Windigo Island

  Chapter 18

  * * *

  Once the wolf of fear inside her was gone, Louise Arceneaux told them everything, the whole truth of the boats and the sailors and the humiliations and the abuse.

  “We all did it,” she said. “Me, Lindy Duvall, Carrie’s mom. Others I could name. Our mothers did it, too. Even some of our grandmothers when they were kids. And it wasn’t just us. I met girls from other reservations. None of us had money. Nobody would give us jobs. We didn’t have casinos back then. Working the boats down in Duluth, we made enough that we could send money home. For a lot of girls, what those sailors did wasn’t any worse than what had already been done to us by other men, even some in our families. And the sailors, they paid us for it.”

  “Did Mariah know this?” Rainy asked.

  Louise shook her head. “I never told nobody till now. It was shameful stuff. And I wanted it to be different for my girl.”

  “Will you tell us how it happened for you, Louise?” Cork said.

  The day was hot, but a breeze came off the lake, blew in through the windows of Meloux’s small cabin, and exited through the open door. Louise sat with her back to one of the windows, her face silhouetted against the sunlit aspens of the lakeshore. She drank cool water and, despite the awful things she related, seemed calmer than Cork had seen her since his association with her had first begun.

  “My dad was a drunk,” she said. “Couldn’t keep a job. Beat my mom pretty regular. And Red. Dad was merciless with Red. My brother got out of there as soon as he could, ran away young. I didn’t blame him. My dad started in on me, you know, molesting me, when I was nine or ten. When I was twelve, he gave me over to a cousin who handled girls on the boats in Duluth. I did that work till I was fifteen, sixteen. Got pregnant then and went back to Bad Bluff. That baby, I lost. I was wild in those days, drinking, doing drugs. I took up with anybody who’d take care of me. Some pretty lousy men, let me tell you. No idea, really, who Toby’s father is, and only a guess at Mariah’s. Had ’em both taken away by social services when they were real little. That woke me up. I got sober. Had help with that from Oscar. That’s Cal and Denny’s dad. He’s got problems of his own, but he was real good about helping me get off the booze. He’s in prison, sure, but there are men in there lots worse than him.

  “For a long time, I worked at a hotel in Bayfield, cleaning rooms. Pretty tough cuz I been diabetic for years. Lots of trouble with my feet. They finally had to take my leg. It’s been real rough since then. Red’s been a big help, ’specially with the boys. I’ve tried real hard to be a good mom, to keep my kids from all the crap that screwed me up. But I see the gang Toby hangs out with, a bad bunch, and now Mariah’s gone. I feel like I failed ’em all.”

  She’d cried herself out earlier, and she told this sad history without tears.

  “Are you thinking that maybe Mariah and Carrie ended up working the boats in Duluth?” Cork asked.

  “If they went off with Raven Duvall, I’d bet on it.”

  “Why?”

  “Lindy tells everybody that Raven’s got a job as a model. My ass. I never saw one picture of her in any magazine. She was my daughter and she really was a model, I’d give out those magazines to everybody. Raven? She went off with a relative, some cousin, years ago. Now when she comes back, she comes back wearing nice clothes and driving a nice car. The only way I ever knew for an Indian girl to get that kind of money is spending all your time on your back. She’s seventeen, eighteen now. That’s old to be working the boats. You ask me, I’d say she’s hooked up with somebody who handles girls, and maybe part of her job is making friends with kids like Carrie and Mariah, getting them into the business.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone this when she disappeared?” Rainy asked.

  “I couldn’t be sure. And I’d have to tell the truth about me. I kept hoping I was wrong and that Mariah’d show up one day, just come back home. Then Carrie washed up on Windigo Island. You know, when I worked the boats, I heard stories of girls getting so beat up and so mistreated by those sailors that they jumped overboard. Gave themselves up to that big lake. I got so scared, I knew I had to do something. That’s when I asked my family for help.”

  She looked gratefully at Rainy and Daniel English and Henry Meloux.

  “When you worked the boats, Louise, how was that done?” Cork said. “I mean, did you have somebody who arranged it for you?”

  “Yeah. Back then there was this Fond du Lac Shinnob. His name was Smiley. Easy to see why. Big-toothed grin all the time, and all the time he was figuring how to screw you. He got us the jobs on the boats and took most of what we made. But he also got us rooms to live in and made sure we didn’t starve. And somehow, he was able to keep the cops off our backs. That’s part of what we were paying for, I suppose.”

  “Think he’s still around?”

  Louise looked doubtful. “That was years ago. Probably everything’s different now. For all I know, they set things up through the Internet.”

  “Do you have any cop connections in Duluth?” Rainy asked Cork.

  “Nobody in vice, but with somebody like Smiley, maybe all the cops know him. I’ll see what I can find out. But it seems to me, our best lead is Lindy Duvall. I’m thinking she probably knows how to contact Raven.”

  “She wasn’t helpful the first time we talked to her,” Daniel English said. “Why would she help us now?”

  Cork turned to Meloux. “Would you be willing to go with us, Henry?”

  The old man looked wistful. “It has been years since I was on a good hunt. I would like to be a part of this one, Corcoran O’Connor. And who knows what it is that we track? Maybe the windigo itself.”

  • • •

  Rainy and Louise Arceneaux stayed on at Crow Point, while Cork and English headed into Aurora. English dropped Cork at the house on Gooseberry Lane.

  “Coming in?” Cork asked.

  English shook his head. “Things to do. I’ve got to get Aunt Louise’s insulin prescription refilled, and get this cooler cooled.” He held the bag.

  Cork got out of the pickup and leaned through the open window on the passenger side. “You’ll be going back to Crow Point this afternoon then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your cell phone works out there?”

  “I checked it, and yeah, it does.”

  “Give me a call tonight. We’ll make a plan for tomorrow morning. I think we ought to head off early for Bad Bluff.”

  “Suits me,” English said.

  The big Shinnob looked toward the house. It seemed to Cork that the man’s eyes lingered longer than a mere glance of curiosity would merit. And Meloux’s words came back to him: You are a turtle chasing the moon. At last, English pulled away.

  Jenny met Cork at the front door. She craned her neck to look down the street where English’s truck had gone. “He didn’t want to come in?”

  Cork shook his head. “Things to do, he says.”

  She gave a shrug, as if it mattered to her not at all, but Cork had a feeling that wasn’t exactly true.

  He walked past her into the house. “Where’s my grandson?”

  “He’s with Aunt Rose. They took Trixie for a walk. So? What happened with Henry and Louise?”

  Cork sniffed the air. “Is that coffee I smell?”

  “I just brewed a pot.”

  “Pour me a cup, and I promise to tell you everything.”

  In the kitchen, Jenny’s laptop sat open on the table. Cork figured that in the few minutes she had while Waaboo was gone she’d been working on her manuscript. “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “It goes,” Jenny said. And she closed the computer.

  She poured them both coffee. They sat at the table, and Cork kept his promise. His daughter listened, her eyes burning with anger, her mouth drawn into a thin, bloodless line.

  “Children,”
she said. “They prey on children. God, I’d love to get my hands on those sons of bitches.”

  “At the moment, we’re focused on one thing: finding Mariah Arceneaux. The larger picture will have to wait.”

  “And do you know how to do that? Find Mariah?”

  “I think I know where to begin. We’re going back to Bad Bluff and talk to Lindy Duvall.”

  “She wouldn’t talk to you before. What are you going to do differently?”

  “Me?” Cork crossed his arms and sat back. “I’m just going to watch and listen.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “One thing I didn’t tell you. Henry’s signed on to this ­investigation.”

  “Henry? Dad, he’s—well, who knows how old? He’s really going to do this?”

  “Try to keep him from it.”

  “It might kill him.”

  “I don’t think that’ll happen. He’s a tough old goat. And he was a great hunter once. Probably still is.”

  “So, back to the Bayfield Peninsula? All of us?”

  “If I told you not to come, would you listen to me?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Then all of us,” Cork said. “For now anyway.”

  • • •

  He made some calls that afternoon, connecting with officers in Duluth PD whom he’d come to know while he wore the uniform of the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Office. He got nowhere. Not only did no one recollect an Indian named Smiley but they were less than forthcoming whenever Cork approached the subject of the boats in the harbor and the possibility of sex trafficking there. In a way, it reminded him of the blindness of Captain Bigboy on the Bad Bluff rez.

  That evening after dinner, he wrestled with his grandson on the living room floor. Waaboo got the best of him. Waaboo always got the best of him. When bedtime came, the little guy begged for his grandfather to put him down. Jenny got her son into his pajamas and his teeth brushed, and Cork took it from there. In Waaboo’s room, he sat on the rocker with his grandson on his lap and read from a collection of fairy tales. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Little Red Riding Hood. Waaboo nodded, nodded, and then was asleep. Cork carried him to bed, tucked him in, and kissed his forehead. Then he stood awhile, watching the sleeping child, the gentle rise and fall of Waaboo’s chest, the flutter of his eyelids as he dreamed. And in his heart, Cork wanted every child everywhere to be this safe in sleep. He wanted the terrors of the world to be nothing more than fairy tales, the terrible creatures—the witches and wolves and windigos—nothing more than make-believe. But that was what growing up was all about. Understanding that there were monsters out there and that every story didn’t end happily ever after.

  Though one had, for the O’Connors. It was the story in which the little rabbit Waaboozoons was saved by Jenny. Like many stories, it began with a storm, freakish and terrible, that had ravaged a good deal of the beautiful wilderness in northern Minnesota and left Cork and his daughter stranded on a remote island. First they’d discovered the body of a young woman, little more than a girl, who’d been murdered. Then, hidden among all the debris, they’d found the baby she’d died trying to protect. When the people who killed the girl returned to the island, hoping this time to find and murder the child, Jenny and Cork had risked their own lives to thwart that dark purpose. Jenny had been a tiger, defending the baby as fiercely as if it had been her own. Cork had marveled at his daughter’s resourcefulness and determination. And then he’d seen the fairy-tale ending happen. The evil had been destroyed, and the child had become Jenny’s own.

  He called Daniel English on Crow Point and discussed the plan for the next day. Then he found Rose and Jenny and Trixie on the front porch. The two women drank herbal tea that smelled of cinnamon and clove. The dog chewed on a rawhide bone. Above them, the sky held a pale purple light, the last of the day. The streetlamps had come on, and Gooseberry Lane was lit in circles with stretches of darkness between them.

  Rose said to no one in particular, “I try not to feel hate, but when I hear about men who prey on children, it’s a trial.” Then she said, “What do you do tomorrow?”

  “We leave early,” Cork told her. “Daniel will swing by with Louise and Henry around five, and we’ll drive back to Bad Bluff.”

  Rose said, “Are you going, Jenny?”

  “Would you be okay watching Waaboo another day, Aunt Rose?”

  “Or so,” Cork added. “We don’t know how long this might take.”

  Rose laughed. “Please don’t throw me in the briar patch.” She grew serious again. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

  Cork didn’t answer immediately. Cicadas had begun to buzz in the trees, a long chorus that rose and fell, and though it was a natural sound of the summer, it put Cork in mind of the windigo, of that unsettling call that had come to him from across the lake in Bad Bluff.

  He said, “I’ve been thinking about Carrie Verga.”

  Jenny said, “What about her?”

  “If Raven Duvall took her and Mariah away from Bad Bluff, and if they were working the boats in Duluth, how did she end up on Windigo Island?”

  Neither of the women offered an explanation.

  Cork went on. “I’ve also been thinking about what Puck Arceneaux said, that people on boats often throw what they don’t want into the lake.”

  “You’re saying someone just threw her away?” Rose asked.

  “According to the medical examiner’s report, she was alive when she went into the water. And one of the things Louise told me was that girls who went on the boats didn’t always come back. So I’m wondering if it’s possible Carrie Verga was trafficked out to a crew who mistreated her and she jumped. Or maybe they just got rid of her, tossed her overboard thinking Lake Superior would hide what they’d done. If it happened that way, it had to be after they left the harbor and while they were passing the Apostle Islands.”

  Jenny said, “Wouldn’t her body have sunk? I mean, it’s Lake Superior, Dad.”

  “Despite Kitchigami’s reputation, the bodies of men lost in shipwrecks have occasionally washed ashore, especially if there have been storms churning up the water. I’m not saying this is what happened, but it’s something that might go a long way to explaining the unexplainable.”

  “So you’re not looking at Demetrius Verga any longer?”

  “I’m not closing any doors yet, Jenny. There’s something dirty about that guy, but I haven’t nailed down how he fits into any of this, if he does.”

  Trixie got up, trotted to Cork, sat on her haunches, and looked up at him.

  “Once around the block,” he said to her. “Then it’s bedtime for both of us.”

  Rose excused herself, said good night, and headed to her room. Cork got Trixie’s leash from the kitchen, and a little plastic baggie to clean up her litter. When he returned to the porch, Jenny was standing alone at the railing, staring up at the stars.

  “You should get some sleep,” he said. “I’m guessing tomorrow will be a long day.”

  She didn’t move, didn’t take her eyes off the stars.

  “I’m a writer,” she said. “Or I like to think of myself that way. A storyteller.” She gave a deep sigh. “I want to write about the world as I think it ought to be. If I were writing Mariah’s story, we’d find her in the end. She’d be alive, and we’d save her.”

  “What makes you think we won’t?”

  “Because more and more, I see the world as it is. And what’s bad about it is worse than anything anyone could imagine.”

  She was right, but not completely so. Cork knew that hopelessness was not the answer. He dug deep inside himself, ignored the voice of reason that was part of what fed his own fear. “Know what Henry would say to that?”

  “What?”

  “The good things balance the bad, because there’s also more good tha
n any of us can imagine. And you want to know something else?”

  “You’ll tell me anyway, so go ahead.”

  “You’re one of the very good things.”

  He kissed her forehead lightly. Then he said to Trixie, “Come on, girl. Let’s get this business behind us.”

  Chapter 19

  * * *

  They pulled into Bad Bluff a few minutes after nine the next morning. Daniel English offered to drop Louise at her house so that she could see her boys and Red, but she wanted to be with Henry Meloux and Cork when they confronted Lindy Duvall. They parked on the street in front of the duplex they’d visited three days earlier. Jenny and English stayed in their vehicles. Louise walked with Cork and Meloux to the door, and it was she who knocked. Lindy Duvall answered, wearing gray sweats, no makeup, her hair an unbrushed tangle. Her face registered surprise.

  “Louise.” Her eyes locked on Cork. “You again.” Then wordlessly she took in Meloux.

  “Anin, noozhis,” the old man said gently. Hello, my grandchild.

  From the room behind her came the sound of a television, which, judging from the outlandish sound effects, was tuned to cartoons.

  “We need to talk,” Louise said.

  Duvall shook her head. “Not a good time.”

  “My daughter’s in trouble, Lindy. And your daughter’s why. We need to talk.”

  “I’m not talking to anybody.” Duvall tried to close the door.

  Cork didn’t let that happen. He put himself in the threshold, his body an unyielding doorstop. Duvall stepped back.

  Meloux spoke. “Granddaughter, it is a sad thing when The People turn their backs on one another. It is a hard world, and alone there is only fear in us. Give me your hand, child.”

  The old man reached out. The woman was clearly afraid. Of the man whose body kept her from closing her door. Of Louise Arceneaux with her ornate peg leg and the truth of what she knew about the pasts of them both. Of whatever it was hidden in her own heart. But clearly she was not afraid of the ancient Mide. Maybe because of his age. Or his size, small now, whittled away by time. Or his eyes, as soft as brown pillows. Or his voice, which promised understanding and acceptance and safety. She did as he asked, took his hand, and let them all inside.