Copper River

  The morning was damp and overcast, the temperature in the midforties. There was a dreary feel to the woods, a dismal quiet. Dina drove the ATV; Cork held on behind, shouldering the knapsack. The narrow Killbelly Marsh Trail was a stream of gold leaves wet with dew. At the river, Dina turned west and they went upstream. On this gray morning, the water reflected a slate sky. She stopped a few minutes later and pointed up the hillside to their right.

  “The mine where Charlie hid is up there,” she said. “Behind all that brush. Wait here.”

  Dina swung herself off the ATV and hiked quickly up the slope. She disappeared behind a thicket and emerged again a moment later. Back at the ATV she said, “Still empty.” She restarted the engine and shot ahead.

  In less than fifteen minutes, they reached the creek that marked the boundary of the Copper River Club. Dina stopped again and dismounted.

  “Give me the knapsack,” she said.

  Cork handed it over and she took out a couple of the Motorola walkie-talkies he recognized had come from the resort. She gave one to Cork, kept one herself. She also took out a compact pair of Leitz field glasses in a case with a belt clip.

  “Ren said the cabin’s a couple miles up the river from here. Give me half an hour,” she told Cork. “I’ll raise you on the radio when I’m in position and have the place scoped out, then you come roaring in—I mean loud. If you have to, lead him on a merry chase. Just get him away from the cabin.”

  “Yesterday he had a rifle,” Cork reminded her.

  “Then keep your head down, cowboy.”

  She turned and began a steady lope along the river’s edge in the direction of Stokely’s cabin. She was wearing the camouflage fatigues in autumn color. She quickly blended with the foliage and in a minute he couldn’t see her anymore.

  He gave her thirty minutes but didn’t hear anything on the Motorola. The problem might have been interference, or distance, or a malfunction of the units themselves. He wondered if he should be worried about Dina, but dismissed that concern. He gave her an extra five minutes, then decided it was time to move, regardless. He gunned the ATV and headed onto Copper River Club property.

  He followed a faint but definite path that shadowed the river. Cork, a hunter all his life and used to tracking, spotted the thinning of the underbrush that indicated occasional foot traffic. He figured it was the patrol route for the security personnel. After a mile and a half, the trail veered suddenly north away from the river. Cork held up, puzzled. He decided that Stokely was probably the reason: the patrol route steered clear of his cabin to preserve his privacy. He gave the ATV gas and kept heading west, moving carefully through the undergrowth, following the river.

  He’d fully expected to be intercepted. Several times he gunned the ATV for no reason other than noise. When he finally broke from the trees into a long clearing, he still hadn’t seen a soul. A narrow, rutted dirt road split the clearing. At the south end that overlooked the river stood a small A-frame cabin and three outbuildings. The cabin appeared to be deserted, with no vehicles in sight. In a fenced area between two of the outbuildings, a big dog was barking up a storm.

  Cork scanned the woods and saw no sign of Dina, which was what he expected. She was there somewhere, watching. He drove the ATV onto the dirt road and turned toward the cabin. A dozen yards from the front door, he killed the engine, swung his sore leg over the seat, and dismounted. In its high-fenced kennel, the dog, a black and tan German shepherd, was doing everything it could short of pole-vaulting to get at Cork. It dashed back and forth, occasionally hurling itself against the chain links in a frenzy of snapping and snarling. Although the fence looked plenty sturdy, Cork was glad to have the Tomcat strapped to his ankle.

  He knocked on the cabin door and waited. He tried to peek in a window but the shades and curtains were tightly drawn. Moving to the garage, he peered through a pane and saw that it was empty inside. He approached the kennel. The German shepherd went into a whole other universe of agitation, sending out a spray of saliva and foam as it slammed into the fence. Cork was a little concerned that it might actually harm itself.

  The next building was a wood shop, locked. Through the window on the door, Cork saw lathes, planes, saws, worktables, and a floor covered with sawdust and shavings. The last building was a small smokehouse.

  He faced the cabin again. It was clear that Stokely was not currently in residence.

  He felt a presence at his back.

  “Nada?” Dina said.

  He shook his head. “No Stokely, no Charlie, no nothing.”

  “There is something,” she said. “Out there in the woods. See what you think.”

  She led him a short distance into the trees and pointed toward an area of bare ground. Cork saw what interested her. He knelt, grimacing at the pain that shot through his leg, and he carefully studied the prints.

  “The cougar,” he said.

  “The night Stokely wounded it?”

  Cork shook his head. “That was a couple of days ago. I’d say these tracks are more recent, within the last twenty-four hours.” He reached out and Dina helped him up. He looked from the tracks toward the cabin, barely visible through the foliage. “This close to a barking dog and a man who’s already put a bullet in it, that animal has to be crazy or desperately hungry.”

  “Was it after the dog, maybe?”

  “Even if you were hungry, would you think that dog was an easy meal? Maybe it was after garbage.”

  “I don’t see a garbage can out here,” she said.

  Cork eyed the line of the tracks, which seemed to head toward an opening in the woods a short distance away. He limped in that direction with Dina at his side. They stepped into another clearing, nearly circular and much smaller than the one that held Stokely’s buildings. This one was only forty or fifty feet in diameter. It was filled with tall grass and wildflowers gone yellow with the season. The ground was uneven, and the ground cover was unevenly rich, surprisingly thick and lush in places. On the far side, loose soil lay thrown about in scattered splashes, the result of an animal’s furious digging. Cork saw a shallow trough scraped in the earth. He crossed the clearing with Dina, and they stood over the hole.

  “Oh God,” Dina said. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Black with rot, ragged from the feeding of the cougar, it was nonetheless clearly a human leg, bare and attached to a body still mostly buried.

  Cork turned away, sickened as he understood the reason for the uneven earth and lush undergrowth in that terrible hidden place.

  43

  At noon the overcast began to break and by two o’clock the sun was nailed to a sky so blue and pure it was almost heartbreaking. The state police working in the tiny clearing cast shadows across the holes they dug and their words to one another were spoken in the hushed tones of men still not quite able to comprehend the brutal enormity before them. There were a dozen vehicles parked along the dirt road leading to Stokely’s cabin. Some were state, others county. Ned Hodder’s Cherokee was there, and that’s where Cork and Dina sat. For too long now, they’d watched the body bags come out of the clearing.

  Despite the number of people on the scene, a somber quiet hung over everything. Someone from the sheriff’s department had tranquilized the German shepherd in the kennel, who’d gone berserk when all the vehicles rolled up. Hodder said the dog’s name was Snatch.

  Dina smoked a cigarette she’d bummed from one of the troopers.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” Cork had said.

  “I don’t,” she’d replied, and they spoke no more about it.

  They’d been interviewed separately by the state investigators, had given their statements, and were free to go. Neither of them was ready. Cork still felt stunned, as if he’d been hit between the eyes with a big mallet. He’d seen bad things in his time, but nothing compared to this.

  Hodder walked toward them from where he’d been conversing with one of the investigators. He leaned against the side of the Cherokee, folded
his arms across his chest, and stared east where Bodine lay a few miles on the other side of all those thick, autumn-fired hardwood trees.

  “Children,” he said. “They’re all children. Fourteen, fifteen years old. Mostly girls. Some of the graves are several years old. So far, the most recent looks to be a couple of weeks. That’s the one the cougar messed with.” He let his arms fall uselessly. “God, how did this happen?”

  “We abandoned them,” Dina said. She threw the butt of her cigarette onto the road, where it smoldered, white smoke against dun-colored dirt. “Cats, dogs, we spay or neuter, but people we let procreate with blithe abandon, people who have no business bringing children into this world. When those kids become desperate we don’t see them, don’t hear them. As long as they’re not haunting our block, staring hopelessly into our windows, we can pretend they don’t exist or worse, that whatever horror they deal with they’ve brought on themselves. They’re not our children. They’re not even like our children. Believe me, this is something I know about.”

  Cork rubbed his leg, which was hot and throbbing. He hadn’t done himself any favors that day.

  “Sara Wolf was Ojibwe,” he said. “Born to The People. It used to be, in a village everyone watched out for the children. Blood ties, clans, those things didn’t matter. Now …” He looked up at the sky and sighed. “It feels like everything everywhere is falling apart.”

  Hodder eyed another body bag being carried from the woods. “Where did they all come from?”

  “Providence House for one,” Dina said. “When I talked to Mary Hilfiker, she told me the kids there came out of nowhere and vanished the same way, and she had no resources to track them. She told me that in this country nearly a million go missing every year. A child abandoned with no one who cares, that’s the perfect prey.” She leaned over as if she were going to be sick. “What I can’t understand is why they’d hire someone like Bell.”

  “If they did a background check—and they probably did—they wouldn’t find anything. He managed to keep his record clean,” Hodder said.

  “How do you know?” Dina asked.

  He shrugged. “My town. I know things like that.”

  Terry Olafsson and a state investigator came from the wood shop. Isaac Stokely, head of security for the Copper River Club, was with them. The investigator led Stokely toward the A-frame cabin. Olafsson walked to Hodder’s Cherokee. He stood a few paces away and stared down at the cigarette butt Dina had tossed.

  “Looks like the wood shop I’ve got at home,” he said. “Smells like it, too. Shavings, sawdust. Always meant good things to me. Not anymore. There’s a trapdoor in the floor of Stokely’s: leads to a small cellar room, a cinder-block bunker kind of a thing, no bigger than a jail cell. There’s a cot, slop bucket, video equipment, some bloody kids’ clothes wadded up and thrown in a corner.”

  He stopped. The line of his mouth went taut. He looked pale.

  “The minute you go down there you can feel it. It’s like the walls are soaked full of all that horror. It’s quiet as a tomb, but Christ, I swear you can hear the screams. I’ve never felt anything like it.”

  “What about Isaac Stokely?” Hodder asked. “Was he involved?”

  Olafsson shook his head. “Claims he knows nothing about it. He’s cooperating. We’ll have to wait and see, but I get the feeling he really didn’t know anything. He seems just as horrified as the rest of us. He’s definitely not protecting his brother.”

  “It’s isolated here,” Cork said, indicating the clearing with a wave of his hand. “Controlled access. The security patrols skirt this area. Bringing in a drugged child in a car trunk—”

  “Calvin Stokely drives a Dodge Ram with a camper shell,” Hodder put in.

  “There you go. A perfect setup until one of the children, a kid with a strong will to survive, somehow gets herself free and runs. Gets lost maybe or is being chased and stumbles into the river.”

  “I can’t sit here anymore,” Dina said. “I’ve got to do something.”

  “What?” Hodder asked.

  “Find Charlie.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet. You coming?” she said to Cork.

  “On the ATV?” He winced. “I don’t think so.”

  Hodder moved toward the driver’s seat. “I’ll give you both a ride. They don’t need me here. You can make arrangements to pick up the ATV later.”

  Olafsson put his hand on the door before Hodder closed it. “It would be a good idea to be available at your office, Ned, in case they decide they want some more information on the locals.”

  “Will do.”

  Cork and Dina settled in, slammed doors.

  “A BOLO’s been issued for Calvin Stokely,” Olafsson said through Hodder’s open window. “There aren’t a lot of roads in this part of the U.P. We’ll get him.”

  He stepped back and Hodder swung the Cherokee around and headed out of the clearing toward the road that would take them to the gate a couple of miles away.

  “So Stokely left the Copper River Club yesterday and never came back,” Cork said.

  “That’s how the log at the gate reads,” Hodder confirmed. “His dog was hungry, too, which would tend to verify that he didn’t return.”

  “Why stay away?” Cork said. “Nothing had been discovered yet that would incriminate him.”

  “Probably he killed Bell and panicked.”

  “And he killed Bell because…?”

  Hodder shrugged. “Maybe he thought Bell was ready to break, spill the beans. Maybe they argued. Who knows?”

  Dina was quiet in back, staring out the window at the trees that lined the road like a wall of flame.

  They stopped at the gate. Hodder spoke to the guard.

  “Still pretty quiet, Wes,” he observed of the empty road beyond the gate.

  “Until the media gets hold of this, then all hell’ll break loose,” the guard replied.

  “What do you think?” Hodder jabbed a thumb back in the direction of all the activity.

  Wes leaned against the Cherokee and spoke through the window. “Nobody’s asked me yet, but I always got the willies around Calvin. Hell, he wouldn’t have the job if it weren’t for his brother and we all knew that. We all knew better than to go near his place, too. I mean, the guy freaked. Big duh, huh? Heads are going to roll up here. You want a job as chief of security, there’s sure to be an opening, Ned.”

  “Say, Wes,” Cork said. “Mind if I ask you a question?”

  “Who’s he?” the guard asked Hodder.

  “Somebody whose question you should answer,” Hodder replied.

  The guard said, “Shoot.”

  “Does it say on your log when Calvin Stokely left yesterday?”

  “I’d have to check.”

  “Check,” Hodder said.

  Wes went into the guardhouse and came out half a minute later. “He got off duty at three, split from the Club at three-thirty.”

  “Thanks. One more question,” Cork said. “Anybody visit Calvin Stokely on a regular basis?”

  “Only one I can think of. A drinking buddy from Marquette. Guy name of Delmar Bell.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Believe me, Stokely wasn’t the kind who’d have a lot of friends. And anybody who visited would have to come through here, so I’d know.”

  “Thanks, Wes,” Cork said.

  The guard stepped back to the box and lifted the gate.

  “What was that all about?” Ned asked.

  “Just fishing,” Cork said. “You never know.”

  Heading back to the resort, they were quiet. Jewell’s Blazer was parked in front of Thor’s Lodge, and she came out as Hodder pulled up.

  “I thought they needed you at the clinic,” Cork said.

  “I couldn’t concentrate. They called in someone to cover. What’s going on?”

  “Let’s go inside,” Cork said.

  She sat stunned, her hand over her mouth as if stifling a scream. Except for “O
h dear God,” she’d said nothing as Cork explained what they’d found.

  “Charlie,” she gasped at last. “Was there any sign of Charlie?”

  “No.”

  “But they still don’t know where Stokely is?”

  “That’s right. They’ve issued a BOLO.”

  She stared at him without understanding.

  “Be on the lookout.”

  Ned, who stood awkwardly near the front door, hat in hand, said, “They’ll get him, Jewell. As for Charlie, she’s a smart kid. I’m sure she’s just hunkered down somewhere, waiting this out.”

  Jewell eyed him hopefully. “You think so? Where?”

  He returned her gaze for a moment, then had to look away.

  “If Stokely has her,” Jewell said, “will he hurt her?”

  It was the question they’d probably all been asking themselves, but only Jewell had spoken it. She grabbed for her purse and pulled out her cigarettes. “Damn!” She crumpled the empty pack, stood up, and began pacing. “We have to find her.”

  “We don’t know where to look, Jewell,” Hodder said gently. “She could be anywhere.”

  “The first time she vanished, she was hiding in an old mine she and Ren knew about. But I checked it this morning on the way to Stokely’s cabin,” Dina told them. “She wasn’t there.”

  Hodder settled his hat on his head. “Look, I need to get back to my office in case the state investigators want to talk to me. On the way, I’ll swing by Max’s trailer and then I’ll check the old lumberyard next to it. I’ve been thinking it might be a place Charlie would hide. Bunch of abandoned buildings and all.”

  Jewell nodded. “You’ll let us know what you find?”

  “I will.” He offered a comforting smile before he left.

  Jewell stood at the window watching him drive away. “I should have done more,” she said to herself.

  “You’ve done everything you could, Jewell,” Cork assured her. “What those men did at the Copper River Club nobody could predict.”