Vermilion Drift

  “Lunch is just about over,” Kitty said. “A couple of minutes from now, we’ve got to punch back in. Got work to do on the other side of that gate. Every second we’re late you pay for, Broom, one way or another.”

  “Hey, Kitty. Broom doesn’t get out of our way, what do you say we make him our afternoon work? Maybe use him as fill for a pothole or something.”

  The two sisters laughed.

  Broom said, “You can do violence to me. That would be a small crime. But the violence to Grandmother Earth is another kind of crime. And the violence a nuclear waste dump would do to generations after us, that’s the greatest crime of all.”

  Kitty laid the bat over her shoulder and looked like a hitter waiting her turn at the plate. “We’re not arguing your point, Broom, just your tactic. You’re not winning yourself or your cause any friends by keeping a couple of breadwinners from jobs that put food on the table.”

  “You got a problem with dumping nuclear waste here, fine,” Bobbi said. “The idea doesn’t exactly make me do somersaults. But our work has nothing to do with that. So kindly step aside and let us pass.”

  Broom stood his ground. “If not us, who?” he said, more to the crowd than to the sisters. “If not now, when?”

  “You know, you’re beginning to piss me off,” Kitty said and unshouldered her bat.

  The gathering of protesters clearly didn’t know which side to root for: Broom, big as a bear, or the two women, tornadoes in tight jeans.

  Cork approached on foot and said, “Isaiah, you don’t stand aside, you’re in contempt of the restraining order.”

  “And who’d blame us for kicking your ass?” Bobbi said.

  Broom crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m willing to be arrested for doing the right thing.”

  “Nobody doubts that, Isaiah,” Cork said. “But why not save that move for when the big trucks roll up carrying the nuclear waste? It’ll get a lot more play in the media than a confrontation with two women.”

  Kitty turned on Cork. “You saying we don’t count?”

  Bobbi said, “Relax, Kitty. He’s on our side.”

  Cork said, “I’m not taking sides here. I’m just saying consider which battles you fight, Isaiah. You really want the news story to be that you got knocked around by a couple of working females just trying to put food on the table for their families?”

  “Let ’em pass,” one of the protesters hollered.

  Broom held his ground for a moment more, then lowered his arms and stepped out of the way.

  The two sisters started back to the pickup.

  “Thanks, Cork,” Bobbi said.

  Kitty still looked pissed. “You ever insinuate that women don’t count in a confrontation, I’ll shove this ball bat up your ass, understand?”

  “I read you loud and clear, Kitty.”

  “Good,” she said. She opened the driver’s door, threw the ball bat inside, and said over her shoulder to Cork, “Next time we see you at the Buzz Saw, your beer’s on us.”

  The sisters slammed the doors shut. The engine kicked over, and the big pickup rolled through the front gate.

  “Got a minute, Isaiah?” Cork asked.

  “Fuck you, O’Connor.” Broom started back to join the other protesters.

  “I have a question about one of your relatives. Indigo.”

  That stopped Broom in his tracks. He turned to Cork and, for a Shinnob, showed an unseemly amount of emotion.

  “Why the hell are you asking about him?”

  A car approached on the highway where the two men stood. It gave a little warning honk.

  “Let’s talk over there.” Cork pointed toward his Land Rover.

  They cleared the asphalt, and the car drove past. The protesters settled back into their canvas chairs or returned to quiet conversations in small groups. Cork walked to his Land Rover with Broom fuming at his side.

  “You ever mention that name again and I’ll beat you within an inch of your life,” Broom swore.

  “He was a relative of yours, right?”

  “My mother’s cousin. What’s it to you?”

  “According to Millie Joseph, he disappeared about the same time the Vanishings ended.”

  “So?”

  “Just wondering if there might have been some connection.”

  “Between him and the Vanishings?” Broom seemed genuinely surprised but not offended.

  “Isaiah, has the sheriff talked to you about the remains they found in the Vermilion Drift?”

  “What about ’em?”

  “They’ve positively identified all but one of the bodies. The one still remaining? I think there’s a good chance it’s your mother.”

  “My mother?”

  “Millie Joseph told me your mother disappeared just before the Vanishings began. Everyone thought that she’d taken off, abandoned you. I believe that wasn’t true. I believe she was one of the first victims. And I believe that Indigo Broom may have had something to do with it.”

  Broom was stunned to silence. He stood there, a big man with his mouth open.

  Cork went on. “Millie Joseph called Indigo Broom ‘Mr. Windigo.’ She told me he was a man folks on the rez avoided. Did you know him?”

  Now Broom’s mouth closed and his eyes became hard as fists. “I knew him,” he said, his lips barely moving.

  “What happened to him?”

  “He left.”

  “And went where?”

  “I didn’t care.”

  “Did anyone ever say?”

  “No. And no one gave a shit.”

  “Not even his family?”

  “Family? He fed on family.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Broom looked at Cork. “We called him Mr. Windigo, too.”

  “Was he the kind of man who could have made those women disappear?”

  Broom said, “I’ve talked enough.” He turned his back on Cork and began to walk away.

  “Isaiah,” Cork called after him. “Are you responsible for the graffiti in the mine?”

  Broom stopped and turned back.

  Because the second entrance to the Vermilion Drift was on the rez, Cork had felt strongly from the beginning that a Shinnob was responsible. Although Cork’s question had been a shot in the dark, Broom’s reaction made him think he might have hit the mark.

  “Which would mean you knew about the other way into the mine. Did you know about the remains?”

  Broom walked slowly back and stood looking down into Cork’s face. The big Shinnob cast enough shadow that it completely swallowed Cork.

  “I know nothing about those bodies down there. As for the graffiti, if I had anything to do with it, which I didn’t, I’d know that tunnel was about the most evil place on earth.”

  Broom left, taking his huge shadow with him.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Given what Cork now knew, he believed that Isaiah Broom’s long-lost relative, Indigo, was a very likely suspect in the disappearance of the women on the Iron Lake Reservation more than forty years earlier. It struck him as odd that Indigo Broom’s name had never been mentioned during the investigation Cork’s father had conducted. Cork had made the connection with relative ease. Why hadn’t his father? Or the other people on the rez?

  He thought about these things as he drove back to Aurora, and before he reached the town limits, he’d arrived at some very speculative conclusions.

  Indigo Broom and Monique Cavanaugh had disappeared at approximately the same time, and the Vanishings had stopped. Broom was a man of desires dark enough to be feared, even by his own people. Cork might have suspected that Indigo Broom was responsible for the fate of Monique Cavanaugh except for one salient detail: his father’s .38 Smith & Wesson Police Special may well have been the weapon used to kill her. He knew, too, that Cavanaugh was a woman of dark desires and devious motives, which she’d hidden well from others, but not from the priest and probably not from her husband, who refused to speak of her once she was gone. Could she, too, h
ave played some part in the Vanishings?

  It was entirely possible, probable even, Cork concluded, that the Anishinaabeg of the Iron Lake Reservation had not been as ignorant as the official reports of the investigation seemed to indicate, nor had his father.

  But why had they all lied?

  And how had a bullet from his father’s gun come to be lodged in the spine of Monique Cavanaugh? If he knew that, maybe Cork would know how a bullet from the same weapon had found its way into the body of her daughter.

  As he pulled into town, his cell phone rang. Sheriff Dross. She told him that she’d scheduled another news conference for the afternoon. She wanted everyone in her office beforehand, at 2:00 P.M., so that she knew where all the parts of the investigation stood.

  Cork stopped by home, grabbed a quick bologna sandwich, and took Trixie for a short walk. Then he headed to the Tamarack County sheriff’s office. He was the last to arrive. In addition to Dross, there were the other usuals: Captain Ed Larson, Agent Simon Rutledge, and Agent Susan Upchurch. Once again, there weren’t enough chairs, so Cork leaned against a wall.

  “Susan,” Dross said to the BCA agent, “why don’t you give us an update on what you’ve found so far.”

  “All right. Remember the marks on the bones that I indicated earlier could have been made by incisions or by the teeth of a scavenger? I’ve pretty much concluded that they’re the result of a knife blade. I also believe they were delivered perimortem.”

  “Perimortem?” Cork asked.

  “At or very near the time of death.”

  “What makes you believe that?” Larson said.

  “In perimortem wounds, the edges of the bone along the incision often curl, like if you’d cut into a live branch that you’ve pulled off a tree.”

  “So the victims may well have been alive when these cuts were made?”

  “Yes. But it’s also possible the cuts were made immediately after death.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “They might be ritualistic. They might have been the result of some kind of homicidal frenzy, I suppose. But you also sometimes find this same kind of mark on victims of cannibalism.”

  “Cannibalism?” Dross looked aghast.

  “I’m not saying that’s what occurred, just that the marks are consistent with a number of possibilities, and that’s one of them.”

  “Great,” Dross said. “The media will love that, I’m sure.”

  Cork asked, “Did Monique Cavanaugh have any of these marks?”

  “No. We’ve found no knife marks on the remains of the Cavanaugh woman, no evidence of knife wounds.”

  “So cause of death was probably the bullet lodged in her spine?”

  “That’s the best speculation at the moment.”

  Cork looked at the sheriff. “Anything more from the Lauren Cavanaugh autopsy?”

  “Yes,” Dross said. “In addition to the bullet wound to her chest, Tom Conklin found a superficial wound on her right side, just above her hip.”

  “What kind of wound?”

  “Tom thinks it’s a bullet graze.”

  “The killer missed the first time around?”

  “We couldn’t say that officially, but that would be my current speculation. Ed, tell Cork what you’ve got.”

  “We’ve gone over the old Parrant estate,” Larson said. “We didn’t find anything of particular value in the big house. But in the boathouse, which Ms. Cavanaugh had renovated into an additional private living area for herself, we found two things. First, between the floorboards, we discovered traces of what we believe to be blood. Simon’s people are analyzing the samples now.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Well, the M.E. believes she died quickly from the gunshot wound. The blood covered a significant area, so I think Lauren Cavanaugh lay facedown after she died, lay there quite a while so that gravity pulled a lot of blood out the chest wound. It looks to me like someone eventually tried to clean things up and, except for what seeped between the boards, did a pretty good job.”

  “What was the other thing?” Cork asked.

  “We got really lucky. We pulled a fingerprint from the back of a table lamp. A bloody fingerprint. Simon’s people are analyzing that blood, too, and trying to match the print.”

  “You’re pretty sure she was killed in the boathouse?”

  “Like Marsha says, I wouldn’t state that officially, but that’s my current speculation.”

  “So killed in her boathouse, taken to the Vermilion One Mine, and sealed up with the other bodies in the drift,” Dross summed up.

  “Anybody at the Northern Lights Center hear or see anything?” Cork asked.

  “The current residents didn’t arrive until the next day, and all the staff had gone home by then,” Larson said. “The only person who might have heard was a guy named Huff. He’s a long-term resident. But he wasn’t at the center in the time frame we believe the killing took place. He was out drinking and has someone who backs up his story. So basically nobody’s been able to give us anything.”

  “I’ll give you something,” Cork said. “Huff was quite comfortable in Monique Cavanaugh’s private area. You might want to lean on him a little, see what gives.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I was there a couple of days ago, talking with Ophelia Stillday. Just an observation I made.”

  “All right.” Larson jotted a note in his little book.

  Simon Rutledge eyed Cork, and there was an enigmatic expression on his face. He said, “I have a little something to add about the earlier killings. The priest assigned to St. Agnes in those days was accused of masturbating in the confessional. Shortly after that, some women’s panties were found hidden there, stained with semen. The investigating officer apparently didn’t feel the situation was such that the priest should be looked at as a viable suspect in the Vanishings, but the Church yanked the guy.”

  “Jesus, where’d you get that information?” Larson asked.

  “You said the files had been destroyed, but I knew that one of your retired deputies, Cy Borkman, had been with the department back then, so I talked to him. Then I tracked down the priest. It was basically the same thing Cork did.”

  Dross leveled a cold eye on Cork. “You knew about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were going to tell us when?”

  “As soon as I had a few more things worked out.”

  “Like what?”

  Cork said, “Simon, did the priest tell you about Monique Cavanaugh’s sexual proclivities?”

  “Reluctantly.”

  “What do you think?”

  “If it’s true, she wasn’t exactly Snow White.”

  Dross leaned forward, and, even across the room, Cork thought he could feel the heat of her rising anger. “What are you two gentlemen talking about?”

  “According to the priest, Monique Cavanaugh propositioned him several times,” Cork replied. “She finally threatened him. And that was followed by an anonymous call to the sheriff’s department that resulted in the aforementioned soiled intimate items coming to light in the confessional.”

  “She set the priest up?”

  “That’s certainly what he believes.”

  “That doesn’t mesh at all with the image everyone has of her,” Larson said.

  “You need to press her son a little more on the subject of his mother, Ed. You may discover that he doesn’t consider her Snow White either.”

  “Is there anything else you know but haven’t told us?” Dross asked.

  “I saw Isaiah Broom today,” Cork replied. “I told him I was pretty sure the unidentified body was his mother.”

  “Jesus Christ, what were you thinking?” the sheriff cried. “We haven’t positively ID’d the final remains. If this gets out and you’re wrong …” She took a moment to rein in her anger, and the whole time the smolder of her gaze was directed at Cork. At last she said, “What’s done is done. That’s all for now, gentlemen.” br />
  The normal tourist traffic had swelled with the influx of folks curious about the grisly discovery in the Vermilion Drift, and Sam’s Place was doing a land-office business. Judy Madsen, Jodi Bollendorf, and Kate Buker had the situation under control when Cork checked in. He promised to be there early that night to close and left things in their capable hands.

  He returned home, gathered the boxes that contained his mother’s journals, and took them out to the patio in the backyard. Trixie jumped up and ran to greet him. He released her from the tether that held her, and she bounded to the far corner of the yard and snatched a dirty tennis ball in her teeth. Cork threw it a few times, then told her gently he had work to do. He grabbed a cold Leinie’s from the refrigerator, settled into a patio chair, and took out the journal that contained the entries immediately following the missing pages that would have chronicled the time of the Vanishings.

  September 17, 1964

  Fall is here and everywhere I look I see blood. It’s in the color of the sumac and the maple leaves and the sky at sunset and at dawn. Henry Meloux is helping Hattie and Ellie and Mom and me. Liam walks like a man made of stone, cold and hard. Cork, ever the quiet, watchful child, sees and wonders but does not ask. Thank God.

  Does not ask, Cork thought. Well, he was asking now.

  He scanned other entries, looking for anything that might be a clue to the missing days.

  September 21, 1964

  The first day of fall officially. Usually a glorious time, but this year we all mourn. Winter is already in our souls. Liam grows more distant. What has been asked of him is great, and he struggles. He is not one of The People. If he were, he might understand and better accept how things must be. There is friction between us. This I can live with. For now. What hurts is seeing how Liam has distanced himself from Cork as well. He’s short with his son. And the Irish in Cork flares up and he lashes back. They battle these days. Except that Cork has no idea of the true enemy here.

  September 29, 1964

  Cork has been suspended from school. He got into a fight with another boy. Over what neither of them would say. Liam is furious. Nothing new. He’s angry all the time now. I’ve asked him to talk to Henry Meloux. He refuses. Cork sits in his room, staring a hole through the wall. My heart is breaking.