“Fine. But we’ll have to have it at some point.”
“Will we? I’d like to be alone with him right now.”
“Perfect,” Aaron said.
He walked away, and in the quiet after his leaving, she could hear the soothing spill of waves against the shore and the soft breathing of the baby asleep at her feet.
“I don’t think it’s going well,” Anne said from the window of the lodge, where she’d been watching the exchange at the end of the dock.
Mal said, “What do you think of him?”
Anne crossed her arms and gave the question a good long think. “He’s smart. He’s handsome. He loves Jenny. He seems very nice. What’s not to like?”
Mal bent and gently touched his injured ankle. “That sounds rhetorical.”
Rose came from the kitchen, holding a big package of frozen hamburger. “Not the best of circumstances under which to meet the O’Connors, you have to admit. What about meat loaf for dinner? And I can do up some garlic mashed potatoes, and there’s a big bag of peas in the freezer. Nothing for a salad, unfortunately.”
“You know,” Mal said, “I keep thinking about that girl and her situation and who might have been cruel enough or angry enough to do what was done to her. And this other one, too. This Chickaway.”
“Thinking what?” Rose said. She sat down at the table with her husband.
“I had a man in confession once who told me he had horrible thoughts about killing his girlfriend.”
“Are you allowed to tell us this?”
“I won’t tell you who he was, sweetheart. And it was a long time ago. He and God have already had a face-to-face on this issue.”
“He’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“Go on,” Rose said.
“He was inclined to kill her because she’d betrayed him, slept with another man. Sent my guy into a murderous rage. He was going to kill her, and then he was going to kill the guy she’d slept with.”
“But you talked him out of it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Did he?”
“You mean did he kill her? No. He killed himself instead.”
Anne said, “And the point is?”
“Maybe Chickaway fathered the child and took Lily Smalldog off Stump Island before she began to show and anyone would know. He hid her on that remote island and was keeping her safe there.”
“Safe from Smalldog?”
“That’s what I’m thinking. Because he knows Smalldog and what he’s capable of.”
“But Smalldog gets wind of it because of all that formula, tortures Chickaway until he tells where Lily is, then kills him, hauls the body off, and goes after Lily. Is that it? A murderous rage? I don’t know, Mal,” Anne said.
Mal shrugged. “I’m just thinking out loud.”
“But the baby has a cleft lip,” Rose pointed out. “Lynn Belgea said Noah Smalldog was also born with a cleft lip. So wouldn’t the baby be Smalldog’s?”
Mal considered the possibility, then offered, “You told me she also said that Indians have a much higher rate of cleft lip than other ethnic groups, so maybe it’s just chance.”
Anne said, “He’s leaving her.”
Rose and Mal swung their attention to Anne, who was still looking out the window.
“What? For good?” Mal asked.
“I mean right now. She’s staying on the dock with the baby. He’s heading back here.”
“I guess we can’t talk about him behind his back then,” Mal said.
“You make it sound awful,” Rose said. “It’s just a family discussion.”
“If you say so.” Mal let out a small groan.
“Oh, sweetheart, I’m worried about that ankle.”
Mal laughed. “With everything else we have to worry about, this ankle’s nothing, Rose. What kind of Catholic would I be if I couldn’t take a little suffering?”
Anne said, “I’m going out to be with Jenny for a while.”
“Go on,” Rose said. “She could use family about now, I bet. And, Mal, would you mind having a little talk with Aaron while I make myself scarce?”
“A little talk? About what?”
“Whatever he wants to discuss,” Rose said.
“If it’s women, I won’t be much help,” Mal said.
Aaron opened the screen door and stepped in. It was clear he was deep in thought, and when he looked up, he seemed surprised to find them there.
Anne said, “I’ll be back,” and she slipped past him and out the door.
Rose said, “I’d better get to that meat loaf.”
She went into the kitchen, but not so far away that she couldn’t hear what passed between the two men in the other room.
Mal said, “You look like a guy who could use a beer.”
“Thanks.”
“Rose, you mind bringing a couple of those beers out here?” Mal called.
She went to the big refrigerator in Bascombe’s kitchen and pulled out two bottles. When she took them in, she found Aaron sitting at the table with Mal. The look on his face reminded her of the thousand-yard stare she’d heard about in men suffering from shell shock. She set the beer in front of him.
“Thank you,” he said and looked at her with those vacant eyes.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” Mal said.
She returned to the kitchen and began to prepare the meat loaf. All the while she kept an ear tuned to the conversation between Mal and Aaron.
“This beer’s Capital,” she heard Mal say. “Sounds like an endorsement, but it’s the name of the brewery. Out of Middleton, Wisconsin. You like it?”
“It’s fine, I guess.”
“One of my personal favorites. Speaks well of Bascombe’s taste that he keeps it stocked even out here in the middle of nowhere.” They were quiet in a way that made Rose uncomfortable. “Tough circumstances for meeting the family,” Mal finally said.
“Tell me about it.”
“We’ve heard a lot about you, Aaron. All good.”
“I’m not so sure you’d get the same report now.”
“People under stress sometimes say things they regret later.”
“But that doesn’t mean it’s not how they feel.”
“Maybe only how they feel in the moment,” Mal said. “We change, moment to moment, circumstance to circumstance. That’s what forgiveness is about.”
“Jenny said you used to be a priest, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Forgiveness was pretty big in your line of work, I imagine.” Rose heard the cynical undertone.
“I like to think it still is,” Mal replied.
For another long minute there was only a huge, looming silence from the other room. Rose peeked through the doorway and saw the two men on opposite sides of the table sipping their beer. She wasn’t sure it had been such a good idea to leave Mal alone with this responsibility.
But she could see her husband’s face, and she didn’t see any alarm or discomfort or unpleasantness there. He simply looked as if he was waiting.
And she remembered something Cork had told her about interviewing suspects, how silence was a pretty good way to get someone with something on his mind to talk.
And then Aaron said, “It’s the baby.”
“What about the baby?”
“Jenny wants to keep him. She’s been with him like two days, and she’s already thinking about him as if he’s her own. How crazy is that?”
“They’ve been through a lot together. She risked her life for that little guy, and is probably the reason he’s still alive. There are cultures that believe that kind of relationship binds people forever.”
“The deal is this, Mal. I didn’t go through any of that. I have no emotional attachment to this kid at all. And what kind of kid is he? Let’s be honest, he’s got a lot of strikes against him. Hell, I’m not even ready to take on the challenge of a normal kid. That baby—and how Jenny feels about him—scares me to death. Christ, and I th
ought the toughest thing I was going to face was meeting the incredible O’Connors.”
“Incredible?”
“That’s how Jenny talks about her family.”
“She loves them.”
“Well, bully for her.” The room plunged again into awkward silence. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“I know.”
“Mal, can Jenny forgive me, do you think?”
“Forgive what exactly?”
“Who I am?” Aaron said. “Or maybe who I can’t be.”
“I think that’s a question only Jenny can answer. Your beer’s getting warm.”
Jenny said, “He’s a selfish idiot.”
“Maybe. To me, he just seems really confused, Jenny. Who wouldn’t be?”
“I’m not.”
“What if you have to give this baby up?”
“I know I’m going to have to give this baby up.”
“Really? Because that’s not the sense I get from you at all.”
Jenny looked down at the child, who lay in the basket at her feet, awake now and staring up intently at her face. She said sadly, “Who’s going to take him?”
“I don’t know. I imagine a decision like that gets made by people with authority.”
“According to rules,” Jenny said bitterly.
“The rules are there to protect the children. You know that.”
She did, but it didn’t matter. Suddenly she was crying. It came over her in an unexpected flood, as if some flimsy dam had finally burst inside her. She leaned to her sister, who held her.
“I know it’s crazy,” she confessed. “Don’t you think I know that? But I can’t help it. The moment I saw him, I knew. It was like I was meant to find him.”
“It’s okay,” Anne said and smoothed her sister’s hair. “I understand.”
“I was so scared out there. Scared for him and Dad and me. I didn’t know if we were going to make it. All I could think about was that poor girl in the cabin and what had been done to her, and would they do the same to me, and, God, what would they do to him?” She drew away from Anne and reached down, pulled the baby from the basket, held him and went on crying.
“It’s all right,” Anne said. “It’s over, Jenny.”
“Is it? We don’t know who that man out there was or why he wanted the baby. Because it was the baby he was after. That much I’m sure of.”
“Okay. But we’re all here to help protect him. He’s safe now.”
“Then why am I so afraid?” She ran her hand along the baby’s soft cheek, then gave her sister a desperate look and spoke words that came out of some dark place of knowing deep inside her. “Can’t you feel it, Annie?”
“Feel what?”
Jenny clutched the child as if some terrible force were trying to wrench him from her. “It’s not over yet,” she said. “The worst is still to come.”
TWENTY-NINE
How far to Stump Island?” Cork asked.
“Another five miles,” Kretsch said. “It’s the last of the islands before you hit the big water, so it’s pretty far out there.”
The wind was against them, and Bascombe, at the helm, gripped the wheel and seemed tense as they bounced through the chop of the waves. They’d passed to the west of Massacre Island, which lay on the other side of the boundary line with Canada, and then Little Oak Island, and finally Garden Island, where the lake had opened up in front of them. On the horizon far to the south, Cork could see nothing. The big water, he knew. There was something about that vast expanse of looming emptiness that was a little frightening. He much preferred the sense of intricacy created by the tangle of islands behind them. Or better yet, the intimacy of the small, clear lakes of home, Tamarack County.
“What do you know about the folks who run the camp?” he asked Kretsch.
The deputy squinted against the wind, and lines cracked the suntanned skin of his face. “Not much. Not quite as accessible as the Baptists used to be. Keep pretty much to themselves, but no trouble. They have money, apparently. They bought the island outright with cash.”
“What denomination are they?”
“I’m not entirely sure.”
“No particular denomination,” Bascombe said to them over his shoulder. “They call themselves the Church of the Seven Trumpets.”
“Never heard of them,” Cork said.
“Pretty fundamentalist, I understand. Holy Rollers or something,” Bascombe said. “But like Tom was saying, no trouble. Me, I think religion is for the faint of heart.”
“What do you mean?” Kretsch asked, a little edge of irritation to his voice.
“I know you’re a good Catholic boy, Tom. But it seems to me religion mostly offers false comfort to folks afraid of dying.”
Stephen had seemed intent on studying the islands as they passed, but now he turned to Bascombe. “You’re not afraid of dying?”
“Sure I am. But when I’m standing at that door, I don’t want some pasty-faced young minister telling me things are going to be better on the other side. Hell, how would he know? You man up to things in life, and I figure death’s no different. That’s all I’m saying.”
Stephen looked off toward a small gathering of bare rocks surrounded by angry water and seemed to think about Bascombe’s comments. Finally he said, “Mr. Bascombe, I respect your opinion, but for me, my religion’s about a way of living, not dying.”
Kretsch’s clear blue eyes sparkled with approval, and the deputy gave Stephen a broad grin. “I’ve never heard it said better.”
Bascombe glanced back and said affably, “Call me Seth, son.”
Stephen looked again at the great water across which they bounded. Cork was proud of his son. Stephen, in his short life, had suffered great blows. He’d been kidnapped when he was very young. He’d seen his father shot—nearly fatally—right in front of him. He’d lost his mother. Yet his faith was strong. And Cork knew it wasn’t the result alone of his Catholic upbringing, nor was it strictly Christian. Of all his children, Stephen was the one in whom the blood of the Anishinaabeg ran most powerfully, and his spirituality came as much from the teaching of men like Henry Meloux, the old Ojibwe Mide, as it did from the text of the New Testament.
“There it is,” Bascombe hollered over the wind and the slap of waves. “Stump Island.”
He pointed south, where a long gray-green worm seemed to sit on the sun-stained water. As they drew nearer, it grew into a flat, heavily wooded island. Cork could see nothing beyond it but the blue horizon. It felt to him as if he was looking at the last outpost in a great liquid desert.
“Anybody else on the island besides the camp folks?” he asked Kretsch.
“Nope. They’ve got the whole place to themselves. Don’t need outside help. For their electricity and heat, they’ve got solar panels and that big wind generator.” He pointed toward a white wind turbine that stood high above everything else on the island. “Propane for backup. They filter their own water, grow a lot of their own food. Pretty much self-sustaining.”
The island was easily a half a mile long, flat and heavily wooded, and the shoreline looked to be all rock. Bascombe guided the launch around the west end, where a gathering of cabins and other buildings came suddenly into view, spread out along the finger of a broad peninsula. The cabins were clapboard painted cedar red. Two structures stood out: the tall wind generator, bone white, and the dark metal spider webbing of another tower currently under construction. The tower looked as if it might, when finished, be used for radio broadcasting. Bascombe guided them toward a long dock, where a couple of big powerboats were moored. Near the dock stood a large boathouse. As they approached, two men came from the boathouse to meet them. The first was tall, blue-eyed, black-haired, gothic looking in the angular cut of his jaw and the long slope of his nose. He wore a denim shirt with sleeves rolled back and clean, faded jeans. The other man was younger, slender, willowy, handsome in a brooding way. He had the same black hair and blue eyes as the other man, and even wit
hout having been introduced, Cork figured they were family. They both cradled rifles.
“What’s with the hardware, Gabe?” Bascombe called as they motored up.
The taller, older man let the rifle hang in one hand, barrel toward the ground, unthreatening. “Just making sure that I knew you and that you’re friendly, Seth. We had someone trespassing last night, someone with a firearm. Took a couple of shots at us.”
“Anybody hurt?” Kretsch asked.
“No, thank God.”
“You see who it was?”
“Didn’t, Tom. But it was someone in a cigarette boat, I can tell you that much. Took off fast once we came after him.”
Bascombe said, “Noah Smalldog?”
The man named Gabriel nodded. “That’s what I figured. There’s a soul bound for hell as surely as I’m standing here.”
They tied up, and when they’d all disembarked and stood together on the dock, Cork asked, “Why would Noah Smalldog come here in the middle of the night?”
Cork placed the tall man in his early forties. His hair, wild in the wind that blew across the big water, gave him a restless, almost manic look. He had eyes so blue-white they seemed made of crystal, and those eyes were looking at Cork pretty sharply.
“I don’t know you,” he said.
“My name’s Cork O’Connor. And I think this Smalldog may have taken a potshot at me, too.”
“Well, I guess that puts us in the same boat.” The man shook Cork’s hand. “I’m Gabriel Hornett.”
“This is my son, Stephen,” Cork said.
“Stephen, eh? Fine Christian name, that. A brave Christian martyr.”
“Yes, sir,” Stephen said with a brief, courteous smile. “Is that Hornet, like the insect?”
“Two t’s at the end, son. Makes my sting twice as dangerous.”
Hornett laughed, and Cork could tell it was a line he used often and was fond of. “This is my brother, Joshua.” He indicated the willowy man with brooding good looks who stood at his side. The younger Hornett gave a silent nod in acknowledgment. Cork placed Joshua in his mid-twenties, a good fifteen years younger than his brother.
“What does Smalldog have against you?” Hornett asked.