Boundary Waters

  Cork stared into his blue-white eyes. “Comprende,” he said. “Comprende real good.” He nodded down at the gum on the parking-lot cement. “Careful there. You might end up stepping in your own mess. Comprende?”

  He shoved past Grimes, who stood grinning in his wake.

  6

  GRANDVIEW WAS A GREAT DEAL MORE than just a summer cabin. It was an estate built of yellow pine logs, a huge two-story structure that dominated a southern inlet of Iron Lake called Snowshoe Cove. Marais Grand had had it constructed at the height of her fame; but she’d had little opportunity to use it. Now, it was generally rented in season by wealthy families out of the Twin Cities or Chicago. As far as Cork knew, no one connected with Marais Grand had stayed there since her murder. The place was hidden from the highway by an acre of hardwoods, mostly maple. As Cork approached Grandview, the wind ran through the trees, shaking down crimson leaves that fell into his headlights like drops of blood.

  He knocked at the front door, waited, then knocked again. He checked his watch. A couple of minutes past seven.

  “Willie,” he called at the curtained front window. “It’s Cork O’Connor.”

  He heard an outboard purring on the lake behind Grandview, the sound growing distant. He followed the flagstone walk around to the deck in back. From there, he could see the long stretch of darkness that was Iron Lake at night. Far across the water, the lights of the Quetico marked the newest resort complex on the lake. Condominiums, tennis courts, a par-three golf course, a pool in a Plexiglas dome, a large marina with a flotilla of rental boats, the best wood roast restaurant north of the Twin Cities. There were cabins, as well, isolated in woodland settings, each with its own Jacuzzi and sauna and one hundred twenty-five channels on a big screen television.

  Much of the shoreline of Iron Lake was being devoured in this way. The success of places like the Quetico was a direct result of the success of the Chippewa Grand Casino. The casino attracted money, lots of it, for the whites as well as the Anishinaabe. Although Cork was happy to see that many good things had come from the new wealth—upgraded services and an increase in the levels of health and education on the reservation, and an economic boom to the rest of Tamarack County—it made him uneasy. Money changed things. Usually for the worst. He’d loved Aurora in part because of its isolation. He felt a deep sadness as he realized a world of strangers was slowly pushing in.

  The gas lamps on the deck were turned low, creating lighting that would have been perfect for a romantic dinner at the big picnic table. The table was empty. Cork mounted the steps and approached the sliding glass doors. The doors were closed, but the curtain was drawn back slightly.

  “Willie?” Cork called again, and tapped on the glass.

  He peered through the slender gap where the curtain hadn’t closed completely. He saw a big brown leather sofa, a coffee table, a beige carpet, a brass lamp, a fireplace without a fire. Grandview looked empty.

  Then he felt a slight shaking of the deck. And he heard something.

  He grasped the sliding door. It opened easily.

  From the other end of the cabin came a sudden, jarring thump followed by a muffled cry. Cork followed the sound down the hallway. Just past the bathroom was a heavy cedar door with a temperature control mounted on the wall next to it. A sauna. The sauna door had been wedged shut, a length of two-by-four jammed between it and the opposite wall of the hallway. As Cork looked the situation over, the door shook from a blow delivered from the other side. Inside the sauna, Willie Raye swore loud and long. Cork slipped under the board and pried it loose with his shoulder. As soon as the door was freed, Raye burst out, naked. His silver hair lay plastered to his forehead. His body, surprisingly lean and powerful for a man of his age, glistened with a thick sheen of sweat. His right shoulder was reddened where he’d slammed uselessly against the door. He gulped in the cool air of the hallway.

  “Goddamn, I’m going to sue somebody,” he swore breathlessly, as he rubbed his shoulder. “That sauna’s a menace. Christ, somebody could get killed in there, door sticks like that.”

  “It wasn’t stuck, Willie.” Cork held up the two-by-four. “Somebody used this to make sure you couldn’t get out.”

  Raye stared at the board. “Shee-it.” His face suddenly lit with the fire of a fearful thought. “My things.” He shoved past Cork and made for the stairs.

  Cork followed and caught up with him standing dead still in the doorway of an upstairs bedroom.

  “Jesus,” Raye gasped.

  The room was torn apart. The drawers had been thrown open and a lot of Willie Raye’s clothing had been tossed on the floor.

  “Sons of bitches cleaned me out,” he said with disbelief. He checked the top dresser drawer. “Except . . . they didn’t take my wallet or Rolex.” He turned suddenly to the open closet. The racks of clothing looked untouched, but Willie Raye slammed an angry fist against the wall so hard his naked flesh quivered. “Them goddamn sons of bitches. They took my briefcase. It was in the closet. The ball-less bastards took my briefcase.” From the pile of clothes that had been thrown on the floor, he grabbed a pair of boxer shorts, some socks, a pair of jeans, and a white pullover sweater. He began hurriedly to tug the clothing on.

  “What are you doing?” Cork asked.

  “Hell, I’m going after ’em.”

  “That won’t do any good, Willie.”

  “You don’t understand,” Raye said. “Shiloh’s letters were in that briefcase.”

  “Whoever it was, they’re gone,” Cork told him.

  Willie Raye slumped onto the bed. “What do we do now?”

  “In her letters, did Shiloh ever mention anybody out here by name?”

  “Nope. She seemed pretty careful about not doing that.”

  “What about the name Ma’iingan?”

  “That’s a name?”

  “It might be.”

  “Never heard it before.”

  Cork walked slowly around the room, noting where fingerprints might have been left, where, if he’d still been in charge of investigations, he would have made sure they dusted. “What did Shiloh talk about in her letters?”

  “The past mostly. Our past.”

  “Her mother?”

  “Not really. She doesn’t remember much about her mother.”

  “Willie, do you know a woman named Elizabeth Dobson?”

  “No. Should I? Why all these questions, Cork?”

  Cork stood in the closet doorway. A big walk-in closet. A closet bigger than his entire kitchen at Sam’s Place. The walls were lined with cedar. He turned back to Arkansas Willie Raye.

  “I just had a talk with some federal agents. They’re here looking for your daughter, too.”

  “Federal agents? What on earth for?”

  “This woman, Elizabeth Dobson, was apparently a friend of Shiloh and had been receiving letters from her, too. She’s been murdered, Willie. The FBI thinks it was because of those letters.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Cork continued moving around the room. Near the window, he bent and studied carefully a yellow birch leaf that lay on the rug.

  “The therapy that Shiloh was involved in might have brought back the memory of the night Marais was killed. Or at least that’s what the federal agents are speculating.” He picked up the leaf. “They think someone might be trying to make sure she doesn’t leave the Boundary Waters.”

  “Christ, Marais died fifteen years ago. Shiloh was only six. What could she possibly remember that would be of any use now?”

  “Maybe it’s not important what she remembers. Maybe what’s important is what someone is afraid she remembers.”

  Willie Raye’s eyes settled on the board Cork still held in one hand. His mouth opened and he took in a quick breath. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I guess I was lucky.”

  “Luckier than Elizabeth Dobson,” Cork agreed. “I’m going to have a look around.”

  Cork checked the rest of the inside of Grandview, then went outside and fo
llowed the flagstone walk as it curved toward the lake. He passed through a small stand of birch where a pile of boards lay, a lot of them two-by-fours, that looked like debris from a building project. Finally, he came to the dock. The water stretched away in unbroken darkness. The nearest signs of life were the lights of the Quetico on the far shore. Cork considered the outboard he’d heard when he arrived. A small boat could easily have pulled up unseen and left the same way. He thought it interesting that Harris and the other agents were staying just across the water, and that the interview with the FBI in Schanno’s office had delayed him just long enough for someone to steal the letters from Grandview.

  Raye was fully dressed and watching through the sliding doors when Cork came back.

  “I’m going to leave you now and go talk to someone who may be able to help us.”

  “Who?”

  “Just a man I know. You’ll be okay here?”

  “I’ll be fine. But Cork, if someone is after Shiloh, we don’t have much time.” Arkansas Willie’s long face seemed longer, drawn down by the weight of his worry.

  Cork reached out and put a hand reassuringly on his shoulder. “We’ll find her, Willie.” He started through the sliding door, but turned back. “One more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you smoke cigars?”

  “No. Vile habit. Why?”

  “Just wondered. Lock up,” he said, and tapped the latch on the glass door.

  Almost a year before, Cork had been a heavy smoker, more than a pack a day. But he’d made a promise to someone he’d loved very much that he would reform. Now he ran every day, and he hadn’t had a cigarette in nine months. He’d become supersensitive to the smell of tobacco smoke. It had been faint in Raye’s bedroom, but definite. Whoever it was who’d been there, they had a fondness for cigars.

  7

  CORK DROVE NORTH OUT OF AURORA, passed the Chippewa Best Western, Johannsen’s Salvage Yard, and finally the last streetlamp of town. Three miles farther, he turned right onto a county road that followed the shore of Iron Lake. In another ten minutes, he came to a graveled access that led to an old resort hidden among the trees. A long time had passed since he’d been out that way, and he slowed as he approached the access, then stopped, killed the engine, and stepped out.

  The moon above the dark pines was waning, lopsided, like a balloon leaking air. The night was still and without a sound. Cork couldn’t see the buildings of the old resort, but he knew how they lay. The big cabin set back from the shoreline. Six small cabins flanking the lane down to the lake. And there, where the black water met the sand, the sauna. All of it had been built by the old Finn Able Nurmi, Molly’s father, and left to Molly when he died. When Molly died, there’d been no one to pass it on to, and now the old resort just sat, disintegrating with each season, the wood going soft with rot so that it would all collapse someday and go back to the earth and there would be no sign that Molly Nurmi had ever been. In the time before the cold science of the whites came to Iron Lake, the Anishinaabe believed the water was bottomless. There was a tradition among the Iron Lake Ojibwe. Before they were married, a couple would take strands of their hair and braid a cord. On the day they were wed, they tied the cord around a stone, canoed to the middle of the lake, and dropped the stone into the water. The stone descended forever, they believed, its spirit bound by the braid of their hair, and forever there would be a thing that bore the memory of them together. In a way, that’s how Cork thought of Molly and him. Forever bound in spirit. As long as he had memory, Molly would always be.

  He drove on, putting the old resort behind him. Two miles farther, he came to a double-trunk birch off to the right of the road. He pulled onto the shoulder and stopped. From the glove compartment, he took a flashlight, locked up the Bronco, and headed toward the birch, which marked the trail into the woods to the cabin of Henry Meloux.

  Meloux was a midewiwin, an Ojibwe medicine man. He was also said to be a tschissikan, or magician, although that was a claim Meloux himself never made nor admitted to. He was the oldest man Cork had ever seen, and he had seemed that old for as long as Cork could remember. As far as Cork knew, except for his dog Walleye, Meloux had always lived alone in his cabin on a small rocky peninsula on Iron Lake called Crow Point.

  Although Cork brought the flashlight, he didn’t turn it on. The trail was easy to follow, lit by the moon and beaten nearly bare by the feet of others who, like Cork, had sought out the old man for his succor and advice. Cork walked for half an hour in the stillness of the woods, crossing at some point from national forest land onto the reservation of the Iron Lake Band of Ojibwe. As he approached the cabin, he could see light through the windows and he smelled wood smoke. He paused, waiting for Walleye to bark and announce his presence.

  When no sound came from the cabin, Cork moved nearer.

  “Henry!” he called. “Henry Meloux! It’s Corcoran O’Connor!”

  A small animal whine came from the woods to his left. In a little clearing visible in the moonlight stood a small dark structure. Cork headed that way.

  Walleye, Meloux’s old hound, lay beside the door. He lifted his head casually as Cork approached and his tail lazily thumped the ground. From the tiny building behind the dog came a long, grumbling fart.

  “Henry?”

  “You’re early,” the old man accused from inside.

  Cork didn’t argue. He’d long ago learned that Meloux had a way of knowing when someone would come to him.

  “Getting so a man can’t take a quiet crap anymore.”

  “Sorry,” Cork said.

  After a momentary rustling behind the door, the old man emerged from the outhouse buttoning the last strap on a pair of gray overalls. “That’s all right,” he said, waving off Cork’s apology. “Wasn’t going so good anyway.”

  Meloux led the way back to his cabin, Walleye at his side. Inside, the cabin was a simple affair. One room, a bunk, an old cast-iron stove, a rough-hewn table and three chairs, a sink with a pump. The walls contained an assortment of items—snowshoes, a reed basket, a midewiwin’s drum, a big bear trap, and a Skelly calendar from 1948 with a drawing of a buxom woman in tight shorts inadvertently entertaining a gas-station attendant as she bent to the sideview mirror to apply lipstick. The cabin was lit by two kerosene lamps, and the smell of the burning oil was mixed with the scent of burned cedar.

  “Been purifying, Henry?” Cork asked.

  The old man didn’t answer, only nodded toward one of the chairs for Cork to sit. He went to the sink and brought back two blue speckled enamel cups, then to the stove where a coffeepot sat heating. He poured hot coffee into the cups. When he returned and sat at the table, Cork handed him a pack of Camel unfiltered cigarettes. Meloux accepted them with a smile and a nod. He broke open the pack and held it out to Cork, then took one for himself. Kitchen matches stood in a small clay holder on the table. Meloux struck one and lit his cigarette.

  Cork held his own cigarette gingerly. He hadn’t smoked since Molly died. It was the last promise he’d ever made to her and he wanted to keep it. But it would be an insult not to join Meloux in the smoking of tobacco, a thing that for the old man had nothing to do with an addictive habit.

  Meloux watched Cork with silent interest. Cork finally reached for a match and lit the cigarette. Only nine months, but as soon as the smoke hit his lungs, it seemed like nine years. Cork realized how much he’d missed the old habit. He closed his eyes and the smoking felt like a visit with a deliciously sinful old friend.

  They smoked in silence for a while. Walleye lay sprawled on the old wood floor, snoring loudly.

  “Walleye didn’t bark when I came,” Cork noted. “He’s old, Henry. Is he going deaf?”

  “You think he didn’t hear?” The old man grinned and shook his head. “He heard. He just didn’t care. He’s old like me. He’s finally learned that what comes, comes. Why bark?”

  The old midewiwin exhaled a flourish of smoke and watched it rise to the ceiling. “They tell
me you are a running fool.”

  “Running fool? Well, I do run, Henry.”

  “The wolf runs after the deer. The deer runs from the wolf. In this running, there is reason.”

  “Believe it or not, there’s reason in my running, too. A lot of things are clearer to me when I run.”

  Meloux considered this for a moment. “A walk in the woods makes clear a lot, too.”

  “It’s hard to explain, Henry. In a way, it’s part of a promise I made to Molly to make my life healthier.”

  “Ah, Molly Nurmi.” He nodded as if that explained it just fine.

  The cedar-and-kerosene-scented silence descended comfortably once again. Cork finally decided it was time to approach Meloux with the reason for his visit. But before he could speak, Meloux said, “I have been purifying the air to clear my mind. The wind speaks these days, a warning I do not understand. I hear the trees groan, but their complaint is lost on me.” He looked at Cork, and within the dark eyes, sunk deep in lined and wrinkled flesh, was a look of concern. “Majimanidoo,” he finished.

  “Evil spirit.” Cork translated the Ojibwe word.

  Meloux nodded. “Powerful. Very powerful,” he cautioned. “It is this that has brought you to me?”

  “Maybe so, Henry.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Information. There’s a woman missing. Noopiming,” Cork said, using the name the Anishinaabe gave to the Boundary Waters area. Inland, in the woods, up in the north. He waved a hand in that direction. “A Shinnob guided her in. This man comes and goes there often. I think the woman may be in some danger and I need to find her guide.”

  The old man put his cigarette down, sipped his coffee, and passed a little gas. In the corner, Walleye growled in his sleep.

  “I have heard that Wendell Two Knives visits there often.”

  “Wendell Two Knives.” A good name to hear. A good man. And it made sense. Wendell Two Knives was of the Wolf Clan. Ma’iingan.