Manitou Canyon

  The old man fell silent, and the two of them sat for a long while without speaking.

  “That’s all?” Dross said.

  “Patience,” Rainy counseled.

  “Did he kill these men, Grandfather?” Trudeau finally asked.

  “They did not find gold,” the old man said.

  “Why do you tell me this story?”

  “Because I think you are a man who will understand.”

  “The other story, Grandfather?” Trudeau asked.

  “When I was a child, the woods here were still full of wolves,” Henry said. “They are remarkable creatures, not unlike human beings in many ways. We think of them as our brothers.”

  “I am Odawa, Grandfather. We think the same.”

  The old man nodded and went on. “I once watched a gray wolf stand between his pack and a charging bull moose. The moose was huge, many times larger than the wolf. His antlers were like great hands with long, sharp fingers. Those antlers lifted the wolf and threw him. The wolf rose and again stood between the angry moose and the others of his pack. The moose charged and lifted him up on those antlers and threw him again. And again the wolf rose and took a stand. While the wolf and the moose went at this time and again, the others of the pack circled and finally attacked the moose from many directions, and together they brought that enormous creature down.”

  The old man ceased speaking, and both men sat in silence for another long while.

  “Henry knows something,” Dross said. She looked at Rainy. “What does he know?”

  “Wait,” Rainy said. “And maybe we’ll see.”

  “That is an interesting story, Grandfather,” Trudeau finally said. “The point?”

  “When one wolf takes a stand against a great danger, others follow. Only in this way do the smaller creatures prevail. I think you understand this.”

  “I do, Grandfather.”

  “Do you know that Corcoran O’Connor is Ma’iingan? Wolf Clan?”

  “I do.” Trudeau’s brow wrinkled, a ruffle of his calm demeanor. He shifted his eyes to the one-way window, where the others stood watching and listening. “And I also know that if you are the wolf willing to take that stand, you accept the sacrifice that may be asked of you.”

  “To protect your own, that is a noble thing,” the old man said. “But not everyone is a wolf.”

  “There are no innocents, Grandfather. This battle involves more than wolf and moose. The sacrifices that will be asked of us all are great. My fate, or Cork O’Connor’s, or even yours, is unimportant. If we continue to lose this battle, we are all doomed.”

  * * *

  “What the hell happened in there, Henry?” Dross said. “What was that all about?”

  Henry had rejoined them on the other side of the glass. Trudeau still sat at the table in the interview room, calmly finishing his coffee.

  “He is not a small, selfish man,” Henry said. “He has a strong spirit.”

  “What’s this battle he talked about?” Daniel asked.

  “I do not know,” Henry said. “But a spider spins its web with a single thread. If we find that thread, we may follow it back to the spider.”

  “What thread, Henry?” Dross said.

  “Ask yourself, what is it that connects these men who forced the woman dealer to cheat?”

  “They both managed casinos,” Dross said.

  “And?”

  “They’re both Native,” Rainy said. “And in a way, I suppose, they’ve fought for their people.”

  “What is it that connects that thread to John Harris?” the old man went on.

  “Some Native interest?” Stephen said. “Some threat?”

  “What does John Harris do?” the old man said.

  “He builds dams,” Jenny replied, then gave a little gasp. “The Internet search I did on Harris indicated he recently built a dam in Ontario. It’s called . . .” She frowned, thinking. “The Manitou Canyon Dam. There was some controversy about it, I recall, pushback from a Native group.”

  “But it still got built?” Stephen said.

  “There was big money involved, I think.”

  “Why kidnap Harris?” Rainy said. “If the dam’s already built, what does it get them?”

  Daniel thought a moment, then said, “Inside the dam. In every way.”

  Jenny said, “For what? Sabotage?”

  “Why not?”

  “But why kidnap Lindsay and Dad?” she asked.

  Dross said, “Maybe because they couldn’t get what they needed out of Harris. So they grab his granddaughter for leverage, and Cork gets taken in the bargain.”

  Deep inside, fear began to chew at whatever hope Rainy had left. If Cork was of no real use to these people, what reason did they have to keep him alive?

  Jenny said, “Could I use your computer, Marsha?”

  They went to the sheriff’s office. Jenny sat at the desk and spent a moment working the computer’s mouse and tapping at the keyboard.

  “There it is,” she said.

  On the screen was a photograph of the Manitou Canyon Dam in the midst of construction. Below it was a photograph of a tall man, middle-aged, clearly Native. The caption under the man’s photo read, “First Nations Chief Aaron Commanda.” The article was about a protest over construction of the dam in the narrows at the head of Manitou Canyon.

  “The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources says the dam is one of many intended to tap the vast energy potential of Canada’s waterways,” Jenny synopsized out loud as she scanned the article. “But the Odawa claim the dam will only benefit the Caldecott Corporation, a South African company. That’s a company that does a lot of mining worldwide. They have plans to begin an extensive open-pit operation a hundred kilometers northwest of the dam site. The Odawa contend the mine operation will pollute the Manitou River and the area around it, which is sacred to them. They petitioned the provincial government and got nowhere. They intended to take their case all the way to parliament if they had to.”

  “And we know how that turned out,” Stephen said. “When big money’s involved, the interests of Indians never matter.”

  Jenny swept the mouse and tapped one of the other articles the browser had brought up. There was another photograph of Aaron Commanda along with a headline that read, FIRST NATIONS CHIEF JAILED IN PROTEST. Jenny scanned it. “He’s the traditional leader of the White Woman Lake Odawa, a small, unaffiliated band who occupy an off-reserve settlement called Saint Gervais in the Ontario bush.” Jenny paused a moment in thought. “Saint Gervais. I’ve seen that name before.”

  “The protest didn’t work,” Daniel said. “Think about the flooding in Aunt Leah’s vision. Does it mean they’re going to blow up the dam?”

  “I need to get on the phone to the authorities up there,” Dross said.

  Henry touched Rainy’s arm. “We must go north.”

  CHAPTER 46

  They’d sat for over an hour in the floatplane. In the west, the sky had darkened again with a swift-moving overcast.

  “More fucking clouds,” Indigo said. “November. I hate this month.”

  Cork understood, but the last thing he was about to do was agree with Indigo on anything. He held his tongue.

  “Spirit’s at the heart of everything?” Cork said to Lindsay.

  “The best gift my grandfather ever gave me, those words, that belief. They saved me from the poison of that snakebite, they really did. And in a lot of ways since. I thought they might help Bird.”

  Indigo looked at his watch. “What’s taking them so long?”

  “He was in pretty bad shape,” Lindsay said. “A couple of aspirin aren’t going to do the trick.”

  “That kid should’ve known what he was getting himself into. One soldier doesn’t hold up the brigade.”

  “You military?” Cork asked.
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  “Shut up” was the answer he got.

  He gave it another shot. “You’re First Nations. So what’s your band?”

  Indigo considered before responding. “Musqueam.”

  “Vancouver,” Cork said.

  Indigo seemed surprised that Cork knew this.

  “Urban Indian,” Cork said. “Ever go camping in the North Shore Mountains?”

  “I was too busy beating up smart-ass white guys.”

  “Beautiful, those mountains.”

  “I did all my camping out in Kandahar,” Indigo said.

  “Afghanistan,” Cork said. “What’d you do in the service?”

  “Learned how to kill a guy like you a hundred different ways.”

  “So, nothing of much use in civilian life.”

  Indigo smiled. “It’s coming in pretty handy these days.”

  Cork glanced at Lindsay Harris, who was taking in the exchange with a look of concern. She gave her head a faint shake, telling him, he figured, to cool it. He understood her fear and he shared it.

  “What are you here for?” Mrs. Gray asked. She gave Indigo the same sour look she’d been giving Cork from the beginning.

  “To do a job. Just like you.”

  “I know what my job is. What’s yours?”

  “I’m what you might call a facilitator.”

  “Of what?”

  “Anything,” he said with a shrug. “Everything.”

  “We don’t need a facilitator. We’ve done pretty good on our own.”

  “You’re two days late getting out of that wilderness. And one of you didn’t come back,” Indigo pointed out.

  “His doing.” She tilted her head so that her chin pointed toward Cork.

  Indigo looked at his watch again.

  “For an Indian, you’re kind of impatient,” Cork said.

  “And you’re kind of talkative. How about you zip it for a while.”

  “Here comes Cheval,” Mrs. Gray said.

  “It’s about time.”

  They watched the pilot slowly make his way along the crescent of the beach. He walked with his hands in his back pockets, and Cork thought his lips were puckered, as if he might be whistling. He mounted a pontoon, opened the door, and slipped into his seat behind the controls.

  “It’s going to be a while,” he said.

  “We don’t have a while,” Indigo said. “We need to get going.”

  “We wait for Aaron. And Bird, if the doc lets him go.”

  Indigo reached to the shoulder holster beneath his jacket and pulled out the Glock again. “I said we need to get going.”

  Cheval glanced at the weapon and shrugged. “Like I told you, you shoot me, who’s going to fly the plane?” He nodded toward the buildings of the small village. “And the sound of it’ll get you a lot of unwanted attention from the folks in Gordonville.”

  Indigo reached to a pocket inside his coat, drew out a suppressor, and carefully screwed it into the barrel. He turned in his seat and leveled the Glock on Cork’s chest.

  “Get going or I shoot him.”

  Cheval gave another shrug, peered through the window, and craned his neck to scan the sky where the clouds were mounting. “I don’t know him. He’s nothing to me.”

  “Go ahead,” Mrs. Gray said. “Shoot him.”

  Indigo seemed to consider the woman’s advice, but didn’t take it.

  “Okay, how about this?” the woman suggested. “If you don’t fly out now, Cheval, Mr. Indigo here will shoot Aaron when he comes back. Bird, too, if he’s with him. We’ve got the Harris girl. We don’t need them anymore.”

  “You’d kill them for a few extra minutes?” Cheval stared at her as if in shock.

  Indigo nodded and smiled. “I like that idea.”

  Cheval said, “You do that, there’s no way I fly this plane.”

  Indigo pointed the gun at the pilot’s forehead. “Then I shoot you, too, and I just move on to the next job. This is all nothing to me. It’s not my river you’re trying to save.”

  Cork was pretty sure Indigo wasn’t bluffing. Cheval must have decided the same thing. He said, “All right, we leave. But Aaron’s liable to kill you when he gets to the lodge.”

  “If we finish this operation, he’ll be forgiving. If not, we’ll see who kills who.”

  Indigo slid from his seat and stepped outside the plane. “Mrs. Gray, you ride up front with Cheval. I’ll ride in back, keep our two guests covered.”

  When the woman was seated, Indigo untied the line that tethered the Beaver to the sign on the beach and stowed the rope. He shoved the plane away from shore, leaped onto a pontoon, and climbed inside behind Cork and Lindsay Harris. The engine kicked over and the propeller chugged into motion. Cheval turned the plane toward the long flat of the lake, began his run, and lifted off.

  They flew for twenty minutes toward the swift gathering of clouds, following the canyon and the river that had created it.

  “Enjoy the view,” the pilot said. “Weather report is for snow. These clouds.” He pointed west, where much of the landscape was already obscured. “Could be heavy, they say.”

  “The sooner we get this business behind us, the better,” Indigo said.

  “There it is.” Cheval pointed to the right.

  Below, out his window, Cork saw a steep curve of concrete at the end of the canyon. The dam there reminded him of a long fingernail that tapered down to the river. Though not particularly broad, the dam rose to an enormous height and completely blocked the entrance to the canyon. Behind it lay a lake, narrow and serpentine, that sent out little legs like a centipede into the surrounding hills. At the base of the dam stood the great block of the power station. Heavy wires had been strung on transmission towers that climbed the canyon wall and marched away among the hills to the northwest along a broad, cleared swath through the forest that resembled an endless, disfiguring scar.

  “It’s filling up,” the pilot said. “Not long before the level will be high enough to start running water through the turbines.”

  “Just get us to the lodge,” Indigo said and once more consulted his watch.

  In another ten minutes, they dropped again, this time over a very large lake that was only a stone’s throw from the Manitou River. Along the shoreline in the distance, Cork could see a small gathering of houses and other structures, a little village. Cheval brought the Beaver down onto the water and nosed it toward an inlet far from the village. Dark clouds had already eaten the sky above the lake, and the surface of the water reflected the color of charred wood. Against a solid wall of pines at the end of the inlet stood a log construction that Cork thought was probably a hunting or fishing lodge. Flanking it on either side were several small cabins. A long dock ran from the lodge onto the lake. As the floatplane approached, two men came out, walked onto the dock, and stood waiting. One of the men cradled a rifle.

  Cheval cut the engine and eased the plane near enough to the dock that the man without a rifle was able to jump onto a pontoon. He took the tether rope, leaped back to the dock, drew the plane in, and secured the rope to a pylon.

  Indigo leaned forward, between Cork and Lindsay. “End of the line,” he said.

  CHAPTER 47

  “It’s Canada,” Dross said. “Another country. I have no jurisdiction there. I can’t just up and go, and I can’t sanction you going either.”

  Earlier, the sheriff had pulled up a map of Ontario on the computer in her office, and they’d gathered around her desk and located the dam in a remote area of the province, along the Manitou River. She’d phoned Thunder Bay, an RCMP officer named Lanny Russo, with whom she’d worked on another cross-border case. Rainy and the others had listened as Dross explained the circumstances and her concerns.

  “I know it’s only speculation, Lanny, but if it’s true, it could be catastrophic.” D
ross had closed her eyes and listened. “No, no real evidence of any kind, only what I’ve told you.” She listened some more. “Yeah, I understand. Thanks.” She’d hung up. “He’d like to have more than our speculations to go on, but he said he’ll check it out and get back to me. He couldn’t promise anything.”

  That’s when Daniel had made his own call, to Bud Bowers. The pilot had agreed immediately to fly them across the border, even if it got him into hot water. Anything, if it might help Cork.

  “We’re not looking for your approval, Marsha,” Daniel said. “If the guy you’ve contacted sends the cavalry, great. But we all know how slow an official response can be. It could be too late. For Cork and Lindsay and John Harris. And look what’s downriver from that dam. Gordonville, a town of several hundred people. If somehow the Manitou Canyon Dam goes, those folks are in real trouble. Remember Aunt Leah’s vision? All those fish dying, fish with human faces?”

  “What are you going to do? Fly to the dam and wait?”

  “Fly to White Woman Lake, to Saint Gervais, and find Aaron Commanda.”

  Rainy could see how the situation twisted Dross.

  “All right,” the sheriff finally said. “But I’m going to let Lanny know about this, give the RCMP a head’s-up. Have Bowers stay in contact. I’ll give him a frequency. If I get word of anything, I’ll let you know.” She turned a sharp eye on Trevor Harris, who’d joined them after the interview with Trudeau. “But you, you’re not going anywhere. I’ve got a comfortable cell for you until this is over.”

  Harris made no complaint and, in fact, seemed relieved.

  * * *

  Rose had picked up Waaboo from preschool. He was hungry—­always hungry—and she’d made him a grilled cheese sandwich and poured him milk. He sat at the kitchen table, feet dangling, feeding Trixie a little bit of his sandwich now and again, when he thought Rose wasn’t looking.

  “Bennie said Baa-baa is a rock, Aunt Rose.”