Vermilion Drift

by William Kent Krueger

  October 16, 1964

  Liam my beloved Liam is dead.

  Dear God why?

  TWENTY-SIX

  In October 1964, the Summer Olympics were held in Tokyo. In that same month, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., received the Nobel Peace Prize. The St. Louis Cardinals became World Champions, beating the heavily favored New York Yankees in the seventh game of the World Series. China detonated its first nuclear weapon. The Star of India was stolen from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Nikita Krushchev was removed as leader of the Soviet Union.

  And in October 1964, Cork O’Connor lost his father.

  In his memory, his life until then had been happy. But one cool fall day, when the oak leaves were a stunning russet against a startling blue sky, when the cry of migrating Canada geese chorused over Iron Lake, when the evening air was full of the scent of woodsmoke curling from the chimneys of Aurora, everything changed. Changed over the course of a few hours. Changed, in fact, in a single instant. Changed forever with the final beat of his father’s heart.

  It had begun with a shoot-out. Cork’s father and a deputy had responded to an alarm at the First Citizen’s Bank, where three inmates who’d escaped from Stillwater Prison were attempting a robbery as they fled toward Canada. During the exchange of gunfire that erupted, a deaf old lady, a cantankerous woman notorious for yelling at children trespassing on her precious lawn, wandered into the line of fire outside the bank. Cork’s father left the cover of the Buick that shielded him to pull the old woman to safety. In those few moments of exposure, a bullet from a stolen deer rifle pierced his heart.

  He didn’t die immediately. He lingered for several hours, unconscious, with his wife and son at the side of his hospital bed. The doctor, a good man named Congreve, didn’t have the ability to mend a heart torn by a bullet designed to bring down a deer and gave them no hope. Cork’s mother had prayed, prayed desperately. Although Cork had said prayers with her, they were empty words. As soon as the doctor had proclaimed that there was no hope, young Cork O’Connor had closed his heart in the way he might have closed a door to an empty room.

  It took him a while to absorb the full impact of his father’s death. He was numb for days, numb during the funeral, numb at the site of the open grave, numb to the words of consolation, numb to his mother’s grief. For a long time he felt nothing, neither joy nor sadness nor fear nor hope.

  That year in mid-November, he helped Sam Winter Moon close up Sam’s Place. The trees by then were bare things, wet, black skeletons in the drizzle of the bleak season. Sam had been his father’s good friend, and as he and Cork put plywood over the serving windows of the Quonset hut, he talked about Liam O’Connor.

  “You know,” Sam said around a nail gripped in his teeth, “that man could outfart a draft horse. Hold your side up a little higher, Cork.” He took the nail from between his teeth and positioned it.

  Cork thought it a little unseemly, speaking of his father that way, but he held his tongue.

  “We were canoeing once up on Angle Lake. Came around a point, headed for the next portage. There not five feet away was a bull moose, munching on lakeweed. We startled him as much as he startled us. That animal lowered his head and was about to do real damage to our canoe and probably to us in the bargain. Your father, he farts and it’s like cannon fire. Echoes off the trees. Sends a tidal wave across the lake. Scares the crap out of that bull moose. The critter turns and hightails it.” Sam was laughing hard enough that he couldn’t hammer. He leaned against the Quonset hut for support and finished, breathless, “And then your father, he says, ‘I just hope we don’t run into a bear, Sam. I’m clean outta ammo.’”

  Cork stood holding up his side of the plywood, watching Sam Winter Moon laugh heartily.

  “It’s okay, Cork,” Sam said. “It’s okay to laugh. It was something your father loved to do.”

  And Cork did laugh. He laughed so hard tears began to squeeze from his eyes, and before he knew it, he was crying. Sam Winter Moon laid his hammer down and took Cork’s hands from the plywood, wrapped his big arms around the weeping boy, and held him.

  December 24, 1964

  Christmas Eve. We went to the candlelight Mass at St. Agnes. A lovely service. Walking home, snow began to fall. I took Cork’s hand and he let me. He’s a somber young man these days. He misses his father. As I do. Henry Meloux says that what we feel, this incredible emptiness, is like a held breath. He says the heart is wise, and if we listen to it, we will understand how to breathe again. I hope Meloux is right.

  Cork put down the journal he was holding and thought about that dark time. He’d grieved for a year, and in the fall of 1965 he’d hunted a bear with Sam Winter Moon, an enormous black bear that Sam had tried to capture with a log trap. The log was heavy enough that it should have broken the back of any normal black bear, but the animal had shrugged it off. Sam, fearing the great creature might be injured and suffering, had gone after it, and Cork had gone with him. It was a journey far different from anything either of them had imagined, a journey that involved a brush with a Windigo and that resulted in the largest black bear pelt anyone in Tamarack County had ever seen, a journey that finally brought Cork out of his grieving.

  January 1, 1965

  We didn’t celebrate the beginning of this new year. We have no reason to celebrate. My husband is dead. My niece is dead, killed by a madwoman and an Ojibwe majimanidoo. And we who are left abide with our guilt, an uncomfortable companion in all our hours. I miss Liam so much. I will miss him forever.

  Cork paused and reread.

  My niece is dead, killed by a madwoman and an Ojibwe majimanidoo.

  Majimanidoo. Evil spirit, Cork translated. Devil. Indigo Broom.

  A madwoman? Monique Cavanaugh?

  His mother had known.

  We abide with our guilt.

  What the hell did that mean?

  The summer solstice was only a couple of days away, and as Cork headed to Sam’s Place that night to close up, a narrow strip of sky along the western horizon was still lit with a pale yellow glow. Jodi Bollendorf and Kate Buker had shut the serving windows. They looked beat, and Cork told them to go on home, he’d take care of the cleaning and would close up himself. They agreed without argument.

  He emptied the deep-fry well, scraped the grill, wiped the prep surfaces clean with a mix of water and bleach, washed the serving utensils, and mopped the floor. He took the cash from the register and went to the rear half of the Quonset hut to do the daily count.

  All the while his brain was working on the mystery of the Vermilion Drift.

  His mother knew about Monique Cavanaugh and about Indigo Broom. Probably his father had known, too. If so, why hadn’t he arrested them, done his duty as an officer of the law? Was it possible that, in the extraordinary circumstances of forty years ago, he’d seen his duty differently, and that was why a bullet from his revolver had ended up lodged in Monique Cavanaugh’s spine?

  The more Cork thought about that last consideration, the more he thought about the image of Liam O’Connor which had emerged from his mother’s journals. A man, at the end, dark and distant and brooding. What had happened to make him so? What had been done that was so difficult for him to accept that it ate at him constantly?

  Cork had finished the daily count and was preparing for a night deposit when his cell phone rang.

  “O’Connor,” he said in answer.

  “Cork, it’s Rainy. You’ve got to come out to my uncle’s place. You’ve got to come out now.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “It’s Isaiah Broom. He’s going to kill Henry.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  She called him again just after he’d parked his Land Rover at the trailhead to Crow Point. The moon was up but on the wane and offered only enough light to give definition to the larger particulars of the forest. Cork carried his Maglite. He paused and slipped the phone from his pocket.

  “Where are you?” Rainy demanded.
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  “On the trail. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “My god, it’s taking you forever.”

  In fact, he’d practically flown. But Cork knew that the kind of tense situation in which Rainy had found herself caused every minute to drag on forever, and he let her censure slide off his back.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, moving ahead as quickly as he could, using the Maglite to illuminate his way.

  “Broom’s barricaded the door. It won’t budge. And it’s quiet in there now.”

  “Will either of them respond when you call?”

  “No. But I think I can hear voices.”

  “Don’t try to force your way in, Rainy. Wait for me. I’m coming as quickly as I can.”

  He leaped Wine Creek and a few minutes later neared the edge of the woods. Before he left the cover of the trees, he killed the beam of his flashlight and silenced his cell phone. He knew the dark would afford him an opportunity to assess things as he approached, and if all his years in law enforcement had taught him anything, it was the wisdom of caution. In the drift of soft light from the gibbous moon, Meloux’s cabin was a dark shape rising on the far side of the open meadow. No light was visible inside. The trail across the meadow was dimly discernible, and he kept to the path most of the way, bent low, moving swiftly. Fifty yards from the cabin he paused, listened, heard nothing. Rainy was nowhere to be seen.

  He crept left and circled behind Meloux’s outhouse to come at the cabin from behind. When he reached the back wall, he paused, heard a small muffled cough, then heard Broom whisper, “Shut up.”

  “I didn’t …” It was Rainy’s voice.

  “Shut up.” A few moments passed, then Broom whispered, “Where is he?”

  “You know everything I know.” Her voice was a knife honed sharp with anger.

  “Christ, if you screwed me, I swear I’ll kill you and the old man both.”

  “I’ve done everything you asked. You’ve heard everything I’ve said to him.” Then, much to Cork’s dismay, she added, “Asshole.”

  Cork inched to the end of the wall and peered around the corner. The cabin blocked what little light the moon offered, and Cork saw only darkness. He had no way to assess the situation. If he came at Broom quickly, he might be able to surprise the man, but at what cost? If Broom had a firearm pointed at Rainy, it could easily discharge in the fracas, maybe on purpose, maybe accidentally. Cork ran quickly through his options as he saw them and made a decision. He retraced his steps to the outhouse, crouched, and loped far out into the meadow, where he laid himself down in the tall grass.

  “Isaiah!” he called.

  Broom made no response.

  “If you think I’m coming up there, Isaiah, think again.”

  “I’ve got the woman and the old man, O’Connor.”

  “So?”

  “I’ll kill ’em.”

  “So?”

  Broom was quiet.

  Cork said, “What is it you want from me, Isaiah?”

  “I want to know what you know about the Vermilion Drift. I want to know what the old man knows.”

  “You could ask.”

  “He’s saying nothing.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t like being threatened. Look, Isaiah, you’ve got good reason to be pissed, but that doesn’t give you license to threaten folks. You want to talk, I’ll talk. I can pretty much guarantee that Meloux will talk, too, if you approach him reasonably.”

  “He’s drunk, Cork,” Rainy called. “And he’s got a rifle.”

  “Shut up!”

  Cork heard the woman grunt.

  “Rainy, you okay?”

  “Yes. But I’ll have a hell of a bruise in the morning.”

  “Look, Isaiah, I give you my word that I’ll tell you everything I know if you just step away from all the threats.”

  “What about the old witch man?”

  Old witch man? Broom evidently saw Meloux in the way many modern Shinnobs did: an anachronism. An old man of the old ways, a witch. Unfortunate because Broom might have been easier to deal with if he respected Meloux in the way Cork did.

  “Just ask him, Isaiah. Ask him without the rifle.”

  There was only silence from Broom’s direction. Then Cork saw movement in the dim moonlight that fell on the ground in front of the cabin. He made out Broom, pushing Rainy ahead of him to the cabin door. He heard the squeak of hinges, but no light came from inside. Then the door squeaked shut. A moment later, behind the curtain of a front window, a faint orange glow appeared. One of Meloux’s oil lamps had been lit.

  Cork stayed where he was, hoping reason had prevailed.

  The door opened, and Broom stood silhouetted against the light. A stupid move, if Cork had been armed. Cork could see the black outline of Broom’s rifle still held in his right hand.

  “Okay, O’Connor. The old man says he’ll talk. Come on up.”

  “Not until you put that rifle down, Isaiah.”

  Broom leaned to his right, and when he came back up, his hand was empty.

  Cork stood, slipped his Maglite into his back pocket, and walked to the cabin. Broom stepped away from the door, and Cork entered. Inside, he found Meloux bound to a chair next to his table. Rainy sat across the room on her great-uncle’s bunk. Cork turned back to Broom just as the big Shinnob pulled a target pistol from under the shirttail at the small of his back.

  “Ah, shit,” Cork said. He glanced at Rainy. “You told me he had a rifle. You didn’t say anything about a handgun.”

  “If I’d known I would have told you,” she replied drily.

  “Sit down, O’Connor.” Broom waved him toward an empty chair.

  Cork did as he was told and took stock of Broom. The smell of whiskey was strong off him. His eyes were heavy and red, and he was unsteady in his movements. He was a huge Shinnob. To stagger the way he did, he must have consumed a lake of alcohol. On the other hand, Broom wasn’t a man with a reputation for being fond of liquor, so maybe he simply had little tolerance for drink but a lot of motivation that day for drinking.

  “I want to know everything you know, everything the old man knows,” Broom said.

  “All right, Isaiah. Where do you want me to start?” Cork replied.

  Broom didn’t answer. He turned his attention to Meloux. “Was it my mother in that tunnel?”

  Meloux said, “No. Your mother long ago walked the Path of Souls.”

  “Don’t play games, old man. Was that my mother’s body?”

  “It was her body,” Meloux acknowledged.

  “How’d it get there?”

  “Like the others.”

  “How’d they get there?”

  “Majimanidoo,” the old Mide said.

  Broom thought a moment, swaying like a tree in a strong wind. “Evil spirit?”

  “Indigo Broom put them there,” Cork said.

  The big Shinnob stared at him, red-eyed. “He killed my mother?”

  “I think so. Her and the other women whose remains were in the Vermilion Drift.”

  Broom fell silent. His legs looked as if they were becoming more wobbly by the moment. “It was him,” he said with certainty.

  Meloux spoke quietly. “He showed you the tunnel, didn’t he? A long time before he put the bodies there.”

  Broom lifted his eyes to Meloux.

  “I know what he did to you in that tunnel, Isaiah Broom. Things only a man of evil spirit would do.”

  Broom seemed angered by Meloux’s knowledge. “I never told anyone.”

  “You never told anyone,” Meloux agreed gently. “But your mother knew.”

  “No,” he said. Then: “How?”

  “That was a thing a small boy could not hide from a mother who loved him. She wanted to kill Indigo Broom, but she vanished.”

  “Loved me? You’re a liar.”

  “A very long time ago, I tried to guide you to the truth, but your heart was hard, and your spirit was all fire. I could not help you. You are a man now, and I am offering you
the truth again.”

  Broom looked suddenly sick. He turned, threw open the door, and rushed outside. From the dark came the sound of retching.

  Cork took the opportunity to grab Broom’s rifle. He checked the chamber. It was empty, and the magazine, too, which probably meant Broom intended to use the weapon only to frighten. Rainy went to her great-uncle and untied the rope that bound him to the chair.

  In the light of the lantern on Meloux’s table, they waited. Broom didn’t return. Cork finally lifted the lantern and went to the door. The big Shinnob lay on his back at the edge of the meadow, passed out.

  “What do you want to do with him, Henry?” Cork asked.

  “Let him sleep for a while. Then I will talk with him.”

  “He may be just as belligerent when he wakes up,” Cork said.

  Meloux replied, “He would not have been a problem except my niece was less than hospitable. She spoke to him harshly.”

  “Jesus, Uncle Henry, a drunken maniac breaks into your cabin waving a rifle and you treat him like an honored guest.”

  “It is my cabin. If I choose to treat him that way, it is my right. And, Niece, until you spoke, he did not point his rifle at anyone.”

  “Oh, Christ,” she said and turned away.

  Meloux asked her, “Will you build a fire in the ring? Corcoran O’Connor will help you. If Isaiah Broom wakes, I will bring him there.”

  Rainy stormed down the path toward the fire ring at the edge of the lake. Cork took the Maglite from his back pocket.

  “I think it would be safer if I stayed here with you,” Cork said.

  “I am not afraid of Isaiah Broom.”

  “It’s not Broom that has me worried, Henry.” He glanced down the path where the angry woman had gone.

  In the dark, he saw the old man smile.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  He offered his flashlight. She refused.

  “I don’t need your help,” Rainy said as she gathered cut wood from a box near the ring. “I know how to build a fire.”