Windigo Island

by William Kent Krueger

  “Bea?” Jenny called into the silence.

  They heard the boards on the second floor creak under the weight of someone’s passage. All their heads turned toward the top of the stairway that led up from the reception area. A rhomboid of sunlight from a west-facing window fell on the wall there, pale yellow against the brown paneling. A sudden shadow cut the light in half, and Jenny felt a shiver of terrible anticipation run down her back. For a moment, nothing happened.

  Then Gina, the young woman with cotton candy hair and the long facial scar, appeared. She looked shattered, as if someone had struck her a blow. “Lock the door,” she said.

  Daniel stepped back and did just that.

  “Up here.” She motioned them to follow.

  They went slowly, the stairway difficult for Louise and her peg leg and crutch. Both Daniel and Jenny helped. Cork went ahead. Meloux patiently brought up the rear. The sunlight through the window on the landing was intense, and Jenny found herself blinded as she mounted the stairs. She had no idea what they were walking into, but every indication at this point was that they were about to enter one of those dark corridors of the human heart she was becoming more and more acquainted with. Anishinaabe blood flowed in her veins. She’d been raised a stone’s throw from reservation life, where poverty and violence were so often a normal part of life. And yet, she understood how shielded she’d been from the darkest realities, the kind that drove Mariahs and Carries and Ravens into the arms of men like Windigo and his brother. These were fearful steps she was taking, but she understood this was a journey that, for her, was long overdue.

  At the top of the stairway, they turned right down a short, ill-lit corridor, and then they followed the young woman through an open doorway. It was a room with several beds, little more than cots. All the beds were empty save one. On that narrow mattress lay Raven Duvall, a girl now barely recognizable because of the bruising and distortion of her face. Her eyes were closed, and Jenny wasn’t certain if it was voluntary or simply that she couldn’t open them because the sockets were so swollen. Her lips were ragged, lopsided balloons. She was wearing the purple Vikings jersey she’d worn that morning when she’d met them in the rose garden of Erikson Park. The jersey was torn and darkened by what Jenny was certain was blood. Two emotions fought inside her. One was a deep, painful empathy for the battered young woman lying helpless on the bed. The other was a terrible, searing guilt because she knew why Raven was there in that horrible condition.

  Bea Abbiss sat in a chair at bedside. In her right hand, she held a folded washcloth that had once been white but was now a mottle of red hues. She said, “Sparkle showed up an hour ago, like this. She was barely able to walk. We got her up here, and then I called you.”

  “You’ve called 911,” Daniel said.

  She shook her head. “Sparkle wouldn’t let me. She’d have to tell the truth about this, and she doesn’t want to do that.”

  Jenny understood. “She’s afraid worse would happen to her.”

  Bea nodded. “And her family.”

  “Windigo did this?” Cork’s voice was like lava, hot and ­seething.

  Raven’s head moved a little on the pillow, a shake indicating No. She managed a whisper: “His brother.”

  “She needs medical attention,” Daniel said.

  Raven gave a small gasp. “No. They ask questions.” Her deformed lips barely moved. “He’d find me. Hurt me, my family. Kill us, maybe.”

  “We could take her to Tamarack County,” Jenny’s father said. “She’d be safe, and we could get someone to look at her there.”

  “No-o-o.” A hiss from Raven, like air escaping.

  “I know a place, closer,” Bea said. “A clinic near the Fond du Lac Reservation. They’ve helped us out in the past, discreetly.”

  “I can’t see anybody,” Raven moaned. “He’ll find out. If he can’t get me, he’ll go after my family.”

  Louise touched Jenny’s arm and said, “Help me down.” She gave Daniel her crutch, and Jenny gave her a hand as she knelt beside Raven. “Sweetie, it’s Louise Arceneaux.” She leaned close and spoke gently. “We’re going to help you. We’re going to keep you safe. And we’re going to keep your family safe, I promise.”

  Louise looked up at Cork for confirmation.

  He said, “I swear to you, Raven, no one will lay a finger on you again or your family.”

  “He’s a good man,” Louise said, as if speaking to a small child. “You can trust him.”

  Then Meloux was beside the bed. In a voice that would have calmed an angry sea, he said to Raven, “You are safe now, granddaughter. You are safe. No one will hurt you anymore. No one will hurt your family. This, I promise.” He laid his old hand, steadier than Jenny had seen in a very long time, upon her heart. “Say to me, ‘I am safe.’”

  She didn’t respond. She lay still as death, and Jenny wondered if perhaps her ordeal had finally overwhelmed her and she’d passed out.

  “Say to me, ‘I am safe,’” Meloux gently repeated.

  Jenny saw tears leak from Raven’s swollen eyes. Her chest trembled. She caught her breath. At last she whispered, “I am safe.”

  “Say these words to yourself again and again, granddaughter, like a prayer. They are only words to you now. You do not believe them yet, but they are true. As long as we are with you, you will not be harmed. This is my promise. Our promise.”

  “And I’ll promise this, too,” Cork said. “The man who did this to you will pay.”

  Jenny looked at him. Her father had many faces, most of them shaped and colored by love, because he was a good and loving man. But the face he wore at that moment was like none she’d ever seen before. He meant, Jenny was certain, to offer Raven Duvall some hope of justice, but what she saw there scared her, and she was afraid that if Raven opened her eyes and saw it, too, she might be frightened enough that she would forget the healing mantra Henry Meloux had offered her.

  • • •

  Bea Abbiss made the call.

  Cork’s Explorer had three rows of seats. He folded down the back row into a flat storage area. He took a mattress from one of the cots in Nishiime House, spread it in the empty place he’d created, and dropped a pillow there. Daniel carried Raven down the stairs of the brownstone, cradling her in his strong arms with great tenderness. He laid her on the mattress carefully, in a way that struck Jenny as deeply caring, and she looked at the big, quiet Shinnob, seeing again his goodness. He was not particularly handsome, yet he was, at that moment, profoundly attractive. Even if he did like Hemingway.

  Raven didn’t protest. Either she was too deep into her pain and exhaustion to care or she’d accepted—even if she didn’t necessarily believe them yet—the promises that had been made.

  They stood on the street with Bea.

  “Find yourself a safe place,” Cork advised her. “Until I’ve dealt with Windigo.”

  “You have my number,” she said. “Call me when she’s been seen, okay?”

  “That’s a promise,” Jenny replied.

  They found the clinic just west of Cloquet, half an hour’s drive from Nishiime House. It wasn’t what Jenny had expected. It sat off the road in a stand of birch trees with its back to the St. Louis River. There were two parts: a nice log home and, next to it, a substantial business-looking structure sided in white aluminum. The sign over the door of the aluminum building read “Rollie’s Large Animal Clinic.” A wisp of a woman in jeans and a blue work shirt met them in the gravel parking lot. She introduced herself as Lenora Downfeather.

  “You’re a vet?” Cork said.

  “No, that would be my husband, Rollie. I’m a physician’s assistant. I work for health services on the rez. Where’s the girl?”

  “Here,” Cork said and lifted the rear hatch on his Explorer.

  Lenora Downfeather leaned inside and got right down to business. After a quick prelimin
ary look, she said, “We’ll need a gurney. My husband’s in the clinic. Tell him what you want.”

  Daniel went inside and came out with a gurney and another Shinnob, who introduced himself as Roland Downfeather. “Rollie to folks around here,” he said. He wheeled the gurney to the back of the Explorer. “How’s she look, Lennie?”

  “We’ll need some X-rays.”

  “I’ll get things set up,” Rollie said.

  Daniel and Jenny’s father lifted Raven out of the vehicle, onto the gurney, and wheeled her inside. The waiting room, like the parking lot, was empty.

  “Rollie cleared his schedule when Bea called,” Lenora explained. “In this kind of situation, we don’t need folks asking questions and spreading the word on the rez telegraph. You all stay here while Rollie and I get the X-rays and I do an examination.”

  She wheeled Raven down a short corridor and into a room.

  Jenny sat down, and the others took seats as well, all except her father, who prowled the waiting area as if it were a cage.

  “What now, Dad?” she asked.

  “As soon as we can, we ask Raven where to find the man who did this to her.”

  “And go after him?”

  “I made her a promise,” Cork said.

  What Jenny saw in his eyes was more than a desire to keep a promise. What she saw there looked very much like murder.

  It was almost an hour before Rollie Downfeather returned and said that they could talk to Raven now, but to keep it limited in time and to one or two visitors at most. Cork went first, and Jenny said, “I’d like to come, too.”

  Her father made no objection.

  Lenora met them in the corridor. She explained that despite how bad Raven looked, the X-rays had shown no evidence of broken bones or internal bleeding. She’d given the girl something to help with the pain, which Raven would probably be experiencing for quite a while. She said it would be all right to talk to her but to take it easy.

  Raven lay on a cot in an exam room. She was covered with a sheet and blanket. She was awake and turned her head when Jenny and her father walked in.

  “He’ll hurt my family,” she said. It was still mostly a mumble through those distorted lips, but it was understandable.

  “We’ll make sure they’re safe,” Cork said. “I promise.”

  That seemed to comfort her more than any painkiller.

  Cork took her hand. “Who is Windigo?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t know his real name. Nobody does. When I first met him, he told me it was Angel. But it’s not.”

  “You said he didn’t do this to you. It was his brother. Does his brother have a name?”

  “Manny. Short for Maiingan.”

  “Wolf,” Cork said, translating the Ojibwe word.

  “Yeah. Wolf.”

  “Why did he do this to you?”

  “Word came down Bea was looking for me. Manny heard. Bea’s always trying to help us girls. Manny knows. Usually he ignores it. Thinks he has us too scared. He said I should call her, see what she wanted. She told me you were looking for Mariah. Gave me phone numbers. Manny said he’d take care of it. He came back last night beat up and pissed as hell. I thought if you kept at it, he might get mad enough to kill somebody.” She looked at Jenny. “What I told you in the park was true. I thought if you and Mrs. Arceneaux went poking around you’d get killed or Mariah would. Better if you just left.”

  She was quiet for a few moments, maybe collecting herself, her strength.

  “Manny followed me to the park,” she went on. “Said he’d been watching me since Misty—Carrie—died. That I’d been different. He grabbed me after I talked to you, wanted to know what you said. I told him you were religious people trying to save my soul. He called me a lying bitch. Said you were the same ones he went after last night. He took me back to our crib, started on me, made the other girls watch. Said he was going to give me the face a lying bitch deserved. A lesson, he called it. He likes giving lessons.”

  “How’d you get away?”

  “A couple guys off one of the freighters wanted company for the weekend. Manny took Krystal. Before he left, he said if I ever talked to anyone again, he’d kill me. He meant it.”

  “But here you are.”

  “They say we’re family. We’re not. Carrie’s dead. They didn’t care. Mariah didn’t do nothing, but they blame her.”

  “What about Mariah? Is she with Manny?”

  Raven shook her head. “Don’t know where she is. Angel took her. Her and another sister. Haven’t come back.”

  “And you don’t know where they went?”

  “He takes girls all over. Don’t know where he went this time.”

  “Would Manny know?”

  “He’d know.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “Apartment. In Duluth.” She gave a street and number, which Cork wrote down on his notepad.

  “Who else is in the apartment?”

  “Just Manny, one other sister. Like I said, Krystal’s with the guys off the boat for the weekend.”

  “No other men?”

  A shake of her head. Jenny could see she was tiring. So could Lenora Downfeather. She said, “I think that’s enough for now.”

  They stepped into the small corridor and spoke in whispers.

  “Can she stay here?” Cork asked Lenora.

  “How long?”

  “Just until after dark.”

  “She really needs to go somewhere she can get constant care. I’ve pretty much done what I can for her. And I know how this will sound, but I’m not eager for the man who did this to know I help these girls.”

  “I understand,” Cork said. “The man who did this? When it’s dark, I’m going after him.”

  Lenora Downfeather looked back at the girl lying beaten on the cot.

  “Godspeed,” she said.

  Chapter 31

  * * *

  They wouldn’t be staying in Duluth that night. In the early evening, while the others kept watch over Raven Duvall, Jenny and Daniel English drove to the hotel to retrieve the things they’d left behind. It was deep twilight when they returned to Rollie’s Large Animal Clinic. Jenny’s father was in the parking lot, talking on his cell phone.

  “That’s disappointing, Simon,” Jenny heard him say. “I expected more.”

  Cork paced back and forth, his voice taut, bordering on anger.

  “No,” he said. “Tomorrow morning will do. But I’ll be keeping tabs on you, Simon, so don’t get cold feet. This won’t simply go away. Tomorrow morning will be the only chance you have to salvage something from all this, the only chance you’ll have at saving your good name. When you’ve done what you need to do, have your lawyer call me. Understand?”

  Jenny didn’t hear him say good-bye.

  “Simon Wesley,” he explained to her. “Says his boss arranged everything over the Internet. Met the guy who delivered the girls, but got no names. His boss said that’s the way it always works.” Cork’s face was a stone mask, but his eyes were cold. “By the time this is over, it won’t work that way anymore for John Boone Turner. Not ever again.”

  Inside, in the waiting room, her father said to everyone, “It’s time to do this.”

  He’d outlined earlier what would occur, and his plan had included only him and Daniel. This didn’t sit well with Jenny, though she’d said nothing at the time. Now she said, “I’m going.”

  “We’ve already decided how this will be,” her father said.

  Once again, she found herself in a position of defiance, a place that, so far, hadn’t turned out to be particularly good. And she knew that once again she was at risk of screwing up a construct that her father, with years of experience in this kind of thing, had designed. But she was damned if she was going to be left behind.

  “Not
we. You. You decided.”

  “You’re not going, Jenny.”

  “I am.”

  “When you came along in the beginning of all this, it was with the understanding that I gave the orders.”

  “Things are different now.”

  Louise said, “Let her go, Cork. If I could, I’d go. I’d help.”

  He put up a warning finger. “Not your call, Louise.” He turned back to Jenny. “If things go south, and there’s no guarantee they won’t, I don’t want to have to worry about your safety.”

  “And I can’t worry about yours?”

  “How will you being there help?”

  “We won’t know unless I am, will we?”

  His eyes were iron, and he spoke with slow deliberation: “Think about Waaboo.”

  “And what do I tell my son as I raise him? That he should stand up for what he believes only if it doesn’t threaten him? That’s certainly not how you raised me.”

  “There’s no logical reason for you to do this. Daniel and I can handle it.”

  It was like hammering against a locked door, but she kept trying. “I need to do this for me.”

  “Why? This isn’t part of the vision.”

  He was right. Somewhere along the way it had become about something much more substantial than a vision. The girl they were trying to save had left home long ago, had walked through a door into the world and been lost. To find her, and in a way, to find herself, Jenny believed that she needed to leave the safety of her own life and follow into that world where Mariah had gone. She understood her father’s resistance. This was a journey no parent wished for a child.

  “Maybe all of this is a part of the vision,” she said evenly. “Or maybe none of it is. All I know is that it feels right for me to go. It feels right here.” She put her fist against her breast, over her heart.

  Her father opened his mouth to make a reply, but Daniel spoke first. “If we get in too deep, Cork, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have someone on the outside of things to call for backup. If she promised to stay clear of the action.”