Windigo Island

by William Kent Krueger

  He didn’t have time to argue. The bottom line was that he wanted her out of harm’s way. So long as she was gone before anything went down with Windigo, he could live with it.

  “Ten-four, kiddo. Wish me luck.”

  He turned the cell to vibrate so that the ring from an errant call wouldn’t give him away. He reholstered the phone and eyed the landscape downriver. A hundred and fifty yards away lay the place he believed Henry was being held. He chose his next hiding place—a thicket of sumac sixty yards distant—and made a dash.

  A strong breeze had risen, skating over the Missouri, shaking the leaves of the trees and underbrush along the riverbank. The wind was both friend and foe to Cork. It helped to mask his approach, but it also drowned out any sound that might give away Windigo’s position.

  Safely inside the cover of the sumac, Cork glanced up the slope. Jenny had descended halfway. She’d paused and was scanning the river north to south, as if checking all the possibilities before her. When she swung the glasses in Cork’s direction, he eased himself into the open just enough to give her a wave. She kept scanning, and he couldn’t tell if she’d missed him or was continuing her charade. She lowered the glasses and moved downslope again with that stiff-legged gait.

  Cork chose his next sanctuary, a grouping of cottonwoods not unlike the one that was his final destination. He shot for the cover and, when he entered the trees, found not only wind damage—trees down, trunks splintered—but also evidence of habitation: old char from a campfire, rusted food tins, a stained, striped mattress that had disgorged its stuffing and had clearly become the abode of vermin. There was no sign of Meloux or Windigo. He felt this was a good indication that he was, in fact, thinking like the prey he hunted.

  At the north edge of the cottonwoods, Cork used a broad trunk as shield and eyed the final copse. It had been thick with upright trees at one time, but whatever tempest had swept up along that river and across the hills and bluffs had razed a good quarter of that timber. Trunks lay uprooted or in great splintered sections on the ground. Between Cork and his goal, there was little cover along the bank. Mostly what he had to work with was the tall, dry grass.

  The day was sweltering, and the effort of this hunt made him sweat profusely. Salty drops stung his eyes. His soggy shirt clung to his back. He was thirsty, and his mouth was dust dry. He eyed what seemed like an interminable stretch of impossibility, and knew he had no choice but to crawl those final fifty yards using the grass as cover. He pulled the Glock from where he’d shoved it into the waist of his pants, released the safety, and gripped the firearm in his right hand. He went down on his belly and began to slither ahead like a lizard. He wondered if Jenny could see him from her high vantage. He didn’t dare risk lifting his head to look. The grass hid him, but it also obscured everything that lay before him. Blind, he made his way toward the damaged stand of trees.

  He’d gone halfway when he heard the gunshot. It came from the cottonwoods in front of him. His first thought was Meloux. He had a sudden vision of the old man’s execution, Meloux’s long white hair dripping blood. His second thought was Jenny. He raised himself and looked up the hillside. She was gone. She’d been so far down the slope that if she’d headed back to the trailer she should still have been visible to him. But she was nowhere to be seen. There’d been the gunshot, and then she’d simply vanished.

  Something happened to Cork that had seldom happened before: he panicked. He lost it. All his careful planning fled. He stood and began a wild race for the cottonwoods. He hit the copse at a dead run, crashing into and through the underbrush, leaping one fallen tree after another. No amount of wind could mask the sound of his coming. He glanced left and right, finally spotted a small clearing ahead. Sitting upright in the center, bound to a sapling with what appeared to be clothesline cord, was Henry Meloux. His head was down. His chin rested on his chest. Just as Cork had seen in his dark vision, Meloux’s long white hair was stained with blood.

  Call it training. Call it instinct. Call it a little of the wisdom Meloux had passed to him over all their years together that was now innate. Whatever it was, the next thing Cork did, he did without thinking. He was running headlong into a situation he had not reconnoitered but was so obviously a trap. Between him and the clearing where Meloux sat bound lay the trunk of a huge fallen cottonwood whose roots, at its thickest end, were like long, ragged claws. Cork had already leaped several very like it, but this one he did not. Instead, he dove for the cover that downed tree provided him.

  Two quick shots sent splinters of the trunk into the air above Cork. The reports came from ahead and to the left. Cork hunkered down and kept himself shielded from what might come next from that direction.

  What came was a voice: “Cork O’Connor. I hear you’re part Mick, part Shinnob, like me. That true?” When Cork didn’t answer, Windigo went on. “Your friend there, he’s not dead. I just gave him a tap on the side of his head, just enough to keep him quiet. A lot of blood, but you know about head wounds. Bleed buckets. Look a lot worse than they are.”

  “What was the gunshot about?” Cork called.

  “To flush you out. I saw your girl coming down the hill, but I didn’t see you. Only a coward would send a woman in his place. I don’t peg you as a coward. Your girl, though, when she heard that shot, she dropped out of sight like a prairie dog. Lucky for her. If she’d been a little closer, I might’ve tried to cap her.”

  “So what now?” Cork hollered.

  “Now we negotiate.”

  “For what?”

  “The old man’s life.”

  Though he still trembled from the adrenaline that coursed through his body, Cork’s panic had subsided. Two pieces of information that he’d needed he now had: Henry was alive—if Cork could believe Windigo—and Jenny was safe. A calm descended, once again Meloux’s wisdom, in a way. Cork understood that a man sometimes had to enter the dark, but he did not have to become a part of the darkness.

  Ogichidaa, he thought. To stand between evil and his people. This was what he was born for. If necessary, this would be the way of his death.

  The wind had grown stronger. The cottonwood leaves above him and the dead branches of the fallen trees around him rattled and clacked. Cork had to raise his voice even more to be heard.

  “The old man’s not moving,” he cried. “How do I know he’s still alive?”

  “You don’t,” Windigo called back. “But if I don’t like our negotiation, I can always pop a couple of rounds into him from here. That’ll make things pretty certain.”

  Cork had a better sense of the direction now. He eased himself toward the clawlike roots of the blown-down trunk and risked a peek, trying to pinpoint Windigo’s exact position.

  The shot that came was high of Cork’s head and to the right. It missed him but sent splinters of the trunk into his scalp and temple. He jerked back, stung and bleeding. He’d got what he wanted, however. He’d glimpsed his Windigo. The big man was protected behind a V formed by a couple of toppled trees thirty yards away, just beyond the clearing where Meloux lay.

  “I don’t think you want a negotiation,” Cork said.

  “No?”

  “I think you just want blood. Mine.”

  Laughter, long and deep, came from Windigo. “My God. Finally, someone who gets me. Oh, I’m going to enjoy this, O’Connor.”

  Cork was safe where he was, but he didn’t like the idea of Meloux trapped in the middle of what was taking place. He needed to draw the muzzle of Windigo’s Desert Eagle away from his old friend. A dozen yards to his left was the shattered stump of a tree that had snapped. It stood five feet high and was nearly as big around as the fallen tree that currently sheltered him. Unless Windigo was a crack shot, Cork believed that, on the run, he would make a poor target.

  He fired one shot from the Glock in Windigo’s direction and launched himself toward the stump. He zigged and zagged as he cr
ossed the dozen yards, and none of the three rounds that Windigo fired hit their mark. Breathing hard, heart hammering, he reached the protection of what was left of a once great tree, where he spent a few moments gathering himself.

  Seven rounds. Cork had counted seven rounds from Windigo. Although he’d long ago given up his own firearms, Cork knew weapons. Year after year, when he’d worn a badge, he’d had to qualify on the range. So the Glock in his hand didn’t feel alien at all. And what he knew about the Desert Eagle .44 Magnum was that the magazine carried eight rounds. Unless Windigo had brought an additional magazine or more cartridges, he had only one left to him. Cork ejected the magazine on his Glock. Except for the shot he’d fired, it was full. Windigo had the advantage of mobility. Cork, if he was lucky, had the edge in firepower.

  “I know what you’re thinking, O’Connor,” Windigo hollered above the wind through the trees. “I know you. I’ll bet you’re a cop. Or you were a cop once. Am I right? I knew it back there in the trailer. I could smell cop on you like dog shit on a shoe.”

  His voice still came from the same direction. Windigo hadn’t moved. He was counting on Cork to come to him, which was not exactly what Cork was doing. Not yet.

  Windigo fired three shots in quick succession.

  “Reloaded,” the big man called. “That’s what you were thinking, wasn’t it? That I was expending all my ammo?”

  The laugh came again, a sound that, within the whoosh of the wind and dull rattle of the cottonwood leaves and scrape of branches and groan of strained limbs, reminded Cork of a Halloween sound, something meant to scare children.

  It didn’t scare Cork, but it concerned him. He had no advantage now. Except that Windigo wanted his blood. Windigo’s hunger was all-consuming. In the darkness of his soul, Windigo was blind to everything but Cork. Was there a way to use that blindness?

  “Tell you what I’m going to do, O’Connor. Your friend there, the old man? He’s safe only so long as you make this interesting. Once I’m bored, he’s dead. Then I come for you. And you know what? After that, I might just go after that girl of yours. And when I’m done with her, I’ll go back to Minnesota and find Mariah and take care of her and her family. Yeah, her family. I’m really warming to this, let me tell you.”

  Cork moved again, this time darting to the cover of yet another fallen tree, half a dozen yards away, an easy distance. But luck, if he had any, deserted him. His right foot caught in a snarl of root, and he went down hard. He felt the painful twist of his ankle. He knew without thinking it consciously that he had to keep moving, and he rolled. At that same moment, he heard the double crack of the Desert Eagle. Two dull thuds and a spray of dirt came from the place he’d fallen. Still on the ground, he scrambled to the cover of the downed cottonwood. Windigo expended two more rounds that burrowed uselessly into dead wood.

  Cork checked his ankle. He didn’t think it was broken, but there was no way he could put weight on it. It wasn’t swelling yet, but it probably would. He thought about Kyle Buffalo, who’d twisted his ankle, too, in his own encounter with a windigo. Was it some black magic of the creature?

  “Remember the rifle booths on the midway at the state fair, O’Connor? Remember those little metal rabbits that used to run across the back? That’s what you remind me of. I was pretty good at popping those critters.”

  Cork looked around him, trying to figure his next move. Nothing offered itself. A good ten yards lay between him and the next reasonable cover, a tangle of branches where two broken trunks lay across each other in a lopsided X. He could pull off a round or two in Windigo’s direction and try to make it across that open distance. But he suspected his damaged ankle wouldn’t be much help. Also, it was the same direction he’d been moving, and Windigo would be expecting that. He could go back to the shattered stump he’d just abandoned. But that was a retreat of sorts, and in this game—as Windigo saw it—that might be a breach of some kind, and the penalty might well be Meloux’s death. He could also do nothing and see what Windigo’s reaction might be and play off that.

  He chose the last option, which was very Ojibwe: to be patient and to wait.

  This was Windigo’s response: “We don’t have much time, O’Connor. I’m guessing the cops’ll be coming sooner or later. So I’m going to change the game. If you don’t make a move real soon, I’ll plug the old man.”

  Cork again considered the crossed, downed cottonwood trunks ten yards ahead of him. It was a long, hopeless distance. And if he was trying to circle, it was the most obvious move for him now. That was exactly where Windigo would be aiming.

  He tried to buy time. He brought his Glock up, swung into the open for a second, pulled off two rounds, and returned to cover. Three shots came in reply, buried themselves with reverberating force in the trunk that shielded Cork, reminders of the damage those hollow-point bullets could do to flesh and bone.

  “I don’t like stalemates, O’Connor. Never believed in that Mexican standoff shit. I think it’s time I send that friend of yours on the Path of Souls and we really get things rolling here.”

  Cork hollered back, “You believe in the Path of Souls?”

  “Grew up Shinnob. That doesn’t mean I believe it. But the old man told me he’s a Mide. So I’m guessing he believes it. Either way, he’s about to find out.”

  Cork had no choice now, no time to think through another move. He gathered himself and launched, tried to sprint across the open ground, tried to ignore the agony of his injured ankle, tried to use that bad foot. Because it was his only chance at keeping Henry alive. Because he loved the old man. Because he was ogichidaa.

  His spirit was strong, but his body—that damaged ankle—­betrayed him. He went down almost immediately. He heard the shot and saw dirt kick up in front of his face. He scrambled in the dead leaves and the dry underbrush, which gave no cover, expecting any moment to feel the .44 Magnum hollow points explode in him. He rolled and crawled and finally limped across the stretch of open ground and threw himself behind the lopsided X of broken trunks. He lay there, breathing hard and fast, amazed still to be in one piece. For the moment, he lay shielded and completely bewildered.

  He waited to hear more from the big man, but nothing came. He heard only the roar of wind among the trees, dead and living. He risked a glance toward Windigo’s little stronghold.

  He saw movement there. He lifted his Glock and sighted.

  Then he lowered his weapon. He watched as Jenny stumbled out of Windigo’s hiding place. He watched her faltering walk—no charade this time—as she made her way to where Meloux sat tied to the sapling. Once she was there, her legs seemed to give out under her, and she slumped beside the old man.

  “Jenny,” Cork called.

  She didn’t look up. He couldn’t be certain that she’d heard him above the noise of the wind.

  Cork studied the place Windigo had been and from which Jenny had come. He saw no indication of life there.

  “Jenny,” he hollered again.

  She still didn’t respond. She sat next to Meloux, her eyes open and unblinking. She seemed to be fascinated by the desiccated leaves on the ground in front of her.

  Cork eased himself up and risked a step away from his own cover. No response from Windigo. He hobbled toward the little clearing where two of the people he loved most in the world sat together, unspeaking. As he neared, he could see that the pale blue T-shirt his daughter wore was spotted with blood.

  “Are you all right, Jenny?” He eased himself down beside her. “What happened, sweetheart?”

  She turned her face to him, and he saw that it was empty of color, and her eyes, in a way, were empty, too. “I killed him. I didn’t mean to. But I killed him.”

  Meloux made a sound, a low groan, and moved a little.

  “Henry?” Cork said. “You okay?”

  The old man lifted his head. “Corcoran O’Connor. It is good to see you.” The a
ncient Mide managed a weak smile. “But then, it is good to see anything.”

  “Let me cut you loose, Henry.”

  Cork pulled his Buck Alpha from his pocket. He cut the cord that bound Meloux, then turned his attention back to his daughter. “What happened, Jenny?”

  She stared at the ground in front of her and spoke in a dead voice. “I killed him. That’s all. It wasn’t part of the vision, but I killed him.”

  “I’ll be right back, Henry.” Cork put his hand softly on his daughter’s shoulder. “I’ll be back, sweetheart.”

  He found a broken branch that reached to his hip and used it as a crutch to help him hobble to Windigo’s sanctuary. He climbed one of the toppled trees that formed half of the protective V. Behind it lay the man whose real name he knew to be Robert Wilson French, a Red Lake Shinnob of mixed heritage, a product of the foster care system, a man feared even by Crips and Bloods and the Native Mob and as empty of humanity at his core as anyone Cork had ever known. The right side of his head bore a terrible-looking wound. Beside him lay the long-handled ax, the blunt end covered in blood.

  Cork checked for a pulse, found none. His daughter had spoken the truth.

  Later, when she could talk, this is what Jenny would relate to her father, and then to the Williams County sheriff’s people.

  While Cork had made his way down the promontory, she’d returned to the trailer’s backyard and had grabbed the ax from the cottonwood stump near the chimenea. She’d slid the long handle down the leg of her jeans so that it would be invisible to anyone watching from below—which accounted for her stiff-legged gait as she descended. On the slope of the promontory, when she’d heard the first shot ring out, rather than running, as her father would have insisted, she’d dropped into the nearest swale and brought out the ax. She’d crawled in the tall grass to a place where she could use her field glasses and had located Windigo. She could see him crouched in the protective juncture of the fallen trees. As the exchange of gunfire had gone on, with Windigo distracted and that mighty wind covering the sound of her approach, she’d come at him from behind. And when he’d fired that final round at her father, she’d sprung on him and had swung the blunt end of the ax. To disable him, she said. To knock him out, maybe. She never meant to kill him. Yet that’s what she’d done.