The William Kent Krueger Collection #4

by William Kent Krueger

  This was directed at Jenny, whose face was stone and who didn’t reply.

  Cork took one last sip of his coffee and stood up.

  Rose said, “Vaya con Dios.”

  And Mal said, “Amen.”

  The ride to Windigo Island was a rough one. The wind hadn’t let up at all. Ragged white clouds tumbled across the blue of the sky, and under the hull of Bascombe’s launch, the lake bucked and kicked like a thing alive and wild.

  They rounded the southeast end of Windigo, and Amos Powassin’s small dock came into view. It was crowded with boats. As they approached, a group of men came from Powassin’s house. They carried rifles and went to their boats, and one by one they motored away, so that the dock, when Bascombe pulled up, was empty save for one small motorboat. They tied up, and as they disembarked, Cherri Allen, who’d brought them to Powassin the day before, stepped onto the narrow front porch of the blind man’s plain little house, shaded her eyes against the sun, and watched them come.

  “Morning, Cherri,” Kretsch said in jovial greeting. “That looked like a posse leaving.”

  Cherri didn’t reply but said darkly, “I suppose you came to see Amos.”

  “Yes,” Kretsch said. “Could we talk to him?”

  “Wait here. I’ll ask.”

  She went inside, and a moment later, a small face appeared at the screen door and peered out at them. It was the child who’d been with Powassin on the dock fishing when they’d come the day before. She eyed them wordlessly—suspiciously, Cork thought—then disappeared again into the dark inside the house.

  Powassin came to the door, pushed open the screen, and stepped out into the sunlight. He wore a white T-shirt and jeans washed until the blue was practically a memory. His blind eyes didn’t blink against the glare of the morning sun. Cherri Allen came with him and stood a little behind him, in deference to his stature.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  It was a neutral tone, neither inviting nor threatening. Very Ojibwe, Cork thought.

  Cork nodded to Stephen.

  “Grandfather,” Stephen began. “We’re trying to find Noah Smalldog.”

  “Ah, Makadewagosh,” the old man said. Although his feelings about the intrusion were unclear at the moment, it was obvious he didn’t mind Stephen being there. “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that. Nobody here can.”

  Can? Cork wanted to ask. Or will?

  “Last night, grandfather, he tried to hurt the baby,” Stephen said.

  The news obviously disturbed the old man. More lines appeared on his already heavily wrinkled face. “You saw him?”

  “We did,” Stephen answered.

  Though that wasn’t technically true, Cork thought. They’d seen someone, and the evidence pointed to Smalldog, but they couldn’t actually say with certainty that it had been him. Cork was tempted to clarify his son’s remark but held himself back.

  The old man thought on this for a long while.

  In the way of a lot of white people Cork had known, Bascombe seemed uncomfortable as the silence continued to stretch. He finally blurted, “Looked like a hunting party was leaving when we came up. What are you hunting?”

  Powassin didn’t answer, didn’t show any sign that he’d even heard. Cork thought it might be because the question came from Bascombe and not Stephen. He was a little pissed at the man for butting in, but it was done. He waited with the others. At the old man’s back, Cherri Allen watched with interest, as if she had no idea how, or even if, he was going to respond.

  Finally the old Ojibwe said, “We’re hunting Noah Smalldog.”

  “Why, grandfather?” Stephen asked.

  “I would like to sit down,” the old man said.

  Cherri fetched a wooden chair from inside the house and brought it to the porch. Powassin sat down with a grateful sigh. In the strong sunlight, his long white hair glowed like electrified filaments. His face was dark, both from his heritage and from decades of life lived mostly outside. He folded his big, gnarled hands across his belly.

  “We got called yesterday about Sonny Chickaway,” he said.

  “That was me,” Tom Kretsch said. “I called.”

  The old Ojibwe continued, “Some of our men went to his place and saw it was all tore up and saw all the blood. They started asking around on the islands, couldn’t find Sonny, came up with nothing. That’s pretty strange out here.”

  “What do you think it means, grandfather?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s not good, I can tell you that.”

  “Grandfather,” Cork said, with great respect in his voice, “do you think Noah Smalldog did something to Sonny Chickaway? Is that the reason you’re hunting him?”

  Before responding, the old man weighed his words for another long period. “In my life, I’ve tried to understand most of the creatures who call this lake home. Smalldog? He’s still a mystery to me. What Noah Smalldog might do, only Noah Smalldog knows. And that probably makes him the most dangerous animal you could run into out here.”

  The old man squinted, as if the strong sunlight finally bothered him. He leaned forward in his chair and spoke quietly. “My advice is to leave. Leave this lake now. Take the child and go somewhere safe. The safest place you know. But do it careful. Do it real cunning. You’re being watched.”

  “By whom?”

  “This is a small community with a lot of eyes and not much to see. Everyone is watching you. And tongues wag. News of what you do is gonna travel across the Angle faster ’n this damn wind.”

  He sat back, and his mouth formed a line from which wrinkles radiated like stitches on a wound.

  “Migwech, grandfather,” Stephen said.

  The old man raised a hand in a gesture of parting, but spoke no more.

  Stephen turned away and the others followed.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Aaron sat on the bench at the end of Bascombe’s dock, a rifle across his legs. He faced the cabin, with the lake and the sun at his back. He wore a ball cap that shaded his long, handsome face, so that Rose, as she walked toward him, couldn’t clearly see his expression.

  “I found blueberries in Seth’s kitchen,” she said. “I made muffins. I thought you might like one. It’s still warm from the oven.”

  “Thanks.” Polite, but without enthusiasm.

  She handed him the muffin and sat down beside him. He removed the rifle from his lap and laid it on the boards at his feet. He broke the muffin into two pieces and offered her half. She accepted. While the wind shook the branches of the poplars on the shoreline and the lake washed restlessly around the dock pilings, they ate without speaking.

  “Thank you,” Rose finally said.

  “What for?”

  She nodded toward the rifle. “For that. It’s uncomfortable, I imagine.”

  “If this Smalldog actually came, I don’t know if I could shoot him.”

  “I understand. But I think the hope is that, seeing you and the rifle, he’ll be prudent and just stay away.”

  “A man who’d abuse and then torture and kill his own sister? If we have what he wants, I’m not sure anything can keep him away.”

  Rose finished her half of the muffin and turned and looked out at the lake. The channel was frothy with whitecaps and brilliant with flashes of blue from the sky and silver from the sun. On the far side rose the deep green of Birch Island, a long, impenetrable wall of trees and underbrush. As she watched, a bald eagle lifted itself on broad wings and curled in a swift arc toward the north.

  “It’s so beautiful,” she said. “I find it hard to think of anything so ugly up here.”

  “Ugly happens everywhere,” he said, as if he were an expert on the subject.

  “I’ve read your poetry. You’re very good, but not very optimistic,” she told him.

  “I’m a realist.” He tipped the ball cap back on his head, and when he looked at her, a sliver of sunlight played along his cheek, like a yellow scar. “Frankly, I don’t get the O’Connor sunny view of life
.”

  “I don’t know that it’s sunny,” Rose said. “It’s just that we’ve come through a lot of hard times together. We’ve supported one another. We’re a close family, the O’Connors.”

  “But you’re not an O’Connor.”

  “Not technically. A long time ago, when I was a little lost in what to do with my life, my sister and Cork asked me to help with their first child.”

  “Jenny.”

  “Yes. Jo, that was Jenny’s mother, was trying to create a law career. Cork was a cop with odd hours. This was in Chicago. I stepped in to fill gaps. Do you know what I found? That the gaps in my own life were filled. I loved helping to raise the children. I never felt like an outsider in this family.”

  “You and Mal have no children of your own?”

  “No. And if you’re wondering do we want children, yes. It just hasn’t happened.”

  “Children,” he said, as if the word were a hard, heavy stone.

  “You don’t want children,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Children, in my experience, are an inconvenience. And children, in my experience, are mostly a disappointment to others and are themselves disappointed. Nobody wins.”

  “I’ve never looked at it as a competition.”

  “You understand what I mean.”

  Rose watched two gulls ride the strong wind over the open water, maneuvering in the difficult air currents with extraordinary grace.

  “I do,” she said. “And I disagree. But my experience is different from yours.”

  “And what do we base our choices on but our own experience?” he asked.

  “Faith,” she offered.

  From inside the lodge came the sound of the baby crying. It was quite loud, and easily heard above the rush of the wind. Aaron looked there, and his face, in the shadow of the long brim of his cap, was dark.

  “I’m not a religious man,” he said coldly.

  “Faith in people,” she said. “Faith in Jenny. Faith in yourself.”

  He gave her a sidelong glance, and the coldness seemed to melt for a moment. “You were a cheerleader in high school, I bet.”

  She laughed. “Hardly.” She draped an arm over the back of the bench and faced Aaron directly. “I’ll tell you something. My childhood and much of my early adult life was a nightmare of taking care of an alcoholic mother. I prayed sometimes for her to die. When she did, I discovered it wasn’t the release I’d thought it would be. My life had been so defined by caregiving that, unless I had someone to help, I didn’t know who I was. That was the real reason I agreed to live with Jo and Cork and give a hand with Jenny. I thought it would save me from having to stumble around searching for a life.”

  “You just went on being a caregiver,” he said.

  “No. I learned what it was like to nurture. Which is different. That’s what the children did for me.”

  “Semantics,” he said, dismissing her.

  “I’m not trying to convince you of anything, honestly,” she said. “I just believe there’s another way to look at life.”

  The wind gusted with a sudden, unexpected ferocity, and tore Aaron’s cap from his head. Rose shot a look toward the southwest, the direction from which the terror of the derecho had come only a couple of days earlier. Although it was filled with speeding clouds, the sky was a soft blue, and nothing threatened on the horizon.

  She heard the sound of an outboard and saw Bascombe’s launch approaching.

  “They’re back,” she said.

  Aaron glanced down at the rifle that lay at his feet. “Finally,” he said with clear relief.

  Once again, they clustered around the table in the dining area of Bascombe’s lodge. The gathering reminded Jenny of a war council.

  “Amos Powassin is right,” her father said. “It’s what I’ve been saying all along. The safest thing for everyone is if we get the baby away from the Angle altogether, the sooner the better.”

  “So let’s give him over to the authorities. The sheriff or somebody,” Aaron suggested. “They’ll come for him soon enough anyway.”

  Jenny shot him a killing look. “I’m not putting him into the hands of someone who doesn’t love him. I’m not giving him up until I know that he’s absolutely safe.”

  Aaron opened his hands toward Cork in a gesture of reasonableness and an invitation to agree. “They have the resources to protect him, right?”

  Her father didn’t answer immediately, and Jenny watched his face closely. She could tell there was a conflict in his thinking, though what exactly it was, she couldn’t say.

  At last he shook his head and replied with what seemed great reluctance. “Based on the response Tom got when he tried to convince the sheriff that our situation up here was bad, I wouldn’t rely on them right now. I’m not sure they’d take our concerns seriously. And even if they did, they’ve already got their hands pretty full.”

  “Okay,” Kretsch said. “We get him off the lake and take him where?”

  A thoughtful silence settled over the table.

  Stephen looked up suddenly and offered an answer. “We could take him to Henry Meloux.”

  “Meloux.” Just saying his name gave Jenny an overpowering sense of relief.

  “Who’s Meloux?” Aaron asked.

  “A friend,” Stephen answered. “And a really special man. He lives in the safest place I can think of.”

  “Where’s that?” Bascombe asked.

  “On the Iron Lake Reservation in Tamarack County.”

  “Where you’re from, right?”

  Stephen nodded. “Henry has a cabin in the woods there, and I know he’d help.”

  “Wait a minute.” Aaron put his hand up as if stopping traffic. “This feels to me a lot like kidnapping.”

  “How can you kidnap a child who has no parents, no home, and no real official existence at all?” Jenny snapped at him.

  “You’re equivocating,” Aaron said.

  “And you’re an ass,” Jenny shot back.

  “Hold on a minute,” her father said. “Aaron’s concern is valid. If things don’t work out, we could be in a lot of trouble. Maybe it would be best to take him to Marsha Dross instead.”

  “Who’s that?” Bascombe asked.

  “The sheriff of Tamarack County,” Jenny’s father answered. “And also a good friend.”

  “Easier to get rid of the baby that way,” Bascombe pointed out. “Off your hands quicker, Cork.”

  Her father appeared uncomfortable, as if he didn’t particularly appreciate the light in which Bascombe’s words cast him.

  The comment made Jenny furious. “I’m taking him to Meloux’s.” She leveled an icy look at her father. “He’ll understand.”

  “Jenny, I’m just trying to think what’s safest for us all.”

  “No, it’s like Seth said. You’re just looking for the quickest way to get my baby out of your hair.”

  “He’s not your baby,” Cork said.

  “And he’s no one else’s either. Just look at him. Who’d take a child with a face like that?” Now she shot an accusing glare at Aaron.

  Silence settled in the room, an uncomfortable waiting. For her part, Jenny felt like a cannon, primed and ready to fire. She watched her father closely.

  Finally he shrugged and said, as if in defeat, “Meloux it is, for better or worse.” He scanned the room, his gaze settling one after the other on them all. “Are we agreed?”

  They all said, “Yes,” except for Aaron. He sat back, darkly mum, and although Jenny could see clearly that he disapproved of the idea, he gave, at last, a reluctant nod of assent.

  Kretsch offered, “If you really believe the safest place for the child is with this Meloux, you go ahead and take him there. If it causes any legal problems, I’ll take the heat.”

  “How do we get the baby away without anybody seeing?” Bascombe asked. “Powassin was right. A lot of eyes are watching you folks, and we don’t know who among them might be in cahoots with Smalldog.”

&
nbsp; “What makes you think he’s not acting alone?” Cork asked.

  “He’s a smuggler, and in my experience in ATF, smugglers don’t operate alone. He’s probably got other Ojibwe helping him. And, hell, maybe even a white man or two. Around here, it’s tough to make a living, and throwing in with Smalldog could be a tempting proposition. Besides, there was someone with him when he came for the baby last night.”

  “We could sneak him out tonight,” Anne suggested.

  “I don’t know that night is the best time,” Bascombe replied. “The lake’s tricky enough during the day. And if Smalldog’s thinking we might do something with the baby, he’ll figure night’s the best time. It’s what I’d figure.”

  “What if we all go together,” Rose said. “Just head over to the Angle and load up in Aaron’s truck and drive out. Wouldn’t there be safety in numbers?”

  Bascombe’s face showed that he clearly didn’t like the idea.

  Apparently, neither did Cork, who said, “I don’t know Smalldog. It might be he’s crazy enough to do something desperate, and one of us—or several of us—could get hurt.”

  “The road out from the Angle cuts through a lot of empty, isolated woods,” Kretsch added. “If Smalldog knew we were running, there’d be a number of old logging roads he could take to cut us off.”

  “You think he’d really do that?” Rose asked.

  “A man who’d do what he did to his sister, no telling what he’s capable of,” Bascombe answered.

  “So let’s take the baby out by water,” Stephen said. “Across Lake of the Woods.”

  “Across the big water?” Kretsch said. “In broad daylight? We’d be sitting ducks for Smalldog and that cigarette boat of his. He’d run us down like a wolf would a rabbit.”

  “Cunning,” Cork said. “That’s what Powassin suggested. Somehow we have to take the boy right out from under Smalldog’s nose without Smalldog knowing.”

  “How do you propose we do that?” Kretsch asked.

  Jenny saw that her father didn’t have an answer. They sat, staring at one another or out the window, and for a while the only sound came from the rush of the wind in the trees.