“I’ve been on Crow Point since yesterday.”
“Big dam broke last night in the mountains near Boulder, Colorado. Floodwater swept down a canyon, wiped out several towns. The death toll is estimated in the hundreds. It’s a huge catastrophe. Jubal Little may be news in Minnesota, but he’s not front page anywhere else.”
That was the kind of luck that didn’t leave Cork feeling any better.
Dross went on. “When I talked to the governor, he asked for the details of Little’s death. I gave them to him as we know them, and told him it looked like a hunting accident.”
“It wasn’t an accident, Marsha.”
“I know, and it’s too bad. Because it was your arrow in his heart, Cork.” Dross watched his face for a reaction. “You didn’t tell us that when we questioned you yesterday.”
“I knew you’d find out soon enough. And once you knew, you might be reluctant to let me go.”
“Your fingerprints and Jubal’s are the only ones on that arrow. Did you shoot it?”
Cork laid his cup on the bed of the pickup and turned fully to the sheriff. “Do you think I did?”
Dross, implacable for a moment, held his gaze, then said, “You know as well as I do that anyone is capable of anything under the right circumstances.”
“Even cold-blooded murder?”
“Is that what it was?”
“You didn’t answer my question. Do you really think I shot that arrow?”
Dross reached into her cup, plucked something from the surface of the coffee, and looked at it closely. “Tick,” she said with amazement. “I thought they’d all be long dead by now.” She flicked it away and gave Cork the same scrutinizing look she’d just given the bug. “Three hours, Cork. You waited three hours before going to get help.”
“I didn’t go to get help, Marsha. Like I told you yesterday, Jubal was beyond help when I left him.”
“My point, more or less.”
“I stayed because he asked me to stay.”
“Going might have saved him.”
“Or left him to die alone. He didn’t want to go that way. We finished here?” Cork tossed the rest of his coffee onto the ground in a gesture of irritation.
“I haven’t answered your question yet,” she said.
“I figured you weren’t going to.”
“Anyone who knows you wouldn’t believe that you killed Jubal Little, Cork. But there’s going to be a lot of pressure on us to come up with someone, and right now, we’ve got no one else to consider. So for a while, as far as the media’s concerned, you’re the bull’s-eye. It’ll be rough.” Dross poured herself a little more coffee, and the steam crawled over the rim as if the cup were a tiny witch’s cauldron. “How could someone have got one of your arrows?”
“I don’t know, Marsha. I’m working on that one.”
“My first guess would be that it’s someone who knows you well.”
“Sobering thought,” Cork replied, but it was exactly what he thought, too. “Marsha, does the name Rhiannon mean anything to you?”
She squinted, thought. “Nope. Should it?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Is it important?”
“Probably not.”
Dross glanced at her watch. “Ed and I are holding a press conference in an hour. We’ll be announcing that the BCA’s been asked to help with the investigation, and we’ll introduce Agent Phil Holter, who’s been tapped to lead the BCA team. We’re still calling it a hunting accident, but that won’t matter. By noon, you’re going to be big news, and everything we do in this case is going to be watched, and whatever passes between us after that will be official.” She reached out a hand. “Good luck, Cork.”
She sounded like someone sending a man off to war.
* * *
When he hit the outskirts of Aurora, Cork called home on his cell phone. Stephen answered.
“There are some cars and vans parked outside,” he told his father. “They’ve knocked on the door, and the phone’s rung a few times.”
“You haven’t talked to any of them?”
“Like you told us, Dad, we’ve kept our mouths shut.”
“All right. I’m going to park on Willow Street and come in the back way.”
He passed Gooseberry Lane and glanced down the street where he’d lived quietly for most of his life. If he’d been asked, he could have recited the history of every house on his block and the lineage of most of the families who occupied them. The street wasn’t crowded the way he’d feared, but he saw a couple of vans topped with broadcast antennae and, despite the drizzle, lots of people milling about on the sidewalk in front of his house. He went a block farther and turned onto Willow Street, where he parked. He walked to the Quayles’ house, whose backyard abutted his own. He cut through the side yard and along a line of bare lilac bushes. Few people in Aurora had fences, and he crossed onto his property without difficulty. He hustled through the yard, across his patio, and to the back door, angry that he had to enter his own home like some kind of thief but grateful that he hadn’t been spotted. Stephen had been watching for him and had the door open.
“Baa-baa,” Waaboo cried when he saw his grandfather come in. He dropped the stuffed alligator he’d been holding, ran across the dining room, and wrapped his arms around Cork’s leg. Cork bent, lifted his grandson, and swung him around so that Waaboo laughed with delight. It was the best sound Cork had heard that day.
Jenny stepped from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel, and Trixie padded along behind her. The dog came to Cork, her tail wagging briskly in welcome, and Cork bent and ruffed her fur. Waaboo reached down to grab at an ear, but Trixie, who was used to the child, slipped away and sat on her haunches well out of reach.
“Any trouble?” Jenny asked.
“I don’t think anybody saw me,” he said.
“We’ve kept the curtains closed, but—” She was cut off by the insistent ring of the phone. She strolled to the stand beside the staircase and checked caller ID. “Them,” she said simply.
Cork put Waaboo down, and the toddler went immediately for Trixie. Then Cork strode to a front window and drew the curtain aside just enough to see out. He’d have been happier seeing no one, but at least it wasn’t a media feeding frenzy. He thought of the dead in Colorado, and knew that the national media, like hungry crows, would flock to the bigger kill. He turned back to his children. “Sam’s Place?”
“Judy opened this morning,” Jenny said. “I talked to her a few minutes ago. There were a couple of enterprising reporters waiting, hoping, I guess, that you or one of us might show up.”
Cork said, “Maybe I ought to hold a press conference there. We could sell a ton of burgers afterward.”
“Seriously, Dad, what are you going to do?” Stephen pressed him.
“The first thing is head back to Trickster’s Point.”
“What for?”
“Maybe I can find something Marsha’s people couldn’t.”
“Like what?”
“I’m hoping I’ll know it when I see it. I left our canoe, so I need to pick that up anyway.”
“Can I go?” Stephen asked.
“You’re on the schedule at Sam’s Place at noon,” Jenny reminded him.
“I’ll call Gordy, get him to cover for me. Okay, Dad?”
Cork thought it over and agreed. There was no reason Stephen couldn’t go along, and it would get him away from the craziness that was going to be their lives for a while now. Cork wished he could get them all away while he dealt with the situation, but he wasn’t sure how to do that or if they’d even go.
“You and our little guy will be all right?” he asked Jenny.
“I think we’ll go to Sam’s Place and spend the day. Maybe by this evening the vultures will have flown.”
“If you need me, call my cell. I won’t get a signal up at Trickster’s Point, but leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I’m in range.”
While Stephen got himself ready, Co
rk made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, wrapped them, and put them in a knapsack along with some bottled water. When everything was ready, he kissed Jenny good-bye and gave Waaboo a big, gentle hug.
“Take care of your mommy,” he instructed seriously.
Waaboo said happily, “Bye-bye, Baa-baa.”
CHAPTER 10
They drove out of Aurora, along the southern shoreline of Iron Lake, then swung north toward Allouette.
When Cork was a boy, Allouette had been a collection of mostly BIA-built homes and trailers, with only a couple of the two dozen streets actually paved. There’d been an old, rotting community center, which had housed the offices of the tribal government, and also a small gymnasium, where the kids could play basketball, and where powwows and community celebrations were sometimes held and the jingle dancers and the drummers practiced. Across the street was LeDuc’s general store and next to that a small café called the Boozhoo. A block away was Alf Johnson’s Sinclair gas station, a two-pump operation that also sold tackle and live bait and beer. The dock on the shore of Iron Lake was a rickety old thing, and the boats tied up there were generally a sad-looking fleet of secondhand dinghies and rowboats mounted with sputtering outboards.
But Allouette had changed. There was a new, much larger community center designed by an Ojibwe architect and built entirely by Ojibwe contractors and laborers. It held not only a gymnasium and the tribal government offices but also a tribal-run preschool, a health clinic, and a number of new tribal-operated community services. The streets were paved, and every house had access to new water and sewer systems. There were burgeoning new businesses. LeDuc’s store had been updated, and next to it was the Mocha Moose, a coffee and sandwich shop that was the darling of Sarah LeDuc. Alf Johnson’s station was now a multipump Food ’N Fuel, and beyond it was a large new marina where a number of fine-looking Ojibwe-owned craft lay moored.
The whole reservation was changing. It had always been a hodgepodge of land owned by individual Ojibwe, or held in trust by the tribe, or leased to the federal government or private parties, or owned outright by whites, who, very soon after the earliest treaty signings, had purchased allotments for a song from Shinnobs who didn’t understand the reality of what they were giving away. Recently, the Anishinaabeg had begun a movement—the Iron Lake Initiative—for the purpose of reacquiring all the land that had originally been theirs by treaty. The land that had once belonged to The People was coming back to them.
This reflection of recent affluence was the direct result of the Chippewa Grand Casino, which had been constructed south of Aurora several years earlier and which was owned and operated by the Iron Lake Band of Ojibwe.
Cork had mixed feelings about all this. He was very glad to see the Anishinaabeg—the people of his blood—finally able to do for themselves what the government on every level had failed to do. He was glad to see the optimism and enterprise that came with the casino gambling, which the Indians called “the new buffalo.” He was encouraged by the flaring of a new fire of Anishinaabe pride in a culture rich in history and wisdom and knowledge and unique tradition. But all this came at a price. In its early days, the Chippewa Grand had seen a good deal of corruption among its management. Oversight of bookkeeping and profits was always questionable, and true and fair distribution of the income was an issue of great and heated discussion among folks on the rez. One of the underlying values of the Ojibwe culture had always been a lack of interest in stockpiling wealth. What you had, you shared, and it was the sharing that was esteemed, not the having. Now, no matter how much people were given in casino allotments, it never seemed enough. Dealing with this sudden influx of money wasn’t always an easy affair for someone raised on nothing and less than nothing. If, for example, you were disposed to drinking, you probably drank more. If you were into drugs, you plunged deeper. If you’d been given to coveting the things you saw in other people’s houses—particularly the homes of white people on television sitcoms and dramas—you bought items you didn’t need or didn’t know how to use or didn’t even really understand the purpose of, and they accumulated and forced you to buy a bigger home or a longer trailer, and despite all you had, you still weren’t happy.
Welcome to the white man’s world, Cork thought.
Although there was an official state forest trail to Trickster’s Point, it was a five-mile hike. Cork had always preferred the more direct route, a two-mile paddle by canoe across Lake Nanaboozhoo. A couple of miles outside Allouette, he turned onto an old logging road that cut northeast through the reservation. The road was seldom used and had become more a memory of road. But two parallel lines of bent and broken undergrowth showed where, a day earlier, he’d twice driven his Land Rover, first with Jubal Little sitting where Stephen now sat, and then alone.
The logging road ended abruptly in a clearing full of sumac that had gone bare weeks earlier. Cork parked, and he and Stephen got out and made their way across the clearing to the shore of Lake Nanaboozhoo. There was a natural, sandy landing where Cork’s canoe lay tipped, with two paddles leaning against the hull. Stephen took the bow and Cork the stern. They lifted the canoe, righted it, and set it in the water. Stephen grabbed a paddle and a place in the bow. Cork took the stern, and they shoved onto the flat gray of the lake.
Its shape was a long, ragged arc with a lot of rocky inlets and small, wild islands. The southern half lay within the Iron Lake Reservation. The northern half was part of the Superior National Forest. The whole body of water sat only a stone’s throw from the area known as the Boundary Waters, a vast, unspoiled stretch of wilderness that went far beyond the Canadian border. Under the overcast sky, the pines along the lakeshore seemed dense and brooding, and the water ahead looked nearly black and cold and depthless.
An Ojibwe legend explained the lake. There was once a maiden so beautiful she believed that no man was worthy of her. She spent long hours gazing at herself in the clear water of a small pond near her village. Every young man who saw her fell immediately in love with her and tried to make her his wife. But the haughty maiden’s heart was ice, and the suitors were cruelly dismissed. They left with broken hearts and great lamentations. Nanaboozhoo, the trickster spirit, heard their cries and decided to teach the maiden a lesson. He disguised himself as an Ojibwe warrior, the most handsome young man anyone had ever seen. He appeared to the maiden as she sat gazing into the pond. The moment she saw his reflection beside her own, she fell deeply in love. She gave herself to Nanaboozhoo, body and soul. Their mating was so wild that it caused the ground around them to be pushed into hills, and so passionate that it melted the maiden’s icy heart, which created a small lake among the hills. Afterward, she fell asleep. When she awoke, she found that Nanaboozhoo had abandoned her, and she was alone. She began to weep and wept so long and so hard that the small lake became the very big lake the Ojibwe named to honor the trickster.
After half an hour, Cork and Stephen came around a long, pine-covered finger of land whose tip pointed northeast. From there they could see, rising on the far side of the lake, a rocky ridge capped with aspens. At the eastern end of that ridge, separated from the rest of the formation by a gap of roughly fifty yards, rose a solitary pinnacle that towered a hundred feet above the trees around it.
In the bow, Stephen nodded toward the pinnacle and said, “Niinag,” an Ojibwe word that meant “penis.”
From a distance, the long, aspen-capped ridge looked like a naked giant lying supine upon the earth, and the solitary pinnacle unmistakably resembled an erect phallus. Ojibwe tradition held that the ridge was a reclining Nanaboozhoo, and they called the tall rock pillar Nanaboozhoo’s Penis, though modern Shinnobs sometimes jokingly referred to it as Tricky’s Dick. On official maps and in official nomenclature, it was called Trickster’s Point.
They made their way across the lake, fighting a sudden cross-wind that had risen, and drew up to the shore. Stephen leaped from the bow and steadied the canoe for his father to disembark. They brought it fully out of the wate
r and tipped it on the soft bed of needles beneath the pines that edged the shoreline, then started inland along a faint path that led toward the towering rock.
“Have you ever been here before, Stephen?” Cork asked.
“No, but there are some guys in school big into rock climbing. I’ve heard them talk about it. They say people have died climbing Trickster’s Point.”
“Only one that I know of, and that was a long time ago.”
The trail meandered through pines that quickly gave way to birch, and then Trickster’s Point loomed, a tower of slate gray stone sixty feet in diameter and more than a hundred and fifty feet high. Even in the cold air, the rock seemed to give off its own intense chill.
“Where did it happen?” Stephen asked.
“Follow me,” Cork replied.
He led his son around the base of the formation to the north face. He stopped at a fold in the rock where, despite the sleet and drizzle that had fallen since Jubal Little died, the ground was still darkly stained.
“Here,” he said.
Stephen stared at the place, nodded to himself, then asked, “What are we looking for?”
Cork’s son was not a hunter. Stephen had never shown any interest, and although Cork had hunted since boyhood and would have been happy to pass down to his son the particular legacy of his knowledge, he’d never pushed the issue. Stephen’s inclinations lay elsewhere, particularly in learning the way of the Mide, and Cork was fine with that. He was pleased that Henry Meloux had taken a special liking to Stephen.
Cork said, “Jubal went ahead of me and circled Trickster’s Point from the south. The arrow entered his chest from the right, from the east. So from there.” He pointed toward the rock ridge that was separated from the pinnacle by fifty yards and that formed the long mass which gave the impression of a giant lying on the earth. “The ground’s been trampled by the sheriff’s people. We probably won’t find anything useful this side of those rocks.”
“So we go up into the rocks?”
“Bingo,” Cork said.
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