“I don’t care how it looks. I know Oscar Manydeeds. He’s not a man who’d do that kind of thing to his brother. Or anybody else.”
“Then help me prove it.”
“How?”
“Help me find him.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
“Ask others out here. Somebody must have seen him. But they’re not going to tell me that.”
Cork’s grandmother sat straight in her chair, as if her spine were made of ironwood. She didn’t reply.
“If you believe he didn’t do this, help me clear him,” Liam O’Connor said.
Grandma Dilsey gave a slow nod. “On one condition.”
“Name it.”
“I believe in my heart it was no Shinnob who did these things. In your heart, you have to believe that, too.”
“I…” Cork’s father looked from Grandma Dilsey to his wife. “I can’t do that. But it’s not because I’m a white man.”
“It is,” Grandma Dilsey said. “And that’s the sad truth. But I’ll help you anyway, because until you’re satisfied, you’ll keep asking the wrong questions.”
CHAPTER 45
Moments after sunset, Liam pulled into the driveway on Gooseberry Lane and sat a moment in his cruiser. He’d spent the day beating his head against a brick wall, trying to find someone, anyone, who might have an inkling where Oscar Manydeeds had gone. Even Dilsey had come up empty-handed. The man seemed to have vanished completely. Which worried Liam for a number of reasons. He got out and walked slowly to the house, feeling as if he were dragging a heavy ball and chain. In the kitchen, he found Colleen sitting at the table, a notebook in front of her, a pen in her hand.
“What are you doing?”
“Lesson plans,” she said. “The start of the school year’s not that far away. Thought I’d get a leg up.”
He sat at the table with her. “I’m sorry. I can be a stubborn bonehead sometimes.”
She laid her pen down. “I knew that when I married you. Any luck finding Oscar?”
He shook his head. “Dropped off the face of the earth.”
“You think he’s somewhere getting drunk, don’t you?”
“It’s one of the possibilities.”
“Maybe he’s somewhere just trying to pull things together. You do that sometimes. For you, it’s in a boat, fishing.”
“Maybe. But there’s another possibility.”
“What’s that?”
“He may not be responsible for his brother’s death, but maybe he knows more about it than he’s let on. And maybe whoever is responsible was afraid he might talk.”
“You think something’s happened to him?”
“I honestly don’t know what to think. I’m just posing possibilities.”
“You said ‘whoever is responsible’ for Big John’s death. You’re sure it wasn’t Duncan MacDermid?”
“Since I got the toxicology report this morning, I’m having significant second thoughts.”
“Who then?”
“At the moment, no idea.” The quiet and emptiness of the house suddenly dawned on him. “Where’s our son?”
“He asked to spend the night with his grandmother. Jorge’s agreed to deliver papers for him in the morning.”
“I don’t blame him. I’m kind of hard to be around these days.”
“These days?” She leaned to him and kissed his cheek. “Hungry?”
“I haven’t eaten since lunch.”
“Leftovers okay?”
* * *
After dinner, Liam called the Sheriff’s Department and checked in with Otto Pendergast, one of the two night-duty officers, who was on dispatch. Pendergast reported that all was quiet in Tamarack County and wished Liam a good night.
“Taking Jackson for a walk,” he told Colleen after the call. She was reading in the living room and gave him a distracted wave.
The light of day had faded to a soft blue, and the stars were only just starting to show themselves. The streets of Aurora were mostly empty as folks settled in for the night. Lights shone warm through windows, and Liam thought about these people who’d elected him with the belief that he’d keep the peace in their town, in their county. He wondered if anyone on the Iron Lake Reservation had bothered to cast a ballot, believing that no matter who wore the badge they would still be on their own. He wanted very much to offer them better than they expected, to give them hope for fairness, for justice. In order to do that, he had to do his best to see through different eyes.
He tried once more to put it all together. Somebody who knew how to navigate Spider Creek had led Louise LaRose to Moose Lake, where she’d died. Maybe her death was intentional, maybe not. But they’d tried to keep her body from being discovered. Either way, accidental death or intentional, they’d felt they had to protect themselves. So, who used Spider Creek to enter Moose Lake besides the Ojibwe? The local Boy Scouts sometimes, and on rarer occasions, Girl Scouts. But they always sought permission from the Ojibwe and had to be led by someone who knew their way through the web of marshy waterways. A few white folks probably went in that way without asking permission, because if you knew the way, it was more convenient than a lot of entry points. And if you wanted a big lake pretty much to yourself, free of a lot of other canoe and camping enthusiasts, Naabe-Mooz was a good bet. So, it could have been someone without a drop of Ojibwe blood in them, someone who might not have wanted to be seen with an underage Ojibwe girl in tow. But still someone who knew the way.
As he and Jackson turned to the corner and started back down Gooseberry Lane toward home, he tried to step out of himself and see the situation through different eyes. Okay, he thought, maybe Dilsey’s right and no Shinnob would ever do to that girl what someone had done. Louise LaRose had died at the hands of someone who was white, someone she’d encountered while wandering the streets of Aurora, someone who had a great deal to lose if her death came to light.
And Big John? It wasn’t a coincidence that he’d died around the same time as Louise LaRose. Liam had been so focused on nailing Duncan MacDermid for Big John’s death that he hadn’t really looked at anyone else. But because the toxicology results had shown that the sedative used on Big John wasn’t the one Liam had found in MacDermid’s cottage, he’d begun to be plagued by doubts about the man’s guilt. So, what was the connection between the murder of Big John and the death of Louise LaRose? Did Big John know something about her death and that’s what got him killed?
This was as far as his thinking had taken him when he walked up the front porch steps and Colleen met him at the door. Her eyes were full of fear.
“It’s Cork,” she told him in a strained voice.
“What about him?”
“He’s gone.”
CHAPTER 46
Grandma Dilsey usually slept like a rock. Whenever she stayed over with Cork’s family in Aurora, he could hear her snoring all the way from his own bedroom. It was no different at her little house on the rez. When he heard that rumbling snore, he left the sofa which she’d made up as a bed for him, dressed, and quietly slipped out the front door.
The moon was high, nearing fullness, and the streets of Allouette were empty and bathed in silver. Cork stood in front of the community center, where he’d told Billy to meet him, waiting in the black puddle of his own shadow, which the bright moon cast. The night was warm, the air still, and for reasons Cork couldn’t quite name, he felt a deep urgency in his mission that night. From his house in Aurora, he’d brought his pack, which he’d told his mother was full of clothes and things. He wasn’t very specific. The pack actually contained a flashlight, a box of kitchen matches, and his official Boy Scout pocketknife. Even though he expected to return to Grandma Dilsey’s before daylight, he’d also put in his canteen, his mess kit, a can of Spam, a block of Cracker Barrel cheese, and a packet of saltines. Be prepared, the motto of a Boy Scout.
Billy didn’t show. Cork tired of waiting and started for Lightning Strike on his own. It was a three-mile walk, mo
stly along the lakeshore. Because of the intense moonlight, he had no trouble seeing his way. He crossed Spider Creek, soaking his sneakers, and entered the stand of old white pines that separated Lightning Strike from the lake. When he stepped into the meadow, he stood for a while before the lone maple. His shadow, which no longer puddled under him, pointed like a stubby black finger toward the limb where Big John had hung.
Although Cork had told no one, the fouled flesh of Big John’s face sometimes haunted his dreaming. He wondered if Jorge had nightmares, too, but he hadn’t asked. He wondered if Jorge’s drawing of monsters helped him exorcise the demons that might otherwise haunt him. If so, Cork wished he had some way of getting rid of his own nightmares.
He continued across the meadow to the place where he and Jorge and Billy had built a fire and tried to conjure the spirit of Big John. He spent the next fifteen minutes gathering sticks to build a fire and dried pine needles to kindle the blaze. Then he sat and fed the flames and let the fire grow so that it illuminated an area a good twenty feet in all directions.
He was hungry, always hungry these days. A growing boy, his grandmother said. He took his mess kit and the can of Spam from his pack and fried himself up a few slices of the meat, which he ate with the Cracker Barrel cheese on the saltines he’d brought. It wasn’t just a quiet night. It was dead still. There was no cooling breeze whatsoever. Cork sat chewing, studying the ruins of the old logging camp in the moonlight, the sturdy, blackened chimney and the burned remains of the log walls. It could have been just bad luck that had caused the lightning to hit and destroy the camp, but Cork liked much better the idea that there was something powerful and sacred about this place, and that Kitchimanidoo, the Great Mystery, had caused it to be destroyed. He hadn’t heard any stories of anyone being killed in the incident, so it didn’t seem to him an act of cruelty. Just a righteous one.
In the bright flow of moonlight, which illuminated even the far side of the clearing, Cork spotted a figure standing beside the tree where Big John had been hung. He couldn’t make out details and had no idea who it might be. It wasn’t Billy Downwind, that much he could tell. The figure was much larger than Billy, huge in fact, a dark giant. Whoever it was just stood there, motionless, staring hard, and Cork felt a ripple of fear run through him. The figure began to advance slowly across the meadow, its shadow dragging behind like the tail of a panther. A man had been murdered here, Cork well knew, and there’d been no one around to witness it. Where the hell was Billy? Why hadn’t he shown? Cork thought about bolting but couldn’t bring himself just to turn tail and run. What would he be running from except his own fear? Still, his stomach knotted ever tighter as the figure drew nearer.
A dozen yards away, the figure finally spoke. “Smelled your fire and the food. I’m hungry, if you’re willing to share.” Two more strides, and Oscar Manydeeds stepped into the light of the flames.
* * *
“I didn’t run,” Manydeeds said. He sat near the fire with Cork and Billy Downwind, who’d arrived a short while after his uncle. “Just needed to come here, get myself straightened out. I used to come all the time, just like you boys.” He paused. “Used to come sometimes with John before he went off to war.”
They’d shared the Spam and cheese and crackers, and munched on apples now, which Billy Downwind had brought along with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He told Cork that his mother had had trouble going to sleep, so he couldn’t get away when he’d hoped.
“John used to say this was a place of good spirit.” Manydeeds stared beyond the firelight toward the tree where someone had hung his brother. “I believe that, and I don’t understand how that spirit could’ve stood by while John got murdered. Guess that’s why I’m here. Trying to figure it out.” He glanced at the two boys. “What about you?”
Billy said, “We saw Big John’s spirit here. I thought maybe we might be able to talk to him or something. Maybe he’d help us understand.”
“Lots of folks seeing his spirit around,” Manydeeds said with a nod. He looked at Cork. “What are you doing here?”
“Like you and Billy, just trying to figure things out.”
Manydeeds finished his apple and threw the core into the fire. “His spirit’s here all right,” he said. “He was older’n me, always getting hauled off to boarding school.” He glanced at Cork. “Your grandma saved me from that when she started her school here. Convinced everybody, the government and whatnot, that this was better than sending kids off to God knows where. But John, once they got hold of him, they didn’t want to let go. He fought ’em. They beat the hell out of him for it, but they never broke him. Then he went into the woods and didn’t come out until he was too old for ’em to take back. But the government, they got him another way. Drafted him. When he come back from that war, he come back changed. That’s when his drinking started. When I started, too, cuz I wanted to be like him. But the booze brought out the worst in both of us, and with the drinking came the fights and all the bad, hurtful stuff.”
Billy said, “You never told me.”
“What’s to tell? Can’t change the past.”
“I thought, when nobody could find you…”
“What? That I was off drinking somewhere?” He shook his head. “John was always on me to stop. Now that he’s gone, I’ve made his spirit a promise. I’m never touching the hard stuff again. John licked it. So can I.” He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “Feel him? He’s here. I know what Henry says about the path to the spirit world, but I think when we go, we always leave something of ourselves behind.”
“He didn’t kill himself,” Billy said.
“I know that. No way he’d kill himself. Was that bastard MacDermid.”
“Maybe not,” Cork said.
Even in the firelight, a darkness was visible on the face of Oscar Manydeeds. “What are you saying?”
“Somebody drugged him before he died,” Cork said. “They used a drug called pentobarbital. Is that the same drug you use to put down horses?”
Manydeeds gave him a hard look. “How do you know this?”
“My dad had Big John’s blood tested. Is it the same drug?”
“Yes.”
“Could somebody have got into your supplies?”
He thought a moment. “Hell, I got broke into. Maybe three, four weeks back. I guess somebody coulda stole something then.”
“Any idea who it might’ve been?”
“I asked around and nobody knew nuthin. Kids is what I figured, looking for something to get high on. They got no respect these days.”
Which was a line Cork seemed to hear a lot from adults, Ojibwe and otherwise, and a little ironic coming from Oscar Manydeeds, whose wildness and disrespect in his adolescence had landed him more than once in juvenile detention.
“Could that be how MacDermid got hold of the drug?” Cork asked.
Before Manydeeds could answer, a sweep of light crossed the dark meadow, and a vehicle pulled to a stop at the end of the old logging road on the far side of the clearing. The headlights died. In the quiet, Cork heard a car door close. A flashlight shot a thin beam toward the ground, and the beam and whoever was behind it came toward the fire. Manydeeds stood, tensed as if preparing to defend himself, or maybe to defend them all. Cork and Billy Downwind stood with him.
“Oscar Manydeeds.” The voice from behind the flashlight beam surprised Cork no end. “I’ve been looking for you.”
The beam died and Cork’s father stepped into the firelight.
CHAPTER 47
“What do you want?”
Manydeeds’s voice was as taut as his body. Liam could see that he was fully prepared to fight.
“To talk,” Liam said. “Just to talk.”
“About my drugs?”
Liam’s eyes settled on his son for a moment, then shifted back to Manydeeds. “The lab test showed pentobarbital in Big John’s blood. That’s a drug you use sometimes.”
“On horses. I’d never use it on my brother.”
“I want to believe you, Oscar, I do. But you see how it looks.”
“To a white cop, maybe.”
Cork said, “Somebody broke into the stables in Brandywine, Dad. They could’ve stolen the pentobarbital then.”
“Is that true, Oscar?”
Manydeeds gave the slightest of nods.
“Why didn’t you report the break-in?”
“To you? Would you even give a shit?”
“I’d have investigated.”
“And got nuthin. Which is what I got when I asked around. If I couldn’t get answers on the rez, you think you could?”
“Why’d you run?”
“Didn’t. Didn’t even know you were looking for me till your boy told me.”
“What are you doing here?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Manydeeds said.
“Try me.”
“You gonna arrest me, just do it.”
Liam stood motionless, his eyes sweeping the three figures facing him in the firelight. It hadn’t taken a genius to figure out where Cork had gone when Dilsey called to say he’d vanished. Liam was relieved that he’d read his son correctly. He could have been upset, but Cork had, in fact, helped him locate Manydeeds.
“Can I sit with you?” he said.
Manydeeds didn’t give an answer, nor did his face give any clue to his thinking.
“I understand this is a sacred place to the Ojibwe,” Liam said. “I want to honor that. But I also have a duty I consider sacred. I’m not here to harass you, Oscar. I’m here in search of answers, and honest to God, I need some help. Someone murdered your brother.”
“Hell, yes. That son of a bitch MacDermid.”
Lightning Strike Page 24