Vermilion Drift (14 page)

“Luck?”

“Henry, I think, would say destiny. You coming?”

“Are you kidding? That water’s freezing. I’ll wait here, make sure no one steals your clothes. Enjoy your swim.” She smiled with wicked delight.

She was right. Although it was mid-June, the lake water was still frigid. In the North Country, the cool nights would keep the water temperature challenging until well into July. Cork plunged in, and the
icy water gripped him like a fierce, angry hand. He considered with amazement the mining engineer, Genie Kufus, who claimed to swim in the lake regularly.
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din
, he thought as he swam feverishly away from shore and circled back to the cliff.

In the middle of the gray face of rock, beginning just at the waterline, he found natural steps. He quickly climbed from the lake and immediately the sun began to warm him. Barefooted, he carefully mounted the rock, working his way toward the line of blackberry bushes. Although from the lake the opening of the cave couldn’t be seen, from his current vantage, Cork could clearly make out the small black hole Meloux had mentioned. He eased behind the bramble, knelt in the mouth of the cave, crawled inside, and waited while his eyes adjusted slowly to the dim light.

It was cool and dry. The floor sloped toward the entrance, so that any water that might have found its way in would have quickly drained. The chamber was small, the size of a five-man tent, and edged with rock shelves. On the shelves lay many items, some looking quite ancient. Cork could see no rhyme or reason to what had been placed there: a bow made of hard maple with a deer-hide quiver full of arrow shafts whose featherings had long ago turned to dust; a colorfully beaded bandolier bag; a rag doll; a muzzle-loader with a rotted stock and beside it a powder horn, still in good condition; a woven blanket; a coil of rope. There were knives and a tomahawk and what looked to be a collection of human scalps. And there was a bearskin that belonged to Cork, in which he’d wrapped his Winchester rifle and his .38 Smith & Wesson Police Special when he’d handed them over to Henry Meloux. He pulled the bearskin from the shelf, set it on the floor, and unrolled it. The Winchester was still there. The .38 was gone.

M
eloux seemed puzzled but not disturbed.

Cork strained to control his anger. “Henry, why didn’t you keep it here with you? Why put it somewhere someone might find it?”

“I do not lock my door, Corcoran O’Connor.” The old man shrugged. “Here, too, someone might find it.”

“Don’t blame my uncle,” Rainy said. “Why didn’t you disable the weapon before you gave it to him? Remove the firing pin or something? You can do that, right?”

It was late afternoon. They sat at the table in the cabin on Crow Point, Cork on one side and Meloux and his niece on the other. Rainy angled her body toward Cork in a threatening way, and, if her eyes had been fists, his face would have been bloody.

“You come here, ask my uncle for help, and when he gives it to you, all you can do is criticize. He’s told me of your good friendship. Frankly, from what I’ve seen so far, I have trouble believing it.”

“Niece,” Meloux said gently. “Your tongue is a knife. If I need a knife, I have my own.”

Cork said, “Henry, you know things you’re not telling me.”

“What I know is that you are looking for a truth I cannot give you now.”

Cork bent toward the old Mide. “A woman is dead, shot with the same gun that over forty years ago killed her mother. It’s the same kind of gun you put in the cave and is now missing. I’m hoping against hope that they’re not the same weapon. I can’t even guess how that could be possible. But I gotta tell you, Henry, I don’t like the feel of it, not one bit. I need to know everything you know.”

Meloux’s face was a blanket of compassion, but there was no hint that he was going to offer Cork anything more.

“Do you know if it was my father’s revolver that killed Monique Cavanaugh?”

Meloux’s expression changed not at all, and again he didn’t reply.

“At least tell me this,” Cork said, his voice pitched with frustration. “Who else knows about this place of
bimaadiziwin
?”

Meloux thought a moment. “It has always been a secret and sacred place. The Mide have always known, but most have walked the Path of Souls. I do not know who knows and has not yet walked that path.”

“So only you and the dead know? Christ, Henry, that’s not true. Someone very much alive and kicking took that gun.” Cork rose and towered over the old man. “If you know who that is, Henry, for God sake tell me.”

But it was like throwing punches at the wind. The old Mide looked up at him and said quietly, “You are a man on a journey. And all the while you stand here, your feet are idle.”

Fire flared in Cork’s brain. “God damn it,” he said and spun away and headed toward the door.

Rainy followed him outside. “When you come again, if you ever do, will you bring something with you?”

“What?” he snapped at her.

“Manners.” She turned, went back inside, and shut the door.

His only food that day had been the oatmeal he’d ordered for breakfast at the Pinewood Broiler when he talked with Cy Borkman. He was starved, and he headed to Sam’s Place. He parked in the lot, went into the old Quonset hut, and apologized to Judy Madsen for having been absent all day. She glanced at his face, and what she saw there caused her obvious concern. “You look like you swallowed a cockroach. The kids and me, we’ve got this covered. You worry about your other business.”

Judy fixed him a Sam’s Super with the works and a large basket of fries. He took his meal in the rear of the Quonset hut.

Sam’s Super was the hallmark of Sam’s Place. It had been Sam Winter Moon’s pride. Sam had believed in a quality burger. He never used frozen patties. Every day, first thing in the morning, he took twenty pounds of lean ground beef and rolled it in his hands into quarter-pound balls, which, order by order, he placed on the hot grill, pressed flat with his spatula, and seared to juicy perfection. The patty was topped with good Wisconsin cheddar, freshly sliced tomato, a large frond of leaf lettuce, a thin slice of Walla Walla sweet onion, and Sam’s own special sauce, whose recipe was a closely guarded secret. Every time Cork bit into a Sam’s Super, he tasted a heaven of memories.

He was almost finished eating when his cell phone chirped. “O’Connor,” he answered.

“It’s Marsha Dross, Cork. We have a situation here. Can you come to my office right away?”

The instant he walked into Dross’s office, he could feel the tension in the air. Dross was at her desk. Rutledge was standing at the window. Ed Larson was sitting with Lou Haddad and his wife. All eyes swung toward Cork.

“Come in,” Dross said, rising. “You know Sheri?”

“Of course. How are you?” he asked.

Haddad’s wife smiled bravely, and her hand lifted a little in a halfhearted greeting.

“Sheri got a note,” Dross said. “Same message Lou and the others received, but with a twist.”

Dross indicated a sheet of paper on her desk. Cork walked over and took a look but didn’t touch. There was a trifold, just as there’d been with the others. The note had been printed on paper that Cork was pretty sure had no identifying watermark, and the same blood-dripping font—From Hell—had been used. The message was almost the same as before, but, as Dross had indicated, it was different and in a terrifying way:
We die, U die. Just like her
.

“Just like her?” Cork said.

“We’re assuming it refers to Lauren Cavanaugh,” Ed Larson said. “Which is interesting. As far as we know, only those of us associated with the investigation knew that Lauren Cavanaugh was one of the victims in the mine.”

“Not true,” Cork said. “The person who put her there knew.”

“Exactly,” Larson said. “We’re taking this very seriously.”

“Where did you get this, Sheri?”

“It was under the windshield wiper of my car.”

“Have Max Cavanaugh or Genie Kufus received anything more?” Cork asked Dross.

“We contacted Cavanaugh at his house this afternoon. He’s got nothing more.”

“And Kufus?”

For a moment, they all appeared to be frozen, a tableau of awkward concern. Then Dross said, “She seems to be missing.”

G
enie Kufus wasn’t at her hotel, nor was she answering her cell phone. Her car was gone. None of her team from the DOE knew where she was.

“When was the last time anyone saw her?” Cork asked.

“She met with her team over lunch, then she returned to her room to work. None of them have heard from her since, and none of them saw her leave the hotel.”

“Have you checked her room?”

“Of course,” Dross said. “She’s not there.”

“You went in?”

“Yes. With the manager.”

“Any sign of a struggle?”

“No.”

“Anything appear to be missing?”

“That’s hard to say without knowing what should be there.”

“You put out a BOLO?” Which was shorthand for Be on the Lookout.

Dross nodded. “She’s driving a rented cherry red Explorer. Not easy to miss.”

“You mind if I have a look at her hotel room?”

Dross shot glances toward Larson and Rutledge. They both gave nods. “Under the circumstances, I’m going to say okay. But I’d like to be there with you.”

“Of course.” Cork stood up and smiled at Haddad and his wife. “I think you should go somewhere safe. When was the last time you two took a vacation together?”

The room Genie Kufus occupied at the Four Seasons overlooked Iron Lake and the marina. It was a lovely view of white-masted sloops and powerboats set against dark blue water.

Dross said, “My guys have already been here, Cork. What are you looking for that they didn’t see?”

“I hope I’ll know it when I see it.”

He turned from the windows and scanned the room. Kufus was neat, well organized. Either she traveled a great deal and had the process down or this was who she was all the time. Nothing looked out of place, and that was helpful to Cork. He walked to the desk. Her laptop was closed. He opened it.

“Don’t turn that on,” Dross warned. “Until I’ve determined that she’s officially missing, we’re on thin ice just being here.”

She was right. Cork glanced through the documents that lay stacked next to the computer. They all appeared to be technical papers dealing with the mine and mining in general. He went to the closet. Dresses and slacks were hung with care; shoes had been set on the floor like soldiers in formation. He went to the dresser and opened the top drawer. Lingerie, scented with lilac from a little pouch of sachet. Which seemed odd for a woman in town on business. The rest of the drawers held other, less interesting, clothing: folded tops, sweaters, shorts.

He entered the bathroom, where he found the towels racked with measured precision. Not even an errant hair on the sink.

“Interesting,” he said.

“What?”

“Kufus is a swimmer, but I don’t see a bathing suit anywhere. Why don’t you call the front desk, make sure none of the staff saw her go out for a swim this afternoon.”

“We already did that.”

“Never hurts to double check.”

She looked ready to offer a reply, probably not a pleasant one, but instead moved to the phone to make the call.

Cork went back to the desk. The charging cord for the woman’s
cell phone was still plugged in, but the phone was gone. Next to the cord was a small pad of notepaper supplied by the hotel. There was a clear indentation from a note that had been written and then torn from the pad. Cork lifted and turned it so that the white paper caught the light through the window just right, and the faint grooving of Kufus’s handwriting was legible. He put the pad back down as Dross hung up the phone.

“She usually takes a swim in the afternoon, but, as we’ve already been told, no one saw her go out today,” Dross reported.

“All right,” Cork said. “I’m finished here.”

“Wasted trip,” she said.

Cork chose not to contradict her.

It was dusk when he headed out of Aurora, south along the shoreline of Iron Lake. He passed the Chippewa Grand Casino just outside of town, where the parking lot was three-quarters filled and still filling. The casino had been a godsend to the Iron Lake Ojibwe, whose profits had underwritten more improvements on the rez than Cork could count. Over the years, however, the casino had also delivered its share of difficulties, but that evening when he passed, he wasn’t thinking about the pros and cons of Indian gaming. He was thinking about the words Kufus had written on the sheet of notepaper she’d torn from the pad in her room: Moon Haven Cove.

Four miles south, Cork turned off the highway onto Moon Haven Drive. The road narrowed to a slender thread of black asphalt weaving among a thick stand of red pine. He didn’t have to think about where the road led. There was only one home on Moon Haven Cove, and it belonged to Max Cavanaugh.

He could have told the sheriff what he’d found, but the note had satisfied him that the disappearance of the DOE’s mining consultant probably wasn’t cause for alarm, and he’d decided that it would be better to pursue the lead quietly on his own. If, as he suspected, Kufus’s visit had nothing at all to do with mine business, a sudden appearance by the authorities had the potential for being embarrassing for all involved.

Of course, the whole question could have been easily answered with a phone call, but Cork had a gut sense—and he was nothing if not a man who followed his gut instincts—that something very interesting might result from seeing to this personally.

He drove slowly as he approached Cavanaugh’s lake home. It was a behemoth of a construction. All the homes that went up on the lake these days seemed to be that way. When Cork was growing up, a place on the lake still meant a modest cabin or a small house with a screened porch that may or may not have been insulated for winter occupancy. There was often a tiny dock, where a boat with a reasonable outboard or a little skiff with a mast for a single sail was tied up. The woods drew close around those old places, and they shared the shoreline together in comfortable intimacy.