Vermilion Drift (9 page)

“They may well be. I can’t really tell yet. Why do you ask?”

“The remains in the corner to the right. See those items littering the floor around it?”

“The things that look like little rusted cones?”

“Yeah, those. I think they’re jingles.”

“Jingles?”

“From a jingle dress. It’s traditionally worn for a healing dance.”

“Jingles,” Larson said. He gave Cork a pointed look. “The Vanishings, you think?”

“That’s exactly what I think,” Cork said. “The Vanishings.”

N
aomi Stonedeer was the first to vanish. Cork had known her well. She was seventeen, with black hair that hung to her waist and hazel eyes. She was bright and lovely and an accomplished Jingle Dancer.

The Jingle Dance was an Ojibwe healing ritual performed by women in long dresses adorned with a couple of hundred jingles sewn closely together and attached in rows. The jingles were traditionally made from snuff can lids or tin can lids rolled into cones. When the dancers performed their steps, the jingles brushed together and created the unique sound that gave the ritual its name. Though it continued to be one of the most esteemed and sacred of the Ojibwe ceremonies, it was also a dance performed competitively at powwows.

In the summer of 1964, Naomi lived near Cork’s grandmother in Allouette, the larger of the two communities on the Iron Lake Reservation. Cork was thirteen and had a terrible crush on her. Whenever he visited Grandma Dilsey, he always found a way to pass the little BIA-built house where Naomi lived with her mother and her aunt. He concocted scenarios in which he played the hero and saved her from a dozen iterations of doom. But when the real thing occurred, he was powerless.

She disappeared in late June. She’d gone to the old community center in Allouette, which had once been the schoolhouse where Cork’s grandfather and his grandma Dilsey taught the children of the rez. Naomi had joined a lot of other women to practice the Jingle Dance in preparation for a powwow that was to be held in Winnipeg in July. She left the community center around 9:00
P.M.
, wearing her jingle dress. It was still daylight, and her house was only a quarter mile away, but she never made it home. Her mother called everyone
in Allouette, and, when no one knew Naomi’s whereabouts, she called Cork’s mother, who was her good friend. Cork’s mother enlisted his father, who was sheriff of Tamarack County.

His father’s first reaction was that probably the girl had simply run away, something a lot of Ojibwe kids did. Poverty was not an unusual circumstance on the rez, nor were the unpleasant domestic situations that frequently resulted. Kids often took off, heading to the safety of a relative who lived somewhere else, or to Duluth or the Twin Cities, looking for a different—they hoped better—life. Naomi’s home life was just fine, Cork’s mother insisted. The young woman had no reason to run.

Cork’s father went to Allouette and that night began a fruitless investigation, which lasted for weeks. He contacted relatives, authorities on other reservations and in the Indian communities in Duluth and the Twin Cities. Word went out to teen shelters all across the Upper Midwest.

Naomi’s father, who’d long ago abandoned his family, lived in Crosby, a good eighty miles from Aurora, where he worked as an auto mechanic. Cork’s father questioned him repeatedly. Although the man couldn’t supply a decent alibi for the night Naomi went missing, there was no evidence that he’d been anywhere near Allouette at the time, and eventually Cork’s father stopped badgering him.

In the end, the search was abandoned, and no trace of Naomi Stonedeer was ever found.

The next vanishing occurred later that summer, in August. Cork remembered it well because it was a great tragedy in his family.

His mother’s sister, Ellie Grand, lived with Grandma Dilsey. Ellie had two daughters. Marais, the elder daughter, had already left home to seek her fortune in country music. That left Fawn at home, and Fawn was special. She was a gentle spirit, a girl who smiled all the time and would probably never grow sophisticated in her understanding of the world. Cork’s grandmother once told him that Fawn offered the Iron Lake Ojibwe a gift. The gift was her simplicity. It was her acceptance, with inexhaustible delight, of the everyday blessings that Kitchimanidoo showered on The People. Fawn laughed at snowflakes, was delighted when a dandelion puff exploded on the wind, cried with
excitement when a fish leaped from Iron Lake and sent a spray of water into the air like pearls thrown against the sky. The Ojibwe on the rez watched over her. But even their protectiveness failed to keep her safe that summer day.

Shortly after lunch, she’d told her mother that she was going for a swim in Iron Lake. Fawn was a good swimmer and often went into the lake alone. She left in her swimsuit, carrying a towel, and her feet were bare.

Allouette had a small beach area next to the old dock where men who gillnetted and spearfished kept their boats. Jon Bruneau was at the dock that day, working on his Evinrude outboard. He swore that he never saw Fawn at the beach the whole afternoon.

Fawn’s disappearance was a blow that knocked the breath out of Cork’s family. Over the next few weeks, his mother spent much of her time with Aunt Ellie and Grandma Dilsey. Other Ojibwe women visited as well. As had often been the case in its turbulent history, the reservation came together around tragedy.

His father exhausted himself in the search for Fawn. He sent divers into the lake off the shore at Allouette, just in case Jon Bruneau had been wrong. He also had divers in the water at Sunset Cove, which was south of Allouette and a place that Shinnobs sometimes went for a swim. He grilled Bruneau mercilessly. He pressed his own good friend Sam Winter Moon to question the whole Ojibwe community. He thought maybe the Anishinaabeg would be more responsive to questions coming from one of their own than from a uniformed white man, even though he was considered a friend of the rez. No one saw anything. No one knew anything. Fawn, like Naomi Stonedeer, had simply dropped off the face of the earth.

The last vanishing was different. It was a white woman. A rich white woman. A woman who attended Mass at St. Agnes. Who volunteered her time on the library board. Who saw to it that her husband contributed lavishly to the campaign to build a new community hospital in Aurora. Who walked down the streets of town recognized, admired, and envied.

She disappeared on Labor Day weekend, when the sumac in Tamarack County had turned blood red and gold was beginning to drive out
green along the branches of the aspen trees, and the air of late evening and early morning carried a chill bite. That Monday morning her husband reported to the sheriff’s office that she was missing. She’d been missing nearly two days by then. Her husband said she’d driven to Duluth for a fund-raiser. She’d intended to come home directly, but she’d been gone two nights. This wasn’t unusual. Sometimes she got it in her head to drive places, a kind of wanderlust, but he hadn’t heard from her, and he’d grown worried. The search went on until almost October, but no trace of her could be found, not even her car. Like the other women, she seemed to have been swallowed by the air itself.

Her name was Monique Cavanaugh. She was the mother of the woman who, forty years later, lay decomposing on the cool stone floor of the Vermilion Drift.

When Cork finished his story, Dross said, “But if these are the women who vanished in nineteen sixty-four, that would account for only three of the older victims. What about the other two here?”

“I don’t know,” Cork said. He looked to Upchurch. “How soon can you tell the age of the bones?”

“Not until after I get them into the lab to examine them.”

“Will you be able to tell if they’re white or Ojibwe?” he asked.

“Once I’ve done scans of the skulls, my computer ought to give me pretty accurate facial reconstructions. But I’ll tell you this right now. I’m pretty sure they’re all female.”

Larson asked, “How do you know?”

“The pelvis. Much larger in the female. Also some of the cranial features. The ridge above the brow, for example. It’s much larger in males. Same with the jawbone. Sometimes race can make a sexual determination difficult; from what I’m seeing, that’s not a problem.”

“Ed, do you think it’s possible whoever put the other bodies here also dumped Lauren Cavanaugh’s?” Dross asked.

Larson shrugged. “Anything’s possible. We’ll know a lot more after we’ve processed the scene.”

“Then we should get started,” Rutledge said.

Cork stepped back. He’d forced himself to return to that wretched place, and he’d stood it as long as he could, and now he felt desperate to get out. “This will take you a while,” he said. “I’m headed up top.”

Dross said, “I’ll go with you. Ed, keep me informed.”

“Will do,” Larson replied.

Dross and Cork walked back to the sink and crawled their way up the passage to the clearing. As they approached the top, Cork heard a loud, familiar voice, clearly in the midst of an argument. When he pulled himself out of the sink, there stood Isaiah Broom looming like an angry bear over Guy Simpson, one of Dross’s smaller deputies. As soon as Broom saw Dross emerge from the hole in the ground, he stormed in her direction.

“I want to know what you’re doing on our land,” he said.

Dross planted herself between Broom and the sink and gave him an iron reply. “We’re here conducting a lawful investigation, Mr. Broom.”

“You’re on Ojibwe land.”

“This is a crime scene, and we’re the law, even on the rez.”

Which was true. Public Law 280, passed in 1953, gave all reservations in the United States the right to choose the agency that would provide them with law enforcement regarding major crimes. Many reservations had gone with federal law enforcement. The Iron Lake Ojibwe had chosen the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department.

Broom pointed toward the sink. “Whatever that is, it’s on our land. I have the right to go down there.”

“When it’s no longer a crime scene, you may do so. I don’t know when that will be.”

“The People have a right to know what’s going on.”

“They will. In due time.”

He glared at Cork. “
Chimook
,” he said, as if he was spitting phlegm. He turned and stormed away across the clearing.

Dross said to Cork, “I think we’ll need a twenty-four-hour watch on this scene until we’re finished processing it.”

Cork stared at the huge retreating form of Broom and said, “I think what you’ll need is a bazooka.”

M
arsha Dross offered Cork a ride to his Land Rover, which was still parked in the lot at the mine office. The traffic from all the official vehicles had broken a clear path through the underbrush, which Dross followed to the perimeter fence. She drove the fence line to a gate that opened onto an old mining road on the west side of the complex and that was guarded by one of the Vermilion One security guys, who gave a two-finger salute as they passed through.

When they reached the Land Rover, Dross killed the engine of her pickup and sat a moment staring through her windshield.

“We’ll need a positive ID of the body,” she said without looking at him.

“Max Cavanaugh,” Cork said. “I was supposed to see him tonight, have him sign an agreement for my investigation.”

“Where?”

“His place.”

“What time?”

“Six.”

She looked at her watch. “It’s almost six now.”

“Guess I won’t make it.”

“I hate this part of the job.”

“What? Talking to me?”

She smiled. Finally.

“Have one of your deputies do it,” he suggested.

“Is that how you handled things?”

“No.” He stared through the windshield, too. “So I guess you don’t want me talking to Max until after you’re finished with him?”

“Yeah,” she said. Then: “Have you ever dealt with anything like this?”

“Possible multiple homicides spread over nearly half a century? Hell, probably nobody has.”

“Five women and now a sixth.”

“If it is the Vanishings, only four are female for sure.”

“Agent Upchurch seemed pretty certain they’re all women, Cork. I’m sure she’s right.”

“And you know this how?”

Instead of answering, she said, “That sink you found is on Ojibwe land.” She swung her gaze toward him, and he knew without her saying a word what she wanted and why she’d offered him the lift. “I’ll need to talk to folks on the reservation,” she said. “I could use your help.”

Although he’d helped with investigations in the past, had done so ever since leaving the department, this time he balked, and for reasons he couldn’t quite articulate. There was something about the situation beyond its complete bizarreness that dug at him, and he wasn’t sure at all what that was.

“I’ll think about it and give you a call. Right now, I need to get something to eat.”

“Two of those women were Ojibwe,” she said.

“Probably more,” he said.

“How do you know?”

He pulled the door handle and let himself out. “We’ll talk,” he said.

He drove home to Gooseberry Lane. His house was a simple two-story place that, with his wife and the kids and the dog, had always felt comfortably full. Now there was only him and the dog. Trixie had spent the day in the backyard, tethered to a line that was connected to her own little doghouse and that let her roam without running loose. When she saw Cork, she greeted him with barking and eager leaps and a tail that beat like a metronome gone wild.

“Hey, girl,” he said, “bet you’re famished. Makes two of us. Let’s see what we can rustle up.”

He poured dry dog food into a bowl, and Trixie plunged her muzzle
in and chomped away greedily. Cork opened a can of tuna taken from the pantry shelf, mixed in some mayo and pickle relish. He sliced a tomato and washed a large leaf of lettuce. He pulled a slice of Swiss cheese from a package in the refrigerator and layered all the ingredients between a couple of pieces of wheat bread. A handful of potato chips and a cold bottle of Leinenkugel’s finished the preparations. He sat on the patio as evening settled over Aurora, and he ate alone and tasted nothing.