Wild Thing: A Novel (13 page)

Still, visibility’s not the greatest, and if he snags the tip of the canoe on a branch, or drives it into the ground, it’s
Goodbye, face
. Most of what he can see is the underbrush at his feet, which explodes into fleeing animal life with every step he takes. Two Persons has never made this much noise in his life. Among mammals alone he identifies a fisher, a martin, an ermine, and a wolverine.

An ax ricochets off his right side, knocking him sideways and almost down but just missing him with its edge. Apparently the Dakota have joined him on land.

But through the branches ahead he can see water again.

Then he’s there: Lake Waste-of-Time. His instinct is to throw the canoe out onto the water, so you know what? That’s what he does. And it lands more or less upright, stabilizing quickly once it starts to take on water again through the gash in the bottom.

Two Persons splashes out to where it’s drifting, but uses Knowledgeable Raccoon’s recommended means of getting in, since he can’t afford to fuck this up: hands on either side, first foot down in the center, other foot drawn in beside it. Now he’s ready to row, and just in time: he can hear the Dakota crashing out of the trees.

Looking around him, Two Persons realizes he no longer has the paddle. He can’t remember putting it down, but clearly he didn’t have it with him when he crossed between the lakes, because he was carrying the canoe with both hands.

Fuck!

He throws himself onto his stomach and starts rowing by hand. He can only reach one side at a time. Water has never felt thinner. The boat seems to move in a circle.

He starts alternating sides more regularly. The shore behind him leaves his peripheral vision. The water turns deep. Even so, he can’t understand why the Dakota haven’t caught him and killed him until he looks back and sees them still standing on the shore a full sixty furlongs behind him.

Staring at the canoe. And talking in low, serious voices.

While on the
far
shore—the one that marks the border between the Dakota and Ojibwe
^*
lands—Two Persons can now see his own platoon gathered. Including Knowledgeable Raccoon, who goes from frowning with concentration to howling in triumph like a wolf while giving the Dakota the “fuck you” sign.

Fuck you is right
, Two Persons thinks, rolling over in the water at the bottom of the canoe, exhausted.

Fuck all of you
.

Ely, Minnesota

Still Friday, 14 September

“Carrying a canoe from one lake to another is called portaging,” Sheriff Albin says. “The path you use to do it is called a portage.”

“Huh,” I say.

I haven’t really been listening to him. His story sounded like bullshit—particularly the part about the Dakota eating people’s faces—and was reminding me of this cologne that mob guys used to wear called Canoe. Maybe they still do.

It also made me wonder why Sheriff Albin’s spending so
much time on us. It’s one thing to try to get information about a potential crime being committed by Reggie Trager. It’s another to get out maps and take us back to Olde Indian Times.

“Portages are tricky, is the thing,” he goes on. “They grow over, the shoreline changes, you’re not allowed to put up signs or score trees to mark them. Even if they’re still where your map says they are, they can be hard to spot from the water. And just because it’s a portage that you can get a forty-five-pound Kevlar tripper over doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to move a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound, four-person aluminum touring boat and all your gear through it. The trail could go straight up a cliff. It could just be too long.

“So if you’re going lake to lake to lake, there might be a dozen different paths you could choose from, depending on what you need to portage and who’s going to be doing the portaging. Getting the right route from point A to point B is like opening a combination lock.”

Jesus. Enough already.

“What do you think happened to Benjy Schneke and Autumn Semmel?” Violet says, making me want to fuck her even more than usual.

Albin’s face darkens. “Is Reggie Trager using
that
to sell his tour?”

“No, he isn’t. We heard about it in Ford, then looked it up in the library.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Yes.”

It calms him down a bit.

“What
do
you think happened?” I say. I’d rather Albin get suspicious and look me up than go back to boring me to death.

“It wasn’t within my jurisdiction.”

“You don’t cover Ford?”

“We do in most cases. Ford’s not in Lake County, but they contract with us for services—we send them a bill, they don’t pay it, we patrol there anyhow. Saves us trouble in the long run. But out in the actual Boundary Waters it’s usually Parks and Recreation, and homicides anywhere in the state except the Twin Cities go to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, down in Bemidji.”

“So you didn’t take the call.”

As far as I can tell, there is no reason at all for him to respond to that.

“I did take the call.”

“And you talked to the other two kids who were there?”

“Numerous times. Both families have since moved, incidentally. Don’t go looking for them.”

“We won’t. Did you see the bodies?”

Violet gives me a sharp look. Albin
still
doesn’t get mad.

“Yes, I did.”

At which point I begin to understand what’s going on.

Albin
has
to believe there’s a 90 percent chance that Violet and I are con artists, morons, or both. But it can’t be every day that people claiming to be a paleontologist and a physician walk into his office and express interest in a case that supposedly involves a human-eating lake monster. And which, two years later, still hasn’t been solved.

“What do you think happened?” I say, for what feels like the fifth time.

“The MBCA report called it a motorboat accident.”

“I thought motorboats were illegal in the Boundary Waters.”

“They are, but that doesn’t mean people don’t bring them in. A lot of the lakes around the edges of the Boundary Waters are half in and half out, and it’s legal to use motorboats on the half that’s out, so things get pretty porous. A couple of weeks ago, when it was warmer, people were waterskiing on Ford Lake. Which is legal on the third of the lake that’s closest to civilization.”

I try to picture anyone from Ford waterskiing. I actually went waterskiing once myself, in the early nineties, with David Locano and his son. The three of us—no worthwhile human being in the group—with our own powerboat and stretch of pristine, previously drinkable water, all for a dumb rush lasting three minutes at a time. If that doesn’t make you feel like Pharaoh, nothing will.

Violet says “But how would anybody get a motorboat as far in as White Lake, after what you’ve just told us about portaging?”

“There are portages in the Boundary Waters for motorboats. Those are illegal too—they have been for decades. But there are a lot of them still out there. Dredged, usually. Sometimes with rails. Parks and Rec will pull rails if they find them, but it’s a big area out there, patrolled mostly by aircraft.”

“Was there a motorboat found at White Lake?” she says.

“No. The two kids who were nearby when Autumn and Benjy died said the four of them went out in two canoes, one of which the survivors used to get back to Ford. There was no way to prove that, though. There
was
a canoe from CFS still out there when I got there, but if the kids were using a stolen or borrowed motorboat, they might have towed a canoe just to paddle around in once they got there.”

“CFS
Lodge?
” I say.

“Outfitters and Lodge, yes,” Albin says.

“Which Reggie Trager
owns?
”

“Yes, although at the time Autumn’s father owned it. Reggie inherited it when Autumn’s father died.”

“Wait a minute,” I say. “Chris Semmel Jr. owned CFS?”

Albin squints, like he’s reviewing whether he should share this information.

“Right,” he says.

“And after Autumn and Chris Jr. died, five days apart, Reggie Trager inherited it?”

“Correct. Chris Jr.’s wife could have kept it, but she wasn’t from around here, and for obvious reasons didn’t want to stay. Back when Chris Sr. left it to Chris Jr. in the first place, he said that if none of the Semmels was willing or able to stick around and run it, Reggie Trager should get the chance.”

Yet another reason for Trager not to have mentioned any of this in his invitation. “Was Trager charged with the murders of Chris Jr. and Father Podominick?” I say.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“There was no evidence he committed them, and three people willing to say he couldn’t have because he was with them at the moment the shots were fired. Even the motive wasn’t as exciting as it seems. Reggie gives something like eighty-five percent of the profits from CFS to Chris Jr.’s widow.”

“Out of the goodness of his heart or because he has to?”

“It was the deal in the will. In terms of money, Reggie probably makes around the same amount he did before, only now he has to run the whole place on his own.”

“Maybe they were about to fire him.”

“No one ever told me that they were. Chris Jr.’s widow included, who is no fan of Reggie Trager.”

“What does
she
have against him?”

“She thinks he’s guilty.”

“On what basis?”

“None that would interest a jury.”

“Or you, from the sound of it.”

“Obviously I prefer not to charge people with crimes they can’t be convicted of. But if you’re asking me whether I think Reggie did it, the answer’s no. I wouldn’t say I know him well, and I’m certainly aware that most people are capable of most things if they’re pushed to it, but with Reggie I just never saw the push.”

“So who did you think did it?”

He shakes his head. “I have no idea. Chris Jr. and Father Podominick were comfortably off, in a town of people who were a lot less comfortably off, but neither one of them seems to have had real enemies. Or even people who would have benefited from their deaths.”

“Do you think the person who killed Chris Jr. and Father Podominick also killed Autumn and Benjy?”

Albin gives it a couple of chair-rocks, looking at me.

“No. I do not.”

“Why not?”

“Not exactly a similar MO. Murder with a hunting rifle I can at least understand. And whoever shot Chris Jr. and Father Podominick was good enough at that to do it without leaving evidence. What happened to Autumn and Benjy seemed like something else entirely.”

“Was White Lake searched for a portage that someone could have gotten a motorboat through?” Violet asks.

“Yes, and I didn’t find one. I also didn’t find one in Lake Garner, but that’s a lot bigger and harder to scout. So maybe there was one and I missed it.”

It’s a nice question, but I don’t think Violet’s headed where Albin is. “Can we see Autumn and Benjy’s autopsy reports?” I say.

“No. I don’t believe that’s legal.”

I don’t know if it is or isn’t.
^*
I try “Is there anything you need to tell us to keep us out of danger?”

I don’t know what oaths to protect people sheriffs here or anywhere else are required to take, but I assume there are some. And maybe they allow, or even require, Albin to cough up information it would otherwise be illegal or unethical to share.

At least, I
think
that’s what he’s been getting at.

“Ideally, walk away now,” he says. “I look at this, I see a lot of downside and essentially zero upside. If you do insist on going through with it, don’t give Reggie Trager the benefit of the doubt just because I don’t think he’s guilty. I’m not a grand jury. Don’t go anywhere in Ford except CFS—the town’s too dangerous. And keep me posted on absolutely everything that happens. Which I don’t mean as an option. I’ll give you my direct line and my e-mail address. If I decide at any point that you’ve withheld information that even
might
be useful to a criminal investigation,
I will make certain you become sorry to have done that. Do we understand each other?”

We nod. Violet says “Yes sir.”

“And one last thing. When you get out to White Lake—don’t go in the water.”

Ford, Minnesota

Still Friday, 14 September

“That guy totally thinks Aquabigfoot is real,” Violet says.

“I agree.” We’re back on U.S. 53, headed to Ford to check into the CFS Lodge. She’s driving. “So do we need to discuss it?”

“What?” she says. “That the sheriff of Lake County thinks the monster is real, or that the monster might actually
be
real?”

“The sheriff part.”

“Whew. For a second I was worried you were getting all spandrelly on me.”
^*