Windigo Island (26 page)

“Williston, probably.”

“Why?”

“Resources there.”

“That’s a long way to carry Henry. And what if he’s followed? How will he know? Remember, that may be exactly what Windigo wants.”

She thought, her blue eyes hard, focused. Finally she said, “He’s down there somewhere we can’t see, but he can see us.”

“Where would that be?”

She scanned the near bank of the river, squinting. “In one of those clusters of trees.”

She wiped a fist across her jaw, a pointless gesture, but it signaled to Cork the intensity of the moment for her, which was a good thing.

“If it’s the police who follow,” she went on, “he can dump Henry’s body in the river. He might even go in with it, let the current carry him to Williston. If it’s us he sees coming down this hill, he’s got what he wants.”

Cork was pleased. She’d learned a great deal on this hunt, how to think like the prey you hunted. If things went south, she wouldn’t be unprepared. “Stay here.”

He left Jenny at the edge of the cottonwoods and went back to his Explorer. Before the fire engines and the Tahoe from the Williams County Sheriff’s Office had arrived, while he and Jenny were getting their story straight with each other, Cork had put Daniel’s Glock under the Explorer’s front seat. Now he pulled the sidearm from its hiding place. He leaned across the driver’s seat and opened the glove box. From inside, he took his field glasses and a folded hunting knife.

When he returned to Jenny, she looked at the Glock. “What are you going to do, Dad?”

“Give him what he wants.”

“We’re going after him?”

“
I’m
going after him.”

“Not alone.”

“You need to stay here.”

“Why?”

“You fulfilled your vision, Jenny. You saved her. Your part in this is finished.”

“No.”

“Yes. You’ve got a son back in Tamarack County to think
about. Take this.” He held the sidearm out to her, but she refused it. “Look, we may be wrong,” he said. “Windigo may double back, return to the trailer when he thinks it’s safe. Until they actually send someone out to impound it, his SUV is still here. Maybe he has money stashed somewhere nearby, operating funds. I’ve seen it before. If he does come back, you’ll need this.”

“To do what?”

“Shoot him. Don’t talk to him, don’t hesitate, just shoot him.”

“In cold blood?” she said.

“Can you do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“He won’t give you time to think.”

“You’re talking about killing a man, Dad.”

“I’m talking about saving your own life.”

“Keep the gun. When you find him, you’ll need it.”

He held up the knife he’d taken from the glove box of the Explorer. “My Buck Alpha.” He opened it. “Three-and-a-half-inch blade. I keep this razor-sharp. I find our Windigo, I intend to cut his throat and skin him.”

His heart was ice, and it wasn’t an idle threat. All his logic, all his clear reading of the signs had one purpose: to find the man called Windigo and kill him.

Jenny stared at him, stared nails. “I don’t need a vision to tell me what’s going to happen. Windigo’s big gun wasn’t anywhere in the trailer. He probably took it with him. He’s hoping you’ll go down there, Dad. If you do, I won’t lose just Henry. I’ll lose you, too.”

“All right,” he said. “I keep the gun, but you get out of here.” He dug in his pocket and brought out the keys to the Explorer.

“I’m not leaving,” she said.

“You’re not going down there with me.”

“Then you’re not going down there.”

Cork’s whole body was iron, his hands like forged steel, white around the weapons he held. Below his thin sheath of human flesh was a beast hungry for vengeance. He could already taste blood.

“Dad,” Jenny said, her voice quiet, amazingly calm. “Dad, listen to me. You march down there, that won’t save Henry. It will only get you killed. I love you. Waaboo and Annie and Stephen and Rainy, we all love you, and we don’t want to lose you.”

“I left Henry to die once today. I won’t do that again.”

“There’s another way. There’s got to be.”

“I don’t know what that is, and we’re running out of time. It may already be too late.”

She reached out and put her hand gently against his chest. Her light, loving touch made him realize how tense he was, how hard he held himself, how bound up in his desire for blood he’d become.

“Listen to me, Dad. Remember what Henry told you? The windigo is a creature of darkness. Darkness feeds on darkness. Our Windigo wants you to do this. He wants you to blind yourself the way he’s blinded. That’s how he’ll beat you in this hunt. There’s got to be another way. And Henry would say look for it here.” She tapped his chest above his heart.

They stood among the cottonwoods at the edge of the promontory. Cork lifted his field glasses and followed the trail Windigo had left through the tall, dry grass, so clear an idiot could have followed it. The hillside was uneven. Here and there, the slope was cut by swales and dips, and the trail dropped out of sight. He lost it eventually but could see that, more or less, it headed northeast, toward the largest growth of trees along the bank of the Missouri. There was something wrong with the cottonwoods there. The copse appeared ravaged, as if a violent storm had swept through, knocking trees down right and left in its rampage. If a man—or windigo—were looking for an ideal place to lie in wait unseen, this would be it. He knew it in his heart.

Cork lowered the glasses. Something had slipped in to replace the fear, the anger, the vengeance. A small glimmer of light had appeared, exactly what Meloux had said the windigo wanted to extinguish. And that light was simply hope.

“Maybe there is a better way,” he said.

Chapter 41

F
rom where he lay in the tall, wild grass, Cork watched Jenny emerge from the trees atop the promontory and begin, in a halting way, to follow the trail Windigo had left down the hillside. She moved slowly, pausing periodically to look about her, as if uncertain which way to proceed. Cork’s field glasses hung around her neck, and every so often, she lifted the lenses to her eyes and scanned the riverbank. Alone on the tip of that high finger of land, which pointed toward the Missouri, she stood out like a black fly on a scoop of caramel ice cream.

Cork had descended the south side of the promontory, which was hidden from the ravaged copse of trees where he believed Windigo had taken Henry Meloux. He’d entered one of the swales that followed the contour of the hillside. As he’d hoped, he’d been able to get within a hundred yards of the riverbank without revealing himself to anyone who might have been watching from below. He’d taken his cell phone and had told Jenny that as soon as he was in position he would call her. That’s when she needed to begin making her own way down the hillside, but in plain sight. If Kitchimanidoo and luck were with them, her descent would distract Windigo while Cork made his dash for the river.

He watched his daughter’s great show of uncertainty. But it wasn’t just hesitancy she played out. She moved oddly, one leg stiff, in the same way that Louise Arceneaux walked when she wore her peg leg. It was a brilliant piece of misdirection, he thought. It reminded him of how the little killdeer pretended to
be hurt in order to lure away predators who neared its nest. He hoped desperately that Jenny’s charade would attract and hold Windigo’s eye.

Cork had kept the Glock, but had done so with one condition: as soon as he began to make his way along the riverbank toward the damaged trees, she would return to the trailer, drive the Explorer a safe distance away, and await his call. If she didn’t hear from him within half an hour, she would phone the Williams County Sheriff’s Office and explain her situation. Under no circumstance was she to put herself in jeopardy.

He allowed her a few minutes of playing out her charade before he made his run. When he was ready, he hunched low and shot for the river, trying to keep as much of himself as he could hidden by the thigh-high weed cover. Grasshoppers buzzed away at his coming, and not far from the river, he flushed a pair of grouse. When the birds hit the air, he dropped and waited, pressing his body against the dry earth, breathing dust. He gave himself a full minute before he pushed up and loped on. When he was finally inside the safety of the riverbank vegetation, he looked up the hillside and found Jenny still moving haltingly, awkwardly down the slope. He pulled his phone from its belt holster and made his call.

“I’m good,” he said. “You go.”

“Not until you reach those trees where we think he’s got Henry.”

“No, you go now. That’s what we agreed to.”

“I’ll keep you in sight with my binoculars. When you get there, I’ll turn back, that’s a promise.”

He didn’t have time to argue. The bottom line was that he wanted her out of harm’s way. So long as she was gone before anything went down with Windigo, he could live with it.

“Ten-four, kiddo. Wish me luck.”

He turned the cell to vibrate so that the ring from an errant call wouldn’t give him away. He reholstered the phone and eyed the landscape downriver. A hundred and fifty yards away lay the
place he believed Henry was being held. He chose his next hiding place—a thicket of sumac sixty yards distant—and made a dash.

A strong breeze had risen, skating over the Missouri, shaking the leaves of the trees and underbrush along the riverbank. The wind was both friend and foe to Cork. It helped to mask his approach, but it also drowned out any sound that might give away Windigo’s position.

Safely inside the cover of the sumac, Cork glanced up the slope. Jenny had descended halfway. She’d paused and was scanning the river north to south, as if checking all the possibilities before her. When she swung the glasses in Cork’s direction, he eased himself into the open just enough to give her a wave. She kept scanning, and he couldn’t tell if she’d missed him or was continuing her charade. She lowered the glasses and moved downslope again with that stiff-legged gait.

Cork chose his next sanctuary, a grouping of cottonwoods not unlike the one that was his final destination. He shot for the cover and, when he entered the trees, found not only wind damage—trees down, trunks splintered—but also evidence of habitation: old char from a campfire, rusted food tins, a stained, striped mattress that had disgorged its stuffing and had clearly become the abode of vermin. There was no sign of Meloux or Windigo. He felt this was a good indication that he was, in fact, thinking like the prey he hunted.

At the north edge of the cottonwoods, Cork used a broad trunk as shield and eyed the final copse. It had been thick with upright trees at one time, but whatever tempest had swept up along that river and across the hills and bluffs had razed a good quarter of that timber. Trunks lay uprooted or in great splintered sections on the ground. Between Cork and his goal, there was little cover along the bank. Mostly what he had to work with was the tall, dry grass.

The day was sweltering, and the effort of this hunt made him sweat profusely. Salty drops stung his eyes. His soggy shirt clung to his back. He was thirsty, and his mouth was dust dry. He eyed
what seemed like an interminable stretch of impossibility, and knew he had no choice but to crawl those final fifty yards using the grass as cover. He pulled the Glock from where he’d shoved it into the waist of his pants, released the safety, and gripped the firearm in his right hand. He went down on his belly and began to slither ahead like a lizard. He wondered if Jenny could see him from her high vantage. He didn’t dare risk lifting his head to look. The grass hid him, but it also obscured everything that lay before him. Blind, he made his way toward the damaged stand of trees.

He’d gone halfway when he heard the gunshot. It came from the cottonwoods in front of him. His first thought was
Meloux
. He had a sudden vision of the old man’s execution, Meloux’s long white hair dripping blood. His second thought was
Jenny.
He raised himself and looked up the hillside. She was gone. She’d been so far down the slope that if she’d headed back to the trailer she should still have been visible to him. But she was nowhere to be seen. There’d been the gunshot, and then she’d simply vanished.

Something happened to Cork that had seldom happened before: he panicked. He lost it. All his careful planning fled. He stood and began a wild race for the cottonwoods. He hit the copse at a dead run, crashing into and through the underbrush, leaping one fallen tree after another. No amount of wind could mask the sound of his coming. He glanced left and right, finally spotted a small clearing ahead. Sitting upright in the center, bound to a sapling with what appeared to be clothesline cord, was Henry Meloux. His head was down. His chin rested on his chest. Just as Cork had seen in his dark vision, Meloux’s long white hair was stained with blood.

Call it training. Call it instinct. Call it a little of the wisdom Meloux had passed to him over all their years together that was now innate. Whatever it was, the next thing Cork did, he did without thinking. He was running headlong into a situation he had not reconnoitered but was so obviously a trap. Between him and the clearing where Meloux sat bound lay the trunk of a huge
fallen cottonwood whose roots, at its thickest end, were like long, ragged claws. Cork had already leaped several very like it, but this one he did not. Instead, he dove for the cover that downed tree provided him.

Two quick shots sent splinters of the trunk into the air above Cork. The reports came from ahead and to the left. Cork hunkered down and kept himself shielded from what might come next from that direction.

What came was a voice: “Cork O’Connor. I hear you’re part Mick, part Shinnob, like me. That true?” When Cork didn’t answer, Windigo went on. “Your friend there, he’s not dead. I just gave him a tap on the side of his head, just enough to keep him quiet. A lot of blood, but you know about head wounds. Bleed buckets. Look a lot worse than they are.”

“What was the gunshot about?” Cork called.

“To flush you out. I saw your girl coming down the hill, but I didn’t see you. Only a coward would send a woman in his place. I don’t peg you as a coward. Your girl, though, when she heard that shot, she dropped out of sight like a prairie dog. Lucky for her. If she’d been a little closer, I might’ve tried to cap her.”

“So what now?” Cork hollered.

“Now we negotiate.”

“For what?”

“The old man’s life.”

Though he still trembled from the adrenaline that coursed through his body, Cork’s panic had subsided. Two pieces of information that he’d needed he now had: Henry was alive—if Cork could believe Windigo—and Jenny was safe. A calm descended, once again Meloux’s wisdom, in a way. Cork understood that a man sometimes had to enter the dark, but he did not have to become a part of the darkness.

Ogichidaa
, he thought. To stand between evil and his people. This was what he was born for. If necessary, this would be the way of his death.

The wind had grown stronger. The cottonwood leaves above
him and the dead branches of the fallen trees around him rattled and clacked. Cork had to raise his voice even more to be heard.

“The old man’s not moving,” he cried. “How do I know he’s still alive?”

“You don’t,” Windigo called back. “But if I don’t like our negotiation, I can always pop a couple of rounds into him from here. That’ll make things pretty certain.”

Cork had a better sense of the direction now. He eased himself toward the clawlike roots of the blown-down trunk and risked a peek, trying to pinpoint Windigo’s exact position.

The shot that came was high of Cork’s head and to the right. It missed him but sent splinters of the trunk into his scalp and temple. He jerked back, stung and bleeding. He’d got what he wanted, however. He’d glimpsed his Windigo. The big man was protected behind a V formed by a couple of toppled trees thirty yards away, just beyond the clearing where Meloux lay.

“I don’t think you want a negotiation,” Cork said.

“No?”

“I think you just want blood. Mine.”

Laughter, long and deep, came from Windigo. “My God. Finally, someone who gets me. Oh, I’m going to enjoy this, O’Connor.”

Cork was safe where he was, but he didn’t like the idea of Meloux trapped in the middle of what was taking place. He needed to draw the muzzle of Windigo’s Desert Eagle away from his old friend. A dozen yards to his left was the shattered stump of a tree that had snapped. It stood five feet high and was nearly as big around as the fallen tree that currently sheltered him. Unless Windigo was a crack shot, Cork believed that, on the run, he would make a poor target.

He fired one shot from the Glock in Windigo’s direction and launched himself toward the stump. He zigged and zagged as he crossed the dozen yards, and none of the three rounds that Windigo fired hit their mark. Breathing hard, heart hammering, he reached the protection of what was left of a once great tree, where he spent a few moments gathering himself.

Seven rounds. Cork had counted seven rounds from Windigo. Although he’d long ago given up his own firearms, Cork knew weapons. Year after year, when he’d worn a badge, he’d had to qualify on the range. So the Glock in his hand didn’t feel alien at all. And what he knew about the Desert Eagle .44 Magnum was that the magazine carried eight rounds. Unless Windigo had brought an additional magazine or more cartridges, he had only one left to him. Cork ejected the magazine on his Glock. Except for the shot he’d fired, it was full. Windigo had the advantage of mobility. Cork, if he was lucky, had the edge in firepower.

“I know what you’re thinking, O’Connor,” Windigo hollered above the wind through the trees. “I know you. I’ll bet you’re a cop. Or you were a cop once. Am I right? I knew it back there in the trailer. I could smell cop on you like dog shit on a shoe.”

His voice still came from the same direction. Windigo hadn’t moved. He was counting on Cork to come to him, which was not exactly what Cork was doing. Not yet.

Windigo fired three shots in quick succession.

“Reloaded,” the big man called. “That’s what you were thinking, wasn’t it? That I was expending all my ammo?”

The laugh came again, a sound that, within the whoosh of the wind and dull rattle of the cottonwood leaves and scrape of branches and groan of strained limbs, reminded Cork of a Halloween sound, something meant to scare children.

It didn’t scare Cork, but it concerned him. He had no advantage now. Except that Windigo wanted his blood. Windigo’s hunger was all-consuming. In the darkness of his soul, Windigo was blind to everything but Cork. Was there a way to use that blindness?

“Tell you what I’m going to do, O’Connor. Your friend there, the old man? He’s safe only so long as you make this interesting. Once I’m bored, he’s dead. Then I come for you. And you know what? After that, I might just go after that girl of yours. And when I’m done with her, I’ll go back to Minnesota and find Mariah and take care of her and her family. Yeah, her family. I’m really warming to this, let me tell you.”

Cork moved again, this time darting to the cover of yet another fallen tree, half a dozen yards away, an easy distance. But luck, if he had any, deserted him. His right foot caught in a snarl of root, and he went down hard. He felt the painful twist of his ankle. He knew without thinking it consciously that he had to keep moving, and he rolled. At that same moment, he heard the double crack of the Desert Eagle. Two dull thuds and a spray of dirt came from the place he’d fallen. Still on the ground, he scrambled to the cover of the downed cottonwood. Windigo expended two more rounds that burrowed uselessly into dead wood.

Cork checked his ankle. He didn’t think it was broken, but there was no way he could put weight on it. It wasn’t swelling yet, but it probably would. He thought about Kyle Buffalo, who’d twisted his ankle, too, in his own encounter with a windigo. Was it some black magic of the creature?