Windigo Island (3 page)

Chapter 5

I
t was four hours to Bayfield, Wisconsin, which lay near the tip of a squat peninsula that jutted north into Lake Superior and at whose end lay the exquisite archipelago of the Apostle Islands. Cork and Jenny left at first light, driving the Explorer, a thermos of hot coffee between them. Almost two hours later, they passed through Duluth and crossed the harbor of the Twin Ports on the Bong Bridge. They entered Superior, Wisconsin, under a heavy ceiling of overcast that completely blocked the morning sun. They took U.S. Highway 2 east and after another hour, turned north onto Wisconsin 13, a road that followed the outline of the peninsula and that was, at that early hour, nearly deserted.

Cork thought Jenny might sleep. It had been a brief night, an early rising. But she was alert and talkative the whole way, and there was an excitement in her voice. She was a woman on a mission. For Cork, the day already held the gloomy feel of failure.

They found the Bayfield Inn and, inside, the café Daniel English had told them about the night before. When Cork and Jenny walked in, they found the place was three-quarters full and noisy. English sat at a table on the far side of the room, next to a window that looked out toward Lake Superior. He wasn’t alone. A man as big as English himself sat with him. An Indian. English stood as they approached. The other man stayed seated and watched them without expression.

“Thanks for coming,” English said. He shook their hands and nodded toward his companion. “This is Red Arceneaux, Mariah’s
uncle. Red, these are the folks I told you about. Cork O’Connor and his daughter Jenny.”

Arceneaux was broad across the chest, heavy around the middle. His hands on the table were meaty and powerful. His face was hard, his eyes black iron. He didn’t rise to greet Cork, and there was no welcoming energy in the handshake he offered from his chair. He didn’t bother to shake Jenny’s hand at all, simply nodded when English introduced her. Beyond an Indian’s usual reserve around white people and strangers, Cork wondered what more was at work in this man’s thinking.

They sat down, and Arceneaux said in a flat, deep voice, “I understand you’re a blood.” Which was the term sometimes used to designate a person of mixed racial heritage.

“My grandmother was true-blood Iron Lake Anishinaabe,” Cork said.

“And you’re a cop, too.”

“Was a cop. Not anymore. I do private investigations now.”

Arceneaux gave a small, dismissive grunt.

A waitress came to the table and dropped additional menus in front of Cork and Jenny. “Coffee?” she asked with no great interest.

They both said thanks, and she spun away, wordless.

Arceneaux had been sizing up Cork since English introduced them. “You think you can find Mariah,” he said. It wasn’t a statement but a challenge.

“I told Daniel I’d do my best to help.”

“Help. You mean like my great-uncle Meloux?”

“I can’t speak for Henry,” Cork replied.

“Daniel told me what he said. I haven’t seen him since I was a kid, but he sounds like he’s turned into one heartless asshole.”

“In my experience, Henry Meloux always has good reason for what he says and does.”

“My sister’s got one leg. How does he expect her to get to him out there in the middle of nowhere?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Okay, answer me this. How do you expect to find my niece?”

The waitress came with mugs and a pot she set on the table. “Ready to order?”

Cork and Jenny asked for oatmeal. The other two stuck with just the coffee.

“I don’t expect to find your niece,” Cork answered when the waitress had gone. He poured coffee for himself and Jenny.

Arceneaux sat back, and his bulk made the chair he sat in squeak. He crossed his thick arms. “Then what the hell are you doing here?”

“My best,” Cork said. “But my gut feeling is that it won’t be enough.”

Jenny gave him a harsh glance, which he did his best to ignore.

“I’ll give it to you straight, Red. Either she’s dead, like Carrie, and she’ll wash up onshore one day or, more likely, she’ll stay on the bottom of Lake Superior forever. That lake’s so cold it seldom gives up its dead.”

“Dad,” Jenny tried to cut in.

“Or,” Cork went on, “she’s somewhere she’s chosen to be, for whatever reason, and she doesn’t want to come back and she doesn’t want to be found.”

“Or,” Jenny said in a voice loud enough to be heard easily above the clatter of utensils and dishes, “she’s being held somewhere against her will and unspeakable things are being done to her.”

Arceneaux looked at Jenny. The iron left his eyes, and he said quietly, “My sister’s all tore up. Has been ever since Mariah took off.” Now he looked a little lost. “We did everything we could to find her.”

“Did you report her as a runaway?” Cork asked.

“Yeah. But kids, they run away all the time. And the cops, they didn’t much care. She’s an Indian kid.”

Cork said, “How do you know she ran away?”

Arceneaux shrugged. “She was there one day, gone the next.”

“Maybe she was abducted.”

“Some of her friends, they told us Mariah’d been planning on leaving for a while. Her and Carrie.”

“Did these friends know where the two girls were headed?”

“Nope, just that they were getting out of Dodge. Seems they had it up to here with living at the edge of nowhere.”

“Does Mariah have any relatives in Duluth or Superior?”

“None close.”

“But some?”

“Got a cousin there somewhere, but we don’t never see him.”

“What’s Mariah like?” Jenny asked.

“A girl. Likes girl things, I guess.”

“Basketball,” English said. “She’s a good basketball player. Played for her junior high team.”

“Did she have a boyfriend?” Jenny asked.

“Nobody special,” Arceneaux replied. “Least not that I know of. Real closed mouth, she is. Keeps things to herself pretty good.” He eyed Cork again. “You want to write any of this down?”

“Why?” Cork asked.

“That’s what they do in the movies, private investigators.”

“I’ve got it, don’t worry, Red. Does Mariah have any brothers or sisters?”

“An older half brother, Tobias. We call him Toby. And two half brothers younger than her, Denny and Cal.”

“The fathers?”

“Louise was never too certain about her first two kids. Denny and Cal’s dad, he’s doing a dime over in Boscobel for an armed robbery beef. Louise, she was pretty wild when she was young. Never bothered getting a wedding ring from anyone.”

“Tell me about Tobias.”

“What’s Toby got to do with this?”

“Probably nothing. But it’s the kind of question a private investigator asks.”

“Trouble, that one. Smokes weed all day, gets drunk nights. No help to my sister at all.”

“How old?”

“Seventeen.”

“Is he close to Mariah?”

Arceneaux shook his head. “Close to what he calls his homeboys, that’s it.”

“Is he in a gang?”

“Nuthin organized on the rez. Just a bunch a kids with nuthin to do all day except get into trouble.” He fell silent for a few moments and stared out the café window, where the overcast sky made the lake water look charcoal. “There’s something you should know,” he finally said. “Something Mariah told me before her and Carrie took off.”

Their food came. While they ate, Arceneaux told them a story.

First, he said he wanted them to know that he was a modern Shinnob, so what he was going to tell them didn’t have anything to do with believing in old myths. He asked if they knew about the windigo. Cork and Jenny said they did. Arceneaux said he’d first heard about the monster when he was a kid. It was told to him like one of those scary stories kids tell each other around a campfire or on a sleepover. He never believed it. Then Mariah told him something he’d been chewing on for a long time.

“She told me that Carrie heard a windigo call her name.”

“How’d she hear it? I mean, what were the circumstances, do you know?”

“Mariah and Carrie and some of her friends were doing some partying out on the lakeshore, a place called Point Detour. They’d been drinking, smoking weed. She told me it was one of those nights when the moon was full. She said it was like this big eye looking down on ’em. It was real calm, then this strange wind come up out of nowhere. Hell, that happens all the time up here, the big lake and all. But she tells me that Carrie goes real pale, and says, ‘Did you hear that?’ And Mariah says, ‘Hear what?’ And Carrie says, ‘Somebody out there on the lake. They called me.’ And Mariah says she didn’t hear nuthin. And then one of the other girls tells her, ‘Must’ve been the windigo.’ But Carrie, she’s never heard of it. So the girl tells her about the windigo and how it’s this
giant cannibal beast that pulls the heart right out of your chest and eats it. And she says that when it’s coming for you, it calls your name. Mariah told me that Carrie freaked out, and they had to leave. I didn’t think nuthin about it until they found Carrie’s body on Windigo Island. Now I can’t think about anything else.”

His dark eyes had been downcast the whole time he told the story. Now he looked up, glanced briefly at Cork, who kept his own face neutral, then settled his gaze on Jenny, who was clearly full of sympathy.

“You got a job, Red?” Cork asked.

“Yeah. Working at the restaurant at the casino. Dishwasher. Not a lot of money, but I also get some disability payment from the government. Vet, wounded in the first Iraq war. Enough between ’em so I make ends meet. And I usually got a little left over to help out Louise. Missing a leg and trying to make it on welfare, things don’t never quite stretch enough.” He squinted at Cork, and distrust was there again in his dark eyes. “You chargin’ for your services?”

“At the moment, I’m working on what you might call spec,” Cork said. “Before I charge you, I’ll let you know. I’d like to talk to your sister.”

“I figured. I wanted to check you out first. You understand?”

“Sure.”

“And you go easy on Louise. That woman’s already had more than her share of misery.”

Jenny reached out but didn’t quite touch Arceneaux. “We’re here to help.”

For a long time, he stared directly into her eyes, an odd thing for a Shinnob. And then he gave a nod, slight and simple. “I believe you.”

Chapter 6

D
aniel English followed Red Arceneaux. Cork and Jenny followed English. They drove north out of Bayfield and followed the shoreline. Across a mile of gray water lay the great green bodies of the Apostle Islands. Although the hour was still early and the day still gloomy, there were already sailboats cutting across the lake. In Cork’s present mood, the sails reminded him of the fins of great white sharks.

“I liked him,” Jenny said.

“Arceneaux?”

“Yeah.”

“Unless I’m greatly mistaken, he’s a man who’s spent time inside.”

“Inside what?” Jenny asked.

“Prison.”

“Really? How can you tell?”

“Prison changes a man. If you know what to look for, you see it.”

“So what did you see in Red?”

“I saw what his eyes saw.”

“Which was what?”

“Mostly he watched our hands.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Yes, he did.”

Jenny thought a moment. “Okay, what of it?”

“In prison, in the blink of an eye, a man’s hands can hold some
thing that’ll kill you. So you always have to know where his hands are and what’s in them. Gets to be habit. Also, manipulation is something men in prison get good at. I saw him manipulate you.”

“Me?”

“As soon as he knew he had a sympathetic audience, he addressed everything he could to you.”

“No,” she said disbelieving.

“Yes,” Cork said. “I also saw a great deal of distrust in him.”

“We’re strangers,” she said with exasperation. “There’s no reason for him to trust us. And yet, in the end, he did.”

“That’s what he said.”

“Look, Dad, if there’s a problem with trust here, you’re just as responsible for it as you say Red is.”

Cork smiled. “Fair enough.”

A few miles outside Bayfield they entered the Bad Bluff Reservation and then passed through the town of Bad Bluff itself, mostly a scattered gathering of prefabs and mobile homes. They passed the Shining Waters casino and hotel complex and turned onto a road that ran west into second- or third-growth timber. Set back among the trees were more prefabs and trailers and some actual houses, these often surrounded by yards full of discard—old appliances, vehicles without tires, mattresses, playground equipment, bicycles, sheets of rusting, corrugated metal. It was reservation life in its worst depiction, Cork thought, evidence of a people whose whole way of being had been attacked a century earlier and who were still reeling. It made him angry, and because the blood of the Anishinaabeg ran through his own veins, it made him determined.

Arceneaux turned up a short unpaved drive that ended at a small, single-story house, which seemed cobbled together. The walls were weathered plywood, and the pale blue paint on them was scant and mildewed. The yard was less cluttered with debris than many they’d passed, but it was worrisome nonetheless. A couple of suspect-looking ATVs sat under a makeshift shelter
of scavenged two-by-fours and canvas. A basketball backboard and netless hoop hung atop a metal pole set in a slab of concrete patched with tar. A big black and white mutt on a chain went crazy barking as Arceneaux led the caravan up to the house.

Arceneaux parked and got out of his truck and said harshly to the dog, “Shut up, Bruiser.”

Much to Cork’s surprise, the dog did. It sat on its haunches and simply watched the procession as they entered the house.

Inside something had exploded. Or more probably it only looked that way. Debris lay everywhere—clothing, magazines, plates and dishes, empty bottles, bottles not empty but filled with liquids only a trained scientist could identify, toys, blankets, newspaper sections. There was a couch and maybe more furniture, too, Cork suspected, somewhere under all those layers of crap.

In the middle of the chaos sat a woman in a wheelchair. She had long black hair and wore a gray sweatshirt and gray sweatpants. The right pant leg was folded under her at the knee. Her loose clothing disguised not at all the fact that she was a heavy woman. Cork could see that it wasn’t just her flesh that weighed her down; there was a heaviness to her spirit as well. She was probably in her early forties and may have been pretty once, but now she was old beyond her years, and years beyond her beauty.

The living room was cramped, small to begin with and smaller because of all that filled it. Through an opened doorway, Cork saw a bedroom. He also saw two kids with video game controllers in their hands, facing a television screen where, judging from the din of battle, every war that had ever been fought was being fought again.

Arceneaux spoke first to the boys. “Denny, Cal, turn that game down a couple hundred notches.” He waited for the boys to respond. When they didn’t, he stepped into the room and in front of the screen. “Turn it down,” he said.

The boys seemed to notice him for the first time, and they did as he asked.

Arceneaux came back and spoke to the woman in the wheel
chair. “Louise, this here’s the man Daniel told us about.”

“
Boozhoo. Anish na
, Louise,” Cork said, offering her a greeting in Ojibwemowin.

“Morning,” she said in reply.

“Good morning, Louise,” Jenny said. “I’m his daughter. Jenny’s my name.”

Louise nodded and studied her. Cork thought she was going to say something, some warm word of greeting. Instead, she yelled toward the bedroom, “Denny, go get your momma a blanket. I’m cold.”

Neither one of the boys moved, but Arceneaux went to the couch, grabbed a ragged afghan, brought it to his sister, and arranged it across her lap.

Louise looked at Daniel English. “Where’s Henry Meloux?”

“He didn’t come,” Daniel replied. “He said he wants you to come to him.”

“How?” She lifted the afghan to expose the pant leg folded under the stump of her leg. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“I don’t know, but it’s what he wants. And if you go to him, he wants you to bring something.”

“What?”

“Mariah’s most precious possession.”

Louise Arceneaux seemed completely bewildered. Cork didn’t know if it was because the request itself was so outlandish or because she simply didn’t have the slightest idea what that possession might be. Her next response was to become heavier, if that was possible. She seemed to sink further under that great weight Cork had felt from the moment he came into her presence.

She looked at him, her eyes dark, hostile. “Do you want something from me, too?”

“Only information, Louise. I need to know everything you can tell me about Mariah.”

She relaxed a little, settled back into her wheelchair, and folded her hands on the afghan that covered her ample lap. “She was my hope. She was smart. She was helpful. She was sun
shine.”

“Did you have any inkling that she was thinking of running away?”

“No. She seemed happy.”

“You haven’t heard from her at all since she left?”

“Not a word.”

“The girl she left with, Carrie, did you know her?”

“Not well. She came over sometimes, but not much. Usually, they hung out somewhere else. It can get kind of crazy around here.”

As nearly as Cork could tell, it was a household of males. Considering the din of battle, the dirt, the disarray, he thought he could understand why a young girl would want to be somewhere else.

“Other friends?” he asked.

Louise squeezed her eyes in thought, then shook her head. “It was her and Carrie mostly. But maybe there were others. You could ask Toby. Cal,” she called toward the room. “Go get your brother.”

“He’s sleeping,” one of the boys yelled back.

“Wake him up.”

“He’ll get mad.”

“Do it anyway.”

The boy dropped his controller. He got up, came out, threw his mother a surly look, and went to a closed door off the living room near the back of the house. He opened the door and went in. Cork could see the end of a bed to the left and, against a far wall, an empty mattress, where surprisingly, the bedding had been neatly put in place.

Louise looked up at English. “I haven’t seen Henry Meloux in thirty years. Did he remember me?”

“Yes,” English said.

She nodded. “He helped me,” she said, more to herself than anyone in the room. “But he didn’t ask me for anything back then.”

Cork wondered in what way she’d been helped by the old Mide. Because what he saw of her life now made him believe she’d always been troubled or in trouble.

The boy came out. “I tried,” he said. “He told me to go ‘f’ myself.” He headed back to his idled controller.

“I’ll wake him up,” Arceneaux said. He disappeared through the opened doorway and turned left. Cork saw half his big body lean down, and when he straightened, he held a teenager in the grasp of his huge hands.

“Jesus,” the kid cried out. “What the—”

“Your mother wants you,” Arceneaux said and shoved the kid through the doorway into the living room.

He wore black boxer shorts and nothing else. He was licorice-stick thin, and his black hair was a mess. He was a good-looking seventeen-year-old, and he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and gave his mother a killing look. Then he gave the same look to the others. Except Daniel English, to whom he said, “’Sup, cuz?”

English said, “This man wants to ask you some questions, Toby.”

Toby eyed Cork as if he had his number. “Cop.”

“No.”

He seemed surprised that he was wrong. “What kind of questions?”

“About your sister, Mariah.”

“What about her?”

“I’d like to find her, if I can.”

“Well, good luck with that.”

“Any idea where she is?”

“Nope.”

“Any idea why she ran off?”

“Nope.”

“Any idea who her friends were?”

Toby yawned, maybe from lack of sleep or maybe from boredom. “Nope.”

“Do you care if she ever comes back?”

His lips formed the word again, but he stopped himself and actually considered the question. In the end, all he offered was a shrug. Then he yawned again and scratched his belly.

“Did you know Carrie Verga?” Cork asked.

“Not really. Saw her around.”

“What about Mariah’s other friends? Know any of them?”

“I never paid much attention.” He sounded truly bored now.

It was clear to Cork he would get nowhere with the kid. “Could I see her room?” he asked Louise.

“Her room?” A look that Cork couldn’t quite interpret crossed the woman’s face. It may have been fear or guilt or some combination thereof. “Why?”

“It might give me a better feel for Mariah.”

Louise’s hands rose from her lap and gripped the arms of her wheelchair. “Not much left. We’re kinda crowded here, so that’s Toby and Puck’s room now.”

“Puck?” Cork asked. Because Arceneaux had neglected to mention anyone named Puck.

“My son,” Arceneaux said. “Him and me, we’re staying here with Louise. Temporarily.”

Which was another detail Arceneaux had neglected to mention. Cork could see only two bedrooms—the one where the boys played their video game and the one from which Toby had just emerged. He wondered where Louise and Arceneaux slept.

“Puck?” Jenny asked. “Like in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
?”

“No,” Arceneaux said. “Like in the little round thing hockey players hit. His real name’s Paul. When he was a kid, he was short and round and loved watching hockey on television. So I called him Puck. It stuck.”

“How long have you been living with Louise?” Cork asked.

“Little over a year. But I have a line on another place. Puck graduated from high school in the spring. He’ll be leaving soon. Going to college. I’ll be moving out then.”

“Is Puck here now?” Cork asked.

Arceneaux shook his head. “He’s working. Got himself a sum
mer job on one of the fishing boats out of Bayfield.”

“You need me for anything else?” Toby asked.

“No,” his mother said, her voice flat and hopeless. “Go on back to bed.”

In departing, the kid said nothing else to anyone. The door, when he closed it behind him, did not close gently.

Louise fell silent, stared at the floor in front of her. When she looked up, her eyes glistened with tears. “I miss her so much,” she said. “And I swear if she comes back everything will be different.”

Different how?
Cork wanted to ask. Was it more than just the dirt and the disarray and the dysfunction? Which, clearly, this family could abide.

Jenny, who’d been oddly quiet, said, “Go see Henry Meloux, Louise. Whatever that takes. I think he can help.”

Louise reached out and impulsively took Jenny’s hands. “But I don’t know what he wants from me.”

“Mariah’s most precious possession,” Jenny said. “Think about it. Take some time. My dad and I have some more people to see, but we’ll be back.”

“All right.” Louise seemed stronger now, as if she’d taken some of Jenny’s strength, the strength of another woman who understood, into herself. “All right,” she said again and released her hold on Jenny’s hands.

Cork said, “We’re going to talk with Carrie Verga’s family. And also the Bayfield County Sheriff’s Office. And I’d like to talk to Puck. Louise, is there anyone else you think we should see?”

“Mariah talked about her basketball coach a lot.”

“I know her,” English said. “We’ll talk to her, Louise.”

The woman lifted her dark eyes, and Cork saw something that hadn’t been there when he’d first come in. It was something that worried him. Because what he saw was hope. And it worried him because so far he could see no reason to hope. He thought false hope was a far crueler thing than no hope at all.

“Thank you,” Louise said to them all.

Red Arceneaux said to them,
“Migwech,”
which meant “thank
you.”

Once outside, they gathered at English’s pickup. “Why don’t we leave one of the vehicles here?” he suggested. “No reason to take two. You okay driving, Cork?”

“I’d rather we used yours,” Cork said. He put his hand on the mud-spattered old pickup. “It’ll stand out less on the rez. And if folks here see you driving up, well, a guy who’s clearly Shinnob has a better chance of getting a reasonable reception. You okay with that?”

“Sure,” English said. “Makes sense.” He looked back at the little, thrown-together house. “When I was a kid, if we saw Louise it was because she came down to Hayward to visit us. We never came up here. Pretty clear why.”