Windigo Island (4 page)

“Yeah,” Jenny said. “I think this visit told us a lot.”

“Oh?” Cork said. “What exactly did it tell us?”

“It’s awfully late for her to worry about being a good mother, don’t you think, Dad? I mean, Christ, if I were Mariah, I’d’ve run away from that.”

“I doubt it. That’s home,” Cork said. “That’s what she grew up with. Dirt and noise and crowding. She was used to it. No, I think something else made her run.”

“What?”

“Let’s keep talking to people. Maybe we’ll find out.”

He opened the door of English’s pickup and gestured for Jenny to get in.

Chapter 7

T
hey drove south out of Bad Bluff. The road ran beside Chequamegon Bay, a long, broad inlet of Kitchigami. The landscape was hills covered with a mix of deciduous and evergreen, checkered here and there with orchards and meadowland. The gloomy overcast had finally broken. Although there seemed to be no wind, the clouds were fast becoming dwindling islands of gray afloat in a vast ocean of blue sky. Below, the water of the bay lay flat and silver-blue in the morning sun.

English was at the wheel of his pickup. Cork sat on the far passenger side. Jenny straddled the middle.

“What exactly do you do as a game warden, Daniel?” she asked.

“Mostly deal with guys trying to take what they’re not supposed to take or taking something when they’re not supposed to take it. Pretty straightforward.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“You have to be careful. Most men’ll be unhappy with a citation, but a few get outright hostile. I carry a sidearm. Never had to use it.”

“You like your job?”

“I like that I get paid to be outside, in the woods or on a lake. And I think what I do is important.”

“What do you do when you’re not patrolling? Or whatever you call it.”

“We call it patrolling. My time off, mostly I relax. Sit on the porch of my cabin. Read maybe.”

“Read what?”

“Whatever.”

“Hunting and fishing magazines?”

Cork suspected his daughter said this in a deliberate attempt to get English to be more forthcoming. If so, she seemed to have failed. The big Shinnob was silent and seemed deadly intent on the road ahead. But after half a mile and a good half minute had slipped by, he replied, “Billy Collins. James Welch. David Foster Wallace. Sherman Alexie. Hemingway.”

“Whoa,” Jenny said. “Impressive. But Hemingway?”

Daniel gave his huge shoulders a small shrug. “Flawed human being, but he’s always seemed to me a guy who understood the profound impact the natural world can have on the human spirit.” Then he asked in a flat voice that, to anyone who didn’t know the Ojibwe well, might have sounded devoid of any real interest, “Aunt Rainy says you write.”

“Not really,” Jenny replied too quickly. “When I’m not being a mom, I pretty much run Sam’s Place. Keeps me plenty busy.”

Her tone was easy to interpret, and the conversation took a fatal nosedive.

They entered Washburn, a pretty little town perched on hills above the lake. They found the sheriff’s department, part of a new-looking county government complex. At the public contact desk inside, they asked to speak with the sheriff and were told that he was out at the moment. The young woman on duty, who wore no uniform or name badge and was, Cork suspected, simply a clerical employee, asked if there was something she could do for them. They explained their situation. She told them to take a seat and she’d get the officer who’d been in charge of investigating Carrie Verga’s death.

They sat in black plastic chairs in the small public waiting area. In a couple of minutes, a man who looked like an NFL linebacker stepped into the waiting area. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt, blue tie, and khakis.

“Lieutenant Joe Hammer,” he said, offering his hand.

Cork introduced them all and once again explained their presence.

“Why don’t you folks come on back, and we’ll talk.”

They followed Hammer down a short corridor to his office. It was little more than a cubbyhole, but neatly kept. On the desk sat three stacks of file folders, like watchtowers. On one of the walls hung two framed photographs. One was of a younger Hammer with a woman in a yellow bikini on a beach that might have been Hawaii. In the other, Hammer stood with the same woman, this time on a lakeshore, both of them older and each holding the hand of a young child. Hammer took the chair at his desk. With a wave of his huge hand, he indicated that Jenny should take the only other chair. Cork stood behind his daughter, and English leaned against a tall green file cabinet with a stuffed owl atop it that looked down on the gathering with an indifferent, glassy eye.

After he’d ascertained their interest in the case, Hammer gave them some of the pertinent details.

“Cold-water immersion and drowning,” he explained. “That’s the official probable cause of death. There was a high level of alcohol and also traces of heroin in the girl’s bloodstream. I haven’t come up with any witnesses, anybody at all who’d seen Carrie Verga in the last year. So it’s puzzling.”

“There were bruises on her body,” Cork said, recalling the photograph English had shown him the day before.

“Yes. She was treated pretty badly before she died. And lacerations, too, although our coroner concluded those were postmortem and probably occurred when the body washed onto the rocks of the island.”

“Any indication of sexual assault?”

“Our coroner didn’t find any, no. Of course, the body had been in the lake, so a lot of evidence could have been washed away.”

“How long was she in the water?” English asked.

“That’s a tough one. The frigid temperature of the lake tends to preserve a body. So it could have been a week or it could have been a month.”

“A year?” Cork asked.

“I thought about that and asked the coroner. He said he didn’t think so. Thought it was much more recent, although he couldn’t really say how recent.”

Cork said, “Carrie and Mariah Arceneaux disappeared at the same time, probably together. Who investigated that disappearance?”

“That would be me. But it wasn’t a disappearance, as such. When their families reported them gone, I looked into the situation. Became clear pretty quick that the girls had run away. They’d been talking about it for a while, and they didn’t leave empty-handed. They packed suitcases. May have got a ride out of town with a friend.”

“What friend?”

“Never was able to get a name. You ever try getting information from folks on a reservation? They close ranks.”

“Any idea where they were headed?”

Hammer shrugged. “Indian kids when they run off generally go to a relative’s place. I checked and that’s not where these kids went. So I notified Ashland and Duluth PD and all the shelters in the area. Also in the Twin Cities. Those are the places where kids up here usually run to if they’re serious about running. I gave their information to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I questioned the kids’ parents. I continued to ask around at their school and on the reservation. I didn’t come up with anything useful except that the girls had talked to some of their friends about getting out of here, going somewhere more exciting. If I’d been concerned that Carrie and Mariah were abducted, that would be one thing. But like I say, it was pretty clear they’d just taken off on their own. It’s been my experience that, more often than not, runaways come home eventually. It’s a hard life out there on the street.”

Cork nodded his agreement with that last statement. “When her body washed up on Windigo Island, what did you think then?”

“Honestly, I’ve been wondering if she’d been around here somewhere the whole time, just didn’t want to be seen. Runaway
and all. I mean, the home life of some of these kids is pretty bad. They want to get away from it, but not away completely from what’s familiar, you understand?”

“Is that possible up here?” English asked. “To hide for a year without being spotted? Seems to me like an area where people would recognize each other.”

“Generally speaking, I think that’s true. But with Indian kids . . .” Again, Hammer shrugged. “The autopsy showed that the girl had been using. Dressed as she was when we found her, it’s not hard to guess what she might’ve been up to.”

“Which was?” Jenny asked.

“In my experience, a young Indian girl who’s into drugs and who doesn’t have a lot of money also doesn’t have a lot of choice in how she gets those drugs.”

Jenny leaned forward, and Cork was afraid she was going to spring at the detective. “Prostitution? That’s what you’re saying? It could only be prostitution?”

“Pretty much that’s what I’m saying, yes.”

“Because she’s Ojibwe.”

“Okay,” Cork jumped in quickly, “how does a kid prostitute herself up here? I mean, without being seen and recognized? Even an Indian kid.”

“We’re not on the moon. We have the Internet. So, Craigslist, for example.”

“Did you check Craigslist?”

“Yes. And Backpage. That’s another way they do this kind of thing.”

“And?”

“I didn’t find anything, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. She probably used information that wouldn’t identify her. Look, it’s upsetting, I know,” Hammer said, addressing his comment directly to Jenny. “Think it doesn’t bother me? I’m supposed to be the one keeping kids like her safe. Even Indian kids.”

“I’m sorry,” Jenny said. “I wasn’t suggesting—”

“That’s okay.”

“Considering what’s happened to Carrie, how are you proceeding with Mariah?” Cork asked.

“We’re not. We have no information, no new leads, no nothing.”

“If Carrie could hide up here for a year, couldn’t Mariah?” English said.

“Of course. But if nobody saw Carrie, who’d see Mariah? We don’t really have anything to go on. Look, one of our big problems is that nobody on the reservation is eager to talk to a cop, even one who’s wearing a Bad Bluff uniform.” He eyed English. “Are you Chippewa?”

“Yes.”

“Bad Bluff?”

“Lac Courte Oreilles, down near Hayward.”

Hammer didn’t look hopeful. “Maybe they’ll open up to you, but I doubt it. You’re not Bad Bluff. It’s a close community, the reservation.”

“I understand,” English said.

“But look, promise me this. When you’re poking around, if you find information that ought to change my thinking or that’ll give us something substantial to go on, you’ll let me know.”

“We’ll do that,” English told him.

Hammer opened his empty hands toward them all. “We’re not uncaring here. We’re just human and limited.”

Chapter 8

L
ieutenant Hammer had given them Carrie Verga’s home address, as well as the telephone number. He also gave them the cell phone number of the girl’s stepfather. He’d told them Demetrius Verga was a widower. His wife had died in a boating accident a couple of years earlier. If they didn’t find him at home, he advised them to check the Port Superior Marina. Verga was an avid sailor and was often on the water.

They tried calling the house but got only voice mail. Same result with the cell phone number. Jenny keyed in the address on the Garmin app of her smart phone. The home, they discovered, was situated south of Bayfield, high on a hill with a gorgeous view of some old apple orchards and, beyond them, the broad water of Chequamegon Bay. A lovely gazebo stood on the sloping front lawn. A little way above the gazebo was a swimming pool filled with water so clear it looked like air and on which there was not a leaf or a ripple. The home sat against a great stand of hardwoods and was old and grand and beautifully maintained. In an elegant and inviting way, everything about it said
money
.

English pulled up the long drive and parked in front of a multicar garage. Cork got out, walked to the door, and rang the bell. He expected no one to answer and was surprised when the door swung open. A big-boned blonde filled the doorway, a woman who was clearly descended from Vikings and who looked as if pillaging might be second nature to her. She was probably in her forties, but her sour expression added a decade to her looks. She said nothing
in greeting, just gave Cork a blue-eyed glare that might have sent a lesser man packing.

“Good morning,” he said in the cheeriest tone he could manage. “I’m wondering if I could speak with Demetrius Verga.”

“He’s not here.” Flat and hard.

“Do you have any idea when he might be home?”

“None.”

“And you are?”

“Not Mr. Verga.”

“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me where I might find him.”

She pointed toward the lake. “Out there.”

“When he returns, would you mind giving him my card?”

From his wallet, he took one of the business cards he carried for his private investigation work.

She studied it, then looked at him, and there was interest in the hard blue marbles that were her eyes. “You’re a private detective?”

“I do private investigations and security consulting.”

“What do you want with Mr. Verga?”

“If you were him, I’d tell you. But you’ve already made it clear to me that you’re not.” He smiled pleasantly. “On the other hand, if I knew who you were, I might trust you with that information.”

“Bibi Gunnarsdottir. I’m Mr. Verga’s housekeeper and cook.”

“Cork O’Connor. It’s a pleasure, Bibi.”

He offered his hand. She took it with no great enthusiasm and continued to eye him as if he might yet be after the family’s heirloom silver.

“I’m looking into the disappearance of Mariah Arceneaux, on behalf of the Arceneaux family.”

“Bad Bluff.” She said it with such distaste that she might as well have simply spit.

“I just came from speaking with Joe Hammer. He’s the Bayfield County sheriff’s officer who’s in charge of investigating both Mariah’s disappearance and Carrie’s death. I understand that the
two girls were friends and that they both disappeared at the same time.”

She shut down, went cold. “You’re right. You should be talking to Mr. Verga.”

“And I know. You’re not him. But would you deliver my card?”

She considered him and the card and finally gave a slight nod. “Is that all?”

“Yes, thank you.” He started to turn away but swung back. “One more thing, Bibi. Does it hurt much?”

“Does what hurt much?”

“That big chunk of ice up your ass.”

As he headed back to the pickup, Cork heard the door slam behind him.

“Anything?” English asked when Cork got in.

He shook his head. “And they say the glaciers are melting.”

Before they pulled away, Jenny gave a final look at the home that Carrie Verga had apparently run from. “I can understand why Mariah would want to get away from her life on the rez, but why would a girl who had all this turn her back on it?”

“And the questions continue to mount,” her father replied.

• • •

They found Port Superior Marina south of Bayfield, asked about Verga, and were directed to an empty slip. Cork tried the man’s cell phone again. Still no answer.

“What now?” Jenny asked.

Cork looked at English. “You said you know Mariah’s basketball coach.”

“Her name. I don’t know where she lives.”

Cork said, “If Bayfield’s anything like Aurora, somebody here does.”

And that proved to be true. They found Leslie Littlejohn in the swimming pool at the Bayfield Area Recreation Center, leading a dozen senior women in water aerobics. Although it was ungodly humid in the pool area, they stood waiting fifteen minutes until
the session ended. When Littlejohn climbed from the water, they introduced themselves.

She wore a black bathing suit, was tall and slender, and kept her dark hair short. Her eyes were a startling auburn. She appeared to Cork to be in her late twenties or early thirties. And clearly, there was Native blood in her.

Cork explained their business, that Mariah’s family had asked them to look into her disappearance.

“Kind of late for that, isn’t it?” Littlejohn said.

“What do you mean?”

She grabbed a white towel from a webbed chair at poolside and began to dry off. “Somebody should have been looking for that girl a year ago.”

“Maybe so,” Cork said. “But we’re here now and doing our best. Mariah apparently talked about you a good deal. We’re wondering if there’s anything you can tell us about her that might help.”

“Why don’t we go to the lounge and sit down?” Littlejohn suggested.

They followed her to a bright little room with a couple of tables and chairs and a narrow view of one of the streets of Bayfield that ran toward the commercial fishing docks on the lake.

“Nobody pays teachers a living wage these days,” Littlejohn said, sweeping her hand the length of her suit. “I supplement my income by working at the rec center, full-time in the summer, part-time the rest of the year. Fortunately, I love what I do.”

Cork said, “What can you tell us about Mariah?”

“A great kid. Despite everything.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“She’s Bad Bluff Chippewa. Strike one. She attended a school that, despite the fact that eighty-five percent of the students are Native, I’m one of only two Indian teachers. There are significant challenges in that environment, for staff and kids alike. Expectations, resources, prejudices, you name it, it’s a challenge.”

“Are you Bad Bluff?” Cork asked.

She shook her head. “Ho-Chunk from Baraboo.” She ran her fingers through her hair, which was still wet and reminded Cork of sleek otter’s fur. “The message Native kids here get too often is that their situation is hopeless. They have no future, no reason to strive, to learn, to try to make a difference. They frequently come from homes where no one values education, probably because the parents grew up hearing the same messages their children still hear today, or worse.”

“What about Mariah?”

Littlejohn smiled in a sad way. “She had such potential. You’ve been to her home?”

“Yeah.”

“A lot to overcome, but I really believed she had it in her. You should have seen her on the basketball court. A natural. Where did that come from? Who knows? But it was there. The ability, the passion. At least for a while. Then something happened. She just . . . changed.”

“What? Overnight?”

“Not quite. I saw it first in her play on court toward the end of the season. She lost something. That’s how it felt. A part of her just fell away. She didn’t bring the drive she had before, the passion. Distracted, I thought at first. You know, that age, boys and all. But there was more to it, I’m sure. She missed her last two games. Just didn’t show. And the next thing I heard, she’d run away.”

“Did she talk to you about what might be going on?”

“Believe me, I asked her. She said nothing was going on. Said she just wasn’t interested in playing basketball anymore. This from a kid who used to show up early to practice and stay a long time after to shoot hoops. You don’t have that kind of passion and then just lose it like you might your cell phone.”

“There was a change on her Facebook page,” Jenny said. “Not long before she disappeared, she posted an entirely different kind of picture than she’d had up before. A disturbing picture for a thirteen-year-old kid.”

“Yeah, I saw that. And when I cleaned out her basketball locker
after she stopped showing up, I found some pretty disturbing items of clothing. Thong underwear, for one thing. And a bustier. They weren’t cheaply made garments.”

“Did you ask her about them?” Jenny said.

“Of course. She said no big deal. A lot of girls wore them.”

“Is that true?”

“A lot of girls wear underthings they think are sexy, but usually not at thirteen and usually not expensive items. Not like what I found in Mariah’s locker.”

“What did you think?”

“Honestly? I thought she was involved in something way beyond what a thirteen-year-old kid should be involved in.”

“What did you do?”

“I talked to our school social worker. She talked to Mariah and to Mariah’s mother. Nothing came of it. And then Mariah was gone.”

Cork asked, “Did you know Carrie Verga?”

“Yes. She played basketball, too. She was good, athletic. But nobody on the team played like Mariah.”

“What did you think of Carrie?”

“A beautiful girl. No trouble. She was Bad Bluff, like Mariah, but her family has money. Her mother was killed in a boating accident a couple of years ago. Carrie was a real quiet girl, and I always wondered if that tragedy might have had something to do with it. And then Carrie runs away and ends up drowning.” She shook her head as if the situation was inexplicable to her.

“The two girls disappeared at the same time. Folks seem to think they ran away together. What do you think?”

“They were pretty tight. So, yeah, I’d say it’s a real possibility.” Her face darkened, and she seemed to be looking inside herself for an answer to a question she had voiced. “You know, I honestly believed they’d come back. I’ve seen kids run off before, and almost always they come back. And now that Carrie’s dead, I’ve got to say, I’m really scared for Mariah.”

“Was there anyone else that Mariah and Carrie hung out with
who might be able help us? Another teacher, another teammate? The school social worker?”

“You’ll have trouble talking to Liz. That’s our social worker. She spends her summers working for some kind of camp for troubled kids out in Wyoming. I can’t recall where. But there was a girl Mariah mentioned a lot, another girl from the rez, someone I didn’t know, someone older. I’ve only been teaching a couple of years, and this girl dropped out of school before I arrived. Went off and became a model or something. Her name was Raven”—she thought a moment—“Raven something. I can’t remember exactly. Mariah was all gaga because she had great clothes and a nice car. It’s the kind of thing that impresses kids.”

Cork took out his notepad and pen and wrote
Raven Something
. He said, “It seems strange that Carrie Verga would be gone for a whole year, and then suddenly wash ashore so near to Bayfield. We spoke with the investigator in charge of the case. He told us he thought Carrie might have been involved in prostitution and had been hiding out here somewhere. Do you think that’s possible?”

“I suppose anything’s possible. But hiding out here?” Littlejohn shook her head. “Not unless she’d been locked up in an attic somewhere.” It didn’t sound like a joke.

“Did the investigator or anyone else in law enforcement talk to you?”

“No. No one’s talked to me officially. This is the first, if this is really official.”

“I used to be the sheriff of Tamarack County, Minnesota. I’ve retired, and this is what I do now. I can’t arrest anyone, but I can still track them down.”

She opened her hands in a show of complete cooperation. “Anything you think might help you find Mariah, you just ask.”

Cork took a business card from his wallet and handed it to the woman. “I think we’re okay for now, but if you remember anything that might be helpful, would you give me a call?”

“Sure.” She read the information on the card; then her atten
tion swung suddenly to Daniel English, and she offered him an engaging smile. “You look awfully familiar. Do I know you?”

English said, “We never actually met before this.”

Littlejohn’s startling auburn eyes spent a moment assessing Jenny, and Cork had the sense that she was trying to get the lay of the land and if there was anything between his daughter and the game warden.

“Are you from around here?” she asked English, with more than casual interest.

“Hayward. Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe.”

“Ah. I’ll bet you came to one of Mariah’s basketball games when we played down there, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Odd that I didn’t notice you then.” She smiled and said, “Well,
boozhoo
.”