Windigo Island (5 page)

Chapter 9

B
ayfield sat on hills on the lee side of the peninsula, with a view looking east toward Madeline Island and south across Chequamegon Bay. It was a small town full of lovely old buildings that in winter held a population of only a few hundred permanent residents. But at the height of the summer season, the streets were choked with tourist traffic. The day had turned hot. When Cork and Jenny and English left the rec center, they walked into a world that wore shorts and tank tops and cheesy T-shirts and shady hats and sunglasses. It was well past noon, and they were hungry. They found a cozy little place called Maggie’s but had to wait for a table. When they were finally seated, Jenny stared at her menu with a troubled look on her face.

“Don’t see anything you like?” Cork asked.

“I see a lot I don’t like,” she replied.

“You’re not talking about the food, I suspect.”

“I’m talking about Mariah. Who is she?” She gave English a penetrating stare.

English responded with a puzzled look, as if the question didn’t seem to make sense to him. “My cousin.”

“No. I mean, who is she? Nobody seems to know, really. All we hear is that she’s an Indian girl who had potential. Then she changed. How does that make her any different from any other thirteen-year-old girl? We all change when we become teenagers, change dramatically.”

“We don’t all run away,” English said.

Jenny ignored him. “I’m wondering what she dreamed, what she feared, what she loved, what she read, what made her laugh. I’m wondering who she is—here.” She made a fist and thumped her breast above her heart. “I’m wondering what the answer to Henry’s question is.”

“Henry’s question?”

“What’s Mariah’s most precious possession?”

“The key to why she ran away?” English asked.

“I don’t know. But I still want the answer.”

Cork said quietly, “The deeper you go, the more personal it becomes, Jenny. Henry gave me a fine piece of advice once. He told me that anger blinds. That to hunt, you need a clear eye, and for that you need a clear mind.”

“I’m not angry.”

“Not yet maybe. But if you allow this to become deeply personal, you will be. And in the end, you won’t only be blind, you’ll be hurt.”

“So your answer is not to care.”

“My answer is to keep a clear mind and a clear eye. It seems to me the best way to help Mariah, if she can be helped.”

“And I think you ought to be able to care, care deeply, about someone, and still think clearly.”

“All right,” he said.

“All right?” She seemed surprised that he’d given in so easily.

“So how do we do this?” Cork said. “How do we find out who Mariah is? How do we find out the answer to Henry’s question? Because it was obvious that her mother didn’t have a clue.” He glanced at English. “Any idea?”

English shook his head. “The Arceneauxs are blood relatives, but I know my next-door neighbors better. Between the government boarding schools and all the relocation policies, Indian families have been torn apart. With us there’s more to it than that. See, my great-grandmother married a good man, Lac Courte Oreilles Anishinaabe. Veteran of World War One and proud of it. Owned a gas station. Great mechanic. Still alive when I was born.
I remember him fondly. My great-grandmother’s sister, things were different for her. Married a Bad Bluff Shinnob, a fisherman. What they called a herring choker. Knew how to handle a herring net, but couldn’t handle the booze. Been a battle for them up here. Don’t get me wrong. We’ve had our struggles, too. Wouldn’t be an Indian’s life if things came easy. But we’ve always been strong on family where I live. The battles we’ve fought have been against governments, bureaucracies, stupid prejudices, not against each other. We’re some of the lucky ones. We know that. I think the Arceneaux bunch know it, too, and there’s always been a little bad blood there. So Mariah?” He shrugged, clueless.

Jenny said, “Girls sometimes keep diaries or journals.” She thought a moment and then said with a sudden epiphany, “Or they post their lives on Facebook.”

“But don’t you need to friend her or something to see her Facebook page?” Cork said.

“I’m one of her friends,” English said.

Jenny said, “I thought you didn’t keep track of the Arceneaux branch of the family.”

“Don’t really follow anyone on Facebook, but I do have a page. Mariah shot me a friend request a couple of years ago. I accepted.”

“Let’s take a look at Mariah’s Facebook page.” Jenny pulled her smart phone from her purse. “Damn it. Battery’s dead.”

“There’s probably a computer at the public library,” English suggested.

“Let’s go see.” Jenny got up.

“You haven’t eaten,” Cork said. “You need to eat. Keeps the mind clear.”

Jenny gave a little growl of grudging consent and sat back down.

They all ordered fish sandwiches. Cork requested the Lake Superior whitefish. English and Jenny both had the lake trout. Despite the crowd in the little restaurant, the food came quickly.

Between bites, English said, “So what’s the trained mind of a private investigator think at this point?”

Cork wiped his mouth with a napkin. “It’s clear that something was going on with Mariah that was way beyond what a kid ought to be dealing with.”

“Prostitution, you think?”

“Despite Hammer’s and Littlejohn’s concern, I think it would be hard to engage in outright prostitution in a town this size without a lot of people knowing about it. All we’ve heard is conjecture. So I’m not ready to jump on that bandwagon yet. But there was clearly something disturbing going on. Maybe it involved Carrie Verga, too. I’d love to get hold of Demetrius Verga, but at the moment that’s up to him. I’d also like to talk to Puck Arceneaux, but that’ll have to wait until his fishing boat docks.”

English said, “What about the other girl Leslie mentioned? The older one who’d dropped out? Raven something.”

“Worth a try, but we’ll have to figure out who to ask. Someone on the rez must know her.”

Cork’s cell phone vibrated. He checked the number on the display. “Demetrius Verga. Finally.” He stood up. “I’m going to take this outside.”

On his way into the sunlight in front of Maggie’s, Cork answered the call with “This is O’Connor.”

“Yeah, Demetrius Verga here. You called.”

Although Cork had never seen Verga, the voice told him this was a big man. Not necessarily in his size but certainly in his own thinking. There was also something foreign in the accent, a little hint of the Mediterranean.

“I’ve been asked by the family of Mariah Arceneaux to look into her disappearance. I’m wondering if I could talk with you.”

“I don’t know what help I could be.”

“I’d still like to talk. I know this must be a difficult time, so soon after your daughter’s death, but it’s important, Mr. Verga.”

From the other end of the connection came only the sound of wind, and Cork wasn’t sure if it was from a breeze running past a man standing at the wheel of his sailboat or was simple static across air into which no one spoke.

Verga’s voice finally returned. “I’m on the lake right now. I’ll probably come back in around four. You want, I’ll meet you at Port Superior Marina. Know where that is?”

“I do,” Cork said. “If your plans change, I’d appreciate a call.”

“Good-bye, Mr. O’Connor,” Verga said without making any promises.

Back at the table, Jenny and English had finished their food. Jenny said, “Well?”

“He’ll talk to me when he comes in from sailing. That’ll be around four down at the Port Superior Marina.”

Jenny looked at her watch. “A lot to do this afternoon. We should get going.”

Cork’s sandwich was only half eaten. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his car keys. “Why don’t you go get the Explorer and bring it back to me while I finish eating? Then you and Daniel go do your research at the library.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to make a call on the Bad Bluff police, see if they can shed some light on any of this.”

“Okay,” Jenny said, clearly eager to be off.

Daniel English reached toward the wallet in his back pocket, but Cork stopped him. “Lunch is on me.”

English said,
“Migwech,”
and followed Jenny out the door.

Cork finished his sandwich slowly, appreciating the quiet time to himself to think. Jenny was right. All they had at the moment was a fairly generic picture of Mariah Arceneaux. But for him, that was enough. What happened to her, whatever it was, didn’t necessarily depend on who she was at heart. The world often did things to people that they never saw coming and that they would never have called down on themselves. Mariah may have opened a door on her own, but what came through that door might well have been a monster she could never have imagined.

About Carrie Verga, he knew next to nothing, but he couldn’t help believing that the fates of the two girls were entwined. It seemed not at all coincidental that they’d been friends and then
had disappeared at the same time. Runaways? But for the fact of Carrie Verga’s body washing up onshore so near to Bayfield, he would have said yes. Her death, however, and all the uncertainty of how she came to be in the lake cast a lethal shadow over every question, every consideration.

He scanned the patrons of Maggie’s, enjoying their lunches and their conversations and their summer day in this little resort community. They all looked typical and normal. And that was, Cork knew, the advantage of real evil. On the surface, it often looked so ordinary. It was only when you’d finally cut your way to the heart of the darkness that you saw the ugly thing the ordinary smile masked.

Chapter 10

A
t a convenience store in Bad Bluff, Cork was directed to the tribal police department, which shared space on the main highway with the tribal fire department. There was a single cruiser parked in the lot. The place seemed deserted at first, but as soon as Cork entered, a uniformed officer stepped from a doorway along one wall. Behind him was a large garage area, and Cork could see the cab of a fire engine. The officer was tall, with brown hair and green eyes, and if he was Indian, not much of that blood showed in his features. The name badge above the right breast pocket of his uniform read
CAPT. BIGBOY
.

“Afternoon, Captain,” Cork said.

“Afternoon.” The officer came forward, using a rag to wipe what looked like engine grease from his hands. “What can I do for you?”

“My name’s Cork O’Connor.” He held out his business card. The officer took it, read it, seemed just as underwhelmed as most cops were in the presence of a private investigator. “I’ve been asked by the family of Mariah Arceneaux to look into her disappearance.”

“That was a year ago.” Bigboy handed the card back. There was a greasy, black thumbprint across most of Cork’s name. “The trail on Mariah’s pretty cold.”

“With the discovery of Carrie Verga’s body, the family’s quite concerned.”

“They shoulda been concerned a year ago.”

“They weren’t?”

“First I heard of it was when the Bayfield County sheriff’s investigator paid me a call. He was looking into the disappearance of Carrie Verga. Told me she’d vanished along with the Arceneaux girl.”

“The Arceneaux family didn’t report her gone?”

“Nope. After I spoke with the sheriff’s investigator, I checked around and found out Mariah had been talking about quitting the rez for a while. Pretty clear what we were dealing with. Kids here run away all the time. They wouldn’t be Indian if they didn’t.” He smiled as if it were a small joke. Very small. “The rez isn’t a place many kids want to spend their lives.”

“Ambition drives them away?”

“That. A bad home life. Money. Sometimes just for kicks they run off. So I figured it was one of those. But I also figured Mariah’d come back. More often than not they do.”

“Now that Carrie Verga’s body has washed up, any other ideas?”

“She’s not the first unusual thing to wash up on that island. We’ve seen boat wreckage wash ashore there. Found an arm a few years back, a human arm. Never figured out where it came from. If you’re inclined to believe old stories, that island’s kind of a magnet for evil.”

“You believe that?”

“What I know is that there are strong currents that run between these islands, and Windigo Island is smack in the middle of one. Makes perfect sense things are going to wash up there.”

“From where? Where would a body have to go into the lake to end up here?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Did you investigate at all?”

He shook his head. “Bayfield sheriff’s jurisdiction.” He said it as if he were speaking about some kind of line demarcated by razor wire. Cork figured relations between the two jurisdictions weren’t as copacetic as Joe Hammer had painted them. Which was often
the case in those instances where reservation law enforcement interacted with other jurisdictions whose officers were predominantly white. “Any other island, it would have been a federal problem. National lakeshore and all. But Windigo Island is part of the rez. Major crimes on the rez get investigated by the Bayfield County sheriff. So I’ve stayed out of it.”

“Not even a little something unofficial?”

“I’ve asked around. Haven’t come up with anything helpful. And I don’t think it’s because folks on the rez have something to hide. I really think they’re in the dark, too. Carrie Verga’s body out there on Windigo Island? That’s the biggest mystery we’ve had here in a good long while.”

“Joe Hammer down at the Bayfield County Sheriff’s Office thinks Carrie Verga might have been drawn into trafficking. If that’s true, do you think Mariah might have been involved as well?”

The captain’s dark eyes narrowed in deep offense. “You’re talking child prostitution. I don’t know about Carrie Verga. She lived in Bayfield, and I can’t say one way or the other about what goes on there. But we don’t have that kind of problem on the Bad Bluff Reservation.”

“You’d know about it if you did?”

“This is a small community. It’s not hard to know what goes on and what doesn’t. We’ve got our share of problems, sure, but I’m here to tell you child prostitution ain’t on the list.”

Cork was tempted to point out that Bigboy didn’t know Mariah Arceneaux had disappeared until the Bayfield County sheriff’s investigator told him. Instead he said, “The kids who found Carrie Verga’s body. They were Bad Bluff kids, right?”

“That’s right. Three boys. Took off to Windigo Island in the dead of night. Nothing worse in mind than mischief, but they ended up getting a lot more than they bargained for. The kid who actually found her body got the wits scared out of him. He swears he heard a monster call his name.”

“Monster?”

“The island’s called Windigo Island.” Again, the small-joke grin.

“He heard a windigo?”

“Not only that, he believes he saw Michi Peshu swim up and crawl onto the rocks.”

“No wonder he was scared out of his wits.”

“Pretty clear that what he saw was the body of Carrie Verga washing up in those waves, which were big at that point. The two boys who made it off the island were lucky to get back safe.”

“And the other boy?”

“Broke his ankle, had to stay there. After we got the call, we went out in our boat to get him. That’s when we found the girl’s body.”

“What about a windigo calling his name?”

Bigboy shrugged. “The wind. His imagination. Like you said, scared out of his wits.”

“Mind if I talk to this boy?”

“What for?”

“Whenever possible, I like to get things from the horse’s mouth. You understand.”

Bigboy thought it over a couple of moments and finally responded with a nod. “I’ll give you his folks’ address, and then I’ll give them a call. Let ’em know you’re coming.”

“Appreciate it, Captain. One other question. You know a girl named Raven? A little older than Mariah Arceneaux?”

“That would be Raven Duvall. Don’t see her much anymore. Last I heard, she’d gone to live with some relative down south. Duluth or the Twin Cities, maybe. Got herself a modeling job, I guess. Doing well, seems like. Why?”

“I heard she might have been a friend of both Carrie and Mariah.”

“On the rez, all the kids know each other. They’re friends or they’re relatives. Like I said, small, close-knit community here.”

“Are you Bad Bluff?” Cork asked.

“On my father’s side. Bad Bluff Ojibwe and German. On my mother’s side, Winnebago and Irish.”

“Lived here long?”

“Most of my life.”

“Like it?”

“It’s home,” Bigboy said, as if that was the obvious answer to a stupid question.

• • •

Cork found the home of Kyle Buffalo off Raspberry Road just outside Bad Bluff. It was a nicely kept two-story house, wood siding newly painted pale green. The mowed lawn held a swing set instead of a rusting, wheelless vehicle. It stood against a backdrop of poplars, and not far beyond that, though out of sight, lay Kitchigami. When he pulled into the drive, Cork spotted a man on a stepladder sliding a brush across the trim above the front door. Cork parked behind a Ford Bronco, and the man climbed down to greet him.

“Boozhoo,”
the man said. “You must be the private investigator Tom Bigboy called about.”

“Cork O’Connor.”

“Brian Buffalo.” He offered Cork a paint-spattered hand. As they shook, he apologized. “Sorry. I teach down at Northland College in Ashland. Native studies. But summers I earn a little extra money painting houses. This year I’m doing my own as well.”

“I appreciate your time.”

“Would you like to come inside?”

“I’d really like to speak with your son.”

“I’ll get him in a minute. I think we ought to talk first.”

“Of course,” Cork said.

Inside he found a house that reminded him in some ways of his own in Aurora. The disarray was comfortable. Buffalo led him to the kitchen and indicated a chair at the dinette there.

“Can I get you something to drink? My wife makes a mean sun tea.”

“Sounds good,” Cork said.

After he’d poured them both glasses and sat down, Buffalo said, “Tom told me you’re looking into what happened to Carrie Verga.”

“Actually, I’m trying to find Mariah Arceneaux.”

“Ah,” he said, as if that was adequate answer for many questions.

“Did you know the girls?”

“Sure. Everybody knows everybody here.”

“What did you think when they disappeared?”

“They didn’t just disappear, Mr. O’Connor. They ran away.”

“Any idea where?”

“Duluth is usually where our kids go when they light out. It’s the closest big city and has a strong Native presence.”

“Kids who run away generally come back, and they come back alive. But Carrie’s dead and Mariah’s still missing. Does that change your thinking?”

“Of course it does. I know Louise is worried, and she has a right to be.”

“There’s been some speculation that Carrie Verga may have been lured into sex trafficking. Would that surprise you?”

Buffalo may have been a college instructor, but he was also Shinnob. His face gave away nothing. “Carrie was a very pretty girl. But she was just a kid.”

“A kid who, when she washed ashore up here, may have been hooked on heroin and was brutalized before she died.”

Cork had the feeling that Buffalo wanted to respond to this, but instead he said, “Why exactly do you want to talk to Kyle?”

“He found Carrie’s body.”

“That was totally accidental. And I don’t see how anything he might tell you could help you find Mariah.”

“I won’t know that either until I’ve talked to him.”

Buffalo said carefully and clearly, “I want you to stay away from any suggestion of prostitution and drugs where Carrie and Mariah are concerned.”

“Fair enough. I just want to hear your son’s story.”

Buffalo stood up. “I’ll get Kyle. He’s in the den, reading.”

“That’s pretty admirable.”

“Not really. Because of that outing to Windigo Island, he’s lost all his electronic access. No television, video games, cell phone for a month. He’s already gone through
The Count of Monte Cristo.
He’s working on
The Three Musketeers
now. In a way, it’s been a blessing in disguise for him. He’s realized he likes reading. You’ll remember your promise?”

“Yes.”

A minute or two later, Buffalo returned with his son. Kyle was on crutches, his right foot strapped into a big black walking boot. He was a tall kid, good-looking, and there was a little fire in his eyes. Whether it was a flame of resistance because of Cork’s presence, or had to do with the constriction of his freedom because of his current situation, or was simply the smoldering defiance of a thirteen-year-old boy, Cork couldn’t have said. But he thought to himself that this was a kid with heart, and he liked him immediately.

“This is Mr. O’Connor,” Buffalo said.

“Boozhoo. Anish na?”
Cork said.

The kid replied politely,
“Anin,”
and they shook hands.

Kyle took a chair at the table with the men. “Dad said you wanted to know about Windigo Island.”

“You took a big chance going out there at that time of night. Lori must be pretty special.”

“You know about Lori?”

“I think everyone in Bad Bluff knows about Lori now. Has she seen what you spray-painted on that rock?”

“I don’t know. Since I’ve been stuck here I haven’t talked to her.” He gave his father an unhappy glance.

“Can you tell me exactly what happened out there, Kyle?”

The kid related a pretty good story, but he left out two important details.

When Kyle had finished, Cork said, “I’ve been told that you heard a windigo call your name.”

For a moment, the smoldering fire in the kid’s eyes seemed about to die, and what Cork saw there instead was fear.

“It was just the wind,” the kid said.

“Do you know what it means when a windigo calls your name?” Cork asked.

“Yeah, I know. But it was just the wind, like I said.”

Cork sipped his sun tea. “I heard a windigo call my name once.”

The kid studied him, gauging his seriousness.

“It was a long time ago. I knew what it meant, and I tried to tell myself it was just the wind. But a wise friend of mine, a Mide, told me that a man knows the difference between a windigo and the wind. What I heard, Kyle, wasn’t the wind. And yet I’m still here. So what I’ve come to believe is that there’s a way to defeat a windigo. Do you know what that is?”

The boy didn’t reply, but Cork knew he had his profound attention.

“Courage. The windigo can’t stand up against a strong heart. And do you know what I believe to be the most courageous thing a man can do? Be truthful. That takes real courage. Face the windigo with a true and courageous heart, and that monster, well, it just gives up and goes away.”

“All that’s just a story,” Kyle said.

“My story’s true. What about yours?”

The kid sat stone still, staring straight ahead, contemplating something only he could see. Cork wondered if he’d crossed a line in bringing up the windigo and if Brian Buffalo might be ready to pull the plug on the interview. But Buffalo said nothing.

“I did hear a windigo.” Kyle sounded relieved to confess it. Then he told Cork the second salient detail he’d left out of his story. “Not only that. I saw Michi Peshu. I swear I did.”

“I believe you,” Cork said.

He looked at Buffalo, wondering how the man would react. The father put his arm around his son and said, “I do, too.”

The kid’s face opened up, bright with hope. “Does that mean I can play video games again?”

“No,” his father said. “Going out there when you did was still a bad idea. Are we finished here, Mr. O’Connor?”

“I think so.”

“Kyle, go on back to your reading,” Buffalo said.