Nevada Barr - A Superior Death

Anna had just about mustered up the energy to start behaving like an adult, when Christina returned.

“Anybody want to come eat supper by my fire?” she invited.

Anna’s first uncharitable thought was that the fire had been left unattended and she cursed herself for leaving her citation book back on Amygdaloid.

“Two very nice people said we could share.”

Anna’s anger dissolved. Sharing: the obvious solution and one that never would have occurred to her in a thousand years. Following Chris and Alison, she carried the picnic cooler up the trail. The sun was shining again; the clouds she and Ally had been fomenting cleared in an instant. The air smelled of pine and wild lily of the valley, marsh marigolds put their golden heads together along the boardwalk over the swampy areas. Goldthread nodded wisely in the woods.

“It’s like Disneyland,” Ally reported, running ahead.

Alison had never been to Disneyland but Anna knew exactly what she meant. In June, Isle Royale was very like the artist’s conceptions of the forest where Bambi and Snow White spent the bulk of their days. Now and then mosquitoes whined menacingly from the shadows, but their bloodthirsty hum only served to add the spice of reality.

Lugging the cooler, Anna came last into the clearing. From a low branch of a spruce tree two beady black eyes met hers. Oscar the bear was on watch, protecting Birch Island camp. Ally stood on a stump, a black cloak held vampirelike across the lower half of her face. Their hosts were Tinker and Damien.

“How did you guys get here?” Anna asked in surprise. “There’s no boat.”

“Pizza Dave brought us over in the Loon and dropped us off,” Tinker told her. “He was on his way to Thunder Bay on a pizza run.”

Taking an NPS boat forty miles across open water to get pizza: it was a firing offense. Anna liked Dave. She hoped she wouldn’t be the one to catch him. “I see Oscar’s on duty,” she said.

“He’s promised not to offer Ally cigars,” Tinker assured her. Anna eyed the woman narrowly but couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.

Before the first marshmallow had melted off the stick and fallen into the ashes, Anna was glad the Fates had seen fit to put them in the way of the Coggins-Clarkes. Ally was completely taken with Damien. For at least a week Christina would be haunted by “Damien said…” and “Damien thinks…”

Tinker showed Anna a dead bat she’d found. Anna had heard the faint whistling of bats’ wings as they cut through the air over the dock at night, but she’d never seen more of them than shadows fleeting over the water. Even Christina was drawn in by Tinker’s knowledge and enthusiasm.

Tinker handled the little animal as if it still lived. Anna thought the creature would get a respectful interment for its unwitting service-probably with an appropriate ritual and a tiny headstone-but after Tinker had studied it she left it high in the crotch of a tree for the scavengers.

For some reason-maybe the eccentric clothes or the childlike love of ritual magic-Anna consistently underestimated the Coggins-Clarkes. There was nothing wrong with their minds.

“That reminds me,” Anna said, speaking to her own thoughts. “Did anyone ever tell you what happened to Donna Butkus?”

“No,” Damien replied and the inflection implied that no one needed to. He and Ally shared a bench at the picnic table. They’d shoved aside all the condiments, and played some gambling game involving pebbles and elbows of dried macaroni. Oscar looked on.

“The Windigo,” Damien intoned.

Mentally, Anna rolled her eyes.

“What’s a Windigo?” Ally demanded.

“Shall I tell you a story?” Damien asked the child.

“A scary one,” Ally insisted.

“I’ll tell the scariest kind of all-the true kind,” he promised.

“I don’t know…” Christina began.

“Please,” Ally begged.

Damien waited. Chris sighed. “The Windigo,” Damien began. With proper flourishes and a creditable French accent, he told Algernon Blackwood’s classic tale of the Windigo, the cannibal spirit who stalked the north woods snatching up unwary travelers and flying them through the air at such incredible speeds their feet were burned away to stumps and their cries echoed through the clear cold skies.

“That was a long time ago,” Damien finished. “Things have changed. There are no more voyageurs, hardly any Indians. But the Windigo is still here, still all around us. Anywhere men hunger for what they cannot have, anywhere they will devour others to get their bellies filled with pride or money or land or power, that’s where the Windigo waits.”

Chris applauded. Tinker beamed: she’d heard the story before. Damien told it at evening programs. Ally was transfixed.

Alison’s eyes were a little too round for Anna’s comfort. It wasn’t a story for a five-year-old. “Does anybody want to know what really happened to Donna Butkus or not?” she asked testily.

“What happened, Damien?” Ally asked to hear him talk. The name Donna Butkus would mean nothing to her.

“She was eaten by her husband, Scotty,” Damien explained. “With pickle relish.”

Ally squealed with delight. “Was Scotty a Windigo?”

“Yes.”

Christina said: “Oh for heaven’s sake!”

Tinker crumbled chocolate into a split banana.

Oscar was unmoved.

“I did talk with Scotty,” Anna pushed on doggedly, “the morning after the reception for Denny. Donna’s sister, Roberta, ruptured a disk. Scotty told me Donna went to Houghton to give her a hand.”

“Scotty said .” Damien pursed his lips. Obviously that carried no weight with him. “And the case of relish?”

“Didn’t ask,” Anna admitted.

“Ah.”

“Roberta Ingles?” Christina sounded mildly alarmed.

“I don’t know her last name,” Anna replied. “Donna goes by Butkus. God knows why. But Scotty said ‘her sister, Roberta.’ ”

“When did this happen-the disk?” The concern was still on Christina’s face.

“Why?” Anna asked. It all seemed rather far from Chris for her to take such a personal interest.

“Because I went bicycling with Bertie Sunday. She was fine then.”

“Bertie is Roberta, Donna’s sister?”

“Yes. She told me to say hi if I saw Donna.”

“Oh Jesus,” Anna breathed. “And Scotty’s left the island.”

“What is it, Anna?” Chris touched her arm.

“Denny and Donna. Donna disappears. Scotty lies. Castle dies. Scotty leaves the island. Maybe the Houghton police had better start looking for a second body.”

“They won’t find it,” Damien said and he tapped the Durkee relish jar significantly.

“And Scotty never left the island,” Tinker added.

“Did you…” Anna hesitated to use words like “spy” or “snoop.” “…follow up on Donna’s disappearance?”

“Some. Scotty’s been kind of short with us ever since he ate Donna.”

“Sort of spiritual indigestion?” Anna offered. Everyone, including Ally, gave her stern matronly looks. “Sorry. Go on.”

“He’d been kind of nasty to Damien a time or two. But when we heard he’d gone to Houghton for a few days, we thought it would be safe to go through his garbage for recyclables.”

“You know it’s illegal?” Anna asked.

“It’s a greater crime to let resources and energy go to waste,” Damien said earnestly and Anna caught another glimpse of the boyish intensity usually hidden behind his cloak of mystery.

“Okay. So you went through his trash and…”

“For recyclables,” Christina reiterated.

“For recyclables. And…”

“We found a flier that had come in on Saturday’s Ranger Three -we know because everybody got one that day. There was a TV dinner, the kind that come with their own plastic plate and you throw the whole thing out. The leftovers were still fresh. Three Jack Daniel’s bottles and a couple of six-packs of Mickey’s Big Mouths. Dave picks up the garbage on Wednesdays and Saturdays. If Scotty’d gone to Houghton Thursday morning like he said he was going to, his trash would’ve been empty.”