William Krueger - Vermilion Drift

The heat increased, and Meloux sprinkled more water on the stones and continued chanting.

After a while, Cork relaxed.

His weariness overwhelmed him.

And he began to dream.

What do you see, Corcoran O’Connor?

He was outside himself, seeing himself, and he said so.

How old are you?

Thirteen, he said.

Tell me what is happening .

And this is what he told.

He’s lying on the sofa in the living room of the house on Gooseberry Lane. He’d thought he would watch television to take his mind off the worry that never left him these days, but he hasn’t bothered to turn the set on. Instead, he stares up at the ceiling and wonders if his father will ever find his cousin Fawn or Naomi Stonedeer, and if he does, will they still be alive. They’ve been taken, abducted, everyone on the rez is sure, but no one has any idea who would do such a thing, and everyone is afraid. The Vanishings. That’s what everyone is calling what’s happened.

The house is quiet. He’s alone. His mother is on the rez with Grandma Dilsey and Fawn’s mother, Aunt Ellie. His father is… well, his father could be anywhere these days. He’s gone a lot. During the day, he leaves in uniform. But at night he leaves in different clothing, and often he doesn’t come back until early morning, when Cork is asleep. But his mother doesn’t sleep, and his father’s sneaking out is something that concerns her. Because of his mother’s worry and because of his father’s inability to find Fawn and Naomi and, most of all, because of his father’s silence and odd behavior that clearly hurt his mother, Cork is angry with him, angry all the time. They barely speak these days. Sometimes Cork sees in his father’s eyes something like regret. And sometimes he longs to tell his father that he’s tired of his own anger and wants to let go of the worry and that all he really wants is for everything to be as it was before the Vanishings began.

He hears the kitchen door open, and a moment later he hears his mother’s voice.

“Damn it, Liam, why won’t you listen?”

“I have listened. To you and all your relatives and every other Shinnob on the reservation. And I understand your concern, and I wish to God that you’d trust me and let me do my job.”

“You leave almost every night and are gone until almost dawn and you won’t tell me where you go.”

“That’s the trust part, Colleen.”

“Trust works both ways, Liam. Tell me what’s going on. Trust that I’ll believe you or forgive you or whatever it takes.”

At first, his father offers only silence. Then he says, “Where’s Cork?”

Cork lies still as death to be sure he can’t be seen.

“I don’t know,” his mother replies. “Out, I suppose.”

“Sit down.”

Cork hears chairs scraping linoleum.

“A while back, Cy Borkman and I responded to a call from Jacque’s in Yellow Lake.”

“That’s a vile place, Liam.”

“Places like that are the reason I have a job,” he says. “It was an altercation over a woman, the kind of woman who looked like she wasn’t particular who shared her bed. I broke up the fight, and ended up escorting the woman to her vehicle. She made me the kind of offer an experienced streetwalker in Chicago might have come up with.”

“Does that happen often?” his mother says, in a brittle tone.

“People try to negotiate with me using all kind of tender. This is about trust, remember?”

“I’m sorry. Go on.”

“She called herself Daphne, and there was something familiar about her. Then it came to me. Beneath all that makeup and the wig and the slutty clothing was Peter Cavanaugh’s wife.”

“Monique?”

“Yep. Monique Cavanaugh.”

“You must have been mistaken, Liam.”

“No mistake. It was her.”

“Did you let her know you recognized her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I was curious. What was a woman like her doing in a dive like Jacque’s dressed like a prostitute and behaving like one? Since then I’ve been watching the place to see if she might come again, and to see if I could figure what she was up to. She’s the wife of one of the richest men on the Iron Range, and I knew I needed to be careful in how I went about things. Last night, I saw her again. She was made up like Daphne, and she wasn’t alone. She came with someone familiar to us both.”

“Who?”

“Indigo Broom.”

“Mr. Windigo? God, just thinking about him gives me the creeps.”

“It gets creepier. I sit in my car in the parking lot most of the night waiting for them to come out. Finally Daphne does, but she’s not with Broom. She’s got a biker on her arm, some big, hairy ape of a guy who gets on his motorcycle and she gets on behind him. Before they take off, Broom comes out, gets in his truck, and when they leave, he follows them. I follow Broom. We end up at the North Pine Motor Court over on Long Lake. The biker and Daphne check in and take a room. Broom parks in the motor court lot, turns off his truck, sits. I park on the road and wait until almost dawn, then Daphne comes out. She gets into Broom’s truck and leaves with him. I pull out my badge and buckle on my gun belt and knock on the door of the room she left. Nobody answers. I knock again, then try the knob. Door’s unlocked. I go in. The biker’s on the bed, naked, tied up with a woman’s nylons and with a woman’s panties stuffed in his mouth and looking like he’s been attacked by a tiger, long bloody scratches everywhere. Bruises, too. I pull out the gag and cut the nylons, toss the guy his clothes, ask him what happened. ‘Nothing,’ he says. The badge gets me nowhere. I threaten to haul him in. He calls my bluff. The kind of guy who’s dealt with uniforms a lot and doesn’t scare. I tell him to get dressed, and I go to the motor court office, get us both some coffee, bring it back. He says he’ll talk but off the record. There’s something he wouldn’t mind getting off his chest, but not to a lawman. So I say, ‘Off the record.’ He tells me that at one point when she’s got him tied up, she pulls a knife from her purse, a switchblade, and says she’s going to cut his heart out and eat it. He laughs, but then she puts the blade to his chest, and for a moment he thinks she’s really going to do it. So I ask him, was it worth it? He says, ‘Mister, even though I thought for a minute I might die, the way she made me feel I almost didn’t care.’”

In the kitchen, it’s quiet for a long time.

Then his father says, “I look at Indigo Broom and Monique Cavanaugh, who, as nearly as I can tell, are involved in some brutal and bizarre sexual behavior. I look at the Vanishings, and I get the feel of something brutal and bizarre there. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“That they took Naomi and Fawn?”

“I can’t say that. Not even unofficially. But there are connections. Broom knows the rez, knows the vulnerable girls, can move about without a lot of notice.”

“And he takes Fawn and Naomi and then what, Liam?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, God, I hate to think.”

Cork hears a kitchen chair slide back and hears his father pacing.

“Liam, how do we find out?” There is a different tone to her voice. Solid. Resolved.

“If I pull him in and interrogate him, I might lose the only advantage I have, which is that he doesn’t know I’m looking his way.”

“What about her?”

“Right. I haul in the wife of Peter Cavanaugh and interrogate her regarding the missing girls and mention the fact that she loves to dress like a whore and have kinky, dangerous sex with hairy bikers. That’ll go over real big with my constituency. Hell, she wouldn’t say a word to me without a lawyer there, anyway. And if I start asking her questions, I lose that same advantage I have with Broom, which is that she doesn’t know I’m watching her.”