William Krueger - Vermilion Drift

“As long as no one touches Ophelia, I can handle whatever they decide about me.”

“Do one thing for me, Hattie, okay?”

“Anything.”

“Get her out of there.”

“The Northern Lights Center?”

“The old Parrant estate, yeah. It’s a sick place.”

She reached out and took his hands again and gave them an affectionate squeeze. “I don’t pretend to understand you, Corkie, but so long as you keep her out of this, I’ll do whatever you want.”

Marsha Dross was waiting for him in her office. “You look rested,” she said.

“You don’t look so bad yourself. I heard Broom talked to you, told you what happened to him down there in the Vermilion Drift when he was a kid.”

“Close the door,” she said. “Sit down.”

Outside a horn blared on the street and someone shouted. Dross got up and closed her window.

“A hard thing for him to tell, I imagine,” Cork said.

“But it explained how Ms. Stillday knew where to dump Lauren Cavanaugh’s body, which was something she was dead set against telling us herself.” She sat down again and leaned back, relaxed. “Once I heard Broom’s story, I understood. So long as he wanted it kept secret-and who could blame him for not wanting a thing like that known publicly-Hattie Stillday wasn’t going to say anything. I can appreciate that.”

Cork said, “I have a story you need to hear.”

“I’m all ears.”

He told what had come to him during the sweat. But with two exceptions. He left out Henry Meloux’s hand in the fate of Indigo Broom, and he didn’t mention Hattie Stillday at all. He saw no purpose in dragging his old friends into this business. When he was finished, Dross was quiet. She simply stared at him.

“You have any proof of this, Cork?”

“The bodies in that mine tunnel, aren’t they proof enough?”

“Christ, if I told this story to the media, do you have any idea how crazy they would make it sound?”

“A guaranteed made-for-television movie,” Cork said with a smile.

Dross got up from her desk and paced the room a few moments, finally ended up at the window she’d closed, and stood staring out. “A story remembered under the influence of a-forgive me, Cork-witch doctor. A story for which there is no proof.”

“The bodies,” Cork said.

“A bizarre mystery more than forty years old. Everyone associated with it dead. The media will keep poking, but I don’t see any purpose in feeding their curiosity.” She turned back to him. “I’m inclined to keep this to myself.”

“I was witness to a homicide.”

“A justifiable homicide,” she said. “If what you’ve told me is the truth.”

“There’s also the murder of Indigo Broom,” Cork said.

“Did you actually see what those men did to him?”

“No.”

“Then you can’t really say, can you?”

“I can’t, no.”

“We don’t have a body. No witnesses. All the principals are dead.” Dross came and stood over him. “We have Max Cavanaugh’s confession, so we know who killed his sister. Hattie Stillday’s part in it she’ll have to answer for, but I don’t think any judge or jury will go hard on her. As for the bodies placed there more than forty years ago, those are cold crimes. This department doesn’t have the time or the resources to pursue that investigation. The media already think we’re a hayseed operation. I can live with that. What I can’t live with is the uproar that would be caused by your story, a story conjured up during some hallucinogenic Ojibwe ritual, being made public.”

“Wait a minute, Marsha-”

“I’m not finished.” She leaned down to him, very near and in a way not at all friendly. “The Great North Mining Company has deeper pockets than this county. Hell, probably deeper than this whole state. What if they chose to sue you or me or Tamarack County for libeling the Cavanaugh name with accusations of serial killings and cannibalism?”

He started up, out of his seat. “The law-”

She pushed him back down. “Screw the law. Let’s talk justice. It seems to me that justice has already been served. Do you not agree?”

He sat, chewing on her question. Finally he said, “Yeah, I guess so.”

“All right, then.”

“It’s not that simple,” Cork cautioned. “You’re taking a big risk, Marsha.”

“There’s a lot I admire about you, Cork, but you always make things more complicated than they need to be. You keep your mouth shut and let me worry about this, okay?”

For a moment, Cork held to an unrelenting sense of responsibility.

“Okay?” Dross said, more forcefully.

Cork finally let go, and that release felt very good.

“Okay,” he said.

He still sometimes dreams his father’s death.

As Dr. Faith Gray continues to tell him, the mind is complicated, and the connections between conscious understanding and subconscious beliefs are difficult to unravel and take patience to reknit.

Nights, when he’s awakened by the nightmare, he often walks the quiet hallways of the house in which he has spent his life. It’s comfortable territory, and although the place has seemed dismally empty since Jo left him-or he abandoned her; it’s a connection whose understanding still eludes him and on which he’s still at work-he knows that, in truth, he’s surrounded by good spirit. It is as Meloux said: All things in Kitchimanidoo’s beautiful creation are connected. Cork and his children and Jo. And also those who have come before and those who will come after.

And so, on those difficult nights, he will sometimes speak to the spirit of his father. He thanks him for saving his mother’s life. He asks his forgiveness for not praying his young heart out when Liam O’Connor lay dying. And he assures him that he loves him.

But most important, he tells his father that he understands.