William Krueger - Boundary waters

“I don’t know where the woman is,” Stormy said.

“Then how do you explain this?” Harris took from Sloane another plastic evidence bag. Inside was a brown envelope, approximately nine by twelve inches. Harris slipped black leather gloves on his hands, carefully took the envelope from the bag, and held it delicately by one corner as he removed the contents-a stack of hundred-dollar bills and a piece of plain typing paper. “Care to read what the note says? Out loud, if you please.” He held the paper out for Cork to read.

“‘As agreed. For making sure our little wood nymph doesn’t leave the forest. Split it with Stormy anyway you want.’”

“There’s fifteen thousand dollars here,” Harris said, waving the stack of bills in the air.

“Where’d you get that?” Cork demanded.

“The trailer you just left. The door was open. Envelope was on the kitchen counter.”

“How convenient,” Cork responded.

Stormy Two Knives glared at the money. “I don’t know anything about it. And my uncle would never have anything to do with something like that.”

“You have a search warrant for Wendell’s trailer?” Cork asked.

“It was in plain sight,” Harris said. “And we had reason to be suspicious. Even if it doesn’t hold up in court, it’ll still be a long time before Two Knives breathes free air again. Unless he decides to help us find the woman.”

“You’re on reservation land,” Cork pointed out. “Jurisdiction here is local. You have no right to arrest this man.”

“Bullshit, O’Connor. Reservations are under federal authority,” Harris countered.

“Not this one,” Cork said. “Jurisdiction here is in the state of Minnesota. Approved by Congress. Public Law 280, passed hi 1953.”

“I’m here on an investigation under the RICO statute. Hauling him in on a parole violation involving a firearm is well within the scope of my authority. Two Knives wants to argue jurisdiction, he’ll have to do it from a jail cell.”

“The hell he will.” Cork stepped between the men and Stormy Two Knives.

Sloane drew a weapon from a shoulder holster under his coat. “We will arrest you, all of you, if we have to,” he said carefully and earnestly. “It would be easier if you just cooperate.”

“I don’t know where the woman is,” Stormy told them. Again.

“Too bad. Sloane.” Harris nodded toward Stormy.

“You have the right to remain silent,” Sloane began.

“I know where she is.”

Everyone stopped and looked at the boy.

“Hush, Louis,” Stormy said.

“No,” Harris said. “Go on, son.”

“Louis,” Stormy warned.

“I don’t want you to go back to jail,” the boy said.

“They won’t-” Stormy began.

“Like hell we won’t,” Harris cut him off. “I’ll slap your daddy’s ass in jail faster than you can say Geronimo, boy.”

Louis looked at the federal agent fiercely. “He was a Chiricahua Apache. We’re Ojibwe Anishinaabe.”

Harris seemed almost on the edge of laughing. “So you are. So you are.” He knelt down to the boy’s level. “Unless we get some cooperation, Louis, I’m going to have to put your father back in jail. I don’t have a choice. You know where the woman is?”

Louis Two Knives nodded.

“Where?”

“Nikidin.”

“What’s that?”

“It means ’vulva,’” Cork said.

“Vulva?” Harris laughed. “You mean like in vagina?”

“I don’t understand,” Sloane said.

“It’s a place, I imagine. Somewhere in the Boundary Waters,” Cork said.

“A place?” Harris still looked pretty amused. “They named a place vagina. Jesus.”

“Can you show us this place, son?” Sloane asked.

“Can you show us on a map?”

The boy looked uncertain, then shrugged.

“Get us a map,” Harris told Sloane.

Agent Sloane holstered his weapon, turned, and hurried back toward the logging road.

Cork said to Harris, “You followed us. How?”

“Technology, O’Connor.”

“A transmitter of some kind? Planted on my Bronco?” Cork looked to Stormy. “I didn’t know. I swear it.”

Sloane came back with a map. He unfolded it and laid it out on a stump.

“Come over and take a look, Louis,” Harris said. He beckoned the boy to him. Stormy Two Knives made a move toward his son, but Sloane stepped in to block his way. Harris put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “How old are you, Louis?”

“Ten.”

“Know what this is?”

“Sure. It’s a map.”

“A map. That’s right. A map of the whole Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Can you read this map?”

Louis took a long look at the map. Finally he shook his head.

“Take your time. I’ll help. We’re right here.”

Harris put his finger on a spot near the center on the bottom.

“We never used a map,” the boy said.

“We?”

“Uncle Wendell and me.”

“You’ve been there?”

“Yes,” the boy said.

Cork said, “Louis, do you remember the names of the rivers and lakes you crossed to get to where the woman is?”

Louis nodded. “Aaitawaabik. Zhiigwanaabik. Bakwzhiganaaboo.”

“Hold it.” Harris lifted his hands. “Those don’t look like any places I see on this map.”

“Ojibwe words,” Cork said. “Louis, did Uncle Wendell tell you stories about the rivers, about the lakes?”

“Yes.”

Cork explained. “Wendell Two Knives is, among other things, an aadizookewinini. A storyteller. I’m guessing he made up stories about the rivers and lakes, gave them names that fit the stories he told Louis. Maybe they’re real names to the Anishinaabe. Maybe they’re just Wendell’s inventions. It would be hard to know.”

“So you’re saying Louis can’t tell us how to get there?” Harris turned his attention once again to the boy. “How far is it?”

“A long day by canoe.”

“Can you take us there?”

Stormy exploded. “No! My boy’s taking you nowhere. There’s no law can force him to go.”

“No?” Harris looked toward Sloane. “Give me the gun.”

Agent Sloane handed him the bag with the. 44 he’d claimed to have found in the toolbox. Harris knelt again, putting himself at the boy’s level.

“Louis, see this gun? We found it in your father’s truck. It’s against the law for him to have this gun and he should go back to jail. But I’ll make a deal with you. If you take me to where the woman is, I give you my word your father will be all right. I won’t tell anyone about the gun.”

“You son of a bitch,” Stormy spat. He yanked the cord on the McCulloch. The saw roared to life and Stormy thrust it toward Harris. “Get away from my boy, or I swear I’ll cut you in half.”

Sloane’s gun was out of his holster in the blink of an eye. “Drop it, Hector,” he hollered over the roar of the chainsaw.

For a long moment, no one moved. Stormy Two Knives held so still, so tense that the veins on his huge arms stood out like rivers on a map. Sloane was like a tragic geometric equation, body vertical, arms horizontal, the barrel of his gun trued on a line directly to Stonny’s forehead. Then Harris made a surprising move. He stood up slowly, looked at Stormy with something very near to sympathy, and asked, just loud enough to be heard over the crying of the saw, “Do you really want your son to see this?”

Stormy glanced at Louis, who stood slightly behind Harris looking terrified. He killed the engine of the McCulloch and put the saw down.

In the relief of the stillness that followed, Cork said, “If the boy goes, his father goes with him.”

Stormy glanced at Cork and nodded almost imperceptibly.

Harris thought it over briefly. “Fair enough.”