William Krueger - Northwest Angle

“That would great, Babs. Thanks.” Jenny picked up the baby and held her nose to his diaper. “He needs changing. I didn’t bring anything for that.”

Belgea said, “Not to worry. I always keep a few disposables on hand. Up here, I try to keep a little of everything available.” She opened the cupboard beneath the sink in the examining room and brought out a box of Pampers. She took a disposable diaper and brought it to Jenny, but before she handed it over, she eyed the baby and then Jenny with obvious concern. “That baby’s taken to you.”

Jenny was pleased that the bond was so obvious.

“Just a word of caution,” Belgea went on. “This baby belongs to someone else. Eventually, you’ll have to give him up.”

“I know. But in the meantime, he needs someone, and here I am.”

“That’s abundantly clear. And he’s lucky. But when the time comes, it may break your heart.” She spoke with great compassion, as if it were her own heart on the line.

Jenny looked down into the baby’s dark, gentle eyes. “It’s been broken before,” she said. “And I survived.”

Ted got up from where he lay, trotted to the front door, and began to bark. A moment later there was a knock at the screen, and a man’s voice called out, “Jenny?”

“That’s Aaron,” Jenny said.

She heard Rose’s voice from the front room. “Come in. They’re in the examining room. This way.”

A moment later, Aaron and Anne walked in. Aaron came to her directly and looked as if he would have given her a big hug but for the baby she held. As it was, he leaned over the child and kissed her.

“Oh, God, Jen, I’ve been so worried.”

“We’re safe now.”

The baby’s face was turned against Jenny’s T-shirt, as if seeking her breast. Aaron glanced down at him, obviously disconcerted, and stepped awkwardly back.

Anne moved in and gave her sister a hug. “They told us everything at Young’s Bay Landing. Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Jenny said.

Anne smiled down at the squirming child. “This is him, huh?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll give you folks some privacy,” Belgea said. “When the bottle’s ready, we’ll bring it in.”

“Thanks,” Jenny said.

Belgea left, and the room was uncomfortably quiet. Then Aaron asked, “What are they going to do with him?”

“I don’t know,” Jenny replied. “For the moment, I’m in charge of his well-being.”

The hungry baby finally cried out and turned his head away from Jenny’s body. Aaron and Anne got their first good look at his face.

“Jesus,” Aaron said.

“He has a cleft lip,” Jenny explained tersely. “It can be repaired surgically.”

“God, I hope so. For his sake.”

A little flame ignited in Jenny, and she snapped, “He’s beautiful, Aaron. Even if that lip never got fixed, he’d still be beautiful.”

To that, Aaron had no reply.

“You found his mother, we heard,” Anne said. “Dead.”

“Yeah.”

“And we heard something about a psycho with a rifle,” Aaron added.

“You heard right.”

“But you’re okay?” he said. “For sure?”

Jenny looked down at the child in her arms. “If it hadn’t been for this little guy, I might not be. I think I would have freaked, except I had to keep myself together for him. In a way, we saved each other.”

Aaron eyed the baby, and Jenny went hard inside, because it was clear to her that he wasn’t at all certain that was necessarily a good thing.

TWENTY-SIX

The soles of Cork’s feet hurt like hell, but he tried to ignore his discomfort. He had more important things to worry about.

Bascombe was at the helm. Beside him was a Marlin 336, lever action, which the tall man had picked up at his lodge on the way from Young’s Bay Landing. Kretsch sat opposite Cork. The deputy was packing, too. He’d put on a gun belt, and holstered there was a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, the same kind of handgun Cork had carried when he was sheriff. Kretsch had also brought a scoped bolt-action Remington 700, his deer rifle, and a box of cartridges. He’d offered Cork the rifle, and Cork had accepted, but with reluctance. On the island, with Jenny and the baby in jeopardy, he would have snatched up the weapon and used it without a second thought. But he was on a different mission now, and as the launch took them deeper into Canadian waters and nearer the island, he weighed seriously the vow he’d made several years earlier never again to raise a firearm against another human being. He was uncomfortable carrying; yet if the man they were after fired on them, Cork didn’t want the responsibility for what happened afterward to rest on the shoulders of the others. Bascombe and Kretsch were there mostly because of Cork and his family, and it seemed to him that at the moment he owed these two men a debt that superseded his own moral misgivings. As they bounced over the swells and veered toward the archipelago where the island lay, he opened the box of cartridges and fed the Remington’s magazine.

“Cork?” Bascombe called over his shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“That island of yours, it’d be to the northwest, right?”

“That’s right.”

Bascombe pointed. “Take a look.”

Deep in the archipelago, a thick column of black smoke rose straight up a few hundred feet into the air, where the wind kicked in and spread it like an oil slick across the blue sky.

Bascombe approached the island from the south, motoring slowly up the channel. Cork had the Remington across his lap, and Kretsch had unsnapped the hammer guard of his revolver so that he could easily draw and fire. The men didn’t speak as they neared the inlet close to the burning cabin.

Bascombe cut the engine to idle, and they drifted and stared at where the flames and smoke roiled up among the destroyed trees.

“What do you want to do?” Bascombe finally asked.

“Not much point in going ashore,” Kretsch said. “That cabin’ll burn for a long time, and for a long time after that, it’ll be too hot to sift the rubble.”

Cork said, “My daughter told me if she was our man she’d burn the cabin, burn all the evidence.”

“Smart girl,” Bascombe said.

“I don’t think our time’ll be wisely spent here,” Kretsch said. “I think we ought to find Noah Smalldog.”

“Do you know where he lives?” Cork asked.

Bascombe laughed. “Nobody knows where Smalldog lives. He understands this lake better than anybody, and he’s probably got himself squirreled away somewhere you couldn’t see even if you were three feet from it.”

Cork said, “How do we find him then?”

Bascombe glanced at Kretsch, and both men seemed to be in unspoken agreement. “Sonny Chickaway,” he said.

“Chickaway? The guy with all that baby formula in his boat?”

“He’s a Red Lake Ojibwe lives on Oak Island,” Kretsch explained. “He and Smalldog are pretty good buds. And him we know where to find.”

“All right,” Cork said. “Let’s go talk to this Chickaway.”

They headed back under a clear sky, and wherever there were bare rocks above water, Cork saw white pelicans roosting. Crows circled the islands, and gulls rode the swells, and despite the destruction, Cork sensed a strong spirit in the Lake of the Woods, something that felt indomitable.

Except for the canned peaches that morning well before sunrise, he hadn’t eaten, and he was hungry.

As if he’d read Cork’s thoughts, Bascombe said, “Got sandwiches in my cooler. I threw ’em together this morning when I wasn’t sure how long we might be out looking for you today, Cork. If you guys are hungry, you’re welcome to them. And pull one out for me while you’re at it.”