William Krueger - Northwest Angle

The cooler was in the back of the boat, and Cork wasted no time taking Bascombe up on his offer. The sandwiches were bologna and cheese, and there were apples, too, and bottled water. Cork handed out the food, then settled down to eat. Christ, it felt like a feast.

“Tell me more about Chickaway,” he said.

Kretsch washed down a bite of sandwich with water. “Some people believe he’s involved in Smalldog’s smuggling activities. You’re ATF, Seth. What do you think about that?”

“ATF?” Cork said.

“Former ATF,” Bascombe clarified. “Before I retired, I spent almost thirty years as a field agent, working mostly in the Pacific Northwest, out of the Seattle division. I thought moving to the Angle would be a relaxing change,” he said with a horsey laugh.

“What about Chickaway?” Cork said.

Bascombe shrugged. “It’s possible he used to be involved in smuggling with Smalldog. But I don’t think they’re such good friends anymore.”

“Why?”

“How about you tell him, Tom? You know what folks say about Lily and Sonny Chickaway.”

“Folks say a lot of things that aren’t worth the breath it takes to say ’em,” Kretsch replied.

Cork swallowed a mouthful of sandwich. “What do folks say?”

Neither man replied. In the absence of conversation, there was only the sound of the wind and the grind of the engine, and the bang of the hull against water.

Finally Kretsch said, “Hell, you might as well go ahead and tell him, Seth.”

Bascombe kept his eye on the GPS and spoke loud so that Cork could hear over the other noises. “Like we told you before, Sonny Chickaway is Red Lake Ojibwe. Him and Noah Smalldog used to be good buddies, and Chickaway’s always looked out for Lily. Kind of like an older brother. Except some folks think Chickaway’s interest in Lily was more than just brotherly. That maybe it wasn’t only Smalldog who trespassed on Stump Island to visit her.”

“Chickaway might have been taking advantage of her, too?”

Kretsch said, “I don’t believe it. Chickaway, well, he’s a good man. And if he visited Lily, there was good reason, and it wasn’t just to be taking advantage of her. Maybe he’s involved in the smuggling, I don’t know. Hell, what if he is? That’s an enterprise got a lot of white men rich over the years.”

“Whoa,” Bascombe said. “Didn’t mean to push a button, Tom.”

“It’s just that it’s easy to criticize the Ojibwe for things white folks are guilty of, too. White men get drunk. White men break the law. And nobody says it’s because they’re white. But an Indian does the same thing and the first reason people come up with is that he’s Indian.”

Cork was liking Kretsch more and more all the time.

“Okay, judgments aside,” Bascombe said, “I’m just going to point out here that it was Chickaway who loaded all that baby formula on his boat. And if what folks on Stump Island say is true and both men had a similar and unsavory interest in Lily Smalldog, in my experience, there’s nothing that can come between friends faster than a woman.”

“Why did everyone have to trespass to visit Lily Smalldog?” Cork asked. “These religious folks don’t let people on the island?”

“A pretty reclusive bunch,” Kretsch said. “Kind of a sect, I guess. They don’t really interact with folks on the Angle, but they never give us any trouble either.”

Bascombe said, “I run into ’em from time to time. They’re decent enough. I understand they do mission work in places like Africa. Even though they kind of inherited her, they’ve done their best to look out for Lily Smalldog.” He cut back on the throttle and said, “There’s Chickaway’s cabin.”

The sun was hot, and Cork was grateful for the old canvas hat Kretsch had loaned him. He stared from the shadow of the brim toward the long wooded peninsula on Oak Island that Bascombe had indicated. Built all along the shoreline of the peninsula were some grand lake homes, million-dollar affairs, Cork figured. But, at the very end of the point, he saw a wooden dock and, among the oak trees, a rustic-looking little cabin greatly at odds with the stately homes that were its neighbors.

Cork said, “How’d Chickaway manage to wedge himself in there with the rich folk?”

Bascombe said, “Land holdings up here are kind of odd. Sometimes the Ojibwe hold a whole island in trust, and sometimes only a part. Most of Oak Island, for example, is privately owned, but that little point belongs to the Red Lake Ojibwe. Nobody except Sonny Chickaway has ever lived there. Not a real popular resident on the island.”

“We’re in luck,” Kretsch said. “His boat’s there. Means he’s probably at home. Pull on up, Seth, and let’s have a talk with Sonny.”

Bascombe brought them in, and they tied up on the opposite side of the dock from where Chickaway’s boat was moored. It was a new-looking Monza with two Evinrude V4 engines, a combination that made for a good, fast craft. But it wasn’t a cigarette boat. They walked the path twenty yards into the shade of the oaks, where the little cabin stood. Kretsch opened the screen door and knocked on the closed inner door. Nobody answered, and he knocked again. He tried to look through the door’s glass panes, but they were curtained. Bascombe moved left to one of the front windows.

“Curtain’s been torn off this one,” he said. He pressed his nose to the glass. “Jesus Christ. Looks like that storm blew through here, too. Come take a gander.”

Cork and Kretsch joined him and eyed the inside of the cabin. Bascombe was right. The place had been destroyed.

Kretsch said, “I think I better take a look.”

They followed him to the front door. He tried the knob, and it turned; the door opened onto a scene of utter devastation. But Sonny Chickaway was not there.

“Wasn’t a storm blew through,” Kretsch said. “Looks more like a pissed-off grizzly bear got turned loose in here.”

Bascombe said, “Yeah, and he must’ve eaten Sonny Chickaway.” He pointed toward a huge dark pooling beneath an overturned chair.

Cork walked to the chair and knelt and touched the pool with the tip of his finger.

“Is it?” Bascombe said.

Cork looked back to where the others stood near the door.

“It is,” he said.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Kretsch sat at his desk in his office, a telephone pressed to his right ear. The features of his lean, boyish face were drawn taut, as if he were battling a bad headache.

“No, sir, there wasn’t a body.”

He listened and picked up a lure from his desktop and dug the hook into the wood.

“Yes, Chickaway sometimes drinks, and he’s been in fights before, and I suppose that could explain why his place was torn up and maybe even the blood, but—”

Cut off, he dropped the lure, sat back, took a deep breath, and listened some more.

“No, nobody’s reported anything. But, hell, that storm yesterday’s got everything and everyone tied up. I mean—”

He nodded and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Yes, sir, I called several of the Ojibwe on Windigo and Little Windigo to see if Chickaway might have shown up there looking for medical assistance. No one’s seen him. And that’s my point. If he was hurt—”

He balled his hand into a bloodless fist.

“Okay, so even forgetting about Chickaway, what about the baby and Lily Smalldog?”

Kretsch’s face, as he listened, grew redder and redder.

“I know it’s out of our jurisdiction,” he finally exploded, “and I do intend to talk to the provincial police in Kenora, but, sir, we have a baby on our hands and a mother who, as nearly as I can tell, was tortured to death, and it seems to me we ought to be beating the bushes for Noah Smalldog, and, honest to God, I can’t do that by myself.”