“Bring him to me tomorrow and I will prepare him. He will stay with me until it is finished.”
“ Migwech, Henry,” Cork said, thanking his old friend.
They walked back to the cabin, with Walleye padding along behind in a tired way. Cork felt tired, too, weighted by the oppressive prospect of all that lay ahead. At the cabin door, he bid the old Mide good night.
Meloux slipped inside with his dog and closed the door.
By the light of the moon, Cork walked the trail back to his Bronco. In the woods on either side, the darkness was intense. But he knew those woods and knew what there was in them to fear, and passing through empty-handed was no concern. The darkness ahead, however, all that lurked within it and that was unknown to him, this was something else. And he was afraid.
TWENTY-FIVE
Cork had been concerned that for Stephen a few days away from school might seem like a holiday or an early summer vacation. But when he explained to his son the purpose of his visit with Meloux, Stephen had become solemn and accepted seriously the idea of a vision quest under the old man’s guidance. Now they walked toward Meloux’s cabin together, with Trixie trotting in front, taking in the scent of everything along the path. In the east, the rising sun was a red fire burning in the treetops. A heavy dew caught the color, and the meadow grass seemed hung with garnets. Walleye bounded from the open cabin door to meet them, and Trixie ran ahead. The two mutts, good acquaintances, danced together in a flurry of woofs and wagging tails.
Meloux stood in the doorway. Like the dew on the meadow grass, his dark eyes sparkled. “ Anin, Stephen.”
“ Anin, Henry,” Cork’s son replied. There was a gravity in his voice that pleased his father. He shrugged off the pack he wore, which held his sleeping bag and clothing.
The old Mide looked at Cork. “There is no need for you to linger. Your part in this is finished.”
“How long will this take, Henry?”
The old man shrugged. “I will send word.”
Cork nodded. “Migwech.” He turned to his son and offered his own version of an Ojibwe prayer. “May you learn the lesson in each leaf and rock. May you gain the strength and wisdom, not to be superior to your brothers, but to be able to fight your greatest enemy, yourself. And may you be ready to come before Kitchimanidoo with clean hands and a straight eye.”
With the morning sun over his shoulder, the sky like mottled marble above his head, and a warm spring wind pushing at his back, Cork abandoned his son to the man he trusted most in the world and turned his feet to the trail through the forest. Beyond that lay a path that he suspected would be as dark as any he’d ever traveled in the great North Woods.
Hugh Parmer was waiting for him in the lot of the Four Seasons. Cork parked, grabbed a gym bag from the backseat of his Bronco, and tossed it into Parmer’s Navigator. The two men got in, and they headed southeast on Highway 1 toward Duluth. They drove through the morning shadow of evergreens. In those places where the sun broke through the forest wall, it hit the windshield brilliant as molten gold. Cork was quiet, thinking of what lay ahead. Parmer, as he drove, drank from a cardboard cup of Four Seasons coffee.
“What’s in the gym bag?” he asked after they’d passed beyond the limits of Aurora.
“Equipment I might need.”
“Got a firearm in there?”
“No.”
“The word I got in Aurora is that you have something against firearms.” Parmer waited a moment, and when no reply came he said, “It seems to me that if a man wades into a pack of wild dogs he ought to expect to be bit. And he ought to be prepared.”
“I don’t want to have to explain myself at every turn, Hugh. You agreed to let me do this my way.”
Parmer shook his head. “They’ve established the rules, and they’re clearly not playing your way, Cork.”
“You don’t have to come with me.”
“Relax. Just being the devil’s advocate here.”
“I’m going to explain this once and then we’re not going to talk about it again,” Cork said. “Two years ago a kid slaughtered a lot of his classmates and a teacher and a security guard at the high school in Aurora.”
“I know. National news.”
“What you may not know is that I was well acquainted with the kid. A lot of folks in town knew him and knew he was troubled. We weren’t there for him when he needed us, pretty much ever. When he opened up in the high school, I’m sure this kid in his own warped thinking was wholly justified. I’ve killed men, too, and justified it in my own ways. But who’s to say my reasons were any better than that kid’s? You have a gun, Hugh, you risk the gun becoming the easy answer to a threat, especially if it’s been the answer for you before. I’m no saint, and I’m not a gun control freak either. I just don’t want the temptation that might come with carrying a firearm. I can’t help thinking that, if I’m smart enough, the gun shouldn’t be necessary.”
“I don’t know that smart is always the answer, Cork. I’ve known men who were born killers. Smart wouldn’t have made any difference with them. What did you do with your firearms? Sell them?”
Cork shook his head. “I didn’t want someone else using them. No, I put them in the hands of a friend for safekeeping.”
“Indefinitely?”
“Permanently.”
Parmer nodded, studied the road ahead, and began to whistle.
They drove to Duluth, crossed the Blatnik Bridge over the harbor, and entered Superior, Wisconsin, where they caught U.S. 53 toward Rice Lake. As they passed Solon Springs, a few miles south of Superior, Cork told Parmer to pull off for gas.
“Tank’s still three-quarters full,” Parmer said.
“Do it anyway.”
Parmer did as he was instructed and pulled into a BP station. While he filled the tank, Cork cleaned the windshield of the mayflies that had plastered themselves across the glass.
“What are you hoping to find in Rice Lake?” Parmer said.
“What we know about Stilwell’s investigation is that he’d talked to people in Wyoming. I’d love to find his notes on that, but there was nothing in his office files in Duluth. Then he came down to Rice Lake and spent some time at Bodine’s airport office and maybe at his home. Then he disappeared. I’m thinking that whatever it was that got him killed-”
“You’re sure he’s dead?”
“For our own safety, I think we ought to assume that. So whatever it was that got him killed, there’s a chance it had to do with what he found in Rice Lake.”
“Records?”
Cork shrugged. “Could be anything, I suppose. I don’t want to limit our thinking.”
They took turns visiting the men’s room and got back on the road. A few minutes later, Parmer said, “You’ve been spending a lot of time watching the mirror. Did that unnecessary fuel stop we just made have anything to do with it? Are we being followed?”
“If we are, they’re a hell of a lot better at it than I am at spotting them,” Cork said. “I haven’t seen anything, but it never hurts to be cautious.”
A little before 11:00 A.M., they pulled into the driveway of the Bodine home, a nice little rambler in a newer development on the western edge of Rice Lake. Cork found the key hanging from a hook under the back steps, exactly where Becca Bodine had told him it would be. They entered through the kitchen, which was clean and smelled of overripe bananas. In the living room, a comfortable scattering of toys lay about. Cars, Tonka trucks, Lego blocks, and on the sofa a plastic contraption that fired Nerf rockets. They found the room that Sandy Bodine had used as his home office. Becca had told him she’d left it exactly as it was when her husband used it. At first it was because of the investigation, then it was simply that she didn’t have the resolve yet to clean things out, something Cork understood well. He returned to the kitchen, slid the gym bag from his shoulder, and took out the electronic sweep equipment he’d brought. He spent an hour going through the house and checking the phone line, but he found no bugs.