Cork looked at the folder. The doodled words on the bloody cover were in the same hand.
The folder hadn’t originally belonged to Harlan Lytton. It had belonged to another dead man first.
24
He’d always loved winter in the North Woods. The clean feel of a new snow. The icy air almost brittle in his nostrils. The way sound carried forever. He could hear Walleye barking a long way off as he parked his Bronco on the frozen lake, climbed the rocky slope of Crow’s Point, and made for Henry Meloux’s cabin. The world felt empty of everything except that sound.
Meloux stepped out as Cork approached. He was wiping his hands on a rag. Big snowflakes caught in his white hair as he stood waiting.
“Corcoran O’Connor,” the old man said with a smile.
Walleye, who was on a rope tied to a metal peg driven into the cabin wall, wagged his tail and nuzzled Cork’s crotch.
“You don’t seem surprised to see me, Henry,” Cork said.
“When you are my age, you will be surprised by little, too.” He looked at Cork with concern. “You are moving like a man my age.”
“A little accident,” Cork said. He gently touched his ribs.
“I have made bean soup,” the old man offered. “We’ll eat.” He untied the dog, turned, and led the way inside.
The cabin smelled of the soup, a thick, tantalizing aroma. Cork realized he hadn’t eaten at all that day, hadn’t even been hungry until he smelled the soup. From his coat pocket, he pulled an unopened pack of Lucky Strikes and gave them to the old man. Meloux seemed pleased.
“After we eat”-he nodded-“we can smoke together.”
Meloux filled two chipped bowls and brought them to the table. He brought bread in a basket and poured coffee from the blue speckled pot that had jumped by itself the day Molly had been there. Walleye sat patiently on his haunches, watching carefully for anything that might come his way. With the wooden ladle, the old man fished a bone the size of a child’s fist from the soup pot and put it on the floor. The dog waited until Meloux called him.
They ate without a word, but not in silence. The old man slurped from his spoon and lapped at the residue of soup along the edges of his lips. In the way of someone used to keeping company with himself, he occasionally mumbled toward his bowl. On the floor, Walleye gnawed greedily on the soup bone. When Meloux was finished, he took the pack of Lucky Strikes Cork had given him and drew out a cigarette. He offered the pack to Cork, then lit his own cigarette with a wooden kitchen match he struck on the underside of his chair. He settled back and seemed quite pleased.
“You make an old man feel pretty good, Corcoran O’Connor,” he said. “It is a long hard way here even without snow, but you visit me often now.” He gave Cork an ironic smile.
Cork leaned his forearms on the table and bent toward the old man. “Harlan Lytton is dead, Henry.”
The old man took a long, slow puff from his cigarette.
“You’re not surprised,” Cork said.
“Death is no surprise to an old man like me. Being able to take a regular crap, now, there is a surprise.”
“Why did you tell me about the Windigo calling his name? Did you think I could do something?”
“Once the Windigo has called a man’s name, there’s nothing anyone can do.”
Cork sat back, eyed the old man, and took a long shot in the dark. “But you told Russell Blackwater the Windigo had called his name.”
Something showed in the old man’s face, a glimmer of concern, but it passed quickly.
Cork knew he’d hit home and he pressed Meloux. “The night I took you into town you went to the casino, but not to gamble. You wanted to talk with Russell Blackwater. Did you hear the Windigo call his name? Is that why you walked into town in the middle of a blizzard? To warn him?”
The old man took the cigarette from his lips and looked at Cork appreciatively. “The whites were wrong to kick you out as sheriff.”
“Did he believe you?”
Meloux shrugged. “It makes no difference if he believes or not. He will still face the Windigo.”
“Why warn him and not Lytton?”
“Vernon Blackwater’s son is one of The People. Harlan Lytton was not.”
“That’s why you told me about Harlan? You thought I would warn him?”
“He was white and his heart was probably very black”-the old man shrugged-“but he was still a man. The Windigo, that is something else.”
“You know, Henry, if my grandmother hadn’t been one of The People, I’d probably wonder about all this Windigo business.”
“If your grandmother hadn’t been one of The People, you would probably not be so smart,” the old man said with a calm flourish of smoke.
Cork thanked Meloux for the soup and put on his coat to leave.
At the door the old man studied him hard. “This anger in your eyes, is it because you are hunting the Windigo?”
“I don’t know what it is I’m hunting, Henry.”
Meloux nodded thoughtfully, still looking keenly at Cork. “The Windigo was a man once. His heart was not always ice. What makes a man’s heart turn to ice? I would think about that, and I would think about how to fight the Windigo.”
“I thought you told me I wasn’t the one to fight the Windigo.”
Meloux shrugged. “I’m old. I’m not right as much as I used to be.”
“Often enough, Henry,” Cork replied.
From Meloux’s he started across the ice, heading back toward town. A mile to the east he could see the inlet where Molly’s sauna stood. He slowed and stopped, then turned in that direction. When she didn’t answer his knock, he let himself in with the key on the nail under the steps. The cabin was cool. Molly kept it that way. Lately, whenever they’d crawled into bed, the sheets were cold at first and for the first few minutes they simply held each other while the bedding warmed around them. Cork walked the quiet cabin, taking in the silent disarray of Molly’s life. The Sunday paper was folded on the coffee table near the big stone fireplace in the main room. On the floor beside a hand-sewn pillow sat an empty cup with a used tea bag in the saucer and next to it, lying facedown, a book called The Tao of Loving. A sweater lay thrown over the back of her rocking chair. He walked up the stairs. In the bathroom her cosmetics were scattered about the counter next to the sink. The lid was still off the Noxzema. Hairbrushes and combs stood together in a small clay pot she’d made herself in an art class at the community college. In the bedroom, the bed had been hastily made. Cork heard the sound of her old Saab coming down the lane. He headed downstairs and stepped into the kitchen as she came in the back door.
Molly glanced at him coldly and hung her coat. “What are you doing here?”
“I let myself in.”
She brushed past him and went to the refrigerator. She took out a carton of cherry yogurt and grabbed a spoon from the drawer. She wore the jeans and the taupe sweater she’d waitressed in all morning. There was a spot of mustard on her right sleeve.
“You look good,” he said.
“What did you expect? That I’d fall apart?” She gave him a brief appraisal. “You look like a bully just stole your lunch.”
“About yesterday,” he said cautiously. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
Molly pulled the lid off the yogurt and took a spoonful. “Why are you here?”
Cork shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat and stared at the scarred wooden floor. “I need to talk to someone.”
“Find someone else.” She turned her back to him and walked to the table.
“There isn’t anyone else,” he said. “I’ve lived here almost my whole life and I’ve got no one to talk to.”
She slid a chair out with her foot and sat down heavily. “Try your wife.”
“She’s in love with someone else.”