“Where’s the house?” I said.
Vinnie had been silent for most of the trip, dozing against the side of the car despite the rattling of the plastic. Now he stirred and told me to stay on the main road all the way to the north end of the reservation.
We went past the Bay Mills Casino, the bigger and newer of the two casinos on the reservation, then the health center and then the original Kings Club Casino. Then the gym and the community college, more fruits of the casino business. A little further down the road we saw a few children sledding down the road that led up to the graveyard on Mission Hill.
Vinnie pointed out a house on the left. I pulled into a freshly cleared driveway. A snowblower sat in the open garage, still caked with slowly melting snow. Vinnie went to the front door and knocked. I stood behind him on the porch as Mr. Parrish answered the door. “Mr. Parrish, good to see you,” Vinnie said. “Do you remember me? My name is Vinnie LeBlanc.”
“Vinnie,” the man said. “Of course. I know many of your cousins. I see them at the college”
“Mr. Parrish, this is Alex McKnight. Do you think he could ask you a few questions? It’s about Dorothy.”
Mr. Parrish looked at me for the first time with slow, careful eyes. He didn’t say anything.
“Please, Mr. Parrish,” I said. “This won’t take long. It’s very important.”
“Very well,” he said. He opened the door all the way and let us in. We stepped into the house, after stomping the snow off our boots. It was a nice place, pleasant and clean, simply decorated. Above the couch there was a painting of a crane. According to Ojibwa mythology, a crane came to this area where the lake tumbled down the rapids of the St. Marys River, laid her eggs and then brought the Ojibwa people to the same spot to settle there.
When Mrs. Parrish came into the room, I could see Dorothy’s face in hers. The same eyes, the same mouth. Vinnie introduced me and I shook her hand. She offered us coffee. We declined. When they sat down on the couch together, Mr. Parrish glanced up into my eyes for a moment. Mrs. Parrish picked a spot on the far edge of the coffee table and sat, staring at it. Neither of them could have been more than five years older than I was. When I had first met Dorothy and told myself I was old enough to be her father, I was right.
“I know this must be a difficult time,” I said. I was sitting in one wing-back chair, Vinnie in another, with the television between us. “I mean, I assume you know all that has happened.”
“We received a call today from the tribal police,” Mr. Parrish said. The tribal police had recently been deputized under the Chippewa County Sheriff, so it made sense that they would handle this end of it. “We understand that Dorothy is missing.”
“She was in my cabin last night,” I said. Mrs. Parrish looked up at me quickly and then back down at the coffee table. “Please don’t misunderstand,” I said. “She was not in the same cabin as I was. I own six of them up in Paradise. Dorothy came to me, asking for help. I let her spend the night in one of the guest cabins. This morning, she was gone.”
Mr. Parrish nodded.
“I can’t help but feel responsible,” I said. “I was a police officer myself once. Looking back at it, I should have done more to help her, right away. I should have called the sheriff’s office, or Protective Services.”
Mr. Parrish lifted his hands from his knees and then put them down again.
“I’d like to help in any way I can,” I said. “Is there any place you think she could be right now? Any place this man Bruckman may have taken her?”
“We don’t know this man Bruckman,” he said.
“You’ve never met him?”
“No,” he said. “We haven’t seen Dorothy in several years.”
I didn’t know what to say next. “You mean,” I finally said, “she came back up here with him for these past few months, but you never saw her?”
“No,” he said.
“But you must have known she was here.”
“No,” he said. “Not until the police called this morning.”
I let out a long breath and looked away from them. And then I noticed, on a set of shelves in the kitchen, a picture of a little girl, maybe seven or eight years old. Pigtails, front teeth missing. It had to be Dorothy. I looked around the rest of the room, but I couldn’t see any other pictures of her.
A fragile silence settled on the house. There was only the faint sound of the snow ticking against the windows. Vinnie sat in his chair, as still as the Parrishes.
I cleared my throat. “Is there anything you can think of,” I said, “anything at all, that might help me find your daughter?”
“I’m afraid not,” Mr. Parrish said.
“Can I give you my name and number, in case you hear from her?”
“Yes,” he said.
I asked them for paper and a pen, and then wrote down the information. I had a sick feeling that it was a completely futile gesture.
“I’m sorry to have taken up your time like this,” I said. “I hope this…” I searched for the right words. I couldn’t even think straight anymore. “I hope this all works out.”
“Thank you,” he said. I shook his hand and then Mrs. Parrish’s. She hadn’t said a word since offering us the coffee.
It was dark already and still snowing when we went back outside. The day was gone.
I started up the truck and got the heater going. We had been in there so briefly, it didn’t take long to warm up. I didn’t feel like talking, so we rode back most of the way to Paradise in silence.
“What about your car?” I finally said. “Where is it?”
“I’m sure my cousins took it back to my house,” he said.
I nodded. There was more silence. A deer hopped through the snow and across the road in front of us.
“Okay,” I said. “So what the hell happened back there?”
“What do you mean?”
“The Parrishes. Why were they acting so strange?”
“How were they acting strange?”
“Come on,” I said. “Their daughter just got kidnapped. I could barely get them to blink.”
“Alex,” he said, “you don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand? Explain it to me. Start with how they could go for years without even hearing from her. I thought family was everything to you guys.”
“It is everything,” he said. “But you have to understand the way my people are. You know, when I was growing up, my mother used to ask me if I wanted to go to the dentist. She didn’t tell me I was going. She asked me. I would usually say no and I wouldn’t go. Does that seem strange to you?”
“Yes,” I said. “But what does that have to do with anything?”
“The Ojibwa people do not believe in interfering with other people’s lives. Even with their own children’s lives. They believe we each have to choose our own path in life. Even if it’s the wrong path.”
“That doesn’t explain anything,” I said. “Vinnie, she was kidnapped, for God’s sake! Shouldn’t that matter to them?”
“Of course it matters,” he said. “What did you want them to do? Break down and start crying for you? They’re not going to show their emotions like that, especially in front of a stranger. And they’re not going to ask you to help them, either.”
“No, of course not,” I said. “Not an outsider.”
“No,” he said. “Not an outsider. It’s not the Ojibwa way.”
“It’s not, huh?”
“No,” he said. “And that’s all I can say.”
“Vinnie, you know what?”
“What?”
“That’s a load of horseshit. Everything you just said.”
“I’m sorry you don’t like it.”
“They’re not aliens from fucking outer space,” I said. “They’re human beings. Their daughter is in trouble. She got mixed up with a very bad guy. Now she’s in big trouble. She might be dead, even. Excuse me for expecting them to seem just a little bit concerned by that.”