Schanno took a big gulp of coffee and his throat drew taut against the heat.
“Tell me about it,” he said.
“Sigurd does a fine job of making a corpse look good for an open casket, but he doesn’t know squat about forensic medicine. Why should he?”
Schanno drank some more coffee and waited.
“Dorsal lividity,” Cork explained. “Blood settled along the back of the judge’s body after he died. Back of his arms and legs, buttocks. Nothing in front along the ribs, stomach, pelvis. He’d been lying on his back quite a while. But I found him on his stomach.”
“You point this out to Sigurd?”
“Sigurd wouldn’t have cared. Much simpler for him and everybody if the judge killed himself and that’s that.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Because the truth is, I wouldn’t care much either except for what it might mean about the boy.”
Schanno traded his coffee cup for the rubber band. He toyed with the band for a while. “What does it mean?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe Paul saw something he shouldn’t have, maybe something that scared him. In any case, I think it sent him into hiding.”
“He’s not hiding. He’s with Joe John.”
“Where?”
“If I had to make a guess, I’d say somewhere on the reservation. I sent a man out yesterday to talk to Joe John’s sister, Wanda Manydeeds. She wouldn’t say boo.” Schanno lifted his thermos as if to pour himself some more coffee, but he paused and said, “Look, if you’re so worried about Paul LeBeau, why don’t you have a talk with Wanda? Maybe you can get more out of her than my man could. I’d just as soon be sure about the boy.”
“What makes you think she’ll talk to me?”
“Your blood,” Schanno said honestly. “You got a little Ojibwe running through you. That and the fact you don’t wear a badge anymore. What do you say?”
“All right. And maybe you should have a look at the judge’s body while I’m out there.”
A pinched look crossed Schanno’s face, as if his underwear had suddenly shrunk a couple sizes. “Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Sigurd already cremated it. Listen, Cork, next time you think you’ve found something, don’t wait to tell me, okay?”
It was his grandmother Dilsey, who’d never been farther from Aurora and the Iron Lake Reservation than the Twin Cities, who had told him the story of how the Anishinaabe came to be a Great Lakes people.
Long ago, the First People (for this was what the word Anishinaabe meant) had lived on the shores of the great salt water far to the east. They were happy there, hunting and fishing and living in peace with their brothers. Gitchie Manitou was good to them and showed his favor by lifting the Megis, a giant seashell, above the water. The rays of the sun reflected off the shiny surface of the shell, giving the Anishinaabe light and health and wisdom.
But one day the shell sank beneath the salt water and a darkness came over the First People. Sickness and death moved among them like hungry animals, and they lived in fear. The Megis rose up again far to the west out of a great river at a place called Mo-ne-aung (Montreal), where the First People built new wigwams and for a long time lived again in the light and warmth of the Megis.
Three more times the Megis disappeared from sight. Three more times it rose up, each time farther west. First on the shore of the great lake called Huron. Next at Bow-e-ting (Sault St. Marie), where the water empties out of Lake Superior. The last time the Megis rose it was at Mo-ning-wuna-kauning (La Pointe Island), where its rays reflected sunlight to even the farthest Anishinaabe villages, blessing them with light, life, and wisdom.
Grandma Dilsey told him a lot of stories, but it wasn’t until he took a course in Ojibwe history and culture offered by the fledgling American Indian Studies Department at the University of Minnesota that he learned facts. He was surprised to discover that the Anishinaabe were the largest Native American tribe north of Mexico. They had indeed migrated long ago from the Atlantic coastline, but the death that had descended upon them and forced them west wasn’t magic. It was war with the Iroquois nation. The war was old and the hostilities deep. The origin of the word Ojibwe meant “to roast until puckered,” for this was the fate that often befell captured enemies.
He learned much about the history of his grandmother’s people, including the insidious treaties that had attempted to divide and disenfranchise them. Since their battles with the Iroquois, and later the Dakota, the First People had battled corruption in the BIA, poverty, alcoholism, the cruelty of government schools, and continued attempts by even well-meaning whites to eradicate their culture and their language. The Anishinaabe had survived, and solid populations were spread across Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Canada.
But most of Cork’s heritage was white, and in his way of living he’d chosen the white man’s world. With his reddish hair and fair skin, he looked more Irish than he ever would Ojibwe. And life was difficult enough as it was. To live it as Indian would have made it that much harder.
He headed out to the Iron Lake Reservation in the late afternoon, still buoyed by the warmth of spirit decorating the Christmas tree had given him. The sun was low, nestled into the bare branches of the trees like a fat red rooster.
Iron Lake was not a large reservation. It comprised less than four hundred square miles of woods, lakes, and bogs with its small population of Anishinaabe living in the two villages of Allouette and Brandywine, and in small, isolated houses or shacks or trailers scattered throughout the woods. Except for State Highway 37, which cut through the reservation in a northwest-southeast line, the roads on the reservation were all bumpy, rutted gravel or dirt. Most winters the back roads were impassable for long periods, but as Cork turned off the highway at the gathering of HUD houses and the old government center that was Allouette and headed into the woods toward Nokomis House, he found the snow cleanly plowed right down to the washboard surface of the road.
The casino, he knew.
The Chippewa Grand Casino, owned and operated by the Iron Lake band of Ojibwe, had opened its doors only six months earlier, but already the revenue from the slots and blackjack tables and keno and mega-bingo had surpassed even the most optimistic projections. In those months alone, the casino had reported a gross income of almost six million dollars. The gamblers came by busloads from Milwaukee, Chicago, the Twin Cities, Winnipeg, and even as far as Kansas City on special junkets arranged by travel agencies; or they drove in from small cities and towns and farms for a taste of Vegas in their own backyard. The gambling had paid off big for the Anishinaabe of the reservation. Every household belonging to the Iron Lake band of Ojibwe received a monthly allotment of several thousand dollars from the casino profits. Any Native American wanting a job could find work at the casino. New road maintenance equipment had been purchased. There were plans for paving, for a new tribal council building, and for a school. Cork thought it was no wonder that the Dakota who ran casinos in southern Minnesota called gambling “the new buffalo.”
Four miles out of Allouette, still on the washboard gravel road, Cork approached Mission Center. It was only a small clearing with a single, square, one-story building in the middle. The Catholic mission that had once served the reservation had been abandoned for more than a decade before Father Tom Griffin arrived in Aurora and set out almost single-handedly to bring it back to life. He spent a good deal of his free time there, refurbishing the old structure. Although the priest tried to enlist the parishioners of St. Agnes, white and red, Cork had heard that more often than not St. Kawasaki worked alone.
By the time Cork reached Mission Center, the sun had set. Stars were emerging from the amethyst sky of the east. A planet like a small ember glowed above the trees. Mars, the angry god of another religion. Cork was surprised to see smoke rising from the stovepipe on the mission roof although there were no lights visible inside. He stopped and got out. The woods of birch and pine that pressed themselves against the clearing had grown dark. The evening light turned the snow a soft blue, and everything was still except for a slight wind that came out of the trees and across the snow, passing Cork with an icy whisper. He turned his collar up. The front door was locked. He peered in at a window. The first thing Father Tom Griffin had done in refurbishing the old mission was to replace the windows and put up shades, which were now drawn. Cork waded around to the back of the building.
Behind the mission was a cemetery that, unlike the mission, had never been abandoned. It was marked by a black wrought-iron fence, waist high. The Catholics on the reservation had continued to use the cemetery to bury their dead, including most recently Vernon Blackwater, who’d passed away from cancer less than a week before. Many of the Anishinaabe buried in the cemetery had chosen traditional burial houses, small shelters of wood
