Darla opened the door even before Cork had a chance to knock. Her eyes were puffy and red from crying, and tears had left a trail through her face powder down both cheeks.
“It’s Joe John, Cork,” she said. “I know it’s Joe John.”
Darla worked at the casino in public relations and was still dressed for the office in a dark blue blazer and skirt, a cream-colored blouse. There was gold around her neck and on her wrists.
Cork stepped in out of the cold and wiped melting snowflakes from his face. “What makes you think so, Darla?”
“Because it’s just like him to drop off the face of the earth for two months, then pull this kind of stunt. It’s just the kind of thing he’d do on a drunk.” She took his coat and brushed the snow onto a mat in the hallway, then hung the coat in the closet there. Cork slipped off his boots and left them on the mat.
He’d known Darla LeBeau since high school, when she was a cheerleader with long blonde hair, nice legs, and a lot for a boy to notice under her sweater. In her sophomore year, she began going steady with Joe John LeBeau. Joe John was a fullblooded Anishinaabe bussed in from the Iron Lake Reservation ten miles outside Aurora. Dating someone from the reservation would have caused Darla a lot of trouble, but Joe John was different. Joe John was a celebrity, a basketball player of amazing ability. The St. Paul Pioneer Press had dubbed him the next Jim Thorpe, and he’d been heavily recruited by colleges all over the Midwest. He accepted a basketball scholarship to Indiana, but just before he was to begin his second year, as he was crossing a street in Bloomington, an old woman who failed to stop her big Cadillac at a red light ran him down. His right leg was shattered from his ankle bone to his hip, and although it was reconstructed, he always walked with a limp after that. With no hope of playing basketball again, he came home to Aurora. Shortly after that, he and Darla were married.
“You probably should have called the sheriff, Darla.”
“I didn’t want to get Joe John in trouble. I just want Paul home safely.”
“Have you tried calling Paul’s friends?”
“I’ve called everywhere I can think. His friends, my folks, the neighbors. I even called Pizza Hut because sometimes he’ll play video games there after he’s finished his routes.”
“Nobody saw him?”
“Nobody. I’ve got coffee. Want some?”
“Thanks.”
He followed Darla to the kitchen.
“You’re sure he went to deliver his papers?” Cork asked.
“He left a note on the refrigerator telling me where he was going. He’s so good that way.”
Cork sat on a stool in her spotless kitchen. He’d sat here with Joe John many times after he brought him home from a drunk. Joe John wasn’t a mean drunk. Mostly he was nostalgic. Very often Cork would find him on the basketball court in Knudsen Park shooting hoops. Even drunk, he had a nice touch. Or sometimes Joe John would disappear for a while, usually no more than a week or two, and he would come back sobered up and contrite and full of assurances that he was through with the bottle forever.
A lot of the whites in Aurora were quite happy to see Joe John fail. Indians, they said with great satisfaction. Drunks. It didn’t matter that Joe John had given Aurora some shining moments, that the signs posted at the town limits proclaiming “Home of the Warriors, State Basketball Champions” were entirely due to Joe John’s talent, and that Joe John had suffered a significant disappointment through no fault of his own. That he was Indian explained it all.
Joe John had tried many times to beat the booze. It was his sister, Wanda Manydeeds, who finally helped him. Like Henry Meloux, she was one of the Midewiwin, a member of the Grand Medicine Society. She convinced Joe John to let Henry Meloux treat him in the old way. She could have treated Joe John herself, but the Midewiwin never ministered to their own relations. The treatment was something neither Meloux nor she nor Joe John would talk about, but it seemed to work. For over a year, Joe John had been sober. He had begun a business of his own, a janitorial service, contracting to clean offices in Aurora. It was a good business. Things seemed to be going well.
Then, two months ago, Joe John up and vanished, leaving his truck smashed into a tree on County Road C and the cab reeking of whiskey. He’d simply walked away from the accident and never come back.
“Have you heard from Joe John lately?” Cork asked.
“Not a word.” Her hand trembled as she poured out his coffee. “I was always afraid something like this would happen. Joe John hated it here, Cork. When he was drunk, he used to talk about how he’d take Paul away someday, somewhere where nobody knew who he was and wouldn’t make fun of Paul for being the son of a drunk Indian.” She looked at her trembling hand and put the pot down.
“You told me on the phone he’s been gone about five hours. How do you know?”
“In his note he said it was two o’clock when he left. I don’t know why he thought he had to deliver on a day like today. Nobody would care if the paper wasn’t delivered today. People would understand.” Her shoulders sagged wearily. “I make good money at the casino. He doesn’t have to deliver papers at all. I think he just wants to show people he’s not like his father.”
“How have things been between you and Paul lately?”
“What do you mean?”
“Any tension, arguments?”
“You mean, did Paul run away?” she said. “He wouldn’t do that.”
“I don’t think he would either,” Cork reassured her. “It’s just one of the possibilities we have to consider.” He sipped his coffee. “Has he talked about his father lately? Maybe said something about wanting to find him? I’m only asking because I know how it feels to lose your father at that age. I know I would have done anything to bring him back.”
“No, nothing. He’s been quieter lately, but I just figure it’s his age.”
“Have you called Wanda? If Joe John’s back, she’d know.”
“I tried. The lines must be down.”
Cork thought for a moment. The refrigerator clicked on and the bottles rattled inside it. The wind howled past the kitchen window in the breakfast nook.
“Okay, we know he left the house. Do we know if he actually started his route? Or finished?”
“No.”
“Do you know what route he follows, who his customers are?”
“No,” Darla said, shaking her head with exasperation. “No.”
Cork reached out and touched her hand across the counter. “That’s all right, Darla. There’s no reason you should. Does Paul keep any kind of record of his customers?”
A sudden, hopeful look lit her face. “He has a receipt book he uses when he collects for the papers every month.”
“Good. Let’s have a look.”
“I’ll get it,” she said.
Cork didn’t see any reason yet to be worried about Paul’s safety. Aurora was a small place and children didn’t just disappear. Probably Joe John was responsible, too ashamed to face Darla but anxious to see his son, particularly as it was the Christmas season. Cork also knew from experience that more often than not when teenagers vanished, they left of their own accord.
Darla LeBeau returned with a dark blue receipt book and handed it to Cork. Paul kept good records, and from the order of the addresses, which began on Center Street and followed one another geographically out to the last address on North Point Road, Cork figured Paul probably collected from his customers in the same order he delivered their papers.
“What are you going to do?” Darla asked.
“I’ll start by calling a few of his customers, find out if the papers were delivered, and maybe when. That will give us a little more to go on than we have now. And you never know. Someone might have seen something.”
He began with the last address in the receipt book. Judge Robert Parrant. The line was fuzzy and Cork didn’t even get a ring at the other end. He moved back through the receipt book, making half a dozen more calls. North of the tracks, nothing connected. South, everyone who answered had received a paper, although no one had actually seen anything of Paul.
“Seems to be a problem with the lines to the north,” Cork told Darla. “I wish I’d been able to get through to
