He shined the light on the creek. It was a clear flow, a few inches deep, three feet wide. Fallen aspen leaves, dragged along by the current, crawled the bottom like banana slugs. Cork spotted the print of a boot lightly embedded on the bank. Looking closely, he realized the footprint was on a faint path that followed the little creek. He began carefully to move through the underbrush, the beam of the flashlight illuminating the path, leading him, he knew, toward Bare Ass Lake.
In a few minutes, he stood on the shore. The lake water slapped against rocks at his feet. The wind moved the trees around him, and their branches touched and scraped, making a sound that seemed like a language Cork couldn’t understand. He edged along the shoreline and, after about thirty yards, reached the landing where Grimes had been killed.
Cork retraced his steps along the shore toward the faint path. Before he reached the juncture with the little creek, he saw something riding the surface of the water, nudged between a couple of boulders. He reached down and lifted Stormy’s jean jacket. The lake water had done nothing to clean the material. The front was streaked with dark splashes, nearly black as they mixed with the dark blue denim.
“Find anything?” Sloane asked when Cork stepped back into camp.
“Nothing,” Cork said. He moved past Sloane without looking at him.
“Should’ve saved yourself a lot of trouble and just listened to me, O’Connor.”
“You found the stand of aspen?” Stormy asked, puzzled.
“I found it,” Cork said. “Your jacket wasn’t there.”
“I could have sworn,” Stormy said. “Are you sure, Cork?”
“I’m sure.”
Sloane stood up, groaning with the effort. “We ought to turn in, get some sleep.”
“My jacket should have been there,” Stormy insisted.
“I give you my word, Stormy,” Cork told him wearily. “Your jacket wasn’t in the aspen stand.”
“Go on, Two Knives. Into your tent. I’m leaving those cuffs on,” Sloane said. “And leave the flap open,” he instructed Louis as the boy crawled into the tent with his father. “I don’t want that man out of sight. You still want to stand watches, O’Connor?”
“Yes,” Cork said.
“Probably a good idea, just to keep an eye on him.”
At that moment, the bark and howl of wolves carried across the Little Moose River from the woods on the far side. Sloane swung the beam of his flashlight in that direction, illuminating only an empty forest. “Great. On top of everything else, now I’ve got to worry about wolves.”
“You don’t have to worry about them,” Louis said defiantly from inside the tent. “They’re a good sign. We are Ma’iingan. The Wolf Clan. Those are our brothers.”
“Son,” Sloane replied coldly, “they ain’t no brothers of mine.”
21
By nine o’clock, Jo was nodding. She sat in the rocker in Stevie’s room, The Indian in the Cupboard open on her lap, her head down, her eyes closed.
For a moment, she dreamed.
A glimpse of a long church aisle, candlelit, with someone’s shadow elongated on a dark red wall. Then she realized the aisle was a corridor through a forest, and the red walls were trees drenched with blood.
She woke with a start and heard the front door open downstairs. Jenny greeted her Aunt Rose happily. Annie joined them and said something Jo couldn’t quite hear. They all laughed.
Jo closed the book and left it on the rocker. She pulled the covers over Stevie, who was sleeping soundly, turned out the lamp on the nightstand, and turned on the night-light near the door. The wind had risen in the evening. Clouds had crowded out the blue of the sky and left the day with a brooding feel. Now the elm in the backyard shifted and groaned and shed its leaves in a golden weeping.
Downstairs, Rose had the television turned to AMC. A Burt Lancaster film. He was young, and when he smiled, those magnificent teeth looked ready to tear raw flesh.
“Where are the girls?” Jo asked.
“In the kitchen.” Rose had a bag of microwaved popcorn in her lap. “Sean just brought her home.”
“I heard. What’s the movie?”
“The Killers.”
The girls stood by the cookie jar on the kitchen counter. The cookie jar was a ceramic replica of Ernie from Sesame Street. Cork had bought it years earlier when Ernie was Jenny’s favorite guy in the whole world, next to Cork. The lid was off. The girls each had a chocolate chip cookie in hand. They were laughing over something, but they stopped when Jo came in.
“Did you have a good day with Sean?” Jo asked. She slipped between them and reached into the cookie jar herself.
“Yes,” Jenny answered with a dreamy smile.
Jo bit into her cookie. “What did you do?”
“Talked, mostly. Mom, he’s so… sensitive. It’s like, you know, I don’t even have to say anything, but he knows exactly what I’m thinking.”
“I’ll bet I know exactly what he’s thinking.” Annie wiggled her eyebrows wickedly.
“It’s not like that,” Jenny said, and gave her sister a gentle push.
“Oh, yeah? What’s it like, then?”
Jenny looked to her mother for help.
“I know what you mean,” Jo assured her.
And she did. Being in love, especially for the first time, felt like being part of something wholly new to the universe. It had been like that with Cork. A long time ago.
“I’m happy for you.” She hugged Jenny tightly and so suddenly that the hand that held Jenny’s cookie got caught between them. Jo pulled away with crumbs down the front of her sweater and laughed.
The doorbell rang. Jo glanced at the clock on the stove-nine-fifteen, rather late for a visitor. She heard Rose at the front door, and she went to see who’d come calling.
Sarah Two Knives stepped in from the porch. The wind came in with her like a rude guest, mussing her hair and pushing at her clothes. Rose quickly shut the door.
Jo knew Sarah Two Knives, although not well. In her representation of the Iron Lake Anishinaabe, she’d spoken with Sarah on occasion at meetings called by the tribal council to discuss issues affecting the rez. What she knew of Sarah, she liked. Sarah was a strong woman who’d raised her son for several years alone while her husband was in prison at Stillwater.
Sarah looked distressed, then she looked behind her toward the closed front door. “I think someone’s watching your house.”
Jo followed her eyes. “You’re sure?”
“I saw someone in the shadows by your lilac bushes when I parked the truck.”
Jenny and Annie had joined them in the living room. Annie went to the window and peered through the slit in the curtains.
“See anything?” Jenny whispered.
“Everything’s moving around in the wind. It looks like everything’s alive.” Annie left the window. “I’m going outside to see.”
“We’ll all go,” Jo said and moved toward the door. “Rose, why don’t you stay here. In case Stevie wakes up.”
“I’ll stay by the phone,” Rose suggested. “Ready to call Wally Schanno’s office.”
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Jo said.
The wind hit their faces when they stepped outside. They moved together-Jo, Sarah, Jenny, and Annie- toward the lilac hedge.
“There.” Sarah Two Knives pointed at a dark place where the hedge cornered toward the driveway.
