Cork handed him the paper plate that contained a cut tuna sandwich, a handful of potato chips, some grapes, and an Oreo cookie. He’d had a tough time keeping it all together in the wind. Supporting himself with the wooden cane, he eased down beside the boy.
Cork stared into the woods where that morning the cougar had screamed at him. Through the shifting branches of some birch trees he could see the flaming crests of the Hurons in the west.
“You know, it occurs to me you’re very lucky,” he said.
Ren, who’d just bit into his sandwich, paused with crumbs on his lips and gave Cork a quizzical look.
“You always have a place to go, that place in your head where your art comes from. Seems to me it must be a place where things come together for you. Miziweyaa. Know what that means?”
Ren shook his head.
“It’s an Ojibwe word. It’s when everything comes together, all of a piece.” Cork kept his eyes on the mountains, careful not to look at Ren’s drawing, which would have been a trespass. “You’re Ma’iingan. There’s a lot of power in your blood. Did you know that?”
Ren looked down at his plate. “Mostly it makes me weird here.”
“You get a lot of flak?”
“It didn’t used to be a big deal, not until my dad died. Then everybody was like, ‘Hey, Tonto.’ ”
“What do you do when they give you a hard time?”
“I say Screw you in my head and try to ignore ‘em.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
The wind shifted for a moment and the papers on the sketch pad riffled wildly. Ren held them down.
“Mom’s not big on being Indian,” he said.
“I know.”
“Ever since Dad died she’s seemed kind of mad all the time.”
“At you?”
“Not me, but everything else. Mostly Dad, because of what he was doing and that it got him killed.”
“How do you feel about it?”
He looked up at Cork. He seemed taken by surprise, as if no one had ever asked him that. “He was doing what he thought was right. I guess I understand.”
Cork put his arm around the boy. “It may take your mom a little longer to get there, Ren.”
“If those men who shot you had killed you, would your wife understand or your kids?”
“I hope they would.”
“But you’re a cop. That’s pretty dangerous.”
“I never thought about it in terms of the danger. I always thought more about trying to do what’s right.”
Ren nodded thoughtfully.
A dab of tuna fell onto Ren’s sketch pad and the boy wiped it off. Without thinking, Cork glanced down and saw a greasy smear across a sketch of a cougar. The drawing was quite good and seemed accurate, except for one thing: the face was feminine and lovely and belonged to Dina Willner.
“I’ve been thinking about Charlie,” Ren said. “She didn’t come here. She didn’t go to the shelter.”
“And?”
Ren’s chest rose with a deep breath. “Whoever killed her dad, maybe…” He looked at Cork, his dark eyes fearful. “Maybe they took her.”
Cork said, “All right. Let’s think about that. Why would they take her?”
“I don’t know. She saw something?”
“What would she see?”
“They killed her dad.”
“So she’s a witness?”
“Yeah.”
“And they wanted to keep her silent?”
“Right.”
“Why wouldn’t they have killed her right there, like her dad?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t, either. But that’s what would have made the most sense. What also makes sense is that she understood the danger and she ran. I think you’re right, though. I think she knows exactly what happened in that trailer, and she’s hiding.”
Ren looked as if he wanted to believe this, but something stood in his way. “Why didn’t she come here?”
“She has a good reason. When we find her, we’ll ask. Okay?”
Ren let it roll around in his head a moment, then he gave a sober nod. “Okay.”
“I’m heading back in.”
Ren said, “Me, too.”
Cork worked his way to his feet while Ren gathered up his things. They started back together.
The phone was ringing as they came through the cabin doorway. Jewell answered. “Hello?” She nodded. “Yes, Sue.” Cork, as he hobbled to a chair, saw her face go ashen. “Thanks, Sue.” She hung up.
She stared at the floor a moment, then raised her eyes, but avoided looking at anyone directly.
“Sue Taylor,” she said. “She and her husband own a hotel that overlooks the harbor. Ren and I saw a commotion down that way as we came into town.”
Ren had stopped in the middle of the room, his sketch pad wedged under his arm, his paper plate in his hand. Dina sat in a rocker near the fireplace. She stopped rocking.
“Sue thought we ought to know.” Jewell ran a hand, thoughtless and swift, through her hair.
Ren stood rigid as a stick of chalk. “Know what, Mom?”
She said the last of it in a breathless rush and Cork heard the heartbreak in every word. “The police pulled a body from the water. Sue didn’t know much except that-I’m sorry, Ren-it was a teenage girl.”
18
You live in a place your whole life. You know it. It’s as familiar as the mole on your left wrist or the flatness of your nose or the way your tongue rests in your mouth. You stop noticing.
Then something happens, and it all changes. You step through some unexpected looking glass of tragedy – the murder of your husband, say – and although everything around you appears the same, nothing really is, not at all, not ever. You wait for a day that feels normal, when the sun is a reason to smile, when the sight of a couple holding hands doesn’t make you want to cry, when you walk without dragging a coffin behind you.
You pray for even a moment of letting go. But it never comes.
She shook her head, clearing those thoughts, preparing for death again and wishing there was a way to prepare Ren, who’d insisted on going with her into Bodine. He sat pressed against the passenger door, cringing like a dog that had been kicked and was waiting to be kicked again.
God, you bastard, if that girl is dead…
She let it go. What good was railing at the deaf?
The Taylors stood on the steps in front of the Farber House. They both wore jackets. Sue had her arms crossed. Ken, tall and angular, looked a little like a dead tree leaning in the wind. They stared across the street at the pier where the remnants of a crowd still lingered. Jewell parked in an open space in front of a yellow fire hydrant. She and Ren got out.
“Where is she?” Jewell called above the rush of the wind off the lake.
“They took the body away a few minutes ago,” Sue replied.
Ren walked to the Taylors. His hands were buried in his pockets and his eyes were deep beneath a furrowed brow. “Was it Charlie?”
“We don’t know, son,” Ken answered. “It was hard to see. They kept people back.”
“How do you know it was a girl?” Ren demanded.
