young woman had no reason to run.
Cork’s father went to Allouette and that night began a fruitless investigation, which lasted for weeks. He contacted relatives, authorities on other reservations and in the Indian communities in Duluth and the Twin Cities. Word went out to teen shelters all across the Upper Midwest.
Naomi’s father, who’d long ago abandoned his family, lived in Crosby, a good eighty miles from Aurora, where he worked as an auto mechanic. Cork’s father questioned him repeatedly. Although the man couldn’t supply a decent alibi for the night Naomi went missing, there was no evidence that he’d been anywhere near Allouette at the time, and eventually Cork’s father stopped badgering him.
In the end, the search was abandoned, and no trace of Naomi Stonedeer was ever found.
The next vanishing occurred later that summer, in August. Cork remembered it well because it was a great tragedy in his family.
His mother’s sister, Ellie Grand, lived with Grandma Dilsey. Ellie had two daughters. Marais, the elder daughter, had already left home to seek her fortune in country music. That left Fawn at home, and Fawn was special. She was a gentle spirit, a girl who smiled all the time and would probably never grow sophisticated in her understanding of the world. Cork’s grandmother once told him that Fawn offered the Iron Lake Ojibwe a gift. The gift was her simplicity. It was her acceptance, with inexhaustible delight, of the everyday blessings that Kitchimanidoo showered on The People. Fawn laughed at snowflakes, was delighted when a dandelion puff exploded on the wind, cried with excitement when a fish leaped from Iron Lake and sent a spray of water into the air like pearls thrown against the sky. The Ojibwe on the rez watched over her. But even their protectiveness failed to keep her safe that summer day.
Shortly after lunch, she’d told her mother that she was going for a swim in Iron Lake. Fawn was a good swimmer and often went into the lake alone. She left in her swimsuit, carrying a towel, and her feet were bare.
Allouette had a small beach area next to the old dock where men who gillnetted and spearfished kept their boats. Jon Bruneau was at the dock that day, working on his Evinrude outboard. He swore that he never saw Fawn at the beach the whole afternoon.
Fawn’s disappearance was a blow that knocked the breath out of Cork’s family. Over the next few weeks, his mother spent much of her time with Aunt Ellie and Grandma Dilsey. Other Ojibwe women visited as well. As had often been the case in its turbulent history, the reservation came together around tragedy.
His father exhausted himself in the search for Fawn. He sent divers into the lake off the shore at Allouette, just in case Jon Bruneau had been wrong. He also had divers in the water at Sunset Cove, which was south of Allouette and a place that Shinnobs sometimes went for a swim. He grilled Bruneau mercilessly. He pressed his own good friend Sam Winter Moon to question the whole Ojibwe community. He thought maybe the Anishinaabeg would be more responsive to questions coming from one of their own than from a uniformed white man, even though he was considered a friend of the rez. No one saw anything. No one knew anything. Fawn, like Naomi Stonedeer, had simply dropped off the face of the earth.
The last vanishing was different. It was a white woman. A rich white woman. A woman who attended Mass at St. Agnes. Who volunteered her time on the library board. Who saw to it that her husband contributed lavishly to the campaign to build a new community hospital in Aurora. Who walked down the streets of town recognized, admired, and envied.
She disappeared on Labor Day weekend, when the sumac in Tamarack County had turned blood red and gold was beginning to drive out green along the branches of the aspen trees, and the air of late evening and early morning carried a chill bite. That Monday morning her husband reported to the sheriff’s office that she was missing. She’d been missing nearly two days by then. Her husband said she’d driven to Duluth for a fund-raiser. She’d intended to come home directly, but she’d been gone two nights. This wasn’t unusual. Sometimes she got it in her head to drive places, a kind of wanderlust, but he hadn’t heard from her, and he’d grown worried. The search went on until almost October, but no trace of her could be found, not even her car. Like the other women, she seemed to have been swallowed by the air itself.
Her name was Monique Cavanaugh. She was the mother of the woman who, forty years later, lay decomposing on the cool stone floor of the Vermilion Drift.
When Cork finished his story, Dross said, “But if these are the women who vanished in nineteen sixty-four, that would account for only three of the older victims. What about the other two here?”
“I don’t know,” Cork said. He looked to Upchurch. “How soon can you tell the age of the bones?”
“Not until after I get them into the lab to examine them.”
“Will you be able to tell if they’re white or Ojibwe?” he asked.
“Once I’ve done scans of the skulls, my computer ought to give me pretty accurate facial reconstructions. But I’ll tell you this right now. I’m pretty sure they’re all female.”
Larson asked, “How do you know?”
“The pelvis. Much larger in the female. Also some of the cranial features. The ridge above the brow, for example. It’s much larger in males. Same with the jawbone. Sometimes race can make a sexual determination difficult; from what I’m seeing, that’s not a problem.”
“Ed, do you think it’s possible whoever put the other bodies here also dumped Lauren Cavanaugh’s?” Dross asked.
Larson shrugged. “Anything’s possible. We’ll know a lot more after we’ve processed the scene.”
“Then we should get started,” Rutledge said.
Cork stepped back. He’d forced himself to return to that wretched place, and he’d stood it as long as he could, and now he felt desperate to get out. “This will take you a while,” he said. “I’m headed up top.”
Dross said, “I’ll go with you. Ed, keep me informed.”
“Will do,” Larson replied.
Dross and Cork walked back to the sink and crawled their way up the passage to the clearing. As they approached the top, Cork heard a loud, familiar voice, clearly in the midst of an argument. When he pulled himself out of the sink, there stood Isaiah Broom looming like an angry bear over Guy Simpson, one of Dross’s smaller deputies. As soon as Broom saw Dross emerge from the hole in the ground, he stormed in her direction.
“I want to know what you’re doing on our land,” he said.
Dross planted herself between Broom and the sink and gave him an iron reply. “We’re here conducting a lawful investigation, Mr. Broom.”
“You’re on Ojibwe land.”
“This is a crime scene, and we’re the law, even on the rez.”
Which was true. Public Law 280, passed in 1953, gave all reservations in the United States the right to choose the agency that would provide them with law enforcement regarding major crimes. Many reservations had gone with federal law enforcement. The Iron Lake Ojibwe had chosen the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department.
Broom pointed toward the sink. “Whatever that is, it’s on our land. I have the right to go down there.”
“When it’s no longer a crime scene, you may do so. I don’t know when that will be.”
“The People have a right to know what’s going on.”
“They will. In due time.”
He glared at Cork. “
Dross said to Cork, “I think we’ll need a twenty-four-hour watch on this scene until we’re finished processing it.”
Cork stared at the huge retreating form of Broom and said, “I think what you’ll need is a bazooka.”
NINE
