“Abbie.”
“Anyone else?”
She thought a moment. “Yes, seems to me before that Leonora Broom had took off. She just up and left her boy. Now that was a shame.”
“Isaiah?”
She nodded. “Oh, he was an angry little boy.”
“So, Leonora Broom first and then Abbie Stillday. Anyone else?”
She thought some more, and while she thought, her tongue lapped idly over her lower lip. “Not then.”
“What do you remember about then?”
She turned her face to him and she smiled. “It was so long ago. But sometimes, when I read your mother’s poems, I remember. Your mother, she was a beautiful writer.”
“Yes.”
“She wrote the loveliest poems. She could have been famous, I bet, if she’d wanted to be. And her journals. She gave them to me before she died. I used to read them. I don’t read much anymore.”
He had forgotten about his mother’s writing. “Did you pass them on to the historical society?”
She shook her head. “Kept those for myself.”
“Where are they?”
“In my room. Push me?”
He wheeled her out of the dayroom, past two old Shinnob men playing checkers and an old woman nodding in front of the television. Her room was on the first floor. It was small but pleasant. She pointed to the closet. “In there.”
Inside, Cork found an old steamer trunk taking up much of the floor space. Beside it were stacked four cardboard boxes. One was marked “Allouette” and one “Brandywine,” the names of the two communities on the rez. On the other two were written his mother’s name: Colleen O’Connor. He lifted the first two boxes, set them on the trunk, and pulled free those below that bore his mother’s name. They were sealed with tape.
“Take them,” Millie Joseph said at his back. “I don’t need them now. I can’t read anymore.”
“
“She could have been a famous author, I bet,” she said again. “Are there any famous Ojibwe authors?”
“A few,” Cork said.
“Good,” Millie Joseph said and smiled.
* * *
He’d loaded the boxes in his Land Rover and was heading back toward Aurora when his cell phone rang. It was the sheriff’s office.
“We have some preliminary information from the crime scene if you want to stop by,” Dross said.
“I’m on my way. I’ve got some information for you, too.”
She was in her office, with Ed Larson and Simon Rutledge. They appeared to have been waiting for him.
“What did you find out?” Larson asked.
“And good morning to you, too, Ed,” Cork said.
“Sorry,” Larson said. “A little eager.”
There were no chairs available, so Cork leaned against one of the file cabinets. “I’ve got two possible names for the additional bodies in Vermilion One.”
Larson had his small notebook out in an instant, pen poised above a clean page.
“Hattie Stillday’s elder daughter, Abigail, who was believed to be a runaway. And Leonora Broom, Isaiah Broom’s mother, who everybody thought simply abandoned him. Check the community clinic in Allouette. There may be dental records for both women available through the Indian Health Service.”
“I’ll get right on that,” Larson said.
Dross asked, “Did you find out if anyone knew about the sink on reservation land?”
“I didn’t get a satisfactory answer to that particular question,” Cork replied. He knew he was spinning out the thinnest thread of truth, but at least it wasn’t a lie. “What did you get from the crime scene?”
“Something we don’t understand,” Rutledge said with a wistful, unruffled look. Not much ruffled Rutledge. It was one of the things Cork liked about him. “The bullet pulled from Lauren Cavanaugh during the autopsy and the bullet Upchurch found lodged in Monique Cavanaugh’s spine were both thirty-eight caliber. Although they were deformed by impact, both stayed in one piece and our techs were able to examine the rifling impressions pretty clearly. Get this, Cork. Both bullets were fired from the same weapon.”
“What kind of firearm?” Cork asked.
“Because of the right-hand twist to the striations, we’re thinking Smith and Wesson, a thirty-eight.”
A .38 Smith & Wesson was a firearm with which Cork was eminently familiar. He owned one himself and had worn it when he was sheriff of Tamarack County. Forty years before that, the gun had belonged to his father.
It wasn’t an uncommon weapon, yet the coincidence made Cork uncomfortable, and he knew that, as soon as the meeting was over, there was something he had to do.
“Anything else from the mine?” he asked.
Larson glanced up from his notebook. “Yes. Beneath the older victim with the bullet in the spine we found a gold wedding band. There was an inscription on the inside surface. ‘My Unique Monique.’”
“Monique Cavanaugh,” Cork said.
“We can’t say a hundred percent at this point, but it’s sure looking that way.”
“Anything useful on the other victims?”
“Clothing remnants still clinging to bone on three of the victims, which may indicate that the other two were nude when they were put there. I can’t imagine the clothing will be much help with IDs at this point. We’ll check dental records at the Indian Health Service, and if the victims are the other vanished women, maybe we’ll get lucky and find matches.”
“It’s the Vanishings, Ed. I’m sure.”
He could see that Larson was certain, too, but the opinion of the sheriff’s chief investigator would be an official and quoted one, and so, good cop always, Captain Ed Larson was cautious in his speculations. “We’ll see.”
Rutledge eyed Cork with arched interest and asked, “What do people on the reservation remember about the Vanishings, Cork?”
“I’ve only talked to one person, Simon. An old woman named Millie Joseph. Her memory’s pretty hit-and- miss.”
“But you’ll talk to others?”
“Of course.”
“Of course,” Rutledge said and smiled enigmatically.
Cork shoved away from the file cabinet, preparing to leave.
Dross stood up. “Cork, we’ve been able to contain most of the information about what we found in the mine. But as soon as this story breaks, it’s going to break big and the media will descend like locusts.”
“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” he replied.
“How do you mean?”
“The Vanishings are decades old, probably as cold a case as you’re likely to find here. Maybe someone will come forward with new information. It happens.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” she said.
FOURTEEN
Cork’s father had left a legacy that included a lot of intangibles. The idea that justice was an imperative. That
