Vermilion Drift

“Look, Max, there’s something I need to say.”

“Say it.”

“I have two grown daughters and a teenage son. It strikes me that I have less control, less access to their private lives than you have with your sister. Frankly, it seems odd.”

Cavanaugh stared at him. His eyes were the hard green-brown of turtle shells. Cork waited.

“My sister is flamboyant,” Cavanaugh finally said. “She inspires. She walks into a room and the place becomes electric, brighter and more exciting. People fall in love with her easily, and they’ll follow her anywhere. In this way, she’s charmed. But she has no concept of how to handle money. The truth is that financially she’s a walking disaster. Consequently, for most of her life, I’ve overseen her finances. It hasn’t been easy. There have been issues.”

“Recently?”

He hesitated. “This arts center of hers. She gifted it significantly from her own resources—our resources. The idea was that other avenues of financing would then be found. They haven’t materialized. I’ve been bleeding money into this project for some time now.”

“Do you have the ability to bleed?”

“There’s plenty of money. That’s not the point.”

“The point is her unreliability?”

He considered Cork’s question, as if searching for a better answer, then reluctantly nodded.

“One more question. Has your sister received any threats related to the situation at Vermilion One?”

“No. She’s not associated with this at all. The mine is my business.”

“All right.” Cork quoted his usual daily rate, then added, “A five-thousand-dollar bonus if I find her.”

“I don’t care what it takes. Will this interfere with your investigation of the mine threats?”

“I’m sure I can handle them both. I’ll prepare the paperwork. Will you be around this afternoon?”

“I have a meeting until four, but I’ll be at my home this evening.”

Cork said, “I’ll drop by. Say around six?”

“Thanks, Cork. But I’m hoping you’ll begin this investigation immediately.”

“I’m already on the clock.”

TWO

Corcoran Liam O’Connor had lived in Tamarack County, Minnesota, most of his life. He’d grown up there, had gone away for a while and been a cop in Chicago, then returned to the great Northwoods to raise his family. Several years earlier he’d been the county’s sheriff, but hard things had happened and he’d left official law enforcement and now ran what he called “a confidential investigation and security consulting business.” He was a PI. He operated his business alone, which was pretty much the way he did everything these days. He’d been a widower for a little over a year, recently enough still to feel the loss deeply; a father, but that summer his children were gone; what was left to him at the moment was the big, empty house on Gooseberry Lane and a family dog constantly in need of walking.

He followed Cavanaugh’s black Escalade east ten miles to Aurora, then along the shoreline of Iron Lake. Rain had begun to fall, and the lake was pewter gray and empty. It was Monday, June 13. Spring had come late that year, and so far June had been cool enough that it had everyone in Tamarack County talking about summers they swore they remembered snow clear into July. Cavanaugh turned off Highway 1 and headed south into a low range of wooded hills capped with clouds and dripping with rainwater. Fifteen minutes later, they entered Gresham, a small town that had been built in the early days of mining on the Iron Range. The Vermilion One Mine had been the town’s economic base, and, until the mine closed in the mid-1960s, Gresham had bustled. Now the streets were deserted; the buildings looked old and ignored. Every other storefront on the single block of the business district seemed long vacant, and yellowed signs bearing the names of realty companies leaned against the glass in otherwise empty windows. Lucy’s, which was a small cafe, was brightly lit inside, and as Cork passed, he could see a couple of customers at the counter and Lucy Knutson at the grill, but no one seemed to be talking. It reminded him of an Edward Hopper work, Nighthawks, and he felt the way he always did whenever he looked at that painting: sad and alone.

Which brought back to him the dream he’d had the night before: his father’s death. He could never predict when the nightmare would visit him, but it inevitably left him feeling broken and empty and unsure. He looked through the windshield streaked with rain and wondered, Christ, could the day get any worse?

Cavanaugh had sped through Gresham and was so far ahead that Cork couldn’t see the Escalade anymore. Less than a mile outside town, he began to encounter the protesters. They wore ponchos and rain slickers and sat on canvas chairs and held their placards up as he passed.

No Nukes Here!

Stop the Madness!

Not in Our Backyards!

Washington—Go Radiate Yourself!

At the moment, there were maybe twenty protesters, which, considering the rain, seemed like a lot. They were an earnest and committed body.

A legal order restrained anyone from interfering with entry to the Vermilion One Mine, but as Cork approached the gate, a tall, broad figure in a green poncho stepped into the road and blocked his way. Cork was going slowly enough that it was no problem to brake, but he wasn’t happy with the aggressiveness of the move. When the Land Rover had stopped, the figure came around to the driver’s side, lifted a hand, and drew back the poncho hood, revealing the scowl of Isaiah Broom.

Cork rolled his window down. With as much cheer as he could muster, he said, “Morning, Isaiah.”

Broom looked at him, then at the closed gate of the mine entrance, then at Cork again. He had eyes like pecans, and he had the high, proud cheekbones that were characteristic of the Anishinaabeg. He was roughly Cork’s age, just past fifty. Cork had known him all his life. They’d traveled many of the same roads, though never together. They were not at all what anyone would call friends.

“You going in there?” Broom asked.

“That’s my intent, Isaiah.”

“You know, a lot of us Shinnobs are wondering about your allegiance these days.”

“My allegiance, Isaiah, is to my own conscience. So far, I haven’t done anything that worries me in that regard.”

“These people,” he said, nodding toward the mine operation, “they don’t worry you?”

“These people are my neighbors. Yours, too, Isaiah.”

“They’re chimook, Cork,” he said, using the Ojibwe slang for white people. “Are you chimook, too? Or are you one of The People?”

Broom had called himself Shinnob. That was shorthand for Anishinaabe, which was the true name of the Ojibwe nation. Roughly translated, it meant The People, or The Original People. Cork supposed that in this way the Anishinaabeg—as they were known collectively—like every human community, thought of themselves as special. Broom and the others were there because the southern boundary of the Iron Lake Reservation abutted the land holdings of the Vermilion One Mine.

“At the moment, Isaiah, I’m just a man trying to do a job. I’d be obliged if you’d step back and let me be on my way.”

“‘In terms of the despiritualization of the universe, the mental process works so that it becomes virtuous to destroy the planet.’ Russell Means said that.”

Broom was fond of quoting Russell Means, who was Lakota, and also Dennis Banks, who was a Shinnob. In the early seventies, these men had been among the founders of the American Indian Movement. Broom had known