Vermilion Drift

he’d taken only a few days earlier, when he’d first been hired to find Max Cavanaugh’s sister: through the study, the parlor, the dining room, the bedroom. As he went, he noted again the artworks that hung on every wall. Some were paintings, oil and watercolor and other media he couldn’t even guess at. Many were photographs, a lot of them by Hattie Stillday but a few by Ophelia as well. The approaches of both women were similar, though Hattie clearly had the more seasoned eye. Her nature photographs didn’t just frame a scene, they evoked atmosphere and mood and texture. They suggested story. He wondered which of the photographs were those Lauren Cavanaugh had purchased but never paid for, photographs important enough that Hattie claimed she had killed for them.

He sat on Lauren Cavanaugh’s bed, wondering if this was where she’d had her romps with Derek Huff, or had she used the bed in the boathouse for that? He opened the drawers of her dresser again and went through her vanity. He checked her closets. He returned to the study and rifled the drawers of the desk. He came up empty- handed, even though he hadn’t really known what he was looking for. He sat in an easy chair in the parlor and stared at the east wall, which was hung with an arranged display of photographs of the North Country. Three of the photos together formed a long panoramic view of a dramatic shoreline. They’d been shot in black and white, an odd choice, Cork thought, when the subject in reality was so vivid in its color—Iron Lake, which would have been hard blue against the powder blue of the sky, the face of a rock cliff, probably the gray of wolf fur, topped with aspens whose trunks were ivory and whose leaves would have been pale jade. He’d never understand art or artists, he decided, and got up and started away.

He’d reached the French doors and was about to step outside when it hit him. He turned and hurried back to the parlor and stood in front of the three photographs. The reason he’d been able to visualize the colors of the scene so well, he realized, was because he knew the place. A place of bimaadiziwin. It was where Cork’s revolver had been hidden but was no more.

Although he could already tell who’d taken the photos, he leaned close and read the artist’s tag to be absolutely certain.

Ophelia Stillday.

THIRTY-FIVE

He asked at the refreshment table if anyone knew where Ophelia Stillday was. They pointed him toward the dock behind the boathouse, and he found her there, sitting by herself on a bench with her cane at her side. She stared out at Iron Lake, where a few sailboats clipped across the water, the triangles of their canvases like white knives cutting the air. She didn’t hear him coming.

“Ophelia?”

Though he spoke gently, she looked at him with surprise and, he sensed, a little bit of fear.

“Okay if I join you?”

She didn’t invite him immediately. She had to think it over.

“I guess,” she finally said.

He sat next to her on the bench.

“You look worried,” he said.

“About Grandma Hattie,” she replied and returned to watching the sailboats.

“You know what I think about Hattie, Ophelia? I think she didn’t do what she says she did.”

Ophelia stared hard at the sailboats.

“I think she’s covering for someone else. It must be someone she loves a lot, don’t you think?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said without heart.

“I think you would. Ophelia, tell me about shooting Lauren Cavanaugh.”

When she finally looked at him, it was with something like relief. “How did you know?”

“Because I know where you got the gun. It’s a place on the rez, a place of bimaadiziwin, of healing. How did you learn about it?”

“Grandma Hattie,” Ophelia said. “She’s shown me a lot of places sacred to our people. She never photographs them herself, but she said if I thought I could do them justice and be respectful that it would be all right.”

“You went into the cave?”

“Yes. That wasn’t part of what Grandma Hattie had in mind, I know, but I wanted to understand the full importance of the place, of bimaadiziwin.”

“You took the gun?”

“Not then, but I knew it was there. When I finally understood Lauren, the real evil in her, I went back. But I only wanted to threaten her with the gun, not kill her.”

“When you took it, the gun wasn’t loaded, Ophelia.”

“I bought cartridges. I went to a store in Eveleth so no one would recognize me.”

“Most people when threatened with a firearm wouldn’t know whether it’s loaded. The firearm itself is usually enough to scare them. Putting bullets in, Ophelia, that makes me wonder.”

She looked back at the sailboats, then up where an egret flew above them, white and elegant. “I don’t know. Maybe I did want her dead. She was an awful person.”

“Tell me about her.”

She sighed deeply. “She wasn’t anything like she made people believe. I mean she was smart and charming and all that, but it was all surface. Below that everything about her was dark. She lied. She connived. She manipulated. She had no sense of decency. But unless you were around her all the time, like I was, you wouldn’t know because she was so good at keeping it hidden.”

“Why didn’t you leave her when you discovered what she was really like?”

“She promised to make sure the right people saw my work.”

“That’s it?”

She looked away.

“What else, Ophelia? It’s all going to come out anyway, so you might as well tell me.”

She laughed, but it was a sound without joy. “What was it you told me on the courthouse steps? The reasons people kill?”

She swung her eyes toward Cork, her young, pained eyes, and he understood.

“You loved her,” he said.

“And I thought she loved me. She told me this leg of mine, this ugly, crippled thing, didn’t matter to her. She told me she saw something beautiful in me and in my work.” She was crying now, softly. “And I believed her.”

“Oh, Ophelia,” he said and took her in his arms and let her cry.

To love and to be loved, he thought. Oh, God, who didn’t want that? And what parent didn’t want this simple blessing for his child?

“It’s all right, Ophelia,” he cooed. “It’s all right.” As her sobs subsided, he asked gently, “So there’s nothing between you and Derek?”

She shook her head. “I hated him at first. I thought he took Lauren from me. Then I realized Lauren simply used people and threw them away. But she didn’t let go of them until she was ready, and I realized Derek was a prisoner just like me.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wanted out of it. She wouldn’t let him. She told him if he left her, she’d ruin him. She’d see to it that no one paid any attention to his work.”

“The night you shot her, would you tell me about that?”

She wiped her eyes, then folded her hands and stared at them awhile, gathering herself before she began.

“We’d met with some of the center volunteers to talk about the new group of resident artists who would be arriving the next day. It was a kind of a cocktail thing. Lauren had a little too much to drink. After everyone left, she