Vermilion Drift

“Why not?”

“I was curious. What was a woman like her doing in a dive like Jacque’s dressed like a prostitute and behaving like one? Since then I’ve been watching the place to see if she might come again, and to see if I could figure what she was up to. She’s the wife of one of the richest men on the Iron Range, and I knew I needed to be careful in how I went about things. Last night, I saw her again. She was made up like Daphne, and she wasn’t alone. She came with someone familiar to us both.”

“Who?”

“Indigo Broom.”

“Mr. Windigo? God, just thinking about him gives me the creeps.”

“It gets creepier. I sit in my car in the parking lot most of the night waiting for them to come out. Finally Daphne does, but she’s not with Broom. She’s got a biker on her arm, some big, hairy ape of a guy who gets on his motorcycle and she gets on behind him. Before they take off, Broom comes out, gets in his truck, and when they leave, he follows them. I follow Broom. We end up at the North Pine Motor Court over on Long Lake. The biker and Daphne check in and take a room. Broom parks in the motor court lot, turns off his truck, sits. I park on the road and wait until almost dawn, then Daphne comes out. She gets into Broom’s truck and leaves with him. I pull out my badge and buckle on my gun belt and knock on the door of the room she left. Nobody answers. I knock again, then try the knob. Door’s unlocked. I go in. The biker’s on the bed, naked, tied up with a woman’s nylons and with a woman’s panties stuffed in his mouth and looking like he’s been attacked by a tiger, long bloody scratches everywhere. Bruises, too. I pull out the gag and cut the nylons, toss the guy his clothes, ask him what happened. ‘Nothing,’ he says. The badge gets me nowhere. I threaten to haul him in. He calls my bluff. The kind of guy who’s dealt with uniforms a lot and doesn’t scare. I tell him to get dressed, and I go to the motor court office, get us both some coffee, bring it back. He says he’ll talk but off the record. There’s something he wouldn’t mind getting off his chest, but not to a lawman. So I say, ‘Off the record.’ He tells me that at one point when she’s got him tied up, she pulls a knife from her purse, a switchblade, and says she’s going to cut his heart out and eat it. He laughs, but then she puts the blade to his chest, and for a moment he thinks she’s really going to do it. So I ask him, was it worth it? He says, ‘Mister, even though I thought for a minute I might die, the way she made me feel I almost didn’t care.’”

In the kitchen, it’s quiet for a long time.

Then his father says, “I look at Indigo Broom and Monique Cavanaugh, who, as nearly as I can tell, are involved in some brutal and bizarre sexual behavior. I look at the Vanishings, and I get the feel of something brutal and bizarre there. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“That they took Naomi and Fawn?”

“I can’t say that. Not even unofficially. But there are connections. Broom knows the rez, knows the vulnerable girls, can move about without a lot of notice.”

“And he takes Fawn and Naomi and then what, Liam?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, God, I hate to think.”

Cork hears a kitchen chair slide back and hears his father pacing.

“Liam, how do we find out?” There is a different tone to her voice. Solid. Resolved.

“If I pull him in and interrogate him, I might lose the only advantage I have, which is that he doesn’t know I’m looking his way.”

“What about her?”

“Right. I haul in the wife of Peter Cavanaugh and interrogate her regarding the missing girls and mention the fact that she loves to dress like a whore and have kinky, dangerous sex with hairy bikers. That’ll go over real big with my constituency. Hell, she wouldn’t say a word to me without a lawyer there, anyway. And if I start asking her questions, I lose that same advantage I have with Broom, which is that she doesn’t know I’m watching her.”

“Have you told anyone else?”

“Just you.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Liam, let’s talk to Sam Winter Moon and George LeDuc. And maybe Henry Meloux.”

“To what end?”

“Maybe they can help.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. But they’ll be more likely to believe you than almost any white person in Tamarack County.”

“There’s that,” he says.

Where are you now?

At Grandma Dilsey’s.

Who else is there?

You.

Who else?

Grandma Dilsey. My mother and father. Aunt Ellie. Becky Stonedeer. Sam Winter Moon. And George LeDuc.

He’s supposed to be swimming in the lake, but he has sneaked back and is sitting against the side of the house below the kitchen window, and he can hear them talking inside.

“Never liked that man. Never trusted him,” Sam Winter Moon says.

“Indigo Broom,” Meloux says. “There is a powerful spirit there. Dark like bog water.”

“I have no proof of anything,” Cork’s father reminds them.

“Proof? I know how to get proof,” LeDuc says. “Liam, you know what the word ‘Ojibwe’ means? To pucker. We used to roast our enemies until their skin puckered.”

“I hope you’re joking, George.”

“Our children are missing, Liam. About this, I don’t joke.”

“What do we do?” his mother asks.

“We go to his cabin, Colleen,” LeDuc says. “If he’s there, we talk to him. If he’s not, we wait until he comes back.”

“Talk to him?” Cork’s father says. “Or pucker him?”

“Whatever it takes, Liam.”

“I can’t let you do that, George. That’s not why I came here.”

“Doesn’t matter why you came.”

“Now wait a minute,” Sam Winter Moon says. “There’s got to be something we can do short of torturing the man.”

Grandma Dilsey says, “If we make him suffer and we’re wrong, can we live with that?”

“Hell, I can,” LeDuc says.

“Unless you silence him for good, George, he’ll sue you for everything you’ve got.”

LeDuc laughs. “That’s the white man’s revenge, Liam. On the rez, he’ll just wait in the dark and slit my throat. I’m willing to take that chance.”

“I think we should watch him,” his mother says. “There are enough eyes out here that he can’t hide. The moment he tries something, we grab him, and then, George, you can do all the puckering you want.”

“What about the woman?” Meloux says.

“Would she do anything without Indigo Broom?” Becky Stonedeer asks.

“I don’t know,” his father replies. “Henry, these are not normal people. God alone knows what they will or won’t do.”

“Can she be watched?” Meloux asks.

“I can’t put any of my men on her. I’d have to do some explaining, and I don’t know how I’d do that. And I can’t watch her myself night and day.”

“I think,” Meloux says, “that I would like to talk to this woman. Indigo Broom, I know. This woman is a stranger.”

His father says, “Got any idea how I can arrange that, Henry?”