Manitou Canyon (2 page)

Lindsay said, “We asked around. Your son is named Stephen. And folks here say he has . . .” She hesitated. “Special gifts.”

“This dream seemed to take place in the Southwest?” Cork said.

“Or a place very like it,” Trevor said.

“Any idea why that particular landscape?”

“None. Except I live in Las Vegas, so it's a landscape I'm familiar with.”

“Dreams often take place in landscapes familiar to the dreamer,” his sister offered. When Cork eyed her, she said, “Psychology minor.”

Cork sipped his coffee, openly studied them both, thought it over, and finally said, “There's paperwork we'll need to take care of.”

“You'll do it?” Lindsay seemed a little surprised and clearly pleased.

“I'll do my best, but I have to tell you up front that I don't think there are any stones left unturned.”

“So what's the plan?” Trevor asked.

“I'll start by going back into the Boundary Waters to see if there's anything we didn't see before.”

The young woman said, “If you do that, Mr. O'Connor, I'm coming with you.”

Cork gave a nod. “We'll have to leave right away, first thing tomorrow morning. We're right at the edge of winter up here, and if we wait, snow might cover every clue we hope to find. Also, my daughter's getting married in two weeks, so we need to be in and out quickly.” He looked at her brother. “You coming with us?”

“The Boundary Waters isn't really my thing,” Trevor said. “I only went in the first place to please Grandpa John, and that didn't work out so well. Believe me, I'd only be in the way.”

Cork glanced at his sister, and she gave a little nod of agreement.

“But I'll say a prayer or two while you're there,” he said with a smile. “Never been very good at that either, but it's the best I can offer.”

Lindsay Harris put a hand over her brother's. “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

Both men looked at her curiously.

She gave a little shrug. “Martin Luther King, Jr.”

“You know the poem that begins ‘We dance round in a ring and suppose'?” Cork said.

Lindsay thought a moment. “And the next line is about something that sits in the middle and knows, right?”

“Yes,” Cork said. “The Secret.”

“Who wrote it?” Trevor Harris asked.

Cork stared out the window at the cold, gray November sky, and said, “Frost.”

C
HAPTER
3

C
ork parked on Oak Street in front of the State Bank of Aurora to deposit the retainer check John Harris's grandchildren had given him. More than forty years earlier, on a gray day not unlike this one, his father and some deputies had been involved in a gun battle here, exchanging fire with some escaped convicts who'd just robbed the bank. An old woman, deaf and oblivious, had wandered into the shoot-out. Cork's father, in grabbing her and bringing her to safety, had taken a fatal bullet. Cork generally didn't reflect much on his father's death, except in this bleakest of months.

After he finished his business in the bank, he walked to the Tamarack County Sheriff's Office, just a couple of blocks away. He could smell the aroma of deep-fry coming from Johnny's Pinewood Broiler. He walked past North Star Notions, where the window had already been stripped of Halloween decorations and now sported turkeys and cornucopias and other symbols of Thanksgiving, more than three weeks away. He waved to Ardith Kane, who stood inside amid aisles and shelves filled with pine-scented candles and toy stuffed moose and dream catchers and Minnetonka Mocassins, and she waved back. He turned the corner at Pflugleman's Rexall Drugs and walked another block to the Sheriff's Department and County Jail. Behind the thick glass of the public contact desk, Kathy Engesser, who was a civilian employee and usually worked dispatch, sat bent over the
St. Paul Pioneer Press,
working that day's
New York Times
crossword puzzle. With a pen. She looked up and smiled.

“Hey, handsome,” she said into the microphone. She had dark blond hair with a few solidly gray streaks. She pushed back a tress that had fallen over one eye. “Long time, no see. Where you been hiding yourself?”

“Closing up Sam's Place today, Kathy.”

“Already? Time does fly. What can we do for you?”

“Is the sheriff in?”

“She's here. Want to talk to her?”

“If she's free.”

“Working on year-end budget stuff. Wouldn't take much to pull her off that, I'm guessing. I'll let her know you're here.”

She lifted her phone and punched a button. Cork watched her lips move. She nodded, put the phone down, and bent to the microphone. “She says, and I quote, ‘God yes, let him in.' ” Kathy reached below the desk and buzzed Cork through the security door.

He found Sheriff Marsha Dross at her desk, awash in a sea of paperwork. She had her elbows propped on the desk and her head in her hands. She looked as miserable as Cork had ever been when he'd worn the badge that was now hers.

“We're broke,” she said hopelessly.

Cork sat down on the other side of the desk and smiled at her across the chaos of documents. “You'll find a way. You always do.”

“We're driving cruisers that desperately need replacement. Our radio equipment is from the eighteenth century. Because of all the overtime on the Klein case last spring and the search for John Harris, my personnel budget is a disaster. In two weeks, I'm going to have to go to the commissioners and tell them that if they want a police force in this county at Christmas, they've got to give me more money. Frankly, I'd rather shoot myself.”

“They'll probably do it for you.”

“If I'm lucky. Old Nickerson has never liked having a female sheriff.” She finally smiled, wanly. “What's up?”

“In fact, it's John Harris.”

Dross was in her early forties, a not unattractive woman who
kept her brown hair cut short and her body in good shape. She'd been the first woman to wear a Tamarack County sheriff's deputy uniform, and it was Cork who'd brought her onto the force.

“You found him?” she asked with a tired smile.

“I've been hired to give it another shot.”

“Hired by who?” Now she was serious.

“His grandchildren.”

She nodded, as if it didn't surprise her. “They weren't happy when I pulled the plug on the search.” She eyed him. “You weren't either.”

“But I understood.”

“What do they want you to do that we didn't do before?”

“Like I said, find him.”

“Christ, we did everything but consult a Ouija board. You have some brilliant idea that escaped us?”

“Not yet. I'm going to begin by talking to Henry Meloux. Then I'm going back into the Boundary Waters, back to Raspberry Lake.”

“This time of year? Good luck. Good chance you'll just get yourself snowed in.”

“Me and Lindsay Harris both.”

“His granddaughter's going with you? You're actually taking her?”

“She wants to go and she's footing the bill.”

Dross seemed impressed. “Lot of pluck in that girl.” She eyed him. “I understand her. But you? You don't think we did a good enough job in our search effort?”

“I think I owe it to her grandfather to give it one more shot. We were pretty good friends once.”

“Long time ago.”

“There's a statute of limitations on friendship?”

“When are you planning to put in?”

“Tomorrow morning. If he's still out there, the chances of finding him alive are pretty slim. But the longer we wait, the slimmer they get.”

“Jenny's wedding is in less than two weeks, Cork. Aren't there responsibilities you're supposed to be seeing to?”

“We'll spend two, maybe three nights on Raspberry Lake. If I don't find anything, I'll call it.”

“And if you do find something?”

“I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

Dross sat back and ran a hand through her disheveled hair. “That whole thing still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. No worrisome medical history. No evidence of foul play. No reasonable suspect in a thousand miles who might have wanted him dead.”

“Maybe his grandchildren, the only heirs to his fortune?”

“Dwight Kohler, their guide, supplied them with rock-solid alibis. And you know Dwight. That kid couldn't lie if his life depended on it. Besides, if they had anything to do with their grandfather's disappearance, why hire you to keep the search going? And if they want an inheritance, they'll have to wait a good long while before he's declared legally dead. So, yeah, I considered them, mostly because I had to, but I couldn't really see it. You?”

“I don't know them well enough, but in your shoes I'd probably be looking somewhere else, too.”

“We considered kidnapping, of course, but there hasn't been a ransom demand, so where's the motive?” Dross shook her head. “Not a single goddamn lead. Not even a body. The man just disappeared into thin air.”

“Maybe you really should have used that Ouija board.”

“Not funny,” she said. “Why are you here, Cork? What do you need from me?”

“Nothing. Just a courtesy call to let you know what's up.”

“Do you actually think you can find him?”

His reply was a noncommittal shrug. “There's something else you should know. The brother, Trevor, claims to have had a vision. That's what's sparked all this.”

“What kind of vision?”

“Hold on to your hat. Stephen came to him in a dream, spoke some blather from Shakespeare, then quoted Matthew: ‘Seek and ye shall find.' ”

“Your Stephen? Seriously? And you bought it?”

“There were some elements of the dream that were pretty compelling and not broadly known. Enough for me to take it seriously. Anyway, I've been hired. Just wanted you to know.”

He stood and looked down at the work she had before her. “All things considered, I'd much rather be doing what I'm doing than what you've got on your plate.”

“Tell me about it,” she said. “Look, do me a favor. On your way out, have Azevedo give you one of our satellite phones. Then promise me you'll check in regular while you're out there.”

“What are you worried about?”

“Let's not call it worry. Let's call it due diligence. And, hell, it'll make me feel better, okay?” As he turned to leave, she added, “Why Meloux? Why talk to Henry about this? He wasn't involved in any of it.”

“Maybe not,” Cork said. “But he's the nearest thing I have to a Ouija board.”

C
HAPTER
4

T
he O'Connor house had been built on Gooseberry Lane long before Cork was born. His grandparents had lived there, then his parents, and now it was his. He thought of it as his second heart. It contained several lifetimes of wonderful memories, was haunted by familiar ghosts, and held the firm promise of happiness yet to come. It was large, two-story, clapboard painted white with green shutters. A covered porch ran the length of the front, and the swing that hung there was a favorite nesting place for the O'Connor clan. Taking down that swing was always one of the last of Cork's preparations for winter. In his thinking, it nailed the coffin shut for the next five months on any hope of balmy weather. He hadn't taken the swing down yet.

He parked in the driveway beside his daughter's Forester. Then he stood for a while staring across the street at the house where John Harris had once lived. The O'Loughlins lived there now, had for years. It was a nice home, brick, a good place to raise a family. But Cork knew that John Harris had never been happy there.

He entered the house through the kitchen. The place smelled of freshly baked cookies, one of the best defenses against the gloom of the dismal season. He heard a child's laughter from the living room, hung his coat on a peg by the door, and went to see what was up, although he had a pretty good idea. He found his daughter, Jenny, playing with his grandson, Waaboo, who was four years old. The boy's real name was Aaron Smalldog O'Connor, but his nickname was Waaboozoons, an Ojibwe word that meant
“little rabbit.” Mostly, everybody called him Waaboo. He was half Anishinaabe and was Jenny's adopted and beloved son. They were playing soccer with a Nerf ball, the goals created with pillows from the sofa and the chairs.

Waaboo saw Cork enter and cried, “Baa-baa!” which was the name he'd called Cork ever since he could first speak but hadn't been able to pronounce “Grandpa.” It had come out Baa-baa, and so it had remained, even though Waaboo could speak quite well now.

“Who's winning?” Cork asked. Though he was pretty sure of the answer. Waaboo was not a good loser, and right now he was beaming.

“Me,” Waaboo said.

Jenny laughed. “I'm too old for this.”

“You play with me, Baa-baa,” Waaboo insisted.

“How about we take a milk and cookie break?” Cork suggested.

Which was an idea they all thought was grand. They sat at the kitchen table, and Waaboo chattered about the kids in his preschool class, and Cork listened with pleasure.

When Waaboo finished his milk and cookie, he said, “Can we play now?”

“Why don't you go practice while I talk to your mother?” Cork suggested.

“Okay. But you come soon.” Waaboo got down off his booster chair and ran from the kitchen.

Jenny eyed her father and said, “What's up?”

“What do you mean?”

“You're stiff as a broom handle. I can see you're holding something inside, Dad. What is it?”

His daughter was twenty-seven, blond and tall. She was a writer, could call herself that legitimately because she'd sold the manuscript for a novel titled
Downwind of the Devil.
It was a fictionalized account of the true rescue of a young Ojibwe girl from the hands of sex traders. Both Jenny and Cork had been at the
heart of that rescue. There was no publication date for the novel yet, but in those hours when Waaboo was away at preschool or when he'd gone to bed for the night, Jenny was hard at work on her next project.

Cork said, “I took on a couple of new clients this afternoon. John Harris's grandkids hired me to find him.”

“You already looked for him pretty thoroughly, didn't you? You and just about everyone else in this county?”

“They want me to have another go.”

“What do you think?”

“Probably be pissing in the wind, but it's their money.”

“I know you didn't agree with the decision to pull the plug on the search. But is there something else now that's reason enough to go back out there?”

“Yeah,” he said and filled her in on Trevor Harris's dream.

She took a small bite of what was left of her cookie and considered as she chewed. “I admit it seems compelling on the surface. But before he went into the desert, Stephen posted all about it on his Facebook page. Pretty much anybody interested could have seen it.”

“Agreed. Do you remember him and his ‘monthterth' under the bed?”

“Sure, that speech thing he had when he was kid. And, boy, was he always afraid of monsters.”

“According to Trevor Harris, Stephen told him, and I quote ‘There are monthterth under the bed.' What do you make of that?”

She sipped her milk. “It does get curiouser. You'd have to know us pretty well to know that. Still, they could have done their homework.”

“To what end? They clearly want me to find their grandfather. And they're willing to pay me good money to try. If it's a manipulation, I can't see the dark twist to it. They just seem like grandchildren very concerned about their grandfather. And maybe I owe it to Johnny Do.”

“Johnny Do?”

“That's what I called him when he lived across the street. He was a hardworking kid, had himself a little enterprise. He hired out to do anything, any odd job. Called his business Johnny Do-All. He tacked up business cards all over town. I just called him Johnny Do.”

“You didn't talk much about any of this while you were searching for him.”

“No reason to, really. He and his mother left Aurora a long time ago, after his father died. They moved to California, and I lost track of him.”

In fact, until Harris disappeared, Cork hadn't known much about the life of Johnny Do after Aurora, except for the result, which had been wealth and world renown. The news accounts, in covering the search effort, had filled him in quite well.

Harris had married young, only a year after leaving Aurora, and had become a father almost immediately thereafter. Although it was never spelled out, it sounded like a shotgun wedding. He put himself through night school, supporting his family by working heavy construction during the day. He was an exceptional student and went on to the Stanford graduate School of Engineering on a full scholarship. As a geotechnical engineer, he'd joined the firm of Alwon and Gale, a large construction company based in San Francisco that specialized in big projects—roads, bridges, dams. Very early on, Harris had designed what had been considered an impossible road across one of the most rugged sections of the Andes. He'd gone on to specialize in creating the designs for projects others considered impossible—roads, dams, bridges in some of the most remote areas of the world. At age thirty, he'd founded Harris International, and his star had done nothing but rise. Although a great success in business, he had a difficult personal life. His projects kept him away from home for long periods of time, and when his daughter was ten, his wife had divorced him. He'd never remarried. By all accounts, his daughter had been a rather wild and reckless youth, married, like her father, in her teens, and a mother before she was twenty. She'd been killed in an auto accident, along
with her equally wild and reckless husband, who'd been driving drunk. In his late forties, John Harris had become the guardian of two young grandchildren.

“What are you going to do?”

“Go back into the Boundary Waters, to Raspberry Lake, see what I can find.”

Jenny looked a little disturbed. “When?”

“We leave tomorrow.”

“We? You and Harris's grandkids?”

“Just his granddaughter.”

“Dad, do I have to remind you that you're walking me down the aisle in two weeks?”

“I'll go in, stay a couple of days, then come out. I'll be back in time for the nuptials.”

Her face was one huge scowl. “So you agreed to all of this just for the sake of good old Johnny Do, a man you haven't seen in, what, forty years?”

“He's the only family these two kids have, Jenny. Remember when your mother went missing, all the hell we went through not knowing what had happened to her? I imagine that's what these folks are feeling right now, don't you?” He saw her relax just a bit, relent. “I probably won't find anything that we didn't find before, but I have to try, and it has to be now. If I wait, the snow's bound to come, and it'll cover every trace that might still be out there.” He pushed away from the table. “I'm heading to Crow Point. I want to talk to Henry.”

“Why? He was involved in the search?”

“No, but he understands those woods better than any man I know. Maybe he can give me a clue to what I ought to be looking for, something we all might have missed.”

“Back for dinner?”

“Yeah. I'll need to pack the gear for tomorrow. By the way, where's Rose?”

He was speaking of his sister-in-law, who'd come from Evanston, Illinois, to help with the wedding preparations. In the absence
of Jenny's mother, Rose had often stepped in to fill the matriarchal shoes.

“Working out at Curves. She says she wants to look svelte for the wedding.”

“But it's all about the bride, isn't it?”

“Oh, you are so male.”

“Come on, Baa-baa,” Waaboo cried from the other room.

“I'll explain to him,” Jenny said. “You go do what you have to do.”

Cork said, “I can spare fifteen minutes for my grandson.” He stood to take care of the most pleasant business he'd seen to in that whole dismal day.