She lifted her eyes to me. “He killed someone, Cork.”
I swung my legs off the bed and was up and beside her in an instant. “Killed who?”
“I couldn’t hear very well. The connection was terrible. Someone named Rodriguez, I think.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is he now?”
“He didn’t say.” She was punching in his number, her hands trembling.
“Tell him to get himself a lawyer, stat.”
“He can’t afford a lawyer.” She put the phone to her ear.
“We can. And even if we couldn’t, he needs legal counsel and he needs it now.”
She looked at the ceiling while she waited, as if praying, then looked at me. “He’s not answering.” She waited another few seconds. “Peter, it’s your mother. Call me back. Now.”
I held out my hand for the phone. “Let me listen to his message.”
She was right. It was scratchy and broken, but the name Rodriguez and the words “killed him” and “they’ll be looking for me” were all discernible.
“Okay if I try him?”
She nodded.
I called him back. On his end, the phone rang and rang and then went to voice mail.
“Peter, it’s Cork. Your message was garbled, so I don’t know exactly what’s happened. It sounds like someone’s been killed. Rodriguez maybe, whoever that is. And it sounds like you believe you’re responsible. You also said they’ll be looking for you. That much came through. I don’t know who’s looking for you, but if it’s the police, get a lawyer and get one now. We’ll be there just as soon as we can.”
Rainy signaled for the phone back. She took a deep breath and said, “It’s Mom, Peter. I love you. I believe in you. Whatever is going to happen, I’ll be there for you.”
She ended the call and stood staring at me, stunned. For a moment, there was not a sound in our bedroom, in our house, in our whole world. Then the first explosion of the Fourth of July fireworks in Grant Park made us both flinch.
“You’ll go with me?” she said. Some women might have been crying. All I saw in Rainy was an iron resolve.
I took her in my arms and we stood together, naked, and I felt once again the weight of history settle on my shoulders.
“Wherever you are,” I told her, “there I am also.”
CHAPTER 2
* * *
I made a phone call to a guy named Ed Larson, who’d worked as a deputy for me when I was sheriff in Tamarack County. He’d retired to Green Valley, south of Tucson. I told him what was up and asked if he could check things out in Cadiz, which wasn’t all that far from where he lived. Ed was only too happy to help. Rainy insisted I book a flight for us as soon as possible. The first plane out of the airport in Duluth was at six-thirty the next morning, and I bought two seats. Rainy had been trying to connect with Peter, but still no answer. She’d thrown on her robe and paced the room. Every few minutes, she punched in her son’s number on her cell phone, tapping the display screen hard as if squashing a bug there.
“Why isn’t he answering, Cork?”
“I have no idea, Rainy. It may be that he’s already been arrested, and they’ve taken his phone away.”
“They have to allow him one call, right?”
“That’s protocol, more or less, but it doesn’t have to be immediately. It depends on a lot of things.”
“Like what?”
“Where they picked him up, whether they actually intend to arrest him, whether it’s a custodial interrogation or they’re simply probing for information. Or maybe his phone just ran out of juice.”
“The moment after he called us?” She shook her head.
She was right. That would have been a huge coincidence, and I don’t put much stock in coincidence. His silence concerned me, too, but I’ve been in enough bad situations to know how to keep a rein on my worst fears. And I know how callous this sounds, but the reality for me was that he was my wife’s son, not mine, and so once removed from that place in my heart where a parent’s deepest fears are locked away. For Rainy, of course, it was different.
“He said they’re after him.” She gave me a dark look. “That doesn’t necessarily mean the police.”
“Let’s not assume anything until we know more. Maybe Ed can find out something helpful. In the meantime, do you know anyone down there you could call?”
She thought a long time. “He’s never talked about people, his friends.” It seemed a revelation to her, one that disturbed her, and the hard front she was putting up cracked a little. She closed her eyes. “It’s possible he’s using again.”
“Don’t do this to yourself. He got clean and he’s stayed clean. This is about something else.”
I said it as if it were an absolute. There are no absolutes, but sometimes, to keep fear at bay, you have to insist that there are.
My cell phone rang. I hoped it was Ed getting back to me. But it was my daughter Jenny calling.
“Dad, you and Rainy missed the fireworks. Where are you?”
I did a quick explanation, and she said, “We’ll be right there.”
Rainy stood in the middle of the room, and I could tell she’d come to some decision. “I have to talk to Uncle Henry.”
Henry Meloux is Rainy’s great-uncle, a man as old as time itself. For several years, Rainy had lived with Meloux in his isolation on Crow Point, a finger of land that juts into Iron Lake far north of Aurora. Like Rainy, he is Mide and was her mentor as she learned the ways of the Grand Medicine Society. After we married, Rainy had come to live in the house on Gooseberry Lane where I’d been raised and where I’d raised my children.
“He knows even less than we do about Peter’s situation,” I said.
“That’s not what I want from him.” She threw off her robe and began to dress.
We were both downstairs when the rest of the family returned home. It was hard dark by then, late. Five-year-old Waaboo, always in a rush of energy, came storming in. His legal name is Aaron Smalldog O’Connor. He’s half Ojibwe, Red Lake Band. His nickname is Waaboozoons, which in the language of the Anishinaabeg means “little rabbit.” We call him Waaboo for short.
“Baa-baa,” he cried, his name for me. Don’t ask; the explanation is a long one.
“Good fireworks?” I said.
His response was a terrible scowl. “You weren’t there.”
“Something came up, little guy.” I glanced at Jenny and she shook her head. She hadn’t explained.
But it was clear Daniel understood. “Does Peter have a lawyer?”
Daniel English is Rainy’s nephew, and like her, full-blood Ojibwe. He and Jenny had been married less than a year. In keeping with the tradition of the Anishinaabeg, and because they were saving money for a place of their own, after the wedding, they’d moved in with us. Daniel was a game warden for the Iron Lake Reservation and understood the necessity of good counsel when navigating all the unpredictable crosscurrents that were usually involved in a legal proceeding.
“We don’t know,” Rainy said. “He’s not answering his phone.”