“Do you know where they are?” I said. “Do you know where Harry and Jo are right now?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Please think,” I said. “This is very important.”
“I promise you. I don’t. I just had the one phone number. Here, I’ll find it.”
He took out his cell phone and did a quick scroll through the memory. He read me off a number and I recognized the 231 area code. It was almost certainly the number at their farmhouse in Cadillac. Either that or a cell phone. He tried calling the number, right then and there, but there was no answer. There wasn’t even voice mail. Another dead end. Lou kept sitting there, watching both of us but not really seeing anything. I could tell his mind was somewhere far away.
In the end, when all the words had been said and his story was done, we took him and his unloaded shotgun back outside to his car. He had been parked down the street, where he could watch Buck’s house. I told him that if we found Buck, I would have him call him. I told him Buck would tell Perry everything he knew about that night. About his brother Pete and the way he’d died. I figured that was the least I could promise him.
“I was thinking maybe I should go talk to this guy Dukes,” he said, just before he got into his car. “Maybe he can tell me something.”
“Don’t bother,” I said, and then I put up my hand before he could even pursue it. “Please, just go back home. You look exhausted.”
“So do you,” he said. “Both of you.”
He was right, of course. But we were far from done. We watched him drive away.
“Come on,” I said to Lou. “We still have to call the police.”
I drove back down off the rez to the gas station next to the Cozy. I figured that was the closest pay phone. Lou sat in silence while I drove, then he got out and went to the phone. He had a quick one-sided conversation with the 911 operator. Then he got back into the car.
“What did you tell them?”
“I gave the woman the house number on Hursley Street,” he said, “told her to send a car over.”
“That’s all?”
“I told her to send someone with a strong stomach.”
We drove back to Paradise, once again passing the two houses on the rez that held his two daughters, along with his grandchildren, all sound asleep at this hour. Lou looked out the window as we drove by, and I couldn’t even imagine what he was thinking.
The moon was waning but still bright. The lake was there just beyond the trees and when the trees broke we could see far out onto the water’s cold surface. I was tired, but I was even more hungry, so when we came to Paradise I pulled into the Glasgow Inn. Lou still hadn’t said a word.
Jackie took one look at us and knew better than to ask how the day had gone. We ate some of Jackie’s famous beef stew and we each had a cold Molson. When we were done we got back into the car and drove up my road. My road and Vinnie’s road. We stopped in front of Vinnie’s cabin and gave it a quick once-over. Nobody had been there.
We were standing outside under the stars and I don’t think either of us knew what to do next. We both needed to sleep, but to give in to that would have been to admit failure. We had looked for Vinnie and Buck all day long and had ended up right here where we had started.
The only difference was, now we had much more to worry about. Including a man named Corvo, who apparently liked to carve up each of his victims like a Christmas goose.
“You had a good idea last night,” Lou finally said.
“Did I? I don’t even remember.”
“It was your idea to go find Dukes. You thought he was probably still close to his home and you were right.”
“Not good thinking on his part,” I said. “But yeah, that’s how we started the day, huh? Seems like a long time ago.”
“I’m trusting that you’ll have another good idea tonight. So go and get some sleep. We both need our strength for tomorrow.”
“Okay. You’re right.”
“We’ll find them tomorrow,” he said. “I know we will.”
I drove him to my second cabin and dropped him off there. Then I went back to my own cabin. Get some sleep, the man says. Like it’s that easy.
As I lay down, the thought came to me. A whole train of thought, running through my mind as unavoidably as a real train roaring down a set of real tracks. This man Corvo came to Sault Ste. Marie to butcher Dukes and he happened to find his neighbor in the house, too. But he didn’t come out here to Buck’s house. And he didn’t come to Vinnie’s house.
He knows they wouldn’t be here. Either one of them. If he knows where they’re not, he probably knows where they are. Which can mean only one thing. The one unavoidable thing I must stop myself from thinking, no matter how hard that may be.
Vinnie and Buck, wherever they are…
They’re probably already dead.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I slept more than I’d thought I would. But it was a thin troubled sleep born of sheer exhaustion, and I awoke the next morning feeling like it had done me no good at all. I got up and looked at the sunlight streaming through the window. It was another goddamned beautiful useless day in Paradise.
When I was cleaned up and ready to go, I drove down to the second cabin. Lou was gone, just like the morning before. Only this time he didn’t come walking up the road. So I got back into the car and drove down past the other cabins, past the cabin with the four women from downstate, up here on their quest to help protect the nesting plovers. Right about then I would have paid big money to have that as my biggest problem, to be going out on the beach and looking for nests instead of whatever the hell the day had in store for me.
I drove past the next cabin, with the family here to visit Tahquamenon Falls and the Shipwreck Museum. Past the next three cabins, all empty that week. I finally found Lou sitting on a rock, just past the last cabin, on the edge of the woods. There was a slight wind that morning, and it was well past black-fly season. Otherwise he would have been sitting there on the rock being slowly eaten alive.
His eyes were closed. He opened them when he heard me coming closer.
“Good morning,” he said. “You’ve come to tell me your great idea for the day.”
“I wish I was. I’ve got nothing.”
He just nodded at that. “It’s been so long since I lived here, I swear, it’s like I almost forgot I’m an Ojibwa. But being here, I don’t know, it makes me remember that I’ve got roots here, going back a thousand years. Like I’m just a little twig on this one big tree.”
“Okay…”
“So I guess I’ve just been sitting here trying to feel where my son is. Or if he’s still even on this earth and part of the same tree.”
“Are you having any luck?”
“I’m pretty sure he’s alive. That’s all I can say.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“You don’t totally believe me,” he said, getting up slowly, “but that’s all right.”
“Maybe I do. I’ve lived around Vinnie and his people for a while now. I’ve even done a few sweats.”
“In that sweat lodge at Buck’s place? Did you have any visions?”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. There had been a time, shortly after Natalie…
“It’s a personal thing,” he said, before I could even start answering. “I’m glad you did the sweats. It makes you a better man.”
He took a minute to shake out the kinks. I had no idea how long he’d been here, but the rock didn’t look too comfortable.
“Come on,” he said. “Now that we know he’s alive, let’s go find him.”