“Waaboo!” Jenny called. But the boy danced on.

“So, we may have a name for the deceased,” Monte said. “Tacicala or Fawn.”

“And we know this how?” Theresa Lee asked.

Monte scratched his jaw and glanced at Daniel.

“Part of Waaboo’s vision,” Daniel said.

“Ah, the vision.” From the way she said it, Daniel understood that Theresa Lee, like any good professional, was not wholly embracing of this kind of lead. “That’s not much to go on.”

“It’s more than we had before,” Monte said.

“Are you going to let Dross know about the name?” Daniel asked.

“We have no real proof of anything yet,” Monte said.

“So, any further word on the search for Olivia Hamilton?”

“As I understand it, the Feds and BCA are hauling in the Howling Wolf customers again.”

“Didn’t get them anywhere before,” LuJean said.

Monte shrugged. “I guess it’s the only avenue they’ve got at the moment.”

Waaboo reached the clearing before the others. When they caught up with him, he was standing still, his little shoulders slumped in devastation.

“What happened?” he asked.

Much of the clearing—the blueberry bushes and the other vegetation—had been trampled, crushed, torn up.

“Why?” Waaboo said.

Daniel put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “I suppose they were looking for evidence, Waaboo.”

“They didn’t have to kill everything.”

“No,” Monte said. “They didn’t.”

Lee scanned the clearing and shook her head. “Who was in charge here?”

“It was kind of a pissing contest,” Monte said. “No clear winner as far as I could tell. We weren’t involved. The grave is over there.”

Jenny and Waaboo hung back, but the others walked slowly to the oblong hole where the body of the girl named Fawn had been buried and then exhumed.

“Pretty shallow. Whoever buried her did a poor job of it,” Lee said. “Either they were in a hurry or they just didn’t care.”

“Maybe they thought this was such a safe place they didn’t have to be careful,” LuJean said.

“How would someone know about this blueberry patch?” Lee looked at Daniel. “How did you know?”

He explained about Cork and Erno Paavola and the payment in blueberries.

“That’s how you knew. But what about whoever buried this girl here? How would they know? Is that something the FBI or BCA are looking into?”

“Excellent question,” Monte said. “But one I can’t answer.”

“They haven’t communicated with you?”

“To them, we’re bumbling reservation cops. We just get in the way. But I suspect they aren’t looking into it. They’re way too focused on finding the Hamilton girl.”

“Come on,” Daniel heard Jenny say. “Let’s see if we can still find a few berries.” He looked back and saw Jenny take their son’s hand. But Waaboo held back.

“I want to go home,” Waaboo said. “I don’t like it here.”

Daniel came back to his wife and son. “How about we just walk around a little bit?”

Waaboo shook his head. “I want to go home.”

“Then we’ll go,” Jenny said firmly.

“Wait—” Daniel said, but Jenny cut him off.

“We’re leaving. Now. Waaboo and me. You can stay if you want to.”

She took her son’s hand, and they left together, walking back toward the path that led to Paavola’s cabin. Daniel watched them go but made no move to join them.

“Go on,” Monte said. “I don’t want you sleeping on the couch tonight. We’ll go over the area. If we find anything, I’ll let you know.”

Daniel shook his head. “This is important enough to risk a night on the couch. Let’s do it.”

LuJean scanned the destroyed clearing. “What a shame. This was a lovely patch.”

“It will be again,” Monte said. “That’s one of the things I love about Mother Earth. She heals. All right, Theresa. How should we do this?”

“Let’s start with a line search. We’re looking for a sudden depression or a sudden mounding or an absence of vegetation, anything that strikes you as unusual. If we find something, we’ll flag it.” She reached into her duffel bag and pulled out a small yellow flag on a long wire stem. “Then we’ll move on. When we’ve completed the search, we’ll come back and investigate each site carefully. Ready?”

And so they began.

CHAPTER 10

It was almost two hours south to Cloquet. Dross drove her cruiser. On the way Cork filled her in on the investigation he’d done for Erno Paavola several years earlier.

“It wasn’t easy. Paavola knew his niece, Irene, had married but didn’t know her new last name. Like Paavola, his nephew seemed to be living off the grid, so no good recent information on him. I searched the public records for a marriage license but came up with zip. Paavola told me his sister had passed away, but he had an old address for her in Aitkin. I went down there. The place was a shabby rental, falling apart. A woman across the street remembered the family. She didn’t remember a husband ever being around, but Paavola’s sister was apparently something else. Kind of a terror. Always threatening to sue over trivial things. She remembered the kids fled pretty early and Paavola’s sister more or less drank herself to death.”

“So how’d you track down the kids?”

“Lucked out, actually. I went back and searched the marriage licenses again. Paavola is a good Finnish name up here, but I’ve seen it misspelled. That double a in the middle can be tricky. So I checked variations. Bingo. There was a marriage license issued for an Irene Pavola—single a—and William Boyle in Aitkin County. A few more clicks on my computer and I found her. A social worker for Saint Louis County.”