“I’d like to talk to your brother. How can I reach him?”

“He’s renting a room in Dahlbert while he’s working the current section of the pipeline. I can give you his address.”

“Does he have a cell phone?”

“Of course. I’ll give you his number.”

She left the room. While she was gone, flute music continued to play softly, and Dross gave Cork a look he couldn’t quite interpret. Irene returned with a small piece of paper on which she’d written an address and cell phone number. She handed it to Dross and sat again in the white wing chair.

“I’m sorry about whoever is buried up there,” she said. “Do you have a name?”

“Not yet.”

“Could it be that missing girl all over the news? What’s her name?”

“Olivia Hamilton,” Dross said. “You’re a social worker, is that correct?”

“I was. Mostly I worked at placing children in foster care. So, I know what it is to worry when a child goes missing.”

“Do they go missing often?”

“I wouldn’t say often, but more than any of us would like. Placements don’t always work out and some kids simply run away. Almost always they show up somewhere else, and we take them back into the system and try again to place them. So many kids in foster care come from traumatic environments. They can be difficult.”

Cork thought about Olivia Hamilton, who, as far as he knew, hadn’t come from a traumatic environment but had, it seemed, been a difficult child. And he thought about Crystal Two Knives, who’d been difficult but had been working at changing her life, and then she’d disappeared. Was there some commonality he was missing?

“You said you were a social worker,” Dross noted. “You’re not anymore?”

“I’m director of a school for troubled youth. I have been for a couple of years now.”

Dross drew the interview to an end, and Irene Boyle saw them to the door.

“Good luck with your investigation,” she told them. “And if there’s anything more you need from me, you know where to find me.”

Dross sat at the wheel and looked at the piece of paper Irene had given her.

“Dahlbert,” she said to Cork. “Not exactly on the way back, but I’d like to talk to Mathias Paavola. You game?”

“Leave no stone unturned,” he said.

She smiled. “You should’ve been a cop.”

CHAPTER 11

Rainy drove her two stepdaughters and Maria in her old Bronco. On the way to the encampment, Jenny explained about the Stockbridge oil pipeline. It had been controversial from the beginning, designed to carry crude tar sands oil from Alberta more than a thousand miles to a refinery on the shore of Lake Superior in Wisconsin. The pipeline was scheduled to run through critical wetlands and cross the Jiibay River at a place called Spirit Crossing, an area sacred to the Anishinaabeg of Minnesota. Despite the fact that other pipelines built by the company had a history of catastrophic spills and that an enormous hue and cry had arisen against the proposal, approval for the project had been granted at all governmental levels. And then it had been up to the people to do what they could to try to stop the inevitable.

From the moment work began in Minnesota, pipeline protests had accompanied the construction. At Spirit Crossing, a stand was being made, both legally and physically. A suit had been filed by a Native organization called Mother Earth League alleging the pipeline posed a threat to a number of burial sites, to several wild rice areas that were important culturally and economically to the Ojibwe, and to the primary source of water for at least one reservation community. Until the lawsuit was settled, construction of the pipeline at Spirit Crossing had been put on hold. But that hadn’t blunted the ongoing protests. Arrests were common, violence occasional. The protesters alleged that it was usually local law enforcement, whose salaries were being augmented by the pipeline company, who instigated the violence. Law enforcement countered that most of the violence was instigated by the protesters. For months the situation had been a powder keg waiting to explode. From the get-go, Anton Morriseau, Belle’s brother, had been among those organizing the protest, and Belle had been helping with the legal defense of the protesters. Since Stephen had finished his undergraduate degree and had come home for the summer and the wedding, he was often there to assist.

“In Guatemala City, we have marched in protest,” Maria said.

“Protesting what?” Rainy asked.

“Corruption, the high cost of living, the lack of basic needs for the poor, violence against Indigenous people—there are so many reasons.”

“Have you been a part of the protests, Annie?”

“Where Maria goes, I go,” Annie said.

Rainy drove them past the encampment, a small village of tents and teepees, which Annie estimated to number about two dozen. It had been laid out in a clearing less than a mile from the site of Spirit Crossing. It looked fairly deserted at the moment.

As they crossed the bridge that spanned the Jiibay River, Maria asked, “What does it mean, Jiibay?”

“In the language of our people, it means ghost or spirit,” Rainy replied.

“How much farther?” Annie asked.

“Spirit Crossing is up the river just a bit.”

Rainy turned off the main road onto a dirt track that ran alongside the river. It was lined on both sides with birch trees that shaded the track. Wildflowers and wild grasses grew in abundance, and between the pale white trunks of the birch trees, the reflection of sunlight off the river came through in brilliant flashes of silver. It was a lovely river, the Jiibay, Annie thought.

They’d gone only a hundred yards when their way was blocked by a barricade around which a half dozen men stood smoking cigarettes and talking. Rainy stopped short of the barricade, and two of the men approached, one on either side of her Bronco. Rainy rolled down her window. Annie rolled down hers.

One of the men leaned down to Rainy. “Road’s closed.”

“Really? Why?”

“Cuz we said so,” the man on Annie’s side replied.

“That’s hardly a reason,” Rainy said.

“Washout,” the man at her window said.

“It hasn’t rained in days.”

“Road construction, then. Take your pick. You’re not coming through.”

“We’ll just park here and walk.”

“Wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” the man on Annie’s side said.

“Why not?” Annie asked.

“Can’t guarantee the safety of your vehicle.”

“What exactly might happen to it?” Rainy said.

“Never can tell. Lots of questionable types around here these days. Vandalism, theft, you name it,” the man on Rainy’s side said.

“I think we’ll just go around the barricade and take our chances with the washout and the road construction,” Rainy said.