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.”
“So, you talked to her?”
“I did. Drove to Cloquet. Found out that she was divorced from Boyle and that her brother, one Mathias Paavola, had lived with her for a while.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“He was away, working a construction job. She said she’d let him know that their uncle Erno was looking for them.”
“Did she ask why her uncle was interested in tracking them down?”
“Of course. Told her I didn’t know.”
“Did she say anything about Paavola?”
“I didn’t ask. My job was to find them. I did tell her that I was going to pass along her contact information to him.”
“And she was fine with that?”
“Didn’t seem excited but also didn’t voice any objection.”
