“No,” Jenny said. “I need you here, Stephen. I have so many questions.”
“Stay,” Daniel told his brother-in-law. “Cork and I have got this.”
It was noon now. Daniel stood with Cork and Sheriff Marsha Dross beside the grave Waaboo had found. The sun was directly overhead, creating dark pools of shadow under Daniel and the other two. Daniel stared at his own shadow, wondering how the day, which had begun with his son on such a bright note, could end so darkly.
“It might be Olivia Hamilton,” Dross said. “We can’t really say how old this grave is.”
“To me, those shoots coming up look like they might be thimbleweed,” Cork said, nodding toward a bit of green showing through the dirt on the mounding. “It would take more than a couple of weeks for seed to have taken root.”
“You’re not an expert on burials,” Dross said. “Or thimbleweed.”
“No,” Cork admitted.
Dross looked down at the grave. “I’d hoped she would call home, or just show up, maybe ashamed, or full of guilt and scared of what her parents might say. Something befitting a teenager who simply made a bad choice.”
“Two weeks is a long time for shame or guilt to keep her disappeared,” Cork said.
“She’d run away before and had come back. I was hoping it might be how this played out.” Dross gave her head a single, hopeless shake.
“She had a wild streak, Marsha, that was clear.”
“What teenager doesn’t rebel a bit?”
“You sound like you’re making excuses for her.”
“I was kind of wild as a teenager,” Dross said.
Daniel asked. “Did you ever run away?”
“Threatened it a few times.”
“Olivia Hamilton was last seen drinking with a bunch of bikers and loggers. Did you go out drinking with bikers and loggers?”
“Some lumberjacks. But I knew them.”
Cork said, “This girl, if it is Olivia Hamilton, didn’t know those loggers and bikers.”
“It’s not Olivia Hamilton,” Daniel said.
Cork and Dross both gave him a puzzled look.
“Waaboo told me she looked Ojibwe. It could be Crystal Two Knives. She’s still missing.”
Dross’s puzzled look morphed into one of deep skepticism. “I’m not basing any assumptions on what a seven-year-old boy believes he’s seen in a vision.”
“Stephen had visions when he was that young,” Cork reminded her. “There have been times when those visions have proved very helpful to you. There’s a whole lot more to this world than you’ll find in a textbook on law enforcement, Marsha. And like I said, the grave does look older than two weeks.”
“Doesn’t do any good speculating,” Dross said. “We won’t know a thing until we exhume a body.”
Deputy George Azevedo came down the trail that led from Erno Paavola’s cabin to the clearing and the blueberry patch. “BCA is on their way. They want us to make sure nothing’s disturbed.”
“Of course nothing’s being disturbed,” Dross shot back. “Do they think we’re rubes?”
“Just telling you what they said, Sheriff.”
“Go on back to the road. When they arrive, show them the way down here.”
“Sure thing, Sheriff.” Azevedo headed away.
Dross took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. “This is going to be a shitstorm.”
“Everybody cares about Olivia Hamilton,” Daniel said. “There was no shitstorm when Crystal Two Knives went missing.”
“That was different.”
“Because she’s Indian?” Daniel’s words fell like stones from his mouth.
“Because Crystal is a troubled kid with a long history of running away. We’ve picked her up a number of times for underage drinking, shoplifting, driving without a license, you name it.”
Daniel felt his blood begin to rise. “So, when she went missing it was easy just to blame it on her own reckless behavior?”
“On a history that told me she’d show up again. She owned a vehicle, Daniel. She just drove away one day. There’s been no report of her car being found anywhere. At the moment, there’s no reason to believe that she’s been the victim of any kind of violence, no reason to pursue an investigation any further than we have already,” Dross said sharply.
“No reason except a grandmother who worries herself sick every night.”
“Let it go, Daniel,” Cork said.
Daniel’s jaw went tight as he bit back the words of an old argument born from an old inequity. He understood Cork’s quiet advice. If this was a grave—and he was almost certain it was—it didn’t matter who was buried here. This wasn’t the time or place to argue the issue. Instead, he looked at the pines that walled off the clearing. “Somebody knew about this blueberry patch but must have figured that no one else did. Burying a body here probably seemed safe.”
