Two agents showed up that evening. One was federal, FBI. The other was state, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. They were hard to distinguish from one another. White shirts, ties, dark suits, shiny shoes. Cork figured they hadn’t been to the blueberry patch. They were just grunts with names of people to question. In his time as sheriff, Cork had worked significantly with both agencies, and he’d come to know men he respected. These two were new to him and seemed too young and too officious. And they didn’t play well together either. They stumbled over each other in their questioning, and the looks that often passed between them were less than collegial. Mostly they were interested in Cork’s knowledge about the location of the blueberry patch. He explained about Paavola and being hired to find his niece and nephew. Then he explained about the payment in blueberries.
“Blueberries?” the FBI agent said. “Seriously?” He gave a chuckle, not humorously but derisively, as if this kind of rural barter was unbelievably backward.
The BCA agent asked about the niece and nephew.
“I have their information at my office,” Cork said.
“And where would that be?”
He told them that he operated out of Sam’s Place.
“Sam’s Place?”
He explained about the hamburger joint he owned, which was housed in an old Quonset hut in Aurora. That brought smirks to both agents’ faces. He offered to supply them with the information, but they assured him they would find it on their own. Stephen and Daniel couldn’t add much. In the end, the agents asked for the shoes the men and boy had been wearing that morning in order to use Sirchie impression cards to help eliminate them from consideration of any prints found at the scene. Cork and Daniel had already anticipated this and had the shoes ready.
“Have they exhumed a body?” Cork asked.
“They’re excavating the site now,” the BCA agent said. “That’s all we know.”
Cork saw them to the door. As the agents descended the porch steps, he heard one of them say, “Blueberries.” And both men laughed.
After they’d gone, Rainy said, “That didn’t seem to get us anywhere. Anyone want coffee, decaf?”
Cork said, “I think I’ll have a beer. We got any Leinie’s?”
Shortly after the agents had arrived and it had become obvious that they considered the possibility of a vision unlikely, if not downright ridiculous, Jenny had taken Waaboo upstairs. After the men had gone, Daniel headed up to join her in Waaboo’s bedroom. From the hallway, he could hear his son’s laughter. Daniel thought it odd that his son should be so lighthearted after what he’d discovered in the blueberry patch that day. But he knew that Stephen had talked to Waaboo about visions and had, perhaps, helped the little boy understand what he’d seen.
“Everything okay?” he asked, stepping through the door.
Jenny and Waaboo sat together on the bed, their backs against the headboard. Waaboo was smiling broadly. In her hands Jenny held a book, James and the Giant Peach.
“The giant peach just squashed the mean aunts’ house,” Waaboo said with delight. “Now it’s rolling away.”
“Have they gone?” Jenny asked.
Daniel nodded. “If there’d been one more of them, they could have done a pretty good imitation of the Three Stooges.”
“Just doing their jobs, I suppose,” Jenny said. Then she asked Waaboo, “What did she look like? The woman you saw in the patch.”
“Not like you. Her hair was black. And she wasn’t old.”
Daniel couldn’t help smiling. “Your mother is young, little rabbit. And beautiful.”
Jenny nodded her thanks.
“She looked like you and me,” Waaboo said to his father.
“Ojibwe,” Daniel said. “Did she say anything?”
“Only that she was lost, too. She wanted us to find her. And she wanted to walk the Path of Souls. She said the other spirit did, too.”
“Other spirit?” Daniel sat on the bed beside his son. “What other spirit?”
Waaboo shrugged.
That day wasn’t the first time Waaboo had seen things others could not. In that way he was like Stephen, who’d had visions all his life. Daniel English was full-blood Anishinaabe. That some people were given visions was a truth he accepted easily. He himself had never had what he identified as visions. And before he married Jenny and settled in Aurora, he’d never known another person who claimed to have had them. But he knew about Stephen’s visions, and those of the old Mide Henry Meloux as well. And now little Waaboo. Stephen, when he talked about his own ability, spoke as if it was a burden, an onerous responsibility, one that, if he could, he would gladly relinquish. “But,” he would always say, “these things are up to the Creator.”
Waaboo saw dead people. And Daniel couldn’t help wondering what in the hell the Creator was thinking, saddling a child with a thing like that.
“Were you afraid?” Jenny asked.
Waaboo shook his head. “I just felt bad for her. Her eyes looked hurt, like she was staring at the sun.”
Jenny glanced at Daniel for an explanation.
Because he didn’t want to go into gruesome details, he said simply, “May point to cause of death.” Then he asked Waaboo, “Was she afraid?”
Again the boy shook his head. “She was just lost. I told her we would find her. Well, I told her that Daddy would. It’s what he does.”
Daniel had a thought and took out his cell phone. He tapped on the photo app, scrolled through the pictures, found the photo he was looking for, and held it out for his son to see.
“Was that the woman you saw in the blueberry patch?”
Waaboo looked at the photograph, then shook his head.
Jenny turned the phone so that she could see the photo as well. “Crystal?”
Daniel nodded. “Worth a try. But maybe she’s the other spirit.”
