"In her letters, did Shiloh ever mention anybody out here by name?"

"Nope. She seemed pretty careful about not doing that."

"What about the name Ma'iingan?"

"That's a name?"

"It might be."

"Never heard it before."

Cork walked slowly around the room, noting where fingerprints might have been left, where, if he'd still been in charge of investigations, he would have made sure they dusted. "What did Shiloh talk about in her letters?"

"The past mostly. Our past."

"Her mother?"

"Not really. She doesn't remember much about her mother."

"Willie, do you know a woman named Elizabeth Dobson?"

"No. Should I? Why all these questions, Cork?"

Cork stood in the closet doorway. A big walk-in closet. A closet bigger than his entire kitchen at Sam's Place. The walls were lined with cedar. He turned back to Arkansas Willie Raye.

"I just had a talk with some federal agents. They're here looking for your daughter, too."

"Federal agents? What on earth for?"

"This woman, Elizabeth Dobson, was apparently a friend of Shiloh and had been receiving letters from her, too. She's been murdered, Willie. The FBI thinks it was because of those letters."

"I don't get it."

Cork continued moving around the room. Near the window, he bent and studied carefully a yellow birch leaf that lay on the rug.

"The therapy that Shiloh was involved in might have brought back the memory of the night Marais was killed. Or at least that's what the federal agents are speculating." He picked up the leaf. "They think someone might be trying to make sure she doesn't leave the Boundary Waters."

"Christ, Marais died fifteen years ago. Shiloh was only six. What could she possibly remember that would be of any use now?"

"Maybe it's not important what she remembers. Maybe what's important is what someone is afraid she remembers."

Willie Raye's eyes settled on the board Cork still held in one hand. His mouth opened and he took in a quick breath. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I guess I was lucky."

"Luckier than Elizabeth Dobson," Cork agreed. "I'm going to have a look around."

Cork checked the rest of the inside of Grandview, then went outside and followed the flagstone walk as it curved toward the lake. He passed through a small stand of birch where a pile of boards lay, a lot of them two-by-fours, that looked like debris from a building project. Finally, he came to the dock. The water stretched away in unbroken darkness. The nearest signs of life were the lights of the Quetico on the far shore. Cork considered the outboard he'd heard when he arrived. A small boat could easily have pulled up unseen and left the same way. He thought it interesting that Harris and the other agents were staying just across the water, and that the interview with the FBI in Schanno's office had delayed him just long enough for someone to steal the letters from Grandview.

Raye was fully dressed and watching through the sliding doors when Cork came back.

"I'm going to leave you now and go talk to someone who may be able to help us."

"Who?"

"Just a man I know. You'll be okay here?"

"I'll be fine. But Cork, if someone is after Shiloh, we don't have much time." Arkansas Willie's long face seemed longer, drawn down by the weight of his worry.

Cork reached out and put a hand reassuringly on his shoulder. "We'll find her, Willie." He started through the sliding door, but turned back. "One more thing."

"Yes?"

"Do you smoke cigars?"

"No. Vile habit. Why?"

"Just wondered. Lock up," he said, and tapped the latch on the glass door.

Almost a year before, Cork had been a heavy smoker, more than a pack a day. But he'd made a promise to someone he'd loved very much that he would reform. Now he ran every day, and he hadn't had a cigarette in nine months. He'd become supersensitive to the smell of tobacco smoke. It had been faint in Raye's bedroom, but definite. Whoever it was who'd been there, they had a fondness for cigars.

7.

CORK DROVE NORTH OUT OF AURORA, passed the Chippewa Best Western, Johannsen's Salvage Yard, and finally the last streetlamp of town. Three miles farther, he turned right onto a county road that followed the shore of Iron Lake. In another ten minutes, he came to a graveled access that led to an old resort hidden among the trees. A long time had passed since he'd been out that way, and he slowed as he approached the access, then stopped, killed the engine, and stepped out.

The moon above the dark pines was waning, lopsided, like a balloon leaking air. The night was still and without a sound. Cork couldn't see the buildings of the old resort, but he knew how they lay. The big cabin set back from the shoreline. Six small cabins flanking the lane down to the lake. And there, where the black water met the sand, the sauna. All of it had been built by the old Finn Able Nurmi, Molly's father, and left to Molly when he died. When Molly died, there'd been no one to pass it on to, and now the old resort just sat, disintegrating with each season, the wood going soft with rot so that it would all collapse someday and go back to the earth and there would be no sign that Molly Nurmi had ever been. In the time before the cold science of the whites came to Iron Lake, the Anishinaabe believed the water was bottomless. There was a tradition among the Iron Lake Ojibwe. Before they were married, a couple would take strands of their hair and braid a cord. On the day they were wed, they tied the cord around a stone, canoed to the middle of the lake, and dropped the stone into the water. The stone descended forever, they believed, its spirit bound by the braid of their hair, and forever there would be a thing that bore the memory of them together. In a way, that's how Cork thought of Molly and him. Forever bound in spirit. As long as he had memory, Molly would always be.

He drove on, putting the old resort behind him. Two miles farther, he came to a double-trunk birch off to the right of the road. He pulled onto the shoulder and stopped. From the glove compartment, he took a flashlight, locked up the Bronco, and headed toward the birch, which marked the trail into the woods to the cabin of Henry Meloux.

Meloux was a midewiwin, an Ojibwe medicine man. He was also said to be a tschissikan, or magician, although that was a claim Meloux himself never made nor admitted to. He was the oldest man Cork had ever seen, and he had seemed that old for as long as Cork could remember. As far as Cork knew, except for his dog Walleye, Meloux had always lived alone in his cabin on a small rocky peninsula on Iron Lake called Crow Point.

Although Cork brought the flashlight, he didn't turn it on. The trail was easy to follow, lit by the moon and beaten nearly bare by the feet of others who, like Cork, had sought out the old man for his succor and advice. Cork walked for half an hour in the stillness of the woods, crossing at some point from national forest land onto the reservation of the Iron Lake Band of Ojibwe. As he approached the cabin, he could see light through the windows and he smelled wood smoke. He paused, waiting for Walleye to bark and announce his presence.

When no sound came from the cabin, Cork moved nearer.

"Henry!" he called. "Henry Meloux! It's Corcoran O'Connor!"

A small animal whine came from the woods to his left. In a little clearing visible in the moonlight stood a small dark structure. Cork headed that way.

Walleye, Meloux's old hound, lay beside the door. He lifted his head casually as Cork approached and his tail lazily thumped the ground. From the tiny building behind the dog came a long, grumbling fart.

"Henry?"

"You're early," the old man accused from inside.

Cork didn't argue. He'd long ago learned that Meloux had a way of knowing when someone would come to him.

"Getting so a man can't take a quiet crap anymore."

"Sorry," Cork said.

After a momentary rustling behind the door, the old man emerged from the outhouse buttoning the last strap on a pair of gray overalls. "That's all right," he said, waving off Cork's apology. "Wasn't going so good anyway."

Meloux led the way back to his cabin, Walleye at his side. Inside, the cabin was a simple affair. One room, a bunk, an old cast-iron stove, a rough-hewn table and three chairs, a sink with a pump. The walls contained an assortment of items-snowshoes, a reed basket, a midewiwin's drum, a big bear trap, and a Skelly calendar from 1948 with a drawing of a buxom woman in tight shorts inadvertently entertaining a gas-station attendant as she bent to the sideview mirror to apply lipstick. The cabin was lit by two kerosene lamps, and the smell of the burning oil was mixed with the scent of burned cedar.

"Been purifying, Henry?" Cork asked.

The old man didn't answer, only nodded toward one of the chairs for Cork to sit. He went to the sink and brought back two blue speckled enamel cups, then to the stove where a coffeepot sat heating. He poured hot coffee into the cups. When he returned and sat at the table, Cork handed him a pack of Camel unfiltered cigarettes. Meloux accepted them with a smile and a nod. He broke open the pack and held it out to Cork, then took one for himself. Kitchen matches stood in a small clay holder on the table. Meloux struck one and lit his cigarette.

Cork held his own cigarette gingerly. He hadn't smoked since Molly died. It was the last promise he'd ever made to her and he wanted to keep it. But it would be an insult not to join Meloux in the smoking of tobacco, a thing that for the old man had nothing to do with an addictive habit.

Meloux watched Cork with silent interest. Cork finally reached for a match and lit the cigarette. Only nine months, but as soon as the smoke hit his lungs, it seemed like nine years. Cork realized how much he'd missed the old habit. He closed his eyes and the smoking felt like a visit with a deliciously sinful old friend.

They smoked in silence for a while. Walleye lay sprawled on the old wood floor, snoring loudly.

"Walleye didn't bark when I came," Cork noted. "He's old, Henry. Is he going deaf?"

"You think he didn't hear?" The old man grinned and shook his head. "He heard. He just didn't care. He's old like me. He's finally learned that what comes, comes. Why bark?"

The old midewiwin exhaled a flourish of smoke and watched it rise to the ceiling. "They tell me you are a running fool."

"Running fool? Well, I do run, Henry."

"The wolf runs after the deer. The deer runs from the wolf. In this running, there is reason."

"Believe it or not, there's reason in my running, too. A lot of things are clearer to me when I run."

Meloux considered this for a moment. "A walk in the woods makes clear a lot, too."

"It's hard to explain, Henry. In a way, it's part of a promise I made to Molly to make my life healthier."

"Ah, Molly Nurmi." He nodded as if that explained it just fine.

The cedar-and-kerosene-scented silence descended comfortably once again. Cork finally decided it was time to approach Meloux with the reason for his visit. But before he could speak, Meloux said, "I have been purifying the air to clear my mind. The wind speaks these days, a warning I do not understand. I hear the trees groan, but their complaint is lost on me." He looked at Cork, and within the dark eyes, sunk deep in lined and wrinkled flesh, was a look of concern.

"'Majimanidoo," he finished.

"Evil spirit." Cork translated the Ojibwe word.

Meloux nodded. "Powerful. Very powerful," he cautioned. "It is this that has brought you to me?"

"Maybe so, Henry."

"What do you need?"

"Information. There's a woman missing. Noopiming," Cork said, using the name the Anishinaabe gave to the Boundary Waters area. Inland, in the woods, up in the north. He waved a hand in that direction. "A Shinnob guided her in. This man comes and goes there often. I think the woman may be in some danger and I need to find her guide."

The old man put his cigarette down, sipped his coffee, and passed a little gas. In the corner, Walleye growled in his sleep.

"I have heard that Wendell Two Knives visits there often."

"Wendell Two Knives." A good name to hear. A good man. And it made sense. Wendell Two Knives was of the Wolf Clan. Ma'iingan.

"This majimanidoo is puzzling," the old man said. "Even cedar smoke does not make him clear to me. Be careful, Corcoran O'Connor. Be especially careful of the water. Pay attention to the wind that blows across the water. It can tell you much."

"What comes, comes." Cork finished his cigarette in a final, pleasing lungful of smoke. "Isn't that what you said?"

"Okay advice for an old man like me. But if I was you," the midewiwin cautioned, "I would keep a barking dog."

8.

SHE WATCHED THE WANING MOON RISE above the rock wall at the end of the long, narrow corridor that held the lake. That's east, she thought. It was a pathetic little piece of information, but with everything so uncertain, that one solid fact was reassuring. Far enough east, she knew, and she would hit Lake Superior and civilization. How far and how long it would take if she were to attempt it were mysteries to which she had no clue.

Wendell had left her a map, a complicated thing, black and white with confusing lines and rings all over it. Nothing like a road map. You might as well give me a book in Chinese, she'd said, laughing. He'd tried to explain to her the lakes, the portages, just in case. She'd pretended to listen.

Stupid, stupid, she thought of herself now. You never listen to the right people.

Somewhere on the cliffs along the shoreline far down the lake, an owl called. She tried to pierce the darkness to see where. The light of the moon gave the gray rock of the corridor a bleak, haunted look. The color reminded her of gravestones. Death was something she'd thought about a great deal alone in those woods. She'd examined carefully the time she tried to take her own life. Wrapped deep in the scent of pine and the sweet smell of the lake water, with the wind and the birds giving her music, her suicide attempt seemed bewildering, like the action of a stranger. Wendell told her the woods could heal if she let them. In that, as in everything, he'd been truthful.

You should have listened more, she thought bitterly, remembering the map. She'd been so careful to make sure no one knew where she was going. She'd been so clever, so complete in her escape. In a way, she realized, she'd dug her own grave.

Then she remembered something Wendell said to her near the end. She'd walked with him down to the lake to see him off. He'd talked of her mother that visit, of the things he remembered about her. They were good things, and she'd been grateful to hear them. Before he'd shoved off in his canoe, he'd said, "We don't die. In the things we pass on to our children, we go on living. There's a lot of your mother alive in you."

Thinking of that, she pulled herself together and pushed away her useless recriminations. She couldn't sit and wait for Wendell forever. Her food was low. Soon the snow Wendell feared would come. She would have to think of a way out on her own.

From its hidden place in the rocks, the owl called again: Who.

The woman drew herself up in the darkness. Me, she thought. Shiloh.

9.