Windigo Island by William Kent Krueger Read Free Book Online

her at the knee. Her loose clothing disguised not at all the fact that she was a heavy woman. Cork could see that it wasn’t just her flesh that weighed her down; there was a heaviness to her spirit as well. She was probably in her early forties and may have been pretty once, but now she was old beyond her years, and years beyond her beauty.
    The living room was cramped, small to begin with and smaller because of all that filled it. Through an opened doorway, Cork saw a bedroom. He also saw two kids with video game controllers in their hands, facing a television screen where, judging from the din of battle, every war that had ever been fought was being fought again.
    Arceneaux spoke first to the boys. “Denny, Cal, turn that game down a couple hundred notches.” He waited for the boys to respond. When they didn’t, he stepped into the room and in front of the screen. “Turn it down,” he said.
    The boys seemed to notice him for the first time, and they did as he asked.
    Arceneaux came back and spoke to the woman in the wheelchair. “Louise, this here’s the man Daniel told us about.”
    “ Boozhoo. Anish na , Louise,” Cork said, offering her a greeting in Ojibwemowin.
    “Morning,” she said in reply.
    “Good morning, Louise,” Jenny said. “I’m his daughter. Jenny’s my name.”
    Louise nodded and studied her. Cork thought she was going to say something, some warm word of greeting. Instead, she yelled toward the bedroom, “Denny, go get your momma a blanket. I’m cold.”
    Neither one of the boys moved, but Arceneaux went to the couch, grabbed a ragged afghan, brought it to his sister, and arranged it across her lap.
    Louise looked at Daniel English. “Where’s Henry Meloux?”
    “He didn’t come,” Daniel replied. “He said he wants you to come to him.”
    “How?” She lifted the afghan to expose the pant leg folded under the stump of her leg. “How am I supposed to do that?”
    “I don’t know, but it’s what he wants. And if you go to him, he wants you to bring something.”
    “What?”
    “Mariah’s most precious possession.”
    Louise Arceneaux seemed completely bewildered. Cork didn’t know if it was because the request itself was so outlandish or because she simply didn’t have the slightest idea what that possession might be. Her next response was to become heavier, if that was possible. She seemed to sink further under that great weight Cork had felt from the moment he came into her presence.
    She looked at him, her eyes dark, hostile. “Do you want something from me, too?”
    “Only information, Louise. I need to know everything you can tell me about Mariah.”
    She relaxed a little, settled back into her wheelchair, and folded her hands on the afghan that covered her ample lap. “She was my hope. She was smart. She was helpful. She was sunshine.”
    “Did you have any inkling that she was thinking of running away?”
    “No. She seemed happy.”
    “You haven’t heard from her at all since she left?”
    “Not a word.”
    “The girl she left with, Carrie, did you know her?”
    “Not well. She came over sometimes, but not much. Usually, they hung out somewhere else. It can get kind of crazy around here.”
    As nearly as Cork could tell, it was a household of males. Considering the din of battle, the dirt, the disarray, he thought he could understand why a young girl would want to be somewhere else.
    “Other friends?” he asked.
    Louise squeezed her eyes in thought, then shook her head. “It was her and Carrie mostly. But maybe there were others. You could ask Toby. Cal,” she called toward the room. “Go get your brother.”
    “He’s sleeping,” one of the boys yelled back.
    “Wake him up.”
    “He’ll get mad.”
    “Do it anyway.”
    The boy dropped his controller. He got up, came out, threw his mother a surly look, and went to a closed door off the living room near the back of the house. He opened the door and went in. Cork could see the end of a bed to the