Read Windigo Island for Free Online

a small, dismissive grunt.
    A waitress came to the table and dropped additional menus in front of Cork and Jenny. “Coffee?” she asked with no great interest.
    They both said thanks, and she spun away, wordless.
    Arceneaux had been sizing up Cork since English introduced them. “You think you can find Mariah,” he said. It wasn’t a statement but a challenge.
    “I told Daniel I’d do my best to help.”
    “Help. You mean like my great-uncle Meloux?”
    “I can’t speak for Henry,” Cork replied.
    “Daniel told me what he said. I haven’t seen him since I was a kid, but he sounds like he’s turned into one heartless asshole.”
    “In my experience, Henry Meloux always has good reason for what he says and does.”
    “My sister’s got one leg. How does he expect her to get to him out there in the middle of nowhere?”
    “I can’t answer that.”
    “Okay, answer me this. How do you expect to find my niece?”
    The waitress came with mugs and a pot she set on the table. “Ready to order?”
    Cork and Jenny asked for oatmeal. The other two stuck with just the coffee.
    “I don’t expect to find your niece,” Cork answered when the waitress had gone. He poured coffee for himself and Jenny.
    Arceneaux sat back, and his bulk made the chair he sat in squeak. He crossed his thick arms. “Then what the hell are you doing here?”
    “My best,” Cork said. “But my gut feeling is that it won’t be enough.”
    Jenny gave him a harsh glance, which he did his best to ignore.
    “I’ll give it to you straight, Red. Either she’s dead, like Carrie, and she’ll wash up onshore one day or, more likely, she’ll stay on the bottom of Lake Superior forever. That lake’s so cold it seldom gives up its dead.”
    “Dad,” Jenny tried to cut in.
    “Or,” Cork went on, “she’s somewhere she’s chosen to be, for whatever reason, and she doesn’t want to come back and she doesn’t want to be found.”
    “Or,” Jenny said in a voice loud enough to be heard easily above the clatter of utensils and dishes, “she’s being held somewhere against her will and unspeakable things are being done to her.”
    Arceneaux looked at Jenny. The iron left his eyes, and he said quietly, “My sister’s all tore up. Has been ever since Mariah took off.” Now he looked a little lost. “We did everything we could to find her.”
    “Did you report her as a runaway?” Cork asked.
    “Yeah. But kids, they run away all the time. And the cops, they didn’t much care. She’s an Indian kid.”
    Cork said, “How do you know she ran away?”
    Arceneaux shrugged. “She was there one day, gone the next.”
    “Maybe she was abducted.”
    “Some of her friends, they told us Mariah’d been planning on leaving for a while. Her and Carrie.”
    “Did these friends know where the two girls were headed?”
    “Nope, just that they were getting out of Dodge. Seems they had it up to here with living at the edge of nowhere.”
    “Does Mariah have any relatives in Duluth or Superior?”
    “None close.”
    “But some?”
    “Got a cousin there somewhere, but we don’t never see him.”
    “What’s Mariah like?” Jenny asked.
    “A girl. Likes girl things, I guess.”
    “Basketball,” English said. “She’s a good basketball player. Played for her junior high team.”
    “Did she have a boyfriend?” Jenny asked.
    “Nobody special,” Arceneaux replied. “Least not that I know of. Real closed mouth, she is. Keeps things to herself pretty good.” He eyed Cork again. “You want to write any of this down?”
    “Why?” Cork asked.
    “That’s what they do in the movies, private investigators.”
    “I’ve got it, don’t worry, Red. Does Mariah have any brothers or sisters?”
    “An older half brother, Tobias. We call him Toby. And two half brothers younger than her, Denny and Cal.”
    “The fathers?”
    “Louise was never too certain about her first two kids. Denny and Cal’s dad, he’s doing a dime over in Boscobel for an