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slight and simple. “I believe you.”

Chapter 6
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    D aniel English followed Red Arceneaux. Cork and Jenny followed English. They drove north out of Bayfield and followed the shoreline. Across a mile of gray water lay the great green bodies of the Apostle Islands. Although the hour was still early and the day still gloomy, there were already sailboats cutting across the lake. In Cork’s present mood, the sails reminded him of the fins of great white sharks.
    “I liked him,” Jenny said.
    “Arceneaux?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Unless I’m greatly mistaken, he’s a man who’s spent time inside.”
    “Inside what?” Jenny asked.
    “Prison.”
    “Really? How can you tell?”
    “Prison changes a man. If you know what to look for, you see it.”
    “So what did you see in Red?”
    “I saw what his eyes saw.”
    “Which was what?”
    “Mostly he watched our hands.”
    “No, he didn’t.”
    “Yes, he did.”
    Jenny thought a moment. “Okay, what of it?”
    “In prison, in the blink of an eye, a man’s hands can hold something that’ll kill you. So you always have to know where his hands are and what’s in them. Gets to be habit. Also, manipulation is something men in prison get good at. I saw him manipulate you.”
    “Me?”
    “As soon as he knew he had a sympathetic audience, he addressed everything he could to you.”
    “No,” she said disbelieving.
    “Yes,” Cork said. “I also saw a great deal of distrust in him.”
    “We’re strangers,” she said with exasperation. “There’s no reason for him to trust us. And yet, in the end, he did.”
    “That’s what he said.”
    “Look, Dad, if there’s a problem with trust here, you’re just as responsible for it as you say Red is.”
    Cork smiled. “Fair enough.”
    A few miles outside Bayfield they entered the Bad Bluff Reservation and then passed through the town of Bad Bluff itself, mostly a scattered gathering of prefabs and mobile homes. They passed the Shining Waters casino and hotel complex and turned onto a road that ran west into second- or third-growth timber. Set back among the trees were more prefabs and trailers and some actual houses, these often surrounded by yards full of discard—old appliances, vehicles without tires, mattresses, playground equipment, bicycles, sheets of rusting, corrugated metal. It was reservation life in its worst depiction, Cork thought, evidence of a people whose whole way of being had been attacked a century earlier and who were still reeling. It made him angry, and because the blood of the Anishinaabeg ran through his own veins, it made him determined.
    Arceneaux turned up a short unpaved drive that ended at a small, single-story house, which seemed cobbled together. The walls were weathered plywood, and the pale blue paint on them was scant and mildewed. The yard was less cluttered with debris than many they’d passed, but it was worrisome nonetheless. A couple of suspect-looking ATVs sat under a makeshift shelterof scavenged two-by-fours and canvas. A basketball backboard and netless hoop hung atop a metal pole set in a slab of concrete patched with tar. A big black and white mutt on a chain went crazy barking as Arceneaux led the caravan up to the house.
    Arceneaux parked and got out of his truck and said harshly to the dog, “Shut up, Bruiser.”
    Much to Cork’s surprise, the dog did. It sat on its haunches and simply watched the procession as they entered the house.
    Inside something had exploded. Or more probably it only looked that way. Debris lay everywhere—clothing, magazines, plates and dishes, empty bottles, bottles not empty but filled with liquids only a trained scientist could identify, toys, blankets, newspaper sections. There was a couch and maybe more furniture, too, Cork suspected, somewhere under all those layers of crap.
    In the middle of the chaos sat a woman in a wheelchair. She had long black hair and wore a gray sweatshirt and gray sweatpants. The right pant leg was folded under