A River Through Two Harbors Page 24

  Deidre patted Pete’s hand. “I feel that way too. But then I think, if each of us can do one thing in our lives to make a change, then the world is a little better place. Remember how willing you were to help me when I needed your assistance tracking down that gang of meth manufacturers? You’re a good man, Pete. Don’t underestimate your ability to make a difference. I know how you look out for the logger’s widow down the road. You let it slip once. And what about the way you took care of Jarvinen the time he broke his foot getting off his skidder. You drove it for a month while he healed. If I remember, you didn’t collect any pay, but had the logging company send him the check. Pete, you old goat, you can’t fool me. You do what you can to help others.”

  Pete took a bite of his pie so he wouldn’t have to answer. The two visited for a long while, and Pete looked out his window.

  “Only about two hours of daylight left. You better get going if you’re going to make it into your cabin with some daylight to spare.”

  Deidre looked at her watch. “No, it’s not even three, yet. Jerry said he wouldn’t be done with the plowing by at least five.”

  Pete’s eyes lit up. “Well, then you’re staying for supper.”

  Deidre laughed. “Thought you’d never ask.” He sat down and made himself comfortable.

  A thought struck Deidre. “Say, Pete. You wouldn’t know any business around here that might have the initials or logo RRR? I found an old brass key that had those letters stamped on it. Looked to be from an old lock.”

  “Geeze, I haven’t thought of that place for years. Where’d you find the key, in that antique place in Beaver Bay?”

  “No, nothing like that. I just found it, and I’ve been wondering where it came from. It seems to be rather unique. You know about it, then?”

  Pete shrugged. “I might. Suppose there are a lot of keys that were made like that, but I know of one place that used big, heavy brass locks, the Rocky River Resort.”

  Deidre’s heart skipped a beat, and she asked, a little too excitedly, “What can you tell me about it?”

  Pete looked at the log beams overhead in his cabin. “Well, let’s see. It must have been 1938, no, 1939, at least that’s what my folks used to say. This area was pretty wild back then, you know.”

  Deidre wanted to scream, “For God’s sake, get on with it, Pete,” but she held her tongue. She knew he would eventually get to the point.

  “I’ve heard that a group of businessmen from Minneapolis bought two sections of land. It went cheap back then. The area had been logged off by the timber barrens twenty years before, and it had come back with scrub timber, balsam and poplar, sometimes birch. You could buy land for fifty cents an acre. ’Course nobody around here could scrape up enough money to grab it. Well, anyway, these guys from Minneapolis bought two sections, pushed a road in about a mile to the Rocky River. Then they built a hunting lodge. I’ve seen it, been in it. They made it out of timber they got from a small area the loggers had missed in 1910, or whenever they cut that area, huge pines.”

  Deidre had to stifle her desire to begin asking questions. She put another bite of pie in her mouth and sipped coffee. Pete con­tinued rambling.

  “Yep, that was quite a lodge. They hunted up here with a gang of their friends for a couple of years, and then the war broke out. My dad and most of the men who lived up here enlisted, so they were gone for a few years. I had a chance to roam the woods, and a couple of times my older brother took me with when he walked the road they had put in. Best grouse hunting you ever seen. I guess that’s not what you’re interested in, though. The couple of times I got back there, you could tell it wasn’t being used. One window had been shot out, and somebody had broke in and taken most of the stuff from the lodge.

  “After the war, you’d a thought they’d come back and fix it up, but a year later they sold it to some guy from Chicago. Believe it or not, he came up here to live. Fixed the lodge up and built a dozen cabins. Advertised he was opening a fishing resort. Used to be two-pound brook trout in that river.

  “He did okay. A lot of people from Chicago came here and paid big money to experience what I had all my life. By then I was old enough to go to work, and I did odd jobs around the resort for him. Even got to do a little guiding. He had a boy about ten years older than me who he really loved, and they did everything together. Then, in 1951 his son was drafted and was sent to Korea. Got killed there. The guy was never the same after that. He asked me to go fishing with him one day, but he didn’t fish much at all. Just watched me. On the way back to the lodge, he told me he was going back to Chicago.

  “The place sat empty ever since. I got back there a few times. Everything was starting to fall apart. Last time I saw, it must’ve been ten years ago. Three or four years ago, somebody posted the land, strung no trespassing signs all around its perimeter. We thought maybe somebody was going to try to make something of the place, but I guess not.”

  Deidre was sitting on the edge of her chair. “Do you know who bought it?”

  “No. Some people tried to find out, but the records at the courthouse show that it belongs to a trust, whatever that is. There’s no way to track down the owners.”

  “Tell me, Pete, was there anything unusual about the locks on the doors?”

  “How do you know that? They were really heavy, made of brass I think, and big. They made me think of the kind of lock you might find on a seaman’s trunk, the kind that needed a big key to open it.

  “Funny thing, though, they were placed on the outside of the cabin. There was another hasp inside, so the guests could lock the door from either inside or out. I still don’t know why you want to know all of this. It’s ancient history.”

  “Pete, will you tell me where this place is?”

  “Sure. It’s no secret. Go back a mile on Highway 1, and take a right on the Bagna Lake Road. Go another two miles, and on the left you’ll see what used to be two stone and concrete pillars that mark the driveway entrance. It’s mostly grown up now, but I think you can still make it out.”

  Before he could say anymore or ask any questions, Deidre stood up and began to put on her jacket. “You make supper. I’m going to take a drive. I’ll be back by five or so,” and she started out the door.

  “Don’t get caught back there after dark,” Pete warned. “Every­thing looks different once the sun sets, and I don’t want to have to come looking for you. It’s supposed to be below zero tonight. Do you have a flashlight? And make sure you take some matches with you. How about a compass? Do you have one?”

  Deidre turned to face her friend. She was almost as tall as he was, he being stooped from his many years of working in the woods.

  “Got them all. And don’t worry, I just want to look around the place. Be back soon.” She gave his sinewy arm a squeeze before she left.

  Pete shook his head after she closed the door. “Got a mind of her own, that one,” he muttered to himself, and went to his stove to check the pot of stew simmering on the front burner.

  Using a large serving spoon, he scooped up a piece of venison that was cooking in the broth and sampled it, added a pinch more salt, and turned the burner off. Pete heard Deidre back up and drive away. He looked out the window, wishing she hadn’t gone off on her own.

  Chapter 29

  Deidre drove into the setting sun and had to shield her eyes from the glare off the pure snow. The clock on her dash showed it was 3:05. In an hour and a half, it would be dark. She remembered that the moon was in its full phase, and she was comforted by the thought that she could make it back to her SUV in the moonlight.

  Traveling on Highway 1 was easy because the county workers had plowed it and spread a mixture of sand and salt to melt the ice. However, it was a different story when she turned onto Bagna Lake Road.

  As she made the turn, she felt the rear end of her vehicle begin to yaw, and it swung fi
rst one way, then the other. She spun the steering wheel in the opposite direction of the skids, and after two or three oscillations, her vehicle straightened out, and she continued on her way but at a slower pace.

  As Pete had predicted, two miles down the road she came to large fieldstone columns by the side of the road. In places, a rock or two had been dislodged by frost and time, but for the most part, they were intact.

  Deidre pulled as far off the road as she could without becoming stuck in the snow banks piled up by a county plow. She stepped onto the frozen road, and a gust of arctic air hit her in the face. It was going to get very cold as soon as the sun set, she thought.

  She removed her pistol from its holster, checked the magazine, checked to make sure a round was chambered, and set the safe. She returned the pistol to her belt and zipped her jacket before pulling up its hood, and last, she pulled on heavy winter mittens to protect her hands from frostbite.

  *****

  As she approached the two cairns that used to guard the entrance to the resort, she noticed a no trespassing sign with an ominous message, Violators Will Be Prosecuted, attached to each.

  Most surprising to her were snowmobile tracks leading up the trail from the road. They were covered by a dusting of snow, indicating the trail hadn’t been traveled since last week. The footing underneath was packed and frozen solid, so walking was not difficult.

  Any other day, she would have enjoyed the hike. A snowshoe hare had crossed the path, leaving behind a distinctive trail of elongated footprints. The tracks told a story of struggle and death, but also survival. It ended in a patch of blood stained snow bordered by the imprints of large wings, and Deidre knew that a great horned owl had descended on its prey in the middle of the night. The rabbit died; the owl lived.

  As she observed the evidence of the battle for existence, Deidre carried no ill feeling toward the owl. It did what it had to do to survive the harsh Minnesota winter.

  On the other hand, she wanted nothing more than to find and punish those people preying on young women, people who weren’t doing it to survive, but to fulfill their evil need to dominate and to satisfy their own greed.

  She trudged on through the snow for another twenty minutes until she reached a spot in the trail where it curved to the right while going up a steep hill. Before Deidre reached the top of the grade, she was forced to stop and rest her hands on her knees. Her breath came in gasps from the exertion, and when she exhaled, it formed a cloud of condensation before her face. She could feel perspiration mat her hair under her parka hood, and when she threw it back, a cloud of steam rose in the air.

  She rested for two or three minutes, allowing her body to regain its rhythm. A few more steps brought her to the top of the hill, and she stopped once more. From her vantage point she could see the layout of the defunct resort.

  Straight ahead, the main lodge was nestled under the cover of towering white pines that had seen their better days. The tops of most were dead, their dried limbs reaching like scraggly arms ready to snag anything that passed by.

  The porch attached to the lodge was partly collapsed, and one of its main corner posts had given way. A portion of the roof had fallen, although not all the way to the ground.

  To the right, following the banks of the frozen Rocky River, a dozen cabins stood side by side. A few of them had the glass missing from their windows, and with one, the roof had caved in, probably from the weight of some forgotten heavy snowfall. Everything was silent. No birds sang, nothing moved except the tops of the trees that swayed in the wind. Deidre could hear the soft whisper of the wind as it passed through the pine tree needles. It should have been a peaceful sight, but the hair on the back of Deidre’s neck bristled ominously.

  She knew when a person had that feeling, there was usually a reason, but she disregarded her gut reaction. She unzipped her coat to have better access to her pistol.

  Deidre kept to the edge of the trail, partially shielded by a dense stand of balsam fir trees that stood like a wall. When she was less than fifty yards from the lodge, the wind shifted slightly, and she caught the odor of wood smoke. At the same time she saw the plume rising from the lodge chimney.

  Deidre froze in her tracks, realizing she was not alone. She knew she should back out, return to her SUV and call for help. But she had a problem. This far from civilization, her cell phone would register no bars. She knew that without checking.

  The nearest phone was several miles back, past Pete’s place and near a small community, Finland. It would take her twenty minutes to walk back to her SUV and another twenty minutes to reach Finland. Against her better judgment, Deidre crept forward while trying to maintain a low profile. As she moved closer to the lodge, she looked across the clearing at the row of cabins and saw smoke rising from one cabin’s chimney.

  She paused to gather her thoughts. The driveway made a loop past the cabins and in front of the main lodge. In the center of the loop was a stand of trees where stately paper birch had grown in three or four clumps, but that had been years before. Now, rotting stubs waited to be toppled by the next heavy storm, the remnants of their once white bark flapping in the breeze. In the place of birch, tag alder brush and cedar trees were growing, forming an island of protection.

  Deidre held her breath, listening for any sound. Hearing none, she dashed from the edge of the road to the safety of the island of trees. Once there, she stopped and held her breath, trying not to let a cloud of vapor rising from her mouth in the cold air give away her position.

  Her heart was pounding against her ribs, and she couldn’t decide if it was from fear or exertion. Probably both, she guessed. Again she waited for any telltale sound: a voice, a cough, the crunch of snow under someone’s foot. Nothing.

  She moved to the other side of the dense copse and paused. Still no movement or sound that she could detect. Deidre made a dash across the road to the side of the cabin with the fallen-in roof and worked her way around back and out of sight from the lodge. From there she was able to walk undetected to the back of the cabin from where she saw smoke rising.

  As quietly as she could, and sticking to the shadows, she felt her way along the side of the building until she was standing under one of the side windows. It was too high up for her to see inside, and Deidre looked around for something to stand on.

  Near the next door cabin was a small drum that looked as though it had held oil at one time, and she managed to reach it, staying in the shadows, which were lengthening in the afternoon sun. In a half hour it would be dark, at least for the time before moonrise. Deidre dragged the barrel over to the window of the apparently occupied cabin.

  She climbed upon it, making more noise than she intended, and peered through the sagging glass. Her heart skipped a beat, and she sucked in a gasp of air.

  A dimly lit, bare light bulb hung on a cord suspended from one of the rafters. Eight beds lined the walls, four on one side and four on the other. In the center, between the two rows were placed two five-gallon plastic buckets.

  On each of three of the beds lay a young girl, a shackle on her ankle and the shackle chained to the foot of the bed. They looked lethargic, emotionally beaten, although they didn’t appear to be bruised or otherwise physically damaged.

  Their bedclothes were disheveled, and each seemed to have just one blanket covering the bare mattress. Each girl wore a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, socks but no shoes. They weren’t talking to each other. In fact, Deidre noted that they weren’t even looking at one another. In the corner of the cabin stood an old-fashioned oil burner, which she surmised was the only source of heat for the room.

  As quietly as she could, Deidre got down from the drum, and began to make her way around to the other side of the cabin. She didn’t want to alarm the girls and cause them to call out or in any other way announce her presence.

  On the other side of the cabin, she was comp
letely out of view from the lodge, and she peeked around the corner of the building. She could see the lodge, see the light in the window because of the deepening shadows. She could clearly see the smoke continue to rise from its central chimney, however, she could see no sign of life in the lodge, and there were no snow machines outside.

  She could plainly see a beaten down path leading from the lodge to the cabin, but even that didn’t look like it had been used today. In one place, snow had drifted over the tracks, and where it had, it was pristine.

  At that moment she decided to approach the door to determine if there was any chance she could get inside.

  Deidre removed her pistol from its holster, checked the safe, and with her weapon in hand quietly slipped around the corner.

  Chapter 30

  Pete had known better than to ask Deidre if he could come with her. She might have said yes, but then, he knew, she would have made him wait out of sight. She probably would have made him stay in the truck, keeping the motor running and the heater going.

  After he was sure Deidre had left, Pete took down his heavy jacket, and went to his closet. He picked up an elongated case and took a small package down from the overhead shelf. After checking the stew one more time and making sure the stove was turned off, he went to his battered pickup.

  When he turned the ignition key, the starter motor ground so slowly it seemed as though it would stop mid-crank. He tried again. This time the engine coughed once. On the third try, the engine spun over and the motor came to life.

  The inside of the windshield was completely frosted, and Pete scraped a small opening through which he could squint. He had parked facing out, so he could drive away without turning around.