Vermilion Drift by William Kent Krueger

the water, which was like a window opened onto another heaven at his feet. Five decades of life and he could still be stunned to silence by such a dawn.
    The old Parrant estate sloped down to the shore. As Cork stood and watched the sun bubble red out of the horizon, something startling occurred. The brick from which that great house was builtturned scarlet, and the walls began to melt, and rivulets of blood ran red across the emerald lawn. Cork stood mesmerized and amazed, but it wasn’t the first time he’d had a discomforting vision involving this particularly cursed piece of real estate. Half a dozen years earlier, shortly before he’d discovered the murder-suicide there, he’d observed a sea of black snakes churning in the yard, snakes seen by no one but him.
    He blinked his eyes, and the morning was again as it had been, and the Parrant estate was solid brick, and its broad lawn was clean and green.
    Mudjimushkeeki , he thought. Bad medicine.
    The tall, lean figure of Derek Huff came from the back of the big house. He was dressed only in a bathing suit. As he headed toward the lake, he cast a shadow that followed him, long and black, like one of those snakes in Cork’s vision years before. He reached the dock, dropped the towel he’d carried over his shoulder, and dove into the lake.
    Cork drank water from the bottle he carried, and he stretched some. His muscles were a little sore. Lately he hadn’t been running as regularly as he would have liked. Despite his best intentions, life often got in the way.
    As he prepared to resume his run, he looked back at the lake, where Derek Huff stroked easily away from shore, leaving a wide, undulating wake behind him that rattled the reflection of heaven.
    When he’d finished the run and had showered and dressed, Cork composed and sent e-mails to his children. He didn’t tell them about what he’d found in the Vermilion Drift. He told them he was busy, happy, missed them. The Vermilion Drift would come up sooner or later, he knew. He wanted it to be later.
    He headed to Johnny’s Pinewood Broiler for some breakfast. He could have eaten at home, but he needed to talk to Cy Borkman, and Borkman always breakfasted at the Broiler.
    He found Borkman sitting on a stool at the counter, already doing major damage to a platter of eggs over easy, link sausage, hash browns, and toast. An empty juice glass sat off to one side, and coffee steamed in a cup within easy reach. Borkman had been hired as a deputy when Cork’s father was sheriff of Tamarack County, and he was still a deputy when Cork held that office thirty years later. He’d always been a big man, always overweight, but with retirement from the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department he’d edged more and more toward the girth of a walrus, and the little stool he sat on seemed hard put to keep from buckling.
    “Morning, Cy,” Cork said and gave Borkman a hearty slap on the back as he sat down beside him.
    “Hey, Cork.” Borkman spoke around a mouthful of breakfast, and it came out something like, “Hey, Hork.”
    It was a busy morning at the Broiler. Kathy Lehman was waitressing the counter. She was blond, fortyish, a transplant from Wisconsin, but nice as they came. She stopped as she hurried past with three plates balanced on her right hand and forearm, shot Cork a smile, and said, “Coffee, hon?”
    “Thanks, Kathy.”
    “Be right back.” And she was gone.
    Borkman put down his fork. He grabbed his napkin and, with a quick swipe, cleaned hash browns and ketchup from his chin. “Say, what was all that commotion at the Vermilion One yesterday? Everybody’s talking about a convoy of official vehicles that trucked in there. The protest getting out of hand?”
    “Nothing like that, Cy.”
    “Me, I didn’t have these bum legs, I’d be walking that protest line myself. Say, heard you’re working for the mine.” It wasn’t the most friendly tone he’d ever used.
    “Security consult,” Cork said. “Some