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 first 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 completely 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.