Blood Is the Sky: An Alex McKnight Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

Waubunowin, but when she asked me to give this name to my firstborn, I was not happy. I thought it meant that my son would grow up one day to be an outcast himself.”
    I looked up at Vinnie. He did not move, or make the slightest sound.
    “My mother-in-law said to trust her. So I did. That is how Vincent was given the name Misquogeezhig.”
    “For what it’s worth,” I said, “I think it’s a good name.”
    “Yes, well, then I had two daughters. My mother-in-law had no interest in naming them. So I thought to myself, this is good. She is done with the naming of my children. But then I had my other son, Thomas. And she said to me, you must name him Minoonigeezhig, which means Pleasing Sky.”
    From the other side of the house, I could barely hear the murmur of the men and women talking, punctuated now and then by an outburst from one of the children. It all seemed to fade into silence as she leaned closer to me.
    “Pleasing Sky is the sky of the west,” she said. “It is the end of the day. The end of life. I always thought it was an unlucky name, Alex. I never should have given it to him.”
    “Mrs. LeBlanc—”
    “No, don’t tell me I’m being a silly old woman.”
    “I wasn’t going to say that.”
    “Perhaps not. But you think that.”
    “Please,” I said. “I don’t understand why you’re telling me all this.”
    “I’m asking you to go with Vincent,” she said.
    It took a moment to sink in. When it did, I knew I was committed. There was no way I could sit in that room
with that woman and have it turn out any other way.
    “I want the two of you to find him,” she said. “Prove me wrong. Go find my son with the unlucky name and bring him back home.”

Chapter Three
    It was still dark when Vinnie knocked on the door. I let him in and poured him a cup of coffee while I finished dressing. He sat there and drank it without saying anything.
    “You know where we’re going?” I said when I was ready.
    “I think so.”
    “We’ll take my truck.”
    “We can take mine.”
    “If we take yours,” I said, “we’ll never make it back. I saw the tread on those tires.”
    “They have paved roads in Canada, Alex.”
    “We’ll take my truck.”
    A few minutes later, we were on our way. The trip started on Lakeshore Drive again, bending around Whitefish Bay, just as we had done the day before. But this time we didn’t stop on the reservation. At this hour the only signs of life came from the two casinos. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to gamble before dawn on a cold October morning, but there were enough cars in the parking lots to prove me wrong.
    When we left the reservation, it was a straight shot down Three Mile Road into Sault Ste. Marie—or the
“Soo,” as the natives call it. We got onto I-75 and headed over the International Bridge, passing over the Soo Locks, and then over the Algoma Steel Foundry Works. With the sun just starting to come up, and the fires burning in the sintering furnaces, the whole scene was like one of the outer rings of hell.
    “Get your license ready,” I said as we came up to the Canadian Customs booth.
    “Little problem,” Vinnie said.
    I looked over at him. “What is it?”
    “Tom’s got my license.”
    “You’re kidding me.”
    “We decided he might need it, just in case. He looks enough like me—”
    “This is beautiful,” I said. I pulled up to the waiting line. There was one car in front of us. Going through customs can be a breeze, or it can be a pain in the ass, depending on who you’ve got in the booth and how they happen to be feeling that day. With the amount of time this guy was spending with the driver ahead of me, it didn’t look good.
    “You got another ID, right?”
    “No, Alex.”
    “A credit card?”
    He just looked at me.
    “You gave Tom your credit cards?”
    “Yes.”
    “You got anything?”
    “I gave him my wallet, Alex. The whole thing.”
    The car in front of me finally pulled away.
    “Pretend you’re