Vermilion Drift (Cork O’Connor, 10) William Kent Krueger. Atria Books (ISBN:  9781439153871) 2011.

Summary: The discovery of six bodies in an underground iron mine leads to facing uncomfortable truths about Cork’s father.

Cork O’Connor comes home to an empty house every night. His children are away for the summer. And he has nightmares. In them he sees his father falling, crying for his help. Then, stepping out of himself, he sees the same scene again–only he is pushing his father. He cannot make sense of it.

But in the daylight, his life is bustling. Sam’s Place is thriving under the manager who would like to buy the place. He has rich consulting clients, including an iron mine owner, Max Cavanaugh. He’s helping with security arrangements while an old mine is under consideration as a nuclear waste storage site. There are protests. Then several people receive threatening messages: “We die. you die.” Max has also asked him to investigate the disappearance of his sister Lauren, who ran an arts center out of the old Judge Parrant mansion.

When the same message appears inside the mine, Cork investigates whether there was another access to the mine. He discovers that one of the side tunnels, the Vermilion Drift (drift being the term for such tunnels) ran under the reservation of the tribal lands and that there was an exit that had been blocked up. But he discovers something else. Six bodies, including one recently murdered.

The recently murdered person turns out to be Lauren Cavanaugh. Four other bodies were of young girls who had disappeared from tribal lands during “the Vanishings.” These occurred fifty years ago. The other body is that of Max’s mother, from the same time. Cork’s father had been sheriff then and Cork a rebellious teen. If all this isn’t weird enough, both women were killed by the same gun, a .38 revolver. That catches Cork’s attention. His father used a .38, which Cork inherited, until he turned it over to Henry Meloux for safekeeping after a school shooting. When he looks in the place Henry concealed it, it is gone.

Cork begins to wonder what his father’s role was in all this. He had been investigating the Vanishings the summer before his death in a shootout arising from a bank holdup. Cork remembers something was different about his father. But there is much from that time he doesn’t remember. All he remembers is being at his father’s deathbed, listening to his mother’s prayers, unable to join her.

As the official investigation of the murders past and present go on, Cork cooperates, but doesn’t share the part about his father. Rather, he pursues a search that uncovers both unspeakable evil, and the possibility that his father had some part in this. Amid all this, Cork realizes that his own missing memories and his nightmares are important, but could also reveal truths that could shatter the image of his father.

Krueger combines a murder mystery with plot twists and red herrings with an inner journey that tests Cork’s resolve to know the truth. Henry Meloux, growing increasingly frail, both holds and withholds the key, waiting for Cork to come to the place beyond anger when he is ready. It’s not clear whether Cork will reach this place or whether it could cost him his relationship with Henry. All that makes you keep turning the pages in another finely written installment in this series.