Time of the Wolves

by Marcia Muller

  I could feel those soulless eyes on my back. I tried to finish my drink, but hatred for the creature behind me welled up and threatened to make me choke. Troy Winslip had in many respects been a useless person, but he’d also been young and naive and hadn’t deserved to die. Nor did Daniel Pope or Troy’s woman deserve to live, and perhaps die, in terror.

  Luis said softly: “Now he is bragging again. He is telling them he is above the law. No one can touch him, he says. Renny D is invincible.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Let’s go now, amiga.”

  As we stood, I looked at Dominguez once more. This time, when our eyes met, a shadow passed over his. What was that about? I wondered. Not suspicion. Not fear. What?

  Of course—Renny D was puzzled. Puzzled because I didn’t shy away from his stare. Puzzled and somewhat uneasy.

  Well, good.

  I said to Luis: “We’ll see who is invincible.”

  I’d expected the Winslips to pose an obstacle to bringing Renny D to justice, but they proved to be made of very strong stuff. The important thing, they said, was not to cover up their son’s misdeeds but to ensure that a vicious murderer didn’t go free to repeat his crime. So, with their blessing, I took my evidence downtown to Gary Viner.

  And Gary told me what I’d been fearing all along. “We don’t have a case.”

  “Gary, there’s the tape. Dominguez as good as told Winslip he was going to stab him. There’s the record of where the call originated. There’s the eyewitness testimony of Daniel Pope. . . .”

  “There’s the fact that the actual crime occurred on Mexican soil. And that Dominguez has the police down there in his hip pocket. No case, McCone.”

  “So what’re we going to do . . . sit back and wait till he kills Pope and Winslip’s woman, or somebody else?”

  “We’ll keep an eye on Dominguez. That’s all I can promise you. Otherwise, my hands’re tied.”

  “Maybe your hands are tied.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? What’re you going to do? Don’t give me any trouble, McCone . . . please.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m going to go off and think about this, that’s all. When I do give you something, I guarantee it won’t be trouble.”

  When I’m upset or need to concentrate, I often head for water, so I drove north to Torrey Pines State Beach and walked by the surf for an hour. Something was nagging at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t bring it forward. Something I’d read or heard somewhere. Something. . . .

  Knives at midnight, Winslip. Knives at midnight.

  Renny D’s high-pitched, cackling voice on the answering machine tape kept playing and replaying for me.

  After a while, I decided to do some research and drove to Adams Avenue to find a used bookshop with a large legal section.

  Crimes against the person: homicide. Express and implied malice . . . burden of proving mitigation—no.

  Second degree . . . penalty for person previously convicted —no.

  Manslaughter committed during operation of a vessel—certainly not.

  Death of victim within three years and a day—forget it.

  What the hell was I combing the penal code for, anyway?

  Mayhem? Hardly. Kidnapping? No, Troy went willingly, even eagerly. Conspiracy? Maybe. No, the situation’s too vague. Nothing there for me.

  Knives at midnight, Winslip. Knives at midnight.

  Can’t get it out of my head. Keep trying to connect it with something. Melodramatic words, as Troy told Pope. A little old-fashioned, as if Dominguez was challenging him to a. . . .

  That’s it!

  Duels. Duels and challenges. Penal code, 225.

  Defined: Combat with deadly weapons, fought between two or more persons, by previous agreement. . . .

  Punishment when death ensues: state prison for two, three, or four years.

  Not much, but better than nothing.

  I remember reading this before, one time when I was browsing through statutes that have been on the books for a long time. It’s as enforceable today as it was then in 1872. Especially section 231; that’s the part I really like.

  Gotcha, Renny D.

  “I’ll read it to you again,” I said to Gary Viner. He was leaning toward me across his desk, trying to absorb the impact of the dry, formal text from 1872.

  “ ‘Dueling beyond State. Every person who leaves this State with intent to evade any provisions of this chapter, and to commit any act out of this State, which would be punishable to such provisions if committed within this State, is punishable in the same manner as he would have been in case such act had been committed within this State. ’ ”

  “And there you have it.” I closed the heavy tome with an emphatic thump.

  Gary nodded. “And there we have it.”

  I began ticking off items on my fingers. “A taped challenge to a duel at knifepoint. A probable voiceprint match with the suspect. A record of where the call was made from. An eyewitness who, in order to save his own sorry hide, will swear that it actually was a duel. And, finally, a death that resulted from it. Renny D goes away for two, three, or four years in state prison.”

  “It’s not much time. I’m not sure the DA’ll think it’s worth the trouble of prosecuting him.”

  “I remember the DA from high school. He’ll be happy with anything that’ll get a slime-ball off the streets for a while. Besides, maybe we’ll get lucky and somebody’ll challenge Renny D to a duel in prison.”

  Gary nodded thoughtfully. “I remember our DA from high school, too. Successfully prosecuting a high-profile case like this would provide the kind of limelight he likes . . . and it’s an election year.”

  By the time my return flight to San Francisco left on Saturday, the DA had embraced the 1872 statute on duels and challenges with a missionary-like zeal and planned to take the Winslip case to the grand jury. Daniel Pope would be on hand to give convincing testimony about traveling to Tijuana primed for hand-to-hand combat with Dominguez and his cohort. Renny D was as yet unsuspecting but would soon be behind bars.

  And at a Friday-night dinner party, the other half of the “detecting duo” had regaled the San Diego branch of the McCone family with his highly colored version of our exploits.

  I accepted a cup of coffee from the flight attendant and settled back in the seat with my beat-up copy of STANDARD CALIFORNIA CODES. I had a more current one on the shelf in my office, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to part with this one. Besides, I needed something to read on the hour-and-a-half flight.

  Disguised Firearms or Other Deadly Weapons. Interesting.

  Lipstick Case Knife. Oh, them deadly dames, as they used to say.

  Shobi-zue: a staff, crutch, stick, rod, or pole with a knife enclosed. Well, if I ever break a leg. . . .

  Writing Pen Knife. That’s a good one. Proves the pen can be mightier than the sword.

  But wait now, here’s one that’s really fascinating. . . .

  The Indian Witch

  From the Santa Carla, California Observer

  January 1, 1900

  We called her the Indian Witch, even though her name was really Mrs. Morrissey. Her husband, Thad Morrissey, ran the only saloon in town, and they lived, just the two of them, in a big clapboard house on Second Avenue a few doors down from Main Street. In 1884 Santa Carla was a small town where everybody knew everybody else’s business, but no one knew the Morrisseys’.

  No one even knew where they had come from. They arrived in town in the fall of 1863: a big, fair-haired, red-faced Irishman and his small, dark Indian wife. Within the week Thad Morrissey bought the saloon and they moved from their rooming house to Second Avenue. Every day at exactly quarter to noon he would walk to the saloon, open up, and spend the hours between then and midnight pouring drinks for loggers who had come into town from the heavily forested ridge that separates Santa Carla from the rugged northern California coastline. He was a genial host, always willing to listen to a man’s troubles or extend cr
edit, but he spoke little of himself.

  Mrs. Morrissey was even more of a puzzle. From the day she and her husband moved into the house on Second Avenue she never once left it. It was thought she feared shunning from the townswomen, as marriages between whites and Indians were generally viewed as repugnant, but that did not explain why she dared not venture so far as her own yard or deep front porch. A servant girl from one of the town’s poorer families did her shopping and presumably was paid well enough that she was reluctant to talk about what she saw and heard inside the big, shadowy house. And so the Morrisseys lived for over twenty years.

  In 1882 my family moved to the end of Second Avenue, where grassland spread to the eastern hills. Often my younger brothers and I would play with our friends in the vacant lot across from the Morrissey house. We boys would see Thad Morrissey leave for the saloon and the servant girl come and go, but we never set eyes upon Mrs. Morrissey until one hot July day in 1884, when a curtain moved in an upstairs window and a stern, dark face looked down at us. I was close to the house at the time, having run into the street to retrieve a ball my brother had thrown, and, when I looked up, her gaze met mine.

  I shall never forget her eyes: black and implacable—al—though I would not have known what such a word meant at age twelve—with a flatness that bespoke knowledge of many terrible things. They frightened me so badly that I dropped the ball and fled back to the safety of the lot. And on that day we christened Mrs. Morrissey the Indian Witch.

  Every day for the rest of July and August we would wait for her to appear in the window. Every day she obliged us on the stroke of three. She would remain there, unmoving, watching us at play for exactly ten minutes. When school began in September, she would watch us as we walked home. By then it seemed to me that I was the object of her gaze.

  September passed quickly, and then it was October: lemon-yellow days with a chill on the evening air. But shortly before Halloween, as if nature were angry at the passage of summer, heat enveloped our inland valley. On the coast the dog-hole ports, where logging companies sent their timber down chutes to schooners at anchor in the coves, were unnavigable because of fog, but Santa Carla experienced no such relief. And on one of those still, blazing afternoons Thad Morrissey toppled forward as he reached across his bar to pour whisky for a logger and died at the age of sixty-two.

  Word of his death spread quickly through town. We boys gathered at the vacant lot after school to see what would transpire at the Morrissey house. A delegation of men, including Doc Bolton and Mayor Drew, arrived. They were met by the servant girl, who spoke briefly with them. The next day we learned the Indian Witch had sent instructions through her that her husband was to be buried without ceremony in a plot he had purchased in the graveyard. The townsfolk were shocked to hear it was a single plot. Thad Morrissey had made no provision for his wife, and not even a funeral wreath adorned the forbidding house’s door. The Indian Witch continued to appear at the upstairs window, but now she seemed to study me more intensely.

  The heat wave finally broke, and November turned chilly. Our thoughts moved forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas. One evening nearly three weeks after Thad Morrissey’s passing I was walking by his widow’s house on the way to visit a friend when a voice spoke to me.

  “Young man, come here!”

  I stopped, my blood suddenly colder than the air, and peered into the shadows. She was on the porch, wrapped in a black shawl, her hand beckoning to me. My first impulse was to run, but curiosity overcame it and I moved closer.

  “Come up on the porch, please.”

  The voice was refined with scarcely a trace of an accent, not at all as I had imagined it. Or perhaps I had not imagined her as possessing any sort of voice, so stony and silent had she seemed as she stood at the window. I ascended the steps slowly.

  The Indian Witch looked me up and down, taking my measure. Then she nodded as if satisfied with what she saw. “I want you to do something for me,” she said.

  “Ma’am?” The word came out a croak.

  She brought out her other hand from beneath the shawl and extended a folded sheet of paper. “I have here a list of things to be purchased. I will reward you for doing so.”

  “But your girl. . . .”

  “Martha cannot perform these errands. No one is to know these things are for me. Will you do this?”

  I looked into her eyes and saw both pride and pleading. Then I nodded and held out my hand for the paper, which was thick with money tucked into its fold.

  “Why did you choose me?” I asked.

  “I have watched you. I know you are trustworthy. Bring the things tomorrow night.” Then she turned and went into the house.

  I forgot about my visit to my friend and ran home, clutching the Indian Witch’s list. My brothers were in the bedroom we three shared and my parents in the parlor, so I took the list to the kitchen, where a kerosene lamp burned low, and examined it.

  The items puzzled me: a pair of sturdy boots in the smallest available size, heavy socks, a warm jacket, a small pack, dried meat, and other portable foodstuffs. It appeared to me as if she were about to embark upon a long hike, except in those days respectable matrons of our town did not walk great distances (and, so far as I know, still do not).

  I saved my errands for late the next afternoon, as I was sure they would attract notice and I wanted my father to return from his work at the grain mill before anyone could question him about his son’s unusual purchases. By the time he heard about them, the deed would be done, and I would have quite a story to tell. My father loved nothing more than a good story.

  By suppertime my shopping was competed and the bundles, along with some extra money, stowed behind our outhouse. I could barely taste my food for my excitement. As soon as I could, I slipped out, retrieved the bundles, and carried them to the Indian Witch’s house. She was waiting on the porch, wearing the same black shawl, but on this night she beckoned me inside.

  To my surprise, the house was quite ordinary, not much different from my own. She motioned for me to deposit the bundles beside the front door, then bent to look through them. When she straightened, she had the extra money in her hand.

  “Yes, I was right about your trustworthiness,” she said. “I always could judge a good man.”

  A good man. My heart swelled at the compliment.

  She handed me the money. “I want you to have this.”

  My reward! I had thought perhaps a piece of pie or cake. But this was too much money, five dollars.

  “I cannot accept. . . .”

  “You can and you will. Come into the parlor, please.”

  I followed, clutching the money, wondering what else she had in store for me.

  A fire burned on the hearth, strong and steady. She had laid and lighted it herself, which impressed me, as my father always proclaimed women incapable of such acts. The Indian Witch motioned me toward a large chair that must have been Thad Morrissey’s, and claimed a cushioned rocker for herself. She gripped its arms with long-fingered hands, and, when she looked into my eyes, the firelight made hers glitter fiercely.

  She said: “I know what you call me, you and your friends. ‘The Indian Witch’.”

  I gulped and could say nothing.

  “It is because I am different. You need to put a name to that difference, so you imagine I have evil powers.”

  “Ma’am. . . .”

  “Be quiet! I have decided to tell you my story. Perhaps it will teach you not to judge others until you know the reasons behind their differences. But first you must promise to tell no one.”

  “I. . . .”

  “Promise!”

  I promised. And then she began.

  My story begins in the winter of Eighteen Fifty-Six. My tribe . . . I am Pomo . . . had always lived on Cape Perdido, at the northwestern boundary of this county. The rains were bad for two years, the sea worse. Fish and game were scarce, the wild plants even more so. My father could not feed our family.

  The
re was a man who ran a saloon in the logging town on the ridge who was known to be charitable. My father went to ask his help, taking me along. My father was proud. He did not want to beg, and the man knew that. So he bargained. He would give food in exchange for me, Wonena. I was fourteen years of age, the man thirty-four. His name was Thaddeus Morrissey.

  My father had no choice but to agree to this proposition. The family would have starved otherwise. For myself, I was not afraid to stay. As I said before, I could always judge a good man. A lesser man than Thaddeus Morrissey would have made me his slave and turned me out when he tired of me. But instead he married me and gave me my Christian name, Emma. He moved me into his rooms above the saloon, asked a neighbor woman to teach me to cook and bake bread and keep house. In the mornings, before he went downstairs, my husband taught me English. He laughed at my mistakes, but gently. He in turn learned words and phrases from my language. In time I came to love him, and he to love me. I think perhaps he had loved me from the first, although we never spoke of it. I became more white than Indian.

  In Eighteen Sixty-One we began to hear rumors. A white man had discovered oil on my tribe’s land on Cape Perdido. Now the big companies wanted to drill wells there, but the tribal council said they would never permit it. Those lands were their hunting and gathering grounds. Their ancestors’ spirits dwelled there. Cape Perdido was sacred to them.

  The government, of course, was on the side of the big companies. They sent troops to force the Pomos off their land. This, of course, was happening to Indians everywhere when valuable things were found on their lands, and some fought back. My tribe decided to fight back, also.

  Do you know Perdido means something not easily tamed? In those days it was even more rugged and wild than now. The Pomos knew that cape, but the government soldiers did not. For over a year they stumbled into the ravines and got lost in the forests and fell from the steep cliffs, while the Pomos hid in natural shelters and moved invisibly across the land, killing the intruders one by one.