The Red Power Murders

by Thomas King

  “He’s got a callus on his leg, and you think he’s a fugitive?”

  “No,” said Thumps, wondering if Hockney had dragged him into a mess that he wouldn’t be able to get out of easily, “I think he might be a cop.”

  NINE

  The smart thing, Thumps told himself as he pointed his Volvo west, was to go home, turn off the phone, get into bed, and disappear under something warm and soft and dark. And stay there until spring.

  Instead, he was on his way to Buffalo Mountain Resort to try to find Claire, though he wasn’t sure exactly why he was doing this. Maybe it was because they hadn’t talked since Thumps had taken off for Canada. Before he left, they had had a minor disagreement about Claire’s son, Stanley, or Stick as he was known to his friends. Thumps had suggested, in a positive way, that Stanley was arrogant and lazy—which he was—and Claire had suggested that Thumps mind his own business. It had been his own fault, stepping between a bear and her cub, and since Claire always put work and Stanley before romance, if amends were to be made, Thumps would have to make them.

  Sometimes his relationship with Claire was more trouble than it was worth. She was loving enough when she remembered and when she made the time, but getting her attention focused on something other than work took more effort than it should.

  Thumps looked at the sky through the windshield. With any luck, he’d get snowed in at the resort, and he and Claire would have to hole up in one of the condominiums that the tribe hadn’t sold yet, a unit with a whirlpool tub and a panorama of the mountains. A unit with a lock on the door and no Stanley banging around in the refrigerator, demanding to be fed. Best of all, he wouldn’t have to bother with Noah Ridge and the dangerous baggage the man dragged along behind him.

  The Volvo didn’t like the look of the sky either, and as they hit the first grade, the car started chug-chugging and drifting toward the shoulder, as if it were running out of breath and needed a rest.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he said, and he leaned into the accelerator.

  Amazing how the past could swing around and find you. Thumps hadn’t thought about Utah or Noah Ridge or Lucy Kettle or Dakota Miles for years. And here they were again. Almost larger than life. And as he coaxed the car into the mountains toward the promise of snow, pieces of those years began working their way out of the ground like old bones that hadn’t been buried deep enough.

  Thumps had watched those years from the sidelines. Close to the action, but never on the field. He vaguely remembered growing his hair long, could recall owning a four-strand bone choker and a beaded belt buckle. Had he really worn them? But when Noah began talking about commitment and pride and today being a good day to die, Thumps had stepped away. He had no quarrel with Noah’s contention that the government’s attitude toward Indians hadn’t changed in two hundred years or that the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Department of the Interior had done little to protect Indians and Indian resources, but the simplistic brand of evangelical rhetoric that flowed out of Noah whenever the media came around always left Thumps uneasy and looking for cover.

  It had been a strategy that combined lost pride and tribalism with the realities of racism and, Thumps’s concerns aside, it had played well on the reservations and in the world press.

  There was no question that the government had crawled into bed with business, passing out leases on Indian land to private companies for oil and coal and gas exploration like loot bags at a party, or that these same corporations had returned the favour, pouring money into political campaigns, so that the cycle of chicanery and profit could be maintained.

  After all, levels of corruption always rose to the level of profit.

  But that had begun to change. Maybe it was because organizations such as the Red Power Movement and the American Indian Movement had brought national attention to a national problem, or maybe it was because Native people had finally had enough of the lies that flowed out of Washington like a river. Whatever the reason, after years of watching their land base dwindle, tribes suddenly dug in their heels, hired lawyers, and went to court to stop the pillage. And they had been surprisingly successful. Not that these wins had stemmed the clamour for the mineral deposits or for the stands of timber or for the fisheries that Native people controlled. As long as Indians controlled one square acre of land, Noah argued from his public pulpit, there would be a White man trying to steal it.

  Maybe that’s what separated humans from animals, a willingness to steal from each other. Then again, Thumps remembered watching a nature show in which a lion made off with the carcass of an antelope that a leopard had killed. So, maybe there was no difference after all. Maybe the old stories were right.

  COOLEY SMALL ELK was waiting for Thumps when he got to the main gate at Buffalo Mountain Resort.

  “Hey, Thumps.”

  Cooley rolled over to the car like a boulder coming down a mountain. He had on a thick leather parka which made him look even larger, if that was possible.

  “You looking to buy,” said Cooley, “or just looking?”

  “Thought they were going to bring in an automatic gate.”

  Cooley put a hand on the roof and leaned in. Thumps could feel the car struggling to keep its balance.

  “They did, but someone broke off the arm. So, they hired me back.”

  Thumps grabbed the edge of the seat so he wouldn’t fall out the window.

  “Claire around?”

  “She’s at one of those meetings,” said Cooley. “Hey, did you hear about my new business?”

  Thumps couldn’t recall that Cooley had ever had a business, let alone a new one.

  “Here you go.” Cooley handed Thumps a card that read, simply, “Small Elk Security.”

  Thumps turned the card over. There was nothing on the back. No phone number. No fax number. No email address.

  “Security, eh?”

  “That’s right. If you need something looked after, give me a call.”

  “There’s no phone number.”

  “Yeah,” said Cooley. “I know.”

  “You’re probably going to need a phone number.”

  “It changes a lot,” said Cooley, “so if I get a client, I just write it on the back.”

  Thumps could still remember the days when his phone bill got paid last. Or not at all. “Well, that’s a good business,” he told Cooley. “And you got the looks for it.”

  Cooley stepped back from the car so Thumps could see all of him all at once. The Volvo bounced to its feet and took a deep breath.

  “My girlfriend says everyone feels safer when they’re standing next to a big guy.”

  “You think I could go up to the office and hang around until Claire finishes her meeting?”

  “You go away on trips, right?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Next time you go, you should think about hiring someone to watch your house.”

  Thumps tried to think what there was in the house worth stealing. The cameras, maybe, although the digital revolution had made most of his equipment next to worthless. He remembered when personal computers came into their own, and electric typewriters became obsolete overnight.

  No one would steal a grumpy cat, so Freeway was safe.

  “Sure,” said Thumps, “and I’ll pass the word around.”

  “Tell them I’ve been trained by Vladimir Vasiliev.”

  If Thumps was going to have to wait to see Claire, sitting in the car and talking to Cooley wasn’t such a bad way to spend the time.

  “Vladimir?”

  “Vladimir Vasiliev.” Cooley waited for Thumps to recognize the name. “The Russian Martial Art System.”

  And then again, sitting in the lobby of the resort and thumbing through old magazines would be okay too.

  “He used to be with a Russian Special Operations Unit.” Cooley took one step to the side and assumed a fighting pose. “I just finished the DVD on strikes. Hop out and I’ll show you a couple of moves.”

  Cooley spun around a
nd slammed his elbow into a nearby aspen. Thumps eased up on the brake and let the car roll forward out of harm’s way.

  “Maybe later.”

  “Sure,” said Cooley, “and as soon as the new gate arm comes in, I’ll be available for security work full-time.”

  The Volvo limped up the road to the main complex, favouring the side Cooley had crushed. In his rear-view mirror, Thumps could see the aspen. It was still quaking, and he wondered if the gate arm had been a casualty of Cooley’s training.

  BUFFALO MOUNTAIN RESORT had become what ambitious projects with high expectations generally become. Disappointments. Not failures. Just disappointments. Claire and the tribal council had hoped that the high-rise condos with their panoramic views of the Rockies and the casino with its glitter and bells and lights and easy cash would provide the tribe with a reliable economic base.

  That hadn’t happened.

  Not that it wouldn’t. Eventually, perhaps. But the last time Thumps spoke to Ora Mae, only about half of the condos had been sold and many of those had gone to speculators who expected to rent them back for exorbitant rates to people on vacation. Fewer than ten percent of the units were actually occupied by warm bodies, and that made the concrete and glass structure feel more like a hotel than a second home.

  The casino had been a success. A nice condo in a good location might be a prudent investment, but if the number of people who drove up to the resort on the weekend or the caravan of buses that arrived daily was any indication, people would rather take a chance than play it safe.

  Thumps had decided that he didn’t like any of it very much. There was something about having a condo-casino complex stuck in the middle of a perfectly-fine-as-it-was forest that rubbed him the wrong way. Maybe it was the photographer in him who was tired of seeing fences and power lines and highways on the ground glass, or maybe it was the knowledge that no matter how successful the resort was, money wouldn’t necessarily make the lives of people better.

  Then again, Thumps reflected, as he eased into a parking space next to the administration office, a little money now and then wouldn’t make his life any worse.

  So, the resort was bringing in money. Just not in the bucket loads that Claire had hoped for and not in any dependable fashion. Which meant the tribe could never plan, only react.

  Which is what Indians did. Or at least, that’s the way it appeared. Life on the reservation, so far as Thumps could see, was a series of reactions. Reactions to governments that wanted to dispense with treaties. Reactions to corporations that wanted to get at the natural resources the tribes controlled. Reactions to benevolent organizations that wanted to help Indians become White. Vine Deloria Jr. had said it best in his book Custer Died for Your Sins, when he argued that Indians were transparent, that Whites looking at Native people knew exactly what Indians needed and how they felt and what could be done to help them. Thumps had read Deloria’s book at university, and while he felt that the man had used a rather general brush to paint his landscape of North American politics and policies, he hadn’t been wrong.

  CLAIRE WASN’T AT the administration office. She was at the condo complex. Thumps caught up to her on the sixth floor in one of the two-bedroom units, standing on the balcony, looking out at the Rockies.

  “If you were in the market for a condo,” said Claire, without turning around, “would you buy this one?”

  Thumps did not believe in extrasensory perception. “You saw me walk over from the office.”

  “What about it?”

  Thumps looked around. He had a vague memory of seeing a model called the Cascade, a luxurious three-bedroom with cathedral ceilings and a glass wall that looked down the Rockies. This wasn’t a Cascade.

  “How many bedrooms?”

  “Two.”

  “Feels small.”

  “We’ve sold only one of these.”

  “Maybe you should lower the price.”

  Thumps had said this as a joke, but when Claire turned to face him, he could see that she wasn’t in the mood for humour. Thumps was reasonably sure that he hadn’t had enough time to piss her off.

  “So, what’s he done now?”

  “Who?” Claire lied poorly. It was one of the qualities that Thumps liked about her.

  “Stick.”

  “Stanley.”

  Stanley Merchant, or Stick as he was known to everyone except his mother, was Claire’s only child. Which was an argument all by itself for multiple-children families. Stick was smart. And he was arrogant. Worse, he was young and still stupid enough to think that the first two attributes were attractive features.

  “So, what’s Stanley done now?”

  “You didn’t come out here to ask me about my son.”

  No, Thumps agreed, he hadn’t, but it was clear that he was going to have to get Stick out of the way before he could move on to the matter at hand.

  “It couldn’t be that bad.”

  Claire sat down in a large, overstuffed chair upholstered with material that looked like a Tuscany grape arbour.

  “Sometimes I think he needs a father.”

  “He doesn’t need a father,” said Thumps. “He’s got a great mother.”

  Normally, Claire would have taken his head off for being condescending, but sometimes flattery and the truth are one and the same.

  “Two weeks ago, he came home with a cut lip.”

  Thumps clamped his teeth on his tongue.

  “It’s not funny. Then he came home limping.”

  “Did you ask him?”

  “Of course I asked him.”

  “And?”

  “He said he was playing basketball.”

  So far as Thumps could remember, Stick hated sports, was happiest sitting in front of a computer monitor.

  “When did he take up basketball?”

  “The other day, he came home with his eye swollen. He could hardly see.”

  Now that, thought Thumps, keeping a firm grip on his tongue, was serious.

  “I’d like you to talk to him.”

  “He won’t talk to me.”

  “You’re a man,” said Claire.

  The last thing in the world Thumps wanted to do was to have a man-to-man talk with Stick. Well, maybe not the last thing, but it wasn’t high on his list of fun activities. Claire, on the other hand, was right up there with warm fires and good food.

  “It’s probably nothing,” said Thumps. “He’s not telling just to bug you.”

  Thumps could see that Claire was unmoved by this logic.

  “Okay, I’ll talk to him.”

  Claire nodded, but she didn’t smile. “Don’t tell him I asked.”

  Thumps had hoped he could bring Noah’s name up in the middle of a conversation that had nothing to do with Noah, but he could see Claire wasn’t about to make the space or the time for that.

  “Noah Ridge is in town.”

  Claire snorted. “Is that a question?”

  “Was just surprised to see him turn up in Chinook.”

  Claire cocked her head and looked at Thumps as though he were something shiny and she were a crow. “You think the tribe invited him?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Hell,” said Claire, “I’m surprised he has the balls to show his face around here at all.”

  There were only two answers that Thumps had expected. Yes, the tribe had invited him. Or no, the tribe had not invited him.

  “You know him?”

  Claire shook her head. “Never met the man.”

  “But . . . ?”

  “Ask Grover Many Horses. I would imagine he’s pretty hot about Ridge coming to town.”

  Somehow the conversation had taken a turn when Thumps wasn’t looking. “Grover Many Horses?”

  “Grover was her brother.”

  “Whose brother?”

  “Lucy Many Horses.”

  Thumps could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen. “Lucy?”

  Claire nodded. “It happened years ago. In Salt Lak
e City. She worked with Ridge.”

  “Lucy Kettle.”

  “That was her father’s name,” said Claire. “But her mother’s family is from here.”

  TEN

  Thumps could remember that even as a child, he had not been fond of surprises. There was a certain disorder to them. A certain confusion. Even good surprises were somewhat annoying. Discovering that Lucy Kettle was from the reservation and that she had a brother who might not be well disposed toward Noah Ridge was a rather large surprise.

  As Thumps drove back to town, he began playing out several scenarios, most of which featured Grover in the role of the avenging angel, striding into the church while Noah was reading from his good book and blowing Ridge’s head off.

  Fantasies aside, one could argue that Noah Ridge’s showing up in a town such as Chinook was nothing more than a surprise with a good explanation. And a gullible optimist might be willing to believe that Lucy Kettle’s brother living near said town was simply a coincidence. It helped if you eliminated the postcard with the death threat, Noah’s past, and an FBI agent who was just wandering around taking in the sights. The sheriff wouldn’t believe it. Not for a minute. Neither would Spencer Asah. But someone might.

  And then there was the dead guy in the motel. John Smith might have nothing at all to do with Noah or Grover or Dakota or Lucy Kettle, but Thumps had the nagging feeling that all these pieces were on a collision course with each other, and that the sound of the crash might just wake up the dead.

  How had it happened? Thumps had started off the day cold, tired, and in a bad mood. He had reluctantly said yes to Hockney’s offer to play deputy for a few days, and here he was driving all over hell chasing suspects. Well, not suspects exactly. Information. Almost as bad. As if he were still a cop. As if he still enjoyed the game.

  Worse, now he had to talk to Stick. Maybe the boy would turn out all right in the end. Maybe he was a late bloomer, one of those kids who did nothing until they hit thirty. Or forty. Not that Thumps cared one way or the other. But Stick was tied to Claire—a package, if you will—and if Thumps wanted to have a relationship with the mother, he knew he had to deal with the son.