The Red Power Murders

by Thomas King

  “The doughnuts are good.” Thumps slid into a booth.

  “You’re kidding.”

  The owner/operator of Dumbo’s was one Morris Dumbo, a rusty rail of a man who liked to speak his mind. Not that Morris had any mind to speak of.

  “Hey, chief, long time no see.” Morris eased himself out of the brown Naugahyde recliner behind the counter. “Who’s your friend?”

  “FBI,” said Thumps.

  “No shit,” said Morris. “You hear about our asshole mayor?”

  Asah looked to see if Thumps was going to help.

  “Doesn’t want to let Wal-Mart open a store in town.” Morris ran a wet rag across the table. “You believe that?”

  “Really,” said Asah, who could see he was going to be left on his own.

  “What about a nice doughnut?” said Morris. “The both of you want doughnuts?”

  “Just coffee,” said Asah. “We have to talk.”

  “This look like a fucking chat room?”

  “Two doughnuts,” said Thumps.

  “Damned straight,” said Morris. “You want raised or cake?”

  Asah waited until Morris had delivered the coffee and doughnuts and had crawled back into his chair behind the counter.

  “Okay,” said Asah, “so how the hell do you know about the bonds?”

  Thumps willed his face to go blank.

  “Come on. Don’t give me that.”

  Thumps took a deep breath and let it out all in pieces. “Why is the FBI wasting time and money shadowing Noah?”

  Asah was ready for the question. “The book,” he said smoothly. “It opened old wounds.”

  “So, you’re not here to protect him.”

  “Nope.”

  Thumps took a bite of his doughnut. “You’re lying.”

  “You always so personable?”

  “Only when someone lies to me.”

  Asah tried the doughnut tentatively. “You know,” he said, “these aren’t half-bad.”

  Thumps ran through the various scenarios, checking each one for flaws. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it the fun way. I’ll guess at the right answers. You sit there and play dumb and eat your doughnut.”

  “Works for me.”

  “First, you didn’t come because of the book.”

  Asah leaned back in the chair. “Really.”

  “If Ridge had anything on the FBI, he would have broadcast it on national television years ago. And if there had been something in the book that might have embarrassed the bureau, you guys would have been all over the publisher before the book ever hit the street.”

  Asah sat stone-faced. Good, thought Thumps, now I have his attention.

  “The Xerox that Street had wasn’t a novelty. It was a copy of the real thing.” Thumps closed his eyes and tried to find the right rhythm. “How much did they get?”

  Asah pursed his lips. “You want another doughnut?”

  “What I want is the truth.” Thumps stuck his fork into a piece of doughnut. The outside edge glistened slightly in the light, and he wondered if it was sugar or grease.

  “Okay, I’m going to trust you.” Asah lowered his voice and made it sound as though his trust was a prize that Thumps had just won. “But nothing to the sheriff.”

  “I’m not going to lie to Duke.”

  “Just don’t volunteer anything.”

  Thumps remembered how the bureau always liked to make everything sound more mysterious and more complicated than it was.

  “Five million dollars. Pretty good motive, eh?”

  Asah had thrown him a bone, but there wasn’t much meat on it. “Buckhorn and Scout and Begay weren’t bank robbers,” said Thumps. “They were activists.”

  “Activists have to live.”

  “Why would Morgan have five million dollars in bearer bonds in its safe?”

  “You’ll have to ask Morgan about that.” Asah finished his doughnut and pushed the plate away.

  Thumps wondered how Street had felt when he opened the package and found the Xerox neatly tucked into a copy of Noah’s new book. That was why he had come to Chinook. He had come to find Massasoit.

  “When did Street call Denver?”

  “Two weeks ago.”

  “Kemo-sabe,” said Thumps, letting the word roll out of his mouth softly. “That was the authenticating phrase, wasn’t it? The way Street knew that the message had come from Massasoit. That it was genuine.”

  Morris came around with the coffee, filled each cup about halfway, and tucked the bill between the napkin dispenser and the sugar jar. By then Thumps knew the conversation was over. He had told Asah everything he knew, and Asah had told him what Thumps had already known. Like looking in a mirror.

  Asah paid the bill and walked with Thumps to the corner. “What are you going to do now?”

  “Think I’ll read Noah’s book,” he said.

  “There’s nothing in it,” said Asah. “Already looked.”

  Thumps glanced at the sky. He had hopes that the sun would still be loose. But it was gone now, swept away by a flood of gun-metal grey ice. Street had come to Chinook to catch Massasoit. And maybe he had found him. Or her. Maybe that’s why he was dead. Now it was Thumps’s turn.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Asah got his car and dropped Thumps off in front of his house. It was a small kindness, but one that Thumps appreciated, though it made him feel a little ashamed of having given the man a hard time at Dumbo’s. Well, maybe not ashamed. Apologetic perhaps. After all, Asah was only doing his job, and his job did not include sharing the particulars of a case with a photographer.

  As Thumps hurried into the house, his neck buried in his shoulders, that’s what he reminded himself that he was. A photographer. Nothing less and certainly nothing more. A photographer who had a darkroom filled with negatives just waiting to be printed.

  Freeway was nowhere to be seen, which was just fine. Thumps was in no mood for a loving cat, much less a surly one. But as he made his way to the basement, he could feel his shoulders begin to relax. The darkroom was his sanctuary, a place where he could hide for hours, for days, and never miss anything or anyone. Sometimes he would turn the phone over on its back, so all anyone calling would get was a busy signal. The phone didn’t like this, made a nasty siren-like sound for about thirty seconds, but then it would shut up, and all would be still.

  Some photographers enjoyed listening to music while they printed, and on occasion Thumps would slide a powwow tape into the player or find some soft jazz on the radio. But for the most part, he kept the darkroom dead silent, which, as it turned out, was the wrong metaphor, for as soon as he thought “dead silent,” he immediately saw Beth’s morgue and, worse, wondered if her basement was as quiet as his, at which point he was sorry he had entertained the thought at all.

  So, instead of going into the darkroom, Thumps settled in the overstuffed chair in the corner of his studio and began cleaning his lenses. It was a ritual he enjoyed, taking each lens out of the bag and holding it up against the light like a diamond or a glass of wine. He’d check each lens for clarity, brush the dust away, rub off any fingerprints or smears with a soft cloth and a gentle, circular action. And after that, he would sit and test-fire each lens at each aperture, at each speed, to make sure that the intervals were even, so he could hear the blades of the shutter slide across each other with a smooth hiss.

  All the puzzle pieces were there in the puzzle box. Noah, Street, Dakota, Grover, Reuben. Along with Clinton Buckhorn, Wilson Scout, Wallace Begay. And always, always, Lucy Kettle. The living and the dead. Not that either group was saying much. Not that any of it made much sense. The more Thumps looked, the more he felt he was missing something. A large piece. A piece that would help the other fragments organize themselves into a shape.

  That was the moment Thumps most liked in photography. When all the shapes came together on the ground glass, when the variations of light organized themselves in a pleasing, sometimes astonishing pattern. That moment when everything
was clean and perfect. Maybe that’s what he had liked about police work.

  Thumps held the gold-ring Goerz Dagor and checked it for any signs of mould. It was a lovely lens, 8 1/4 in a No. 1 Copal shutter, small and compact with a wonderful signature that was particularly valuable in portraiture, a lens sharp enough to catch the brilliance of eyes but with a soft, rounding effect that gave dimension to a face and didn’t flatten out features the way the newer Nikons and Fujis did.

  It took him less than an hour to clean and test all the lenses, and because there was nothing but trouble and sorrow waiting for him upstairs, he took the field camera apart and cleaned the bellows, checked it for light leaks, and inspected the gear drive and the rails for any signs of misalignment and wear.

  Then he cleaned the camera bags, rearranged the photo storage folders, wiped down the light box, vacuumed the floor, and stacked the containers of slides in groups of four rather than three.

  At seven o’clock, Thumps turned the phone over and called Claire. “I’m sorry about the other night.”

  “I hear it got rather exciting.”

  “You doing anything?”

  “I’m going to bed.”

  “Can I come by?” Thumps tried to think of the right thing to say. “Be nice to see you.”

  “As in sex?”

  Okay, so that wasn’t the right thing to say. But Claire hadn’t posed the question in a nasty way. It was a straightforward question, the generic kind, the kind Thumps dealt with every day. Will the car start? What shall I have for lunch? Should I stay in bed? And Thumps understood this.

  “Where are you?” Claire’s voice sounded softer now.

  “At my place.”

  “Don’t take too long.”

  Thumps knew better, but he could feel his spirits begin to rise.

  “Otherwise, I’ll be asleep,” said Claire.

  DRIVING OUT TO Claire’s place was like slipping back in time. Before Europeans and Big Macs. Claire’s great-grandfather had built the original cabin on the circle of bottom land that had been carved out and left behind by the Ironstone River as it came out of the mountains and worked its way south. The cabin was no longer standing, had been exchanged for a sky-blue-and-white aluminum prefab rectangle, which was sturdy and functional, though nothing much to look at. Thumps would have described the structure itself as ugly, but not the view. From every window in the house, you could look out at the foothills and the mountains and prairies, and watch the light and the sky turn with the seasons.

  In his travels, Thumps had seen only a few truly beautiful places. This was one of them.

  Claire was waiting for him at the door as he pulled up.

  “Can I park the car in the barn?”

  “It’s not that cold,” said Claire, who was familiar with the Volvo’s reputation.

  “Just as a precaution.”

  THE BARN WAS an ancient arrangement of posts and beams, mitred and pinned in place with wood dowels and bracing. The floor was covered with straw, and as the Volvo rolled over the soft carpet, Thumps could feel the car kneading the ground with its tires, as though it were getting ready to snuggle down for the night. Then again, maybe it was.

  Thumps had forgotten which of the Merchants had built the barn, but whoever it was had built it to last. Most old barns around Chinook were falling apart, their roofs peeled off by the wind, the siding pulled away by the elements. Claire’s barn had simply weathered, and standing inside it felt like standing inside a fortress. Or a mountain.

  Thumps wasn’t sure if he noticed the rope first or the blood. Some barns were junkyards with tools and tractors and hay and pieces of old furniture tossed in on top of each other. Claire’s barn was generally pristine, at least as barns went. Tools were hung up, the hay stacked. So, the rope wrapped around one of the support posts for no good reason was a curiosity. Whoever had done it had wrapped the rope and packed it tight the way you would if you were making a scratching post for a cat. But the arrangement stood at chest level, too high for a cat, and the dried blood on the rope was one of those things that Cooley might have put on his list under Unusual. Next to the post was a set of sawhorses and a small pile of boards that had been snapped in half.

  The things you find in a barn.

  Claire was waiting for him in the living room. She was sitting on the sofa in her housecoat.

  “Car happy?”

  The housecoat was terry cloth, a thick dark-green blanket that covered Claire from head to toe. She had had it for as long as he had known her, and from the garment’s general condition, Thumps suspected that it was the only housecoat she had ever owned. Frumpy was the kindest word to describe it, but Thumps understood how certain items of clothing could become magic and take on almost mystical qualities, lucky shirts, power suits, shoes that whisked you along. And truth to tell, Thumps liked the robe. There was a sensual quality to its frayed sleeves and threadbare bottom.

  “You want some tea?”

  No, Thumps thought to himself, I don’t want tea.

  The other reason Thumps liked the robe was that it generally marked the beginning of foreplay. Most times when Claire was interested in sex, she would begin the complications in the robe. There would be the chatting, the nuzzling, the necking, the hands and lips wandering around, and then, before Thumps could find the belt and undo the knot, the robe would be open, not all the way, but enough so he could slip a hand in and touch warm flesh.

  That was the true joy of sex. Not the penetration or the brief but enjoyable thrusting and bucking, but that first moment when you felt someone else’s body. For Thumps, being stretched out against Claire, all of his skin touching all of hers, was as good as it gets.

  “You find Ridge yet?” Claire pulled the robe to one side and crossed a leg.

  Thumps took a deep breath. “No.”

  “What about his woman?”

  There was that phrase again. Thumps could imagine the sheriff or Asah and certainly Morris Dumbo making that mistake. European society, after all, had for hundreds of years cast women as items of property.

  “She’s not his woman.”

  “Is she yours?” Claire pulled the robe back over her leg.

  “No.”

  “I didn’t mean now.”

  Thumps shook his head. “Not then either.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  Thumps eased away from Claire. Why did women say that? He knew it was a gross generalization, that not all women said “You don’t have to tell me.” Now that he thought about it, he remembered a woman he had met at graduate school, Elizabeth something, who insisted on knowing everything. But more women had told him he didn’t have to tell them something than had insisted on being told. Men, in Thumps’s experience, didn’t want to know all that much. What they needed to know, they could see. Or hear. Or taste. Or smell.

  Claire slid across the sofa and leaned up against Thumps. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m just worried about Stanley.”

  And there it was. The reason for the invitation. Thumps was getting thick. He had been misled by the tone of Claire’s voice on the phone and by the bathrobe. It wasn’t sex Claire was interested in. It was her son.

  “Stanley’s fine.”

  “What would you do if he were your son?”

  Thumps entertained himself for a moment imagining Stick draped over his lap. Thumps was not an advocate of corporal punishment, but he had more than once wanted to give the kid a good spanking.

  “Look, when Stick gets home, ask him about the barn.”

  “What about the barn?” There was just the hint of alarm in Claire’s voice.

  “Just ask him.”

  “Is it serious?” Claire put her hand on Thumps’s arm and coaxed it toward her.

  “No,” said Thumps as he felt his hand slide under Claire’s robe.

  “Can you stay a while?” Claire let the robe fall open. No red thong and push-up bra. It was much better.

  “You always entertain with nothing on
under your robe?”

  Claire swung up and straddled Thumps’s lap. She leaned forward and kissed him softly on the mouth, then straightened and let the robe slide off her shoulders.

  “What robe?” she said as she eased his head to her breasts.

  THUMPS WOKE CUDDLED UP to a large pillow. At first he thought it was Claire lying next to him, but when he swung a leg over what he thought must be her thigh, he discovered that it wasn’t. Claire didn’t believe in large beds, and it took Thumps no time at all to find that he was in bed alone. The bathroom was his first guess, but as he lay in bed, waiting for her to return, he slowly came to the realization that not only was he the only person in bed, he was the only person in the house.

  If this had been summer, Thumps would have gone looking for Claire on the porch, where she liked to sleep during the hot weather. But not even an Inuit would be on the porch tonight.

  Thumps got his clothes on and padded across the living room to the window. There was ice on the glass, but outside the winter sky was ablaze with stars, bright as fire. This was one of the pleasures, Thumps reminded himself, of living close with the land. You couldn’t see skies like this in a city, not even a city the size of Chinook.

  Thumps didn’t really expect to find Claire wrapped in her bathrobe, standing on the prairies enjoying the winter sky, and she wasn’t. But there was a light on in the barn. He should have known better, should have mentioned the barn in the morning. Now there was no getting around the problem he had created.

  Claire was sitting on a bale of hay next to the beam lashed with rope. When Thumps came into the barn, he had the uncomfortable feeling that Claire had been waiting here all this time for him to show up.

  “You need to hear it from Stick.”

  “I want to hear it from you.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Is that blood on the rope?”

  Stubbornness is contagious. If Claire wasn’t going to ask the question she wanted to ask, Thumps wasn’t going to answer it.

  “Ask Stick.”

  “Stanley isn’t here.” Claire readjusted the robe so it looked more like chain mail. “You are.”

  Thumps had read an article that claimed that, after sex, women wanted to cuddle and talk while men wanted to flee. Whoever wrote the piece hadn’t talked to Claire. She was passionate enough. And loving, for that matter. But there was also a single-mindedness to the woman that could burn through the afterglow of intercourse with all the grace of an acetylene torch.