by Thomas King
“It’s a little violent,” said Moses, “so I don’t tell this one to children unless they ask for it.”
“That White guy is really pissed off. ‘You crazy Indian,’ he shouts at Old John. ‘What the hell are you doing, shooting my chickens like that?’ Old John doesn’t say anything. He just goes over and takes the chicken disguise off the coyote. Well, the farmer is real impressed, and he asks John how he knew that chicken was really a coyote. You know what Old John said?”
Thumps knew better than to guess.
“He said, ‘What else could it be?’” Stick sat back with a big grin on his face. “Good story, huh?”
“Stick is getting pretty good with stories,” said Moses. “And he’s still a young boy.”
“So, you think I should be looking for a coyote.”
Moses shrugged. “Somebody’s killing your chickens.”
STICK FINISHED OFF the rest of the bread while Moses caught Thumps up on news from the reservation. Rose Many Bears was getting married for the fifth time. Buster Gladstone was graduating from law school. The recreation centre needed a new roof. And the council was looking at getting into the cellphone business.
Stick had found a can of peaches and was banging around in the drawers, looking for a can opener.
“You tell your mother you’re training with Cooley?”
Stick stopped what he was doing. “Cooley tell you?”
“Nope,” said Thumps. “I saw the makiwara board in the barn. The rest was easy.”
“You tell my mother?”
“Nope. But she saw the board too.”
“It’s none of her business.”
“Oh, no,” said Moses. “Children are every mother’s business. That never changes.”
“I’ll tell her when I feel like it.”
“Not knowing makes them nervous,” said Moses. “It’s never a good idea to make a mother nervous.”
“You want some more coffee?”
“No,” said Moses. “We have to be going. Stick is going to take me to the mall for lunch at that Chinese place with the spicy chicken and the thick noodles.”
Thumps put his hand on the articles Moses had brought with him. “Can I hold on to these?”
“Sure,” said Moses. “Maybe they’ll help you find that coyote.”
IT WAS AFTER NINE before Moses and Stick headed off to the mall. Thumps wondered how Stick was going to tell his mother that he was training with Cooley Small Elk to be a security agent. Thumps didn’t suppose Claire would be crazy about the idea, especially since it involved some degree of bodily harm to her only child. Still, part of him wanted to be there in the room when Stick shared the good news, while part of him knew better than to be anywhere near a “nervous” Claire Merchant.
Thumps found the end of a block of cheese and half a tomato that Stick had missed and made himself a toasted-cheese sandwich out of the crusts that Stick had ignored. The can of peaches had survived only because Stick hadn’t found the can opener, and Thumps put it back in the refrigerator next to the apricot jam.
The new set of articles was pretty much the same as the old set of articles. There was an in-depth profile on Morgan Energy and its CEO, Matthew Colburne, a series of stories about poverty in the urban reservation, and a brief history of the Red Power Movement. The most interesting item was an interview with Lucy Kettle, in which she talked about the FBI and its attempts to destroy organizations involved in social activism. She didn’t mention Massasoit by name, but hinted at a bureau informant within RPM.
By eleven, Thumps had read everything, and all he had to show for the effort was seven piles of articles instead of the six with which he had started. Freeway had selected one of the taller stacks and knocked it over so she could stretch out on top of it. Most cats liked catnip. Freeway liked paper. It didn’t matter what kind—a magazine, a newspaper, a flyer, a book, a sheet of Kleenex. Put it out and she would be on it in a flash.
He was reaching for the stack of articles that Moses and Stick had brought that morning when the phone rang. There were only two people who would have any reason to call him. The sheriff and Claire. He didn’t want to talk to the sheriff, but he did want to talk to Claire. And if she was calling him, it meant that she wanted to talk to him.
“DreadfulWater?”
It wasn’t the sheriff, and it certainly wasn’t Claire. It was a deep voice with a reservation accent. At first he couldn’t place it.
“You know Al’s?”
“Sure . . .”
“Meet me there, now.”
“Who is—” but before Thumps could finish the question, the line went dead. Freeway rolled over on her back and did her dead-squirrel routine. It was her way of inviting him to lie down on the floor with her and rub her belly. Most days he would have been happy to do that, but today, he suspected, wasn’t going to work out the way he had imagined.
THIRTY-ONE
Thumps walked to Al’s, bundled up in his new parka. It was a marvellous thing, light but wondrously warm, the dark fur around the hood soft and luxurious. Thumps suspected that it was Asah’s way of saying that he was sorry for how things had gone. Though Dakota hadn’t made it easy. Thumps was ready to help her, but first she had to want the help. And as far as he could see, she didn’t. Pride or commitment or loyalty, it didn’t matter. They could all get in the way of good sense.
He knew the voice on the phone, or at least he had heard it before. As he trudged through the snow, he ran through the people who it might have been and came up empty. Memory was a shy creature, in the open one minute, back in the woods the next.
Wutty Youngbeaver was sitting at the counter when Thumps got to Al’s. Wutty and Al had a long on-again, off-again relationship, and from the way Wutty was smiling and bobbing his head, Thumps supposed that they were friends again.
“Hey, Thumps,” Wutty swung around on his seat. “You got any of those photographs left?”
Thumps had never thought of Wutty as an art enthusiast. “Any one in particular?”
“My girlfriend said she saw a poster of the Snake River. Black and white with the Tetons in the background. Real nice sky.”
“That’s probably Ansel Adams.”
“You got any like that?” said Wutty. “You know, maybe something with a ding that you’re going to throw away anyway.”
Al came out of the back with the coffee pot. She filled Wutty’s cup and gestured toward the back of the café. “At the back,” she said. “You want breakfast?”
GROVER MANY HORSES was sitting in the last booth, hunched over a cup of coffee. On the seat beside him was a plastic bag. He didn’t look particularly happy, but that could have been the weather. Thumps slipped off the parka and carefully hung it on the hook by the side of the booth.
“Is it true about that Justice guy?” said Grover, without the courtesy of a greeting. “They think Ridge did him?”
Thumps sat down across from Grover. “Is that why you called me?”
“I kicked the shit out of him.” Grover took a spoonful of sugar and slowly lowered it into the cup. “I guess you know that.”
“At the Mustang.”
“Wasn’t my fault. Stupid shit just kept riding me.”
“Did you know it was Ridge?”
“I was pretty sure,” said Grover. “He looks a lot older now.”
“You knew him before?”
Grover put the bag on the table and opened it. “Lucy used to write me all the time. She’d tell me about Salt Lake City and the Mormons and what she was doing. Sometimes she would send me clippings and stuff about that Red Power thing she was into. There were a couple of articles with pictures of the two of them.”
Thumps looked at the letters, neatly tied together in bundles.
“They were lovers.”
“Noah and Lucy?”
“No.” Grover showed his teeth. “Lucy and Justice. It was supposed to be a secret, but she told me. They were going to get married.”
There was one of the
missing pieces, dropped into his lap, a minor deus ex machina. No brilliant police work, no clever deductions, no intuitive revelations. Just dumb luck. Thumps had supposed Reuben had come for Dakota. But he had come for Lucy.
“I never knew her,” said Grover. “But she never forgot me.”
“She must have loved you.”
“Yeah.” Grover closed the bag and pushed it across the table to Thumps. “Old man Blood said you might want to read these. He said maybe you could figure out who killed her.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“There’s other letters too. From that friend of hers.”
For a moment, Thumps tried to think of who would have written Grover. “Dakota Miles?”
“Yeah,” said Grover. “Nice woman. She liked Lucy a lot. Told me all sorts of great stories.”
“They were good friends.”
“No one else sees these. Just you.” Grover slid out of the booth and put on his coat. “We straight on that?”
“Yeah,” said Thumps, “I understand.”
Grover started to go and then turned back. “You going to see Ridge any time soon?”
“Maybe.”
Grover bent down, his voice soft and delicate. “Tell him if he comes back here, I’ll kill him.”
AL KEPT HIS CUP filled while Thumps sat in the booth and read the letters one by one. When Grover had given him the letters, a part of Thumps hoped that they would contain answers. But all he found was the Lucy Kettle who liked lemon sorbet and tacos, who had seen Billy Jack and Blazing Saddles at least four times, who missed her family, especially her baby brother. Grover had been right about Lucy and Reuben. She wrote about him as only a lover could. Grover hadn’t given Thumps the letters because he thought they would help. He had given Thumps the letters to show him who his sister really was.
Thumps tied the letters together and put them back in the bag. He would have liked to have known the woman who had written them. Perhaps they could have been friends. Dakota was right. Lucy Kettle wasn’t Massasoit. The woman who wrote these letters wouldn’t have betrayed something she believed in, something for which she had sacrificed her family, something she had spent her life defending.
“You know, it’s not polite to read other people’s mail.” Al put the pot on the table. “Unless you got a good reason.”
“Grover’s sister, Lucy.”
“I remember that one,” said Al. “Headstrong.”
“Sheriff been in this morning?”
“Nope. Saw him heading over to the courthouse about fifteen minutes ago. I hear he’s in a foul mood.”
“Two murders aren’t going to make him happy.”
Al ran her hand over the parka, stroking the fur around the hood. “I see photography is beginning to pay off.”
“It was a gift.”
“What’s the fur?”
Thumps shrugged. “Rabbit?”
“I know rabbit when I feel it.” Al opened the parka. “Sometimes they got a tag, tells you what the thing is made of.”
Thumps tied the bag shut. If the roads were good, he’d drive up to Glory tomorrow and give them back to Grover. Maybe he’d call Claire and see if she wanted to go for a ride, see the mountains in snow.
“You know, if this was a Pendleton, it would be worth a pretty penny.”
He could take his cameras along and give winter another try. Other photographers had turned winter into spectacular images. Maybe if he could create something beautiful out of the bleakness of the season, he wouldn’t resent it so much.
“Well, la-di-da,” Al tapped at a small tag sewn into the seam of the coat. “It’s mink.”
“No kidding.”
“Now that’s one sneaky son of a buck,” said Al. “You ever know Joshua Cotton?”
“Before my time.”
“Joshua ran a trapline until he couldn’t walk anymore. Always had a story about a mink. Hardly a winter went by that he didn’t have one of those varmints in his supplies. Little beggars would tear everything apart. Some of it they would eat, but Joshua figured that, most of the time, they just liked to raise hell.”
“Sounds like some people I know.”
“Sure as hell wouldn’t want one for a friend.”
Thumps slid out of the booth. “I need a favour.”
“Sure,” said Al, “long as you don’t need to borrow my car, my gun, or my husband.”
“You don’t have a husband.”
“Then that improves your odds of my saying yes.”
Thumps handed Al the bag of letters. “Can you hold these for me? Keep them safe?”
“Not much of a favour.”
“If something happens to me, make sure they get back to Grover.”
“You planning on getting yourself killed or something?”
“No.”
“Can I read them?”
“No.”
“You got to read them.”
“That’s because I’m a deputy.”
Al took the bag and wandered behind the counter. “And here I thought you were a photographer.”
“I could use a large envelope.” Thumps pulled the parka on. “And a couple sections of newspaper.”
Al put her hands on her hips and cocked her head. “This another favour?”
THUMPS TRIED STROLLING to the sheriff’s office, to see if embracing the season would change his attitude toward it, but after a block of wading through the snow and the cold, he pulled the hood over his head and picked up the pace to a brisk walk. Not that his mind was truly on the winter landscape or the weather.
He hadn’t seen it. Even when Moses had told him what to look for, he hadn’t seen it.
Not that he could prove anything. In fact, he doubted that any real proof existed. Only one man knew, and Thumps was sure he wasn’t going to hang himself. But one thing was sure. Lucy Kettle was dead. A witness-protection program might have kept her away from Dakota, but it wouldn’t have separated her from Reuben and most certainly not from her brother. Somehow or other she would have got word to the two men. The woman who wrote those letters would not have given up her life for safety. Someone had taken it.
ANDY WAS SITTING at the sheriff’s desk, trying to look as though he belonged in the same area code as Hockney.
“Where’s Duke?”
“He’s out.”
“Where’d he go?”
Andy came out of the chair slowly, in one motion. “Sheriff wants to make you a deputy, that’s his business. But I don’t work for you.”
“All right. Then I’ll go find the sheriff.”
Andy’s face broke into a broad smirk. “Fat chance of finding him. You haven’t got a clue where he went.”
“That’s right,” said Thumps, “so when I do finally find him, he’s going to be mad as hell.”
The smirk melted. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” said Thumps, dropping the envelope on the desk, “Duke told me to check on a couple of things, and I did, and now he’s going to want to know what I found.”
“This about the murders?”
“Can’t say.”
“That woman confessed,” said Andy, trying to think and talk at the same time, “but I always figured Ridge for the killings.”
“So, how do I find the sheriff?”
“Is that it?” Andy’s eyes were bright with interest now. “You got proof that Ridge shot Street and Justice, don’t you? I told Duke not to let him go.”
“You’re smarter than people give you credit for.”
“Tell you what.” Andy picked up the envelope and turned it over. “I’ll get this to Duke.”
“I’m not sure that that’s a good idea.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t get to make those decisions.” Andy grabbed his jacket and hat. “You get to stay here and mind the store.”
THUMPS WATCHED ANDY slide his way down the street. Then he pushed Duke’s chair into the cellblock. Cellblock was probably too grand a word. The sheriff’s office had two cells.
One was empty. Dakota was in the other.
Thumps wheeled the chair to the cell and sat down. “Andy went to find the sheriff. We probably have twenty to thirty minutes.”
“Are you here to rescue me?” Dakota didn’t look as though she needed rescuing. She looked as though she had given up.
“How long have you known that Noah was Massasoit?” Thumps rolled the chair against the bars.
“What are you talking about?”
“How long?” Thumps said quietly.
Dakota sat down on the floor next to the bars. “We were working on the book, and Noah said something.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that Mitchell Street killed Lucy.”
“Noah didn’t like Street.”
“It was the way he said it.”
“In the book, he says that the FBI put Lucy in a witness protection program.”
“You didn’t know Lucy,” said Dakota. “There’s no way she would have run for cover.”
“Would Lucy have known?”
“I’m not even sure.”
Thumps pressed a little. “Would she have known?”
“No,” said Dakota. “If she had, she would have told the world.”
“She might have wanted to protect the organization.”
“That’s something I would do,” said Dakota. “Not Lucy. She didn’t tolerate lies.”
Thumps put his elbows on his thighs and let his head fall into his hands. Noah would have liked the irony of the FBI funding RPM. He could sell them little pieces of information now and then. Nothing important. He would have enjoyed that game, playing spy, playing God.
“Look, it was just a feeling.”
“But he would have needed an out, someone to take the blame if things went south. Somebody credible. Somebody who the FBI could believe was Massasoit.”
“He wouldn’t do that.” Dakota leaped to her feet.
“Lucy was second-in-command. Was she trying to push him out?”
Dakota shook her head. “They didn’t agree on everything. That’s all.”
Thumps found himself hoping that the sheriff would arrive and end the interrogation. He wasn’t enjoying any of this.