by Thomas King
THIRTY-EIGHT
Asah had rented a Honda. A silver Accord. A colour that reminded Thumps of icebergs. Why anyone would choose a car the colour of the weather was beyond him, especially when there were all sorts of vibrant greens and yellows and reds in neons and metallics, colours that could cut through the gloom and lift the spirits.
Thumps put the box on the back seat, started the engine, and waited for the windows to clear.
“I wanted him to pay for what he did.”
“I know.”
The car had decent legroom and a six-way adjustable seat. Thumps wasn’t sure he liked the sunroof. It made the interior feel low and cramped. And the car was an automatic. He understood the convenience of not having to shift gears or worry about a clutch, but it was like shaving with an electric razor or baking a potato in the microwave. The Volvo was temperamental and heavy, but when you closed the door, you felt as though you were sitting in a vault. The Honda made Thumps feel as though he were trapped in a roll of tinfoil.
“After I came back to Salt Lake, Mrs. Tomioka called me.”
“Lucy’s neighbour?”
“She was always worried about Lucy. Worried she didn’t eat enough. Worried that she would never get married and have children. Worried that she lived alone. Worried about her job. You name it, Mrs. Tomioka worried about it.”
“Sounds like everyone’s mother.”
“When Lucy didn’t come home, Mrs. Tomioka began going by the house and picking up all the flyers and the newspapers that had been collecting on the porch. And the mail. She had everything arranged in neat piles on her living-room table.”
The defroster was slow and inefficient. Clear glass was just barely showing above the dashboard. Thumps turned the fan up to high.
“I didn’t open any of the mail at first. I just took it home. Every week I would stop by and pick up whatever Mrs. Tomioka had collected, and we would talk about Lucy. She was sure Lucy had gone off to find herself and that any day she would return with wonderful stories about her adventures.”
“But you knew she was dead.”
“I suppose I did.” Dakota braced herself against the door. “Lucy had the movement, and she had Reuben. She had already found everything she wanted.”
“How long before you opened the box?”
Dakota ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t know. Maybe a year. Maybe more.”
Thumps glanced at the back seat. The return label was still intact. Morgan Energy. Denver, Colorado. “But when you opened it, you knew what it was.”
“Yeah,” said Dakota. “I knew what it was.”
“But you didn’t tell Noah.”
“That box was dangerous,” said Dakota.
More than dangerous. Thumps would have said fatal. Clinton Buckhorn was dead, Wilson Scout was dead, Wallace Begay was dead. Two FBI agents had lost their lives in the raid.
Lucy Kettle.
But the killing hadn’t stopped there, and the years hadn’t softened the danger. Mitchell Street. Reuben Justice. Lives lost. Lives destroyed.
The window was almost clear now, and Thumps could see the sky through the windshield. The sun was breaking through the bank of clouds in streaming shafts of white light, and the world looked bright and clean. He pulled the car into gear and felt his way to the road.
“Are you going to arrest me?”
“For what?”
“I sent that Xerox to Street,” said Dakota. “I knew he’d come after Noah.”
“What about Reuben?”
“I wanted him to be here when it happened.” Dakota took in a deep breath and held it. “He didn’t do anything, you know. And I got him killed.”
Thumps wished he could tell Dakota that none of this was her fault, that it had been Noah who had set this drama on stage all those years ago when he had decided to play God. It was Noah who had created Massasoit. Noah who set Street on Lucy. And once in motion, once the killing began, there was no stopping it until everyone was dead. Or famous.
In the end, the only player left standing was Noah.
“At your house, Asah figured out that I had the bonds.” There was no emotion in Dakota’s voice. “He called me at the hotel.”
“I don’t need to know.”
“But you’re curious.” Dakota’s eyes were moist and glazed, as though she had just come away from a long cry. “You’re wondering if I made a deal with Asah. You’re wondering if I told him I’d give him the bonds if he killed Noah.”
“Did you?”
“What if I did? What the hell is the law going to do to him?”
“Nothing.”
“Noah always wanted to be famous. He’d be a lot more famous dead.” Dakota looked out the window. “You know, you could ride off with me into the sunset. We could keep the bonds and go someplace warm. You interested?”
“Sure.”
“Liar.” Dakota smiled sadly. “What’s going to happen to me now?”
“Whatever you want.”
“You’re not going to turn me in?”
“I’m not a cop.” Thumps kept his eyes on the road. “I’m a photographer.”
“I can’t walk away from things the way you can.”
Thumps pulled the car to the side of the road and skidded to a stop on the hard snow. “You have to be kidding!”
“What do you care?”
“You’re going to Los Angeles with Noah?” Thumps could feel the anger burn through him. “He would have given you up. If it had come down to you or him, he wouldn’t have even thought about it.”
“What about you?” Dakota’s eyes were clear now. And hard. “If I had asked you, would you have done it?”
Thumps looked at the box on the back seat and remembered the moment he had walked into the backroom of the Glory Video Emporium. Asah had been behind the desk, the bonds and documents in front of him. Dakota had been waiting on the couch. Thumps had imagined that she had been waiting for him to come to the rescue. But maybe she had just been waiting for an answer.
“For the bonds? For Lucy?” Dakota touched the side of Thumps’s face. “For me? Would you have killed him for me?”
Thumps let Dakota’s hand stay on his face. “There’s nothing for you in Los Angeles.”
“It would have been ironic.” Dakota closed her eyes and took a slow breath. “Don’t you think Noah would have found it ironic?”
CHINOOK HAD DUG itself out from the storm by the time Thumps pulled up in front of the Tucker. The main streets had been cleared, the downtown sidewalks had been shovelled, and everywhere everyone was going about their business, as though winter had never arrived. In his life, Thumps had seen too many tragedies to be bothered by the weather. Yet he was. Maybe it was that tragedies had causes and effects, that they could be softened or avoided or prevented, while the weather came and went as it pleased, without regard for anyone or anything.
Like Noah Ridge.
“You going to give the box back to Morgan Energy?”
“Not my box.”
“Then what?”
Thumps opened the car door. “Buckhorn sent the bonds and the documents to Lucy because he knew she would do the right thing. Do what Lucy would have done.”
“I don’t know what she would have done.” Dakota reached over to take Thumps’s hand. “I don’t know anymore.”
“Then,” said Thumps as he pulled his hand away and stepped out into the cold, “why don’t you keep the box until you do.”
The steps up to the Tucker had been swept clean. Thumps wondered if the Mother Lode had a lunch special that he could afford. A soft drink and a sandwich. As he got to the entrance, a young man dressed in a red-and-black uniform opened the door for him, and Thumps walked into the hotel without looking back.
THIRTY-NINE
Thumps didn’t watch the Leno show. He had seen too much, heard too much, and knew too much to be able to manage the spectacle of Noah’s playing the embattled hero on national television. For the next week, he stayed in his da
rkroom. Freeway sat outside the door and howled, insisting that it wasn’t healthy to hide away like that and that what he needed was company. When he finally let her in, she didn’t crawl in behind the studs under the sink, but rather sat quietly on his lap while he worked his way through a set of negatives that he had taken years ago, along the California coast, in the days when he had understood the difference between goodness and evil.
For the first few days, the phone didn’t stop ringing. Over the hum of the enlarger, he could hear the answering machine take the calls, Hockney, Archie, the Denver office of the FBI, which wanted to send an agent around to talk with him. Claire called several times, but not even her quiet, patient voice could coax him out of the safety of the basement.
The last message had been from Grover Many Horses to say that he was going down to Salt Lake and that he’d call when he got back.
THERE WERE RHYTHMS to the seasons, and winters in Chinook were no exception. When Thumps finally came out of hiding, put on Asah’s parka, and walked to Al’s, he discovered that the warm winds had come through and melted most of the snow.
Al was at the grill, working the piles of hash browns with a spatula. “About time you showed up,” she said. “Archie was going to file a missing person’s report.”
“He around?”
“Back booth,” said Al. “With your other friend. You going to eat breakfast or you going to sit around and mope?”
“Breakfast, please.”
“I’ll call Milo. He’ll want pictures.”
“Thumps!”
Thumps didn’t have to look to see who it was. Archie. In a booth with the sheriff.
“Where have you been?” Archie was cutting one of the sheriff’s sausages into bite-sized pieces. “You’ve missed all the excitement.”
“You look like shit,” said Hockney.
“Did you see the Leno show? They mentioned Chinook twice. Even showed a picture of the Tucker.” Archie squirted some ketchup on Hockney’s plate next to the hash browns. “And the FBI came by the store.”
“They buy a book?”
“A book?” said Archie. “Why would the FBI buy a book?”
“Speaking of books,” said Hockney, “your buddy is on the best-seller list.”
“That’s right,” said Archie. “Number five on the New York Times.”
“Fiction?”
“Sheriff’s famous too,” said Archie. “He was on television. What did they call it?”
“Never mind,” said Hockney.
“‘Standoff in Glory.’” Archie took a forkful of hash browns and slid them through the ketchup. “Had a picture and everything. Said the sheriff was a hero.”
Thumps didn’t want to be reminded of Glory. He had gone there to save Dakota and, in the end, might have saved Noah instead.
“Stop by the office,” said the sheriff. “I’ve got your cheque ready.”
“What do you figure?” said Archie. “You think he’s going to write another book?”
Breakfast arrived, and Archie alternated between helping Thumps eat it and providing a running commentary on the events of the day.
“He ever stop talking?” said the sheriff as Archie retold, for the fourth time, the story about how Noah had disappeared the night of the reading.
“Nope.”
“Article in the Washington Post,” said the sheriff, keeping his voice low so he wouldn’t disturb Archie. “Justice Department is looking into allegations of bribery at Morgan Energy.”
“No kidding.”
“You ever wonder what happened to the bonds and the rest of that stuff?”
“Nope.”
“Guess it doesn’t matter,” said Hockney. “I checked with the bank. Bearer bonds are pretty much like cash, so they’re probably long gone by now. Nobody’s going to sit on that kind of money for twenty-five years.”
Thumps pushed some egg on a piece of toast. He had been hungry when he sat down, but now he was just tired.
“That the way you got it figured?”
“More or less.”
“You know what we should do?” said Archie, who realized that he had lost his audience. “We should write a book.”
IT WAS DELLA’S DAY at the Salvation Army. “Can you believe this weather?” she sang out as Thumps came through the door. “This keeps up, I won’t have any summer stuff left.”
“You get any winter coats in?”
“You bet,” said Della, “but what’s wrong with the one you got? That’s a nice coat you got.”
Thumps slipped the parka off and laid it on the counter. “Doesn’t fit,” he said. “Maybe you know someone who can use it.”
“Sure,” said Della. “Come on, I got something at the back I think you’ll like.”
THE WEATHER WOULDN’T LAST, of course. A new arctic storm was already on its way out of Canada. But for now, the Volvo wouldn’t have any excuses, and as Thumps came out of the Salvation Army with his new coat, he considered driving to Moses’s place to see if the old man knew why people expected so much of each other, why they expected so much of themselves, and how it was a person could wind up with so little.
Moses would probably make a pot of tea and tell him a story. And maybe that was it, maybe in the end a good story was the best anyone could do.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THOMAS KING is the bestselling author of Green Grass, Running Water; Truth and Bright Water; The Back of the Turtle (winner of the Governor General’s Award); and The Inconvenient Indian (winner of the RBC Taylor Prize), among many other works. A Member of the Order of Canada, King lives in Guelph, Ontario.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at harpercollins.ca.
PRAISE FOR THOMAS KING
“At once plainspoken and poetic, King is equally at home with his vivid, often comic characters and with the vibrant natural world in which their dramas are played out.” —People
“Thomas King is beyond being a great writer and storyteller, a lauded academic and educator. He is a towering intellectual.” —The Globe and Mail
“He’s a master of the lethal one-liner. . . . King wants to make his readers smile.” —Calgary Herald
“Thomas King has become Canada’s most wide-ranging and best-known writer of novels, stories, children’s books, essays, films and TV programs that recreate, with wry and wise compassion, the dilemmas that have bedeviled the current and historical lives, myths and realities of aboriginal people in North America. And therefore of all of us.” —Winnipeg Free Press
“Thomas King is funny. And ironic, sarcastic, clever and witty. His writing style is direct, offbeat and accessible.” —Edmonton Journal
“King’s writing is sharp, the characters are well-drawn.” —National Post
“Mr. King will alarm you with his cleverness and originality.” —Tomson Highway
“King has established himself as a first-rate comic novelist. At his best, he is as savagely and darkly funny as Twain. . . . [King] defies all our expectations about what Native American fiction should be.” —Newsweek
“Thomas King . . . introduces the reader to characters who will stay in the memory long after the last page is turned.” —The Milwaukee Journal
“King has a marvelous way of mixing the past and present, the worlds of men and women, the worlds of white and native people, and the worlds of the real and the imaginary.” —Times-Colonist (Victoria)
“A first-rate talent.” —Kirkus Reviews
ALSO BY THOMAS KING
DreadfulWater
The Back of the Turtle
The Inconvenient Indian
Truth and Bright Water
CREDITS
COVER IMAGE: HELENE HAVARD / ARCANGEL IMAGES
COPYRIGHT
THE RED POWER MURDERS
Copyright © 2006 by Dead Dog Café Productions Inc.
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Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
First published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
in an original trade paperback edition: 2006
First HarperCollins ePub edition: 2015
This Harper Perennial trade paperback edition: 2017
EPub Edition: October 2017 EPub ISBN: 9781443449007
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