Murder on the Red Cliff Rez

by Mardi Oakley Medawar

  His temper getting the better of him, he shouted for the doctor, causing Dr. Richard Blankenship to bolt out of the hard plastic chair. In the process he dropped his cigarette and sloshed coffee all over himself, the affected sections of the light cotton slime-green scrubs immediately turning black. Doc Ricky wasn’t concerned about his scrubs; he was too busy trying to snatch up the cigarette before it could do permanent damage to the expensive new carpeting. Ricky was still fumbling when the secretaries came on the trot. David quickly rescued the hapless doctor from their wrath, grabbing him by the upper arm, propelling him toward the door.

  Outside on the cement stoop, now awash with morning sunshine, Ricky looked about for a suitable repository for the cigarette butt and the cup. There wasn’t one. He settled for simply dropping the butt into the dregs of the coffee, then setting the cup close to the edge of the stoop. Still holding the doctor’s arm, David led him away from the front door, into the full blaze of the morning light. Before he had the chance to speak, a dusty tan sedan bumped into the lot and screeched to a stop. Front and back doors popped open and three men folded out.

  The BIA was now officially on the scene.

  Two white men fell in behind C. Clarence Begay, the head agent generally referred to as the Navajo. As the parade passed them by, C. Clarence acknowledged the police chief and the doctor with a grunt and a nod. And kept on moving. Not until the three BIAers disappeared inside did David return his attention to the doctor.

  “Talk to me about our victim.”

  Doc Ricky fiddled with an empty pack of cigarettes, index finger shoved inside the top opening, fruitlessly rooting for one last cigarette. Pulling a face, David removed a hard pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket, shook out two, passed one to Ricky. The doctor’s hands trembled as he tried to light it. Having already lit his own, David passed the Bic’s flame Ricky’s way. The two of them stood for a moment, inhaling and exhaling smoke. When the doctor decided to speak, he answered in totally Wild Card Ricky.

  “Well, simply from cursory exam I’d have to say that poor Jud is dead.”

  At least he hadn’t sung the Oklahoma show tune, and for that David was grateful. “Droll, Rick. Really droll.”

  Doc Ricky was chugging another drag, smoke billowing from his mouth. “Hey, s-gi. I do my best.”

  David canted his head, squinting at the doctor. “How long have you been in these woods?”

  “Give or take a decade?”

  “Yup.”

  “A decade.”

  “And you’re still clinging to the Eastern Cherokee way of saying thank-you?”

  Doc Ricky’s magnified eyes swam behind the Cokebottle lenses, looking all the world like a pair of dark fish bumping against the glass of their twin tanks. “Well, excuse the linguistic breath out of me. Possibly you haven’t noticed, but I’m having a bad day.”

  David placed a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “We all are, Rick, but I need you to stay with me a few minutes longer. Then you can go some place dark and quiet and have yourself a nice little nervous breakdown.”

  “Swear?”

  “Yup.”

  The amplified eyes became partially hidden as the doctor squinted, suspicious. “Just how legally binding is a yup?”

  David’s hand left the doctor’s shoulder, a frown conveying that he’d reached dark-humor overload.

  “Okay, okay.” Ricky sighed. He took another deep draw from the cigarette, exhaled, strove for a more professional tone. “Jud was shot in the side of the head at close range.”

  “How close is close?”

  “Hugging close. As in tight hug. There’s no exit wound, which means the bullet zinged around inside his skull until solid gray matter was reduced to linguini.”

  “I take it his death was instantaneous.”

  “Oooooh, you betch’um.” Ricky could maintain professional detachment for only so long. In this instance, a whopping whole minute.

  David turned at the waist, teeth scraping the corner of his mouth as he studied the courthouse. “I guess I’ve put it off for as long as I can. I’ve gotta go back in there and take a look at our victim.”

  “Better you than me.”

  David turned quickly, staring for a long moment at the medical examiner. “Rick,” he said in a low voice, “you’re a doctor. The sight of blood isn’t suppose to affect you.”

  “Yeah? Well, looking at a corpse that was once the father of the two kids I’ve treated for flu and ear infections makes me a bad, bad M.E.”

  Looking up at the sky, David shook his head. “Naaah. That just makes you a little too sensitive.”

  With Ricky in reluctant tow, David paused at the reception counter, speaking to one of the attentive ladies. “Has the widow been located yet?”

  Aggie Primeaux breathlessly spoke right up. “We’re still trying to find her. She’s not answering at the house.”

  “Maybe she drove her kids to school. Call over there and ask the principal to do his best to find her for me.”

  “I’ll get right to it.”

  David’s knuckles rapped the countertop. “Good girl.”

  Aggie Primeaux was a bit long in the tooth to be considered a girl, good or otherwise. But that the gorgeous Police Chief Lameraux would think so had her giggling as she punched the number for the elementary school in Bayfield.

  Tribal Chairman Perry Frenchette was holed up in the Tribal Judge’s office with the BIA boys, the office door closed. Even through wood, as David passed that door he clearly heard raised voices, the loudest, the Navajo’s.

  “Damn it, Frenchette! Not only do I have the right, I have the authority …”

  David and Ricky continued on down the corridor, coming to the two officers standing guard just outside an open door. The youngest officer, Melvin Paris, looked keyed. “This is some kinda morning, eh, boss?”

  “You might want to bring down your excitement a little,” David said, his disapproval evident. Removing his baseball cap, holding it in one hand, David leaned in the doorway. The attorney’s office wasn’t large. A bulky wooden desk, shoved tight against the left wall, still managed to take up most of the floor space. Because it was an end office, two windows were set into the right wall. Behind the desk was a freestanding bookcase jammed with law books and bound tribal treaties, each volume imprinted with the relevant years, beginning with the late 1700s and advancing steadily onward. To the side of the book cabinet and fixed to the bare cream-colored wall with pushpins was a large map of Red Cliff. Lastly, half hidden by the bulk of the desk, lying facedown and crumpled on the floor like a pile of discarded clothing, was the mortal coil of Judah Boiseneau.

  A strong coppery odor wafted out to David as he silently studied the large stain on the new carpet that surrounded the dead man’s head like a black halo. The stain pattern told David that death had not been immediate. The bullet had turned Jud into vegetable instantly, but some part of his brain had survived a second or two, keeping the heart muscle pumping following the collapse to the floor. He asked his officers in a half whisper, “You guys keeping everybody out of here?”

  “We’ve been trying,” Melvin replied. “But trying to stop the Navajo was like trying to stop a windstorm. He just went on in. He was stomping all over the place when Perry finally ordered his fat butt out.”

  Great, David thought angrily. Keeping this crime scene intact was about as simple as hitting the moon with a load of buckshot. David vented his frustration on the doctor. “And how about you, Rick? Did you wear gloves the entire time you were doin’ your thing?”

  “No. Not until I actually worked on the body.”

  David felt his blood pressure rising. “Why not?”

  “I guess because as a general rule, dead guys aren’t all that fussy about germs.”

  Doc Ricky was beginning to irritate the living fire out of David. Shoving the doctor forward he said sourly, “Okay, it’s show-and-tell time. I want you to point to anything you might have touched before you started in on Jud.
”

  “How the hell am I suppose to remember that?” Ricky cried.

  “You wanna be a suspect?”

  “No.”

  “Then if I were you, I’d get to remembering all your touchy, feely places pretty damn fast.”

  “Ahh, shit!”

  Aggie Primeaux did more talking than requested. Well, she’d had to. The school secretary was a cousin, and when her cousin asked, “What’s going on, Aggie?” the question operated like pressure on a fault line. Aggie dutifully opened up like the San Andreas. Later she was put on hold, waiting while her cousin tracked down the principal. It was a while before the principal came on the line, and Aggie once again said much more than had been requested by Police Chief Lameraux. Alarmed, the elementary school principal hung up, running to search the hallways for Mrs. Boiseneau.

  The first bell for class sounded shrilly, the principal maneuvering his way through waves of children running for their classes. Teachers were closing the classroom doors. The principal quickly motioned to the teachers who happened to notice him to come forward. The three teachers were stunned by the news of Judah Boiseneau’s untimely demise. But not so shocked as to be at a loss for an opinion.

  “I knew something like this was going to happen,” one said sharply. “I just thought it would be him shooting her.”

  The principal was caught off balance by the acerbic remark. “Are you talking about Mrs. Boiseneau?”

  The three women looked at each other; then, as if reluctant, they nodded.

  The principal gasped sharply. “Why on earth would any of you think something so terrible?”

  The teachers looked astonished. Finally, one put voice to the astonishment. “You mean … you don’t know?”

  Deputy Michael Bjorke drove U.S. 13 from Washburn along the two-lane route that curved out of Chequamegan Bay and hugged the coastline of the peninsula jutting into Lake Superior. A hard-core city boy, he was not moved by the sight of old farms intermixed with forests. Michael was also fighting a rumbling stomach, the by-product of a bachelor’s breakfast. In the backseat of the blue-gray Ford sedan were the two crime-scene technicians. Riding shotgun was long-time Republican Sheriff Ralph T. Bothwell. The two crime-scene guys were around the same age as Michael, meaning barely a hiccup over thirty. Ole Bothie teetered on the brink of retirement. In Michael’s opinion Ole Bothie’s retirement was long overdue.

  Bothwell’s sluggish style of crime busting was responsible for holding up the parade to the reservation. Michael and the crime guys had been ready to go from the time the Indian cop had hung up on him, yet they’d had to cool their jets for a good half hour waiting for Bothie. And then the sheriff had wanted to stop for breakfast!

  In the hopes that the corpse would still be vaguely fresh when they got there, Michael had stopped at a convenience store and bought candy bars. Which was why he was now regretting the Butterfinger, learning to his great dismay that chocolate-covered peanut-butter crunchy stuff and a dippy two-laner were not a happy mix. Especially as every now and again Bothwell would indent his side of the car seat and cut one, the smell coming out of that man, inhuman. Michael hated his new boss and knew for a certainty that despite Bothwell’s jocularity, the feeling was mutual.

  Bothwell was not happy about Michael’s transfer to his department. Not happy at all. But being a political animal Bothwell knew he could not say no when the hard currency of politics—personal favors—was in play. Accepting Michael Bjorke as a deputy was definitely a personal favor. One he owed to the lieutenant governor, no less.

  Deputy Bjorke’s maternal uncle.

  “He’s a good cop, but for now, it would be best if he were not in Madison. A year ought to do it. I’m trusting you to take good care of him.”

  Bothwell was taking very good care of Mikey. He had him answering the phones. Casting “Politico Boy” in a demeaning job had proven quite satisfying. At least until this morning. It had been the sheriff’s bad luck that there had been no one else in the office to field the call from the rez. Then Mikey, bone-weary of desk duty, had had the audacity to cite the reg stating that any field-qualified officer answering such a call meant that said case automatically belonged to him. Still more than a little peeved, Bothwell treated his new deputy to yet another S.B.D.

  The Moccasin Telegraph hadn’t quite made it to Little Sand Bay Road, and Tracker was one of the few Indians still drawing breath who didn’t own a scanner. Totally unaware of the murder, she was in her truck heading for the Native Spirit Gifts, the rez gift shop and local outlet for her innovative style of pottery. A highly skilled sculptor, she began with an ordinary pot. Then, using her fist, she caved in one side of the wet pot, filling in the created space with a sculpted face. Every face appearing from the side of one of her pots was haunting and undeniably Chippewa. Her work was also sold out of a gallery in Minneapolis—the same gallery that hadn’t wanted her when she’d been a starving art student.

  At least the lady manager hadn’t wanted her. “My dear,” the woman had said, elongating the dear as if she were the owner of a general store and speaking to a poor Indian waif begging for a penny gum ball. “Have you even the faintest idea how many potters there are in the Twin Cities area?”

  Knowing the question was rhetorical, Tracker remained mute, seeing only peripherally the man to her left.

  The woman continued, tingeing her voice with a note of regret. “And all of them are professionals, artists with years of experience and … verve. Oh,” she hastened to add, “I’m not saying you’re without talent. There is a certain value in your effort. But perhaps with a bit more maturity and—”

  Suddenly the shadowy man was just there, startling them both as he removed a pot from the heavy cardboard box Tracker held in her arms. He handled it carefully, examining it. He’d picked out the first pot she had ever created with a face peeking out from the indented side.

  “This is marvelous. What an addition to my collection,” the man had said, his voice warm and mellow. “That is, if I’m not too immature to offer for it?”

  Another rhetorical. The man’s hair was gray. The manager’s eyes flared with horrified surprise. “Why, why of course, Mr. Heist,” she stammered. “That’s the very piece I would have chosen if not—”

  Tucking the pot into the crook of his arm, Mr. Heist raised a silencing hand. “Yes, if not for the fact you must daily turn away dozens of more experienced potters.”

  The woman attempted a smile, her entire face stiff with the effort. Mr. Heist paid two hundred and fifty dollars for the pot. The three remaining pots were taken by the manager on consignment and Tracker dared hope that as an artist, she was on her way to success. The aforementioned lady manager was definitely on her way. But just to where wasn’t clear. All Tracker was told by Harold Arnold, the gallery owner, was that his former manager had decided to move on.

  Tracker liked dealing strictly with Harold, or Harry, as he called himself. He was short and Jewish—“Tribe of Levi,” he chortled—and she trusted him absolutely to get the best possible prices for her labors. On the home front, Native Spirit Gifts was running a close second to the sales volume of Minneapolis. And Tracker’s success was due to the faces. Or more correctly, to the one face she could not stop her fingers from sculpting. The one face that was there each and every night, hovering above her like a phantom lover.

  Which was entirely appropriate.

  Four

  Purely out of guilt for having yelled at her dog, Tracker made pancakes, Mushy’s favorite breakfast. Now he was having the time of his life, hanging out of the truck’s passenger window, the wind whipping pelt, ears, and tongue. Because of the winds barreling off the lake, Tracker was wearing a jacket, flannel shirt, thick socks, and jeans. A mere ten-minute drive inland and spring’s mild heat was enveloping her.

  Blueberry Road is the official rez through road, zigging through the center of the tiny town, then skirting the boundary of the reservation. A minute after turning onto Blueberry, Tracker remembered tha
t Uncle Bert wasn’t doing well—flu or something. Her father had made it quite clear that as she lived closer to her uncle than anyone else in the family, he expected her to do her bit in checking on the old man. Uncle Bert’s home was in the forested cove of Raspberry Bay. He had no neighbors, no telephone.

  Tracker dreaded having to make the house call. Uncle Bert had been the family hermit for nearly fifteen years. Uncle Bert was stone deaf, and because of his affliction, ornery. Hence the hermit thing. But he was alone and ailing, so like it or not, he was about to have a visit from his nearest neighbor/relative. Uncle Bert wouldn’t like it. Nor would his collection of cantankerous dogs. That thought caused her to stop the truck just after turning onto the dirt track that was Raspberry Road.

  “Quit whining,” she said sharply. She reached around Mushy’s bulk and proceeded to crank up the window. “The last time we were here and the window was down, you jumped out and found yourself in a fight. A fight you weren’t winning, remember?”

  Mushy remembered. But the need for revenge had the big dog squirming and whining against the closed window. By the time the truck neared Uncle Bert’s land assignment, Mushy was a quivering mass of muscle, his ruff standing straight up, a warning growl issuing from his throat. Mushy’s way of declaring Just let me at ‘em. I know I can take ’em this time.

  Uncle Bert’s front yard and his trailer with its long walled lean-to was a bleeding eyesore. Two years ago, attempting to spruce the trailer house up a bit, Uncle Bert began painting the thing a shade of crap green. Possibly because he hoped a green trailer in the woods would be an invisible trailer. Trouble was, he’d had only one bucket of the stuff. He ran out of paint, then couldn’t be bothered to buy more. The lingering effect was a thoroughly streaked green section on a faded blue and rust-splotched fifty-byten trailer. The logged wall lean-to looked good, though.