Murder on the Red Cliff Rez

by Mardi Oakley Medawar

  Elliott sighed heavily. “You’re right about the shit, boss. Benny’s stepped into a big old pile of it this time.”

  “Elliott! What have I told you about graphics over the com line?”

  Elliott was wounded. “Well, you started it!”

  The offended dispatcher was gone. And there was no point trying to call him back. Elliott Raven could be a very pouty person.

  Tracker found no dead man in Uncle Bert’s bed, just rumpled sheets and blankets and more layers of dog hair. She didn’t know yet if she was relieved. It had taken so much out of her to open the door and shine the spot beam inside that now she was shaking from head to toe. Leaning against the doorjamb, she took a moment to collect herself. Then she snatched up a soiled shirt from the bedroom floor and carried it outside.

  Opening the passenger door, she shoved the shirt against Mushy’s snout, giving the command “Hunt!” She’d just had time to toss the spotlight inside when Mushy took off like a bullet, going not for the woods behind the abandoned trailer, but down the weedy path that cut through the copse fronting Raspberry Road.

  When she was six, her father had begun teaching her how to track. By the time she hit seven her father realized his daughter had an innate ability. He then turned her over to a young man then thought of as the best tracker on Red Cliff.

  Benny Peliquin.

  By the time she was ten years old, Benny declared his small pupil could track a partridge in flight. Which is how she’d earned her nickname, Tracker. She had never worked with a dog until she had rescued Mushy and taught him to follow a scent. But unlike a bloodhound, Mushy didn’t bay. Mushy ran like a silent streak. It was Tracker’s job to keep up because Mushy wouldn’t stop until he’d found whatever it was he’d been instructed to sniff out.

  Tracker’s legs were pumping and her boots were leaving tracks in the muddy red clay as she crossed the width of Raspberry Road, then jumped the ditch and hit the woods on the other side. She couldn’t see Mushy, but she could see the path he’d cut in the run through rain-sodden ferns and sapling brush. Tracker stayed on Mushy’s trail even though when she reached the woods, there was only faint light filtering through the dense canopy and a mist floating above the spongy forest floor. As she moved through it, the mist parted, wafted away like a shy spirit. She’d barely run a quarter of a mile when she emptied her mind, allowing her inherent tracking ability to kick in. Benny called this zoning.

  “Forget radios, TVs, any of that kinda crap, kiddo. None of that stuff’s in the zone.”

  As a six-year-old, she’d been afraid. “What’s in that zone, Ben?”

  “Cool stuff, kid. Really cool stuff.”

  Benny had been right. In the zone she could hear her breathing, the thudding of her heart, and the blood coursing through her body. She was not hampered by physical things: the straining of her muscles, the branches that snagged at her clothing. Her hair, tied in a single braid, sailed behind her. In the zone, physical discomforts didn’t exist. Then she heard Mushy barking. The realization that her dog had found something was enough to pull her out of the zone, and with such force that she stumbled and fell to her knees. Resting for a minute on all fours, she listened. Strange loud sounds echoed through the forest. But it was Mushy’s frantic barking that pulled Tracker to her feet.

  She didn’t have a treat to give him as a reward. A pat and a “Good boy” would have to do. Mushy, standing on the very edge of the cliff overlooking Raspberry Bay, wasn’t interested in any type of payment. The dog continued to howl at the huge flat-bottomed barge far below in the bay.

  The salvage barge measured roughly eighty feet in length and twenty feet in width. The barge’s crane was working, men running along the deck as the crane heaved a log out of the murky water. There was no mistaking the log for anything other than an old-growth white pine, for not since 1908 had there been any other log like it. These logs were the primary reason salvaging companies had marked the lake’s bays off into a grid, had paid the state a king’s ransom for the retrieval rights. The state of Wisconsin, not the Chippewa Nation, held the offshore rights along the reservation’s coastline. This had the current Tribal Council firing reams of protests to the state’s supreme court and barnstorming Washington, D.C., waving old treaties and Indian land-use agreements.

  Yet here the salvagers were.

  According to present state law, the salvagers weren’t operating illegally. Immorally, until the appeals were decided, most assuredly, but not illegally. And they were about a month too early. A risk foolhardy in the extreme, as there is nothing more dangerous than Lake Superior during early spring. Tracker also took note of the empty Zodiac moored just off the barge’s stern. There was something puzzling about the inflatable, but she didn’t have time to ponder what it might be as a man so tall that even at this distance he looked like a giant came out of the wheelhouse. It was apparent that he’d heard Mushy’s barking even over the crane’s noise. Holding a pair of binoculars to his eyes, he scanned the rim of the cliffs. Within seconds, she no longer heard the grinding noise of the crane, the muted voices of the men directing the newly upraised log. She no longer heard because she was feeling the big man’s eyes boring into hers. Instinctively, her hand closed on Mushy’s collar.

  Freddy Harold had always been big, so big that his mother had almost died during his birth. In fact, the delivery was so complicated that Freddy just barely escaped being born a total idiot. But he was slow, pathetically slow, unable to keep up with his classmates even though his teachers moved him right along with them through each grade. By the time he was eight, he had realized that he was different and that the other kids knew it and didn’t like him for it. At eight, Freddy stopped being the play yard’s gentle giant. The fear displayed by the other children pleased Freddy.

  In the rough-and-tumble salvaging world, Freddy, in charge of security, was a highly valued employee. His present boss had repeatedly stressed that there were to be no witnesses to the current salvage operation, and Freddy had understood. However, the new job’s location was so remote that the retrieval had gone along without a hitch. Freddy had been bored.

  Until that old man had showed up.

  Now, and on the same cliff top where the old man had appeared, was a little girl. Through the field glasses, Freddy honed in on her face. She was moving around a lot and twice he had to adjust the glasses in order to see her features clearly.

  “You won’t get away from Freddy,” he muttered. Then with a shout, “I need the raft!”

  Trying to pull Mushy back from the edge was like trying to drag a moose. Barking threats at the men below, Mushy stood on his hind legs, back paws dug into the cliff’s red soil with super dog purchase. Tracker pulled on his collar with all the strength she possessed. Finally she yelled, “End!” Mushy settled reluctantly, turning his face from her back toward the bay as she tugged him into the safety of cover and out of binocular range. Sweating profusely she knelt beside her dog, petting him, trying to force her mind back into the zone, a place where pure instinct was not only all-knowing, it was protective.

  Tracker wanted to understand a lot of things at the moment, and that protective aspect would have been nice, too, but trying to launch herself into the zone never worked when her conscious mind was working overtime considering questions rising like bubbles. More pressing than any of the questions was her gut wisdom telling her to get the hell out of there.

  Tracker went with her gut.

  David had just finished listening to Elliott’s lengthy news item and was replacing the mike when through the cruiser’s windshield, he spotted Tracker’s truck. She had to be doing at least eighty.

  “Holy shit!” he shouted.

  And then his breath caught in his throat as her white truck skidded into the turn and only by sheer boneheaded luck did not flip sideways into the ditch. When the truck made it safely into the P.D. parking lot, he remembered to breathe. A second later he was cursing as he bolted out of the cruiser and ran for the footbridge to th
e police department’s lot, lagging several paces behind Joey Du Bey.

  Six

  Tracker bailed out of the truck, slamming the door and locking Mushy inside. Braid whipping behind her, legs pumping, boots thumping tarmac, she fixed her gaze on David, who was sprinting over the creek’s footbridge. She didn’t even notice Joey Du Bey until he was directly in front her, grabbing her arms. She tried to squirm away, tried breaking his hold. She couldn’t see over Joey’s shoulder, but she knew David was coming. She wanted to get to David. She needed to get to David. But Joey drew her in, held her hard against his side. The cause of the animosity between the two men was Joey Du Bey’s determination to make Tracker his wife.

  David was running up behind them. Joey could hear his approach and Tracker wriggled harder, trying to free herself. Joey tightened his hold and breathed into her ear, “I love you, Track.”

  Arriving on the scene and blowing like a horse, David yelled at Tracker: “Just what the hell were you doing?”

  Tracker pushed against Joey, but Joey wasn’t ready to let go. David’s fury and the volume of his voice increased tenfold. “Do you have any idea how fast you were going? You were on two wheels making that turn. You almost got yourself killed! I ought to write you up.”

  David’s blast revived Tracker’s temper and with one last shove she was able to disentangle herself. Finally facing David and feeling like a fool, she yelled right back. “You want to give me a ticket? Fine. Just don’t forget to mention …” The toe of her boot made swift contact with David’s shin.

  “Je-sah!”

  “ … assaulting an officer.” She rounded on Joey. “I have to report a missing person.”

  David was walking off the pain in his leg. Joey folded his arms across his chest, fighting the urge to grab her again. “Who’s missing?” Joey asked.

  Tracker answered in a burst of words. “My uncle Bert. I just came from his place. There isn’t a sign of him or his wolf pack. I did find two lines of trout I figure to be about a week old. The fish were laid out on his table, like he was about to take care of them and then … didn’t.”

  David came to stand directly behind her. “You do a search?”

  Anger forgotten, Tracker spun on her heels to face him. “Yes. But not a big one. I sent Mushy to seek because that was quicker. Mushy went straight for the bay, David. Right for the cliffs. I didn’t find Uncle Bert, but you’ll never guess what I did find.” She went on to tell him.

  “Ho-le—” David couldn’t finish. “Track? Are you sure?”

  Hands on hips, she bent forward, yelling, “Do you think I don’t know a log recovery barge when I see one?”

  David exploded in kind. “Just calm down, will ya? Your screaming is giving me a damn headache. If you’re right—”

  “And I am!”

  David’s mouth curled in a snarl. Their eyes met and held. David blinked first. He growled, “I’ve gotta tell Frenchette.”

  “I’ll tell him myself.”

  “Not you, me. He’s not in any mood to have you going at him like a fishwife.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, but at that moment, from the corner of her eye, she saw the tribal ambulance pulling out of the separate parking lot. She watched the white van making the turn onto Highway 13. The ambulance was not going in the direction of the reservation hospital, nor was it using its siren. Tracker’s eyes cut back to David. “What’s going on over there?”

  Their continuing war drifted into yet another truce. For over two years now they were either screaming at each other or uncomfortably polite. Psychologists call this behavior sexual repression. David and Tracker had come to know it simply as normal.

  David took a deep breath, expelled it. “If you haven’t heard the latest news, that makes you the one and only soul on Red Cliff.” David shoved his hands deep into his jean pockets. “It’s also the reason I was about to call you. I’m going to need your help.”

  “Oh, not again!”

  Standing between David and Joey, Tracker felt like one of three naughty kids called into the principal’s office. Seated in comfortable chairs facing the Tribal Chairman’s solid oak desk were the BIA agent known as the Navajo, Sheriff Bothwell, and a blond deputy with eyes the color of blue ice. As David reported the barge sighting to Perry Frenchette, the Navajo, chewing on a thumbnail, watched the chairman’s face mottle. Sheriff Bothwell, who didn’t appear interested in what David was saying, propped his chin on his hands and offered her a smile and a quick wink. The blond deputy ignored her as he listened intently, hunching forward on the chair, arms braced on his knees. She knew the deputy was bursting with energy even though at the moment he was sitting perfectly still. His eyes watched all the players intently.

  Perry Frenchette flew into a rage, hollering even before David was finished speaking. “Well, this is something I needed to hear today, of all days!” David pressed his lips into a tight line as Frenchette rolled on. “I’ll personally look into the business in Raspberry Bay, but as for you, Lameraux, you’re to concentrate on the killing. Or more to the point, finding Benny Peliquin—”

  “Benny didn’t do it,” Tracker quickly interjected.

  Perry Frenchette didn’t cope well with being interrupted. Everyone working for him understood that whenever he launched himself into a tirade they were to wait humbly until he ran himself out. Before he’d fully recovered from her impertinence, Tracker spoke again.

  “I’ve known Benny all my life. He’s not a killer. You’re after the wrong man.”

  “My sister-in-law Thelma said—”

  “I really don’t care what Thelma said,” Tracker replied, her inflection flat.

  His face flushed with anger, the Tribal Chairman thundered, “Young lady, this does not concern you.”

  Tracker was not intimidated. “Obviously Police Chief Lameraux thinks otherwise because he’s asked me to join the search for Benny. But I’m afraid I can’t help David just now. My uncle Bert is missing and finding him is my first priority.”

  Frenchette’s jaws bunched, relaxed, and bunched again as he literally chewed on his outrage. When he was finally able to trust himself to speak with any degree of composure, he said, “I understand family loyalty, but if my police chief feels he needs your aid, then as a full member of this community you are required to give it.”

  Tracker and the chairman made eye contact as the chairman’s implication registered with every Indian in the room. Beside her, David and Joey shifted uncomfortably and sent her sideways glances. Feeling a strange undercurrent to the conversation and thoroughly interested because of it, Bothwell slouched, entwining the fingers of his hands and resting them atop the bulge of his belly. The Navajo seemed to be holding his breath as his eyes shifted between Tracker and Frenchette. Deputy Bjorke leaned even more forward and watched even more diligently as the silence extended, becoming a nonverbal confrontation between the chairman and the young woman.

  Tracker’s eyes didn’t waver when she finally spoke directly to Frenchette: “As of this moment, you are responsible for my uncle.” She turned away and had no more than closed the door behind her when Frenchette went off on David.

  “You had no business hiring that woman without asking my permission first.”

  “Enlisting Tracker isn’t anything I haven’t done before,” David said firmly. “If you expect us to find Benny, you know we need Tracker.”

  Frenchette glared, breathed hard through his nostrils, as he said, “Get out of here, Lameraux. I don’t want to see your face again until Peliquin’s in custody.”

  As David and Joey turned to go, Michael Bjorke leaped out of his chair, shadowing them. Not one of the three bothered closing the door.

  Bothwell, a grin splitting his face, offered with a chuckle, “That boy of mine’s a real go-getter. But he’s a city boy. I think he’s gonna have all he can do keepin’ up with that little trackin’ gal of yours. She’s a hot little pepper, eh? If I was twenty years younger and fifty pounds lighter, I wouldn’t mind trai
lin’ through the woods after her myself. Think she’ll really find Peliquin?”

  Frenchette wasn’t listening to the sheriff. His gaze lingered on the hallway just beyond the open door. Then he came back to himself with a snap. Lifting the receiver he said tersely, “If you’ll excuse me, I have several calls to make.”

  “Uh-huh,” Bothwell drawled. He shot a glance at the BIA agent. The Navajo was sitting back in his chair. Apparently the agent felt unaffected by Frenchette’s acerbic dismissal. Bothwell’s eyes shifted back to the chairman, who had finished dialing and was now standing with his back turned to the desk. Taking the hint, he slapped the chair’s armrests and hoisted himself to his feet. “Well, guess I’ll go get myself some breakfast.”

  BIA Agent Begay rose and followed a few paces behind Bothwell, but the Navajo went no further than the edge of the doorframe, closing the door practically against Bothwell’s well rounded hind end. The door was just clicking shut when Bothwell heard the Navajo ask, “Okay if I smoke?”

  The diffident request was followed rapidly by a negative reply. The door now closed between him and the two men, Bothwell could hear their low-voiced exchange. Trouble was, he couldn’t make out any of their words. He was tempted to press his ear against the solid wood and blatantly eavesdrop, but as his empty belly was screaming for attention, he didn’t.

  The blond deputy was really beginning to chap Tracker’s lips. The four of them—David, Joey, Tracker, and Deputy Bjorke—were standing in the P.D. lot. David was trying to calm her down. Although she’d seemed in control during the meeting with Perry Frenchette, she’d been a breath away from exploding. Now that she was outside, a place relatively safe to explode while retaining some shred of dignity, Deputy Bjorke was talking about hunting Benny, just how they should go about catching a man that was closer to her than one of her own brothers. Bjorke went on babbling without any sign of let-up until Tracker had had more than enough.