Murder on the Red Cliff Rez

by Mardi Oakley Medawar

  “Heard you got a new rifle.”

  David made himself more comfortable, his shoulder pressing against hers. “Oh, yeah? Who told you about my new rifle? Your dad?”

  Tracker shrugged. “He mentioned you’d been going to the sand pit. I put it together the reason had to be a new rifle. Your old one hasn’t needed to be sighted in since …” Her voice trailed off as she feigned trying to remember. She snapped her fingers as if it had suddenly come to her. “Oh, yeah. Since I was at school in the Cities and you were running around behind my back with Sharrie Du Bois.”

  David pulled a face, drank some of his beer. The moment dragged. Then, elbows braced against the tabletop, his face inches from hers, he began speaking as if he hadn’t heard the dig. “I got a .270 New England with a Swift 1.5 X 4.5 variable scope. I’m using 130-grain rounds.”

  Tracker nodded. “Sounds good.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “It’d be better if I could sight in the son of a bitch. Even at a hundred yards and with the crosshairs bang on, the sucker shoots high right.”

  “Too high for a shoulder?”

  As this was Tracker of innumerable neck shots asking, David fiddled with the baseball cap on his head, sounded a derisive laugh. “Duh!”

  Michael, not a subsistence hunter, was bored. The first thing he’d learned after being assigned to the backwoods was that when one was bellying up beside a roadhouse sweetie, the jeans-and-flannel-wearing femme fatale invariably asked, “What do you shoot?” Michael left the table, going for the bar and another round of beers.

  Benny pushed the cleaned platter away, leaned forward. Lip pointing in the direction of Michael’s back, he said, “He don’t know who I am?”

  David didn’t bother to hide the smirk. “Not a clue.”

  Benny eased against the chair’s backrest, propping an elbow on the edge of the table. Thoughtful, index finger slowly rubbing across chin, Benny drawled, “Well, damn, this is different.”

  David, exhaling a long plume of smoke, laughed, “Kinda thought you’d like it.”

  The effect of the beer and the familiar circumstance were beginning to make Tracker feel a bit too warm all over. Before she found herself yielding to the temptation of slipping her arm through David’s, she leaned forward, spoke to Benny. “Let’s take him through the mystery of the log barge.”

  “Are you back on that?” David yelped.

  Tracker slapped David’s arm and snarled, “Will you please just give me five damn minutes?”

  David flashed his killer smile. “Okay, babe. I’d be more than happy to give ya four hours, but if all you’re needing is five minutes, I swear to ya, honey, I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  Irked, Tracker slapped his arm again. Watching them, Benny smiled.

  “Puttin’ Frenchette on the logging recovery deal was like lettin’ the fox guard the chickens,” the stranger at the table was saying.

  Michael carefully placed the beers on the checkerboard sized table. He had to be careful. His hands were small for a man’s (his worst physical flaw in his view), and the table was already littered with two full ashtrays, a platter, and four empty beer cans. As soon as he put the beers down, the stranger hooked one and kept right on talking. Michael eased into the chair as the pair across from him grabbed beers for themselves without bothering to acknowledge his efforts.

  “Here comes the best part,” Tracker said to David.

  The noise level in the bar rose another decibel. The volume of Benny’s voice did not rise with it. He simply leaned forward more, the remaining three leaning in with him, four heads meeting at the center of the tiny table.

  “All the bullshit Frenchette laid out during his campaign on putting a stop to the salvaging was just that. I told anybody who’d listen that the man was crooked as a hound’s hind leg. But hell, he won tribal chair anyway, so I says to myself, okay, that’s that. How much harm can the man do in a two-year term? But if what Tracker seen out in the Raspberry’s got anything to do with Frenchette, then that man’s found a way to hurt us all pretty damn bad.”

  “You think that recovery operation’s gonna hurt the tribe?”

  “Dumb question, David,” Benny sneered. “Means you know beans about how this land of ours got stripped down to nothing much more than little pissant birches and tags. Them ain’t trees, they’re friggin’ weeds. What we got now ain’t nothing like the forests our grandfathers used to walk and hunt in.”

  Benny was becoming loud, attracting undue attention. Tracker reached across and touched his hand, flicking her eyes in the direction of the men seated at the bar, who were blatantly eavesdropping. It hadn’t been too long ago that men exactly like the ones now in the Cantina were contesting Indian claims on the grounds that Indians already had too many rights. Benny took the hint and lowered his voice.

  “The thing you’re missin’,” he continued, addressing David, “is that right now ain’t the time to recover so much as a sunken toothpick. The weather’s all wrong and the lake’s a bad, bad lady in the spring. So those boys gotta be recovering something that ain’t sunk. I got a good guess on what that is, and it ain’t in the bottom of nothing.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” David cried.

  Benny squirmed in the chair, came in closer, his voice low. “I’m talking about the old growth stand just shy of Raspberry that’s—”

  David’s temper blew. “Oh, come on! I know that stand. Hell, everybody knows that stand. It’s sacred, Ben. Nobody, and I mean nobody, would ever dare touch it.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Benny’s tone was a dare. “How do you know? Have you been out there lately? Do you know anybody that has?”

  “No,” David said tersely. “Have you?”

  “Nope. But that’s where me an’ Track were headed when you popped in on us. An’ that’s where we’ll go right now if you can put off arresting me for a couple more hours.”

  Michael’s ears suddenly perked. “Arrest you! Arrest you for what?”

  Benny offered his hand to Michael, his expression and voice deadpan. “I’m Benny Peliquin. Thanks for the beer, eh.”

  Tracker was fighting back laughter as they all piled into her truck. The deputy was so near hysterical she wouldn’t have been at all surprised if David suddenly wrestled him to the ground and wedged a tongue depressor inside his mouth. There was only one jump seat and floor space in the back. Michael and David ignored the jump seat, both choosing instead to sit on the floor with their legs tucked against their chests.

  “We have our own way of doing things,” David said.

  “Yes,” Michael countered, “but there is this tricky little item known as following procedure. You show me anywhere in the regs where it states a murder suspect has the right to scarf nachos and beer and I’ll eat the damn page!”

  Silence reigned while David tried to make himself more comfortable in the confined space. Then Tracker and Benny heard David say in a musing tone, “You’re kinda an anal guy, aren’t ya?”

  Everyone on Red Cliff knew Tracker’s truck on sight. As they drove along Blueberry Road, drivers sailing by in the opposite lane flashed the Red Cliff wave. She waved back, ignoring any and all stares directed at her hooded passenger. No one could see David’s or Michael’s heads just below the porthole-sized rear windows. The afternoon sky was clearing, sun now dominating the sky, and with each curve of the road came another heart-stopping view. Like migrating birds, artists of every ability annually flocked into Bayfield County. And not one of them has ever managed to capture on canvas or paper the unabashed beauty of Northern Wisconsin.

  Reaching Red Cliff’s firing range, the sand pit, Tracker negotiated the path ending at the pit’s edge. From this point on, they’d be walking. Getting out of the sand pit, which was huge, meant scrambling up the sandy wall, then heading due north through a dense thicket of skinny poplars, birches, and tag alders. Waist-high raspberry bushes, denuded clusters of spiky sticks, were a hazard, every limb eager to rake exposed skin. Benny walked to the
far left. Tracker could see him now and again through the tree line. When she heard him cry “Ho-wah!” she immediately veered in his direction.

  David and Michael followed Tracker. Within minutes they found Benny standing in the middle of a road, one that shouldn’t have been anywhere near Raspberry Point. Admittedly it wasn’t much of a road. Not even a fourwheeler could have driven over the smashed-down saplings and bramble and widely grooved imprints created by the huge tires of a skidder—a log-pushing piece of equipment. There was a legally running pulp operation less than a couple of miles away, where a skidder was known to be working. Finding evidence of a skidder where it clearly shouldn’t have been caused David’s heart to thump in his chest.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Michael demanded.

  David turned a bloodless face toward him. “Not now, man … not now.”

  The four began walking again, Benny well out in front. No one spoke as they hiked along the treacherous path.

  Little more than half an hour later, they cleared the top of the knoll. What they should have seen from this vantage point were hundreds of enormous white pines, darkened boughs crowding against the clear late-afternoon sky. What they should not have been seeing, but most certainly did, was sunlight glimmering off Lake Superior. Like sleepwalkers, the four continued forward until they reached the edge of unbelievable desolation.

  David was the first to come to a semblance of reason, to understand that what they saw was real, not a buck-wild nightmare. His reaction came in a shout. “Holy shit!”

  Tracker wanted to do a bit of yelling herself. Trouble was, her throat was locked and her brain refused to register the sight her eyes were taking in. Her feet began to move, taking her slowly along the border of what had been sacred ground. Like an automaton she stepped over and through heavy layers of ankle-breaking slash. When a berm became impassable, still numb from the neck down, she shifted her course, walking along a muddy rut. The skidder was long gone, as were the chain saws. There was no noise now, not even in the winds whipping at her clothing, swirling strands of hair around her face. Finally the heartbreak was too much and she crumbled.

  She had no concept of time, had no idea how long she pressed her face against the earth, watered the clay with her tears. Hands captured her quaking shoulders and she dimly realized that she was being lifted to her feet. Still weak, she swayed. Strong arms caught her, encircled her. Like a frantic animal she grabbed for the strength the other offered and held on tight.

  “We’ll get ‘em, babe,” David said, resting his chin on her head. “I swear to God, we’ll get ’em.”

  Michael’s normally glib tongue was silenced as he strode several yards behind them. Tracker was glad. This meant that he too was affected by the destruction. Head down, she walked close behind Benny, fighting off the urge to look left or right. New forests are full of sapling and fern ground clutter, but old growth forests are carpeted by nothing more than pine straw. This is because the huge boughs keep the floor in perpetual shade. Tracker remembered this old forest as it had been just last summer, with its mighty branches forming a canopy that rivaled the vaulted ceilings of the world’s most impressive cathedrals, and its blessing of cooling shade on the hottest days.

  In this new emptiness, the sun’s brightness stung her eyes, filled her with an indescribable grief. She willed herself to focus, concentrate hard, for even in this chaos, there was a seam of order, a logical progression. Decimating a forest, particularly if the decimating was done in absolute secrecy, required planning. And money.

  Lots of money.

  Eleven

  They stood dangerously close to the cliff’s edge, their bodies buffeted by winds that first skimmed the icy surface of Lake Superior, then surged straight up the jagged cliff wall. Tracker’s hearing had returned, the winds now whistling shrilly against her ears.

  Covering her ears with her hands, blocking both the wind and the numbing cold, she shouted, “The barge wasn’t recovering.”

  David hunched his shoulders against the wind. “Well, hell, Track, even I figured that one out.”

  Benny, one hand clamping the hood to his head, lifted his chin, indicating an area a little less than thirty yards away. “Right there is where the logs were skidded over the side. Looks like they did all the cuttin’ in the winter when there was a guarantee no one would be coming up here. All they had to do after that was wait for the thaw an’ bring the barge in to pull up a prime load of number one Clear. Easy beans.”

  “Hang on a second,” Michael shouted over a gust of wind. “I’m having some trouble with a few details. Just what is number one clear?”

  Experiencing a new pang of grief, Tracker remained silent, turned to face the Big Lake. David took a deep breath, expelled it, then answered the question.

  “Number one clear is timber that runs with a perfect grain. In other words, it’s lumberyard dream wood. In the late 1800s old growth was cut down like grass, leaving only a few pockets of ancient trees. This particular stand belonged to the Tribe and was visited only twice a year, while the other stands are in the National Forest and are regularly patrolled. So if anyone was looking for trees wide as a man is tall and stretching up five hundred feet, this little isolated section would spring to mind. Especially when foreign markets are willing to pay millions for that grade of timber.”

  Michael said pensively, “Based on that, it’s even harder for me to believe a bunch of tree rustlers would come in here and wipe the place out before they had a guaranteed buyer. The risk factor wouldn’t be worth the effort because we’re talking about a whole lot of Indians who would be hugely pissed the minute they realized they’d been ripped off. And then there’s the fact that any buyer is going to insist on a guarantee of delivery. Guarantees mean contracts. Now how the hell would anybody get anything legally binding on a load of hot lumber?”

  Michael’s question hung in the chilly air until Benny finally mused aloud, “Ya know, before somebody did the world a favor, I once had a cousin who was the Tribal Attorney.”

  For a hard-core cop, Deputy Bjorke seemed to be getting the hang of arrest Indian style. During the drive back to Tracker’s cabin, David rode shotgun, the deputy and Benny crouched out of sight in the minicab. Pulling into her drive Tracker fully expected Mushy to come bounding off the porch, barking a greeting. Opening the truck’s door, she heard Mushy barking, but he wasn’t on the porch. Stepping out, staying close to the front of the truck, she saw her dog, heard his barking, but the sound was muffled because Mushy was barking from behind the glass of the cabin’s large front window.

  David, standing on the opposite side of the truck, looked across the hood to her. “Who do you know who could trap Mush inside your house without getting killed in the effort?”

  At a loss for an answer, Tracker locked eyes with him.

  Getting anxious, David prodded, “Your dad, maybe?”

  Tracker shook her head, said in a low voice, “He swears Mush’s an incurable biter. Dad sometimes won’t even get out of his truck until I’ve chained Mushy.” She looked around. There were no recently made car or truck tire markings in the drive.

  David was studying the cabin, the dog trapped inside sounding louder. This was not good. He removed his pistol from the holster, checked the cylinder, snapped it closed. “Stay here.”

  “But it’s my cabin.”

  David began to move away. “Don’t fool with me, woman. I mean it. Stay here.”

  Gun in both hands held stiff-armed and off to the side, David approached the cabin. Tracker, worrying a thumbnail as she watched him, heard the cab’s door open and then someone whispering.

  “Track?” Michael had only in the last hour began calling her by the familiar nickname. “Stay exactly where you are and you’ll block any sight of me from the windows. I’m gonna slip left to give David some backup.”

  Tracker’s nod was barely perceptible as the door behind her clicked closed. A heartbeat later she heard a faint rustling. Peripherally, she saw Mic
hael slip across the yard; then she lost sight of him until he came to stand amid the scrawny maples lining the drive. The Glock Michael carried was held firmly in both hands, arms extended and locked at the elbows as he sighted down her very own front door. Meanwhile David neared the porch steps. He looked so handsome.

  So vulnerable.

  Doctor or not, Ricky was a tobacco addict. He made no excuses or offered apologies for the vice. In Cherokee his attitude is known as Sgidvnusdi, “That’s just the way it is.” He had no idea how the expression for national Indian fatalism was said in Ojibway, nor did he particularly care. It was far too late to care. Far too late to learn to speak Chippewa beyond the usual hello and good-bye. Doc Ricky was smoking furiously as he packed. Then the bedside phone began to ring. He quickly checked Caller ID, then answered, speaking tersely. “What are you doing?”

  Wanda, his assistant, was sobbing, quickly approaching hysterics.

  Doc Ricky ran a hand through his hair, breathed heavily into the receiver. “Look, we’ve been all through this—”

  “You don’t understand!” she shrieked. “You’ve got to listen!”

  Ricky had neither the time nor the tolerance to endure another of Wanda’s weeping jags. “I’ve gotta go, Wanda.”

  “Please!” he heard her wail as he slammed the phone down.

  In his home office, the door firmly closed against his sharpeared wife, Tribal Chairman Perry Frenchette made a phone call. After two rings, his cousin-in-law Thelma answered.