Blood Ties

by Sigmund Brouwer

  “I know,” Duggan said. “He called. I already got the box out. Open the door and it’s yours.”

  Was it too much effort for the man to it do himself? Clay wondered. He opened the door. A file folder box was at Duggan’s feet.

  “Thank you,” Clay said. As he stooped to pick up the box, he tried to ignore the smell of dirt and body sweat in the folds of Duggan’s body.

  “Could never figure out why Russ made me hang on to this,” Duggan said. “The old lady always complained that it cluttered up the closet.”

  It was Duggan’s wife, then, who kept things neat around here.

  “Like I said,” Clay told him, “thanks.”

  Clay carried the box back to his Jeep, hoping he’d step on the annoying terrier as it chased him in tight, noisy circles.

  * * *

  Clay was five miles back along Highway 40 when his cell phone rang.

  “Garner,” he said, curious. Few people had this number. Had Flannigan already found something of interest?

  “Don’t go home.”

  “Pardon?”

  “This is Fowler. You got the box?”

  “Yes. I haven’t looked through it yet.”

  “Good. Don’t go home. Make yourself scarce.”

  Unconsciously, Clay eased off the accelerator. Fowler was not the type of person to say things lightly.

  “All right,” Clay said. “How about telling me why?”

  In the background, Clay heard a doctor being paged over the hospital intercom.

  “Maybe ten minutes ago, the sheriff showed up. Here in my room. He was looking for you. He called Old Man McNeill, who told him you were headed here. But don’t blame McNeill. He didn’t know what they wanted.”

  “Which was?” Clay didn’t like the implication he was hearing in Fowler’s voice.

  “They wanted you for questioning. Which is why the sheriff has already sent a car up to your ranch.”

  "But –”

  “I know it wasn’t you who took Kelsie,” Fowler said. “I know that good and well. But I couldn’t tell them, not without letting them know about the false reports and everything else. I had to keep my mouth shut and play dumb. I waited until they left. I’m in a wheel-chair at a pay phone, and I’m glad I caught you in time.”

  “Me?” What kind of nightmare is this? “Me?”

  “They found a watch underneath the bed at Kelsie’s condo. With a broken strap. Like it had been kicked there or something during a struggle. The back of the watch is engraved to you. And they’re wondering real hard how come it was you who told them you didn’t even know where she lived when you called them up and sent them to the condo.”

  Clay thought of the engraved Seiko that Kelsie had given him one Christmas. It was a dress watch, thin, flat, and elegant. He rarely wore it, preferring the scratched Timex, which could take the abuse of work on the ranch. The Seiko could have been missing from his bedroom jewelry box for weeks before he would miss it.

  “Clay,” Fowler said, “they’re real serious about this. They know she left you. And they know the same thing you do. Nine out of ten times in a situation like this, it’s the boyfriend or husband. If you're onto something, best thing you can do is stay out of sight and not give them a chance to pick you up. Claim you didn’t know there was a warrant out.”

  “What about Rooster Evans?” Clay said. “It looks like –”

  “They want Evans too. No doubt about that. They’re still looking. But they’re also interested in you.”

  A quick glance in the rearview mirror showed no cops. Clay was already jumpy. He was also already making plans. He knew cops. If they decided to detain him, he’d be lucky if he got out of jail in less than two days – if he managed to clear himself. By then, Kelsie might be dead.

  On the other hand, running would make him look more guilty.

  He weighed his choices. Looking guilty or losing time in the race to save Kelsie. It was an easy decision.

  “They won’t find me,” Clay told Fowler. “But how can I reach you? There’s no phone in your room. I’m sure I’ll have questions after I get through the files.”

  “Keep that battery on your phone charged. I’ll wheel out here and call whenever I can.”

  “Thanks,” Clay said. “And I mean that.”

  Clay waited for traffic to clear then spun his steering wheel hard, cutting a U-turn so sharply his tires squealed. He needed to get off the pavement and onto the back roads.

  4:52 p.m.

  James McNeill held a shotgun pointed at Sonny Cutknife. He and Johnny had marched Sonny to this isolated clearing at gunpoint, a half-hour walk of complete silence except for Sonny’s questions, which went unanswered. James and Johnny wanted him nervous by the time they reached the post driver.

  Johnny Samson had earlier thought he would find it satisfying, after all these years, to back Sonny Cutknife against a post driver and place his head beneath the poised hydraulic weight. After all, a quarter-century earlier, Sonny had done the same to him.

  But he didn’t find it satisfying. The man with the ponytail and massive gut and fringed leather vest was now a stranger, not the flat-bellied, rope-muscled bully of Johnny’s memory.

  They hadn’t spoken to each other since that summer, their last encounter an angry shouting match over the disappearance of Harold Hairy Moccasin. Johnny had questions; Sonny gave no answers, just insolent shrugs.

  The Native Sons were an equally distant memory. Johnny rarely thought about the bulldozer and the church-burning. He’d long since understood the confusion, grief, and youthfulness that had led him to his passive participation. While he regretted those few days in the summer of 1973, he now treated the memory with the same sad forgiveness a father might have for an errant son. Mostly, when he thought of the Native Sons, he remembered the truth of his grandfather’s advice about choices. Had Johnny walked toward the church instead of away, he wouldn’t be teaching school on the reservation; he wouldn’t be married with two children and happy to return home every night after school.

  “You heard Anderson’s dead,” Johnny said to Sonny, holding the man’s ponytail so his head could not move on top of the fence post. It was an exact copy of how Sonny had once made him look up at the hydraulically driven weight. “Maybe now it’s your turn to die.”

  “You been watching too many movies,” Sonny said. “A shotgun at my back. Blindfolded silence on a long walk. Now this. I’m supposed to wet my pants?”

  James glanced at Johnny, who raised his eyebrows in the equivalent of a shrug. With the tractor idling in the background to supply power to the hydraulics, this was supposed to scare Sonny.

  Johnny figured the old man felt as foolish as he did. Earlier, they’d moved the tractor to an isolated clearing and set up the hydraulics.

  “We want answers,” James said. “I heard you once figured this was a good way to make a point.”

  “Another lifetime,” Sonny said. “I’m surprised Goody-Two-Shoes here admits it ever happened.”

  “Might be one difference this time,” Johnny said. He nodded at James, who reached over and put his hand on a lever. Sonny turned his head slightly, his total attention on the lever. “We’re not bluffing.”

  James yanked. Sonny flinched. The weight above his head remained in place.

  “What a shame,” James said. “The hydraulics aren’t connected properly. Guess we’ll have to reconnect.”

  James took his time. He reached down among the hoses and made adjustments. When he was finished, he wiped his greasy hands on his pants.

  “I think it’s ready now,” James said. “I’ll be happy to test it. Unless you’ve got some answers.”

  “How about the questions?” Sonny asked, not quite as confident as before.

  James grabbed the shotgun from where he’d set it on the tractor fender then nodded at Johnny. Johnny released Sonny’s ponytail, and Sonny eased himself away from the fence post.

  “You’d really kill me?” he asked.

&n
bsp; “My daughter’s gone,” James replied. “So’s my grandson. I'm about ready to do whatever it takes.”

  Sonny straightened his vest. He adjusted his belly around his pants. “What do you want to know?"

  “Emerald Canyon,” James said. “You mentioned some of the others were dead and some of the others hard to reach. What’s the setup? Who else is involved?”

  “That’s all you want to know?” Sonny was genuinely surprised. “You make this big production, and that’s all you want to know?”

  “And the summer when we were just boys,” Johnny said quietly. “Harold Hairy Moccasin. I want to know about him.”

  Johnny was surprised at himself for blurting the question. He thought he’d buried most of the events from back then. But now, with Sonny right here...

  “Let me have a smoke,” Sonny said. He waved at James. “And put the shotgun away. I thought this was something serious.”

  Without waiting for permission, and ignoring the shotgun James kept at half-mast, Sonny fished inside his vest pocket, found a cigarette, lit it, and walked over to the tractor to turn off the ignition. He drew once on the cigarette and leaned against the rear tire of the tractor.

  “Noise was getting to me,” he said.

  All the ways Johnny had imagined this going, thinking maybe they’d have to nick Sonny’s ears or threaten to slit his nostrils; all the worry Johnny had put into wondering if he himself would be changed by becoming like Sonny, even for a good cause and only for a few minutes – and now the guy was relaxing with a cigarette and running this like it was his own conference?

  “So what exactly do you want to know?” Sonny took another heavy drag and turned his dark eyes toward Johnny. Although Sonny’s face had fattened and sagged, those feral eyes still gleamed with danger. “And about that summer? Ancient history. If you need to know the truth, I called the cops ahead of time and told them about the church.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Old Hairy was drinking beer, remember? When I left you to baby-sit him, I went into town and called the cops.”

  Johnny asked the obvious question.

  “Why?” Sonny echoed. “Publicity. Didn’t take me long to figure out the media people weren’t going to help out by broadcasting our message. I mean, the entire valley’s out of power, they’ve got tapes from the Native Sons, and all of them report it as a blown transformer? So I decided you and Hairy could make a little sacrifice. I sent them an anonymous tip, figuring once you got caught at the church, the rest of the stuff would come out and I’d get the publicity I needed to bring some more people to run the attacks. Only you –” Sonny blew smoke out in lazy curls and sneered disgust “– you decided to run back home. And when they caught Hairy, they didn’t arrest him.”

  “He really joined a hippie commune?”

  “Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. You didn’t believe it back then, why start now?”

  “Then...”

  “They killed him, Johnny. Plain and simple. It could have been you they dragged to a mountain cabin and beat to death.”

  Sonny gave him a gold-toothed grin. Rumor had it he didn’t need a cap, just liked the looks of it. “That was the first time this mess splattered all around you and missed completely. Second time, it was me taking it instead of you.”

  James had moved beside Johnny. They both stared at Sonny. It was quite a performance. Of course, Johnny knew, performing had been Sonny’s strength, even before turning it to his advantage in tribal politics.

  “See, Johnny.” A timed pause. Another draw on the cigarette. “That fall, they came to me. It took them that long to put everything together. They came to me. Not you. You were second choice. They made me a deal. I took it. Which put me in, and they never had to make you the offer.”

  “They?” Johnny felt stupid. He was hanging onto every word coming out of Sonny’s mouth. He knew it. Sonny knew it.

  “The Emerald Canyon boys. Fits neat and tidy, doesn’t it? As that seems to be the reason you were both in such heat to get me here.”

  Sonny shot his cigarette away with a flick of his fingers. He noticed Johnny’s wince. “Five bucks, Johnny. I got five bucks that says you won’t be able to just stand there. You’ll have to track down the cigarette butt and make sure it don’t start a forest fire.”

  James leveled the shotgun and fired, all in one motion.

  Sonny stared at him in disbelief, then looked down at the hissing of air. Between his legs, the rubber of the tractor’s tire was shredded in an apple-sized hole, with the force of the air actually blowing Sonny’s pants like a flag in the wind.

  “You get that cocky grin off your face,” James said. “Find the butt yourself and stamp it out. Then get back to where you were and tell me about Emerald Canyon. I’m old, and in case you didn’t notice, I don’t have the patience I used to.”

  Sonny did as he was told. By the time he got back to the tractor, it was already tilted on a nearly flattened tire.

  “Not only is my patience gone,” James said, “so’s my aim. Meant to put that buckshot a couple inches higher. Maybe next time.”

  “No next time,” Sonny said. “All right? My heart’s in bad enough shape as it is.”

  “Emerald Canyon,” James said. “What was the deal they offered? And who were they?”

  “They needed someone in administration to make sure the casino transferred some of the profits. They needed someone to make sure there would be no problems in developing the real estate. Me. In return, they promised me whatever money I needed for my campaigns and a percentage of the gross profits.”

  “They?” James asked.

  “You don’t know? That’s the dumbest thing I –

  James used the pump-action to lever another shell into the barrel. “You’re not talking fast enough for me.”

  “Wayne Anderson was one of them. He was the one who handled most of the transfers. Bermuda bank accounts, Swiss bank accounts. He put up a great smokescreen for the rest of them. There were five more all together. Fowler, the sheriff back then, he was in on it too. A couple others.”

  “Who?”

  “Hey, I’m not stupid. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not stupid. Don’t you think I did what it took to find out where all the money was going?”

  “You’re starting to sound cocky again,” James said. “What’s that fancy word doctors use today? Vasectomy. That’s it.”

  He took aim just below Sonny’s belt buckle and thoughtfully repeated himself. “Vasectomy. Fast and simple.”

  “Remember Thomas King, the judge who got shot by his wife?” Sonny’s speech cadence picked up.

  James nodded. Who in the valley could forget? She’d pleaded self-defense, proved it, inherited everything, and moved to Hawaii.

  “King was one of them,” Sonny said. “And two county council representatives. Both of them are dead now, but the money keeps going to their estates, funneled in from offshore. Anderson and Fowler have a few things on me that made it politically stupid to squeeze them. Frank Evans was in on it, and he’s dead too. Now you see why I went to you for some spare change.”

  “No, I don’t,” James said. “Explain.”

  Sonny looked bewildered. “But you’ve got a Grand Cayman account too. I figure you’ve got close to six million in there. Which is why I came to you.”

  8:30 p.m.

  “Welcome home, my love,” the old lady said, closing the front door.

  His mother’s car was already pulling out of the driveway. She was on her way to an extended weekend in Las Vegas. She’d said she was going alone, but the boy knew better. His mother had found a new boyfriend. She wasn’t even bothering to call them uncles anymore.

  “It’s nice to see you again. How long has it been since you stayed?” She answered her own question. “Since you and your mother moved out of town with that awful man. I think you were only six then.”

  He shrugged. Six years old was forever ago.

  The old lady surprised him. She moved forward and engul
fed him in her arms. Her rose perfume choked him. It filled him with panic, and he fought to push his face away from her chest.

  “Let go!” It came out as a muffled shout.

  She did not let go.

  He half punched her stomach, and her arms dropped away. “That’s weird,” he said, sucking in air. “Leave me alone.”

  “Bobby?” There was a wildness to her eyes that disturbed the boy. He wondered if she was going to attack him. “Bobby...”

  “Bobby?” His gut response was rage. It filled him with a frenzy of remembered hatred. He shouted, “That’s not my name.”

  She took a stutter step backward, as if his voice was ice water thrown across her face. The glow behind her eyes faded. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Forgive an older person’s failing memory. You remind me so much of another boy I used to know.”

  The boy nearly put his hand over his nose and mouth. Her perfume really bothered him.

  “Let’s get you unpacked,” she said. “I’m sure you’re tired after the drive.”

  He shrugged. He didn’t intend to waste much time in the house. It looked like a museum: doilies on everything, old velvety-looking furniture, blinds closed on every window. The sooner he started roaming the neighborhood, the better.

  The boy brightened when he saw the location of his bedroom. It was a two-and-a-half story house, His room was at the end of a hallway on the second floor. With any luck, he would have a great view. In his suitcase was the low-power telescope he had received for his tenth birthday. Given privacy and much of the night, there was no telling what he might see through the windows of other houses.

  “There you are, dear,” she said, opening the door of the room and letting him step past her into the musty interior. There was an old-fashioned four-poster bed draped with a lacy bedcover. Beside the bed was a standing wardrobe closet. “Unpack and come down when you’re ready. I’ll have tea and cookies waiting for you.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  She closed the door. He set his suitcase on the bed and opened the bedroom window. He crawled out, found a drainspout, and climbed down to the yard.