by Draker, Paul
“No shit, Trevor. One of them was my mother.”
That was a surprise, but now that I thought about it, it made sense: a familial hereditary trait, rather than a racial or cultural one.
“What happened four years ago?” I asked. “How did I end up with your job?”
Her shoulders sagged perceptibly. “I was wondering when you would go there.”
“I’ve been a little preoccupied lately. But I’m not stupid.”
“When you assumed I was unqualified,” she said, “you weren’t being racist or sexist, because that’s not who you are—I know that now. You were just doing the math.”
I nodded. “There can’t be more than ten people in the world capable of doing what I’ve done here with Frankenstein. But it turns out, you’re one of them.”
I waved a hand at the desolate reservation land outside. “DARPA got funding to build a supercomputer and develop MADRID right here at Pyramid Lake. There are maybe twenty-five hundred Northern Paiute with sufficient blood quantum to be enrolled in the local tribe. What’s the probability that one of them would also just happen to be one of the ten people on the planet who could actually do this job? And she’s a natural-born microexpression reader, too? The odds of that being a coincidence are less than one in a hundred million.”
“Your timing really sucks, Trevor.”
I laughed. “I had this whole thing backward. You weren’t the last-minute PR hire, Cassie. I was. They hired me to keep DARPA from looking bad after you bailed out and left them high and dry. The Pyramid Lake supercomputer and MADRID were originally supposed to be your pet project. For the last four years, I’ve been keeping your seat warm.”
She stared straight ahead out the windshield, chewing at the inside of her cheek. “So where do we go from here?” she finally asked in a small voice.
She wouldn’t look at me. Strangely, I felt bad about that. It had actually been kind of a dick move on my part, bringing this up right now, what with McNulty’s death and everything. Cassie was right: my timing did suck.
“Where do you want to go from here?” I asked.
“To dinner with my family. And I hope you plan on behaving, Trevor. I really don’t need any more problems right now.”
“I’ll be a perfect gentleman,” I said. “Believe it or not, I’m capable of that, too.”
“Don’t do me any favors.” She angrily punched the radio back on. “I bet it’s nice, not having to live up to anyone’s expectations—to just do whatever you want, say whatever you want, and beat the crap out of anybody who doesn’t like it. Must be real easy, being you.”
I thought about Amy and Jen and how much I missed them both, and a sour taste filled my mouth. I swallowed and stared down at my feet.
“You’d think so,” I said. “But it’s really not as much fun as it looks.”
Neither of us said anything for a while. The setting sun turned the drifting high clouds into wisps of lavender and pink against the darkening blue mirrored in the lake below.
Cassie muttered something under her breath. I glanced at her, but her eyes were fixed on the road.
“I told McNulty, yesterday,” she said, in a voice so soft it was barely audible, “that I like working with you.”
I didn’t have an answer to that. But I couldn’t help thinking of how she had looked, curled up asleep in the beanbag, after she stayed with me to help Amy, who still desperately needed our help right now.
Cassie stared straight ahead, but her hands tightened on the wheel. The corner of her mouth twitched downward. She appeared to be bracing herself, expecting me to say something sarcastic or nasty, and that also made me feel bad.
“I like working with you, too,” I said. “We’re a good team.”
“McNulty asked me how the knowledge transfer was going… how soon I thought I’d have a handle on everything…”
The picture of a calendar rose in my mind again, my termination date circled in red. I just nodded.
Her voice got even quieter. “I told him if you got taken off the project, I’d leave, too.”
I stared at her in surprise. “When?”
“Not why?”
“No, I don’t care why. When did you tell McNulty this?”
“I called him in the afternoon. When you stepped out.”
And McNulty had still been sitting there stunned, with the phone in his hand, when I walked into his office. Her threat—forcing him to keep me on the project—had caved his world in. How? And after she hung up, who else had McNulty called about it?
Cassie’s knuckles whitened on the wheel. I glanced at her face, saw the hurt spreading across her features, and I realized what I had just said to her.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that,” I said. “Why did you tell McNulty you’d quit if I left?”
She waved me away. “You don’t care.”
“Yes, I do. Why did you say that to him?”
“Because I’m tired of being treated like a child and having people make my decisions for me. I’m tired of not being told things.” She glared at me. “Don’t think this is about you, Trevor, because it isn’t; I couldn’t care less who I’m working with. But I get to make that choice. Nobody else.”
“I think there’s something else they didn’t tell you,” I said.
“What does that mean?”
“Why is Homeland Security here?”
“That asshole.” Cassie’s jaw hardened. “He acted like I was some sort of anti-government Indian-rights extremist, a modern-day Ghost-Dance Wovoka, coming back to the rez under cover of my job to sabotage everything DARPA is doing here.”
I laughed, thinking of Roger’s constant conspiracy shtick, and wondered how his conversation with Bennett had gone. Probably just fine—Roger knew when it was time to shut up.
“It’s not funny,” she said. “Bennett asked me if I lured McNulty to the geyser so a bunch of my ‘associates’ could jump him. I almost called Gray to complain about that asshole, but I didn’t want to be a baby about it.”
“Bennett’s been out here lots of times,” I said. “But I’ve never seen him before. He and McNulty had a hidden agenda we didn’t know about.”
But I was thinking, Gray? As in Grayson Linebaugh.
“How do you know the senator?” I asked.
“Family friend. He and Uncle Jim go way back, to when Gray was a freshman congressman. He’s done a lot of good things for our people over the years. Keeping the Navy base open, developing the geothermal resources, bringing DARPA work here—none of it would have happened without him.”
She frowned at me, like she thought I was going to say something disparaging. “He’s been like a guardian angel for me ever since my dad… since Billy and I lost our parents when I was twelve. Even when I flaked on everyone four years ago and went back to California, Gray was very understanding. He helped me get the job at LLNL.”
“Why’d you run out on a hundred-million-dollar project here after he pulled strings and tailored it just for you?” I asked.
“Personal reasons.” She looked away. “Guy trouble.”
I laughed.
“Fuck you, Trevor,” she said. “Do you know why I decided to stay on Monday, after you acted like such a total prick? Because of the look on your face when I asked you about your daughter’s picture, that’s why. I felt sorry for you. But so far, it’s about the only thing I’ve seen from you that’s even remotely human, so maybe I was wrong—”
Something darted into the road up ahead, barely visible in the graying twilight beyond our headlights.
“Look out!” I yelled, instinctively reaching for the wheel as Cassie stomped the brakes.
The Prius slewed sideways with a screech of rubber. I felt the seat belt bite into my shoulder, and then we came to a stop, diagonally straddling the middle of the road.
We both blew out relieved breaths, and I turned in my seat and leaned past her to see what we’d almost hit.
“Iza’a,” Cassie said, and laughed sud
denly next to my ear, shaking her head with a jingle of earrings. My eyes tracked to where she was pointing.
Five yards behind our car, a coyote stood in the middle of the road, its eyes glowing like miniature reflectors. It stared at us with unnatural calmness.
“Izabui. How appropriate.” Cassie turned her face toward mine. “Coyote the Trickster. That’s you right there, Trevor. That’s you.”
CHAPTER 36
James Barry’s place was a sprawling single-story ranch overlooking the Truckee River, a couple of miles past the tribal fish hatchery. The plain, modest house that was the tribal chairman’s residence was painted a clean white, and the dirt yard, lined with cactus and other desert plants, looked clean and well-kept.
Cassie parked next to a sun-faded red Jeep sitting on the unpaved driveway. She turned off the engine and we stepped out, our shoes crunching loudly on the pea gravel. From the tree-lined darkness beyond the house, I could hear the soft burble of the Truckee River. On the other side of the road I could see nothing but barren emptiness—pale dirt gleaming in the twilight, beneath a sparse cover of sagebrush that climbed the sloping foothills.
I reached into the backseat and got out the flowers I had brought: a ceramic vase wrapped in a red bow and filled with thick, hardy South African proteas, purple desert lupine, marigolds, and desert paintbrush. I knew their names because I had Googled their pictures before Cassie picked me up.
She eyed the bouquet now. “You’re making me look bad. I thought you said you were stuck at home without a car.”
Carrying the vase, I followed her to the door. “Nowadays, you can order anything over the Internet and have it delivered to your doorstep.”
And luckily for me, someone who lived in my neighborhood had done exactly that. I figured their unwitting contribution to tribal relations was going to a good cause, but I gave the flowers a quick once-over anyway, just to make sure there were no inappropriate cards attached.
James Barry opened the door wearing a chambray work shirt and jeans. He shook my hand and gathered Cassie up in a big hug, asking her how she was coping. Then he led us through the great room and into the open-plan kitchen, where Christina—his wife and Cassie’s aunt—made a big deal about the flowers and hugged me. She was a well-spoken woman with broad cheekbones, a warm smile, and a piercing gaze that seemed to miss nothing. I wondered if she shared Cassie’s skill at reading faces.
A pair of large, prehistoric-looking gray fish lay on a cutting board on the granite counter. Christina picked up a fillet knife and began slicing large boneless fillets from their backs, drawing the sharp, narrow blade from head to dorsal fin with deft, smooth motions.
The thirty-inch fish, with their slimy skins and downturned sucker mouths, looked familiar.
“Cui ui—Pyramid Lake suckerfish,” I said. “Aren’t these protected or something?”
Christina smiled at me. “That’s why this is such a rare treat. Northern Paiute Numa people differentiate each tribe’s cultural identity based on their main food source. Here at Pyramid Lake, we are the Kuyuidökadö or cui ui ticutta—literally, ‘cui-ui fish eaters.’ But we haven’t been able to legally enjoy this part of our ancestors’ traditional diet for almost fifty years.”
Cassie went to the sink to wash her hands and help. I found it disturbing that the tribal chair’s family would be so matter-of-fact about poaching these endangered fish, but I kept my discomfort off my face. Still, Christina must have caught something in my expression, because she laughed.
“Don’t worry, these two are perfectly legal. Every year, the researchers down at the hatchery sacrifice a few and remove their opercular bones to build a profile of seasonal growth rates. They give the rest of the fish to the tribe, and we hold a lottery for which family gets them. This was our lucky year.”
She flipped the steak-size white fillets into a glass pan layered with crushed nuts, then turned them over to encrust the other side.
“Nevada pine nuts—another Paiute staple,” she said. “A friend collects and roasts these locally—trust me, the stuff from China doesn’t even come close.”
Moving with the quick precision of a TV celebrity chef, she slid a pair of shiny copper pans onto the heavy-duty stainless-steel gas range, and began tossing in ingredients she had arrayed in little glass bowls on the countertop.
James handed me a beer. “You’re in for a real foodie experience,” he said. “Christina’s nouveau-Native recipes are her passion—her cooking’s been featured on Food Network.”
“I feel pretty useless right now,” I said. “What can I do to help?”
“Billy’s got a couple rabbits on the barbecue outside.” Leaning against the counter, James wagged the neck of his beer toward the back door. “He might need a hand bringing them in.”
Out in the backyard, the river was loud in the darkness beyond the trees. I found Cassie’s brother, Billy, whom I recognized from the bar, standing over a big stainless-steel propane grill alongside the house, brushing something onto skewers of pale meat. Fat sizzled and dripped. I had my doubts about the ugly suckerfish, but the rabbit smelled delicious.
“You kill that guy?” Billy asked without looking up.
“Did you?” I asked. “They figured the killer was an ‘associate’ of Cassie’s.”
“Killer’s white,” he said. “They’re high if they think he was Indian. That geyser’s sacred to us.”
I moved up next to him and leaned over the grill. “Looks tasty.”
“Just shot ’em a couple hours ago.”
“With what?”
Billy turned his head and stared at me. His eyes were unfriendly. “A gun.”
I laughed. “No kidding, hotshot. What kind?”
“Seventeen Remington Seven hundred Varmint SPS,” he said. “A larger caliber like a three-o-eight wouldn’t leave enough rabbit to be worth skinning.”
I thought of Roger’s snide comments about my .223 AR, and how I needed to “man up” and get a .308.
“Know a good local FFL?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Me.”
So Billy was a federal firearms license holder—a government-authorized gun dealer—whom I could use to order what I wanted from out of state.
“I’m getting a Knight’s Armament SR-twenty-five ECR,” I said. “What would you charge me for the transfer?”
“Civilian version of the M-one-ten.” Billy snorted. “In Iraq, snipers and designated marksmen from my unit used ’em. That’s a pricey toy. What’s a yuppie like you need one for?”
I shrugged. “To shoot tighter groups. From farther away.”
He snorted again. “A six-thousand-dollar rifle ain’t the answer. It’s about the shooter, not the gun.”
Straightening up, he spread his collar and fished out a heavy knapped-obsidian arrowhead that hung from a leather thong around his neck.
“See this? Every couple months, the best shooters on the rez go out for a dawn varmint hunt. It’s kind of a tradition. First shooter that downs an animal from more than three hundred yards wins this and keeps it until the next time we go out. But I might as well carve my name on it, sigumuhu, because nobody’s been able to take it from me in three years. Unless maybe you want to try once you get your fancy new toy?”
“I don’t see anything fun about shooting defenseless animals,” I said. “You want to handle the transfer on the rifle or not?”
He turned over a skewer of rabbit to baste the other side. “Seventy bucks. I’ve got paperwork in my truck.”
I thought about what he had said earlier. “Marine Corps?” I asked.
He nodded. “Company B, First Battalion, Third Marines. You better hope Cassie never has any reason to complain to me about you.”
“You talk pretty tough for a guy who just sat there and let a dude insult his sister.”
Billy frowned at me. “What are you talking about?”
“Calling her ‘Pocahontas’?”
“That was her nickname back in high school,�
�� he said. “Cassie and I went to school with Ray. He didn’t mean anything by it.”
I thought of Ray’s kid’s car seat again, and turned away to poke at the meat on the grill. “Oh.”
The rabbit was ready. I picked up the platter sitting next to the barbecue, and held it while Billy used tongs to slide the pieces of rabbit off the skewers. Then we went inside.
Our plain-looking platter of barbecued rabbit looked out of place amid Christina’s elegant presentation of food, which lined the dining room table like pieces of art on white serving plates.
I ended up sitting at the head of the table, across from James and next to Cassie. I was getting a kick out of watching her. Around her relatives, she seemed younger somehow—a little self-conscious, like a shy high-school kid bringing a date home for dinner with the folks. It made an interesting contrast with the put-together, professional side of her I had seen so far at work. I thought about what she had said about having to live up to people’s expectations, as the tribal chair’s adopted daughter and a senator’s protégé. It sounded as though other people had been planning her life for her for a long time. No wonder that four years ago she had run away from it all.
I was pretty sure Cassie’s little act of rebellion yesterday was why I was sitting down to dinner at the Barrys’ table right now. I was amused, but also a little chagrined, by the realization that Linebaugh had been more than willing to accede to my twelve-million-dollar request mainly because he expected me to be gone by now, and Cassie to be the one benefiting from it.
I figured James had been in the loop for that whole thing, too. Since Cassie had threatened to leave unless I stayed, he had invited me to dinner to sniff me out and get a better sense of just how big a nuisance they now had to deal with.
“Trevor,” he said, “please tell us a little about yourself. I’m curious: what brought you to Pyramid Lake?”
I almost smiled at that.
“Not much to tell, really,” I said. “I’m a California kid, from near Bakersfield, originally—a not-so-nice little area called Oildale, better known as “the ’08.” Not really a lot of opportunities there, but I was good at math and computers, so I applied to MIT and got in. Moved out to Boston and worked my way through an undergrad degree in aeronautics, then a master’s in CompSci, and then a doctorate focusing on high-performance computing. Spent a year working at Lincoln Labs, but that wasn’t really the right environment. Then DARPA reached out to me and it sounded interesting, so I signed on and here I am.”