Not Dead Enough

by Warren C Easley

  She forced a smile. “Well, I intend to hold up my end of the log.” Then she took a sip of her coffee and stared into the space between us. “Might take those two awhile to come around, though.”

  I smiled and shook my head. “It could be worse. You could be dealing with L.A. cops.”

  She looked at me and cocked her head slightly. “You’ve had the pleasure?”

  “I used to be a prosecutor down there. Retired early. The city cops treated the county sheriffs like crap. A favorite pastime.”

  She chuckled and sipped some more coffee. “Seems to be the way of the world.”

  “What’s the C stand for?”

  She looked at me for a couple of beats with those eyes. “Cleta. But my friends call me Big C.”

  “My friends call me Cal.”

  We were on our second cup of coffee when Winona called back. I took the call out in the hall, telling her only that the police wanted to talk to her about Ferguson, without giving any details. She said she was free, so I gave her directions and told her to meet me in front of the building.

  Winona arrived wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and an oversized cotton sweater. Her hair was down, and she wore no makeup. She extended her hand, and I held on to it after we finished shaking. “Thanks for coming, Winona. Uh, I’m afraid the news isn’t good. Cecil Ferguson was murdered last night. Somebody beat him to death.”

  She withdrew her hand and stepped back like I’d slapped her. “No! Not again!” “What happened?” When I finished telling her, she said, “Why do they want to talk to me?” She had lost most of the color in her face.

  “Like I said on the phone, they know I was working on your behalf. So they want to see what you know and to cross-check my story, too.” I paused for a moment, searching for the right words. “When they realize you’re Nelson Queah’s granddaughter, they might consider you a suspect, as well.”

  “Me?”

  I laughed. “Right. You do have a motive, you know.”

  “Oh.”

  “They’re going to ask you where you were last night.”

  He eyes widened ever so slightly, which gave me a pang of discomfort. She smiled weakly and brushed a strand of hair from her face. “I was home. Alone.”

  “Fine. Anyone see you?”

  She shot me an annoyed look. “Not that I know of. What, I need to prove I was home?”

  I smiled. “They’re cops investigating a murder, Winona. They suspect everyone. I’d sit in with you, but I’m a witness in this thing, too.”

  “You mean as my attorney? Wouldn’t that look a little weird?”

  “It would raise some eyebrows, but you don’t need an attorney, anyway.”

  She paused for a couple of beats. “Uh, there is one thing…”

  “What’s that?”

  “I, uh, after you phoned me yesterday, I went over to the senior center to see Ferguson.”

  “You did? Why?”

  She scrunched up her brow and opened her hands. “I don’t know. I guess I thought maybe he’d talk to me if I came in person. I wanted to hear the truth, you know, from his mouth. Anyway, you mentioned he was on the fourth floor, so I figured I’d just take the stairs and pop in like you did. But no one was coming in or out, and I couldn’t figure out how to get in.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I left. But, uh, when I was standing there out front one of the staff members happened to come out. She asked if she could help me.”

  “Where did you go after that?”

  “Home.”

  “Okay. Just tell them the truth and you’ll be fine.” I took her inside and introduced her to Grooms, who escorted her up to the interview room. As she stepped into the elevator, she turned and said, “Cal, will you wait for me?”

  “You read my mind.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Winona Cloud came out of the interview with Adams and Hamilton with a forced smile that didn’t begin to hide the stress around her eyes. She told me it went fine, but I took one look at her and said, “Come on. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee and we can talk.” I wondered what could have happened in the interview to make her so uptight.

  “I think I’d rather have a drink.”

  “Sure. We can do that. You know of a place around here?”

  “I don’t know this neighborhood.” She paused for a moment. “Why don’t you just come over to my place? I’m just across the river.”

  On the way to Winona’s apartment, I called my neighbor, Gertrude Johnson, and she agreed to feed Archie for me. Winona lived in a loft on NW Flanders in the Pearl District. I parked next to her car in front of what was once a long loading dock and climbed steep stairs to the second floor of the converted warehouse. Drenched in late afternoon light, her apartment had work-scarred oak floors, exposed laminated beams, ducts and conduits fourteen feet up, vibrantly green plants in big pots and a profusion of art hung on a perimeter of gouged and chipped brick walls. The only separate room was the bathroom, and her bed was three steps up on a landing on the west wall. The place was as neat as a military barracks, and I found myself hoping she never dropped in on me unexpectedly.

  “Nice place.”

  “Thanks. This was one of the first warehouses to get converted in the Pearl. They stored whiskey here. If you breathe deeply enough you can still smell the bourbon.”

  I inhaled heartily through my nose. “Jim Beam, I think.”

  She smiled and her dimples appeared and then disappeared like tentative little whirlpools. “I don’t have any hard stuff, but I have a good Oregon pinot. You want some? That’s what I’m having.”

  I told her yes, and while she fetched our wines I walked the perimeter looking at the art—mainly originals with Native American themes. I liked her taste, an interesting mix of traditional and abstract works. I stopped to admire a watercolor of a woman in buckskins sitting on a tree stump. A pale moon hung over her right shoulder, and over her left an owl in flight was silhouetted against a lavender sky.

  “Some people save their money. I buy art.”

  I turned around and Winona handed me a glass of wine.

  “That’s a Dana Tiger. She paints Indian women, strong ones. That one’s a medicine woman. Don’t mess with her.”

  The woman in the painting gazed at me with fierce eyes, her left hand extended as if summoning the owl. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  We stopped at a cluster of photographs next. In the center was a large picture of Celilo Falls—the iconic image of two men dip-netting from opposing platforms over the narrows with the falls thundering behind them. On either side were hung a series of what I took to be family photographs. Winona pointed at a shot of an imposing woman with a serious, almost defiant look and a smiling child holding a small doll. “That’s Grandmother Tilda and me.”

  I leaned into the photo. “Where’re the dimples?”

  She smiled again, broader this time. “They’re there. You just can’t see them.” She pointed to another photograph. “That’s Grandfather Nelson in his Marine uniform with all his medals.”

  Nelson Queah had wavy, black hair, a strong jaw and cheek bones that ramped steeply to his eyes, which blazed against his coppery skin with the intensity of a man who believed in himself and the future. Something stirred in me, a kind of reinforcement of the admiration I felt after reading his letters. “He looks like a very proud man.”

  Winona sighed and smiled wistfully. “The picture was taken after the war. He’d just finished a purification ceremony.”

  “What’s that?”

  “In our culture we believe war poisons the spirit, and warriors return tainted. So it’s necessary to cleanse their souls before they re-enter their families and communities.”

  “How’s it done?”

  “Oh, our family had a shaman do it. You know, lots of sweat lodge time, fa
sting, praying, that sort of thing.”

  “Huh. We should do something like that for our vets coming back from Iraq. Might cut down on post-traumatic stress.”

  “There are many things white culture could learn from us. It’s a shame most of the teaching has been in one direction.”

  I thought of our battered environment and beleaguered wildlife. “Amen to that.” Then I looked at the picture of Nelson Queah again. “You favor him.”

  She nodded and smiled demurely. “I know. Everyone says that.”

  “It’s the eyes. You have his eyes.”

  She dropped hers for a moment, deflecting the comment. Then she showed me the rest of her family, including a shot of her father taken a few months before he was killed in a logging accident up near Mount Hood. She skipped over a couple of pictures of a young woman bearing a striking resemblance to her. I didn’t press it, knowing she had her reasons for ignoring her mother.

  At one point she put a hand on my arm, leaned into me slightly and pointed to a thin, young girl standing in front of an old shed. “That’s my favorite cousin, Mirrie.”

  “Philip told me he was your favorite cousin.”

  She squeezed my arm and laughed. “He did not. I hardly knew him growing up.”

  She let go of my arm, but the sensation of her touch lingered on my skin. I was anxious to hear about the interview, but I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and the wine had stimulated my appetite. “Are you hungry?” I asked.

  “Yes, but there isn’t a thing to eat here. I’m not domestic at all.”

  “We can go out,” I offered.

  “How about takeout? Do you like Thai?”

  “Can’t beat the Thai food in Portland.”

  After we called our order in and were sitting on the couch, I said, “You seemed a little tense after the interview, Winona. Are you sure it went okay with Adams and Hamilton?”

  She took a sip of her wine and held my eyes for a moment. I sensed she was running some kind of calculus in her head. “They took my fingerprints and a couple of mug shots—”

  “Not mug shots. They didn’t arrest you.”

  “Whatever. The white detective asked me if I was upset that Ferguson killed my grandfather.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I said I was upset about what he said, but I didn’t know for certain whether he killed Grandfather. I mean, he could have just been bragging or something. And then the black one says something like, ‘Well, I wouldn’t blame you a bit if you were upset, I’d be upset, too.’ I thought it was kind of sneaky.”

  I nodded. “They were trying to provoke a reaction.”

  “And they kept asking me if anyone saw me at home last night. Like I needed this airtight alibi to satisfy them.” She gestured toward the windows. “Is anyone going to see me in here? I don’t think so.”

  She looked a little flustered, and I got a sense of how she probably came across during the questioning. I was beginning to wonder how Adams and Hamilton had read her. “Did you order in last night? Make or receive any calls?”

  “No and no.”

  “Anyone see you park your car when you came back from the retirement home?”

  “Not that I know of.” She turned her palms up in a gesture of frustration. They don’t actually think I killed Ferguson, do they?”

  “Like I said, they’re trained to be suspicious of everyone. That’s what makes them so likeable.”

  She puffed a breath out. “The Gestapo’s more likeable than those two.”

  When the food arrived, we spread the cartons out on a round oak table in her kitchen alcove and helped ourselves to spring rolls with plum sauce, tom yum soup, fried noodles, and a curry and mango dish we spread over white rice. Winona picked at her food, and I ate for both of us.

  After dinner we talked for a while longer, and I decided to head for home. She walked me to the door, and when I turned to face her, a big tear hesitated halfway down her cheek. It glistened in the overhead track light.

  “You okay?”

  She dropped her head. “I’m just upset about everything, I guess.” She raised her head back up, and tears welled up in both eyes.

  Without thinking I hugged her. She sighed, and we stood there for a few moments in soft, tentative contact. I felt her quiver ever so slightly and stepped back. “No wonder you feel like this. You’ve been on an emotional roller coaster. Things will look better in the morning.”

  She sniffed. “I know.” Then she looked up at me, her eyes moist and shiny. “Do you charge extra for hugging your clients?”

  I chuckled. “I believe I put you on the free hug plan.” As I said that, footsteps sounded in the hall outside her apartment followed by a sharp rapping on the door.

  Winona looked puzzled and said in a hushed voice, “Who in the world could that be?”

  I shrugged, but I had a pretty good idea who it was.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It must have been a slow crime night in Portland for Adams and Hamilton to be able to generate a search warrant and find a judge to sign it so fast. I figured that if they came at all it would be some time the next day. After all, probable cause based on revenge for something that might have gone down fifty years ago would be a stretch for just about any judge. The fact that Winona had gone to see Ferguson probably tipped it. It looked like she was casing the place, after all. In any case, there they were, documents in hand when Winona opened the door. When he saw me standing behind Winona, Adams smirked. “Working late, counselor?”

  I shrugged. “Looks like you’re the ones working late.”

  It took the two detectives and three uniforms a little more than one hour to complete the search of Winona’s loft. She held up pretty well as they bagged the clothes in her dirty laundry hamper and most of her shoes, and she managed to shrug when they announced they were impounding her car. After all, she could walk to work. But when they went for her laptop, she exploded. “You can’t take my computer, damn it. It has all my work on it, my e-mail, my documents, everything.”

  “That’s the idea,” Hamilton said as he slipped it into a large evidence bag and labeled it.

  “When can she expect it back?” I interjected.

  “Our forensics guy should clear it in a couple of days. She can probably pick it up on Wednesday.”

  “Wednesday! I have work to do tomorrow,” Winona shot back. “What am I supposed to do? I’ve got a presentation to give, and it’s on that machine.”

  Hamilton shrugged. “Sorry for the inconvenience, ma’am, but that’s the best we can do.”

  When the cops finally left, we wandered into the kitchen area. Winona poured us each another glass of wine. She ran a finger along the edge of the table and looked at me over her glass. “What happens now?”

  “They’ll be looking for any forensic evidence that can connect you to the crime scene. You didn’t make it to his apartment, so no worries. The good news is they didn’t have enough to arrest you, and once they complete the lab work, you’ll be eliminated as a suspect.”

  “That’s a relief,” she said, but with a decided lack of conviction.

  “Uh, is there anything else you need to tell me about this?”

  She held my gaze, and her eyes flared for just an instant before she looked away. “No. There’s nothing else I can think of.”

  We chatted a while longer, finished our wines, and as I was leaving, said, “There’s one other thing, Winona.” She looked at me and arched her eyebrows. “I don’t want to frighten you, but you need to be careful. I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but two murders in a row is not a good trend. Keep your doors locked and don’t let any strangers in, okay?”

  She gave me an amused look. “Why would they want to hurt me?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. And that’s what worries me. None of this makes any sense.” I
searched her face to see if what I’d said frightened her.

  I needn’t have worried. Winona Cloud was clearly not one to frighten easily.

  ***

  You’d have thought I’d been gone for a month by the way Archie carried on when I got home that night. He spun around me barking wildly and yelping at a pitch so high it made me wince. I was reassured by his behavior that no one was lurking in the shadows, but I gave the perimeter of the house a quick check just to be sure nothing had been tampered with. I took him inside and gave him his weekly bone a few days early as a special treat.

  I went into my study, read my e-mail, and then scanned the online New York Times. I was wide awake, so I got out my notes on the Queah case and looked them over again. There were only two more names on my list that warranted checking into. The first was Timothy Wiiks, the young man who approached Queah about the corruption at the dam. I’d asked Philip to find him but hadn’t heard anything. I Googled his name and came up empty, except for the fact that Wiiks was a Norwegian name. Then I searched the online white pages and found nothing there either.

  Fletcher Dunn, the journalist who’d interviewed Queah just before he disappeared, was a different story. I learned he’d stayed on with The Portland Journal, which later became The Oregonian, and retired five years earlier. He spent the last fifteen years of his career writing a column called Dunn’s Doings, which judging from a few samples I skimmed, was a broad-ranging commentary on things going on in Portland and the state. I also found an address for him in Lake Oswego, a suburb south of Portland. None of the early Journal articles were archived online, so I was unable to locate the articles Dunn had written about Celilo Falls that were mentioned by Queah in the letter to his wife. I wondered if Fletcher Dunn would remember anything about the man he interviewed so long ago, the man who saw something in him to trust.

  The buzz of the day’s events finally began to wear off, so I took the back staircase up to my bedroom with Archie leading the way. I rummaged through my CDs for something mellow and slipped in an early Bonnie Raitt, recorded before she won a Grammy. I fell asleep somewhere in the middle of “Everybody’s Cryin’ Mercy.” But it was a shallow, restless kind of sleep, and sometime before dawn I did something I hardly ever do—I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.