by Eric Redman
“So Fortunato needed to kill the resort?” Kawika asked, recalling Tanaka’s comment: “Old dog, old trick.”
“Actually, he needed a third party to kill it,” Tanaka replied. “And at just the right moment, before final permits. That’s the point Cushing keeps making.”
Tanaka explained what Cushing had told him. Fortunato wouldn’t want his hyped financial projections to be what killed the resort. The investors would come after him. So maybe, Cushing reasoned, Fortunato had decided to provoke HHH into challenging the permits. Or let the tenants do it, those hunters. Or find an heir to the old chief to challenge KKL’s title in court. Anything to string things out and keep the construction financing stage from being reached.
“It explains a lot,” Tanaka told Kawika. “Shimazu might’ve figured out what Fortunato was up to. So he might’ve wanted Fortunato dead and for people to think Hawaiians did it. He knew about the HHH guys, Cushing says. Knew they were furious with Fortunato.”
When Kawika hung up, the message light glowed red. The Freestone operator said Madeline John had left him a message: “Meet at shop at nine AM. Come alone.” Hard to interpret that. Kawika hoped it meant good news.
Kawika looked over at Patience. “Ready yet, P?” he asked.
“Almost. This connection is slower than The Virginian’s,” she confessed, smiling. “I was wrong about that—but you’ve got to admit, the bed is better.” She had pages of handwritten notes beside her computer. A little hourglass, continually draining and refilling with pixels, rotated in the center of her screen.
Kawika decided to call his mother. He assured her he was safe, then asked to speak with his stepfather.
“Pat, do you know the U.S. Attorney for Eastern Washington?”
“Sure. Ernesto Gonzales. Ernesto Che, folks call him. Haven’t worked with him myself—he’s strictly a Fed, and they keep to themselves. Ernesto’s a Bush appointee, new guy in the post. I hear he’s good people. Why?”
“An assistant U.S. Attorney, Steven Kellogg—he was murdered.”
“Yeah, about five years ago. In Wenatchee, right? No indictments, no convictions. Feds never released names of suspects, of course, and they don’t tell us local prosecutors much. Case is still unsolved, I know that much.”
“Did you know this Steven Kellogg?”
“No, just knew he’d been killed. But Gonzales must’ve known him. Ernesto was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Spokane for dogs’ years. Hometown boy. Worked his way to the top.”
“Could you call him for me? Let him know I’ll be contacting him? I want to pick his brain about the Kellogg case. Might relate to mine.”
“Really? Wow, that would be something. I’ll call him first thing in the morning.”
“Thanks, Pat.”
“A pleasure, Sport.”
Patience shut down her computer and was ready to tell Kawika what she’d learned.
“Here’s the sequence,” she began, consulting her notes. “First, Fortunato was developing Fawn Ridge. The plan was to piggyback on the ski resort, but environmental groups challenged the ski resort’s water permits and won—unexpectedly, I guess. Right after that, Fortunato blew up the wintering shelter. The government announced an investigation. This Steven Kellogg was lead prosecutor.”
“Any mention of FBI agents?”
“No. FBI agents must avoid publicity, I guess. Anyway, Kellogg got the federal grand jury to indict Fortunato for destroying the wintering shelter. Lots of publicity. Then something happened: the government dropped charges against Fortunato. Case got dismissed. His development company pleaded guilty to making false statements, but that was it. Does that make sense?”
Kawika nodded. “It’s what the Feds do when they can’t nail you for anything else.”
“Well,” she continued, checking her notes. “Fortunato’s company filed for bankruptcy. Then a while later Kellogg got murdered. Fortunato must’ve been a prime suspect, right? Though probably they had other suspects too; Kellogg had been a prosecutor for a long time. No suspects named in the news coverage.”
“No hints from the Feds?” Kawika asked.
“Just cryptic remarks in the paper, like the FBI knows who did it, they’re getting the evidence together. No arrests, though. The murder case just sort of petered out, it seems. A few quotes from ‘sources close to the investigation.’ Like, ‘Sometimes you know who’s the killer but you can’t get the evidence you need.’ That sort of thing.”
“What evidence was missing, I wonder,” Kawika mused.
“I don’t know; no indication in the news. One more thing, though. A bunch of Seattle folks bought Fawn Ridge out of bankruptcy. All fifteen hundred acres. They gave it to the Methow Conservancy, the local land trust. The Conservancy preserved most of it as open space. But guess what? The Conservancy gave six hundred forty acres to Jimmy Jack and Madeline John.”
“That’s interesting,” Kawika said.
“Oh, and I should’ve mentioned, along the way Fortunato’s wife filed for divorce—Melissa Jane Fortunato, and she took back her maiden name, Melissa Jane Harding. That’s almost the only time Fortunato’s name turned up in the papers after Fawn Ridge went bankrupt.”
Later, in bed, they learned more. She’d been on top of him, rocking, her hands on his chest, when she whispered that she wanted to turn around.
“Oh,” he protested weakly. “Don’t get up, don’t get up.”
So she didn’t. Instead, she turned, carefully keeping him inside her. She settled down again, this time with her hands on his thighs, and rocked some more. As her excitement grew, she resumed the turn she’d interrupted, this time moving more quickly, with greater confidence, creating the unusual sensation of him twisting inside her, her twisting around him. Moments later, she collapsed against his chest, sweating, his arms embracing her quietly as their hearts raced.
“Now you know what a spinner is,” Kawika murmured.
“Now you do too,” she murmured in reply.
64
On Fawn Ridge
“You walk good?” Jimmy Jack asked. They’d met at Madeline John’s antique shop at nine AM and driven in Jimmy’s pickup to the still undeveloped site of Fawn Ridge, the former Rattlesnake Ranch.
Kawika nodded. “Yeah, I walk good.”
“Okay,” said Jimmy Jack, setting out with long loping strides. They were climbing a grassy hill up to the ridge line. “We’ll walk along the ridge to the end of the property,” he said. “I’ll tell you about the old winterin’ shelter. That’s it, Hawaii. Nothin’ more. You got it?”
“Got it,” Kawika replied.
“You know anything about Indian reservations?”
“Not much.”
“This land we’re on? Part of a reservation once, the Moses Reservation. Named for Chief Moses. He wasn’t a Methow. The Methows, we never got a reservation. We got tucked under Moses’s wing, like lots of other Tribes. But his reservation was big enough for all of us—ran from Wenatchee up to Canada, and from the Okanogan River to the crest of the Cascades. Methow Valley was right in the middle.”
“But there’s no reservation here now, right?”
“You see any casinos?”
“No. But I might have missed one.”
Jimmy smiled grudgingly.
“Secretary of Interior, way back then, he promised Moses the reservation would last as long as the Cascades. It lasted four years. Last time I looked, the Cascades were still here.”
“What happened?”
“First, Uncle Sam took back the whole north end of the reservation. Did it for some miners, up in the mountains. ’Course, the miners went bust, but Uncle Sam never returned that land to Moses. After he lost that chunk, Moses took his people south, waitin’ to see what happened next. Big mistake. What happened next was, the white man found gold in the Methow River. Silver too. Not up in the mountains—right in the Methow Valley. Uncle Sam tells Moses, ‘You’re not livin’ on that reservation I gave you, so I’m gonna take it back.’ Congres
s abolishes the entire reservation. Uncle Sam sticks Moses and a bunch of Tribes on the Colville Reservation.”
“The Methows too?”
“Methows too. Uncle Sam picks Moses to run the Colville Reservation. Consolation prize. Moses invites his buddy Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce to come live with him. Really pisses off the Colvilles. See, the Nez Perce used to kill Colvilles, before the Army run ’em off.”
Kawika wouldn’t let Chief Joseph distract him. “That’s not the end of the story.”
“No, it ain’t the end of the story. Because the Great White Father, he sets it up so any Indian who don’t want to follow Moses to the Colville, well, that Indian can get land from the old Moses Reservation. One square mile. You know how much that is, Hawaii?”
“A square mile? A mile on each side?”
“You’re a genius, Hawaii. A square mile is six hundred and forty acres. But almost no one took it.”
“Why not?”
“Because the Indian didn’t get to choose his own square mile; the white man chose it for him. We still got cliffs around here called Indian Henry’s Choice—big old cliffs, filled with rattlers.”
They had reached a ridgeline—the ridge of Fawn Ridge. Kawika cast his eyes over the sweeping view as he waited for Jimmy to resume. Looking north, Kawika saw the deep Methow Valley girded with high peaks white with snow and glaciers, running in parallel lines up past the Canadian border. To the west he saw the jagged summits of the Cascade Sawtooth. To the east, high forested hills. To the south, more of the valley, more mountains. A stunning panorama.
“Now about the winterin’ shelters,” Jimmy continued. “The Methows lived here thousands of years. They hunted and fished, gathered plants and berries. Winters, they just dug in, covered up, waited it out. Took a lotta work—these shelters were big ol’ pits with rock walls. The old people, they picked the best sites, where the game wintered too. When they needed fresh meat, they popped their heads out, killed a deer or a moose, dragged it inside.
“Well, about two hundred years ago, the Methows got horses,” Jimmy went on. “Soon they couldn’t live without ’em. But horses couldn’t winter here: too cold, no food. So every winter the Methows just headed south with their horses and fell in with Moses’s people. Abandoned the winterin’ shelters. Never used ’em again.”
“So why would anyone destroy an old shelter if he found one on his land?” Kawika asked. “You’d think Fortunato could’ve made it a sort of feature of the resort.”
“He thought of that. But then he learned somethin’. The Great White Father, he made a special rule for the Methows. A Methow Indian could pick his own square mile, if it had a winterin’ shelter on it. The shelter proved his tie to the land through his people, see? And you remember how big a square mile is, Hawaii?”
“Six hundred forty acres, you said.”
“Right. And how big was Fawn Ridge?”
“Fifteen hundred acres, wasn’t it?”
“Very good, Hawaii,” Jimmy replied. “So figure it out. Your Athabascan buddy Ralph stood to lose almost half of Fawn Ridge because of one old shelter.”
“Wait—you mean a Methow Indian could still claim that land today?”
“That’s one way of lookin’ at it. The other way is, the law never allowed a white man to get title to land with a Methow winterin’ shelter on it. Any white man on that land, he was a squatter. And your Apache friend, he was fucked, thanks to that shelter. He was developin’ a resort, and you can’t develop a resort without ownin’ the land. You probably know that.”
“So I’ve heard,” Kawika said, meeting Jimmy’s sidelong glance.
“But Ralph didn’t understand,” Jimmy resumed. “Not at first. He found the shelter and thought, ‘Hey, somethin’ to help sell real estate.’ Like ‘Now you can winter where the Lost Tribe wintered’—that sort of thing. So he shot his big mouth off. Shoulda kept quiet, just bulldozed the sucker. Once he learnt how the shelter messed up his title, he bought some dynamite, blew it sky high. That got attention. The man always had big plans, yet he never did slow down to think.”
Jimmy paused, as if about to add something. But then he said simply, “And that’s the last thing I’m sayin’ about that Assiniboine. He was a hothead and a dumb fuck.”
“He—” Kawika began.
“Yes, here we are at the end of the property. Time to turn around.”
On the way back, Jimmy talked about the land. “This land, when it was Rattlesnake Ranch, it was a mile wide and better’n two miles long.”
“Where’s the wintering shelter?”
“You just breathed some of it. Sky high means somethin’ when you’re dynamitin’. Anyway, the Conservancy, they give me and Madeline some land. Wanted us to have it because of the shelter—also so I’d look after the rest of their land here. They ain’t developin’ it, they’re preservin’ it. So I got me a payin’ job. I do a bit of irrigation, same as I used to.”
“I thought the water rights—”
“The Conservancy ain’t greedy. They’re just usin’ what the ranch used before Ralph. And mostly I’m fightin’ weeds without no irrigation. No chemical sprays neither. See, you break the sod out here, you’re gonna get weeds. The trick is to keep ’em down with no water. I want to find the best grass for buildin’ sod again. Somethin’ that don’t need nothin’ but rainfall and snow. What is that? Blue bunchgrass? Tufted wheatgrass? Don’t know yet. But I aim to find out.”
Further on, he pointed to a ravine where saplings grew in individual wire cages to protect them from deer. “Plantin’ native trees where they grew once,” he said. “Got some serviceberry in there too. Good bird habitat.”
When he talked about restoring land, Jimmy sounded almost rhapsodic. He explained about vegetative cover: what vegetation different animals favor, the distances from cover they feel safe venturing. He described working with local farmers to intersperse their fields with small groves of trees, lines of shrubs, patches of longer grass—all to provide more cover for native animals.
“You need an assistant?” Kawika asked, jokingly. “Or maybe a business partner?”
“You applyin’ for the job?”
“No, but I know a woman who’d love to work with you.”
“The woman you’re with?”
“Your wife mentioned her?”
“Yeah. Madeline liked her, I guess.”
“She liked Madeline too.”
“Cats, probably.”
“Probably.”
“So, that woman or another one?”
“Another one, actually. A Native Hawaiian. She wants to reforest an entire island.”
Jimmy turned to Kawika and laughed. “Hell,” he said. “That’s probably more than fifteen hundred acres. Have her give me a call. We could compare notes.” He handed Kawika a simple business card:
Jimmy Jack’s
Methow Valley Land Repair
&
Wildlife Restoration
P.O. Box 5454
Winthrop, Washington 98862
(509) 555-5454
Kawika took the card and read it. “I see you matched your box number and your phone number,” he said. “That’s helpful. Is it easy to arrange?”
“Joe Crane, a guy at the phone company back then, he was helping the Feds with their investigation—he did it for me,” Jimmy Jack replied. “Had a friend at the post office too. It’s Madeline’s birthday: May 4, 1954. That’s why I picked them numbers. Easy to remember.”
Kawika thought about it: 5454. 5/4/54. May 4, 1954.
“You have cell phone reception here?” he asked suddenly.
“Not down here, but back on the ridge.”
“Excuse me,” Kawika said. “I’ll be right back.” He hiked quickly up to the ridgetop and called Patience at the Freestone.
“P,” he said, “Remind me, what date was Steve Kellogg murdered?”
“Let me see,” she replied. “Here it is: August 9, 1998.”
Kawika stood silently, thin
king hard. August 9, 1998. 8/9/98. 8998. Frank Kimaio’s number: 8998.
“Kawika?” she inquired, breaking his concentration. “I have a question for you. Do you know about Bill Harding?”
“Who’s Bill Harding?”
“He was Melissa Harding’s brother. Melissa Jane Harding—Fortunato’s wife. So Bill Harding was Fortunato’s brother-in-law. The guy who sold Rattlesnake Ranch to Fortunato. You won’t believe this: Bill Harding drowned, Kawika. He went fishing alone, and he fell out of his boat. Does that sound familiar?”
“He drowned?”
“He drowned in that lake right over there,” said Jimmy, suddenly pointing over Kawika’s shoulder. Startled, Kawika jumped and spun around, dropping his cell phone. Jimmy bent, retrieved the phone, handed it back. He’d walked up right behind Kawika, unseen and unheard.
“Jesus, Jimmy, you scared the shit out of me.”
“You said you walk good, Hawaii. But you don’t. You walk noisy.”
65
On the Road
Kawika guessed Jimmy Jack would call Marshal Hanson and that Hanson would run Kawika right out of town. Which is exactly what Hanson did. By the time Kawika got to the Freestone, the marshal and Patience were sitting in the lobby.
“Your bags are packed, Detective,” the marshal said. “Time you hit the road. I warned you, if you poke around about Ralph Fortunato, we really can’t have you here. Not right now. Someday we’ll welcome you and Ms. Quinn back to the Methow. But that day’s not here yet.”
Kawika considered what he might say. He decided to say little.
“Okay. Can’t blame a lawman for trying, Marshal. But I guess that’s it for now. C’mon, P. Let’s head down to Wenatchee, get you on a plane.”
Hanson smiled tightly and nodded to each of them.
“Oh, one thing,” Kawika said, turning at the door. “Okay with you, Marshal, if we take the East Side Road instead of the highway? I’d like Ms. Quinn to see that side of the river.”