by John Hansen
I shook my head, but I appreciated Ronnie’s creativity at coming up with a clever punishment for the old bastard. I walked over and flipped the clay top back securely on the pitcher, careful not to touch Ronnie’s drops of urine on the edge, and then we shut down the kitchen and went upstairs to sleep.
Larry made his special pancakes that next Sunday morning and he didn’t say a word or show any signs that he was aware of our foul play – although Ronnie told me he made sure he was on hand to witness Larry and Phyllis’s pancake breakfast; and he told me he watched them carefully as they began to eat.
The next morning, I got a call that changed everything for me in Two Med, from the Bureau of Indian Affair’s office in Browning, so Greg was wrong about them not being interested in me. The call made a cold, nervous feeling sink into my stomach like a ball of concrete. Katie had answered the store phone when they called, and she had called over to me from the gift shop register that I had a phone call. I was stocking the store fridge, packing in eggs and milk and bacon from large, waxed refrigerator boxes; and I asked her who it was, wondering who on earth would be calling me at the store when no one I knew had the store’s number. I walked over to the phone figuring it was Greg or Dee possibly.
“It’s the police.” Katie said, looking at me with concern.
I froze in mid stride and just stared back at her as she held the phone. Larry or Ronnie weren’t within earshot, and there were only a couple of campers milling around in the snack bar area, so nobody heard.
I nodded to her silently, and wiping off my hands on my jeans, I took the phone from her with my heart now beating a hard rhythm against my ribs.
“This is Will Benton,” I said into the phone, glancing over at Katie who walked over to finish my stocking. I turned to the other side of the register for some privacy. “What can I do for you?”
The voice of a large, burley man filled the earpiece of the phone, his mouth sounded too close to the mouthpiece, “Will? This is Detective Olsterman, in Browning.” The detective had the touch of a southern accent, “en Brownin’…”
He continued, “I’m with the BIA, and I wanted to talk to you about Alia Reynolds. I got a statement from somebody that you knew her?”
“Yea, I knew her,” I said. No point in being evasive, I told myself; I’ve been wanting an investigation, after all, to find out who killed her. But not an investigation of me.
“Well why doncha come down to my office this afternoon and we’ll chat – gotta few questions for ya,” he said in a slow drawl.
“I don’t have a car.”
“Well we’ll send someone to getcha,” he quickly said back.
I didn’t like the sound of that, getting into the back of some cop car in front of the store.
“No, I’ll just borrow my friend’s car.”
We worked out a time for me to be there and I ran it by Larry, telling him the BIA wanted to talk to me about some hiker who had gotten killed, someone I had met. No point in lying anymore, especially since Katie knew the police had called for me. Larry seemed agitated at the news, and asked about the hiker and how I was involved, but I just shrugged and said I didn’t really know what it was all about.
As I got into Ronnie’s car, the coldness and nervousness increased in me as I tried to imagine how the BIA saw me. What had they been told, and by whom? Did Clayton say something about me to throw them off his trial? Am I going to need a lawyer? The idea still sounded preposterous – that I would ever need legal counsel living in the middle Glacier National Park.
I told myself it was all farfetched, that the BIA was just going through its list of witnesses; and I kept the fear out of my head as I started the car. No matter what this conversation with the BIA was about, I wasn’t going to let a chance slip by of trying to help find who killed her. Before I had left, I did call Greg at his office number, though, and left him a message that I was heading to the BIA’s office because they wanted to talk to me. It seemed like he should know.
As I pulled away from the store, I heard the transmission straining to switch into gear, and I wished I had a more reliable vehicle to drive to Browning in. But Ronnie’s car was better than walking; and I appreciated his generosity in lending it out whenever Katie and I asked. Larry had an old blue pickup truck at the store that was in good shape, but it was gone for some reason that day; and I knew he wouldn’t have lent it to me in any event – nor did I really want to drive his vehicle.
Ronnie’s car as usual struggled manfully up and over the hills on the main road, back and forth over the switchbacks and curves that led out of the mountains and towards Browning. I ended up making it to the tiny downtown area a little after four p.m.
The BIA’s building was a small, one-story, flat, aluminum-siding structure next to the county courthouse. It had a big window in the front, like it had previously been some kind of retail store in the 40’s or a hardware store or something.
I parked out front and went in. I walked up to a counter where a secretary was filing papers into a large metal file cabinet. The whole office looked dated and cheap, stuck in the 70’s with old metal desks, Styrofoam coffee cups, and dirty fluorescent lights. A dusty, beige computer in front of the secretary was the only technology I saw beyond telephones and file cabinets. There were a couple of men in uniforms in the room, looking like regular cops, but the patches on their sleeves looked different – a big seal with the government’s “Department of Indian Affairs” logo on it.
The secretary near the door told me to sit and wait after checking out my name with someone on the other end of her phone. As I sat down in a tiny lobby alone, I felt my nervousness rise, now that I was about to face the meeting itself. I felt like I should have prepared myself somewhat, arranged a few facts a bit, reviewed things so I could keep them on the killer’s trail. I wasn’t even sure what I’d say when the interrogation began.
I hated sitting there waiting to be called back; and I wished I had not come and just talked to the cop on the phone. I reached up and felt Alia’s metal arrowhead around my neck, almost as a reflex. I wanted to help the cops, and I was hoping they could shed some light on what happened, but I still felt like I was on enemy territory in that office. Maybe Ronnie had gotten to me.
And anyway, what did I know about Alia, and what could I tell them? Nothing that wouldn’t point back to our sleeping together the night of her death. A macabre and chilling thought occurred to me – would they have done some sort of test for recent sexual activity? Of course they would – they already have, I thought. Maybe the results had just come back, and that’s why they had now called me…
Eventually I was called back by the secretary, and I was led to a small office in the back. I was led into the room; and I sat down in a well-worn chair, old and leathery, in front of a big wooden desk with an amazing amount papers stacked here and there on it, in some places jumbled together. On the desk rested a couple of coffee mugs, two phones, a lot of paperweights and awards. A little black computer monitor was sitting at the very far side of the desk, as if it was reluctantly placed there merely out of obligation, and shoved aside keep it out of the way.
Finally a large man in a BIA uniform came in and sat down at the desk, nodding to me. His badge read “Olsterman.” Officer Olsterman seemed about 55 or 60, was heavy set, overweight, but tall – probably almost seven feet, I estimated – a huge human being and intimidating. He had a very round head, like a big egg, and a small face with hard eyes close together making him appear slightly dull witted, but still menacing – like a temperamental giant. He sported a scraggy, grey/white beard, which made his bald head stand out all the more. He had on the same uniform the others outside had, but without a tie or gun belt.
He settled himself in his chair with a sigh, introduced himself and offered me some coffee, and when I declined he said, “Well, we just have a few questions for ya.” He pointed over to a tape recorder on his desk, “We tape conversations like this, that ok?”
I glanced the ma
chine, not liking the look of it, and said, “Ok.”
He must have noticed my hesitation, because he showed me a wide smile and said, “It’s no big deal, Mr. Benton. We been talkin’ to anyone that knew her.” He switched on the recorder and pressed the red “record” button. “You did know her, didn’t ya?”
“Yeah, we had just met. But in knew her, yeah.” I watched the wheels of the tape recorder turning. Alarm bells starting going off in my mind – I was probably the only one they knew of that was with her the night of her death, and we had had sex, and whatever I said would be written in stone.
He asked me when we met, and how and where. I told him about her coming into the store that day, me taking her on a canoe ride, showing her around the place, and that we had hung out until late in the evening. I kept it a little vague. I was struggling between wanting to tell this cop all of it, the sex, my feelings for her, my desire, because I wanted to somehow relate to him what she meant to me, and to get him off his ass to find this killer who had destroyed a precious work of art. But I was also struggling with the desire to distance myself from the cop and his investigation. Yet as I spoke, I slowly felt a releasing of my hesitancy and a resigning myself to my fate, whatever fate would bring; it was like he had some subtle cop power to get me to talk into this machine on his desk. I glanced at its moving wheels again. It was still a relief to tell what I knew about Alia to this cop, like releasing the pressure in a tire that was overfilled, but I was still cautious, and I decided not to tell him we had had sex.
Officer Olsterman mostly sat still as a stone as I spoke. As I talked, he interjected a few brief questions to clarify some facts, but basically he let me ramble. After I had finished telling him about Greg visiting me at the store and telling me about Alia’s death, he picked up the line of questioning.
“So you said the last time you saw her was when she left your room late that night, but I don’t think you said when that was exactly,” he said.
Because I had no idea... But what could I actually say? Even I thought it strange that I had not heard or felt Alia leave the bed and my room that night, nor had I heard her on the stairs when she left – and I was a very light sleeper. Somehow, she had snuck out of the place without a sound, as if she had just floated out of the window like a ghost.
I wondered how I appeared to this cop as I sat before him – a fool, a possible killer, or just a nobody to be crossed off a list? One thing I was sure of, was that my story sounded too vague; a suspect would be that vague, that incomplete.
Officer Olsterman’s long years on the job and his cop’s sixth sense noted my uneasiness, smelled it, probably, and he now watched me with a new interest in his eyes.
As I sat before him, I sweated under the reality that one misstatement could mushroom this “fact finding” conversation (as Olsterman had called it at one point) into something much more serious, and divert the police off the proper trail, wherever the proper trail was…
“I don’t really know when she left me,” I said again, shrugging quickly. “She just left in the night.”
“You didn’t hear her leave?” he asked again.
“No.”
He glanced over at some notes on a legal pad beside his arm, then back at me. “Did you two quarrel before she left?”
I should my head. “No.”
He just sat in silence. I felt a strain develop in the air.
“Any reason why she would just leave in the middle of the night like that, Mr. Benton?” His tone had changed ever so slightly and had a new edge.
“Could have been anything,” I said. “I really didn’t keep track of time, but she may have left early morning – I don’t know.”
“Early morning? What were you two doing in your room that night?” He asked, watching me.
“Playing guitar.”
Why didn’t I hear her leave, goddamn it? I thought. Her disappearing like she did cast a different like on the whole night, and a different light on me. The more we talked, the more I felt like Officer Olsterman’s interest in me was growing – despite my whole intention to avoid that. And whatever happened to me aside, any attention spent on looking at my involvement was wasting what little powers the small police force in Browning had available to apply to this case.
Olsterman scribbled something on his pad. “Did she ever talk to you about anyone who wanted to hurt her?”
“No, nothing like that.” I heard frustration edging into my voice. “She had a troubled past, you know, and I was told she recently broke up with this guy Clayton, a drug dealer in town...” I paused and watched the officer’s face for a reaction, but he didn’t give away anything – just the same passive but steady gaze at me and at his legal pad.
“What kind of ‘troubled past’?” he asked.
I told him about her foster care experience, what little I knew; but I left out the story about the bathtub and I just said she had been abused physically. It seemed like a violation of her trust in me, somehow, even now, to expose that dark secret she had entrusted to me – at least to a cop I had just met.
He took a few notes on the legal pad. He then asked me if I had any kind of criminal record, and asked me about Ronnie and the rest of them at the store, if they knew Alia and similar questions. I told him they didn’t know her. The officer made a final couple of notes on the pad as I talked and then he slowly looked at his watch.
“Well I think that about does it.” He stretched his beefy arms back over his head, popping some vertebra in his neck and rolling his large head around slowly, and then he reached over and switched off the recorder.
The whole thing had gotten us nowhere. What had he gained from anything I had said? What had I gained? Now, despite my misgivings and apprehension in coming there at all, now that I was actually there, I didn’t want it to end so briefly without anything of substance being learned by either of us that afternoon.
“So how’s the investigation going?” I asked him.
The officer shrugged. “There’s not much to go on. We don’t have a lot of information at this point.”
He looked at me with the hint of a smile, or at least I thought I detected one. “Nobody seems to have heard or seen anything.”
I waited a moment, searching his face for a sign as to what he may be thinking; but he kept his face a mask of tired, grudging duty.
“Who found her body?” I asked.
He shook his head slowly, “I’m sorry – can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
He paused a moment. “Because I said so; and because it’s an ongoing investigation.” He reached down and brought up his coffee mug and took a sip.
“A ranger in Two Med told me that there was no sign on her of sexual assault. Is that true?”
The officer sighed for a second, and placed the mug back down and shook his head in exaggerated frustration. “Greg, I assume. You need to tell Greg that he should stay in the park and take care of park business – he’s not a part of any investigation.”
I considered that for a second. “Is there any?”
“Is there any what?” he asked.
“Is there any investigation? I mean, you said yourself you don’t have enough information, so where do you go from here?”
He looked at me with a face that said I don’t need some young punk questioning how I do my job. He cocked his big round head sideways a little and said, “What are you trying to say, young man?” He leveled his gaze at me a little lower, probably an expression he used regularly on young punks who back-talked him.
“I mean she’s been dead for a while and I don’t think the BIA has even been out to Two Med at all to ask around about her – at least not that I’ve heard. What about the campers and tourists who were around when she died? They’re long gone now.”
I felt my face was getting red as I rambled, and I felt a new rush of irritation with the feeling that nothing would probably be accomplished by this meeting. I wanted to vent all the frustration and impatience that
had been pent up in me since I had been told Alia was dead, onto this bald cop. Someone so good and passionate in my life had been ripped right out of my hands, and it was beginning to look like the cause, and the killer, would remain a mystery. And I could not take that... I would not take that.
“It just seems like everyone is just shrugging it off,” I said. “There’s this clown Thunderbird supposedly elected by the Blackfoot tribe to find out what happened – which is a joke. At least Greg seems to give a damn – and she was killed in the park. I mean this wasn’t a bear attack – how many violent murders like this could there be in Two Medicine? And is anyone looking into this Clayton person – she lived with him for Christ’s sake…”
I stopped and took a deep breath and looked out of Olsterman’s office window, shaking my head, trying to calm down. Officer Olsterman didn’t say a word, but just stared at me, his mouth a firm frown and his eyelids half-lowered.
I knew Alia deserved better; she barely had had a chance in life and now barely had a chance in death. I decided, right then and there, that I would find out what happened to her. I would recruit Greg, the only person who seemed to care besides myself, and find out what happened no matter what happened. If it cost me my two-bit job, so what? If it got me in trouble with some crazy drug dealers? Whatever. If I got hurt? So be it. Thrown in jail? Fine.
“You may think I don’t care about this girl, Will,” Olsterman said as if reading my thoughts, “but we take our job seriously, and we do our jobs seriously. You think this is the only crime we have to investigate? It’s not – not even the only murder. But make no mistake we are taking it very seriously.”
I looked back at the officer; he just seemed more tired than motivated, and his words didn’t convince me. At this point, I just wanted to get out of his office and go find Greg. I saw the sun was going down in the distance out past the buildings in town. I told the officer that I had to get back to the store and I asked if we were finished.