Blood Memory

by Margaret Coel

  Catherine McLeod was taking control, and that was unacceptable. He’d played her game. Followed her to the ranch, found the exact spot for the assassination, waited for her to drive past. But all the time, she operated on instincts that had nothing to do with logic, nothing to do with what should have happened. She’d disappeared somewhere in the maze of galleries inside the art museum, and he had lost her.

  Lost her in the jungle. But he wouldn’t track her through the jungle again. A fool’s game for inexperienced, pink-cheeked, nineteen-year-old privates with a few months of rifle training, not for skilled snipers, accustomed to picking off masked insurgents from the rooftops of Baghdad. The winning game was to bring the insurgents to the sniper, set up a place where they would want to be, give them a reason to come.

  He would have to devise a new plan, and that would take a little time. He would have to cajole Deborah, dangle the $50,000 payoff in front of her, but that would be easy. It was the idea of his client getting nervous, doubting his ability, that gave him a stab of worry. He had to work out the plan tonight; this had to be over fast.

  23

  After the woman’s footsteps had padded back down the hall, Catherine set up her office: laptop on the desk, notepad squared to one side of the laptop, cell on the other. Silence engulfed the whole place, as if she’d wandered into a vacuum. She walked over to the bedside table, turned on the radio, and found the jazz station. A trumpeter imitating Miles Davis. She left the volume low, went back to the desk, and tapped out the number on the cell for the Victorian house high on a hill across the city. One ring and Marie picked up, as if she had been sitting by the phone, staring at it, willing it to ring. The familiar voice brought the knot to Catherine’s throat again. She swallowed it back, and—odd, this—felt a sense of relief. There were still parts of her old life that remained. There was still Marie.

  She was working hard, she told her, everything was going to be fine. She shouldn’t worry. Catherine could feel herself forcing the words, willing them to be true. She could sense in the hush at the other end that Marie knew the real truth.

  “All right, dear. If you say so.” Both putting on an act, and what good actresses they had become, Catherine thought. She was getting to be an expert at being someone else, and so was Marie, the relaxed, unconcerned mother.

  “How’s Rex?” Catherine said, still digging back into that other life.

  “Getting along okay. He misses you.”

  Catherine winced at the sharp pain that stabbed her, as if she’d touched a hot iron. She was about to end the call when another thought bubbled up out of somewhere: “Did you ever know anything about my . . .” She hesitated a moment. “. . . natural parents?”

  Marie took a moment. Catherine could hear the sharp intakes of her breathing, followed by the quiet sound of resignation. “What do you mean?”

  “I found the name Fitzpatrick while I was researching Sand Creek. It sounded familiar. I was wondering . . .”

  “It was your birth mother’s name,” Marie said. Catherine wondered at the cost to her of uttering the word mother. “She was part Arapaho. I’m sorry, but we never knew much about your father. You never seemed to want to know about them.”

  Part Arapaho, Catherine was thinking. She knew how it had worked. Lawrence used to talk about the half-breeds in the early days of Denver. A lot of white men on the plains back then and not many white women. Often white men took Indian wives. Squaws, they were called. Thomas Fitzpatrick might have married an Arapaho woman. If so, they could be her ancestors. She closed her eyes and tried to picture her mother—a dark-skinned woman leaning toward her, wisps of long black hair brushing her face. She tried to recall the sound of her mother’s voice, but it was like trying to catch the melody of a song that she hadn’t heard in a long time.

  “There’s the box of your mother’s things in the attic,” Marie said. “I haven’t gone through it in years. I can pull it out for you.”

  “It’s not important now.” It was a moment, that was all, the faintest sense of connection to her own past when she had picked the name Fitzpatrick to hide under and had then come across the name of Thomas Fitzpatrick. She smiled at the irony. In her old life, she had always had a sense of disconnection, and now it was as if the past were trying to reach out and touch this new woman she was becoming. She told Marie again not to worry and pressed the end key.

  She checked the other messages. Nothing from Unknown. She could almost picture his expression when he learned she had checked out of the hotel. Talking to the doormen, trying to figure out which cab had picked her up—dark-blond hair, five feet six or so, slim, backpack, couple of bags. Surely you remember? It would take him a while. She shook off the safe feeling that had begun to wrap itself around her. She would never be safe until he was arrested.

  Lawrence had called, but she had no intention of returning the call. He was a part of the old life that had broken into pieces, and the pieces could never be put back together.

  She turned on the laptop. Twenty-nine messages in her e-mail box, and most of them junk. She scrolled down, clicked on the message from Violet, and glanced down through the black typed lines:

  Checked on Arcott Enterprises in Alaska, California, and Nevada. Arcott has been very busy the last four years. The company built five casinos. All operating and making a lot of money for the tribes. But I did confirm that the company raised money to build the casinos from numerous financial institutions. Alaska—Northern Investment and Global Financial Services. California— Majority Finances, Centurion Investments. Nevada State Financial Corporation. All of the financial institutions are located within the respective states. Arcott’s company manages the casinos, although that wasn’t public information. I had to make a few calls to some local newspapers. Here is where it gets interesting. I was not able to confirm that the tribes are the sole owners of the casinos.

  Catherine read through the message again. It could mean nothing, and yet it might mean everything. Arcott Enterprises depended on borrowed money to build the casinos, and Arcott worked with local institutions. What kind of deal had he struck with the tribes and the financial backers? Repayment from the tribal profits or an ownership stake in tribal casinos that the institutions would have been unable to build on their own? What kind of deal had Arcott struck for himself? And what side agreement had he made with the Arapahos and Cheyennes? There was so much Arcott had left out in the interview. But she hadn’t asked the right questions.

  She found Arcott’s number in her cell and pressed the dial key. The automated voice came on after two rings. Please leave a message. Someone will return your call during regular business hours.

  “Mr. Arcott, Catherine McLeod of the Journal.” She could feel a little rush of excitement that came every time she knew she had finally figured out the right questions that would cause whoever she was interviewing to blanch and stammer; every time she pulled up a page on the Internet or found a document in some dusty archive that some official had hoped would stay hidden. She could sense when she had stumbled onto the right track. “My sources say you relied on local financial backers to build the casinos in other states. Will the financial institutions you’re working with here have a silent partnership in the casinos? Will you have a silent partnership? My information will run in tomorrow’s story. I’d appreciate your comments.”

  She hit the end button and went back to the e-mail messages. Similar messages from several readers: She should keep up the good work. Nobody wants another casino in the state. Why are the tribes able to go against the people’s wishes? Who’s really going to make money if the casino is built? Well, those were the questions, and she intended to find the answers.

  She understood then. Erik, whoever he was, intended to kill her before she could find the answers.

  And yet, Newcomb and the TV reporters were also following the story. They would pick up the leads and follow them to the end, just as she was doing. Did Erik intend to kill every reporter covering the proposed casino?
It didn’t make sense. Unless there was something she knew that they would never find out.

  Here was something unusual. A message from someone named Sam Morrow: The Truth of Sand Creek. She hesitated a moment before opening the message. He could be Sam Morrow. “I’m a professor of history at the University of Colorado in Denver,” the message began. “I’ve been following your stories on the Sand Creek Massacre and the proposal to build an Arapaho and Cheyenne casino near Denver. You have neglected several important aspects, or perhaps you yourself have decided they are not important enough to include. In the interests of accuracy in history, I believe we should have a talk. I will be in my office tomorrow at 3:00 p.m.” Beneath the message was a telephone number and the address of an office on the third floor of the North Building on the Auraria campus.

  Something not important enough to include? As if she made decisions about what mattered and what didn’t. She felt a little sting of annoyance. She was a reporter. She reported the news, she didn’t make it. She hit the reply button and typed: “I will see you then.”

  She scrolled down to the message from Marcy at the governor’s office: “Briefing set for Monday, 3:00 p.m., Senate Office Building, Washington.”

  She would be there.

  Finally she dug the carton of hair color out of the plastic bag. Then she found a pair of scissors in the desk drawer, went into the bathroom, laid out the coloring bottles and tubes, and went to work cutting her hair even shorter until it spiked around her head and changing the color to dark auburn, becoming someone else again, someone she hardly recognized in the mirror after she’d finished the process. Medium height, thin-looking woman still in her thirties, but barely—God, she was getting gaunt—with dark reddish hair cut above her ears, a boy’s haircut.

  She went back to the desk and laid out her dinner next to the laptop. She pried the plastic wrap from the sandwich and poured a little wine into one of the crystal glasses from the tray on top of the dresser. The smell of hair dye invaded the room, and she flung open the window. It was getting dark outside, a soft grayness settling over the street and lawn. Yellowish lights glowed in the street lamps. Apart from the distant hum of traffic and a dog yapping somewhere, the evening was quiet. She settled back into the chair and glanced through the notes she’d made today, underlining certain parts she intended to emphasize for tomorrow’s article. Just as she was about to start writing, the cell rang. Unknown appeared in the readout.

  She felt her muscles freeze, her joints lock into place. She wanted to drop the cell, but her fingers remained stuck around it. Then another feeling started through her, like a slow-burning flame. She had to hear the sound of his voice again, listen beyond the words to what he was thinking. It seemed as if this were required. She pressed the key and waited.

  “Catherine? Peter Arcott.” Arcott’s voice boomed in her ear. She felt her fingers relax, her body sink against the back of the chair. “What do you want?”

  “Clarification of a few things in our interview,” she said, using the most businesslike tone she could muster. She pulled over her notepad. “My sources . . .”

  “Your sources? Who else have you talked to?”

  “I’m running down a story, Mr. Arcott. My paper’s contacted numerous sources. Is it true that you built the other casinos with local financial partners?”

  “If you’re asking if I raised investments to build the casinos, I’ve already told you that.”

  “Does that mean you intend to have local partners in the proposed Arapaho-Cheyenne casino?” The sandwich was already starting to dry out. She smoothed the plastic over the top.

  “I told you, the financial plans aren’t finalized.”

  “So you don’t deny that the financial backers may be local institutions or investment companies?”

  “Depends upon the terms.” She was scribbling everything he said in her own brand of shorthand that she’d developed through countless interviews. “I intend to secure the best terms to make the casino as economically attractive as possible for the tribes.”

  “Will the financial backers have a stake in the casino?”

  “Methods of repayment have not yet been worked out.”

  “You’ll take a finder’s fee for raising the capital, correct? Another fee for handling construction. You’ll also step into a lucrative position of operating the casino.”

  Arcott didn’t say anything for a moment. She could hear the air blowing through his teeth. “I don’t like what you’re insinuating.”

  “What am I insinuating, Mr. Arcott? That you and the owners of the land and the financial backers will make a great deal of money from an Indian casino?”

  “Last I heard from my lawyers, there’s no law against businesses making profits in legitimate business arrangements.”

  “Whose idea was it to trade Arapaho and Cheyenne settlement claims for five hundred acres?”

  “You already have the answer, but looks like it’s not the answer you’re after. Doesn’t fit in with your preconceived ideas that, somehow, the Indians are being conned. Nonsense. The tribes know what’s in their own best interests. My company is in the business of helping them to a better life. If you print anything else . . .” He waited a couple of beats before he went on. “I promise to sue you for defamation of character and slander. Are you sure you want to get into a lawsuit with me?”

  “I intend to publish the facts surrounding the casino proposal, Mr. Arcott. No matter what they are.” Before she could thank him for his time, she realized he’d hung up.

  She unwrapped the sandwich again, took a bite, and washed it down with a gulp of wine. Her whole system seemed to pounce on the food, and she realized she hadn’t eaten since the muffin and coffee she’d grabbed this morning. She hadn’t had a decent meal since he had burst into her town house. She finished half the sandwich and went to work.

  It took almost two hours to finish the article—writing, rewriting, checking her notes. Nibbling at the sandwich. Finishing off the glass of wine and pouring another. The faint smell of chemicals rose out of the empty bottle of hair coloring in the wastepaper basket near her feet. She’d been careful to stick with the facts, not cast any shadows on Arcott Enterprises, Denver Land Company, or anyone involved with the casino proposal:

  According to reliable sources, Peter Arcott raised financial capital from local businesses to build casinos in other states.

  Arcott declined to comment on the source of financing to build the proposed $300 million casino in Colorado. He did not deny that financing may come from local sources. Arcott Enterprises expects to operate the casino.

  Jordan Rummage, spokesman for Denver Land Company, owner of the proposed 500-acre casino site, said that the company expects to trade the land for Bureau of Land Management acreage in another part of the state. He declined to name the company owners.

  Senator Charles Russell’s office did not return the Journal’s call.

  She pressed the send key, feeling limp with frustration. Arcott Enterprises and Denver Land Company stood to make a lot of money if Congress approved a land settlement. But the tribes also stood to make a great deal of money. Who had initiated the whole idea in the first place? Arcott? Rummage? The tribes? Still so many holes to fill in, so much to learn before she could write the entire story.

  The ringing noise punctuated the quiet. Catherine picked up the cell and glanced at the readout. Philip Case. She jammed her thumb against a key. “Philip,” she said, and they were both talking at once. “How’s Maury?” “It’s about Maury.” “Is he okay?” And “He’s gone, Catherine.”

  Then she heard the sobs and the strangled gulps of air coming through the phone. She felt herself falling forward. Her elbow struck the edge of the desk. “No, Philip,” she heard herself saying. “No! No!” And in between the sobs, Philip saying, “His heart stopped. They tried to start it again. They tried. They tried, but it just wouldn’t start.” Then Philip’s voice, choked and muffled, coming from somewhere far away, “I can’t tal
k anymore.” The cell silent against her ear, and she was still saying, “No! No!” and sliding off the chair, the cell clacking against the surface of the desk, and the floor coming toward her, her knees scraping the carpet.

  Not Maury! It could not be true. How could it be true? How could the world be without Maury? Biking ahead on the path along the Platte River, and she, trying to pump as hard as she could to stay with him, and Philip shouting behind, “Wait up!” And just last Saturday night, Maury walking across the grass at City Park, hauling the wicker hamper filled with the gourmet dinner and two bottles of good wine, Philip hurrying beside him. They’d spread out the blanket she’d brought, eaten the dinner, sipped the wine, and listened to the jazz concert. Watched the sun set behind the mountains and the long streaks of orange and fuchsia spread through the sky. She’d understood then that Maury was kind. He’d taken pity on her, the recent divorcée, still getting her bearings, trying to figure out who she was and where she belonged. Let’s ask her along, he’d said to Philip, and Philip had plastered on the resigned expression that he wore all evening.

  She managed to crawl into the corner next to the desk. It seemed the noise of her sobs filled up the whole room, burst out the window, and filled up the outdoors. She clamped her knees to her chest, rested her head against the wall, and gave in to the sobbing and to the wall of grief crashing over her.

  24

  Harry Colbert waited as Senator Russell folded his bulky frame into the rear seat. The door closed with a soft thud, the driver got in behind the wheel, and the town car slipped back into the narrow street that wound past the lawns in front of the flat-faced brick mansions. The morning sun twinkled in the upstairs windows.