Blood Memory

by Margaret Coel

  Senator Adkins interrupted. “I’ll pledge to do everything in my power to make certain that any such rider does not leave the Congress.”

  “I’ll make the same pledge.” The voice came from the group of senators next to Russell. Other senators were glancing at one another and nodding.

  “This briefing is over.” Senator Adkins rose from his chair and started for the rear door, but the other senators were circling around, patting him on the back. Russell remained seated for several moments before he got to his feet, Colbert lunging forward to support his arm. He guided the old man out the door past the knots of senators and staff.

  “Well, I’m disappointed.” Dennis Newcomb shouldered next to Catherine in the corridor. “Frankly, I was looking forward to a real classy resort and casino close to home. Governor never asked me.”

  Catherine stopped and turned toward him. She waited until two of the senators, trailed by staff, had walked by. “Who do you think would benefit most?”

  “The tribes, of course.”

  “Read my story tomorrow, Dennis. You might learn something.”

  30

  Catherine carried the steaming latte through the coffee shop and out onto the sidewalk. She sat down at a table in front of the plate glass window and took a sip of the foamy milk floating on top of the coffee. Most of the other tables were occupied. A couple of young mothers, strollers pulled in close; a realtor or banker or investments counselor poring over papers with a worried-looking man and woman gripping their coffee cups; some kind of businessman working at a laptop, a couple of other people chatting on cell phones.

  From her table, she could see anyone entering or leaving the shop and still keep an eye on the street and the sidewalk. The need to watch had come over her the minute the plane had landed in Denver. It was like an armor she’d left at the gate and had to take up again. Erik would be here waiting for her, she was certain of that. She was close now. She was close to the end of the story that somebody didn’t want her to write.

  She’d written today’s story on the plane, quoting Whitehorse and YellowBull and Arcott, Senator Russell and Governor Lyle, and the Arapaho attorney from the Wind River Reservation. “I’m confident we have stopped this attempt to override the wishes of our people in its tracks,” the governor had said outside the briefing room. He was grinning; there was a bounce in his step when he’d walked away. It had made sense, the entire complicated proposal nothing more than an excuse to bring a casino into a state that didn’t want it. Still Senator Russell had been around long enough to know how to cajole and arm-twist and cash in favors. Even as she had typed “end,” she’d understood that the ending still waited to be written.

  Catherine took another sip of latte and watched Violet steer a white sedan alongside the curb. Then she was coming across the street, her bag tight under one arm, as if she had just come from an ATM where she had withdrawn her life’s savings. There was a little breeze, a coolness that promised to cut through today’s heat, and her blond hair streamed backward over her shoulders. She looked pale in the sunshine. Big round sunglasses shielded her eyes.

  She was almost to the front door when her head snapped around. “There you are,” she said, walking over and setting the bag on the table. “You’ll find the title report in the inside pocket. Frankly, I don’t see how it will prove anything. I’m going to get some coffee.”

  She disappeared inside the shop as Catherine opened the bag and pulled out a folded sheaf of white pages. She flattened them on the table. She recognized Violet’s handwriting on the note attached to the first page: Title Record, followed by the legal description of the five hundred acres. Arcott might have chosen any parcel of land in the vast emptiness of the plains, she thought, but this was the land he wanted.

  She glanced down the top page. Title transferred to Denver Land Company in 1992. Previous owner: West Associates. Nelson Rummage, agent of record. Title transferred via quick claim deed. Whoever owned the land had simply transferred the title into a different company.

  She began flipping through the other pages, running her eyes down the lines of black type. A series of transfers from one company to another— 1958, 1932, 1901—all by quick claim deeds with agents’ names that she didn’t recognize.

  Here was something. At the top of the page, in black cursive, were the words: The United States of America. Then came a dense paragraph of nineteenth-century legal jargon describing the northwest quarter of a section of land in Colorado Territory containing five hundred acres. Now, know ye, that the United States of America, in consideration of the premises and in conformity with several Acts of Congress Do Give and Grant unto SR Associates. At the bottom was the signature: Ulysses S. Grant, President of the United States of America. The date was the tenth day of May, 1876.

  SR Associates. The company name in black type, as innocuous as all the other company names. Catherine shut her eyes and summoned the image of the sepia photograph hanging on the wall of the study in the Stern Mansion. Leland Stern and Ethan Russell posing in front of a two-story brick building, faded white shirts and black string ties and wide-lapelled jackets, grins on their faces, the black letters painted over the door: SR Associates. The original real estate partnership between the Stern and Russell families, Lawrence had told her on the first night he had brought her to dinner at the mansion. Even then—Lawrence walking her up and down the hallways, in and out of the library and living room and sun room, identifying all the serious faces of his ancestors that peered down from the portraits on the walls—even then she had sensed Elizabeth Stern’s disapproval, standing apart, watching from the end of a corridor.

  Lawrence had talked on and on: SR Associates, one of the first companies formed in the year Colorado became a state. Offices in the building that his great-grandfather and Ethan Russell had constructed on Market Street. New office building’s on the site now, he’d said. You’ve seen it, haven’t you? Beautiful building. Almost fully leased.

  “So? Was I right?”

  Catherine opened her eyes as Violet slipped into the chair across from her. “I looked up the names of the agents. All attorneys. So the title record doesn’t really prove anything. We still don’t know who owns the five hundred acres.”

  That wasn’t true, Catherine was thinking. Lawrence and his grandmother and Senator Russell owned the land. She moved the cup of latte halfway across the table. Still the odor floated back; her stomach was churning. She was afraid she would be sick.

  “You okay?” Violet leaned over the table. “Maybe you should eat something. Shall I get you something?”

  “No. No,” Catherine said. “I don’t want anything.”

  “Wait a minute.” Violet removed her sunglasses and folded them. She reached out and tapped the title record. “You recognize one of the companies or the name of one of the attorneys, don’t you? Tell me, Catherine. Who is it?”

  Catherine looked away. The nausea was rising in her throat, and everything seemed blurry—the people at the other tables, the cars parked at the curb, the red sedan crawling past. The breeze had died back and the air was hot, suffocating. She forced herself to turn back. “The Sterns and the Russells own the land,” she managed. “My ex-husband owns the land.”

  “You mean . . .” Violet slumped in the chair. “Why, Catherine? Why would he hire someone to kill you? Any reporter could have found out who the owners are. I mean, what about Newcomb at the Mirror?”

  “He would have to dig through a lot of historical records, make a lot of connections,” Catherine said. “It could take time. Congress might have approved the settlement claim and the casino could be halfway built before he stumbled onto the owners.” She hurried on, trying to make sense of it. “Maybe they just wanted the deal done before anyone found out who was behind it. It would look bad when the truth came out. Senator Russell would have pushed through a deal that let him exchange land that he and his old friends own for even more valuable land. But Russell would be out of office. Eventually the whole matter wo
uld just fade away.”

  And yet something felt odd, not quite right. They had so much to lose! The respect accorded the old families, the reputations, the traditions, and the legacy. All in the hope of acquiring more valuable land. Catherine had the sense that she was circling a mine shaft sunk into the depths of a mountain. She could see the entrance, but she couldn’t see down into the darkness.

  There had to be something else.

  She folded the pages of the title record and got to her feet. “Listen, Violet,” she said. “Don’t mention this to anyone.”

  “Marjorie?”

  “Not yet. This doesn’t prove anything.”

  She waved the wad of pages over the table, stuck them in her bag, and started to walk away, Violet’s voice trailing behind her. “Be careful.” Not until she got into the Taurus that she’d left near the corner of a parking lot, hidden from the street by a red delivery truck, did she open her cell and tap out Norman’s number. The engine came alive when she turned the ignition, the low hum blended into the ringing noise in her ear. Then Norman’s voice: “What is it, Catherine?”

  “I’m on my way to the Indian Center,” she said. “I think you’d better meet me there.”

  “Well, that’s a problem.”

  “What shall I write, Norman? That you cut a deal with Lawrence Stern and Senator Russell? A 500-acre parcel of land, in exchange for what? More valuable land? Or was there more to it than that?”

  “I’ll see you there.”

  The white numbers on the dashboard clock read 10:27 a.m. She would be at the Indian Center in twenty minutes.

  Catherine expected him to be late. She would arrive, pour a cup of coffee in the cafeteria, and station herself at a table where she could see the entrance. She would have a few minutes to untangle the thoughts that jumbled together, the craziness of them. She’d spent six years as Mrs. Lawrence Stern, trying to cocoon herself in his world, as if she belonged, and yet she didn’t know him at all. He was a man of risks, that was true. He’d taken a big risk to develop large buildings, and he’d taken a big risk to marry her. But when the buildings didn’t pay off, he’d divorced her. Which had left him free to marry the daughter of a billionaire.

  As for Senator Russell—there was a man she knew nothing about. Exchanged a few nice-to-see-yous at the country club or some gala fund-raiser, and always the old man was looking past her, expecting a more appropriate woman to materialize beside Lawrence. And his office had not returned her calls.

  Still the idea that Lawrence or Senator Russell would hire a professional killer to stop her from reporting that they owned the five hundred acres and had made some kind of private deal with the tribes seemed so out of the way of things, so big and dense that she couldn’t reduce it to something she could comprehend. Still, a killer who called himself Erik, with yellow hair and narrow shoulders, had come for her. He had killed Maury.

  She spotted Norman as she came through the front door of the Indian Center. At the far end of the cafeteria, seated at a table apart from the other tables clustered in the center of the room. A handful of people were working behind the lunch counter. Sounds of a faucet running, plates scraping together. A couple of kids sat at one table over plates of sandwiches. The odors of peanut butter drifted toward her as she walked past.

  Norman was half to his feet, leaning forward, balancing himself against the edge of the table. He watched her with hooded eyes, shadowed under bushy black eyebrows. She sat down across from him, plopped her bag on the table, and took out the title records. She pushed the folded pages across the table.

  “The names of the owners of the land will be in tomorrow’s paper,” she said.

  Norman made no move to pick up the pages. They lay like road kill between them. “Tell me the rest of it, because . . .” She bit at her bottom lip; she could taste the blood. “Because I need to know whose idea this was.”

  He clasped his hands together and looked down, appealing to the table, the floor. “They came to us, all right?”

  “Who?” Catherine set her notepad on the table and started writing.

  “Your ex. Colbert from Senator Russell’s office.” Norman glanced up. “Said they had a surefire deal, get us a casino, a lot of money coming in every month. All we had to do was go along, file a new claim with the BIA for all the land stolen from us. Said we’d be working with Arcott Enterprises. Peter Arcott had gotten lands for tribes in other states.” He smiled to himself and nodded, as if this were amusing. “He’d already talked to Senator Russell, made sure Congress would give us five hundred acres for a first-rate hotel and casino. Everything was legitimate. Hell, I never questioned whether it was legitimate. Colbert was sitting right there, laying it all out. The senator’s right-hand man.”

  “So you went along? Willing to exploit what had happened to our people at Sand Creek.” She stopped writing and looked at the man across from her. The word “our” still clung to her tongue. It had felt natural. “How did you convince the elders?”

  “You know how poor our people are? You know how most of ’em live every day? Lucky to get some food to feed the kids, a little gas to get to some low-paying job that’s gonna lay ’em off tomorrow, and that’s if they’re lucky enough to get the damn job in the first place. Wanting more, you know, for the kids. Wanting things to be better.” He shoved his clenched hands into the middle of the table and leaned toward her. She started writing again. “You want to know the truth? I wanted the casino more than I ever wanted anything in my life. It was like a dream, and I wanted it to come true. There’d be jobs for any Arapaho or Cheyenne that wanted ’em. We’d get millions of dollars every year from our share.”

  He snapped backward and, folding his arms across his chest, focused on some point across the room. There was the sound of footsteps behind her, people coming in for lunch. “Our share,” she said. And this was it, she knew, this was what was hidden in the darkness. “Who else would share the casino profits?”

  “Stern and Russell. They’d put up the land.”

  “They planned to trade the five hundred acres for even more valuable land.”

  “Make it easy that way, your ex told us. No landowner to fight Congress over condemning the land. They’d offer the land for a trade. Just lookin’ out for the poor Indians, he said, and I admit that got my dander up, ’cause they were lookin’ out for themselves.”

  Perfect, Catherine was thinking. She finished jotting down what he had just said and added her own thoughts: Casino spitting out millions every year, cash flow no longer a problem. Lawrence could continue developing large commercial and residential complexes, independent of his new wife’s finances, and Senator Russell could retire to his ranch, a man assured of wealth.

  Norman was saying something about how he and the elders had gone along, kept quiet, because it was good for the tribes. Everything was gonna work out, he said, until she had come along.

  “You were the one who called me,” Catherine said. “Alerted me to the story, arranged for the exclusive with the elders.”

  “You’re one of us.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “We knew by looking at you. We figured we could trust you. You’d write the truth about Sand Creek and soon as people in this state knew about the genocide, they’d get behind the settlement. You’d help us get the casino.”

  Catherine set her pen down and dropped her head into her hands. She had the picture now, all the little pieces snapped into their proper places. She could feel the little waves of nausea rippling through her, and the headache hovering like a cloud. Her mouth felt dry. She would give a hundred dollars for a glass of wine. She wondered how it had happened, each step of the process. Had Lawrence hired the assassin on his own? That seemed unlikely. More likely, he had consulted with Colbert, who would know these things, wouldn’t he? A man about Washington with all kinds of connections, even to professional killers.

  She was going to be sick now. She got out of the chair and ran past the tables filling u
p with grandmothers and little kids, past the brown startled eyes of the Indians lining up at the lunch counter. She pushed through the door to the bathroom and sank onto the floor of a stall. There was a moment when she felt as if she were watching all that was left of whoever she had tried to be, all the wretched lies she had told herself swirling down the white porcelain toilet.

  Harold YellowBull was at the table when she got back. She pulled up the chair that she’d kicked backward as she’d jumped up and sat down. Norman had already told the elder, she knew. He sat blank-faced, cowboy hat tipped low, eyes peering at her from the shadow of the brim.

  “There is something else I have to know.” She looked from the elder to Norman. “Why did you let them hire an assassin to kill me?”

  It was Harold who said, “We don’t know nothing about that, daughter.” The old man’s face was patched with weariness, as if he’d just understood the rest of the deal that Arcott and Lawrence and Colbert had offered, the part that would have stopped everything, the part that white men never told Indians. “We never thought they was gonna harm you. Soon’s Norman here got to thinkin’ that one of ’em sent a killer after you, he went to see Stern. Stern wasn’t happy to see you, that right, Norman?” Without moving his eyes from her, he tilted his head toward the man next to him.

  “Told me I shouldn’t ever come to his office again,” Norman said. “Couldn’t ever be seen with him. He didn’t want anybody putting two and two together now that the stories were coming out.” He ran his tongue over his lips. “Lawrence swore to me he didn’t know anything about anybody trying to kill you. He said he was worried about you, tried to help you. I came away thinking that somebody else wanted you dead for some other reason. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve believed him.”

  Catherine waited a moment before she said, “Detective Bustamante will want to interview you. You’ll have to tell him everything.”