White Ghost Ridge

by Carol Coffey

  Locklear looked away and swallowed.

  “Do you want to hear the rest of the story, Half-breed?”

  “No,” Locklear whispered.

  Looks-Twice closed his eyes and waited.

  “Yes. Please, just finish it,” Locklear said.

  “The day you came into the world the tribe were celebrating the Sun Dance. It was the day of the summer solstice, June 21st.”

  “The Sun Dance?”

  Looks-Twice sneered. “It is a celebration of the renewal of our tribe and of our land. It is a day we make sacrifices for the good of our people, when we ask the spirits for guidance and well-being for our people.”

  “I see,” Locklear said.

  “Back then, the reservation was a few miles from where the town is today, set in a deep valley with views of the mountains on all sides. The sun was high in the sky and the valley was lit up with its energy. Our ancestors were smiling down on us. Our men were dressed in traditional clothing preparing to celebrate the dance. People were eating, laughing, dancing and the sound of our drums echoed around the valley. We were to have a naming ceremony for babies and for our young people as they prepared to become men and women. While our people were celebrating, my sister was screaming in our mother’s hut at the top of the valley as she tried to bring you into the world. None of the old women came to help as they would have done. They were afraid of what they might see. I waited outside until I could no longer bear to listen to her. I feared she would die. Seven hours passed and still she screamed out until at last she screamed so loud that the very eagles in the sky took flight from their nests and hid among the mountains. Soon after, my sister came out of the hut with you covered in a shawl. Her white dress was covered in her blood. I could hear my mother weeping in the cabin. I took you from Wachiwi and looked at you and my heart broke for her. She began to climb down into the valley where our chief was finishing the naming ceremony. I followed behind her with you and tried to steady her and as she reached level ground the singing stopped and the drums did not beat. The world suddenly seemed silent. Not even a bird could be heard. The sun disappeared behind dark clouds that had risen up out of nowhere and the sky fell into darkness. Wachiwi kept walking while blood flowed down her legs and the people moved out of the way. Most turned away from her but I remained by her side. She took you from my arms and handed you to Chief Akecheta. He was a very old man and he was very wise. He took you and pulled the shawl from your head and held you up close to his old eyes. Old women cried out at the sight of your white hair. The White Ghost is among us, they said, but the chief did not show any fear. He held you out and stared into your eyes as though he was communicating with you.”

  Locklear swallowed. “My hair was white?”

  “You had the eyes and skin of our people but just like my sister saw in her dream, your hair was the same as the White Ghost. Akecheta decided that you were sent to curse us and that Wachiwi had allowed evil to use her womb to destroy us from within. He prayed over you and asked our spirits for guidance. As he prayed the sky darkened further and a dark shadow spread over the valley.”

  Locklear looked to the ground. “And so he named me.”

  “Yes. Ohanzee. Shadow.”

  “The chief then told my sister the decision of the spirits. He told Wachiwi she must take the child and leave him in the city where white people would care for him.”

  “But she refused.”

  “Yes.”

  Locklear inhaled and waited although he knew. He knew the rest of the story because he had lived it.

  “As Wachiwi’s brother, I promised I would see that it was done. I took Wachiwi back to the hut and my mother washed her. As my sister fed you for the first time, she was not joyful as a mother should have been. She cried. She was weak from blood loss. I waited until she slept and I tried to take you from her arms so that I could drive you to Rapid City and leave you there.”

  Locklear could feel anger rising up inside him. Anger for himself, at what had happened to him during the first hours of his life and anger for his mother and the suffering she had endured.

  “Each time I tried to take you she awoke and I could not free you from her arms. I agreed with my mother that I would wait until morning came and would allow my sister to come with me to deliver you to where you belonged. When morning came, I took Wachiwi to my car and drove with you to Rapid City but when we got there she would not part with you. I told her to come inside the hospital so that she could say goodbye to you but she pleaded with me to take her back to her children. She could not have both. She had to choose.”

  “So, you left her there, on the street with a new baby?”

  “No. I took her inside the hospital and the doctor was worried about how much blood she was still losing. It was as if your birth was taking her life from her. They asked me to let my sister stay. They told me to come back in a few days for her. They said they would take care of you and see that a good home was found for you.”

  “So you left?”

  “Yes. And when I returned a few days later, Wachiwi was gone and she had taken you with her. She had chosen you. She left a note for me saying ...”

  Looks-Twice’s chin trembled and his small brown eyes filled with tears.

  “Saying, ‘Ohanzee has nobody but me. I accept my punishment but I cannot leave him alone in the world. Look after my children.’”

  Locklear’s eyes filled with hot tears. His mother had chosen him. All those years he was angry with her for giving him the rootless life he endured but she had sacrificed everything for him. He remembered how his birthday always coincided with his mother’s black mood and worsening drinking. It was the day her world changed forever. Something Mendoza had once said to him when he complained about how his mother was always running from something flooded back to him. His trooper had said that a mother will always put her child first and that, if she was running, it was to protect him.

  “Why did you come to our trailer that day?”

  Looks-Twice sighed. “It was not the first time I found your mother. I used my job as a police officer to find out where she was. Each time I found her I pleaded that she give you up and come home but she refused.”

  Locklear sighed.

  “I came to your trailer that day to make my sister see sense. Your brother was twelve years old and he was sick. My mother died three years after Wachiwi disappeared. She died not knowing what became of her daughter. Chaska had leukaemia. He was calling out for her. I had every school looking out for a Native woman with a boy your age. I figured she wouldn’t change your name. She knew it was a sentence for her and she would accept it. What I didn’t figure was that she would use my grandmother’s last name. It was pronounced Loc-a-leer. It took some detective work to find you but I did.”

  “And you asked her again to leave me behind?”

  “Yes. Nothing had changed on the reservation except Wachiwi’s husband was now chief. He would not let me take the children even to see her. I stayed with her for three days pleading with her to come back and look after her dying child – but she would not abandon you. You, who were conceived through violence and hatred. She chose you with your white face and Olsen’s blood running through your veins. When I saw how my sister was living, sleeping with men who were not her husband, drinking, letting you run wild, I knew that she was no longer who she had been. The children had stability. They were better off without her. I drove away from that trailer knowing I would never see her again. I would tell the children that Wachiwi and her half-breed child were dead. Three days after I returned to Pine Ridge, Chaska died in my arms, calling out for his mother.”

  “And she died calling out for him,” Locklear said quietly.

  Looks-Twice looked at him. “She made her choice.”

  “You gave her no choice. You were her brother. Under Sioux tradition you were supposed to protect her but you didn’t. All because she made a mistake and she was facing up to her mistake by caring for a child that didn’t ask to come i
nto the world in the way that he did. You abandoned her, Looks-Twice. You dishonoured her.”

  “You know nothing of what I did. After that last time I saw her, I was filled with anger because I knew then that I would spend my life caring for Wachiwi’s children and that I would not have my own family. No woman wanted to care for the children of my cursed sister. From time to time I would find out where she was and I would write to her. Sometimes I would threaten to tell the authorities that she was neglecting her son. I never did it, but I wanted to hurt her. I wanted her to lose the only child she had left, the one she had chosen above her full-blood children.”

  “Which explains our many sudden moves. You were tormenting her.”

  Looks-Twice looked down but his expression did not alter.

  “How did she die?” he asked.

  “In a haze of dementia and torment. Looks like you are going to face the same awful death. In the end, my mother no longer knew who I was, but she died calling my brother’s name. She called for Chaska and Magaskawee. She called out over and over and I didn’t understand what she wanted. I didn’t know what those words meant.”

  Locklear exhaled at the thought that he’d had a brother, a brother he would now never get to know. He did not look on the white-haired man in Rapid City as his brother. Not now that he knew the kind of man he, and their father, was.

  “When Chaska died, I lost my soul. He was like my own son. I began to drink. I was full of anger and I channelled that anger into protecting all I had left: my land, the soil my father left me. When I realised that our sacred artefacts were being stolen by white people, I joined INTENT and I devoted my time to putting things right.”

  “You shot a cop.”

  Looks-Twice nodded. “It was my darkest moment. I asked the spirits to take away my anger and to put peace in my heart. But then they came.”

  “Who?”

  “Scientists with digging machines, upsetting the graves of my ancestors, scraping at their bones and pulling up the sacred things my people had placed in the earth as offerings. They came onto my land, three, four, five times. Han Pauls and his activists stood in unison with me. Peaceful demonstrations which achieved nothing. Photographs in white newspapers.”

  “What happened to my mother’s other child, my sister?”

  Looks-Twice snorted. “Forget her. No-one is looking for you, Locklear. No-one. Now, you made a promise to leave if I told you the story. Now you know it all. There’s nothing more I can do for you. E wang oh ma nee yo.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means ‘Be careful how you travel’. It is a warning.”

  Locklear stood and stared at the old man.

  “You never did anything for me, Uncle. You are as much to blame for what happened to my mother as Olsen, maybe even more because you were supposed to love her, to protect her. You failed her and you failed me.”

  He walked to the door and left the room.

  Outside, he asked the young cop if he could use his phone. He spoke with Goulden, said he was not pressing assault charges on Looks-Twice and pleaded for his release whenever the hospital felt he was well enough to be discharged. Goulden argued that Looks-Twice’s case also involved the discovery of stolen goods on his property.

  “You can’t steal what you already own, Goulden. All he did was take back what was stolen from him.”

  When Goulden finally conceded, Locklear returned to the room and stood in the doorway but the old man had already fallen asleep.

  “Goodbye, Uncle,” he said quietly as he closed the door and thought about what his next step would be.

  Chapter 31

  When morning came Locklear found himself back in Rapid City police station by sunrise, assisting Wilson with local aspects of the case which was now being largely handled by the FBI. At seven thirty Mendoza called from Richmond Airport to say that the first flight she could get to Mexico City was due to leave Richmond at nine fifty and that she was not looking forward to making the six-hour flight alone.

  “I enjoyed working on this case, sarge, just you and me with no Kowalski or Benson harassing us. Felt like we were a couple of private investigators with no-one to answer to but ourselves.”

  “Sounds like something I could live with,” Locklear replied.

  He did not tell Mendoza about his visit to Looks-Twice or the depressing story of his conception and birth. That tale could wait until another time, if indeed he ever uttered it to another living soul, which he doubted he would.

  Mendoza listened intently as he told her how the investigation had so far uncovered the involvement of museum curators, forgers, diplomats and university archaeology departments.

  Olsen Junior had changed his tune the previous evening and was now willing to testify that he had been with British diplomat Amelia Hirsh on the night that her cousin Alec Holton had been murdered and that, while he had no hand in the killing, he assisted the diplomat to enter the building through a garbage chute. Olsen had confessed that he and Hirsch tried to make the Native American branch of INTENT look guilty of the murder by leaving the stick key in the professor’s computer. He also claimed that cutting into Holton’s scalp in an effort to further point the finger at the Native American branch of the movement had been a childish, cringeworthy attempt by Hirsch to cover her tracks. Olsen admitted to hacking into Holton’s computer to send an email to Holton’s colleague Lee Carter inviting him to the apartment shortly after they expected to have left, which would provide the police with not only one but two suspects and would hopefully slow the investigation down until their prized shipment of twelve ancient Egyptian carvings were safely in the US and readied for sale. Olsen was going to jail for a long time and his father, who had obviously been a part of the business, would spend what days remained to him behind bars.

  Hirsch’s public denial of Olsen’s claims were broadcast overnight around the world before the footage of her leaving the scene with Olsen was provided to the British Government who immediately revoked Hirsch’s diplomatic immunity and agreed for her extradition to the US for trial. It seemed the inheritance that Hirsch seemed so desperate to get her hands on would be tied up until she was very old. On Locklear’s information, the FBI advised Scotland Yard to arrange for the exhumation of Holton’s mother for an autopsy which meant Hirsh could be facing two life sentences in two countries.

  Sartre, for his part, was clever enough to know the game was up and handed himself in, hoping that he might get a reduced sentence for adding to the information the cops already had on his estranged wife and, with it, information on the bribes taken by Richmond cops Diaz and Hill for planting evidence in the home of Lee Carter, who was innocent.

  Braff was also in confessional mode and had implicated the US army in the transport of artefacts during the war in Iraq and was claiming that involvement went up to the highest ranks at that time. He had also hung the Rosenbergs out to dry. The professor was arrested in Vermillion but his son and daughter-in-law were in hiding in the US consulate in Paris. Word had it that the US would follow Britain and strip the Rosenbergs of their diplomatic immunity and send them to the US for trial. Tommy Rosenberg was spotted in the early hours of the morning boarding a plane for South America. The sun-burnt, crack-lipped photo of the ginger-haired young man had made Locklear smile. He hoped he had learnt his lesson and would go straight from here but somehow he knew he’d be hearing about young Tommy Rosenberg in the future. His life of privilege and free licence meant he would find it difficult to live on a meagre wage and live like ordinary people do.

  The police’s only lead into the organisation known as INTENT was an old Native American with dementia who would soon die from a brain tumour which was clouding his memories. Looks-Twice claimed to have no memory of the organisation and, with Whitefeather dead, the wealthy philanthropists who reportedly funded the organisation’s illegal activities would remain unknown.

  Paytah Hunter was nowhere to be seen.

  “Wow,” Mendoza said when Locklear
finished giving her the update.

  Locklear waited for her to expand on that.

  Then she said, “I was thinking, sarge, I didn’t get to say goodbye to my grandmother. I mean, I knew she was ill but you always think there will be time to say the things you want to say but sometimes things happen and you don’t get that chance.”

  Locklear swallowed. “What are you saying, Mendoza? Is this your way of telling me you’re looking for another position? Thought you just said you enjoyed working with me?”

  Mendoza laughed but he could hear the sadness in her voice.

  “No. That’s not what I mean. What I want to say is, if something happened and this was the last time I spoke to you, I want you to know how much you mean to me.”

  Locklear did not reply.

  Mendoza could hear his quick breath on the phone.

  “Sarge?”

  “Jo,” he began. It was the first time he had ever used her first name. “My relationship with you is the best I’ve ever had with any woman. I want to keep it that way. If anything were to change,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “if we were to become more than friends ... well ... it would change everything.”

  He listened and thought he could hear her sobbing quietly.

  “Mendoza, you are grieving. So much has been going on for you between your ex-husband coming back into your life, your worries for your child and your grandmother dying. I think we need to talk about this some other time, when things are better for you and you can see things clearly. Please, please, don’t cry, Mendoza.”

  Locklear’s words were met with silence. He noticed Wilson standing to the side, obviously waiting to talk to him about the case that was still unfolding. He waited until the cop realised the detective sergeant’s phone conversation was of a private nature and walked away.

  “Ohanzee,” Locklear whispered.