“It’s the only story.”
“Did Helen and Catherine ever fight?”
“No.”
“How do you explain the cruel things that Helen said to Catherine?”
“Insults are how Helen compliments people. If she’s being nice to you, then you should worry.”
“You spent most days with Catherine and Helen. In texts, she describes you as her best friend forever. If a man were meeting her in the middle of the night, in the forest, you would know whom that man was, wouldn’t you?”
“If she were meeting a man that she wanted to meet, that she was in love with or wanted, I would know about it. I would know who he was and so would Helen. We do not know who sent that text.” The young woman spoke with an affected speaking style, her accent more Hollywood Hills than Rocky Mountains.
Keep her talking; listen to her voice, its slight offering. Reluctant to say anything, overthinking each response, Zadeh was not polite; she was shy. Her speaking style was hesitant, she deliberated before she spoke, and spoke shrewdly. She stared over Brouwer at the false roof, at the florescent lights, incanting the words as though a spirit worked through her like a Sybil.
“Would Cat have had a secret lover?”
“We had no secrets.”
“That’s true Avina. In the spring, she sent you a text saying I know your secret. She knew a secret about you that no else knows. What was the secret?”
“Nothing. How I felt.”
“But you had a secret that only Catherine knew. What was the secret?”
Avina Zadeh blinked at the lights in the white room and breathed out slowly, and her shoulders slumped forward. “She knew about how I felt. She was telling me that I can trust her.”
“The secret about how you felt?”
“Yes. That I don’t feel like myself. I’m someone else. You know?”
“No.”
“Like, I’m me, but I’m not me. I feel like I’m not who I am. Do you know what I mean?” Zadeh hid her mouth in the wool. She searched for more words, but none came.
“You’re young. It takes time to find yourself. You have to start following the voice in your head that is telling you what you should do. That voice is your integrity. You will never become secure in yourself if you ignore what your own mind is telling you.”
The girl thought for a moment.
Brouwer said, “What does Skyrocket refer to?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know but she says it to you. Catherine was smart, gifted; she knew what she was saying had meaning, for both of you. Someone placed Catherine in an outcropping of scarlet Gilia, skyrockets, on a mountain cliff. She died in skyrocket and referred to those same flowers in messages to you.”
Zadeh did not respond to the statement.
“How is that possible?” Brouwer asked.
“I don’t know. It’s all so strange; it feels fake.”
“Did you and Catherine go to that spot before, to where she died?”
“Yes, to pick flowers. She wanted western themes in her designs. She was becoming more, like, western and country. She was getting into nature, becoming super western. It is why we started sleeping outside some nights, to look at the stars and swim at night. We sat and talked, looking at the mountains, the trees, and the sky. We started to hike, to look for flowers.”
“And Catherine nicknamed you skyrocket?”
“Yes.”
“Not afraid, she says that you are ‘not afraid,’ what weren’t you afraid of?”
“Catherine was brave. She could do anything. She helped me be confident, to be more like her.”
On first impression, Brouwer had felt as the sheriff had, that Zadeh’s simplicity was an act, and underneath it was something he called animal cunning. She was no longer sure, sitting alone with the girl, what animal she had before her, but knew the young woman would often be underestimated. Not seeing what she was capable of would be a common mistake made with her.
On her right shoulder, Zadeh had a black inked portrait of the Sioux Indian warrior Red Cloud.
“Tell me about your tattoos, do they mean anything or are they for style?”
“They’re both.”
Avina opened the heavy wool blanket exposing the portrait of Red Cloud.
“What can you tell me about Red Cloud?” She needed the girl to talk.
“Red Cloud was the oglala Sioux chief who led guerrilla warfare campaigns against the invading white army. I got it in L.A. I was surprised that American Indian history would be cool in L.A.”
“Did you learn about Red Cloud’s War in school?”
“I read about him on my own. He led attacks on the U.S. Army in Wyoming before it was a state. He was married to Pretty Owl. His mother’s name was Walks Like She Thinks. Women are powerful to the Sioux and they take direction in families from their mothers. Red Cloud led an army of Cheyenne, Sioux and Arapaho warriors against the whites, who were killing native people. Crazy Horse acted like a wounded scout, even his horse acted injured, so the U.S Army would chase him. He led the whites into a valley to be ambushed by Red Cloud.”
“This is a subject you’re interested in, Native American history?”
“Red Cloud led his people into War because he knew that white men do not follow their own laws and don’t believe in their own God. The laws and gods that they made Indians take, they don’t believe in themselves. Red Cloud knew that treaties were lies. When they are afraid, white men destroy anything they can see. White men live in a state of perpetual fear. Red Cloud sensed the white man’s fear and became a freedom fighter to protect his people from it. So I think he was more of an American than the Army officers he scalped were.”
“You identify with oppressed people.”
“I have his image on me to remind me that people die for freedom every day, and that to be an American, you have to act like one, like a real one. Not like how marketing and advertising and politics pressures you to act, but like how you know you have to be, to be free. That’s what being an American means.”
“Tell me about the tattoo of the cat above your right breast.” A Cheshire cat in a cavalier hat grinned with deviousness from her chest in blue-black ink.
“It’s a Russian mafia tattoo. I got it in Vegas.”
“Yes, it’s a Russian gang tattoo,” Brouwer said. “It’s a prison symbol, so that other inmates know what role that gang member plays. Do you know what it symbolizes?”
“Yes. It’s the mark of the thief.”
“That’s right; it is tattooed in prison on a condemned man to show that he was a thief. And so, Avina, are you a thief?”
Her small torn muscle shirt exposed much of her body and she looked down at the cat in the cavalier hat. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe everyone is a thief.”
Above her second small breast were the symbols from the U.S. Dollar bill note. The Great Seal of the United States and its reverse side crest both in large green ink circles as they are on the dollar note. The Seeing Eye pyramid and the American eagle on its striped shield.
“You have images from the dollar on your chest. You don’t like marketing, but seem to worship money, Avina. What does that symbol tell me about you?”
Zadeh spread her fingers across the Seeing Eye pyramid. “This is the reverse side of the Great Seal. Annuit Coeptis is part of the motto. It means that Americans are favored in our undertakings.” Zadeh smiled, a black gap among her white teeth displayed in a rare moment of comfort.
“Helen talked about Catherine’s dream of conjuring an earth goddess, an ancient forest queen, something primordial. She has notes in her design books about a nature goddess who was merciless and destructive to men, just like nature around us. Were you girls acting out rituals in the forest, summoning this nature goddess that Catherine revered?”
“We meditated among the trees. You go into the forest to clear your mind of desire.”
“Why would a nature goddess be merciless and violent? Was Helen a
cting out a fantasy for Catherine, as part of these rituals?”
“Catherine was the goddess. We had no rituals.”
“Why would Helen say that you were obsessed with Catherine?”
“Because it’s true, Helen never lies. Helen can’t lie.” She tucked her chin into the woolen blanket.
“When Catherine said something to hurt you, it cut you to the bone, didn’t it Avina? When she mistreated you, snubbed you, shrugged you off, you would not sleep for days. She was leaving you. She was going off to design school, and leaving you. She told you that night that she was leaving you all alone on the mountain, alone in your life. You couldn’t handle her leaving you alone, could you?”
“I didn’t want her to go, but I always knew she would. Something like Catherine in your life, it can’t last.”
“It was too much for you wasn’t it Avina? That Catherine was leaving. She didn’t want to be with you, and you couldn’t live without her, so you snapped. You laid your hands on Catherine that night, didn’t you?”
They studied one another across the steel table, and the fan hummed. Zadeh said,
“You don’t understand that my relationship with Catherine was healthy because you’ve never had a real female friend, not one you can trust. Have you?”
“You and Helen want to talk about me,” Brouwer shook her head. “But it’s your life that’s on the line right now, not mine. The powers that be are tying a noose for you girlfriend. You need to see that. You need to tell me what happened. You have to learn to tell the truth; even if it’s the first time you’ve ever done it.”
“What is the truth, Detective?” Avina asked.
“That Catherine was changing, and you couldn’t allow your friend to change, could you?”
“You’ve never had a woman in your life that you can say you truly love. Have you Detective? You’ve never had a friend and I think that’s sad. I have only known you a short while and I think so many women would love you, and so many girls would want to be like you.”
#
The girls climbed the giant rocks that edge the heavy stillness of Jenny Lake. Rung and left windless by the dense green forest, the lowest rocks slick from spray at the shore, the tumble of giant rock fixed the glassy lake to the stony mountain above. Helen on the most massive boulder first, its granite top over a story tall, she stood on the primeval rockslide with the glacial lake vast before her. With bare feet on wet rock, and her arms outstretched for the others, she pulled them up to join her. Diving into the cold mountain water, each girl made hardly a splash, barely a noise, as they slid into the deep lake in silence, but they screamed as they came up for air, shocked from the coldness of the glacial water. Piercing shrieks echoed off rock faces. Avina Zadeh was the weaker swimmer, following the form of the stronger women’s strokes. Their laughs and squeals absorbed into the climbing columns of fir and spruce.
They sunned themselves on the huge slabs of rock that caught sunlight at the edge of the forest shadows. Catherine sat up, her face to the sun; water beaded on her tanned skin, and wet rolled down from her body. Her eyes shining, sparkling like the mountain water, she smiled and rubbed sunscreen into her upper arms and shoulders.
Avina had never dreamed she could have friends like this, or a life like this. She wouldn’t have dared. They lay on the flat rock while the vast mountain lake sparkled in the sun.
19.
Rose Mazer checked her make up in a compact, working herself into a seat across the mahogany desk from Sheriff Hargrove.
“I’m terribly sorry for your loss ma’am,” the sheriff said.
She made a show of looking around at the deer antlers, the elk head, the plaques, trophies, and military commendations, her eyes large and studious. She stretched her bright red lips into a wide smile. Cover up skin toner creased with her sharp facial features dried by an indoor tanning bed. Blond hair dye emphasized the dark roots of her hair. She clasped curling pink fingernails around the strap of a designer brand handbag on her lap.
She said, “I’ve read about you on the internet and I’m happy that an American hero is looking for my baby’s killer.”
“Unfortunately I have more bad news for you. I tried to reach you but your phone was off. Lara’s remains are not in Jackson. We sent her to the state lab down in Sheridan to undergo some tests. There may have been a sexual component to Lara’s death, or trace evidence that can be recovered.”
She began speaking to him but his thoughts were elsewhere. The vanilla sweetness of her perfume wafted through the air-conditioned office as she flattered him in a syrupy voice. Her sugary cloying grated at him. The interview with Helen Hearne had not gone well. Despite trying to gain her trust, she attacked everything he said and threatened legal counsel, shutting down the interviews altogether. He had lost to her, a twenty year old, who had never worked a day in her life. Helen Hearne’s insolence and dismissal of him reverberated against older sources of shame. A headache pulsed behind his eyes. It was Lara Mazer’s mother rambling to him now, and he was not at ease with what she was saying. Her red lipstick mouth worked up and down while her shadowed eyes catalogued him.
“Tell me about Lara,” he broke in. She stopped speaking and cleared her throat.
“What can I tell you?” Rose Mazer said. “Lara was a troubled girl. She always was.”
“Troubled,” he repeated. “Interesting choice of words, troubled. I’m troubled myself, by what Lara faced.”
She adjusted herself nervously before him.
“I want to know everything about her and about the men in her life of course. Where did she see herself? I’d like to know what life was like for Lara.” He settled sluggishly into the groaning leather.
Rose had a boyfriend named Sonny living with them at Pelletier, Idaho, when Lara was just a kid. Rose was away for a few nights to work as a cook at a work camp and came home to find that Lara had locked Sonny out of the trailer. She had propped chairs against the doorknob but Sonny splintered in the door, kicking it in with his heavy work boots. Rose was bewildered at what was going on. The scrawny thirteen-year old Lara stood on the sofa with a kitchen knife. Sonny grabbed her by the tiny wrist and flung her onto the linoleum. Finally, he stood on her tiny arm so she would release the knife. A neighbor called the cops and Sonny spent the night at County. Lara spent the summer in a cast. For leaving her there alone with him, she went weeks without speaking to Rose.
When Sonny came out of the county lockup, she locked herself in her small bedroom at the back of the trailer and again he kicked in the door to get at her. Pressing her face against the floor, he was able to stop her struggling. After that, she started to change, taunting him, provoking him, calling him awful names to start a fight, and then fighting him, tearing the place apart.
Troubled, possessed, Lara made up stories about Sonny, awful things to ruin him. That Sonny liked to get on his knees and beg like a dog, panting to her, that he laid at the end of her bed like a human pet. Satanic lies, the first sign of how deeply troubled Lara was.
Coming home from working the bar at the beer garden during a softball tournament, the screaming was loud from the end of the street; opening the door, Rose beheld the sight. Sonny was on top of Lara holding her head into the sofa cushions pressing her tiny frame down to shut her up. Lara cried bloody murder, shouting craziness until the cops came and took Sonny away again. It was all Rose could do to keep them from killing one another.
Over the next year, Lara got skinny, too skinny even. Out in the streets half the night, dying her beautiful raven hair pink, when that failed to shock, she had it shaved bald. Missing school and never speaking, she started with the tattoos and pot, becoming promiscuous, all lures to draw men into trouble.
Later, she ran away, and tried to get to Portland. Sleeping in bus depots, she huddled with her backpack behind gas stations, a skinny girl in the rain. Breaking into a hamburger stand closed for the night to find shelter, got her picked up and brought home. Her hair grown out into a brush cut like
a runaway boy, a street urchin, she walked in one night and sat silently on Rose’s sofa.
Sheriff Hargrove knew Lara’s story better than Rose did. He filled in the details for himself while the mother described her daughter as some lost cause. Lara spent her teenage years in foster homes, a few different families taking her in. She had a few scrapes with authority to be sure, but finished school and got a job on the Idaho ski hills, and made her way into Jackson Hole. Lara grew into a solid young woman out here on her own.
She wanted to be a cosmetician. As a condition of not taking away her driver license, the sheriff followed up with her occasionally, to ensure she was completing her courses, and that she would never drink and drive again. He talked to her. Lara Mazer was making her own way, on her own terms. Then someone watched her walk out of that shithole bar and took her life. His vision blurred on his office wall, he could not hear the mother’s tedious lies, but her lipstick was moving.
Rose Mazer was saying, “I always knew something like this would happen to Lara. That this would be how she went, the way she lived, the way she carried on, I saw this happening many years ago.”
“After the fact, a thing seems fated. You didn’t help her find sanctuary did you, Rose?”
“What does that mean?”
“She was being sexually assaulted by your man and you let it happen.”
“How dare you. That’s a disgusting lie. She told you that bullshit. Lara was a born liar.”
The contractor that built the Teton County Sheriff’s office had finished the walls with muted earth tone builder’s colors—broadly inoffensive raw umber browns, the color of empty dullness, a coffin for empty days. The sunlight of the high afternoon enriched the brown. It shone now as the clouds tumbled along in the wind, and the wall became copper, the copper of the casing on a lead bullet, and the copper that stays behind with the skull while the lead and other gray matter carry on.
He said, “Your daughter had filed a complaint to a high school counselor stating that your boyfriend of the time, Samuel “Sonny” Goodloe Junior, late of Pelletier, Idaho, sexually assaulted her in the summer of her attempted escape to Portland, and that the assaults dated back to his arrival in your home on her thirteenth year.”
Dream of the Wolf Page 11