Cold River Resurrection (10 page)

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hapter
23

Cold River Tribal Police Department

0200 hours

Smokey entered his office, left the lights off, and dropped in his chair. From where he sat he could look out his window at the Bureau of Indian Affairs Corrections Center, the perimeter lights making colorful halos above the razor wire fence. He rubbed his face, his hand coming away with the dried blood of his friend.

I have to burn my uniform.

He blew out his breath and considered what to do next. Whatever he decided, he would have to include his family in his planning.
Back to the old ways.
He was many things, as he knew most people were – father, former husband, tribal member, Indian, staff sergeant in the army, and police lieutenant. He had always known there was a hierarchy to his many roles. He understood the dichotomy of position. A poodle could be a ferocious carnivore when loose in the park after dark, but at home, that same poodle was a beloved pet and heeled to the master.

As a husband, Smokey believed that he was a failure. As a father he was trying, but he didn’t think he was much good at fatherhood either. He knew the one thing that saved him was that Laurel adored and loved him unconditionally.

I love her, too.

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes.
He pulled his hands away, mindful of the blood. Thoughts of the recent past were worse when he was tired. He couldn’t see clearly into the future, especially when things seemed to be out of his control. Like now, with answers just out of reach.

Amelia had begged him to not go back into the Army after nine-eleven. She had begged him to find someone else to go in his place. Hadn’t he done enough for his country? Smokey was determined to go and fight, and he thought that somehow her life would work out for her. He knew later that his urgency to get back to his unit in Afghanistan clouded his hopes for Amelia, that he held a benevolent wish that she would be okay. He knew at some level (pushed way back in his mind) that she might lose her struggle for life on her rez.

He turned and looked into the dark wall and thought about the past, looking with the benefit of years, and he was never kind to himself about what he had done. The arrogance of being right, of leaving his young wife and daughter to fend for themselves while he went to fight tugged at his soul.

He remembered the last time he saw Amelia, the day he left for his second tour.

He had carried Laurel on his shoulder and Amelia walked beside him into the meadow above his house. It was a cold morning in December, the sun bright in the sky. The frost on the grass glistened as it melted.

Smokey glanced over at Amelia. She walked with her head down, scuffing her boots. She was wearing jeans, a bright red and white ski jacket, her hair wound around her shoulder and down the front.

“
A’a
.” Laurel twisted in Smokey’s arms and pointed. A large crow landed in a Juniper Tree in front of them.

“Mommy, look,
a’a
.”

Smokey watched with her as the crow looked at them. “She should concentrate on English,” Amelia said. She kicked at a rock in the path. They stopped in the middle of the meadow and Smokey put Laurel down. She was three. She ran through the meadow and stopped, wind milling her arms.

Smokey knew that Amelia wasn’t mad about Laurel speaking Sahaptin. Amelia had been distant, and hadn’t spoken much since he told her he was going back to Afghanistan. She wouldn’t meet his gaze. He looked at the mountains and snowy peaks ahead, the meadow etched in frost – and he wanted to remember this morning. It was as if he were looking in high definition, the mountain so clear and cold, and when he looked back at his house he could see the cloudy breath of the horses in his distant corral. Most of all, Smokey saw the slump of Amelia’s shoulders.  

“Smoke, I just . . . I don’t know if I can do this, for a year or more, without you, I just think someone else can go over there to fight.” She twisted around, away from him as Laurel ran up and pointed at the crow.
Smokey glanced at his wife. At age twenty-five her face was puffy with alcohol.

“Maybe your partners can help you,” he said, not able to keep the edge from his voice, and he was instantly sorry when he said it, but he knew it was out there now, and he could never take it back. Her partners. What she called her friends, her drinking buddies. He knew Amelia had been drinking her way through his last tour, leaving Laurel for longer and longer periods with his mother. She had slowed down for the months he was home, and when he received his new orders, she had started again, making little excuses to be gone, and in the last few days, she didn’t even bother with an excuse.

The skin around her mouth drew tight, and when she glanced at him, he saw the pain in her eyes. Amelia mumbled something and he leaned in close.

“Amelia, what?”

When she spoke, the pain turned to anger, and she mumbled, louder.

“I said, fuck you
, Smokey.” A tear rolled down her cheek and Smokey reached for her and she put her face in his chest. She threw her arms around his waist and clung to him and sobbed. Laurel looked up at Smokey and then her mom. Smokey pulled Laurel into his leg and held both of them.

“Mommy crying.” Smokey stroked her hair.

Amelia started talking without lifting her head.

“Smoke. I need you. I love you. I can’t fight this without you . . . I can’t fight this alone. And the loneliness. I . . . just . . . you . . . can’t go.”

He stood there and didn’t know how to respond. He rubbed her back under her jacket. When Amelia finally lifted her head, the anger was back in her eyes.

Smokey left at noon. Amelia and Laurel and his mom stood in front of the log house. Laurel and his mom waved. Amelia stood there and stared as he drove through the meadow. He looked back one time. Amelia was already walking toward her car.

It was the last time he ever saw her.

She was dead in five months.

Smokey brought his head up and stared at the dark wall in his office.

And you killed her, Smokey.

After a few minutes, he stood and stretched. It was time to see the chief.

Smokey sat across from Chief Martin Andrews and closed his eyes. He opened them as Nathan entered and took a chair.

“Whoever these people are,” Smokey said, “they have money, guns, and resources. They knew where Jennifer was, and they must believe she saw something up there and want to get it out of her. They killed everyone they came across in the hospital, just shot them and went on.”

“What about Tom?”
the Chief asked, his face grim.

“Doesn’t look as if he had much warning. He was against the back wall of Jennifer’s room, shot in the head, had his gun out.” Smokey removed the pistol from his belt and gave it to Nathan.

“This is Tom’s.”

He drew his Glock and placed it on the Chief’s desk. Chief Andrews looked at it.

“All hell is going to break loose here,” the Chief said, “and soon. The Sheriff, Madras Police Department, the State Police, all are gonna want a piece of you for shooting up their jurisdictions. Not to mention that the rez is going to be swarming with F.B.I. Agents in about an hour.”

“I’ll get Smokey a replacement gun from the armory,” Nathan said. The Chief nodded, and Nathan left the room.

“Officially, as of now, you are on administrative leave,” Martin told Smokey. “Unofficially, I need your help with the Kruger woman, and I need your help with trying to figure out just what the hell happened here. A body dump, it looks like, with some people who have improved the human race by leaving it suddenly. But why here?”

“Well,” Smokey said, “The Great White Father in Washington uses the Navajo for dumping nuclear waste
. Why not dump bodies here?”

“You think the feds are responsible?”

“I wouldn’t count them out, they have done worse things and pretended innocence,” Smokey said.

“What are we going to do with Jennifer Kruger? Any ideas?”

“She went home with Sarah for a shower and to borrow some clothes,” Smokey said. “They should be back soon, then I suggest we video an interview with her, should keep the local law enforcement and the F.B.I. off for a while, record a statement from me as well. Nothing will satisfy the feds until they can have one of their junior woodchucks interview her, antennae quivering and pencil poised, and all that. They are gonna want to wring her out.”

“The F.B.I. will want to put her into protective custody,” the Chief said.

“The feebs couldn’t protect my virginity,” Smokey said. “When she gets back, I will take her to mom’s place. The junior woodchucks won’t be able to find her there, off the paved roads, in the timber, and all that. Give us some time.”

Martin nodded.

Nathan entered the office and handed a forty caliber Glock to Smokey, a box of ammunition, and two new magazines. He tapped Smokey’s belt.

“Need your old magazines for evidence,” he said.

Sarah leaned in the open doorway and knocked. Jennifer stood behind her. Sarah motioned Jennifer to a chair and introduced her to Chief Andrews. 

“You look different, somehow,” Smokey said. He grinned. Jennifer was wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a gray sweater with a big green “O” on it.

Sarah snorted. “She was wearing a hospital gown when good ol’ Smokey picked her up,” she said. “A gown with no back in it.”

Chief Andrews stood and approached Jennifer. “You feel up to talking about what happened, on camera?” 

Jennifer said yes, and so it began, the interviews about what happened on the mountain, and then a separate interview about the events tonight. Jennifer was seated in an interview room with a small table and chairs, and Detective Johns asked her questions. Smokey watched from a television monitor in another room. Jennifer spoke in a low voice, slowly, and talked about finding the bodies, and then becoming thirsty and hungry, disoriented, and about being found. She didn’t remember finding any other body or a “hand.”

Smokey thought she was incredible; poised without being polished, giving matter-of-fact answers about the time she was lost. She concluded that after the first night, things began to get fuzzy, until she was completely disoriented.

“Tell me about tonight,” Detective Johns asked, his voice encouraging, soothing.

Jennifer didn’t answer right away, and to the uninitiated, she might have been stalling for time to collect her thoughts, to make up an answer. Smokey knew that she was trying to get it right, that she was taking her time before answering. And for all of her bravado during the flight to the rez, she looked scared. He knew from her file she was twenty-eight, but now with
a leg crossed under her in the chair, the way she tucked her hair behind her ear and absently chewed her lip, she looked to be all of twelve. 

“I was lying on my back in my bed watching television, a House rerun. The F.B.I. guy was in the hallway – he really didn’t associate with us. Tom was in the chair, watching with me, and we would laugh together when something funny happened, or House did something totally outrageous. Did you know Tom liked that show?”

A lone tear rolled slowly down her cheek and she wiped it away with the heel of her hand. Smokey found his throat growing tight, and he felt a sudden kinship with Jennifer that surprised him.

I will protect her with my life, for being a friend to my friend. 

“Then . . . there were a bunch of shots all together in the hallway, loud. I think that’s where they shot the F.B.I. Agent. I jumped and spilled my juice, and looked over at Tom. House was yelling at a doctor on the tube, Tom’s eyes were still on the television, getting big, and he struggled to get out of the chair, pulling his gun out as he stood up. And then . . . these men ran into the room and shot Tom as he was going to the hallway, trying to protect me.”

She put her hands up and covered her face and spoke through her fingers. “They took me into the hallway and this wild man with braided hair and a uniform came and shot the bad men, and we raced for the reservation.”

“Do you remember more?” Detective Johns asked.

Jennifer went over it again, started with the loud noises, and talked
about what she remembered of the people, the sounds, the shooting. When she got to the part about arriving on the reservation, she sat back and closed her eyes.

“That’s all I can remember for now.”

Detective Johns looked up at the two-way mirror and stood up. He held up his hand.

“Jennifer, thank you for sharing this terrible time with me. If you think of something, please call me, no matter how late.”

Sarah was there to take Jennifer out of the room. Smokey smiled at her as he entered.

He spent the next thirty minutes going through his arrival at the hospital and the aftermath, engaging the men taking Jennifer, the flight to the reservation.

“What do they want with the woman?” Johns asked.

“Whatever they want,” Smokey said, “has to do with what she found, what she saw on the mountain.” He stood up and nodded to Johns and walked out.

When he came out of the interview room, Nathan pulled him aside.