Homicide My Own (22 page)

“I put out the word,” the chief said, “that you’re still here doing something for me.”

“So the heat’s off, as far as the county is concerned?” I said.

“You wish. Nascine always feels that if anybody’s gonna do something for me it ought to be him. He’ll still harrass you, but get yourself to tribal land if he does, that’ll give you some protection.”

“Nascine did it,” I said. “I’ll bet the farm on that. Ain’t, Odd?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Even if he did,” said the chief, “the only evidence we have is that bruise on Jeannie’s leg that may or may not match a police baton. It might match the barrel of the shotgun.”

“Wait a minute…if Jeannie ran from the car…and Nascine brought her down with a baton to the back of the knee…and shot her…and then put her back in the car…why in the hell would he do that?…but that’s not my point.”

“What is your point?”

“My point is he came into physical contact with her when he picked her up and put her into the car again, which opens the possibility to his leaving on her what didn’t exist back then…DNA.”

“Nascine was the officer who discovered the bodies. He may have made the mistake of touching them.”

“Nascine discovered the bodies?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course he did,” I said, disgusted.

It was amazing how little we knew about the case, and yet we had the possibility of knowing it all.

Odd wasn’t even listening. He had opened the yearbook.

I looked at the dedication page. Even upside-down I could see it was a blown-up snap of Jeannie and James, in a rain forest, covered with slickers, arms around each other, in a thick growth of ferns dripping with moisture.

“Anyhow,” said the chief. “Jeannie’s body was cremated. So was James, for that matter.”

“Shit, piss, and corruption.”

“I never met a woman like you, and I don’t think that’s a compliment.”

Odd paged through the yearbook, and I could see in his face the recognition of old friends, the reliving of school activities from someone else’s life. He stopped at one page and put his finger on a picture.

“Cammy!” he said, smiling.

I turned the book around and looked at the picture. Camilia Two Trees: Chorus, Stitch ‘n Rip Club, Library Volunteer, Cheerleaders, Homecoming Princess. She had deep dark eyes and high cheek bones, a Mona Lisa smile.

“We were friends from the first grade,” said Odd, “right up until…”

Together they must have made a formidable pair, the fair and the dark, beauties, both.

“I hope things turned out well for her,” said Odd.

“You can see for yourself,” said the chief. “She’s helping out during the season at Rocketman’s.”

Rocketman’s was at a T-intersection in the main perimeter road, set back in an acre of crushed rock where by state law purchasers of fireworks were required to set off same, and occasionally someone actually did, mostly as a test before committing to a trunkload.

The stand itself was long and narrow and consisted of a wide counter laden with pyrotech small fries, behind which was a long wall in three tiers, displaying the hard stuff, in ascending order of fire power. After hours, it was battened down by a series of hinged four-by-eight standard plywood panels, hung during the day in an open position. The whole thing was whitewashed, but stamped lumber markings bled through.

Near the entrance was an old rusted pickup for sale, with the bald spare tire mounted to the grille. The camper shell that used to be on the pickup was on the ground, at the far end of the stand. It served as kitchen and break room. A portable Honey Bucket toilet was set up at the other end of the stand.

All signage was hand-lettered, including the large Rocketman sign that sat on the roof of the stand, with its logo of an Indian atop a blasting rocket. The others: NO SMOKING, MUST BE 16 OR OLDER, NO M-80S OR LARGER WITHIN 150 FEET, VISA AND MASTERCARD OK.

Cheap plastic pennants in red, white, and blue were festooned from the stand to outlying poles in the ground. A string of Christmas lights ran the length of the stand for nighttime sales.

We pulled onto the lot, drove over the crushed rock, and up to the stand. We were the only car on the lot. Two teen-aged boys appeared from behind the counter, rising from their lawn chairs. They were bare-chested, wearing jeans that hung below their hips, revealing three inches of their boxer shorts. One was listening to rap music, the other was watching Jerry Springer on a jury-rigged battered black-and-white TV set. Goofy kids, both, but I would have killed for their hair, either one, glistening black, thick, and hanging down their backs in expertly crafted pigtails. My own had become brittle, dry, and thin. In moments of despair, I’d thought of shaving it all off and letting people think I had cancer, which, let’s face it, is a tad more socially acceptable than menopause, if less forgiving at the end.

The boy at our end of the counter, the one listening to rap, which he hadn’t bothered to turn down—Snoopy, Doopy, Dogg, Dogg, Gangsta, Bitchslap, Copkiller, Boyz, Noize—asked, “What can I get you, yo?”

I glanced over the exotic rainbow array of Chinese imports, everything from little hand-held poppers to diversionary concussion bombs, stuff I had never seen up close and had always regarded as slightly insane, just another way to split a tranquil night with ear-whacking discomfort. What possible satisfaction or joy could come by putting a match to these things? On the other hand, there are people who liked to be peed upon. No one can account for another one’s pleasures.

“Is Cammy here?” I asked.

“Yeah, she’s in the camper making tacos,” said the kid. “Just go on in.”

The camper door was open and we could see the back of a woman half as wide as the camper itself. Like the boys outside, her hair hung down in pigtails. A few flies buzzed around her, but summer had not yet come with any real heat, so the bug population was sparse.

“Cammy?” said Odd, and it was a real question. More like, you can’t be Cammy, my beautiful friend. If that’s what Odd was thinking, what do you suppose Camilia was thinking, when she turned and saw a big Swede addressing her so familiarly.

What Rap Boy hadn’t told me, but would be explained to me some time later, was that the tacos she was making were, more specifically, Navajo tacos. You take a bag of Frito corn chips, slit it along the long edge and puff it open like an envelope. Then you cover the chips with refried beans, grated cheddar, some salsa over the top. I couldn’t wait to get home and try it myself. I was going to add diced kielbasa.

I wasn’t sure Nascine had talked to her about Odd. I wasn’t sure he ever talked to her at all, he might be that kind of husband. Indians, I was learning, unless they talked to you, didn’t tell you much of anything, and even then sometimes left a lot to the imagination.

“Cammy,” he said again, “is it you? Is it really you?”

“I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“When you were in fifth grade,” said Odd, “you had this idea for a very exclusive club. You found the perfect cedar, and your idea was to build a treehouse in that cedar…”

Camilia took a step or two toward Odd. Her hands were trembling.

“It would be our club house. You wanted to call it the Tree Top Club. But it was to be exclusive and secret so you said we should use just the initials and call it the T.T. Club, so that no one could guess where our clubhouse was. And I said, ‘Think about it, Cammy…the T.T. Club? The Titty Club.’ You were
so
embarrassed, and then we laughed and laughed, and that was the beginning and the end of the famous Titty Club.”

Gripping the doorframe, she eased her bulk down to the step and sat there, benumbed, staring up at the big Swede.

“No one else ever knew about that,” she said.

Earlier, the chief had asked me if I ever saw an Indian cry. I was seeing one now. Odd squatted down on the gravel before her and took her hand. He didn’t say anything. She cried for a long time, then leaned forward and put her arms on Odd’s shoulders and drew him to her. She pressed her face next to his.

“Jeannie,” she wept, “Jeannie… I’m so sorry….”

The rear of the camper was set back behind the fireworks stand, so the two kids working there could not see us, nor we them. At least there was that. I heard a car pull onto the lot. We were pretty well out of the sight of any customers, too, unless they decided to come back there and blow up a few Kamikazes. Unlikely as that might be, I thought I’d better head it off anyway. Besides, I wanted to give Odd and Cammy a moment alone.

I slipped away without the two old girlfriends noticing.

“Hello, Sheriff,” I said. Nascine was just getting out of his car.

“Deputy,” he said.

“Right. I shot the Sheriff.”

He stopped in his tracks and knitted up his brow.

“It’s a song, Bob.
I shot the Sheriff, but I did not shoot the Deputy…”

I sang it loud, loud enough for Odd to hear and wonder what the hell. I circled Nascine and turned him around, so that I was looking past him, at the front end of the camper, waiting for Odd to appear. I wished he would.

“You’re a real smart ass, ain’t you?” Nascine said with a kind of free and easy venom, lighting up a Camel in defiance of a rather sensible rule against smoking near a fireworks stand.

“That is part of the profile, but I like to think I’m just misunderstood.”

“Why are you still on the island?”

“Why else? Loading up on fireworks.” I had missed a sign. BEST DEALS. “I hear Rocketman has the best deals.”

I led Nascine over to the stand and started randomly selecting my arsenal from the back wall. The kids stacked them and tallied the price.

“Gimme an Ambush, an Atom Splitter, a Warp Speed…”

“Where’s your prisoner?” asked the deputy.

“Offer’s still open. You want him, you can have him, and the two females as well.” To the kid, I said, “And I want a Texas Cyclone, a Dark Zone…a Golden Shower?”

“I don’t name ‘em,” said the Springer fan, “I only sell ‘em.”

“Where’s your partner?” asked Nascine.

“You took a real shine to him, didn’t you?”

“Where is he?”

“People do take a shine to him. He’s very popular. Every other month he gets named Officer of the Month, they give him that good parking place close to the door. The guy gives off a light, you know? I guess you could call it a glow, and everybody wants to kind of get within that glow. What a wonderful thing that is. I guess.”

“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”

The f-word came much easier to this guy.

“My partner. You know, the way there’s always one person in town that everyone is attracted to. The Golden Girl…or guy. He’s an unusual guy. You never met a guy like him. I’d like for you to hang out together for a while, see what I mean.”

“I’d like for you to get off the island.”

“I can see that. I just don’t know why. Or maybe I do.”

“We don’t like big city cops…”

“Big city? You ever been to Spokane?”

“…skirting our jurisdiction, cozying up to the Indians to get around dealing with the county.”

“Which must be a pleasure, I’m sure. Next time.”

“You are one smart ass bitch, ain’tcha?”

“Now, you’ve crossed the line, Sheriff. Only my colleagues call me bitch.”

I really wanted to send a kick to his jewels, and I had a clear channel, as he was standing feet apart, arms folded across his chest.

“What else?” said the kid. They were in business here.

“What the biggest thing you got?” I asked, still staring down the wiry deputy. “I want the most bang for my buck.”

Both kids answered at the same time. “The Predator.”

“Then give me
two
predators.”

“Where’s my old lady, Calvin?” asked the deputy.