Indian Killer (23 page)

“We got to go!” shouted purple mask. Blue mask was already in the driver’s seat, ready to roll. White mask smashed Cornelius one last time, jumped into the 4Runner with the other two, and screamed triumphantly as they sped from the scene.

A
S OLIVIA AND DANIEL
ate breakfast, the radio announced that Mark Jones had been kidnapped by the Indian Killer. A homeless Indian couple had been assaulted by three masked men. Olivia had wanted to talk, but Daniel excused himself from the table. A few minutes before seven in the morning, Daniel Smith left home, saying he had extra work at the architecture firm.

As Daniel drove away, Olivia knew that he was really going to look for John. As he drove from Bellevue over the 520 bridge west to Seattle, Daniel could see a few sailboats out for an early cruise on Lake Washington. A man and woman, dressed warmly, were aboard a large one with a red and white sail, just a hundred feet or so from the bridge. As Daniel imagined he heard their laughter, he felt jealous. Man, woman, boat, water, freedom. Everything so simple for them. The shadow of Mount Rainier rose on the southern horizon. On a slightly overcast day, the mountain was just a ghost, a subtle reminder of itself, a brief memory. With unlimited visibility, the mountain was spectacular and surreal, rising as it did over the urban landscape of Seattle. Daniel knew that accidents had occurred on Seattle freeways because of drivers who were distracted by Rainier’s beauty. Local Indians had always believed that Rainier was a sacred place, not to be climbed or trivialized. Daniel wondered if any Indians had wrecked their cars because of a view of the mountain.

He parked the car downtown in a lot near the firm and walked the streets. Little traffic, a few cars and out-of-season tourists. A heavy rain had fallen, leaving behind that particular odor which so many people associate with fresh air and nature, though that smell rises out of the damp, musty places in a city. Still, Daniel had always loved the rain and what it left behind. As Daniel wandered, he felt no love for the rain or the city. He felt lost and hopeless, searching for his son, who had become a stranger. Daniel had never done anything this desperate. He had no idea what he was doing, only that he would not find John by sitting inside, just waiting. He was shocked by the number of homeless people, especially the dozens of Indians, who were living in downtown Seattle. He was intimidated, but he soon found the courage to talk to them. Outside the Elliott Bay Book Company, which had not yet opened, Daniel saw a homeless Indian man in a wheelchair.

“Hello,” Daniel ventured. The Indian was about forty years old, with long, greasy hair. He wore a U.S. Army jacket and a red beret.

“Hey,” replied the Indian. “You got any change?”

Daniel dug in his empty pockets. Then he pulled a couple dollars from his wallet and handed them over.

“Thanks.” The Indian quickly pocketed the money.

“Listen, could I ask you something? I’m looking for my son. He’s Indian. A big guy. Talks to himself.”

“Hey, partner, most everybody down here talks to himself. How’d you get an Indian son anyways? Marry you some dark meat, enit?”

“No, no. He’s adopted.”

“What’s his name?” asked the Indian.

“John. John Smith.”

“You adopted an Indian kid and named him John Smith? No wonder he talks to himself. What’s your name?”

“Daniel.”

“Hey, Daniel, I’ve got to say I don’t know one Indian named John Smith. I know King and Agnes. I know Marie the Sandwich Lady and Robert. But I don’t know a John Smith. Ain’t nobody knows any Indian named John Smith. Ain’t no such thing. You must have dreamed him up.”

The Indian laughed, slapped his own face, twirled around in his chair.

“You know,” drawled the wheelchair Indian. “I bet you’re a cop, enit? You’re just a cop looking for that Indian Killer, right?”

“No, no. I’m really looking for my son. This Indian Killer thing has me worried about him.”

“All the cops been through here a million times already,” said the Indian. “Asking me this, asking me that. I’ll tell you what I told the others. I know who killed those white people.”

“You know who did it?”

“Damn right, I know,” said the Indian. He laughed loudly, rolling his chair away from Daniel.

“Wait,” Daniel called after him, caught in the surprise of the moment. “Who did it?”

“It was Crazy Horse,” shouted the Indian, who stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “You know Crazy Horse?”

“Of course,” said Daniel, who’d read most every Indian book that Olivia had set in front of him. “He’s Oglala Sioux, right?”

“Oh, yeah, he’s Oglala.” The Indian, slowly wheeling back, closer and closer to Daniel, kept speaking. “And he’s more. This Indian Killer, you see, he’s got Crazy Horse’s magic. He’s got Chief Joseph’s brains. He’s got Geronimo’s heart. He’s got Wovoka’s vision. He’s all those badass Indians rolled up into one.”

The wheelchair Indian dug through his pockets, pulled out a series of wrinkled news clippings, and waved them in the air.

“See,” said the Indian, “I’m keeping track. We all are. Every Indian is keeping score. What? This Killer’s got himself two white guys? And that little white boy, enit? That makes the score about ten million to three, in favor of the white guys, enit? This Killer’s got a long ways to go. Man, he’s the underdog.”

The Indian laughed loudly, slapping his still legs. He began to roll away from Daniel.

“But who is he?” asked Daniel.

“It’s me,” said the Indian, his laughter getting louder as he rolled farther away. Then, still laughing, he stepped out of his chair, pushed it quickly down the street, and disappeared.

Though unnerved, Daniel could not stop searching for John. He spent most of the day in downtown Seattle, but never found anybody, white or Indian, who had ever heard of an Indian named John Smith, though they all knew a dozen homeless Indian men.

“Yeah, there’s that Blackfeet guy, Loney.”

“Oh, yeah, enit? And that Laguna guy, what’s his name? Tayo?”

“And Abel, that Kiowa.”

After searching for hours, Daniel returned to his car and made it back to Bellevue for an early dinner.

“How was your day?” asked Olivia, hoping that he’d tell her about his search for John.

“Okay,” said Daniel.

John’s parents ate the rest of their meal in silence.

That night, Olivia Smith dreamed: Father Duncan dipping baby John into the baptismal; four-year-old John heaving a basketball toward the hoop as Daniel laughs and claps his hands; Daniel kissing down her belly; John’s naked body, bloody and brown, dumped on a snow plain. Olivia dreamed: a red tricycle; lightning illuminating a stranger standing at a window; pine trees on fire; an abandoned hound mournfully howling beside a country road. Olivia dreamed: John standing alone on the last skyscraper in Seattle as wind whips his hair across his face; Daniel holding her head under water at Lake Sammamish until she panics; the moon rising above the Space Needle; Father Duncan dipping the adult John into the baptismal.

With a sudden start, Olivia sat up in bed, awake, unsure of her surroundings. Slowly, she recognized her bedroom, maple bureau, huge closet door ajar, Daniel snoring lightly beside her. Knowing she would not sleep now, she crawled from bed and walked into the bathroom. Without turning on the light, she pulled down her pajamas and sat on the toilet. She could not go, though there was a slight pressure in her bladder. She briefly wondered if she had an infection. She held her head in her hands and waited. She thought about the Indian Killer murders, how the news was filled with photographs of the white men who had been killed. Of the little white boy, helpless and small, as John had once been. She wondered if John was safe. She wanted to pray, but felt embarrassed by her position. Then she prayed anyway as her legs fell asleep.

As Olivia prayed, Daniel dreamed: his secretary leaning over his desk with papers to sign; the Bainbridge Island ferry crossing rough waters. Daniel dreamed: young John running across a field; a stranger hammering nails into a joist. Daniel dreamed: a red truck breaking through a guardrail; a pistol firing. Daniel dreamed: a man screaming; John standing over the bed.

Frightened, Daniel sat up in bed, sure that John was there. Daniel could almost smell his son. Smoke and sweat, sweet and dank. Then Daniel could smell his son, could feel him there.

“John?” asked Daniel.

Olivia heard her husband, quickly pulled up her pajamas and stepped into the bedroom.

“Daniel,” she said. “Who are you talking to?”

“It’s John,” he said. “He’s here.”

Olivia looked around the bedroom. The windows were locked tight. The bedroom door was shut. Since the closet door was slightly ajar, she opened it and turned on the light. Daniel’s suits on one side, her dresses and blouses on the other. On both sides, above their clothes, boxes were stacked from shelf to ceiling. A dozen pairs of Daniel’s shoes scattered on the floor; ten pairs of Olivia’s. No John. She switched off the closet light.

“He’s not here,” Olivia said to Daniel, to herself. “You’re dreaming.”

“No,” said Daniel. “He’s here. I can smell him.”

Olivia sniffed the air. She knew her son’s smell. Was confident of that. Knew she could’ve been blind and still picked him out of a crowd. She’d held his clothes to her face and breathed in deeply. She’d held him close in her arms and buried her face in his thick black hair. When he was young, he smelled of cut grass and pine trees, band-aids and hydrogen peroxide, strawberry Kool-Aid and Ivory soap. As he grew older, he smelled of Old Spice and dirty tennis shoes, secondhand smoke and ocean, pepperoni pizza and musty libraries.

“He’s here,” Daniel said, nearly pleading now. “I know it.”

Olivia heard the obvious fear and confusion in her husband’s voice. She had not often heard him sound so defenseless. She went to his side, touched his face.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

Daniel pointed at the place where John had been standing.

“Right there,” Daniel said. “He was right there.”

Olivia looked at the spot. She wanted to see John standing there. She wanted it so much that he almost appeared. As if John was struggling to step from another world into this one, a sliver of light floated there at the foot of the bed. Olivia could see it, and knew that it was an illusion, an odd moment of moonlight, the afterimage of the closet’s bright lamp. But she wanted to believe in it.

“Right there,” Daniel whispered as Olivia gently pushed him onto his back.

“I know, I know,” she said as Daniel closed his eyes and fell back to sleep.

Wide awake now, she walked downstairs into the kitchen for a glass of milk. She opened the fridge and saw that the leftover roast had been cut into. She then saw the carving knife dropped carelessly into the sink. Daniel’s midnight snack. No wonder he was dreaming, Olivia thought as she washed the knife and replaced it in the cutting block.

W
ILSON WOKE SLOWLY, KEEPING
his eyes closed even as he drifted into consciousness. The clock radio beside the bed was playing a song about fire and rain. Sunlight filtered softly through his closed eyelids, creating a fireworks display. The next-door neighbor’s dog barked through the thin walls of the apartment complex. No pets allowed, but Wilson did not mind the dog. He had often considered getting a dog himself. The garbage truck two blocks away rumbled through gears. The smell of eggs and hamburger from the apartment below him. A mother and father, two boys, down there in such a small space, a one-bedroom only a little larger than Wilson’s studio. They were never loud, never bothersome. Wilson heard only the faint metallic music of the boys’ video game, Nintendo or some such thing. The mother, Janice, picked up Wilson’s mail when he was away, though he rarely was. She would deliver it to him neatly wrapped in one of those huge rubber bands that seem to have no other use than wrapping up large bundles of mail. He wondered how Janice fit her husband, two sons, all the eggs and hamburger, and those huge rubber bands into that little apartment.

He remembered other mornings, waking up, wondering which foster parents were keeping him, surrounding him with their space. He often forgot. One day the O’Gradys’ large house, and then he was in the Smiths’ tiny place the next morning, waking up in the same bed with Stuart Smith, who wet the bed. No. Wilson wet the bed but always blamed it on Stuart. After he moved from the Smith house, Wilson slept alone and could not blame it on anybody else. The Johnsons were kind and considerate about Wilson’s bed-wetting. Mrs. Johnson slipped a shower curtain between the sheets and mattress when she made the bed, and washed the soiled sheets without saying a word. The Sheldons were cruel. Mr. Sheldon shamed him. Mrs. Sheldon made him wash the sheets himself by hand. Some nights, he was forced to sleep in the bathtub, without blankets, sheets, or pillow, because he had ruined so many. The Hawkinses simply made him sleep in the same wet sheets night after night. The Crowleys locked him in a dark closet for hours at a time.

As a teenager, Wilson had learned to control his bladder on most nights. But when he did wet his bed, he woke up early and washed the sheets. During sleep-overs with friends, he stayed awake all night, terrified to fall asleep. While living with the Lambeers, he’d once fallen asleep on the floor during an overnight birthday party and stained a shag carpet. His new friends had promptly and completely ostracized him after that. Alone and frightened, he made friends with family pets, and if those family pets sometimes ignored him, Wilson kicked them. Their yelps of pain made him feel better. Or he led the dogs and cats miles away from the houses, tied them to traffic signs, and walked away. They came back, or they didn’t. Wilson had once set a bowl of antifreeze in front of a family dog and watched happily as the dog lapped it up.

Now, as an adult, Wilson tried to forget all that, but once in a while he still woke up with a start, worried that he’d wet the bed yet again. He’d woken up that morning, touched his crotch and the sheets beneath him, and breathed a sigh of relief. He’d been up late working on his novel,
Indian Killer
. With his other novels, he usually wrote about five pages a day, but he had managed to fill only a single page of
Indian Killer
before he forced himself to bed at 3
A.M.
He’d only written ten very rough pages since he had talked to the desk sergeant about the killings. Up late every night, trying to finish. So much pressure, so many monsters. Wilson wondered about a woman, a wife, calling him to bed. Would she have let him stay up until three in the morning? He was frightened by the thought, by a woman. He thought of Beautiful Mary pushing him into that doorway, how she held his penis with her callused hand. He saw her scarred face and her dead eyes. He trembled at the memory and wondered if he would sleep. As it was, Wilson crawled into cold sheets and lay there wide awake for hours before sleep surprised him and dragged him off into the dark. He had never remembered his dreams very well, but last night, he knew he had fought off a variety of faceless monsters. Then he had dreamed about the murders. To his surprise, Wilson had dreamed of David Rogers’s face as a bullet passed through his brain, had seen the blood fountain from Justin Summers’s belly, had heard the muffled cries of Mark Jones. Now Wilson’s arms and legs felt sore.