Indian Killer (38 page)

King, the failed college student, who walked the shelves of the Elliott Bay Book Company, picked out a book at random, and read a few pages a day until he finished it. Joseph, the recluse, who always wore a pair of nonprescription sunglasses, kept a hand drum hidden in the brush near the freeway, and would still sing old tribal songs. The newspaper man, Crazy Robert, who was a reporter for the
Seattle Times
when he was twenty-five and homeless by the time he was thirty-five. Obese in his youth, Robert had become impossibly thin. And the women. Agnes, who kept a menagerie of stray dogs and scavenger birds, spoke in whispers. Green-eyed Kim, the angry one, the nurse who had spent ten years in prison for killing an abusive husband. Annie, with black hair that once flowed down to her knees, now knotted and tangled beyond repair. She used to sing standards in a Holiday Inn Lounge in Norman, Oklahoma.

John did not know any of these Indians, could know nothing of their backgrounds. He did not know why they had fallen apart or what small thread kept them tied together now. Despite all their pain and suffering, these Indians held together, held onto one another.

John looked into the eyes of those Indians. He looked into the eyes of Boo, the white man who had been forever damaged in a war. Boo and the Indians all had the same stare, as if they spent most of their day anticipating the sudden arrival of the bullet that was meant for them. John saw the bruises and blood. And wanted to talk, to finally speak. To tell them about Father Duncan and the desert, the dreams he had of his life on a reservation, and those rare moments when he had stood on tall buildings and seen clearly. But there was no language in which he could express himself.

John saw that Marie, the sandwich lady, was crying now, tears rolling down her face. Falling to the floor of the van, they would collect and fill up the world. He wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to get on his knees before her and confess all of his sins. He wanted to rest his head in her lap, feel her fingers combing through his hair, and hear her softly singing.
Hush, hush,
she would sing,
everything will be fine in the morning.
He wanted to tell her about the desert. He wanted to give her a gift for all that she had done.

“John,” said Marie, wanting him to speak. She could see him standing at the protest powwow, not wanting to owl dance, but forced into it by tradition. She could see him, with golf club in hand, standing over Wilson and the cab driver, then curled into the smallest possible version of himself as those white boys punched and kicked him. John looked at her, through her. Marie felt a sudden rush of heat. She could smell smoke. She could see an empty landscape, golden sand, blue sky, a series of footprints leading toward the horizon. She could see the dark figure of a man in the distance. He grew smaller and smaller. No matter how far or fast she ran, Marie knew that she could never catch him.

“Hey, man,” said Boo, trying to break the tension in the truck. The other Indians were silent and still.

John turned toward Boo, who could see the emptiness in the big Indian’s eyes.

“Hey, come on,” said Boo and offered John a sandwich. It was a small and ridiculous gesture.

John looked at the sandwich. He looked at the crippled white man, who had lost almost everything. He had lost his family, his home, his country, the use of his legs.

“Here,” Boo said again and held the sandwich closer to John.

“John,” said Marie, wanting John to accept Boo’s gift.

John heard Marie’s voice in the distance. He looked at the sandwich, that small offering. He closed his eyes and imagined his birth.

John hears the slight whine of machinery. He hears gunfire. Explosions. A bird cry. The machine closer now and louder. The
whomp-whomp
of blades as the helicopter descends. John hears it land on the pavement outside the van. John closes his eyes and sees the man in the white jumpsuit running across the pavement, holding a bundle of blankets in his arms. The white jumpsuit man wears a white helmet and visor that hides his face. Another white man and woman wait at the end of the street. They huddle together beneath a huge umbrella. The helicopter brings the rain. The man in the white jumpsuit holds the baby in his arms. Swaddled in blankets, the baby is warm and terrified. Beneath the umbrella, the man and woman wait. He is a handsome man, pale-skinned and thin. He grimaces, tries to smile, then grimaces again, awkwardly, as if the smile were somehow painful. She is a beautiful large-breasted woman with ivory skin and clear eyes. The man in the white jumpsuit runs to the man and woman beneath the umbrella, and offers them the baby swaddled in blankets. The baby is small, just days from birth, and brown-skinned, with a surprisingly full head of black hair. The white woman takes the baby and holds him to her empty breast. The baby suckles air. The white man pulls his wife closer beneath their shared umbrella. He tries to smile. The man in the white jumpsuit turns and runs back to the helicopter. He gives the pilot a thumbs-up and the chopper carefully ascends, avoiding power lines and telephone poles.

John opened his eyes and looked around the sandwich van. Everybody was quiet and still, waiting for him to speak or move. John, feeling unworthy and too ill to be healed, looked again at Boo’s small offering. Bread, blood. John could hear the helicopter floating away.

John knew that the man in the white jumpsuit was to blame for everything that had gone wrong. Everything had gone wrong from the very beginning, when John was stolen from his Indian mother. That had caused the first internal wound and John had been bleeding ever since, slowly dying and drying, until he was just a husk drifting in a desert wind. John knew who was to blame. If it had been possible, John would have reached out, lifted the visor, and seen the face of that man in the white jumpsuit. John knew he would have recognized the curve of the jaw and the arrogant expression. John had seen it before.

Once more, Boo offered the sandwich to John, who this time shook his head at that smallest kindness. There was no time for kindness. John needed to be saved and John knew exactly which white man had to die for him. He moved to the back of the truck, opened the door, and stumbled to the pavement. He did not look back, afraid of what he might see, and nobody in the truck tried to stop him. Marie watched John go away. Her skin felt hot and dry. She wondered how it felt to kill a white man.

T
RUCK SCHULTZ LISTENED TO
the police radio scanner. Dozens of calls. Bar fights, domestic assaults, arson. The Seattle Urban Indian Health Center had been firebombed. Two police officers had been ambushed by rock-throwing Indians. Random gunfire. Police were looking for a truck full of white kids who were attacking homeless Indians. After he’d announced that the Indian Killer was responsible for Edward Letterman’s death, all hell had broken loose. Worse than New Year’s Eve. Worse than a full-moon Saturday night. Truck was in awe of his own power. He had to speak. He leaned toward the microphone.

“I don’t think so,” said Officer Randy Peone as he stepped into the studio. He pointed a finger at Truck. “You ain’t got nothing else to say tonight. Not one damn thing.”

O
UTSIDE THE TULALIP TRIBAL
Casino, David Rogers was trembling. He was alone in the dark parking lot and was terrified. He had two thousand dollars in cash in his pocket and suddenly felt very vulnerable. As he tried to open his car door, he dropped his keys. He bent over to pick them up and he felt a hot pain at the back of his head, saw a bright white light, and then saw nothing at all.

When he woke, David was lying facedown on the back seat of an old Chevy Nova. Two white men, Spud and Lyle, first cousins, pulled David out of the Nova and dragged him through the woods to a clearing a hundred feet off the road. Still groggy, suffering from a severe concussion, David could barely focus on the two men. He looked down at the ground and saw a solitary flower. He wondered if it was a lily. He wondered if camas root grew there. He wondered how long it had been growing.

“He’s awake,” said Lyle.

“Holy crow,” said Spud as he counted the money again. “Little bastard was rich.”

“How much?”

“A lot, I think.”

David looked up at the cousins. He tried to think clearly. He wanted to tell them something about Hemingway.

“He’s seen our faces,” said Lyle.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Spud, thinking hard.

“You think anybody saw us take him?”

“Nah, those Indians can’t see for shit.”

Lyle and Spud laughed.

“What should we do with him?” asked Lyle.

“I don’t know. I guess we should shoot him.”

David tried to get to his feet. Spud pushed him backward and David sat down hard, his back against a fallen tree.

“He’s just a kid,” said Lyle.

“A rich kid.”

“That’ll be true.”

Spud pulled out his pistol, a .38 Special, and aimed it at David’s face. Lyle covered his face. Spud’s hand was shaking. He closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. A startled owl lifted from a nearby tree.

“Holy crow,” said Spud. “I killed him.”

“Yeah, he looks like he’s asleep.”

“Well, what should we do now?”

“I say we get the hell out of here.”

With that, Spud and Lyle climbed into their Chevy Nova, drove north through Canadian customs without incident, and into Vancouver. That same night, they lost the two thousand dollars in an illegal poker game, plus another thousand dollars in promises. When those promises couldn’t be kept, Spud and Lyle were driven to a secluded spot by a river and forced to kneel in the mud. With their hands tied behind their backs. Spud and Lyle pleaded for their lives but only the river listened, and it didn’t care.

Shot once in each eye, Spud and Lyle’s bodies were found by a hiker later that summer. David Rogers’s murder was never solved.

“C
OULD YOU TELL US
your name, for the record? And where you’re from?”

“Uh, my name is Sean Ward. I’m a student at the University of Washington. I’m from Selkirk, um, Selkirk, Washington. I need to, uh, talk about some things.”

“What do you need to tell us, Sean?”

“Well, this isn’t about just me. Yeah. It’s about my roommates, Aaron and Barry. Uh, that’s Aaron Rogers and Barry Church.”

“Yes?”

“Well, you see, we’re the guys in the masks. The ones who’ve been beating up Indians. We’re the baseball bats. Uh, yeah. We’re the masks.”

“Where are Aaron and Barry now?”

“They’re still out there, I guess. I left them earlier. I tried to get them to stop, but they wouldn’t.”

“Is that why you have that bump on your head?”

“Yeah, Aaron punched me.”

“Why are you telling us this?”

“I’m not sure, you know? I mean, I love those guys. Aaron and Barry. I mean, I think we started doing this for a good reason.”

“A good reason?”

“Well, uh, maybe it’s not a good reason. But people would understand, I think. You know that David Rogers? The guy who disappeared from the casino? He was our other roommate. I mean, David and Aaron were brothers. That’s what started us in, you know. It was for, uh, revenge.”

“How many people did you assault?”

“Well, there was the guy on the Burke-Gilman Trail. Then that couple on Queen Anne Hill. Then some homeless old guy earlier today. Uh, that makes it what, four people? Yeah, four.”

“Three of those people are still in the hospital. You almost killed them.”

“Yeah, I know. But, uh, I know you’re not going to believe me. You shouldn’t believe me. But I didn’t hurt anybody. I carried a bat and stuff but I never used it. It was mostly Aaron. Barry, too. But it was mostly Aaron. I made them quit, you know? I made Aaron stop hitting people. If I hadn’t been there, Aaron might have really killed somebody.”

“You’re in a lot of trouble, Sean.”

“I know.”

“Why’d you do this? What are you going to tell your parents? How are you going to explain this?”

“I don’t know. I mean, uh, it’s like this white-Indian thing has gotten out of control. And the thing with the blacks and Mexicans. Everybody blaming everybody. I mean, it’s like white people get blamed for everything these days. I mean, I know we did some bad stuff. I know it. I know what me and Aaron and Barry did was wrong. But it was anger. Frustration, you know? David disappeared, and we, uh, just lost control. I mean, somebody had to pay for it. Somebody was to blame for it. I don’t know what happened. I can’t explain it all. Just look around at the world. Look at this country. Things just aren’t like they used to be.”

“Son, things have never been like how you think they used to be.”

W
ILSON LEFT BIG HEART’S
after his encounter with Reggie and drove home to his apartment on Capitol Hill. He wondered how he was going to fix things with Reggie and Big Heart’s. He had done so much for his fellow Indians. He had made the ultimate sacrifice. He wanted them to love him. He parked his pickup in front of the building, slowly trudged up the front walk, and checked his mail.

Isn’t that how it happened?

He loved his mail. There was none, of course, but he checked anyway. Then he walked upstairs, opened his door, and turned on the light. His apartment was as neat as always. The small table. Two forks, two spoons, two knives, two plates. The black-and-white photograph of his birth parents on the dresser. The foldout couch. It was cold in the apartment because Wilson always turned down the heat before he went out. Seattle was cold at night during the summer and winter. He was slightly chilled and wanted to climb beneath the covers and sleep for days. First things first, though. He brushed and flossed his teeth, undressed, and tossed his dirty clothes into the hamper.

Isn’t that how it happened?

Then he slipped into his favorite pajamas and settled into bed. He could hear his neighbors turning in for the night. Running water, flushing toilets, creaking bed springs. It was very quiet. One police siren, then another, and a third. Cars on the freeway ten blocks to the west. Muffled conversation between two men walking down the street in front of the building.