Indian Killer (39 page)

Isn’t that how it happened?

In his bed, awake and wondering about the Indian Killer, about finishing the novel. He thought about John Smith, who, in Wilson’s mind, remained as unfinished as the novel. In the dark, Wilson could still see the photograph of John at the construction site. John’s fellow workers eat together, share a joke and common laughter, slap one another on the back. John sits back all by himself, his eyes dark and impenetrable. Wilson thought that a person driving down a road and coming upon a tunnel as dark as those eyes would stop, turn the car around, and go miles out of his way to avoid it. As it was, Wilson had tried to follow those eyes. Sitting with John’s mother, he had felt it when something left her body. Something solid and substantial. Following John’s eyes into Big Heart’s, he saw Reggie’s eyes, just as dark, but lit with a more volatile fire. Quicker to burn, easier to extinguish. Reggie was probably in Big Heart’s telling stories and laughing right now, reliving his encounter with Wilson, turning a potentially fatal conflict into a series of comic escapades.

Isn’t that how it happened?

Wilson was thinking about John Smith, then fell so quickly to sleep that he effortlessly slipped into a dream about Smith. He dreamed about Smith pushing that knife into the white man in the University District. He saw Smith slit the throat of the businessman. Then Smith was smiling as he lifted the young boy from his bed. Then Wilson saw himself with that knife. Wilson saw himself pushing the knife into one white body, then another, and another, until there were multitudes.

Isn’t that how it happened?

Then the dream changed, and Wilson was pulling up in front of his apartment building again. A brown hand reached through the open window of the truck and smashed Wilson’s head against the steering wheel. Stunned and barely conscious, Wilson slumped in his seat and somebody, a dark figure, reached inside Wilson’s jacket and took his weapon. Then the dark figure opened the door and pushed him out of the way. With Wilson stuffed under the dashboard, the dark figure sat quietly at the steering wheel, waiting to see if the commotion had attracted any attention. A police siren in the distance, but nobody shouted out. No lights suddenly appeared in the apartment building. No cars passed by. The dark figure started the pickup and slowly drove down Capitol Hill.

“D
R. MATHER, I HEAR
you know who the Indian Killer is.”

“Well, Officer, I don’t know who the Indian Killer is, but I have some information you may find useful in your investigation.”

“And?”

“Well, it’s about a former student of mine, a Spokane Indian named Reggie Polatkin.”

“Any relation to Marie Polatkin?”

“Why, yes. They’re cousins. How do you know her?”

“She’s the Sandwich Lady.”

“Excuse me?”

“She delivers sandwiches to the homeless.”

“Really. I can’t imagine her in such a role.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she always seems so impulsive, so emotional. What’s the word I’m searching for? So individualistic. Not tribal at all. I mean, she actually threatened me with physical violence earlier today.”

“How did she threaten you?”

“She said she’d eat my heart.”

“Really? Marie Polatkin said that?”

“Yes, she did. Of course, I had to drop her from my class. I’m thinking of pursuing more serious charges against her.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that. Tell me more about her cousin.”

“Reggie? Well, as I said, Reggie is a former student of mine. We had a misunderstanding and he, well, he assaulted me.”

“Sounds like you and the Polatkin family have a problem.”

“I hardly find this amusing, Officer. I must protest your behavior.”

“Protest noted.”

“Officer, Reggie and I used to travel together. And we talked. Reggie had a very violent father. Very violent. A white man. I always worried that Reggie was going to hurt somebody.”

“Why were you worried?”

“Because he said he dreamed about killing people.”

S
LOWLY, WILSON WOKE AND
made several attempts to open his eyes. His head ached and he could taste blood. He tried to reach up and touch his face to see how badly he was hurt, but discovered that he was tied to a wall. He could not move his arms or legs. He tested the ropes, but they held tight. How had this happened? Wilson wondered if he was still dreaming.

But Wilson was tied to a wall. His head did ache and his mouth tasted of real blood. He couldn’t move his arms or legs. He did test the ropes that held him. He stood eagle-armed, his wrists tightly secured to two-by-fours, his legs tied at the ankles to another two-by-four. All of the two-by-fours were part of a wall frame. Wilson looked around. By twisting his head, Wilson could see that he was tied to a wall frame in an upper floor of an unfinished downtown building. He could see the other frames that would hold the walls for the bathrooms and two large corner offices. He noticed frames for rows of smaller offices between corner offices. The elevators and shafts were finished, looked strange and out of place. Various saw-horses scattered here and there. A forgotten black metal lunch box near a power saw. An open metal door just north of Wilson. An unlit exit sign above it. Wilson tested the ropes. He could see through the wooden skeleton of the floor to the buildings that surrounded him. In one building, a janitor pushed a vacuum back and forth, back and forth. A police siren many floors below him. Then another siren, and a third, a fourth, blending into one long scream. Wilson could sense that somebody was standing behind him. Wilson knew that his shoulder holster was empty and that somebody behind him was holding the pistol.

“John?” asked Wilson.

“Yes,” John answered. Wilson twisted his head violently from side to side in an effort to locate him.

“John? Where are you? Let me see you, okay? Let’s talk, okay?” asked Wilson. John heard the fear in Wilson’s voice, even as he tried to bury it beneath layers of professional calm.

“John?”

John inched closer to Wilson and touched his arm.

“Hey, John, you scared me there. Why don’t you come out here where I can see you? We can talk, right? Why don’t we talk?”

John remained silent.

“Hey, John, I met your mom tonight. She’s a beautiful woman.”

John saw his Indian mother on the delivery table. She reached for her Indian child.

“Olivia, right? She really loves you, man.”

John saw Olivia, wearing only a towel, walking across a hardwood floor. Her hair wet, her damp feet leaving slight prints on the wood.

“She wants you to come home. Don’t you want to go home?”

Wilson waited as long as he could stand for a response. His voice broke.

“And what about your dad, John? What’s his name?”

I don’t have a father, John thought, but he saw Daniel dribbling a basketball in the driveway.
Like this
, Daniel was shouting,
like this
.

“Come on, John, talk to me. It’s okay. We can talk about it. Everybody will understand. I’ll make them understand. I’m a writer, John. What do you say?”

Silence. Wilson thought hard, trying to save his life.

“Listen, John, any Indian would kill a white guy if he thought he could get away with it. Which Indian wouldn’t do it? I’m an Indian. I know. There are a million white men I’d kill if they’d let me. Talk to me, John. Indian to Indian. Real Indians. I’ll understand.”

John heard the fear in Wilson’s voice now.

“Hey, remember up by my apartment? Remember when you had that golf club? Man, I thought you were going to beat my ass. Who were you with? That Indian woman, the one who hates me, right? Maria, Marie, Mary? What’s her name?

“I knew an Indian woman named Mary. Beautiful Mary. Back when I was a rookie. She lived on the streets, man, and I looked out for her. Really, I did. I was the only Indian cop on the force. The only one. Can you believe that? There aren’t many now, but I was the only one then. And I’ll tell you. It was hard work. They always gave me the shit jobs. Called me Chief and Tonto and everything else. Man, it was awful. But I took care of the Indians, you know? All those Indians who lived downtown? Just like now, huh? Lots of them. And Beautiful Mary was my favorite. I mean, I never told anybody this before, but I loved her. I mean, really loved her. I kept thinking we were going to get married or something. I thought we’d have little Indian babies, you know? But then she was killed. Raped and killed. They stuffed her behind a Dumpster. I just wanted to die, you know?”

John stepped forward and pressed the pistol against the back of Wilson’s head. Terrified, Wilson tried to think, not wanting the ultimate indignity of being killed by his own weapon.

“Please,” Wilson said as he struggled against the ropes. He was afraid of the pistol. He was begging for his life from the man he knew was the Indian Killer.

“Don’t hurt me,” Wilson said to John. “I’m not a white man. I’m Indian. You don’t kill Indians.”

“M
R. WILLIAMS, I’M SURE
you know why you’re here, don’t you?”

“Call me Ty. And yeah, I figure it’s because of what we did to that white guy.”

“And who is this ‘we’ you’re referring to?”

“You know, Reggie and Harley and me.”

“Reggie Polatkin, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“And Harley?”

“Harley Tate, man, he’s deaf. He’s a Colville Indian.”

“And where is Harley Tate now?”

“You mean you ain’t got him? And Reggie, too? I figured you had us all nabbed.”

“Nabbed for what, Ty?”

“For beating up that white guy on the football field. Well, I should say that Reggie really hurt him. Harley and I didn’t know that was going to happen. What was that white guy’s name. I read it in the papers, but I don’t remember.”

“Robert Harris.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Reggie took that guy’s eyes. But he’s doing okay, enit?”

“Mr. Harris is fine. But he says you tried to kill him.”

“Hey, I don’t know nothing about any murders. Yeah, I beat up on that white guy. But like I said, Reggie really hurt him. I didn’t want no part of that. You got to talk to Reggie about that.”

“You know where Reggie happens to be?”

“Nope.”

“Where were you this evening about ten o’clock, Ty?”

“I was at Big Heart’s, up on Aurora. I swear.”

“And where were Reggie and Harley at ten?”

“I don’t know, man. I mean, Reggie left after he almost got in a fight with Jack Wilson.”

“The mystery writer, Jack Wilson? The cop?”

“Yeah, he hangs around the bar a lot. He’s a Wannabe Indian.”

“Wannabe?”

“Yeah, you know, wants to be Indian.”

“I see, and what time did Reggie leave the bar?”

“I don’t know. About nine or so, I guess.”

“And you didn’t go with him?”

“No, I swear. There’s about a hundred Indians who’ll tell you I was in that bar until closing.”

“We’ll check on that. How about Harley?”

“Harley took off this afternoon and I ain’t seen him since. He and Reggie almost duked it out.”

“Does Reggie own a knife?”

“A knife?”

“How many times has Reggie used this knife on someone?”

“I don’t know anything about a knife. Hey, shit, this ain’t about that Indian Killer, is it?”

“You tell us what this knife is about.”

“Hey, man, you ain’t going to pin that Indian Killer stuff on me. I didn’t kill nobody. And Reggie didn’t kill nobody, either. I know Reggie. He’s smart. He went to college, you know?”

“We know. He beat up his professor. A great student.”

“I don’t know what that was about, man. Maybe Reggie was just trying to scare him. That professor put the whammy on him, you know? Got Reggie kicked out. Reggie was smart, man. I tell you. He didn’t kill nobody. You go ahead and run your tests. Get all the witnesses you want. But I didn’t kill nobody. Reggie didn’t kill nobody.”

“Do you own a knife?”

“Yeah, I got a Swiss Army knife, a butter knife, and a steak knife at home. Shit, yeah, I own knives. I have to eat, enit?”

“Did Reggie own a knife?”

“I don’t know, man.”

“And what about Harley Tate?”

“You’ll have to ask him yourself.”

“And where is he?”

“Only Harley knows where Harley is.”

“D
ON’T HURT ME,” WILSON
said to John. “I’m not a white man. I’m Indian. You don’t kill Indians.”

John wondered if Wilson knew the difference between dreaming and reality. How one could easily become the other.

In his dreams, John saw his Indian mother standing on the porch as he drove away from the reservation. It was cold and rainy, as it would be on a day such as that. Or on another day, in another dream, his Indian mother on the delivery table, in all the blood, too much blood. She has died during his birth. An evil child, he destroyed his mother’s life as she gave him his.

Standing on the last skyscraper in Seattle, John was silent as the desert. The golden sand and blue sky. The long series of footprints leading to the horizon where that stand of palm trees waits. The wind beginning to blow. A storm approaching. Soon the sand would obscure the footprints and there would be no trace that anybody had come this way before.

John looked at the pistol in his hand and understood this was not the right thing to do. He dropped the pistol to the floor in front of Wilson, who was weeping. As Wilson continued to weep, the first ferry from Bainbridge Island docked at the wharf. Cars rolled off in orderly rows. Another jet passed by overhead, the nonstop from New York’s Kennedy Airport. Indian lawyers were already in their offices. Indian doctors were sound asleep. Wilson wept. Mick, the bartender, sat alone at the bar in Big Heart’s Soda and Juice Bar. He shuffled over to the jukebox, which was still playing songs that had been requested hours earlier, and pulled the plug. Olivia Smith stood quietly in the doorway of her husband’s study. He was asleep, crumpled on the couch, a detailed map of the United States propped open on his chest. She curled up close to her husband on the small couch. In a downtown garage, the street sweepers had just finished their shift and were contemplating a long day of sleep. Fog. Rain. Wilson wept. Rescue helicopters landed at Harborview Medical Center a few blocks east of the last skyscraper in Seattle. Mark Jones stood silently at the foot of his parents’ bed and watched them sleep. The ocean pounded against the shore. The alarm clocks were ringing, and workers, Indian and not, would soon fill the streets.