Shockwave (5 page)

Those same sneaker-wave tentacles are as capricious as they are deadly—they don’t just whip out and drag people under, they sometimes fling things back up on the beach, too.

Like that body.

As soon as I saw that photo, I knew the strange man I always thought of as a video ninja had been there, doing his work. The original ninjas were trained as spies, working in darkness centuries before artificial light existed. And that was him—part
of the night—incessantly spying in service to the overlord who lived inside him.

So I knew that the ninja had already been in place for hours when the ocean disgorged the body of that man, patiently waiting for any new players to step into his frame.

But why send that photo? Maybe he couldn’t resist the opportunity to see his work displayed on paper—not just on whatever back-channel Internet site he’d set up to show his videos. Maybe he needed to tell himself he really was the photojournalist I’d called him. An artistic documenter, not some degenerate, compulsively seeking more captives for his master’s dungeon.

It didn’t matter. I wasn’t there to analyze him, even if I could. What I needed was what he could tell me.

What I knew he
would
tell me.

“W
hat time was it?”

The video ninja knew what I was asking, and didn’t hesitate—the digital photo he’d sent was date/time-stamped, and that couldn’t have been some accident on his part.

“Four-oh-nine a.m.”

“That angle in the photo …?”

“I was … I was between some rock formations. There’s a little place under there that—”

“Only you know about,” I finished for him, twisting my disgust into what would sound like a respectful acknowledgment of his skills.

“Yes.”

“Did anyone else see it? The body? When it first hit the shore, I mean?”

“No.”

“You just snapped the shot and took off?”

“Yes.”

“And you e-mailed it to the papers from a proxy address?”

“Yes.”

“What about that
Undercurrents
thing? The online … blog, or whatever you call it?”

“No. I knew the regular papers would call the police, but I didn’t think they … the people who run the blog … I didn’t think they’d cooperate with the police—they’re more like watchdogs than reporters.”

“Did you do a little work on it first? Artistic work, I mean.”

“No!” he snapped out vehemently, probably surprising himself more than me. “I don’t need that stuff,” he explained, instantly reverting to timidity. “That’s not photography, it’s just playing with a computer program.”

“I understand. And we’re still friends, right?”

“Yes.”

“So I don’t have to put you to sleep this time? You’ll just keep looking straight ahead, not look behind you as I leave?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever heard the sound a silenced pistol makes?”

“Only in—”

“Movies. Okay. I have much better equipment than that. You’d never hear it. Neither would anyone else.”

“But I’m not going to—”

“I believe you. But we’re friends, so I have an obligation. Friends always warn friends about risks they might not see for themselves. I have to explain what would happen if you
did
turn around, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

By then, his fear-stench was overpowering, and we were upwind from what he’d been there to film. So I vanished from his life. Again.

I
t had started with Dolly, a few nights before.

“That damn ocean. I love it, but I’m afraid of it, too. It’s so beautiful, so calming. That must be where ‘Pacific’ came from. But now it’s like something … malignant, Dell. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s almost as if someone lobbed a grenade into our lives.”

“It’s only a picture.”

“On the front page of the paper.”

“It’s still a picture, no matter where it’s put.”

“But that … body. That’s what they do. Over there. You know.”

Yeah, I knew. Coming across the mutilated body of a soldier from your outfit was supposed to make you fear going any deeper into the jungle. Maybe it did, for some. For those trained as we were, it only served as confirmation that we were where we wanted to be—close to the enemy we’d been hunting.

“Dolly, honey, it came out of the ocean. If a gigantic chunk of concrete could float here all the way from Japan, that body could have been dumped into that same ocean anywhere between Canada and California.”

“It was a fresh kill, Dell.”

I didn’t question how Dolly knew that—anything the local hospital found would be shared with her as soon as one of her nurse pals came on shift. “So—less time to float, sure. But ‘fresh’ doesn’t mean all that much, especially in salt water.”

“But it still feels like an … invasion.”

“A dead body isn’t an invasion. It could be a warning to anyone
thinking
about invading, sure. But who invades the ocean?”

“I know. I know it’s logical, what you’re saying. But you know I don’t spook at shadows, baby. And I have to trust my …”

I couldn’t put a name to what I knew my woman had always
trusted. “Instincts,” “intuition,” whatever it was, I knew she’d had it—inside her, I mean—before she ever entered that kill-zone where we’d first met. Maybe it was what
sent
her there.

But all that really mattered was that it hadn’t kept her from trusting me.

I
t was another ten days before any public info started to emerge.

I read the press release that passes for “news” here to Dolly. The dead man had been ID’ed by his prints: Welter Thom Jordan, born August 21, 1980—so age thirty-three at time of death. White, male, five feet ten inches; two hundred and twelve pounds, hazel eyes. No facial hair, head shaved. Two prior prison terms, both for assault, with the last one flagged as a “hate crime.” The local papers didn’t have much more, other than his “racist tattoos.”

“What kind of name is ‘Welter’?” I asked.

“Probably supposed to be ‘Walter,’ ” my wife said. “You’d be amazed at how many times a birth mother misspells a baby’s name, especially if she’s alone and frantic. Or the hospital itself might have screwed it up.”

For a slice of a second, I wondered what my own birth certificate might have on it. The thought passed almost before I was conscious of it. An instant reflex, the kind you work hard to develop, always narrowing the gap between “see” and “shoot.”

“Hate crime?” I asked my wife.

“Probably the assault was against anyone that fits one of the categories: different skin color, gay, a mixed-race couple.…”

“If he did a good jolt on that last one, he’d have been a young man when he was locked up for it. But that kind of crime would carry status with certain people—he wouldn’t have been alone in prison. And that height-weight ratio sounds like he spent
a lot of time pushing iron, even if it was only the bars on his cell.”

“All they have so far is what was on file when he was arrested. That was quite a while ago, so the autopsy would be a lot more accurate—he could be anything from muscled up to a flab bucket when he was killed. I haven’t seen the autopsy photos, but I could if you—”

“Dolly …”

“What, baby?”

“What’s this—
any
of this—got to do with us?”

“His watch. Wristwatch. The police found it on a homeless guy, and they’re holding him for the murder.”

“So?”

“So Mack says there’s no way the guy they arrested could have done it.”

“Mack?”

“The man who works with … Well, he works outdoors, mostly, but he has to interface with the hospital, too,” she said, as if repeating something I should have already known.

“It’s still ‘So?,’ Dolly. If it’s not going to touch us, then—”

“It already has. There’s already talk about some crazy homeless man, but it’s just smoke, I think.”

“Why not just let the cops work it out?”

She gave me one of those “Are you for real?” looks she must have picked up from the teenage girls that haunt this house. I’ve only got two places just for myself: that “den” Dolly fixed up for me on the first floor, and the basement. The kids know they can walk into the den if the door’s open … and not even to knock if it isn’t.

The basement door is always closed, always locked, and the only way to get to it is down a hall, after a sharp left turn.

Nobody ever follows Dolly down that hall. Rascal’s usually pretty indifferent once Dolly lets anyone in the house, but trying
to follow behind Dolly when she walks away will get you a warning growl … if it’s your lucky day.

Like I said, rules.

“They may not be investigative geniuses, honey. But … I mean, who cares? A dead Nazi, some homeless guy, a nut job—who cares?”

“Dell, I already told you. Mack says—”

“People are probably
saying
everything.”

“You never met him. Mack, I mean.”

“I don’t need to meet him.”

“Dell …”

I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes. I knew that tone.

“I know Laura. The guidance counselor at the high school. She worked on the rez before that.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Don’t you give me one of your looks, Dell. When I say ‘counselor,’ I’m not talking about some New Age healer—around here, those people, they’re like … everywhere you turn. ‘Counseling’ means what it sounds like. Not aroma therapy or toxin-releasing massage.”

“Okay,” I said, but that didn’t slow her down.

“And I don’t mean one of those ‘I’ve been there’ idiots who think having been a dope fiend makes you an expert on drug addiction. To work inside a school, you need a license. Which means going to school
—graduate
school—and passing exams afterward. So, if the school hired her, she was qualified for the job.”

“If that was the rule, they’d have to fire some of the teachers.”

“Will you
stop
? Aren’t you the one always saying the tribe should spend some of their casino money on a program for gambling addicts?”

“I said that
once
, sure. But come on, Dolly. You really think that’s what the tribe wants,
less
gambling? If it wasn’t for those casinos, they’d all have to find jobs.”

“Very funny. The fact is, those casinos were a smart political move. Even in this state, this
side
of the state, anyway—where most of the voters are concentrated—a lot of folks just plain resent them. The tribe, I mean. So—”

“How do you know that resentment’s wrong? You can resent a person who’s a different color than you for reasons
besides
their color.”

“Like what?”

“Like all that phony ‘Native American’ worship, like the TV ads about respecting their ‘culture,’ like all the garbage about how they’re always ‘giving back.’ It’s all about money, period. Hell, they’re even running their own payday loan rip-offs now. What’s it matter whether the person bleeding you white is a genuine Native American?”

“Dell …”

“What? All you have to do is show you’ve got some percentage—I’m not sure how high, but it isn’t much—of Indian blood, you get all kinds of job opportunities that others don’t, never mind those ‘allotments’ you can collect. With so many people out of work …”

“It’s not that way everywhere. Plenty of Indians live in the worst kind of poverty.”

“Sure. In states that don’t have casinos.”

“Dell, you’re the last person I’d expect to—”

“Why? Just because I can’t tell a thing about myself from a blood sample, you think I’d resent other people just because they can? And they
do
swing a lot of weight with all the politicians, don’t they?”

“Sure they do. But it’s not like they’re fighting each other, so they’re not paying negative money.”

“What’s negative—”

“Like when those two tribes were fighting over who would get the ‘casino rights’ in Texas. That’s what sent that king lobbyist to prison. Abramoff, I think his name was—he was taking
money from
both
sides for payoffs to politicians. It happens all over—some ‘tribe’ with eight members claims a few acres, and, all of a sudden, they’ve got some real heavy hitters ‘advocating’ for them.”

“And that
didn’t
happen here?”

“No,” she said, tartly, “it did not. The casino business here, it’s not owned by one single tribe—they’re a confederation. So it’s not the percentage of any particular tribe you need, just a percentage of Indian blood.”

They should have done that centuries ago in Africa
, I thought to myself.
If they’d ever confederated … But those tribes never will. Why join forces to fight off non-native invaders? They know they’ll eventually go back to wherever they came from. Then the different tribes can start killing each other again. Just like they were before strangers with a different skin color showed up
.

“Anyway. It wasn’t counseling gamblers that got Laura in trouble on the rez—it was working with young girls.”

“She changed her own job?”

“No. She added to it. Her forty-hour week was more like sixty. But she did break a lot of their rules. Like when an Indian woman—no matter how young—gives birth but she can’t take care of the child. Or doesn’t want to. Or even … Well, it doesn’t matter. If the baby ends up a candidate for adoption, their rules are that only an Indian family can adopt.

“There was this one case: a newborn baby was put in ‘foster care’ with a Mexican family for nine years. But when that family wanted to adopt him, the tribe objected. They
objected
when the only family that baby had ever known wanted to adopt him! There’s some federal law that lets them do that, and they won in court.

“But there
wasn’t
any Indian family that wanted to adopt a child that age, so guess what? Back to foster care, only with a
different
family!”

“That’s nuts,” I said, my mind flicking back and forth between “the only family that baby had ever known” and “nine years”—the age I’d probably been when I escaped from that “clinic.” It took more effort than usual to push all that back where it belonged, but I managed it. “Anyway, don’t they have Mexican Indians? Like Aztecs and—”

“It’s not the same thing. Not to them. And you’re right, that
was
nuts. And Laura said so. In public.”