Two Medicine (23 page)

I again pictured a grisly
scene and I imagined the fear she must have felt, and the pain, and
another flash of vicious angry rose up in me.

“
But who the fuck would
just kill her like that?” I asked. “Does anyone have any suspects –
any leads?”

Greg shook his head slowly.
“The BIA in Browning doesn’t have any leads – I spoke with them
today. The rangers certainly don’t have any leads.” Then he looked
at me, “Will, I don’t think
you
did it, of course. But you were known to have been
with her on her last night.

He shifted on the bench,
“What I’m saying to you is you need to be careful, that’s
all.”

I nodded but said nothing
– the whole thing just seemed too bizarre to grasp.

After a moment I said, “So
she was murdered, but not for rape or robbery.”

Greg just shrugged.

“
So what are you going to
do about it?” I asked him.

Greg didn’t answer. The
helplessness of the situation angered me. “She was a good, honest
person…” I said to him, quietly. “Just trying to survive, to get
by. Didn’t have any real family here…” I spat on the ground after
he said this and gripped his bottle with both hands. “She never had
much luck.”

I thought about her last
few days on this earth for a moment. “She lived with this drug
dealer guy, supposed to be some bad dude – ‘Clayton’ is his name,”
I said. “She broke up with him, I heard. So is anyone looking at
him?”

“
Who told you about
Clayton Red Claw?” Greg asked.

“
This girl Bridget who’s
on staff at the park headquarters; she mentioned something about
it. You know the guy?”

Greg nodded, watching me,
“Everyone knows Clayton.”

“
Well, is the BIA
investigating him?”

“
Probably,” Greg said,
“but not about this, I think.”

I looked at him
questioningly, but he shook his head and said, “I’ve got ideas
about him also, Will, as far as Alia’s murder goes, and his brother
Jake too – they are never apart. But the BIA keeps their distance
from them, for some reason. It’s all that drug business in
Browning. People think Clayton and Jake are involved drug dealing
all over Northern Montana.

“
But,” Greg said, “the BIA
doesn’t tell us rangers anything – they don’t share info about any
investigation they have going – drugs or murder. We’re the Khaki
Cops, remember?”

I shook my head, “So we
don’t know if anyone is a suspect, or if anyone gives a shit that
she was killed.”

“
People give a shit. I
give a shit,” Greg said, softly, but then I saw his face became
more grim, and he said with a rough voice, “She was killed in my
park, but what can I do? She died in my territory, but the rangers
are supposed to let the Bureau handle homicide.”

He took a quick sip of his
beer, “My father became this big hero cop for a while, after he
tracked down two missing girls and freed them from some crazy
bastard’s basement they were locked in. He didn’t even call for
backup – just him and his partner went in there and ripped their
bindings out of the wall and dragged the girls out. Arrested the
two guys that lived there too. They had killed women in the
past.”

Greg leaned back against
the side of the house. “He was asked by some reporter why he went
straight into the house without waiting, and you know what he said?
He said: ‘Because it’s my job.’ Simple as that.”

Greg picked at
the paper label on his beer, then his hand
suddenly fell back to his lap and he looked over at me with angry
scowl on his face, “I want to indict whoever did this to Alia.
Because if someone can do that to her in my park and just get away
with it scott free, then it could just happen again, to the next
girl – to Ophelia.” He swilled the last of his beer down his
throat. “And that would mean this Khaki Cop uniform I wear doesn’t
mean shit.”

I sat for a moment,
thinking of Alia laying on the ground, alone and abandoned. “The
uniforms mean something,” I said.

I suddenly felt very
exhausted, and I looked at my watch – it was getting late. Greg
caught the signal and took a deep breath, smiling with a sadness in
his eyes, as if forcing himself to move on.

“
Do you remember my
orientation talk?” he asked.

“
Of course.”

“
That Thoreau
quote?”

“
I think so.”

“
He’s my favorite writer;
and I have an even better one for you… personally.”

Greg took a breath, held it, and then
recited:

“
I went to the woods
because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential
facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,
and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not
lived”

“
From
Walden
,” he said.

“A personal quote?” I
asked, “or is that a message for me?”

“We’ll see,” he answered.
“We better get you back; Larry will have your hide if you are late
again.”

I looked at Greg as he got
up slowly from his chair. A complex man, I thought. Was he a
frustrated ranger rent-a-cop, whose talents were sadly unutilized,
who has to watch police work from a distance? Or was he just
another hopeless dreamer who never made good on his dreams because
he didn’t try hard enough, or didn’t’ keep trying? Was he a friend
to me, or a risk to be avoided? Would he help Alia?
Could
he help?

I found, as I got up to go,
that I had a new view of this puckish little ranger, who seemed one
minute to be nothing more than a harmless tour guide, the next to
be in an emotional jumble, behind an amiable face. Whatever he was,
he clearly was not telling me everything he knew about what was
going on with Alia’s death, or everything he knew about me, and
that still unsettled me. What he
had
told me was almost blurted out in
a moment of emotion. Even if there was some kind of investigation
into Alia’s death, I doubted if Greg was going to have anything
further to do with it.

I said my goodbyes to Dee,
and gave a little kiss on the cheek to Ophelia in her pajamas when
Dee made her walk up to me for a hug; and Greg had me home before
midnight.

Nineteen

News of the murder spread
quickly. While violent death was not unheard of in Glacier Park and
Browning as Greg had said, it was rare when not caused by grizzly
bear attack or a fall off some cliff along a hiking trail. I tried
to find out about any funeral plans for Alia, and I called the only
funeral home in Browning and gave them the info. But the lady on
the phone had already heard about the murder, and said they hadn’t
been contacted by anyone regarding funeral services. There was no
newspaper in Browning, and no coroner’s office, the closest for
both was in Kalispell – so I couldn’t get any information from that
route. I even called the Blackfoot tribal council, but got nowhere.
They wouldn’t talk to me at all about her – a man on the other end
with the tribe just stated he couldn’t help.

Larry, Ronnie and the rest
heard about the death shortly after my visit with Greg; and the
rangers all over the Park were talking about it to the staff
members, warning them to be careful just in case there was still
some killer out there still lurking in the mountains or stalking
around Browning. Ronnie said he was shocked, and said something
about how Alia must have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
When Larry heard the gossip, he chalked it up to more “red trouble”
in Browning, although she had been killed within the borders of the
park between Two Med and Browning’s city limits, so the gossip
went. Katie hadn’t met Alia, but was duly concerned, as a girl who
often took long hikes by herself would be.

The story of the murder
startled the campers who heard of it too, but soon, given the quick
turn around on the campsites, and the story quickly was forgotten
as new campers and visitors replaced the old.

I was told by Greg a few
days after I had visited with him that the BIA’s office had “barely
looked into it,” and that the only group that seemed truly
concerned with finding anything out was the Blackfoot council, in
Browning. He said I probably didn’t need to worry about any
questioning now.

This both depressed and
angered me; Alia definitely deserved better and someone definitely
deserved to pay for what they did to her. Greg called me up later
told me that the Blackfoot tribe council had held a meeting and had
elected a member to both press the BIA’s office into investigating
further to find a suspect, and also for that member to report to
the council on any updates in any investigation. But when I heard
who they appointed, my hopes immediately fell to the
ground.

“
Thunderbird?” I said to
Greg, in shock. “That weird white guy who hangs out around here?
That guys a joke!”

Greg said, “There’s more
to him than meets the eye, Will – he’s well known around here.
Don’t let his goofy ways fool you. And yes he’s an elder on the
Blackfoot council – they don’t let just anyone serve like that, you
should know.”

“
Really, I’m glad they’ve
taken as much interest as they have,” he continued. “Usually, the
tribe council doesn’t get involved in criminal matters – they have
to let the BIA handle things. The people living there have enough
depression and dismay without murders and other crime to think
about and get involved in...”

Elder or no, I still
couldn’t believe that Thunderbird was the council’s choice to check
into Alia’s murder – or that he was even a member of the tribe,
much less their man in charge. Did this so-called “council,”
whoever they were, really care about Alia’s murder if that’s who
they have pressing the BIA? Thunderbird seemed more likely to get
arrested
himself
,
based on his crazy behavior, if he started hanging around the
Browning office. I gave up on the reservation doing anything about
it after that. As I hung up the phone with him, I realized that
now, of anyone I knew in Montana, only Greg seemed to have any
interest in talking about Alia’s murder and any authority to help
discover who had killed her.

I had the
next day off,
and
this was now a week since Alia had been killed. I
decided to get out deep into the hills, to take the trail let led
up to the top of Mount Sinopah, a long and difficult trek that a
lot of causal hikers didn’t undertake. I would have some solitude
there, at least, to think about things. I wanted to be totally
alone, and not have to talk to anyone or think about anything –
just sit in the sun and soak up the warmth – become just another
feature on the mountain – alone and immovable.

I started around eight
a.m., and kept up a brisk pace. I was in a t-shirt and shorts only,
and the day was growing hot. The mosquitoes were gone, completely,
and were now replaced by the black flies that Alia had promised.
They didn’t bite, as she had said, but they did swarm around my
face the same way, although they seemed to stay near the water and
didn’t go up to high elevation, so I was ok after a few minutes of
hiking. I brought a small pack with some random food for lunch I
had grabbed from the store and a large bottle of water, as I
planned on being out all day.

About two thirds of the
way to the top of Mount Sinopah was a tiny mountain lake called
“Sky Lake.” It was found past the top of one of the higher ridges
near the summit of Sinopah, so you couldn’t see it from the valley
floor when the hike starts. I at least wanted to make it that far,
because I had heard it was a beautiful spot, hidden from
view.

On my way up the trail I
crossed through breaks in the green fir and hemlock trees where the
woods would clear and the trail meander through wide, grassy
fields, dotted with flower patches of vivid shades of dark purple,
and bright reds and yellows, heated by the sun into vibrant bursts
of color. I had learned some of their names from campers in the
park. I saw, amongst the thick, dark-green cow parsnip bushes, with
their little umbrellas of white flower clusters hidden on top, and
huckleberry plants boasting the sought-after vivid blue berries
sagging heavy with juice almost to the ground, there were purple
lupine flowers rising up in their vertical clusters, like violet
spear heads, and also brilliant three-petal trillium flowers
looking like white starfish having crawled up the mountain to lay
in the sun.

A hundred other blooms
that I didn’t know yet were sprinkled all over these sun-lit
meadows I would occasionally cross in between the woods, and
sometimes further up where the trees didn’t grow. I would sit on
the trail side, next to patches of stinging nettles that would itch
your exposed ankles for the next five minutes only if you walk
through them, and just absorb the light and warmth and fragrance of
those fields. The path that led up the mountain was dry and rocky,
but on either sides of the trail was a riot of plant life and
towering firs that drew one along as if through an ancient trance.
A scurry of rocks and dust said that a fat marmot had just
scampered underground; and bees lazily, drunkenly, flew around the
flower blossoms in no particular hurry.