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Authors: Mardi Oakley Medawar

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BOOK: Murder on the Red Cliff Rez
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Tribal Chairman Perry Frenchette was holed up in the Tribal Judge's office with the BIA boys, the office door closed. Even through wood, as David passed that door he clearly heard raised voices, the loudest, the Navajo's.
“Damn it, Frenchette! Not only do I have the right, I have the authority …”
David and Ricky continued on down the corridor, coming to the two officers standing guard just outside an open door. The youngest officer, Melvin Paris, looked keyed. “This is some kinda morning, eh, boss?”
“You might want to bring down your excitement a little,” David said, his disapproval evident. Removing his baseball cap, holding it in one hand, David leaned in the doorway. The attorney's office wasn't large. A bulky wooden desk, shoved tight against the left wall, still managed to take up most of the floor space. Because it was an end office, two windows were set into the right wall. Behind the desk was a freestanding bookcase jammed with law books and bound tribal treaties, each volume imprinted with the relevant years, beginning with the late 1700s and advancing steadily onward. To the side of the book cabinet
and fixed to the bare cream-colored wall with pushpins was a large map of Red Cliff. Lastly, half hidden by the bulk of the desk, lying facedown and crumpled on the floor like a pile of discarded clothing, was the mortal coil of Judah Boiseneau.
A strong coppery odor wafted out to David as he silently studied the large stain on the new carpet that surrounded the dead man's head like a black halo. The stain pattern told David that death had not been immediate. The bullet had turned Jud into vegetable instantly, but some part of his brain had survived a second or two, keeping the heart muscle pumping following the collapse to the floor. He asked his officers in a half whisper, “You guys keeping everybody out of here?”
“We've been trying,” Melvin replied. “But trying to stop the Navajo was like trying to stop a windstorm. He just went on in. He was stomping all over the place when Perry finally ordered his fat butt out.”
Great,
David thought angrily. Keeping this crime scene intact was about as simple as hitting the moon with a load of buckshot. David vented his frustration on the doctor. “And how about you, Rick? Did you wear gloves the entire time you were doin' your thing?”
“No. Not until I actually worked on the body.”
David felt his blood pressure rising. “Why not?”
“I guess because as a general rule, dead guys aren't all that fussy about germs.”
Doc Ricky was beginning to irritate the living fire out of David. Shoving the doctor forward he said sourly, “Okay, it's show-and-tell time. I want you to point to anything you might have touched before you started in on Jud.”
“How the hell am I suppose to remember that?” Ricky cried.
“You wanna be a suspect?”
“No.”
“Then if I were you, I'd get to remembering all your touchy, feely places pretty damn fast.”
“Ahh, shit!”
 
Aggie Primeaux did more talking than requested. Well, she'd had to. The school secretary was a cousin, and when her cousin asked, “What's going on, Aggie?” the question operated like pressure on a fault line. Aggie dutifully opened up like the San Andreas. Later she was put on hold, waiting while her cousin tracked down the principal. It was a while before the principal came on the line, and Aggie once again said much more than had been requested by Police Chief Lameraux. Alarmed, the elementary school principal hung up, running to search the hallways for Mrs. Boiseneau.
The first bell for class sounded shrilly, the principal maneuvering his way through waves of children running for their classes. Teachers were closing the classroom doors. The principal quickly motioned to the teachers who happened to notice him to come forward. The three teachers were stunned by the news of Judah Boiseneau's untimely demise. But not so shocked as to be at a loss for an opinion.
“I knew something like this was going to happen,” one said sharply. “I just thought it would be
him
shooting her.”
The principal was caught off balance by the acerbic remark. “Are you talking about
Mrs.
Boiseneau?”
The three women looked at each other; then, as if reluctant, they nodded.
The principal gasped sharply. “Why on earth would any of you think something so terrible?”
The teachers looked astonished. Finally, one put voice to the astonishment. “You mean … you don't know?”
 
Deputy Michael Bjorke drove U.S. 13 from Washburn along the two-lane route that curved out of Chequamegan Bay and hugged the coastline of the peninsula jutting into Lake Superior. A hard-core city boy, he was not moved by the sight of old farms intermixed with forests. Michael was also fighting a rumbling stomach, the by-product of a bachelor's breakfast. In the backseat of the blue-gray Ford sedan were the two crime-scene technicians. Riding shotgun was long-time Republican Sheriff Ralph T. Bothwell. The two crime-scene guys were around the same age as Michael, meaning barely a hiccup over thirty. Ole Bothie teetered on the brink of retirement. In Michael's opinion Ole Bothie's retirement was long overdue.
Bothwell's sluggish style of crime busting was responsible for holding up the parade to the reservation. Michael and the crime guys had been ready to go from the time the Indian cop had hung up on him, yet they'd had to cool their jets for a good half hour waiting for Bothie. And then the sheriff had wanted to stop for breakfast!
In the hopes that the corpse would still be vaguely fresh when they got there, Michael had stopped at a convenience store and bought candy bars. Which was why he was now regretting the Butterfinger, learning to his great dismay that chocolate-covered peanut-butter crunchy stuff and a dippy two-laner were not a happy mix. Especially as every now and again Bothwell would indent his side of the car seat and cut one, the smell coming out of that man, inhuman. Michael hated his new boss and knew for a certainty that despite Bothwell's jocularity, the feeling was mutual.
Bothwell was not happy about Michael's transfer to his department. Not happy at all. But being a political animal Bothwell knew he could not say no when the hard currency of politics—personal favors—was in play. Accepting Michael Bjorke as a deputy was definitely a personal favor. One he owed to the lieutenant governor, no less.
Deputy Bjorke's maternal uncle.
“He's a good cop, but for now, it would be best if he were not in Madison. A year ought to do it. I'm trusting you to take good care of him.”
Bothwell was taking very good care of
Mikey.
He had him answering the phones. Casting “Politico Boy” in a demeaning job had proven quite satisfying. At least until this morning. It had been the sheriff's bad luck that there had been no one else in the office to field the call from the rez. Then Mikey, bone-weary of desk duty, had had the audacity to cite the reg stating that any field-qualified officer answering such a call meant that said case automatically belonged to him. Still more than a little peeved, Bothwell treated his new deputy to yet another S.B.D.
 
The Moccasin Telegraph hadn't quite made it to Little Sand Bay Road, and Tracker was one of the few Indians still drawing breath who didn't own a scanner. Totally unaware of the murder, she was in her truck heading for the Native Spirit Gifts, the rez gift shop and local outlet for her innovative style of pottery. A highly skilled sculptor, she began with an ordinary pot. Then, using her fist, she caved in one side of the wet pot, filling in the created space with a sculpted face. Every face appearing from the side of one of her pots was haunting and undeniably Chippewa. Her work was also sold out of a gallery in Minneapolis—the
same gallery that hadn't wanted her when she'd been a starving art student.
At least the lady manager hadn't wanted her. “My dear,” the woman had said, elongating the dear as if she were the owner of a general store and speaking to a poor Indian waif begging for a penny gum ball. “Have you even the faintest idea how many potters there are in the Twin Cities area?”
Knowing the question was rhetorical, Tracker remained mute, seeing only peripherally the man to her left.
The woman continued, tingeing her voice with a note of regret. “And all of them are professionals, artists with years of experience and … verve. Oh,” she hastened to add, “I'm not saying you're without talent. There is a certain value in your effort. But perhaps with a bit more maturity and—”
Suddenly the shadowy man was just there, startling them both as he removed a pot from the heavy cardboard box Tracker held in her arms. He handled it carefully, examining it. He'd picked out the first pot she had ever created with a face peeking out from the indented side.
“This is marvelous. What an addition to my collection,” the man had said, his voice warm and mellow. “That is, if I'm not too immature to offer for it?”
Another rhetorical. The man's hair was gray. The manager's eyes flared with horrified surprise. “Why, why of course, Mr. Heist,” she stammered. “That's the very piece I would have chosen if not—”
Tucking the pot into the crook of his arm, Mr. Heist raised a silencing hand. “Yes, if not for the fact you must daily turn away dozens of more experienced potters.”
The woman attempted a smile, her entire face stiff with
the effort. Mr. Heist paid two hundred and fifty dollars for the pot. The three remaining pots were taken by the manager on consignment and Tracker dared hope that as an artist, she was on her way to success. The aforementioned lady manager was definitely on her way. But just to where wasn't clear. All Tracker was told by Harold Arnold, the gallery owner, was that his former manager had decided to move on.
Tracker liked dealing strictly with Harold, or Harry, as he called himself. He was short and Jewish—“Tribe of Levi,” he chortled—and she trusted him absolutely to get the best possible prices for her labors. On the home front, Native Spirit Gifts was running a close second to the sales volume of Minneapolis. And Tracker's success was due to the faces. Or more correctly, to the one face she could not stop her fingers from sculpting. The one face that was there each and every night, hovering above her like a phantom lover.
Which was entirely appropriate.
Purely out of guilt for having yelled at her dog, Tracker made pancakes, Mushy's favorite breakfast. Now he was having the time of his life, hanging out of the truck's passenger window, the wind whipping pelt, ears, and tongue. Because of the winds barreling off the lake, Tracker was wearing a jacket, flannel shirt, thick socks, and jeans. A mere ten-minute drive inland and spring's mild heat was enveloping her.
Blueberry Road is the official rez through road, zigging through the center of the tiny town, then skirting the boundary of the reservation. A minute after turning onto Blueberry, Tracker remembered that Uncle Bert wasn't doing well—flu or something. Her father had made it quite clear that as she lived closer to her uncle than anyone else in the family, he expected her to do her bit in checking on the old man. Uncle Bert's home was in the forested cove of Raspberry Bay. He had no neighbors, no telephone.
Tracker dreaded having to make the house call. Uncle
Bert had been the family hermit for nearly fifteen years. Uncle Bert was stone deaf, and because of his affliction, ornery. Hence the hermit thing. But he was alone and ailing, so like it or not, he was about to have a visit from his nearest neighbor/relative. Uncle Bert wouldn't like it. Nor would his collection of cantankerous dogs. That thought caused her to stop the truck just after turning onto the dirt track that was Raspberry Road.
“Quit whining,” she said sharply. She reached around Mushy's bulk and proceeded to crank up the window. “The last time we were here and the window was down, you jumped out and found yourself in a fight. A fight you weren't winning, remember?”
Mushy remembered. But the need for revenge had the big dog squirming and whining against the closed window. By the time the truck neared Uncle Bert's land assignment, Mushy was a quivering mass of muscle, his ruff standing straight up, a warning growl issuing from his throat. Mushy's way of declaring
Just let me at ‘em. I know I can take 'em this time.
Uncle Bert's front yard and his trailer with its long walled lean-to was a bleeding eyesore. Two years ago, attempting to spruce the trailer house up a bit, Uncle Bert began painting the thing a shade of crap green. Possibly because he hoped a green trailer in the woods would be an invisible trailer. Trouble was, he'd had only one bucket of the stuff. He ran out of paint, then couldn't be bothered to buy more. The lingering effect was a thoroughly streaked green section on a faded blue and rust-splotched fifty-byten trailer. The logged wall lean-to looked good, though.
The yard was two parts au naturel and one part messy old man. Shutting down the truck's engine, Tracker waited
for the hounds of hell to come bolting out, baying and snarling. But this morning the dogs were unusually tardy. As she waited in safety inside the truck, she began to notice the eerie silence. Then too, the old trailer seemed to sag more than normal, as if it had been … abandoned. Tracker instantly tossed the thought aside. Uncle Bert had lived on this assignment since Moses was a boy, first in a plank cabin that had eventually fallen down around his ears, then in the trailer—a gift from the tribe—back in the days when the trailer had been brand spanking new. Uncle Bert would never abandon his private chunk of forest.
Absolutely never.
“He's got to be running bears,” Tracker mused aloud. Being Bear Clan, Uncle Bert wouldn't ever intentionally kill a bear. But that little taboo never stopped him or his dogs from trying to run the legs off the bears. Anticipating the imminent return of Uncle Bert and his pack of slathering mongrels, Tracker knew it would be best if she just stayed put. Which meant—hey! Ciggie time. Snapping off the shoulder belt she reached for the glove compartment, extracting the box of Marlboro Ultra Lights.
Tracker had been a smoker since she was thirteen. Not a heavy smoker, but a smoker nonetheless. And now that she lived like a cloistered nun, rarely drank, certainly didn't overeat, what else was there? Lighting up, she tried to ignore the almost sinister silence. Come to think of it, Mushy was a bit too quiet. Her eyes flicked in the dog's direction. Mushy was perfectly still, watching through the window, ruff smooth and flat. All very un-Mushy-like. But then, the hush hanging over this neck of the woods was equally unlike Uncle Bert.
Finally, cigarette smoked down to the filter, she stabbed
it out in the ashtray and ordered Mushy to stay. Still leery of the hell hounds, she opened the cab door.
 
Seconds after she opened the unlocked door, she was engulfed by a stench emanating from the trailer's central area. Coughing, waving a hand in front of her face in an attempt to fan up a whiff of clean air, she entered the gloomy interior. Uncle Bert did have electricity, but because of the darkness, locating a light switch was as difficult as selecting a particular raindrop in a downpour. Uncle Bert had never been one for windows. Every window on the trailer was boarded over from the inside. He maintained that when he wanted to enjoy the beauty of the day he'd go outside. Actually, what he didn't like was the thought that anyone driving along Raspberry at night would see his lights. As he so quaintly put it, “Folks comin to see ya in the dead of night only want one of two things: either to rob ya or to ask for a loan. Either way, you're out money.”
In this case, his boarded-over windows did more than keep daylight out. They trapped the smell inside. Unable to stand it, she fled, retiring to the rickety porch. She knew she couldn't just leave the situation like this. Her uncle might be in there dead or close to it. But the thought of groping around in the dark while the stench of the place permeated her clothing, skin, and hair caused her to shudder. Then she remembered the portable spotlight.
Ignoring Mushy's high-pitched pleas she rooted around in the extended cab until she found the portable spotlight, an item useful when hunting deer. That is, if Tracker's way of taking a deer could be glorified with the term
hunting
. Dear were everywhere, and taking one typically meant stopping the truck, popping on the light just long enough
to get a fix, then shooting right out the truck window. After that, all that was left to do was to heft the carcass into the flatbed. On the rez, especially on Elderly Hunt Day, the meat processor who worked for free for that one day only knew immediately those who'd been former poachers and those who, because of the loosening of the gaming laws, had never needed to poach. Ex-poachers shot the deer in the neck, dropping it where it stood. Other hunters hit the deer in the shoulder, a bigger target.
Tracker was a neck shooter—one of the precious few
neckers
too young to have seen the inside of Bayfield County Jail.
Back inside the trailer, Tracker shone the spot around, finding at once the cause for the stink: trout, two strings rotting on the card table Uncle Bert used for everything, including dining. Judging from the condition of the fish, they'd been awaiting the gutting knife for at least three days. She whipped the beam away from the card table, scanning the living room. A heavy layer of dog hair coated everything, even the walls. Wading through the debris covering the floor, she inched forward. The thought of what she might find in the trailer's only bedroom had her heart hammering against her ribs.
 
Traveling to Tulsa from Duluth wasn't quite the snap Imogen's father had made it sound. Imogen knew this, having made the trip a dozen or more times. But during those past trips, Jud had been there to help—that is, when he'd taken it into his head to help. Now she was completely on her own, scared out of her wits, and frustrated by the Duluth International (flights into Canada qualified as International) Airport way of doing things.
Or not doing them.
The tickets had been waiting for her at the counter just as her father had promised. The trouble was, there weren't any flights until the following morning. Which meant Imogen had to bundle the children off to the Holiday Inn on Second Street, where she spent the night watching her children sleep. In those hours, the events of the last day replayed in her head like an exceptionally awful horror movie. Plate in hand, she'd gone to her husband's office to deliver his supper. The minute she stepped into the building she'd felt an odd foreboding. Shaken by what she could describe only as an unknown menace, she walked the corridor, pausing before the closed door of her husband's office. “Don't go in there!” she imagined a matinee audience screaming. Yet like the stiletto-wearing B-movie heroine who invariably twists her ankle when she runs away from the monster, Imogen had turned the knob. And then she'd heard her own screams.
Benny Peliquin was Jud's cousin. That was all he'd been to her for many years. When the trouble in her marriage escalated, became physical, Benny became her white knight, the man she could call any hour of the night or day. The only man in Jud's family willing to step between her and Jud's fists. In the past few months he underwent another transformation, becoming her gentle lover. The man responsible for the unborn child sleeping snug inside her womb. She shouldn't have told him. She really shouldn't have. Her confession to Benny had only expanded the fierce tensions, Jud's reactionary violence.
“You have to leave him, Jeanie. You have to come to me. You have to let me protect you.”
“And who's going to protect us from the crap that will start flying around this rez?”
“Let me worry about that.”
“No! Don't push me, Ben. Please, just don't push. I have to have time to think.”
“And if Jud starts knocking you around while you're thinking? Am I suppose to just let that happen?”
“I'll call the cops.”
Benny's mocking laugh had been hard. “Yeah, like they're such a help.”
“But this time I'll file charges. I really will, Ben.”
He'd merely looked at her, both of them knowing she wouldn't. Imogen preferred bruises to disgrace. Her father, the career politician, had taught her and her mother only too well that outward appearances to the voting public were absolutely everything. Which was why when Jud began knocking her around early in the morning, Imogen had done nothing more than yell to her children to run outside and hide. Once they were gone, she had done what she could to protect herself and her unborn baby from Jud's uncontrollable temper.
Now Jud was dead.
Given the fact that his unnatural demise had occurred just hours after their latest physical go-round, and knowing that on Red Cliff rez it would have taken less than an hour for Benny to have heard all about it, Imogen hardly required the services of Sherlock Holmes to work out this particular little whodunit. Which was why she was running. She couldn't allow her children to be caught up in the cross fire. She had to get them to safety. Then and only then would she come back—never mind that her father
would forbid it—to stand by Benny's side. She owed him that. After all, he'd killed Jud in order to protect her.
Protect their baby.
Hadn't he?
 
The five-thirty wake-up call came, but Imogen hardly needed it. She roused the children and got them ready to face the Northwest puddle jumper, then the mad dash through the Minneapolis airport to make the connecting flight. With every nerve in her body buzzing, Imogen hustled the two children from one flight to the next, tried to coax them into eating airplane food, and then begged them to sit still during those moments they aggravated the other passengers. It wasn't until she and the children deplaned in Tulsa and she saw her father and mother waiting that Imogen finally allowed herself to cry.
 
David's only real duty was to keep the crime scene intact. He also had to keep Doc Ricky halfway calm and in attendance. The latter was proving to be more difficult by the minute as Doc Ricky became increasingly insistent about leaving. He'd been on emergency duty all night long and this morning was expected at the well baby clinic. Doc Ricky's strong opinion was that his continuing attention to one dead man wasn't worth the health risk to even one live baby. The man had a valid point, but the Bayfield County coroner told David point-blank over the telephone that he felt no compunction to haul himself out to Red Cliff. “Hell, Rick's forgotten more about forensics than I'll ever know.”
When David duly passed on the message that the coroner had lobbed the ball back into Ricky's court, Doc Ricky had turned sullen. Ricky's physician assistant would have to see
to the babies. Ricky didn't care for that, and judging by the one-sided telephone conversation, Wanda, his assistant, wasn't especially thrilled either.
David had completely cordoned off the back of the building and dismissed all nonessential personnel. He hadn't really had the authority to give the staff a day off, but as the Tribal Chairman continued to confer behind closed doors, David had been left to assume that authority. Frenchette would most probably bust a gut when he poked his head out and realized that for all intents and purposes tribal employees were enjoying an unscheduled day off with full pay, but David couldn't do his job with a flock of onlookers sticking to him like gum.
Standing in the small parking lot staring at the tips of his boots, David listened to his officers. He was not pleased with what they had to say. “What do you mean, you can't find the widow?” He directed this question to his youngest patrolman, Melvin Paris.
BOOK: Murder on the Red Cliff Rez
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