Buffalo Bill's Defunct (9781564747112) Page 8
Todd mumbled something. His ears were red. He looked like his mother, with dark eyes and hair, but he had his Anglo father’s height and fair complexion.
“You told your mother?” Rob kept his voice even.
Todd Welch squirmed in the chair opposite him, the hot seat. “Yeah, and she called Aunt Maddie.”
“Outsiders,” Rob murmured, watching the kid.
“They’re family!”
“Let me clarify my point. When it comes to talking about an ongoing investigation by the Latouche County Sheriff’s Department, anyone outside the department is an outsider. Got that?”
“Yeah.” He sounded sullen.
“Outsiders—mother, girlfriend, auntie in Two Falls.”
“The guys told me you found a petroglyph, a broken piece of The Dancers. Aunt Maddie had to know. She’s the chief. Mom is tight with her sister. It was natural for her to call my aunt with the news.”
Rob sighed, “I understand. The sheriff may not.”
Todd squirmed and looked miserable.
Rob didn’t reassure him, though he decided not to tell McCor-mick about the lapse. Todd was a rookie.
“That all, sir?” Todd rose.
“Yeah. Just keep your mouth shut and try not to do it again.” Rob shuffled through the papers on his desk, looking for the photographs Linda had taken of the petroglyph. He found them under a lab report. He thumbed open the file folder he intended to take to Two Falls. It already held the artist’s portrait of the victim. He started to insert the photos.
Todd gave a gasp. He leaned across the desk. “What’s that?”
“That’s what Vancouver thinks our man looked like.” Rob hesitated, then handed Todd the faxed sheet. “Do you recognize him?” It was a young face, almost a boy’s. Todd had not been part of the crew that unearthed the corpse. He’d come on duty when Dave Meuler went off, so he hadn’t had a look at the body.
Todd sank back onto his chair as if his legs wouldn’t hold him. “Eddy. I think it’s my cousin, Eddy Redfern.”
Rob’s mind raced. He drew a long breath. “I’m sorry, Todd, but I have to ask. Are you sure?”
“I…no.” Todd held the sheet to the light of Rob’s halogen reading lamp. “I think it’s Eddy.” His voice shook. “It’s a bad picture. Oh, Jesus.” He dropped the drawing and covered his face with shaking hands.
Rob rescued the paper before it slipped to the floor. Pity and confusion kept him silent for a long while. When he thought the deputy had had time to compose himself, he stood up and shoved the phone console forward.
Todd’s hands dropped. His pupils were dilated.
A chill was running up and down Rob’s spine. “Will you call your aunt? Isn’t Redfern her husband’s name?”
As was the family custom, Madeline Thomas had kept her maiden name after marriage. The Thomases had supplied the Klalos with many chiefs and other prominent elders. Madeline was the first woman to be elected principal chief of all three bands, though there had been female chiefs of the local groups before white contact, unusual among Northwest tribes. Her husband, whom Rob had found easier to deal with than his wife, was a fisherman. Redfern used traditional methods, including the notorious gill net. Rob didn’t remember whether or not they had children.
Todd chewed his lip. “Yes, my uncle’s Jack Redfern, but Eddy’s not their son. He’s Leon Redfern’s second son. Leon is Uncle Jack’s brother.” He stopped, cleared his throat. “Eddy is…was four years younger than me.” He spoke in jerks as if his mind was not in gear. “Real smart. He was a student at Portland State, wanted to be an accountant, to keep the books for the tribe. They’re going to start a casino.”
“So I heard.” The casino was a pipe dream so far, but stranger things had happened. There were two small casinos in Clark County and a big one south of Olympia. Sheriff McCormick shied away from the idea like a spooked stallion. Law enforcement problems in the county, not to mention traffic, would double the day a casino opened.
Rob could see the difficulties, but a well-managed casino could fund health care and scholarships, and jobs would open up in a depressed economy. It might be a good idea. He didn’t know. He did know that if the homicide victim was Eddy Redfern, he needed to have a long talk with the principal chief of the Klalos.
He said gently, “Will you call Chief Thomas and tell her you think the victim is your cousin?”
“But you said—”
“This is different. Your aunt needs to know, and she should hear about it from you. Give her my sympathy and ask her if we can see her in about an hour.”
Todd nodded, mute.
“If she wants me to break the news to Eddy Redfern’s parents, I’ll do it first.” That was a duty Rob did not relish, but it was a duty.
“I’ll ask her. I think Uncle Jack will want to be the one to tell his brother. Is that okay?”
“They should do whatever seems right to them. Take as much time as you need, Todd. I’ll go tell the sheriff.”
And he did. When Mack heard the news, he was not a happy politician.
TODD rapped on the passenger window. “She’s ready.” Rob extricated himself and his laptop from the shotgun seat and stepped out of the patrol car into gusting rain. He’d been sitting in the car for a good half hour, waiting for Madeline Thomas to put all her defenses in place. It was cold, and the windows had steamed up.
While he waited, he’d been doing electronic busywork and trying to decide how to approach Maddie. The last time he had seen her had been at his grandmother’s memorial service two years earlier.
The chief had spoken her piece in full ceremonial costume before the assembled mourners, thrusting herself center-stage, making political hay. He had heard her platitudes through a fog of rage. Not the most useful frame of mind for diplomacy. He suppressed the image. Like Sheriff McCormick, Maddie could no more help being a politician than a skunk could help being a polecat.
Todd pulled the visor of his hat down over his eyes. “Uh, Uncle Leon’s pretty upset.”
“Upset how?” A gust of rain hit Rob’s face. “Better lock the car.”
“Aw.”
“Lock it.” Stealing a patrol car would appeal to the adolescent sense of humor. There were lots of kids in Two Falls.
Todd shrugged and obeyed.
Rob tucked the laptop under his jacket. There was plenty of room. He wasn’t armed. “Upset as in grieving or as in wanting to kill me?”
“I dunno. He’s had a couple of beers.”
“Great.”
“He’s not a drunk,” Todd protested. “He’s upset.”
Rob nodded. So was Todd upset. So, for that matter, was Robert Guthrie Neill. He didn’t want to think how upset Madeline Thomas would be.
He headed for the house. They had parked on the street. Wet gravel crunched underfoot.
Madeline and Jack lived in a double-wide mobile home with a view of the larger of the cascades for which Two Falls was named. The Choteau River tumbled past the village to its confluence with the Columbia.
When Bonneville Dam went in, in 1938, the Choteau band of the Klalos had been relocated to a secondary fishing camp. Unimaginative government housing lay below Maddie’s house, along with newer mobile homes, most of them double-wide.
Todd had caught up and was leading him not to the conventional front door but around the side on a path composed of cedar cross-sections set in gravel. The well-groomed walkway led to an annex. The addition was taller than the house, with clerestories and a central skylight rather than ordinary windows. It was roofed with the same practical gray metal as the mobile home, but cedar shakes covered the walls. A cedar lintel surmounted the door, and a carved pediment depicting the chinook salmon, totem of the Thomas clan, gleamed in the rain. The figure had been painted recently.
Todd knocked at the door and opened it without waiting for a response. He ushered Rob into a reception room that was doing its best to look like the interior of a miniature longhouse without the inconveniences.
Empty? What was Maddie playing at? Rob strode to the nearest bench, divested himself of his laptop and wet jacket, and turned back to the fire at the center of the room. It radiated satisfying warmth.
Wait, he told himself. And listen.
Todd shifted from foot to foot. “She meets with the tribal council in here.”
Rob nodded, head bent, hands out to the fire. Rain drummed on the skylight.
“I’ll go find her, okay?”
“Sure.”
After an interminable wait, a door opened at the far end of the room and Maddie entered with her husband. Both of them wore plaid wool shirts and jeans, Maddie a beaded headband. They were stocky people, not very tall, but Maddie had solid presence. Todd straggled in after them and shut the door. Leon Redfern did not appear.
“Lieutenant Neill.” Maddie inclined her head regally.
“Chief Thomas.”
“You remember my husband, Jack?”
Rob extended his hand and Jack shook it. “How are you, Jack? I’m sorry for your trouble.”
“Ah, thanks. My brother…he’s not so good. Trying to reach Lila up in Umatilla.” Jack’s seamed face creased with misery.
“Lila?”
“That’s his wife.” He cleared his throat. “Eddy’s mother. She’s Nez Perce, visiting her sister up on the rez. They was hunting today.”
“I see,” Rob murmured. He was trying not to imagine the horror awaiting the poor woman.
Madeline took a step toward him.”How sure are you?”
“Todd made the identification from an artist’s drawing, so it’s not absolute.”
“It’s Eddy.” Todd hung his head and scuffled his feet. “I’m sorry, Aunt Maddie.”
She closed her eyes and took a long breath.
Here it comes, Rob thought. Before she could speak, he said, “I checked missing persons for six counties, including Multnomah and Clark.” Portland was in Multnomah County, Vancouver in Clark. “Nobody listed Edward or Eddy Redfern, not in the last ten weeks.”
“Leon didn’t want to report the boy missing,” Jack said heavily. “We been looking for him.”
Rob walked over to the bench and retrieved his tape recorder from his damp jacket. “I ought to record this.”
Maddie’s face set but she didn’t say anything.
“Do I have your permission, Chief Thomas?”
“Yes.” She squeezed the syllable out. “I suppose you’ll use it against us.”
He kept exasperation from his voice with an effort. “I want it for my protection, ma’am. And for yours. There should be no misunderstanding about what we say.”
She grimaced. “Oh, go ahead.”
That took awhile. He gave his name, the date, place, and time, and the names of those present. Eventually he’d have to interrogate Maddie, Jack, and the parents individually, but for now he was just trying to understand how young Eddy Redfern could disappear without anyone saying a word about it to the authorities. He showed both of them the artist’s reconstruction and Jack groaned.
Maddie said, “It’s not a good likeness.”
Rob didn’t explain why it wasn’t. Chief Thomas blinked back tears.
Rob turned back to Jack, who had sunk onto one of the benches. “You were saying, Mr. Redfern, that Eddy’s family were aware that he was missing.”
“Well, he didn’t get in touch. He said he was off checking something out and not to expect him to show up at the powwow. That was in August. You know kids, they have their own lives these days.”
And their own deaths. Rob said nothing.
Jack gulped. “When Eddy didn’t come home for the Labor Day picnic we always have, his folks started to worry. Lila talked with his roommates in Portland. He lived in a house with four other students in the Hawthorne district, rode his bike to the college to save gas.”
“To Portland State University.”
“Yeah. Summer school let out second week in August. They, his roommates, said he left the last week of classes, before exams started, told them he’d finished early. His grades was okay, so that must be the truth. He said he was going to a big swap meet, and then up to The Dalles.”
“The Dalles?”
“He has friends on the Fish Commission,” Madeline said. “He worked for them two summers as an intern.”
“Did he show up there?”
She shook her head.
Jack said, “The girl he hung out with there told Lila that Eddy called her from Portland, said he’d be up later. But he never came.”
The timing sounded right. Rob got Jack to give him the girlfriend’s name.
Jack didn’t know the phone number. “She works for the fisheries people.”
“Okay, we can trace her.” Rob sat beside Jack with the tape recorder between them.
Maddie stalked over. “Trace her? She hasn’t done anything wrong!”
Rob mustered patience. “Find her. Talk to her. Eddy may have said something to her about the swap meet or whatever else he was doing, something that will help us identify his killer. Why a swap meet?”
Silence. Jack and Madeline stared at each other. Todd sneezed. “Sorry.”
Madeline said, “He hung out at the big swap meets because he was looking for things that were stolen from us.”
“From Lauder Point?”
“A lot of the young ones did it.”
“Not me,” Todd interjected.
“I wouldn’t let Todd,” she said with the hint of a sneer. “Didn’t want to get him fired.”
But Todd knew about it. Rob said, “Let me understand you. You were conducting an investigation, looking for the looted objects, and using your young people as agents?”
“We have a right to do that.”
He stared at her.
Madeline’s eyes dropped. “They just went to the swap meets and antiques shows.” She sat down on the next bench over and gazed into the fire.
“How young?” The hair on the back of Rob’s neck prickled.
“No kids under eighteen. Just the ones out of high school, and only if they wanted to and had time. I told them to be careful and not to…to confront any of the dealers. Just to report anything to me that might be part of the missing cache. And to give me the dealers’ names.”
“And?”
“I didn’t think anything would come of it. They like doing it,” she burst out. “It makes them feel part of the Klalo people. They’ve been looking ten years now, different kids every year, never found anything. A few dealers were selling looted stuff, but it wasn’t ours. I gave their names to the fisheries people Eddy worked for.”
But not to me, Rob reflected. He didn’t say anything. Chief Thomas sounded defensive.
“The laws have changed a lot in the last ten years,” he ventured, keeping his voice neutral.
“Oh, you noticed?”
He said through his teeth, “I attended three workshops on the changes—two at my own expense. I have a filing cabinet full of cases, legal opinions, and articles from archaeological journals. I noticed.”
She made a dismissive noise and turned her face away.
“Paused at four fifty-two.” He hit the Pause button. He needed to think, not emote. He walked to the other end of the room and looked at the display of pine-needle baskets. Beautiful work. Some of the baskets must have been very old, but one tiny perfect thing looked as if it had been made last week. He wished his daughter, Willow, could see it.
Artifacts such as the baskets, not to mention the ceremonial objects
hanging from the walls, now fetched thousands of dollars at auction. Museums and private collectors had created a market that transformed pothunters into thieves, even grave robbers.
An Oregon man was on trial for looting a burial site in Nevada that dated back several thousand years B.C. In Washington, archaeologists and tribal leaders were at loggerheads over proposed scientific examination of one ancient skeleton. Sacred sites throughout the region had been vandalized. There had been no human remains anywhere in Lauder Point County Park, fortunately. The new laws, actually old laws with new teeth, were an attempt to deal with the situation.
When he thought he had his temper under control, Rob went back to where Todd was hovering over his aunt and uncle. They had been speaking in low voices and broke off at his approach.
Maddie started to say something, but Rob held up his hand. “Let me say my piece. If I haven’t offered apologies for failing to find the sacred objects stolen from Lauder Point, I offer them now. There’s no reason for you to believe I take the theft seriously after all this time. You’re bound to judge by results.”
Jack said, “Well, now…”
Maddie shifted on the bench. Todd was staring at him.
Rob kept his voice even. “I’m sorry to offend you with questions, but we do have a homicide. A valuable member of your community has been killed. Finding out who committed this outrage will be easier if you cooperate—”
The door to the main house flew open and a thinner, shorter version of Jack Redfern burst in. “I talked to her. She knows.” He broke off, sobbing, and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “She wants to kill you, Maddie. Hell, she wants to kill me.”
Todd and Jack spoke simultaneously. Todd took Leon Redfern’s arm and helped him to a seat near his brother. Jack patted his shoulder.
Rob stood still and watched them. When he glanced at Madeline Thomas, she ducked her head, breaking eye contact, as if she were ashamed. So she should be. She hadn’t thought anything would come of it. In spite of himself, Rob felt a twinge of sympathy for the stubborn woman.
When Leon seemed calmer, Rob introduced himself and shook hands. He showed Redfern the artist’s version of his son’s face and waited for the bereaved man to compose himself.