A Far Gone Night (9 page)

“Keep going, Thomas,” Payne said.

I said, “Someone murdered that girl. It was supposed to look like drowning, so someone screwed up at the scene of the murder, somehow the body got away from them in the river and she slipped downstream. I don’t know. They waited and watched and checked out the news and when they heard that the body had been found here, they knew what they had to do. Find out where the body was, and the local paper told them it was here, and taken to Dr.
Jarlsson’s
lab. Next, they had to get the body back so they could destroy evidence of the murder, and then intimidate Prentice into writing that false report before taking Dr.
Jarlsson
and his wife ‘away.’ No body, no fingerprints, and an official report that the girl committed suicide. I fear for the
Jarlssons
.”

“But what about the missing photographs? How did they disappear?” Lunatic asked.

“No idea,” I said.

“Thomas,” Payne
said,
his voice low and serious. “You said you might have something. What is it?”

“You have it, too, Harmon. She had a small silver earring.
Actually two pieces.
The report said it was a tiny silver eagle’s head with a silver feather.”

Moon made a sound. We looked at him.

“What?” Liv asked. “What, Moon?”

“I gave someone in my family an earring like that, one I made myself.”

Liv shot me a look and said, “There are lots of earrings out there, Moon. This doesn’t mean this girl is someone you know.”

“Pretty sure,” Moon mumbled.

“It’s not enough to go on,” Payne said.
“If there were only something else, some other way to be sure whether this is your person or not.
Something definitive.”

My stomach sank as I recalled
the swoosh
of white hair on the left side of the girl’s skull. For a moment, I considered not saying anything,
then
I had to. Lunatic Mooning is my friend, and I owe him the truth. After all, he saved my life once. So I said, “There was something else that was not in Dr.
Jarlsson’s
report.”

“What?” Payne asked.

I said, “The girl had very dark hair, but there was a patch of white on the left side, looked kind of like a Nike swoosh. Prentice didn’t have that anomaly in his report.
Should have.”

Moon slumped and dropped his head. We looked at him.

“M
y niece’s name is Cynthia Stalking Wolf. Cindy,” Lunatic
began,
his voice barely above a whisper. “I gave her that earring when she was ten because she was now a big girl, I told her. Two years later, she ran away, and I never heard from her again.”

Liv, tears in her eyes, reached her hands across the table to take Lunatic’s hands in hers.

He said, “There is only one earring like that. I made it for her. It was silver and in the shape of a tiny eagle’s head.
A symbol for
Mi
-Ge-Zee.
A tiny silver feather was part of the earring. And she has had that streak of white hair since birth. The dead girl is Cindy.”

“Does she have family we can contact?” Harmon asked. “Where do they live?”

“Her mother was my sister, Harriet Red Wing,” he said, straightening up in the booth. I glanced sideways and saw the face of a man of great sorrow. I looked away. “Harriet was
Anishinabe
. She died three years ago.
Cirrhosis of the liver.
Her husband, Lawrence Williamson, was
Chalaka
, and was killed in a knife fight outside the casino on the
Chalaka
Reservation about four years ago. He was no good. Cindy was an only child, ignored, likely abused, a three-year-old walking alone along the gravel roads of the reservation.”

“What do you mean by ‘
Chalaka
’?” I asked. “You’re
Anishinabe
, and Cindy was your niece?”

Moon said. “The
Anishinabe
made alliances with other tribes, such as the Ottawa and Potawatomi. The
Chalakas
are like that.
Some intermarrying among tribes.”
He took in a huge breath of air and let it out haltingly. Liv and I exchanged glances of pity.

Harmon looked sad as well, but he continued to ask questions. “Was Lawrence Williamson an Indian? Where is the
Chalaka
Reservation? Up in Minnesota somewhere, isn’t it?”

“Lawrence was also
Chalaka
. He chose a white man’s name. The reservation is just outside the small town of Red Oak, about forty miles northwest of Winona,” Lunatic said. “The Whitetail River passes through it.”

“Why would anyone want to kill Cindy?” Liv asked, squeezing Lunatic’s hands. Olivia and Moon have been friends since elementary school.

He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, a hopeless smile passing over his face. “I can imagine scenarios,” he said. “She was a runaway, a street kid. Didn’t care for the ways of her people, and I can’t blame her. Poverty, drugs, alcoholism, and then the casino coming onto the reservation, and you know what that can bring.”

“Not much good,” Harmon said, sitting upright.
“Lots of money, but, inevitably, prostitution, corruption, gambling addiction, drugs.”

“Mitigation payments,” I added.

“What are mitigation payments?” Liv asked.

“An open door to corruption,” I said. “Mitigation payments are monies paid from the casino to local authorities to ‘mitigate’ the impact of the casino on the local government. The casino goes in with a contract to pay the locals for infrastructure—roads, power, water, additional law enforcement. It can be millions of dollars annually.”

“That would be hard to turn down,” Liv said.

“Yes,” I said, “and the typical response from the locals goes something like this: ‘I hate to see a casino come in, but it’s hard to turn down the money.’ Of course, the casinos provide lots of well-paying jobs for not only Indians but quite a few non-Indians, too.”

“It’s enticing,” Lunatic said, his deep voice soft, “because who really wants to work all day in a fish processing plant, or making souvenirs for tourists and casino customers when you can pull in a good paycheck, and benefits, from the casino’s owners?”

Liv said, “Why would the Indians have to make those payments if the casino is on their land?”

“The reservations have a kind of sovereignty, protected by the federal government, it’s true,” I said, “but they still need local support and the roads need to be built to the casino and building permits, and, again, a need for local law enforcement. Casinos usually have their own security, which is serious stuff, but they need to coexist with the local sheriff’s department or police department. And guess who gets the bulk of the mitigation millions? Usually, it’s the local District Attorney’s office and the local law enforcement budget.”

“And that opens the door to a sweetheart deal between the officers of the law and those they are supposed to supervise,” Harmon said.

“Uh-oh,” Liv said.

I continued. “Of course, those monies go into beefing up the numbers of deputies needed because of the riff-raff that come into the area to feed their addictions, and to the D.A.’s office for more lawyers to prosecute cases arising from the casino traffic.”

“And maybe lavish ‘professional’ conferences in Hawaii,” Payne said. “I believe that most of those arrangements are on the up and up, but temptation can be powerful when you’re talking about millions.”

Lunatic turned his head toward me, looked me in the eye, and asked, “How do you know so much about casinos and mitigation payments?”

“I read a lot.”

A brief, rueful smile crossed Lunatic’s face. He said, “I must do something to find out who killed Cindy Stalking Wolf. And punish them.”

“Let’s amend that statement to substitute
we
for
I
,” I said.

“It is not your place,” Moon said.

“I agree with Thomas,” Liv said. “We are friends, all of us, and even if Thomas has only been here a little while, he’s the one who pulled your niece, Cindy, from the river, and if it weren’t for him, her death would be a suicide and not a murder and those scum who shot her would be laughing up their sleeves having gotten away with it.”

“What Olivia said,” Harmon interjected, “but this has become a murder investigation and a missing persons investigation now that we’re searching for the
Jarlssons
, and even though I would really appreciate your help, please step aside and let me get after this. I know that, no matter what I say officially, you two will probably want to nose around on your own. Don’t do it.”

“Sorry, Harmon, but I can’t leave it to you. This will be handled by me, my people, and you know why,” Lunatic said, leveling a look at the Sheriff.

“What?” Liv asked. “What?
Why not?”

Sheriff Payne looked back at Moon and said, “The Ojibwa, the
Chalaka
, do not trust the white man’s legal system. That’s why there was no missing person’s report coming to my desk, no social workers’ intervention, no communication from law enforcement up there.”

“I guess I can see why trust is lacking,” Olivia said. “Just watch the news. Corruption abounds.”

“But you know I’ll do what I can to find out everything about this girl, Moon,” Payne said, glaring at Olivia.

“I know you will,” Moon said, “but you’re just part of the white man’s system. It is corrupt as a system.
Nothing personal.”

“Moon,” Liv asked, “do you think Cindy might have been involved in some of that
yuk
that goes along with casinos? Those things Harmon just said—drugs, prostitution?”

“Maybe,” Lunatic said, “but that isn’t more important than finding out who killed her, why, and where that goes.”

“I agree,” Harmon replied. “And you are beginning to sound like
a law
enforcement professional. But we need evidence to prove what happened to her. Keep that in mind.”

“Thank you, Harmon,” Moon said. “But this girl is family. I can’t let it stand.” He turned to me, not an easy accomplishment given his bulk and the restraints of space in our booth. “And I am grateful to you, Thomas, for what you have already done for Cindy. Perhaps we can work together to gather information, although as an outsider, you won’t get far.”

“Why not?
I have my ways,” I said.

“You’re what those on the
rez
call a
Chi-
mook
, slang for white man. Not a compliment,” Moon said.

His voice was recovering from the earlier brokenness, and I could sense a kind of resolve building in his mind. I said, “We’ll get those guys. Who can withstand the might of an
Anishinabe
-Irish confederation?”

“Who, indeed?” he said.

“I must reiterate,” Harmon said, “that this is my job, and my
department’s
. We’ve had this conversation before. Stay out of it, gentlemen.”

“I need to get back to work, business is picking up,” Moon said.

He started to slide out of the booth but a woman appeared in his way. Suzanne
Highsmith
said, “This looks like a combination Tribal Council, Sheriff’s Department, and Concerned Citizens meeting. What did I miss?”

“Your ride out of town,” I said.

Lunatic said, “Excuse me, Suzanne,” and headed for the bar as she stepped aside.

Without hesitation, she slipped off her full length, blue wool coat and handed it to Moon when he held out his hand to take it. He moved away. She was wearing a pale blue cashmere sweater, a bright blue silk scarf, and snug charcoal slacks. High-heeled black leather boots completed her ensemble.

She slid in beside me and sat down. “Ooh, a nice, warm seat. I’ll have to thank Lunatic.” She looked around at us, smiled, tossed her long, black braid over her shoulder. “What are you eating?” she asked Liv.

“Heartbreak,” she said softly, dabbing a napkin at her eyes.

“We were just leaving,” Harmon said, and they both left.

“This is nice,” Suzanne said. “Alone at last, and hip to thigh,” crowding me a little. I didn’t mind. “May I?” she asked, reaching for my second Loony Burger. I nodded. She took a knife, cut the sandwich in two, and slid her half onto a double napkin she’d assembled for the purpose.
“Looks scrumptious.”
And she dug in. She rolled her eyes and mumbled a sound of satisfaction.

“You’ve never had a Loony Burger before?”

“I’ve been tempted. They sounded too big, but half of yours is just right.”

“That’s ambitious of you, eating my food.”

“Oh, yeah.
I’m hungry after my morning stroll and then writing about what’s going on with you since late last night. By the way, did you know, Thomas, that the
Rockbluff
Motel has
suites
?
Three of them.
Mine has a roomy bedroom with a very comfy queen-sized bed and big screen TV and a bath with a freaking Jacuzzi! The main room also has a big boob tube and really nice furniture along with a teensy kitchenette. Who would have thought?”

“I stayed there for a few days when I first came to town, but it was just a very plebian single room and bath. I’m not surprised Harry
Goodell
has suites.”

“Who?” she asked over a small bite of her sandwich.

“Harry
Goodell
.
Owner.”

“Oh, that cute little darling man!
Harry
Goodell
! He is so
nice
to me!”

“What do you want, Suzanne?” I asked, picking up the remains of my second Loony Burger.

“So much for small talk.
Sheesh, I’m trying to be conversational and gregarious, you know, building my relationship with you and accommodating your nutritional
oddities,
and you try to brush me off. Not very
Christian
, either, if I may.”