Indian Killer (7 page)

T
HE KILLER BELIEVED IN
the knife, a custom-made bowie with three small turquoise gems inlaid in the handle, heavy but well-balanced, nearly long enough to be considered a sword. A beautiful weapon, polished until the killer could see clear eyes, curve of cheek, and thin lips in the silver sheen of the blade. During those moments, with knife in hand, the killer felt powerful, invincible, as if the world could be changed with a single gesture. Snap of the fingers, one step forward, a hand closed into fist. With the knife, the killer became the single, dark center around which all other people revolved.

At home, the killer had sharpened the blade until it could cut away a thin layer of skin when just lightly run along a forearm. Everything had a purpose. The knife needed to be sharp. The killer wanted to carry the knife at all times, but its size and weight made it difficult to conceal. A special knife needed a special sheath. Since the killer could not sleep, there was plenty of time to build a sheath, fashioned from irregular leather pieces and nylon cord. With the knife resting comfortably in its sheath, hidden beneath a jacket, the killer could move freely. More importantly, the killer had quick access to the blade as it sat just above the left hip. For hours, the killer practiced pulling the knife from its sheath, then slashing, cutting, and thrusting the blade into imaginary enemies. Faster and faster. The killer practiced, as hands blistered and arms ached with pain, until exhaustion. Only then did the killer fall asleep.

At night, the killer dreamed of the knife. Of the search for a perfect knife. It had not been easy. There were many choices. Paring, chef’s, boning knives. Bread, utility, carving knives. Wooden handles, plastic handles. So beautiful, the parts of a knife. Blade, bolster, tang, handle. Indestructible. Lifetime guarantees. Large sets. One knife at a time. Knife blocks with blade sharpeners included. Demonstration videos. County fairs. Mail order. Department stores and discount chains. Garage sales and secondhand stores.
A Short Guide to Cutlery.
In a large kitchen, the meat carver decided which piece of meat each guest received. The neck for the journalist, the breast for royalty. The killer had touched so many knives, studied their blades, tested their heft. The knife is the earliest tool used by humans, over two million years old. Knife, knifing, knives, to knife, to be knifed, knifelike. The killer sliced open test fruits and vegetables, ran fingers over the deep grooves cut into carving boards. Four thousand years ago, humans learned to separate elements, and discovered the power of iron. The killer shifted a knife from left to right hand, and then back again. How to hold a carving knife: last three fingers behind the bolster point, index finger on one side of the blade, thumb on the other side. The paring knife is an extension of the hand. The bread knife is perfect for cutting through objects with hard exteriors and soft interiors. Ancient and elemental, the knife.
The Illustrated History of Swords.
Blade against blade against blade. A knife must be sharp, clean, and stored properly. A blade should be sharpened before and after use. The mirror of a polished blade. The mirrors in a department store. The mirror of the sky visible between department stores. The Rockwell scale measured the hardness of steel. The higher the number, the sharper the blade. Steel tends to shrink back into itself after long periods of disuse.

Hiding that beautiful knife in the sheath beneath a jacket, the killer followed white men, selected at random. The killer simply picked any one of the men in gray suits and followed him from office building to cash machine, from lunchtime restaurant back to office building. Those gray suits were not happy, yet showed their unhappiness only during moments of weakness. Punching the buttons of a cash machine that refused to work. Yelling at a taxi that had come too close. Insulting the homeless people who begged for spare change. But the killer also saw the more subtle signs of unhappiness. A slight limp in uncomfortable shoes. Eyes closed, head thrown back while waiting for the traffic signal. The slight hesitation before opening a door. The men in gray suits wanted to escape, but their hatred and anger trapped them.

The killer first saw that particular white man in the University District. Confidently, arrogantly, the white man, Justin Summers, had brushed past the killer. With his head high and shoulders wide, Summers took up as much space as he possibly could. He strolled down the middle of the sidewalk, forcing others to walk around him. So when the arrogant white man rudely brushed past, the killer wanted to teach him a lesson. Nothing serious, just a simple and slightly painful lesson. Then, without reason or warning, the killer suddenly understood that the knife had a specific purpose. But the killer had to be careful. There were rules for hunting.

The killer knew that particular white man in the University District was all alone, and that was good. Men in a pack could protect each other. When threatened, they could scatter in many directions and confuse the killer. A solitary man was vulnerable. Easy to follow, that white man, so self-absorbed he failed to notice much of anything. Muttering to himself, looking down at the sidewalk, he walked block after block. He ate Thai food by himself and read a magazine. After he finished eating, the white man walked toward the Burke-Gilman Trail. The killer followed him closely, and once stood beside him as they waited for the walk signal. So close. At any time, the killer could have reached inside the jacket and pulled out the knife. The late evening streets were so quiet that the killer could have slid the knife into the white man’s kidney and then walked away. But the moon was terribly bright and illuminating. There was a chance the killer would be caught. Thrilled by the idea, the killer moved closer to the white man, until they were almost touching. The white man glanced at the killer. A superficial glance, nothing more important than a wind blowing a newspaper down the street. The killer reached inside the jacket and touched the knife.

The killer especially hated the white man’s clothes and followed him as he walked south for a few blocks, then turned west on the Burke-Gilman Trail. The killer could see and smell the white man. Aftershave, leather jacket, Thai food. It was late, a few bicyclists flashed by, but the trail was mostly deserted. The killer walked a few feet behind the white man for a few minutes, then reached out and tapped the white man on the shoulder.

“Whoa,” said the white man. “You scared the shit out of me.”

The killer was silent.

“Hey,” said the white man. “Do I know you, man?”

The killer took a step back, knowing that anger would change a face. The killer had seen other people do it. Other people could change the shape of their faces at will. Through a trick of shadow and moonlight, or through some undefined magic, the killer’s face did change.

“What’s going on?” asked the white man, now really frightened by what he saw in the killer’s face.

The killer saw the fear in the white man’s blue eyes. The man’s fear inspired the killer’s confidence. The killer slid a hand beneath the jacket and felt for the knife. It was there in its homemade sheath, blade sharp and beautiful. It would soak up all the moonlight. The white man was not stupid. When he saw the killer reach beneath the jacket, the white man began to desperately hope that somebody would walk along the trail soon. A dozen University cops were always breaking up unauthorized parties on campus, but very few ever patrolled the trail.

“What do you want?” asked the white man loudly, trying to inject anger into his voice. Be strong, he said to himself, don’t show any fear.

“Hey, let’s be cool about this. I don’t want any problems,” the white man said.

The killer moved quickly. With fingers wrapped around the handle, the killer snapped the knife out of its handmade sheath. The killer’s feet moved forward, and the sharp blade forced its way into the white man’s belly.

The killer had not necessarily meant for any of it to happen. The killer picked up the white man’s body, carried it on a shoulder, and walked along the trail in a daze. A group of UW students staggered past, on their way home from some party, and laughed loudly at the killer. The killer stopped, ready to drop the body, and run.

“Shit, you’re a strong one, huh?” one of the students slurred to the killer, and then tugged on the white man’s leg. “Jesus, you got wasted, huh? Shit, wake up, wake up. The party’s just starting.”

The white man groaned and shifted. The killer was surprised that the man was still alive. His blood ran down the killer’s back.

“Shit,” said the student. “Don’t you two be doing anything nasty now, huh?” Laughter. “You’re both going to be hating it in the morning. Hangover City, you’ll be hating it.”

The students laughed and staggered away. The killer watched them go, breathed deeply, and kept walking down the trail. The killer wanted to drop the body and leave it where it landed, but felt responsible for the white man. Honestly, the killer had not necessarily meant to hurt him and wanted to make sure the man was buried properly. There had to be a ceremony, a wake, silent prayers. That was how it was done. The killer had learned many ceremonies, but rarely practiced them.

The killer walked off the trail into a dark neighborhood. Silently singing an invisibility song learned from a dream, the killer carried the body to an empty house. A
FOR SALE
sign. Bare windows. A broken lock on the back door. The killer carried the body inside the house and gently set it on the living room floor. Kneeling beside the body, the killer cut the white man’s scalp away and stuffed the bloody souvenir into a pocket. So much blood. The killer was drenched with blood, soaking shirt, jacket, and pants. The blood was beautiful but not enough. One dead man was not enough. The killer was disappointed. Disappointment grew quickly into anger, then rage, and the killer brought the knife down into the white man’s chest again and again. Still not satiated, the killer knew there was more work to do. The dead man’s blue eyes were open and still, pupils dilated. With hands curved into talons, the killer tore the white man’s eyes from his face and swallowed them whole. The killer then pulled two white owl feathers out of another pocket, and set them on the white man’s chest. Blood soon soaked into the feathers, staining them a dark red.

“H
ELLO OUT THERE, FOLKS
, this is Truck Schultz on KWIZ, the Voice of Reason, and boy, do I have a problem!”

Schultz sat in the radio station, smoking a cigar, drinking coffee. A tall, muscular white man with a receding hairline, blue eyes, and large ears, he was the host of the most popular talk-radio show in the city and was ready to go national, sure that he would be more popular than Rush Limbaugh. Truck had started with a late-night jazz show on KWIZ a few years earlier. Not long after conservative radio hit it big, KWIZ changed its format to talk and Truck became a star. His promotional billboards were everywhere:
KEEP ON TRUCKIN’!
Now Truck had a hundred thousand listeners and a drive-time slot. He never played jazz anymore. Leaning close to his microphone, Truck exhaled a cloud of thick, gray smoke and spoke loudly and clearly.

“Through my sources in the Seattle Police Department, I’ve just learned that the body of a white man was discovered in a house in Fremont early this morning. My sources say that the man was scalped and ritually mutilated. That’s right, folks. Scalped and ritually mutilated. My sources say certain evidence makes it clear that an American Indian might be responsible for this crime. My sources would not reveal what that evidence was, but they did make it clear that only an Indian, or a person intimately familiar with Indian culture, would know to leave such evidence behind. What do you think, folks? Give me a call.”

A
FEW DAYS AFTER
she met John Smith at the protest powwow, Marie Polatkin walked into the evening section of the Introduction to Native American Literature class for the first time. The professor had not yet arrived. The students were gossiping about the dead body that had been discovered in an empty house in Fremont.

“Yeah,” said one older white woman. “I read he was scalped.”

“Yeah,” said a white man. “Like an Indian would do it.”

“An Indian?”

“Yeah, Indians started that whole scalping business.”

“Oh, that’s spooky. And here we are, in an Indian class. I just got the shivers.”

“You’ve got it all wrong,” Marie said as she sat at a desk near the front. “The French were the first to scalp people in this country. Indians just copied them.”

The white students all stared at Marie, saw that she was Indian, and then turned back to their conversation.

“I bet it was one of those serial killers,” said another white woman.

“Yes,” said a third white woman. “There’s something in the water here. I mean, we’ve got the Green River Killer, Ted Bundy, the I-5 Killer. We, like, raise them here or something.”

Marie tried to ignore the morbid discussion. She was more concerned about the professor. She’d signed up for the class because she’d heard that Dr. Clarence Mather, the white professor, supposedly loved Indians, or perhaps his idea of Indians, and gave them good grades. But he was also a Wannabe Indian, a white man who wanted to be Indian, and Marie wanted to challenge Mather’s role as the official dispenser of “Indian education” at the University.

“He always wants to sweat with Indian students, or share the peace pipe, or sit at a drum and sing,” Binky, a Yakama woman, had said. “He’s kind of icky. He really fawns over the women, you know what I mean? Real Indian lover, that one.”

Still, in spite of and because of Dr. Mather, Marie assumed she’d be one of many Indians in the class, all looking for an easy grade. But she’d been wrong in her assumptions. She was the only Indian in the class. When Mather walked into the class, he was wearing a turquoise bolo tie, and his gray hair was tied back in a ponytail.

While Marie was surprised by the demographics of the class, she was completely shocked by the course reading list. One of the books,
The Education of Little Tree
, was supposedly written by a Cherokee Indian named Forrest Carter. But Forrest Carter was actually the pseudonym for a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Three of the other books,
Black Elk Speaks
,
Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions
, and
Lakota Woman
, were taught in almost every Native American Literature class in the country, and purported to be autobiographical, though all three were co-written by white men. Black Elk himself had disavowed his autobiography, a fact that was conveniently omitted in any discussion of the book. The other seven books included three anthologies of traditional Indian stories edited by white men, two nonfiction studies of Indian spirituality written by white women, a book of traditional Indian poetry translations edited by a Polish-American Jewish man, and an Indian murder mystery written by some local white writer named Jack Wilson, who claimed he was a Shilshomish Indian. On the recommendation of a white classmate, Marie had read one of Wilson’s novels a few months before the class. She’d hated the book and seriously doubted that its author was Indian, or much of a writer. She’d done some research on his background and found a lot of inconsistencies.