Murder on High (23 page)

When they got back to the Katahdin Air Service office, Tracey called Pyle to ask him to check the fingerprints on the rattle and the headdress against those of a Lome Coley of Indian Island. Pyle was waiting for them when they returned to Orono to tell them that the fingerprints had checked out. He hadn’t even needed to consult the FBI’s fingerprint identification system. Coley’s prints were on file at the Penobscot County Jail, where he’d done time on several occasions for being drunk and disorderly, resisting arrest, and reckless driving. “Like eating pie,” Pyle had said of the task of matching up the prints. Pyle also confirmed that Coley had a Federal record, having been arrested several times in connection with American Indian Movement demonstrations—including once with Marlon Brando, a supporter of Indian causes, in a demonstration at Wounded Knee. He’d also been among the Red Power militants who had occupied Alcatraz Island in 1969.

After listening to Pyle’s report, Tracey called Bill St. Louis to tell him that they wanted to talk with Coley, and to ask for his help in locating him. As a state police officer, Tracey had to be sensitive about treading on the turf of other police departments. Fifteen minutes later he and Charlotte were crossing the bridge onto Indian Island. Coming off the bridge, they passed a quaint old church—the oldest Catholic church in North America, Tracey told her—and continued along a winding country lane lined with lilacs in full bloom—the French influence again, Charlotte assumed—and the small clapboard-sided houses that were typical of the island. After a short distance, they made a right-hand turn past a moccasin shop. This brought them out at what appeared to be the downtown section of the island: a string of modern buildings that included the Indian Island School and the Penobscot Nation Community Center. The police station stood across the street from the largest of these buildings, the Sockalexis Memorial Arena, whose parking lot was filled with cars and a row of perhaps twenty buses.

“High stakes Bingo,” Tracey explained, nodding at the arena. “They get fifteen hundred to two thousand players.” He went on to explain that the arena was named after the tribe’s two most famous members: Andrew Sockalexis, who was a marathon runner in the 1912 Olympic games at Stockholm, and his cousin Louis, a star of the Cleveland Spiders baseball team, which later changed its name to the Indians in his honor. Originally built for ice hockey, the arena was now used for the much more lucrative sport of high stakes Bingo, the reservation being exempt from state laws that prohibited high stakes gambling.

St. Louis was waiting for them in the lobby of the tribal police station.

When they asked directions to Coley’s house, which was in a suburb of the main village called Oak Hill, St. Louis replied that he probably wouldn’t be home. “If I know Lome,” he said, “we’ll find him across the street. C’mon, I’ll take you over there.”

A few minutes later they entered the huge, smoke-filled arena, which was packed with hundreds of tables of Bingo players, most of them women and all of them eagerly watching the television monitors to see what number the Bingo machine would spit out next. Charlotte didn’t know what she had been expecting, but it wasn’t this little slice of Las Vegas on the shores of the Penobscot. A sign advertised The Drifters, who had apparently performed earlier in the day, and the sound system blared a Drifters recording of “Up On The Roof.”

Charlotte wondered how they would ever find Coley in this crowd, but St. Louis knew exactly where he would be: sitting with a bunch of old Penobscot women at one of the tables at the back that were reserved for walk-ins. He was a middle-aged man who looked like central casting’s idea of an Indian, of the bad-guy variety. He had dark, pockmarked skin; shoulder-length black hair combed back over a thinning spot; a thin, straggly mustache and a wispy Vandyke beard; and a nose that looked as if it had been in one too many fights at the Shuffle Inn. He wore a T-shirt with a picture of a medicine shield on it.

Charlotte didn’t recognize Coley’s face, since it had been concealed by the mask, but she did recognize his physique, with its thin legs and protruding belly, across which the light blue fabric of the T-shirt was tightly stretched. Though he scrutinized her closely, she couldn’t tell if he recognized her or not. She didn’t think so.

Coley sat in front of his Bingo card, which was ringed by a collection of trinkets: a red rabbit’s foot, a miniature troll figure with shocking pink hair, and the beaded medicine bag.

Several of the other people at the table had similar collections, from which Charlotte concluded that they must be good luck charms.

St. Louis looked down at Coley’s Bingo card, on which only a few of the twenty-five numbers were colored in. “Winning anything?” asked the Indian detective as the caller called out number O-63.

Coley looked up at the lighted board to confirm the number, and then down at his card. Then he picked up his dauber and colored in the number. Finally he looked up at St. Louis. “Naw,” he said. “I never win.”

What was the point of being a male shamanist pig, Charlotte wondered, if you couldn’t even use your supernatural skills to help turn up the right ball in the Bingo machine? Even with the help of the trinkets.

Coley set down his dauber, and then looked up at them and smiled. It was a warm but reluctant, almost shy, smile. He had a narrow mouth and small teeth, which were very white.

Charlotte could see why the old ladies might like him.

Coley pulled a cigarette out of a packet labeled “Native Blend” and lit it with a cigarette lighter. “What can I do for you?” he asked as he leaned back and drew on his cigarette, the corners of his eyes squinting in distrust.

“This here is Lieutenant Howard Tracey from the state police,” St. Louis said. “He’d like you to come across the street to the station for a little chat. You’ve played your package out,” he added, “so let’s go.”

Charlotte could see from the tense set of Tracey’s shoulders that he was nervous. There was always the chance that Coley might bolt.

But he needn’t have worried. Coley crumpled up his Bingo card and tossed it onto the table. “Same old story,” he said to his tablemates. “They ain’t got nobody else to pick on, so they pick on an Indian.”

The women nodded in agreement, and cast dirty looks at Tracey.

Then Coley got up and followed St. Louis out as the caller called out another number, and several shouts of “Bingo!” resounded throughout the hall.

12

Coley admitted to being Pamola. As they suspected, he had parked on one of the old logging roads on the northwest boundary of the park, and bushwhacked in to the Perimeter Road. To reach the Klondike, he had followed the route that his great uncle had used, down a slide on the eastern slope of Mount Coe. To get from there to Chimney Pond he had taken the route that Keith had described, and to get to the retreat center he had taken the trail from Daicey Pond. His motive had been the revenge of Pamola. Or so he said.

“Pamola don’t like people trespassing on his territory,” he stated, and proceeded to tell an involved story about a Penobscot who had once been forced by bad weather to spend a night on the summit of Katahdin, and had been terrorized all night long by the malevolent spirit. From the disparaging things he had to say about the retreat center, however, it was clear that his real motive was jealousy. He was one of Black Elk’s Blue Men, just as Keith had said. He was probably a coward as well, Charlotte guessed, which was why he had appeared only to women. She didn’t doubt that he believed what he said about Pamola. What she did doubt was his mental capacity. There were holes in his logic, gaps in his narrative. She couldn’t tell if that was just the way he was, or if his brain had been pickled by alcohol.

“What about you?” Tracey asked. “Aren’t you afraid of trespassing on Pamola’s territory? I thought the Penobscots were afraid to go above the tree line for fear of Pamola’s wrath.”

“That there’s just superstition,” Coley replied, which Charlotte thought an odd remark for an Indian shaman to make.

Then Tracey got to the sixty-four-dollar question: “What about Mrs. Richards? Did Pamola take revenge on Mrs. Richards; too?”

“Who’s she?” he asked.

“The woman who was murdered on the Knife Edge.”

“Oh. I heard about that on the radio.” He looked up at them. “You think Pamola killed her?” he asked, as if he were actually considering whether or not that was possible.

“No. We think you killed her,” said Tracey.

Coley stared down at the toes of his beat-up running shoes for a minute, and then looked back up at his questioner. Finally he repeated Tracey’s accusation. “You think I kilt her,” he said, nodding his head.

Tracey stared him down.

“What makes you think that?” Coley asked. He spat out his consonants like a Frenchman, and Charlotte wondered if it was the historical contact with the French that had resulted in his peculiar accent or if it was the remnants of the lost Penobscot language.

“The fact that we found a fishing crossbow of the type she was killed with at your camp at Klondike Pond,” Tracey replied.

Coley stared up at them, and drew on his cigarette. “When was she kilt?” he asked thoughtfully, as if he himself were the detective.

“On Saturday, June ninth, around two. Where were you then?”

“Playing high stakes Bingo. I play every time. I can name a dozen people who saw me. Ask any of ’em. In fact, I think I may still have my ticket stub at home.” He began to get up. “Can I go now?”

“What time does Bingo start?” Tracey asked.

“The regular games start at noon,” replied the Indian detective. “But he could have arrived at any time.” He turned to look down at Coley, who was the only one who was seated. “What time did you get here?” he asked.

“About two,” he replied. “I missed the first four games. It took me four hours to get out to the Perimeter Road, another hour to get to my car, and two hours to get back here. I left the camp at six-thirty, and still didn’t get back to the island till nearly two.”

“No way he could have done it,” St. Louis said. “Unless he was flying.”

“My powers don’t extend to flying,” said Coley, chuckling good-naturedly now that he knew he was off the hook.

“If you were here, that means that somebody else used your crossbow to kill Mrs. Richards, or one just like it,” Tracey said.

“I don’t have no crossbow,” he said.

“You don’t?” said Tracey.

Coley shook his head.

“It had an Indian charm on it.”

“That may be, but it still ain’t mine,” said Coley.

“Then somebody must have put it there. Does anybody else use your camp?”

He shook his head again.

They had caught a fox, but not the right one. But at least they had the Pamola issue out of the way, Charlotte thought, reminded again of Occam’s Razor. Now they could get back to the murder.

“Now can I be excused?” asked Coley sarcastically.

St. Louis’ comment that Coley couldn’t have made it back to Indian Island in time for Bingo “unless he was flying” had put an idea into Charlotte’s head. She and Tracey had landed a float plane on Klondike Pond. Why couldn’t someone else have done the same thing? She wasn’t thinking of Coley—he wouldn’t have had access to a float plane, that she knew of—but of Keith Samusit. It was his float plane that had been anchored at the retreat center. He presumably used it to survey tribal lands for timber. She remembered the float planes that had been lined up in the river at the regional headquarters of the state forest service, which were probably used for the same purpose. Knowing that Coley was using the Klondike Pond camp as the staging area for his nocturnal ramblings, Keith might have killed Iris and planted the murder weapon at the camp with the intention of framing Coley. Their pilot had told them that he personally flew eight or ten sightseeing flights a day over the mountain. And the Katahdin Air Service was just one of several flying services in the area. Who would have noticed one more plane? Especially when the pond couldn’t even be seen from the park trails. Then there was the fact that it was Keith who had directed them to the camp, perhaps with the aim of casting suspicion on Coley. If Coley were to be believed, he was already a sort of general scapegoat. What was a murder on top of everything else? Moreover, there would be the attraction for Keith of killing two birds with one stone: not only would he be pinning Iris’ murder on someone else, he would also be getting rid of a rival for his authority as ceremonial leader.

On the ride back to the barracks, Charlotte discussed her theory with Tracey. The problem was: How to prove it? They could check with the float plane services in the area to see if any pilots had noticed a plane at Klondike Pond. They could—and would—test the crossbow for fingerprints. (They would also pass the bolts along to Clough, so that he could match the tips up with the entrance wound in Iris’ neck.) But Keith was not stupid: if it was his intention to frame Coley, he would have been careful not to leave any fingerprints.

It was past seven by the time they got back to Orono, but Pyle was waiting for them with more news. It was his first murder investigation, and he was all eagerness. He would have worked around the clock had Tracey asked him to. Charlotte could tell from the grin on his young face that he had turned up something significant. It was about time, too. It seemed to Charlotte that they’d wandered off track in their pursuit of Pamola, Occam’s Razor or no. They were like hikers who are tramping happily along, only to be brought up short when they suddenly notice that the edge of the path is no longer marked by cairns, the trees are devoid of blazes. The Pamola issue had been a false trail, and they now had to do what any hiker would do under similar circumstances: go back to the last trail marker and set off again from there, this time with a keener eye for their direction. Not that the trail in an investigation was always clearly marked. Especially once you were underway, when it tended to branch off into a maze of narrow, interlocking paths, like a network of capillaries, which, if you were lucky, would eventually all merge, and, if you had the good sense to follow along, bring you out at the heart of the matter. But they weren’t even underway yet. They were still at the beginning, where their route should have been straight, wide, and clearly marked.