Two Medicine (25 page)

“Who says he’s been acting
like homicide detective?” I asked. My voice betrayed my
anger.

Ronnie noticed it and
tried to cool things off a bit by shaking his head dismissively and
clinking out beer cans together in a fake toast. “Sorry man, I
don’t mean to stir things up; I know you cared about
her.”

But I wouldn’t let his
comments drop – not this time. “But who said he’s been acting like
a detective? What do you know about it?” I asked. I knew that I was
sounding a little frazzled and manic now, but I had been feeling
that nobody
anywhere
was acting like any kind of detective when it came to her
murder, that it was being swept under a rug as far as I knew, and
Ronnie’s weird suggestion was just another frustrating
joke.

Ronnie shrugged and pursed
his lips together, his small mustache wrinkling up under his nose,
“Well, Clayton says he’s been snooping around Browning all
week.”

“Clayton?” I asked. “What
does that loser know about anything?”

Ronnie looked at me for a
moment, hiding a smile, “Well he
knew
Alia – longer than you
did.”

“Clayton probably did the
deed himself, that fucking degenerate,” I said, offended by
Ronnie’s smile, and not wanting to actually name Alia or the murder
out loud – not wanting to expose such a raw wound and hidden pain –
not with a guy like Ronnie.

Ronnie’s half-smile fell
when I said that. He shook his head. “You better stay away from
Clayton – and his brother Jake,” he said, growing seriousness
immediately. “They’re no murderers, at least not that I know of,
but they don’t fuck around and they won’t take too kindly if
someone’s going around saying they killed Alia. You could be in
trouble with that shit, Will,” he said, sounding actually concerned
about my safety.

“Did Clayton saying
anything to you about Alia’s death?” I asked him.

Ronnie shook his head. “Of
course not,” he said. “But I rarely talk to him.”

“What’s really your
connection with Clayton and Jake, Ronnie?”

“Connection?” he asked,
smiling again. “I’d say the only connection was that I bought some
weed off them. But so does everybody around here.”

I frowned at him, thinking
of Alia living with Clayton in Browning; and then I looked over the
screen door and out past the porch light into the darkness. It was
perfectly dark out there, and I couldn’t see any more than what was
illuminated by the cone of light from the single lamp above the
porch. Moths flung themselves around erratically on wing around the
lamps. Again, I pictured her little body trampled and beaten, her
small arms and legs bloodied, that pretty little face with her
smart and emotional eyes shoved down into the mud. That little body
tramped like trash. It made me sick to picture it.

Ronnie suddenly let out a
long and deep belch that sounded like some monstrous creature
roaring, and then her muttered darkly, “That old bastard up
stairs…” meaning Larry, of course. “We oughta teach him a lesson.
Acting like he owns the place…” I knew Ronnie was trying to change
the subject and the mood, trying to cheer me up and move past it;
and I tried to shake off the dark feeling that had come over me as
he spoke as well.

The idea of Ronnie
teaching Larry a “lesson,” whatever that really meant, appealed to
me; and Ronnie was certainly the right guy for a job like that – a
man who did not just have bad morals, but really had no morals at
all – no ethics either way.

Suddenly Ronnie hopped up
from the kitchen bench and walked over to one of the metal kitchen
counters, over to where Larry kept a large pitcher made of pottery
with a clay lid on it. In that pitcher was Larry’s prized
concoction of sourdough, fermenting for days at room temperature.
Larry was always going on about how his sour dough had won awards
in Kansas and about how it was this “secret recipe” that he’d
“die,” before giving up, as if any of us wanted it.

Larry would make pancakes
for him and Phyllis on Sunday mornings from this batch. And now, I
watched with fascination as Ronnie hopped up and stood on the metal
counter, flipped off the lid of the pitcher, dropped his pants,
looked over at me and said, “What do you think, chiefy?” And then
peed straight into the sour dough, letting about half the stream
pour into the picture and then squeezing back the rest while he
jumped down to finish on the back porch, shooting a long stream out
into the darkness of the back yard.

I shook my head, but I
appreciated Ronnie’s creativity at coming up with a clever
punishment for the old bastard. I walked over and flipped the clay
top back securely on the pitcher, careful not to touch Ronnie’s
drops of urine on the edge, and then we shut down the kitchen and
went upstairs to sleep.

Larry made his special
pancakes that next Sunday morning and he didn’t say a word or show
any signs that he was aware of our foul play – although Ronnie told
me he made sure he was on hand to witness Larry and Phyllis’s
pancake breakfast; and he told me he watched them carefully as they
began to eat.

The next
morning
, I got a call that changed
everything for me in Two Med, from the Bureau of Indian Affair’s
office in Browning, so Greg was wrong about them not being
interested in me. The call made a cold, nervous feeling sink into
my stomach like a ball of concrete. Katie had answered the store
phone when they called, and she had called over to me from the gift
shop register that I had a phone call. I was stocking the store
fridge, packing in eggs and milk and bacon from large, waxed
refrigerator boxes; and I asked her who it was, wondering who on
earth would be calling me at the store when no one I knew had the
store’s number. I walked over to the phone figuring it was Greg or
Dee possibly.

“
It’s the police.” Katie
said, looking at me with concern.

I froze in mid stride and
just stared back at her as she held the phone. Larry or Ronnie
weren’t within earshot, and there were only a couple of campers
milling around in the snack bar area, so nobody heard.

I nodded to her silently,
and wiping off my hands on my jeans, I took the phone from her with
my heart now beating a hard rhythm against my ribs.

“
This is Will Benton,” I
said into the phone, glancing over at Katie who walked over to
finish my stocking. I turned to the other side of the register for
some privacy. “What can I do for you?”

The voice of a large,
burley man filled the earpiece of the phone, his mouth sounded too
close to the mouthpiece, “Will? This is Detective Olsterman, in
Browning.” The detective had the touch of a southern accent,
“
en Brownin’…”

He continued, “I’m with
the BIA, and I wanted to talk to you about Alia Reynolds. I got a
statement from somebody that you knew her?”

“
Yea, I
knew her,” I said. No point in being evasive, I told myself; I’ve
been wanting an investigation, after all, to find out who killed
her.
But not an investigation of
me.

“
Well why doncha come down
to my office this afternoon and we’ll chat – gotta few questions
for ya,” he said in a slow drawl.

“
I don’t have a
car.”

“
Well we’ll send someone
to getcha,” he quickly said back.

I didn’t like the sound of
that, getting into the back of some cop car in front of the
store.

“
No, I’ll just borrow my
friend’s car.”

We worked out a time for me
to be there and I ran it by Larry, telling him the BIA wanted to
talk to me about some hiker who had gotten killed, someone I had
met.
No point in lying anymore, especially
since Katie knew the police had called for me.
Larry seemed agitated at the news, and asked about the hiker
and how I was involved, but I just shrugged and said I didn’t
really know what it was all about.

As I got into Ronnie’s car,
the coldness and nervousness increased in me as I tried to imagine
how the BIA saw me.
What had they been
told, and by whom?
Did Clayton say
something about me to throw them off his trial? Am I going to need
a lawyer?
The idea still sounded
preposterous – that I would ever need legal counsel living in the
middle Glacier National Park.

I told myself
it was all farfetched, that the BIA was just going
through its list of witnesses; and I kept the fear out of my head
as I started the car. No matter what this conversation with the BIA
was about, I wasn’t going to let a chance slip by of trying to help
find who killed her. Before I had left, I
did
call Greg at his office number,
though, and left him a message that I was heading to the BIA’s
office because they wanted to talk to me. It seemed like he should
know.

As I pulled away from the
store, I heard the transmission straining to switch into gear, and
I wished I had a more reliable vehicle to drive to Browning in. But
Ronnie’s car was better than walking; and I appreciated his
generosity in lending it out whenever Katie and I asked. Larry had
an old blue pickup truck at the store that was in good shape, but
it was gone for some reason that day; and I knew he wouldn’t have
lent it to me in any event – nor did I really want to drive his
vehicle.

Ronnie’s car as usual
struggled manfully up and over the hills on the main road, back and
forth over the switchbacks and curves that led out of the mountains
and towards Browning. I ended up making it to the tiny downtown
area a little after four p.m.

The BIA’s building was a
small, one-story, flat, aluminum-siding structure next to the
county courthouse. It had a big window in the front, like it had
previously been some kind of retail store in the 40’s or a hardware
store or something.

I parked out front and
went in. I walked up to a counter where a secretary was filing
papers into a large metal file cabinet. The whole office looked
dated and cheap, stuck in the 70’s with old metal desks, Styrofoam
coffee cups, and dirty fluorescent lights. A dusty, beige computer
in front of the secretary was the only technology I saw beyond
telephones and file cabinets. There were a couple of men in
uniforms in the room, looking like regular cops, but the patches on
their sleeves looked different – a big seal with the government’s
“Department of Indian Affairs” logo on it.

The secretary near the
door told me to sit and wait after checking out my name with
someone on the other end of her phone. As I sat down in a tiny
lobby alone, I felt my nervousness rise, now that I was about to
face the meeting itself. I felt like I should have prepared myself
somewhat, arranged a few facts a bit, reviewed things so I could
keep them on the killer’s trail. I wasn’t even sure what I’d say
when the interrogation began.

I hated sitting
there waiting to be called back; and I wished I
had not come and just talked to the cop on the phone. I reached up
and felt Alia’s metal arrowhead around my neck, almost as a reflex.
I wanted to help the cops, and I was hoping they could shed some
light on what happened, but I still felt like I was on enemy
territory in that office. Maybe Ronnie had gotten to me.

And anyway, what did I
know about Alia, and what could I tell them? Nothing that wouldn’t
point back to our sleeping together the night of her death. A
macabre and chilling thought occurred to me – would they have done
some sort of test for recent sexual activity? Of course they would
– they already have, I thought. Maybe the results had just come
back, and that’s why they had now called me…

Eventually I was called
back by the secretary, and I was led to a small office in the back.
I was led into the room; and I sat down in a well-worn chair, old
and leathery, in front of a big wooden desk with an amazing amount
papers stacked here and there on it, in some places jumbled
together. On the desk rested a couple of coffee mugs, two phones, a
lot of paperweights and awards. A little black computer monitor was
sitting at the very far side of the desk, as if it was reluctantly
placed there merely out of obligation, and shoved aside keep it out
of the way.

Finally a large man in a
BIA uniform came in and sat down at the desk, nodding to me. His
badge read “Olsterman.” Officer Olsterman seemed about 55 or 60,
was heavy set, overweight, but tall – probably almost seven feet, I
estimated – a huge human being and intimidating. He had a very
round head, like a big egg, and a small face with hard eyes close
together making him appear slightly dull witted, but still menacing
– like a temperamental giant. He sported a scraggy, grey/white
beard, which made his bald head stand out all the more. He had on
the same uniform the others outside had, but without a tie or gun
belt.

He settled himself in his
chair with a sigh, introduced himself and offered me some coffee,
and when I declined he said, “Well, we just have a few questions
for ya.” He pointed over to a tape recorder on his desk, “We tape
conversations like this, that ok?”

I glanced the machine, not
liking the look of it, and said, “Ok.”

He must have noticed my
hesitation, because he showed me a wide smile and said, “It’s no
big deal, Mr. Benton. We been talkin’ to anyone that knew her.” He
switched on the recorder and pressed the red “record” button. “You
did know her, didn’t ya?”