Two Medicine (36 page)

I couldn’t think of any
likely suspect, beyond Clayton, and he was a mystery now too. If he
lost it because of the break up or something else – he was
incredibly calm about it – and Sky was too smart to not figure it
out if it was him. Then there was always the possibility of a
random attacker out there... But the odds of a random attack were
slight I felt… And that bit about the lack of
footprints?

Some special care had been
put into this killing – which suggested a motive. I shook my head.
What did I know about crime scenes and motives? I would more likely
just end up in the woods like Alia, I thought to myself.

Although Sky had
mentioned “dinner,” it seemed dinner was just
going to be drinking beer. I had a fresh one waiting for me as I
sat back down in the living room. Clayton was fiddling with his
phone as I settled back into the couch. I looked at him and tried
to picture him murdering Alia in some violent way, beating her with
some kind of blunt instrument – I could imagine it.

Clayton set the phone down
and looked over at me, noticing the picture next to on the couch.
He nodded as if in approval. “Let me show you another picture.” He
got up to get a large photo off a shelf across the room.

I thought he had meant a
photo of Alia, but when he returned and showed me the picture, I
saw a large, fat man standing at a podium, speaking to a
crowd.

“My father – James Red
Claw.”

His father had strong
Native American features – stronger than Clayton – although with
short, salt-and-pepper hair and a cowboy hat. He had the
stockiness, the large brown eyes and round small head of the
Blackfoot tribe, though, sure enough.

Sky had sat back down in
the recliner as Clayton showed me the picture. She sighed and said,
“Clayton, just tell him about everything,” in a tired
voice.

Clayton looked to her for
a long while, just standing there in front of me still holding the
picture, then he looked back to me and nodded. “Ok.” He sat down
heavily in his chair again, and stared at me, still holding the
photo.

“Ok,” he said again, as if
resolving finally let some secret out. “You know I want you to stay
away from the cops… because they get things wrong and create more
trouble than they solve, right?”

I nodded, just thinking of
how Ronnie kept saying the exact same thing. I didn’t mention he
may be right since Officer Olsterman seemed to regard me as a
suspect now, despite the fact that I had been running around town
trying to find out what happened.

“But,” he continued, “what
you don’t know about is Browning. My father
was
Browning.” He reached back,
setting the photo on a small table next to him. “He ran an
insurance business in town, had some real estate investments, and
he ran the tribe’s finances.”

“But what you also don’t
know,” Clayton continued, “is that he also ran the biggest drug
business in Montana – right here out of Browning. Nobody knew it
for a long time, but he controlled all of the meth, coke, weed and
other shit coming into Northern Montana from Canada – for years,
for many years actually, until he was busted five years ago. It
made big news in this state, especially since he was well known as
a business leader and elected official.”

“Him and his brother, my
Uncle Ray, were Army vets, and had connections in Canada with some
vet buddies who had connections in Mexico. So they started bringing
stuff in in the 80’s, and soon they were the biggest ones running
drugs into this state – the only ones after a while. My uncle was
ratted out by his connections in California after they got busted
up there, and he died in prison last year. My father,” Clayton took
big gulp of Miller and continued, “he is serving eighty years for
1
^st
degree murder – he’ll
die in prison too. He’s in Atwater – a prison in California. He’ll
never get out.”

Clayton looked at the
picture of the big man proudly giving a speech before an American
Flag draped behind him, a man with two faces.
Did Clayton have two faces?

Clayton stopped for a
moment and surprisingly Sky picked up his thread. “Clayton’s
ancestors go back generations in the tribe; his great-grandfather
was a Chief and met with the president in Washington. But James Red
Claw destroyed the family reputation, and they lost everything when
the feds arrested him. The Red Claws lost their homes, their
businesses and real estate, and their money. The whole family has
been fucked up over it.”

Clayton picked up the hand
gun that had been resting on the coffee table. He admired it, and
then drew back the slide, exposing the barrel. “Only me and Jake
stuck around here, that’s my brother you met before – with the
sunglasses... We’re all that’s left of the Red Claws.”

Clayton pulled the
magazine out of the gun and then snapped it back in with his palm.
He shoved the gun into the waistband of his jeans, and then pulled
a cigarette from a pack and lit it. “Jake is always leaving his
shit out in the open…” He smirked at me and drew in a lungful of
smoke. I watched him as he blew out through his nose. “And I am
going to build everything back up to where we were – that’s why I’m
running for Council this year. I’ll be the youngest ever elected…
And that’s just the start.”

He looked at me with a
level gaze, and said, “My father lost everything, but most of all –
worst of all – was that he lost our name. The Red Claw family is
now looked at like a bunch of criminals. Everyone thinks we still
deal drugs and we are blamed for every fucking bad thing that
happens here.”

“Like Alia’s murder,” Sky
asked.

“And everything else,”
Clayton said. “So, you see why I wanted to talk to you. You don’t
know the history here, but now you know a few of the people, and
you know some of the law enforcement. I’m under suspicion in
everything I do, Will, and I want to change that. It’s got to
change – it’s what I was born to do.”

Not carrying a gun in your
waistband would be a good start,
I thought
to myself.

He drained the last of his
beer and stood up; his t-shirt fell over the gun. “So I can’t have
you thinking I killed Alia, which I know you do. And I can’t have
you getting anyone else thinking I killed her.” He walked over to
me and stuck out his hand, “Make sense?”

I shook his hand. “Makes sense,” I said.

He looked over at Sky and
then at me and said, “We gotta turn in soon; I got an early shift
tomorrow.” He offered his me his hand, again, so I shook it again,
wondering if he was getting drunk.
Probably best that I was leaving soon.

“
So thanks for coming and
hearing me out,” he said.

I sensed it was time I was
out the door, but there was one more subject I had yet to broach,
and I wanted to have something said about it before I
left.

“
Is Jake
involved?”

Clayton face was blank but
his eyes showed distrust. I stared back at him, trying to show
resolve and that I wasn’t intimidated anymore – although I still
was.

“
In what?” he
asked.

“
Jake didn’t kill her,”
Sky suddenly said. “So don’t bother about him.”

I kept my eyes on Clayton,
though. He nodded slowly. “Jake is a different situation. We don’t
see eye to eye on some things, him and I; but he’s my brother and I
love him, and I’ll support him no matter what. But he didn’t kill
anybody, so stay away from him Will, because you’d just be wasting
your time.”

“
Who do you think killed
her, then?” I asked him.

“
Don’t know,” he said
after a moment, “maybe you did.”

His face was still blank, but there was now
a malevolence in his eyes that was concerning. Sky stepped over and
held one of his hands.

“
Time to go, Will,” she
said.

As I got up to leave,
Clayton seemed to suddenly shrug off the tension, and he stepped
next to me as I approached the door. He put a hand on my shoulder,
and smiled, but the smile was forced. “Look, I just wanted to tell
you how things are in Browning… Thanks for coming.”

I just nodded and walked
out onto the porch. As Clayton closed the door, I heard him say,
“But if you keep dropping my name around town in connection with
Alia, we are gonna have a problem.” The door shut firmly on my
back.

Another pleasant evening in
Browning… I mused. As I got into Ronnie’s car and started to drive
back, I realized that I had just as many questions, if not more,
now, after meeting Clayton and Sky, than I had before. Why did
Ronnie say he bought his drugs from Clayton and that “you could get
anything” from him – if Clayton was keeping his nose clean and
trying to get to the leadership of the tribe? Who is Clayton
really? I still had no idea. And where is Jake in all this? And
why
was
Sky out in
the woods in the middle of the night?

As I drove towards Two
Medicine, I resolved to find out at least the Sky question before I
was done – even if it killed me. I was sick of being in the dark,
and it was getting darker all the time…

Twenty-Nine

I
drove back home with the growing feeling like I was just
getting deeper into a mass of questions, instead of getting closer
to an answer. After I got back to the store, I took Alia’s picture
from the car with me as I walked up the porch and into the kitchen.
I stared at the little girl’s beaming face in the photo – I could
see an Alia in the making – eyes squinted in the sun, holding her
mother’s hand, trustingly.

I got back into my room
without meeting any of the staff, but after getting out of my
clothes, I heard a soft knock on my door. I put on some shorts and
went to the door. It was Katie; she smiled at me sleepily and
suddenly pushed her way into the room.

“
What are you up to?” she
murmured as she walked over to my bed and sat heavily down on the
mattress. Her face was flushed, her hair was done up but in quick
and messy way, and her eyes were watery. She looked very drunk, but
also seemed to have been crying.

“
I came to your room
earlier, but you were gone,” she said, slurring the words. “Where
were you?”

“
How much have you been
drinking?” I asked, even though it was blatantly obvious that it
was way too much, whatever the amount. And it was so out of
character for her that I worried that something major had just
happened to her. I left the door open.

She reached down
and pulled a small bottle of whiskey from her
pocket – whiskey that we sold from the store. She was wearing the
same small, white shorts she had on when I first arrived, I
noticed. She was also wearing a little white t-shirt, with no bra,
and I could see the little, tans caps of her nipples through the
material – like she had dressed quickly for a quick
undressing…

I watched as she took a
drink from the mostly empty bottle. Her face winced with disgust as
she swallowed it down; and then she tossed the bottle over to me
and said, “Have a snort.”

I set the bottle down on
the dresser, next to the picture of Alia I had gotten. Katie
noticed the picture and got up, putting her hand out on the wall to
steady herself. She walked over and looked carefully at the
picture.

“
Is
that
her
?”
she asked, reaching for the photo. I reached over and put set the
frame face down on the dresser before she could grab it. “What’s
gotten into you?” I asked. I grabbed her hand and led her back over
to the bed, which was still the only place to sit down that I could
offer.

She misinterpreted the
gesture, and with a sloppy smile she put her arms around my neck
and leaned in to kiss me. Her hands were warm, and the heat coming
off of her flushed face was palpable. I pulled her arms off of me
and gently set her back down.

“
Katie,” I said softly,
“this isn’t going to happen. You’re drunk and I’m pretty sure you
don’t really want this from me – not really.”

She looked offended.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, “you only like trailer trash from
Browning?” She got up, but too fast, and leaned over and crashed
against the far wall, knocking over the lamp that was by the
bed.

She looked down at the
lamp for a moment, and then sat back down on the bed heavily, as if
giving up trying to storm out. She then leaned over and cradled
herself, hunching forward and resting on her knees. I was concerned
she might throw up on the floor. I walked over and set the lamp up
right again, and then sat beside her. I reached over and rubbed her
back softly. Maybe she would just collapse on the bed and go to
sleep, I thought, I could sleep in her bed then and be done with
this depressing scene.

“
So tell me why you’re now
chugging whiskey and making moves…” I asked her. “One Ronnie is
enough around here.”

She put her face into her
hands and began to softly sob. I could feel her chest heaving; and
I just sat there and rubbed her back for a few minutes as she
cried. She soon sat up quickly, as if recovering some dignity, and
rubbed her eyes with her hands like she had done on the way back
from church. She sniffed and looked at me angrily. I stopped
rubbing her back.