Cold River Resurrection (14 page)

“I sure didn’t want to spend the first night alone, after finding the dead man,” Jennifer said, quiet now.

“That was the beginning of some very bad nights, I can’t remember the next one, but I’ll try. Let me think.”

Smokey smiled, reassuring.

Laurel squeezed her hand, smiled a knowing little girl’s smile.

She’s  a beautiful girl, and will be a stunningly gorgeous woman. I wonder if she knows that.

Cold. Stiff. I got up from the first night alone, scared, hungry, eating a bar from my pack. Nanna, I want my Nanna more than anything in the world. I found . . . I saw something.

Think, Jen.

I saw

And then I found Nanna.

And I ran.

“I remember what I found, I found my doll, Nanna” Jennifer said. She spoke slowly, measured, in a monotone, as if in a trance, her mind on the mountain, her eyes taking in a horrific scene. “But how did I get the hand?”

Smokey opened a folder and removed three pictures. Jennifer watched as he placed them face down on the table.

“Laurel, this is where you leave us,” Smokey said.

“But Dad, why can’t I . . .”

Smokey looked at his daughter. Laurel got up, gave Jennifer a hug, kissed Smokey, and walked inside the house.

Smokey waited until she was gone. “Do you remember where you found your doll
?” he asked.

Jennifer didn’t move, made no effort to look at the pictures.

No. I don’t remember. It was on the ground, I was running. I was running from the bodies in the meadow, and then during the day

“It was daytime,” Jennifer said, “and I had been running.”

I was running and then I tripped and fell down and saw my Nanna. I grabbed her and looked around at the trees, the sky, no one here, but what was my Nanna doing here? I picked her up and then I ran. I looked back and saw the trees, the big rock wall where Nanna was. There was a sheer rock wall, going up fifty feet or more, a tree on top of the cliff with a branch out sideways, like a stick person holding his arm out over Nanna.

“I know where I found her,” Jennifer said. She spoke quickly, excited now, still seeing the rocks and the tree.

“There was a tree, a distinct tree, with a branch sticking out like an arm, a pine tree I think, and I picked up Nanna, the hand, under the tree at the base of a sheer rock wall. Maybe a fifty foot high rock wall.”

“We should be able to find that,” Smokey said, “although Nathan and I didn’t see a rock wall in our travels there.” He looked at the map and drew a line showing their trail. He consulted a notebook, and then put an x in the Whitewater River area where Jennifer was found.

“Can we fly over it?” Jennifer asked. “Maybe find it from the air. It can’t be too far from Kal-leed’s body. I found Nanna the day after I found the bodies.”

“We can fly it, but flying it means taking the feds with us,” Smokey said, “and that carries with it another set of problems.”

Jennifer reached for the pictures and picked them up. She turned the first one over and placed it on the map in front of her.

A hand. A small hand, severed at the wrist. Red fingernail polish, with some kind of pattern in gold. Trailer camp nails, we used to call them. A hand photographed on a blue background. No blood. Looks like it has been under water, wrinkled. Turn over another picture Jennifer.

She turned over the second picture.

A piece of cloth, a dirty piece of cloth.

“Is this -?”

“We think that cloth is from your shirt, the cloth you had Nanna, the hand, wrapped in when we found you,” Smokey said.

Jennifer shook her head.

I just don’t remember.

She turned the third picture over. A woman, a young woman, in an obvious jail photo, her unsmiling face staring at the camera.

“Is this –“

“This is the woman . . . was the woman whose hand you found,” Smokey said. He looked at his notebook.

Jennifer stared at the picture.

I’ve never seen her. I don’t think I saw her on the mountain. I can’t remember what I saw by the cliff. I don’t think that I saw her. What was there?

She shook her head. “I don’t know her.” She put the picture down on the map.

“Her name is Georgia Sherell. She worked the street in Portland.”

“And
she was with Kal-leed,” Jennifer said, “she was with him when he died.”

“Probably so,” Smokey said.

Then let’s go find her, Jennifer thought. And let’s go find the cliff. Find out what I saw.

I need to know.

How bad could it be.

Bad.

C
hapter
30

Cold River Indian Reservation

Parker Creek

“How much further?” Amy asked.

Stan took his pack off and sat down beside it. He pulled the map from his pocket.

“Two, three miles, toward Whitewater Creek Glacier,” he said. “Where Jennifer Kruger walked, from Parker Creek to Whitewater Glacier. That’s where we will find Bigfoot, tag him, or her (this got a smile from Amy)
, take pictures, then get out of here.”

“Be famous,” Amy said.

“Be rich and famous,” Stan said. He pulled his tracking rifle from his pack. “We shoot Bigfoot with this, we can track him during the next year, wherever Bigfoot might travel.”

Amy nodded. She had heard this before. She watched as Stan removed a small case from his pack.

“With my mini-laptop, we can track Bigfoot from anywhere in the world.”

We might need to, Amy thought.

We might need to be anyplace but here.

C
hapter
31

Cold River Tribal Police Department

Smokey parked and saw a virtual caravan of Suburban SUV’s and unmarked Ford Crown Vic sedans.

Feds are here.

Nathan met him at the back door and grabbed him in a bear hug. “Glad you made it, Little Brother.”

“Me too.”

“Come with me.” Nathan motioned Smokey toward the hallway. They walked past the records officer and Smokey put his finger to his lips, hoping she got the idea that they didn’t want anyone to know he was there. She put her arms around him.

“I’m not here,” Smokey said.

“Didn’t see you,” she said, and walked back to her desk.

Smokey dropped to a chair as Nathan closed the door. He was tired to his core, could go to sleep here right now.

“I just need a few minutes sleep,” he said, and yawned.

“Feebs are raising hell in there with the chief,” Nathan said, “and the chief wants you in there. Told me to find you quick.”

“You found me,” Smokey said, his eyes closed. He started talking, told Nathan about the morning with Jennifer and her description of the rock wall.

“U.S. Attorney is mad as hell, was yelling around about you, maybe the chief, hiding h
er witness,” Nathan said.

“H
er witness? Jennifer?”

“Yup.”

“Fuck her.”

“Yup.” They both laughed.

“Between you and me,” Smokey said, “can you find out where that rock wall is, talk to some of the elders?” Nathan nodded.

The door opened and Chief Martin Andrews entered. He closed the door and sat at a desk, looking at Smokey, then Nathan.

“Feebs are pretty upset. The U.S. Attorney is upset. They want Jennifer Kruger, and the coordinates to the location of the man in the meadow.”

“We gonna give it to them?”

“We have to,” Martin said. “They will get it one way or another.”

“What about Jennifer?”

“She’s their witness. They want to put her in a protection program for the time being.”

“She have a choice in this?” Smokey asked, his face getting red, his fatigue making thought difficult. He wanted to sleep. He got up, glanced at Nathan. “Let me know, Big Brother,” he said.

Nathan nodded.

Smokey walked out with the chief.

The conference room was filled with suits. Most Smokey knew from working on other cases in the past. James Russell, Supervisory Special Agent for Oregon, F.B.I., and oh my, Julie Sturgis,
the
U.S. Attorney for the State of Oregon, a presidential appointee who had survived the purges in D.C. Smokey thought she looked a little uptight as he entered the room. Pissed was more like it. But she was tough, and he liked that in her.

She had two of her Assistant
U.S. Attorneys with her. One of them, Kelly Devans, a fifty year old prosecutor, was assigned to Indian Country prosecution in Oregon, and was the person who prosecuted most Indians in U.S. District Court. He was a pretty good guy, hard worker, and didn’t blow too much smoke.

More F.B.I. suits, six more in all.
Two of the young agents Smokey had worked with before, and they had to be watched. Olson, his blond hair said surfer dude, Rafael, dark hair, serious. Full of themselves. Rafael a loose cannon, would use Indian Country to get where he wanted to go. Thought of everyone outside of Washington, D.C. a “local,” with Indians below that designation.

The other four were a mixture of people waiting to find a station they liked well enough to retire: A middle
-aged woman from Sioux Falls; a gray-haired man with a paunch, an old Russian specialist until the Ruski’s no longer mattered; a CPA from San Francisco who looked very uncomfortable, as if the Indians might start scalping at any minute; and the supervisor from Bend, Oakley, a good cop who had gone as far as he could with the F.B.I. without completely compromising his integrity.

Oakley wasn’t going to be able to stop what was going to come next, Smokey thought.

Martin made introductions. Smokey knew that this isn’t going to be an event where we all shake hands. He nodded as each person was introduced in turn. He had met all of them except the new Assistant U.S. Attorney, Theresa Barrett.

Julie Sturgis led, as was expected. She stood up, moved her gray suit coat back with a hand and placed it on her hip, as if she were in court addressing a jury. No nonsense. She looked at a police report, probably my report, Smokey thought, and then addressed the room.

“Well, Lieutenant Kukup, sounds as if you have been busy.” She looked at Chief Martin Andrews, and then finally at Smokey.

He didn’t answer, and knew he wasn’t expected to.

“The hospital is one issue we’ll get to in a few minutes. I want to hear about the bodies in the woods.” She looked at Smokey. In fact, they were all looking.

“As you know from my report, Sgt. Nathan Green and I were at the landing when Jennifer Kruger was brought in from the woods by the mountain rescue group. She had a hand with her, probably a female hand, looked as if it had been severed.” 

He told them about the backtracking, the days and nights spent in the woods. He got up and walked to a map of the reservation on the wall.

“We started here,
near the Whitewater River, and the track took us more or less south toward Parker Creek.” He looked at the F.B.I. supervisor from Bend, Oakley. “We have GPS waypoints all along our trail,” Smokey said, and smiled.

“We don’t use smoke signals too much any more.”

That got a smile from Sturgis, and then she was serious again.

“On the morning of day three, we found the bodies.” Smokey described the body of Mohammed Kal-leed as they found it. The billfold. The missing head.

Russell held up his index finger.

“And you didn’t find a female body?”

Smokey shook his head. No.

“How do you think the bodies got there?” Oakley asked.

Smokey looked around the room. “Nathan Green is as good a tracker as you will find.  I’m pretty good myself. Mr. Kal-leed didn’t walk in. It would help if I knew when he was last seen intact. In Portland, or wherever.”

Russell looked at Sturgis, and she shook her head. No.

Smokey was tired. Too tired. He felt the anger coming up, and found he didn’t care if he controlled it.

Business as usual with the feds.

Smokey removed a notebook from his pocket. He handed it to Martin.

“Chief, my notes for our backtracking, with GPS notations along the way, with Mr. Kal-leed
’s location. I can copy them for you.”

Martin nodded. He called his secretary and Smokey handed her the notebook, explained the pages to be copied when she came in. The room was quiet until she returned, handing the notebook and copies to Chief Martin Andrews.

“I have a question of you all,” Smokey said. He looked at Sturgis, the power in the room. She nodded.

Permission to speak in my own land. Control, Smokey old kid, control yourself. If you go off, you will lose credibility. Try.

“The hospital. Who were they, and why did they want to kill Jennifer Kruger?”

Sturgis sat, looked at her notepad, and then up at Smokey.

“Well, at some point we can get to that. What we need to do is to get Ms. Kruger, talk with her, and keep her in a safe place.”

“With all respect, U.S. Attorney Sturgis, you all had her once, and weren’t able to keep her safe. I see that this is business as usual with the feds. We’re not only the ‘locals,’ we’re just a bunch of po’ Indins.”

“Lt. Kukup,” Chief Martin Andrews said quietly.

“I had a friend killed,” Smokey continued, the anger rising, “and the same people tried to kill me, and I want to know!”

“Well I had a friend killed, too,” Agent Rafael said, yelling at the end, coming up out of his chair.

Oakley pointed at Rafael, told him to sit down. Rafael glared at Smokey, and then slowly sat back down. Smokey glared back.

They were all looking at him now, Sturgis not flustered, just looking.

“As far as you feds protecting Kruger, give me a break. You guys won’t be able to find her, let alone protect her. Good job in the hospital.” He looked at Oakley, and then at Sturgis. Smokey watched as Oakley raised his hand. He directed his remarks to Sturgis.

“Permission to say something,” he said.

She nodded. “Of course, we are all here to get to the bottom of this, to find the people responsible.”

I don’t believe that for a minute, Smokey thought. They are all here to protect whatever they think they need to protect.

“I’ve known Lt. Kukup for quite some time, we have a good relationship,” Oakley said, “
and, it’s my understanding that he has a secret security clearance with the department of defense, a former Ranger in Afghanistan and Iraq, assigned as active reserve, isn’t that right, Lieutenant?”

Smokey nodded.

Sturgis looked up at Smokey, a curious interest on her face.

“How about I fill him in, with Chief Andrews, and then
go talk with Ms Jennifer Kruger? We’ll all get what we want.”

Smokey stood. He looked at Oakley, then at the U.S. Attorney, and left the Chief’s office.

Well, I could have handled that better. I need some sleep.