Cold River Resurrection (6 page)

C
hapter
12

Road 2168

Whitewater River Drainage

0945 hours

Smokey and Nathan arrived to see the rescue team come into sight a hundred yards down the hill from the old logging landing. They waited with the Cold River Fire and Safety ambulance crew at the end of the road. The team carrying Jennifer on a stretcher moved like a twisting, many-legged animal, chugging slowly up the hill. They picked their way around rocks and tree stumps. A man in a flight suit trailed the stretcher, holding an IV bag.

Smokey stood back as the medics transferred Jennifer onto a gurney, keeping the IV in place. Her face was swollen, blackened and streaked with blood, her right eye puffed out over her cheek. S
he looks dead.
Her left eye blinked and moved from side to side, an unfocused nystagmus.
She doesn’t know where she is.
The Cold River medics took over and moved the gurney into the ambulance. Smokey stepped back with Nathan and waited to hear something about her condition.

“No!” A croak from inside the ambulance. After a minute, Medic Carole Tewee  came to the door.

“Lieutenant, can you come look at this?”

Smokey walked to the door, thinking that the woman may be aware of her surroundings.  He looked in around Tewee.

“She’s got a death grip on this bloody rag, and when we try to get it from her, she just grabs it tighter. It sounds like she thinks it’s a doll, or something. I don’t believe she is coherent, but we need to get an idea of what is going on with her.”

“Can you sedate her?”

“Not too much, she’s in bad shape, we’ll be pulling out in a minute.”

“Got it,” a medic from inside said. And then, “Oh shit.” He handed the bloody rag to Tewee. She unwrapped it. “Christ,” she said, and twisted her face away. Smokey leaned forward.

A hand. She’s been holding a human hand. With painted fingernails.

Tewee handed the rag with the hand to Smokey. He cradled it and looked closer, aware of the putrid odor, trying to look at it in a clinical fashion. The skin was starting to slough off, especially around the fingernails and at the fingertips; the hand had been severed at the wrist, not an animal separation, but it looked as if a sharp instrument had been used.
Surgical?

What the hell happened to her? What did she find out there?
This changes things, won’t be going home tonight.

He found his voice.

“Sergeant Lamebull, take custody of this evidence.” And then he added, “Paper sack, seal it for an autopsy later. In the fridge in the evidence room.”

The people on the landing were quiet, the Portland Mountain Rescue team subdued, not as jubilant as they should have been, finding Jennifer alive. Sergeant Nathan Green directed them to a van.

“Lieutenant.” The man in the flight suit came forward. He introduced himself. “Sergeant Scott Durning, 939
th
Air Rescue Group.”  He held up a red pack. “You need to see this, Lieutenant.”

“What’s in it, Scott?”

“Bones, Lieutenant. Human bones, I think.”

What the hell happened out there? What did this poor girl get into? And where?

Smokey pulled the flap open and looked inside the pack. Like Sergeant Durning, he knew what the body parts were. Bones. Metacarpal bones, phalanges. They did indeed look human.

“You get GPS coordinates, where you found her?”

“Sure did,” Durning said.

“We’ll backtrack from there,” Smokey said.
Smokey looked up beyond the tree line to the snow-covered slopes of Mt. Jefferson, a mountain that had long-held secrets, even from the people who had always lived nearby. He knew he would be going up there within a few hours.

What the hell did she find?

A human hand, a few days removed from its owner, a most certainly dead owner.

Human hand bones, the owner long since dead.

What the hell did she find?

C
hapter
13

Mountain View Hospital

Madras, Oregon

“She’s in pretty bad shape, not out of danger yet, but I think she’ll pull through.” Dr. Evans, the on duty ER doctor explained to Smokey.

“Is she talking?” Smokey asked, glancing through the curtain at Jennifer.

“Nothing that makes any sense. She cried out ‘Nanna’ or ‘Manna’ a couple of times, she flailed her arms around so we gave her a mild sedative. We can’t give her too much, we’re a little worried about her heart rhythms.”

“What now?” Smokey asked.

“The main thing is to pump fluids into her, she’s young, in good shape physically, keep her in bed until she’s ready to get up. No broken bones that we can tell, a lot of contusions, bruises, we’ll clean her up, that will help, and keep her here.”

“Did she say anything about what she found?”

“No, but I heard that she may have found a body part or something.” Dr. Evans said. He entered the curtained area by her bed and picked up her wrist, feeling for a pulse. A nurse was gently wiping her face. Even with the bruises and a deep scratch on her cheek, she looked a lot better than when he first saw her.

She’ll be pretty again.

“How long you know me, Doc?” Smokey asked. They backed out of the enclosure.

“Since you were a snot-nosed kid.” Evans grinned, put his arm around Smokey and said, “What do you need, Lieutenant?”

“Let your staff know that we will have someone with her twenty-four seven. Oh, and her room is not listed anywhere. We may want to move her each day.”

“You mean have a guard on her?”

“Yes, at least until we know what is going on.”

Evans held up a key ring and motioned for Smokey to follow. He walked to a door at the rear of the ER and motioned again for Smokey to follow. A gleaming white Mercedes sedan was parked just outside.

“You need one of these on the reservation, Smokey.”

“Yeah, Doc, turn it into a rez ride, that’s just what I need.”

Evans laughed and they walked back inside.

Smokey stopped by the gift shop on his way out. Every hospital stay warranted flowers. He picked out a bouquet of wild flowers and saw a cloth doll with a bright summer dress, and took it to the counter with the flowers.

“You want to leave a message?”

“Uh, no. . .wait, I’d better.”

To Jennifer, We’re glad you are safe. Your new Nanna. Lieutenant Smokey Kukup, Cold River Search and Rescue

Smokey took the flowers and doll to the ER room as Officer Sarah Greywolf walked in. She looked at the flowers and raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything. Smokey gave her instructions, and knew that Jennifer would be safe. If anyone could get Jennifer to talk, he knew that Sarah would be the one to do it.

“Sarah, how are you?”

“Comes and goes, I’m okay. Never shot anyone before.”

“You know, you need anything . . .”

She put her hand on his shoulder. "Yeah, now go.” In any other department, Sarah would be on administrative leave for being involved in a shooting. On the rez, Smokey knew, you went back to work immediately, unless and until evidence unfavorable to the officer came out of the investigation.

He placed the doll in the crook of Jennifer’s arm, touched her elbow and looked at Sarah. She shook her head and waved him away. Smokey left the ER and walked to his car, dialing Chief Andrews as he walked. It was time to go into the wilderness and find what the hell was out there. Then get back and talk to Jennifer. He drove out of Madras and north toward the rez. He told Chief Andrews of Jennifer’s condition. He had a thought.

“Martin, does the F.B.I., the feebs, know about this yet?”

“I called the Supervisory Agent, Oakley, in Bend, and the Assistant U.S. Attorney in Portland.”

Shit.

“Their reaction?”

“Not much yet, they’re not too excited about the body parts. I believe the quote was, “You find a body, looks like they were killed on the rez, call us. Looks like they were dumped there, have fun.”

“So their peckers aren’t up yet,” Smokey said.

Martin laughed.

“I find a body or two,” Smokey said, “You can bet they’ll be coming ‘round, photo opportunity too much to pass up, they’ll show up, tromp around in their Doc Martens, fuck up the crime scene, throw out some orders, and leave the work to us Indians.”

“How do you really feel?” Martin asked, and laughed again.

“I need Sergeant Green to meet me, now, at the department, ready for two or three days in the woods. We’re gonna backtrack, starting immediately. Find what’s out there.”

Smokey, a fifteen year veteran of the Cold River Police Department, Army Ranger, tribal member, and one of the best trackers in the country, wanted to find out what Jennifer saw. Find what was out there in the most rugged, isolated piece of wilderness in the country.

Maybe I should let it remain a secret, the way the land had been forever.

C
hapter
14

Whitewater River

When Smokey was five years old, his father would put him on a horse and have him follow tracks. He followed tracks of deer, elk, bear, cougar, and smaller animals like the
spilyay
(coyote), and weasels, raccoons, porcupine, and squirrels. Later on, he learned to track humans.

From the height of a horse he learned to find the trail of his quarry, and then track the mammal through different conditions. He learned shadow and the nuance of weather and time and how long different kinds of soil would hold a track.

The shadow on a track from a horse is different than the shadow he would see walking, or on his knees. He learned that shadow is best seen in the early morning, or late afternoon.

You could create shadow with a flashlight. That’s what Smokey and Sergeant Nathan Green would be doing into the evening. Tracking with flashlights.

Smokey parked the Suburban on the logging landing where they had met the rescue crews with the ambulance to pick up Jennifer Kruger just hours before. He shut the engine off and looked over at Nathan Green. He wouldn’t want it any other way – to be tracking, spending time in the woods, going into possible danger after the bad guy, than with Nathan.

Nathan Green, sixty-one years old, the uncle, the older brother I never had, Smokey thought. Expert tracker, taught me a lot of what I know about tracking, a lot of what I know about police work, too. He lets me play the uncle to his five kids. Nathan got out and stretched. Smokey watched this man, easy to laugh with, easy to like.

Smokey knew that Nathan would back him up in an instant with his life, if need be, and he had on several occasions.

I’m a lucky man, Smokey thought. To be here on this day, with Nathan.

“Hey, Nate, you ready?” Smokey got out and opened the back doors of the Suburban.

“You worry about yourself, Lieutenant.”

“Oh, I’m not worried. Just making sure that my elders are properly equipped.”

Nathan snorted. “Elders my ass. I’ll walk you into the ground, you’ll be coming ‘round crying, wanting me to ease up the pace, can’t take it.”

“So that’s how it’s gonna be, this trip.” Smokey pulled his pack out and checked the straps. They were dressed in woodland camo Battle Dress Utilities with khaki-colored packs. They weren’t trying to be found. If they needed stealth, they were ready. Smokey just didn’t know what they would find.

Or who.

The pack was heavy when he shouldered it. He buckled the kidney belt, easing the weight on his shoulders. He and Nathan were self- sufficient should they become separated. They had sleeping bags, shelters, clothing, maps, compasses, hand-held GPS units, cell phones, radios, food, water, first aid, and a lot more. They each carried the department Glock forty caliber pistol.

Smokey opened a long gun case and removed the rifle. He handed it to Nathan, and pulled out another for himself.

“You expecting Mr.
Anahuy
(large bear)?” Nathan asked, as he took the rifle.

“Nope, but maybe his evil two-legged cousin.”

“Bigfoot, then.”

“The other cousin. Man. Much more dangerous of a critter than anything has ever come ‘round walking in these woods.”

“Amen, Little Brother. Amen.” Nathan shouldered his rifle, a .308 caliber sniper rifle with scope, bipod and sling. Smokey did the same with his. They would be able to reach out and touch someone a long way off if need be, a half-mile or more. They both knew this was no longer a search and rescue mission. This was a hunt for bodies and the person or persons who put them there.

They picked up the trail of the rescuers and backtracked, easy to follow since there had been six of them carrying a litter and not trying to hide sign.

Smokey took one last look at the Suburban and they dropped off the landing into the forest. They walked out through a logged-over area with the new trees growing up about head high, and then into the forest, the white glaciers of Mt. Jefferson gleaming at them through the trees. The first mile was all uphill and he stopped in a small clearing, the waters of the Whitewater River down to his right. He looked over at Nathan as he came up.

“You got some sweat coming down there, Big Brother.”

“Not as much as you, Little Brother. Maybe you need to go on a diet. Eat more roots and berries.”

Smokey laughed and watched as Nathan looked at his GPS unit.

“Another ten yards, almost due west, where she was found.” He put the GPS unit in a bag on his belt. “Beyond that, another couple of hundred yards to where the Air Rescue guy found her pack and sleeping bag.”

Smokey leaned over the log and peered into Jennifer’s hiding place. He reached down to his belt and removed his flashlight. The place in the rocks where she had wedged herself seemed incredibly small.

What a warrior she is.

He slid backwards off the log and looked at the scratches, the bark removed in some places, the scratches deep, wide apart.

“Mr.
Anahuy
was a big’n,” Nathan said, bending down, looking at the tracks. “Looks like he was all of five hundred pounds, big for a black bear. This little woman, she’s a fighter, most people would’ve given up.”

“Yeah,” Smokey said. He stood by the log. When Jennifer was here she had been on her last night, her last day, delirious, dehydrated, not sure where she was or even
if
she was. Her fight with the bear was instinctive, as old as man and woman, as old as mammals, fighting with instinct and adrenalin and fear and tooth and claw and muscle, no pain felt, to quit was to die. There was no calling 9-1-1 here, no yelling for help, no flagging down a cop, no locking the doors. This was down and dirty doing or dying.

I admire you more, little girl, Jennifer. Wish I had known you. Get well.

Smokey looked at Nathan and shrugged. “Let’s go to where the pack was found.”

Nathan led off, Smokey looking back at the crisscrossed logs where Jennifer fought with the bear and stayed her last night. He shook his head. Nathan was tracking uphill, through the trees, stepping around brush and over an occasional log, the Ponderosa Pine trees towering over them.

Nathan stopped in a clearing, brush and windblown trees giving an opening to the sky.

“Here. The Air Rescue Squadron guy found the pack here.”

Smokey looked up at Mt. Jefferson. The sun was sinking over the top.

“Gonna be dark in less than an hour.”

“I guess we move on, to the sleeping bag, check out the track in the dark. Might work better,” Nathan said. They found the sleeping bag in ten minutes, using the GPS to guide them, finding a few tracks as they went.

At the sleeping bag, Nathan eased off his pack and dropped to his knees. He was looking for sign of Jennifer, so he could start tracking her. He looked around, slowly, out two to three feet, and turned in a circle to find her track.

“Fuck.”

“What?”

“
Anahuy
brought her bag here, no sign of Jennifer. We have to go back to the place where she was found.” Nathan picked up his pack and started back to the east, back toward the log hiding place where Jennifer fought the bear.

“Wait.” Smokey held up his hand. “Here. A track, down toward the river.” Nathan came over and looked.

“She had to have water,” Smokey said. He watched as Nathan followed a track toward the water, abruptly turned and headed up the hill toward Mt. Jefferson, walking slowly, shining his flashlight down back and forth.

“You jump tracking, Big Brother?” Smokey asked.

“You know any other way to do this? We are in a hurry. We need to locate what she found. She had to go down to the river and then back up here again, and maybe back down for another two times. I’m going to find out where she went down to the river in the first place, and then backtrack from there.”

Smokey watched in the dying light as Nathan found a track, then used his tracking stick to find another, and got up and walked down toward the river, then took an abrupt left and walked uphill.

“I’m marking this spot, going to find where she went to the river from here. She came up here. May work, may not.”

“I’ll get your pack.”

Nathan walked uphill on a game track. Smokey carried the packs, watching from fifty feet back, providing cover for Nathan. As the sun went down behind Mt. Jefferson, Nathan used his flashlight, slowly, and then, “Got it. She went down here, came from upriver. We got it.”

Smokey came up, his muscles straining with the two packs.

“What now, Big Brother?”

“We take a break, then track. Flashlights should work.” Nathan straightened and looked at Smokey.

“Guess what, Little Brother?”

Smokey lifted his eyebrows.

“Mr.
Anahuy
had been following her, for some time.”

“I thought as much. You’re not the only one who can read sign.”

They tracked for three hours, first to the north, the wrong way from where they thought she should be, and then followed the track back to the south, up higher toward the glacier, and then back into the trees.

They lost it on a slide area, rocks and dirt coming down through the trees.

“Let’s stop here for the night,” Nathan said, and then added, “if that’s okay, Sir.”

Smokey snorted. They ate dinner of sandwiches and jerky, and water. No fire. Smokey didn’t know if anyone was out in the wilderness area or not, but they decided to take no chances. He rolled into his bag.

Smokey and Nathan lay in the dark at the edge of the clearing. Smokey had placed his sleeping bag with his feet facing the clearing so he could see the stars. Nathan was a murky shape a few feet away, using his pack for a pillow. It was an hour before moonrise. Smokey fingered his necklace, a leather cord with a small
spilyay
carved out of juniper wood. The coyote had been against his skin for a long time. Sweat and body oil had changed the light colored wood to black, as if a s
haman
had turned wood into obsidian.

He drifted, waiting for sleep. He thought his
uncle
must be sleeping, when the older man spoke.

“I see you still wear the
wahayakt,
” Nathan said. He spoke in a murmur, almost a whisper.

“I thought you were sleeping,” Smokey said.
How can that old man see what I’m doing?

“No, just watching you, Little Brother.”

“I’ve never taken it off since you gave it to me, Uncle. It served me well in Afghanistan. I was like two men. The Taliban said that I was an enemy who could be in two places at once. I fought, and you were by my side.”

Nathan had given Smokey the necklace as Smokey was leaving for Afghanistan. It was a tradition, when a good friend was going on a hazardous journey
, to give that friend something that had been used a lot, a
wahayak,
(necklace,) a pocket knife, something valuable to the giver. If the person with the object gets into trouble, they can take the object out and will have the strength of the giver, as well.

“Do you know the history of this
wahayakt,
Little Brother?”

“Just that it belonged to you, Uncle.”

Nathan spoke again, this time a whisper. “It belonged to
my
uncle, my father’s brother. He gave it to me before I left for the war of my generation. I wore it into Cambodia a year before Nixon announced we were going into that godforsaken jungle.” Nathan chuckled, a low dry laugh, as if what he was remembering wasn’t particularly funny, but there was no other way to think of it.

“My uncle fought beside me many a day,” Nathan said. “I once carried two of my wounded buddies a lot of miles to a base camp, chased first by the Khmer Rouge and then VC. When I got there the commander was astonished that this little Indian could carry two heavy
Šiyápu.
I didn’t tell him that my uncle was lifting also. He wouldn’t have understood.”

Smokey touched the necklace, thinking that he should have left it with Amelia, to help her with the alcohol, the drugs, the temptations of loneliness. He must have said her name aloud as Nathan interrupted his thoughts about his late wife.

“Maybe you should have Little Brother, given Amelia the
wahayakt,
but then you might not have made it back.”

“Maybe not,” Smokey agreed.
But then, she might have been able to use my strength to fight her devils.

“Did I ever tell you about taking Amelia up here, Uncle?”

“No.”

“When we first got married, she was nineteen, I was twenty-eight. She had been going to college down there in Bend, at the community college, and when she got out for the summer, we used to hike up in this valley.”

Nathan didn’t speak. Smokey didn’t expect him to, and thought about that summer. He smiled. After a time, he spoke again.

“We would pitch a small
ts’xwili,
and when it got dark we would build a fire and put a blanket out next to it. In the warm of the summer night we would lay together on the blanket and talk, look at the stars, and make love. Talk and make love and lay by the fire and hold each other until morning. On each trip, we would always pitch a tent, but I don’t remember ever using it. We hiked in here several times that summer - Amelia would have our packs ready when I got home for the weekend. Later, when I left for war, we never talked about it, Amelia and me. We never talked about it when things got bad, but I know this was our best time.
Her
best time, and mine.