Tainted Trail (20 page)

Why hadn't Mom Jo and Mom Lara told him about this? Why keep him ignorant of his true heritage? Why hadn't Max, in the last few days, warned him what he might discover here? It shook his faith in his moms and Max.

Ukiah realized he had been right, that first night outside the Kicking Deer home, when he saw the house like a humane cage. His life was irrevocably changed. He could only escape what he just saw by bleeding out the memory and never taking it back.

Cassidy brushed his hair out of his eyes. “Maybe being forewarned will make it all less of a blow.”

He ducked his head, and his bangs fell back into his eyes. “Is there something really here relating to Alicia?”

“Yes. It's a photograph she might have seen.” Cassidy pointed down a narrow hallway off the grand entrance.

The hallway had a door into the gift shop to the right, bathrooms on the left, and continued on down to staff offices. A temporary exhibit hung on the wall, past the point of normal public areas. Looking for Alicia on his own, he would have ignored the exhibit. A plaque explained that these were family photographs taken during the annual rodeo.

“I'm not sure if this is important,” Cassidy said as he looked at the pictures. “Call it my chunk of blue sky, or flash of red.” She referenced their earlier conversation on jigsaw puzzle pieces. The photographs were mostly in color, showing people in brilliant costumes. Some photos were much older, carefully posed, black-and-white. In one, a familiar face looked out. “That's me.”

“Yeah.” Cassidy produced a copy of the photo he had shown her at her hardware store. He realized that the machine hum he had heard while she was in her office had been a scanner—she had scanned the photo without him knowing it. She held it up beside the black-and-white photo. Even down to the length of hair, the faces were identical. “I came out yesterday and compared these two. If Alicia saw this,
she might have recognized you. You haven't changed much over the years.”

 

As in all the other places Ukiah had visited so far, the museum had a guest book on the front desk. He wondered what weird Oregon tradition led to the prevailing habit as he flipped back through the pages. They were marvelous tools for a private investigator; too bad most of the places in Pittsburgh didn't have them.

Alicia signed in August 21, a week after being at the bead shop, and a little over a week before she disappeared. Either Rose hadn't signed, or Alicia had come alone.

Armed with the date, Ukiah began questioning the staff. He held out little hope, however, of them remembering her. After buying the tickets, he and Cassidy had not seen one identifiable museum worker.

Luckily, he found a gift shop employee that thought she might remember Alicia.

The young Native American woman, however, shook her head even as she admitted recalling Alicia. “I see a lot of people this time of year. She looks vaguely familiar.”

Ukiah pulled out a copy of the Christmas photo, the one of Alicia standing beside him. It gave a size reference. People of extremes got noticed, and Alicia was a tall woman.

“Yes. I did see her. She was asking about one of the rodeo photos. I'm not sure which one. Apparently it didn't have a name identifying the person in the photo. I told her that she would have to talk to a curator, who would be in on Monday.”

“Did she talk to you about anything else?”

“She bought one of the books. She said it was going to be a gift for a friend who was from one of the local tribes.”

Alicia bought a book for me?
“Did she say anything about him being related to the photograph?”

The woman considered and nodded slowly. “Yes, she said something about that. She said she wanted to know the name of the family so she could contact them and see if they had lost a child several years ago. She asked me if I knew anyone in the area that lost a little boy.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I didn't grow up around here.” She pressed a hand to her breast. “I'm Cree! I met my husband at a powwow and moved here only three years ago.”

 

“We didn't put a name on it because we didn't want reward seekers to know what Magic Boy looked like,” Cassidy explained the lack of a name on the photo. Zoey had rejoined them, explaining that the rodeo photos were new, and thus interesting.

“They could take a photo of it,” Cassidy said. “Play with it digitally and come up with proof of some sort that my grandfather would believe. He's nearly a hundred years old. He was born before television was invented. He doesn't realize what people can do with pictures now.”

Ukiah murmured his agreement while staring at his photo. What could Alicia have learned from it? They had kept Kraynak in the dark about his true nature, so Alicia couldn't have known that this was him. She could have guessed, though, that this was a near relative. Certainly it seemed to confirm in her mind that he was from one of the three tribes on the reservation.

Had she handled the photo? He touched the frame edge lightly. Alicia's ghost presence indicated she had most likely taken it off the wall. He lifted it up.

“What are you doing?” Cassidy hissed.

“Alicia took it down,” he said and flipped it over. “She undid the catches.” He undid them and lifted off the back. Written on the back, in ancient, faded script, was
MAGIC BOY KICKING DEER
,
DIED SEPTEMBER
23, 1933.

Jared caught Ukiah's right wrist, lifting his arm up to run a thumb over the unblemished line of his radius bone . . . “Lead the way, Magic Boy.”

Jared called Ukiah by his true name, but Ukiah hadn't recognized it. Even now, it triggered no emotion in him.

“My name was Magic Boy?”

“What else would you call a two-hundred-year-old child?” Cassidy asked.

September 23. The day Rennie arrived at Pendleton.

Unsettled by the apparent coincidence, Ukiah replaced the back and rehung the picture. “So Alicia has a name.”

“We had nothing to do with her disappearing,” Cassidy said.

“I didn't say you did.” Ukiah stared back at himself. “She wouldn't realize this was me. She thinks I'm only twenty-one. She would look for relatives of Magic Boy, though, thinking I was a descendent.”

“She didn't talk to anyone in the family that I heard,” Zoey said. “That's who I would ask.”

“We're not all on speaking terms, though,” Cassidy said. “Magic Boy's death triggered a big family feud.”

“The family isn't listed in the phone book,” Ukiah murmured. “She wouldn't know how to contact them. She probably would have checked with county records.”

“Let's go, then!” Zoey cried.

“It's closed today,” Cassidy said. “I'm not sure she could have found anything. Magic Boy disappeared during the 1933 roundup, within hours of that picture being taken. My family has always believed that he was killed, but the police wouldn't start an investigation. They said he just ran off. Alicia wouldn't have found any birth or death certificates on file.”

“Census records,” Zoey stated. “In 2000, we had to fill out the names of everyone that lived in the house. She could have found who he was living with and then looked up their descendants. Boy, this is like a puzzle.”

“Obituaries list next of kin and how they are related,” Ukiah said. “If the library has microfilm of the local newspaper, and your family placed an obituary for Magic Boy, that's one place she could have looked.”

Cassidy glanced at her watch. “I think the library might still be open. We can see what she found out.”

 

The library closed twenty minutes before they arrived. It was one wing of a large imposing red-brick building. Zoey rattled the doors and then proclaimed, “Major stinker.”

“No Sunday hours,” Ukiah observed.

“You can visit on Monday,” Cassidy said. “If you're still here. Surely, this has nothing to do with her disappearance.”

“It's a place she visited and maybe met someone,” Ukiah said. “She was only in town three times. Unless the kidnappers saw her at the campgrounds themselves, Pendleton is where they noticed her.”

 

Sam had picked out their rendezvous site, a park at the end of town next to the courthouse. A statue of a man on a horse presided over the park. A plaque explained that he was Til Taylor, first sheriff of Pendleton, killed during a jailbreak. Ukiah glanced at the bronze statue and heard Degas's slight mocking voice, saying,
“One would think he was a martyred saint or something, the way they carry on.”

Max and Sam sat opposite the statue, heads together in deep discussion. Ukiah caught the scent of their mutual attraction. Sam laughed at something Max said and turned to press her face against Max's shoulder. There was softness to Max's face that Ukiah had never seen before, as if some inner tension had released. The two looked up as Ukiah approached, a mix of guilt and mild annoyance.

Ukiah felt a twinge of jealousy and tried to soothe it away. The last few days had bruised him heart and soul as well as body, he told himself, and he was being oversensitive. “The gang's all here and none the worse for wear.”

“Good,” Max said. “Dinner?”

“Definitely,” Ukiah agreed. Food, sleep, and a phone call to Indigo would return him to balance. Sex with Indigo, though, would have been an even better tonic.

True to form, Max had found the best place to eat while doing his legwork. “I've heard Raphael's is excellent.”

Sam cringed slightly. “Excellent but expensive.”

“Our treat,” Max said, “for putting Ukiah up for the night.”

“Oh!” Sam stood and bent her arm up behind her back. “Okay, okay, you twisted my arm enough. Raphael's it is.”

 

Raphael's turned out to be around the corner in a large Queen Anne–style house. Three tall gables looked out over
a covered porch. The interior was rich with stained wood, leaded glass, and modern art from native artists. Just inside the door was the ever-present guest book.

“I love these things” Max murmured, signing in a flourish. “Alicia was a good little trooper and signed all the ones she came across.”

“So I noticed,” Ukiah said.

“Did you check to see if any of the names around hers repeated?”

“Same people visiting the same time as her?”

“Yeah.”

Ukiah called up the guest books. “No. No one had.”

Max made a slight noise of disappointment.

The hostess sat them at a window, gave them menus, and fetched them hot, fresh bread with a spicy herb crust.

Sam leaned across the table to murmur to Max, “Is that your foot?”

Max looked slightly surprised over the top of his menu. “Yes.”

She smiled. “Oh, good.”

Max looked smugly embarrassed and laughed.

Max ordered the smoked quail with browned huckleberry sauce. Sam had venison marsala. Ukiah ordered the salmon topped with huckleberry puree, the soup along with the salad, and asked for a second round of the bread.

The waitress clucked, “Growing boys,” and went off for the bread.

Sam took out her notebook. “If I ever disappear, I hope I'd leave more of a trace. Today almost inspires me to dye my hair purple or green.”

“At one time, Alicia dyed her hair purple,” Ukiah said.

“Too bad she stopped,” Sam murmured. “At most of the places I checked, no one remembered Alicia or Rose.”

Max considered Sam. “Green would be fetching on you.”

“Brat.” The corners of her mouth turned up into a Mona Lisa smile. “Kentucky Fried Chicken is a few blocks down from the coin laundry. As I hoped, Alicia stopped there while doing laundry. Andy Henry on the counter remembers
her, but they talked about nothing more than chicken and the weather.”

“What's this Henry like?” Max asked.

“He's extremely short with huge feet. Looks like Mickey Mouse,” Sam said. “So desperate for a woman to notice him that he'll remember any one that does.”

“Well, that doesn't match up with any of our kidnappers,” Ukiah said.

“I solved our mystery location.” Sam tapped her list. Alicia had written
Big Sink
for the total of Wednesday, August 18. “I called Eastern Oregon University at La Grande and questioned one of their geology professors. The ‘big sink' turns out to be a weird local geological thing that I hadn't heard of before. The ‘sink' is an area south of Jubilee Lake, which looks like a large piece of earth
sank
into the ground. The girls got directions at the Chevron service station last week on how to get to Jubilee Lake. The attendant was fairly sure it was Wednesday morning, and that they were going to drive out immediately. But it's just a big hole in the ground, with a weird magnetic thing so compasses don't always work correctly.”

“They don't?” Max asked.