Tainted Trail (9 page)

A chill went down Ukiah's back. “So, what's the connection to Alicia?”

“Three hundred and fifty people died in Umatilla County last year. Three hundred and thirty-five were natural causes. Only ten were killed by accident during the whole year. That's an average year. In the last two months, twenty people have died in fires, four people have drowned, six people
have died in nonwitnessed, single-car accidents, and five hikers have vanished without a trace. Alicia is just the most recent one. If the hikers are all dead, then that's thirty-five people in an eight-week span.”

The numbers stunned him. He could see why the deaths were alarming, but not why they pointed to a connection between all of them. “Why do you say that the shooting links it?”

“Do you know how many homicides we have a year?”

“I wouldn't think many.”

“In a good year, none. In a bad year, one. So, statistically, there's a connection.”

He looked at her.

“Listen to the details,” she urged him. “The Coles' house burned down on July third—eight dead. A fire in a trash can, seemingly started by a cigarette butt, spread to some fireworks, and the whole house went up. July nineteenth—the propane grill sitting on a wooden front porch takes out the Watsons' house. Six dead and the family dog. August nineteenth—the Burkes' house. Six dead. Cause this time: an apparent toaster meltdown. Nothing's the same, right?”

He nodded, not sure where she was leading.

“All fires started after midnight.” She ticked the points off with her fingers. “All family members were found dead in their beds or bedrooms. And the kicker, all family members had missed work, school, doctor appointments, et cetera, the day of the fire. No one had seen or talked to them the day they died.”

“All twenty?”

“All thirty-five people, actually, with maybe the exception of Alicia, who had been seen the morning she disappeared. And a large number of them hadn't been seen for two or three days prior to the fire: Kids were off school for summer, some of the homemaker mothers didn't have appointments to miss, or one of the adults wasn't employed.”

“Why ‘maybe' for Alicia?”

“If she was killed Monday, then she was seen the morning she died. If she died Tuesday or Wednesday, then no one saw her the day of her death.”

“We have to assume she's still alive.”

Sam glanced at him in surprise. “Despite the shooting?”

“There are reasons why my shooting might not be related to Alicia's disappearance,” Ukiah stalled, and then changed the subject. “Do you think these people are killed and put into their beds and the house burned down to cover the murders?”

Sam shrugged, sighing. “So far the autopsies don't show any cause of death beyond smoke inhalation and massive burns. The firefighters say that some of the victims obviously woke up enough to try to escape but never made it to safety.”

She saw that he was finishing the third meal and indicated a nearby trash bin. “Want me to toss the papers?”

“Sure, thanks.”

She strolled over to the trash bin, stuffed the bag in, and turned. She looked past the car, swore, and started for Ukiah at a trot. Even forewarned, Ukiah was still startled by the man that suddenly leaned in the Jeep's window.

“Hello! Who are you?” the stranger asked. He had an infectiously cheerful smile and ice-cold blue eyes that swept down over Ukiah, inspecting his wounds.

“None of your business, Peter.” Sam jumped into the driver's seat.

“Peter Talbot.” The stranger put out his hand to be shaken. “I'm Sam's husband.”

“Ukiah Oregon.” Ukiah extended his right hand out of habit, and checked the motion as his bulky white cast reminded him that his right arm had been recently broken.
Sam is married?
Peter Talbot reached out and caught Ukiah's hand before he could retract it.

Just looking at him, Ukiah couldn't imagine Sam married to this man. Ukiah recognized that Peter Talbot was good-looking in a scruffy sort of way. Tall, lean, chisel-featured, he could have graced a magazine ad. From wispy blond hair that fell into his eyes, shirt unbuttoned to show lean chest muscle to battered shoes, though, he seemed completely mismatched to Sam's orderly neatness.

In the driver's seat, Sam nearly bristled with anger. “Let go of him and get away from the car.”

“I'm just shaking his hand.” Peter kept hold of Ukiah's hand, giving it a painful shake.

Sam started the Jeep. “You know you're not supposed to be within a hundred feet of me.”

“That's cute, Sammie Anne. You come to my place of work and tell me to stay away from you.”

“Since when are you working at McDonald's?”

“Sammie Anne, private eye, you're supposed to know all this! I started last week. I'm the morning manager.”

Sam glared, revving the Jeep's engine. “Let go of him.”

“So, who the hell are you, Ukiah Oregon?” Peter flashed him a smile that might have been charming if not for the coldness in his eyes.

“I'm a private investigator from Pittsburgh,” Ukiah said, trying to extract his hand.

“The uncle of the lost hiker flew him in.” Sam gunned the engine again.

“Couldn't cut it, Sammie Anne?” Peter grinned.

“He's a tracker. It's not my area of expertise,” Sam stated.

“So, what happened to you, Ukiah?” Peter asked, ignoring Sam's anger. “Did someone else catch you messing with their wife?”

“I'm not your wife anymore,” Sam said. “Now, let go of him.”

“Now, honey, give the man a chance to answer.” Peter tightened his hold.

“I had a rough day.” Ukiah stopped trying to free his hand, instead squeezed back. Recently he'd discovered he was considerably stronger than the average man.

Peter winced slightly. “Well, you better not even think about touching my wife.”

Sam reached into the backseat of the Jeep and fished out a cattle prod. She snapped it on and jabbed it out within an inch of Peter Talbot's nose. “Let him go!”

“Easy, Sammie, I was just doing just that.” Peter released his grip.

Sam must have shifted into reverse earlier while Ukiah was grappling with Peter. She let out the clutch and the Jeep leaped backward. She snapped off the cattle prod, dropped it into Ukiah's lap, and wrenched the Jeep around. Shifting into first, she roared out of the parking lot.

They drove in silence until Sam suddenly pulled into a small shaded park.

“I'm really sorry about that,” she said. “People do silly things when they're young. Start to smoke. Get tattoos. Get married to complete jerks.” Sam parked the Jeep and killed the engine. “Of course later you grow up enough to realize how stupid you've been, but getting rid of your mistake requires lots of pain and messy procedures.”

“You're divorced.”

“Coming up on two years. Not that Peter has acknowledged it. He thinks since I haven't shacked up with anyone else, I'll be crawling back to him any day now. He's even taken steps to speed up the process, so I needed to get a restraining order on him. I try to keep track of where he's working so I can avoid him; but he's never happy at anything very long, so he quits most jobs after a few months. He just started working at the post office a few weeks ago. I guess that got tedious fast.”

“He must find work easily.”

“He's a charming, irresponsible bastard. People love him. Most people forgive him for all the shitty things he does, mostly because when he's truly cruel, he makes sure he isn't caught. I caught him at it one too many times, and just ran out of forgiveness. Screwing with your broken arm is so like him. I didn't want to pull away while he had hold of your arm. Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have a girlfriend, kid?”

“Girlfriend isn't the right word.” It wasn't a strong enough word. Fiancée also seemed weak.

“Oh! Okay. Well, this might be useless advice then, but don't rush into anything permanent. Love isn't enough to base a life together on.”

“Max thinks it is. He says when you find someone, you grab hold and you don't let go.”

“Oh.” She said and started the car. “Sooooo, Max is married?”

“He was. His wife was killed in a car wreck. He thinks you should make the most of life because you don't know when it's going to end.”

Sam made a sound of enlightenment and pulled out of the parking space. “Well, love is a good start, but love can blind you to the monster inside. People are rarely what you think they are on first sight.”

What if you're the one with the monster inside?
He wondered about Indigo's comment of “If we get married.” Was she beginning to see what life with him would be like and having second thoughts? Could he blame her?

“I should have asked earlier,” Sam went on, unaware of Ukiah's turmoil. “Should you really have eaten so soon after abdominal surgery?”

“You heard about that?”

“It's a small town and I like to nose into other people's business. What the hell was that all about, anyhow? And why did it piss off Kicking Deer so much?”

“Ahhhhhh.” Ukiah drew a blank on how to explain. “That one is hard to explain. Can we get back to it?”

Sam threw back her head and laughed loudly. “Oh, come on, that's the interesting one, especially since it's put a bug up Kicking Deer's back end something awful.”

“Kicking Deer is annoyed because I'm trying to find his grandfather.”

She stopped laughing. “Jesse Kicking Deer?”

“Yes. I would like to talk to him. Do you have any clue how I could do that?”

“Ah!”

“Ah?”

“The Tuesday-night disaster. You drove out to see Jesse Kicking Deer and got jumped all over by one big, mean county sheriff.”

“Yeah. So Jesse still lives at the ranch?”

“Is this part of the Kraynak case?”

“No,” Ukiah admitted. He shifted uneasily in his seat. Boy Scouts, with all the emphasis on truthfulness, hadn't been the best training for a private investigator. “A couple years ago, Max was hired by a client in Pittsburgh to find the identity of a John Doe. The case brought him out to Pendleton and dead-ended. Some new information has turned up, and we think the John Doe and the Kicking Deer boy are one and the same. Sheriff Kicking Deer, however, won't let us talk to his grandfather.”

“The Umatilla Wolf Boy ended up in Pittsburgh? That's a new one. Is this John Doe still alive, or are we talking heirs of the estate—so to speak?”

“He's still alive.”

“What the hell is he doing in Pittsburgh?”

“He was adopted after found running feral. His parents tried to establish his identity when they found him, and when they couldn't, they decided to keep him instead of informing the authorities. They believed a feral child in a state institution would receive minimal loving attention.”

There, the Boy Scouts would be proud of him. Each and every word the truth!

“And?”

“And what?”

“Well, that happened back in the 1930s. What's the Wolf Boy doing now? Can he talk? Is he in a nursing home? Is he running naked in the back woods of Pennsylvania? Is he a millionaire?”

Ukiah hunted frantically for a safe answer. “What he is doing really doesn't matter if I can't get to talk to Jesse Kicking Deer.”

Sam clicked her tongue several times, thinking. “Jared's sister, Cassidy, just bought Zimmerman's, the Pendleton hardware store. She might not talk to you, but she'd be stranded behind the store counter, having to listen to you.”

“Hopefully, she won't take a swing at a wounded man.”

Sam smiled. “Or shoot him again.”

Ukiah frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I'm just saying that Jared Kicking Deer might have a good alibi, but there are over a dozen Kicking Deer families
in the area. It's common knowledge that the Kicking Deers are quite annoyed by all the claims to the Wolf Boy legacy. Jared seems to have his nose particularly out of joint—perhaps he said something to a sister or uncle or cousin and now suspects they did something rash.”

“A dozen? Jared is the only Kicking Deer in the phone book.”

She laughed. “They all have unlisted numbers. Now tell me, why did your partner feel the need to do surgery on you?”

“Let me think on that one.”

She frowned in annoyance. As she pulled onto Main Street, though, she shrugged. “You owe me, Oregon. Just remember that. You owe me.”

Zimmerman Hardware, Pendleton, Oregon
Thursday, August 26, 2004

Zimmerman's sat midblock on Main Street, hemmed in tight on either side. There were no parking spots available, so Sam stopped near the door.

“There's parking in back, but it's really uneven. This will be easier on you. Go ahead in, I'll catch up with you.”

Ukiah climbed carefully out and she pulled away. Tools and signs crowded the window front, an overload of information complete with a historical plaque. A cowbell over the door clanged as Ukiah came through the door, but it was doubtful anyone heard it over a loud banging coming from the back of the store. Like the window front, the store was a tight pack of everything imaginable. What caught the eye was a moose head, stuffed and hung on a support column, looking dolefully down at Ukiah.

The banging continued in the back. No one was at the front counter, so he limped to the back of the store. A second checkout counter formed a small conversation niche in the back. Four men gathered there, Native Americans, in blue jeans, T-shirts, and baseball hats. The oldest seemed in his seventies, the youngest only nineteen or twenty. They nodded in greeting, eyes curious.

The noise came from an old Coke machine, which rattled and banged as if it was about to fling machine parts across the room. The hot grease smell coming from the soda
machine's compressor competed, strangely enough, with the heavy scent of fresh-cut cedar.

“Turn it off! Turn it off!” the man leaning against the counter was saying. “Just give it up, it's dead!”

“It's still running, Lou!” A woman wedged in behind the Coke machine called.

“It's time to get a new one, Cassidy,” Lou said.

“Oh, no, it isn't,” Cassidy shouted over the noise.

The eldest man shook his head. “She's not going to throw it away because that's the way the white man thinks. Throw it away instead of fixing it.”

“What did I tell you about that, Uncle Daniel?” Cassidy said. “White man this and white man that. Bleah on the ‘white man.' You give him power by assigning everything to him. Think of it instead as human nature. We see something better and grab hold of it, even if what we've got is perfectly good.”

“Getting a new one is the only practical answer,” Lou said. “What you'll save in electricity costs will pay for getting a new one. Hell, you probably could sell this one to an antique dealer.”

“Heretic!” Cassidy hunted through a battered red metal toolbox. “You're missing the whole point!”

“Cassidy,” the youngest said. “You just said getting a new one is human nature.”

“What's the point?” asked the eldest man.

“It's a landmark. A tradition.” Cassidy stood, her back to Ukiah. “We've got here the old hardware store. The old pickle barrel.” She gave said pickle barrel a kick. “The old Indians sitting around talking life to death.” She waved a crescent wrench toward the men. “And the Coke machine. If I replaced it, then it would be: Oh, it's a shame about the hardware store. Cassidy got hold of it and just gutted it down to the bones!”

“Gutted” was emphasized with a wild swing of the hand holding the crescent wrench; it would have caught Ukiah in the temple with the backhand if he hadn't ducked. The local men all flinched for his sake.

“Don't give me that look,” Cassidy growled at the local
men and crawled behind the Coke machine again. “Don't think I don't hear it. ‘What does that insane red woman think she's doing, buying a hardware store? What does she know about hardware?' Well, helloooooooo! I have an industrial engineering degree, people. I know a crescent wrench”—she stuck the crescent wrench out and waved it—“from a screwdriver! Really, if a white
man
can run this place, then I should be able to do it in my sleep!”

“If you have an industrial engineering degree, why did you buy this place?” Ukiah asked. “Why not do—industrial engineering?”

“Bwah!” she shouted into the guts of the Coke machine. He wasn't sure if this was a laugh or not. “I did the token red-woman bit, and no thank you. Here, if people act like your friend, you know they mean it because otherwise they don't bother, I don't have to spend a fortune in clothes, and all I have to do is show that I know how to repair things.” The Coke machine purred to life. “There! And that's why I can't throw this old baby away.”

She came up grinning, grease smudging her face. She was an older version of Zoey, from wry mouth and dark laughing eyes, down to a face that was more strong than pretty. She wore her thick sienna hair pulled into one ponytail instead of dual braids like Zoey. Despite the grease on her hands and face, she managed to get none on her crisp blue oxford. Nearly hidden by her collar, she wore a leather-and-bone choker, beaded with chunks of tumbled turquoise and a center silver medallion. She smelled of bruised pine needles, cut cedar, and machine grease.

She looked at Ukiah in surprise. “Oh, you're the one asking dumb questions.”

“Sorry,” Ukiah said.

She waved away the apology. “It's just these guys heard the rant so often, I was surprised anyone asked. What happened to you, good-looking?”

“The crutch?” Ukiah risked standing on both legs to swing his crutch about. Breakfast was kicking in and his body was speedily mending itself.

She laughed. “Yes, the crutch and the cast.”

“Oh, I fell. Actually, I was shot and then I fell.”

She looked at him for a minute, blinking in surprise, and then giggled, covering her mouth with a greasy hand, smudging black fingerprints across her face. “You're the new Umatilla Wolf Boy?” She went into gales of laughter when he nodded. “Oh, Jared told me about you, but he didn't say how cute you were.”

There was an interesting mix of reactions among the men. Two were laughing. The eldest one looked at him thoughtfully. The youngest glared jealously at him.

“So, what's your name?” Cassidy asked.

“The woman that adopted me called me Ukiah Oregon.”

“Like the town?”

“Yes.” He balanced on his crutches to take out his wallet and dug awkwardly into it to pull out his business card. “She found me in Umatilla Park just out of Ukiah and took me to Pittsburgh, eight years ago.” Then, because he had tucked the picture into his wallet, he pulled out the photo of him at thirteen. “This was what I looked like back then.”

She ignored the card, taking the photo instead, carefully as not to smudge it with grease. Some of the laughter went out of her eyes. She looked up at him again, studying him.

“Actually, you haven't changed much.” She went off into a side room. There was the slight hum of a machine. “I'm surprised to see you up and around. Jared gave the family a full report on your injuries, including the hocus-pocus stuff.”

“I heal quickly.” Ukiah cringed at the thought that
all
the Kicking Deers knew about the mice.

“You've got Zoey convinced, but she always believed.” She came to the door of the small office, using a paper towel to wipe cleanser off her hands along with the black grease. She considered him silently, her face skeptical. “Jared says you're a fake, but Jared has never believed any of the family stories about Uncle.”

“I haven't asked anyone to believe anything,” Ukiah protested. “I just wanted to ask a few questions. Who was my mother? What was she like? How did I get lost? What
age was I when I was lost? Why did you call me uncle? Are we related? Did my mother have other children?”

“But you
have
asked us to believe you,” Cassidy said. “Don't we have to first judge your right to an answer before we give it?”

Ukiah met her dark eyes much like his own. “Can you fairly judge someone you've refused to talk to?”

Cassidy gazed at him in silence that went on for several minutes. Ukiah waited, sensing that she was trying to be fair. His patience in listening, Max said once, was one of his greatest strengths.

Cassidy spoke to the youngest man without looking away from Ukiah. “Simon, can you do me a favor?”

“Anything,” Simon answered, leaping to his feet.

“I didn't bother to refill the machine until I was sure I could repair it.” Cassidy went back into the office and returned with a printout and the photo. She handed the printout to Simon. “Could you go to Swire's and pick up a case of each in bottles?”

“I'll do it in a little bit.” Simon looked pointedly at Ukiah.

“Oh, don't be jealous.” She handed Ukiah his photo. “Didn't you hear? He's my long lost great-great-uncle.”

Grudgingly, Simon went and Cassidy considered Ukiah, arms folded over her chest. “The boy we lost was grandfather's uncle, so that's what we call him,” she admitted grudgingly. “Jared told me about the mouse thing. He's positive you faked it. I've been dying to know. How
did
you do it?”

Ukiah was startled at her directness. “What?”

“The trick with the mice. How did you do it?”

He glanced at the listening men.

“Oh, don't worry. Its just family now.” She indicated the men in turn, starting with the oldest. “This is Uncle Daniel, and Uncle Quince, and Cousin Lou. That's why I sent Simon out for soda. He's not family.”

“I don't want to talk about it,” Ukiah said.

“If you want us to tell you about our missing Uncle,”
Cassidy said, jerking up her chin, “you have to tell us about the mice.”

Ukiah considered the four Kicking Deers. An exchange of trust. It felt like he was getting the short end of the bargain, but perhaps they felt the same way too. He tried for a vague explanation. “The mice are just something that happens when I'm hurt.” Oh, that sounded stupid. He winced, and decided to keep his mouth shut.

She laughed at the look on his face. “So, it's been seventy years! What have you been doing with yourself, Wolf Boy?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. Running with the wolves is all I remember. Season after season.”

She walked around him, scratching her chin. “Well, you look damn good for being eighty!”

“I'm not eighty,” Ukiah said quietly. “My father's people told me how old I was.”

That startled them.

“Your father's people?” Cassidy echoed.

“Who are your father's people?” Uncle Daniel asked.

How did one describe the Pack without using the word “alien”? “They are dangerous, brutal people. Killers. They told me how my mother was taken. How I came to be.” Hex had stunned his mother and taken her to the ship. Prime used the ovipositor to splice his alien genetics into her human DNA and impregnated her. It was sterile rape. “My father planned to kill my mother before I was born.” Prime thought a breeder was too dangerous to let him live. “My father's people thought he had succeeded, so they didn't know I existed until recently.”

Puzzlement took over Cassidy's face. “If you don't remember anything, and they didn't know you were born, how did you find your father's people?”

“Well, actually, they found me.”

“I reiterate.”

Ukiah cocked his head. “You what?”

“Oh, I forgot.” She clapped her hands together. “Wolf boys don't have a strong grasp of English!”

“I do well enough,” he said. “We think it's because I lived long enough among humans”—that sounded bad—
“before I lived with the wolves, that I picked up English quickly once I was found. I didn't know it when Mom Jo found me.”

“Reiterate is to repeat,” Cassidy told him. “How did your father's people find you?”

“There is a knowing, without touching, without speaking.”

She looked angry for a moment, and then a grin took over her mouth. “You do the mystic bullshit pretty good.”

“I was hired to find a missing girl that they were looking for too. Our paths crossed.”

“Oh, the first story was so much better.” She shook her head. “Do you really expect us to believe that you're an eighty-year-old man?”

“No. I'm older than that,” Ukiah said.

“Ninety?” Cassidy asked.

Ukiah hesitated, wondering how much to tell them. If they were his family, wouldn't they know this already? “My father's people say that I was born several hundred years ago.”

“He's good,” Uncle Quince mumbled. “I nearly believe him.”

“Someone talked again,” Lou said.

“What do you mean?” Ukiah asked.

“Whenever someone comes along with a good story,” Cassidy said, “it always turns out that someone in the family told the wrong person the whole story. You've got interesting takes on the story that no one else has tried. And you've got that wolfie kind of feel.”

“Look, all I want is to talk to people about my mother, and about myself,” Ukiah said. “My father's people thought she had been killed before I was born, so they were surprised to find me. They couldn't tell me how I ended up with the wolves, or how long I had been with the wolves, or what I had done before then.”