Cold River Resurrection (11 page)

“I am going to personally go to stay with Tom’s body, through the autopsy, and then bring him back for the dressing. Since this happened in town, they will insist on an autopsy, and when we get him back, I’ll tell you about the plans for the dressing.”

“Thanks. I wasn’t thinking or I would have already sent someone.”

“You’ve been busy,” Nathan said. “Take care of her,” he added, nodding at Jennifer.

“You can count on it, Big Brother. You can count on it.”

Smokey walked outside, Jennifer trailing him, carrying a bag Sarah had put together for her. Smokey walked to a silver police patrol car and motioned for Jennifer to get in the front passenger side.

He drove out of the lot and down past the park. The red brick of the old Bureau of Indian Affairs buildings flashed by on their right, a daily reminder of the Great White Father’s presence.

Jennifer pulled her borrowed jacket around her shoulders as they left the police department. She thought she would be fatigued, but she felt a strange exhilaration. She had recovered quickly from her ordeal in the wilderness. She was to have been released from the hospital later today, but the release came in a sudden way she certainly didn’t expect. Her regimen of walking and jogging three times a week down by the Willamette River in Portland probably saved her.

The ordeal in the wilderness left her with an uneasy feeling, as if she had left something unfinished. She hadn’t put that in place yet. She remembered seeing the dead body by the log. Sarah Greywolf told her in the hospital that she had been holding a human hand as if it were a doll, her Nanna, she was calling it. Little by little the days (and nights) in the woods were coming back to her, bits and pieces, but she was still missing chunks of time.

Smokey turned onto the highway, the opposite direction from the end of the chase at the bridge, Jennifer thought. The sun came up behind them as they drove up the hill and out of the town of Cold River, the sagebrush-covered hillsides still in shadow.

Jennifer had spent the last day in the hospital talking with Sarah. Jennifer had instantly liked Sarah. They were about the same age – but had such different backgrounds. Sarah was a single mother, Jennifer learned, and she had been a police officer for five years. Sarah was a Cold R
iver tribal member. Jennifer thought that Sarah was pretty, with her long dark hair and dry sense of humor. Sarah made constant fun of Smokey, her first cousin.

Sarah had grown up on the reservation and gone to high school in Madras. She had lived on the rez all of her life, and knew
everyone.

Jennifer was secretly glad that Sarah hadn’t been in the hospital when the bad men (and that’s how she was thinking of them, bad men) had arrived. She was sincerely sorry that the officer had been killed, but she also knew that she didn’t cause his death.

Carl. What to do with Carl. The boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend, she corrected herself. He had been by the hospital once and stayed a few minutes. Nervous. Ill at ease. He clearly didn’t want to be there, and apparently came out of a sense of duty or something. Carl needed to be back in his world, his realm of friends and co-workers in Portland, back at his insurance adjusting business where he could plan another of his conspiracy theories (they’re hiding Bigfoot – whoever
they
are – on the reservation) and get rich quick schemes.

The problem with Carl was that he wasn’t bad – he was just
there
. He was a nerd in some ways, and made his life okay by chasing conspiracy theories on his off time -  aliens, Bigfoot, you name it. 

But the problem is you, Jen, and you know it. You just
settled
for Carl. You had just
settled
. What your mom had done.

Settled
.

Carl was never going to rock her world, or as her friend Allie used to say, Carl ain’t gonna make you wet just thinking about him.

God, she had actually thought in the past year about marrying Carl – just to be done with it, and now the thought made her want to vomit.

Carl and I are so done, and we know it.

Done.

Jennifer had finally let him off the hook by telling
him to go, that she would be alright, and she needed to sleep. The relief in his face was a little painful to her. Only a little.

At the top of the hill out of Cold River she looked over at Smokey, his features outlined in the instrument lights. Pretty good-looking man, even if he did have long hair. In braids. She idly wondered what his family looked like, his wife and child. Sarah had only said that he had a little girl.

“Well at least this trip, so far,” he said as he guided the car through the corners, “is quieter than the last one.”

“Thank God for that,” Jennifer said. “I don’t think I could stand too many more of those. Or survive them. And for you, your wife and family must be worried sick after they heard of what happened.”

“I’m not married, and my family, they trust me to do the right thing,” he said.

He’s not married.
Jennifer didn’t know why that mattered, but it did.

Stop it, she told herself. And he is raising a little girl. Now she knew what Sarah meant that Smokey was raising his little girl. She had thought that it meant he was raising her with his wife.

Jennifer, stop it right now. You’ve almost been killed, first in the wilderness, and then by a bunch of killers, and now you’re thrilled because your rescuer is not married.

But she was pleased. She smiled to herself. She looked at his hair, the long braids hanging down on his uniform shirt. Ohmigod. A man with braided hair. She thought of her younger years following Jerry Garcia around. There were men there with long hair. But they were not men.

This was a man.

“Smokey.”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for saving my life. After they killed all those people, I don’t think they were going to let me go.”

“Probably not.”

“And who are those people? Are they from here? What did they want with me?”

Smokey turned left off the paved highway, driving through a wide meadow on a gravel road toward woods in the distance. He had told Jennifer that his mother lived in a traditional community on the reservation – up toward Mt. Jefferson, many miles north of where Jennifer was found. You had to be a guest to be there. Or a tribal member.

“We don’t know yet. You must have seen something they’re worried about. The bodies up there in the wilderness area.”

“Maybe they think I did, but whatever they’re worried about I didn’t find after all. A body or two, some have been there a long time, according to Sarah.”

“Sarah talks too much,” Smokey said.

“Don’t you be picking on my Sarah,” Jennifer said.

“Your Sarah,” Smokey said, smiling.

“Yeah, and those people, they can just leave me . . . leave all of us alone.”

“It’s too late for that,” Smokey said. “They brought death to a friend of mine, and brought death to the reservation, to a sacred place. They will have to pay.”

Jennifer suddenly knew that he meant what he said, that the bad men (whoever they were) who had killed his friend and those people at the hospital, were in trouble. She had seen him in action, and he didn’t need a committee to decide what needed to be done.

My life has been on hold until this point.

I’ve been marking time, she thought. I’ve lived more (and feared more) in the last week than in my entire life. I know that life can’t be all adrenalin, but it’s like I’ve been waiting for something all my life – something to happen.

Maybe this is it.

Other than spending time down in Eugene at the University of Oregon (everything in the state was
down
when you lived in Portland) she had lived in the city of Portland all of her life.

Something was happening. I don’t want people to kill me, and I didn’t plan this, but I can’t get out of here. Not yet. I know that.

And you’re not as afraid as you should be, Jennifer, old kid.

I can’t just go back to Portland and pick up my old life again. Not with those men out there, and Smokey seems to understand it. I don’t want to, and I’m not sure I can. I miss my apartment on the river, but I can edit books from any location.

I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna stay alive and help Smokey and the others find these people. I’m gonna remember what I saw up there.

Jennifer Kruger, search and rescue victim, kidnapping victim, victim of some very bad men, wished later that she had just gone home and found a new apartment. Worked it out on her own.

She had found death on the mountain, and it still followed her these days.

And visited those around her. Her new-found friends.

Sarah.

Smokey.

The people they loved.

C
hapter
24

Cold River Indian Reservation

Sidwalter

Jennifer looked out at the woods. The trees didn’t seem so threatening now when she was in a car with Smokey. The sun drifted up through the trees behind them as they drove slowly through a large meadow.
Wildflowers littered the grass like bright red and yellow discarded confetti. A herd of horses stood off to the left, ears up and watching the car, waiting for a sign to run.

“Those your horses?” Jennifer pointed.

“One or two of mine might be mixed in there. Most are wild mustangs; we have a lot of them on the reservation.”

I really am in the wild west, Jennifer thought. She looked up ahead and saw the house, a long low structure with log siding. A covered porch with a railing ran full length across the front. A lazy trail of white smoke rose out of the chimney.

This isn’t a teepee. It looks like Bonanza. She half expected Pa, Hoss, Little Joe, and Hop Sing to come out on the porch. If that happens, I’ll know that I really died and am forced to live in a surreal world, where Indians have running water, cars, electricity, resorts and casinos.

A three
-car garage was off to the side, and then what looked like a shop and barn in the back. Corrals. A haystack. One of the biggest stacks of wood she had ever seen. As they parked behind a Suburban, she nodded at the wood.

“Get cold here?”

“In the winter, very cold. But on most mornings, winter and summer, my mother uses wood to cook breakfast.”

Smokey opened the door of the car and started go get out. Jennifer picked up her pack and stepped
out as the front door of the house burst open and a blur of movement shot toward them. A girl, about eight years old Jennifer thought, ran toward the car, her black ponytail bobbing, her white tennis shoes flashing. She wore jeans and a red hooded sweatshirt.

“Daddy!” The girl threw herself at Smokey and jumped. Jennifer thought he would have fallen had he not braced himself for the certain onslaught.
The girl wrapped her arms around him and kissed his cheek.

“Hey, little girl, ease up,” he said, laughing, “
and speaking of up, why are you awake so early?” He kissed her on the forehead.

“I asked Grandma to wake me up when you were on your way home. She said you called.”

Jennifer stood at the front of the car and waited. Smokey made the introductions.

“Jennifer, I’d like you to meet Laurel, my daughter. Honey, this is Jennifer, the woman I told you about.”

Laurel lifted her head up from Smokey’s shoulder.

“You the lady who was lost?”

“That was me,” Jennifer said.
Woman he told her about? What else did he tell her about me?

Jennifer held out her hand.

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” she said. Laurel waved.

“Well, let’s go in and meet my mother,” Smokey said. Jennifer hung back as they started to move toward the front porch area. Smokey whispered something to Laurel, and the girl jumped down from his arms and held a hand up to Jennifer.

“Come on, take my hand,” she said. Jennifer reached out with her bandaged left hand. Laurel grabbed her hand lightly, smiled up at her, and pulled.

“Come on, Jennifer. Aunt Sarah told me all about you. I’m going to introduce you to Grandma. The others are still sleeping, but when you meet them, they won’t bite.”

Jennifer had a sudden fear, afraid that these people, Smokey’s family, wouldn’t like her, would think of her as an intruder, and she just wanted to be away.

But you don’t have any other place to go, Jen.

Jennifer looked to Smokey for help. He shook his head, smiling. She let herself be pulled inside. A large living room looked out over a deck in the back, with floor to ceiling windows. A big screen television stood in the corner, a news channel on, the sound down low. Jennifer had several impressions at once. Leather couches and chairs, bead work, baskets and animals on the walls. Pictures of family.

Smells of coffee. Breakfast.

A short round woman with long gray hair stood at a wood stove in the far corner, stirring a pot. She looked up and smiled. Jennifer let herself be pulled that way, thinking that the woman had beautiful eyes.

“Grandma,” Laurel said, still pulling, “this is Jennifer, the lost lady that Daddy found.”

“I’m very happy to meet you,” Jennifer said, holding out her right hand.

“I’m Catherine,” she said, “but everyone calls me ‘Cat.’” She moved Jennifer’s outstretched hand and gave her a hug.

“Welcome to our home.”

Jennifer tried to move back to make the hug a quick, superficial thing, but Cat moved closer and gathered Jennifer in her arms. Jennifer stiffened, and then stopped struggling when Cat looked into her eyes from inches away.

“Welcome to my home, child. Sarah said that you had been through a lot, that you were special, that you needed us. You will heal here and find peace.” And with that, the woman let go, and Jennifer stood there, not knowing what to say.

“Thank you for everything,” she finally said, and then she looked around.

“Where’s Smokey?”

“Oh, he’s getting his clothes ready to burn,” Cat said.

Burn?

“The clothes he wore when they found the bodies, the
uniform he wore last night during the killing. Death clothes. He has to burn them, never to wear them again. And then he has to go to the sweat lodge and purify himself from death.”

A man who could drive a Mercedes like Jeff Gordon, a man who was a police supervisor, a father,
was a man who embraced a tradition and religion that she couldn’t comprehend.

Cat held up a cup of coffee and Jennifer took it, the aroma of the coffee and breakfast melting her remaining resistance.

A home. That’s what this is.

A home.

And that’s what you have been missing, Jen.

She had a thought and tried to push it away, but it remained.

Death follows you, Jen.

Followed you to the hospital.

To the reservation.

To this family.

This family that I have been missing all my life.

But death did follow her. And had she known then what form it would take, she would have borrowed one of the cars out front, driven to Portland, and taken her chances at her apartment.

Please, God, don’t let death follow me here.