Cold River Resurrection (29 page)

E
pilogue

Five Months Later

Smokey sat on the couch and looked around at bare walls of the new log house. It was still rough, but at least they had a roof and walls. The lamp in the kitchen made a dim glow in the living room, but he was too content to turn on more light. Sometimes at night he had flashes of terror at what he had almost lost, and then he would take deep breaths and creep into Laurel’s room and watch her as she slept.

He saw the flash of headlights and heard the car as it stopped in the drive. The front door opened and Jennifer and Laurel came in, noisy, chatting as Nathan followed with his arms full of their booty. As Smokey waved at them he heard his cell phone ring.

Albany

Amy sipped tea after dinner and opened up Stan’s laptop. She went to the mapping program and watched the movement of the blinking light at the base of White
water Glacier on Mt. Jefferson. In mid-December it was too late in the year to be Mr. Bear, or as Smokey called it, 
Mr
. A
nahuy
.

She had already chosen a Latin name for the creature:
Stanislaus Gigantopithecus Bipedus,
named after Stan. He would like that. She picked up her cell phone and made the call she had been putting off for a week. She had waited until she was sure. She didn’t want to tell Smokey something she couldn’t back up.

“How’s my favorite Indian?”

“I’m good.”

“You sound good, all healed and everything. That the girls I hear in the background?”

“Yep.”

“You healed up enough to give a ride to a city girl?”

“I’ll manage, if I have to crawl. When and where?”

“I’ll be on the bus from Portland tomorrow, should be coming through the reservation about noon, give or take because of the snow. This city girl doesn’t do snow. Besides, I have a new tat to show you.”

“What kind of tat?”

“Smokey, it’s an Indian thing. I’ll show you tomorrow.”

“Amy?”

She heard the softness in his voice. “Yeah?”

“Amy, you’re always welcome here. All my life you’re family now. What’s the occasion?”

“I’ve got something else to show you.”

Something that doesn’t exist.

Something that has been here since before time.

Author Enes Smith

Enes Smith relied upon his experience as a homicide detective to write his first novel,
Fatal Flowers
(Berkley, 1992).
Crime author Ann Rule wrote, “
Fatal Flowers
is a chillingly authentic look into the blackest depths of a psychopath’s fantasies. Not for the fainthearted . . . Smith is a cop who’s been there and a writer on his way straight up. Read this on a night when you don’t need to sleep, you won’t . . .”

Fatal Flowers
was followed by
Dear Departed
(Berkley, 1994).  “You might want to lock the doors before starting this one,” author Ken Goddard wrote, “Enes Smith possesses a gut-level understanding of the word ‘evil,’ and it shows.” Ken Goddard is the author of
The Alchemist
,
Prey
, and
Outer Perimeter
, and Director of the National Wildlife Forensic Laboratory.

Smith’s work as a Tribal Police Chief for the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Indians of Oregon led to his first novel in Indian Country,
Cold River Rising. Cold River Resurrection
is the second novel in the Cold River series. He has been one of the few
Šiyápu
to hold that position in Indian Country. He worked as police chief in 1994 and 1995, and even though he is a
Šiyápu
, he was asked back as tribal police chief in 2005.

He has been a college instructor and adjunct professor, teaching a vast array of courses including Criminology, Sociology, Social Deviance, and Race, Class, and Ethnicity. He trains casino employees in the art of nonverbal cues to deception. He is a frequent keynote speaker at regional and national events, and has been a panelist at The Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention.

The beginning of the Cold River series  - soon to be a major motion picture by Road’s End Films.

A
preview

COLD RIVER RISING

A  NOVEL

COLD RIVER RISING

Enes Smith 2006

This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. 

COLD RIVER RISING.  Copyright 2006 by Enes Smith.  Copyright 2011 by Enes Smith.  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Cover design by Road’s End Films

ISBN 978-0-9778705-4-7

Enes Smith Productions edition June 2006

Kindle edition March 2011

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I am a Šiyápu, a white man, and as such, any mistakes I have made regarding Indian tribes, peoples, customs, and culture are mine alone.  This is a work of fiction, from a Šiyápu looking in from the outside, and any relation to persons and events are from the author’s imagination, and not related to real people or events.  

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There have been many people who have contributed time and kind words, without whom Cold River Rising would have never happened:

Nancy Spreier, friend, consummate researcher, and constant believer, owed more than I can write - thanks to her husband and family for putting up with bibliophiles; Annie Hausinger, for the journey of friendship; Tom Jones, fellow cop and most talented man I know; Michelle Jones, friend who cares enough to force me to write when I’ve lost the way; Barbara Lambert, for editing and suggestions on the early manuscript, and introducing me to horses, large dangerous animals that don’t like humans (according to Larry McMurtry).

For Tony, Melissa, Maddie, and Dani

and

Hunter, Halle, Samantha, and Justin

All my love

Prologue

Monday, May 6

10:02 a.m.

Martin Andrews had come to terms with evil in his life, and he thought he had seen most of what man could offer.  Until the school this morning.

He went to the school because he had to. He thought later that his willingness to drive into harm’s way was explainable only to those who had been in police work or the military or firefighting.  In twenty-three years as a police officer, the last eight in homicide, he had been in the rank rooms of death, touched the waxy, shiny, tenebrous skin, and smelled the foul breath of people long dead.  He had seen the stark lost hope in the eyes of prostitutes and druggies, street people and the homeless, in many ways more depressing than their death.  He knew the dark side, could sometimes see it in his sleep.  But until this morning, he had struggled and managed to remain above it, clinging to a thread of hope that good existed with evil.

Martin lost the thread this morning.

He drove the unmarked Ford through the bright sunny streets of S.E. Portland, checking residential addresses. He was looking for a witness to an old case, an easy way to get through the day.  His radio was down low, a mutter in the background, but he heard the call go out just the same.

“Seven twenty one, unknown problem at the Nora Westley elementary school.”

As the patrol unit answered, Martin realized he was just a block away. Closer.

“The caller was cut off - sounded like,” the dispatcher hesitated.  “Sounded like a gunshot or loud noise.”

Martin drove the block to the school, slowing, turned his unmarked car into the parking lot.  He told the dispatcher that he would assist, meet patrol at the front.  It was quiet in the lot, the teachers’ cars sitting alone in a group, as if they had been sent to parking lot detention.  He parked next to a Volvo wagon and stood beside his car, watching.  He grabbed his jacket and portable radio and studied the front doors, then walked across the lot, the school windows looking to Martin like big accusing eyes.

Martin heard a loud noise from the inside of the school and he stopped in the lot, thinking that this was a stupid place to be.  What was that noise? A shot?

As he reached the sidewalk in front of the entrance, the glass door to his right burst open and several kids ran out, their legs pumping as they ran across the lot and away from the building.  A woman ran after them, carrying a small girl.  She glanced at Martin, stopped, pointed inside, and ran after the kids.

The voice came over his radio, excited now “..shooter in the school, confirmed, repeating shooter in Nora Westley Elementary. . . all units. . .”

“Forty seven fourteen’s in the front door, waiting for the first unit.”

Martin entered through the glass front doors and looked around for the office, holding his Glock down by his leg.

“Seven twenty one’s at the school.”

Okay, now I have some help, Martin thought.  The lessons of Columbine have not been lost on us.  At a school we don’t wait for S.W.A.T., the first units at the school just go to the trouble.

Must be between recesses. Quiet in here.  He stopped inside the door and waited for his eyes to adjust to the florescent lighting. Something didn’t look right, didn’t smell right, silent alarms going off inside Martin, and then an internal voice screamed

There’s a body down the hallway, to the right in a pool of blood

The blood glistened on the floor, trapping the body in its redness.  Martin moved his gun up and covered the hallway, the skin on his face and neck tightening.  As he reached for his radio he heard a noise behind him and whirled, his gun coming around.  A uniformed officer, Terry Gordon, he thought, came in behind him.  Martin pointed at the body and they both started as a series of gunshots blasted from somewhere down the hallway, a scream cut off by the last shot.

Officer Gordon spoke quietly, urgently into his microphone clipped to his shirt.   

More shots and shouting.

Martin held his Glock up in front of him, moving fast on the balls of his feet.

“Here,” Officer Gordon said, and Martin peeked around a corner and saw bodies, a teacher and a kid, down the hallway by some gray lockers.

A kid screamed, muffled, cut off by a shot.

Another shot, close, two doors down.  Who’s doing this, a kid?

Gordon stood beside the door and reached for the doorknob as Martin stood to the side.  As Officer Gordon’s hand touched the knob, the door opened suddenly, thrown back against the wall and a man stood there, must be a teacher, Martin thought, and then the man shot Terry Gordon in the face. The blast from the gun sounded impossibly loud to Martin, the muzzle just inches away, the blood from Terry’s face spattering, and Terry staggered back into Martin and dropped

and Martin shot from five feet away, the bullets hitting the gunman, must be hitting him, but he’s firing back, and why isn’t he falling, and...

Martin fired again as a puff of wind hit him in the left arm, high up in the bicep, feeling the bullet snap on the bone, twisting him around, and then the gunman was gone.  Martin stood there, swaying, his ears ringing from the muzzle blasts.  He heard someone crying in the room.  A kid.  Where’s the gunman?

He leaned in the door and saw him down on his back, up against a chair.  His eyes were open, staring at the
Big A, little a
on the wall above the chalkboard.  He wasn’t moving.  As Martin walked toward the gunman he saw a head and the bright eyes of a girl, about six years old.  She followed him with her eyes as he leaned over and picked up the gunman’s pistol and tucked it in his belt.

Kids were starting to peek up over their desks.  Martin tried to wave his left arm at the girl but it wasn’t working.  He rocked back against the wall and slid down, pressing his shoulders against the blackboard, sliding slowly at first, and then he fell heavily from a crouched position, his Glock clattering on the floor.

“Ow.”  He yelled before he could stop the sound.  He rocked over to sit, his feet splayed out in front of him.  He fumbled for his Glock and jammed it into his holster.  He looked around the room.

“Where’s your teacher?”

The girl with the bright eyes pointed.

“She okay?”

“She’s dead,” another little voice said from the back of the room.  The girl with the bright eyes crawled around her desk and moved toward Martin, leaving a trail of blood on the tile.  She had been shot in the leg, more than once, Martin thought, the wounds pumping out blood in small spurts.  When she reached him he put his right hand on her leg and put pressure on, pulling her into him.

Ohmigod what have we done to our children

Martin looked around the room, looking at the aftermath of a crazy man. 

“He got the wrong room,” a little voice said.  “He said he was looking for Mrs. P, but she’s next door.”

Some of the kids were standing, staring at the shooter, others crying.  A scream from down the hallway. 

The girl said her name was Claire.  She had her right thumb in her mouth and spoke around it.  She pointed with her little finger, not letting her thumb out of her mouth.

“Mishsush Carter,” she said, gave a little hitch, and continued to suck her thumb.