Not Dead Enough (28 page)
Authors: Warren C Easley
Hanson stood looking down on us, the line of his mouth tight and straight, his eyes gleaming and feral looking. My stomach dropped. “Claxton, you come up first,” he said in a voice straining to sound commanding. He greeted me at the top of the stairs with the metallic click of steel on well-oiled steel as he cocked the automatic and leveled it at me. “Now, take the corkscrew out from wherever you've hidden it or I swear I'll shoot you right now. There was one down there. I'm sure you found it.”
I pulled the corkscrew from my belt and offered it to him in my outstretched hand. “Drop it,” he said, and when I did, he kicked it aside while keeping his eyes and gun trained on me. “You're next, Win.” When she got to the top of the stairs, he looked her over carefully but didn't pat her down. Okay, we're going to take a drive. You're the chauffeur, Claxton. Win will be in the back with me. If you do anything stupid, I'll shoot her, of course.”
On the way out, he picked up the white garbage bag, which he'd apparently repacked with Norquist's left-behinds. To be disposed of once and for all, no doubt. The rain had let off and a cold wind had blown the clouds, exposing a partial moon that cast a pale light on the courtyard.
When we reached his car, I turned and he tossed me his keys.
I caught the keys and threw them over my shoulder in one motion. They cleared the fence and landed in the thick underbrush. “Hey,” he shouted as his eyes left me momentarily, following the arc of the keys. I lunged at him and missed grabbing his gun, but deflected the barrel enough that the round he squeezed off whizzed past my ear. The explosion deafened me. I lunged again, but he pulled free.
He must have been a tennis player, because the backhand he hit me with was perfectly placed, the barrel of the gun catching me square on the side of the jaw. My head felt like the clapper of a bell. My knees buckled, and as I sank to the ground I heard a scream and thought I saw Winona with an arm up out of my peripheral vision. Then I fell down a very dark elevator shaft.
When I came to, I was lying in a deep mud puddle. I came up on my hands and knees, and my nose drained muddy water. I coughed up some gravel, too, along with one molar and a mouthful of blood.
I looked around like a cow in a pasture, my head spinning, my ears ringing. Winona and Hanson were gone!
I struggled to my feet and looked around, trying to clear the wasps swarming in my brain. I could just see the side gate in the dimness. It was open. I tried to run, but my legs were like rubber. I shook my head and tried again.
I stopped on wobbly legs in the middle of the road, my breath coming in gasps. Which way to go? I screamed to myself. Then I heard a single gunshot. It came from the forested area directly across the road. I took off in that direction and found myself on a narrow trail.
It was darker under the canopy. I moved as fast as I could, trying to be as quiet as possible. Don't think about the gunshot, I kept telling myself. Just find her.
The trail steepened as it descended into the Silver Creek watershed. I was moving at a good clip when I saw a shadowy form in the trail. Too late! I tripped on the object and went sprawling. I got to my hands and knees, turned around, and gasped.
A body.
I crawled back to it. David Hanson lay face down in the trail, one knee pulled up, one arm outstretched with the gun still in his hand.
Moonlight shone softly off the bottle neck sticking deep and firm in his back. I checked for a pulse on his wrist and his neck. If it was there, it was weak. He moaned.
I pried the gun out of his hand, stood up, and called out. “Winona, are you okay? Come out. Hanson's down. You got him.”
I heard a couple of twigs snap up the trail. “It's okay,” I repeated. “He's down. I have his gun.”
She came up the trail and hugged me so tightly I feared for my ribs. “Oh, Cal. I thought you were dead.” She laughed almost hysterically. “You tossed those damn keys and I was trying to get the bottle neck out of my pants. I thought he shot you.”
I laughed, too, as the stress drained out of me. “I heard you scream, I think, before I went out.”
She peered at my face, then turned it into the moonlight and wiped my chin with her fingertips. “You're bleeding.”
I shrugged. “The bullet missed, but he clipped me good with his gun.” I rubbed my swelling jaw. “He owes me a tooth, damn it, and maybe a hearing aid. What happened after I went out?”
I felt her shudder. “I stabbed him, that's what. It staggered him, but he stayed on his feet.” She opened her hands, palms up, as if to apologize. “I had no choice but to run.”
Hanson groaned again. She knelt down next to him. “He's lost a lot of blood. We need to get him out of here. I don't want him to die.” She looked up at me, her brow knotted in surprise. “I asked you for that bottle neck, but I wasn't sure I could actually use it⦔
I smiled. “I was. You're a warrior, Winona. You did your grandfather proud.”
Marmot Dam on the Sandy River
October 19, 2007
It would have been a perfect day to watch a dam being breached if my heart hadn't been so heavy. Archie and I were hiking east along the ridgeline above the Sandy River. Old growth hemlocks and Douglas firs still dripped from a rainstorm the night before, and the trail was heavy with mud. But the river below gleamed like polished silver in the afternoon light, the air crisp and cool and filled with forest scents.
We were hiking in to witness the final step in the removal of Marmot Dam. I had been tied up in court that morning, so we were hurrying to catch at least part of the show before it got dark. It was a promise I intended to keep. After today the Sandy would join the small but exalted ranks of rivers in the U.S.âor the world, for that matterâthat flow freely for their entire length. Of course, the Marmot Dam wasn't that large, but as my friend Jason Townsend said once, “It's a good start.”
I couldn't help but think of the ceremony Winona had organized to honor her grandfather, Nelson Queah. It was held at the little park across the highway from the new Celilo Village, where Winona and I had first spoken of the events of March 10, 1957. Tribesmen from up and down the Columbia River came in cars, trucks, and even canoes. There was drumming and chanting, speeches and food. A bronze plaque was unveiled. I remember exactly what it said:
Nelson Queah
June 9, 1920 to March 10, 1957
Fearless defender of his Tribe, his Country,
and The Columbia River. May his soul rest in peace below the falls he loved and fought so hard to preserve, and may it come to pass that the mighty roar of the falls will be heard again.
As I hiked on under the dripping canopy, my mind drifted back to the events that took place after our confrontation with David Hanson. It'd been close, but he pulled through. After we told our story and connected all the dots for the police, Winona was not charged with anything. In fact, several articles in the media referred to her as a hero, a term that made her eyes flash with anger. “My grandfather was a hero, but I'm not,” she was always quick to point out.
David Hanson is a guest of the state now. The charges against him include multiple counts of murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, and assault. He considered himself a pretty bright guy, but the burner phone he used to communicate with Jacob Norquist was found in his car. Hubris always trumps intelligence. He's trying to duck the death penalty by offering to implicate Royce Townsend in the murders of Nelson Queah and Timothy Wiiks back in 1957. There's no statute of limitation on murder.
The fact that Hanson took that call from Cecil Ferguson that day last March proved fateful not only for him but for Townsend as well.
There may not be enough evidence to get an indictment, but the accusations look pretty ugly for the elder Townsend. To make matters worse, word has gotten around that he's the father of “The Oregon Sniper.” That pretty much shit-canned what was left of his social standing in Portland, and there's a rumor his wife has left him.
Townsend's legitimate son, Jason, took a dim view of all this and severed ties with the family. Incidentally, I had lunch with him last week, and he told me he's decided to leave Oregon politics to go trekking in the Himalayas for six months. Can't say that I blame him for wanting to get out of town.
The icing on the irony cake came when I got a call from Shirley Norquist after all this broke in the paper. Turns out Jacob Norquist's father was really Braxton Gage, not Royce Townsend. “You can tell by the eyes,” she told me. “Jacob had Braxton Gage's eyes.” I thought back on my first encounter with Gage and realized that's why he looked familiar to me. “Even though Royce never treated Jacob very well,” she went on, “I figured my son was better off thinking he was his father rather than Braxton's. I guess I was wrong about that.”
When I asked if she intended to set the record straight, she replied, “No. Let Royce twist in the wind like me.”
The casino deal in the Gorge tanked last month. The Governor nixed the deal after learning of Gage's plan to fund the Oregon Patriot Militia using casino proceeds. Apparently the cyber attack Fletcher Dunn had told me about worked because a string of incriminating e-mails between Stephanie Barrett and her brother-in-law, a high level OPM operative, got plastered across the Internet. Of course, the hacking was illegal, but the Governor couldn't ignore the posts.
Smart move by the Gov, I'm thinking. If he had okayed that deal, he ran the risk of being confronted with a pitchfork-wielding mob of Oregonians outraged by the prospect of a gambling casino in their beloved Gorge.
Philip and I would have been in that mob.
Speaking of Fletcher Dunn, I drove him over to the Hazelden Center in Newberg two weeks ago. He's decided to do something about his alcoholism. He'd called and asked for a ride but didn't tell me where he wanted to go. Just like him. The last thing he did was hand me fifty dollars and say, “Santos is taking care of the yard while I'm drying out. Make sure he gets this. It's a bonus.”
I rounded a sharp bend in the river and heard the whine of an engine and the faint sound of people shouting before I saw the sand and gravel dam. It had been constructed to hold back and divert the river while the concrete behemoth below it could be blown up and carted away in huge trucks. That job was finished and all that remained was to breach the massive, yet temporary structure.
I wasn't sure how much I'd be able to see before it grew dark. The experts couldn't agree on how long it would take the river to have its way. But they had already blocked the diversion channel, which meant the full force of the river now waited to be unleashed, a river that stretched from the dam up to the glacier fields on Mount Hood.
As I watched, workers cut a channel into the top of the dam, which allowed the river to commence its work. The flow began with a trickle but built with amazing speed. Soon it became a fast stream, which became a torrent, and then a waterfall. Huge chunks of the dam broke away and washed downstream, releasing rock, sand, and gravel held captive for ninety-four years and opening miles of new habitat to the runs of salmon and steelhead that had called the Sandy their home.
The light faded slowly, and when the sun touched the horizon behind the trees it set it afire. By this time, the dam was nearly gone, the river free.
As I hiked out, my heart ached for Winona. She wanted to be here as much as I longed for her company. That wasn't possible. Her reward for saving my life and catching the man behind the Oregon Sniper was to be arrested by the Portland Police for the murder of Cecil Ferguson. The Portland crime lab had found a speck of his DNA on the bottom of one of her shoes.
Whoever said that no good deed goes unpunished wasn't kidding.
Tonight, the midnight oil will burn at the farm as I prepare for a meeting with her lawyer in the morning. This will not stand.
Four historical events underpin this story:
On March 10, 1957, the falls and the village at Celilo on the Columbia River, a Native American cultural and trading hub for more than ten thousand years, were inundated with the closing of the floodgates of the newly commissioned The Dalles Dam.
On March 10, 2007, a commemoration of the event was held at the relocated Native American village, which lay across I-84 from the original site.
On October 19, 2007, the Marmot Dam on the Sandy River was removed, allowing the river to flow freely again from the glacial fields on Mt. Hood to the Columbia River.
An attempt to site a gambling casino in the Columbia River Gorgeâthe so called “Bridge of the Gods” projectâwas active during 2007. It failed to get traction when numerous citizens, citizen groups, and the governor came out against it.
The rest of the story was derived solely from the imagination of the author.
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