William Krueger - Blood Hollow

“Did he kill Charlotte?” Jenny asked. There was disbelief, and maybe a little fear, in her voice.

Jo took off her jacket, opened the entryway closet, and reached for a hanger. “The sheriff has evidence that points in that direction.”

Jenny leaned back against the wall and stared down at the rug. “When they first started going out, it seemed like it was Solemn just playing her. By the end, I remember wondering who was playing who.” She shook her head. “But, Jesus, killing her?”

“He’s innocent until proven guilty, Jen,” Cork said.

She looked at him with those crystal blue eyes that were her mother’s. “Not Solemn Winter Moon, Dad. Not in this town.”

Sam Winter Moon used to say white people were just like puppies. If one peed on a tree, all the others had to pee on it, too. The morning after Solemn vanished into the night, Cork found out just how true Sam’s words were.

Jo had a court case first thing, and she left in the gray light before sunrise to prepare. Cork made sure the kids got up, had breakfast, and were off to school on time. They drank Minute Maid orange juice, ate Cocoa Puffs and Kix, and complained because Rose always had a hot breakfast for them. When they were finally out the door and on their way, Cork thought a hot breakfast did sound like a good idea, and he hopped in his Bronco and headed for the Broiler.

Johnny Papp’s Pinewood Broiler was an institution in Aurora, a gathering place for locals as far back as Cork could remember. His father, during his tenure as sheriff, often started his day there, rubbing elbows with the loggers and construction crews and merchants and resort owners of Tamarack County. Most of them were descended from the early Voyageurs and the immigrants-Finns, Germans, Slavs, Irish, and a dozen other nationalities who’d come in the old days, lured by the promise of a good life built on the wealth of the great white pines and the rich iron ore deposits of the Mesabi and Vermilion Ranges. Only a very few ended up rich, but most immigrants were able to build good lives, create homes, and establish history. The problem was that as they moved in, they shoved aside an entire group of people who had occupied that land for generations. The white men called them the Chippewa, which was a bastardization of one of the names by which they were known, Ojibwe. They were part of the Anishinaabe Nation whose territory, by the time the white settlers arrived, stretched from the eastern shores of the Great Lakes to the middle of the Great Plains. The Anishinaabeg saw themselves as stewards of the land with no more right or need to possess the earth than the hawks did the air currents that held them aloft. Land ownership was a white man’s concept, and it was accomplished through a series of treaties and underhanded business dealings that robbed the Anishinaabeg blind.

But all this was a long time ago, long before the Broiler regulars were born, and to them it was ancient history and of no relevance to their lives. Unless the uppity members of one of the tribal bands decided to push the issue. Which happened on occasion. Usually with an outcome that pleased no one.

When Cork stepped into the Broiler that morning, the talk was of Solemn Winter Moon. Everyone seemed to know about the accusations and about Solemn’s flight. Cork bellied up to the counter, called to Sara, a young waitress with tanning-booth brown skin and dyed blonde hair, for a cup of coffee and a stack of buckwheat cakes, then he turned to listen to what was being said at the nearest table.

Jeeter Hayes was holding forth. Jeeter was head of a crew that did tree work for the Tamarack County Department of Parks and Recreation. He was a big man with an enormous number of tattoos that made his arms look, from a distance, like the green hide of an alligator. He had a small head for such a large frame, and Cork had always suspected that the size was an indication of how little that skull had to hold. Everyone at Jeeter’s table seemed to have a story of a social or criminal trespass by Solemn, and every story seemed to be worse than the last.

Jeeter finally looked in Cork’s direction. “I heard he did things to her before he killed her. That true, Cork?”

“You want details, ask Arne Soderberg.” Cork sipped his coffee and wondered where the hell his pancakes were.

“I heard your wife’s defending him.”

“You want to know, ask her.”

“I always kind of liked Jo,” Jeeter said. The way he said it made it sound vaguely dirty. “We all do, don’t we, boys?” He nodded, but the other men only looked at him, as if wondering where this was going. “We don’t like it when she pushes something for them out there on the rez, but she’s almost one of us by now, you know?” Jeeter stood up, walked to the counter, and sat on the stool next to Cork. “Defending a guy like Winter Moon, after what he did to Charlotte Kane, that’ll set a mean hook in a lot of folks’ thinking. Am I right?”

Cork said, “The kid hasn’t been formally charged yet, and you’ve already got him convicted and hung, Jeeter.”

Jeeter narrowed his eyes on Cork. “A man who’d piss on a cross, hell, I imagine nothing’s beyond him.”

Solemn had never pissed on a cross. He had, however, admitted to vandalizing St. Agnes Church, which included urinating in the baptismal font and spray-painting graffiti across one of the church walls. He’d written Mendax. The vandalism had taken place late at night, a few weeks before Christmas. In a door-to-door canvass of the neighborhood following the incident, the sheriff’s deputies found someone who’d seen Solemn’s truck parked on the street in front of the church. When they went out to Dot’s place to talk to Solemn, the deputies found a can of black spray paint in his truck. Solemn didn’t even try to deny his guilt.

Jo had defended him. Solemn claimed to have been drunk and to have acted alone, but Jo had a question for him he couldn’t answer and it made her believe he was not telling the whole truth. She asked him what Mendax meant. He told her he didn’t know. “Liar,” she said. He swore he was telling the truth. “No,” Jo told him. “Loosely translated, the word means liar.” When she asked him why he’d put that particular word on the wall of St. Agnes, he refused to reply. It was Jo’s belief that Solemn hadn’t done the deed on his own. She thought he’d been talked into it and was covering for his accomplice. She believed the most likely candidate was his girlfriend Charlotte Kane, who was bright, Catholic, and at that time, displaying a wildness that surprised everyone. Solemn insisted on taking the fall alone. He apologized in person and in writing, and he spent a day taking the spray paint off the wall. He also agreed to shovel the walks of St. Agnes free of charge during the rest of the winter.

At the counter of the Broiler, seated next to Cork, Jeeter opened his hands and said with great innocence, “I’m just going on history here, O’Connor. Just looking at the road that kid’s already traveled and torn up behind him.”

Cork said, “I took you in a few times for drunk and disorderly back when I wore a badge, Jeeter. Does that mean you’re ripe for killing somebody?”

Jeeter leaned close. Cork could smell the char of crisp bacon on his breath. “You want to know the truth, I don’t have to wait until a jury says he’s guilty. I know it already. Indian bucks, see, they love the idea of doing a white woman. Get ’em drunk and, hell, anything’s game.” His words were not spoken loud, but they were spoken into a hush that had settled over the Broiler.

Cork looked across the room at the faces of people he knew, but who sometimes seemed like strangers. No one contradicted Jeeter Hayes.

“This conversation’s over, Jeeter,” Cork said.