Two Medicine (27 page)

He had recently ended
things with Bridget (although she still came to the store or to the
bonfires to hang out with us at times as if nothing had changed)
and he had taken up with a new girl, Jamie, a very tiny,
black-haired girl who was actually high up in the park
administration, I came to find out – a full-timer for the park year
round. She was also very pretty, with green eyes, but she was very
serious and had a dead-pan nature that was hard to get
around.

As usual, I don’t know
where Ronnie could have met her, or any of his hook ups, but he
started bringing Jamie around pretty often, and introduced her to
me one night as me and Katie where experimenting, out of sheer
curiosity if not boredom, with a bunch of random fruit, cheese,
candy, and dairy ingredients tossed into a blender to make a new
milkshake we were going to call “The Alpine.”

“
What’s up gang?” he
called over to us as he came stomping down the stairs to the
kitchen, Jamie following down the stairs behind him in more careful
steps. There was a feline quality to her movement – in looking
around the room, in stepping down the stairs. I guessed they had
just screwed more likely than not, as Ronnie was not one to waste
time in his room doing much else with any female guest. I scanned
Jamie for signs of having been tossed around the sack but I didn’t
see anything that gave a clue.

“
Jamie, meet the gang.” He
waved a hand in our direction as he opened the kitchen fridge and
stuck his head in, and then came out with a Coke. “By the way,” he
said to Jamie, casually, “Will wants to work for the administration
this fall. He wants to stay here the year ‘round, so find him a
job.” He drank a long gulp from his Coke, his small mustache
bristling over the edge of the can.

Jamie sat down at the
bench by the big kitchen table. “Is that right?” she asked, folding
her legs and hunching over watching me.

I shrugged. “Well, I
planned on when I first got here that I’d want to stay year
round…”

“
But then you actually got
up here…” she finished my sentence with a knowing smile.

“
No, I still want to
stay,” I said, “I’m just not sure what I want to do for a job here
in the winter.”

“
What the hell else are
you gonna do but work for the park, Chiefy, be a lumberjack like
Larry?” Ronnie said.

“
You never
know.”

“
Well let me know if you
want to talk to some people, later in the summer, Will,” Jamie
said, as Ronnie began dragging to the back door.

“
Come on, sweet cheeks;
let’s get some supplies in Browning,” he said as he kicked open the
screen door and left. Outside I heard Ronnie’s junker start up and
spit gravel as he drove out of the parking lot.

I walked back over to
Katie, as she dumped the icy gelatinous goop she had created into a
large glass. Neither of us was too interested in trying “The
Alpine” anymore as we peered at it given its crude, mud-like
appearance, so we stuck the whole thing in the freezer to
“hopefully make some kind of sorbet,” Katie said
optimistically.

As we were cleaning up,
which we always did religiously after using the kitchen to avoid
hearing Larry’s bitching, Katie looked at me and said out of
nowhere, “Were you in love with her?”

I looked back at her.
“Who?” I asked, already knowing who she asked about of
course.

She just shook her head
ruefully and went back to washing dishes.

“
Why do you ask?” I said
after a moment, resuming my drying.

“
Because you always wear
that necklace, and I saw her wearing it when she came in; and
because you haven’t really been the same since she died,” she
answered, dumping out the blender pitcher. “You’re
different.”

I had no idea that Katie
would have noticed those things, but I should have because of
anyone at the store she was the observing type – the type that
listened more than spoke, and watched more than
interacted.

“
How am I different
exactly?

“
You’re sadder,
quieter...” Katie said, turning to me and leading against the
counter, scanning me as if looking anew at my symptoms. She then
wiped her hands on her apron, and said, “You seem to be… I don’t
know… waiting for something – like you’re not all here in the
moment anymore.”

I thought about that for a
moment, and figured she was probably right.

“
I asked Ronnie if he
noticed anything different, but he said he didn’t think so,” she
continued as I thought it over.

No, I said to myself, only
a woman would notice the necklace and the slight change in
tone.

“
It’s hard to talk about,”
I said, as we finished the last of the dishes.

“
It’s the
hard-to-talk-about things that need to be talked about most,” Katie
said.

I said nothing further
about it. I wanted to keep Alia pure, in a different place, not in
the here and now where she was dead, cold, gone. In the other
place, she was alive, forever young, and waiting. We cleaned up and
left the kitchen for the morning.

That night as
I lay in bed, looking up at the ceiling, with its
old nails sticking out here and there, and Siegfried and Roy now
gone from their little sleeping nook, out eating moths and flies in
the black sky, I thought about what Katie had said again. Alia’s
death
had
made me
a different person, made me think different – about this place, Two
Medicine, about Montana, about myself. A person who fell in love
within a couple days and then had his love ripped from his bed in a
brutal death – that will change a man. But her slaying had changed
me another way too, it had crazily given me a new purpose in my
home at Glacier Park – to find who killed Alia and have him
arrested – that was my one thought.

I wondered so often, minute
to minute, about Alia’s murder – who did it, and why – that I began
to ask
why
I
actually cared so much? I mean, I had found this wonderful,
beautiful girl who I really could have fallen in love with – not
just a two-day love but a lifetime love; but the entire
relationship, the entire time we had known each other, could fit
within one week; and we had had sex only once. I lay in bed,
staring out of my window into the night sky, and thought, “We all
die eventually, and even though hers was brutal and horrible, and
so far unsolved, death was still an experience that happened every
day in the world. So why couldn’t I let it go as a tragedy, like a
friend being killed in a car crash by a drunk driver?
Why had it changed me?

But I knew the answer. It
was because even though it was true that Alia and I had barely
scratched the surface of each other’s souls and sensibilities, in
another sense, a truer sense, there was no “surface” at all with us
and had never been – we had gone deep down to the bottom of our
hearts almost instantly, unconsciously, and we hand branded each
other on our skin, in our hearts. There’s no other way to say it. I
felt it as strongly and painfully as I would an actual brand on the
skin. She had branded me, left something in me, and taken something
out of me – all within a week, within a few kisses, and within a
few words – with just a few looks from those eyes of hers. I
did
love her, I repeated
to myself as my eyes closed that evening, and I was going to find
out who the hell did that crime to her, and I would die trying if
need be.

The first thing
I did the next day, which was fortunately my day
off, and which was a Friday, was to call up Greg again.

“
Hello?” he answered after
a few rings.

“
Greg? It’s Will,” I said,
as I sat on the edge of my bed. “Just hear me out for a second. I
want to explain something. Everyone’s attitudes so far about the
murder – Alia’s murder – is that it’s just another reservation
incident, another part of living in the slums, and not really worth
anybody’s time to really trouble with. I know that’s how it’s going
to be written off – another “Red Alert.” The BIA cops haven’t
lifted a finger after I was down there, the locals in Browning
don’t care from what I can tell, and the tribe council isn’t
interested either – just another black eye for them and the
Blackfoot name. And, of course, no family or friends have surfaced
to even mourn her since she died.”

“
Ok…” Greg said,
hesitantly, after a moment’s pause.

“
Well,
you seem to be the only one besides myself showing any kind of
feeling about her murder, and it did happen on
your
turf, as you
yourself said... So what I propose is that we do a little
investigating ourselves: ask around, talk to people, get the police
reports, and just find out what happened – ourselves...” There was
no response on the other line. I cleared my throat and plowed
onward, “And we start with a visit the reservation to find out more
about her last days – visit with her foster parents, her roommates,
co-workers… nothing major... you know.”

I tried to keep my voice
level as I spoke with him, fighting back the rushing anxiety I felt
as I could almost feel him slipping away from me as I spoke. “Then
we talk to this Clayton guy, see what his deal is…”

Greg butted in,
“Browning’s outside my ‘turf,’ Will, so I wouldn’t have any
authority there, as you well know. And you, some amateur, going
around stirring things up about a murder case isn’t going to help
either.”

“
You
don’t need
authority
to ask questions, Greg. We’re just interested in
finding out about her life, as friends of hers that are grieving
over what happened – that’s all it has to be to anyone who asks –
just a couple friends trying to just get some answers... And
anyway, anything we find we report to Olsterman in Browning; and if
he doesn’t’ do anything about it then we go to the cops in
Kalispell –simple as that!” I ended with a hopeful lift to my
voice, and then expectantly waited for his response.

There was a silence on the
other end of the phone, again, and then a tired sigh. “I understand
where you’re coming from, Will. But I honestly don’t have time to
conduct some half-baked investigation that will lead nowhere,
probably. I’ve got
real work
to do in the park, other matters to deal with, you
know.”

“
Real
work?” I asked, with a regrettable harshness. “More lectures about
bear bells and pepper spray, Greg? Is checking fishing licenses and
ripping parking tickets more
important
than looking into a
murder?”

Silence on the other end
again – this time an ominous silence. I regretted instantly what I
had said, remembering out talk on the porch, and how he had
confided in me out of trust and friendship, and I felt embarrassed
and sorry now as I threw it back into his face.

“
I’m sorry, man, I
just…”

“
Don’t be sorry,” he
quickly interrupted. “You’re out of line saying it, and you don’t
know the first thing about being a ranger, but… but you’re more
right than you’re wrong.” He cleared his throat and spoke a little
quieter. “To be honest with you Will I haven’t been able to get
this case out of my mind, and I’ve actually been asking around
about it in the park.”

I heard him move the phone
to a different ear, “That’s what I was doing a couple of days ago,”
he almost whispered, “I went to Kalispell and the ranger HQ and ran
the facts through Records – trying to find a similar past incident
– any kind of similarity to other murders. I also asked Kalispell
PD for help in running Alia’s friends and connections through the
system.”

“
And?” I asked.

“
And zippo.” He took a
deep breath, then said quietly, “I keep thinking about next summer,
and the next after that, and what I’ll feel like driving around Two
Med as a ranger who let a murder go in his park. When I see other
girls walking down the road, that’s what I’ll think about. When I
look in the mirror, that’s what I think about.”

A pause, and then, “I’m
willing to go along with this for a bit, Will, to push back a
little, even if that just means crossing a few people off a list I
have in my head. I’m in.”

I felt a shot of optimisms
bolt through my mind at his words, a rush of energy. Even just the
possibility of trying to help Alia with a member of law enforcement
(even if it was a ranger) gave me a new hope.

“
Excellent, I’ll be over in an hour.” I said quickly, hanging
up the phone before he could utter another word, before he could
protest about needing a few days, about being busy, about taking
our time. I was too driven now, too excited by my new plan to
actively
do
something
that nothing was going to
delay it – it had already been delayed too long and the trail of
her murder was already too cold.

I borrowed Ronnie’s
junker car again, which by now had sort of become
everybody’s car, and got to Greg’s ranger station well before an
hour. I rapped on the door and Greg let me in with an incredulous
look. I again explained my plans to him and it took some cajoling.
In the time it had taken to drive over to his station, Greg had
already cooled a bit from his decision, and had about a million
objections to starting that morning, but I was able to finally
convince him to go with me to Browning that day. But, he said, it
would have to be at lunch time, at noon, and only for a short time
during his break, and that he had to be back promptly at 1
pm.