The Bakken Blade Read online

  Zeke nodded. “He’s safer here?”

  Mankato nodded.

  “Who issued the warrant?” asked Zeke.

  “There’s lots of publicity about this,” said the Lieutenant. “My boss was anticipating a Federal warrant, so he asked the Tribal Court to issue a, what would you say, a preemptive warrant.”

  Zeke nodded. “Can we see him?”

  “Yeah, we got that request from the FBI office. We’ve got it set up in one of the interview rooms. I’ll need Bruce Doekiller to sit in on it with you.”

  “That’s fine,” said Cord.

  “He’s been interviewed already,” said Zeke. “How many times?”

  “We’ve talked to him four times. He admits to being drunk and angry at Jenny, but he denies being involved with her death. Or that mess at the trailer park.”

  “Can we take a shot at him?” asked Cord.

  “Yep, he’s waiting,” said the Lieutenant. “Come with me.”

  * * *

  “Why should I talk to you?” asked Sam Bearcat. He was sitting at a wooden table in a gray prison jumpsuit with wide red stripes down the arms and legs. Handcuff chains had worn grooves in the edge of the wooden tabletop where destructive prisoners had sawed at it with their restraints.

  “Sam, look, we may be your best chance. We’re the only ones investigating. Most everyone else, including the Tribal Court and the FBI, is sure you did it,” said Zeke.

  “What’re you, the good cop?” sneered Bearcat.

  “Sure,” said Zeke. “So we need you to walk us through what happened that night.”

  Bearcat was sullen, sitting with his back to the concrete block wall while Zeke, Cord and Doekiller sat across the table from him.

  “Frankly, Sam, they looked at your record and decided that you’re guilty. The FBI was anxious to wrap this one up. Your history made it easy for us,” said Cord.

  “And you’re the bad cop,” said Sam.

  “I’m the bad FBI agent. I was anxious to wrap it up, too.”

  Sam scowled. “Sure, just lock up the Indian,” he said.

  “So, what happened, Sam? What do you remember?” asked Zeke.

  “We were drinking and throwing axes. Jenny and I had a fight and I’d left her at home. Then she shows up at the bar. She was trying to make me mad,” said Sam.

  “What was the fight about?” asked Zeke.

  Sam smiled a crooked smile. “The usual, you know? Sex and money.”

  “Do you have a job?” asked Zeke.

  “I did, but I got laid off,” said Sam.

  “For…?” asked Cord.

  “I was working security for one of the oil fields. But I failed the drug test,” said Sam. He looked away as he said it.

  “How about Jenny, was she working?” asked Zeke.

  “Yeah, she was working at the Family Dollar.”

  “How long ago did you fail the drug test, Sam?” asked Zeke.

  Sam looked away again. “Uh, it’s been a while.”

  “Did you stop by the Salty Dog most nights?

  “Yeah, I guess. I’d go by for a beer and to win some money throwing the axes.”

  “You did pretty well with that?” asked Zeke.

  “Yeah, I usually came out ahead.”

  Zeke nodded. “Did you and Jenny live together?” he asked.

  “We rented a place over on 4th Street. It’s OK, not too bad.”

  “Been there long?” asked Zeke, keeping a rhythm.

  “Yeah, a couple of months.”

  “So who would have wanted Jenny dead?” Zeke asked, avoiding accusation.

  “Not me, that’s for sure,” said Sam Bearcat.

  “They say you were pretty mad at her. Maybe it was an accident,” said Zeke.

  “Man, they said she was skinned. That’s sick.”

  “Are you a hunter, Sam?” asked Cord.

  “Yeah, sure, most everybody’s a hunter up here. Bighorn sheep, elk, pronghorn…”

  “Pronghorn?” asked Cord.

  “Yeah. You’re not from around here, are you?” asked Sam.

  “It’s sort of a cross between a deer and an antelope,” said Doekiller. “About a hundred pounds and they run like the wind.”

  “How fast?” asked Cord.

  “Up to fifty-five miles an hour,” said Zeke. “Only faster mammal is a cheetah.”

  Doekiller nodded an affirmation, and Cord whistled between his teeth.

  “Are they good for eating?” asked Cord.

  “Pretty good. Some people like them better than venison.”

  “Thing about pronghorn,” said Zeke, “is you need to skin them fast because their hair’s hollow, and it holds the heat.”

  “That’s right,” said Bearcat, looking at Zeke oddly.

  “So, you and Jenny fought about sex and money,” said Zeke. “Sam, was alcohol involved when you fought? Or drugs?”

  “No, I try not to get high if I know I’ll be throwing axes,” said Bearcat. “At least until I get up to the Salty Dog.”

  “Witnesses say you were pretty wasted that night, Sam,” Zeke continued.

  “Yeah, I was pretty pissed at Jenny. When I got to the bar, I had a couple shots to calm down.”

  “A couple?” asked Cord. “Bartender said four.”

  “Yeah, coulda been. I guess they were double shots.”

  “So you were drinking and throwing axes,” Zeke paused and looked at Sam, “and Jenny showed up at the Salty Dog a little bit later. She was still mad at you?”

  “That’s an understatement. When I left the apartment, she was threatening to move out…”

  “What did she do when she got to the bar?” asked Zeke.

  “I don’t know, I didn’t pay much attention at first. But after a while, she got louder, started flirting with guys, talking about stupid crap.”

  “Like…?” asked Zeke.

  “Like how she wanted to be with a real man. Like she was more woman than most men could handle. She was toasted, too.”

  “She was flirting?” asked Zeke.

  “Started out she was just loud talking and putting me down. Like I said, I was throwing axes so I wasn’t really paying attention. I think she started flirting when she saw I wasn’t taking the bait,” said Bearcat. “Probably made her mad.”

  “Did you see her with anybody?” asked Zeke.

  “Yeah, she was talking to some Indian guy. He was a pretty big guy. At a table over by the bar. It looked like he was buying her drinks,” said Bearcat.

  “What did you do?” asked Cord.

  “I finished the match, and then I confronted him. Told him to stay away from Jenny,” said Bearcat.

  “Some patrons said it was a screaming match,” said Cord.

  Sam Bearcat looked at him. “Yeah, I guess it was,” he said.

  “Then what?” asked Zeke.

  “The bartender dialed the police. She yelled, ‘I’m calling the police, now.’ And then Jenny left. So, I sat down at a table. I guess I fell asleep,” said Bearcat.

  “Jenny left alone?” asked Zeke.

  “I don’t know. No, wait, I do remember. I assumed that she left because she didn’t want to deal with the cops. Tossed her drink down real quick and walked out, alone,” said Bearcat.

  * * *

  When she sat like this and listened to the storm, she felt the ebb and flow of the universe with every breath. The energy was palpable. This was the closest she had been to it in a long while, and the raw power of its presence invigorated her.

  The woman sat cross-legged on the floor of a small room. She felt old. The carpeting was filthy and threadbare from years of use. It looked like it had never seen a vacuum cleaner. Her eyes were closed. She could hear the rain pelting hard outside.

  The walls in the room were full of holes the size of a fist, a few from the fists of unremembered men, evidently angry to the point of violence. Others were from her careful application of a Sawzall blade to the drywall. These latter holes were more uniform and square. She
called them “hidey-holes”.

  The blanket she’d wrapped around her shoulders was from the Apache, a man who had lived with her here for the better part of a year, before moving on suddenly. It was red and blue and cream and white with squared off patterns that repeated across the length of it. She’d cut holes in the blanket for her arms with the Sawzall, and now she wore it like a poncho.

  But the energy was pure. It was from the spirits of her ancestors who had lived in this same place and hunted these same lands. Now, she was one of the only ones left, one of the few hunters.

  Thunder cracked outside and the small house shook from the impact of the sound. The rain accelerated suddenly, drowning out other noises. It smelled damp.

  She thought of the small creatures in the forest. The squirrels and the birds and the chipmunks. They must be soaked by now, hiding in a nest or under a rock to stay dry.

  In front of the woman, on the floor, was a skinner’s knife. It was her only knife. It had a short, wide blade and a strong edge. There were two metal rivets binding the wooden handle to the blade. They looked back at the woman like dead eyes. A short lanyard hung from a hole in the handle. This was more of a tool than a weapon. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again and picked it up. The silver blade and the wooden handle looked back at her silently, judgmentally, she thought. She whispered, “You don’t have to understand. You just do your job.”

  She set the tool down and closed her eyes again. Felt the energy.

  The rain continued to pour down, but the wind had stopped. In her mind, the woman visualized the powerful drumming of the heavy raindrops on the ground, the kinetic energy dissipating as each drop plummeted the fertile topsoil, then bounced and fell again finally to be absorbed in the dirt. This was a part of the energy she felt. It was her energy.

  The hidey-holes were dark places in an already dark room. Some were just openings, while others were cut just above the wood framing and had a support below to keep things from falling inside the wall. Those were where she hid her things.

  The rain beat down, relentlessly. The woman got up and picked up the knife. She looked at it with some disdain, then walked to the wall and set it back in its place in the hidey-hole.

  * * *

  “Gramm, are you alright?” asked the girl.

  The woman looked at her with a vacant expression, and then her eyes seemed to focus on the girl. She nodded.

  “Yes, dear,” she said.

  The girl stood very still, uncertain. The small room with the barren carpet and holes in the walls was dark with the dusk of the evening and cold with the brisk wind. The storm had passed through. The woman pulled the blanket tighter around her.

  The animals must be shivering, the woman thought. Then she said, “Are you hungry, dear?”

  The girl, fourteen and still pudgy with baby fat, nodded.

  “I’ll get you something. Would you like macaroni and cheese?”

  The girl thought for a minute and said, “No, do we have any soup left?”

  The woman nodded and said, “Come on, I’ll get you some.”

  In the kitchen, the woman took a container from the refrigerator and set it on the counter. The wahonpi soup inside gave off the strong scent of bison meat, prairie turnips and wild potatoes, and the woman felt the edge of hunger approaching her. She spooned some soup into two bowls and put them in the portable microwave by the stove to warm up.

  She turned back to the girl. “What have you been doing today, Mika?”

  “I’ve been drawing,” said the girl. “It’s too cold and windy to play outside, Gramm.”

  “What are you drawing?” asked the woman.

  The bell on the microwave dinged and the woman removed the hot soups. She set one bowl in front of the girl and the other in front of herself.

  The girl picked up her spoon and started eating.

  “Did you say your meditation today?” asked the woman.

  The girl spooned some soup into her mouth, swallowed and said, “Not yet.”

  “Well, don’t forget,” said the woman. “‘Whatever you do in life, do the very best you can with both your heart and mind…’”

  “I know how it goes, Gramm. I’ll say it after we eat.”

  “Everyday. You must repeat it every day, child. It is your heritage.”

  The girl didn’t respond. When they had finished their soup, the woman went back into the small living room and sat in her place on the floor, legs crossed. She thought about the tribe and the larger nation. She thought about white men getting rich from their oil, and how years ago her father had sold the mineral rights on their land in return for a pittance. She thought about the shame of the Sioux, once a proud people, now reduced to second class citizenship and relegated to unwanted lands.

  They were a laughingstock, and many were drunks that gambled away their paychecks every weekend. They were predictable and impotent. And they had lost their way.

  Chapter 10

  Tillman Cord pulled his Crown Vic up in front of a small brick bungalow with a long, triple-wide driveway. There was a Peterbilt eighteen-wheeler in the driveway attached to a trailer that read, “Stiller Transport.” A large garage dominated the front of the house with three overhead doors. The sod looked like it had been laid recently.

  Zeke, in the passenger seat, said, “Looks like the right place.”

  Both men exited the car and walked up the driveway to the door. The house was one of a few completed in a partially filled subdivision not far from the Bismarck airport. It looked new.

  Zeke rang the doorbell and a moment later a tall man with heavy jowls opened the door. He was dark complected, ruddy like his picture, and his hair was jet black.

  Cord said, “Will Carter? FBI. We tried to call earlier.”

  The man nodded and said, “I saw your call. Just didn’t want to answer it. What do you want?”

  “It’s about the dead girl up in New Town,” said Cord, staring at the man. “You were one of the last people to see her alive.”

  “Oh, that. I guess you may as well come in and talk about it.” He pushed the screen door open for them, unconcerned. He was chewing something. “Just eating dinner.” He wore a red windbreaker with ’Stiller Trucking’ stenciled on the front.

  He led them through a living room to a separate dining room with mismatched maple wood furniture. On the table was a plate half-filled with meatloaf and potatoes, and a tall glass of milk. Will Carter sat in the chair in front of the plate. Then he took another bite of his meatloaf.

  “Mr. Carter, like I said, we’re here about Jenny Lakota’s murder,” Cord started. “I’m with the FBI and we need to ask you a few questions.”

  Carter looked at him, shook his head and said, coolly, indifferently, “That was a horrible thing.” His flippant attitude belied his words.

  “It was,” said Cord.

  “I guess someone at the bar told you about me, right?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. They said the girl was flirting with you, and that you’d gotten into it with her boyfriend,” said Cord.

  “Now wait a minute,” said Carter. “Yeah, I was there, and yeah, I bought the girl a drink, but if you think I’d hurt her… No way. She was just, well, friendly, and she asked for a drink, so I said, ‘Sure’.”

  “Had you seen her before? Did you know her?” asked Zeke.

  “Well, sure, I’d seen her there in the bar before. But this time she was tipsy, and like I said, friendly. So I played along. She was sort of cute, ya know.”

  “What about the boyfriend?” asked Zeke. “Had you seen him before?”

  “Maybe a couple times,” said Carter. “Mostly he threw the axes. Sometimes he looked like he was high on something. Anymore I just mind my own business, drink my beer.”

  “Did you follow the girl to the trailer park? Have sex with her there?” asked Cord.

  “Trailer park? No, nothing like that, man. I mean I finished my beer and left after she did. I heard the bartender call
the cops, and it didn’t sound like someplace I wanted to stay, so I drank up and left.”

  “Did you see her outside?” asked Zeke.

  “No. I admit, I looked around for her when I went out, but I didn’t see her. So I went back to the motel room.”

  “Can anyone verify that?” asked Cord.

  “What, that I went back and watched TV alone? I doubt it,” said Carter. “I fell asleep around 11:30, I think.”

  “Are you a hunter, Mr. Carter?” asked Zeke.

  “Sure. I’m an Indian. I grew up hunting. Just about everyone up here is a hunter.”

  “What do you hunt, mostly?”

  “Big Horn Sheep. Sometimes pronghorn. But those suckers are quick,” said Carter.

  “Have you skinned animals?” asked Cord, pushing a bit with a pointed question.

  “Once or twice,” said Carter. “It’s not something I favor. I usually take the animal to be processed and let them do it all.”

  “But you do know how to skin, then,” said Cord.

  Carter swallowed his food and leveled his eyes at Cord and said, suddenly serious, “I don’t like your questions. I didn’t kill that girl.”

  “Folks in the bar said that you and her boyfriend had a confrontation,” said Cord. “A fight.”

  “Wasn’t a fight, really,” said Carter, back to his meatloaf. “Just a lot of jawing and some threats. He was gesturing around with an axe, but his friends got hold of him before he did anything crazy. He coulda gotten hurt.”

  “And you stayed there, in the bar?” asked Zeke.

  “Yeah, I’m not really one to run from a fight,” said Carter. “I just stayed in my chair by the bar. Let the two of them talk it out.”

  “The man and the girl who was killed, Jenny Lakota?” asked Zeke.

  “Yeah, they were both pretty drunk. Soon as she left, he sat down at a table, all unsteady. And then he put his head down and fell asleep.”

  “He fell asleep?” asked Cord.

  “Yeah. Here, I took a picture.” Carter started scrolling through his smartphone. “In case he made any trouble for me. You know, got his friends together and caught me outside or something.”