“John? Where are you? Let me see you, okay? Let’s talk, okay?” asked Wilson. John heard the fear in Wilson’s voice, even as he tried to bury it beneath layers of professional calm.
“John?”
John inched closer to Wilson and touched his arm.
“Hey, John, you scared me there. Why don’t you come out here where I can see you? We can talk, right? Why don’t we talk?”
John remained silent.
“Hey, John, I met your mom tonight. She’s a beautiful woman.”
John saw his Indian mother on the delivery table. She reached for her Indian child.
“Olivia, right? She really loves you, man.”
John saw Olivia, wearing only a towel, walking across a hardwood floor. Her hair wet, her damp feet leaving slight prints on the wood.
“She wants you to come home. Don’t you want to go home?”
Wilson waited as long as he could stand for a response. His voice broke.
“And what about your dad, John? What’s his name?”
I don’t have a father, John thought, but he saw Daniel dribbling a basketball in the driveway. Like this, Daniel was shouting, like this.
“Come on, John, talk to me. It’s okay. We can talk about it. Everybody will understand. I’ll make them understand. I’m a writer, John. What do you say?”
Silence. Wilson thought hard, trying to save his life.
“Listen, John, any Indian would kill a white guy if he thought he could get away with it. Which Indian wouldn’t do it? I’m an Indian. I know. There are a million white men I’d kill if they’d let me. Talk to me, John. Indian to Indian. Real Indians. I’ll understand.”
John heard the fear in Wilson’s voice now.
“Hey, remember up by my apartment? Remember when you had that golf club? Man, I thought you were going to beat my ass. Who were you with? That Indian woman, the one who hates me, right? Maria, Marie, Mary? What’s her name?
“I knew an Indian woman named Mary. Beautiful Mary. Back when I was a rookie. She lived on the streets, man, and I looked out for her. Really, I did. I was the only Indian cop on the force. The only one. Can you believe that? There aren’t many now, but I was the only one then. And I’ll tell you. It was hard work. They always gave me the shit jobs. Called me Chief and Tonto and everything else. Man, it was awful. But I took care of the Indians, you know? All those Indians who lived downtown? Just like now, huh? Lots of them. And Beautiful Mary was my favorite. I mean, I never told anybody this before, but I loved her. I mean, really loved her. I kept thinking we were going to get married or something. I thought we’d have little Indian babies, you know? But then she was killed. Raped and killed. They stuffed her behind a Dumpster. I just wanted to die, you know?”
John stepped forward and pressed the pistol against the back of Wilson’s head. Terrified, Wilson tried to think, not wanting the ultimate indignity of being killed by his own weapon.
“Please,” Wilson said as he struggled against the ropes. He was afraid of the pistol. He was begging for his life from the man he knew was the Indian Killer.
“Don’t hurt me,” Wilson said to John. “I’m not a white man. I’m Indian. You don’t kill Indians.”
26. Testimony
“MR. WILLIAMS, I’M SURE you know why you’re here, don’t you?”
“Call me Ty. And yeah, I figure it’s because of what we did to that white guy.”
“And who is this ‘we’ you’re referring to?”
“You know, Reggie and Harley and me.”
“Reggie Polatkin, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“And Harley?”
“Harley Tate, man, he’s deaf. He’s a Colville Indian.”
“And where is Harley Tate now?”
“You mean you ain’t got him? And Reggie, too? I figured you had us all nabbed.”
“Nabbed for what, Ty?”
“For beating up that white guy on the football field. Well, I should say that Reggie really hurt him. Harley and I didn’t know that was going to happen. What was that white guy’s name. I read it in the papers, but I don’t remember.”
“Robert Harris.”
“Yeah, that’s it. Reggie took that guy’s eyes. But he’s doing okay, enit?”
“Mr. Harris is fine. But he says you tried to kill him.”
“Hey, I don’t know nothing about any murders. Yeah, I beat up on that white guy. But like I said, Reggie really hurt him. I didn’t want no part of that. You got to talk to Reggie about that.”
“You know where Reggie happens to be?”
“Nope.”
“Where were you this evening about ten o’clock, Ty?”
“I was at Big Heart’s, up on Aurora. I swear.”
“And where were Reggie and Harley at ten?”
“I don’t know, man. I mean, Reggie left after he almost got in a fight with Jack Wilson.”
“The mystery writer, Jack Wilson? The cop?”
“Yeah, he hangs around the bar a lot. He’s a Wannabe Indian.”
“Wannabe?”
“Yeah, you know, wants to be Indian.”
“I see, and what time did Reggie leave the bar?”
“I don’t know. About nine or so, I guess.”
“And you didn’t go with him?”
“No, I swear. There’s about a hundred Indians who’ll tell you I was in that bar until closing.”
“We’ll check on that. How about Harley?”
“Harley took off this afternoon and I ain’t seen him since. He and Reggie almost duked it out.”
“Does Reggie own a knife?”
“A knife?”
“How many times has Reggie used this knife on someone?”
“I don’t know anything about a knife. Hey, shit, this ain’t about that Indian Killer, is it?”
“You tell us what this knife is about.”
“Hey, man, you ain’t going to pin that Indian Killer stuff on me. I didn’t kill nobody. And Reggie didn’t kill nobody, either. I know Reggie. He’s smart. He went to college, you know?”
“We know. He beat up his professor. A great student.”
“I don’t know what that was about, man. Maybe Reggie was just trying to scare him. That professor put the whammy on him, you know? Got Reggie kicked out. Reggie was smart, man. I tell you. He didn’t kill nobody. You go ahead and run your tests. Get all the witnesses you want. But I didn’t kill nobody. Reggie didn’t kill nobody.”
“Do you own a knife?”
“Yeah, I got a Swiss Army knife, a butter knife, and a steak knife at home. Shit, yeah, I own knives. I have to eat, enit?”
“Did Reggie own a knife?”
“I don’t know, man.”
“And what about Harley Tate?”
“You’ll have to ask him yourself.”
“And where is he?”
“Only Harley knows where Harley is.”
27. Decisions
“DON’T HURT ME,” WILSON said to John. “I’m not a white man. I’m Indian. You don’t kill Indians.”
John wondered if Wilson knew the difference between dreaming and reality. How one could easily become the other.
In his dreams, John saw his Indian mother standing on the porch as he drove away from the reservation. It was cold and rainy, as it would be on a day such as that. Or on another day, in another dream, his Indian mother on the delivery table, in all the blood, too much blood. She has died during his birth. An evil child, he destroyed his mother’s life as she gave him his.
Standing on the last skyscraper in Seattle, John was silent as the desert. The golden sand and blue sky. The long series of footprints leading to the horizon where that stand of palm trees waits. The wind beginning to blow. A storm approaching. Soon the sand would obscure the footprints and there would be no trace that anybody had come this way before.