The sheriff stepped away from the door and walked around the table to watch the two men. He was tempted to stop whatever it was Lonetree was up to, but his instincts held him back.
“She had most of her clothing on when I found her. It made me sick.”
Lonetree nodded and patted the deputy on the back. “Deputy Jennings, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You did good work tonight. I wish I had dependable men like you on the Rez.” He smiled and looked at the sheriff. “Hell, we wouldn’t have any crime at all.”
“Just lucky, coming across that Indian like I did.”
“That Indian?”
“The suspect, I mean. No offense to you, sir.”
“No offense taken, Deputy. That was a stroke of luck, coming across a murder and rape in that alley. Do you always check the alleys on that side of town?”
“As often as I can, yes sir.”
John lightly pinched the deputy’s shoulder, then patted it again. “Say, that’s a nice set of rings.”
Jennings looked down and nervously switched his wide brimmed hat to his other hand. John wasn’t looking at the deputy’s hand any longer, but at the embroidered badge on the man’s jacket.
The sheriff slowly unsnapped the holstered weapon at his side.
“We’ve had some disagreement here, Deputy. Maybe another set of trained law enforcement eyes can sort it out for us.” John held his hand out, gesturing for Jennings to face the girl’s body. He kept his large hand on the boy as he led him over to the mid-point of the stainless steel table. “This impression right here…do you have any idea what that could be?”
The deputy leaned in and looked at the backward L indentation on the girl’s chest. He cleared his throat.
“No, sir…I uh…no, I don’t know.”
“Falling stars,” John said. He looked away from the body and released the boy’s shoulder.
“Sir?” The deputy looked up.
“Nothing. Just a dream I had a few nights ago,” John smiled. He looked at the sheriff and let the smile fade. “Deputy, you say Randy Yellowgrass was leaning over the body when you found him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind Randy was intoxicated. You know, drunken Indian and all that. But I find it hard to believe Randy was capable of doing this. Especially since Betty was his very own cousin.”
“I didn’t know that, John,” Kimble said, staring at his deputy.
“Yeah, well, in all honesty, that’s neither here nor there, sheriff. Cousins have killed cousins long before this. However, there is one thing… That damn dream I had, falling stars…Well, they were falling around Betty, of all people.”
“There’s some who say John here has certain…” the sheriff looked from the deputy to Lonetree, “abilities. We laugh it off most times down at the station. Dream-walking they call it.”
“Indians — what are you going to do?” John asked jokingly. But he quickly advanced on the deputy, reaching inside Jennings’ uniform jacket, past the embroidered star, and ripped free the metal badge pinned to the officer’s shirt. He took Jennings by the arm and threw him toward Betty Youngblood’s body. The deputy turned in indignation as he slammed into the autopsy table, shaking the dead girl’s body violently. John Lonetree placed the star-shaped badge on Betty’s chest — right into the imprint of the backward L. “Falling stars, Deputy Jennings.”
“Goddamn!” the sheriff said. He pulled his nine-millimeter out of its holster.
For a split second, John didn’t know who the sheriff was going to point the weapon at. He was relieved when he saw it was Jennings who was being covered.
“When you held her mouth closed, you broke her teeth off with your rings. And then after you cut her breast off, you cut her throat.” John grabbed the deputy by the jacket and deftly removed Jennings’ own weapon. He tossed it to the shaking coroner, who juggled it and finally caught it. “After that, you thought it was safe enough to fuck this little girl — after she was dead!” he said through clenched teeth.
“You fuckin’—” the sheriff said, taking very close aim at his own man.
“Then you cut her up some more, didn’t you? But you didn’t count on the badge you were wearing…the star. It made that backward L shape. Add three more of those L’s and you have a five-pointed star.”
“Jesus,” the coroner said. He looked like he was close to going into shock.
“I think if you look in the back of his cruiser, or search his house, you’ll find the uniform he was wearing when he murdered this little girl. The knife he used on her is more than likely in the sewer or a lake. The doc here will be able to extract his DNA from Betty’s body.” He shook Jennings one last time, tossed the deputy aside like a rag doll and stormed out of the examination room.
An hour after Jennings was taken into custody for the rape and murder of Betty Youngblood, Sheriff Kimble found John Lonetree sitting on the curb, leaning against a parking meter.
“I’ve never in my life seen or heard anything like that.”
Lonetree looked past the sheriff, up toward the night sky. The nights held a chill that was getting ready to morph into outright cold, as the middle of October approached.
“Cursed is what I am,” John said. He took a shuddering breath. “The curse of Dream Walking has always been with me, my mother, and grandmother.” He finally looked at the sheriff. “It really sucks.” He pulled his gun, and then his own badge from his Levis jacket and handed them to the sheriff.
“What’s this?”
“I want you to give them to the tribal council for me. I can’t go back and face them.”
“Why? You have nothing to hide. You did good John — real good. You made me look like a fool.”
“Van, making a redneck like you look like a fool isn’t that difficult a task, and not something I aspire to do very often.” He shook his head. “I had the dream of Betty and the falling stars, and didn’t act on it. I’m not tired of my red blood, but I’m tired of being numb inside and not recognizing things for what they are. I guess I refused to act because I was almost ashamed of being an Indian. That has to stop.” John rose slowly to his feet.
“Where will you go?”
Lonetree pulled the telegram from his jacket pocket.
“New York, and then Pennsylvania — a house called Summer Place. An old classmate of mine from Harvard, we used to play football together. Anyway, he needs my help. I figure this is a good time for a vacation and a hard case study on what it is that I am. He needs help, and I need to get the hell out of here.”
“Help with what? What is Summer Place?” Kimble asked.
John had turned and started to walk away, but he stopped. When he turned back, he had a crooked grin on his face.
“It ate his grad student a few years ago. Leave it to Gabriel Kennedy to make my guilt seem small.”
John walked off into the darkness of the Montana night, his black hair gleaming in the moonlight. His cowboy boots clicked down the road leading away from the reservation, possibly forever.
The third member of Gabriel Kennedy’s team was on his way to New York.
The man tilted the faculty ID so the heavyset bartender could see it clearly in the dim light of the filthy, smelly dive someone had the gall to name Nirvana. The bartender looked it over and eyed the man at the bar. The man wore a brown suit and a white shirt. His collar was open, and he wore no tie.
Instead of answering his question, the bartender poured a tap beer and walked away. The man in the suit sighed and placed the photo of Jennifer Tilden back in his coat pocket. He turned to leave.