Slider’s Son

by Rebecca Fjelland Davis

  “Not much you can do until your dad shows up to clear his own name. Nobody will back that cockamamie theory. We all know your dad too well. You don’t need to sweat that one, Grant. And it’s the big FBI guy’s job. To follow every lead. Doesn’t mean he really thinks either one of you did it.”

  “Who—who do you think did it, Grumpy?”

  “I don’t know, and if I did, I wouldn’t want to say and be spreadin’ rumors.”

  Grant nodded and took a big gulp of sweet, cold root beer. “So you haven’t seen him? I thought maybe he’d come here before he came home.”

  Grumpy shook his head. “Sorry. And much as I like your business, I really think you two better skedaddle home before your mother shuts me down again for corrupting the young. Polish off those root beers and hightail it.”

  So Shirley and Grant gulped down their drinks, said thank you, and stepped outside.

  “Now what? That didn’t help, did it?” Shirley said.

  “Yeah, because at least Dad hasn’t been here . . . and we know everybody else knows he’s innocent, too. It helps.”

  “We going to the courthouse?”

  Grant nodded. “Come on.”

  They took the alley behind Grumpy’s, walking along the back of the stores, as far from streetlight glow as possible. Then they bolted across Main Street into the alley behind Sims’s. From there, they stayed in the shadows until they reached the courthouse. Grant hadn’t known what to expect, but it shocked him to see lights blazing from several main-floor windows.

  “Look!” Shirley jabbed him with her elbow. She pointed.

  Slider’s car was parked, nose-in, right outside his office door.

  “Holy mackerel,” Grant whispered.

  They looked at each other and tiptoed quietly, because the windows were open in the hot night, underneath Slider’s window and listened. They could hear Steadman’s voice. “My man Warner’s on it right now. Evidence expert.”

  Slider said, “Good. Gotta check. That’ll be it for now, then? I’d like to get home. My wife’s probably worried sick.”

  After what seemed like a forever pause to Grant, it sounded like somebody, probably Steadman, pushed his chair back. “Don’t you know better than to make public threats like that, Sheriff?”

  “This is small-town justice. Sort of like the old west. You gotta do what you gotta do to keep law and order. I have no regrets. The whole town would know I’d never kill Big Joe and hide it.”

  “But you’d have killed him in public?”

  “If I had to kill him, to save his wife and kids? I might have. But I didn’t.”

  The voices moved away from the window, probably toward the sheriff’s door. Shirley and Grant stared at each other.

  “Shall we go tell him we’re here? Or run and beat him home?” Shirley whispered, looking ready to bolt if Grant said to run.

  Grant wanted for all the world to go meet Slider at the front courthouse door, but he couldn’t imagine what Mamie would say when they all came home together. “I guess we’d better make a run for it.”

  Shirley took off like a shot, with Grant on her heels. They were one and a half houses from home when a car pulled up beside them. Shirley let out a little shriek, but Grant knew the sound of the engine.

  Slider came to a stop and stepped out of the car in one motion. “What in tarnation are my children doing, running the streets like ragamuffins just because I’m out of town for a night?”

  “Daddy!” Shirley dodged around the car, and grabbed him around the waist, hugging tight.

  Slider patted her hair, then lifted her up and kissed her. He held out his other hand to Grant, who, just as relieved as Shirley to have Slider right here in the flesh, let himself get pulled tight against his dad’s ribs. Slider roughed his hair, and set Shirley down.

  “Get in the car, you ragamuffins. What in tarnation were you doing?”

  “Daddy!” Shirley spilled out, “The FBI man got Grant and thought he killed Big Joe and that maybe you did it, and we were afraid they arrested you and put you in jail because Grant said the FBI man took over your office, and we were so scared, so we went to see if you were in jail!”

  Slider chuckled as they climbed into the car.

  He pulled up to their house and turned to them. “Well, glad you’re checkin’ up on me. But I think I can take care of myself. Even if that FBI guy is a little big for his britches.”

  “What happened? Did you find Little Joe? Did you bring the Thorsons back?” Grant asked.

  “Yes, they’re back.”

  “Where? Where are they?”

  “Mary’s in custody, in the jail for now. She won’t speak a word. Little Joe, Emma, and Alice are in protective custody.”

  “What’s protective custody? Like jail for kids?”

  “No, no. Just staying somewhere safe where the law can keep track of them. So Little Joe can’t run off again. With the judge’s sister for now. In Lakota.”

  Grant nodded. “But what was Steadman talking about? Who is his man? That Warner? That he said is on it? What did that mean?” Grant said.

  “Have to search the Thorsons’ car and house. The car’s up at Reservation Lake. I just brought back the family, couldn’t do anything about the car. But one evidence expert is going to drive up tonight, check the car, and be back tomorrow morning. The other one is going through their house right now. Will probably finish in the morning. Now. Let’s get out. I’m going to open the front door. You two scamper up to bed as silently as possible, and I’ll go distract your mother. Maybe she won’t notice that you’re missing in action.”

  And so they did. For once in his life, Grant pulled something over on his mother without her noticing.

  When Slider came up to kiss them goodnight, as Mamie instructed, he heard Shirley giggling to beat the band in the next room.

  Thirty-Nine

  Murder Weapon

  Grant had a nightmare about a thundering knock on the door and being hauled off to a kids’ prison, where he and Little Joe sat huddled together by the wall. The door to the cell opened, and Frank was thrown inside. The door banged shut, and open again. Then Orland was thrown in, too. The banging continued, doors down the prison hall, Grant figured, while together they waited for something horrible that was going to happen, and Frank kept saying, “We promised we’d run away on the train. Let’s break out and run away before they come back and kill us! They’re gonna hang all of us!”

  Grant opened his eyes, relieved for only a moment that it was a dream. Somebody real was actually knocking on the door downstairs. It sounded an awfully lot like Steadman’s knock yesterday.

  He lay still, not wanting to be the one to answer the door. His dad’s footsteps went to the front door, and it clicked open.

  “You again?” Slider said downstairs. “It’s not even seven o’clock. What couldn’t wait?”

  Grant bolted out of bed and went to the stairs in his pajamas. The sun sat low above the horizon, and pink light stretched up the eastern side of the sky and spilled onto the living room floor.

  Steadman and another man stood on the step, holding a gun-sized bag. “Can we come in?”

  Slider stepped back, motioned them inside. Mamie came hurrying out, tying a chenille robe around her waist. Grant stood leaning over the banister, watching.

  “What’s going on now?” Slider said, motioning to two chairs in the living room.

  Steadman sat down in one and opened the bag. He put on cotton gloves, and then he pulled out a twenty-two. Exactly like Grant’s. Beautiful, new, shiny, with polished wood, just like Grant’s.

  “This was in the lean-to of the Thorsons’ house,” Stead-man said. “Examination shows it was fired within the last week.”

  Slider nodded, wrinkled his eyebrows, nodded.

  Grant sucked in his breath.

  Slider heard him and glanced up, not surprised to see Grant listening. To Steadman he said, “So why’d you come here so early?”

  “’Cause it’s fishy
, that’s why. Now we need to print your son, Sheriff. And we need to print Frank Swanson and every other person who threatened Big Joe Thorson. There are fingerprints,” Steadman went on, holding out the gun.

  “Can’t be me,” Grant said. He hurried the rest of the way down the stairs. “I’ve never touched Big Joe’s gun.”

  “It’s not Joe’s gun,” Steadman said. “Joe’s gun was in the basement. Where the body was found. His fingerprints, Little Joe’s, and Mary Thorson’s were on it. This has Little Joe’s prints and a few other sets. Look familiar to you, Grant?”

  “Yeah. But it can’t be . . .” He turned down the hall and hurried to his dad’s closet, where he had kept his .22 ever since the Christmas light shooting incident last winter. Grant had earned the gun back, but he’d kept it there, safe, beside Slider’s .22 and 12-gauge bird-hunting shotgun.

  He opened his dad’s closet, moved his dad’s heavy coat, extra uniform, and Sunday suitcoat, and reached for his gun. Grant moved the coats again. The 12-gauge was the only gun in the corner of the closet. He looked again. The shotgun was the only gun there. Both his dad’s .22 and his own were gone. He dropped to his knees and swept his hands along the floor, but they were gone.

  It made sense that his dad’s gun was gone. If he had gone to the reservation to bring back Mary Thorson and Little Joe and his sisters, he probably had to bring a gun. But his? Where was his? He had put it back here after the last time he had hunted jackrabbits with Little Joe. At least three weeks ago.

  His gun was gone. Gone.

  He stood up, the knot in his stomach back with full force, and walked back to the living room.

  He stood at the edge of the braided rag rug that reached from the davenport to the chair where Mr. Steadwell sat. He lifted his eyes to Slider’s, not to Steadwell’s.

  “It’s gone, Dad. My .22 isn’t in your closet. Neither is yours.”

  Slider rose to his full height as if Grant’s announcement pulled him out of his chair by a string—as if getting up were effortless, no muscles involved. “Mine’s in the sheriff’s car.”

  Mamie’s mouth fell open, a silent gesture, all the more powerful because Mamie wasn’t prone to such emotional displays, and this was the second time Steadman had gotten a rise out of her.

  “I’m afraid, Sheriff, that if these prints match your son’s, that he is the primary suspect in this murder. He had motive, and now circumstantial evidence points to him.”

  “Hold your horses.” Slider stepped closer, towering over the men. Grant stepped behind Slider. “You haven’t got fingerprints yet. Get them and then we’ll talk.”

  “Larger fingerprint—yours, on record from other investigations, match the ones on the barrel,” Steadman said. “Four sets on this gun. One set matches the Thorson kid. Yours. And there are more sets. Most smaller than a grown-up. I expect one set to be Grant’s.”

  Slider nodded. “Let’s get dressed. Head to the courthouse.”

  Steadman rose from the chair, rebagged the rifle, and stepped toward the door. “See you in . . . ten, fifteen minutes?”

  When the door closed behind them, Slider put his hand on Grant’s shoulder. “Son, when’s the last time you remember using your gun?”

  “Three or four weeks ago. When I went hunting with Little Joe.”

  “Who all has shot your gun besides you?”

  “Little Joe. Frank. Me. Shirley. That’s it.”

  Slider nodded. “Go get dressed, and let’s go get this over with.”

  An hour later, Grant had been fingerprinted. Frank and his dad arrived at the courthouse, too. Both Grant’s and Frank’s fingerprints matched some of those on the gun. His dad’s, Frank’s, Little Joe’s, and Grant’s. And Mary Thorson’s.

  “But on the trigger,” Steadman said, “there are a jumble of partial prints. Can’t tell which set pulled the trigger last.”

  The stone in Grant’s stomach had grown to a boulder. Little Joe? Frank?

  Frank wouldn’t look at him, and after the fingerprinting, Frank’s dad ushered him out of the room.

  When Steadman let Grant look closer, he knew for sure. It was his gun. He recognized the wood pattern in the stock, and a tiny scratch near the butt. How on earth had his gun gotten into the Thorsons’ lean-to? It made no sense.

  When he and his dad came home for breakfast, Mamie had made biscuits and gravy—Grant’s favorite breakfast—but he could hardly swallow any of it.

  Slider spread a biscuit liberally with honey and looked at Grant. He took a bite and chewed. “Grant. You need to be ready for a trial, too. We’ll have to testify. You and me, and Will, Frank. Once they figure out the primary suspect, they won’t wait too long for this one. One of the lawyers will probably even call all the boys playing ball the day we found him.”

  A witness for a murder trial. The petrified wooden boulder in his stomach turned over. What if the lawyer or judge asked him if he’d ever heard Little Joe say he wanted to kill his dad? He couldn’t lie under oath. He’d have to tell the truth. What if Little Joe did it? Or Frank? What if they had used Grant’s gun? What if one of them got sent to prison? If his gun killed Big Joe, he didn’t know if he’d ever want to shoot it again.

  When he came home for dinner, Slider said he’d been to visit Mary Thorson in jail and apologized to her for keeping her there, but told her it was just until the trial.

  Slider said, “Mary hadn’t said a word since I picked her up and brought her back. But this time, she lifted her head toward the window, and the sunshine sort of framed her like a halo, you know what I mean? Like she could have been some sort of darn holy painting of the Virgin Mary. And she talked. She said, ‘Sheriff Slider, you really believe I’ll ever get out? I’ll never get out. You know that. An Indian woman on trial for murdering a white husband? Who are we kidding? It does not matter if I am innocent or not.’”

  “Wait!” Grant cried. “They think Mrs. Thorson did it?”

  “That’s the way it looks. More and more. Nothing’s sure yet, though.”

  “What does it matter that she’s an Indian?” Shirley asked. “That doesn’t make any difference.”

  Slider let his breath out in a long, slow sigh that reminded Grant of air going out of a tire. “There are people in this world, Shirley, that are so small-minded, they are willing to believe anything bad about somebody different than they are.”

  Shirley scrunched up her face at this. “Why?”

  “Mary Thorson is a full-blooded Mandan Indian,” Slider said. “Some people can’t forget that, ever. Small-minded people are scared of people different than they are. Some people are scared of all Indians.”

  “Who would be dumb enough to be scared of Mrs. Thorson?” Shirley asked.

  “People think since we used to fight some of the Indian tribes—mostly to get our hands on their land, it seems to me—that any Indian still just might want to kill us. Downright stupid.”

  “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Shirley said. “How can grown-ups be that dumb?”

  “That’s dumb!” Harley mimicked.

  “Shirley, watch your tongue,” Mamie said. “That is low-down language for a lady. Set an example.”

  Shirley glowered at her mother.

  “Simmer down, Mamie,” Slider said. “The girl’s right.”

  “Is that like what Hitler in Germany thinks about Jews?” Grant asked.

  “Yup,” Slider said. “It’s all the same small-minded stupidity.”

  “Stupidity?” Mamie said. “That’s a little harsh. It’s not stupid to be careful when you don’t know somebody.”

  “It is stupid to judge somebody you don’t know,” Slider said. “Downright ignorant.” He spooned a scoop of potatoes into his mouth.

  Mamie humphed and got up to serve milk pudding.

  “It would be like saying Frank Swanson gets in trouble, so all Swedes are trouble. Same darn thing,” Slider said, swallowing his mouthful of mashed potatoes.

  “But why are they accusing Mr
s. Thorson?” Grant asked. “I thought Steadman thought I did it. Or Frank. Frank’s off the hook? And Little Joe?”

  “Nobody’s off the hook yet. Frank’s prints are on the gun. So are Little Joe’s. And yours. But so are Mary’s. And other evidence points to Mary, so she’s the prime suspect.”

  “Partly because she’s Indian?”

  “Maybe.” Slider scraped his plate clean. “Probably. But evidence, too. It’s not all bias in this case.”

  Grant sat back, reeling. He’d never thought of Mrs. Thorson as the possible murderer. Sweet, beautiful Mrs. Thorson.

  “And I told Mary Thorson,” Slider went on, “I said, ‘Your lawyer is arguing for self-defense.’

  “And Mary said, ‘The Battle of Little Big Horn was self-defense, too.’

  “I laughed,” Slider said, “and I said, ‘Yes, and history’s proven that Custer was an idiot.’ After that, Mary wouldn’t say another word.”

  “Poor woman,” Mamie said, bring bowls of pudding to the table.

  “Now you’re talking sense,” Slider said, patting her arm. She jerked it away and almost spilled the pudding.

  Slider also said the district court judge, Judge Chester-man, was coming to preside over the trial to try to eliminate as much bias as possible. He wasn’t going to put it off a day longer than necessary. “As long as they don’t come up with some different evidence, he’ll pick jurors on Monday. Trial starts on Tuesday.”

  “Already?” Mamie asked. “A trial already?”

  Grant stirred his bowl of pudding. “I can’t believe Little Joe’s on trial for murder.”

  Slider laid down his spoon. “Not Little Joe. Just Mary. Little Joe’s a juvenile. And you can’t charge two different people with the same crime. And it looks like Mary did it.”

  “But if they don’t know for sure yet, how can she be on trial?”

  “Because she is the one accused of murder.”

  Beautiful Mrs. Thorson, who said he was a good boy. This just got worse and worse.