In The Company of Wolves_Follow The Raven

by James Michael Larranaga

  “Quin, do these images look accurate?” Kruse asked.

  “Yes,” he said, looking over at Dillan and Rachel, who already knew how accurate they were.

  “And for our guests, I’ll show you the actual home as photographed after the crime in which Quin’s parents were murdered and Autumn was abducted. Please notice how Rachel wrote the sensory detail of a purple door, which is shown in this photo.”

  The sketches were one thing but when Quin saw the old photo of his home, he felt heaviness in his chest and limbs. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see the inside or even to know that Rachel and Dillan had been there in their minds.

  “And now we’ll move on to Stage III. Here you’ll see the sketches showing the layout of the home with the family room and kitchen in the front,” Kruse said, using his remote as a laser pointer, “and the bedrooms and bathroom in the back. Here are the crime scene photos of those same rooms.”

  With deep breaths, Quin watched as Kruse brought up photos of the broken front door, red sand on the family room carpet, blood in the bedrooms, and the open window through which his sister had fled that night. He looked away, down at his boots, mortified by what had happened to his family.

  “Where do we go from here? How can Quin assist in this search?” Dr. Hayden asked.

  “Thank you, Dr. Hayden,” Kruse said. “To be most effective, RV needs people on the ground. While viewers like Rachel and Dillan can find physical locations, they cannot as easily find moving targets, like humans. Quin will be our man in the field tracking leads.”

  “That’s all great, but this is a very cold case,” Agent Clark said. “I’ve reviewed the file and there were no suspects other than…well, him.”

  Quin felt the heat of their stares and the assumed guilt he’d carried on his shoulders for most of his life. Yes, a twelve-year-old could murder his parents, even his sister, if he was crazy enough. Many children are capable of such atrocities, but he wasn’t. He knew it was time to put all those rumors to rest. He stood up and turned to face his new accusers, Agents Clark and Backstrom.

  “I think about my parents and my sister constantly, but this is the first time I’ve ever felt that somebody could put me on the right trail. I need a place to start, something to follow, and if she’s still out there, I’ll find her. I’m a bounty hunter, gentlemen. I hunt people for a living.”

  “I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Kruse said, folding his arms.

  “How much contact will I have with the paranormal team?” Quin asked, feeling his working vacation already dissolving into a full-time assignment.

  “You’ll be in touch daily. We’ll equip you with Bluetooth and these military-grade sunglasses,” Kruse said, flipping to a new slide showing an earpiece that hides inside an ear canal. While the sunglasses looked ordinary, there was a tiny camera lens discretely embedded in the center of the frames, above the nose. “The consumer-grade version of these glasses records video at 1,080 pixels and 30 frames per second continuously for only one hour. These glasses record four times longer, capturing video wirelessly and backing it up in the cloud. The glasses will monitor your vitals, Quin; your heart rate, sweat rate, even your body fat. It shows us a color-coded composite score. Blue means you’re relaxed, totally cool. Yellow means you’re under mild stress. And if you enter the red zone, we know you’re in a fight or flight situation.”

  “Is this really necessary?” he asked Kruse and Dr. Hayden. “Why record my vitals?”

  “Your health is important to us,” Dr. Hayden said.

  “There might be times when we cannot speak to you,” Kruse said, “but we want to know how you’re doing.”

  “What you really want to know is if your guinea pig dies in the desert, where to go pick it up,” Quin said.

  “No, of course not,” Dr. Hayden said.

  “Use the gear as much as possible, but rely on your natural instincts, too,” Kruse said.

  That’s what Quin intended to do, live by his wits, his own natural senses. He knew gadgets often failed in the real world of bounty hunting and all of this technology meant Kruse could track Quin’s every move. They were sending him on a long journey with a very short leash.

  The Minnesota Correctional Facility in Shakopee is the only women’s facility in the nation to house maximum-custody-level offenders without a perimeter fence. Among its 568 beds, child molesters live among first-degree murderers, as well as arsonists. To an uninformed visitor to this small town, the one-story brick buildings might look like the east campus of the Sweeney Elementary School across the street. Security is maintained with tightly controlled supervision during times in which inmates move from one building to another, or what is announced as “movement.” Guards are always nearby, observing inmates and visitors.

  Quin picked up his ID, along with Hawk’s and Slim Jim’s, and handed them back so they could put them in lockers. He set his keys, dream catcher earring, and belt inside and watched Slim Jim tugging off his tight hoodie, stuffing it into another locker along with all his other cheap bling. Hawk carefully removed his bracelet and silver necklaces, kissing each item as he placed them into his temporary locker.

  “I hate this place,” Slim Jim said, combing his hair with his fingers.

  “A good reminder of how you don’t want to live your life,” Hawk replied.

  Slim Jim smirked. “How many of these chicks you think you’ve put in here, Quin?”

  “None. I never bounty hunt women.”

  “How come? I’d do it.”

  Of course you would. Most skips are men, and the few women brazen enough to bust bail usually run into the arms of a protective boyfriend. Cops know how dangerous domestic disputes are, and most bounties know how futile it is to chase a female skip. But of course Slim Jim didn’t know anything about the trade.

  Quin led them to the security scanner, where Hawk went through first, then Slim Jim, and finally Quin, who set off the alarm. A male guard with thick lips and a bulbous nose sighed and told him to stand. He waved a wand up and down Quin’s legs.

  It beeped.

  “Empty your pockets,” the guard said, challenging him.

  Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Quin assumed he’d find nothing but lint or possibly a gum wrapper. Instead, he felt metal: his earring. How did that happen? Embarrassed, he showed it to the guard. “Sorry.” He heard Slim Jim laughing inside the waiting room.

  “Pick it up on your way out,” the guard said, taking it from his hand.

  He joined Hawk and Slim Jim in the lounge with the other visitors. Movement would happen on the hour in five minutes when inmates like Helene were allowed to go from one building to the other.

  “Did you plant that earring in my pocket?” Quin asked Slim Jim. “I could’ve been banned for that.”

  “No, I swear,” he said, but the kid was already laughing again, proud of his stunt.

  “Jimmy!” Hawk said, snapping his fingers. “Stop it.”

  “It’s not like I want to be here,” Slim Jim said.

  It was Quin’s idea to bring him along as a reminder to Helene what Hawk had to put up with every day living with his rebellious grandson. They waited to enter the visitors’ room because inmates entered first, sitting in rows that faced the guard. When they got approval, they walked into a room that was already abuzz with loud conversations.

  Helene Woman of the Storm was seated in the middle of a row between two other inmates, eyeing Quin and Slim Jim before she stood in front of her father and embraced him. Her black hair was parted down the middle and tied into two braids, one of them resting next to Hawk’s cheek as he hugged her. That’s all the physical contact inmates could have with the outside world: one hug and kiss at the start and end of each visit.

  “You look good, Papa,” she said, sitting, tugging at her sweatpants.

  “You too,” he replied.

  Quin knew that was a polite lie because she was heavy; she’d probably gained fifteen pounds since he’d seen her in January. How
could she gain weight in this place when meal times, she’d complained, were only thirty minutes long, with long lines? Maybe she was spending too much time in Segregation with no exercise.

  She squinted at her nephew. “Hey, Jimmy.”

  “Hey…peace,” he said, deadpan.

  Quin watched as Helene, Hawk, and Slim Jim talked for ten minutes about family on the outside and her tedious life in here. Sometimes they’d drift into their Lakota language as if they didn’t want Quin, the Navajo outsider, to understand what they were saying, but he knew some of their words, which said that Hawk was approaching the subject of a journey.

  “Quin,” she said, “this is a surprise. Thought you left the rez for good.”

  “That’s why I returned today, to let you know I’m leaving Minnesota.”

  “Where to?”

  “Arizona.”

  “Back to the Navajo Nation where you belong. No more Sioux life for Quin?” she said. He remembered how she’d convinced him to pretend he was her son, to live on the Wakan rez and keep a watchful eye on Hawk while she served her prison sentence. She trusted him better than any of her money-grubbing cousins and far more than her nephew, Jimmy. That was the pact Helene and Quin had made with each other, and it was only recently that Hawk admitted he’d known the truth all along.

  “Not sure I belong with the Navajo either, but I’m heading back,” Quin replied. “Hawk received the full death benefits from Rebecca’s life insurance. I wanted you to know that.”

  “Is that true?” she asked Hawk.

  “Yes, the money is in the bank.”

  “Good. But if Quin is leaving, who will check in on you, Papa?” She ignored Jimmy seated across from her.

  “That was the other thing I wanted to talk to you about,” Quin said. “Hawk was thinking of taking a vacation from the rez.”

  She folded her arms. “Vacation…with who? Him?” She pointed at her nephew, laughing at the idea.

  “No,” Hawk answered, resting his hand on his grandson’s knee. “Sorry, Jimmy.”

  “Why is it so hard to believe that you and I would vacation together?” Slim Jim asked.

  “You barely get your ass out of bed by three in the afternoon,” Helene said. “That’s why.”

  “He’s better about that, but he still stays up pretty late,” Hawk admitted.

  It was awkward listening to Helene list the reasons why Slim Jim would never make a road-worthy travel companion. She told her nephew he was lazy, a reckless driver, money slipped through his fingers like sand, and he was bad at cards, too. How ironic it was to watch a prison inmate describe all of somebody else’s faults. Quin’s plan to use Slim Jim to bait Helene into letting her father go was working all too well.

  The kid finally blurted it out, “Hawk wants to go with Quin to Arizona!”

  Helene gasped loudly enough for the inmates and visitors on either side of her to pause their conversations, turning to see what the drama was about. “With you?” she said to Quin.

  “How about it?”

  “Why would I let him go with you?”

  “Because Slim Jim is lazy and reckless,” he said, using her own words.

  “Hey, she can call me those things, but not you, bro,” Slim Jim said, leaning forward, pointing at Quin.

  “The point is, Hawk would like to go on a road trip, and your nephew here has agreed to work on his own self-improvement program while Hawk’s away,” Quin said.

  “No, uh-uh,” she said.

  “It will only be a couple of weeks,” Hawk said.

  “You two gonna golf or gamble? Do that here. The summer is so damn short, why waste it in Arizona?”

  “We have a bounty assignment,” Hawk said.

  She pinched the bridge of her nose up between her eyes, as if she had a headache. “What? You two are teaming up?”

  “Told you she wouldn’t like this,” Slim Jim said, folding his arms.

  “What kind of bounty assignment takes the two of you to Arizona?”

  “We’re searching for Quin’s sister,” Hawk said.

  “Ah, Jesus,” Helene said, looking up at the ceiling. “A goose chase.”

  “What’s wrong with looking for a sister?” Hawk said, his voice cracking.

  Helene lowered her head and looked her father in the eyes. “Oh, c’mon, don’t start with that.”

  “You ever tried to go out west and talk to your sister?”

  “Well obviously I can’t leave here. I tried that once and it didn’t go so well,” she said. “She knows where to find me, where to find her son,” she said, nodding to Slim Jim.

  All of this was family history that Quin had only heard fragments of in conversations with Helene: two sisters who floated away like balloons and a widowed father grasping at their strings.

  “Family is important,” Hawk said. “Quin is searching for family and I want to help him.”

  “You said you wouldn’t hunt anymore,” she said.

  Quin remembered this agreement, too. He and Hawk would bow hunt for whitetail deer along the muddy banks of the Minnesota River Valley. When the tension on the bow proved to be too hard on Hawk’s shoulder, he agreed to be a spotter for Quin. On more than one occasion, Quin had found Hawk asleep in his tree stand twenty feet off the ground. Hearing that, Helene had put an end to her father’s hunting days. Hawk and Quin’s excursions became long walks through the forest, tracking, Hawk showing Quin how to find smaller, secondary deer trails or woodland streams where they could find deer at midday. He was his field guide, teaching him about predators and prey and how the wolf once lived there but had been pressed north by Europeans, he’d say, not white people; French fur traders who navigated the lakes and rivers in canoes.

  “I’m going with Quin,” Hawk said.

  She folded her hands, pleading, “Papa, you’re too—”

  “Old? We don’t stop hunting because we get old, we get old because we stop hunting.”

  Quin watched a tear slide down Helene’s cheek, dripping onto her prison pants.

  “I’m not asking for your permission,” Hawk said. “I’m asking for your blessing.”

  “Oyawaste ota,” Helen said in Lakota, meaning many blessings.

  “You’ll watch over him, yeah?”

  “Like my own father,” Quin assured her as he stood up. Once a visitor or inmate stands, it signals the guard that the visit is over.

  Two more tears raced down her puffy cheeks before she wiped them away with her palm. This must be why they named her Helene Woman of the Storm, her emotions always shifted like thunder clouds before bursting into rain. He knew the Lakota could have several names in their lifetime, but this one seemed to fit. And through those tears she smiled at her father and her face became a radiant sun shower, the best blessing Hawk and Quin could have asked for.

  “I’ll order the plane tickets and we’ll leave in a couple of days,” Quin said.

  “Oh, no, I can’t do that,” Hawk said, shaking his head.

  “Why not?” Quin asked.

  “Fear of flying,” Helene answered.

  “I’m not afraid,” Hawk argued. “It’s the pressure in my ears.”

  “If you’re taking him,” Helene said, “you gotta drive him to Arizona.”

  “That’ll take too long,” he said, looking at Hawk. “You sure you won’t fly?”

  “No, go without me, Quin.”

  Quin did not want to leave Hawk behind, not after getting his hopes up. “Jimmy, you do it,” Quin said. “Drive your grandfather down to Arizona.”

  “No way,” Helene said.

  Slim Jim chuckled, scratching his belly. “Looks like my value here is starting to rise. How much you gonna pay me, Quin?”

  Leave it to Slim Jim to take advantage of the situation, but Quin didn’t have much choice. “I’ll cover your expenses plus a hundred dollars a day,” he said. “And if we get shot at, I’ll double your pay on those days.”

  “You never mentioned getting shot,” Helene said.
/>   “Every bounty assignment has the potential for violence.”

  Slim Jim belly-laughed louder. “Say no more, I’m all in!”

  Without the threat of a random drug test hanging over Quin’s head, he started drinking Hawk’s tea again. He had small bags of it stuffed into a coffee canister in his kitchenette cupboard. He was on a lighter dose of medications, thanks to Dr. Hayden, and officially “off the chain,” free to imbibe, thanks to Agent Kruse. Tonight would be a quiet celebration with a cup of ayahuasca on the deck where he could watch the moon rise with the steam of his tea.

  The microwave beeped and he set the mug on the counter where he steeped the bag in the water and breathed in the tart aromas. Just a whiff of it made him feel at ease, gave him a natural sense of calm he hadn’t felt in how long—weeks or months? He sipped and walked barefoot with mug in hand across the apartment, past his overstuffed duffle bag that he’d load into the truck tomorrow to start his trip. There was a dry evening air on the deck and he set the mug on a small table, then sat in a teakwood chair, his bare feet cooling in the breeze.

  The night was clear, the moon shining down like a searchlight focused only on him, a man on the deck drinking tea. He sipped and thought about his upcoming travels to Navajo land where he’d face his past, the family that had disowned him. The way to find out what might’ve become of Autumn was to start with his relatives, the very people who didn’t care about Quin, back then or now. The same family members who’d turned him away and left him to foster care and a life of shuffling from one home to another. From there, he and Hawk would drive south to his childhood home to see what they could find, to at least bring closure to the event, as Dr. Hayden had suggested. And on some remote chance, maybe Dillan and Rachel could zero in on where to look for his sister.