Walk a Black Wind df-4

by Michael Collins

  “You’re sure you weren’t there earlier, Crawford? What did ballistics say about the bullets that shot Emil Van Hoek?”

  “From Ralph Blackwind’s pistol. It was an 8-mm Nambu he’d picked up in North Korea. No mistake possible, a rare gun here. There wasn’t another one in Dresden, I don’t think.”

  “His pistol?” I said. “Not the submachine gun?”

  “No.”

  I said, “You told the story just that way at the trial? Emil Van Hoek, and Mrs. Van Hoek there, told the story?”

  “They weren’t at the trial. There was no need. Emil was too sick. Katje testified, and Blackwind admitted going crazy, shooting up the house. The Van Hoeks gave depositions.”

  “Depositions?” I said. “Where would Sasser and Katje be, Crawford? Think? Where could Sasser be now?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, squeezed his hands together in that chair. “I’ve thought, but I can’t-”

  Old Mrs. Van Hoek said, “She meets with Sasser at the lodge on Black Mountain Lake. Abram Zaremba’s lodge. She goes there to him sometimes.”

  Crawford began to say something, but I didn’t wait. I ran out to my car. The rain had stopped now. I drove toward Black Mountain Lake and the million-dollar project that, in one way, had started the whole tragedy. The project, and Joel Pender’s drunken stupidity. In one way they had started it all, but in reality it had begun a long time ago when a young Indian soldier married a patroon girl momentarily rejecting her heritage and future for passion. A moment that she had regretted, and started the whole inexorable chain of violence.

  Black Mountain Lake glittered darkly like the surface of Pluto with its methane ocean. There was light in the lodge at the end of the county-built private road. I saw the three cars. One was Anthony Sasser’s green Cadillac. I drew my gun, and slipped up to a window of the lodge. I knew who the third car had to belong to. Maybe I wasn’t too late. But I was.

  Through the window I saw a large, rustic room. Katje Crawford stood against a far wall in her red slack suit, her handbag held in both hands before her like a shield. John Andera faced her some ten feet away with his gun in his hand. They didn’t seem to be speaking, just looking at each other with closed faces, the death of their daughter, and eighteen years, between them.

  Something more lay between them, too. Something real, physical. The body of Anthony Sasser.

  Sasser lay on his back in a pool of blood, his dead eyes fixed on the ceiling with surprise and fear. He was dead, John Andera knew how to kill, did not miss.

  I slipped around to the front door. It was open. I went inside silently. John Andera heard me when I was twenty feet away in the rustic room, and half behind him to his left.

  “I’ve got my gun, Andera,” I said.

  I hoped my voice wasn’t shaking. I couldn’t play with him. If he moved, I’d have to shoot. If I gave him one chance, I was as good as dead.

  His eyes looked toward me.

  27

  John Andera looked toward me, and then back at Katje Crawford, and let his gun drop away from him with a small toss. Too dead inside now to even try to run and end it all his own way if that meant more struggle. My stomach relaxed. I went limp. I hadn’t been so sure I was any match for him even with my gun and the advantage.

  “Shoot him,” Katje Crawford said. “He’s a murderer ten times over. Shoot him now.”

  “I’ll take him in,” I said.

  “He’ll fool you,” she said. “He shot Tony in cold blood.”

  Andera said, “Sasser admitted it, Fortune. He was scared, he talked. He told Zaremba that Francesca had really seen my face when I killed Leland, that she was working with the police, that she knew Leland had been killed to protect the Black Mountain Lake project. He made Zaremba send me to kill Fran.”

  His dead eyes turned toward Katje Crawford. She still stood against the wall in that red slack suit, fear and a kind of hate on her face.

  “I didn’t know it was Francesca,” Andera said to her. “I didn’t recognize her. I killed those who made me do it.”

  Katje Crawford opened her handbag and took out a cigarette. Her hands shook, she could barely light the cigarette. Her eyes seemed hypnotized by John Andera’s face, watching only him.

  I said, “Did Sasser tell you why he did it, Andera?”

  Katje Crawford looked at me now. The look was one of sheer terror.

  “What?” John Andera said.

  “Did Sasser tell you why he told Zaremba that Francesca was dangerous? It was all a lie. Francesca didn’t see your face when you killed Leland, she couldn’t identify you. She wasn’t holding anything back, she had no evidence against you or Zaremba. All she was doing was looking for her real father. Nothing else. So what reason did Sasser have to lie to Zaremba and get her killed?”

  It was so silent in that big lodge room that I could hear the cars on the distant county highway, and the slow drip of the last drops of the stopped rain from the trees outside.

  Andera said, “He had his reasons, Fortune. He did it. He told me he did it.”

  “He did it,” I said. “The question is why?”

  Katje Crawford said, “He was sure Francesca knew too much. He told me that.”

  She smoked, the cigarette trembling in her frightened hand like a rabbit shivering in the open as a fox stalked. I spoke to John Andera.

  “I told Katje there that Sasser had talked to Francesca in New York. You heard me tell her tonight, didn’t you, Andera? You were outside the Crawford house listening. I told her, and she came running to Sasser. Why? They were lovers, Andera. She was tossing over Crawford, as she tossed you over twenty years ago. But she didn’t come here just to warn Sasser.”

  Katje Crawford said, “Stop it, Fortune.”

  I said, “All Francesca was doing was looking for her real father. That’s all. The rest was lies, a smoke screen set up by Sasser-and by Katje.”

  I turned to face Katje Crawford. “You told Sasser to lie to Zaremba and have Francesca killed.”

  She shook her head sharply. “You’re wrong. She was my daughter. You’re terribly wrong.”

  “A daughter you were never close to, always hated. Both the twins, really, because they were as much a part of Blackwind as they were of you. But Francesca mostly because she was most like her real father, because she sensed your hate of her, your fear. Since she was a little girl she was different, against you, sensed the wall between you. A wall of hate and fear because you’ve always been afraid Blackwind would someday come back. You never believed he died in that escape. Death, Katje, that’s what you’re afraid of. The fear of being killed if Blackwind ever found out the real truth.”

  Katje Crawford smoked, drew the smoke deep into her lungs. John Andera watched her. I moved closer to him.

  “After Francesca left home,” I said, “Katje found out what old Emil Van Hoek had told Francesca. We’ll never know if she killed old Van Hoek, too, or if he just died under the strain. A little of both, maybe. But, whatever, Katje was terrified of what would happen if Francesca got to you and told you what she had learned from Emil Van Hoek.

  “You see, she had recognized you that time you went to Sasser about the contract to kill Leland. I don’t know how, but she did. Then Francesca went looking for you, and Katje had to stop her. She got Sasser to locate Francesca, and he did. Then she had him tell Zaremba that Francesca was dangerous, that Zaremba had to stop her. What Katje and Sasser hadn’t expected was that Zaremba would send you to kill your own daughter! Chance, accident, call it fate again.

  “Then I showed up hired by someone. They had to know who hired me. Sasser tailed me to find out, and spotted you that morning in front of my office. He knew who you were, and what you were, and what had happened. He knew you were trying to find out who had made you kill Francesca, so he tried to shoot you, but got me instead. Then you killed Zaremba, and they really panicked. They had set Francesca up for murder, you had killed her, and now you were after them. They didn’t dare risk me finding
it all out, so Katje killed Carl Gans who could have led me to the truth. Only he lived just too long. He told me enough.”

  Andera said, “What could Francesca have told me?”

  I looked at Katje Crawford. It was, after all, her story. She said nothing, stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray as if unaware of what she was doing. A reflex action, neat and orderly, a well-mannered woman. Andera was close to me now, his false blue eyes staring into my face, waiting.

  I shrugged. “That you didn’t shoot Emil Van Hoek back there eighteen years ago. The one crime you couldn’t evade. The charge that sent you to prison and ruined your life, and you never did it. You shot up that room at random. Emil Van Hoek fell behind the couch. You didn’t see him again, did you? You left with Katje and the children. You drove off. But you stopped at the end of the street, and-”

  Andera said, “Katje ran back. She said she had dropped some medicine the kids had to have. She ran back, I waited in the car. I had the kids, they were crying, the motor was running, I-”

  “You were distracted, not thinking about gunshots. The kids were noisy, a Nambu makes little noise. Katje had your pistol with her, easy to grab it in the confusion, you had put down the guns to drive. Later, at the trial, you assumed you’d hit old Van Hoek in that first volley of wild shots in the room. Van Hoek never came to court. But he knew who had shot him.”

  I faced Katje Crawford. “What was your father to do back then? His own daughter had shot him, but could he send her to prison, ruin her life and her children’s lives? So he never told. He kept silent, and felt guilty all these years. That was why he didn’t reveal that he knew Ralph Blackwind was alive, and that was why he finally told the truth to Francesca. He was near death, she was aware of her real father at last from Joel Pender’s mistake, so he told her, and that was why you had her killed.”

  Katje Crawford’s eyes had the fear in them, and the hate, too, and a kind of strangely detached anger-at a world that wouldn’t behave as she insisted it should? How dare the world not do what she wanted? Then and now. It was the world’s fault, Ralph Blackwind’s fault for not understanding back then that she had had to correct a mistake, the fault of Francesca for being the intransigent child she had been.

  “You had to come back,” she said to Andera. “Ruin my life. So insane you thought I’d actually go with you that night, never even noticed that I took your pistol back to the house. Yes, I shot my father. I hoped I’d killed him! You would have gone to the electric chair then! He didn’t die, but he didn’t tell, either. It was fine. Only the old fool had to tell Francesca three months ago! He wanted her to know the truth about her real father before he died. He told her. And I knew you were really alive. I’d seen you.”

  She glared at Andera, it was his fault for being alive.

  “I didn’t recognize you at all,” she said. “But you have a habit. A strange, unique habit-you always smell a drink before you drink it. When I saw you do that with Tony Sasser that night at his house, I knew. I couldn’t believe it, but I knew it was you.”

  Andera said, “At Pine River we smell the water we drink. Alkali; poisoned water holes. I never lost the habit.”

  “Once I saw that,” Katje Crawford said, “I saw the contact lenses, the dyed hair, the lifts in your shoes, the hint of the face I knew under the changes. You were alive, and then my father told Francesca the truth. To clear his conscience! Was I going to let her tell you, let you come for me? A professional killer?”

  John Andera moved. I had relaxed too much. He lunged, and he had my gun. Without a word, he lunged, got hold of my gun, and for an instant we wrestled. The gun fell from my hand, hit the floor with a loud clatter. Silent, he jumped toward where it had fallen.

  We both saw the little automatic come out of Katje Crawford’s handbag. She held it, the. 22-caliber mate of the the one Felicia had aimed at me. The pistol that had killed Carl Gans. Both Andera and I stood motionless for a moment. Then Andera forgot my pistol, began to walk straight toward her, his hands curled as if for her throat.

  She shot him four times. All four shots hit him in the chest and stomach. He walked on. She shot a fifth time. He stumbled to one knee, sank forward on his face not three feet from her with his hands still reaching toward her.

  That fifth shot was all that saved my fife. She shot me in the stomach. I doubled over, but the little bullet didn’t stop me. I was on my knees reaching toward my gun on the floor. She tried to shoot again, but the gun was empty. Andera’s pistol was ten feet from her. She couldn’t get it before I reached my gun. She turned and ran out of the lodge. I got my pistol, and fired one shot before she vanished. It went somewhere in the ceiling.

  Outside, her car started, faded away.

  I crawled to John Andera. He had rolled onto his back. He was still breathing. His eyes were open up toward the ceiling, but not seeing the ceiling. Seeing, maybe, the sky of Arizona.

  “Andera?” I said. “Blackwind?”

  “Trapped…” his whisper said. “… the land…”

  That was all he said. I crawled to the telephone, called the police. When I crawled back to him, He Who Walked A Black Wind was dead.

  28

  I was in the hospital for two weeks. The little bullet had torn me up inside, and they weren’t sure I would make it. I just lay there and breathed. I cared about nothing except staying alive-just like Katje Crawford.

  Lieutenant Oster wasn’t happy with me, neither was Gazzo down in New York. But the police must work on facts and evidence, and this time there had been no other way to smoke out the truth except my way. They could close the books now in both cities-there was no point to charging Harmon Dunstan or George Tabor, the dead Mark Leland’s partner, for their silence and evasion.

  My girl, Marty, came up to see me. She had her director with her, so we could only be polite. Mayor Martin Crawford visited me on the sixth day. I was feeling better, I knew I would live a while. Crawford told me that they hadn’t found Katje yet. He seemed older, sadder.

  “They traced her to Los Angeles,” he said. “Poor Katje, she must have been crazy with fear. I don’t know what I’m going to tell the children, the younger ones.”

  “Try the truth,” I said. “What happens to Black Mountain Lake now? Any second thoughts?”

  “Of course not. Someone will take over for Abram Zaremba.”

  “Business as usual, as soon as you know who to cosy up to?”

  “What happened had no relation to the project, Fortune,” he said. “I had no part in what happened.”

  “You could have told Francesca the truth all these years, you could have been a father. But you kept quiet, got your share.”

  “It was all Katje’s ideas and actions.”

  “But you wanted her, so you share the guilt. At least you could be a real mayor, work for the people, not for the Sassers and Zarembas. That had its part in killing Francesca, too. The legal but immoral world you live with. Greed and privilege.”

  “I do nothing wrong, Fortune. A man exists in his world. I work with things as they are, get all I can. I live today, win if I can, and don’t apologize for the way things are.”

  He wouldn’t change, no. Self-interest was the base. He’d get a new wife someday, one just like Katje, but without, hopefully, a mistake in her past that drove her to hate, fraud, fear and murder. He’d forget Francesca because it was too hard, too unnerving, to go on remembering. Eventually, he would come to think of her as a sad, foolish girl with wild ideas that got her killed-her fault, not the world’s.

  Near the end of my two weeks in hospital, Lieutenant Oster brought the word that Katje Crawford had been found in Panama City. She had tried to shoot the Panamanian policemen, still fighting for her life and her needs. They shot her to pieces. They don’t fool with armed fugitives down there.

  It all seemed so purposeless-Katje Crawford’s battles for her privileges; Zaremba and Sasser’s scheming for power and money; Martin Crawford’s deals for his big house and his comfort. No p
urpose beyond the moment. All so brief and transient in a life that was itself so transient you had to give it shape with some purpose or there was only a mad race going nowhere.

  On my last day, as I dressed, Felicia Crawford and Paul Two Bears came to visit. The police had told them all of it. Felicia’s face was dry and quiet. Almost as quiet as the face of Francesca on the morgue slab where it had all started for me. It gave my healing stomach a turn, seeing Felicia’s face so much like that of her dead sister.

  “So?” I said. “Can you forget it all?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “We’re going back to Pine River. I like it there-the space, the land; hard as it is. I’m half Indian, after all. Work with the tribe, the land.”

  “A purpose?” I said.

  Paul Two Bears said, “For the old man, before he dies.”

  “A change is coming,” Felicia said. “For the Indians, maybe for the country. Maybe they’ll listen to the Indians, to us. The old man thinks the time is near.”

  “I envy you,” I said.

  “A home,” she said. “A real home. Not a father, maybe, but a grandfather, an uncle, cousins, a place. For me and for Francesca. I’ll be happy for both of us. I know who we are, what we are. For both of us, Mr. Fortune.”

  “She’d be glad,” I said.

  She would be-Francesca Blackwind. Aware, somehow, all her short life that she belonged somewhere.

  After they had gone, before I went out and back to my own narrow world, I sat and pictured again Francesca’s dead face in the morgue. She would be happy to know that her sister had gone home, had found the place that she, Francesca, had known was there and had wanted.

  Out of it all, one had gone home, had found the lost home they had carried inside them. It made me feel almost good.

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: fbd-7a4dae-533f-cf41-e99f-5494-2c4c-cfd041

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 26.07.2012