Blood Ties

by Sigmund Brouwer

  "Clerk at the front desk saved you the trouble.” Clay thought it interesting that Russ Fowler had no need to ask who George Samson was. “Same clerk who probably called you. From what I understood from George, the clerk knew his granddaughter. The clerk also saw enough to know it wasn’t a knife that killed Doris.”

  “George Samson don’t know you from Adam. What’s he calling you for?”

  Clay had been asking himself the same question, a fact he was not going to share with Russ Fowler. “As you might recall from yesterday’s conversation, my assignment here is the train derailment adjoining his property. I interviewed George last evening. He called my motel room a half-hour ago and asked that I come down here.”

  “We’ve got this investigation under control,” Fowler said, not budging from his position.

  “Mr. Samson seemed to think you might be less than thorough. I find that interesting, especially in light of your less-than-thorough approach to the train derailment investigation.”

  “The derailment was an accident, and I refuse to waste time on it. George is a crazy old Indian who belongs in a Wild West show. And you belong back in Washington. This is beyond your jurisdiction. Clear this investigation site, or I’ll make sure you don’t last another week with that tin badge.”

  This was something Clay understood. Intimidation. It usually meant the intimidator had something to hide – fear, maybe, or guilt.

  Clay was also a stubborn man. If these local boys had treated him with any courtesy, he might have left them to their work and gone to his, futile as it was. Instead, he smiled and held his ground. “I had an interview scheduled with Doris Samson later today, Sheriff. So her mysterious death ties this into my train investigation. Also, this is a non-white murder victim. That, too –”

  “Non-white?” the first deputy echoed in disbelief. “Some Flathead squaw gets stuck like a frog, and you want to talk like a government clerk?”

  Clay would not give them the satisfaction of knowing how badly he wanted to shuck his starchy role and respond like the backhills boy he’d left behind. Instead, he chose his language carefully. “Doris Samson is from the Flathead reservation. That, too, makes it my business, according to federal statutes that grant FBI jurisdiction in government and Indian reservation matters.”

  “Get someone in Washington to send me a memo to that effect, son,” Fowler said, thumbs hitched behind his suspenders. “I can always use more toilet paper. In the meantime, why don’t you just get into your car and leave us to our work.”

  “You’re barring me from stepping inside the room?”

  “I’m telling you this is local sheriff’s business. I don’t even want you peeking inside the doorway.”

  It was almost comical, Clay thought, the way the two deputies shifted to block the doorway, like two boys playing king of the hill and daring Clay to try to take the top.

  Clay Garner drew a deep breath. An unsolved murder and an interjurisdiction dispute, all before his first cup of coffee.

  “Sheriff,” he asked, “do you have a photographer on the way? Coroner? Crime techs?”

  Sheriff Fowler shook his head. “You been watching too much television, son. This one won’t be tough to solve. Tonight, some brave will get drunk and tell his pals about a squaw who gave him so much grief he had to shut her up for good. We’ll hear, track him down, and sweat it out of him. Case closed. Not that anyone cares.”

  Clay studied the sheriff. Clay had his first tingle of excitement, as if an instinct he didn’t know he possessed was coming to the surface. “From what Mr. Samson told me,” Clay said, keeping his slow drawl even, “whatever you have in this motel room didn’t happen because a drunk lost control.”

  “Son, not only did you get beat good with an ugly stick when you was little, someone knocked the hearing out of your skull. I just said nobody cares about a dead Indian.”

  “I do.”

  “Your point being?”

  “Obstruction of justice. Another federal statute that puts this within FBI jurisdiction. Unless you deal with this crime scene properly, I will investigate and charge you and your deputies with said violation.” Clay winced inside at how pompous he sounded. But at his age and level of inexperience, he had little else but rules, his badge, and the weight of the organization to give him confidence and authority in this unusual situation.

  Fowler watched Clay to see if it was a bluff.

  Clay reached into his suit pocket. Much as he hated the jacket, it was handy for holding a notepad and pen. He pulled out his notepad, flipped it open, and recorded the time and date.

  “Fowler,” Clay said, looking up briefly. “F-0-W-L-E-R?”

  “Boys, let him inside,” Fowler said after a long pause. He directed his next words to the largest of the deputies. “Two Car, get back on the radio. Make the calls for a forensic tech to be flown in from Missoula. If they squawk, tell them the FBI will cover the expenses.”

  Fowler lifted his jowly face to look at Clay again. "Right, Mr. Special Agent?”

  “Right.” Clay knew he’d be lucky to get this one past the paper-pushers. But he was angry and stubborn, and if he had to, he’d pay for this himself before letting Fowler find an excuse to file this as just another knife fight.

  “Go on in,” Sheriff Fowler told Clay. “It ain’t pretty. You know the rules. Don’t touch anything. If you feel queasy, make sure you get clear into the parking lot before losing your breakfast. Be a real shame, wouldn’t it, if you messed up all your fine evidence?”

  11:14 a.m.

  “Here’s a twenty,” Harold Hairy Mocassin told Johnny Samson. “Go in and buy some gum. Got it? Costs a dime. Make sure you keep all the change. Then meet me down at the hotel in five minutes. I’ll show you a good time then.”

  “I don’t get it,” Johnny said, folding the money and placing it in the back pocket of his blue jeans. “You wrote a phone number on the twenty. How does that double our money?”

  Harold Hairy Moccasin stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette on the sole of his work boot. They were standing in sunshine two doors down from a five-and-ten store on a street with little pedestrian traffic. It was past eleven o’clock, a time crucial for Harold in two ways. Enough of the morning had passed that Harold expected the cash register in the five-and-dime to carry a necessary reserve of cash; the Kalispell Hotel bar was open and waiting for their triumphant entry with some of that cash.

  “Johnny, there’s plenty you don’t get,” Harold said. “Blame it on your grandfather. It ain’t hard to tell this is your first day alone in the white world. You stick with me, man, and you’ll get an education worth something.”

  “Hey, man. You watch what you say. My grandfather –”

  “Be cool, Johnny Samson. Be cool. All I’m saying is there’s two worlds. You know the hills. Now you get to know the streets.”

  Johnny Samson drew a deep breath. Harold Hairy Moccasin, in a deerhide jacket, was short, skinny, with a half-dozen straggling long chin hairs. At nineteen he had been out of boarding school long enough to have grown his braided hair below his shoulders. He had his own truck, a ’64 Chevy, and he’d been with a dozen women already, even had a couple of children, if a person cared to believe him.

  About a hundred years earlier, Harold was proud to tell people, a Crow named Hairy Moccasin had scouted for Custer. Hairy Moccasin had not been suicidal enough to stay put when he saw the odds at the Little Bighorn, and as a result Harold was able to include himself among the great-great-grandchildren who bore the scout’s name. The privilege of such a background more than made up for the dignity he lost when people called him Hairy instead of Harold.

  Johnny was honored that a person of Harold Hairy Moccasin’s stature would give him any attention at all, let alone invite him into town to celebrate Johnny’s seventeenth birthday with his older sister, Doris. Johnny would have felt less honored. if he’d known Harold Hairy Moccasin had designs on Doris and that Harold intended to lubricate the day’s celebration as much as poss
ible with their twenty dollars doubled.

  “Nothing can go wrong, Johnny. You’re just buying a pack of gum. They can’t stop Indians from doing that. Just be sure to use the twenty I gave you.”

  “Yeah,” Johnny said. “I’ll be sure.”

  “And don’t look my way when you leave. Got it? When I walk in after you, she can’t know we’re together.”

  Johnny Samson nodded in agreement.

  Johnny left Harold and walked the short distance to the store-front. He wore cowboy boots, jeans, a jean jacket, and a Stetson. Johnny’s hair was longer than Harold’s, but Johnny had been raised in the hills, not in a boarding school, and no one had ever forced him to cut his hair like a white man’s.

  The doorbells jangled as Johnny let himself into the store. He stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. The store window was jammed with cheap merchandise, so little sunlight made it through, and the light fixtures were cheap and far between.

  Johnny approached the cash register. A brown-haired girl his age stood behind it. She had waxy white skin, pimples, and square glasses, which added pudginess to an already overly pudgy face.

  “Gum,” Johnny said. “I need some gum.”

  “It’s on the shelf beside you,” she said in a tone of voice that indicated he was an idiot for not noticing.

  Why was he so nervous he couldn’t see the gum himself? Harold was the one taking a risk. Right?

  Johnny Samson grabbed a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit and threw it on the counter. He dug Harold’s folded twenty out of his back pocket as the girl regarded him in silence. She handed him the change, and he left the store, turning toward the Kalispell Hotel. As instructed, Johnny did not look behind him for Harold Hairy Moccasin.

  Five minutes later, Harold Hairy Moccasin met Johnny at the curb in front of the side-door entrance to the hotel. Two older Indians sat on the curb, heads down to keep the sunshine out of their eyes.

  Harold was eating from a one-pound bag of raisins as he joined Johnny Samson.

  “Raisins?” Johnny asked. He badly wanted to know if and how Harold had doubled their money as promised but felt more compelled to ask why Harold had stopped at a grocery store when all Harold had talked about the entire morning was whiskey and draft beer.

  “Raisins,” Harold confirmed. “Man, don’t you know nothin’.”

  “I know I don’t eat raisins. When I was little, one of my cousins told me whites made them by catching flies and pulling off their wings and legs. I never touched them since.”

  “Eat them and your blood clots better,” Harold replied with a superiority granted by knowledge. “Nobody can say Harold don’t think ahead.”

  Harold maintained his master-to-pupil tone. “See, tomorrow I sell blood. Four bucks a pint, man, that’s what you get. Thing is, they don’t let you donate more than once every six weeks. It’s hard to make money that way. And they got this test to make sure your blood's thick. There’s an easy way to beat that, though. Eat plenty of raisins, and next day you pass the clotting test. I go in every ten days, give ’em a different name. To them, we all look alike. Raisins cost me fifty cents; I get four dollars, plus plenty of cookies and Kool-Aid. Good business, I figure.”

  Johnny nodded, not sure why he was smiling, Could it be healthy for a person to give away that much blood? But if Harold Hairy Moccasin moved that easily through the white world, Johnny needed to pay attention.

  “You get another twenty dollars?” Johnny asked, knowing he had more to learn from Harold Hairy Moccasin.

  “Close enough.” Harold discreetly unfolded a handful of bills. There was no sense flashing wealth with the bar right up the steps, not when so many friends somehow always managed to appear to share good fortune.

  “Did you use a gun?” Johnny was amazed.

  Harold grinned and puffed out his chest. “I case the stores downtown. See, when a cashier gets a large bill, she’s supposed to put it on top of the register when she makes change. That way there’s no mix-up. Some places though, the cashier’s lazy, throws the bill in right away. She can never be sure what you just handed her. Like in the store we just visited.”

  “Yeah?” Johnny wasn’t following. He didn’t want to show it though.

  “You went in,” Harold said, “bought gum, gave her the twenty, got nearly twenty back. I waited a few minutes, bought a candy bar, gave her a dollar bill. She gave me change and closed the drawer. I tell her, look, I been ripped off, what happened to the rest of my money? She says what do I mean? I say I gave her a twenty. She says no, it was only a buck. I tell her I know for sure because I had a girl’s phone number on it. I close my eyes and tell her the number, like I memorized it. She looks at the bill on top of the stack of the twenties, sees the one you gave her, and it’s got the phone number I wrote down when we were standing outside. I tell her it ain’t right, trying to rip off an Indian. She’s all sorry, gives me another nineteen bucks to make up the difference.”

  Johnny shook his head, half in admiration, half in worry. “Kind of like stealing but different.”

  “You sound like the Flatheads I left behind. Too respectable. Me, I figure nothing you take from the whites is stealing. Think what they took from us. Maybe you should spend less time with your grandfather, hang out with some of us braves who ain’t scared to fight for the old ways.”

  Johnny Samson wondered what to say to that – he loved his grandfather – but he didn’t have to worry about a reply. Harold Hairy Moccasin already had him by the arm and was pulling him up the steps into the Kalispell Hotel.

  “Let’s get this celebration started,” Harold said, already dreaming of Doris Samson and a variety of possibilities with her. Some were saying she’d changed her ways, but Harold was optimistic the rumors about her and church weren’t true. “She knows you’re in town. She’ll find us or we’ll find her, I promise.”

  Inside the hotel, they walked down a narrow corridor to the barroom. Nobody challenged Johnny for age identification, which raised his esteem for Harold, who had earlier told him not to worry about it. The bartender, however, cigarette hanging on his lip, took a little wind out of Harold’s impressive momentum to this point.

  “Hey, Harry Hairy,” he called as they stepped into the yeasty smell of old, spilled beer soaked into wood floors. “No money, no service.”

  Harold shrugged it off and tried to get back into his role of master by throwing a ten carelessly onto the bar. There were maybe a half-dozen other people in the room, all nursing drinks at tables with Formica tops. They were wise – getting drunk too early meant waking up sometime in the evening with too much time to kill until the next morning, wasting all the booze it had taken to get them senseless in the first place.

  “Couple of whiskeys with beer chasers," Harold said. “And I told you plenty of times already, it’s Harold.”

  “Sure thing, Harry Hairy.”

  Johnny was watching carefully. He expected Harold to get angry at this white insolence, but instead Harold accepted the drinks meekly.

  Harold showed Johnny how to gulp a whiskey shooter and follow it with draft beer. Johnny learned fast. In fact, within the hour, he had guzzled four whiskey shooters and six beers and was well on the way to being drunk for the first time in his life when a Blackfoot Indian he did not know sat down beside him and asked if he was Johnny Samson because if he was, his sister Doris had been murdered and word was out that the sheriff had already put her in a body bag and the FBI was out looking for her friends, relatives, and boyfriends.

  2:01 a.m.

  At age forty-four, along with holding considerable power over two local banks, James McNeill ruled seventy-two hundred acres of Flathead Valley foothills, fifteen hundred head of grazing and feed-lot cattle, one hundred horses, thirty employees, two bunkhouses, an eighteen-year-old son, a nineteen-year-old nephew, and a sixteen-year-old daughter. In turn, he was ruled only by the memories of his wife, Maggie, buried three years earlier after succumbing to a brief and painful fight wit
h bone cancer.

  James sometimes found himself at a loss to deal with Kelsie, his daughter, in direct contrast to the ease of dealing with his son and nephew. His son, Michael, loved the ranch in the same way he did, and they rarely found cause to disagree. As for Lawson, James had become his nephew’s legal guardian a week after the boy’s tenth birthday, following a house fire in which he had lost his mother. The decision to adopt Lawson had been easy. Lawson’s mother had been Maggie’s sister, and family was family. Now best friends with Michael, Lawson proved to be amiable company for James and was smart enough to listen carefully on the few occasions when James felt pushed hard enough to raise his voice. A day didn’t go by that James wasn’t grateful both boys had ignored any fool notions about going down to San Francisco and joining the long-haired movement of hippies, communes, and dope-smoking.

  But Kelsie?

  James sat at the dining-room table, facing business ledgers and a midafternoon coffee, which cooled untouched as he looked through the ranch-house picture window. With the panoramic view of much of the valley below, he had eyes only for the activities at the horse corral near the main barn, some hundred yards down from the house.

  He spotted Kelsie leaning against the wood railing, mesmerized by three cowboys who whooped and hollered as they took turns riding green horses to a standstill. One of them, a good-natured neighbor boy named Rooster Evans, was not even part of the ranch but showed up often to throw a hand in with work, simply to be close to Kelsie. The other two cowboys were ranch hands, paid to work, not to perform in front of his daughter, who had been standing there for nearly two hours.

  Lord, James thought, how he wished for Maggie. She would be able to talk girl things with Kelsie. Whenever James tried, he fumbled so badly it embarrassed both of them.

  What James wanted to do was to go down there and order Kelsie to leave and let the ranch hands get on with their work. He knew it would be futile, though. Kelsie, a dreamer so much like her mother, also had her mother’s stubborn streak. If he told Kelsie not to do something, it would only give her more determination to do so. If he told her to stay away from the cowboys, that would only add to her romantic notions of true love. And James was sure she’d set her heart on one of the cowboys – he just didn’t know which one.