Kiki stood. “I’ll let you enjoy your lunch.”
I didn’t linger after the plates were cleared.
FOURTEEN
As I zipped toward home, I tried to stop obsessing about what information the reports held and took a moment to enjoy the drive. Even my dirty windshield couldn’t mask the sky’s brilliance. Cloudless. Vast. An intense shade of blue that straddled the color spectrum between turquoise and sapphire.
Few artists had captured the magnificence of a spring sky. Plenty of talented hands showcased the bleak winter sky. Or the hazy, hot, dry hues of a stormy summer sky. Or the color-leached tones of an autumn sky. Spring was so transitory in western South Dakota it almost wasn’t a season. Which is why it’d always been my favorite time of year.
Shoonga bounded across the yard to greet me. Nothing like a dog’s slobbering, barking, yipping as the ultimate welcome home.
Jake’s head was buried in the engine compartment of the farmhand. Inside, Sophie sat at the kitchen table doing word searches as she hardboiled eggs. Hope watched TV, Joy asleep at her breast. Just a typical day at the ranch.
I locked myself in Dad’s office. While I waited for the computer to boot up, I rifled through the stack of bills, intending to divide them in the order they needed to be paid, when I remembered book work was no longer my domain. I did a quick tally:
Not doing ranch books.
Not helping with the cattle.
Not doing domestic chores.
Wow. I was getting to be as useless as teats on a bull around here.
Not entirely useless. You cough up cash out of your retirement pay every month for operating expenses.
That thought was even more depressing. Had I really become the type of hobby rancher I loathed? And would I feel guiltier if I was elected sheriff ?
Did your dad feel guilty?
Good question.
I opened the manila envelope and slid the papers out, shuffling until I found Jason’s personal effects. The lists were separated into three categories: body, vehicle, and motel room.
Items listed found on and around the victim’s body:
Clothing:
Brown leather jacket
Jeans
Long-sleeved dress shirt
T-shirt
Briefs
Socks
White athletic shoes
Black leather belt
Loose change in front right pocket
Noticeably absent: any type of wallet or identification.
I checked off the items, one by one. Another item was noticeably absent. J-Hawk’s knife, which he claimed he never was without. He’d had it in Clementine’s because he’d been waving it around like a madman. Maybe it was on another list. I kept looking.
Items listed found in victim’s vehicle:
Vehicle registration
Proof of insurance
Manufacturer’s manual
South Dakota map
Cell phone and charger
Two boxes of folders filled with Titan Oil information
Four empty cans Red Bull energy drink
Twelve protein bar wrappers
Two pairs sunglasses
Three ball caps
Winter jacket
Windshield scraper
Leather gloves
Rubber boots
Duffel bag contents:
Athletic shorts
Sweatpants
Two T-shirts
Socks
Athletic shoes
Deodorant
iPod
Three water bottles
Four protein bars
Forty (40) unopened pill containers of prescription-brand OxyContin.
Holy crap. Forty? No wonder Dawson had spelled it out and listed it numerically. Be easy to assume a mistake had been made in the cataloguing.
My question? Why did Jason have that much OxyContin in his possession? Was working for Titan Oil that stressful?
I went back over the list. No mention of the knife. Anywhere. Something was wrong here. I scanned the next header.
Items listed found in victim’s motel room:
Three pairs jeans
Four pairs suit pants
Four dress shirts
Two suit jackets
Two ties
Two pairs dress shoes
Five long-sleeved casual shirts
Three T-shirts
Seven pairs underwear
Nine pairs socks
Belt
Toiletry bag contents:
Toothbrush
Toothpaste
Condoms
Dental floss
Electric razor
Aftershave
Mouthwash
Nail clipper
Four (4) pill containers of prescription-brand Nexavar
What the hell was Nexavar? I’d never heard of it. My stomach-flipped when I looked at the first item under the next heading.
Suitcase contents:
One hundred (100) unopened pill containers of prescription-brand OxyContin.
I stared at the paper, as if the meaning of the words would change.
The J-Hawk I’d known, the man who’d saved my life, had been a regimented career military man who walked the straight and narrow.
This Jason Hawley was either a drug addict or a drug dealer or both.
I scoured the paperwork again. I didn’t discover anything new, but I realized there’d been no personal effects. No pictures of his family. No wedding ring.
No knife.
If the knife wasn’t at the crime scene, in his SUV, on his person, or in his hotel room … where was it?
As much as I questioned Dawson’s investigative progress, I doubted he would’ve missed such an important piece of evidence—given the fact Jason Hawley had been stabbed as well as shot.
Had Jason waved the knife at his attacker, like he’d done in the bar? Had the killer grabbed the knife and used it on Jason? What kind of sick fucker did that?
One smart enough not to leave evidence behind.
Frustrated and sickened, I flipped back to the first page. The coroner’s report.
No autopsy had been performed, the coroner examined the body basically as it’d come to her. The first page was a diagram of the body. Each wound was listed with precise measurements. Each bruise, each scratch. The diameter of the bullet holes. The sizes of the exit wounds. The length of the knife gashes. The depth of the knife gashes. But no gashes on his forearms.
I found it interesting that the knife wounds had been inflicted after the gunshot wounds. Had the killer been afraid Jason would survive? So slicing and dicing him after riddling his body with bullets was extra insurance?
If Jason had been bleeding out, no defensive cut wounds on his forearms made sense; he’d had no need to protect himself.
The coroner’s conclusion stated the victim had died between eleven p.m. and two a.m. There was no scientific way to know how long it’d taken him to die. If I’d gotten off shift early at Clementine’s that night, would it have mattered?
Had Jason lain there dying, hoping I’d swoop in and save him from the grim reaper just like he’d saved me?
Sick to my stomach, I had to close the file and let that guilty thought soak in. I took a deep breath and flipped the page.
Blood work information. A list of the standard tests, which I didn’t understand the necessity for. J-Hawk had obviously been murdered. What difference would it make if drugs were found in his body after the fact? Drugs hadn’t killed him.
I scanned the list, because like Kiki had warned me, it contained a whole lot of medical gibberish. A couple of details caught my eye. High levels of OxyContin. The second number was abnormally high—a drug I’d never heard of: Nexavar. But it was the same one found in his motel room. I typed the name in the search engine.
Immediately 275,000 references popped up. Clinical trials. Testimonials. Research papers. FDA approval.
Nexavar was a drug for the treatm
ent of cancer.
Cancer.
J-Hawk had cancer?
No. Fucking. Way. Had to be a mistake. Maybe a misspelling of the common pharmaceutical name. I spelled it differently.
Same results.
Stunned, I sank back in my chair and stared at the screen, thoughts racing around my head like escaped lab rats.
If Jason had cancer, why hadn’t he stayed close to North Dakota so his physicians could monitor his vitals?
My mouth dried. After what he’d told me, I knew he’d rather deal with a cancer diagnosis on his own, on the road, away from his family, instead of allowing his attention-monger wife to care for him.
Didn’t cancer treatment make you tired? Wear you down?
Yes, but cancer treatment could be painful, so that explained the large amount of OxyContin in his system.
But it didn’t explain the massive amounts of OxyContin in his possession.
So Major Jason Hawley, who’d hated taking even a simple aspirin during his army years, had started popping pills to erase the pain and side effects from the cancer meds? Or had he become addicted to drugs because they helped him cope with how much he’d hated his life?
What a vicious circle. I wished he’d confided in me earlier. Not that I could’ve done a damn thing about his cancer or his drug dependency, but it might’ve offered him some comfort that he did have friends he could talk to.
I wondered who’d known about his use of painkillers.
His wife? Not likely.
His employer? Not likely.
I wondered who’d known about his cancer.
His wife? Likely.
His employer? Likely.
Anna? No.
J-Hawk couldn’t risk telling Anna he was dying. She would’ve said fuck it and stayed by his side until his life ended.
I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell anyone, because technically, I wasn’t even supposed to have this information. But really, what did one more secret matter? I’d just pile it on the 10 billion others I was keeping.
As enlightening and disheartening as this information was, it didn’t get me any closer to finding out who’d killed him.
Might be a long shot, but I had to find out more about the woman he’d talked to that night.
I called Winona’s cell. “It’s Mercy. I’m still trying to put faces together with names on the lists. George Johnson mentioned a woman Jason talked to.”
“What’s her name?”
“Cherelle. She’s young. Indian. Got a nasty scar on her face. I guess she’s been in Clementine’s a couple times, but I don’t remember seeing her. Do you know her?”
“Yeah. Cherelle Dupris. She’s bad news.”
Damn static. “Could you repeat that?”
“I said she’s with Victor Bad Wound.”
I frowned. Another name I vaguely recognized. “Who is Victor Bad Wound?”
“Victor Bad Wound is Barry Sarohutu’s younger brother.”
“If Cherelle comes into Clementine’s, no matter what time, will you call me right away? Please?”
“I guess. But I’m being honest when I say I hope she never comes in again.” She hung up.
I tapped my fingers on the desk and stared into space. I needed more information on this Cherelle person. Who’d have access to that kind of information?
Bingo.
One person knew everyone and everything that went on around the Eagle River Reservation.
I called Rollie.
FIFTEEN
Given Rollie’s reputation for maintaining a low profile when it came to his business dealings, I agreed to meet him out in the middle of nowhere. I understood his need for privacy and discretion, because it matched mine.
Besides, I was armed.
The dust rooster behind his truck clued me to his impending arrival a half mile before he skidded to a stop in front of me.
Rollie leaned across the seat and yelled through the open passenger’s-side window. “Hey. Get in.”
“Can’t we talk here?” I’d already waited overnight for this chat, and Geneva had a million things for me to do today.
“Nope. I’ve got a meeting at elk crossing.”
After three tries, the passenger’s-side door on his truck finally shut, and we were tooling down County Road 2A, headed toward the reservation.
“I almost didn’t come,” he offered conversationally.
“Why?”
“Mebbe because you don’t call me to meet just so we can shoot the breeze. You only call when you want something.”
Was that a note of … hurt in Rollie’s tone? Nah. And I refused to be put on the defensive. “The phone line runs both ways, old man. You can call me, too.”
“I hate talking on the damn phone.”
“I know. But I’m rusty on using smoke signals to get your attention.”
“Smarty.”
I smiled.
“So what’s on your mind, Mercy girl?”
“First, if I want to ask you a couple of questions, will I owe you another favor?”
Rollie grabbed a smashed pack of smokes from the bench seat. He punched the lighter knob and shook out a crumpled cigarette. Cancer ritual complete, he faced me. “It depends.”
Cryptic. “On what?”
“Coupla things. But they’ll keep until the proper time.”
Was Rollie waiting to call in those “favors” if I became sheriff ? I’d blindly agreed to do whatever he asked me the first time I’d needed his help. Evidently I hadn’t learned my lesson, because I was about to do it again.
“Ask away,” he said.
“What do you know about Barry Sarohutu, his brother Victor Bad Wound, and the group they run?”
“Run is exactly the right word, hey. You oughta run as far away from them as you can.”
Rollie? Scared of someone on the rez? That was new. “Do you run from them?”
“Wish I could. I know enough about ’em to make sure I stay on their good side.” He blew a smoke ring. “Why you askin’?”
“Their group has been coming into Clementine’s. Everyone’s freaked out about it.”
“They should be. No one wants Sarohutu and his guys around, but telling them to take their business elsewhere ain’t smart.”
“Why not?”
“Fear of their unique ways of retaliation. People call them the Lakota Yakuza.”
I laughed.
“Ain’t no laughing matter. Them guys’ll carve you up if you so much as look at them wrong.”
My smile dried. “Is that what happened to Cherelle Dupris?”
His gaze turned sharp. “You’ve seen her around Clementine’s?”
“Not personally. But I’ve heard she was in, and I want to talk to her.”
“She ain’t gonna talk to you without Victor Bad Wound’s permission.”
“You sure?”
Rollie ground out his smoke. “Lemme tell you a story about Cherelle. About six years ago, Sarohutu returned to the rez to ‘establish’ himself after he’d run away to L.A. fifteen years before. He noticed Cherelle—hard not to, she was a beautiful girl. She competed in Junior Indian Princess pageants, and everyone believed she’d be Miss Indian South Dakota, maybe even Miss Indian America.”
This was not going to be a happy Indian parable.
“She fell under Saro’s spell. But Victor had his eye on Cherelle long before his half brother returned to the rez. His jealousy became an obsession, and he snatched her. Victor knew Saro would dump Cherelle if she wasn’t the hottest chick on the rez, so Victor marred her. Rumor is her face isn’t the only place he sliced her. Another rumor is Victor kept her tied up for three weeks, allowing the slice on her face to become infected so it wouldn’t heal right. Victor thought he was being clever, giving her a ‘bad wound’ so everyone knew she belonged to him, not Saro.”
What a sick fucking bastard.
“When Victor released Cherelle, she ran to Saro and told him what’d happened. She believed Saro would want he
r no matter how she looked, and she demanded Saro punish Victor for what he’d done.” Rollie paused. “Saro beat her severely. When she recovered, he swore to keep her ugly face around as a reminder to everyone on the rez never to come between him and his brother. Saro announced the mark on her face meant she was Victor’s property. Then Saro warned if she ever tried to leave Victor, he’d kill off her family members. One by one.”
Sounded like an idle threat, yet I knew it wasn’t. It reminded me of J-Hawk’s wife. God, lots of psychopaths walked free, in every culture and in every walk of life.
“Cherelle didn’t believe him. She went to Rapid City to stay with her cousin. Two days later, her unci was the victim of a hit and run. After the funeral, Cherelle moved in with Victor and cut herself off from her family. She’s their errand girl, their go-between, their whore for hire. She’s whatever they want her to be.”
I was sickened by the story. I didn’t doubt the truth of it, but I wanted to know how Rollie had come across the information. Or if it was common knowledge on the Eagle River Reservation.
Took him a long time to answer. “The basics are common knowledge. But Cherelle is Verline’s cousin. Verline was thirteen when that happened.” He fingered his necklace. “Verline begged me to do something about Saro and Victor. No doubt what they done ain’t right. Mebbe if I’da been twenty years younger I’da taken them on. But I’m an old man. Ain’t proud of using that as an excuse, but it is what it is.”
No point in building up Rollie’s ego; he’d see through my insincerity and take offense. I changed the subject. “How is Verline?”
“Mean.” He sighed. “She’s pregnant again.”
Holy Viagra. Verline, Rollie’s live-in, was barely nineteen and younger than any of his six kids from his various relationships. I suspected Verline was younger than Rollie’s oldest grandkid. She’d given birth to their son seven months ago.
“You’d think by your age you’da figured out what causes that situation.”
“Smarty.” Rollie slowed behind a Lexus parked at elk crossing, which was a sign by a gravel pullout that warned of wildlife at large. He threw it into Park. “Be right back.”
In the side mirror, I watched Rollie approach the vehicle and pass a small box through the window opening. The driver handed over folded cash. Rollie unfolded it and counted it. He nodded, tucked it in his shirt pocket, and sauntered back to the truck as the Lexus roared away.
Mercy Kill Page 16
