Tainted Trail

by Wen Spencer

  Sam frowned and looked to Cassidy, “I thought the Wolf Boy was supposed to be old, like in his eighties or something.”

  “Uncle died in 1933,” Cassidy stated. “Grandpa never got over it. When people started to sight the Wolf Boy back in the nineties, he set up the reward, but it’s not the same person.”

  Was he the same person? He could be, but only if the boy had been him. He could have survived a murder and being lost in the woods for decades. A normal Native American child, though, would have stayed dead. How could he know without talking to someone that knew the boy?

  Sam put a hand on his shoulder. “You can’t win them all, Wolf Boy. Come on, I’ll give you a lift back to your hotel.”

  Behind Ukiah, the door opened and the cowbell clanged in warning of another customer.

  Cassidy glanced over Ukiah’s shoulder and then sighed. “If you have nothing you want to buy, it would be best if you go.”

  He started to turn away, and then remembered Max’s comment at the hospital. “Actually, I need a hacksaw.”

  Sam announced that she’d be out in the car.

  Cassidy Kicking Deer rang up the purchase and slipped the hacksaw into a plastic bag to make it easier for Ukiah to carry. “What do you want this for?”

  Ukiah lifted up the cast. “To cut this off.”

  Anger, disbelief, and glimmers of belief warred on Cassidy’s face. Apparently she could not decide if he was truly a family legend returning home or a clever con artist scheming to trick her family out of a lot of money. In the end, disbelief won out. “Have a nice day,” she said coldly, meaning it as a dismissal.

  Ukiah used his card key to get into his room, wishing Max had been there to greet him. He stretched out on the bed, heartsick from the day. Alicia was still missing, someone had tried to kill him, and the Kicking Deers thought he was a con artist. Sleep would be a welcome distraction. Luckily his body was battered enough, and his breakfast large enough, that he dropped off almost immediately.

  He woke to his phone chirping on the nightstand. Indigo’s phone number showed in the display. He hit the talk button. “Hi. I miss you.”

  As if the words opened a wound, he suddenly missed her horribly. It was the first time that they had been separated.

  “I miss you,” Indigo murmured. “How do you feel?”

  He considered his body. “A little sore. I’ll be able to track tomorrow, after a big dinner tonight and a good night’s sleep.”

  And truthfully, he realized, it wasn’t the first time they had been apart. Indigo’s FBI work had taken her a field several times in the last two months. It was the first time he was away, with no friends or family except Max and Kraynak to disguise their separation.

  “Good. Any news on Alicia?”

  “Um, I’ve been asleep. I haven’t heard anything all day.” Suddenly a flash of fear went through him. What if Max and Kraynak both had been shot? Who would call him? “Can I call you back? I just had a panic attack over Max—I’m going to stay worried until I talk to him.”

  “I understand. I’ll be here for the rest of the evening.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I know you’d do the same for me.”

  They said quick good-byes and he hit the speed dial for Max.

  “Bennett.” Max answered on the first ring.

  “It’s me. I was just getting worried that I hadn’t heard from you.”

  Max laughed. “Actually, same here. I’ve got a gun, Kraynak, and half the Umatilla county police force with me. You’ve got a busted-up arm, walking on a crutch, no gun, and are completely alone in a strange city.”

  “I’m amazed you left me alone.”

  “I don’t know what I was thinking about.”

  “Alicia.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I’m holed up in the hotel room right now. I had an interesting talk with Sam Killington about statistical deviations from the norm. There’s a weird pattern of elevated death rates in the area. House fire fatalities is one.”

  “Sounds like she’s doing insurance-fraud investigation.”

  “Well, missing hikers is another elevated rate.”

  “Oh, damn. One of Kicking Deer’s deputies—he’s one of those big, dumb-blond ox types—has a theory that a hunter shot you, despite the fact it’s out of season for just about everything.”

  “With that high-power of a rifle?”

  “Yeah, I know. Stupid as it is, we’ve been hoping it might be true.”

  “Sam has no proof that the fires and hikers are connected, just statistics.”

  “Something is juggling the numbers, kid. I’ve told you that sometimes the only way you can see the passing elephant herd is to look at the numbers on the seismograph.”

  Ukiah consulted his nearly perfect memory. “No you haven’t.”

  “Well, I should have. Look, we’re calling it a night here. It’s getting dark. Kraynak and I will be back in Pendleton in an hour or so. The three of us can compare notes over diner. See you then.”

  Ukiah hung up and dialed Indigo again.

  “Special Agent Zheng,” she answered.

  “Max is fine, but they haven’t found anything. They’re on the way back.”

  “You’ll be out first thing tomorrow,” she reminded him. “You’ll find her.”

  He found himself smiling under her calm assurance. Indigo was the most centered person he knew, unruffled in the face of death and destruction, with a stillness that was a peaceful refuge for him. In the face of confusion and chaos of the everyday world, he found her tranquility a joy and blessing.

  “How’s Kittanning?”

  “A little fussy. I think he misses you. Hellena showed up on the pretense of discussing Mom Jo’s dogs and got him settled.” Hellena was the alpha female of the Dog Warriors. “I hope you don’t mind, but I told her about the shooting.”

  “I don’t mind.” The Dog Warriors were his family by genetics; they probably should know he had been hurt. It steered his mind, however, to the Kicking Deers. “Did Max tell you? We think we’ve found my mother’s family.”

  “He told me that your contacts with Sheriff Kicking Deer haven’t gone well.”

  “It’s worse.” He sighed, wishing she was there, with him. He told her about his meeting with Cassidy Kicking Deer. “Maybe they’re right, Indigo. I mean, I’m kind of jumping to conclusions here. There is a boy missing, believed to be running with the wolves. I’m a boy that ran with wolves. But what if Cassidy is right? Her great-great-uncle is dead, and has nothing to do with me. Maybe because I was out there, being strangely famous for running with the wolves, Jesse Kicking Deer clung to the hope that his uncle wasn’t dead, when he really was.”

  There was a minute of silence and he listened to her beautiful breathing.

  “There’s holes to it,” Indigo stated. “First is the sheriff’s reaction to the mice. Why would anyone fake pulling mice out of incisions? Normal Native American children do not have mice in their abdominal cavities.”

  He followed her logic. “If the Kicking Deer boy was Pack blood, though, he would.”

  “Exactly. Secondly, there is the Kicking Deers’ reply to your claiming of possibly being several hundred years old.” Indigo repeated the response. “He’s good. I nearly believe him. Somebody talked.”

  “As if someone told me something I shouldn’t know.”

  “Which is the Wolf Boy could be considered two or three hundred years old,” Indigo continued. “Then there is the fact that the grandfather believes that the boy is still alive even though there are photographs of his death. Cassidy indicates a gruesome death. If the body was disfigured, then the question of true identity comes into play. Or did the body disappear?”

  “Which would have happened if the boy came back to life.”

  “Lastly, the grandfather believes that the child is still alive, even at age eighty-four, which isn’t a totally unreasonable life span for a normal person. Remember, though, they�
�re looking for the Umatilla Wolf Boy. Who would believe a person could spend seventy-two years running feral in the Oregon wilderness?”

  “Cassidy Kicking Deer doesn’t.”

  “But Jesse Kicking Deer, who knew the boy personally, does.”

  You’re virtually indestructible, Max’s voice repeated in his head. Max would still believe in him after seventy-two years.

  “I don’t think you’re jumping to a wrong conclusion, Ukiah, but I also think you may never get these people to admit you’re their relative. I know that this isn’t the same, but your moms and Max love you. They’re your parents now. You’ve got them, Cally, Kittanning, and me.”

  “I know. It’s not like I was planning to move back to Oregon with them. I just wanted to know what my childhood was like.”

  “Ukiah, the Kicking Deers loved you enough that seventy years after you vanished, they’re still looking for you. Perhaps the old man could give you more details, but it’s going to work down to this—they loved you. Knowing how you thrive on being loved, how could you’ve been anything but happy as a child?”

  With the three-hour time difference, Indigo needed to say goodnight shortly afterward. Rather than torturing himself about what he hadn’t discussed with Indigo, Ukiah thought about what Sam Killington had told him, and wondered what she hadn’t.

  He wasn’t sure if three fires in two months was a huge number. It felt like it, though. If the fires started after midnight, most people would be in bed. In a deep sleep, most people would die of smoke inhalation before waking. But all of them? Only the large numbers of deaths indicated something wasn’t right. It was a deviation of statistics, and that was all.

  Yet, that was what seemed to be driving Sam’s investigation. The only link between the house fires, the hikers, and drownings—if Sam was telling him the truth, and if she hadn’t missed some other connection—was that the numbers were all statistically deviant from the norm. Max would be aquiver now, sure that someone was plotting something. Ukiah, however, was at a loss. He worked with the concrete. A footprint. A blood sample. A stray hair. These were things he could grasp.

  When Max, Kraynak, Chino, Leo, and himself played poker on Fridays, they never let him shuffle the deck or deal. Each and every card felt slightly different to him. As he slid the card facedown across the table, he knew what it was as clearly as if it was faceup.

  Max stated that there were ways to predict, based on your own cards, what other people were holding and if your hand beat theirs. Ukiah found the theory impossible to use. He judged his hand against the others’ reactions, weighing their nervousness or lack of. Against their regular players of two private detectives, a police detective, and a lawyer, he did poorly. He only did well when outsiders sat in—people more open with their expressions than they knew, and less knowledgeable about Ukiah’s skills.

  He tried to find angles to Sam’s case he could grasp easily.

  There was the fact that the families of the house fires had missed appointments, work, and school. Something kept all these people home to die. It kept them in bed as the house filled with smoke. Perhaps it was a killer, holding these families hostage. But fires weren’t as destructive as people supposed; even on badly burned bodies, coroners could find evidence of stabbing, gunshots, poison, drugs, and strangulation. Even if the victims had been smothered—which was also death by asphyxiation—prior to the fire, there would be the lack of smoke in the lungs.

  The thought of someone stalking through a dark house, snuffing out one life after another, sent another shiver down his back.

  He thought instead of Alicia. He wanted desperately to believe she was just lost. He didn’t want to think about someone killing her.

  Alicia and Rose had set up camp at an isolated point, yet with full access to the road. Anyone could have driven up to the camp, killed both girls, and rode away without fear of detection. If they had wanted to eliminate evidence, they could have carried off the bodies to be dumped elsewhere; in this land of four-wheeled pickup trucks and great tracts of rarely traveled forest roads, there were no logistic problems.

  Surely there was comfort in that Rose was still at the camp, and saw Alicia walk away. Surely in a place as small and remote as the primitive campground, no killer would feel the need to so carefully hide his presence.

  But who shot him, and why?

  “We looked.” Max blew the dust out of the cut in Ukiah’s cast, eyed the depth, and placed the hacksaw blade back into the groove. “We didn’t find any sign of Alicia. We also tried to find where the sniper would have been when he shot you. Unfortunately we’re talking too large of an area—a hundred and eighty degree arc up to a half mile in range.”

  Kraynak watched the proceedings from the narrow balcony, doubt clear on his face as he chain-smoked through two cigarettes. “You sure we should be taking that off?”

  Max glanced up at Ukiah without lifting his head, a steely command to be silent. Kraynak, like many of their Pittsburgh friends, knew that Ukiah was different. After the shooting in June, it was a fact impossible to hide. Max and Ukiah, however, told almost no one the whole truth. Indigo knew—she had been swept up in the events—as did Ukiah’s mothers. Everyone else, Kraynak included, they left to make their own best guesses. A guess, Max insisted, could not be as dangerous as the confirmed truth.

  “I’ll be fine as long as I don’t put stress on the knit,” Ukiah said truthfully.

  Max sawed slowly and carefully. “He’s good with his left hand, but he’s been taught to use his right. The cast is in the way. He can’t shoot accurately or move easily with it on.”

  “If he shoots with that hand, he’ll break the arm again,” Kraynak said.

  “Do I have to really carry?” Ukiah asked.

  Max looked up Ukiah again. “Yes. If I could have left you a gun at the hospital, I would have.”

  Ukiah sighed. It didn’t seem right to shoot at someone to defend himself when he was nearly indestructible. He supposed there was a chance he would have to defend Max or Kraynak, who weren’t. It might have been the luck of the draw that he was shot and not one of the others. Unless, of course, the Kicking Deers had something to do with the shooting.

  Which reminded him. “I found out something interesting today. Apparently Jesse Kicking Deer has a large reward for the information leading to the return of the Umatilla Wolf Boy to him, and the family isn’t happy. It’s possible we tripped a trigger there. One of them might have shot me.”

  “That’s slim,” Max said. “About as slim as the hunter theory.”

  “Why don’t we just say it?” Kraynak ground out his butt. “The only reason anyone in Pendleton would be shooting at Ukiah would be to stop him from finding Alicia.”

  “They had thirty experienced people out the day before,” Max said. “Why not shoot at them?”

  “They weren’t on the right trail,” Kraynak said.

  “How did anyone know what trail I was on?” Ukiah asked.

  “Scanner,” Max said. “Sam told you that she heard Kicking Deer report the shooting.”

  Ukiah scanned his memory. “I wasn’t reporting where I was, and you can’t tap the GPS signal.”

  They considered the problem in silence.

  “Jared Kicking Deer knew we were heading for that hill,” Max said. “We stood there and discussed meeting Ukiah at the foot of the cliff.”

  “We said that was slim,” Kraynak said.

  Ukiah threw his mind back. “He reported to the dispatcher where he was going. It went out on the police channels.”

  “And anyone with a scanner would have heard it,” Kraynak said.

  “Ukiah will be up to tracking tomorrow,” Max said, pausing for a confirming nod from Ukiah. “We’ll find her then.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Umatilla National Park, Umatilla County, Oregon

  Friday, August 27, 2004

  It was the type of morning where the sky turned solid, the very air thickening to a gray blanket. Riffs of fog drif
ted off the treetops, the forest breathing out into the chilled air like a slumbering beast.

  Kraynak and Max were tense to the point of vibrating and trying not to show it. Healed and sound, Ukiah nevertheless still felt battered and bone-bruised. He limped through a grid search, hoping he’d find Alicia before he collapsed again.

  He crossed over the point where he lay wounded the day before yesterday and came to where Alicia landed. He crouched close to the earth, trying to glean every detail from the loose crumble of cliff face and weeds.

  Alicia had come down through a series of pine branches, resulting in a far easier landing than he experienced. Somehow the search-and-rescue team hadn’t trampled this point and he found Alicia’s handprints where she pushed herself up to a sitting position.

  “She’s bleeding, but not too much. I don’t think she was knocked unconscious; there’s no blood pool. She’s moving on two feet with a steady stride. If she had hurt a leg, or couldn’t swing an arm, it would show.”

  “Incoming,” Kraynak said calmly, but was moving quickly sideways to take cover behind a boulder, pulling his pistol.

  Max dropped down, bringing up his pistol.

  Ukiah took a deep breath, focusing on the crash of a body moving through the woods. “It’s Kicking Deer.”

  Max and Kraynak pointed their pistols skyward instead of at the oncoming sheriff.

  The county policeman came out of the woods like a storm front. “Why are you out here?”

  “My niece is still missing, we’re still looking,” Kraynak snapped, holstering his pistol.

  Kicking Deer crossed to Ukiah. “You fit to track?”

  “I’m fine,” Ukiah lied, feeling anything but fine.

  Kicking Deer caught Ukiah’s right wrist. Lifting Ukiah’s arm up, Jared ran a thumb over unblemished skin, pressing carefully against the healed but still aching radius bone.

  The slight pain triggered a deep growl of warning.