by John Hansen
Olsterman nodded slowly at me, and then picked up a card from his desk and handed it to me. As I grabbed it he held it for a second before releasing it into my hand, and said, “I have to say this in these situations, of course, but don’t leave town without checking in with me first – we may have some more questions for ya – might need a DNA sample from ya too.”
I nodded vaguely, and walked out of his office and towards the front door. His parting request haunted me as I left, but I realized that it was just a part of the whole, ridiculous mess. I reflected again that I was mostly likely the last person to see Alia alive (in their minds) and that made me either the killer or an important witness, so of course they were going to be keeping an eye on me. But DNA would only complicate things for me, and it left me with a bad feeling.
All in all though, I thought as I started up Ronnie’s car and backed out of the building, could have been worse… At least they didn’t arrest me.
Twenty-One
I called Greg that night, but only got Dee. She told me Greg would be out of town for a couple of days assisting with some park business on the other side of Glacier, but that she’d give him the message to call me when he got back. Disappointed, I hung up the phone and hoped I could convince him to look into what happened with me.
The next few days at the store passed uneventfully, my thoughts about Alia’s murder drowned out at times by the steady pace of the job – up front and in the kitchen cooking up peoples’ meals. More new faces from the campsites came and went, buying this and that, ordering meals, telling us about themselves, their travels over the park, asking us where we were from, and what it was like to live in the store… asking about the grizzlies, the bald eagles, the lake and mountains, and the ancient log store itself.
I fell into a routine pretty quickly as we got into late June – up at seven in the morning to shower and eat a small breakfast, usually with Ronnie and Katie even when one of them was off for the day, then to either prep the kitchen with Phyllis who remained a constant presence in the kitchen, or I’d be prepping the gift shop cash register and restocking the stuff on the shelves. Larry’s truck had been gone a while and Larry told me when I asked about it that it was in the shop; and when the truck was returned it had a new coat of paint.
After breakfast and restocking each morning, we’d open the main front door and side doors, propping them open with wooden wedges, letting the sunlight and breeze flow in through screens, then ringing up the buys on the registers, or in the back grilling burgers and making shakes in the kitchen. Ronnie still kept me entertained when we’d be paired up, telling me stories about his feats of debauchery with women in Detroit and in college, and his exploits when it came to consuming spectacular amounts of booze and drugs – of all kinds and varieties, at this party or that festival.
He had recently ended things with Bridget (although she still came to the store or to the bonfires to hang out with us at times as if nothing had changed) and he had taken up with a new girl, Jamie, a very tiny, black-haired girl who was actually high up in the park administration, I came to find out – a full-timer for the park year round. She was also very pretty, with green eyes, but she was very serious and had a dead-pan nature that was hard to get around.
As usual, I don’t know where Ronnie could have met her, or any of his hook ups, but he started bringing Jamie around pretty often, and introduced her to me one night as me and Katie where experimenting, out of sheer curiosity if not boredom, with a bunch of random fruit, cheese, candy, and dairy ingredients tossed into a blender to make a new milkshake we were going to call “The Alpine.”
“What’s up gang?” he called over to us as he came stomping down the stairs to the kitchen, Jamie following down the stairs behind him in more careful steps. There was a feline quality to her movement – in looking around the room, in stepping down the stairs. I guessed they had just screwed more likely than not, as Ronnie was not one to waste time in his room doing much else with any female guest. I scanned Jamie for signs of having been tossed around the sack but I didn’t see anything that gave a clue.
“Jamie, meet the gang.” He waved a hand in our direction as he opened the kitchen fridge and stuck his head in, and then came out with a Coke. “By the way,” he said to Jamie, casually, “Will wants to work for the administration this fall. He wants to stay here the year ‘round, so find him a job.” He drank a long gulp from his Coke, his small mustache bristling over the edge of the can.
Jamie sat down at the bench by the big kitchen table. “Is that right?” she asked, folding her legs and hunching over watching me.
I shrugged. “Well, I planned on when I first got here that I’d want to stay year round…”
“But then you actually got up here…” she finished my sentence with a knowing smile.
“No, I still want to stay,” I said, “I’m just not sure what I want to do for a job here in the winter.”
“What the hell else are you gonna do but work for the park, Chiefy, be a lumberjack like Larry?” Ronnie said.
“You never know.”
“Well let me know if you want to talk to some people, later in the summer, Will,” Jamie said, as Ronnie began dragging to the back door.
“Come on, sweet cheeks; let’s get some supplies in Browning,” he said as he kicked open the screen door and left. Outside I heard Ronnie’s junker start up and spit gravel as he drove out of the parking lot.
I walked back over to Katie, as she dumped the icy gelatinous goop she had created into a large glass. Neither of us was too interested in trying “The Alpine” anymore as we peered at it given its crude, mud-like appearance, so we stuck the whole thing in the freezer to “hopefully make some kind of sorbet,” Katie said optimistically.
As we were cleaning up, which we always did religiously after using the kitchen to avoid hearing Larry’s bitching, Katie looked at me and said out of nowhere, “Were you in love with her?”
I looked back at her. “Who?” I asked, already knowing who she asked about of course.
She just shook her head ruefully and went back to washing dishes.
“Why do you ask?” I said after a moment, resuming my drying.
“Because you always wear that necklace, and I saw her wearing it when she came in; and because you haven’t really been the same since she died,” she answered, dumping out the blender pitcher. “You’re different.”
I had no idea that Katie would have noticed those things, but I should have because of anyone at the store she was the observing type – the type that listened more than spoke, and watched more than interacted.
“How am I different exactly?
“You’re sadder, quieter...” Katie said, turning to me and leading against the counter, scanning me as if looking anew at my symptoms. She then wiped her hands on her apron, and said, “You seem to be… I don’t know… waiting for something – like you’re not all here in the moment anymore.”
I thought about that for a moment, and figured she was probably right.
“I asked Ronnie if he noticed anything different, but he said he didn’t think so,” she continued as I thought it over.
No, I said to myself, only a woman would notice the necklace and the slight change in tone.
“It’s hard to talk about,” I said, as we finished the last of the dishes.
“It’s the hard-to-talk-about things that need to be talked about most,” Katie said.
I said nothing further about it. I wanted to keep Alia pure, in a different place, not in the here and now where she was dead, cold, gone. In the other place, she was alive, forever young, and waiting. We cleaned up and left the kitchen for the morning.
That night as I lay in bed, looking up at the ceiling, with its old nails sticking out here and there, and Siegfried and Roy now gone from their little sleeping nook, out eating moths and flies in the black sky, I thought about what Katie had said again. Alia’s death had made me a different person, made me think different – about this place, Tw
o Medicine, about Montana, about myself. A person who fell in love within a couple days and then had his love ripped from his bed in a brutal death – that will change a man. But her slaying had changed me another way too, it had crazily given me a new purpose in my home at Glacier Park – to find who killed Alia and have him arrested – that was my one thought.
I wondered so often, minute to minute, about Alia’s murder – who did it, and why – that I began to ask why I actually cared so much? I mean, I had found this wonderful, beautiful girl who I really could have fallen in love with – not just a two-day love but a lifetime love; but the entire relationship, the entire time we had known each other, could fit within one week; and we had had sex only once. I lay in bed, staring out of my window into the night sky, and thought, “We all die eventually, and even though hers was brutal and horrible, and so far unsolved, death was still an experience that happened every day in the world. So why couldn’t I let it go as a tragedy, like a friend being killed in a car crash by a drunk driver? Why had it changed me?
But I knew the answer. It was because even though it was true that Alia and I had barely scratched the surface of each other’s souls and sensibilities, in another sense, a truer sense, there was no “surface” at all with us and had never been – we had gone deep down to the bottom of our hearts almost instantly, unconsciously, and we hand branded each other on our skin, in our hearts. There’s no other way to say it. I felt it as strongly and painfully as I would an actual brand on the skin. She had branded me, left something in me, and taken something out of me – all within a week, within a few kisses, and within a few words – with just a few looks from those eyes of hers. I did love her, I repeated to myself as my eyes closed that evening, and I was going to find out who the hell did that crime to her, and I would die trying if need be.
The first thing I did the next day, which was fortunately my day off, and which was a Friday, was to call up Greg again.
“Hello?” he answered after a few rings.
“Greg? It’s Will,” I said, as I sat on the edge of my bed. “Just hear me out for a second. I want to explain something. Everyone’s attitudes so far about the murder – Alia’s murder – is that it’s just another reservation incident, another part of living in the slums, and not really worth anybody’s time to really trouble with. I know that’s how it’s going to be written off – another “Red Alert.” The BIA cops haven’t lifted a finger after I was down there, the locals in Browning don’t care from what I can tell, and the tribe council isn’t interested either – just another black eye for them and the Blackfoot name. And, of course, no family or friends have surfaced to even mourn her since she died.”
“Ok…” Greg said, hesitantly, after a moment’s pause.
“Well, you seem to be the only one besides myself showing any kind of feeling about her murder, and it did happen on your turf, as you yourself said... So what I propose is that we do a little investigating ourselves: ask around, talk to people, get the police reports, and just find out what happened – ourselves...” There was no response on the other line. I cleared my throat and plowed onward, “And we start with a visit the reservation to find out more about her last days – visit with her foster parents, her roommates, co-workers… nothing major... you know.”
I tried to keep my voice level as I spoke with him, fighting back the rushing anxiety I felt as I could almost feel him slipping away from me as I spoke. “Then we talk to this Clayton guy, see what his deal is…”
Greg butted in, “Browning’s outside my ‘turf,’ Will, so I wouldn’t have any authority there, as you well know. And you, some amateur, going around stirring things up about a murder case isn’t going to help either.”
“You don’t need authority to ask questions, Greg. We’re just interested in finding out about her life, as friends of hers that are grieving over what happened – that’s all it has to be to anyone who asks – just a couple friends trying to just get some answers... And anyway, anything we find we report to Olsterman in Browning; and if he doesn’t’ do anything about it then we go to the cops in Kalispell –simple as that!” I ended with a hopeful lift to my voice, and then expectantly waited for his response.
There was a silence on the other end of the phone, again, and then a tired sigh. “I understand where you’re coming from, Will. But I honestly don’t have time to conduct some half-baked investigation that will lead nowhere, probably. I’ve got real work to do in the park, other matters to deal with, you know.”
“Real work?” I asked, with a regrettable harshness. “More lectures about bear bells and pepper spray, Greg? Is checking fishing licenses and ripping parking tickets more important than looking into a murder?”
Silence on the other end again – this time an ominous silence. I regretted instantly what I had said, remembering out talk on the porch, and how he had confided in me out of trust and friendship, and I felt embarrassed and sorry now as I threw it back into his face.
“I’m sorry, man, I just…”
“Don’t be sorry,” he quickly interrupted. “You’re out of line saying it, and you don’t know the first thing about being a ranger, but… but you’re more right than you’re wrong.” He cleared his throat and spoke a little quieter. “To be honest with you Will I haven’t been able to get this case out of my mind, and I’ve actually been asking around about it in the park.”
I heard him move the phone to a different ear, “That’s what I was doing a couple of days ago,” he almost whispered, “I went to Kalispell and the ranger HQ and ran the facts through Records – trying to find a similar past incident – any kind of similarity to other murders. I also asked Kalispell PD for help in running Alia’s friends and connections through the system.”
“And?” I asked.
“And zippo.” He took a deep breath, then said quietly, “I keep thinking about next summer, and the next after that, and what I’ll feel like driving around Two Med as a ranger who let a murder go in his park. When I see other girls walking down the road, that’s what I’ll think about. When I look in the mirror, that’s what I think about.”
A pause, and then, “I’m willing to go along with this for a bit, Will, to push back a little, even if that just means crossing a few people off a list I have in my head. I’m in.”
I felt a shot of optimisms bolt through my mind at his words, a rush of energy. Even just the possibility of trying to help Alia with a member of law enforcement (even if it was a ranger) gave me a new hope.
“Excellent, I’ll be over in an hour.” I said quickly, hanging up the phone before he could utter another word, before he could protest about needing a few days, about being busy, about taking our time. I was too driven now, too excited by my new plan to actively do something that nothing was going to delay it – it had already been delayed too long and the trail of her murder was already too cold.
I borrowed Ronnie’s junker car again, which by now had sort of become everybody’s car, and got to Greg’s ranger station well before an hour. I rapped on the door and Greg let me in with an incredulous look. I again explained my plans to him and it took some cajoling. In the time it had taken to drive over to his station, Greg had already cooled a bit from his decision, and had about a million objections to starting that morning, but I was able to finally convince him to go with me to Browning that day. But, he said, it would have to be at lunch time, at noon, and only for a short time during his break, and that he had to be back promptly at 1 pm.
“Perfect,” I said cheerily, smiling at him as he shook his head.
I spent the rest of the morning on his computer, tracking down the names of the men on the Blackfoot council, where and when the council met, and anything regarding contact info for Alia’s foster parents – anything, in fact, that helped tell me what her life was like in Browning up until the day she died. My plan was to find out from the tribe if they had known of any trouble or danger she was facing from anyone, and what they knew about Alia’s life before her last few days.
I also wanted to talk to her last foster parents, and even with the bastard who had molested her, but I didn’t know if he would still be living in Browning after such a scandal – and he had probably gone to prison anyway. I knew it was a stretch – looking up her old fosters – but I had so little to actually work with that any specific idea I had gave me encouragement.
As I punched a few letters on the keyboard I remembered Alia telling me that that foster couple had worked at the high school, and there was only one school in Browning, so I just had to find out who the married couple was at the school where one was a teacher and the other a cafeteria lady.
Finally, at noon, Greg and I drove off in Ronnie’s car – and two more unlikely murder investigators there certainly never were. Greg said that his ranger truck would attract too much attention and cause the locals to be wary, as they were with any law enforcement, so we drove in the jalopy. I felt a giddy excitement as I drove into Browning, but Greg just stared sourly out the side window on the drive in. Nonetheless, despite his moodiness I felt happy for the first time in a while – happy to have a purpose now, to be taking a step towards some kind of answer. Any answer.
Twenty-Two
It was once “Indian country”… as Larry liked to say. But now Browning was a wasteland of asphalt and grime, garbage, plastic bags, and empty liquor bottles. An old town, a thin town – drab, empty, store fronts and muddy streets, trashy, weed-filled medians next to cracked, concrete curbs, junk and cars in peoples’ yards, completed the scene. There was a flatness to the town that contrasted with the souring, snow-tipped peaks you could see off in the distance. If anything, the distant mountains on the horizon in Glacier just made Browning all the more depressing. Even the name “Browning” was gloomy.
