by John Hansen
“Yea,” he said, “But Council Leader is an elected position. I’m running next year.” I shifted on the couch a little and sipped my beer, then asked him again, “The tribe doesn’t seem to be doing anything though. This Thunderbird guy…”
Clayton interrupted me, “Thunderbird is just a well-known guy, and talks to everyone, so he talks with the BIA and the rest for us – but he’s just a…” Clayton thought about it a moment.
“A distraction.” I said.
Clayton’s face showed a barely-perceptible smile. “Yea. That’s it.” He settled back into his chair. “The tribe will find out on its own, though, so don’t be going around and getting the cops involved. That’s what I invited you here to tell you.”
“How would the tribe even get involved; I mean what authority do they have when it comes to murder?” I asked, irritation unintentionally seeping into my voice.
Clayton looked at Sky a moment, then said, “The Blackfoot say ‘never be afraid to talk matters over with those you disagree’ and I wanted to have you here to talk matters over. You don’t know anything about this place – you don’t know anything about us – and you didn’t really know Alia.”
“I knew her better than you think,” I blurted out, “well enough to know that she deserves better than to have been beaten to death and left in the dirt to die. And then to be buried and forgotten and people just talk about wanting to find out what happened? I can’t leave it like that.”
“She was cremated,” Sky said.
I looked back at her and wondered what she was feeling about all of this. She was clearly a girl with intelligence and guts, and must have her own thoughts about this entire thing.
“You found her out in the woods Sky,” I said. “What do you think happened to her?”
Sky didn’t answer, but looked at Clayton. Clayton seemed, for his part, to suddenly soften at my question. His brow furrowed and he searched my face as if looking for any insincerity, or ulterior motive hidden there. “Look Will, I know how you feel – I dated her for two years and she lived here with us. But you don’t know how things work here. So let the tribe handle this and stay out of it.”
“She lived here until she broke up with you,” I said.
“No,” Sky cut in. “She lived here until she was killed.”
This was a bit of a shock. I looked to Clayton. “You mean she lived here with you two, while you are dating, after your breakup?”
“Yep,” he nodded. “We were close – all of us – we were a family. The Blackfoot are like that.”
This took a moment to process. I stared down at the carpet, then up at Sky.
“Can I see her room?”
Sky nodded. “Sure.”
She led me down the hall while Clayton stayed in the other room. The hall way had three doors – two bedrooms and a bathroom, I guessed – and it was a very narrow space with not much room to stretch out. Sky led me to the last door on the right and pushed it open. I walked in and immediately smelled Alia – that subtle, sugary perfume. I felt like she was just around the corner. I stopped in the doorway and looked around; and I saw a room that was small, square, and had only bed and a dresser in it, with an old TV in the corner and a small stereo sitting on a shelf. Posters of Marylyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails were taped to the wall.
“We boxed up most of her stuff and gave it to Goodwill already,” Sky said from the doorway, looking in over my shoulder. “There was no one to send it to, as you probably know.”
I walked over to the bed and pictured Alia’s little frame sleeping there. I thought back to our night together, holding each other like we did as we slept in my bed. I wondered if her sheets still smelled like her but I resisted the urge to bury my face in them in front of Sky who was still standing in the doorway, watching me. I walked over to the closet and pulled open the sliding door.
“There’s still a few things in there...” Sky said.
I saw some small shoes on the closet floor and a jacket on a hanger. A black, long-sleeve Jack Daniels t-shirt was hanging there too, and I ran my hand over the material. I breathed in through my nose but didn’t detect her fragrance here. It had been too long, and the clothes had lost her essence, hour by hour.
I saw a picture in a frame over on the dresser, showing a little, dark-haired girl with a tall, thin woman, smiling in the sun at some farm. They were standing next to horses, which had their heads down grazing. I picked up the picture.
“That’s her mom – and Alia,” Sky said. “I didn’t know what to do with that pic. She’s got no family to send it to; and I have no idea where her mom is now. It didn’t feel right to give it to Goodwill, or throw it away.”
“Just keep it,” I said, and I set the picture back onto the dresser. “Sky,” I said looking over to her, “why were you out in the woods in the middle of the night when you found her? Why don’t you just tell me?”
Sky just looked at me for a moment.
“You were looking for her, right?” I asked.
“Actually no,” she said after another moment’s pause, “I was looking for Clayton.”
“What was Clayton doing out there?”
“Clayton didn’t kill her, Will, if that’s what you think.”
“Then why were you out there looking for him?”
She finally stepped from the doorway and walked over towards the dresser. She reached for the picture and put it into my hand. “You take this, keep it.”
I stared at the picture again.
“She was a good person, Will,” Sky said quietly, looking around the room. “She was just trying to get by, working a shitty job, working the diner – trying to make a life, hoping to get out to L.A. someday.”
“She told me.”
Sky breathed a sigh and said, “She had this way of… connecting, with people.” She looked at me. “She said you and her connected instantly.”
I kept staring at the picture of her as a little girl, wondering if she was happy in that moment, at least.
“That necklace meant a lot to her,” Sky said, nodding at my necklace. “It was her ‘lode stone,’ which means it was her connection to the spirit world, in the Blackfoot way. She got it at one of the powwows – I think after her mom left.”
Sky looked down to my wrist, at the leather strap wrapped there. “Who gave you that?”
“Thunderbird.”
She nodded, as if that was expected. “Yeah, he gave her one just like it, long time ago. He was like an uncle to her – a big, weird uncle.” Sky smiled to herself.
“Who killed her, Sky?” I asked, looking up at her.
Sky looked at the picture in my hand and shook her head. “If you can find out, Will, do it – that’s why I brought you here. I think people have already started to forget about her… So keep that photo and find out what happened; her spirit will be at rest then.”
Sky turned and left the room – leaving me standing alone in the center of Alia’s world. Was there something here that could actually tell me about her last days? I looked around the room again and spotted a small spiral notebook. I walked over and picked it up, it was brand new looking, not used at all. What was more tragic than a diary never used?
I flipped it open to the first page – nothing. I flipped through all the pages – blank. I was about to set the book down when I noticed on the very last page was a girly looking handwriting – loopy characters in pencil with elaborately dotted and crossed “I”s and “T”s. At the bottom was the signed name “Alia Reynolds.”
I glanced out to the hallway, and then turned back to the book and quickly read over the paragraph of lines written on the page. I felt confused, however, when I got to the end. It read like a poem, but it was written in the third person, and didn’t seem to apply to Alia in any way.
It read:
When she was a little girl, Alia was spoiled and rich, and had gold and silver poured down onto her bed like a fountain of light. She bathed in riches and never knew pain or hunger.
; When she was a young woman Alia was spoiled and rich, and had jewels and luxuries handed to her by rich men and women, who wanted a moment of her time. She bathed in riches and never knew pain or hunger.
When she was an old woman, Alia was spoiled and rich, but gave her gold and silver and jewels and luxuries to her daughter, like a fountain of life from a woman everyone wanted. She bathed in riches and never knew pain and hunger.
Was this how Alia saw her future, a prediction of success in Hollywood as an actress? Or was this poetic deception which meant to highlight her poverty and destitution? Where did her life fit in to this fairy tale? What was the point?
She had signed it like a letter. But to whom?
Feeling more uncertain about her life than when I had started, I walked out of the Alia’s room back down the hall to the living room. Everything came down to one question: Of all the people I had met so far, was there any person in her life that would have killed her, and so viciously?
I couldn’t think of any likely suspect, beyond Clayton, and he was a mystery now too. If he lost it because of the break up or something else – he was incredibly calm about it – and Sky was too smart to not figure it out if it was him. Then there was always the possibility of a random attacker out there... But the odds of a random attack were slight I felt… And that bit about the lack of footprints?
Some special care had been put into this killing – which suggested a motive. I shook my head. What did I know about crime scenes and motives? I would more likely just end up in the woods like Alia, I thought to myself.
Although Sky had mentioned “dinner,” it seemed dinner was just going to be drinking beer. I had a fresh one waiting for me as I sat back down in the living room. Clayton was fiddling with his phone as I settled back into the couch. I looked at him and tried to picture him murdering Alia in some violent way, beating her with some kind of blunt instrument – I could imagine it.
Clayton set the phone down and looked over at me, noticing the picture next to on the couch. He nodded as if in approval. “Let me show you another picture.” He got up to get a large photo off a shelf across the room.
I thought he had meant a photo of Alia, but when he returned and showed me the picture, I saw a large, fat man standing at a podium, speaking to a crowd.
“My father – James Red Claw.”
His father had strong Native American features – stronger than Clayton – although with short, salt-and-pepper hair and a cowboy hat. He had the stockiness, the large brown eyes and round small head of the Blackfoot tribe, though, sure enough.
Sky had sat back down in the recliner as Clayton showed me the picture. She sighed and said, “Clayton, just tell him about everything,” in a tired voice.
Clayton looked to her for a long while, just standing there in front of me still holding the picture, then he looked back to me and nodded. “Ok.” He sat down heavily in his chair again, and stared at me, still holding the photo.
“Ok,” he said again, as if resolving finally let some secret out. “You know I want you to stay away from the cops… because they get things wrong and create more trouble than they solve, right?”
I nodded, just thinking of how Ronnie kept saying the exact same thing. I didn’t mention he may be right since Officer Olsterman seemed to regard me as a suspect now, despite the fact that I had been running around town trying to find out what happened.
“But,” he continued, “what you don’t know about is Browning. My father was Browning.” He reached back, setting the photo on a small table next to him. “He ran an insurance business in town, had some real estate investments, and he ran the tribe’s finances.”
“But what you also don’t know,” Clayton continued, “is that he also ran the biggest drug business in Montana – right here out of Browning. Nobody knew it for a long time, but he controlled all of the meth, coke, weed and other shit coming into Northern Montana from Canada – for years, for many years actually, until he was busted five years ago. It made big news in this state, especially since he was well known as a business leader and elected official.”
“Him and his brother, my Uncle Ray, were Army vets, and had connections in Canada with some vet buddies who had connections in Mexico. So they started bringing stuff in in the 80’s, and soon they were the biggest ones running drugs into this state – the only ones after a while. My uncle was ratted out by his connections in California after they got busted up there, and he died in prison last year. My father,” Clayton took big gulp of Miller and continued, “he is serving eighty years for 1st degree murder – he’ll die in prison too. He’s in Atwater – a prison in California. He’ll never get out.”
Clayton looked at the picture of the big man proudly giving a speech before an American Flag draped behind him, a man with two faces. Did Clayton have two faces?
Clayton stopped for a moment and surprisingly Sky picked up his thread. “Clayton’s ancestors go back generations in the tribe; his great-grandfather was a Chief and met with the president in Washington. But James Red Claw destroyed the family reputation, and they lost everything when the feds arrested him. The Red Claws lost their homes, their businesses and real estate, and their money. The whole family has been fucked up over it.”
Clayton picked up the hand gun that had been resting on the coffee table. He admired it, and then drew back the slide, exposing the barrel. “Only me and Jake stuck around here, that’s my brother you met before – with the sunglasses... We’re all that’s left of the Red Claws.”
Clayton pulled the magazine out of the gun and then snapped it back in with his palm. He shoved the gun into the waistband of his jeans, and then pulled a cigarette from a pack and lit it. “Jake is always leaving his shit out in the open…” He smirked at me and drew in a lungful of smoke. I watched him as he blew out through his nose. “And I am going to build everything back up to where we were – that’s why I’m running for Council this year. I’ll be the youngest ever elected… And that’s just the start.”
He looked at me with a level gaze, and said, “My father lost everything, but most of all – worst of all – was that he lost our name. The Red Claw family is now looked at like a bunch of criminals. Everyone thinks we still deal drugs and we are blamed for every fucking bad thing that happens here.”
“Like Alia’s murder,” Sky asked.
“And everything else,” Clayton said. “So, you see why I wanted to talk to you. You don’t know the history here, but now you know a few of the people, and you know some of the law enforcement. I’m under suspicion in everything I do, Will, and I want to change that. It’s got to change – it’s what I was born to do.”
Not carrying a gun in your waistband would be a good start, I thought to myself.
He drained the last of his beer and stood up; his t-shirt fell over the gun. “So I can’t have you thinking I killed Alia, which I know you do. And I can’t have you getting anyone else thinking I killed her.” He walked over to me and stuck out his hand, “Make sense?”
I shook his hand. “Makes sense,” I said.
He looked over at Sky and then at me and said, “We gotta turn in soon; I got an early shift tomorrow.” He offered his me his hand, again, so I shook it again, wondering if he was getting drunk. Probably best that I was leaving soon.
“So thanks for coming and hearing me out,” he said.
I sensed it was time I was out the door, but there was one more subject I had yet to broach, and I wanted to have something said about it before I left.
“Is Jake involved?”
Clayton face was blank but his eyes showed distrust. I stared back at him, trying to show resolve and that I wasn’t intimidated anymore – although I still was.
“In what?” he asked.
“Jake didn’t kill her,” Sky suddenly said. “So don’t bother about him.”
I kept my eyes on Clayton, though. He nodded slowly. “Jake is a different situation. We don’t see eye to eye on some things, him and I; but he’s my brother and
I love him, and I’ll support him no matter what. But he didn’t kill anybody, so stay away from him Will, because you’d just be wasting your time.”
“Who do you think killed her, then?” I asked him.
“Don’t know,” he said after a moment, “maybe you did.”
His face was still blank, but there was now a malevolence in his eyes that was concerning. Sky stepped over and held one of his hands.
“Time to go, Will,” she said.
As I got up to leave, Clayton seemed to suddenly shrug off the tension, and he stepped next to me as I approached the door. He put a hand on my shoulder, and smiled, but the smile was forced. “Look, I just wanted to tell you how things are in Browning… Thanks for coming.”
I just nodded and walked out onto the porch. As Clayton closed the door, I heard him say, “But if you keep dropping my name around town in connection with Alia, we are gonna have a problem.” The door shut firmly on my back.
Another pleasant evening in Browning… I mused. As I got into Ronnie’s car and started to drive back, I realized that I had just as many questions, if not more, now, after meeting Clayton and Sky, than I had before. Why did Ronnie say he bought his drugs from Clayton and that “you could get anything” from him – if Clayton was keeping his nose clean and trying to get to the leadership of the tribe? Who is Clayton really? I still had no idea. And where is Jake in all this? And why was Sky out in the woods in the middle of the night?
As I drove towards Two Medicine, I resolved to find out at least the Sky question before I was done – even if it killed me. I was sick of being in the dark, and it was getting darker all the time…
Twenty-Nine
I drove back home with the growing feeling like I was just getting deeper into a mass of questions, instead of getting closer to an answer. After I got back to the store, I took Alia’s picture from the car with me as I walked up the porch and into the kitchen. I stared at the little girl’s beaming face in the photo – I could see an Alia in the making – eyes squinted in the sun, holding her mother’s hand, trustingly.
