In the Company of Wolves: Thinning The Herd

by Larranaga, James Michael

  “Or maybe I keep the database for my sales people to call on,” Louis said.

  “Or maybe you do both,” Lunde said.

  Louis calmed down. “So there’s no way we’ll close this deal with Rebecca Baron?”

  “I doubt it,” Lunde said. “Quin knows too much. He knows what everybody is offering. But you can take comfort in the fact that Ben Moretti probably won’t win the deal either.”

  A big sigh came rushing out of Louis’s soft chest. At least he had a consolation prize. “Get me that database.”

  A wolf lopes through the plains or forests, continually picking up scents as he goes.

  Now back in his natural element, Harold did what he liked best, investigative work. Since Ben had given him free reign to search into Quin’s past, Harold knew he’d find something, given enough time.

  Harold walked quickly down one of the wide hallways of the admissions building of the University of Minnesota. He carried Quin’s resume, looking for the registrar’s office. This was where Quin attended school, where the whole internship supposedly had started. What kind of student was Quin? That was what Harold needed to know.

  A young couple kissed on the staircase, and a kid in sweats kicked a hacky sack. This place felt more like high school than college. Either college students were getting younger, or Harold was getting older.

  At the registrar’s office, he thought he could pump them for information. He entered through the glass door to see a student working behind the desk. Perfect.

  “Can I help you?” she asked. She had short bleached hair that was dark at the roots.

  “Yes,” Harold said. “A friend of mine is a student here. He was in a car accident last night. He’ll be out for a week or two—“

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” she said, covering her mouth with her hand. A gold bracelet dropped to her elbow.

  “Yeah, well, he’s OK,” Harold said, impressed that he had her attention so easily. “He asked that I stop by and pick up any assignments for him. I drove out here, and I lost his class listings. I was hoping you could help me.”

  She looked around the office at the other women typing and talking on the phones. Privacy was important at schools. He knew she’d have a hard time offering him much information.

  She sat down at her computer. “What exactly happened to your friend?”

  He hadn’t thought about the details of his lie. He didn’t think anyone would press him on it. “His car spun on the ice. He was broadsided by a semitruck.”

  The color drained from her already pale face, and she shook her head. Maybe he’d gone too far. “He’s in stable condition,” Harold added.

  “Your friend’s name?” she asked.

  “Quin Lighthorn.”

  She typed on the computer. “My best friend died in a car accident three years ago.”

  Harold wasn’t looking to start a support group, but he tossed her a line. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear about your loss.”

  “Thanks,” she said, still typing. “What’s Quin’s Social Security number?”

  Harold looked down at the application Quin had filled out for Safe Haven and read it to her.

  “Here he is,” she said. “But he’s not enrolled this semester.”

  “He’s not a student here?” he asked, reading the resume and cover letter. On both documents he claimed otherwise.

  “No, your friend has taken five classes in the last two years,” she said, squinting into the screen. “But he audited those classes.”

  “You mean he wasn’t even getting credit for them?”

  “Right. You can audit a course for a smaller fee and participate without taking tests,” she said. “A lot of senior citizens or people in the neighborhood do that.”

  Harold wondered what classes Quin had taken. “Can you print that out for me?”

  Harold noticed that Professor Marlene Grossman taught the five classes Quin had audited. “Where would I find this professor?”

  “Grossman? She‘s in the building next door, room 205,” she said.

  “Thanks,” Harold said.

  “Sure. I hope he feels better!”

  Back in the hallway, Harold waded upstream through a crowd of people carrying backpacks slung over their shoulders. When he got to Professor Grossman’s classroom, he stepped inside to see a rugged woman in brown corduroys and a knit sweater, writing on a digital whiteboard. Her neat handwriting was projected in green ink on the far wall of the room in short, squat letters. The sentence referred to tribal customs. He’d found the right place.

  “Excuse me, are you Professor Grossman?”

  “I’m Doctor Grossman,” she said, correcting him.

  He entered the room to get out of the busy hallway. “I’m sorry, Doctor Grossman. I’m Harold Reiker. I work for Safe Haven LLC. We offer an internship program, and we’re thinking of hiring one of your students. I would like to ask a few questions, if you’ve got the time.”

  The light from the video projector cast harsh shadows across her face.

  “I’m certainly an advocate for internships,” she said. “Which student are you referring to?”

  “Quin Lighthorn,” he said.

  She smiled. “Ah, Quin.”

  “You remember him?”

  “He drifts in and out of my classes.”

  “Is he a good student?”

  “Oh, definitely,” she said. “He’s very interested in Native American Studies. The topic fascinates him.”

  Of course it does, Harold thought. He’s Indian, and he wants to know what white people are teaching about his culture. “Anything about him that would make him a poor choice for an internship at an insurance company?”

  She set the green pen on the table and sat on the edge of a desk. She had an angular face and scratched her bony jaw. “He’s a little off balance, don’t you think?”

  “Off balance?” Harold asked loudly over the sound of a group of students laughing in the hallway outside the classroom.

  “He took one of my classes about a year and a half, maybe two years ago,” she said. “He was an ordinary student who sat in the back and took notes. But as the weeks went on, he began coming to class with more of a Native American look.”

  “You mean he wore Indian clothing?”

  “Native American jewelry and beads in his hair.”

  “What’s so strange about that?” Harold asked. “He’s Sioux and lives on the reservation.”

  “I don’t know how he ended up on a Minnesota reservation because Quin isn’t Sioux. He’s from a reservation in Arizona. He’s Navajo,” she said.

  “He moved from one reservation to the next. Is that so uncommon?” Harold asked.

  “There are more than five hundred Native American tribes in this country. Each tribe has its own traditions. You don’t hop from reservation to another,” she explained.

  Another chink in Quin’s armor. No, this was a gaping hole. “He takes an antihallucinogen, right?” Harold asked.

  “I can’t get into specifics, Mr. Reiker,” she said. “It would be against school policy.”

  “Forget the medications,” he said. “Can you tell me what’s wrong with him?”

  “We have better student candidates for your internship program than Quin,” she said, ignoring his question.

  He needed to press her harder. He had to give her a reason to pass along the information. “But you don’t understand. I’ve already hired Quin.”

  She dropped her green pen on the floor.

  “Quin is working for your company?” she asked, staring at him in amazement.

  “Yes, and if there’s something wrong with him, I’d like to know what it is,” Harold said, remembering how he’d caught Quin talking to invisible ravens in the trees.

  Dr. Grossman hit a few keys on her computer and then wrote a telephone number on a piece of paper. “Quin’s doctor is Kirsten Hayden. She contacted me after he began taking my courses to let me know he can be unstable at times. My guess is manic-depress
ive.”

  Manic-depressive was a label Harold had heard before when he worked as a cop. Many of his overworked friends on the force had battled depression. “He gets down in the dumps once in a while. That’s not so uncommon.”

  She was giving in now and divulging more than she should. She kept her voice low. “From what I understand, Quin suffers from intense mood swings. He has the potential to become quite violent. That’s why his doctor contacted me.”

  Her head hurt, her vision was blurred, and Rebecca felt an odd tingling sensation along her right arm. Last night had been worse. Her headache had kept her up half the night worrying that the tumor was growing.

  She sat up on the couch, looking out the window onto the white snow. The sun reflected off the ice on the lake and made her light-sensitive eyes water. Should she call her doctor and tell him the symptoms were back? No, she’d already put the doctors behind her. She wanted to experience this naturally without extraordinary means.

  They’d given her heavy doses of painkillers. She had a prescription for a morphine IV, but a home health nurse would need to administer it, and she wasn’t ready for that, either. She would endure the pain naturally, the way she’d given birth to her daughter.

  On the coffee table, in a stack of papers bound in a manila file, she had her last will and testament. Why was it so thick? Maybe the richer you were, the fatter your will. She had a large sum of savings in the bank, a few trusts, and as soon as she could sell this life insurance policy, she’d have even more to give away.

  Who dies and leaves this much paperwork behind? Possibly lawyers, accountants, and mortgage bankers like Mike. Certainly not artists like her. She preferred to die on simpler terms.

  The throbbing pains in her head were the ringing reminders that she really had no time left. She wouldn’t take a dream vacation after all or have fun with the money. She had to rewrite this will, in her own words, and decide which charities would receive her estate.

  She’d allow Mike a chance to review the document to make sure it was legal because he was good at that sort of thing. But she wouldn’t let him change the substance of the document or who she’d donate money to in the will. She had to do this her way.

  For now, she had to think about what she would prepare for dinner. Quin would show up in a matter of hours.

  From the outside, the Shakopee Women’s Prison looked nothing like a prison. To Quin the place seemed more like the campus of a middle school. The one-story buildings were connected by neatly shoveled sidewalks. The grounds had plenty of trees, residential homes stood across the street, and there wasn’t even a fence around the perimeter.

  If she wanted to, Helene Woman of the Storm could escape merely by walking away. Any woman could, but if apprehended, she’d be sent to a harsher place, as Helene had reminded him many times.

  Quin entered the building and signed his name to the roster. The male security guard behind the glass checked the list and made a phone call. He was a big man with a handlebar mustache and muscular shoulders that stretched the pleats on his uniform shirt.

  Once Quin got clearance, the guard would frisk him for metal objects, remove his feathered earring, and allow him to pass through to the next building. He’d been visiting the prison on and off for two years. He was familiar with the routine.

  A television hanging in the corner of the lobby showed the midday news. The volume on the TV was too low to hear anything, but Quin watched a reporter standing outside the Safe Haven mansion next to the police tape. There was a photo of the deceased deputy and the words “apparent suicide” below her photo. An investigation into her death was under way.

  Quin again considered calling the police or FBI with an anonymous tip, but he was concerned they’d track him down with caller ID or in some other way. First he had to close the deal, and then he’d pass on the information.

  “Sir?” the security guard said, standing behind Quin, waving a metal detecting wand.

  He removed his earring and coat while waiting for the man to finish scanning his body. After passing inspection, he walked through a metal door and waited for the guard to unlock the door to the next building. Most of the guards were reading magazines or watching television and seemed completely annoyed when a person from the outside needed to enter.

  Quin noticed Helene seated on a chair in the visitors’ lounge, sucking on an unlit cigarette. Her Diet Coke and pack of Marlboro Lights were on the armrest, her only security blankets. Across the room were a young man and woman, barely out of their teen years, chattering away and laughing. Unlike Helene, that girl obviously hadn’t murdered her boyfriend to get in here. He sat right next to her. Or maybe she’d found a new boyfriend.

  Quin hadn’t visited Helene in weeks, so when she looked up at him, he expected an angry scowl. Her face was expressionless, as if she were challenging him to guess what she was thinking.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he said, sitting next to her on a hard-cushioned chair.

  She took a drag from her unlit cigarette. “Where have you been?” she asked, as if he’d shown up late for dinner.

  “Working here and there.”

  “You don’t need to work, Quin,” she said, tugging on her black hair. She always wore it the same way, parted down the middle, the part so straight it would take a plumb line to improve it. She looked too shopworn for a woman still in her fifties, like an overweight Pocahontas.

  “I get bored sitting around your father’s house,” Quin said. “Hawk is a great guy, but he’s old. He sleeps a lot.”

  “He’s not sleeping, he’s meditating,” she said.

  “Well, he snores when he meditates,” Quin said, taking a shot at her.

  “At least he visits me. Tell me how you think Hawk’s holding up?”

  “He gets along,” Quin said. “He has his routines. Besides, Slim Jim is there.”

  “I’m paying you to watch him, to protect him,” she said. “I don’t trust Jimmy. His friends are vermin.”

  Who could argue with that? Slim Jim and his rowdy friends weren’t on Quin’s Christmas card list.

  “You have to spend more time on the rez,” she said. “That’s what I’m paying for.”

  This irritated Quin. He didn’t appreciate the way Helene talked down to him in her condescending smoker’s voice. “Yeah,” was all he said, thinking back on how he’d fallen into this situation. For a woman who wasn’t his mother, she sure acted like it.

  Quin and Helene had a mutual friend who’d introduced them a few years ago at a party. She was drunk and yelling at her boyfriend when Quin stepped in and broke up their fight. He knew as soon as he met her that she was a hot-headed woman, a hurricane always spinning toward a coastline. He drove her home that night, tucked her into bed like a gentleman, and went home thinking nothing of it.

  She must’ve been impressed. After that night she had called him often. They partied occasionally, and she eventually blasted a hole through her old boyfriend’s chest. Frightened and on the run, Helene had returned to her reservation for the first time in thirty years. She thought that crossing over to the reservation was like running to Mexico—that the law would have no jurisdiction there, but Hawk gave her the courage to turn herself in.

  He told her to straighten out her life, and that since she’d returned to the reservation, she would automatically receive a monthly stipend from their casino. Other tribal members fought this, claiming that when she left she’d lost all rights to casino money. So Hawk promised he’d pay her each month as long as she finished her prison term, which was only another two years. Now she had something to look forward to, a nest egg to protect.

  She’d called Quin, her younger drinking buddy, and told him she wanted to keep a watchful eye on her father while she was serving time. She struck a deal to pay Quin to stay with Hawk on the reservation. She told her friends and family that after she’d left the reservation thirty years ago, she’d become pregnant. Quin was her son. He had returned to help his grandfather.

&nbs
p; At first, Quin wasn’t sure about the idea. Who would believe it? But Helene kept working on him, telling him he looked the part because he had Indian blood. Even so, she had no right talking down to him. She wasn’t his real mother.

  She tapped her Marlboro onto the table, glancing around the room. “What kind of jobs are you working?”

  “Bounty hunting,” he said.

  “Again? God, I wish Hawk hadn’t taught you that,” she said. “Give it up, will you? He taught you our ways, but you’re not Sioux, Quin.”

  “I’m Indian,” he said defensively.

  “You’re Navajo. You’re not Sioux, and you’re not from the Wakan reservation!”

  At one time she’d spent a considerable amount of effort convincing him the Sioux and Navajo were similar. Lately she’d been doing the opposite, reminding him he was an outsider. This made him angry.

  “It takes more than long hair and dark skin to be Wakan,” she said proudly, as if he could never understand.

  He felt he understood her culture. “I have visions.”

  “You have visions?”

  “I see things.”

  “You’re freaking me out,” she said. “All I want you to do is keep an eye on Hawk until I get out of here. Make sure Jimmy and his pals don’t spend all his money. Can you do that?”

  Quin remembered the wolf bundle in the front seat of his truck. If Helene found out he’d borrowed so much money from her father, she’d commit her second murder right here in the lounge.

  “Don’t worry, I’m watching Slim Jim too.”

  “Good. And check in with me once in a while,” she said. “Hawk’s old, and I want to know how he’s holding up.”

  She looked him over, studying his longer hair. Her stares made him angrier, edgier. Her eyes were somber like her father’s, and she had similar age lines cutting across her face, like cracks on an old ceramic doll.

  Just nod and smile. Don’t provoke her any further. “Everything is under control.”