Chilling Effect (An Aroostine Higgins Novel Book 2)

by Melissa F. Miller

  At the thought of her grandfather, seeing her here, among the Chinook, helping them in her small way, her eyes filled with tears.

  “Thank you.”

  “What are your plans now?”

  “I think we’ll stay one more night at the cottage and then return to our hotel for the last night of our trip. We have a return flight already booked for Sunday. I’m glad I never got around to canceling it.”

  Lily ran up to them. “Can we all sit together at the dinner? Please?”

  “Yes, child,” Boom said.

  “Sure thing,” Joe agreed.

  Aroostine squatted so she was eye to eye with the girl. “I’d be honored to sit near you. You were so brave, Lily, telling everyone how you felt.”

  Lily’s eyes were solemn, but a hint of pink pride bloomed on her cheeks. “Thank you. I really was so scared we wouldn’t get there in time to help my mom. Boom really, really does drive slowly. Like a tortoise.”

  Boom and Joe roared with laughter. Aroostine smiled but a chill ran through her—Lily’s comment niggled at her. There was something wrong about it. Something that didn’t make sense. She tried to shake it off, but it clung to her and lodged itself into her mind.

  “You don’t drive much?” she asked Boom.

  “Not in years. I haven’t driven regularly since I was a young man.”

  Joe eyed her curiously.

  “Come on,” Ruby called, gesturing them to a picnic blanket that she had stretched across a patch of grass.

  “Roo?” Joe asked.

  “You go ahead and eat. I need to check in with Sid and just take care of a few quick things.” She knelt beside the girl. “Save me a good dessert, okay?”

  She walked through the sea of people carrying plates and covered dishes. She bumped into Carole, whose arms were wrapped around an enormous salad bowl.

  “You aren’t leaving?” the judge asked.

  “I’ll be back in a bit.” She started through the doorway then turned back. “Carole?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why do you think Lee Buckmount wouldn’t take responsibility for the drones?”

  The judge shook her head, and her hair fell around her face like a silver curtain. “I’ve known Lee a long time. His refusal to admit the embezzlement makes a certain sort of sense—he’s motivated by money, he always has been. I think he hoped he could somehow keep that money even if he went to prison. But I don’t understand why he wouldn’t allow us to judge the accusation of breaking into Ruby’s home or why he refused to admit to stealing the drones. There’s no gain for him there. Unless . . .”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless he truly didn’t do it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Boom was waiting for her. He watched through his front window as she trudged from the guest house, her shoulders bent as though they carried a great weight. As she stepped up onto his porch, he turned the doorknob and opened the door. She froze, her fist stopping midknock, and blinked at him with sad, fatigued eyes. Dark circles rimmed her eye sockets.

  “There you are, Aroostine.”

  He stepped aside to let her in. She hesitated.

  “It’s okay, come in. I know why you’re here.”

  She stiffened at that but then her face relaxed, as if she also found comfort in it. He knew what was about to pass between them would wound her. He wished it didn’t have to be so.

  She walked past him into the living area but didn’t sit. He closed the door and locked it.

  “Can I offer you some tea? Toast?”

  She shook her head.

  “You should eat,” he urged.

  “I’m not hungry.” She inhaled deeply, gathered herself, and then exhaled and asked the question he’d been dreading. “Why?” Her voice broke.

  He found it difficult to speak around the lump in his throat. “Please, Aroostine. Sit down. I’m making tea. I’ll bring it in and we can talk. I’ll tell you what you need to hear. But, sit. You look like you’re going to collapse.”

  She started to protest but stopped herself and sank into the love seat.

  She still wanted to trust him, he realized with a start. He hadn’t expected that. Perhaps she was willing to listen with an open heart and be persuaded.

  He hurried to the kitchen to pour the tea before she reconsidered. When he carried the cups into the living room on their saucers, he was pleased to see that his hands didn’t shake.

  “Thank you,” she said. Then she set aside the cup and saucer without taking a sip.

  He lowered himself into the chair across from her and waited, wondering where she would begin.

  “Does she know—Carole Orr?”

  “Does she know what? About my past? Or my present?”

  She gripped her hands together, almost as if she were praying. Her interlocked fingers turned white from the pressure.

  “All of it.”

  He sighed, blowing air across the surface of his tea. “Any Chinook on this reservation who’s of a certain age remembers AIM and what things were like then.”

  “The American Indian Movement?”

  “Yes. You’re too young, and the Lenape didn’t have a recognized reservation, so you may not fully understand our history. In the late sixties, early seventies, the country—the entire country—was in upheaval. White, black, red, yellow, brown. No matter the skin color, the people were rising up. Leaders were killed. The government, your government, was brutal.” He heard his voice take on power. He sounded like a younger version of himself, the man who rallied the people.

  “Your history books teach about the Black Panthers, the Kent State massacre, and the assassinations of civil rights leaders. Have you read about the Trail of Broken Treaties or the standoff at Wounded Knee?”

  She shook her head no.

  “I would guess you haven’t. Our people were being executed, stabbed, shot, mutilated by federal government agents. Evidence was manufactured. People went to jail. Women, mothers, were beaten on the courthouse steps for daring to demand justice for their dead sons—”

  He stopped himself abruptly and reached for his tea. Now his hands were shaking. The china cup banged against the saucer with each tremor. He drank and tried to slow his heartbeat.

  “So, you were in AIM,” she said softly, encouraging him to continue.

  His voice was weaker now, even to his own ears. “Yes. I was in AIM. So was Carole. So were many others. But I was a young man, full of fight. I grew frustrated; I felt that the leadership was losing sight of the people. Splinter Red Power groups began to form—other natives who felt as I did. Some were angrier than others. I got involved with the wrong people. I made mistakes.” He stared down at the teacup for a moment then lifted his head.

  She glared at him, her brown eyes flashing. “Mistakes like bombing the IRS building in Salem?”

  “Yes.”

  They sat in silence for what seemed like a very long time. He had to decide how much to tell her and whether he could accept the consequences of telling her.

  “You feel betrayed by me, daughter?”

  She set her mouth in a hard slash. “I’m not your daughter.”

  His heart squeezed in his chest at the rebuke. “So you researched my background and you learned that I spent eight years in prison.”

  She said nothing.

  “No one was injured, you know. We bombed the building on a weekend. It was a protest.”

  She whipped her head up at that. “Was it a protest when you tried to blow me up?”

  “I panicked. Please try to understand. Lee Buckmount and his supports were destroying our culture. They were happy to turn a profit on the backs of gamblers and drinkers, but at least we struck a deal with Lee to fund some of our cultural initiatives and to set up a scholarship fund. But then he brought the drones. That was sheer greed. Blood money. He had to be stopped. When Isaac discovered Lee’s financial shenanigans, it created an opportunity for me to try to help our community. Lee was distracted, worried, not focuse
d on his businesses. I was able to convince a sympathetic security guard to look the other way while a couple military drones disappeared.”

  “What was the plan? Were you going to sell them or what?”

  “Sell them to whom? Terrorists? My word, no. I don’t want anyone to have them. They’re death machines. I planned to destroy them. The Department of Defense would learn that the testing facility wasn’t secure and cancel the contract. That’s all I wanted to achieve.”

  He thought he sensed her beginning to soften toward him—she seemed to have less stiffness in her shoulders, less anger in her gaze. He plowed ahead, hopeful that she would understand. “You know in your heart that those drones are evil. That’s why you had the vision that first night.”

  “Who told you that I heard about the drones from Ruby?”

  “You did.”

  She recoiled. “I did no such thing,” she spat.

  “Your spirit guide showed you Lily in the vision with the drone. It seemed odd that you felt such a connection to a girl who you’d just met. Unless . . .”

  “Unless Ruby told me about the drones? You were comfortable acting on that hunch?”

  He shrugged. “You call it a hunch because you deny your background, Aroostine—”

  “Please, no more spiritual mumbo jumbo from you. You broke into Ruby’s, and you tried to kill me and Joe.”

  “One life, two lives—this is nothing in the face of an entire people’s history.” He said the words coldly, even though the truth was he’d struggled over the decision, consulted his own spirit guide, asked the ancestors for guidance. She may not have considered herself his daughter, but he felt a connection to her, and it had pained him to do what he’d done—what he’d had to do.

  “As one of the lives you found so disposable, I have to disagree.”

  He allowed her reproach to wash over him in a wave.

  “My turn to ask a question. How did you put it all together?”

  “Something Lily said at the sentencing circle about your driving. You’re a cautious, out of practice driver, but you got to the scene so quickly when Lee was attacking Ruby. Lily said you drove slowly, though. You were already off the reservation grounds when Ruby called—weren’t you? You snatched Lily from school as an insurance policy to keep Ruby from talking to anyone else about the drones.”

  “Partially correct. I knew Lee was going to beat information out of Ruby. It’s his way. I didn’t want him to harm the child, but I also didn’t want Ruby and Lily to talk to the government. I didn’t plan to harm Lily. I just needed to keep the theft of the drones quiet until I could arrange for their destruction.”

  She scrunched up her face and looked at him as though he were abhorrent. He didn’t know how to convince her that she did matter to him—but the Nation mattered more. She was a pure spirit, a fighter for good. Of course she mattered.

  But he knew he wouldn’t be able to get her to see. It was a battle he’d lost once before: when a young Carole Orr had told him to choose Red Power or her. Of course, his warm feelings for Aroostine were only paternal, unlike the heady first love that he and Carole had shared a lifetime ago.

  “But you let me—you helped me—try to convict Buckmount for your crimes. You aren’t the mystic sage you pretend to be. You’re just an old coward and a fraud.”

  He drained his tea and stood. He looked down at the young woman—ablaze with anger—sitting on his old corduroy divan and felt something like pity. “I’m sorry it has to be this way.”

  Aroostine wasn’t sure what she’d hoped to accomplish by confronting Boom. He was unrepentant and committed to rationalizing his crimes as somehow being in furtherance of some amorphous, greater Indian good. She’d wasted her time coming here. She should have followed her first instinct and gone straight to Chief Johnson.

  I’m sorry it has to be this way—that’s the best explanation he could manage for attempted murder?

  She pushed herself up and out of the sunken love seat cushion.

  “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have come.”

  She started toward the door, but he blocked her path. She moved to her left, he moved with her. She moved right. Again, he followed. She stopped.

  “I don’t have anything else to say to you. I’m leaving.” She forced the words out between clenched teeth.

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  “I’m not asking permission. Now, please get out of my way.”

  Something about the sad smile he wore and the hooded expression in his eyes chilled her.

  “You can’t leave.” He raised his right arm and made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the door and windows. “I watched you as you left the circle. I could see in your face that you were beginning to suspect what I had done. At that point, I had a choice. Run or stay and face you. I’m too old to run, Aroostine. I don’t want to start a new life away from White Springs. But I’m not going back to prison.”

  She stared at him, trying to make sense of his words, but his impassive face gave her no clues. She swept her gaze around the room. When she strained her eyes and squinted, she could just make out a thin ribbon of wire dancing around the door and window frames—as if he’d strung a line of Christmas lights that had no bulbs.

  Her chest tightened.

  “What’ve you done?”

  “I didn’t have a lot of time, so I won’t pretend it’s my best handiwork. But it should suffice. I left the potluck and came back here to wire all the windows and doors to a series of incendiary devices. When I locked the door after you got here, it activated the final bomb. Try to open the door and you and I go sky high. Same for the windows. The only way out is in pieces.”

  She surveyed the first floor. Two windows in the small front room, one in the kitchen, a front door, and a back door. No basement. A set of stairs, offset from the front door, led to the second floor.

  He guessed what she was thinking and shook his head. “Second-floor windows are rigged, too.”

  She wet her lips. “What’s your plan—you want to live in here forever, the two of us?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not crazy, Aroostine, but I am desperate. I’m not going to die in a cage. So you pick: forget we had this conversation, let the drone thing go, and walk out of here to live the rest of your life, or die with me in what promises to be an impressive explosion. I’m at peace with either decision.”

  She believed him. He looked relaxed and loose. When he spoke, his tone was calm, almost hypnotic.

  “And what if I do neither. What if I just settle in, decide being your captive beats either alternative?”

  “If you make that decision, then I’ll open the door and decide for you.”

  Her breath caught in her dry throat. She started babbling, the sort of stuff movie police officers say to insane, dangerous men with nothing left to lose, even though it never sways them. She knew he didn’t intend to let her live, no matter what promises she made. He’d decided to die in a blaze and to take her with him.

  “Boom, you don’t want to do this. We can work something out. Disarm the bomb and let me go.”

  Just like a central-casting villain, he threw back his head and laughed.

  “Be serious.”

  She mentally inventoried the contents of her pockets: pen; nearly dead cell phone; Isaac’s keychain; and a lip balm. Someone could likely make a creditable weapon out of those items—unfortunately, she was not that person.

  She smiled. Boom smiled back, although his eyes registered distrust. She breathed in, breathed out, and took a step closer to him. Gave him another smile.

  “Boom, please.” As she said the words, she kept her eyes locked on his and took another step toward him. She was close enough to smell the fabric softener on his shirt.

  “Your fate is yours to decide, daughter.”

  She nodded. Inched one step closer, until their foreheads were nearly touching.

  Don’t back up, she pled silently, willing him to stay right where he was standing.


  As if he heard her thought, he obliged, planting himself more firmly and leaning slightly forward.

  “You know what to do,” he whispered in a low voice.

  She did, in fact, know what to do. She just had to force herself to do it. She stared into his gold-flecked eyes and readied herself.

  “Aroostine?”

  She snaked both hands out and grabbed his shirt in her fists and pushed him backward, hard. As he lost balance, his torso went back, but his head whipped forward. She lowered her head, tucked her chin into her chest, and pulled him toward her. He flopped forward, and the center of his face smashed into the crown of her head with all the force of his one hundred and eighty pounds and the momentum of her push and pull. Her head instantly screamed with pain; the reverberation of pain began on the top of her head and ran to the base of her skull.

  She released the fabric from his shirt and let him fall to the ground. Then she pounded up the stairs without looking to see if he was unconscious, dead, or alive. She simply ignored the thumping pain on the top of her head and ran.

  As she hit the landing at the top of the second floor, she fumbled for the cell phone. She pressed herself against the wall, her legs shaking, and hit the speed-dial button for Joe’s temporary phone.

  He answered on the second ring. “Where are you? You disappeared on me,” he grumbled.

  “This is important. Do not try to get into Boom’s house.”

  “What? Where are you?”

  She panted, trying to catch her breath. “I’m at Boom’s. He’s booby-trapped the doors and windows. If any of them open, the house will blow up.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll explain later, just please, get Chief Johnson, call Sid, call Carole Orr—do something, but do not try to enter the house. Make sure you tell them.”

  “Okay, I got it. Why’s he letting you use the phone?”

  She leaned and peered down the stairs but saw no movement below. Was he conscious down there?

  “I head butted him. I think I knocked him out, maybe?”

  “You did what?”

  Impatience vied with panic. She didn’t have time for this.