by Thomas King
Thumps checked his teeth. The one real benefit of having skin a little darker than the people around you was that your teeth looked whiter than they were. He tried to remember when he had last had them cleaned. Before he left California? That long ago?
Thumps turned on the shower and stepped in. Okay, he was curious. People in Chinook didn’t die all that often, and as he recalled, the condos weren’t going on sale until next week, so it was too soon for the Birkenstocks from Los Angeles and Toronto to start shooting each other over the views. Maybe it was a tourist with foresight who had decided to kill himself before the casino opened and he lost all his money. But the cop in Thumps, the cop he had tried to leave behind in California, told him that the body at Buffalo Mountain Resort wasn’t going to be anything so simple.
Of course the death could be something simple. Something uncomplicated. Something ordinary. A heart attack. A stroke. Out of habit, Thumps had assumed that foul play was involved. Homicide had been his game. Bodies that came his way when he was on the force had not died of their own accord. But Ora Mae hadn’t mentioned how the body became dead, had she? Thumps had merely jumped to that particular conclusion.
He padded down the hallway to the kitchen, Freeway weaving her way around his feet, complaining about the late hour and starvation. “You need to lose weight,” Thumps mumbled, though it wasn’t clear whether he was talking to the cat or to himself.
He opened a cupboard and took out his favourite bowl. One of the heavy water glasses was out of place, and he moved it slightly to the right, so that it lined up with the rest of the set. There was a satisfying feeling to order, Thumps had to admit. Bowls where they should be, glasses in straight lines, flatware in perfect stacks. Cereal boxes arranged by height.
Claire would be up by now, would have already finished her breakfast. If frosted cereal and white toast could be called breakfast. How anyone could face each morning with only sugar and carbohydrates to give them energy and courage was beyond Thumps. Thank heaven for Shredded Wheat. And soy milk.
“Come on,” he said to Freeway, and headed for the stairs.
The basement was damp and cool and dark, and the feel and the smell of being underground always reminded him of the eight years he had spent in Eureka on the northern California coast. He had liked the town, had especially liked the weather. Grey. Foggy. Wet. Green. It was an isolated community, to be sure, but you could go up to Clam Beach and walk the two miles from the river to the cliffs and not see another person. Or further on to Trinidad Head and have a sandwich on the pier and watch the ocean run in around the point. San Francisco was six hours to the south when the road was open, but coastal people tended to stay put. Tourists came north, but they were a seasonal occurrence, like migrating birds and mudslides.
Chinook, on the other hand, was high prairies, cold and dry. In the summer, the sweat would fry on your face and leave salt lines around your neck, and every morning you’d have to pry each eye open with your fingers. Winter was worse. You’d spread lotion all over your body to keep the skin from splitting apart and still get smoke simply by rubbing your arms together. Or start a fire by snapping your fingers.
But the weather in Chinook was not why Thumps had moved here, and the weather in Eureka was not why he had left.
Thumps unlocked the door to the darkroom. His nose had been right. The stop bath was dead. He tipped the tray out, washed it, and leaned it against the side of the sink to dry. Freeway loved the darkroom, and she headed straight for the shelves under the sink where Thumps kept the amber bottles of chemistry. Once behind the bottles and buried in the plumbing and the open stud wall, there was no way to get her out until she had had her fill of darkness and mystery.
“We’re not staying.”
Before he had received Ora Mae’s phone call, Thumps had planned to spend the day printing, sitting in the dark in front of the old Omega D-2, sorting through proof sheets and negatives. He hadn’t been looking forward to working in the darkroom particularly, but now that he wouldn’t be able to hide away in the basement, he found himself feeling resentful for having lost what he now considered to be . . . leisure. He sat down in the chair and slid in under the easel. This was his favourite spot. Quiet, dark, private. Sometimes he would work on one negative for days, lose himself in the variations of light, pull print after print until the image was perfect. And then, more times than not, he would decide that the contrast wasn’t quite right, or the toner was too strong or too weak, or the paper was too warm or too cold, and he would begin again.
“Come on.” Thumps rolled out of the chair, grabbed the Leica and the Vivitar flash, and slipped the seventy-millimetre lens into the bag. “Time for a treat.”
“Treat” was one of a handful of words that Freeway knew. Or, rather, it was one of a handful of words she cared about. She loped out the door and up the stairs, and by the time Thumps arrived in the kitchen, she was on top of the scratching post complaining and doing her cat dance.
Thumps hadn’t seen Claire for over a week, and he tried to remember whether they were friends again. Claire was a terrific woman, but she tended to be, well, tense. Mostly, it was her job. He understood that. As head of the band council and a single mother, Claire was always under some sort of pressure, and unfortunately, she wasn’t the type to delegate responsibility.
Or pain.
And between the council and her teenaged son, she had plenty of both. Not that Stick was a bad kid. He was bright, enthusiastic, and a general pain in the ass. Thumps just wished that Claire could keep her feelings about the two of them separate. If she was angry with Stick, Thumps caught the fallout. If she was annoyed with Thumps, Stick heard about it. Thumps had the distinct feeling that Claire could only manage one man at a time, and he found it confusing trying to remember who was in the doghouse and who was in the yard.
He opened the cupboard, took down the box of Kitty Num-Nums, and placed a tiny brown fishy-smelling biscuit on the scratching post directly under Freeway’s nose.
“This is it. Don’t ask for more.”
Through the window, Thumps could see that it was going to be another bright, high-sky day. He missed the fog and the damp. Sunshine was overrated. Freeway gulped her treat down and began dancing around for another.
“No way.” Thumps washed his fingers in the sink.
Dead bodies could be simple affairs. But as he opened the door, Thumps had the distinct feeling that the one at Buffalo Mountain Resort wasn’t going to be the easy kind, the distinct feeling that things were about to get complicated. The distinct feeling that this one was going to ruin more than just his morning.
THREE
As Thumps drove the twenty miles out to Buffalo Mountain Resort, he realized that if he hadn’t wasted time on cereal, he might have been able to enjoy a minor automobile spectacle—Duke Hockney’s Ford, Sterling Noseworthy’s BMW, and Beth Mooney’s Chrysler station wagon flying by him at speeds well over the posted limit. Sterling, who had the fastest car, might have been in the lead. But the sheriff’s sport-utility had the lights and the nifty siren, and Thumps wondered what the chances were that Duke would have taken time out of his busy schedule to pull Sterling over and give him a ticket.
All the way out to the turnoff, Thumps kept an eye on the rear-view mirror, half expecting to be chased down by an armada of ambulances, fire trucks, and television vans, hell-bent for the scene of the crime. But by the time his old Volvo had chugged its way up the grade to the new road that the tribe had built to accommodate the flood of cars and tour buses Claire hoped would wash over the tribe’s most ambitious economic project, the only vehicle he could see in any direction was his own.
Not that he knew for sure that there was a crime, but when he crossed the river and stopped the car next to the security gate and the guard house, he noticed two things. One, the gate was closed, and two, Cooley Small Elk was smiling so hard, his teeth were beginning to show.
“Hey, Thumps.”
Coo
ley put one arm on the roof of the Volvo and leaned in at the window. The car sagged to one side, and Thumps had to brace his knee against the arm rest to keep from being thrown against the door.
“You’re late, cousin.”
Cooley had been the perfect choice for the gate guard. Huge and friendly, he was security personified, and he had the one attribute that money couldn’t buy. With his dark brown skin, his high cheekbones, his piercing eyes, and his long black hair done up in braids, Cooley looked as though he had just stepped out of an Edward Curtis photograph on his way to a movie set. Not many of the people who were going to visit Buffalo Mountain Resort or were going to buy condominiums at the complex had ever spent any time with Native people. But if they had seen Little Big Man or Dances with Wolves—and who hadn’t—they knew Cooley.
“Great-looking uniform.”
“Yeah,” said Cooley. “You know, they make you buy these things with your own money.”
“Hard to find your size?”
“I’ll say. Had to send all the way to San Francisco.”
The black butt of a pistol hung out of Cooley’s holster. Thumps wasn’t sure an armed guard was a good idea, especially with a protest lurking at the edges of the complex, that could turn ugly at any time. If it hadn’t already.
“I see they’re letting you carry.”
“Naw,” said Cooley. “It’s my kid’s air gun. They just want me to look like a guard. You’d think that with Stick and his pals playing cowboys and Indians, they’d have me packing.”
“Fooled me.”
Cooley leaned in farther and dropped his voice. “Got my rifle inside, just in case there’s any real action.”
“Like today?”
Cooley smiled and stood up. The Volvo lurched back to its feet. “Yeah, today’s been great.”
“Anybody we know?”
“Nobody’s talking,” said Cooley. “You going to take pictures?”
“If I can get in.” And Thumps let the car roll forward a little.
“Old Nosehairs said nobody gets in without his okay,” said Cooley. “As if he’s in charge of anything.”
“Sterling upsets easy.”
“Acted as if this was my fault.”
“Can’t see how that could be.”
“Hell,” said Cooley, “they aren’t paying me to keep people out.”
“People wind up dead in the damnedest places.”
“They’re paying me to play Indian.” Cooley smoothed his braids and hitched his pants. “Soon as they sell most of the units, they’ll bring in one of those automated gates, and I’ll be history.”
“Everybody up at the condos?”
“You got your camera handy?”
“Right here.” Thumps pulled the Leica out of the bag.
“How about taking a picture of me? My girlfriend’s got a thing for uniforms.”
“Sure.”
“Wait a minute,” said Cooley, and he lumbered over to the guardhouse. “Let me get my rifle.”
From the front gate to the main complex, the road followed the natural curve of the land, so that you had the illusion of winding your way through deep forest. And only after you broke into what Sterling euphemistically called “the clearing,” and looked back, did you realize for every tree that had been left standing, twenty had been taken.
Thumps stepped out of the car and slung his camera bag over his shoulder. Even with the sun out, the morning mountain air was sharp, and it caught him by surprise. The hill from the parking lot to the condos was not particularly steep or long, but he paced his breathing so that he wouldn’t have to stop and he wouldn’t pass out. It was the altitude, he told himself, and the weight of the camera bag, neither of which was the truth. But it was too early in the day to be dealing with personal realities and a corpse.
The lock on the main door was one of those new technical wonders that worked from a computer. If you didn’t have the code or a key card, you could spend your lunch hour with a cutting torch trying to get in. Someone had propped it open with a rock. So much for security.
Thumps was surprised at how quiet the building was—dead quiet, he might have said, had he not been out of breath. Given the number of people who were already somewhere inside, he expected to hear voices, see people running back and forth, perhaps even stumble across a sign that said, Dead Body, This Way. But there was nothing. No sound. No activity. Just the echo of silence and the smell of empty places.
The elevators were polished brass, and they glistened in the half-light of the lobby. Thumps checked the indicator. One of the cars on the eighth floor. The body was probably there. And, as luck would have it, so were the models.
As soon as Thumps stepped off the elevator, he knew he was on the right planet. Down the hall and around the corner, he could hear the vague rumour of voices. And they didn’t sound particularly happy. No sense in rushing in, Thumps told himself. Not until the dust had settled.
The model across from the elevators was a three-bedroom, two-bath, cathedral-ceilinged affair called the Cascade, and despite Thumps’ general objection to anything he could not afford, he had to admit that the place was luxurious. The west wall was glass, floor to ceiling, and the unobstructed view of the mountains made everything feel spacious and airy. The kitchen was right out of an architectural magazine—dark wood cabinets, porcelain sink, six-burner gas stove-top, stainless-steel appliances, and thick dark green granite countertops running off in all directions. With cork floors the colour of warm toast.
Thumps stood in the kitchen and took a deep breath. He could like this. He tried the stove-top. There was a momentary clicking sound as though someone were trying to strike a match on steel, and then the soft blue flame blossomed under the burner.
The refrigerator was a side-by-side cavern built into the wall. Inside, someone had left a large decorator plate of fresh fruit along with a bottle of champagne, two glasses, and a buff card with a gold ribbon that read, “The only true currency is quality.”
Thumps ran a hand across the counter. Smooth and cool. He lifted the handle on the tap and watched the water slide effortlessly into the sink, as if it were oiled.
The master bedroom was a long rectangle, painted deep green with a crimson accent. Thick Persian carpets were spread out on the hardwood, and Thumps didn’t have to turn up a corner to see that they were handmade. Against the far wall was a king-sized bed, with a carved wooden headboard depicting a forest scene complete with a river, several moose, and a family of beavers. Someone had left a single red silk rose on the duvet next to a small wicker basket of individually wrapped chocolates, a reminder to prospective buyers that luxury was in the details.
Lots of toys, Thumps thought to himself. Lots of toys.
But it was the master bathroom that made him smile—a five-piece, marble-tile ensuite with a deep jacuzzi tub positioned under a greenhouse window so you could lie in the swirling water and see the sky.
The dead body could wait.
The glass door to the shower was etched with dolphins, and the inside walls were wrapped with handmade tiles in an abstract underwater scene. Porcelain and chrome sunflower shower heads bloomed on each of the three walls, while cast-pewter whales near the floor let in fresh steam through their blowholes.
At the back of the enclosure was a stained-glass window with two standing cranes in a marsh done up in blue and green and milk tones. Triangles of clear bevelled glass let in just enough light to nourish the hanging ferns. The cedar bench under the window was a nice touch, Thumps thought. You could stretch out on the aromatic planks and let the water and the warm mist wash over your body, or you could turn the recessed heat lamps on and create your own tropical rainforest at the flip of a switch.
He tried to imagine what it would be like to spend an afternoon stretched out on the bench in the steam and the water, and the more he thought about the water pouring out of the shower heads and mixing with the steam to form a comforting, moist
cloud, the more he realized that he had to go to the bathroom.
When Thumps strolled out to the living room, on his way to the balcony and the matched lounge chairs and the white cast-iron table, he found Ora Mae waiting for him in the doorway.
“It was open.”
“You got lucky,” said Ora Mae. “Locks don’t get installed until next week.”
Thumps shoved his hands in his pockets and smiled.
“You see anything you like?”
“It’s overpriced.”
“And you call yourself a detective.”
“I’m a photographer.”
Ora Mae opened the refrigerator. “You touch anything?”
“Besides the cheap champagne?”
“It’s not cheap,” said Ora Mae. “And what about this?” She slid the fresh fruit out so Thumps could see the entire plate. “Looks as if someone has helped themselves to some of my apples.”
“Not guilty.”
“Uh-huh.” Ora Mae slid the plate back and closed the door. “You’re beginning to remind me of Goldilocks. You didn’t mess up the bed, did you?”
Thumps shook his head.
“Use the toilet?”
“So, where’s the dead body?”
Ora Mae put her hands on her hips. “Four hundred and fifty thousand,” she said. “And that’s without the options.”
Thumps blinked. “What options?”
“Almost everything you see.” Ora Mae looked around the room. “For four-fifty, all you get is formica and broadloom.”
Thumps liked Ora Mae, and he was glad that she liked him. “How many have you sold?”
“Why? You thinking of buying?”
“You think it’s a good investment?”
“Investment?” Ora Mae smiled her best smile—the one she used on buyers to help them find their cheque books. “Now, what do you think?”
