Indian Killer

1. The Aristotle Little Hawk Fan Club

JACK WILSON GREW UP white and orphaned in Seattle. Dreaming of being Indian, he’d read every book he could find about the First Americans and had been delighted to learn that they raised their children communally. An Indian child moved freely between tepees, between families. A child could be loved and disciplined by any adult in the tribe. During the long, cold nights, every campfire was a welcome sight for a lonely child. Wilson loved the idea, and tried to find some tribal connection with his eleven foster families, but could only advance a little beyond uncomfortable formality with one household before he was forced to pack up his meager belongings and move to another. Lying in strange beds, Wilson read about Indians and recreated himself in the image he found inside those books. He saw himself as a solitary warrior on horseback, crossing miles of empty plains, in search of his family.

Wilson’s mother had died of cancer when he was a baby, and his father had died in a car wreck when he was ten, but something in Wilson refused to believe in their deaths. He always expected a phone call from her, to see him come bursting through the front door with unexpected news. But it was a lie. Wilson knew about liars. And what the TV and movies said about Indians were lies. That they were evil. That they raped white women and ate white children. Indians were said to worship the devil. His teachers tried to tell him all these bad things about Indians, but Wilson had always fought them.

“So,” said his high school principal when Wilson was sent in to see him yet again. “What about Indians this time?”

“I’m part Shilshomish Indian,” Wilson said. “I looked it up. There was an old medicine man named Red Fox who lived in a shack on Bainbridge Island. Back in the 1920s or something. His Indian name was Red Fox, but his American name was Joe Wilson. My dad used to say that Joe Wilson was his great-uncle.”

“Well, now, that’s very interesting. How does it have anything to do with your visit to my office?”

“Mrs. Jorgenson said all the Indians were dead. I told her it wasn’t true. I said I was Indian. She said I was a liar, and I said she was the liar. Then she sent me here.”

“Are you lying?”

“No,” Wilson said. “I promise. I looked it up. Well, my dad used to say he’d heard of a relative named Joe Wilson, who was a crazy old man. But that must be Red Fox, don’t you think?”

Twelve years later, in 1977, when he was a rookie police officer in the Fourth Precinct of the Seattle Police Department, Jack Wilson still believed that Red Fox was a relative. He walked a beat downtown and knew the names of most of the homeless Indians who crowded together beneath the Alaskan Way Viaduct and in Pioneer Square. Lester, Old Joe, and Little Joe always together, Agnes and her old man, who was simply known as Old Man, the Android Brothers, who’d come here from Spokane years earlier and were collecting spare change for bus tickets back home. Beautiful Mary, who was still beautiful, even though a keloid scar ran from the corner of her left eye to her chin. She thought Wilson was handsome and called him by some word in her tribal language. She told him that it meant First Son, but it actually meant Shadow.

One evening, Beautiful Mary pushed Wilson into a dark doorway, unzipped his pants, pushed her hand inside, and stroked his penis. Wilson’s knees went weak. He leaned against the door for support. He tried to kiss Mary but, still stroking him, she turned her face away. Then, without warning, she released Wilson and stepped back.

“What’s wrong?” Wilson asked, his face red and sweaty.

Beautiful Mary shook her head. Wilson grabbed her arm with more force than he’d planned. He could see the pain in Mary’s eyes. She twisted away from him and ran away.

Beautiful Mary was almost forty years old when she was murdered. Wedged between a Dumpster and the back wall of a parking garage beneath the Viaduct, she had been raped, then stabbed repeatedly with a broken bottle. Wilson had immediately emptied his stomach on the pavement. Then he had found a stray newspaper and covered her face. Her eyes were still open. He had called in quickly, but it took an hour for the ambulance to show up. While the attendants were loading Mary into the ambulance, one homicide detective arrived to investigate.

“You found her body, correct?” the detective asked Wilson.

“Yes, sir.”

“And?”

“And what, sir?”

“And what did you notice? Any suspicious people? Witnesses? Evidence?”

“I didn’t notice, sir. I, I knew her. Her name is Mary, sir. Beautiful Mary.”

“She isn’t so beautiful anymore,” said the detective. He took a few notes, closed his book, and walked away. Wilson had assumed they would solve the case quickly. Beautiful Mary was a very visible member of the homeless community. Somebody must have seen something. Wilson read the newspaper the next day, looking for a story about Beautiful Mary. Nothing. No story the next morning, or during the next two weeks, either. He asked a few questions around the station house. Nothing. Three weeks after Mary’s death, Wilson bumped into the police detective who was supposed to be investigating her murder.

“Excuse me, sir,” said Wilson. “Have you learned anything more about Mary?”

“Mary?” asked the detective. “Who’s Mary?”

“Don’t you remember? Mary? Beautiful Mary? The Indian woman who was killed downtown? I found her body. A few weeks ago?”

“Oh, shit, of course. I remember you. The rookie. Lost your breakfast.” Wilson blushed. “Shit, that case is low priority, rook. One dead Indian don’t add up to much. Some other Indian guy killed her, you know. Happens all the time. Those people are like that. You ask me, it’s pest control.”

“Sir, I don’t think so.” Wilson fought the urge to punch the detective.

“You don’t think what, rook?”

“I know those people, sir. The Indians. They’re my people. They wouldn’t hurt each other. We’re not like that.”

“How the hell are they your people?”

“I’m Indian, sir.”

The detective looked at Wilson’s blue eyes and blond hair. Wilson was tall, six foot, but slight of build. The detective laughed. Indian, my ass, he thought.

“Okay, Sitting Bull,” said the detective, “I’m happy you’re so proud of your people. But it’s still low priority. You want to look into it, be my guest.”

“I just might do that, sir.”

The detective patted Wilson on the head, as if he were a dog, and walked away, laughing to himself. “Indian,” he said and laughed some more.

Wilson tried to talk to the Pioneer Square Indians, Old Joe and Little Joe, Agnes and Old Man, the Android Brothers, but they refused to give him any answers about Beautiful Mary’s murder.

Wilson eventually arrested a homeless white man named Stink and brought him in. The detective who had dismissed Wilson took over the case, led Stink into an interrogation room, and obtained a confession.

Stink hung himself in his cell that night, before he ever had a chance to go to trial, and Wilson was issued a small, vaguely insulting commendation for his “valuable assistance” in solving the crime. But Wilson had earned some respect, and he made detective in 1980. Working homicide, he quickly learned that monsters are real. He also knew that most of the monsters were white men. Plain, quiet men who raped and murdered children. Plain, quiet men who cut women into pieces. Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer. Famous killers, obscure killers. The white man who grabbed his infant son by the ankles and smashed his head against the wall. The white man who doused his sleeping girlfriend with gasoline and then dropped a lit match on her face. While black and brown men were at war with each other, their automatic gunfire filling the urban night, the white men were hunting their own mothers, lovers, and daughters. Wilson never grew numb to any of it. Every Sunday, he knelt at a pew and confessed the sins of others. He worked hard, helped solve more than half of his cases, and slept poorly at night. His record was distinguished only by the small number of days he called in sick. While the other detectives had families and outside interests, Wilson had only his tribe of monsters. Wilson worked homicide for eight years before he injured his knee while on duty. He stepped out of his car near the end of his shift, slipped on oily pavement, and tore a couple of ligaments all to hell. He was desk-bound for a year, all the while in fruitless rehabilitation of his knee. Finally, he retired on a full disability pension. Since he had never married, or even been in love, he wound up alone in his little apartment on Capitol Hill.

A year into his retirement, after another boring Monday Night Football game, he was forced to weigh his options as a middle-aged, lonely ex-cop. Somehow, he found himself missing the monsters. He had no idea how that happened, but he knew he needed something to fill the hole that had opened inside himself. He could become a drunk, spend all his time in one of the cop bars, and get free beer and pity from active officers. He could sink into a deep depression, swallow the barrel of his revolver, and be buried with full honors. Or he could do something. He could, for example, sit down and write. Now, he had never written before, but he had always been good with a story, had always loved books. So he bought the most expensive typewriter he could find, because real writers didn’t work on computers. He brought the typewriter back to his apartment and began to type.

His first book, titled Little Hawk, was published by a small local press. It received fairly decent reviews and sold a few thousand copies, so Wilson was hooked. Wilson’s second book, Rain Dance, based on the murder of Beautiful Mary, was released a year later and became a regional best-seller. Both of Wilson’s books starred Aristotle Little Hawk, the very last Shilshomish Indian, who was a practicing medicine man and private detective in Seattle. He was tall, so tall, according to the first paragraph of Little Hawk, that his long, black hair was taller than most people all by itself. Little Hawk was brutally handsome, of course, with a hawkish nose, walnut skin, and dark eyes.

A beautiful white woman fell in love with Little Hawk in each book, although he was emotionally distant and troubled. The beautiful white women fell in love with Little Hawk because he was emotionally distant and troubled. White women wrote letters to Wilson and confessed their secret love for Little Hawk. They wished they could find a man like Little Hawk, a quiet warrior with a good heart. Wilson knew it was all sort of ridiculous, but he loved the money and attention. Fan letters, small articles in the local newspapers, a three-minute interview on public radio. His fellow officers thought he had become rich and famous, so he went out and bought a brand-new 1994 Chevy pickup with a vanity license plate that read SHAMAN.

Lately, a New York literary agent had signed him up.

“Indians are big right now,” said Rupert, the agent. “Publishers are looking for that shaman thing, you know? The New Age stuff, after-death experiences, the healing arts, talking animals, sacred vortexes, that kind of thing. And you’ve got all that, plus a murder mystery. That’s perfect.”

Rupert had gotten Wilson a deal with a New York publisher for his third book, which he had yet to write. His modest success had him struggling with writer’s block. Every morning, he woke up early, ate his breakfast, and stared at the blank page in his typewriter. He had spent most of the advance money, and his agent and publisher were putting pressure on him to finish.

“How’s the book coming along?” asked Rupert.

“It’s going well,” said Wilson, lying.

“They want to publish in the fall,” said Rupert. “You think you can finish in time?”

“Sure,” said Wilson. After he hung up the phone, he suddenly felt dizzy and nearly passed out. He needed help.

Trying to relax, Wilson drove over to the Seattle Police Department’s Fourth Precinct on Second Avenue, his old haunt. He parked in a reserved space, but all the officers recognized his vanity plates and never had him towed. He limped into the precinct, still blue-eyed and blond, although he had put on forty pounds in the last couple of years. He was forty-seven years old, bulky, and working on an ulcer.

“Hey there, Mr. Mystery,” said the desk sergeant, who often felt sorry for Wilson. The sergeant thought Wilson spent entirely too much time at the precinct, as if he were a twenty-two-year-old former high school football star who still went to games because he had nothing else to do. “How you doing?”

“Doing fine, doing fine,” Wilson said. “What have you got?”

Wilson depended on the desk sergeant for inside information. The sergeant never gave him anything important, really, just interesting details that might find their way into his books. The first Little Hawk mystery was based on a true case of what some might put down to spontaneous combustion. An elderly woman had simply turned to ash while watching television in her apartment. There was no rational explanation for it, no hint of foul play. She had been sitting in a chair that also should have gone up in flames. But the chair was just a little charred, mostly intact, and covered with her ash. In the book, the victim was a gorgeous fashion model. In real life, the old lady’s case was quietly filed away and never mentioned again. In the book, Little Hawk caught the murderer, an ex-fireman who’d been spurned by the model. The dead model’s best friend, an even more beautiful and successful model, had fallen in love with Little Hawk.

“I’ve got a good one for you,” said the desk sergeant, wanting to give Wilson something more substantial than he’d given him before. “But you’ve got to keep this one way under your hat.”

“I don’t wear a hat,” said Wilson. It was an old joke between the two men.

“Well, then, keep it in your shorts,” said the sergeant, finishing the joke.

“What is it?”

“You heard about that white guy they found dead the other day?”

“David Rogers?” asked Wilson, who knew about the white man’s disappearance from the Tulalip Tribal Casino. Wilson kept a neat file of newspaper clippings about such crimes.

“No, not him,” said the sergeant. “He’s still missing. I’m talking about the other one. The one they found in that house in Fremont.”

“Yeah, the Summers guy, what about him?”

“Well,” said the sergeant, glancing around to make sure nobody could hear him. Everybody in the precinct knew he gave Wilson inside information, but he’d never before revealed details about an open case. “The killer left two feathers behind. Like a signature or something.”

“Feathers?” Wilson blinked once or twice. “What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean? Feathers. Like as in Indian feathers, you know? But I can’t tell you what kind. We can’t go public with that. The city would go crazy.”

“Really?”

“Really. I thought that would interest you. Kind of right up your alley, ain’t it?”

“Maybe,” said Wilson.

“And that UW student, David Rogers, who disappeared from the Indian casino? I won’t say the killer did that one, but we’re looking real closely at it. And you know that kid, Mark Jones, the one who was kidnapped?”

“Yes.”

“This killer took him.”

“How do you know that?”

“The killer left behind two feathers on that little boy’s bed. Hell, we haven’t even told his parents what those feathers mean. What do you think they’d do if they knew about the killer?”

“Go crazy.”

“Yeah. And this killer’s got a name. You want to hear it?”

Wilson nodded. He knew that police officers and newspaper reporters loved to give clever names to the monsters.

“We’re calling him the Indian Killer. Good, ain’t it? Now get the hell out of here before I get in trouble.”

Wilson smiled.

“See you, Sarge,” said Wilson. As he left the precinct, Wilson could almost see Aristotle Little Hawk sitting on the passenger side as he climbed into his truck. Aristotle and the Indian Killer. Wilson could see the knife separating scalp from skull.

2. Testimony

“MRS. JONES, I KNOW this is a painful experience for you, but we need to go over it again.”

“I’ve told you everything I can remember.”

“Can we please reconstruct the events one more time?”

“I’ve told you. I came home from work.”

“At what time?”

“A little after six. I usually get home a little after six. Then I walked into the house, and Mark and Sarah, the nanny, were watching television.”

“What were they watching?”

“Some superhero show, I think. I just went right into the kitchen to make dinner and Sarah went home.”

“And where was Mark at this time?”

“I told you, he was watching television.”

“Now, what time did the nanny, Sarah, leave the house?”

“I don’t know. Twenty after six, something like that.”

“Okay, and what were you doing at that time?”

“I was making dinner.”

“And what were you preparing?”

“Shit, I don’t remember.”

“Okay, okay, and then what happened?”

“I got Mark ready for bed, read him a couple stories, and then he went to sleep.”

“And then what happened?”

“I went to sleep.”

“Okay, and what do you sleep in?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you sleep in a T-shirt, a nightgown, what?”

“Why is that important?”

“Well, there might be fiber evidence. Trace materials, you know?”

“Really? Well, I sleep in the nude.”

“Naked?”

“Yes, you have a problem with that?”

“None at all. Does your husband sleep in the nude?”

“Sometimes. But since he was in Japan at the time, I have no idea what he was wearing.”

“Okay, so you went to sleep. And then?”

“And then I was asleep.”

“Where was Mark?”

“He was asleep in his bed.”

“And then?”

“Shit, how many times do I have to tell you this? I woke up in the middle of the night and knew something was wrong. At first, I thought there must have been an earthquake. I mean, I used to live in southern California, so I know that feeling. But everything was still. And I was scared. So I went into Mark’s bedroom to check on him.”

“In the nude?”

“Of course not.”

“And what did you find in Mark’s bedroom?”

“Nothing. He was gone. But I saw the feathers. Two of them.”

“And what time was this?”

“I don’t know. Do we have to keep going through this? I mean, are you trying to find my son or not? And what the hell were those feathers about?”

“Mrs. Jones, we’re doing our best. Now, is it true that Mark has had some discipline problems at school?”

“Yes, but they have nothing to do with this.”

“But he’s been in a few altercations?”

“Yes, he has.”

“Do you have any idea why?”

“He’s a six-year-old boy. They have altercations.”

“I’m sure. And how is your relationship with your husband?”

“It’s fine.”

“Fine?”

“Yes, fine.”

“Is there any reason you can think of that Mark might have run away? Have you checked with all your friends and relatives who live in the area?”

“Mark didn’t run away. Somebody took him.”

“Mrs. Jones, do you know of anybody who might want to hurt Mark? Or take him?”

“No. Don’t you know?”

“Well, there are certain other crimes that may be connected to your son’s disappearance.”

“Listen, I want to know: what kind of monster do you think would take somebody’s child?”

3. The Learning Curve

JOHN SMITH STOOD IN the darkness outside the UW Anthropology Building and stared at Marie Polatkin through the classroom windows. She was arguing with the professor, a white man wearing a gray ponytail and turquoise bolo tie. He also had a large bandage on his forehead, though John had no idea that the professor had injured himself by running into a low basement ceiling. John didn’t know Dr. Clarence Mather, but he’d seen many other white men in Seattle who dressed that way. Those white men thought long hair and turquoise were rebellious, but John knew that, for white men, long hair and turquoise were simply another kind of military uniform. John wondered if Marie understood that. Perhaps she was telling the professor how she felt about his ponytail and turquoise bolo tie. Of course, John couldn’t hear anything Marie was saying, but he could tell she was angry. She sat up straight in her seat, her finger jabbing the air as she made some point, one hand running nervously through her long, black hair. John thought she was beautiful.

After the class was over, as John followed Marie through the dark campus, he’d been surprised to learn that she was following the professor. She was good. She used trees and statues as cover, slipped into shadows and blind spots, stepped quietly across cement and gravel walkways. She was so good that John had lost sight of her a few times and, only by following the professor himself had he picked her back up again.

Dr. Mather, completely unaware of both Marie and John, walked to the faculty parking lot. A few cars were still left in the lot, which was faintly illuminated by two rows of streetlights. Mather set his briefcase on top of his car and began a methodical search for his keys, shoving his hands into every pocket. Marie crept so close to the professor that John was left breathless by her daring. She was just ten feet away from the professor when another white man called out. Marie disappeared behind a car as Mather turned toward the voice.

“Dr. Mather!” said the white man as he approached. “Dr. Mather, it’s me. It’s Dr. Faulkner.”

Mather recognized Faulkner, the chair of the Anthropology Department.

“Good evening, Dr. Faulkner. How are you?”

“Fine, fine. How was your class?”

“Well, I’m having trouble with a student. An Indian student, actually. She is very disruptive.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. What’s her name?”

“Marie Polatkin.”

“Polatkin? Polatkin? Why is that name familiar?”

“She’s a cousin of Reggie Polatkin. You remember him, of course. He assaulted me in the Student Union Building.”

“Of course. My God, Dr. Mather! You don’t think there’s some sort of conspiracy going on, do you?”

“No, no. Marie is a very bright girl, just confused. I’m sure things will work out. I mean, things are very tense in the class since David Rogers disappeared.”

“He was your student?”

“And since that other man was scalped, my white students have been reluctant to express their opinions. Marie seems to be taking advantage of their fear.”

“Listen, would you like to go for a drink? Perhaps we can discuss this.”

“That would be fine.”

Mather and Faulkner climbed into separate cars and drove out of the parking lot toward the same destination. John watched the cars pull away and wondered what Marie had thought of the white men’s conversation. John stood at the edge of the parking lot and looked for Marie, but she had disappeared.

4. Chemistry

WALKING DOWN THE BURKE-GILMAN Trail, Arthur Two Leaf thought about the evening chemistry class he’d just left. He was a carbon-based life-form. The chemistry professor, Dr. McMinn, was a carbon-based life-form. The plants on either side of the trail were carbon-based life-forms.

“We are all made of essentially the same DNA, the same genetic material,” Dr. McMinn had said. “In fact, women and men share about ninety-nine percent of the same genetic material.” She’d then looked at Arthur, who had a wild crush on the white professor. “And people of different races, such as Native Americans and European-Americans, also share about ninety-nine percent.”

That might be true, Arthur had thought, but that one percent makes all the difference.

He was still thinking of Dr. McMinn’s blue eyes, and speculating about her genetics, when three masked men stepped from the brush beside the trail. One man, wearing a white mask, was holding a baseball bat.

“Hey, prairie nigger,” said white mask. “What the fuck you doing on our trail?”

Arthur suddenly understood the flight instinct. And he also understood how a deer could stare into the headlights of an approaching car and be unable to move.

“I don’t want any trouble,” said Arthur.

“You don’t want any trouble?” asked white mask.

“No,” said Arthur, his voice breaking.

“Oh, now, listen to him squeal,” said white mask.

“Yeah, like a pig,” said blue mask.

Purple mask was silent.

“Are you an Indian pig?” asked white mask.

“Whatever you say, man,” said Arthur.

“Whatever I say?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Well, Indian pig, I say this,” said white mask as he punched the bat into Arthur’s belly. Dazed, Arthur staggered and fell to the ground. As he fell, he could see the baseball bat in white mask’s hands. Expecting a beating, Arthur reflexively curled into a fetal ball to protect himself. He wondered if he was going to die.

5. Big Heart’s Soda and Juice Bar

WILSON’S STUDIO APARTMENT WAS small but tidy. It was in an old building just east of downtown. He had lived in it forever even though he knew he could have moved into a larger place. He felt safe in this one. He liked his couch that folded out into a bed, the coffee table where he took many of his meals, the big-screen television filling up an entire wall, the clock radio, the chest of drawers with a black-and-white photograph of his birth parents set on top, the small desk with matching chair. His typewriter sat on his desk, along with a cup of pencils, some correcting fluid, and copies of his two published books. His kitchen was tucked into a corner: tiny refrigerator, stove, and sink. He had two plates, two settings of silverware, one cup, and one glass. Small stereo. A simple life, to be sure, but it was good camouflage from the monsters.

Wilson thought about the Indian Killer. A white man scalped, a white man disappeared, a white boy kidnapped. It was Biblical, David versus Goliath. But Wilson was disturbed by that. He wondered if a real Indian was capable of such violence. He knew about real Indians. He’d read the books, had spent long hours meditating, listening to the voices from the past. From the confusing and complicated cornucopia of tribal influences that made up Wilson’s idea of ceremony came burned sage and tobacco, a medicine pouch worn beneath his clothes, and a turquoise ring on his right hand. While beating the drum he’d ordered from a catalog, Wilson played Southern and Northern style, often within the same song. Some nights, Wilson would slip into the traditional dance outfit he’d bought at a downtown pawn shop, drop a powwow tape into the stereo, and two-step across the floor for hours. He dreamed of being the best traditional dancer in the world. Wilson saw himself inside a bright spotlight in a huge arena while thousands of Indians cheered for him. Real Indians.

Wilson sat down at the typewriter, cracked his knuckles, typed the first word, and leaned back in his chair. He cleared his throat, decided he was thirsty, and wondered if he had any milk left. He drank gallons of one-percent.

He stood up, walked over to his refrigerator, opened it, and discovered it was nearly empty. A pizza box, jar of mustard, and unidentifiable lunch meat. Opening the refrigerator had made him hungry, an automatic response, so he grabbed his apartment keys and went for some dinner at Big Heart’s Soda and Juice Bar on Aurora and 110th. In light traffic, Big Heart’s was at least a twenty-minute drive from his Capitol Hill apartment, but Wilson never minded the effort because Big Heart’s was an Indian bar, meaning that Indians frequented the place, although a white man owned it. Wilson spent a lot of time at Big Heart’s. The bar was a huge multilevel circus. On the main floor, a twenty-seat bar, a jukebox, and a dozen tables. Two pool tables on the lower level, a dance floor and bandstand on the upper floor. Three or four hundred Indians shoved into the place on a busy weekend night.

Despite all of the time he spent in Big Heart’s, Wilson had never come to understand the social lives of Indians. He did not know that, in the Indian world, there is not much social difference between a rich Indian and a poor one. Generally speaking, Indian is Indian. A few who gain wealth and power as lawyers, businessmen, artists, or doctors may marry white people and keep only white friends, but generally Indians of different classes interact freely with one another. Most unemployed or working poor, some with good jobs and steady incomes, but all mixing together. Wilson also did not realize how tribal distinctions were much more important than economic ones. The rich and poor Spokanes may hang out together, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the Spokanes are friendly with the Lakota or Navajo or any other tribe. The Sioux still distrust the Crow because they served as scouts for Custer. Hardly anybody likes the Pawnee. Most important, though, Wilson did not understand that the white people who pretend to be Indian are gently teased, ignored, plainly ridiculed, or beaten, depending on their degree of whiteness.

“Hey, there,” said Mick, the bartender, who was also the owner, as Wilson took a seat facing him. “What’ll you have? A hamburger and fries, a glass of milk, right?”

“I’ve been wondering,” Wilson said to Mick after the food arrived. “How come so many Indians come here?”

Mick shrugged his shoulders.

“How long they been coming here?”

Mick looked around the bar. A few Indians were playing pool, a big Indian guy in a dirty raincoat was sitting quietly at the other end of the bar from Wilson, and one couple was slow dancing to a bad song on the jukebox. It was still early on a weeknight. Mick breathed in deep, tilted his head in thought, made clicking sounds with his tongue, counting that way.

“I guess it must be about five, six years now,” said Mick. “A few Indians just showed up one night, you know, like they were scouts or something. Then there were a few more the next night. A couple weeks later and the whole place was Indian. You know, for a while, I used to have a lot of white customers, too, but the Indians drove them away. You’re about the only white guy left.”

Mick had always referred to Wilson as a fellow white guy. And that had always bothered Wilson, who was so proud of his Indian blood. He had told all of the Indians who would listen about Red Fox, his Indian ancestor. Wilson had not told them that he was a writer, though everybody knew anyway. He thought he was anonymous in this place, picking up bits of stray information for his novels, but Wilson wrongly assumed that the Indians who went to Big Heart’s did not read any books, let alone his books. In blissful ignorance, he figured he fit in fine, though the Skins in Big Heart’s knew that he was just another white guy trying to become Indian by hanging out in an Indian bar. Wilson thought he was charming, but he had just become an expected feature of Big Heart’s, a cheap sort of entertainment, and all the Indians called him Casper the Friendly Ghost.

“Hey, Mick,” said Wilson. “Have you ever had any serious trouble around here?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, have there been any killings, anything like that?”

“No way. Lot of fights, I guess, but nobody’s been killed. Why you ask?”

“Just curious.”

Mick nodded his head, then turned to wash a few glasses. There were only a few, just busy work, but he liked to stay on top of things. Mick had once come across one of Wilson’s books and was surprised to see his face on the back cover. Mick was even more surprised when he read the book. It was pretty good, although Mick was kind of tired of hearing about Indians. Still, Mick thought, Aristotle Little Hawk was a good Indian, even if he was just some character in a book. He wished more Indians like Little Hawk hung out in the bar. He knew Wilson claimed he had some Indian blood, said so inside the book. But Mick did not buy that shit. Mick’s great-grandmother was a little bit Indian, but that did not make him Indian. Besides, who the hell would want to be Indian when you could just as easily be white?

“I run a pretty tight ship here,” Mick said to Wilson. “You can’t let these people get anything started. You have to cut it off at the bud.”

Wilson nodded his head and filled his mouth with fries. Mick was always complaining about Indians. Wilson thought it ironic, since Mick depended on Indians for business. If all of the Indians abandoned Big Heart’s, Mick would go under in a few months. Big Heart’s would become a ghost town. Once an Indian bar, always an Indian bar, and the white people would never come back.

Three Indian men in their early twenties walked into Big Heart’s then, laughing and carrying on, having a good time. Wilson recognized them. One was Harley Tate, the Colville with the mashed nose who couldn’t hear or talk. Another was Ty Williams, a chubby, light-skinned Coeur d’Alene. The third was Reggie Polatkin, the Spokane Indian with the startling blue eyes.

“Hey, Casper!” Reggie shouted to Jack Wilson. “How’s it hanging?”

“Down to my knee,” Wilson said, the expected response. He had learned some things in the bar.

“Hey,” said Reggie. “Buy us a pop.”

“Sure,” said Wilson. “Three Pepsis, Mick.”

“Jeez, you dumb-ass white guy,” Reggie said, shaking his head. “Don’t you ever get it right? The Colvilles drink Pepsi, but we Spokanes only drink Coke. And those damn Coeur d’Alenes drink 7UP, enit?”

“Never had it,” said Ty, the Coeur d’Alene. “Never will.”

“Well, then,” Reggie said. “What do Coeur d’Alenes drink?”

“Blood,” said Ty.

“Hey, Mick,” said Wilson. “Make that one Pepsi, one Coke, and a tomato juice.”

Reggie and his friends laughed.

“Good one, Casper, good one. Come sit with us.”

Wilson received very few invitations to sit with the Indians in Big Heart’s, so he jumped at the chance.

“Get some popcorn, too,” Reggie said to Wilson, who filled up a couple of bowls and brought them to the table.

“You’re a good man, Casper,” said Ty. “I don’t care what everybody else says.”

Wilson blushed. These Indians could still make him blush. Harley the Colville made a few frantic hand gestures, sign language. Since they were frantic, Wilson figured he was telling a joke. Ty and Reggie, who had learned sign language, made a few signs in return. They all laughed again, Ty and Reggie loud and baritone, Harley high-pitched and slow.

“What did he say?” asked Wilson.

“Nothing important,” said Reggie, still laughing a little.

They talked and laughed, signed and laughed, although Wilson understood few of the jokes, signed or spoken.

“Hey,” Reggie asked Wilson. “Where are all the white women?”

There were a dozen or so white women who liked to sleep with the Indian men who frequented Big Heart’s. Though Reggie generally preferred Indian women, he would fuck an Indian groupie now and again. He liked the power of it. He liked to come inside a white woman and then leave her lying naked on a hotel bed she’d paid for, or in the backseat of her car, or on a piece of cardboard in an alley outside Big Heart’s.

During his senior year of high school, Reggie had been sitting with his white girlfriend and a few other white friends when a drunk Indian had staggered into the pizza place. Reggie had pretended not to see the Indian, who’d flopped into a seat, laid his head on the table, and passed out. The Indian smelled like he hadn’t bathed in weeks. As if to tell a secret, Reggie’s white girlfriend had leaned forward. Reggie and his white friends had leaned toward her.

“I hate Indians,” she’d whispered.

Reggie had tried to laugh it off, but he’d felt as if he’d been torn in half. Later that night, his girlfriend had tearfully tried to apologize to him. They’d parked on a dirt road a few miles outside of Seattle.

“I’m sorry,” she’d said. “I didn’t mean you. I love you. You’re not like those other Indians. You’re not like them.”

Reggie had not said anything. Without a word, he’d kissed her hard, stripped her naked, and fucked her for the first time. She’d cried out when he roughly penetrated her. She’d been a virgin, though Reggie hadn’t asked and wouldn’t have cared. Every night for a week, he’d picked her up from her house, driven her to that same dirt road, and fucked her. No condom, no birth control pills, no withdrawal. He came inside her and hoped he’d gotten her pregnant. He’d wanted her to give birth to a brown baby. He’d wanted to dilute his Indian blood. He’d wanted some kind of revenge. He’d wanted some place to spill his pain. After a week of painful and angry sex, his white girlfriend had broken up with him. She had not been impregnated. She would never speak to him again.

“Hey,” Wilson said. “I heard something crazy.”

“What?”

“I heard a white guy was scalped.”

The Indians stopped laughing. They stared at Wilson.

“You’re full of shit,” said Reggie.

“No, really,” said Wilson. “Somebody killed him and scalped him.”

No laughter. Harley signed. Reggie signed back.

“What did he say?” asked Wilson.

“He thinks you’re full of shit, too.”

Wilson could see that Reggie was uncomfortable.

“You already knew about it, didn’t you?” Wilson asked Reggie.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” said Reggie, who had moved his chair away from Wilson. Harley and Ty signed back and forth.

Reggie stared angrily at Wilson, who could not think of anything to say. He knew he had crossed some line, had violated an invisible boundary. He was not being a good cop, it was all too obvious, but he could not help himself.

“How did you hear about it?” Reggie asked suspiciously.

“I heard some guys talking about it downtown,” Wilson lied, still assuming the Indians didn’t know he was an ex-cop. “And they were talking about that young boy, too. They think he was kidnapped by the same one who scalped the white guy.”

Reggie nodded his head slowly, took a sip of his Coke. Ty and Harley exchanged nervous glances.

“Do you think an Indian would do something like that?” asked Wilson, leaning forward in his seat, ready to take mental notes.

Reggie stared at Wilson, a hard stare.

“What do you think?” asked Reggie.

Wilson sat back in his chair, drummed his fingers on the table.

“No way,” said Wilson. “I don’t think so. Not a real Indian.”

“No, huh? Is that your answer?”

Wilson shrugged his shoulders.

“Well,” said Reggie. “I think an Indian could do something like that. Maybe the question should be something different. Maybe you should be wondering which Indian wouldn’t do it. Lots of real Indian men out there have plenty enough reasons to kill a white man. Three at this table right now.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Reggie looked at his friends. Ty and Harley stood as if to leave.

“Wait, hey,” said Wilson. “I was just talking. Come on, I’ll buy you another round.”

“No thanks.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, we’re sure.”

“Okay, then. I’ll see you around, right?”

“Listen,” said Reggie. “You know about Bigfoot? That Sioux Indian?”

“Yeah,” said Wilson. “He died at the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890. He was Minneconjou Sioux, I think. He was killed because he was leading the Ghost Dance.”

“The Ghost Dance?”

“Yeah, it was a dance that was supposed to destroy the white men and bring back the buffalo. Ghost Dancing was thought to be an act of warfare against white people.”

“Yeah, and who killed Bigfoot?”

“The Seventh Cavalry.”

“No, I mean, who killed him?”

“Some soldier, I guess. Nobody knows for sure.”

“You’re not paying attention. What color was the man who killed Bigfoot?”

“He would’ve been white.”

“Exactly, Casper. Think about that.”

The three Indians left the bar. A dozen other Indians walked in soon after and greeted Wilson. Reggie, Ty, and Harley bumped into a few friends in the parking lot. Ty and Harley were eager to talk about Wilson and the murders, but Reggie remained quiet. He knew that Wilson was probably trying to write some book about the scalping. And he’d get it wrong. Wilson didn’t understand anything about Indians. Ty, with his voice, and Harley, with his hands, told other Indians about the scalping. The word spread quickly. Within a few hours, nearly every Indian in Seattle knew about the scalping. Most Indians believed it was all just racist paranoia, but a few felt a strange combination of relief and fear, as if an apocalyptic prophecy was just beginning to come true.

6. Testimony

“MR. TWO LEAF, HOW are you feeling?”

“My eye hurts.”

“Yeah, that’s a nasty black eye. Any other injuries?”

“A couple bumps and bruises. Nothing serious.”

“Can you tell us anything about who did this to you?”

“Three guys in masks.”

“Excuse me?”

“Three guys in masks jumped me on the Burke-Gilman Trail. I was coming back from class.”

“You’re a student at the University?”

“Yeah, a chemistry major.”

“And can you tell me exactly what happened?”

“I was walking and these three guys jumped out of the bushes. One of them, the white mask, the leader, was talking smack at me.”

“Talking smack?”

“You know, talking smack, talking trash, giving me shit about being Indian.”

“And you are Native American?”

“Yeah, Makah.”

“And then what did you do? Did you provoke the attack?”

“You mean, aside from being Indian, did I provoke the attack? No way. Three guys, one of them holding a baseball bat? They could’ve called me anything they wanted to call me.”

“And what did they call you?”

“They called me an Indian pig. Oh, and they called me a prairie nigger. Pretty colorful, enit?”

“I suppose.”

“That one pissed me off, though. I ain’t no prairie Indian. I’m from a salmon tribe, man. If they were going to insult me, they should’ve called me salmon nigger.”

“I’m surprised you can laugh about this.”

“It’s what Indians do.”

“Weren’t you afraid?”

“Yeah, I was afraid, but I’m afraid most of the time, you know? How would you feel if a white guy like you got dropped into the middle of a black neighborhood, like Compton, California, on a Saturday night?”

“I’d be very afraid.”

“And that’s exactly how I feel living in Seattle. Hell, I feel that way living in the United States. Indians are outnumbered, Officer. Those three guys scared me bad, but I’ve been scared for a long time. But, you know, I think something crazy is starting to happen.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’ve been hearing rumors, you know?”

“What kind of rumors?”

“That Indians are organizing. They’re looking to get revenge.”

“Revenge?”

“Yeah, Indians have been scared for a long time. Now they want to scare some white guys. Things are starting to get tense, you know? I mean, it’s like fire and hydrogen. All by themselves, fire and hydrogen are fine. But you mix them up and boom! Volatile.”

“Is there anything you can remember about the three men who attacked you?”

“The leader was the meanest one. The other two weren’t angels, but that leader wanted to kill me, I think. If those joggers hadn’t come along, he might have done it. He was plain crazy, you know? Crazy white guys.”

“How can you be sure they were white?”

“Blue eyes, man, blue eyes.”

7. Mark Jones

MARK JONES WOKE UP in a very dark place but knew instantly that somebody was sitting near him. The frightened little boy tried to talk and to move, but found he was gagged and his arms were tied behind his back. He struggled against the ropes. The killer reached out and touched him. Mark couldn’t see the killer, but felt something familiar, and almost comforting, in the touch.

Mark closed his eyes against the sudden painful glare of a flashlight. At first, when he slowly opened his eyes, Mark could see only that glare and the vague shadow of the killer. Then, as Mark’s eyes adjusted, the killer used the flashlight to illuminate the prized possessions. The beautiful knife, that silver blade with three turquoise gems inlaid in the handle, hanging in a special place on the wall. Mark started to cry, understanding the power of the knife. The killer then illuminated a bloody scalp nailed to the wall, which made Mark scream behind his gag. He wanted to go home, home, home. He coughed and gagged around the cloth shoved roughly into his mouth. Fearing the boy might choke to death, the killer pulled the gag out and Mark breathed deeply. Fresh air, relief, a slight taste of hope. The killer held a juice box in front of him and the boy nodded.

Mark’s hands were still bound, so the killer poked one end of the straw into the juice box and then put the other end of the straw into Mark’s mouth. The boy drank greedily and quickly, broke into a spasm of coughs. After he regained his breath, Mark emptied the juice box. The killer let it drop to the floor. Then he put the gag back into Mark’s mouth.

The boy started to cry again. The killer was lost in thought. By now, the killer had assumed the whole world would know about the power and beauty of the knife. But the police had managed to hide the truth. The newspapers knew nothing about the killer. The television knew nothing about the killer. And there was so much to know. Such as the fact that the scalping was just preparation, the prelude to something larger. The killer knew that the kidnapping of Mark Jones was the true beginning, the first song, the first dance of a powerful ceremony that would change the world. Killing a white man, no matter how brutally, was not enough to change the world. But the world would shudder when a white boy was sacrificed. A small, helpless boy. The killer, like a Christian plague, had swept into the Jones’s house and stolen the first-born son of a white family.

The boy was frail, weeping himself into exhaustion, and the killer felt a shallow wave of compassion. But there was no time for that. The owl had no compassion for its prey. Without tears or hesitation, the owl ripped its prey apart to get at the eyes, at the heart, the sweetest meat of all. The owl hunted to eat. It had no message. But the killer wanted people to know about the message of the knife, and knew who would be the messenger. With a flutter of wings, the killer pulled the beautiful knife from its place on the wall, leaned over the boy, and began cutting.

8. The Messenger

TRUCK SCHULTZ CHEWED ON his cigar, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. He was looking forward to a few days off. He was thinking about a fishing trip when his assistant walked into the studio with an open box.

“Truck,” said Darla. “I think you better look at this.”

Inside the box, a ragged piece of Mark Jones’s Daredevil pajamas and two bloody owl feathers.

9. John Smith

AT NIGHT, RAIN AND fog invades the city of Seattle, an occupying force that pushes people inside homes, restaurants, and offices to escape it. One moment, bright moon and clear skies. The next moment, gray everywhere. At three in the morning the temperature drops, but not enough to frighten anybody but tourists. John was not a tourist. He was aboriginal. He stepped through this rain and fog without incident. He loved and needed the dark, feeling it contained more safety than the small circles of white light beneath each street lamp. He pulled his collar closer to his neck and marched through the slight cold. He walked across the Fremont Bridge, north of downtown, southeast of his Ballard apartment. There were no people, no cars. John was the last person left on earth. He wanted to be home alone, in his bed, quiet. This bridge was a bad place. Then the silence was broken. Twin headlights. Illumination. A pickup, filled with curses and Brut aftershave, rattled over the bridge.

“Fucking Indian!”

As the pickup left him behind, John raised his hand, fingers spread wide. He did not understand his own gesture. The pickup slowed, brake lights almost beautiful in the gray air, then stopped, still, reverse lights suddenly bright. John watched the pickup. He raised both hands in the air. He heard a man screaming, then realized he was screaming. As the pickup stopped short of him, the passenger door was flung open, and a big, black boot stepped down to pavement. John looked up into the night sky. The Aurora Bridge hung in the sky a couple hundred feet above the Fremont Bridge. Suicidal people jumped off the Aurora Bridge. Nobody jumped off the Fremont Bridge. More cars on the Aurora Bridge. Just the solitary pickup on the Fremont. John could hear every car and bridge in the city. So many cars and bridges in the city. John had lost count years before.

“Fuck you, Geronimo!”

A big white man in black boots. Driver’s door open now. Two white men. No, two white boys, tall and skinny. Laughing and drinking at a safe distance from John. Seattle was a safe city. The news proved it every day because every murder, rape, and bank robbery made the papers.

“What the fuck you staring at?”

John was staring at the white boys. They were pale and beautiful. John pointed at them.

“What the fuck you pointing at?”

John knew these white boys. Not these two in particular, but white boys in general. He had been in high school with boys like these. He had sat in their pickups, showered with them after gym class, shared pizzas. He had leaned out the windows of their cars and screamed at downtown drunks. Sometimes he had leaned out the window and screamed at everybody they passed.

John was still screaming. He stood on the Fremont Bridge and screamed. The two white boys shouted curses at him, but they kept their distance, ready to jump into their pickup at the slightest provocation. John saw them as Catholic boys, in their junior year at private school. One played varsity basketball; the other played baseball. Both were class officers. They were the boys who forced their hands down the pants of girls who pretended to like it.

“She wanted it, you know? But I let her go, you know? I took pity on her.”

John remembered how these boys talked. He had tried to talk that way himself. He had tried to lie as often as possible, understanding that lying was a valuable skill. High school taught white boys the value of lies, and John knew this. He knew these white boys intimately. He knew these two white boys standing on the Fremont Bridge were publicly loved and admired by their classmates and teachers. These were the boys who were secretly hated and envied, too. Their deaths could create a hurricane of grief and confusion.

During John’s senior year in high school, one of his classmates had been killed in a car wreck on the Interstate. John had been sitting in his homeroom when the principal walked into the class with the news.

“I have some tragic, tragic news,” said the principal without subtlety. “Scott O’Brien was killed last night.”

John began to cry for reasons he could not understand. He had not liked Scott O’Brien. A few weeping girls huddled together in the corner. Scott’s friends, all white boys, sat quietly and stoically, fighting back tears, sucking in their bottom lips, occasionally pounding their desks in imitation of the pointless, masculine methods of grief they saw on television. Sidney Bush, the only Jewish Catholic in Seattle, had his head down on his desk. His acned face was hidden, his fat shoulders were shaking. He might have been crying. But John knew better. Scott had been extremely cruel to Sidney.

“Kike!”

“Jewboy!”

“Fat ass!”

“Pizza face!”

John watched Sidney and knew that he was laughing quietly. Sidney had heard the news of Scott’s death, thrown his face down on the desk, and couldn’t help his joy. He was still laughing over there, in the far corner, near the tattered copies of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and seventy-two editions of the St. Francis Catholic School Annual, dating back to the institution’s early years.

“St. Francis, St. Francis, our trust in God for thee…”

Sidney Bush was laughing in the corner. John felt a single, hot tear sliding down his cheek and falling to the desk. John looked down at the tear, touched it with a fingertip. He knew that the next school annual would be dedicated to Scott O’Brien. A center spread filled with photographs and mementos, precious memories, and statistics. John knew there would be a prayer at graduation, a seat left empty in honor of the missing classmate. Yet, in the far corners of rooms, a few would be hiding their smiles.

“Fuck you, you fucking Indian!”

John remembered that he was still standing on the Fremont Bridge, still screaming, he believed, while the two white boys were getting bored, their curses losing volume and intensity. John felt the screams rattle his ribcage. His throat burned. He took a step forward, then another. The white boys were startled. The driver hopped into the pickup, ready to race away. The passenger threw his beer bottle in the general direction of John. The bottle revolved in the air as John watched its flight, its parabola, its sudden crash against the pavement at his feet. A close call. That white boy was an athlete.

“Fuck you!” from the departing pickup, squealing tires and laughter. John stood alone on the bridge. He needed a shower and shave. His whiskers had grown in clumsy patterns, thick at the chin and sideburns, barely visible at the cheeks and above his lip. His long hair was braided with a broken shoelace. John was quiet. He looked down at the pavement, stepped over the broken glass, and began walking. He walked up Aurora, past Big Heart’s Soda and Juice Bar up on 110th and Aurora. He sometimes visited the bar, but he felt no such need that night. He walked past the graveyard where prostitutes laid down with customers, past Kmart and Burger King, the Aurora Cinemas. John kept walking past all of that. He could not find the courage to stop walking. He walked miles beyond any neighborhood that resembled his own. He walked until he found himself on a dead-end street, a cul-de-sac, a vanishing point. At the end of the street, a small Catholic church, painted white with blue shutters, had tiny, stained glass windows. A candle burned above the front door.

Inside the church, John found the usual pews, altar, confessional, more candles, wood carvings of Jesus crucified, Jesus entombed, Jesus rising again. John still believed in the mystery of his Catholic faith. He used to enjoy Mass, felt some comfort in the numbing repetition of word, symbol, and action. How, every Sunday, he knew exactly what the priest was going to say. There were no surprises, no sudden starts and stops, no need to interpret and understand. The priest told the congregation what to believe and the congregation believed him. But John had not been to Mass in years.

As John walked further into that small church, he saw a priest kneeling at the front. John knew who it was.

“Father Duncan,” said John as he kneeled beside the priest, believing it was the same man who had baptized him years before. This was the priest who had walked into the desert and disappeared. This was the priest who knew everything.

“Father Duncan,” John said again.

Father Phil, a tall Irishman with red hair and ruddy skin, turned from his prayers to look at John.

“Father Duncan,” said John, desperately now, wanting recognition.

“No, it’s Father Phil. Did you know Father Duncan?”

“Yes.”

Father Phil had one of Duncan’s paintings hanging in his study. He knew the story of the Indian Jesuit who’d walked into the Arizona desert and disappeared.

“He’s gone,” said John. “He disappeared.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

John wept. Father Phil placed a hand on John’s shoulder.

“I have sinned,” said John.

“How long has it been since your last confession?”

“Years.”

“What have you done?”

“I have had impure thoughts.”

Father Phil closed his eyes, whispering prayers that John could not make out. John wanted to be forgiven. He felt the pain and rage rising in his throat.

“Father,” said John, his voice rising, his hands gesturing wildly. “All the anger in the world has come to my house. It’s there in my closet. In my refrigerator. In the water. In the sheets. It’s in my clothes. Can you smell it? I can never run away from it. It’s in my hair. I can feel it between my teeth. Can you taste it? I hear it all the time. All the time the anger is talking to me. It’s the devil. I’m the devil. If I could I’d crawl into a hole if I knew God was in there. Where’s the hole? You know, I just killed two white boys on the bridge. They were there on the bridge. They wanted to hurt me. They were the devil. I killed them. I threw them off the bridge into the water. They can’t hurt me anymore. They hurt me. They wanted to steal my eyes. They wanted everything. What am I going to do? What am I going to do?”

Phil looked at John. He reached out and held John’s hands. Phil wondered if the Indian was a killer, or lost, or both.

“My son,” said Father Phil. “Tell me about your pain. I will listen.”

John looked around the small chapel.

“Father, your church is empty.”

“I know. Sometimes it feels empty even when it’s full of people.”

“How come?”

“Because people are lost.”

John left that priest and his church and soon found himself standing outside his Ballard apartment. A note from his parents was taped to the door:

John—

Please call us when you get in.

We are worried about you. We love you.

Mom & Dad

John tore the note from the door, crumpled it into a ball, and shoved it into his pocket. He found the apartment key his mother had sewn into his pants. She had done the same for every pair of pants he owned. He opened his door and stepped inside.

10. Finding the Body

THE BLUE VAN ROLLED slowly down a dirt road on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. Thick stands of trees flanked the road. The faint sounds of Interstate 5 could be heard in the distance, though the people inside the van, a Spokane Indian couple, were not comforted by those distant sounds of civilization.

“I think we’re lost,” she said.

“We’re not that lost,” he said. “You can hear the freeway. Listen.”

She listened, could hear the big trucks hauling their cargo north to Canada and south to Seattle, quickly passing senior citizens leisurely touring in their recreational vehicles. She could hear the whine of a traffic helicopter. All those people so close and far away at the same time.

“Well,” she said. “Unless I’m mistaken, we’d have to walk through the woods to get to the freeway. On foot, we’d know exactly where we are. But, unless I’m mistaken again, we’re in the van. And since we can’t drive through those woods, we are lost, enit? Listen, there were a couple houses back there. We could go back and ask for directions.”

“We’ll be fine,” he said.

He drove five miles down the road until the asphalt turned into dirt and a sign proclaimed PRIMITIVE ROAD — NO WARNING SIGNS.

“Now,” she said, “I think that is reason enough to turn around.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“Hold on a second,” she said. “I have to go pee.”

She grabbed the roll of toilet paper they always kept in the glove compartment, jumped out of the van, and went searching for a good spot. She always felt like a dog when she had to go in the woods. Amusing herself, she pretended to sniff at a few trees, looked back at the blue van where her boyfriend waited, and then walked farther into the brush. She was wishing she had a temporary penis for outdoor urination use when she caught a whiff of something foul.

“Jeez,” she whispered to herself, plugging her nose.

She tried to walk away from the smell, but it seemed to be everywhere. A dead animal, she thought. Then she wondered if it might be a dead porcupine. If the poker had not been dead too long, she might be able to salvage the quills and give them to some Indian grandmother. Indian grandmothers could always use more quills. She stood still and tried to discern the source of the smell. She could not tell in which direction she should go, but she knew it was close. She started walking in ever-widening circles, hoping to find the dead porcupine by stumbling over it. The smell grew more powerful as she walked closer to a stand of pines. When she stepped between two large trees, she saw the body sitting back against a stump.

“Holy Mary,” she whispered and made the sign of the cross.

Dressed in a University of Washington sweatshirt and blue jeans, David Rogers almost looked as if he were resting after a long walk. His head fell against his left shoulder, a single bullet hole between his eyes. There was very little blood and no other wounds, though the body was well into its decomposition. For some reason, she noticed that the boy’s tennis shoes were untied.

11. Fire Starter

“TRUCK,” SAID THE ASSISTANT over the intercom.

“Yeah,” said Truck, without opening his eyes.

“You’ve got a call on line three, from Johnny Law.”

Truck sat up quickly and took the call. Johnny Law was the pseudonym for Truck’s source in the Washington State Patrol office. After Truck had received the piece of Mark Jones’s pajamas and the two bloody owl feathers, he’d learned from Johnny Law that a serial murderer, dubbed the Indian Killer, was loose in the Seattle area. Leaving behind two owl feathers as a calling card, the Indian Killer had murdered and scalped Justin Summers, had kidnapped little Mark Jones, and was a suspect in the disappearance of David Rogers. Truck had been itching to broadcast the news, but the police had threatened to shut him down if he went public.

“What’s up?” Truck asked Johnny Law.

“We found that college boy’s body, David Rogers, up on the Tulalip Reservation about thirty minutes ago. He was murdered, shot in the head. The money he’d won was gone, of course.”

“Is it an Indian Killer murder?”

“Doubtful. He was shot in the head. No signs of mutilation on the body. No feathers. Looks like a robbery. But we’re not ruling anything out.”

The caller hung up and Truck smiled. Fuck the police, he thought.

“When are we back on air?” asked Truck.

“Two minutes,” said the assistant.

“Get me the file on that college kid who disappeared a couple weeks back.”

The assistant raced to the filing room, pulled out the folder, and rushed it back to Truck. David Rogers. Twenty-one years old. A junior English major. Three point one grade-point average. He worked part-time in the computer lab.

“Thirty seconds to air,” said the assistant.

“Free all the phone lines,” said Truck. “I’ve got things to say. And try to get David’s brother on the phone. Aaron, I think his name is. We’ve got his number around here somewhere. He called in a while back.”

Truck continued to read. David’s mother had died of cancer when he was five years old. His father, Buck, living on the family farm outside of Spokane, was distraught by his youngest son’s disappearance. A good boy.

“Ten seconds to air,” said the assistant.

Truck sipped at his coffee, wiped his face with his favorite handkerchief, and leaned toward the microphone.

“I’ve just received the disturbing news from my esteemed sources in the offices of the Washington State Patrol. It seems that the body of another white man has been discovered up on the Tulalip Indian Reservation forty miles north of Seattle. The details are sketchy, but authorities have identified the body as that of David Rogers, the University of Washington student who has been missing since he won two thousand dollars at a slot machine. The body was mutilated and dumped near the Tulalip Tribal Casino, the last place where David Rogers was seen alive. I know this is terrifying news, but I must inform you that the Seattle Police Department believes that a serial killer, known only as the Indian Killer, is responsible for David Rogers’s murder, as well as the murder of Justin Summers, the bartender whose bloody body was found in Fremont. Both David Rogers and Justin Summers had been scalped.

“And there is more. The police insisted I keep this quiet, but the time for silence is over. Just a few days ago, the Indian Killer mailed me a special package. Inside the package were a piece of Mark Jones’s pajamas and the Indian Killer’s calling card. Now, I don’t want to tell you what the killer sent me. But it’s proof of the Indian Killer’s existence. The Indian Killer has kidnapped and most likely murdered little Mark Jones.

“Citizens, I am deeply saddened by these murders. I extend my deepest sympathies to the family and friends of the murdered men. And most especially, to the mother and father of Mark Jones. I think we should have a moment of radio silence in their honor.”

Truck pressed the mute button, sipped at his coffee, toked on his cigar, and watched the clock. A full minute passed.

“Citizens, I am outraged. What is our society coming to when good men cannot safely walk the streets of our cities? When a little boy can be taken from the safety of his own home? And you know these murdered men, this kidnapped little boy, were targets precisely because they were white. They were guilty of the crime of being white males.

“Yes, yes, citizens, I know, I know. What have I been telling you? Haven’t I told you that our current political climate, with its constant vilification of white males, would prove to be disastrous? White males built this country. White males traveled here on the Mayflower, crossed the Great Plains on horseback, brought light to the darkness, tamed the wilderness. This country exists because of the constant vigilance and ingenuity of white males.

“And, now, through no fault of their own, two men are dead, and a little boy is missing, because they were white. If two black men had been killed because of their race, this city would be in an uproar. If a black child had been kidnapped by a white man, the city would be up in arms. Citizens, there would be a candlelight march. Our liberal black mayor would have appointed a task force by now. Of course, he would have. This whole country cares more about the lives of young black teenage hoodlums than it does about law-abiding, God-fearing white men.

“And now comes the news that an Indian savage is killing white men. Have we somehow traveled back to the nineteenth century? Has some Godless heathen been kept on ice on the reservation for a couple hundred years? Did they thaw that psycho warrior and send him into the city to scalp white men? Citizens, I’m happy I am balder than Kojak and Yul Brynner combined.

“Seriously, citizens, I’m deeply, deeply saddened. But, I have to tell you, I’m not surprised by this turn of events. I mean, what happens to a child that is given everything he wants? That child becomes an aggressive, domineering brat. Well, citizens, we keep giving Indians everything they want. We give them fishing rights, hunting lands. We allow them to have these illegal casinos on their land. They have rights that normal Americans do not enjoy. Indians have become super citizens, enjoying all the advantages of being Americans while reveling in the special privileges they receive just for being Indians.

“And we give all this to them because we supposedly stole their land from them. Indians are living a better life than they ever did before. They have jobs. They have electricity and running water. They have God. Citizens, and this is a fact, there are more Indians living now then there were when Columbus first landed on these shores. It’s true, you can look it up.

“And despite all these special advantages, Indians still live in poverty. They live in filth, folks. Broken-down cars stacked in their yards. They have the highest infant-mortality rates. They have the highest rates of alcohol and drug abuse. Indians still get rickets, for God’s sake. We give them everything, and yet they cannot take care of themselves.

“Would you give money to a four-year-old and tell her to feed herself, clothe herself, buy a house, pay bills? Of course not. Yet we give millions and millions of dollars to these Indians and expect them to know what to do with such wealth. Then when we, as tax-paying citizens, complain about such a waste of our tax dollars, the Indians call us racist. They whine about their treaty rights. They wave their flimsy little treaties around. Well, I’ve got a piece of paper to show those Indians. It’s called the Bill of Rights and, citizens, it doesn’t say one word about special rights for Indians. It’s says that all men are created equal. All men, not just Indians.

“Calm down, citizens, calm down. I know how you feel. I know you’re upset. You have every right to be upset. I’m upset. We have coddled Indians too long and we’ve created a monster. We share the responsibility.

“It’s true, citizens, it’s true. We should have terminated Indian tribes from the very beginning. Indians should have been assimilated into normal society long ago. We should have given them every chance to become fully productive members of our society. Yet we allowed them to remain separate. In fact, we encouraged their separation from the mainstream values and culture in this country. That separation created poverty. It created drug abuse and addiction. It created misery and anger. It created this Indian Killer. Now, I believe we should find this Indian Killer, give him a fair and speedy trial, and then hang him by the neck until he is dead.

“Yes, citizens, to paraphrase one of our great military leaders, Philip Sheridan, the only good Indian Killer is a dead Indian Killer.”

12. The Battle of Queen Anne

LESS THAN AN HOUR after Truck Schultz phoned Aaron Rogers and personally told him about the discovery of his brother’s body, Aaron, Barry Church, and Sean Ward were cruising downtown Seattle, looking for Indians to attack. Aaron and Barry had both tossed baseball bats into the truck before they left the house. Each of the three had a ski mask shoved into his pocket.

“Let’s do it for David,” Aaron said to his housemates, pounding the steering wheel of his Toyota 4Runner as he cruised through downtown Seattle. On any given night, a couple dozen Indians usually staggered through the downtown streets. Aaron had often seen them. Homeless drunks. Men and women. Sitting in their own vomit. Rotten faces, greasy hair, shit-stained pants. Aaron had always been disgusted before. Now he felt a hate that made his chest ache. Sean and Barry scanned the streets. Other college kids on the street walked from bar to bar, laughter and conversation. A small crowd gathered outside the Elliott Bay Book Company. Couples slowly strolled past dark windows of stores.

“Where the fuck are they?” Aaron was screaming now, his face red with frustration.

“I’ve seen Indians up by the Seattle Center,” said Barry. “On Queen Anne Hill.”

Cornelius and Zera, homeless Indians, huddled together in a doorway across the street from a Blockbuster Video on lower Queen Anne Hill. The doorway was a good spot, kept warm by the furnace beneath it. Fairly safe, too, in a busy neighborhood. Cornelius and Zera had spent a year of nights in that doorway.

“You warm?” Cornelius asked Zera.

“Warm enough,” she said. But she was shaking, and Cornelius pulled her closer. They’d been together for five years and had spent half of that time homeless. The other half, they’d shared and been evicted from three apartments. Money and jobs were seasonal. Cornelius, a Makah Indian, was a deep-sea fisherman, a job that would have kept him away for months at a time, and he just didn’t want to leave Zera, a Puyallup. She was manic-depressive and simply couldn’t take care of herself. So Cornelius worked as a manual laborer, losing the job whenever Zera showed up and terrorized customers and managers, or when he missed work to search for her after her latest disappearance. She’d been hospitalized three times and Cornelius had always missed her so much he couldn’t sleep. He would just walk around the hospital, one or two hundred times a day, until she was finally released.

“You warm now?” Cornelius asked.

She nodded her head, but he knew she was lying. He offered her a drink of coffee from the thermos. He’d always leave the empty thermos at the back door of the nearby McDonald’s, and Doug, the redheaded night manager, would secretly fill it again with leftover coffee. Small kindnesses. Cornelius also had a loaf of bread he’d bought with money he’d made selling Real Change, the newspaper written and distributed by the homeless. He took out two slices, jammed them together, and offered it to Zera.

“Hey, look,” he said. “A jam sandwich.”

She laughed, took the sandwich, and swallowed it down.

As Aaron piloted his truck through lower Queen Anne in search of Indians, he brooded about David. Frail David Rogers with his lopsided grin. Always reading some damn book or another. Loved Hemingway’s Nick Adams, the monosyllabic hero with the monosyllabic name. Nick. The first man, the essential man, the genesis of man. Adams. Everything that David was not. In high school, David tried to play football and made the team as a fourth-string receiver. He cheered on Aaron, the toughest linebacker in the league. Aaron had wanted to play college football at the University of Washington, one of the best programs in the country, but they hadn’t been interested in him. He was too small for Division I, the recruiters told him. Junior college would be best, the coaches told him. But Aaron would not accept anything less than UW, so he enrolled anyway, and David had followed him. Aaron hadn’t made it halfway through the first day of football tryouts when some behemoth knocked him unconscious and out of contention for a roster spot. After that, Aaron and David had grown even closer. More than brothers. They moved in with Sean and Barry, studied hard, and were well on their way to graduation when David disappeared. Aaron thought of his father, who was probably driving to Seattle right now.

“Fuck,” Aaron cursed while Barry held his baseball bat tightly. Sean was getting more nervous than angry. He’d never seen Aaron, who had quite a temper anyway, look so furious. Aaron had been on a short fuse since David had disappeared, and Sean could understand that. Hell, he missed David, too, but he was gone and there was nothing they could do about it. Maybe they thought they could do a lot about it, like beating the shit out of a few Indians with blunt instruments. Perhaps baseball bats. Sean shook his head. It was all getting out of control.

“They’re hiding,” Sean said. “We’re not going to find them now. Everybody must know about the Indian Killer.”

“We’ll find them,” Aaron said.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Sean.

Before Aaron could respond, Barry shouted and pointed up the street at two Indians sleeping in a doorway. Aaron smiled. He slipped a ski mask over his face, as Sean and Barry did the same.

Cornelius was watching Zera sleep. She spent most of her waking hours in a struggle for emotional balance, and it showed in her face. Deep wrinkles, haunted eyes, sudden gestures and unpredictable movements. In sleep, she relaxed, sometimes smiled, and Cornelius thought her beautiful. Sleep is a little piece of death, he thought, and Zera found some peace in that temporary afterlife. He was busy looking at her while she slept when the truck pulled up to a sharp stop near the doorway.

“Hey, you fuckers!”

Three men in ski masks, white, purple, and blue, jumped out of the pickup. Two of them, white mask and blue mask, held baseball bats. Purple mask was empty-handed.

“Wake up, wake up!” Cornelius yelled as he shook Zera awake. They both struggled to their feet.

“Fucking drunks! Fuck you, fuck you!”

The man in the white mask advanced with his baseball bat. He was obviously the leader. For some reason, Cornelius held out the thermos as an offering. He looked down at his outstretched hand and couldn’t believe what he was doing.

“I don’t want your booze!” shouted white mask as he swung the bat and smashed the thermos out of Cornelius’s hand.

“Home run! Home run!” shouted blue mask. He came forward, swinging his bat as if he were a baseball player warming up. Purple mask stayed back.

“Come on, come on, you fucking Indian,” said white mask. He jabbed his bat into Cornelius’ belly. Zera was trembling beside him.

“We don’t want no trouble,” Cornelius said. “We’ll leave.”

“Go back to where you belong, man!” shouted blue mask. “Get the fuck out of our country, man!”

A crowd had gathered, though no one in it seemed eager to interfere. God, I hope somebody called the cops, thought Cornelius. When he flexed his hand, the pain told him white mask had broken it into pieces. Cornelius was still debating his options when Zera made her decision and tackled blue mask. Before Cornelius could react, white mask broke Cornelius’s jaw with a wicked swing of his bat.

“Get her off me! Get her off me!” blue mask shouted as Zera tore at his face. As purple mask tried to pull her off, white mask savagely beat Cornelius. Five, ten, twenty swings of the bat. Four cracked ribs, punctured lung, various contusions and abrasions, concussion.

Purple mask had pulled Zera off blue mask, who had smashed her across the face with his bat. The amount of blood shocked blue mask. He stepped back.

“Payback, motherfucker, payback!” shouted white mask. He kept swinging the bat at Cornelius, might have beaten the life out of the Indian, if purple mask had not pulled him away.

“We got to go!” shouted purple mask. Blue mask was already in the driver’s seat, ready to roll. White mask smashed Cornelius one last time, jumped into the 4Runner with the other two, and screamed triumphantly as they sped from the scene.

13. Night Terrors

AS OLIVIA AND DANIEL ate breakfast, the radio announced that Mark Jones had been kidnapped by the Indian Killer. A homeless Indian couple had been assaulted by three masked men. Olivia had wanted to talk, but Daniel excused himself from the table. A few minutes before seven in the morning, Daniel Smith left home, saying he had extra work at the architecture firm.

As Daniel drove away, Olivia knew that he was really going to look for John. As he drove from Bellevue over the 520 bridge west to Seattle, Daniel could see a few sailboats out for an early cruise on Lake Washington. A man and woman, dressed warmly, were aboard a large one with a red and white sail, just a hundred feet or so from the bridge. As Daniel imagined he heard their laughter, he felt jealous. Man, woman, boat, water, freedom. Everything so simple for them. The shadow of Mount Rainier rose on the southern horizon. On a slightly overcast day, the mountain was just a ghost, a subtle reminder of itself, a brief memory. With unlimited visibility, the mountain was spectacular and surreal, rising as it did over the urban landscape of Seattle. Daniel knew that accidents had occurred on Seattle freeways because of drivers who were distracted by Rainier’s beauty. Local Indians had always believed that Rainier was a sacred place, not to be climbed or trivialized. Daniel wondered if any Indians had wrecked their cars because of a view of the mountain.

He parked the car downtown in a lot near the firm and walked the streets. Little traffic, a few cars and out-of-season tourists. A heavy rain had fallen, leaving behind that particular odor which so many people associate with fresh air and nature, though that smell rises out of the damp, musty places in a city. Still, Daniel had always loved the rain and what it left behind. As Daniel wandered, he felt no love for the rain or the city. He felt lost and hopeless, searching for his son, who had become a stranger. Daniel had never done anything this desperate. He had no idea what he was doing, only that he would not find John by sitting inside, just waiting. He was shocked by the number of homeless people, especially the dozens of Indians, who were living in downtown Seattle. He was intimidated, but he soon found the courage to talk to them. Outside the Elliott Bay Book Company, which had not yet opened, Daniel saw a homeless Indian man in a wheelchair.

“Hello,” Daniel ventured. The Indian was about forty years old, with long, greasy hair. He wore a U.S. Army jacket and a red beret.

“Hey,” replied the Indian. “You got any change?”

Daniel dug in his empty pockets. Then he pulled a couple dollars from his wallet and handed them over.

“Thanks.” The Indian quickly pocketed the money.

“Listen, could I ask you something? I’m looking for my son. He’s Indian. A big guy. Talks to himself.”

“Hey, partner, most everybody down here talks to himself. How’d you get an Indian son anyways? Marry you some dark meat, enit?”

“No, no. He’s adopted.”

“What’s his name?” asked the Indian.

“John. John Smith.”

“You adopted an Indian kid and named him John Smith? No wonder he talks to himself. What’s your name?”

“Daniel.”

“Hey, Daniel, I’ve got to say I don’t know one Indian named John Smith. I know King and Agnes. I know Marie the Sandwich Lady and Robert. But I don’t know a John Smith. Ain’t nobody knows any Indian named John Smith. Ain’t no such thing. You must have dreamed him up.”

The Indian laughed, slapped his own face, twirled around in his chair.

“You know,” drawled the wheelchair Indian. “I bet you’re a cop, enit? You’re just a cop looking for that Indian Killer, right?”

“No, no. I’m really looking for my son. This Indian Killer thing has me worried about him.”

“All the cops been through here a million times already,” said the Indian. “Asking me this, asking me that. I’ll tell you what I told the others. I know who killed those white people.”

“You know who did it?”

“Damn right, I know,” said the Indian. He laughed loudly, rolling his chair away from Daniel.

“Wait,” Daniel called after him, caught in the surprise of the moment. “Who did it?”

“It was Crazy Horse,” shouted the Indian, who stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “You know Crazy Horse?”

“Of course,” said Daniel, who’d read most every Indian book that Olivia had set in front of him. “He’s Oglala Sioux, right?”

“Oh, yeah, he’s Oglala.” The Indian, slowly wheeling back, closer and closer to Daniel, kept speaking. “And he’s more. This Indian Killer, you see, he’s got Crazy Horse’s magic. He’s got Chief Joseph’s brains. He’s got Geronimo’s heart. He’s got Wovoka’s vision. He’s all those badass Indians rolled up into one.”

The wheelchair Indian dug through his pockets, pulled out a series of wrinkled news clippings, and waved them in the air.

“See,” said the Indian, “I’m keeping track. We all are. Every Indian is keeping score. What? This Killer’s got himself two white guys? And that little white boy, enit? That makes the score about ten million to three, in favor of the white guys, enit? This Killer’s got a long ways to go. Man, he’s the underdog.”

The Indian laughed loudly, slapping his still legs. He began to roll away from Daniel.

“But who is he?” asked Daniel.

“It’s me,” said the Indian, his laughter getting louder as he rolled farther away. Then, still laughing, he stepped out of his chair, pushed it quickly down the street, and disappeared.

Though unnerved, Daniel could not stop searching for John. He spent most of the day in downtown Seattle, but never found anybody, white or Indian, who had ever heard of an Indian named John Smith, though they all knew a dozen homeless Indian men.

“Yeah, there’s that Blackfeet guy, Loney.”

“Oh, yeah, enit? And that Laguna guy, what’s his name? Tayo?”

“And Abel, that Kiowa.”

After searching for hours, Daniel returned to his car and made it back to Bellevue for an early dinner.

“How was your day?” asked Olivia, hoping that he’d tell her about his search for John.

“Okay,” said Daniel.

John’s parents ate the rest of their meal in silence.

That night, Olivia Smith dreamed: Father Duncan dipping baby John into the baptismal; four-year-old John heaving a basketball toward the hoop as Daniel laughs and claps his hands; Daniel kissing down her belly; John’s naked body, bloody and brown, dumped on a snow plain. Olivia dreamed: a red tricycle; lightning illuminating a stranger standing at a window; pine trees on fire; an abandoned hound mournfully howling beside a country road. Olivia dreamed: John standing alone on the last skyscraper in Seattle as wind whips his hair across his face; Daniel holding her head under water at Lake Sammamish until she panics; the moon rising above the Space Needle; Father Duncan dipping the adult John into the baptismal.

With a sudden start, Olivia sat up in bed, awake, unsure of her surroundings. Slowly, she recognized her bedroom, maple bureau, huge closet door ajar, Daniel snoring lightly beside her. Knowing she would not sleep now, she crawled from bed and walked into the bathroom. Without turning on the light, she pulled down her pajamas and sat on the toilet. She could not go, though there was a slight pressure in her bladder. She briefly wondered if she had an infection. She held her head in her hands and waited. She thought about the Indian Killer murders, how the news was filled with photographs of the white men who had been killed. Of the little white boy, helpless and small, as John had once been. She wondered if John was safe. She wanted to pray, but felt embarrassed by her position. Then she prayed anyway as her legs fell asleep.

As Olivia prayed, Daniel dreamed: his secretary leaning over his desk with papers to sign; the Bainbridge Island ferry crossing rough waters. Daniel dreamed: young John running across a field; a stranger hammering nails into a joist. Daniel dreamed: a red truck breaking through a guardrail; a pistol firing. Daniel dreamed: a man screaming; John standing over the bed.

Frightened, Daniel sat up in bed, sure that John was there. Daniel could almost smell his son. Smoke and sweat, sweet and dank. Then Daniel could smell his son, could feel him there.

“John?” asked Daniel.

Olivia heard her husband, quickly pulled up her pajamas and stepped into the bedroom.

“Daniel,” she said. “Who are you talking to?”

“It’s John,” he said. “He’s here.”

Olivia looked around the bedroom. The windows were locked tight. The bedroom door was shut. Since the closet door was slightly ajar, she opened it and turned on the light. Daniel’s suits on one side, her dresses and blouses on the other. On both sides, above their clothes, boxes were stacked from shelf to ceiling. A dozen pairs of Daniel’s shoes scattered on the floor; ten pairs of Olivia’s. No John. She switched off the closet light.

“He’s not here,” Olivia said to Daniel, to herself. “You’re dreaming.”

“No,” said Daniel. “He’s here. I can smell him.”

Olivia sniffed the air. She knew her son’s smell. Was confident of that. Knew she could’ve been blind and still picked him out of a crowd. She’d held his clothes to her face and breathed in deeply. She’d held him close in her arms and buried her face in his thick black hair. When he was young, he smelled of cut grass and pine trees, band-aids and hydrogen peroxide, strawberry Kool-Aid and Ivory soap. As he grew older, he smelled of Old Spice and dirty tennis shoes, secondhand smoke and ocean, pepperoni pizza and musty libraries.

“He’s here,” Daniel said, nearly pleading now. “I know it.”

Olivia heard the obvious fear and confusion in her husband’s voice. She had not often heard him sound so defenseless. She went to his side, touched his face.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

Daniel pointed at the place where John had been standing.

“Right there,” Daniel said. “He was right there.”

Olivia looked at the spot. She wanted to see John standing there. She wanted it so much that he almost appeared. As if John was struggling to step from another world into this one, a sliver of light floated there at the foot of the bed. Olivia could see it, and knew that it was an illusion, an odd moment of moonlight, the afterimage of the closet’s bright lamp. But she wanted to believe in it.

“Right there,” Daniel whispered as Olivia gently pushed him onto his back.

“I know, I know,” she said as Daniel closed his eyes and fell back to sleep.

Wide awake now, she walked downstairs into the kitchen for a glass of milk. She opened the fridge and saw that the leftover roast had been cut into. She then saw the carving knife dropped carelessly into the sink. Daniel’s midnight snack. No wonder he was dreaming, Olivia thought as she washed the knife and replaced it in the cutting block.

14. Blank Pages

WILSON WOKE SLOWLY, KEEPING his eyes closed even as he drifted into consciousness. The clock radio beside the bed was playing a song about fire and rain. Sunlight filtered softly through his closed eyelids, creating a fireworks display. The next-door neighbor’s dog barked through the thin walls of the apartment complex. No pets allowed, but Wilson did not mind the dog. He had often considered getting a dog himself. The garbage truck two blocks away rumbled through gears. The smell of eggs and hamburger from the apartment below him. A mother and father, two boys, down there in such a small space, a one-bedroom only a little larger than Wilson’s studio. They were never loud, never bothersome. Wilson heard only the faint metallic music of the boys’ video game, Nintendo or some such thing. The mother, Janice, picked up Wilson’s mail when he was away, though he rarely was. She would deliver it to him neatly wrapped in one of those huge rubber bands that seem to have no other use than wrapping up large bundles of mail. He wondered how Janice fit her husband, two sons, all the eggs and hamburger, and those huge rubber bands into that little apartment.

He remembered other mornings, waking up, wondering which foster parents were keeping him, surrounding him with their space. He often forgot. One day the O’Gradys’ large house, and then he was in the Smiths’ tiny place the next morning, waking up in the same bed with Stuart Smith, who wet the bed. No. Wilson wet the bed but always blamed it on Stuart. After he moved from the Smith house, Wilson slept alone and could not blame it on anybody else. The Johnsons were kind and considerate about Wilson’s bed-wetting. Mrs. Johnson slipped a shower curtain between the sheets and mattress when she made the bed, and washed the soiled sheets without saying a word. The Sheldons were cruel. Mr. Sheldon shamed him. Mrs. Sheldon made him wash the sheets himself by hand. Some nights, he was forced to sleep in the bathtub, without blankets, sheets, or pillow, because he had ruined so many. The Hawkinses simply made him sleep in the same wet sheets night after night. The Crowleys locked him in a dark closet for hours at a time.

As a teenager, Wilson had learned to control his bladder on most nights. But when he did wet his bed, he woke up early and washed the sheets. During sleep-overs with friends, he stayed awake all night, terrified to fall asleep. While living with the Lambeers, he’d once fallen asleep on the floor during an overnight birthday party and stained a shag carpet. His new friends had promptly and completely ostracized him after that. Alone and frightened, he made friends with family pets, and if those family pets sometimes ignored him, Wilson kicked them. Their yelps of pain made him feel better. Or he led the dogs and cats miles away from the houses, tied them to traffic signs, and walked away. They came back, or they didn’t. Wilson had once set a bowl of antifreeze in front of a family dog and watched happily as the dog lapped it up.

Now, as an adult, Wilson tried to forget all that, but once in a while he still woke up with a start, worried that he’d wet the bed yet again. He’d woken up that morning, touched his crotch and the sheets beneath him, and breathed a sigh of relief. He’d been up late working on his novel, Indian Killer. With his other novels, he usually wrote about five pages a day, but he had managed to fill only a single page of Indian Killer before he forced himself to bed at 3 A.M. He’d only written ten very rough pages since he had talked to the desk sergeant about the killings. Up late every night, trying to finish. So much pressure, so many monsters. Wilson wondered about a woman, a wife, calling him to bed. Would she have let him stay up until three in the morning? He was frightened by the thought, by a woman. He thought of Beautiful Mary pushing him into that doorway, how she held his penis with her callused hand. He saw her scarred face and her dead eyes. He trembled at the memory and wondered if he would sleep. As it was, Wilson crawled into cold sheets and lay there wide awake for hours before sleep surprised him and dragged him off into the dark. He had never remembered his dreams very well, but last night, he knew he had fought off a variety of faceless monsters. Then he had dreamed about the murders. To his surprise, Wilson had dreamed of David Rogers’s face as a bullet passed through his brain, had seen the blood fountain from Justin Summers’s belly, had heard the muffled cries of Mark Jones. Now Wilson’s arms and legs felt sore.

Wilson kept his eyes closed. He ran his hands over his body, searching for strange bumps and growths. He was getting to be that age and had to be more careful. Any change, however slight, was cause for concern. No pain, nothing new there, no growths, no tumors, no chemotherapy, no hair falling out, no funeral with his fellow officers in their dress blues telling funny stories and outright lies about his worth as a human being.

Wilson opened his eyes. He was hungry. He slid out of bed, stepped into clean blue slippers, went to the bathroom, and washed his face. The newspaper was waiting for him just outside his front door. The delivery guy always folded it strangely. It must have something to do with the union, Wilson thought. He thought that every morning. He read the front-page headlines about the Indian Killer as he walked over to the little kitchen area, poured Grape-Nuts and one-percent into one of his two bowls, pulled one of his spoons from the drawer, and sat down to eat.

Along with speculation about the identity of the Indian Killer came the disturbing news of several racially motivated attacks. An Indian man had been attacked on the Burke-Gilman Trail by three masked men swinging baseball bats. An Indian couple had been brutally beaten by those masked men and were now in the hospital with fractured skulls and other injuries.

Wilson finished the newspaper and breakfast, washed the bowl and spoon, and dressed. He had work to do. He combed his hair, brushed his teeth, locked the apartment door behind him, and caught a bus downtown to Occidental Park in Pioneer Square. It had been more than ten years since he’d walked a beat in the Square. But he knew the street where the homeless Indians still hung out, and they could have some answers.

He stepped off the bus a couple blocks away from Occidental Park and heard the music. It was a Thursday. Wilson remembered that the Pioneer Square Business Owners Committee had decided, whatever the weather, to hold outdoor concerts in Occidental Park every Thursday at noon. It was not much of a park, one city block filled with benches and bad publicly funded sculpture. No grass and no flowers, just red brick pavement covered with cigarette butts and graffiti. Skinny trees grew at regular intervals. The merchants had convinced the city that holding concerts in the park would attract more tourists to the downtown area, but there was a problem. Occidental Park was a gathering place for dozens of homeless people. So every Thursday morning around ten, the Seattle Police Department quietly drove the homeless out of the park. By noon, it would be filled with tourists. Around one in the afternoon, the homeless would begin filtering back in. By five, the park would once again belong to the street people.

Wilson walked into the park just as the street people were starting to return. Due to the Indian Killer threat, police patrols had been increased, and five cops walked through the park. Some band played an unidentifiable mix of trumpets, piano, strange-looking guitars, and voices. Everybody in the band was white. One homeless white guy in a wheelchair had rolled himself right next to the stage. He was loudly singing along with the band. The musicians gave him angry looks, but the homeless guy was probably a better singer than any of them. Wilson watched that scene for a while, but he was looking for Indians. A few dozen Indians were regulars in and around Pioneer Square, as Indians had been when Wilson was a rookie cop. Some of those walking slowly in the Square were the sons and daughters of Indians from Wilson’s youth.

A local phone company had set up a promotional display at the south end of the park. Anyone could make a free three-minute long-distance call to anywhere in the country. All people had to do was to leave their names and current phone numbers, so they could be subjected to dozens of calls from minimum-wage telephone solicitors. There were six telephones and a pile of directories. A smiling woman answered questions.

Wilson sat on a bench near the telephones. For a while, he watched tourists surprising people back home. One vacationing man made an anonymous semi-obscene phone call to his boss back in Wisconsin. Amused and bored at the same time, Wilson was about to leave when he noticed an Indian man leaning against a tree about twenty feet from the phones. He was obviously homeless. Dressed in dirty clothes, shoes taped together, broken veins and deep creases crossing his face. The Indian might have been twenty or fifty. There was no way of knowing for sure. Slowly, the Indian man made his way closer to the phones. Wilson watched him. The Indian stood next to a traveling salesman making a call home to his wife. Wilson stood up and carefully walked closer. He did not want to scare the Indian guy away. Wilson felt he still looked like a cop.

“Yeah, it’s been fun,” said the salesman into the telephone. “It’s been raining a little, but not like they say. I could see the mountains. Yeah, this Indian Killer thing is going on. No, I’m not worried. You know how it is.”

As the businessman talked, the Indian moved closer to the phone. Wilson moved closer, too. The Indian smelled bad. The businessman wrinkled his nose, finished his conversation, hung up the phone. He looked at the Indian with disdain, and then quickly walked away. The Indian picked up the phone and held it to his ear.

“Can I help you, sir?” asked the telephone woman. She looked at the Indian as if he were contagious. She said “sir” like anybody else would have said “asshole.” She wondered if he was the Indian Killer, but decided this man couldn’t have hurt anyone in his condition.

“I want to make a call,” said the Indian.

“And where might you be calling?” asked the telephone woman.

“Home,” said the Indian. “My reservation.”

“And where, precisely, is your reservation, sir?”

“Montana.”

The telephone woman assessed him. This promotion was certainly not targeted at him. But she was just a temporary employee anyway, and who wants to get into an argument with a homeless Indian in downtown Seattle? She read from her list of questions.

“Sir, who’s your current long-distance carrier?”

“What?” asked the Indian.

“Who’s your current long-distance carrier?”

“Oh. The Moccasin Telegraph.”

“Are you happy with their service?”

“You bet. They’re loud and proud.”

“And what other long-distance carriers have you had?”

“Oh. You mean like smoke signals?”

“Sure, like smoke signals.”

“Well, then, I had smoke signals.”

“And were you happy with their service?”

“Damn right I was.”

“Have you ever employed Pacific Sun as your long-distance carrier?”

“No, who’s that?”

“We’re Pacific Sun, sir. Would you ever consider using our service?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, then,” said the telephone woman as she handed the Indian a clipboard and pen. “Sign here and fill in your address and current phone number here.”

“No problem,” said the Indian as he filled out the form with bogus information.

“Use that phone there,” the telephone woman said. “You’ve got three minutes.”

Amazed, Wilson watched as the Indian dialed the telephone, surprised the telephone woman had played along. The Indian closed his eyes in concentration, slowly pulling each digit from some phone number in his past. Wilson wanted to know who the Indian was calling. A grandmother? Parents? Lover?

As Wilson edged closer and eavesdropped on the conversation, Marie Polatkin watched it all from across the street. She was sitting in her sandwich van, waiting for the concert to end. The ten-year-old van was white, with “Seattle Open Heart Mission” painted crudely on both sides. Inside the van, there was a driver’s seat, a passenger seat, and a dozen bakery racks, enough to hold hundreds of sandwiches.

Marie had been watching Wilson since he first walked into the park. She had recognized him from the author photograph on the back of his book she’d been forced to study in her Native American literature class. Dr. Mather had told the class that Wilson was going to be giving a public reading at the Elliott Bay Book Company soon, and he was giving extra credit to anybody who attended. Marie planned to go, but she certainly wasn’t going to sit quietly and listen to Wilson tell lies. She had read some interview where Wilson had proudly revealed that his great-grandfather or uncle or somebody had a little Indian blood. She couldn’t understand the gall of such people. After all, she had a little bit of white blood, but that damn sure did not make her white. She looked in the rearview mirror of the van and saw what anyone would see reflected, an Indian woman. Dark eyes and hair, brown skin. She could not be white if she wanted to be white. And she had wanted to be white more than once. When she was nine years old, sitting on the front porch, she had rubbed her face with a piece of her dad’s sandpaper, trying to get rid of her color. Her skin was raw and bloody when she quit, still Indian. Now she was proud of being Indian, but it wasn’t a simple feeling. In the eyes of the white world, any Indian woman was the same as all other Indian women. Only white people got to be individuals. They could be anybody they wanted to be. White people, especially those with the most minute amount of tribal blood, thought they became Indian just by saying they were Indian. A number of those pretend Indians called themselves mixed-bloods and wrote books about the pain of living in both the Indian and white worlds. Those mixed-blood writers never admitted their pale skin was a luxury. After all, Marie couldn’t dress up like a white woman when she went to job interviews. But a mixed-blood writer could put on a buckskin jacket, a few turquoise rings, braid his hair, and he’d suddenly be an Indian. Those mixed-bloods could choose to be Indian or white, depending on the social or business situation. Marie never had the opportunity to make that choice. She was a brown baby at birth, born to a brown mother and brown father.

“Vulture,” Marie said to herself as she watched Wilson inch closer to the Indian man on the phone. Marie knew he was King, a Flathead from Arlee, Montana. Jesus, Marie thought, if that white guy gets any closer to King, they’re going to be dancing.

“Nah, I’m okay,” King said to the person on the other end of the phone line. “Yeah, been saving up some coins. Thinking about coming back home, you know?”

King had left the reservation in 1980 to attend college and become a teacher. He had made it through one semester before he ran out of money. Too ashamed to return to the reservation, he’d worked on a fishing boat for a few years, then was struck by a hit-and-run driver while on shore leave. Too injured to work, without access to disability or workers’ compensation, King had been homeless for most of the last ten years.

“Sir,” said the telephone woman. “Your three minutes are up. We have to close up shop.”

“Okay, okay,” King told the woman, then said a few more words into the phone and quietly hung up. He cleared his throat, blinked back tears, and walked away.

Wilson began to picture the Indian Killer using the free telephones. But who would he call? An ancient ancestor, somebody from the sixteenth or seventeenth century, a wise old medicine man? Maybe a medicine man who was murdered by white people. The medicine man wants the Indian Killer to get revenge. Wilson cursed himself for not bringing along a notebook. Walking north out of the park, he hoped he could catch the next bus home to write this down.

With head low and shoulders hunched, King walked south across the street toward the sandwich van. His telephone call had been a failure. He had talked to a stranger, a young boy, maybe fourteen. An Indian stranger, but still a stranger. King had dialed that number hoping to hear his sister on the other end of the line, but it was some other Indian. It was a number on the Flathead Reservation, King’s rez, but it wasn’t his family’s number. A Flathead boy answered but did not know if any of King’s relatives still lived on the reservation. Maybe all of his relatives had left. Disappeared, or died. The Indian boy had been polite and had listened to King rattle on for three minutes. The boy had even asked about King’s health. Somebody had taught that little Flathead boy how to be a good Indian.

“Hey, King,” said Marie. She was leaning out the window of her van, holding a couple of sandwiches. Her glasses were slipping off the bridge of her nose, but she couldn’t do much about it with sandwiches in one hand, the other hand clutching the steering wheel as she leaned out the window.

“Marie,” said King. “What kind you got?”

“Ham and cheese, turkey and Swiss. And peanut butter and jelly.”

“Jeez, ain’t had P.B. and J. in a long time.”

“How long?”

“A long time,” said King, stretching out the vowel sounds.

“Well,” said Marie. “Come sit in the truck with me. I can’t feed anybody until the band leaves anyhow. Give me some company, enit?”

“Enit,” said King. He climbed into the cab. He smelled bad, but Marie was almost used to it. The band played horrible music for another hour, as the tourists left the park by twos and threes. Marie gave sandwiches to a few men and women who recognized the van. Clouds arrived. Rain fell. A light rain. Enough to make you consider a heavier coat, but not enough to make you wear one. The tourists were gone; the homeless had returned. Marie wanted, just once, to have enough sandwiches. There were never enough sandwiches. King kept telling her stories about his reservation and she kept smiling.

15. Mark Jones

MARK JONES WAS SURE he was alone in the dark place. He listened for the killer, and heard only his own breathing. Mark was very young, only six years old, but he was smart. He knew the killer would never let him leave.

A few hours, or days, or weeks earlier, the killer had cut a piece from Mark’s pajamas. When the killer had first started cutting, Mark had screamed, thinking he was going to die. But the killer hadn’t hurt him at all, had just taken the pajama piece and left Mark alone in the dark place. Mark had cried at the damage to his Daredevil pajamas. The blind superhero who didn’t need light to see. Mark wished he could see in the dark.

As frightened as he was, Mark somehow found the strength and courage to stand. With his hands bound and his mouth gagged, Mark shuffled through the room, trying to find a door, an escape. He didn’t want to make any noise. He wanted to be as silent as the killer. Mark searched. He stumbled, staggered, and finally fell. As he fell, he screamed through his gag.

16. The Last Precinct

WILSON DRANK ONLY MILK at The Last Precinct, a cop hangout in downtown Seattle. It was a small place, one room with ten tables, forty chairs, and a jukebox. Nobody ever sat at the bar. The men’s and women’s bathrooms were used interchangeably, since the patrons were rarely women. The cops tended to segregate themselves by beat, homicide detectives sharing one table, narcs another. The vice squad took up half the place, and a few patrol cops sat in a corner. But whatever their beats, the men were loud and drunk. The drinks were cheap and strong. Wilson felt no need to sit with a certain group, or to get drunk. Let the others drink themselves stupid. Wilson understood that need, but would not allow himself to lose control.

This evening, Wilson sat with Randy Peone, a patrol cop from downtown, who was seriously considering a change of careers; Bobby, a SWAT sharpshooter with ulcers; and Terrible Ted, an especially drunk and belligerent homicide detective.

“Look at us,” said Ted, waving his huge arms to show surprise at the group around the table. “We got a Mick, a Wop, a Kraut, and a fucking Indian.”

“Indian?” asked Bobby. “Who’s Indian?”

“Wilson’s a fucking Indian,” said Ted. “What? Apache or something, right, Wilson?”

Smiling, Wilson shook his head.

Bobby studied Wilson’s features in the dark of the bar.

“Jesus,” said Bobby. “You don’t look Injun. You look like an American to me.”

“He’s got some Indian blood in the woodpile, don’t you?” asked Ted. “Yeah, his grandmother liked her some dark meat.”

Wilson just smiled.

“You know about that scalping?” asked Ted. He leaned awkwardly over the table.

Wilson stopped smiling and said, “Yeah, you working on it?”

“Nah, George has got it,” said Ted. “Why? You hear anything?”

“Not much,” said Wilson.

“I thought you might have,” said Ted. “You being an Indian and all. I hear you fuckers tell each other everything.”

“Hey, Wilson,” said Peone, trying to change the subject. “You’re going to be appearing at some bookstore?”

“Yeah,” said Wilson. “At Elliott Bay Book Company tomorrow night. You should come.”

Peone laughed.

“No thanks,” said Peone. “I ain’t into that stuff. You working on a new book these days?”

Bobby and Peone waited for Wilson’s answer. Ted snorted dismissively. Wilson sipped at his milk before he spoke.

“Yeah, it’s about the Indian Killer.”

“No shit,” said Peone.

Terrible Ted was suddenly interested.

“Where you getting your information?” he asked, leaning forward. His beer nearly tipped over but Bobby reached out and saved it.

“Here and there. Just been talking to some Indians, you know? It’s all fiction.”

“What are you trying to find?” asked Ted.

“Shit,” said Peone. “What you getting so testy for, Ted? You think Wilson killed those people?”

Everybody laughed, except Terrible Ted.

“He’s messing with a current investigation,” said Ted. “He ain’t no cop anymore. He wasn’t much of a cop when he was a cop. He’s just a goddamn writer.”

Wilson and Ted glared across the table at each other. Peone ordered another round in an attempt to calm everybody down.

“Hey,” said Bobby. “Did you hear the joke about how the Indian boy got his name?”

“Listen,” Wilson said to Ted. “I’m not messing with your investigation. I’m just talking to Indians a little bit. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means something,” said Ted. “An Indian is out there killing people and you’re talking to Indians. That means something.”

“How do you know an Indian did it?” asked Wilson. “Because of the scalping? Shit, anybody who ever watched Western movies knows about scalping.”

“It’s more than that,” said Ted. “We know it’s an Indian.”

“You sure?” asked Wilson. “How do you know it isn’t somebody pretending to be Indian?”

“We know, we know,” said Ted.

“Yeah,” said Bobby, continuing his joke. “So this Indian boy says to his mom, ‘Mom, how do Indians get their names?’ His mother says, ‘Indians are named after the first thing their mothers see after giving birth. Like with your brother, I looked outside the tepee after giving birth to him, and saw three antelope running. That’s why your brother is named Running Antelope.’”

The waitress, Chloe, arrived with drinks. She was tall and beautiful and hated cops.

“Hey, Chloe,” said Ted. “You ever fucked an Indian?”

Chloe looked at Ted with as much boredom as she could manage.

“No, really,” said Ted. “I want to know. I mean, are they animals or what? Were you ever scared they was going to kill you?”

Chloe silently took five dollars from the pile of money in front of Ted and walked away.

“She wants me,” said Ted, smiling. He stared hard at Wilson, who was getting very nervous. Peone shoved a new beer at Ted.

“Hey, Ted,” said Peone. “Drink up.”

“And then,” said Bobby, desperately trying to finish his joke. “His mother said, ‘When I gave birth to your sister, I saw an eagle flying near the sun, so I named her Burning Eagle. That’s how Indians name their children. Why do you ask such questions, Two Dogs Fucking?’”

Bobby laughed loudly at his own joke. Terrible Ted and Wilson continued to stare at each other. Peone felt his stomach burning. He figured he was going to have to break up a fight soon. But Wilson and Ted were both forty pounds overweight, so the match wouldn’t take long. It would be just two more fat cops slugging it out in The Last Precinct. They would bruise up their knuckles a bit and then be arm-in-arm an hour later. Best friends. Just like grade-school boys after a tussle at recess.

“You know,” said Ted. “I hate Indians.”

Peone forced a laugh and slapped Ted on the back. Ted ignored him.

“They smell,” continued Ted. “They’re fucking drunks and welfare cheats. They ain’t got no jobs. They’re lazy as shit.”

Wilson was suddenly angry and scared at the same time.

“You don’t know anything about Indians,” said Wilson.

“I know what some Indian did to that kid. Just about cut off the top of his head. And left two bloody owl feathers.”

“An owl?” asked Wilson.

“Yeah, an owl!” shouted Ted, standing and spilling beer everywhere. “You think I’m stupid? You think I don’t know about Indians? You don’t believe me?”

Wilson leaned back in his chair, out of Ted’s reach. He slid his hand inside his jacket, kept it there.

“What?” screamed Ted, noticing Wilson’s move. “You going to pull your piece on me? Go for it, you fucker!”

Peone and Bobby both stood and held Ted back.

“Hey, hey,” said Peone. “Take it easy, Ted, take it easy.”

Wilson stood up and stared at Ted.

“You fucking Indian lover!” shouted Ted. The whole bar watched, eager for a fight, a violent release of stress.

“Hey,” Peone said to Wilson. “Why don’t you just go on home?”

Wilson nodded his head and headed for the door. Ted, wanting to chase Wilson down, fought against Peone and Bobby.

“Fucker!” shouted Ted as Wilson left the bar and walked into a foggy evening. It was cold. Wilson shoved his hands deep into his pockets and walked to his truck. His hands were shaking with anger as he unlocked the door and hopped inside.

“Shit,” he whispered to himself and leaned his head against the steering wheel. He never understood why people hated Indians as much as they did. Terrible Ted had probably never talked to any Indians he wasn’t arresting at the time. Wilson remembered Beautiful Mary, who had been almost forgotten because she was an Indian. He remembered how she had lain behind the Dumpster beneath the Viaduct. Blood everywhere. A broken bottle tossed in the Dumpster. Her eyes still open. Nobody in the police department cared when an Indian was killed, but everybody cared now that an Indian might be killing white men. Wilson wondered what would happen when the press found out more about the murders.

Wilson started his pickup and pulled away from the curb. He drove up Denny Way to Broadway on Capitol Hill. On Broadway, runaway kids huddled in doorways, smoking cigarette butts. Aspiring rock stars strummed air guitars in front of Mexican restaurants. A couple of homeless men sat in front of the all-night supermarket. Gay and lesbian couples strolled together, safer in this neighborhood than in any other in Seattle. An illegal firework lit up the sky, a traffic signal blinked yellow. A German shepherd with a red bandanna tied around its neck yawned. A drunk man tried to parallel park his Honda. How many people knew that an Indian might be killing white men?

Wilson thought about the Indian Killer, the owl and feathers. The owl was a messenger of death, of evil. Wilson had read about Native American perceptions of the owl. If you were visited by an owl, that meant you were going to die soon. Wilson had always been fascinated by owls. He often visited the owls in the Woodland Park Zoo, and they often came to visit him in his dreams.

In one recurring dream, Wilson is riding with his real parents in a big car. They are all quiet and content. Hank Williams on the radio. Wilson looks up at his father, who is driving and smoking a cigar. Wilson’s father looks back and smiles around the cigar. It is a beautiful moment. Wilson’s mother is humming along with the radio. She is small and pale, ethereal in the darkness of the car. Then the family looks ahead, headlights illuminating the dark road. Wilson’s father inhales and exhales smoke. Suddenly, an owl floats directly in front of the car. Wilson’s father has no time to hit the brakes. Wilson can only begin the first note of a scream when the owl crashes through the windshield. Wilson always wakes up at that moment in the dream.

Wilson drove slowly down Broadway. He still missed his father, who had never smoked a cigar in his life. He missed his mother. Wilson turned on the radio. Truck Schultz, the homegrown conservative talk-show host, was pontificating.

“Citizens, we need to do something about this illegitimacy rate,” said Truck. “This country is full of welfare babies giving birth to welfare babies. Citizens, we need to stop this cycle of poverty. And believe me, I’ve got the solution. You see, it’s all about education. The smart kids aren’t getting pregnant. How many honor students are getting pregnant? None. Well, citizens, I propose that we sterilize any girl whose I.Q. is below one hundred.

“Now, seriously, citizens. I think this program is going to work. Not only will we decrease the illegitimacy rate, but we’ll also stop the dumbing down of America. Dumb girls will not give birth to dumb babies. Evil girls will not give birth to evil babies. Indian women will not give birth to Indian Killers. What do you think, citizens? Why don’t you give me a call at 1-800-555-TRUK and tell me how much you agree with me.”

17. Deconstruction

“THE INDIAN KILLER,” BEGAN Dr. Mather, “is an inevitable creation of capitalism. A capitalistic society will necessarily create an underclass of powerless workers and an overclass of powerful elite. As the economic and social distance between the worker and elite increases, the possibility of an underclass revolution increases proportionally. The Indian Killer is, in fact, a revolutionary construct.”

Dr. Mather was wearing a huge bandage on his forehead. A few of the students wondered aloud if he’d been attacked by the Indian Killer, but Marie Polatkin knew that wasn’t true. None of them knew that Mather had knocked himself silly by running into a low overhang in the Anthropology Building basement.

“The kidnapping of Mark Jones is actually a bold, albeit cowardly, metaphor for the Indian condition. Indian people have had their culture, their children, metaphorically stolen by European-American colonization. And now, this Indian Killer has physically and metaphorically stolen a European-American child.”

Marie raised her hand. She had been tolerating Dr. Clarence Mather’s babble for far too long. There were only ten students in the Introduction to Native American Literature class that evening. The news of the Indian Killer had scared the rest of them away, Marie supposed. Just like white people, worried that some killer Indian was going to storm a university classroom.

“Now,” continued Dr. Mather, ignoring Marie’s raised hand. “If we compare the construct of the Indian Killer with Jack Wilson’s fictional alter ego, Aristotle Little Hawk, we can begin to more fully understand the revolutionary nature of Mr. Wilson’s mystery novels. The Indian Killer and Little Hawk are twentieth-century manifestations of the classic Indian warrior. One, the Indian Killer, is wild and untamed, à la Geronimo, while the other, Little Hawk, is apparently tamed and civilized, a hangs-around-the-fort Indian, if you will, but is, in fact, actually working within the system in his efforts to disrupt it.”

“That’s bull!” shouted Marie.

“I take it that you have something to add to our discussion, Ms. Polatkin.”

“Yeah, I’m wondering why you think you know so much about Indians.”

“I hardly think I have to prove myself to you, Ms. Polatkin.”

“Have you ever lived on a reservation?”

“I have spent time on many reservations.”

“Yeah, but have you ever lived on a reservation?”

“I lived on the Navajo Indian Reservation for three months.”

“Three months, huh? You must have learned so much. You must know so much about our revolutionary tendencies.”

“Ms. Polatkin, I’ll have you know that I was actively involved with the American Indian Movement during the late sixties and early seventies. I smuggled food to the Indians at Wounded Knee.”

“Yeah, and you had the money to buy the food that you smuggled in there, didn’t you?”

“Could I ask you what you’re trying to accomplish, Ms. Polatkin?”

“Well, I’m just sick and tired of people like you. You think you know more about being Indian than Indians do, don’t you? Just because you read all those books about Indians, most of them written by white people. By guys like Jack Wilson.”

“Jack Wilson is a Shilshomish Indian, Ms. Polatkin.”

“Sure he is. He’s quite the Indian warrior, isn’t he? Just like the Indian Killer, huh? A big buck of an Indian man, right? I mean, what makes you think the Indian Killer is Indian anyway?”

“The scalping, of course.”

“You think Indians are the only ones who know how to use a knife? And do you think Indian men are the only ones who know how to use a knife? I’m pretty good with a knife. I bet even you, the adopted Lakota that you are, can wield a pretty fair blade yourself, enit? Who’s to say I’m not the Indian Killer? Who’s to say you’re not the Indian Killer?

“I mean, calling him the Indian Killer doesn’t make any sense, does it? If it was an Indian doing the killing, then wouldn’t he be called the Killer Indian? I mean, Custer was an Indian killer, not a killer Indian. How, about you, Doc, are you an Indian killer?”

“Ms. Polatkin, I beg your pardon.” Dr. Mather laughed nervously. “I am certainly no murderer.”

“Are you scared of me, Dr. Mather?”

“Of course not.”

“Oh, I think you are. I’m not quite the revolutionary construct you had in mind, am I?”

“Ms. Polatkin, I wish…I wish you’d take your…your seat,” he stammered. “So we may continue with our class.”

“I’m not an Indian warrior chief. I’m not some demure little Indian woman healer talking spider this, spider that, am I? I’m not babbling about the four directions. Or the two-legged, four-legged, and winged. I’m talking like a twentieth-century Indian woman. Hell, a twenty-first-century Indian, and you can’t handle it, you wimp.”

“Ms. Polatkin, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the classroom. In fact, I strongly suggest that you drop this class entirely.”

Marie turned away from Dr. Mather, gathered her books, and headed for the door.

“Dr. Mather,” she said before she left. “An Indian man is not doing these killings.”

18. Cousins

JOHN KNEW THE DARKNESS provided safety for Indians now. But long ago, Indians had been afraid of the darkness. During the long, moonless nights, they had huddled together inside dark caves and had trembled when terrible animals waged war on each other outside. Often, those horrible creatures would find the cave and carry off one of the weakest members of the tribe. Indians had been prey. This had gone on, night after night, for centuries. Then some primitive genius had discovered the power of fire, that bright, white flame. Fire pushed back the darkness and kept the animals at bay. During the night, Indians still huddled together in their caves, but a fire constantly burned at the cave’s mouth. At first, those small white flames were a part of the tribe. Neither male nor female, neither old nor young. Neither completely utilitarian nor absolutely sacred. Still, despite the Indians’ best efforts, the flames began to rebel. At first, in small ways, by refusing to burn. Then, by scorching a finger or hand. And finally, by pulling a careless child into their white-hot mouths and swallowing it whole. And always, always, the flames were growing in number and size. John knew they became candles, then lamps, then cities of lamps. Those white flames re-created themselves in the image of Indians. They grew arms and legs, eyes and hair, but they could never make themselves dark. They built dams that sucked white light from the rivers, and wires, crackling with white light, that connected houses, and houses filled with thousands of white lights. Those white flames could build anything. They tore everything down and rebuilt it in their image. Bright lights everywhere, cities casting their lights upward until the dark sky could not be seen, animals with neon in their eyes. But those white lights could not make themselves into Indians. And those white lights envied the Indians’ darkness. Their white-hot jealously grew into hatred; hatred grew into rage. The Indians became prey again, and now, for hundreds of years, the Indians have been burned, then dropped to the ground as piles of smoldering rags. Reduced to red ash that floats in the wind.

Now, as John walked through downtown Seattle, as white people walked wide circles around him, as they crossed busy streets to avoid him, as they pointed at him and whispered behind their hands, he began to see them as they truly were. White flames. A family of white flames, mother, father, daughter, son. A flame riding a bicycle. Flames crowding onto the Bainbridge Island ferry. A flame playing a battered guitar. Flames sitting in the cars passing by. One flame leaning out a pickup window, shouting obscenities at John. He wondered if Father Duncan, before he disappeared in the desert, had begun to see people as they truly were. Had Father Duncan, in his beautiful black robe, looked into the mirror and seen the white flame dancing at his neck? There were flames everywhere in downtown Seattle. Three large white flames surrounding a tiny, old Indian woman beneath the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

“Hey, Indian Killer,” the brightest flame taunted the old woman, who wore dark sunglasses and carried a white cane. “Come on, Indian Killer, come on. Show me how tough you are. Kill me, kill me.”

The old woman had no escape. Painfully skinny, her elbows and knees larger than her arm and leg muscles, her head and feet large and out of proportion, she looked more manufactured than human. She raised her fists to the three white flames surrounding her.

“Get away from me!” shouted the old woman. “I ain’t done nothing to you!”

John easily pushed aside the three flames and stood beside the old woman. John faced the three flames. John, feeling as strong as water. The flames wavered in his presence. A small crowd had gathered to watch. Other flames. A few of them shouting protests.

The flame that burned brightest had to smile, raise his empty hands and clap them together. The old woman was startled, but John didn’t react. The flame laughed. He pointed at John, and then all three flames piled into a pickup and drove away. The crowd of white flames that had gathered to watch soon dissipated.

“Hey, cousin,” the old woman said to John. “You showed up just in time. I was about ready to hurt somebody.”

“They’re gone,” John said.

“What tribe you are?” asked the old woman.

“Navajo.”

“Ah, Nah-vee-joe, huh? N-a-v-a-j-o,” the old woman spelled. She sniffed at John. “Yeah, you do smell like the desert. You a long ways from home, enit?”

John didn’t reply.

“You got some place to stay, Mr. Nah-vee-joe? Me, I’ve got lots of places to stay around here. All these white people think I’m homeless. But I ain’t homeless. I’m Duwamish Indian. You see all this land around here.” The old woman waved her arms around. “All of this, the city, the water, the mountains, it’s all Duwamish land. Has been for thousands of years. I belong here, cousin. I’m the landlady. And all these white people, even the rich ones living up in those penthouses, they’re the homeless ones. Those white people are a long way from home, don’t you think? Long way from E-u-r-o-p-e.”

John looked at the white flames around them. Just a few now. It was getting late. He saw flames crossing an ocean of gasoline.

“Hey, cousin, what’s your name?”

“John. John Smith.”

“Well, John-John, you want a drink?”

John looked at the bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag. He was disappointed in the old woman.

“I don’t drink,” John said.

“Heck, John-John, it ain’t a-l-c-o-h-o-l. It’s water. Bottled water at that. You can’t tell anymore what they put in the tap water, you know?”

John knew they could put poison in bottled as well as tap water, but he didn’t want to scare the old woman.

“What’s your name?” John asked.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” she whispered. “My Christian name is Carlotta Lott, but my real name, my Indian name is…” The old woman sniffed the air to make sure nobody was close enough to hear. “My Indian name is…are you sure you can keep a secret?”

John nodded.

“Okay. My real name is Carlotta Lott.”

John was confused. The old woman was laughing loudly. She clapped her hands, slapped her belly with unmitigated glee. John reached out and touched Carlotta’s shoulder.

“John-John,” said Carlotta, suddenly serious. “There’s a big difference between what those white people think about Indians and what we know about us. A big d-i-f-f-e-r-e-n-c-e. And there’s even a bigger difference between what Indians think about each other, and what you and I know about ourselves.”

John released Carlotta’s shoulder. She took off her sunglasses and John stared at her dead eyes that were as white as salt.

“You see, John-John, I think I know a little about you. I think I know a little of what you want. I can feel it in here.” Carlotta touched her chest. “You got something special about you, enit?” Then lower and deeper, as if her voice were coming from a different place inside of her. “Real special.”

John nodded. Carlotta reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, rusty knife. Just a small paring knife rescued from a restaurant Dumpster. The old woman found John’s hand and folded his fingers around the knife handle.

“This is my magic,” said Carlotta. “And I think you know about magic. There’s good magic and there’s bad magic. This knife is both.”

John held the knife. It was small and pitiful.

“I think you know about the knife, don’t you? K-n-i-f-e. Silent K, John-John, silent K.”

John tried to give the knife back to the old woman. He didn’t think he needed it.

“No, no, Mr. Nah-vee-joe, it’s my gift to you. From a Duwamish Indian to a guest, a visitor.” Carlotta bowed deeply. “You honor me with your presence. H-o-n-o-r.”

“I have nothing for you,” said John.

“Yes, yes, you do, your ears, John-John, your ears.”

John touched both of his ears, one and then the other.

“Listen to me, John-John. I used to see. I have seen many things. Things that were good. Things that were bad. Things I wasn’t supposed to see. We’ve been good to white people, enit? When they first came here, we was good to them, wasn’t we? We taught them how to grow food. We taught them to keep warm. We was good hosts, enit? And then what did they do? They killed us.

“But we’ll get back at them, John-John. I’ve got me a time machine. And I can show you how to use it. You can go back to that beach where Columbus first landed, you know? You can wait there for him, hidden in the sand or something. C-a-m-o-u-f-l-a-g-e. And when he gets on the sand, you can jump out of hiding and show him some magic, enit? Good magic, bad magic, it’s all the same.”

The old woman pointed in the general direction of the puny knife in John’s hand.

“Magic, magic, magic,” chanted the old woman. “You want to go back? You want to know how to use the time machine?”

“Yes.”

The old woman stuck her right hand in her pocket. She wiggled it around as if searching for something.

“You want to see the time machine?” asked the old woman. “I got it in my pocket.”

“Yes.”

“You sure you want to see it? It’s powerful. And once you see it, there ain’t no going back. N-o.”

“Yes.”

The old woman whipped her hand out of her pocket and held it out to John. It was empty. John could see the dirty, brown skin, the four fingers and opposable thumb. John stared at Carlotta’s empty hand, and then at the knife in his own hand, and understood.

19. The Aurora Avenue Massacre

“WHAT’S MY NAME?” ASKED Reggie. He held a tape recorder in front of the white man.

“I don’t know,” sobbed the white man. He was on his knees while Ty and Harley held his arms at painful angles behind his back. They were all on the Indian Heritage High School football field, just a few blocks from Big Heart’s Soda and Juice Bar. It was late. Loud traffic on Aurora Avenue to the west and Interstate 5 to the east. Reggie was recording all of it.

The white man had been camping on the football field, after having hitchhiked into town. He’d dropped out of college a few months earlier and had been exploring the country ever since. He had one hundred dollars in cash, two hundred in traveler’s checks, three ripe bananas, a Jim Harrison novel, and various articles of clothing. Also, a sleeping bag, small one-man tent, first-aid kit, flashlight, portable radio, and an Eddie Bauer backpack.

“What’s my name?” Reggie asked again.

“I don’t know.”

Reggie kicked the white man in the stomach. Hard enough to bruise, but not enough to cause permanent damage. Reggie was good at this. He looked down at the kneeling white man.

“Hurt him,” Reggie signed to Harley.

Harley nodded and twisted the white man’s arm. Howls of pain that Harley could not hear. Howls of pain that Reggie recorded and would listen to later.

“Now,” Reggie said. “What the fuck is my name?”

“Please. Please stop. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“My name is Ira Hayes,” Reggie said.

“Okay, okay,” said the white man. “Your name is Ira Hayes.”

“Yeah, you know I was one of those guys who raised the flag at Iwo Jima?”

“Iwo what?”

Reggie kicked the white man.

“Iwo Jima, asshole. An island in the Pacific. During World War Two. One of the bloodiest military exercises of all time. Thousands and thousands died. But I survived, man. I climbed to the top of Iwo Jima and helped plant that flag. I was a hero. And now I’m dead. You know how I died?”

“No.”

Reggie kicked the white man again.

“You know how I died?”

“How?”

“Exposure. I fucking froze to death in a snowbank.”

The white man looked up at Reggie, who then slapped him hard across the face. Reggie held the recorder close to the sobbing man.

“Why’d you let me freeze?” Reggie asked.

“I…I didn’t.”

Reggie slapped him again.

“Why’d you let me freeze?”

The white man shook his head. Reggie grabbed him by the hair.

“What’s my name?”

“Ira Hayes.”

Another slap.

“Wrong. What’s my name?”

“Ira Hayes, Ira Hayes.” The white man pleading now. Reggie slapped him twice.

“What’s my name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do it,” Reggie said to Ty, and he twisted the white man’s arm until something popped. The white man screamed into the tape recorder.

“Somebody’s going to hear us,” Ty said to Reggie, who then took a handkerchief out of his back pocket and shoved it into the white man’s mouth.

“What’s my name?” Reggie asked the white man, who could not respond intelligibly. Reggie slapped him.

“Shit, when you going to learn,” Reggie spoke directly into the tape recorder. “My name is Black Kettle. And I’m alive right?”

The white man nodded agreement.

“Wrong,” Reggie said and kicked him. “I’m dead.”

The white man wept.

“Because you white bastards murdered me. You killed me on the Washita River in Oklahoma. You and that fucker Custer, remember?”

No response.

“Yeah, we were flying a U.S. flag above our village, remember? We saw you coming, your Seventh Cavalry, and my wife and I rode out to meet you, to ask for peace. And you shot us before we even spoke. Do you remember?

“And do you remember my camp on Sand Creek in Colorado four years earlier? Do you remember when you and Colonel John Chivington rode on our camp? Once again, we were flying a U.S. flag, and a white flag. We had no weapons, none, not one rifle. We were mostly women, children, and old people. And you rode in on us and killed three hundred. Do you remember? What’s my name?”

The white man wearily shook his head.

“It’s Black Kettle, you fucker,” said Reggie and punched the white man in the face, knocking him unconscious.

“Oh, shit,” Reggie said into the tape recorder. “He’s out.”

“That’s enough,” signed Harley. “Let’s get out of here.”

Ty agreed.

“Listen,” signed Reggie. “It’s over when I say it’s over.”

Reggie shook the white man until he came to.

“What’s your name?” Reggie asked him and he grunted something through his gag.

“No, that ain’t it,” said Reggie. “Your name is Truck Schultz.”

The white man was skinny, with an unkempt goatee. He was extremely near-sighted but had lost his glasses somewhere during the struggle with Reggie, Ty, and Harley.

“Aren’t you a white-trash asshole named Truck Schultz?” Reggie asked. “What do you think? You like that name?”

The white man shook his head.

“Really? You don’t like that name? You are positive that’s not your name? You sure?”

The white man nodded.

“Damn, you white guys look alike.” He signed to Ty and Harley. “Don’t they look alike?”

Ty and Harley nodded. Reggie kneeled down beside the white man.

“You ain’t Truck Schultz, huh?” said Reggie. “Well, you look like one of those professor types. Are you a professor? I mean, with that fucking goatee, you look like a professor. Are you sure you’re not? Speak into the mike, man.”

The white man grunted and nodded his head.

“I’m really sorry,” Reggie whispered. “I guess I confused you with someone else. Can you ever forgive me?”

The white man nodded.

“Really? That’s so kind of you,” said Reggie. “I mean, we’re all human, right? And we make mistakes, don’t we? I mean, we were looking for a white-trash asshole named Truck Schultz, and it looks like we got ourselves a whole different white-trash asshole, right?”

The white man vigorously nodded his head.

“Well, then,” said Reggie. “Let’s say we make a deal. How about I promise to let you go if you promise to keep all this between us. Does that sound okay?”

“Hm-huh, hmn-huh,” the white man agreed through the handkerchief in his mouth.

“You promise?” Reggie asked as he dropped the tape recorder into a pocket. He then placed his hands on either side of the white man’s face, leaned in close as if he was going to kiss him, and forced his thumbs into the white man’s eyes. The white man screamed as Reggie dug into his eyes, searching for whatever existed behind them. The white man fainted from shock and pain. Stunned, Harley and Ty let go of the white man’s arms and stepped back. The white man flopped facedown into the grass and did not move.

“What did you do?” Ty asked.

“I took his eyes,” Reggie said, genuinely surprised by Ty’s question.

Harley looked down at the white man’s body, then at Ty and Reggie, and ran away. Ty soon followed, and Reggie kicked the white man once more before chasing after his friends.

20. The Elliott Bay Book Company

WILSON WAS EXCITED ABOUT his reading, and worried that news of the Indian Killer would make the bookstore cancel. But Ray Simmons, the readings coordinator, who somehow found the time and energy to schedule over three hundred readings a year, had assured Wilson that it was going to happen. The Elliott Bay Book Company was a beautiful store in the heart of Pioneer Square, just a few blocks from the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the waters of Elliott Bay itself.

There was another side to the coin, though. Because of the proximity of the water, and because the Elliott Bay’s basement was actually below sea level, rats had often been seen darting through the store. Wilson had never laid eyes on the rats but had heard rumors that they were often mistaken for small dogs. It was said that Elliott Bay’s owners had once bought a small battalion of cats to take care of the rats. One night, after closing, they had released the cats into the store. When the store had opened early the next morning, the cats had disappeared. It was a wonderful rumor and, if true, more proof that Elliott Bay was a great bookstore. Wilson certainly would have hated it if rats lived in his building. Yet he believed the rats, or the rumors of rats, belonged at Elliott Bay, and gave the place mystery as well as beauty.

Wilson decided to take a taxi to the bookstore for his reading. It would save time and energy, he told himself, an excuse for arriving in as formal a manner as he could afford. Wilson, waiting outside his building when the cab pulled up, immediately recognized the driver, Eric. As an ex-cop, Wilson knew a lot of cab drivers, all kinds of emergency room doctors, and many bar owners.

“Hey, Wilson!” shouted Eric, who apparently had no control over the volume of his voice or any idea that he always yelled.

“Hey, Eric,” said Wilson as he climbed into the cab.

“Where to?”

“Elliott Bay bookstore.”

“So, you got a reading, huh?” asked Eric. He was a frustrated writer himself who found Wilson particularly interesting, although he had never told Wilson that. “You going to read from one of your old books or something new?”

“I don’t know.”

Eric and Wilson lapsed into silence for five dollars’ worth of city streets, down Capitol Hill to Pioneer Square.

“Hey!” shouted Eric. “You hear about that Indian Killer?”

Wilson nodded.

“Three’s the number, I guess! Two white guys and a little white boy! Indian Killer got them all!” shouted Eric. “It’s about time!”

“The police don’t think David Rogers was murdered by the Indian Killer.”

“Well, whatever, it’s about time!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, those Indians always get the raw end of the deal! It’s about time for some payback, don’t you think? I mean, there’s all sort of stuff going on! One Indian guy got jumped by white guys with baseball bats! And an Indian couple were about killed by the same guys on Queen Anne Hill! They’re in the hospital. One white guy got beat up by three Indians up on some football field!”

Wilson leaned back heavily in his seat.

“Hey!” said Eric. “You got some Indian blood, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well!” said Eric. “Aren’t you happy about this? I mean, it’ll teach white people not to mess with Indians anymore! I mean, I’m a white guy and I’m not about to mess with Indians now! Not that I ever did to begin with! I mean, Indians are cool, don’t you think?”

Wilson did not respond.

“Hey, Wilson!” said Eric after a long while. “You okay?”

Wilson did not even hear Eric’s question. He was lost in his thoughts, wondering if he could finish his Indian Killer novel before some hack wrote a cheap paperback. Wilson could just imagine the cover of that hack book: an obscenely muscular Indian, bloody knife in his hand; a beautiful white woman in a ripped dress; a horse. It would be called Savage Revenge or Apache Vengeance. Whatever the hack book was called, Wilson knew it wouldn’t be as serious as his.

Wilson was still thinking about his book when Eric pulled up in front of the Elliott Bay Book Company. A crowd of Indians was milling about at the entrance.

“Hey!” said Eric. “Looks like you’re being protested!”

A dozen Indians marched in a circle. They carried picket signs that said things like WILSON IS A FRAUD and ONLY INDIANS SHOULD TELL INDIAN STORIES. A handful of non-Indian spectators had gathered to watch the protest. A few people crossed the picket line and entered the bookstore. A local news reporter was interviewing one particularly vocal Indian woman.

“Why exactly do you dislike Wilson’s work?” asked the reporter, a generically handsome white man.

“Wilson is a fraud,” said Marie Polatkin. “He claims to be Indian, yet has no documentation to prove it. His novels are dangerous and violent.”

“Do you think his novels might have an influence on the Indian Killer?”

“I don’t know,” said Marie. “But I do think books like Wilson’s actually commit violence against Indians.”

Wilson paid Eric, stepped out of the cab, and walked toward the bookstore. He wanted to ignore the whole situation, but the reporter abandoned Marie and deftly intercepted him.

“Mr. Wilson,” said the reporter. “Many people in the Indian community dispute your claim of being Indian. In fact, some think that your books may encourage violence. They say your books might be a prime motivating factor for the Indian Killer. How do you respond to that?”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Wilson. “I’m an ex-cop and I happen to be a member of the Indian community. I am a Shilshomish Indian.”

“Bullshit, bullshit!” chanted the protesters.

Wilson tried to enter the store, but the reporter grabbed his elbow.

“Mr. Wilson,” said the reporter. “These protestors have presented a petition signed by two hundred Indians that asks you to quit writing books about Indians. How do you feel about that?”

Wilson blinked, stunned by the petition.

“Well,” he said, searching for words. “I don’t really know. I mean, nobody has the right to tell me what I can or cannot write.”

“There are two hundred Indians who disagree with that, and Marie Polatkin insists she can get hundreds more to sign her petition. How many signatures would be enough to make you quit, Mr. Wilson?”

“I have no comment,” stammered Wilson as he broke free of the reporter and stumbled into the bookstore. He was reeling. How many would be enough? A hundred thousand? A million? What if every Indian in the country asked him to quit? He was a real Indian himself and had done all he could to help other real Indians. He was on their side. Wilson was dizzy with confusion as Ray Simmons escorted him downstairs, where ten fans waited for him.

Outside, the protest continued. Marie, pounding a drum, led the chants. Her voice was hoarse. Her shoulders and hands ached. She could not hit the drum any longer. As she handed it over to another protester, she noticed John Smith standing all by himself. Huge and obviously Indian, he was automatically a frightening part of the protest, even though he had no idea what was happening.

“John,” said Marie and raised her hand.

He was wearing a clean T-shirt, blue jeans, and a black coat. He was clean-shaven and his hair was combed into careful braids. It was a good day for John.

“John,” Marie said again as she walked up to him.

“It’s me, Marie,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “You’re protesting again.”

“Yeah,” said Marie, smiling. “Protesting this, protesting that.”

The crowd swirled around them. John felt threatened.

“What are you protesting now?” asked John.

“Don’t you know? This writer, Wilson, pretending to be an Indian? Writes mystery novels?”

John nodded, remembering that Olivia Smith had given him one of Wilson’s books as a birthday gift. John had never read it. The book sat in one of the neat piles in John’s room. Now, as Marie talked about Wilson, John saw the anger in her brown eyes.

“Wilson is a fraud! Wilson is a fraud!” chanted the crowd. When Marie raised a fist into the air and jointed the chant, John became fascinated. She was wearing red gloves, and he reached out and touched her clenched hand with his fingertip. Her fist felt hot. Marie grabbed John’s hand and formed it into a fist. Suddenly, John’s arm shot up, his fist above his head. He began to chant along.

“Wilson is a fraud! Wilson is a fraud!”

The protest lasted until the Indians got hungry. They drifted off in pairs, in groups of four or five. The spectators and news crew had left long before. Meanwhile, Wilson’s reading had drawn a decent audience, mainly of people who wanted to see what the fuss was all about. Marie and John were sitting in her sandwich van outside the bookstore when Wilson poked his head out the door, looking for Eric, the taxi driver.

Marie spotted Wilson when the taxi pulled up and he jumped in, eager to get home. Marie decided to follow the cab. John didn’t say a word.

“So!” Eric asked Wilson. “How did it go?”

“It was an adventure,” said Wilson. His audience had peppered him with questions about the so-called Indian Killer: “Mr. Wilson, since you see so clearly into the Indian mind, I was wondering if you might know what this Indian Killer might be thinking?” “Don’t you think the Indian Killer is just another sign that the American culture is spiritually bankrupt? Don’t you think we all need to turn to the Indian religions in order to save our country?” “Are you going to write about the Indian Killer?”

The people had applauded when Wilson revealed that his next novel was going to be about the murders, and he had smiled at the applause. Then he realized that he should have kept his mouth shut. Now that his secret was out, other authors and publishers would surely confirm his worst fear and rush books into production.

Inside the sandwich van, Marie and John rode in silence. She was intent on following the taxi. She wanted to know where Wilson lived. She wanted to protest right outside his house. The police would come for sure, especially in light of this whole Indian Killer thing. That could be a big scene, all three local networks might show. John watched the taillights of the taxi. They reminded him of something he could not remember. It was a nagging feeling that hurt his head. His stomach growled loudly.

“You hungry?” asked Marie. “There might be a few sandwiches in the back. Help yourself.”

John looked behind him and saw the metal racks that held the sandwiches. Other than the racks, the van was bare. John spotted a sandwich on the floor and picked it up. He worried that it might be poisoned.

“Did you make this?” John asked Marie.

“Yes.”

John knew then that it could not be dangerous. He was hungry and wanted to eat it, but felt guilty because he had nothing to offer Marie in return.

“Go ahead,” she said.

The sandwich tasted like smoke.

“Man,” Marie said. “I hate this guy.”

“Who?” asked John with a mouth full of bread and bologna.

“Wilson. He’s a cannibal. No, he’s not even eating his own kind. He’s a scavenger. He’s a maggot.”

The sandwich suddenly tasted like anger.

“And there’s this other guy, Dr. Clarence Mather. He’s teaching my Native lit class, you know? He’s one of those kind who thinks he knows everything about Indians. An Indian expert. Arrogant asshole.”

John nodded. He remembered the night he had followed Marie as she had been following Mather.

“You were following your teacher,” John said.

Marie stared at the taxi ahead of them.

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“I was following you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Marie seemed to accept that answer as being honest and decided she’d have to be more careful in the future.

“If you ask me,” said Marie. “The wrong white guys are dying.”

The sandwich soured. John quickly finished it and licked his fingers. He thought about Jack Wilson and Clarence Mather, and wondered how their fear would taste.

The taxi pulled up in front of Wilson’s, and Marie pulled up right behind the taxi, her headlights filling the cab.

“Hey!” shouted Eric as he noticed the van. “I think we’ve got company!”

Wilson turned around in his seat. He could not see who was in the van because of its headlights. Eric reached under his seat and pulled out a sawed-off golf club, a one-iron. Wilson and Eric stepped out of the taxi at the same time. When Marie turned off her headlights, Wilson recognized her as the leader of the protest, Marla or Maria or something like that, but he couldn’t quite see who was with her.

“What do you want?” screamed Eric, waving his golf club.

“It’s those protesters,” said Wilson.

“Come on out of there!” shouted Eric, “I’ll give you something to protest!”

Marie smiled at the cab driver’s bravado. He did not look like much of a fighter, or a golfer. John saw the club and closed his hands into fists. Just two white men. John knew he could hurt them.

“Come on!” shouted Eric.

John stepped out of the truck.

“No,” said Marie, but John was already marching toward Wilson and Eric. The cab driver quickly backpedaled, but John saw that Wilson held his ground with a surprising lack of fear. Actually, Wilson was too shocked by John’s obvious resemblance to his own hero, Aristotle Little Hawk, to be afraid. Wilson felt as if he’d brought Little Hawk to life through some kind of magic. Wilson had always felt magical, but he’d had no idea how much power he really possessed.

“Aristotle,” said Wilson.

John knew about Aristotle. The philosopher was required knowledge for Catholic schoolboys. But he had no idea why this white man was talking about an ancient Greek while a crazy cab driver was swinging a tiny golf club. It was very confusing. John wondered if these white men were real.

So John reached out to touch Wilson, to test his reality. Eric suddenly found his courage and, screaming like a television Indian, charged John. Wilson heard the screams and reflexively fell to the ground. Eric swung his one-iron blindly at John, who snatched the club out of the air and took it away. Disarmed and terrified, Eric fell to the ground beside Wilson. John raised the club above his head and stepped toward the men. Wilson reached inside his jacket and John wondered if the white man had a weapon. Then Wilson relaxed and showed John both hands.

“John!” shouted Marie. For a brief moment, she thought that John was going to smash the men’s brains with the golf club, but John just screamed and threw the strange weapon toward the apartment building. Glass shattered. Windows lit up. Marie dropped the van into drive and pulled up beside John. Wilson and Eric scrambled out of the way.

“Get in! Get in!” shouted Marie. John looked at her. He wondered if she was real. He turned away from her, ran away, disappeared. Marie watched him running, then she quickly drove away.

“I’m glad you saw them,” said Eric. “You can tell the cops who it was! Those damn protesters!”

“No,” said Wilson, firm in his belief that the big Indian would have valuable answers. “We don’t need the cops. I was mistaken. I don’t know who they were.”

“But you said you recognized them?”

“No, I was mistaken.”

“Jeez, it’s a good thing that wasn’t the Indian Killer, huh? We’d both be dead!”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Eric shrugged his shoulders. He was sure Wilson was lying, but not sure why. It didn’t much matter since no one had been hurt. Wilson was already unaware of Eric, of Marie, of everything but John. Wilson was enchanted with John. Wilson thought that a man who looked like that could be Little Hawk. Wilson wanted John all to himself.

21. Testimony

“MR. HARRIS, CAN I have a few words with you?”

“Hey, dude, are you, like, a cop?”

“Homicide detective, actually.”

“Well, I haven’t been homicided. At least, not yet. No thanks to those Indians, though. They blinded me, man.”

“The doctors think you’ll be able to regain some of your vision. Maybe all of it.”

“That’s what they tell me. But I don’t know, man. I’m scared. I can’t believe what those Indians did.”

“Yes, well, that’s what I’d like to talk to you about. Are you sure they were Indian?”

“Positive. Braids and all. Just like the movies.”

“Do you think you could identify them? Perhaps work with one of our sketch artists to come up with a composite? I know it will be hard without your eyes. But we’ve got to try.”

“Just like the movies, huh?”

“Just like the movies.”

“Yeah, man, I’ll do my best. Like I said, they were some righteously angry dudes.”

“Can you tell me exactly what happened that night?”

“Yeah. You see, man, I’ve been hitching across the country, trying to find myself, you know? Out there in the open spaces, man, you can see some powerful shit, I mean, some powerful stuff. But anyway, I was on my way to Canada. I, like, met these Canadian dudes down in Arizona a few weeks back and they said I could visit them anytime I was in Canada.”

“And that’s why you were camped on the Indian Heritage High School football field.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know it was an Indian school. It was some righteous grass to me. I mean, I knew it was a football field, but I don’t believe in football, you know? I was rolled up in my sleeping bag, sleeping, when these three guys pulled me out and started beating me up.”

“And you’re sure there were three of them?”

“Uno, dos, tres.”

“And did they say anything? Mention any names or places?”

“Hey, man, they were recording me.”

“Recording?”

“Yeah, with a tape recorder, you know, like it was an interview or something, like they wanted to keep a sound track or something. And they kept calling me weird names.”

“Can you remember what they called you?”

“No chance, man. I was out of it by then. I was all dizzy and everything was moving in circles. Everything spinning, and then one dude shoved his fingers into my eyes and here I am in the hospital.”

“Is there anything else you can remember?”

“I think one of them was deaf.”

“Deaf?”

“Yeah, all three were talking with their fingers, you know? Sign language. And one of them had blue eyes. A blue-eyed Indian.”

“You’re positive about that?”

“Yeah, yeah. You know, I was listening to the boob tube and heard something about this Indian Killer. You think these guys have something to do with that?”

“We’re looking into that possibility.”

“It’s so strange. It’s, like, those Indians guys hurt me just because I’m white. But I haven’t done anything bad to Indians. I like Indians, man. I even visited a couple of reservations. The Navajo, the Hopi. Beautiful. And this Indian Killer is killing white guys just because they’re white, right? And he kidnapped that little boy because he was white?”

“That seems to be the motive.”

“And that little dude, what’s his name, Mark?”

“Yes, Mark Jones.”

“Yeah, well, he certainly didn’t do anything bad to Indians. I mean, not every white guy is an evil dude, you know?”

22. Slow Dancing with the Most Beautiful Indian Woman on Earth

IF A WHITE STRANGER, completely unaware of the year, happened to stumble into Big Heart’s Soda and Juice Bar and heard the music blasting from the jukebox, he might assume that he was living in 1966. Or 1972. Perhaps as late as 1978. The white stranger would see over two hundred Indians dancing. A white stranger might have assumed the Indians were celebrating something special, and they were. Mick had opened the bar, despite the Indian Killer scare, and was pulling in the dough. The Indians were dancing to Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, early Stones, earlier Beatles. Disco had been outlawed by the patrons of Big Heart’s. Black music was rare. World music never made it through the door. Lou Reed and Kiss were favorites, though. Blood, Sweat, and Tears, Three Dog Night, and Creedence Clearwater Revival were revered. But there were no white strangers in Big Heart’s that night, though a few dozen Indians were new in town, just visiting, playing in a basketball tournament, looking for love, lost. All thinking about the Indian Killer. John was there too, neither stranger nor tourist. He had no definition for what he was. Drinking his Pepsi, he sat at the bar.

He felt guilty for having left Marie alone with Wilson and the cab driver, but John had been frightened by his anger. He stood over those two white men and wanted to kill them both. He wanted to smash their faces, break their bones, and crush their blue eyes. The only thing that stopped him was the thought of Marie, who would have witnessed it. She should not be subjected to such things. She was special and deserved something better. John had wanted to trust her, the woman who gave sandwiches away, but her thick glasses were frightening. Her crooked front teeth were absolutely terrifying. John could feel the heat spreading in his belly when he thought of her, the Indian woman with small breasts and thick hips. He wanted to tell of his plan, his need to kill the white man who was responsible for everything that had gone wrong. But she might misunderstand. John could not risk that. He had not meant to leave her behind, but he had to protect himself. He could have crushed the writer and cab driver, but that would ruin everything. There were too many eyes watching. John had to sacrifice his time with Marie so that he could live. He had to have priorities, make schedules, budget his time and energy. He had found his way to Big Heart’s because he knew he would be safe there. So many Indians. Though he knew he wasn’t a real Indian, John knew he looked like one. His face was his mask. John knew all of this to be true.

If John had happened to look at the Big Heart’s dance floor right then, he would have seen two Indian women, tired of waiting to be asked, dancing all by themselves. He would have seen dozens of other dancing couples, and large groups of single Indian men. Too shy to dance, they sat in large groups, whispering about their romantic intentions.

“Hey, you see that one?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to ask her to dance.”

“When?”

“Pretty soon. I’m taking my time.”

Those discussions went on for hours while the women waited, or danced with each other, or left the bar. When an Indian man finally found the courage to dance, he usually stood in place, shuffled his feet back and forth, snapped his fingers in time with the music. The only Indian men who danced with abandon were the same ones who danced traditionally during the powwows. Whenever a fancydancer or a grassdancer took the floor at Big Heart’s, he was the object of much curiosity.

John never danced. He barely talked. Indian women often approached him because he was a big, handsome buck with long, black hair. The women sat in dark corners and watched John.

“You see that big one over there? He looks like he just got off a horse.”

“Oh, yeah, enit? I think he’s Navajo. You know I’d comb his hair every night.”

The Indian women would laugh. They were always laughing. John wanted to laugh. He knew his laughter would make him feel more like a real Indian. He listened closely to the laughter, tried to memorize it. A booming belly laugh from a fat Lummi Indian. A low chuckle from Jim the Colville. A poke-to-the-rib-cage giggle from Lillian, a Makah. All kinds of laughter. All kinds of Indians. John would practice at home, stretch his mouth into those strange shapes called smiles, and laugh loudly enough to make his neighbors nervous.

John sat at the bar and laughed. Nobody paid much attention. It was not unusual for an Indian to sit alone at a bar and laugh.

“Hey.” A woman’s voice. John ignored it.

“Hey.” The woman again. John closed his eyes.

“Hey,” said the woman as she touched John’s shoulder. Frightened, he whirled in his seat. The Indian woman stepped back. John studied her for any signs of danger. She was tall and dark, her black hair cut into a stylish bob. Beautiful and confident. She wore a red shirt and blue jeans.

“You want to dance?” she asked.

John shook his head, turned back to his soda.

“Come on,” she said. “Shock me.”

She took John’s hand and led him onto the dance floor. He did not recognize the song, but it was too fast.

“My name is Fawn. I’m Crow,” she said, dancing a circle around John. She spun, shook her hips and hair. She put her hands around John’s waist and danced in closer.

“Who do you love?” she asked. It was more a step in her dance than a question or invitation. John raised his fist in the air the way that Marie had taught him. Fawn looked at his fist, at the ceiling. She laughed, raised her fist to the ceiling. Other dancers watched this happening. They raised their fists to the ceiling. Nobody knew why they were doing this. It just happened. One song blended smoothly into another, then another. John raised both fists. He pumped them into the air. One white guy was singing on the jukebox, then another, and a third. Song after song. Indians dropped quarters into the jukebox, punched the buttons, and waited for their songs to play. There were so many quarters in the machine, so many songs requested, that the jukebox would still be playing a few hours after closing time.

Fawn and John danced. Jealous Indian men watched closely. Fawn was a beautiful woman who never went home with anyone, but most of the men liked to assume they would be the first. John was taking that opportunity away from them. Ty, the Coeur d’Alene, Reggie, the blue-eyed Spokane, and Harley, the deaf Colville, watched and simmered.

“Who’s he think he is?” signed Harley.

“Sitting Bull,” signed Ty.

“No,” said Reggie. “He’s just bullshit.”

Reggie had been pursuing Fawn, without success, for a couple years.

“Hey,” Fawn shouted to John over the music. “I seen you in here before, enit?”

John nodded his head. He wondered if she was listening to the same music he heard.

“Yeah, I thought so,” she said. “You’re that shy one. What’s your name?”

“John.”

“What tribe you are?”

“Navajo,” said John.

“Hey, hey, a sheep eater!” Fawn laughed and slapped John playfully on the cheek. He touched his face. “Kind of tall for a Navajo, ain’t you?”

“I don’t eat sheep,” said John.

“I was kidding,” said Fawn, amused by John’s seriousness.

“I don’t eat sheep,” John said again.

Fawn laughed, hugged him close for a brief moment, then danced a little further away. He could not understand why this woman thought he ate sheep.

“I don’t eat sheep,” John said for the third time. The sheep were singing in his ear. The voices, which had descended to whispers for a while, began to grow in volume again. Greg Allman was singing somewhere in the distance. But he sounded more and more like Father Duncan. He was singing to John, trying to convince him that Fawn was the devil.

John turned away from Fawn, from the noise and music. She reached for him, but John shrugged her off. He walked off the dance floor and pushed past Reggie, spilling Reggie’s Pepsi. Reggie cussed and wiped at his suddenly wet and sticky shirt, but John just stormed out of the bar. Reggie, Ty, and Harley followed him. John staggered into the parking lot, hands pressed against his ears, trying to quiet the noise. There were a dozen cars parked under the dim lights. A steady stream of cars flowing up and down Aurora Avenue. A few Indians in the parking lot. Inside, most danced to Deep Purple and “Smoke on the Water.” John fell against a blue van.

“Hey!” shouted Reggie. “That’s my rig!”

Reggie did not own a car, but he was looking for a reason to fight. John looked at Reggie, Ty, and Harley. He recognized Harley, the deaf one. He’d seen him in the bar many times before. John had always been fascinated by Harley’s signing, his fingers forming words and sentences almost without effort. John stepped away from the van and stared at Harley’s hands. Harley gave him the finger.

“You were dancing with my woman,” said Reggie.

“Fawn?” asked John.

“Yeah, she’s my woman.”

Reggie stepped closer. He was much shorter than John and sixty pounds lighter, but Reggie was a veteran bar fighter backed by two friends.

“I don’t want you near my woman,” said Reggie. He poked a finger into John’s chest. John recoiled at the touch. Reggie assumed he was afraid. He shoved John back into the van.

“Oh, man,” said Reggie, pretending that John had dented the door panel of the van he did not own. “Look what you did to my van. Can you believe that, Ty?”

Ty shook his head.

“Can you believe what he did to my van, Harley?” signed Reggie.

Harley shook his head.

“I’ve seen you around, you know,” Reggie said to John. Reggie pointed a finger at him. “You’re Navajo, enit?”

John could barely hear Reggie now. The noise in his head was deafening. He wanted to tell these Indians everything. Maybe they could help him. He wanted to tell them he was not Navajo. He had no idea what kind of Indian he was. These Indian men, these warriors, would know how to be Indian. John was lost, trying to sign, twisting his hands into shapes that approximated words.

“Look at that,” said Reggie. “Now he’s making fun of Harley.”

Harley closed his hands into fists.

“Man, you Navajos think you own the world, don’t you?” asked Reggie. “Well, this ain’t Navajo land, cousin. Ain’t no sheep around here. You’re in the land of the salmon people.” Reggie slapped his chest. “I’m a salmon man. Ty and Harley here are salmon men. What do you think of that?”

John covered his ears with his hands and fell to his knees. Tears, whimpers, head bobbing in time with the music in his head.

“Look at you,” said Reggie. “You Navajos are supposed to be the toughest Indians in the world and look at you now. You ain’t tough. You ain’t nothing. Your people would be ashamed of you.”

John whimpered. Reggie, Ty, and Harley laughed, confident, though somewhat surprised by their easy victory. Reggie leaned down beside John to whisper in his ear.

“Hey, Sheep Boy,” whispered Reggie. “You don’t belong here. You ain’t Indian. If you don’t eat salmon, you ain’t shit.”

Reggie was feeling very tough.

“You’re lucky I don’t kill you,” whispered Reggie. “I eat Navajos for lunch. Then I eat white men for dessert.”

John looked up at Reggie.

“You don’t believe me?”

John kept shaking his head, sure that Reggie was lying.

“Thing is,” said Reggie, “I’m not Chief Joseph, man. None of that ‘I will fight no more forever’ crap. I’m going to keep fighting, Sheep Boy. I’m going to fight forever.”

“You’re the devil,” John said to Reggie.

“No, I’m not. I’m God.”

Reggie stood and kicked John in the ribs. John grunted with pain, closed his eyes, and searched his mind for a better place to be. Ty and Harley stared at Reggie.

“What the hell you doing?” signed Harley, genuinely afraid.

“Just giving him shit,” signed Reggie and winked.

John opened his eyes and slowly stood. He towered over his tormentors. He raised a fist in the air. Ty, Harley, and Reggie, laughing loudly, all did the same. They were still laughing as John staggered out of the parking lot. He stepped onto Aurora Avenue, turned south, and walked away from Big Heart’s. With the police patrols increased, two black-and-whites slowly cruised by John. He walked past the Oak Tree Cinemas, the World’s Greatest Sushi, Chubby & Tubby’s sporting goods and home supply store. Green Lake to the east, the ocean to the west. Water everywhere. So many places to drown.

23. A Conversation

“AARON, SON, WHAT’S HAPPENING over there?”

“I don’t know, Dad. Things are getting pretty crazy.”

“I read some Indians got jumped by three guys with baseball bats. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, son?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you telling me the truth? You know how much I hate liars.”

“Dad.”

“Tell me the truth, son.”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“And Barry and Sean?”

“Yeah.”

“Why, Aaron?”

“For David. It’s all for David.”

“You’ve got to stop this, son. You’re going to get caught. Or hurt. I don’t want to lose you, too.”

“Dad, I miss him.”

“I miss him, too. But those Indians aren’t worth it. They’re not worth anything.”

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember that night when we shot at those Indians in the camas field?”

“Of course. We scared the crap out of them.”

“Remember how you told us to shoot above their heads?”

“Yeah.”

“I aimed for that Indian guy. I aimed right for him. And when he fell down, I thought I got him. And I was happy.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“What if I caused all of this? What if David is dead because I tried to shoot that Indian?”

“That’s nonsense, Aaron. You were just a kid. You didn’t know any better.”

24. Mark Jones

THE KILLER WATCHED MARK sleeping in the dark place. The little boy had been sleeping constantly. It was getting harder and harder to wake him, and then he wouldn’t eat or drink much when he was awake.

The killer knew that a decision had to be made. The world now knew of the killer’s power and beauty. The newspapers were filled with interviews with the mother and father of Justin Summers, the first murder victim. Justin’s parents wept, and the killer loved their pain. Mark’s parents were subdued, in shock, too numb to show much emotion.

I just want the person who kidnapped Mark to know this, said Mrs. Jones in the largest article. Mark is a very special boy. He’s got a mother and a father who love him very much. He’s got a grandmother and two aunts. His nanny, Sarah, loves him like a son. He’s just a little boy. Please give Mark back to us.

The killer looked at the sleeping boy, dirty, smudged with dust from the dark room. His face was stained with juice and food. The killer sat in the dark and thought about the future, the ceremony. The killer left the dark place, filled a bucket with warm, soapy water, grabbed a hand towel from the bathroom, and went back inside to clean Mark. The killer was gentle. Mark didn’t wake as the killer carefully undressed him, removing the filthy Daredevil pajamas. Mark didn’t wake as the killer washed his face and body, his arms and genitals, his legs and feet. Mark didn’t wake as the killer dressed him in a large T-shirt.

The killer took the special knife down from the wall, slid it into the handmade sheath, and looked down at the sleeping boy. The killer picked up Mark Jones and, holding the boy as a parent would hold a child, left that dark place, and went out to finish the ceremony.

25. How He Imagines His Life on the Reservation

JOHN SEES THE SADNESS in his mother’s eyes as he prepares to leave the reservation for college. She wears a simple dress, something she sewed herself late at night. Lately, she has not slept well because she constantly worries about her son. She had given birth to him when she was very young, fourteen years old, and had greeted his arrival with a combination of fear, love, and ignorance. Her own mother had died while giving birth to her, and her father had been killed in Korea. Raised by a series of cousins and near-relatives, an orphan, she was not sure she knew how to be somebody’s daughter, let alone somebody’s mother. When John was born, the result of a random powwow encounter, he might as well have been an alien. Brown-skinned and bloody, twisted with the shock of birth, John screamed. But was he screaming out of rage, hunger, terror, or something more? She held him to her chest and prayed. Please, she whispered to him, stop. Ever since his birth, she has expected those screams, even now as she stands on the porch and watches John pack the car with his last piece of luggage. He is leaving her, leaving for college, and she is terrified of the life that awaits him in the white world.

“Are you sure about the car?” he asks.

“Yes, yes,” she says. “I don’t need it. I can use the tribal van. Or I can walk if I need to go to town. It’s not far.”

“But what about winter?”

“I’ll walk faster,” she says, and they both laugh.

She looks at her son. He has grown into a handsome man, tall and strong. But more than that, he is smart and generous, good to children and the tribal elders. For ten years, she has driven the tribal lunch van, which delivers meals to the elders, and John has often helped her. That was the way they both learned to speak the tribal language.

“Etigsgren,” said the elders upon their arrival.

“Etigsgren,” said John, perfectly mimicking the elder’s guttural stops and singsong accent.

“Ua soor loe neay. Reliw yerr uo hove?” asked the elders.

John smiled and shook his head. He did not have a girlfriend. He spent most of his free time with the elders. He vacuumed their carpets. He chased down rogue spiders in their bathtubs. He never killed the spiders; the elders had taught him that was bad luck. But the elders didn’t want little monsters slinking around their houses either. So John would gently scoop the spiders into his hands and carry them outside. He could feel the spiders’ legs wildly kicking and tickling his palm. He had always felt guilty about taking the spiders from their familiar surroundings and abandoning them in the wilds of a reservation backyard. John was not sure what spiders had to fear, but he was sure it was out there somewhere, waiting and watching. While the elders watched from their kitchen windows, John would kneel in the grass, set his hand close to the ground, open his fingers, and let the spiders loose. In their panic, the spiders would blindly scramble away, somehow convinced that they had broken free of their prisons and needed to quickly hide. John studied the grass as the spiders climbed over leaves and twigs, small stones and broken glass, until they disappeared into the small shadows.

“Ua roob gey da yoo,” said the elders when he returned.

“Not so good,” said John, feeling guilty and privileged.

“Ah,” said the elders in halting English. “You’d feel better if you had a girlfriend, yes?”

John had been too busy with school, basketball, and his work for the children and elders to worry about girlfriends. John had always been good in mathematics and science and had become an excellent teacher. The little Indian girls were the quickest learners, and they were beautiful. Much taller than the boys and more mature, the girls publicly recognized the magic of mathematics and science, how they proved the existence of God.

John had read about a species of South American ants that raised aphids like cattle. He had described this to Indian boys, who made a conspicuous display of their feigned skepticism, and to Indian girls who believed it wholeheartedly.

“Listen,” John had said. “The aphids, these small insects that suck the juice from plants, well, they eat this one kind of plant that the ants cannot eat. The aphids eat it all up and clear it out of the way, you know? Then as the aphids digest this plant, some chemical process inside the stomach changes the plant into a sugar. The aphids secrete this sugar, which the ants harvest to feed to their larvae. Really. The ants keep the aphids in little stockyards inside their nests. Isn’t that great? The ants collect this plant, carry it back inside the nest, and feed the aphids in the little stockyards. Isn’t that amazing?”

The Indian girls would laugh and write long essays about ordinary magic, about their grandmothers, who could make stews out of anything. They would remember beautiful stews crafted from a single potato, a can of tomato soup, and deer jerky.

“Remember that?” the Indian girls would ask themselves and other girls, and they would all remember the stories, and would laugh at the memories. Then they would hand in their essays, shyly smile at John, and run outside to the basketball court. Meanwhile, the Indian boys would sulk in the back of the room. They would answer questions in rough monosyllables, all the while drawing amazing landscapes filled with impossible animals: the buffalo with intelligent blue eyes; the salmon with arms and delicate hands; the deer driving a pickup; the bear dribbling a basketball down the court. When John came around to check on the boys, they would hurriedly cover their drawings, both ashamed and proud of their artistic impulses.

“What do you have there?” John would ask.

“Nothing,” the Indian boys would whisper.

“You can’t go to recess until you show me,” John would say.

The Indian boys would stare out the classroom window and watch the Indian girls run up and down the basketball court.

“Here,” the Indian boys would say and reveal their drawings. “It ain’t no good.”

“It’s very good,” John would say, which always made the Indian boys shrug their shoulders. “Go to recess.”

The boys would run to join the girls on the basketball court. John loved the children’s laughter, the way those stoic, silent boys became so loud and excited, those bright, talkative girls so intense and competitive on a basketball court. Basketball was all math and science.

John had studied hard in high school. His grades and basketball had won him a scholarship from the state university and he now was heading off to college to be a pre-medicine major. He would be only a hundred miles away, but it might as well have been a thousand miles.

“I’ll come back every weekend,” he says to his mother as he slams the trunk shut.

“Don’t do that,” she says. “You need to make friends.”

John smiles at his mother. He would have come back every weekend if she had wanted that, but she has released him. John breathes deeply, fighting back tears. He has always wanted to go to college. He has dreamed of it, dreamed of walking through the hallways with serious purpose, his backpack filled with complicated books and reams of paper. Drinking coffee and arguing important points with other students. Finding the professor who would be a father figure, who would guide him carefully toward his future. An Indian man, or a black man, or maybe a Chinese man. Yes, a tall Chinese man with a passion for the Pittsburgh Pirates. College would transform John. He would become a doctor and return to the reservation to practice. It is all he has ever wanted. To help his tribe.

John had known he wanted to go to college when he was three years old. He had learned to read then, and reading taught him everything he needed to know about life outside the reservation. He picked up a book before he could read, when the words were still a mess of ink and implications, and somehow understood the purpose of a paragraph. The paragraph was a fence that held words. All the words inside a paragraph had a reason for being together. They shared a common history. John began to see the entire world in paragraphs. He knew the United States was a paragraph within the world. He knew his reservation was a paragraph within the United States. His house was a paragraph distinct from the houses to the west and north. Inside the house, his mother was a paragraph, completely separate from the paragraph of John. But he also knew that he shared genetics and common experiences with his mother, that they were paragraphs that belonged next to each other. John saw his tribe as a series of paragraphs that all had the same theme. They all belonged to the same tribe, shared the same blood. John could step into his classroom and see his features in his classmates. The wide face and brown skin, the high cheekbones and strong jawline, the large ears and long eyelashes. No matter their heights, they all had long bodies and short legs. Girls and boys, men and women, everyone had narrow hips and a flat ass.

John looks at his mother crying on the porch and sees himself in her features. She is a beautiful woman, somehow more beautiful as she cries. John does not quite understand why this is true. He cannot understand why he likes to see those tears on his mother’s face. It is proof of her love, certainly, but it touches something else inside of him so strongly that he takes a step backward.

“Don’t cry,” he says to his mother, but they both know she is going to cry for hours. John feels a single, hot tear roll down his face.

“You’re going to be somebody important,” she says.

John tries to smile. He goes to his mother and takes her in his arms. She is a small woman, but John can feel the strength in her arms and back when he hugs her.

“Don’t let them hurt you,” she whispers.

John holds his mother.

“They’re going to try to stop you,” she says. “They’re going to try to humiliate you. They’re going to call you names. They’ll want you to fail.”

“I’m going to be fine,” says John.

She looks up at her son, takes his face in her hands.

“Listen to me,” she says. “Don’t let them change you.”

John kisses his mother and turns away from her. He climbs into the car and starts it. He drops it into drive and pulls away from their small house. His mother stands still and quiet on the porch, watching him leave the reservation. She closes her eyes and listens to the sounds of the car fading into the distance. Then all is quiet.

26. Hunting Weather

AT FIVE THAT FOGGY morning, Truck Schultz stood at the back door of the KWIZ studio. On a cigar break, he was thinking about how the Indian Killer, that sick bastard, had actually made Truck’s show the highest-rated radio program in the Pacific Northwest. Truck smiled, tossed his cigar away, and tried to open the door. It was locked. Truck pounded on it — the buzzer was broken — but there was no response. He knew the janitor and a neurotic producer or two were inside. Darla, his assistant, was in her office. Truck pounded on the door until his hand hurt.

“Shit,” he said and stared into the fog surrounding him. He’d have to walk to the front, through the parking lot and a dark alley. The fog was thick, the sun had not yet risen, the air cold and heavy. Vernon Schultz, Truck’s father, would have called it good hunting weather. A garbage truck rumbled down a street in the distance.

“Double shit,” Truck said and stepped away from the back door. He was immediately surrounded by a strangely dark and dense fog. Fucking Hound of the Baskervilles, Truck thought as he walked through the parking lot. He could make out the dim shapes of cars. Shrouded in fog, the cars looked like large animals, monsters even, ready to pounce. Truck laughed nervously, and heard his laughter echo loudly across the parking lot. His own pickup sat in the best space. He briefly thought about driving the truck to the front, but then remembered he’d left his keys inside the studio.

“Triple shit,” he said as he thought about the Indian Killer and perfect hunting weather. Truck wondered how it felt to kill a man. Truck himself had never been able to kill a deer, let alone a man.

“There,” Vernon Schultz had whispered to his son as they sat together in the hunting blind. A doe had emerged from the fog just fifty feet away. The twelve-year-old Truck took aim, watching the deer daintily step across the cold ground, but could not pull the trigger.

“Now,” whispered Vernon, but Truck couldn’t shoot.

“Now,” Vernon said, much louder, and the doe, suddenly aware of their presence, bounded back into the fog.

“Oh, damn,” said Vernon and gave his son a gentle nudge. “Couldn’t do it, huh?”

With tears in his eyes, Truck looked up at his father.

“Next time,” Vernon said.

“Next time,” Truck said as he made his way through the foggy parking lot outside the KWIZ studio. He wondered how the Indian Killer had found the courage to cut a man’s throat. Truck shivered out of fear, though he told himself it was because of the cold. He knew the alley was close because he could smell the garbage Dumpster. Something made a noise out there in the fog, and Truck had to resist the urge to run. The flight instinct.

“Darla?” Truck asked, wondering if his assistant had realized he hadn’t come back from his smoke break. No response, but he had heard footsteps, then a painful scratching noise, as if two pieces of metal were being rubbed together. Truck walked faster, stepped into the alley, and felt a powerful claustrophobia. He couldn’t see the walls of the alley, but he knew they were there, just beyond his reach. He could see neither the parking lot behind him nor the street ahead of him. He realized he’d blundered into an enclosed space. Panicked prey, he thought, a hunter’s dream.

A large bang caused Truck to drop to one knee. He couldn’t tell whether it had come from behind or in front of him. The fucking fog has never been this bad, thought Truck, never, not once. He’d always thought fog was a minor nuisance, at worst potentially dangerous, but this fog felt specific and alive. This fog had sharp teeth. Truck slowly rose and stepped toward an alley wall. He touched the damp stone with one hand and felt some relief. He’d begun to wonder if the world had ceased to exist outside the fog. But he knew that wall and trusted there was another wall on the opposite side of the alley. He’d driven and walked between these walls for years. He could smell the Dumpster, and he knew there was a NO PARKING sign on the opposite wall. Truck was afraid.

“You got to kill them with one shot,” Vernon Schultz had explained. “If you just wound them, all their fear rushes through their bodies, gets into the meat. All that good meat will get filled up with fear, son, and that just tastes awful.”

With one hand on the wall, Truck walked down the alley. His fear rushed into his muscles. His legs and arms ached. His head felt heavy and full. He knew he could just lie down in the alley right there and fall asleep. He kept walking, and each step seemed to take forever, as if the street beyond the alley was hundreds of miles away.

A sudden flutter of wings above him. Truck wondered what kind of birds flew in the cold and fog. Bats? Owls? He knew the Indian Killer had sent him two owl feathers, along with a piece of Mark Jones’s pajamas, but the police had refused to tell him what these things meant. He knew it was more than just a signature. It was some kind of Indian voodoo. Truck didn’t believe in magic, but he believed in evil. The Indian Killer was out there somewhere, perhaps in that alley with him, and Truck wished he were carrying a pistol. He knelt down on the ground and searched for a weapon: broken bottle, stick, stray pipe, rock, anything. He found only newspaper and paper sacks.

“I know you’re there,” Truck shouted into the fog. “And I’ve got a gun.”

No response.

“I’m walking through,” Truck shouted. “You better just get out of my way. I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

Silence.

“Here I come,” Truck shouted as he walked down the alley.

“You got to hang the deer meat up high,” Vernon Schultz had said. “The bears will get at it, or the dogs, or the wolves. You got to hang it high, and you got to camp upwind from it. A half mile away, at least. You don’t want to be between that meat and some hungry bear, son. Hang it up there high.”

Truck held his head high as he walked down that alley, deeper and deeper into the fog.