Authors: Anne Argula
He opened the door. I was right about the kind of knock.
A sheriff’s deputy in a starched tan uniform, wearing bifocals in a set of Costco frames, stood on the porch. He was no spring chicken. He could have retired a couple years ago and opened up a security business, but he would have had to work too hard, and he would have had to leave the island. He looked like a guy taking it month by month now, any one of which might be a good time for his retirement dinner. He stayed lean, maybe abetted by the cigarettes he smoked. There was one in his shooting hand now.
Mother and child awoke too, and they were sitting up in bed, the blanket pulled to their necks. Nothing from the tethered Houser, who might have died in his sleep, for all I knew. For all I cared.
“Yes?” said Odd.
The deputy didn’t say anything at first. He was trying to process what he saw: two women in bed, another one on the davvy, a young guy in his skivvies.
“I’m Deputy Nascine, from the county,” he said at last. “I run the substation on the island. Everything okay here?”
“Everything’s fine here. Why?” said Odd.
“Some rumors going across the island,” he said, leaning into our cottage, craning his neck for a better look.
“What kind of rumors?”
“You the cop from Spokane?”
“Was that the rumor?”
Odd, who got along with everybody, did not like this guy on sight, I could tell, and I knew they would be at it in another minute.
“He’s one and I’m the other,” I said. “What can we do for you so early in the morning?”
He looked at his watch. It wasn’t early for him.
“My information was that you picked up a fugitive here on the island.”
“That’s right,” I said, “on tribal land.”
“A tribal fugitive?”
“Of course not. A white guy.”
“That fugitive should have been put in my custody.”
It looked like he’d step inside except for the fear that Odd might slam the door on his foot, because Odd was holding it that way.
“Whatever…I guess if you busted him he woulda, but you didn’t bust him. Anyway, he’s with us now,” I said, “like he’s supposed to be.”
“I think you miss my point, ma’am. I don’t know what the man has done, what crimes he may have committed on the island. Rules say he’s not your prisoner ‘til I hand him over, and somebody’s been hiding him from me.”
“Well, that sounds serious as a kidney stone, deputy, but
my
information tells me the Indians, according to their constitution, can keep a honky for twenty-four hours before turning him over to his rightful masters. That’s all that was done.”
“The Indian constitution is for Indians. Your boy’s not an Indian.” He took the last drag on his cigarette and flipped it out to the driveway. He’d already said all that he wanted to say to me. He directed his attention to Odd. “Shining Pony and that excuse for a police station don’t mean shit. I’d like to know who the fugitive is, what he done, and where he is right now.”
“I’m here,” called a frail voice from behind the counter, from the kitchen floor.
“Shaddup,” said I.
“I’m gonna have to come in here,” said the deputy.
“You’re gonna have to stay outside,” said Odd, taking a stronger grip on the door’s edge.
Gwen and Stacey weren’t saying anything. From the look on their faces, they were waiting for the shootout.
“There are rumors that this prisoner’s been mistreated,” said the deputy.
“Not true,” called Houser. “I’m my own worst enemy.”
“Not while I’m around,” I muttered.
“They’ve been nothing but considerate with me,” Houser testified.
“You can turn him over now, or we can all hang fire while I call for backup.”
Having given us our selections, the deputy leaned into the Honeymoon Cottage, bracing himself against the door frame with both hands, and waited for our answer.
Odd turned to me and said, “You know what? Let’s turn him over and get him off our hands.”
“I don’t want to be turned over,” moaned Houser. “I want to stay with you guys.”
I saw something in Odd’s eyes and played along. “Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “He’s been a pain in the ass, and he’ll probably beat the rap anyway…and we still have things to do on this island.”
“What things?” asked the deputy.
“Oh, we got a project,” said Odd.
“Didn’t the rumors…your information…tell you about the project, deputy? What’s your first name, by the way?”
“Robert,” he said.
“Jeez Louise, not another one,” I said.
“What?” he said, distracted.
“This island is full of Roberts. Every other person is a Robert, I don’t get it. Either that or infirm or fat or missing digits.”
“Who are these two?” the deputy asked, nodding toward Stacey and her mother.
“Not Roberts,” said Stacey.
I had to hand it to the sassy little cocksucker.
“It gets complicated, but they are part of the package here,” I said. “Look, you want him, give us a minute to get dressed, we’ll clean him up and hand him over to you and God bless, because he’s kind of high maintenance.”
“If he goes, I go,” said Stacey.
“If she goes, I go,” said Gwen. “I’m her mother.”
“Definitely. There you are, deputy, three for the price of one.”
Odd was fighting back his half-crooked smile.
Deputy Robert was taking in Stacey.
“I’m the ‘victim’,” Stacey volunteered. “Can you believe that? Victim of
what
?”
“We got nowhere else to go but here or with you, sir,” said Gwen.
“Welcome to the lot of ‘em, deputy, with our compliments.”
He pushed back from the doorframe, shook another cigarette out of a pack of Camels, and lit up. He looked again at his watch. “There’s a 9:45 ferry to America. All of you, including you back there, you’re gonna be on it. Get off my island and go back to Spokane.”
“Fine,” said Houser. “I want to. I don’t like this island one bit.”
Odd and I dummied up. We had already sold it, we weren’t going to buy it back again.
The deputy went away acting as though he had carried out the law as he interpreted it. Big man, little island.
We slapped off a hi-five, like a couple of kids who had pulled a fast one on the face of authority, but we still had nowhere to go, nowhere but back to Spokane with our chewed-up fugitive. We still had Stacey and her mother, waiting for Karl Gutshall to fix their Civic. We still had Connors back home doing God knows what with Esther. And we still had hot flashes by the bushels, at least one of us did. We still had Jeannie piggy-backing on the big Swede. What we didn’t have was whoever murdered her and her boyfriend, James Coyote.
My eyes dropped again to Odd’s legs. I’d forgotten that a man can have such nice legs. He was standing in the open doorway watching the Sheriff’s patrol car pull away. I focused in on that birthmark on the back of his knee, and I felt myself falling into it, the way you do when you lean out over a balcony from the sixteenth floor of a building that somebody’s jumped off. I had already seen Odd pulled out of his body a couple of times in the past twenty-four hours, and now the same thing was happening to me. To tell you the truth, I half-enjoyed it, because I could have used a little vacation from that burning body.
I didn’t know what yet, but suddenly that birthmark meant something to me.
“How long have you had that?” I asked.
“What?”
“That thing behind your knee.”
“I was born with it. They call it a port wine mark.”
Then it hit me. I flew out of my wrap, my heart pounding. I grabbed my jeans and rifled the pockets, but then I remembered Odd had driven last.
“Quinn? What the hell…”
I rifled his pockets and came up with the car keys. He asked me what I was doing but the adrenalin was pumping so hard I couldn’t answer. I ran outside in my skivvies, doing a painful dance on the gravel. I got to the trunk of the car.
Frank was standing outside the main house, leaning on the porch rail, sucking up oxygen. He gave me a wave and a cheery “Good morning!”
Odd was standing on our porch now. I’m sure he was wondering from what new conniption he would now have to rescue me. Frank gave him a good-morning too, all smiles, probably believing we must finally be having a swell time in his little resort.
I opened the trunk and took my service baton from its holding ring. I rushed back to the porch. By this time, Stacey and her mother were standing in the open doorway, both in their skivvies, both probably worried that I was rushing in to beat the shit out of Houser.
Not a bad idea, but.
I stopped behind Odd and placed the baton along his port wine birthmark. It was a perfect fit.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Creeping myself out,” said I, and I was.
I deputized Gwen.
Houser had not fallen sick, thank God, but he was not in the pink either and I was damn sick of dragging him along. I made Gwen raise her hand and swear to a lot of stuff I made up on the spot, with no authority whatsoever to administer same.
“Do you swear to enforce a distance between the prisoner and the victim sufficient enough to preclude any and all physical contact of any nature whatsoever?”
“I do,” she swore solemnly.
“I do too,” said Stacey, though I was not fool enough to swear that one to anything. I cuffed Houser’s hands behind his back and gave the key to Gwen, pretty much shitcanning my career should she turn out to be irresponsible, and, da frick, she was already irresponsible or her daughter wouldn’t be giving head to a guy more than twice her age.
Odd and I got back into yesterday’s clothes. I didn’t have a toothbrush, he didn’t have that or a razor, but we pulled ourselves together as best we could, while my new deputy brewed the coffee.
“Would you tell me where we’re going?” he asked. We were using the bathroom together, having reached a new level of intimacy, I guess.
I envied him his short hair. All he had to do was wet it and run his fingers through it. My own was a mess and there wasn’t a lot I could do with it. The Shenandoah solution, a babuska, was not available, so I pulled it back and tied it up. I looked like general hell, but could care less.
“I’ll tell you when we get there, I don’t want to look like an idiot.”
“A little late for that,” he said, and I laughed.
Gwen handed us each a cup of coffee and we blew on it.
“Remember, sitting in James’ four-by…how you knew something was wrong?
“Yeah…”
“Something
was
wrong.”
“What?”
“That’s what we’re gonna find out, if we’re lucky.”
It was not easy going back to the tribal police headquarters and Chief Shining Pony. I was prepared to do a little groveling.
The second Robert was on duty and I gave him a dour good-morning, which he took warily and returned a grunt that I took as a greeting between enemies. He probably heard from the first Robert all about the ruckus last night, including the screaming match I had with his boss, the kind of match I never lose, by the way.
“Know where the chief is?” I asked.
“Hmm-hmm.”
“Like, where?”
“In his office.”
I belayed my usual cop’s rap, and tapped like a timid doormouse.
We went inside. To say the chief was a bigger man than I gave him credit for would not be accurate, because I had always given him that credit. He understood that my shrewish behavior the previous night was borne on a cop’s need for justice and her outrage that it had been denied for so long. I didn’t tell him it was all multiplied by a factor of…whatever, by the hormonal desert maelstrom inside my body.