Not Dead Enough (15 page)

“For God's sake, David, you're just going to have to deal with it.” I heard someone moan. “Don't. Not now. We need to get back inside before they miss us. You don't know the pressure I'm under.”

The noise of their shuffling feet caused me to miss David's reply, although the tone of his voice came through. It was plaintive, laced with emotion.

When I got in my car, I sat there for a long time in silence. First the news from Royce Townsend about his son's intentions toward Winona and then the weird conversation I'd just overheard. What the hell's going on?

Finally, as I pulled onto the Townsend's driveway and my headlights bored a tunnel across the darkened pasture, I said aloud, “That sounded like a lover's spat.”

Chapter Twenty-nine

That night I had a strange dream. I was sitting in a dark room facing the illuminated outline of a door. The thin ribbon of light was unnaturally bright and strangely alluring, as if something desirable burned on the other side. I got up, and as I searched like a blind man for the door knob, the light went out. I awoke with an overwhelming sense of loss. The digital clock showed four twenty, and after tossing around for another half hour I got out of bed and called Phillip.

“What's going on, Cal?” he answered warily. It wasn't like me to call him at the crack of dawn.

“Not much. Couldn't sleep. Did I wake you?”

“Are you kidding? I'm on the way to the Deschutes to meet a couple of developers from Bend. They want to experience the Zen of fly fishing for steelhead. I can't wait.”

“You'd better include some deep breathing instructions for when you give them the bill.”

“Hey, with the money they're raking in, they can afford me. Real estate in Bend's like a feeding frenzy, man.”

“It's called a bubble.”

“Yeah, well there's something not right about it. What goes up comes down. But I'm sure you didn't call at five to discuss real estate.”

“Actually, I've got a couple of things on my mind. First, what do you know about the Tribes trying to put a gambling casino in the Gorge?”

Philip laughed with derision. “Oh, that. Yeah, the Tribal Council's actually considering it. Can you believe it?”

“Is your father involved?”

“Up to his eyeballs. I think it's a stupid idea. Ranks right up there with flooding the falls.”

“I heard Braxton Gage's involved in the deal. The guy keeps popping up in this mess you got me into.”

Ignoring the dig, Philip said, “Uh, I'm not getting the connection here.”

I chuckled. “There probably isn't any. But I need some way to approach Gage. I figured your father might be able to help me. You know, give me some sort of introduction so I don't have to make a cold call.”

“I'll ask him.”

“Thanks. The other thing is, I need to go fishing to get my head straight.”

“What's wrong with your head?”

“Nothing. I just need to think some things through is all,” I said, hoping he wouldn't pry. I felt my deck had been shuffled by Winona's visit coupled with that night at the Townsend estate, but I sure as hell didn't want to talk about it.

“What about your arm, man?”

“I'll use Saran Wrap.”

“Duct tape might work better.”

“What's the Sandy doing right now?”

“Actually, the Sandy might be a good bet. I heard there's a run of native steelies in there right now. I don't know whether they're early summers or late winters. Your best bet's probably below Marmot Dam. It's a pretty good hike in but worth it.” He hesitated for a moment. “Uh, you ready to go steelheadin' on your own?”

“Ready as I'll ever be. I've had a good teacher.”

Philip laughed. “By the way, you can say goodbye to the dam while you're up there. They're going to breach it in October. You can thank Winona for that. She and the outfit she works for were key in convincing the power company to take it out, and they finally agreed. It'll make the Sandy free-flowing from Mount Hood to the Columbia.”

Philip's comment surprised me. Apparently, Winona was as modest as he was. “She didn't mention it to me. I think I'll go have a look.”

***

The next morning I stood on a boulder with my back to the sun on the edge of the Sandy River. I was looking for steelhead. They're hard to catch, and it never hurts to know where they are, although you're damn lucky if you ever see one. Sluicing off the glaciers on the southwest side of Mount Hood, the water was fast, cold, and clear. The fish would appear as dark shadows against the river bottom. I saw none.

After a hike through the trees, this was my first good look at the river, which swept around a broad oxbow and came rattling at me over a mantle of volcanic basalt covered with loose, gray gravel—prime habitat for steelhead. The firs and cedars still dripped from a rain the night before, and fast moving clouds threatened more weather. Archie was behind me on the bank with strict orders to stay put. There was plenty of wild life up there, even cougars. I didn't want him getting into any mischief.

I waded downriver and stopped about forty feet from a spot where the river darkened, indicating the presence of a depression deep enough to hide fish. I tossed a fly called a Red Rocket at a forty-five degree angle to the bank, watched it sink below the surface, and then worked it across the depression using the tip of my rod. The fly must work by shock value, since the red and pink fluff hiding the hook looked more like something from a Vegas chorus line than any insect on the planet. The water was refreshingly cool against my waders, and the faint scent of fir needles and water hemlock drifted downriver with the breeze.

As I worked the hole, the rhythm of my casts began to relax me. Nothing stirred, which was fine. I'd come here to gain a little perspective. Fly-casting on a spring day—fish or no fish—was my newly discovered way to relax and think. I had to admit I was a long way from the uptight prosecutor I used to be down in L.A. Maybe there was hope.

That damn kiss, I said to myself as I snapped the line forward. Never should have happened. I couldn't seem to get my mind off it, which brought up the question of why I'd chosen to live like a monk. I had good reason. Not just the shock of Nancy's death, but the fact that I wasn't there for her when she needed me. My self-imposed exile was driven as much by guilt and shame as by pain. I swung the fly through another lazy pass across the hole without incident. Nothing doing, so I moved downstream, letting my line drift in the current as Archie followed along on the bank.

A hundred and fifty feet downriver I cast the Rocket into a promising looking series of eddies formed by a line of submerged boulders, a good place for a steelhead to rest and feed. My body continued to relax, but my mind still churned. So, I meet this woman, and suddenly my resolve starts to falter, I mused. What had it been, a year here in Oregon? Come on, you can do better than that, I told myself. The Red Rocket continued to bob along unmolested. I retrieved it and replaced it with a Sandy Blue—its toned-down first cousin—and moved on.

I lost track of time as I worked my way downriver. I thought of the fragment of conversation I'd overheard between Jason Townsend and David Hanson. With the passage of several days, I realized I was no longer so sure what the hell they were talking about. Despite this, a part of me—the self-serving part, I suppose—wanted to say something to Winona. I laughed out loud when I tried to imagine how I would do that. No, I would keep my mouth shut. Jason Townsend's sexual preferences and what he chose to tell Winona about them were clearly none of my business.

Fishing's a lot like life—things happen when you least expect it. I was well below the oxbow, my thoughts drifting with my fly in a soft riffle when a steelhead hit with an adrenaline-releasing jolt. The big fish ran downriver as line tore off my reel, causing the handle to spin into a blur. Afraid all my line would be stripped off, I grabbed at the knob on the crank and got my knuckles rapped for the trouble.

“Ouch!” I cried, and this started Archie barking and spinning in circles.

I thrust my hand in again and managed to catch the knob without further damage. The steelhead slowed down and then stopped. I inched it around to face me, the current magnifying its strength, my rod bent at a worrisome angle, my leader taut as a bridge cable. Archie could barely contain himself on the bank. I worried he might actually swim out to help me.

The fish allowed me a couple of cranks on the reel before breaking for deep water. I pulled up, and it became airborne in a writhing, athletic leap. For an instant it seemed to freeze in front of me like an iridescent sculpture, jaws agape, pink-edged gills flaring. Then it casually tossed my fly with its barbless hook halfway to the bank. As the fish fell back into the river, I could have sworn it looked at me in amusement.

I fished on for another hour, but that was my only strike of the day. Actually, I was glad I didn't hook another fish, since the fight had left my knuckles raw and the stitches in my left arm aching.

Arch and I hiked out on a high trail through the trees that Philip suggested. We stopped above Marmot Dam for a look. The river slid over the spillway in a laminar sheet that shattered at the base like a wave breaking on a beach. A bypass stream around the dam still roared, but the turbines it drove for ninety years were gone. Like a clogged artery, the river above the dam had built up a century of silt and debris. I imagined touching off the blast that would obliterate the structure and wondered how long it would take for the free-flowing river to heal itself.

As Arch and I stood watching, a shaft of sunlight turned a section of water upriver from gray to slate blue. I wondered about the fish down there. I had to believe breaching this dam would stop their decline and give them a fighting chance. I kicked a rock into a swath of sword ferns and started down the trail thinking about Winona and Jason, how they could work together to free rivers like this. Suddenly the idea of their engagement seemed to make a lot of sense.

We were nearly back to the trailhead when my phone rang. It was Philip.

“Cal, where are you?”

“I just hiked out of the Sandy. I'm at the trailhead.”

“Do any good?”

“One nice fish, but it got off. Damn near tore my stitches out.”

“How's your head?”

“Better.”

“Listen, my father says he'll talk about the casino with you, but only in person. You're halfway here. Why don't you come out to the Rez and join us?”

Chapter Thirty

Rain pummeled the car until Arch and I cleared the Cascades and met the high desert, where Route 26 stretched out in front of us like a tapered black ribbon. To the southwest, the snow-clad peak of Mount Jefferson seemed to levitate above the flat plain. I rolled down the windows so we could taste the sage and wildflower scented air. I parked just inside the Reservation, and we hopped into Philip's truck for the drive to the family hunting cabin, which sits on the Warm Springs River near the junction with the Deschutes.

Philip told me once that the land has been in the family since the first Paiutes staggered onto the reservation in 1879 after being ravaged by disease and hounded by the U.S. Calvary. The original log cabin had been torn down and replaced with a modest frame structure after the family received its reparations check in the 1950s for the flooding of Celilo Falls.

George Lone Deer was shorter and stouter than Philip, with close-cropped, silver hair. I could see Philip in his face, although the father's nose was broader, the eyes darker, more brooding. When Arch and I got out of the truck, he smiled with warmth. “Welcome, Calvin.” Then he dropped to one knee, and greeted Archie like an old friend. “Philip told me about this one. He helps you fish, huh?”

I smiled and shook my head. “He's a little disappointed in me right now. I lost a nice steelhead this morning.”

“I'll bet he can herd some sheep, too,” George Lone Deer added, thumping my dog on the back.

“Sheep, cars, deer, you name it.”

A younger man standing behind George stepped forward and introduced himself. Isaac Minishut's hair was pulled back in a ponytail like Philip's. His eyes hovered like dark moons behind horn rim glasses with thick lenses.

“Isaac's chief legal counsel for the Rez,” Philip said, patting the shorter, thinner man on the shoulder. “He keeps my father and the Tribal Counsel out of trouble.”

“More like damage control,” Isaac shot back with a droll smile that made me like him instantly.

“We've got the sweat lodge fired up, Cal. Care to join us?” Philip said, his eyes dancing with delight at the knowledge that I hated what he was proposing but couldn't say no.

I winced inwardly and snapped him a dirty look. I'd taken a couple of “sweats”—the homemade steam baths practiced by Native Americans—with my friend, and he knew full well I found them about as fun as a trip through hell with a sunburn. But it would be an insult to say no. “Sure,” I answered with false enthusiasm that made Philip snort and swallow a smile.

But I lucked out this time. Once inside the lodge—a rickety half-dome of bent branches covered with canvass and old woolen blankets—Philip's father controlled the ladling of water onto the rocks which had been heated to a dull red. He took pity on me. Every time the steam hissing off the rocks threatened to displace the last molecule of air in the lodge, he would back off and allow me to gulp a breath. The elder Lone Deer mumbled and chanted prayers in his native language, but I really didn't care that I was witnessing a ritual that hadn't changed in eons. I did try to conjure up some spiritual thoughts of my own, but it's hard to think when your brain is melting.

The Warm Springs River is misnamed, because its water is always ice cold. Nevertheless, when the sweat was over I made a dash for the river and when my scorched body hit the water, the shock snatched every ounce of breath from my lungs. But fifteen minutes later up in the cabin with a hot mug of coffee with two shots of whiskey in it, I felt damn good.

Philip had quickly steered the conversation my way, and I was sketching in some of the information surrounding Nelson Queah's disappearance and Timothy Wiiks' accident. I was anxious to see if they could help me in any way but was not anxious to tell them too much.

George Lone Deer was wrapped in a thick robe sipping a beer, his bare feet propped on a stool. He said, “I can't speak about Timothy Wiiks, but as a young man I knew of Nelson Queah. He was a strong man. If he had lived, he wouldn't have taken a dime in reparations. No one believed that he got drunk one night and stumbled into the river. He was a sure-footed fisherman and not a heavy drinker. He had fought long and hard to save the falls. Some thought the loss was just too much for him, that he killed himself. Others were not so sure.” He shook his head slowly and studied his feet. “It is good that you're helping his granddaughter find the truth. The truth is important, even after the passage of time.”

I met his eyes and nodded in agreement. “I think Wiiks was killed because he discovered a financial rip-off at the dam. Someone was skimming money from the government. Wiiks worked for Ferguson, and Ferguson reported directly to Braxton Gage.”

“Gage worked on The Dalles Dam?” Isaac interjected.

“Yeah. He owned a gravel and cement company with his father back then.”

Isaac shot George a quick glance and then looked back at me. “Holy shit. You think he's involved in this?”

“Call it a working hypothesis. We may never know exactly what went on at the dam, but it looks like the fear that the cover-up murders might be discovered set somebody on edge.”

Philip pointed at my left forearm, which was still wrapped in the same crude waterproof bandage I'd used when I was fishing. “Cal took a bullet from the same guy that got Watlamet.”

Isaac's mouth dropped open, but he said nothing.

I looked at him and then at Philip's father and said, “I need to talk to Gage. Can you tell me anything about him that might help me do this?”

“Isn't that risky?” Isaac asked.

“Not the way I see it. If he's in on it, he already knows about me. If not, he might be able to help. It's worth a shot.”

“The old bastard won't see you unless you have something he wants,” Philip's father said. “He's surrounded by bodyguards and greedy people.”

“What about this casino deal?”

Isaac's eyes got bigger. He glanced at Philip's father, then back at me. “How do you know about that?”

The elder Lone Deer raised his hand in a calming gesture. “It's okay, Isaac. We can trust Calvin.”

Isaac nodded faintly. “First of all, there's no deal. There've been some exploratory talks. Gage has an ideal piece of land and the ear of the Governor, to say nothing of his influence in the Gorge. But he wants more than we're willing to give him.”

Philip stood up abruptly and scowled at his father. “Tell Gage to get stuffed. Why do we want a casino in the Gorge, anyway? We're acting like white people. What's next, a new dam on the Columbia?”

His father set his beer can down and massaged his forehead with big, rough fingers. In a low voice he said, “You know the answer to that, Philip. Jobs, schools, roads, bridges, that's why.”

Philip stomped across the room, kicked the screen door open and went out on the porch. His father smiled wistfully and shook his head as Isaac dropped his gaze and began studying a knot on the plank floor. The room fell silent and so did my hopes of learning anything useful about Braxton Gage. Finally, I said to both men, “Are you sure there's no way I can get in to see Gage?”

Isaac said, “It would be easier to get in to see the President at the Whitehouse.”

My gaze shifted to Philip's father, almost in desperation. He smiled at Isaac's remark like he had after his son's blow-up, as if to say these were things to be expected from younger men. He said, “I will talk to Gage. He wants this deal as much as we do. I will—”

Isaac interrupted, shaking his head emphatically. “I don't think that's a very good idea, George.”

Philip's father put his hand up again, his mouth set in a firm line. “We will do this in honor of Nelson Queah.”

I thanked Lone Deer and went out on the porch to join Philip. “Come on,” I said, figuring he needed to cool off, “let's hike down to the junction and see if any trout are rising.” We were half way to the Deschutes when my cell chirped. It was Deputy Sheriff Grooms. “Hey, Big C.” I greeted her. “What's happening?”

“Thought you deserved to hear the latest. I got a probable on the composite sketch. The perp went grocery shoppin' at a gas station out near Clarno last week. A guy who pumps gas there was pretty sure it was him. Didn't see a car. Said he walked out of there with a backpack, headed east on the Shaniko Fossil Highway.”

I stopped dead on the trail and Philip eyed me intently. “Nice work. Any idea where he was headed?”

“I've got a hunch. There's a narrow canyon a few miles up from there, runs north off the highway. Used to be a vermiculite mine up in there pretty far. That'd be a good place to hide a campsite. It's a long shot, and the trail's probably cold, but I figured it's worth a look. Listen, any chance you could call your friend, Lone Deer, and persuade him to meet me out there? He might see somethin' I'd miss.”

I looked at Philip. “You're in luck. Philip's right here. Hang on a sec.” To Philip I said, “Grooms thinks she might know where the shooter camped out. She wants you to come over to Clarno to help her check it out. You up for that?”

“Hell yes,” my friend answered.