White Ghost Ridge Page 25

  “Is this Eddie Grass?” she asked when the stranger answered.

  Grass was silent for a while.

  “Who wants to know?” the retired cop cautiously replied.

  Mendoza sighed.

  “I’m Trooper Mendoza. I work with Detective Sergeant Locklear. I’ve been trying to get in touch with him but he isn’t answering his phone. I know something is wrong. You are the only contact I know in Pine Ridge. So, do you have any idea where he’d be?”

  Grass took a moment to reply.

  “Maybe. But I know someone who might know for sure, someone I told him to contact. I’ll phone and find out.”

  Mendoza paced the departures waiting area. Sweat trickled down her brow as she waited for her plane to take off. She dialled her boss three more times and left urgent messages. In the last call, she was close to tears as she pleaded with him to call her. With only the worst imaginings going through her mind, she shed some silent tears in the window seat and was thankful that there was no-one else seated beside her on the small regional plane. She had cancelled her planned flight to Rapid City from where she would have travelled to Pine Ridge by car as this was no longer an option. She didn’t have time to take that route, needing the quickest route that would get her to her boss. After a ten-minute discussion with a less than enthusiastic desk clerk, she had booked a seven-and-a-half-hour flight with a one-and-a-half-hour layover in Denver to Chadron municipal airport. But the Nebraskan airport would still leave her around 40 miles from Pine Ridge.

  She had sent a text to Grass giving him her arrival time and asking if he would pick her up as she could not waste time trying to rent a car when she felt in her bones that Locklear was in deep trouble. The sooner she got there and found him, the better.

  Chapter 25

  Locklear woke to find that the face looking down at him was not that of Daccota Looks-Twice but of a young Native. He tried to open his eyes fully and moaned aloud.

  “Quiet! Don’t wake him!” the young guy said.

  Locklear tried to push himself up from his supine position. He sat on the hard floor, touched his temple and smoothed out the hard-dried blood between his fingers.

  “Looks like you might need sutures,” the young man said.

  Locklear looked around the room he found himself in. There were track marks on the ground where he had been pulled through the straw and left to lie on the cold hard ground beneath him. The walls were lined with square hay bales and he could smell chicken shit.

  “I’m in the barn?” Locklear asked as he tried to stand. The room spun and he fell forward into the young man’s arms.

  Locklear noticed a small handle on the floor behind the young guy. He disentangled himself and crawled on his knees towards it.

  “Wait now!” the kid said. “Please, don’t make noise. I’m going to get you out of here before he wakes up.”

  “Before who wakes up?” Locklear rubbed his temples to try to reduce the sharp pain in his head.

  “Looks-Twice.”

  Locklear remembered the man coming at him at the front door of the house and hitting him. What he couldn’t understand was why he was still alive, why Looks-Twice had not finished him off.

  “Where’s my hat?” he asked suddenly as though his Stetson mattered at this very moment in time.

  The kid lifted it from the dusty ground behind Locklear, blew it clean and handed it to him.

  “You’re Jim Hunter,” Locklear said. “I’ve been looking for you. I know you’re a friend of Tommy Rosenberg. I want to know what the two of you were doing on that dig.”

  “Look, we can talk about that some other time. I begged Looks-Twice to get you out of here but he became really angry. I took him into the house to get him some medication but he has these blackouts and fell down on the kitchen floor. You have about ten or fifteen minutes before he comes to.”

  Locklear lifted the handle of the trapdoor which led down to a squat basement.

  “Where’s my phone?” he asked.

  “Looks-Twice took it. He smashed it up.”

  “Give me your phone. I need to use its torch to look down here.”

  “Please don’t look down there. It’s better that you walk away now while you still can. I’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt you.”

  “Give me that goddamn phone!” Locklear barked.

  Hunter handed over his phone and hung his head. Locklear shone its light down into the space which was nothing more than a dirt-floored shallow crawl space about three feet beneath the foundation of the barn. In it he saw several Native American artefacts and, if he was right, among the artefacts was the Native American Fertility figure Carter said was stolen during the dig.

  “You stole that fertility figure from the dig here?”

  “I did not steal them. These are our sacred things. I took back what belonged to my people. We would prefer to bury them back in the earth where our ancestors placed them but, when we did that before, the professor returned with his team and dug them up again. Please, I am asking you to just go and forget what you saw. They should not be put in a museum or sold to the highest bidder but placed where our ancestors intended them to be.”

  “Intended! Is this what INTENT means? That there was an agreed intent for people provided with consent for digs to return those items to their owners but they never did and, in fact, sold them?”

  “Yes. And it means our INTENT is to get those items back whatever the personal cost to us.”

  Locklear looked at the handsome youth and the passion in his dark-brown eyes.

  “Jim, you’re a law student. If you’re charged with the theft of these items, you know that you’ll probably go to prison. That will finish any hope you have of using your education to help your people. Think about this.”

  “Please, you need to get you out of here before Looks-Twice wakes.”

  “The hell I will. I’m taking him in for questioning and I’m taking these artefacts with us.”

  Hunter stood to his full height. Locklear stood and faced him. The two men were about the same height but Hunter was younger, and stronger.

  “I don’t want to fight you,” Locklear began as he inched toward the young Native.

  He was interrupted by the sound of police sirens wailing onto the lot. He moved to the barn door, followed closely by Hunter.

  Two policemen got out of the car and Locklear walked towards them.

  “Looks-Twice is passed out on the floor inside the house. He assaulted me,” Locklear told local cops Goulden and Clark. He left out the part about the missing artefacts, for now.

  The cops entered Looks-Twice’s house and pulled the man out in handcuffs.

  Locklear walked across the dusty site.

  “Mind if I speak with him alone?”

  Clark nodded and he and Goulden walked casually back to their car.

  Looks-Twice gave Locklear a look of disdain and spat in his face.

  Locklear wiped his face and stared the man down.

  “This kid, you’ve got him involved in something that’s way over his head,” he said. “He’s got a good future. Don’t take him down with you.”

  Looks-Twice stared at Jim Hunter.

  Locklear waved the kid over and the three of them stood in a circle.

  “What do you want?” Looks-Twice asked.

  “You go with the police. You say the kid had nothing to do with anything. I know that you thought you were doing right. All you’ve done is take back things that were taken from your own land so hopefully you’ll get off with probation.”

  “And for that?”

  Locklear indicated Hunter. “For that I convince the police to let you keep the artefacts that rightfully belong to you, and I don’t press charges for the assault. You agree to that and the kid tells me all he knows about who is buying the pieces. It’s not INTENT I’m after, Looks-Twice. I know your organisation is only trying to protect artefacts from being wrenched from their proper heritage. I’m trying to help you stop the people who ar
e taking those items in the first place. Hunter – I need you to come with me to meet Tommy Rosenberg off a flight that lands into Rapid City tomorrow morning at 9.00am. That’s the next step in this investigation. That’s how I think we can put an end to this.”

  Looks-Twice gave Locklear a cold hard stare while he considered the offer.

  “Let’s hope your white blood does not betray us.”

  Goulden and Clark strode over and took Looks-Twice to the police car.

  Before the old man got in, he turned to Locklear.

  “Half-breed?”

  Locklear reluctantly looked in Looks-Twice’s direction.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  Locklear shook his head.

  “Probably better that way,” Looks-Twice said.

  Goulden placed his hand on the old man’s head and pushed him into the car.

  The police car drove off and another car pulled into the site, followed by an ambulance.

  Eddie Grass climbed slowly out of his beaten-down vehicle as two paramedics made for Locklear and sat him on the steps of the ambulance to see to his wounds.

  Grass blew out and dug his hands into his pockets.

  “I spoke to Han. Seems that he phoned Looks-Twice and warned him that you’d be coming. He pleaded with him not to do you any harm or get himself into further serious trouble with the law. Guess Looks-Twice had other ideas.”

  Locklear sighed.

  Grass looked over at Hunter who now stood alone at the edge of the site.

  “That the kid you were looking for?” he asked.

  Locklear nodded.

  “His name is Paytah Little-Eagle, Locklear. Parents are dead – road accident when he was no more than three or four years old. Drunk driver killed them outright. Nobody here would know him as Jim Hunter. No wonder you couldn’t find him. I think he’s a distant relative of Looks-Twice.”

  Locklear beckoned for the young Native to come closer.

  “OK, Jim, or Paytah, you better get out of here but tomorrow at first light I’ll pick you up and we’re meeting that flight. If you don’t show up, I will find you and you will be charged with the theft of that fertility figure. Do you understand me?”

  “You’ve made yourself clear,” Hunter spat.

  “Where do you live?”

  Hunter hesitated. “I’ll be at the corner of Village and 18.”

  Locklear nodded as the ambulance crew continued to check him over.

  “You might have concussion. We’re taking you to hospital,” the ambulance man said.

  “No, you’re not,” Locklear replied.

  Grass touched Locklear’s arm.

  “Your trooper’s pretty worried about you. I’m picking her up this evening when she lands. Just go and get checked out. Then you can finish the investigation.”

  Locklear rubbed his throbbing head. “OK.”

  Chapter 26

  Locklear woke for the second time that day with someone standing over him. Mendoza was staring down at him with a worried expression on her face. Through the window beside his hospital bed he could see that night had fallen and he had slept for hours since his arrival in the small regional hospital.

  “Thank God you’re OK.”

  “It’s you who should be thanked. If you hadn’t phoned Grass who in turn phoned Han, no-one would have known I was on Looks-Twice’s isolated property. Right about now I expect I’d be in a shallow grave on his land.”

  “Seems like I saved your life twice?”

  “Huh?”

  “Remember, Beth Stoll, our weird case in Harrisonburg? She tried to shoot you? Mennonites? No?”

  Locklear stared blankly at Mendoza.

  “Jeez, sarge, if you’re pretending, stop it. You’re scaring me.”

  Locklear grinned and coughed. His left eye was black and swollen and a large purple bruise covered his cheek.

  “Seems like the old guy gave you a going-over. Can’t believe he did so much damage.”

  “He wasn’t that old, Mendoza, and he was strong. I didn’t see him coming. Simple as that.”

  Mendoza waited as Locklear told her about Han Pauls, about Looks-Twice and the coincidence that he had shot a young O’Brien when he served as a native cop in the area some years before, about Rosenberg and about Paytah Hunter’s reluctant agreement to go with him to the airport with Locklear to meet the young frequent flyer who Locklear hoped to make sing like a canary..

  Mendoza, in turn, told Locklear about the unused garbage chute in Holton’s apartment, about the will which essentially meant Amelia Hirsch would be no richer from Holton’s death and about Henschel’s carer Ardavan who had used her position to gain access to Holton’s apartment and ensure easy access for the person who planned to murder the mild-mannered professor.

  She left the part about the security camera at the pizzeria to last.

  “Hirsch and the albino?”

  “Your White Ghost,” Mendoza said.

  “Seems he’s been getting around. He came to Holton’s ex-partner’s apartment in DC armed. Had a tussle with a neighbour and fled. Horowitz has been living in fear ever since.”

  “And it was definitely them? You saw them clearly?”

  “Well, the albino guy is easy to identify even though his face isn’t really clear on the footage. The guy is huge with thick snow-white hair. I didn’t know exactly what Hirsch looked like so I googled her. She’s a five-foot, one-hundred-and-twelve-pound powerhouse who won medals for gymnastics in high school and college.”

  “Why two of them? Why not use one of them to take Holton out?”

  “I’ll tell you why. You see, Hirsch knew the front and sides of the building had security cameras so she couldn’t enter the building using either and a guy like our White Ghost, I mean, how hard would he be to find?”

  “Very hard, as it turns out, Mendoza. This guy has been giving us the run-around ever since Carter first mentioned him. But go on.”

  “Anyway, Hirsch knew that the back entrance had no cameras. She had keys to the basement and, once inside, she just needed the ghost guy to lift her up to the chute. She wore thick leather gloves to climb in over the serrated edge. Then she used suction cups to climb up the chute. Thankfully she left one of them behind. It’s with forensics now. Cops must have arrived on the scene sooner than she expected them to and she got sloppy.”

  “But the call to emergency services from Holton’s home. It was a man who made that call.”

  “Could have been a tape played by Hirsch while she was inside,” Mendoza offered.

  Locklear nodded as he digested the information.

  “You understand why I didn’t issue a warrant for their arrests?” she asked.

  Locklear inhaled. “Yes. Hirsch can’t be arrested because she has diplomatic immunity. There’s no way Benson would have touched that one. And the White Ghost, we don’t even know who he is.”

  “And, if we alerted Hirsch that we were on to her, our ghost friend would have disappeared, Tommy Rosenberg and Braff wouldn’t board their flights and we’d never solve this case.”

  “Sartre and his gang of thieves went to a lot of trouble to point the finger at INTENT. What I don’t understand is why Holton involved Carter and why Sartre worked hard to point the finger at him by planting evidence at his house.”

  Mendoza nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. At first I thought Sartre had deliberately implicated Carter in the theft at the lab to blackmail him and get Carter to do his dirty work like he did with Holton. But he could have got anyone to steal artefacts on digs. He didn’t need Carter for that. I think that Holton may have brought Carter to the site for his own safety in case Rosenberg tried anything. I think he feared for his life. Carter was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sartre seized the opportunity then and had us running in two directions at once, or at least he thought he did. I doubt he knew of our relationship to Carter and that we’d know he wasn’t guilty. He had to know we’d find out who INTENT were eventual
ly but he was free to transport and sell artefacts during the time it would take for us to figure it out. Who knows, perhaps whatever Braff and Rosenberg are bringing in tomorrow is the jewel in the crown. Their retirement pot.”

  “Yes, seems plausible,” Locklear replied.

  “There’s something else. O’Brien seemed to know all about Ardavan and her family. Seems he was tracking her movements. I couldn’t get any more out of him than that but, I don’t know, it’s been bothering me. Why would he have been doing that? Why her? What else does he know that he’s not saying?”

  “You think Benson had him track her?”

  “No. He said it’s a hobby for him. I told him I’d tell you what he was up to. He’ll be expecting you to question him.”

  Locklear thought about O’Brien’s moonlighting for a moment. Slowly, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and tried to untie the hospital gown which was secured at the back.

  “OK, I’ll get to him later. Help me,” he asked.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Back to the motel,” Locklear replied.

  “No, you’re not, sarge. You’re staying here overnight and tomorrow we’ll see how you are before we go chasing any more angry natives.”

  “I think I’m done pissing off the natives, Mendoza. I’ve moved my focus to Tommy Rosenberg and to whoever he is selling the artefacts to. You know Looks-Twice asked me today if I recognised him. I didn’t but it got me thinking ...”

  “About?”

  Locklear squirmed as he tried to loosen the gown from about him. “Mendoza, will you help get me out of this thing?” he snarled.

  Mendoza walked to the other side of the bed and began to untie the hospital gown’s cords. Locklear reached back and pulled the gown off to the front and reached out for his clothes.