White Ghost Ridge Read online

  Mendoza could hear movement behind her. She could feel her heart quicken and wondered what was taking their back-up so long.

  “I guess ... I guess you can hear very well?”

  “Bingo!”

  “I ... also think ...” Mendoza began, stalling for time.

  “No, that’s enough chat for now, honey, because I’m just going to shoot your friend in the head.”

  Locklear leapt up and charged at the man from the side, ramming him into the wall. They fell to the ground and began to tussle. Mendoza raised her gun and looked behind to see an old man hobbling in her direction with a firearm in his hand.

  “Gun,” he demanded.

  “Gun?” Mendoza said.

  “Gun.”

  “OK,” she said as she pretended to be about to throw the gun in his direction – but she twisted and, as she threw herself on the ground, fired two shots into the old man’s leg. He fell down and was still. Blood oozed from his leg and he groaned quietly.

  Mendoza ran to where Locklear continued to wrestle with the white-haired man on the ground.

  “Shoot him!” Locklear shouted as he tried to gain control.

  Mendoza lifted her gun but the man kept pulling Locklear on top of him, blocking Mendoza’s aim.

  “Shoot him!”

  “I’m trying! I’ll hit you!” she shouted.

  Locklear saw his gun lying on the ground beside him. The albino reached forward to grab it but Locklear got there first and hammered two blows into the man’s temple, knocking him unconscious.

  Locklear stood up, gasping, as Mendoza ran to his side.

  The sounds of police sirens screamed outside.

  Locklear and Mendoza stood over the unconscious man and took in his unusual features. The man’s snow-white hair and milky-pale skin were expected given his condition but it was his features that led Locklear and Mendoza to stare down at him in shock. His thick hair was the same length as Locklear’s and he shared the same high cheekbones and strong jawline as the detective sergeant. His broad face and high furrowed brow also mirrored Locklear’s face. He also shared the same full, albeit paler, lips and his thick white eyebrows were the same shape as Locklear’s jet-black brows.

  “Jeez, sarge! He’s you!” she gasped as police rushed into the warehouse, two paramedics following more cautiously behind them.

  She reached into the man’s trouser pocket and lifted his wallet.

  “Samuel Olsen,” she said aloud as she read the man’s ID. “He turned 58 years old in March.”

  “That means he was born three months before me,” Locklear said.

  In the middle of the aisle, a cop stood over the old man Mendoza shot while paramedics saw to his wounds.

  Mendoza walked to where the old man lay in a pool of blood.

  The cop was holding a wallet.

  “Did you take some ID?” Mendoza asked urgently.

  “Henry Olsen,” the cop replied.

  “He took two to the knee,” one of the paramedics said.

  She squatted next to the old man. “Sir?” she said.

  The man’s eyes blinked but he did not open them.

  “Sir?” she repeated.

  The old man opened his eyes and looked at Mendoza as she focused on the strong features he shared with the huge man who still lay unconscious at Locklear feet’s, and with Locklear himself.

  “Is Samuel Olsen your son?” she asked.

  “Yes. Is he OK?” the old man whispered.

  “Sir, do you have any other children?” she asked as the paramedics lifted him onto a stretcher.

  An oxygen mask was placed over his face.

  “Wait!” Mendoza said to the paramedics who glared at her.

  “We’ve got to get him to a hospital. You can ask your questions later.”

  Mendoza turned to look at her boss. She walked slowly back to him where another paramedic attended to Olsen Junior.

  “Well, sarge. Seems like your suspicions were right. I think you just knocked out your brother and I think I just shot your father.”

  Chapter 29

  In the waiting area of Rapid City’s regional hospital, Locklear and Mendoza waited for two hours to hear how the two Olsen men were faring. Wilson, the senior cop who had led the back-up at the warehouse, came to the doorway.

  “The old man is out of surgery. It’ll be a while before we can speak to him. His son is fine. Concussion. He’ll be kept here overnight and then transferred into police custody. The warehouse contained artefacts from all over the world. They’ve been taken to a secure location. We won’t know if they are replicas until specialists can study them but the captain has contacted the FBI. They’ll be taking over the case.”

  “Has the son said anything?” Mendoza asked.

  “Won’t talk. Wants to speak to his lawyer.”

  “Braff?”

  “We found him hiding in a vault upstairs. He had six wooden carvings with him, possibly Egyptian. Captain contacted the consulate who contacted the museums there and sent through a photo. The curator said there are twelve carvings in all and they are priceless, thought to be around four thousand years old and they’re definitely where they are supposed to be – in a locked case with security cameras trained on them. Guess the ones Braff had must be fakes.”

  Locklear, who had hardly spoken since they arrived at the hospital, raised his weary bones from his seat.

  “The ones in the museum are fake. Tell them to check again. Tell them to check their security footage again. They were most likely swapped by a senior staff member at night when the museum was closed. It will be someone in a position of trust who had access to all areas.”

  “Will do,” Wilson said as he left the room.

  “I phoned Paytah and told him to set Tommy loose,” Mendoza said. “He said he’d drop him in the middle of Badlands National Park. Said it’ll take the city boy at least five hours to get to the main roadway – if he ever finds his way back to civilisation, that is.” She grinned.

  “I guess young Rosenberg was carrying the other six carvings?” Locklear asked.

  “Yeah. Paytah dropped them into the station, marked for Wilson’s attention like I told him to. He gave the desk clerk your car keys and walked away.”

  “Good. Let’s hope Paytah has the sense to lie low now for a few days until this blows over.”

  “You want to talk about your half-brother and your father?”

  “I don’t know they are for sure!” Locklear barked.

  Mendoza flinched. “Sarge –”

  “OK, I’m sorry. I guess it seems that way but I really wish it wasn’t. What I was hoping to find, if anything, would have been ...”

  “Would have been what?”

  Locklear looked at his shoes and inhaled. He did not raise his eyes to his trooper.

  He swallowed. “Would have been my Native family.”

  “Do you want me to talk to Olsen? See what I can find out?”

  Locklear shook his head. “No,” he said quietly.

  “What about Looks-Twice? He must know something. Couldn’t you just ask him?”

  “I remembered something, Mendoza ... something that happened a long time ago.”

  “What?”

  Locklear inhaled. “I’ll tell you another time.”

  Mendoza put her arms around her boss and hugged him.

  “I’m sorry it didn’t turn out better for you, but we solved the case. Braff will rat Hirsch, Sartre, the Olsens and the Rosenbergs out. INTENT’s work will be finished. And more important than anything, Carter will be cleared.” She loosened her embrace.

  “There are still loose ends, Mendoza. This won’t stop INTENT because whoever is masterminding the theft of artefacts around the world will find willing replacements for Hirsch and the Rosenbergs. But you’re right, it will clear Carter and that’s what we set out to do. The rest will be down to the FBI and how it handles the case from here.”

  Mendoza’s phone rang. She moved into the corridor and put her f
inger in her ear as she tried to hear the voice of a long-distance caller. Locklear watched from the glass wall of the waiting room as tears welled in his trooper’s eyes. He followed and stood behind her.

  “OK, tell Mom I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she said as she ended the call.

  Locklear turned Mendoza around to face him.

  “That was my brother, Diego. Grandma died a couple of hours ago. Mom was trying to call me but she couldn’t get through. The funeral won’t be for a few days. Diego is teaching at an art college all summer in Europe so he’s not going to be able to get there. My mom really needs me.”

  “Go. You need to be with your family now.”

  “But ... what about you?”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll see you back in Richmond.”

  As Mendoza slipped from view Locklear sank back in his seat. He brought all of the case’s loose ends to the forefront of his mind. He made a mental note of the what he needed to do to knit those loose ends together.

  He knew where his first stop would be and he was not looking forward to it.

  When his mind was clearer, Locklear stood on the periphery of the dwindling number of cops at Rapid City’s hospital and, knowing there was little else he could do there for the rest of the day, he exited the facility and walked the short distance to the police station to collect his car keys from the desk.

  From there he went to the precinct’s parking lot and got into his car. Then he drove south on Highway 41 for the one-and-a-half-hour journey to Pine Ridge Reservation. By the time he arrived on the outskirts of the town, the day was almost at an end and the cloudless sky had transformed into a deep midnight-blue canvas with long silvery lines on the horizon.

  When he reached the jail, he found that Daccota Looks-Twice had been moved to hospital following another blackout and according to Goulden he was not doing well. Locklear drove his car to the parking lot of the local hospital and made his way to the ward where Looks-Twice was handcuffed to the side of his hospital bed. The old Native was awake and was sitting up, staring into space. Locklear pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down.

  Looks-Twice stared at him with dark pools full of hatred.

  “I remember you,” Locklear began.

  Looks-Twice snorted.

  “You came to the trailer where I lived with my mother. I was about nine years old. I remember you both argued in your language. You were driving a yellow mustang. Who are you?”

  “I am Wachiwi’s brother.”

  “You’re my uncle?”

  “I’m not your uncle. Knowing that my blood runs through your veins makes me sick. I hate you. I’ve always hated you.”

  “I remember how you looked at me and what you called me. Paleface. Why did you hate me? I was just a child. What could I have possibly done to make you hate me?”

  “It’s not what you did to me but what you did to my sister.”

  “What did I do?”

  Looks-Twice did not answer. He looked out the window into the night sky and began to hum a tune to himself.

  “You wanted her to do something. Something she wouldn’t agree to,” Locklear said.

  Looks-Twice sneered.

  “What was it?” Locklear asked.

  “They say I’ve got a brain tumour. Soon my memories will be all gone and then I will die. You might never find out what we talked about.”

  “I want to know.”

  “You want? You got everything you wanted. You, Half-breed, got Wachiwi while her full-blood children were left with only me to fend for them.”

  “Her children? I don’t understand. My mother had other children? Where are they?”

  “Your brother is dead. Chaska died in my arms crying out for his mother and still she did not come. No-one wants to see you. You are hated among our people. The ancestors of your white father brought a curse on our village. Wachiwi brought his evil into our lives and it ruined her.”

  “Then Henry Olsen really is my father?”

  Looks-Twice spat on the ground of the hospital floor and turned his face away from Locklear.

  “Do not speak his name to me.”

  Locklear inhaled. “And the so-called White Ghost who killed Albert Whitefeather? He’s my brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “How? How did this happen?”

  “She was beautiful and what Olsen did to her ...” he whimpered.

  Locklear looked away as the realisation of how he may have been conceived dawned on him.

  “I didn’t ask to be born,” he said quietly.

  Looks-Twice did not answer.

  “I know that Paytah is a relation of yours. Is he also related to me? How does the kid fit into the picture?”

  Looks-Twice turned his face back to Locklear. His nostrils flared and his mouth set in a hard, angry line.

  “You stay away from Paytah. You keep your evil away from him. I will protect him for as long as there is breath left in my body.”

  “You got him involved in crime. He could have gone to jail. Is that what you want? You aren’t teaching him the ways of your people. Anger is not the Sioux way.”

  “How would you know what the Sioux way is? Did your mother teach you? I don’t think she did. She knew you were a curse for her, a punishment. That’s why the chief gave you your name on the day you were born.”

  “Where was that?”

  “In Pine Ridge.”

  “I was born here? When did my mother and I leave?”

  “The day after you were born. I took her away in my car. There was no other way.”

  Looks-Twice turned his eyes once more to the window of his stifling hospital room.

  “What happened? I deserve to know. I need to know. If you tell me, you won’t ever see me again. For your sister’s sake, tell me. Tell me what happened to my mother.”

  “Be careful what you wish for, Half-breed. Some things are best left unspoken.”

  Five minutes passed and still the old man did not speak. He pulled his wrinkled arm twice against the handcuffs that imprisoned him and began to hum. Locklear went to the door and gestured to the young cop to come inside.

  “Untie him, please,” he said. “I’ll take responsibility. You can tell Clark I ordered you to.”

  The young cop shrugged, unlocked the cuffs and walked quickly out of the room.

  “OK,” said Looks-Twice. “You want to know, so you will know and you will be sorry you ever asked me how you came to be.”

  Chapter 30

  Locklear listened as Looks-twice told him the story of his mother’s arranged marriage to the chief’s son when she was just sixteen years old and how she had agreed to the marriage to keep her father happy. The following year she gave birth to a daughter followed two years later by a son. The marriage had not been good for Wachiwi and she endured many years of suffering at the hands of her alcoholic husband who was more than three times her age and whose first wife had taken her own life to free herself from his cruelty. Looks-Twice told how his sister had begged their father to agree to her divorcing her husband but, despite this being possible in their tribe, he refused as he had given the chief his word and it could not be broken. Wachiwi was unhappy and used every opportunity she could to get away from the reservation by travelling to nearby towns to sell Native American rugs to craft-store owners. It was in Rapid City that she met Henry Olsen and the young beauty was taken in by his kindness and generosity to her. Olsen gave her good prices for her weaving which he displayed prominently in his craft store. He began to buy her clothes and gave her money to help look after her children. He treated her with what she understood then to be nothing more than brotherly kindness. Soon, though, she had fallen in love with him and she thought her father would release her from her marriage. Olsen began to give Wachiwi whiskey which he made her drink every time she crept off the reservation to see him. Slowly, she became dependant on him and the alcohol he brought which soothed her troubled thoughts and enveloped her in a false sense of happiness. She spent more an
d more time seeking him out, often walking long distances to find him. She began to neglect her children, leaving them in the care of her mother who had divorced her own abusive husband to live in a hut alone at the top of the valley. It was here that Wachiwi was to run for protection when she found herself pregnant by Olsen who she insisted had forced himself on her.

  Locklear held up his hand to Looks-Twice when he uttered those words. He inhaled and wondered if he could bear to hear any more of his mother’s sorrowful past.

  “I told you. Sometimes it is better not to know,” Looks-Twice said.

  “No. Go on.”

  “Wachiwi stayed in our mother’s hut trying to hide her pregnancy but word had spread among the tribe that she had lain down with a descendant of the White Ghost. Wachiwi tried to hide her shame and swore to the chief that the child inside her was her husband’s child. She prayed to her ancestors to make this true and she was not without hope because her husband had continued to inflict his cruelty on her in the same way he had done since the first night of their marriage.”

  “And then I was born?”

  “Three months before you were born Wachiwi had a dream that you came into the world with colourless eyes and white hair which stood high on your head. She screamed in the night and my mother said the dream would come true. Each night for a week my sister had the same dream. On the eight day she walked to the main road and hitched a ride to Rapid City in the hope that Henry Olsen would find it in his heart to help her. When she got there, he was not at his store. She went inside and saw a woman standing in the store with a new baby covered in one of Wachiwi’s weaves. Wachiwi asked the woman if she could see the baby and when she pulled back the shawl the baby had the same white hair as she had seen in the dream and skin whiter than milk. Wachiwi fainted and, when she came to, the woman was standing over her with some warm tea. She told my sister that she was Henry Olsen’s wife and that this was his son born only days before. Wachiwi had not known that he was married. He had deceived her. When Wachiwi told my mother that story she said the baby had pink eyes and every night until you were born she cried and worried about what it was that was growing inside her.”