White Ghost Ridge Page 8

  “If this is heaven, show me hell,” she quipped as she took in the row of three intoxicated men sitting on the pavement outside.

  There were no cars parked in the motel driveway which looked like it had become a permanent home to homeless people with addiction problems. One of the men, a Native American around fifty years of age, stood and moved towards Mendoza. His two older companions, one white and one Latino, smiled toothless grins as their friend pushed a coffee cup which contained a few nickels and a one-dollar coin into her face.

  “Spare a dollar and save your life,” he said with a laugh.

  Mendoza ignored him.

  Locklear opened the screen door and waited until his trooper was safely inside before glaring at the man.

  “Relax,” Mendoza said.

  “Neither of us are armed, remember?” Locklear replied.

  “He looks like a strong breeze would blow him over and I can handle myself, OK?”

  The pair stood just inside the small reception area which was furnished with a solid pine desk which ran the length of the room and could only be accessed through a small gate which was obviously locked from the inside. A lone woman was sitting on a red plastic chair behind the tall desk. Locklear could just about see the crown of her grey curled hair from where he stood. The tiny area inexplicably smelt of urine. Mendoza looked into the two visible corners, hoping the presence of a dog or cat would explain the nauseating aroma but she saw neither.

  “What a dump,” she whispered to Locklear.

  Together they approached the desk and leant on its stained ridge but the woman, who could probably barely make out the print she was reading through her thick glasses, did not look up from the glossy magazine she appeared to be lost in. Mendoza coughed.

  “Yes?” the woman said, without even glancing at the cop.

  “This is Detective Sergeant Locklear and I am Trooper Mendoza. We’re here to take a look around Albert Whitefeather’s room,” Mendoza said confidently.

  Locklear squirmed in his shoes. Neither he nor Mendoza had any jurisdiction in South Dakota and even though they had agreed earlier that pretending to be local cops would be their only way to find out about Whitefeather, it did not sit well with him.

  “You got ID?” the woman asked as she eyed the two plainclothes cops.

  Mendoza pulled out her ID and kept her finger over the Virginia PD seal. She thrust it forward.

  The woman squinted at the photo and looked at Mendoza. “What happened to the other cops who were here?” she asked. “Thought they’d finished up everything. And why aren’t you in uniform?”

  “We’re detectives, ma’am,” Mendoza replied. “We here to do follow-up. See if there’s anything they missed.”

  The woman nodded. She stood and earmarked the article she was reading. Locklear glanced at the heading which read ‘How to Change Your Life in Thirty Days’. He smiled to himself. It wouldn’t be hard to change your life in even one day if you ended up working in a dump like the motel he was standing in. Any change at all would surely improve the lot of the woman in front of him. Quitting was the first idea which came to his mind. He wondered briefly how she had ended up working alone at night in what was obviously a dangerous working environment.

  “I’m Norma Macken. I do the night shift here.”

  “How long have you worked here?” Locklear asked.

  “Oh, about twenty-five, twenty-six years,” she replied.

  Mendoza’s mouth opened in disbelief.

  “Raymond!” Norma suddenly screamed. “I’ll have to wait for my son to man the reception.” Dropping her voice to a low whisper, she added: “Can’t take your eyes off the desk, believe me.”

  “You live here as well?” Locklear asked.

  “Yes. Room and board and a small wage but, well, it suits us.”

  The three waited in silence for Raymond to appear. They could hear the muffled sounds of a single male voice behind a door which sat to one side of the reception desk. The words suddenly became clearer as the speaker began to shout – arguing about the quality of the shit and price he wanted for it.

  “Raymond!” Norma called out again nervously.

  The side door opened and a heavily bearded, overweight man of around thirty in an Iron Maiden T-shirt and pizza-stained shorts walked through, phone in hand.

  “I’m doing business. What the fuck are you calling me for?” he screamed.

  Mendoza sniffed the air which had suddenly become filled with the aroma of marijuana. It was a welcome change from the smell of urine which was beginning to make her feel sick.

  Locklear looked at the pair and immediately understood their history. He pictured a young Norma, abandoned by whatever cretin she’d had the misfortune to hook up with, roaming around with a young child and a desperate need to put an affordable roof over their heads and food on the table. This job offered her both. For some reason she had stayed. The reason, he figured, was Raymond. The man didn’t look like he had turned out so good. Norma, it seemed, would be handing out keys in the stinking lobby and feeding pizza to her lazy, dopehead son until she took her last breath.

  Norma blushed and nodded urgently towards the visitors.

  “These are cops,” she warned. “Detectives come about Albert.”

  Raymond took a few steps back, as though putting two feet between him and the cops might dampen the smell wafting towards them. Mendoza decided to use the opportunity in front of her to the fullest advantage.

  “Listen, we’re not interested in whatever you’re smoking or how much of it you happen to have stashed in your room. We want to see Whitefeather’s room, take a look through his stuff. Let us do that and we’ll be out of your hair. We won’t see any need to tell whoever owns this joint that you’re running a little sideline from the property. Will we, Detective Sergeant Locklear?”

  Locklear shook his head but did not speak.

  Mother and son exchanged looks.

  Norma nodded. “Thank you. But Albert’s room has been cleaned out. His stuff is here though, in lock-up. No-one came for it. The other cops didn’t seem interested in it. I didn’t have the heart to throw it out, Albert having fought for our country and all.”

  Locklear and Mendoza followed the woman through a series of doors behind the reception area while Raymond remained behind on guard. They waited while Norma pulled a large bunch of keys from a chain around her neck and unlocked a cage in a back room.

  “I keep these on me all the time. Even sleep with them. Can’t trust anyone these days,” she said, looking at Locklear as though she knew the man understood her, understood her life, her struggles and above all, her disappointments. A single tear welled up in her eyes. She took off her thick bifocals and wiped them roughly with her sleeve.

  “Raymond is a good boy,” she said, still looking at Locklear.

  “I’m sure he is,” Mendoza offered.

  Locklear looked away and focused his eyes on the cage which held only a bicycle with two flat tyres, two oil paintings and three cardboard boxes on top of a broken bureau.

  “That’s all there is,” she said as she lifted one of the paintings and admired the rural scenery. “He liked to paint. He was getting real good at it. Rest of the stuff is in those three boxes. Hard to think that’s what a life comes down to, isn’t it?”

  Mendoza opened one of the boxes and began leafing through its contents. “How come no-one has claimed it? Doesn’t Whitefeather have any family?”

  “He has a younger sister, Cindy. Geddis is her married name. She’s a teacher at the school on Columbus. He talked about her a lot.”

  “How well did you know him?” Locklear asked, breaking his silence which he could see had begun to make Norma nervous. He understood the woman and sensed that she preferred people who talked a lot. It filled the air and probably made her feel less lonely.

  “Fairly well. Albert was a nice man. He’d come into the reception at night to talk to me. Sometimes he’d bring me a coffee from the diner even though he co
uld hardly afford to feed himself. Albert was a sweet guy. I miss him.”

  “How long had he lived here?” Mendoza asked.

  “Oh, about five, maybe six years.”

  “He wasn’t married? Kids?”

  Norma shook her head.

  Mendoza lifted an envelope from the box and read it.

  “Why does it say Albert Mills?” she asked.

  Locklear took the envelope from Mendoza and read the name and address.

  “That’s from the army pension people. I phoned them and told them Albert was dead. Most of them Indians got a regular name and an Indian name which can change a few times during their lives during naming ceremonies.

  Mendoza looked at her boss. “Did you know that?” she asked.

  Locklear shook his head.

  “Was Albert from this town?” he asked.

  “Yes. He was born here. I don’t know exactly where. Far as I know both parents are passed on now.”

  “Did he ever have any visitors? His sister, did she ever come here?” Mendoza asked.

  “Albert lived with Cindy and her family for a couple of years when he got back from Iraq but it didn’t work out. He told me that until the war he had a normal life. He had a good job working for some antique place that restored furniture, paintings, that sort of thing. Had a good future ahead of him. After 9/11, he enlisted because he was a proud American. He wanted to defend his country, least that’s what he thought until he got to Iraq and saw what was really going on.”

  “What was going on?” Mendoza asked.

  Norma moved the second box and pulled Albert’s dog-tags from it.

  “Well, I’ll never know if some of it was in his head. He had a drink problem and he took a lot of painkillers. He was wounded in Iraq. Shot. Had two, maybe three operations but he didn’t get any better. He was in a lot of pain. Army sent him to lots of doctors but they didn’t help. He made complaints about what had gone on during the war. He wrote to Washington and to newspapers, he did everything he could to make the situation public but no-one would listen to him. When the army suggested a psychiatric evaluation, Albert willingly went to prove them wrong. He thought it would help his case. He went two or three times, told the psychiatrist what he’d experienced over there, what he saw. But the shrink said he was mentally ill, diagnosed him with paranoid-schizophrenia. After that, Albert broke off all ties with the army. He just kept going to the free clinic downtown for prescriptions for painkillers and he kept drinking. After a while his sister couldn’t have him at her house anymore. She’s got three little girls and she didn’t want them seeing that. Albert moved in here then. About four or five years ago, he started to come good. He got involved in AA, stopped drinking. He didn’t stop the pills though. I’d see him walk through the lot here sometimes and he’d look as though he was in so much pain that he could hardly move. He’d go back to his room, take a bunch of pills. Wouldn’t see him until the next day. Guess he couldn’t get through the night without them. He joined a Native American group and he got real interested in his heritage. He’d stop here sometimes at night on his way back from a meeting and tell me all about the Lakota history and how he was a proud Sioux. He changed his name to Albert Whitefeather which had been his family’s original name. He said the naming ceremony was a real proud day for him.”

  Mendoza glanced at her boss and noticed how engrossed he was in Albert’s story. The two men had a lot in common. A Native American heritage both had grown up knowing nothing about. They had both served in the army, had a history of alcoholism and lived solitary, lonely lives. She lifted a photo of a young Native American woman, a white man and a tall, handsome Native man with three small girls.

  “Is that Albert?” she asked, pointing at the Native American man.

  Norma nodded. “That was before he got that awful tattoo on his face.”

  Mendoza replaced the photo neatly on top of something flat inside the box. She glanced down and saw it was a small laptop. She lifted it out.

  “Can we take this? For evidence?” she asked.

  Norma blushed. “It was missing from his room when the cops searched it. I noticed it as soon as I let them in because it was always on the table in his room. He’d sit in the library most days looking things up. He had a real interest in history. I knew straight away that Raymond took it so I couldn’t say anything. You won’t tell, will you? He didn’t mean anything by it. He just loves computers, that’s all. I took it off him but by then the cops had finished up here so I just boxed it up with the rest of his stuff. I phoned his sister and left a message at her work to say come and get Albert’s stuff but she never came.”

  Mendoza put the laptop down and began rifling through the dead man’s things to check for anything else that might be useful.

  “Do you know the name of the group he joined or how we’d make contact with them?” Locklear asked.

  “No. Sorry. Is it important?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I think you’d be best speaking to his sister. Albert did say once that she was dead set against him becoming involved with them so I’m sure she knows where you’d find them. I don’t know why she didn’t want him joining though. He seemed so happy. Like he finally had a purpose, that he belonged somewhere.”

  “You know Albert died in Richmond – do you know why he went there or even how he afforded to fly there?” Locklear asked.

  Norma shrugged.

  “I’m sorry, no. He definitely wouldn’t have had money for flights or anything like that, but he did go away a lot. Sometimes he’d be missing for a few days. I never asked him about where he was when he’d get back. I figured it was to do with the group he’d joined. Last few days though before he went missing for good, he wasn’t himself. He was keeping to himself more. He seemed nervous. I told him someone had come here one night looking for him while he was away. The man tried to talk Raymond into letting him into Albert’s room. Ray refused and the man threatened him. When I described the man to Albert, he was shaking. I never seen him so upset.”

  “What did the man look like?”

  “Raymond said he looked like a ‘weird ghost dude’.” Norma smiled sadly. “My son has a way with words.”

  “So, very pale-skinned, blond?”

  “Guess so. Ray said he was really tall too.”

  “The man Carter saw at the dig site,” Mendoza said quietly to Locklear.

  He nodded and turned back to the woman.

  “You didn’t tell us what Albert thought was going on in Iraq,” he said.

  Norma placed Albert’s army dog-tags back in the cardboard box and closed it.

  “Albert said that some senior members of his unit were stealing Iraqi stuff and bringing them back to the US on army aircraft to sell illegally here.”

  “Stuff?” Locklear asked.

  “You know, museum stuff – valuable things. He said when he found out about it, his corporal sent him on what Albert called a ‘routine walk-through’ and he was shot.”

  “And he thought that was somehow the army’s fault?” Locklear asked incredulously.

  “Yes,” Norma added simply. “He was shot in the back.”

  Locklear waited for more.

  “So?” Mendoza asked.

  “By an American bullet.”

  Locklear endured a sleepless night in his strange bed which he already knew would only be home for a short time. The local newspaper he had pored over before he tried to sleep did not tire his busy mind as reading normally would. Articles recounting the hopeless situation many Native Americans found themselves in when they arrived in Rapid City scratched at his mind and hindered his attempts to sleep. The fruitless search for work and the cycle of poverty and homelessness haunted him as he tossed and turned in the uncomfortable, unfamiliar bed. The newspaper’s historical section only served to heighten his agitation until, with little chance of rest, he got up and stared out the long narrow window at traffic passing by the quiet motel.

  He thought about the investi
gation which he hoped would soon take them out of the city of his birth. He had not thought about how he might feel or if indeed he’d feel anything on his return to Rapid City, but he had not anticipated the unease he had felt during the short cab ride through the streets of the city. He had not thought about the anxiety that would rise up through him as he walked with Mendoza through some of the familiar streets, streets he had followed his confused mother around as she searched for something he could not see and she could not name.

  He went back to bed and tried to sleep again.

  At dawn, he got up, stretched out his sore back, dressed and went to Mendoza’s door. He heard some movement inside so he knocked lightly.

  The door opened immediately to a smiling Mendoza, again in her bathrobe.

  “Come on in.”

  Locklear stepped inside.

  On her bed sat Whitefeather’s old laptop.

  Locklear looked at its blank screen. “Find anything?”

  “No. Tried three times to get into it but couldn’t guess his password. It’s locked now. Only hope is O’Brien might be able to figure it out, but I doubt he could do it remotely.”

  “Can’t see O’Brien helping us, Mendoza. He doesn’t seem the helpful type.”

  Mendoza grinned. “Hang on, sarge. I’ve got something to tell you. I guess he cottoned on to the fact that I was up to something when I asked him to rush things through for me and he was listening in when Benson very publicly put me on desk duty. He’s a good deal more on our side than you think. As I was leaving to follow you out of the building, he called me and handed me a stick key and said, ‘Here’s the files you wanted’. I thought he’d forgotten that he’d already given me what little there was on Holton’s laptop on a key earlier. I thought nothing of it. You know as well as I do how weird he can be, so I just took the stick and put it into my pocket. I remembered it last night and decided I’d better put the info onto my own laptop. It wasn’t another copy of the emails from Whitefeather to Holton. There was only one file on it named ‘I never gave this to you’.”