White Ghost Ridge Read online

  “What was in it?”

  Mendoza placed her laptop on the small dining table inside the door and opened the file.

  Locklear took the lone seat at the table. Mendoza stood behind him.

  “Holton’s bank statements?” he said as he scanned the page in front of him.

  “O’Brien obviously downloaded them from Holton’s laptop. Until a few months ago, nothing was amiss. There were a few international transfers from the UK – most likely from his mother. No large amounts. Usually around $2000-$3000 each time.”

  “And then?”

  “Then everything changes. The UK transfers keep coming but there are more of them and the amount being sent keeps increasing, up to $20,000 one time. Within a couple of days in each case, the money is gone from Holton’s account.”

  “Do we know where it went?”

  “No – cash withdrawal each time.”

  “That explains the cash in Holton’s closet.” He swung around to look at her. “Why do you think O’Brien is helping us, Mendoza? If he’s found out, he’ll probably lose his job.”

  “You’re suspicious of him?”

  “I’m suspicious of almost everyone. I need to know why he’s doing this.”

  Mendoza looked down at her clasped hands and reflected on her boss’s words.

  “I guess Kowalski, me and probably Carter are the only three people in the world that you trust.”

  Locklear made no reply.

  “Sarge, you’ve only known me and Carter a couple of years though I suppose you’ve known Kowalski best part of your life but what happened to everyone else? There must have been other people in your life? People you trusted, loved?”

  Locklear coughed nervously as he did each time anyone got too personal with him. He looked into Mendoza’s eyes and saw only sincerity in the huge brown pools.

  “I guess everyone else let me down. Or I let them down. Either way, it doesn’t matter anymore, Mendoza. Now, can we get on with the job?”

  Mendoza sighed. “Well, maybe O’Brien is helping because the missing artefacts are Native American? He’s part Native so I guess it bothered him.”

  Locklear thought about this for a moment and wondered if the Native American aspect to the case bothered him. He decided it didn’t. A case was a case. Someone was doing something wrong and it didn’t matter to him who they were or to whom they were doing it. He would find them and bring them to justice.

  “OK. We need to keep in contact with O’Brien. We’re on the outside now. He’s the only one who can get information for us.”

  “There’s more, sarge.” Mendoza leaned over Locklear’s shoulder to open another document on the laptop. He pulled back a little from the contact. “Look – O’Brien also included more information on Whitefeather’s death than I’d been able to grab before Benson called me into his office.”

  Locklear scanned the document which was lengthy and detailed. “Sum it up, Mendoza.”

  She went and sat on the bed and he turned around to face her.

  “Seems the cops haven’t ruled out suicide because Albert supposedly had mental-health problems. There was a witness at the scene, a Ms Mai Nguyen who was driving home from working late when she saw a man on the US1 Bridge, fighting with Whitefeather. They struggled and Nguyen said as she passed she saw the man lift Whitefeather up and throw him off the bridge.”

  “Throw him? The rail on that bridge must be five feet tall, maybe higher. How big was Albert?”

  “Autopsy report says he was 5ft 10, weighed about 160 pounds.”

  “Took a big man to do that. Any description?”

  Mendoza grinned. “Nguyen told cops who arrived at the scene that the man was very tall and that he was wearing a long dark coat with a hood. She said when she drove past him the man looked into her car but then took off. It was dusk but Nguyen said she could still see enough to say he was definitely white. She said he was extraordinarily pale and that he looked ...”

  “Like a ghost,” Locklear said, finishing her sentence.

  “Right. And there’s more. When cops came to Nguyen’s workplace to interview her the next day she suddenly couldn’t remember having given that description. She said she couldn’t remember what he looked like. She also said that it was possible that the man was trying to stop Whitefeather from jumping off the bridge. Two cops interviewed her and put on the sheet that the witness was shaking.”

  “So you think someone got to her?”

  “Yes. Someone you’ve already met. Nguyen works at the University of Richmond. She’s the Dean’s private secretary. Gerard Sartre sat beside her throughout the interview, holding her hand.”

  “Was it our friends Diaz and Hill who interviewed her?”” Locklear asked.

  Mendoza nodded.

  “OK. I’d better give O’Brien a call,” Locklear said.

  “No, he doesn’t like you. I’ll do it.”

  “Not that I care, Mendoza, but why exactly does O’Brien not like me?”

  Mendoza laughed, picking up a hairbrush and pulling it through her unruly hair. “Maybe because of the way you speak to him?”

  “I speak to everyone that way.”

  “Doesn’t mean it doesn’t piss him off, sarge. I think you and O’Brien are more alike than you think. One-worded answers to open-ended questions. The things that annoy you about him are exactly the reasons I think he doesn’t like you. Two peas in a pod.”

  Locklear frowned and stood.

  “Well, sarge, what’s next?”

  “We’re going to pay a visit to Whitefeather’s sister, Cindy. See if she knows any ghosts.”

  Chapter 9

  The car Locklear and Mendoza hired was inconspicuous enough to blend into the neighbourhood where Cindy Geddis worked as a pre-school teacher on the other side of Rapid City. The eight-year-old tan-coloured Chevrolet Impala looked like the local car of choice and Locklear noticed several similar albeit slightly older models pass as they made their way to their destination. They drove in silence along Joseph Street past a long line of cheap houses, thrift food stores and so many small Indian casinos that Locklear lost count. Small churches stood side by side with gambling houses, liquor stores and homeless shelters. They pulled into a gas station beside the Save a Lot store and watched two intoxicated men fight on the pavement. Locklear, unable to watch the men fight over a cheap bottle of wine, fixed his eyes to the ground as he put the gas-tank cap on.

  “You OK?” Mendoza asked as she returned from the store with two fresh coffees.

  “Yeah.”

  Locklear drove back onto Joseph Street and followed straight for three miles until he reached the turn for East Patrick Street. He took a right over the railway line and drove past a huge billboard advertising Mount Rushmore with the slogan Do Big Things.

  “Oh, if we have time, I’ve got to see that. Might never be back this way again,” Mendoza said.

  Locklear snorted.

  “What?”

  “You want to go to see the place white people carved their faces into a granite mountain to show their dominance over the aboriginal population who held those hills sacred?”

  Mendoza thought for a moment. “I guess not. Jeez, sarge, I had no idea you felt that way ... that you ... well ... cared.”

  Locklear tightened his grip on the wheel as he passed almost identical stores to those on Joseph Street except Patrick Street had even more casinos and fewer churches than those he had counted on Joseph.

  “I don’t,” he said. “It’s just ... wrong.”

  “Take the next left,” Mendoza said as she turned off the route planner on her phone.

  Locklear pulled into the huge parking lot which was thronged with cars as parents dropped their children off to the large, two-storey school.

  “There must be a hundred kids here and even more parents,” Mendoza said. “How are we going to find her in this crowd? We can’t go inside and ask, can we?”

  “No. Best we can hope for is to get her attention in the parking lo
t. See if she’ll talk to us.”

  They sat in silence as they looked out for the Native American woman they’d seen in the photo in Whitefeather’s sad cardboard box. Three Native American women passed right by the car but were older and looked like they were dropping their grandchildren off for the day. One woman matching Cindy Geddis’s age and appearance could be seen parking a blue Toyota on the far side of the lot but when she got out of the car she ushered two boys and not three girls inside. When the children were safely inside, she drove off at speed, obviously late for whatever job awaited her.

  It took another eleven minutes for the crowd to fade until only four adults remained in the parking lot. Three women and one man. Two of the women were white and were attempting to herd the remaining smaller children into a line-up in front of the main door. The man had his back to Locklear’s car and was carrying a little girl. In front of him and obscured from view was a woman who was much smaller than him. The only view Locklear could get of her was the faint outline of a green skirt blowing in the early-morning breeze. From the distant view Locklear had, the man appeared to be white but the child in his arms whose face was partially obscured by the man’s shoulder, looked Native. Locklear waited a while longer but the pair seemed to be lost in conversation.

  “Move,” Locklear said aloud as he waited for the man to step aside and give him a view of the woman.

  Another moment passed and a shrill bell rang out across the lot. The man leant forward and kissed the woman. He stepped back, giving Locklear a good enough view to confirm that the woman was Whitefeather’s sister. The man handed the child to her and got into his car. As he drove away, Cindy Geddis was still standing in the lot, smiling and waving with the child in her arms.

  “I think I should talk to her on my own, sarge.”

  “Why?”

  “I just have a feeling she’ll be more comfortable talking to me.”

  Locklear shrugged and leaned his sore back into the seat.

  “OK.”

  Mendoza opened the door and moved swiftly across the lot. She took out her badge and was flashing it before Locklear had a chance to remind her to take a gentle approach. He watched as the smile faded from Geddis’s face. Whitefeather’s sister stared at the badge and then glared at its owner. Mendoza started to deliver whatever speech she had rehearsed and Locklear wished he was close enough to hear but already knew the interview was not going to go well. He watched as the woman asked one of the two remaining teachers to take her child into the school. Once alone, Geddis placed her hands firmly on her hips and glowered at Mendoza.

  Mendoza apparently kept to her script, no doubt trying to explain why she was there and how the murder of Alec Holton in Richmond more than seventeen hundred miles away had led to her brother and subsequently to her. He watched as the woman spoke. Geddis’s anger was obvious as she waved her arms about. Mendoza, unperturbed, persisted. She interrupted Geddis and continued to talk. Geddis seemed to soften but only a little. She spoke some more and Locklear wondered at what point Mendoza would feel it was OK for him to join in. He waited for her signal and continued to watch as Mendoza moved a little toward the woman and put her hand on her shoulder. The woman began to weep. Mendoza comforted her and kept talking. Geddis softened some more and start talking again. She seemed to be giving Mendoza information that might be useful, judging by the fact that Mendoza took a notebook out of the back pocket of her mannish trousers and wrote some notes as she nodded sympathetically. He waited some more but the two women seemed to have a lot to discuss so he tapped on the dashboard but did not take his eyes off the pair.

  When Mendoza finally turned in his direction, he watched as she pointed towards the car and, obviously, to him. Geddis raised her hand to her eyes to block out the sun and get a good look at the man Mendoza had obviously introduced as her sergeant. Locklear got out of the car but, as he stepped forward to join them, something in the woman’s face made him freeze. Cindy Geddis’s mouth turned into an O. Her eyes opened wide and she turned her head from side to side so slightly that Locklear might have missed it had he not been so fixated on her expression. Cindy Geddis was scared. Scared of him. Geddis turned her face to Mendoza and said something. A short sentence. No more than three or four words. Then she disappeared into the building.

  Mendoza turned again and stared at Locklear with an expression of confusion on her face. She looked down at her notebook, flipped its cover over and shoved it roughly into the back pocket of her pants. She walked to the car and got into the passenger seat.

  Locklear climbed back in. “What the hell happened?” he barked.

  Mendoza looked at her boss and tried to formulate her sentence.

  “Well?” Locklear growled. Geddis was their only lead. Without her, they might as well pack up and fly back to Richmond and accept that Carter was going to prison for a very long time. “Mendoza, speak, what did she say, just there, just before she took off? The rest you can tell me later.”

  “She said ‘It’s not possible’.”

  “What did she mean? What’s not possible?”

  “You, sarge. What she meant was you’re not possible. Earlier you said let’s go and see if Cindy Geddis knows any ghosts? Well, looks like it’s you, sarge. You’re the ghost.”

  Locklear and Mendoza sat in the diner across from their motel and ordered a late breakfast. Locklear moved his pancakes around the plate, trying to make sense of Geddis’s reaction towards him. He came up with nothing and waited for Mendoza to finish her huge bacon sandwich. He gulped down the last of his strong bitter coffee and waited.

  “So, you have absolutely no idea why Cindy looked at you that way?” Mendoza asked through a mouthful of bread and bacon.

  “None.”

  “Looked to me like she recognised you.”

  Locklear snorted. “How could she? She would have been a small child when I last lived in this town, if she was even born at all. And I think we can take it I’ve changed a bit in the last thirty-plus years?”

  “I guess, sarge,” Mendoza said with a smile.

  Locklear ordered more coffee and listened as Mendoza recounted Cindy Geddis’s story of Albert Whitefeather’s descent into an obsession that was to cost him his life. He learnt that Albert and Cindy’s parents had come from the Pine Ridge reservation to settle in Rapid City in the hope of a more prosperous life. Cindy said that her parents had not been political and had wanted only two things for their children – education and stability which the Native American couple found in the then bustling town of Rapid City. Both worked hard to buy their own home: Albert Mills Senior had been employed as a wood-turner and his wife, Catherine, worked as a cook in a local diner. Neither of Whitefeather’s parents had experienced a Native American upbringing, being forcibly taken from their parents to be educated in Christian-run boarding schools in much the same way as their parents had been before them. Mills Senior did not drink alcohol as he had seen the destruction it had visited on his community and the young couple wanted to distance themselves from their past and, by default, from their community. When the pair married they left Pine Ridge for good, visiting only on occasional holidays or to attend the funerals of relatives. Both of their children were born in Rapid City and Cindy said she had received a conventional upbringing in which their Native American heritage was rarely discussed. Both she and her brother were raised as Catholics and attended local state schools. When their parents died, Albert was already working in Sioux City and Cindy had married. Albert, she said, returned from Iraq a broken and damaged man, both physically and emotionally. She believed his story of stolen Iraqi artefacts and also believed that when he reported this a member of his own unit shot him.

  Locklear, immersed in the story, had a question. “If that’s true, why didn’t they finish him off? Why let him live to tell the tale?”

  “Cindy said when Albert was shot, he remembered lying on the ground, face down. He heard feet approaching him and prepared himself for death. Next thing he heard shouting
. Then two of his buddies were pulling him by the arms towards safety. He heard his commander shouting for them to desist and leave the private where he lay. They ignored him and dragged Whitefeather to safety. He was taken to their makeshift hospital and I guess, once he was there, there were too many people around him. Army couldn’t risk killing him then. The bullet was removed from his spine and he was flown back to the US as soon as he was strong enough.”

  “Did you happen to get the names of his buddies?”

  “Sure did. Private Patrick Lewis and Private Sandra Torres. Both now civilians. Lewis runs a bait-and-tackle store in Sioux City. As far as Cindy knows, Torres moves around a lot but she’s also originally from Sioux City. Lewis might know where we can find her.”

  “What else?”

  “When Albert returned to the US he needed two more surgeries on his back. Neither were successful and he became dependant on painkillers. He couldn’t get back to his old job which he had loved. With nothing else to do all day, he began writing to Washington about the stolen artefacts. His letters were ignored. Then he started writing to newspapers. He got some exposure but mostly local rags looking for seedy stories. Army began to put the squeeze on him. Cindy said twice they stopped paying his disability pension, only reinstating it when a shrink said Albert was mentally ill. She reckons that’s what they wanted. If they couldn’t kill him, they had to discredit him. Make people think he was crazy. Albert started to drink and his behaviour resulted in tensions in Cindy’s marriage. Her husband wanted him out. She kept trying to keep the peace. She said he became obsessed with stolen artefacts from around the world, spent all day on his computer. By the way, I have his password. Thankfully I got it off her before she locked onto your scary face! He began joining anti-war protests. Actually, he joined any protest group he could find. But, and this is key, the only Native American group he joined was the Pine Ridge Native American rights group and they’re legit, sarge. I told Cindy that the motel manager said Cindy hadn’t wanted Albert joining these groups but she said she had no problem with Albert joining PRNA. It’s a small group which is part of a chain of sister-groups all over America and Albert mostly attended meetings in Rapid City. Their aim is to gain equal rights for Native Americans. They lobby the government to honour treaties by returning land and Native American artefacts to their respective tribes. But she went on to tell me that, after joining the group, Albert became acquainted with more radicalised Native Americans although she never knew who they were or anything really about them. Two things happened to send Cindy over the edge. Firstly, Albert was arrested for throwing a stone through the Dean’s window in the University of South Dakota.”