Homicide My Own - Anne Argula [17]
Since the lieutenant had fallen back into his silent mode, I bit into the hot greasy bread, and it really was a wonderful thing to have in your mouth. I knew I was going to eat the rest of it, which I would then have on my thighs.
“Are you eating something, talking to me?” asked the lieutenant.
“Sorry, Lieutenant. It’s Indian frybread. We’re at the chief’s house.”
He took another moment and said, “Maybe you should extend the chief a professional courtesy.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but what would that be?”
“Maybe you should help them with their murder case.”
“Excuse me? First of all, it isn’t really their case. It’s the Sheriff’s case, even though one of the two kids killed was an Indian, and it might have been a hate crime, in the days before they had that classification. Now that I think about it, what crime isn’t a hate crime? You got money and I don’t—I hate you.”
“Quinn, you’re bustin’ my balls.”
“Second, and sorry about that, they don’t want our help because nobody is working on the case. In their wisdom, they all have accepted that sometimes someone gets away with murder. And third, what would be the value of our professional courtesy since neither one of us knows jackshit about investigating a murder, even if it happened last night instead of thirty-three years ago.”
“But you said Gunderson could help them.”
“I said he thought he could solve the case, but that’s Odd. Odd might say he thought he could hold his breath for six minutes.”
“Can he do that?”
“It was just an example.”
“You say that Houser can’t travel much before tomorrow morning?”
“That’s affirm. He looks like shit on a clothesline.”
“Okay, then. Get a room, nothing too expensive. Keep your receipts. Keep close watch on Houser’s condition. Don’t let them give him up unless it looks like he’s cashin’ his check. Officially, as of now, you’re on loan to the chief there, help him with this murder. A kind of cross-cultural hands across the state sort of a deal.”
“Lieutenant, there ain’t no murder case, at least not that the chief has. You haven’t been listening. Is it because I’m a woman?”
“No, Quinn, it’s because you’re black.”
For the record, I am not black. Polish on my mother’s side, Irish on my father’s. About the time the Irish were getting out of the coal mines, the Polish were filling them up. My folks met in the change. The lieutenant was just cracking wise about discrimination in general.
“Where’s Gunderson been getting his information on the murder thing?”
“From the chief, but…”
“Well, there you have it.”
“Have what, for fuck’s sake?”
“Quinn, the mouth.”
“Sorry, but I am two minutes away from a conniption with the conniption fast gaining.”
“Let us review. And I’m taking notes. On this day we had a conversation. Substance being, Houser is suffering an intestinal disorder, the result of a self-inflicted bite. Your call is not to make him travel thusly. As your superior, I concur. So as to justify your staying over, apart from monitoring Houser, you request and I authorize a temporary duty assignment, that being to assist the reservation police in examining evidence relative to a crime committed upon one of their members at some time past. How’s that sound?”
Like overrefined bullshit that has lost its power to fertilize.
“That sounds just lovely, Lieutentant,” which due to the manner in which I said it conveyed the same message.
“Would you like me to check in?” I asked.
“Only if you can’t help yourself,” he answered.
8.
This particular tribe had come to accept casino gambling and the resale of fireworks, but they drew the line at hotel management, believing it was wrong to make a person pay for sleeping in your bed. The only overnight accommodations were on the white part of the island, The Tidewater Cottages, four tiny cottages in need of paint and repair, owned and managed by Frank and Angie Rupert, who met us at the driveway.