Homicide My Own - Anne Argula [51]
I could have slept a little longer. I would not have minded an hour or two more of sleep. Up to me, I would have slept the rest of the day away, but at seven in the morning there was a rap on the door. Not a Frank or Angie rap. A rap lacking politeness. A rap I recognized even though I was still half asleep, having perfected the technique myself. A cop’s rap.
I sat up and gathered the bedspread around me. I was light in the head and may have been a little grogsick from last night’s beers and martinis.
“I’ll get it,” said Odd. He took the few steps to the door in his boxer shorts and t-shirt, and I looked at his legs. He had great legs, lightly feathered with silky blond hair, and an oval birthmark on the back side of his right knee. I remembered having noticed it before, during volleyball, when I played in the back row and Odd was in the front.
He opened the door. I was right about the kind of knock.
A sheriff’s deputy in a starched tan uniform, wearing bifocals in a set of Costco frames, stood on the porch. He was no spring chicken. He could have retired a couple years ago and opened up a security business, but he would have had to work too hard, and he would have had to leave the island. He looked like a guy taking it month by month now, any one of which might be a good time for his retirement dinner. He stayed lean, maybe abetted by the cigarettes he smoked. There was one in his shooting hand now.
Mother and child awoke too, and they were sitting up in bed, the blanket pulled to their necks. Nothing from the tethered Houser, who might have died in his sleep, for all I knew. For all I cared.
“Yes?” said Odd.
The deputy didn’t say anything at first. He was trying to process what he saw: two women in bed, another one on the davvy, a young guy in his skivvies.
“I’m Deputy Nascine, from the county,” he said at last. “I run the substation on the island. Everything okay here?”
“Everything’s fine here. Why?” said Odd.
“Some rumors going across the island,” he said, leaning into our cottage, craning his neck for a better look.
“What kind of rumors?”
“You the cop from Spokane?”
“Was that the rumor?”
Odd, who got along with everybody, did not like this guy on sight, I could tell, and I knew they would be at it in another minute.
“He’s one and I’m the other,” I said. “What can we do for you so early in the morning?”
He looked at his watch. It wasn’t early for him.
“My information was that you picked up a fugitive here on the island.”
“That’s right,” I said, “on tribal land.”
“A tribal fugitive?”
“Of course not. A white guy.”
“That fugitive should have been put in my custody.”
It looked like he’d step inside except for the fear that Odd might slam the door on his foot, because Odd was holding it that way.
“Whatever…I guess if you busted him he woulda, but you didn’t bust him. Anyway, he’s with us now,” I said, “like he’s supposed to be.”
“I think you miss my point, ma’am. I don’t know what the man has done, what crimes he may have committed on the island. Rules say he’s not your prisoner ‘til I hand him over, and somebody’s been hiding him from me.”
“Well, that sounds serious as a kidney stone, deputy, but my information tells me the Indians, according to their constitution, can keep a honky for twenty-four hours before turning him over to his rightful masters. That’s all that was done.”
“The Indian constitution is for Indians. Your boy’s not an Indian.” He took the last drag on his cigarette and flipped it out to the driveway. He’d already said all that he wanted to say to me. He directed his attention to Odd. “Shining Pony and that excuse for a police station don’t mean shit. I’d like to know who the fugitive is, what he done, and where he is right now.”
“I’m here,” called a frail voice from behind the counter, from the kitchen floor.
“Shaddup,” said I.
“I’m gonna have to come in here,” said the deputy.
“You’re gonna have to stay outside,” said Odd, taking a stronger grip on the door’s edge.
Gwen and Stacey weren