Homicide My Own - Anne Argula [55]
Scenes were now replaying for Odd, and it was powerful testimony, but from an eye-witness who would never be allowed to take the stand. It was evidence still incomplete at best and legally useless. He remembered Nascine, Deputy Bob, coming to Jeannie’s school and making a scare presentation on the evils of marijuana.
“It was stupid. Even he couldn’t pretend that he believed all that crap. All the kids giggled through most of it. But he was young, younger than the teachers, and handsome in his tan uniform. Some of the girls had serious crushes on him. Later, he came back.”
When Deputy Bob returned to present a cautionary lesson on the consequences of drinking and driving, complete with gruesome audio and visual aids, a session for which he could find far more enthusiasm, and to which the students responded with far more horror, Jeannie made her move. The deputy, she decided, would guide her through that awkward, embarrassing, and dangerous passage into womanhood. She knew her own power and was sure he would not refuse her.
“It happened in his cabin…he was renting a bachelor’s cabin, inland from Point Sinister…”
“I know the place,” said Seth Shining Pony.
“They were toking on some weed he’d confiscated from somebody, and Jeannie got over her jitters, and everything he said was soothing…and so funny…and then her clothes were off…and it wasn’t all that painful, and she was okay with looking at him after. For a few days, then, she thought she must be in love with him. She wrote his initials all over her notebook…since she was underage and he was a cop she was afraid to write his name…but her girlfriend caught her at it, and she had to tell her everything.”
“Who was this girlfriend?” I asked. “What was her name?”
Odd shook his head. “I can see her…she’s shorter than I, straight dark hair…dark complexion…”
“Tribal?” asked the chief.
“Yes! She’s an Indian girl.”
The one thing Jeannie hadn’t anticipated was that Deputy Bob would fall in love with her. She was sure he was well experienced, and in fact he was, having had his reasonable share of high school beauties. But that was when he was in high school himself. Ten years later, all the cheering was over, and those girls disappeared into other lives. It was Jeannie who took dominion over his heart and mind.
“That’s when the trouble started…the anger…the jealousy when Jeannie started going out with James,” said Odd, and then he had to sit down. He was exhausted and could no longer follow the thread to its inevitable end.
“So Stacey was right,” I said. “Jeannie had to tell somebody. She told her friend. You have to remember that friend’s name, Odd.”
He tried, but nothing was coming.
The chief remembered. He said, “Camilia Two Trees.”
“Yes! It was Cammy! How could I forget her? We were best friends.”
“Is she still around?” I asked the chief, “Is she still on the island?”
“Yes, she’s still on the island. She’s married to Bob Nascine.”
That 9:45 ferry to “America,” as Deputy Nascine had so quaintly put it, had once again chugged off without us. We were having breakfast at the cafe, where old man Drinkwater was still holding down a stool at the counter and where all looked over their long stacks and bacon when we came in. They were looking at Odd. I recognized their expressions. Once in Spokane we had this transgender, girl to guy. He was built like a dumpster, with a hairy chest and a bushy beard and everyone who knew about the change would look at him and think: that man, that man used to be a woman.
The accommodating waitress, the young recovering alcoholic fry-cook, Drinkwater and his Indian chums, all the assorted palefaces, everybody knew by now, whether they believed it or not, that Jeannie, that fabled tragic beauty of thirty-three years ago, slain on our shores, was back,