Homicide My Own - Anne Argula [56]
As we drank our coffee and waited for our pancakes, I leaned toward Odd and said, “Putting aside what we got waiting back in the Honeymoon Cottage, and what we got waiting back in Spokane, as I see it here, we got two possibilities.”
“Both long shots, I’m guessing,” he said.
“Camilia Two Trees Nascine knows everything and is so weary of the burden and so sick of a lifetime with Deputy Bob that she’ll be willing to spill the beans, and he’ll do us the great favor of eating his service revolver…”
“Or?”
“Or you do a face-off with Nascine. That is, Jeannie does a face-off with Nascine. Scare the wits out of him until he confesses.”
“He doesn’t scare easy.”
“Hell he doesn’t. He was scared when he came to the cottage this morning. He kept looking at you like at a ghost.”
“Is that what I am, Quinn?”
Ghostly stuff was about him, for sure.
“No, you’re flesh and bones, kid, the physical part of you is.”
“The physical part?”
“The other stuff…I’m still sorting it out. It’s like candles.”
“What’s like candles?”
I was looking for something that made sense, something that we could grasp.
“When a candle burns down, and you pass the flame to a new one, you get a new candle, but what about the flame? It’s the same flame that used to be on the old candle, ain’t? And that flame can pass from candle to candle, thousands of times, as many times as you have candles. Size of the candle doesn’t matter, nor the color, whether it’s a beautiful candle or a cheesy one…one dying candle lights two new ones, ain’t? Two from one. Ten from one.”
That’s how I finally did the math on this thing.
“I guess so.”
“That’s the way I’m sorting it out. That’s something I can understand, a flame, passed from one candle to another, forever.”
“That’s nice, Quinn.”
“Look, we’re cops, okay? We’re gathering evidence. I don’t care where it’s coming from if it nails the perp. We can work all that out later.”
“Right.”
“You’re you and only you, but your light goes way back, and that last glow of light wants to make itself known. I mean, maybe that’s the reason you were born, in Spokane…”
“I always hated Spokane.”
“That don’t matter. You were born there, to become a cop, to chase after Houser, the pedophile, to this island where the person you used to be lived and was murdered, so that person can face her murderer and bring him down.”
“So what are you doing here?”
“Me? I got the mouth. Left to yourself, you wouldn’t say boo.”
“Maybe that candle lit both of us.”
“Yeah, it’s a pretty thought, kid, but my light is sixteen years older than yours. If I did have a past life, it was probably as a peasant running away from some Cossack with a hard-on.”
The door opened and once again everyone turned. It was Chief Shining Pony and under his arm was tucked a white leatherette yearbook, Class of 1967. He slid into the booth next to Odd and ordered a cup of coffee.
He put the yearbook on the table but didn’t open it. Odd couldn’t take his eyes off it.
“I put out the word,” the chief said, “that you’re still here doing something for me.”
“So the heat’s off, as far as the county is concerned?” I said.
“You wish. Nascine always feels that if anybody’s gonna do something for me it ought to be him. He’ll still harrass you, but get yourself to tribal land if he does, that’ll give you some protection.”
“Nascine did it,” I said. “I’ll bet the farm on that. Ain’t, Odd?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Even if he did,” said the chief, “the only evidence we have is that bruise on Jeannie’s leg that may or may not match a police baton. It might match the barrel of the shotgun.”
“Wait a minute…if Jeannie ran from the car…and Nascine brought her down with a baton to the back of the knee…and shot her…and then put her back in the car…why in the hell would he do that?…but that’s not my point.”
“What is your point?”
“My point is he came into physical contact with her when he picked her up and put her into the car again, which opens