Kawika decided to call his mother. He assured her he was safe, then asked to speak with his stepfather.
“Pat, do you know the U.S. Attorney for Eastern Washington?”
“Sure. Ernesto Gonzales. Ernesto Che, folks call him. Haven’t worked with him myself—he’s strictly a Fed, and they keep to themselves. Ernesto’s a Bush appointee, new guy in the post. I hear he’s good people. Why?”
“An assistant U.S. Attorney, Steven Kellogg—he was murdered.”
“Yeah, about five years ago. In Wenatchee, right? No indictments, no convictions. Feds never released names of suspects, of course, and they don’t tell us local prosecutors much. Case is still unsolved, I know that much.”
“Did you know this Steven Kellogg?”
“No, just knew he’d been killed. But Gonzales must’ve known him. Ernesto was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Spokane for dogs’ years. Hometown boy. Worked his way to the top.”
“Could you call him for me? Let him know I’ll be contacting him? I want to pick his brain about the Kellogg case. Might relate to mine.”
“Really? Wow, that would be something. I’ll call him first thing in the morning.”
“Thanks, Pat.”
“A pleasure, Sport.”
Patience shut down her computer and was ready to tell Kawika what she’d learned.
“Here’s the sequence,” she began, consulting her notes. “First, Fortunato was developing Fawn Ridge. The plan was to piggyback on the ski resort, but environmental groups challenged the ski resort’s water permits and won—unexpectedly, I guess. Right after that, Fortunato blew up the wintering shelter. The government announced an investigation. This Steven Kellogg was lead prosecutor.”
“Any mention of FBI agents?”
“No. FBI agents must avoid publicity, I guess. Anyway, Kellogg got the federal grand jury to indict Fortunato for destroying the wintering shelter. Lots of publicity. Then something happened: the government dropped charges against Fortunato. Case got dismissed. His development company pleaded guilty to making false statements, but that was it. Does that make sense?”
Kawika nodded. “It’s what the Feds do when they can’t nail you for anything else.”
“Well,” she continued, checking her notes. “Fortunato’s company filed for bankruptcy. Then a while later Kellogg got murdered. Fortunato must’ve been a prime suspect, right? Though probably they had other suspects too; Kellogg had been a prosecutor for a long time. No suspects named in the news coverage.”
“No hints from the Feds?” Kawika asked.
“Just cryptic remarks in the paper, like the FBI knows who did it, they’re getting the evidence together. No arrests, though. The murder case just sort of petered out, it seems. A few quotes from ‘sources close to the investigation.’ Like, ‘Sometimes you know who’s the killer but you can’t get the evidence you need.’ That sort of thing.”
“What evidence was missing, I wonder,” Kawika mused.
“I don’t know; no indication in the news. One more thing, though. A bunch of Seattle folks bought Fawn Ridge out of bankruptcy. All fifteen hundred acres. They gave it to the Methow Conservancy, the local land trust. The Conservancy preserved most of it as open space. But guess what? The Conservancy gave six hundred forty acres to Jimmy Jack and Madeline John.”
“That’s interesting,” Kawika said.
“Oh, and I should’ve mentioned, along the way Fortunato’s wife filed for divorce—Melissa Jane Fortunato, and she took back her maiden name, Melissa Jane Harding. That’s almost the only time Fortunato’s name turned up in the papers after Fawn Ridge went bankrupt.”
Later, in bed, they learned more. She’d been on top of him, rocking, her hands on his chest, when she whispered that she wanted to turn around.
“Oh,” he protested weakly. “Don’t get up, don’t get up.”
So she didn’t. Instead, she turned, carefully keeping him inside her. She settled down again, this time with her hands on his thighs, and rocked some more. As her excitement grew, she resumed the turn she’d interrupted, this time moving more quickly, with greater confidence, creating the unusual sensation of him twisting inside her, her twisting around him. Moments later, she collapsed against his chest, sweating, his arms embracing her quietly as their hearts raced.
“Now you know what a spinner is,” Kawika murmured.
“Now you do too,” she murmured in reply.
64On Fawn Ridge
“You walk good?” Jimmy Jack asked. They’d met at Madeline John’s antique shop at nine AM and driven in Jimmy’s pickup to the still undeveloped site of Fawn Ridge, the former Rattlesnake Ranch.
Kawika nodded. “Yeah, I walk good.”
“Okay,” said Jimmy Jack, setting out with long loping strides. They were climbing a grassy hill up to the ridge line. “We’ll walk along the ridge to the end of the property,” he said. “I’ll tell you about the old winterin’ shelter. That’s it, Hawaii. Nothin’ more. You got it?”
“Got it,” Kawika replied.
“You know anything about Indian reservations?”
“Not much.”
“This land we’re on? Part of a reservation once, the Moses Reservation. Named for Chief Moses. He wasn’t a Methow. The Methows, we never got a reservation. We got tucked under Moses’s wing, like lots of other Tribes. But his reservation was big enough for all of us—ran from Wenatchee up to Canada, and from the Okanogan River to the crest of the Cascades. Methow Valley was right in the middle.”
“But there’s no reservation here now, right?”
“You see any casinos?”
“No. But I might have missed one.”
Jimmy smiled grudgingly.
“Secretary of Interior, way back then, he promised Moses the reservation would last as long as the Cascades. It lasted four years. Last time I looked, the Cascades were still here.”
“What happened?”
“First, Uncle Sam took back the whole north end of the reservation. Did it for some miners, up in the mountains. ’Course, the miners went bust, but Uncle Sam never returned that land to Moses. After he lost that chunk, Moses took his people south, waitin’ to see what happened next. Big mistake. What happened next was, the white man found gold in the Methow River. Silver too. Not up in the mountains—right in the Methow Valley. Uncle Sam tells Moses, ‘You’re not livin’ on that reservation I gave you, so I’m gonna take it back.’ Congress abolishes the entire
