She shut the door and the two stood in the miniscule foyer. A photograph of a group of Makahs huddled next to a whale carcass dominated the space. It wasn’t a particularly old image. Despite outcries from environmentalists and organizations like PETA, the Makahs had established their continuing right to hunt for whales off the coast of Washington. They had done so only once in modern times.
“Mrs. Bonners, I really only want to know one thing and I think you might be able to help me. Something has troubled me over the years.”
The woman regarded her visitor warily. “I guess you were probably traumatized too. Not as much as we were. But seeing Tommy Freeland right after he did what he did to our Anna Jo must have been bad. Like I said, not like us at all, but hard I guess.”
“Yes, it was,” Birdy said. “I don’t even like bringing it up. Just thinking about it all these years makes my heart break for you and your family.”
“Thank you, but that’s not why you’re here. I heard it through the grapevine that you’re trying to clear his name.”
The grapevine on the reservation was more powerful than a satellite receiver. “It isn’t so much that,” Birdy said. “I don’t know what happened, but one thing that troubles me is all the violence against Anna Jo. They called it a rage killing. I don’t know what Tommy would have been so mad about.”
“Trust me,” Carmona said, “he was mad. Do you need me to spell out what he did to her?”
There was no use suggesting that Tommy wasn’t the killer. The focus had to be on gathering information and understanding. Not promoting something she wasn’t even sure about.
“I guess so,” Birdy said. “What was it?”
Carmona glanced through the window as a pair of headlights slowly meandered by. “You better go now. Let’s just let sleeping dogs lie,” she said.
Birdy wasn’t ready. She wanted,
“He said he did,” she said, her words emphasizing the word “he” in a strange way. Birdy asked the victim’s mother what she meant.
“Look, I know you have respect for our people,” Carmona said, her voice whistling a little through the gap in her front teeth. “I know you haven’t completely forgotten where you came from, so let’s just leave it at that. Let’s let Anna Jo be. Let her live in our memories as she was-not as you’d have her.”
Carmona opened the door and held it for Birdy to pass. Birdy put her hand on the doorjamb to buy a moment more of conversation.
“Anna Jo didn’t love Tommy, did she?”
“Good-bye, Dr. Waterman. Let my daughter rest in peace.”
CHAPTER SIX
It had been a quiet day in the Kitsap County Morgue, which meant it had been a good day. No one who worked there ever cursed their jobs because there was “nothing to do.” An empty chiller meant a day without carrying the hurt of someone else’s loss. A child. A wife. Even a friend. Birdy was in the midst of finishing up a supply order that needed to be filled when she looked up from her desk to see a woman in an orange North Face jacket and black jeans. The color combination was definitely on the Halloween side of the fashion wheel, which might have been intentional. The holiday was only a week away.
“You don’t remember me, Dr. Waterman,” the woman said, her voice soft and nearly reverential. She was slightly built, with the facial features of a Makah-intense eyes slashed above with eyebrows that never needed any help from Maybelline, and, most strikingly, a pronounced nose.
Birdy looked her over, racking her brain.
“I’m Iris,” the woman said. “I used to be Iris Bonners. Married to Randall Rostov now.”
Birdy nodded. “Of course, I remember you,” she said, a little unconvincingly, as she worked hard to reel in some kind of memory. She did recall Randall Rostov; he was the son of the first Makah to run a whale-watching business catering to the tourists from Seattle. If Iris hadn’t said her maiden name, she would never have guessed who she was.
Iris was Anna Jo Bonners’s little sister. She had been three or four grades behind Birdy in school, a gap of enough measure to ensure that their paths seldom crossed. It didn’t matter how small a school was. And the reservation school was small by any standards. Only eighty students graduated with Birdy-and only three of those went on to college.
“It’s okay if you don’t,” Iris said, taking off her jacket to reveal a cascade of black hair that had been tucked inside. “I was a lot younger than you.”
Birdy smiled, a recollection finally coming to her. “I do,” she said. “I actually do. Weren’t you a dancer? I remember hearing that you went off to study dance back east. New York?”
Iris nodded. “Yes, I was. Back then. Made it as far as Milwaukee. A far cry from New York, that’s for sure. Now I work in the bar at the casino. In the bar. So much for my brilliant career. But look at you.”
Birdy deflected the compliment, if that’s what it had been. With some of the people on the reservation mad at her for getting a medical degree and not returning to work in the free clinic, it was hard to know if Iris really thought her career had been brilliant or a betrayal.
“Coffee?” Birdy asked. “I was about to pour myself a cup.”
Iris shook her head and declined. “Too late in the day for me. And really, I don’t have much time. The longer I wait to get to the point of it all, the greater the likelihood that I won’t be able to get up the nerve to tell you what I think you need to know.”
Birdy scooted back into her chair, her eyes riveted on Iris. “Okay. No coffee. Sit down. Talk to me, Iris.” She motioned to Iris to take one of the chairs across her desk.
“I’ll stand,” Iris said. “And first of all, before I say anything, I want you to know that as sorry as I am about everything, I’m also scared. Really scared. I have two kids. This can’t come back to me. Promise.”
“Promise.”
“I hope I can trust you, Birdy. I’m hoping that given your job and your education, you’ll be able to keep a confidence.”
“I will,” she said.
For the next twenty minutes, refusing to sit, Iris Bonners Rostov talked about her sister, how much she loved her, how she was sure they’d have been close.
“Not like you and your sister,” the younger woman said.
“That’s right, my sister and I aren’t close,” Birdy said, swallowing the sentence in one bitter gulp.
Birdy wondered why Iris had needed to make the jab. People often needed to hurt someone as a way to take away their own pain. Putting the hurt on another person sometimes made them feel better, if only by comparison.
“Iris, you came a long way to tell me something you think might be important,” Birdy said.
“I did,” she said, “but really I’m scared.”
“It’s about Tommy, isn’t it?”
She nodded, but stayed quiet.
Birdy pushed for an answer. “Iris, what?”
Iris took a breath. “I don’t know that my sister really loved Tommy. I know it is wrong to talk bad about the dead, but it seems to me that Anna Jo has had a long enough time to adjust to what she did-wherever she is.”
“I’m sure she’s at peace,” Birdy said.
Iris looked away. “Not after what she did, maybe not.”
“What did she do?”
“She cheated on Tommy. She was seeing someone else. I think that’s why Tommy killed her. He must have found out.”
The disclosure came out of nowhere. Birdy had thought that Iris was going to say something against Tommy,
