Morrill Hall was the centerpiece of the campus, an impressive Ivy League — looking structure with a big bell tower reaching for the sky. It was on top of a steep rise, with a large pond and fountain toward the bottom of the slope. I drove up the hill, around to the parking lot in back, and climbed the stone steps to the rear entrance. Another staircase with marble steps curved up and to the left, and as I made my way to the third-floor administrative offices, I could feel my adrenaline surge.
I walked down the hall past big oak doors with gilt lettering on them until I spotted the one with his name, just his name, on it. I opened the door and stepped inside, where I could see a receptionist’s desk with a hallway beyond. I stood there, and after a couple of minutes a middle-aged woman emerged from the hall. She looked like a drill sergeant.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m here to see Bill,” I replied.
“Your name, please?”
“Mr. Smith.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes, I think we were set for ten,” I lied.
“I don’t see anything on his calendar. May I ask what this is about?”
“I’m from the Edsel Foundation, here about matching your donor contributions with our dollars.”
That got her attention. “Let me go tell Mr. Wendland you’re here.”
She came back shortly. “His office is at the end.”
I walked down the hall and into Bill’s wood-paneled office. His back was to me as he rearranged twentieth-century file folders in a large cabinet. He heard me enter and turned.
“I’ll be damned,” he said, taking care to keep the desk between us.
I looked him straight in the eyes. “Long time no see.”
He gave me the grin of a hungry spider. “Have a seat.” He pointed to a leather chair.
I just stood there.
“I don’t figure there’s any foundation that sent the likes of you here, or anywhere, so what’s up?” He smiled broadly, as if I was a long-lost friend or his next meal.
“Elizabeth.”
“What about her?”
“Stop. Stop now and you still have a chance to keep all this glory and power. Stop messing with her, with her job and deanship. Stop hunting her in alleys and out of sight. Let her go, stay away, and keep her safe.”
“Her safety has nothing to do with me.” He sat in the leather-chair throne behind his big desk and grinned again. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Right or wrong, I’ve got something of yours.”
His eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Meet me out at the Bear Paw Battlefield tonight.”
“The Bear Paw Battlefield? What the hell’s this all about?”
“If I was you, I’d be there, Bill,” I said, turning around and walking out. “Before sunset so we can see what we’ve got to see.”
I drove south from Chinook and turned off the highway toward the tourist facility on the edge of the battlefield. Across a coulee to the east, the monument sat on the highest point of ground. Farther to the east was a bare cutbank where I had buried the Montana Bar jacket in multiple plastic bags. My own private memorial on that sacred ground. My own feeble attempt to be a good witness and honor a victim.
Too many of what Bill called my “kind” had already been dishonored in history. I wanted him to represent his “kind” and answer for all that has happened to Indian people, to trapped women, to anyone his kind had abused. Even if I never got to crack his skull with the collapsible steel baton shoved in the back of my waistband.
Damn right, Colt, you take a job, you go in prepared and do it right.
I stood there waiting in the fading light. Thinking about Elizabeth. Me. Us.
With about a half hour of daylight left, I spotted the vehicle — a big black Suburban like the security guys in movies drive — heading south on the old highway coming from Chinook. It was going like a bat out of hell and careened off the blacktop onto the gravel road leading to where I was. When it straightened out again it raised a big plume of dust as it bore down on the tourist lookout point and skidded to a stop in the parking area.
Bill was out and on the ground before the car was fully settled to a stop, his red face nearly matching the tie loosely knotted around his beefy neck. He wore his hotshot lawyer suit, and I wondered if he still carried killer steel in his back pocket. He was breathing hard and didn’t look happy as he stomped up the footpath to the lookout.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing back here, or what you’re up to, but I’m here to find out,” he said, putting his hands on his hips as he stopped about ten yards from me.
“Leave her alone.”
“Like you did. Like she is. Like she will be after you’re gone again. All alone.”
“You stop it all right now. No more going after her in any way, shape, or form. Or we’ll see you in court. Win, lose, or draw there, your rep will be ruined, your clout will evaporate, and all your money will make you a big target that’s been made weaker for every other person you’ve fucked with or fucked over all these years. They’ll come out of the woodwork to go after you.”
“What, you think you’re a goddamn attorney or something now too?”
“Yup. University of Minnesota Law, class of ’85.”
“They gave you a law degree because you’re a blanket-ass Indian son of a bitch?”
“Talk about blankets, Bill, I’ve followed your rape charge for a long time.”
He looked at me incredulously. “So what,” he finally said. “That’s over and done with.”
I reached into my shirt pocket, took out a folded piece of paper with three pictures printed on it, and handed it to him. The top picture was of the back of a satin warm-up jacket with Montana Bar silk-screened on it. The middle picture was of the front of the jacket, with Bill Wendland embroidered over the left breast. The bottom picture was of a dried stain below the name and above the left front pocket.
“You were a pretty good stick on that softball team, remember?” I said, as he looked at the pictures. “Those were nice jackets. Too bad yours has that stain on it. Like a stain on a blanket. What do think that is, DNA evidence maybe?”
“Statute of limitations,” he shot back. “And even if that wasn’t already up, I was found not guilty, and they can’t try me twice for the same offense. The law’s the law.”
“True. But I bet I can get some DNA match from you somewhere — off a cup you drink coffee from, at your barber. You’ll have to spend the rest of your life watching out for that.”
You need more to nail him! You need—
“And even if I don’t get the criminal science, the girl is a woman now and has heirs. Some of them live around here. I’ll file a dozen civil lawsuits, spill out every accusation in subpoenas for evidence, and make it huge so it’ll get in the papers. Sure, you might get every one of those lawsuits thrown out, but the evidence I’ll introduce will create evidence others can use to, say, show a legally established pattern of propensity for... for whatever someone else accuses you of. With me as a witness to put it all in context, because the law is the law, ennit?”
“You come after me—”
“I come after you only if you keep after Elizabeth. If she so much as gets bit by a mosquito, I’m going to file some of the most beautiful briefs you’ve ever seen. And out of where I and my friends know it’s hidden—”