The Iron Lake Ojibwe Tribal Police Department was located in a structure newly built in anticipation of the reservation receiving final approval to begin its law enforcement operation. In 1953, with the passage of a piece of legislation titled Public Law 280, criminal jurisdiction on the reservation had been transferred from the federal level to the state, and the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department had begun offering its services to the reservation. The result had always been questionable. Cork, when he’d been hired as a deputy, was the first officer on the force with any Native American blood in him. Which had helped some. But because he was of mixed heritage, he was still viewed with skepticism by many on the rez. Things didn’t improve much after he’d been elected sheriff. For years the tribal council had discussed creating its own policing body. As with all things bureaucratic, the process had taken time. But the Ojibwe knew how to be patient and persistent.
Six months before Olivia Hamilton was reported missing, the department began operation. A man named Monte Bonhomme had been brought on as chief of police. Bonhomme had a long law enforcement background with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe in the central part of the state and so possessed a good deal of experience with the confusing labyrinth of jurisdictional issues involved in law enforcement on a reservation. Daniel English, who’d been a conservation officer for the Iron Lake Ojibwe Department of Natural Resources, had been his first hire.
Monte Bonhomme was at his desk when Daniel walked in. The chief glanced up from some papers and said, “Take a day off to pick blueberries and you find a grave instead. Good work, I suppose.”
“Dumb luck. Have they finished exhuming the body?”
“They have.”
“Were you there?”
“I was. In keeping with our cooperative agreement with the sheriff’s department.”
“And?”
“The buried girl wasn’t blond and had been in that grave a lot longer than two weeks. When it became clear that it wasn’t Olivia Hamilton, the Feds and BCA lost interest. More or less they turned the case over to Sheriff Dross. The body’s at the morgue. Long black hair and she was wearing a beautifully beaded bracelet, so reasonable evidence she might be Native. Which means it’ll be a while before a good postmortem is done. Olivia Hamilton will continue to get all the attention.”
“I think I can tell you what the ME will find.” Daniel explained what Waaboo had said about the eyes of the woman, that they were open and looked hurt, as if she’d been staring at the sun. “If that’s true, I’d say she was strangled to death.”
“That’s a detail you didn’t tell me when you called yesterday,” Monte said. “Go over it all again. And this time, don’t leave anything out.”
Daniel sat down and related the events of the previous day. He added something else he’d neglected to tell Monte the day before. He related what Waaboo had said about another lost spirit.
“Olivia Hamilton?” Monte asked.
“Maybe. Or maybe Crystal Two Knives. Waaboo couldn’t say.”
Monte opened a drawer in his desk and took out a folded document. “Come here.”
As Daniel approached, Monte unfolded the paper and laid it out. It was a map of the Iron Lake Reservation. Daniel wasn’t surprised to see that it looked like a patchwork quilt of holdings—land held in trust by the tribe, land held by individual tribal members, land owned by white people or white entities, and land whose ownership was in dispute because of conflicting interpretations of treaty language. As with many other reservations across the country, there was an ongoing effort to purchase the land not currently owned by the Ojibwe in order to consolidate the Iron Lake Reservation and, as much as possible, re-create its original configuration.
“Check this out,” Monte said.
He put his finger on a large section of land that abutted the reservation on the southeast. It was nearly sixteen thousand acres the county had laid claim to on the basis of a disputed interpretation of the treaty agreement 150 years before. The long-held position of Tamarack County was that the reservation was subsequently diminished or disestablished by the Nelson Act of 1889 and other federal actions, and the Iron Lake Band of Ojibwe’s sovereignty was limited to lands held in trust by the federal government pursuant to the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.
Daniel considered it all legal gobbledygook. Like most folks on the reservation, he understood that the move was driven by private interest in the mineral reserves beneath the surface. The Iron Lake Ojibwe had been battling for years to secure rightful dominion, and the case was still making its laborious way through the court system. Erno Paavola’s cabin and its surroundings lay in what most folks in the county now referred to as the Contested Section.
“If the female in the grave was Ojibwe, I think we have a legitimate claim to jurisdiction in this case,” Monte said. “Or concurrent jurisdiction at least, per our cooperative agreement with the Tamarack County sheriff.”
While the case was being litigated, the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department and the newly instituted Iron Lake Ojibwe Tribal Police Department had reached an agreement to share responsibility for law enforcement in the Contested Section. In truth, because of the remoteness, it was almost always more expedient for a tribal police officer to respond to disturbances. The area was sparsely populated, and so far, there’d been no major incidents to test the strength of this loose agreement.
The department door opened and LuJean Desjardins strolled in. Officer Desjardins was large. Not heavy, but big-boned and powerful-looking. Her face was solid, as if cut from a block of old-growth maple. Her cheeks still held the pocks that told of serious adolescent acne. When she was confronting a miscreant, her eyes became two dark holes of impending justice. But among her fellow officers, she was a wealth of jokes and funny stories. She was the only officer on the force who was Iron Lake Ojibwe. The other officer was Anthony Zuppardo, whom they all called Zippy. He’d grown up on the Leech Lake Reservation, where his mother was a teacher at the Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School. Although he was white, he had reliable common sense when it came to reservation issues.
“Almost shot a thief this morning,” LuJean said.
“How’s that?” Monte asked.
“A raccoon’s been raiding my garbage bin. I’ve tried everything, but it’s one smart critter. Caught it in the act this morning. I had my Mossberg to my shoulder, ready to squeeze off a shot.” She lifted her arms in pantomime and sighted with one eye shut. “Then two little raccoon heads popped up beside her. Momma just feeding her babies. What could I do?”
“A Mossberg? Really?” Monte said.
“I was thinking of using a grenade, but I didn’t want to disturb the neighbors so early in the day.” She looked at Daniel. “Boozhoo, and congratulations. If that’s appropriate given the circumstances. Heard about you finding a grave instead of blueberries. Olivia Hamilton?”
“They exhumed the body,” Monte told her. “Pretty clear it wasn’t the Hamilton girl.”
“Crystal Two Knives?”
“Not her either,” Daniel said.
Monte said, “I was just pointing out to Daniel that the girl’s body was found on land that is arguably within our jurisdiction.”
“The Contested Section?”
“Exactly. Every other law enforcement agency is still focused on the Hamilton girl. I think we ought to take on this investigation ourselves. It might lead us to Crystal. Or maybe even the Hamilton girl.”
Daniel glanced at Desjardins. It was clear they were all in perfect agreement. Which was not always an easy achievement when it came to almost any issue in the Native community.
CHAPTER 7
Cork walked into the office of Sheriff Marsha Dross, who was sitting at her desk looking grim.
Nearly two decades earlier, when Cork had occupied the office and had sat in the chair behind the desk, he’d hired Dross as the first female officer for the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department. Now, looking at Dross, who was bent like a wilted flower, he didn’t miss the job or wearing the badge one bit.
“Feeling stepped on?” he asked.
Dross was in her early forties, her hair just beginning to show a hint of gray. Usually, she was upbeat, a woman who enjoyed cross-country skiing and snowshoeing in the winter and, in the summer, canoeing the Boundary Waters. She was fond of line dancing. On karaoke nights at the Four Seasons hotel, she exhibited a fondness for songs by Tina Turner, Joan Jett, and Blondie. She had a pretty fine voice herself.
“Bastards,” she said.
