Broken Angels Read online

Kris stepped off the bus into a puddle of black water. Behind her, the bus whined and drove away. The blocky building of the AWARE Shelter was bigger than she’d expected. Off to the side was an addition still sitting in the mud of new construction. The driveway down was steep and the front door locked. She pushed a bell and it was opened by a woman about her age, but shorter and with a softer face.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, glancing up at Kris.

  “I’m looking for Evie Gabriel.”

  The woman pursed her lips. “We can’t release the names of the people who are staying here.”

  “She’s my mother.” Kris pulled Evie’s letter from her pocket and pointed at AWARE’s address in the corner. “She told me to meet her here.”

  The woman fingered the letter, reading the address. “Come in.” She left Kris standing inside the door while she disappeared into a side office. A minute later she was back following an older woman with probing eyes, white, clean skin and a blouse with shoulder pads.

  “So you’re Kris,” she said. “Evie talked about you.” She came forward, smiling, and shook Kris’s hand, speaking her name, which Kris immediately forgot.

  “Is she here?” Kris asked.

  “No, she left about a month ago.”

  “Do you know where she went?”

  The woman’s eyes became assessing. “When was the last time you saw your mother?”

  “I know she’s a drunk,” Kris said.

  “Yes,” the woman said carefully as if there were more to it than whiskey. “I don’t know where she is. She’d been staying at the Glory Hole before she came here.”

  Kris shook her head.

  “It’s a homeless shelter downtown,” the woman said.

  She came back to Alaska for this? “Where is it? Can I call from here?”

  “Of course.” The woman pointed to a phone on the desk that faced the entrance.

  Kris punched the buttons as the woman recited the number. She talked to the man who answered. In the background people were talking, chairs scraped on linoleum and knives and forks clinked on plates. He yelled into the noise without putting his hand over the receiver. “Anybody here named Evie Gabriel?” A couple of voices answered and the man said to her, “No one’s seen her for a while. More than a couple of weeks, I think.” Kris hung up.

  “I wrote my mother at this address,” Kris said. “Did she get my letter?”

  “Letters are kept in the advocate’s office.” The women picked up the phone, punched a button and spoke briefly into the receiver, waited and then thanked the person before hanging up.

  “We have nothing here for her,” she said. “If the letter got here, either she got it, or we sent it back to you. We only keep letters a few weeks.”

  The woman regarded Kris with concern and Kris stared back, not wanting any part of her pity. She reached down and picked up her duffle.

  “Do you need a place to stay tonight?” the woman asked.

  “Yeah,” Kris said.

  “There’s a hostel in town. It’s not expensive and it’ll be fairly empty this time of year. It’s on the corner of East and Sixth.”

  Kris climbed back up onto Glacier Avenue and turned right toward town. It probably wasn’t seven yet, but the street was empty. Yellow streetlights shone through the drizzle and reflected off the wet street. Cars sped by on a highway partly hidden by trees to her right, on her left were houses. Her sneakers were wet; the cold was starting to sting her toes and the strap of her duffle cut into her fingers. She switched hands, balled the cold one in her jacket pocket to warm it up. She was on the next plane out of there. She wasn’t going to piss away one minute trying to find Evie. It’s not like you can look a drunk up in the phone book.

  The sound of tires came up behind her and she moved off the road onto the gravel shoulder without glancing back. Suddenly, the vehicle dropped a gear and wheels screeched against the asphalt. Headlights pinned her, throwing her shadow into the night. Kris jumped to the side; the truck’s mirror hit her shoulder, spinning her onto the ground. The truck skidded, reversed, and roared back at her. She threw herself off the embankment and rolled down the steep slope into wet leafless bushes.

  The truck door slammed and a man, short and stringy, ran around the front through the lights. He paused at the top of the slope looking down into the darkness. She sank into the shadows. He hesitated only a second and then raced down the slope. Kris leapt to her feet and tore into the trees. Bushes slapped her face and grabbed at her clothes. The body crashing through bushes behind her came closer. Then his hand was in her hair; he grabbed it and yanked her back. The bones in her neck popped, her feet flew forward, and she fell hitting the ground hard. He jerked her head back and a blade snicked open.

  Kris pivoted away, her hair twisting hard in her scalp. Digging her toes into the ground, she rammed her head into his gut. He rocked back a step, dropping her hair. Before he could swing his knife, she fell to the ground, wrapped her arms tight around his ankles and slammed her shoulder into his shins. The man toppled backwards. He grunted, swore, and kicked free of her grip. Kris clambered into the wet brush, struggling to escape. His body hit her, she twisted, and then he was on top of her his cheek pressed against hers, his breath hot and harsh on her neck.

  He lifted his head to gloat. Kris rose up and snapped her teeth into his lip. He stiffened and wrenched his head back. She held on, grinding her teeth into the flesh. Blood ran into her mouth. A fist pounded into the side of her head. Where was the knife? Hands locked onto her throat. She heaved and they rolled over, she was on top, her knees between his legs. She stretched a leg and slammed her knee into his balls. He blubbered, spraying hot blood and spit into her face; his legs scissored against her knees. She hit him again. He convulsed; through his lip, her teeth touched.

  Kris let go and raced back through the trees. She struggled up the slope, slipping on the wet grass. The truck was there, lights on and engine idling. She ran to the driver’s side, flung open the door, and searched wildly for the parking brake. With both hands, she twisted it; it snapped in. Pushing against the door frame and twisting the wheel with her hand, she turned the back end of the truck off the road. The rear wheels found the slope and it accelerated down the embankment, crashing into the bushes below. The lights shot up into the trees across the street.

  “What happened to you?” the woman behind the desk asked.

  “Nothing. Got lost in the woods,” Kris said. On her way into town she’d sneaked into a gas station bathroom to clean the blood and dirt off her face and change her shirt, but she was still a mess. The marks of his fingers were purpling on her throat. In the morning, they’d be ugly.

  “Lost in the woods?”

  “I thought I could cut across to Glacier from the highway,” she said. She let her eyes drift toward the common room where four or five people were slouched on a sofa and in chairs, talking. A radio sitting on a bookcase was tuned to a station playing old rock.

  “Oh. Well, you can take a shower after I check you in.”

  An hour later, clean and warm, Kris burrowed deep under the weight of the extra blankets she’d stripped from the bunk above her. She hugged her knees to her chest and tried to push away the lingering fear of the chase through the bushes and the bitter, unnamed feeling that hovered at the edge of her awareness. Her mother had forgotten her, again.

  After a while, the air under the covers became stale and her hip began to ache. She stretched, pushing her feet into the cold sheets at the end of the bed, and poked her head out of the blankets for fresh air. Only a fool would have expected something different from Evie; nine years weren’t long enough to make any difference.

  Nestled in the bed, her fear and hurt quietly slipped away. It was going to be a chore to get that guy’s truck back up on the road. He probably worked for AWARE; its way of keeping business coming through the door.

  Voices drifted up from the common room accompanied by the tinny sound of the radio. In the fog of near sleep, Kris hear
d a pause in the murmur and then a man’s voice say: “Whoa. The cops found a body in Sheep Creek.”

  Thursday, November 12

  “Name’s Barrett.” The detective motioned her to a chair.

  “Barrett,” Kris repeated without interest. The title wasn’t there, but it was understood. He had dark hair clipped short, brown eyes, and the kind of everyday, standard white man’s features that reminded Kris of the missionaries working the streets in L.A.; you couldn’t tell them apart. Except Barrett was a big man, a head taller than anyone else and he radiated dominance.

  Kris sat warily; she didn’t do well with dominance. She broke his gaze and looked around the office. The desk and the chair she sat on were gray steel. A couple of pictures in gilt frames, their backs to Kris, were on his desk next to a model tank; the cannon pointed off at an angle. On a side table was a computer with a screen saver going and against the back wall was a short bookcase with loose-leaf binders and manuals ordered by height. Next to it was a metal file cabinet. Framed certificates or diplomas hung on white, windowless cement-block walls.

  She looked back at Barrett who sat watching her silently. His eyes probed the bruises on her cheek, rested on the bandanna around her neck, then dropped for a second to her breasts before rising back to her face.

  “Do you like them?” Kris asked.

  “Like what?” Barrett lifted his eyebrows.

  “My tits.”

  A file drawer screeched open in another room and someone laughed.

  “Sorry.”

  Sorry wasn’t a word Kris heard often. She let it hang.

  “You found my mother in a creek yesterday.” It had been on the morning news. The other people staying at the hostel were hustling around the kitchen, ignoring the radio chattering in the background, as they made themselves breakfast. Kris stood to the side, leaning against a counter, watching them heat water, fry eggs and toast their bread, when her name, “Gabriel,” cut through the clutter of kitchen noise. No one noticed when she moved over and stood next to the radio. She caught only the last half of the story, but she heard enough to know why her mother hadn’t met her at the airport.

  “We didn’t, someone else did,” Barrett said. “And if we’d known that she had next of kin, we wouldn’t have released her name. I’m sorry you had to hear it on the news. You live in Juneau?”

  “What made you think she didn’t have relatives?” she asked.

  Barrett considered her for a moment, as if it weren’t his job to answer questions; then opened his hands signaling that he’d grant her control of the conversation. “The person who found her knew her,” he said. “An old trapper from Fairbanks and apparently met her there. He told us she had no relatives.”

  “Who’s he?”

  Barrett opened a file on his desk. “Ben Stewart; he’s lived in the interior since the fifties. Trapping mostly, north of the Koyukuk. He moved down here last spring. May.” He looked up, generously waiting for her next question.

  “Was she living with him?”

  He looked surprised. “No.”

  “How was she killed?”

  “Looks like both barrels of a shotgun. A post-mortem is scheduled this afternoon. We won’t have the report until Monday, longer if the ME orders lab tests. I suspect she was killed early on Tuesday; the rigor had already left her body. But it’s hard to tell; the water’s cold and decomposition won’t be normal.” Barrett paused. “Sorry; it must be difficult to listen to this.”

  Barrett went on in a quieter voice. “Stewart drove back in to tell us and by the time we got out there it was dark. We went in with lights, examined the area, and brought the body out. We checked with all the people living down there but no one heard a thing. The stream is loud and the houses are fairly distant and buffered by trees. I’d be surprised if someone inside could’ve heard a shot.”

  Kris was starting to hear excuses; he was setting her up for dumping the case. She’d seen it often enough—some colored kid or a Native gets killed and the cops just hang police tape around the blood, shove the body into an ambulance, and leave. Barrett wasn’t going to waste time on Evie.

  “What happens next?” she asked.

  “Tell me about your mother.” Barrett shuffled pages in the folder. “Stewart says he didn’t have much contact with her here in Juneau. But he would see her around town. Apparently she was having trouble. She spent some time on the streets last summer.” Barrett stopped and looked at her expectantly.

  The last nine years of Evie’s life were a black hole to Kris, though it didn’t look as if much had changed. In any case, talking to cops had never done her any good and anything she could tell Barrett would only pump up his white man’s view of Natives. She said, carefully, “All I know is that a month ago she was in the AWARE shelter and before that she was at the Glory Hole.”

  “You didn’t see her much?”

  “No, I live in L.A.”

  “Oh. When did you come up?”

  “Yesterday.” She told him about Evie’s letter.

  “May I see it?”

  Kris pulled it out of her jacket and handed it to him.

  “Is this her writing?” he asked, smoothing it on the desk.

  “Yeah.” She didn’t make any excuses for the scrawl and broken sentences.

  “So, she thought things were getting better for her,” Barrett said.

  “She was always thinking that.”

  “Why did you come up then?”

  A constant pressure came off Barrett; she pushed against it and didn’t answer. Barrett watched her, waiting. Kris held his gaze then looked at his certificates on the wall. U.S. Army; Purple Heart.

  “When did you see her last?” he asked.

  “Two thousand six.”

  “Nine years? You kept in touch?”

  “I don’t know how she found me,” Kris said, getting irritated.

  “You wrote back at this address?” He pointed to a spot in the letter, ignoring her tone.

  Kris nodded.

  “So she knew you were coming up yesterday, the day after she was killed.” He began to play with a pencil. “Interesting.”

  “Who’s going to bury her?” Kris was done being interrogated.

  “If she’s indigent, the city will.” Barrett eyed Kris, but she wasn’t going to volunteer; it wasn’t money she had. Barrett shrugged imperceptibly. “It’ll be pretty basic. One of the pastors in town will provide a service. I think it’ll be tomorrow; they won’t want to keep her body over the weekend. Check with Rick Tyson at the city.”

  “Where’s this stream?”

  He told her.

  “And the trapper?”

  “He’s up the Third Street staircase; in the little house on the left. I don’t think he gets out much.”

  Kris stood.

  “May I keep the letter for a couple of days?” he asked, tapping it.

  Kris didn’t want him to, but she wasn’t going to haggle. She shrugged.

  “Before you go, tell me where you’re staying.” He pulled a notepad out of a drawer.

  “At the hostel.”

  “When do you go back to L.A.?”

  “Sunday.”

  “I’m headed over to the Glory Hole this evening during dinner to see what I can learn,” he said. “But they won’t tell me what they’ll tell you. You up for it? Eat there tomorrow or Saturday and let me know what you find out?”

  He stood. Kris resented having to look up at him. “I’ll see,” she said and left.

  __________

  “The trail starts to the left of the guardrail.” The woman who’d given her the lift pointed through the windshield.

  “Thanks.” Kris closed the door; the car turned around and headed back toward town. The drizzle was heavier here. In the hostel’s lost and found, she’d found a clear plastic poncho with “Princess Tours” printed on it in aqua blue letters. She pulled it out of her jacket pocket and stuck her head through the center hole. Fed by the drizzle, little beads of water beg
an to cling to it.

  The cold air stung and Kris kept her fists balled in her jacket pockets, balancing with her elbows as she picked her way down the trail until it leveled out. Fifty feet in, she found the muddy spot where she guessed the trapper had found Evie’s print; it was a low point in the trail and on wetter days, it looked like water seeped across it from the upper slope. When she turned the corner into the cut of a creek, she saw a man leaning on the railing of a narrow wooden footbridge, watching the water crash over the rocks. His face and blond hair were pasty against a high-end purple and green raincoat. As she stepped onto the planks, he caught sight of her and nodded.

  Kris stopped a few feet away and he pointed silently downstream. Below them, the water coursed over the rocks, then leveled out for a ways before rushing around a bend. Beyond the turn, Kris saw a sagging square of yellow police tape tied to the stems of bushes on either side of the stream.

  The man leaned over and shouted in her ear, startling her. “This is where that woman was killed,” he said.

  Through the drizzle and surrounded by the naked shrubs, the area bound by the tape looked abandoned and desolate. A sudden loneliness filled and emptied her and Kris dropped her elbows on the railing, letting her weight slump onto them, surprised at the unexpected surge of feeling.

  “Hey, you OK?” A tentative hand rested on her shoulder.

  She straightened and it fell off. Still looking down the stream she said, “She was my mother.”

  “What?” He lowered his ear.

  “She was my mother,” she shouted, turning toward him, angry that he’d intruded and angry that he hadn’t understood.

  “Oh.” He lifted his head and gazed down at her. “I’m sorry.” His words were lost in the noise of the stream, but she read them on his lips. He fidgeted, ripping open a Velcroed pocket flap and smoothing it closed again. He looked concerned and started to lift a hand, then let it drop as Kris turned away and leaned again on the wooden rail. Below her, the stream raced out from under the bridge and its mist boiled up into her face, cooling her skin and dewing her eyelashes.

  The railing creaked and canted out a fraction; in the corner of her eye, Kris saw the man’s arms resting on the rail a little farther down. She wanted him gone. It irritated her that he was staring like a tourist at the spot where her mother had been murdered. She let her anger grow, but couldn’t stay focused and she forgot him as she stared at the yellow square of tape. She felt confused. Her mother was dead; why should she care? What had she been hoping for when she came up? A real mother this time? A friend? Or a chance to unload her bottled resentment and anger? She’d fought herself for weeks before deciding to come. And she wasn’t sure why she did—some troubling sense that it was the right thing to do.