OUTSIDE THE TULALIP TRIBAL Casino, David Rogers was trembling. He was alone in the dark parking lot and was terrified. He had two thousand dollars in cash in his pocket and suddenly felt very vulnerable. As he tried to open his car door, he dropped his keys. He bent over to pick them up and he felt a hot pain at the back of his head, saw a bright white light, and then saw nothing at all.
When he woke, David was lying facedown on the back seat of an old Chevy Nova. Two white men, Spud and Lyle, first cousins, pulled David out of the Nova and dragged him through the woods to a clearing a hundred feet off the road. Still groggy, suffering from a severe concussion, David could barely focus on the two men. He looked down at the ground and saw a solitary flower. He wondered if it was a lily. He wondered if camas root grew there. He wondered how long it had been growing.
“He’s awake,” said Lyle.
“Holy crow,” said Spud as he counted the money again. “Little bastard was rich.”
“How much?”
“A lot, I think.”
David looked up at the cousins. He tried to think clearly. He wanted to tell them something about Hemingway.
“He’s seen our faces,” said Lyle.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Spud, thinking hard.
“You think anybody saw us take him?”
“Nah, those Indians can’t see for shit.”
Lyle and Spud laughed.
“What should we do with him?” asked Lyle.
“I don’t know. I guess we should shoot him.”
David tried to get to his feet. Spud pushed him backward and David sat down hard, his back against a fallen tree.
“He’s just a kid,” said Lyle.
“A rich kid.”
“That’ll be true.”
Spud pulled out his pistol, a .38 Special, and aimed it at David’s face. Lyle covered his face. Spud’s hand was shaking. He closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. A startled owl lifted from a nearby tree.
“Holy crow,” said Spud. “I killed him.”
“Yeah, he looks like he’s asleep.”
“Well, what should we do now?”
“I say we get the hell out of here.”
With that, Spud and Lyle climbed into their Chevy Nova, drove north through Canadian customs without incident, and into Vancouver. That same night, they lost the two thousand dollars in an illegal poker game, plus another thousand dollars in promises. When those promises couldn’t be kept, Spud and Lyle were driven to a secluded spot by a river and forced to kneel in the mud. With their hands tied behind their backs. Spud and Lyle pleaded for their lives but only the river listened, and it didn’t care.
Shot once in each eye, Spud and Lyle’s bodies were found by a hiker later that summer. David Rogers’s murder was never solved.