| |
(Sitka. Elizabeth Kitka’s house. Present day. Tuesday.)
“I liked your father,” Elizabeth told Karin. “He was charming.”
Karin took a deep ragged breath and let it out slowly before she responded. Telling the story as her mother, a tribal storyteller, told it, as it must have happened, affected her deeply.
She managed a smile. “That’s what mom said, too. He was a good man.”
“And Duke killed him?”
Karin sighed. “He didn’t come home. Neither did Andrew Solomon. The records here mention two suicides, but there are no names attached. Which was stupid on Duke’s part. He could have pretended to put them on the plane home, and the discrepancy would have gone unnoticed. But communication was so much worse than it is now, and he thought he could get away with something like this.”
“And he did get away with it,” Elizabeth said as she got up, refilled her coffee cup, and gestured in the direction of the younger women. Both shook their heads.
“The next piece of the story is hard for me to talk about,” she said. “I’ve never connected it to your father, Karin, but now I see it must be.”
“The DA had been furious,” Elizabeth continued. “Furious over the arrests, over the lousy records the jailor kept, over Duke’s behavior in the council meeting and afterward. And over the two suicides — men whom no one could name. Nor could anyone produce their bodies. He decided to conduct a formal investigation and impaneled a committee to hold hearings.
“Luke Kitka, Jr., was going to be his star witness.
“And then the day before the hearings, Paul disappeared.”
“What?” Angela exclaimed. “How come I didn’t know anything about this?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “You weren’t born yet. Paul was about four. I don’t think even he remembers it. Someone kidnapped him. Said if Luke testified, we’d get his body back. If he backed out, then Paul would be returned unharmed.”
“My God,” Karin murmured.
“Yeah. The whole tribe went looking. Discreetly of course. The note said if we reported it, they’d kill Paul. Who even thinks about killing a child to prevent an inquiry into mishandling the arrests of a mob?”
“Especially a mob of Indians,” Karin said bitterly. “I’ve been reading the arrest reports. You don’t realize how far we’ve come until you go back and read documents from 30 years ago. A bunch of illiterate, racist fucks. Excuse my language, but....”
Elizabeth nodded. “Exactly. Even the DA conceded he didn’t think anything would come of the hearings, but he wanted to at least embarrass Duke Campbell. He would have gotten state press out of it at least.”
“I take it Granddad and the rest of the village had no luck finding Paul,” Angela said, looking at her grandfather.
“No, we didn’t,” Luke Kitka, Sr., said quietly. The lines of his face deepened in remembered pain. “I have never understood how they could hide a child so effectively.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Luke agonized. Here was a chance to make a difference — perhaps — in how policing was done in this town. Perhaps.
“But it would cost him his son. He couldn’t do it. He called the DA and backed out. Without his first-hand knowledge of Jacob and Andrew’s presence in the jail, the hearing dissolved into he said, he said. With the cops being united, and the accusers having brown skin.” Elizabeth’s tone was bitter.
“And you’ve never known who had him?” Angela asked.
Elizabeth shook her head. “Four days. Four agonizing, excruciating days he was gone. And then the hearings wrapped up, inconclusive, and Paul was playing in the front yard when I went out to get the afternoon paper. Happy, talking about wanting to go see Aunt Rosemary, of all things.” She laughed. “And for 30 years, I’ve wondered who took my son. I mean obviously Duke had something to do with it, but Paul would have been much more traumatized if he’d spent four days with a stranger — especially an angry stranger.”
“So, you figure it was someone you knew?” Karin asked.
Elizabeth winced. “Even smaller number. Someone Paul knew. And at four, that wasn’t very many people.”
Angela shook her head. “Wow. And you all never said anything to any of us? This was why Dad drank.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Every time someone else got beaten up by a cop. Or someone was sent to prison unfairly, he’d brood. Hard for a man to feel helpless. Harder, when he could have maybe done something. He knew he’d made the right choice. I know he made the right choice. I truly believe they would have killed Paul if he’d testified.
“But knowing that you had to let go the deaths of two fine men — who he liked very much, Karin — as well as the prosecution of the unnamed men who had kidnapped his son? That eats at a man. It ate at Luke.”
Karin blinked tears back. “Luke kept his promise to my dad and called my mom. That’s how we knew the story as much as we did. But Mom always wondered why no more was done. Now I know.”
“Luke felt he owed Jacob — and your mom — that much,” Elizabeth replied. He tracked down Andrew’s family too. But it seemed so little.”
“Mom appreciated it, a lot,” Karin assured her.
Captain Wyckoff spoke up for the first time. “I need Joe Bob to go through these papers, if you don’t mind, Elizabeth. And yours too, Karin. If there is anything in there we can use to confront Duke, he’ll find it. Breadcrumbs, he calls it.” He looked pained.
Angela giggled. Even Elizabeth smiled.
“I’ll send him around. You’ll know him by the thick Texas accent he has even though he’s been here for ten years. I think it’s deliberate.
“In the meantime, I want to go visit the jailor while he’s still in the hospital and can be found,” he finished, with a slight smile.
Purdue sighed. “I’m going with you. I don’t think anyone, even a police officer, ought to be going about alone.” He considered that. “Make it especially a police officer. Doesn’t look like Paul is the first officer Duke has disappeared.”
Kitka, Sr., looked at them. “We have drivers to take you where you’re needed. We’re with you every step of the way.”