all bodies. Victim’s ages range from mid 30s to early 40s. Identities indicate three adults and one juvenile. Bodies in advanced state of decay when found, buried in shallow graves behind lake house. Boy’s body found chained to a wall.“
Janet put the paper down at looked through the front door at the neon light just coming on across the street announcing free shots for girls on football night at the Red Spot.
“It’s time to talk to talk to Chuck Neigless”. She said, with finality, standing and reaching for her service revolver and holster as she felt for her patrol car’s keys on her utility belt.
Janet Littlehorse had known Jay most of his life. He was a couple of years older. Chuck Neigless was her age. She knew both of them, having grown up and gone to school with them. Chuck had been a quiet kid, shy, and not very well thought of by his peers. He’d been befriended by the older Jay after a bullying incident that she barely recalled. Jay had been a protector, and had interceded in a fight between Chuck and a few kids closer to Jay’s age. Jay had been seen as a hero in the episode, but there was a lot of talk about the somewhat shocking amount of brutality he’d displayed in defending Neigless. That soon quieted down, though, and the two were seldom seen not in the company of one another.
Jay had always “set off her radar”, as she told herself while driving to the nursing home at the outskirts of town. There are some people who, on the surface, seem to be kind and gentle, even almost reserved, but that do so in a way that the surface of a swift moving stream may hide its currents. Jay was one of these people. He had grown to be a physically imposing figure, well over six feet tall, and sturdily built. His prominence in the community as a doctor gave him something of an air of importance that, while he did his best to not come off this way, still shown through. He was the type of person for whom the phrase “does not suffer fools gladly” seems to have been coined. The sort of person whom you instantly like and felt a personal warmth from, but once drawn to this warmth, you are very soon aware that it may actually be masking a second layer that the person has become very skilled at hiding, but that our most primitive animal instincts can detect. Jay was this person, and Janet had always sensed it.
Chuck’s “breakdown”, if indeed that’s what it was, was ancient history. He’d been forced to drop out of school for “medical” reasons that were kept very secret, even in this little town where everyone knew everyone else. The term “nervous breakdown” was thrown around, but no one really knew what that meant. But that was decades ago, when no one spoke openly about mental illness. It was shameful and as such, to be hidden. Chuck had remained “hidden” all of his adult life, and now lived in the nursing home she was driving to.
There had been an incident dating all the way back to her Freshman year in high school. They – Jay and Chuck – had gotten into some kind of trouble. Jay’s father, also a doctor, was a prominent figure in the area, and had made it “go away”, so to speak. Jay was soon back in school as if nothing had happened, but Chuck was simply the stuff of rumors ever after that. There was even a rumor that Jay had killed him spread by gossipy high school kids. But that radar, or instinct, kept this from ever reaching Jay’s ears. No one dared approach him. He was too well loved, respected, and perhaps even feared for that.
Janet’s father, a proud Objiwa elder, was also a hopeless alcoholic. It was largely what got Janet interested in the law in the first place. From his frequent scrapes with local law enforcement, she had taken the notion of becoming a lawyer – perhaps to “rescue” her father. Instead, she settled on law enforcement, largely as a result of seeing how poorly her father was treated at their hands. One night, returning home drunk after being gone for nearly two days “at an tribal council” (bar), her father had sat at the kitchen table rambling on about “some killings.” Janet had half listened to him, knowing that in his current state, he could hardly be counted on for accurate information. Still, what her father had said stuck with her for all these years, for reasons she was never really able to understand. He’d been wandering off in the woods that evening, something he often did on particularly drunken nights. He’d been off in the woods on the other side of the lake, and had come across a lake house.
“They don’t trust no indian!” he had said. “I seen it with my own two goddam eyes, though!” He’d cast his gaze around the room as if expecting someone to question his veracity. No one said anything, or really much listened, being much accustomed to his late night drunken ramblings.
“They was buryin’ folks, I tell ya! I seen it with own two eyes. I snuck up on ‘em and watched, but they never knew I was there. Them white boys couldn’t find an Indian like me in the woods at night with a spotlight. They was buryin’ folks!”
Her long suffering mother had simply asked after a pause “Who were they burying, Gene?”
“Hell, I don’t know… Dead people.” Janet could tell from his admission that he hadn’t even given thought to who was dead.
“They was two high school boys doin’ it, tho. And one of ‘em was that doctor’s boy!” This caused Janet to listen a little closer. That her father was capable of completely fabricating this story, or of having been so drunk that he mistook someone for doing some late night gardening with a murder cover-up was well known, but she thought it odd that he would single out who he saw, and if he’d made this up, why would he have picked such a random person as Jay for targeting his accusation?
“People think I don’t know or see, but I do! Some of them white folks think they can get away with anything just ‘cuz their daddy’s a doctor. Hell… I seen ‘em, and I’ll tell the sheriff, too!”
Janet knew he wouldn’t do any such thing. Even if he were able to remember this all the next day, the sheriff wouldn’t give the drunken old indian the time of day, much less listen to cock and bull like this. The next day, her father, hung over and eating a little before wandering into town to start drinking all over again, had no memory of last night’s escapade, or if he did, he didn’t say a word about it, and they certainly weren’t going to encourage him. Only once, years later as his health began to fail, had she been fishing with him, the last time ever she did so before his death, did he ever mention anything about this again. By then, Janet had forgotten all about the story, but her father apparently hadn’t.
“You’re studyin’ to be a lawyer and all. Tell me this.” He said, staring into the water. “What if a fella saw a murder happen and he never said anything about it? Would he get in trouble?” Janet couldn’t remember what she’d said in response to this, but she sure could remember what he said next, and would probably never forget it.
“You do me a favor, ok, little moonbeam?” (A name he hadn’t called her since she was little.)
“You stay real clear of that Atherton boy, ok?”
The Nursing Home
The Sun Valley nursing home lay on the outskirts of town. Almost everyone there was at least 75 years old – many much older – but some were there because they were not really old, but were in some way mentally impaired, but not severely enough to require institutionalization at the state hospital. Of these, Chuck Neigless was perhaps the least visible. He seldom talked, and when he did it was so low and quiet that attendants had to lean close to him to hear what he was saying. He was pale and tired looking, and slept most of the day and night. He had been taking tranquilizers and sleeping pills for so long that his whole life was made of sleep and drowsy glimpses of the world around him.
Janet Littlehorse stood quietly at the desk waiting for Eileen Noblonsky to finish her phone call. Janet knew her, but not well; A local girl who married soon after high school and had been working at the nursing home since then. She was a few years younger, and their paths hadn’t crossed in school.
Eileen looked up from her desk when she’d put the phone in the cradle.
“Well, hello, Janet!” She said with the sort of long rehearsed pleasantness that Janet imagined was about as real as her hair color which had become supernaturally red since the
last time she’d seen her; the sort of shade that can only be found in the animal kingdom or on the hair color isle of the drug store.
“Hi, there, Eileen. It’s good to see you. How’ve you been?” Janet said, amiably.
“Oh, same as the weather! Nothing much knew to report!” she responded. “What are you doing out this way? Official business?”
“Yes, I am.” Janet said, mostly truthfully. “Is Chuck Neigless still living here?”
The receptionist paused imperceptibly, face almost breaking out of the professional friendliness.
“Yes, he sure is.” She said, her voice just a notch quieter than it had formerly been. “He’s in the adult dissociative wing. He’s been there for longer than I’ve worked her. I guess he’ll always be here.” She paused again. “I can say that in the 27 years I’ve worked here, you are the first and only person to ever come ask for him.”
Janet thought about this for a half moment. There was just a hint of challenge to the assertion. It had the slight connotation of “and that’s the way we like it here” to it.
“Yeah, I don’t think he ever had any family here. His parents died early, and I think he was living with his aunt until… Until he came to live