drew him forward.
âMy friend, I am going to come after you with all guns firing, and when I prove youâre lying â because Iâve got the goods â the judge will send you up for twenty years on a perjury beef. Youâve been in the joint, you know what they do to informers in there.â It was my hard-boiled voice, but I didnât have to feign anger. In retrospect Iâm not sure it was wise to imply I had secret evidence against him, but I wanted to shake him, dissuade him from being so certain on the stand.
Wallâs head disappeared into a rain poncho and he went off to pay his bill. âItâs on me, Doug,â I called. He turned and walked out into the downpour, everyone staring at him.
The young waitress leaned over to me as she served my soup and sandwich. âGood luck, Mr. Bo-champ,â she whispered.
âBeechâm,â I said.
I turned north to Cheekye, where Chief Joseph lived, just over the Cheakamus bridge. My little car slithered dangerously near some grazing horses, near a collapsed cedar fence. In this rain-darkened afternoon, lights were on in the reserveâs scattered frame dwellings. No one was outside. Everything looked wet and sad.
I had no set plan for the weekendâs most delicate task: separating Monique Joseph from her parents, entreating her to tell the truth. She had got Gabriel into a bad pickle by lying to her parents. He could be hanged were she not to recant â thatâs what she must understand. But she was only sixteen and dependent on her parents, perhaps in fear of them. The cop-suckers, Gabriel had called them.
I was kicking myself for not having invited Ophelia to come when I ought to have insisted. Who better to interview Monique Joseph than the crisis intervener whoâd won over the mutinous women of Oakalla?
The cultural centre loomed through the rain, a windowless sawn-lumber longhouse with a few smoke holes in a shake roof. Election signs out front, stuck there proudly â the great white chief, Diefenbaker, had recently granted treaty Indians the right to vote.
Around the corner was a two-storey dwelling, obviously that of Benjamin Joseph. Obviously because an RCMP van was sitting outside it, engine running. I called down curses on my own head for not going there first. Theyâd wasted no time after Doug Wall alerted them.
I parked nose to nose with the van, whose driver was slouched, wiping a wet nose, pretending to ignore me. Puffy red cheeks and recessed, close-set eyes. Jettles, I guessed.
A girlâs rain-blurred face stared from a second-floor window: Monique, confined to her room. The front door opened and Staff Sergeant Roscoe Knepp stepped out, pulling on a rain cape, and came purposefully down the path toward my car. Rugged, handsome, square-chinned â the Sergeant Preston type one saw in the tourist posters. He called, âStep out of the car, sir, with your hands up.â
I was astounded at his effrontery. Grabbing my umbrella, I alighted to find him unhooking his handcuffs from his belt.
âIâm afraid we have to impound this vehicle, sir. We donât allow people to drive tin cans on the public roads.â A broad grin at my confusion, then a raucous laugh. âGotcha!â He grabbed my hand. âHowâre you doing, counsellor? You sure picked some kind of pissy day to come moseying around the valley.â
I recovered, attempting a smile. âSo whatâs going on here, Staff?â As if I didnât know.
âLetâs talk about it in comfort â we got the heater on. Grab the front seat there, Iâll jump in the back.â Pushy, but I didnât resist. âBrad Jettles, Arthur Beauchamp.â Just a chortle issued from those pudgy lips; he was still enjoying his honchoâs little joke.
Knepp leaned toward me from the back. âLast time you were up here, it was over that narcotics roundup, a really big shew â youwatch Ed
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