Birdy Waterman 01 - The Bone Box

down to the business at hand.
    Birdy was small for her age, fearless when it came to the noisy saw, and just hungry enough to help her mother and father in any way that she could. Helping each other was not only the tribal way, but the way of the Watermans. Natalie made money doing what she considered bogus crafts for the tribal gift shop, and Mackie Waterman fished for salmon up and down Neah Bay and over to West Port. Tribal fishing rights didn’t always guarantee a good income—no matter what the non-Native fishermen said. So there, on that summer day, Birdy did what she always did: forage for deadfall along the coast trail that wound its way from the hillside down to the rocky beach populated by sea stacks and smelly sea lions.
    She was on the east fork of the trail when she first heard the noise. It came at her like a locomotive, pushing, huffing, and puffing. Each breath was a gasp for air. At first, it didn’t seem human. Birdy idled her chainsaw, then shut it off. She turned in the direction of the noise.
    “Hey!” a familiar voice came at her. “Birdy!”
    She looked through the tunnel-like pathway and strained to see who it was.
    “Birdy!” It came again.
    Coming toward her was her cousin, Tommy Freeland. He was in the darkness coming toward her. The ground thumped under his frantic feet. She set down the saw. Then, like a strobe light, his face was suddenly illuminated. It wasn’t the handsome face of a much loved relative, despite the familiar flinty black eyes and handsome broad nose.
    The twenty-year-old’s face was dripping in red.
    “Tommy!” Birdy cried out, and moved closer. “Are you okay?”
    “Birdy!” he called again, stopping and dropping his elbows to his knees. “Help me.”
    By then she was close enough to see that the coloring on his coffee skin wasn’t just any red. It was the dark iron red of blood. Tommy’s T-shirt had been splattered with what instinctively Birdy Waterman, only fourteen, knew was human blood.
    “Are you hurt?” she said, almost upon him.
    His eyes were wild with fear. “No, no,” he said as he tried to catch his breath. “I don’t think so.... I think I’m okay.” He looked down at his bloody hands and wiped them on his blue jeans, also dark and wet with blood.
    Birdy shook a little as fear undermined her normally calm demeanor. “What happened? Who’s hurt?” she asked.
    Tommy, breathing as hard as a marathon runner at the finish line, swallowed. He started to cry and his words tumbled over his trembling lips. “Anna Jo. Birdy, I’m pretty sure Anna Jo’s dead.”
    Anna Jo was a beautiful young girl, the kind other girls of the reservation aspired to be. She had a job, her own car, and she was kind. No one thought anything but the best of Anna Jo Bonners.
    Did he say dead? The question rolled around in her head, but she didn’t say it out loud. Something held her back. Maybe it was because she didn’t want confirmation of something so terrible. Birdy took a step backward and fell onto the black, damp earth. Tommy lunged at her and she screamed.
    “Hey,” he said. “I won’t hurt you. I was trying to stop you from falling. Don’t be afraid of me.”
    “What happened to Anna Jo? What did you do to her?”
    Tommy blinked back the recognition of what his cousin was undoubtedly thinking just then.
    “No. I never. I just found her. Honest. She was at Ponder’s cabin. She was already dead. I promise. I never hurt anyone.”
    Birdy found her footing and got up from the damp, dark earth. Her heart was pounding so hard inside the bony frame of her heaving chest just then, she was certain that she’d have a heart attack. She didn’t want to die and she didn’t want to find out what had happened to Anna Jo. She was too scared. Instead, she turned and ran, leaving the wagon, the chain saw, and her bloody cousin on the trail.
    Twenty years later, as she walked down that same trail, the scene played in her head. Birdy hadn’t thought about what she’d felt that summer day and the role fear had played in what she testified to at trial. She was the witness who had put Tommy on that trail covered in blood. She was the one who had provided the time line that connected the victim to the killer. While it was true that Tommy Freeland had had blood all over his hands and chest, and it was true that he and Anna Jo had had a bitter fight a few days before she died, he’d denied any part of the brutal stabbing that had killed her.
    One of the last