Read Online Indian Pipes by Cynthia Riggs - Free Book Online

the brown and orange and red clay of the cliff, leaped from a shadowy recess onto the sand.
    He greeted Victoria with a gap-toothed grin. “My friend!”
    Victoria frowned. “You didn’t need to frighten us.”
    “Whaddaya say, Dojan!” The patrolman held up his hand.
    “Not much, Malachi!” Dojan replied, slapping his hand against VanDyke’s.
    “Thought you were in Washington,” the patrolman said.
    Dojan turned his head and peered at the line of islands to the northwest.
    VanDyke laughed. “Hear you’re living on a yacht on the Potomac River. The first Indian member of the exclusive Washington Yacht Club. I hear they’re accepting women members, too. What’s the world coming to?”
    Dojan growled.
    VanDyke laughed again.
    “Why don’t you sit over there on that flat rock,” Victoria ordered the patrolman. “Dojan and I need to talk.”
    The surf crested and broke onto the rocks, no longer a steady rumble, but a distinct roar, crash, and swish.
    Dojan said, when they were out of the patrolman’s hearing, “Somebody killed him.”
    “Of course someone killed him.”
    “You think somebody pushed him off the cliff?”
    “What do you think?” Victoria asked.
    Dojan shook his head, and the string of bones around his neck rattled. “He was killed down here.”
    Victoria nodded. “We need to find a weapon. A rock, I suppose.” She looked around the beach, which was paved with cobbles. “A rock big enough to bash in his skull, but small enough so someone could hold it in one hand.”
    “Maybe he threw the rock into the ocean,” Dojan said. “Maybe the tide came in and washed it clean.”
    “Maybe, but who knows. We may find something.” They walked slowly away from the patrolman, who sat on the rock where Victoria had told him to sit. Dojan walked with his hands behind him, his back bent. Victoria continued her back-and-forth search, occasionally looking up the side of the cliff.
    “See, Dojan, this is where he began his climb.”
    Dojan came over to her and looked up the gully in the steep cliff. They could see marks in the naturally eroded clay, marks of fingers clutching for rough spots to pull a person up. A long smooth stretch that might have been caused by a stomach sliding up the cliff. They could see an occasional splotch of dark color that contrasted with the clay. As they looked higher, they could see where tufts of grass had apparently been grabbed for a handhold, flattened places where a foot must have rested.
    Starting from the base of the cliffs above the high tide mark, they combed the beach in a widening semicircle.
    “Here, Dojan. This would be about the right size.” Victoria pointed with her stick to a rounded cobble about the size and shape of a baseball.
    “No.” Dojan shook his head. “Must be bigger. Rougher.”
    “I’m taking it with us.” She picked it up, and set down her cloth bag so she could take notes. They circled, collecting stones. Dojan took the cloth bag, which had become quite heavy. They found a dozen likely cobbles before they went back to where Patrolman VanDyke sat, piling sand into a castle. He had set small stones around the castle’s turrets, a flag of Irish moss on a tower. A wave crashed. The swash raced toward his castle and filled the moat with foam and hopping sand fleas.
    His radio crackled, and VanDyke unsnapped it from his belt and answered. After he signed off, he asked, “Where’s your van, Dojan?”
    “Tribal Headquarters.”
    “Okay if I take you and Mrs. Trumbull there and leave you? I got to respond to a call. Can you get her home?”
    Dojan held up his hand, palm out. “I will drive my friend home after we report to Chief Hawkbill.”
    Malachi dropped them off at headquarters, and the two went inside to the chief’s office. The chief was dozing at his desk, his hands clasped in front of him, his head nodding. Behind him Victoria could see the sweep of the Atlantic Ocean, an unbroken steel blue.
    The chief sat up with a jerk,