Chapter 5

It was almost ten when she woke, which woke me. She was on the inside, which meant to get out she had to crawl over me. That might have been delightful, except that she needed to pee and it was chilly. She scampered to the bathroom and, when she came out, she didn't "parade" around naked. She went to her pack and got on some clothes so she could get warm. I realized she was going to avoid the issue when she said "I'm going to the kitchen to see if they have anything for us, since we missed breakfast."

"Be there in a jiffy," I said.

Ten minutes later I was walking toward the chow hall. Eartha was more than happy to cook us both eggs. She crumbed up left over bacon and threw that in, adding in some cheese, and produced two omelets that were delicious.

"So what we doing today?" asked Kelani, around a mouthful of omelet.

"Fishing? Horseback riding?" I suggested. "Do you know how to fish?"

She snorted. "I lived a thirty minute run from the ocean. Fish was a staple in our diet."

"How did you catch them?"

"If the water was nice we swam and speared them. Sometimes we used nets. It depended on the season and what fish were around."

"Have you ever fished American style?"

An hour later we were standing at the edge of a small mountain lake that basically interrupted a stream on its way down the mountain. We were using lures, and I had explained the techniques of trying to make the lure appear alive to the prey.

She lasted about half an hour, casting and reeling in, only to cast again.

"Is this supposed to be fun?" she asked.

"Some people live to do this."

"Boring people, right?" she suggested.

"The fish taste good," I said.

"Yes, but it would take us all day to catch enough just to feed one family, much less the whole camp."

"I don't intend to try to feed the whole camp."

Just then she got a bite. The experience of pulling in a fighting fish energized her for another half hour, but when we trudged back up the trail for lunch all we had was the one she'd caught. It was almost one, so when we turned that one in to the kitchen staff, they said said they'd cook it up for her for supper.

It had warmed up considerably and after lunch she wanted to go for a walk. She picked a trail that had a sign that said "scenic overlook" and set a pace that I was hard put to keep up with, even though I had at least six or seven inches on her in terms of height. The trail led to a place where there was a sheer cliff face rising to the right of the trail, and where an observation deck had been built jutting out into space on the left. The deck wasn't large, maybe ten by ten, but there was a sturdy railing around it. Below us was a drop of probably a hundred feet, at the bottom of which was the stream that fed the lake we had fished at that morning. Out in front of us were the Rocky Mountains. There were benches along the railing and she sat down on one, patting the seat beside her.

"You've been in this business for twenty some odd years?" she asked.

"Something like that, if you include the militatry."

"Did you ever work with female partners before?"

"Yes."

"And how many of them did you end up taking to bed?"

She was very direct, was my little Kelani.

"Two," I said.

"Out of how many?"

I coughed. "Um ... two."

She looked at me again, longer this time. "I see," she said.

"In both cases the women got attached to me. I mean I didn't go after them. Things just got complicated. When you work as closely together as we do, emotion seems to creep in."

"I can understand how that could happen," she said.

"This is serious, Kelani," I said. "Neither of those relationships worked out."

"Why not?"

"It's a mixture of things. Some of it is thinking about each other instead of the job. If the job happens to be dangerous, that can be fatal. And then there's the whole issue of worrying about the other one getting hurt. Then it's inevitable that sooner or later one of you wants to cut a corner for some reason, and that puts the other one on the spot, because partners are supposed to keep each other honest. Plus you're usually trying to keep it a secret, because you don't want the boss to find out and transfer one of you, and that makes things tense. You can't show how you feel in public, and you feel like you're sneaking around. It just doesn't work."

"So what happened to them?" she asked.

"One moved to the San Francisco office. The other accepted a position with the FBI."

"And you didn't go with either of them?"

"Nope. I like my job." I looked at her. "My turn."

"Your turn for what?"

"Tell me about this guy in college."

She was quiet for a while. "I'll tell you, but not now. Tonight."

"After supper?"

"In bed."

"Do you really think sleeping together like this is a good idea?"

"It worked fine last night," she said.

"I'm not sure my control will be so good when I'm not exhausted," I said.

"I'm not worried," she said.

"What about your other boyfriends?" I asked.

"I'll tell you all that tonight," she said.

"Why not now?"

"Because it is light, and you can see me, and I don't want you to be able to see me when I speak of these things."

I sensed the tension in her. It made me curious. She was very businesslike when she needed to be, but she was also carefree and smiling at times. I had never sensed any darkness in her past, but it sounded like there was something there.

"Fair enough," I said.

"What are the next steps in this investigation?" she asked.

I was surprised that she wanted to change the subject, but I went with it. In the best of all worlds, depending on how close we could get to pinpointing the destination of the helicopter after it left the camp, there would be some kind of surveillance of future flights, to see if there were any patterns, and to see if we could document where the supplies left on the chopper were unloaded. That person was in theory, receiving stolen goods, because the camp was claiming the cost of everything in their claims for reimbursement. Eventually there would be a raid and evidence would be seized.

After that would be a visit to the wholesaler where the food and supplies were issued, and going through their books. Then there would be a visit to the Helicopter company, and the questions for them. Previous patrons of the camp would be interviewed and asked how many people were in their camp. All that information would be compared with what the contractor had reported and charged the government for. Everything would be bundled for the AUSA to look at. Maybe there would be a Grand Jury, or perhaps he would just seek indictments based on the raw evidence.

By the time we had roughed out the possibilities and options, and what each of those might lead to, it was time to head back for evening chow. Kelani was served her fish, along with a trip to the buffet, which was seafood that night, including lobster and King Crab legs. We sat at a table with another couple we hadn't met, named Judy and Kurt Phillips, and their son Kevin, who looked to be about eleven. She was a realtor and he sold trailers. I found out that night how many different kinds of trailers there are in the world.

They were nice people, though, and didn't invite us to swap partners, so we ended up playing cards with them after dinner while Kevin watched a movie from the considerable selection of DVDs the camp had in a rack on the wall. Kurt suggested a men-against-women spades game. Kelani had learned to play in college, and Judy was very experienced. It had been years since I played. The women thrashed us in the first game, going over five hundred while Kurt and I only had 247 points. They beat us in the second game too, but only by forty-five points. When that game was over Judy stood up.

"I'd stay and play again, but two out of three means I own my husband for the rest of the night, and I have plans for him, so we're leaving now. We must do this again. Kelani, I'll partner with you any day of the week."

Kelani beamed and we watched them walk away. She turned to look at me.

"Interesting tradition they have," she said.

"Don't even try it," I said.

"I could never own you," she sniffed. "It is not the Maori way. Aroha Tuatahi are partners. They cannot own one another."

"I love it when you speak Maori," I said. "You sound so mysterious. What does it mean?"

She stood up.

"I'll explain that tonight too."

Then she held out her hand to me.

When we got to the room I went to the bathroom. When I came out she was already in bed. The clothes she had been wearing were on the floor. She was lying on her side, her head propped up on one hand, supported by her elbow. Her dark eyes glittered in the light of the overhead bulb.

She watched me get undressed. I left my boxers on.

As I went toward the bed, she flipped the top bag back. It exposed her nakedness ... and it was no accident.

"The light," she reminded me.

As I got in she put her hand on my chest.

"Do not turn away from me right now," she said. "Later, perhaps, but not now."

Her hand moved to my shoulder, which she gripped gently, and pulled on, rolling me toward her. She scooted up against me and, for the first time, I felt those firm, hot breasts on my chest. She wiggled her left arm under me and put her right one around me. It was impossible not to do the same, and in a handful of heartbeats, we were embracing each other closely. I felt her breath on my chest, and put my nose in her hair, which smelled wonderful.

"First I need to explain the Maori concept of Aroha Tuatahi. My people believe that each person is born with a spirit that matches only one other perfectly. That person is your Aroha Tuatahi, or spirit mate. A man may take two wives, but only one will be Aroha Tuatahi. In America some call this your one, true love."

"I'm familiar with the concept," I said. "I don't buy into it. I think you can fall in love with many people."

"The elders would agree with you," she said. "But they would insist that while you might love many, there is only one Aroha Tuatahi."

"And I suppose there is some mystical way of determining who your ... however you say it ... is," I said.

"That was never explained to me," she said. Her fingers moved on my back, aimlessly, almost nervously. "I was told my Aroha Tuatahi was probably another half breed, like me. There were no other half breeds in the clan, nor in any of the clans up to three days run from my village. Most considered me damaged and thought no man would want me for more than kairau ... a prostitute."

I heard pain in her voice ... more pain than simply being predicted to be a prostitute would cause.

"Most?"

"One Papa (she pronounced the 'a' long, making it into pay-pay) - uncle would be the American word - took special interest in me. It was not like your American uncle, though. All men in the village were Papa to me. This one, though, decided to find out if I was different from a real Maori girl on the inside."

"He raped you," I said. I felt the urge to tighten my arms, but refrained.

"He wouldn't have called it that. I was expected to submit. I fought him, but he was too strong. He said it was to be my lot in life anyway when I grew up."

"When you grew up?" I felt a chill run down my spine.

"I was twelve."

"Shit."

"Twelve is old enough to marry, though few girls are sought for at that age," she said. "They are a very moral culture, actually. Had the others known he took me by force they would have punished him. He said I would disappear if I told anyone what he had done, and that no one would miss me."

"I'm sorry, Kelani."

"Not as sorry as he was," she said. "When he came back for seconds I bit off his ngarengare ... his penis."

"Damn!"

"When the others heard his screams they came. There was no way he could explain that. He died anyway. Bled to death."

"Damn!" I gasped again.

"There is no Maori word for oral sex," she said. "It is a perversion to them. When they found his penis on the ground in front of me, and my mouth bloody, they refused to even try to stop his bleeding. Of course I was even more damaged goods then, but at least the men left me alone."

"So you didn't have lots of boyfriends," I said.

"I had none. And, as I grew up, because I wasn't taught the female ways, and had few friends, and wasn't sought after, I read books. I read everything I could get my hands on. There was a big box of books in the council house. I had read all of them two or three times by the time I was fourteen. No one thought to send me to school, or stop me from going either, so one day I followed the other girls who went to school. There was a Pakeha teacher - a white woman - and she liked me. She gave me more books and then tutored me. It was wonderful, even though we both knew that if I didn't marry a white man, I would be a prostitute in Aotearoa."

"Aotearoa," I repeated.

"The Maori name for New Zealand," she said. "It means land of the long, white cloud."

"What a crappy childhood," I said softly.

"Not really," she said. "I had no idea how crappy it was. It was just my life. I didn't know any better until I got to America. College opened my eyes."

"How did you manage that?" I asked. "It can't have been easy for a girl such as you describe to get to America."

"Nothing could have been easier, as it turned out. All this time I knew very little about my mother. My aunties just said she was a good woman for a Pakeha. Then, on the day I was eighteen, a white man came to the village. He was a Mormon missionary. They were scattered all around the south island. I had seen some of them before. They loved to talk about their religion. Anyway, he asked for me, and when I was called, he gave me an envelope. In it was my birth certificate, and a letter from my mother."

"Wow," I said softly.

"She said she was sick with cancer they couldn't do anything about, and that she was sorry she had to leave me. She wrote how she decided that I should be raised by my father's clan, but that she wanted me to have options later. The birth certificate, she said, would prove I was an American citizen. It said my last name was Mortenson."