Blood of the Tribe Read online

  Blood of the Tribe

  By

  David S. Brody

  Blood of the Tribe

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and

  incidents either are products of the author’s imagination

  or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events

  or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2003 by David S. Brody

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

  form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical,

  including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any

  information storage or retrieval system, without the

  permission in writing from the author.

  Eyes That See Publishing

  Westford, Massachusetts

  Also by the Author

  The “Boston Law” Series:

  Unlawful Deeds (Book 1)

  The Wrong Abraham (Book 3)

  The “Templars in America” Series:

  Cabal of the Westford Knight: Templars at the Newport Tower (Book 1)

  Thief on the Cross: Templar Secrets in America (Book 2)

  Powdered Gold: Templars and the American Ark of the Covenant (Book 3)

  The Oath of Nimrod: Giants, MK-Ultra and the Smithsonian Coverup (Book 4)

  The Isaac Question: Templars and the Secret of the Old Testament (Book 5)

  Echoes of Atlantis: Crones, Templars and the Lost Continent (Book 6)

  About the Author

  David S. Brody is a Boston Globe bestselling fiction writer named Boston’s “Best Local Author” by the Boston Phoenix newspaper. A graduate of Tufts University and Georgetown Law School, he has appeared as a guest expert on documentaries airing on History Channel, Travel Channel, PBS, and Discovery Channel. Raisedin Laconia, New Hampshire, he currently lives in Westford, Massachusetts.

  The first four books in his “Templars in America” series have been Amazon Kindle Top 10 Bestsellers.

  Unlawful Deeds, the first book in his “Boston Law” series, was a Boston Globe Bestseller and was ranked #1 on Amazon’s Massachusetts sales ranking.

  For more information, please visit DavidBrodyBooks.com

  Praise for Blood of the Tribe

  (Book 2 in the “Boston Law” Series)

  “A wonderfully written legal thriller that leaves you hanging on the edge of your seat.”

  -The Book Review Cafe

  “Monumental issues. Multi-faceted characters. Taut drams. It’s all in a day’s work for David S. Brody.”

  -Lisa Dumond, Senior Reviewer, Black Gate Magazine

  “A fast-paced, plot-driven mystery.”

  -Middlesex Beat

  Praise for Unlawful Deeds

  (Book 1 in the “Boston Law” Series)

  “Best of the Coming Season.”

  -Boston Magazine

  "The action and danger are non-stop, leaving you breathless. It is one hell of a read."

  -About.com Book Reviews

  "Better than Grisham. A fabulous work."

  -Gary Chafetz, Boston Globe 2-time Pulitzer Prize Nominee

  "An enormously fun read, exceedingly hard to put down."

  -The BookBrowser

  “David S. Brody: Boston’s Best Local Author”

  -The Boston Phoenix

  Author’s Note

  This story is set in the early 2000s, prior to the time of legalized casino gambling in Massachusetts and prior to the 2007 date when the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe was officially recognized by the federal government.

  To my daughters, Allie and Renee—

  The most important legacy any writer can leave.

  BLOOD OF THE TRIBE

  PROLOGUE

  [August]

  Normally the feeling of bark on her skin and leaves in her hair made Dominique smile. But not today. There was no joy in murder.

  She folded her large frame neatly against the trunk of the oak tree, gently blew a bee off her wrist. Nothing to do now but wait. She would not be seen—the brush on the side of the winding subdivision road had grown thick over the summer, and the morning sun shrouded her in shadows. She had always had the ability to allow the natural world to simply envelope her. Even when the natural world was nothing but a strip mall-sized wooded area left to serve as a buffer between the green lawns and cedar fences and three-car garages.

  The rhythm of the woods altered slightly as a car approached. She watched a police cruiser slowly snake its way over the smooth, gray-black asphalt. The road used to be a rutted, dirt way she and her friends raced down on their bikes as children. The finish line was the lake, the same lake that was offering a soft morning breeze in futile opposition to the sticky August air.

  The cruiser rolled past, pulled up alongside a knot of people huddled near where the road split into a handful of long private driveways. Most of the people were residents of the cedar-shingled subdivision. Some of them were even her friends.

  The policeman hiked his pants up over his gut, wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his sleeve as he approached the group. “I’m Officer Cleary. I received a call about a man in a ditch.”

  Between the knot of tennis shorts and windbreakers and Prada handbags, limbs branched from the man’s body at unnatural angles. “Has anybody called for an ambulance?” the policeman asked. He waited for a response. Nothing but people looking at their feet. “Well, has anyone checked to see how bad he’s hurt?” Again, nothing.

  The officer radioed the dispatcher and confirmed that an ambulance was on the way. He folded his arms across his chest, tried to raise himself up to look down on his mostly-taller audience, addressed the group a third time. “Hey, does anybody know what happened here?”

  A woman shrugged. “I found him here when I came out for my morning walk. I screamed, and everyone came running. I think it’s Rex Griffin. He lives in the old farmhouse right as you come into the subdivision.”

  The policeman slid on his hip down into the culvert to the man’s side, touched a blood-crusted cheek. Dominique knew it would be cold. Just as she knew he wouldn’t find a pulse. He turned back to the group. “He’s dead.”

  The officer seemed to wait for the usual gasps and screams and Oh-my-Gods. Nothing. Not from this group. Not for this corpse.

  The policeman shook his head and shrugged, then bent down and reached into the dead man’s hip pocket. He pulled out a wallet, thumbed through it, focused on what looked like a driver’s license. A glance back at the victim’s face, then a quick nod.

  He hoisted himself out of the ditch, studied the faces of the neighbors for a few seconds. “Please stay away from the body. I’m going to get some tape to mark the scene.” He began to walk away, then stopped and turned. “And nobody leave.”

  They waited until the policeman was out of view, then one man tentatively offered a handshake to another. A woman squeezed her neighbor’s shoulder. A few people exchanged quick embraces.

  Everyone was smiling, even as their eyes rested on the cold body lying dead in the ditch.

  Chapter 1

  Seventeen months earlier

  [March]

  Bruce Arrujo wondered whether he had a death wish. The other boats, even the much larger ones, had returned to the shelter of the harbors hours ago, before the midday sun had been completely swallowed by the storm. But here he was, alone in a 30-foot sloop, his mainsail flapping angrily, trying to sail through the teeth of a tropical nightmare that had whipped its way up the Atlantic coastline and was now tossing his craft around like an ant in a dark gray toilet bowl.

  He was a good sailor. One of the best, in fact. Not that it was much to be proud
of—put any sturdy young man at sea alone in a boat for close to a decade and he was bound to become proficient at handling the vessel. Not exactly the most profitable use of his Harvard Law degree, he knew. But, then again, alone in the froth of the Atlantic, at least he did less harm than many of his fellow law school graduates did sitting behind their desks. And none of them could touch his history when it came to misuse of a law degree.

  He had long since taken down his jib and reefed his mainsail, so there wasn’t much to do now other than to try to keep his bow pointed at the waves. Unfortunately, such an angle forced him to sail close-hauled, with his sail pulled in tight to the boom. And that caused the boat to tip precariously, the downwind rail actually dipping down and burying itself beneath the water’s surface. But he had no choice. If he got turned sideways to the waves, a wall of water would broadside him and likely flip him over.

  The fact that he was indifferent to the possibility of being capsized actually alarmed him more than his predicament itself.

  From under his rain slicker, he pulled out a laminated picture. He shielded the photo as best he could from the storm, stared at the face of the woman who had exiled him to a life at sea: Shelby Baskin. The woman he had loved, then betrayed. If she couldn’t spark some desire in him to survive this storm, then nothing could.

  He felt a slight pang in his chest near his heart. After eight years, the thought of her still moved him. But not nearly as much as it used to. Even the spark that was Shelby was beginning to fade into the darkness that had become his existence. Without her, he would have long since allowed the sea to swallow him up.

  Was today the day he just let go?

  Out of the howl of the wind his grandfather’s voice responded to the unspoken question. Grandpa chided him, cursed him. Live your life, damn it! Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop your whining.

  Bruce allowed himself a small smile. It had been years since his grandfather’s spirit had bothered to speak to him, years since the old man who had been like a father to him had deigned to offer guidance from the beyond. Perhaps time had dulled even the old man’s anger. Or perhaps even Grandpa could sense how close Bruce was to simply turning the boat broadside to a wave.

  Bruce took a deep breath: Shelby and Grandpa. That was really all there ever had been in his life. He had betrayed her and, by doing so, had betrayed the memory of the man who had invested so much in Bruce’s upbringing. Shelby had rebuffed all his efforts at reconciliation, but perhaps he should make one last attempt to reconnect with his grandfather before simply allowing his life to expire. If he failed, there would be plenty of chances later to die.

  He shook the water from his eyes, turned his attention back to the storm. Somewhere, through the walls of water and sheets of spray and oceans of darkness, the shores of Cape Cod waited for the grandson of Umberto Wild Duck Arrujo to return. And on those shores lived the people of his grandfather, the Mashpee Wampanoag Indians. The name Wampanoag meant “People of the Dawn, and the tribe had been the first to greet the Pilgrims in Plymouth.

  He would go to them. Perhaps they would greet him, help him find his grandfather, maybe even help him issue in a new dawn for himself.

  * * *

  The boy’s skates hummed as the blades carved into the ice. Only the best skaters—those with strong legs, ideal form, superb balance—could generate that hum. It was almost as if the blades were playing the ice the way the bow of an expert violinist danced across the strings. No scrapes, no clatters, nothing but the hum. A gift.

  Pierre Prefontaine took a deep breath, the familiar hockey rink smell filling his nose. Zamboni exhaust and adolescent sweat and snack bar pizza all coagulating together in a cold, gray fog above the ice surface. Sort of like the way a carnival would smell if you dropped the whole thing in a giant freezer. There were probably a hundred of these airplane hanger-like rinks across Massachusetts, and they all smelled the same.

  Pierre had had no trouble finding the rink. “Look,” his boyhood friend, Bob, had said. “Picture Cape Cod as an arm, with a bent elbow in the middle and a fist at the end. The fist is Provincetown, the elbow is Chatham. You know how sometimes old women get that baggy flesh under their triceps, right near their underarms? Well, that’s Mashpee. The baggy flesh near the underarm.” Not exactly Mapquest, put it did the trick. It had taken him an hour and a half to do the drive from Boston.

  He turned to Bob, looked up at his friend. Tall and thin, the perfect build for a basketball player. But he had chosen a life in hockey instead. “So, who’s that number 11?” Pierre was more than a bit surprised to hear the words come out of his mouth. Just by asking the question, he was acknowledging that he had become intrigued by the job offer. It paid about one-tenth of what he made doing commercial real estate brokerage. But it was probably twenty times as much fun.

  “Name’s Billy Victor. Good size, good skills, loves to compete. He’s only a sophomore. Just think, you’d have two full years to ruin his game.”

  Pierre laughed, knocked the hockey stick out of his friend’s hands. Carla was right—Pierre liked to hang with his boyhood pals because it allowed him to act like he was still twelve. He skated across the rink to intercept the boy. “Hey, I was watching you skate. You’ve got some great wheels.”

  The boy squinted down at him cautiously, not quite sure how to respond to the stranger who his current coach said might be his future one. Pierre saw himself through the boy’s eyes—round face, tousled hair, easy smile. The right look for a polite Catholic boy whose mother wanted him to be a priest. But probably not the ideal face for a hockey coach. Maybe he should blacken a couple of teeth. “Thanks,” the boy finally muttered.

  “I noticed your shots are all going high. That on purpose?”

  “Nah. They just seem to sail on me.”

  “On your follow-through, try extending your stick forward instead of up. Usually a low follow-through will give you a low shot.”

  “’Kay.”

  Pierre skated away, moved to the side as the team began a puck-handling drill. As Billy made a turn around a pylon, his puck and that of one of his teammates collided and spun away. Billy retrieved his puck, spun back to the pylon to continue the drill. His teammate was waiting for him, stuck out a thick leg and tripped him. Billy crashed headfirst into the boards.

  The boy lumbered toward Billy and skidded to a stop, spraying Billy in the face with ice dust. He was about Billy’s height, but much thicker. All thighs and chest. He hissed at Billy. “Fucking Indian. Go on back to your reservation.”

  Billy scrambled to his feet and charged at the bully. Pierre saw Bob grab Billy’s teammate and use his long arms to pin him against the boards. Pierre intercepted Billy just as he threw a right-hand punch. The punch glanced off Pierre’s cheek, spinning him around. By the time he regained his balance and grabbed Billy from behind, Billy had landed a couple of punches on the top of his teammate’s thick head. Pierre thought about letting him throw a few more, but he could see that Bob was still trying to separate the combatants. He wrestled Billy away.

  He rubbed his cheek, smiled at Billy. “Damn. You hit hard. Now what was that all about?”

  “Asshole’s been on my case all year. Says he hates Indians.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause he’s a fuckin’ idiot, I don’t know.”

  A few minutes later Pierre skated alongside Bob. “You should have let them fight. Be done with it.”

  Bob laughed. “I can’t. Billy’s too tough—once they got going, he’d never stop. And the big kid’s too friggin’ dumb to know when he’s been beat. They’d end up killing each other. And I’d probably get sued.”

  “Still, it would end it, once and for all.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. These kids’ parents probably used to go at it when they were in school. Maybe even their grandparents. That’s the way it is here. There are some assholes in town who hate the Indians—always have, always will. And they just pass it down to their kids.”

  Pierre nodde
d. He and his family used to vacation on Cape Cod when he was a kid, so he knew that the town of Mashpee had been splintered in the 1970s when the Mashpee tribe filed a lawsuit claiming ownership to all the land in the town. The claim eventually failed, but that didn’t mean everyone lived happily ever after. Short of rape, nothing sparks a little bigotry quite like someone trying to evict you from your home.

  As the practice continued, Pierre made a point of studying Billy. He seemed to be a typical teenager—horsing around with his teammates when the coach wasn’t looking, slapping the puck loudly against the boards when a group of girls walked by. But he worked hard, and seemed to be a quick learner. He blasted a low slap shot that found the far corner of the net, only a few inches off the ice, then turned to see if Pierre had been watching. Pierre clapped his stick on the ice and smiled. “Nice shot, Billy.”

  During the scrimmage at the end of the practice, Billy’s co-combatant lost control of the puck in his skates. As he looked down to find it, Billy flashed into the thug’s skating lane, lowered his shoulder, and caught his teammate in the chest with a perfectly executed—and completely legal—body check.

  As the bully lay writhing on his back gasping for air, Billy picked up the puck, swooped in on the goalie, and flipped a shot into the top corner of the net.

  He dropped his stick and gloves to perform a mock Indian war dance—spinning on one skate and then the other, the opposite knee moving up and down in rhythm with his chant. “Wa-wa-wa-wa,” filled the arena, Billy modulating the chant by covering and uncovering his mouth with an open palm.

  Then he flashed a quick smile at Pierre and skated off the ice.

  Chapter 2

  [May]

  Shelby Baskin stopped outside a glass office tower in downtown Boston, eyed her reflection in a smoky glass window for the umpteenth time that evening. Not bad. Sexy but respectable in a black sleeveless dress, the curves still in all the right places. And even in the dim dusk light her blue-green eyes lit up the window pane.