Joanna could have taken full credit, but she didn’t. She was more interested in getting the job done than she was in accumulating bragging rights.
“If there’s an arrest warrant, the authorities in North Dakota will need to come up with that,” Craig Witherspoon continued, “but I believe you have enough probable cause to justify a search warrant here. Once your people get it written up, have them take it to Judge Askins. I’ll call and give him a heads-up that the request is coming his way. Let’s get this bastard off the streets before he has a chance to hurt anyone else.”
Chapter 35
Bisbee, Arizona
Friday, December 8, 2023
As Joanna hurried back to her car, she planned tocall into the office and get that warrant in progress, but her cell phone rang before she had a chance. With a Rapid City, South Dakota, number showing in caller ID, Joanna figured it had to be one of two people—Nadia Grayson, MMIV’s field agent for South Dakota, or Luke Running Deer, Amanda Hudson’s brother. It turned out to be the latter.
“You don’t know me,” he began once she answered, “but Anna Rae Green gave me your number.”
Joanna already understood that no matter how long ago a loved one might have died from homicidal violence, the pain of that loss never goes away. The fact that Luke Running Deer had called Joanna within minutes of hearing from Anna Rae only served to underscore that belief.
“I know who you are, Mr. Running Deer,” Joanna interrupted before he could complete his self-introduction. “You’re Amanda Hudson’s younger brother.”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Yes, I am.”
Not was, Joanna thought.Still am.
“Anna Rae asked if there was anything missing from Amanda’s personal effects when they were returned to us,” Luke continued.“The thing is, I wasn’t on the best of terms with my parents when all this happened. Neither was Amanda, for that matter, so I didn’t even know which of Mandy’s personal effects came back until years later when I cleaned out my grandmother’s house. That’s when I realized the knife was missing, but by then so much time had passed and nothing seemed to be happening in her case. I tried mentioning it to someone at the Highway Patrol, but he wasn’t particularly interested.”
As soon as she heard about a missing knife, Joanna instantly recalled Anna Rae saying that a whetstone had been found among Amanda’s possessions. She’d also said something about Amanda being estranged from her parents at the time of her death.
“There were issues between you two kids and your folks?” she asked.
Luke sighed. “As a young woman, our mother, Bonnie Running Deer, was drop-dead gorgeous. On the other hand, our father, Elmer Hudson, wasn’t anything to write home about. He was also a jerk and a bigot. Grandma Running Deer called himwasicu.”
“A what?” Joanna asked.
Luke chuckled. “That’s a derogatory Lakota term for Caucasians—on a par with calling Hispanics wetbacks, only worse. Somehow, when Elmer married our mother, it never occurred to him that their kids would end up looking like Indians instead of looking like him. There was still a lot of anti–Native American prejudice back in those days, so when our father filled in the information on our birth certificates, he failed to mention Amanda and I were half Lakota. He checked the Caucasian box and that was it. As an adult, I had to jump through all kinds of hoops to regain my tribal identity.”
“That goes a long way in explaining why, when MMIV was asking for unsolved murders involving Indigenous people, your sister’s case was missed.”
“That’s what Nadia Grayson told me, too.”
“Was your father abusive?”
“Of course he was,” Luke responded. “To Amanda and me and to our mother too. Amanda left home a week after she graduated from high school. She went to Grand Forks, got a job as a nurse’s aide in the hospital, and started taking night courses so she could become an RN. I left home about the same time she did, but since I was two years younger, I only got as far as Grandma Running Deer’s house. I lived with her until I graduated from high school. After that, I joined the army. I was through basic training and stationed at Fort Ord in California when Amanda was murdered. I came home on leave for her funeral.
“After that, things went downhill for my mother real fast. She’d always been a drinker, but it got a lot worse. Once Mom was diagnosed with cirrhosis, my father packed up her and all her stuff and dumped her off at Grandma’s house, which is where I finally found the unopened envelope from the coroner’s office after both my mother and grandmother passed away.”
While listening to this long family saga, Joanna had been dying to ask about the knife. Realizing this was a story Luke had needed to tell for a very long time, she managed to keep her mouth shut, but when he finally paused for a breath, she had her opening.
“You mentioned a knife?” Joanna prodded.
“Oh, yes, the knife,” Luke said. “I was sixteen when Amanda left home to go live in Grand Forks. For someone living in Devil’s Lake, Grand Forks was the big city, and I worried about her. She didn’t have a car—couldn’t afford one. I was afraid someone might come after her when she was walking home from work or school, and I just happened to have a switchblade. I wasn’t supposed to have one, but I did, so I gave it to her for protection.
“Amanda wasn’t the kind of girl who carried a purse, but she always wore boots, so I gave her the knife, along with a little deerskin holster so she could slip the knife inside one of her boots and carry it there.”
“As a concealed weapon?” Joanna asked.
“Yes,” Luke allowed. “I suppose it was.”
“Was the holster included in Amanda’s personal effects?”
“No,” Luke said. “Only the glasses, the bracelet, and the whetstone.”
