Questing for a Dream, page 25
“No… she’s Ojibwe.”
“So you two don’t talk Indian to each other?”
Nadie shook her head, smiling slightly. “No.”
He nodded. “Did you know her before you came here?”
“Uh-uh. I came from… further away.”
“Oh. I see.”
At the food court, they bought food at the various counters and snagged a few tables out in the middle of the seating area to eat together. As Nadie had expected, Charlotte bought the two of them a cinnamon bun to share, so all Nadie had to buy was her coffee. Nadie took a couple of bites of the rich confection, rolling her eyes.
“These are honestly the best. Even better than Beth’s!”
Charlotte cut off a bite for herself. “Who’s Beth?”
“Mouse’s mother.”
“Mouse?” Cole repeated. “What kind of a name is that? Who’s Mouse?”
“A friend of mine,” Nadie said. She rolled her eyes. “And it’s his band name.”
“Oooh.” His cheeks flushed a little pink. “Sorry. Guess I should have figured that out. What about you? Do you have a name like that?”
Nadie shook her head. “My mom told my grandfather it meant wise. It’s supposed to be a Nehiyaw name, but Grandfather said he doesn’t think it really is.”
“Nay-hih-yaw?”
“What you call Cree.”
Cole nodded and took a big bite of his burger. He looked across the table at Charlotte and one of the other boys and snapped his fingers a couple of times to get their attention while he chewed. He swallowed strenuously.
“Hey, yeah, me too. Gimme… ten of crank.”
Nadie looked and realized money and pills were being counted up and exchanged amongst the little group. She felt her eyes get wide as Cole exchanged his money for a small baggie of crystals.
“Do you think you should be doing that here?” she asked, looking around worriedly.
There were a few people watching what was going on, pretending they weren’t, but sending quick glances over at them every few seconds.
“Relax,” Cole said. “No one’s busted us here yet!”
Charlotte slid a couple of pills across the table toward Nadie. “You shared with me, I share back with you.”
“Oh, you don’t have to… I don’t need them…”
“You think I don’t know you’re out? And don’t forget, I know how much you just got for bottles. You don’t have the money to buy, and I know you’re not bartering… yet.”
“I’m fine,” Nadie tried to push them back.
“Keep them!” Charlotte raised her hands, refusing to take them. “Hide them until you need them, if you don’t want them right now. Next time you’re out partying, you’ll be glad for them.”
Nadie glanced around, nervous of anyone seeing them on the table in front of her. It wouldn’t hurt her to have a couple of pills around just in case she needed them. She had been able to avoid taking too many since arriving at the shelter and that gave her confidence. She knew she had the willpower to leave them alone on days when she didn’t need them. She wasn’t addicted and she didn’t plan on getting hooked. She grabbed the two pills and shoved them into her pocket. Two wasn’t enough to be harmful.
Charlotte nodded and went back to her negotiations with the other youths. Nadie squirmed in her seat, anxious at the drug deals being conducted right out in the open. But Cole and the others seemed confident they weren’t going to get caught. Nadie hunched over, making herself small, and nibbled a couple more bites of the cinnamon bun. It stuck in her throat, the sweetness cloying. She had to swallow hard to get it down, then washed it down with a swallow of coffee, now lukewarm and bitter.
She glanced over at Charlotte again, worried. Charlotte shook her head. “She’s such a baby,” she said to one of the boys. “Scared of everything!”
“I am not,” Nadie muttered. Not loud enough for them to actually hear her.
There was a loud tramping noise, and conversation was muted as everyone looked around to see what was going on. Nadie saw a wall of black-suited cops sweeping into the food court. Cole swore.
“Bust!” he warned.
Nadie and the others didn’t believe it at first. The police were there for something else. Some other operation that didn’t have anything to do with them. But within the next few seconds, they could see the cops were focused on them, advancing in their direction.
“Scatter!” Charlotte commanded, flying out of her seat and heading toward the hall that led past the bathrooms to an emergency exit, which would get her out to the parking lot. Nadie remained frozen on her feet, petrified by indecision. One at a time, the others peeled off, making a break for it. Nadie stood up. She could see Charlotte hadn’t managed to escape. The hallway had been blocked by the police as well.
“Drop to the floor!”
Nadie turned to look at the cop who had closed in on her.
“On the floor!” he repeated, grabbing the back of her clothing and throwing her down.
Nadie tried to catch herself but didn’t get her hands or knees down in time to break her fall. She reflexively tried to push herself back up and the cop kicked her back down.
“Stay down! Lace your hands behind your head!”
There was so much noise and confusion, Nadie was overloaded trying to process it all. Her brain seemed to be three beats behind everything else that was happening.
“Hands behind your head!”
He grabbed one of her hands and wrenched it behind her head, cracking the elbow painfully.
“Ow!” Nadie brought the other hand behind her head and obediently laced her fingers together. He started patting her down. Nadie flinched and jerked away at his touch, no matter how she tried to stay still. He thrust his hands into her pockets and turned them inside out, finding her knife, her change, and the two pills Charlotte had just given her.
“Those aren’t mine,” Nadie said, feeling sick. “Those are Charlotte’s, I just took them because she wouldn’t take them back. I didn’t buy them!”
He didn’t comment, putting them in a small bag so they wouldn’t get lost. He continued to pat her down. Nadie squirmed at his touch. He grabbed each hand to pull it down to her back, popping her elbow again.
“Ow, you’re hurting me!”
He clipped a pair of handcuffs over her wrists. When he released her, Nadie turned her head and looked around for the others. There were still people sitting and standing around the food fair, but all of the kids who had been seated with Nadie were on the floor like she was.
“I didn’t buy any drugs,” Nadie insisted.
He picked up the plastic bag and scribbled something on it. “What’s your name?”
Nadie hesitated. He nudged her with his toe.
“Easy question. What’s your name?”
“Uh—Tonya.”
“Tonya what?”
“Tonya Nehiyaw.” Nadie used the same last name she had given Cammy.
“Nee-hih… can you spell that?”
Nadie did. He wrote it in block letters on the bag.
“All right. On your feet.”
He grabbed the inside of her upper arm and helped pull her up to her feet. He waved at one of the other police officers.
“Noelle, come check this one for me.”
The policewoman came over.
“She was pretty squirmy when I was doing the pat-down. She could be trying to hide something.”
“I’m not!” Nadie protested. “I just don’t like him touching me.”
“Stand still for me, then,” the policewoman said. She started at the top of Nadie’s head, working her way slowly down Nadie’s body, including under her bra strap. She lifted up Nadie’s shirt and checked her waistband. She went down Nadie’s legs. “Take off your shoes.”
Nadie obeyed, and the woman checked them. She put them back down and let Nadie put them back on. When Nadie looked back up at her, the policewoman was putting on a pair of blue gloves.
“Open your mouth.”
Nadie did, and the cop put her fingers in Nadie’s mouth, pulling her cheeks around and making her lift up her tongue and move it around. She nodded and stripped off the gloves.
“She’s clean. If you’re worried, do a strip-search at the station.” She looked at the pocket knife, change, and two pills on the floor beside them, and gave a little grimace. “Yeah, I don’t think you need to worry about this one.”
The first cop nodded. “Thanks. Okay, Tonya. You’re being detained for suspected possession of a controlled substance. Once we test these pills, we’ll bring charges. You got a lawyer?”
“No.”
“You want one?”
“I… I don’t know. I told you, they’re not mine. I don’t even know what they are. They’re not mine.”
“They are in your possession, that’s all that matters to me.”
He escorted her out of the mall to where there was a line of police cars and vans parked waiting for them. He took her over to a van. Nadie thought there would be a big open area inside the van and she’d be able to talk to the other kids. But it turned out it was divided into individual little compartments with steel walls in between.
“You’re going to be waiting in here for a little while,” the policeman told her. “Just be calm and sit still.”
She realized after he helped her in and closed the compartment door why he said that. It was as close as a coffin. There was no room to move or air flow. She tried to do what the policeman had said, just to be calm and sit still. She slowed her breathing and closed her eyes, pretending she was somewhere else. Maybe sitting in her room at night. Or outside in the woods, under the stars, with a campfire warming her feet.
She breathed in and out, in and out, even and regular.
Nadie was startled when the van started up its engine and pulled out, but glad to be on her way. She was getting sore sitting in the same position on the hard bench for so long. She could just hear noises outside the van, muffled enough not to be able to tell what was going on.
At the police station, a different policeman opened the compartment and helped her out, and took her in for booking.
“She have any ID?”
“Nothing on her. Gave her name to the arresting officer as Tonya Nehiyaw. See if she’s in the system already.”
The officer on the other side of the counter looked at the name on the evidence bag and typed it in.
“Nope. Where are you from, kid?” He looked at Nadie.
“Winnipeg.”
“Never been booked in Alberta?”
“No. I’ve never been arrested ever.”
“In foster care? Got a health care card?”
“No.”
“Runaway?”
“No.”
He looked at her for a moment, then looked back down at his computer. Nadie assumed he was checking descriptions in the missing persons database anyway. But he wouldn’t find her there. Even if Grandfather had gone to town and filed a missing person report when she disappeared, the file would have been closed when Nadie Laplante was reported as drowned in the river.
The booking officer eventually shrugged. “I don’t see her in here at all. You know your Social Insurance Number, Tonya?”
“No. Don’t know if I have one.”
He rolled his eyes. “Well, maybe the fingerprints will pop something. Let’s get her entered.”
Nothing showed up since her prints had never been entered in any system before. They completed the process, and Nadie was put into an interview room, where she had to wait again.
Nadie had her head down on the table, tired from waiting. The door finally opened and a police officer came in and sat down across from her.
“Tonya Nehiyaw?” he asked, looking down at a computer printout.
“Yes.”
“I am Constable Warner. You are being questioned in connection with methamphetamine discovered in your possession. Do you understand that?”
“They weren’t mine,” Nadie told him immediately. “They’re my friend’s. I just… she passed them to me and wouldn’t take them back. I would have thrown it out, once I went past a garbage can…”
“You would have, would you?”
Nadie nodded. “I don’t do drugs.”
“Uh-huh. Never done anything?”
“N-no,” Nadie’s tongue betrayed her, stumbling slightly.
Warner tapped the piece of paper with the end of his pen. “That didn’t sound certain.”
“I haven’t. I don’t do drugs.”
“Why would your friend give it to you, then?”
“I dunno. Maybe she wanted to get me hooked.”
“Not something friends usually do…”
Nadie thought about Holly’s manipulations. She was pretty sure Charlotte wasn’t being manipulative the same way as Holly, but she also pressured Nadie to drink or take drugs when she didn’t want to. Nadie thought it was just because Charlotte didn’t want to drink alone, but she wasn’t sure.
“Sometimes people pretend to be your friend… but they just want something from you,” she said.
He lifted his eyebrows. “What do they want?”
“To get you addicted? Maybe they want you to depend on them… or to make you confused… vulnerable.”
Warner leaned back, tipping his chair back on two legs. “Really. You think that’s why your friend Charlotte gave you these pills?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she was just trying to be nice.”
“So you don’t deny you had drugs in your possession when the bust was made.”
Nadie hesitated.
“There were cameras on you kids while you were making your deals,” Warner offered, his tone smug. “And on all of the arrests being made. We’ve got you dead to rights.”
Nadie stared at him. “They said no one had ever been arrested making deals there before.”
“Well, if they thought no one noticed or cared, they were wrong. There have been plenty of calls about drug deals being conducted right out in the open at the mall. That’s why we were watching and set up the sting today.”
“Oh.”
“You hadn’t been part of a deal there before?”
“No. I told you, I don’t do that.”
“How long have you been taking meth?”
“I don’t. I’m not an addict. I don’t look like one, do I?”
At least Nadie knew she hadn’t had anything that day that would show up with dilated eyes or some other symptom. They could test her blood if they wanted to, she was clean.
“You can’t tell a meth user until they’re pretty advanced in their addiction. You’re still taking pills, haven’t moved on to smoking or mainlining yet. You’re not going to have major signs.”
“I’m not a user.”
“What can you tell me about the other kids you were with?”
Nadie shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know any of them. Only Charlotte.”
“Tell me about her.”
“I don’t know… I’ve only known her for a little while. I don’t know anything about her taking drugs.”
“You’ve never seen her take anything?”
“Just drinking… I saw a guy give her something… but she wasn’t conscious. That wasn’t her choice.”
He looked up from his notes. “That’s assault. One of the guys from the mall?”
“No. At a club.”
“You’ve never seen her take pills like she gave you today?”
Nadie thought about Charlotte taking the pills Nadie gave her. It obviously wasn’t something new to Charlotte. And Graham had talked about her doing coke and other drugs. She couldn’t very well tell Warner she had given Charlotte drugs herself.
“When can I go home?”
“You’re not going home,” Warner said. “You’re going to jail.”
“But… all I had was two pills, and I told you those were Charlotte’s…”
“It’s still possession. And you were part of a larger trafficking operation. That carries pretty heavy penalties. Especially with minors involved and in an area where there were children around.”
“I wasn’t trafficking!”
“You’ll get the chance to tell that to a judge. At some point.”
Nadie put her elbows on the table and held her head. How could she get in trouble when she had been forced to accept the pills? It hadn’t been her choice. It was Charlotte’s fault.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” she insisted. “I’m not an addict or a dealer. I was just there, I wasn’t involved.”
The door opened and someone else came into the room. Nadie rubbed her eyes, trying to wipe away the tears. Her nose was starting to run.
“The way you were drinking the other night?” a voice said. “You have a substance abuse problem, whether you want to admit it or not.”
Nadie looked up. The other person who had entered the room was Cole. She frowned, trying to make sense of it.
“What?”
He sat down at the table with her, nodding a greeting to Warner.
“The other night at the club, with Charlotte. You were drinking pretty heavily.”
“You weren’t there.” Or had he been? There had been a lot of people at the club. Nadie vaguely remembered dancing with a group of punk-looking kids. Had Cole been one of them?
“I’m not surprised you don’t remember. You were pretty smashed.”
“I didn’t go there to drink. I thought I was ordering iced tea.”
He laughed. “That’s a good one. I’ll have to remember that!”
“What…” Nadie looked from him to Warner. “What are you doing here? I thought you were arrested too.”
“Tonya, I’m a police officer. I was undercover. Trying to break up this operation.”
A wave of cold went over Nadie and settled in her stomach. She tried to remember all she had told him. How much had he seen at the club?
“You know I wasn’t dealing,” she asserted.
He leaned forward. “Here’s what I can do for you, Tonya. I think you’re a victim of circumstance. But you did get caught in the middle of a drug trafficking ring and it was clear it wasn’t the first time drugs passed hands between you and Charlotte. Things could go badly for you in a courtroom.”
