Chapter 295 The Desperate Reservation (Part 1)
This information came from the chat between the four of them after dinner. Aaliyah, who was taken directly back to the hotel to rest by Braxton, finally recovered and introduced some local conditions to everyone.
Although she still looked haggard, the girl's mental state improved a lot after receiving Jack's assurance that he would do his best to find out the truth.
Jack took the opportunity to ask her about the hunter Corey Lambert.
Corey once had a daughter named Emily, and Aaliyah's sister Natalie used to be best friends. The two girls were the same age and were almost inseparable.
Emily disappeared at a party three years ago, and her body was discovered a few days later by a young sheepherder in a field more than 20 meters away from Corey's house.
"So, what happened to that girl?" Jane's cheeks were flushed. She was freezing before. Jack asked for a bottle of whiskey and poured her a glass.
Aaliyah shook her head, "No one knew that the wolves had destroyed the body and no traces of it were left. In the end, the identity of the body was confirmed through DNA testing."
"After that, Uncle Corey sold his sporting goods store at the ski resort and became a professional hunter."
After speaking, tears filled her eyes again, and Braxton poured a little juice into the cup in front of her. Aaliyah rejected any alcoholic beverages, which came from her past life experience.
Jack knew that in this country, the problem of alcoholism was as serious as the epidemic of drug addiction, and among the Indians, the problem of alcoholism was magnified multiple times on this basis.
In traditional Indian culture, many hallucinogens are used as tools to communicate with gods, such as tobacco, mushrooms, and the secretions of certain animals.
But before the white people arrived in the Americas, the indigenous people who were isolated in this promised land were still slowly developing their own civilization, and they had not even picked up the technology tree of distillation.
So when the Indians exchanged furs from the colonists for "strong drinks" such as brandy and rum, things got out of hand.
One theory is that due to tens of thousands of years of isolation, Indian genes have caused them to naturally lack the ability to decompose alcohol, which makes them more intolerant and addictive to spirits than other races.
As a result, the aboriginal people regarded spirits, which can make you feel ecstatic after a few sips, as a sacred object. To this day, the Sioux people in North America still call spirits "mni wakan", which means holy water.
In modern times, in the Americas, especially in North America, alcohol has become the best placebo for Indians who have been completely marginalized, "captive" in reservations, and have no hope of life.
Today, about 80% of Aboriginal people in this country have alcohol problems, and one in four babies is born with fetal alcohol syndrome.
Among Aaliyah's paternal relatives, two died of cirrhosis of the liver caused by alcoholism, and three died of drunken traffic accidents. This is what caused her extreme rejection of alcohol.
Not wanting to touch upon the girl's painful past further, Jack asked Braxton to take care of his fiancée, and agreed to go to Aaliyah's parents' house tomorrow morning, and then go shopping with Jane.
After all, Jane felt something was wrong at the thought of wearing the clothes of a deceased girl. It was not because of any taboo in Eastern culture, but because she thought of the reluctance in the eyes of the old Indian woman at that time.
Jane really felt the kindness of that family. Although she was very reluctant, facing her thin clothes, they still took out her late granddaughter's clothes and put them on her.
And Jack also understood the origin of the complicated look in Jane's eyes when she changed her clothes and appeared in front of Corey Lambert.
I bought a complete set of warm clothes at a store in the town and simply changed into them. Then I found a dry cleaning shop and sent the clothes to be dry cleaned. I repeatedly asked the clerk to handle them carefully.
It was already late when we returned to the hotel. Jack sent Jane to the door of the room, said hello and prepared to go to bed. His room was next door.
"Come in and have a drink."
Jane seemed to be still drunk, with a blush still hanging on her cheeks, and she looked a little more charming than during the day.
"Well, no, I already have a girlfriend." Jack silently changed a certain word into the plural in his mind.
Jane's expression froze, her hand holding the door frame slipped, and then she gritted her teeth and glared at him, and said angrily, "I want to talk to you about this case."
"Ah, sorry, sorry." Jack apologized quickly. Regardless of whether it was a misunderstanding or not, his answer just now was a bit hurtful to the girl.
The room in the small hotel is not big and the layout is very simple. Except for an exaggerated wine cabinet with local characteristics, it is not much different from an ordinary hotel.
Jane entered the room and turned on the heating, took off her coat, poured Jack a small glass of whiskey, and then buried her body tiredly on the sofa.
"I did a little bit of research before I came here, and it was very quick, but you know, Aboriginal women are not counted in the federal missing census."
Jack didn't answer, just put the wine glass in his hand and turned it slowly, listening to her narration quietly.
“And the most recent report I could find about them was from fifteen years ago, and it said that one-third of Indian women in this state had been raped, and that of those who had perpetrated violence against them, 96% are non-Indians.”
"And I'm just a rookie who was sent here to go through the administrative process. Maybe tomorrow, there will be a call from above to call me back to Las Vegas."
Jane's voice became weaker and weaker, and gradually became inaudible. When Jack came back to his senses, he found that she was snoring gently.
"It would be great if there were more 'Mothers' like you in this world."
Jack sighed with emotion, put the sleeping girl on the bed, touched her forehead, and found that the blush on her cheeks was not because of the small glass of whiskey, but because of a fever.
After giving Jane a treatment, Jack took off her shoes, covered her with a quilt, and then left her room quietly.
Although this girl looks a bit naive, she is not stupid. Obviously, it is impossible for a stupid person to become an FBI agent, so from the moment she arrived here, she knew that she was just a tool to perform bureaucratic processes. .
It's as if Jack didn't take Rosie's promised support to heart from the beginning. It's not that he doesn't trust Rosie, but that in this place that is deliberately ignored, the law is more valuable than used toilet paper in the toilet. Also useless.
Maybe Rossi does have enough energy to let BAU's "Gulfstream" business jet land at the nearest airport, but the favor he has to sell for this, or the price he pays, will even be much greater than that of dealing with food in New Mexico. Human demon.