“FAWN’S JUSTICE”

It’s never too late to heal the heart you left behind.

An American Indian FBI agent, who is troubled by dark visions and is wrongfully blamed for the death of a US Congressman, reluctantly answers the call to investigate her estranged father’s murder in rural California, only to unearth fresh evidence of a serial killer who supposedly has been in prison for a decade.”

As an FBI agent in San Francisco, FAWN REDFERN’s career is on the skids. Her mentor in the Bureau, DANE SCOTT, has betrayed her after a Congressman is killed in a brutal slaying right under the Bureau’s watchful eye. As she is fired, Fawn gets the news that her estranged father, a Kirolowa Chief, has been murdered. Her half-brother’s heart wrenching plea is for her to come home to Northern California and run for Sheriff. Though the choice is difficult, Fawn agrees.

As Redwood County Sheriff, Fawn attempts to find the answers to her father’s death and assimilate into the tribe she never knew, though she’s unaware that she hasn’t been given the total picture by the tribe. Complications arise when Dane informs her that the Bureau believes she is on the trail of a serial killer – one who is already supposed to be in prison.

All the while, Fawn is dealing with troubling supernatural visions and fears that she has inherited her Caucasian mother’s mental illness. With the help of her Kirolowa grandmother, GRAM, a shaman, Fawn pieces together the clues to the crimes and the mystery of her place in the world.

Fawn’s investigative efforts allow an innocent man to be freed from prison, uncover the truth about the serial Seashell Killer, and expose the wide scale racketeering and money laundering that sullies certain members of the tribe. But Fawn’s greatest win is finding peace with herself and discovering that her parents truly loved her.

Tone

• Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
• Thunderheart
• Wind River
• Sioux City
• Zodiac
• Where the Rivers Flow North

 

Central Characters

Fawn Redfern

Fawn Redfern was a homeless teenager until her mentally ill mother was killed in their shanty on the streets of San Francisco. An FBI Agent, Dane Scott, took her in, groomed her as his lover, and mentored her in the Bureau. Now approaching 30, Fawn’s career is on the skids – and so is her love life. Dane has betrayed her after a Congressman was killed in a brutal slaying right under the Bureau’s watchful eye.

As she is fired from the FBI, Fawn gets a phone call with news that her estranged father, Kirolowa Tribal Chief Dan Redfern, has been murdered. Her half-brother speaks for the tribe and makes a heart wrenching plea for her to come home to Northern California. The tribe not only needs her expertise for the investigation, they pledge their support for her to run for county Sheriff. Fawn struggles with the decision but finally agrees.

What Fawn uncovers as she investigates her father’s death is a tangle of corruption, murder, racial conflict, sex trafficking and a plot to overthrow the regional government. She is also terrified that she is losing her sanity, like her mother, as dark visions of the deep past come unbidden and take over her focus. Torn between her Kirolowa and Caucasian roots, Fawn desperately tries to balance the strain through a turbulent combination of alcohol, shamanic training and long distance running.

Fawn ultimately solves the mystery of her father’s death and delivers justice to the criminals responsible. But her greatest win is understanding the nature of her visions, harnessing them, and finally feeling the deep love her parents had for her.

Dane Scott

Handsome, wealthy Dane Scott is a complicated man with a lot on his mind – his celebrity career at the FBI, his prestige as a best-selling author, keeping tabs on the cash he’s laundering, and jockeying for position in an increasingly powerful secret white brotherhood. In fact, falling in love was the last thing he needed. He wasn’t even sure he knew what love was.

When Dane first took 15-year-old Fawn Redfern under his wing, she was a homeless teenager who inspired a passion in him unlike anything he’d tasted before. Her brash personality, her quick wit, and her pert young body enervated him at their first encounter. She was a conquest, deliciously untouchable, and he had to possess her. 

It only seemed natural to take out a contract on Fawn’s mentally ill mother and groom Fawn for a life she never could have had otherwise. Fawn flourished under his roof, and he patiently coached her to be everything he wanted in a lover. A few years later, she joined him as an agent at the FBI. She never knew about his secret life or the truth about how her mother died.

Now things have changed for Dane. All that was once facile and convenient is becoming faded and sour. Things aren’t going well between him and the leader of the white brotherhood. A series of hired hits that were supposed to simplify his path and consolidate his power have come under new scrutiny – by his own protege, no less – and Fawn is coming dangerously close to unveiling his entire network. Not good.

As Fawn matures and her confidence grows, her appeal for Dane is waning. While Fawn approaches 30, other fresh young girls are finding their way to Dane’s door, and things are getting hard to explain. Dane hangs onto Fawn out of habit, but she is becoming damned inconvenient.

Finally, Dane makes the painful decision to end it with Fawn. The encounter doesn’t go as he’d planned, and things get hot in a hurry. During their firefight on a seaside cliff, Dane is confronted with every self-defense trick he taught her. It nearly proves fatal. His only chance for survival is the pounding surf below. He jumps.

Arnold Pickle

As the largest supporting role, Arnold Pickle provides a bit of comic relief amid the dark backdrop that is Fawn’s Justice. He might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, and he’s never had much success with women, but it doesn’t take big-city sophistication to be a good cop. 

At least, he thought so until Miss High-and-Mighty, Fawn Redfern, showed up from San Francisco and took his job as Acting Sheriff. So, she’d worked at the FBI. What’s so great about that? Since the downturn in the Redwood County job market, his only option was to stay on the force and work for the woman who’d displaced him. Such a shame. Things had just started to go so well for Pickle. 

It all began when Sheriff Hooper left a party drunk, driving his cruiser like a Ferrari. He missed the curve and plowed into a big tree – a two thousand year old redwood tree. The tree won. That’s when Pickle rose to fill his old boss’s job. Pickle had wanted to cite Hooper posthumously for driving drunk and wrecking the County’s car, but someone talked him out of it, pointing out that maybe Hooper had paid enough.

Shortly after this terrible accident, the Kirolowa tribal chief was attacked and killed. No one knew who did it, but the killer’s method looked dangerously familiar. It was Pickle’s first big case as Acting Sheriff. However his slim grasp on glory soon slipped through his fingers as outsider Fawn Redfern ran for Sheriff and won with the backing of the tribe. She was the chief’s estranged daughter, and the tribe had recruited her for the job.

Pickle always seemed to be under Fawn’s heel. That city girl had no business here behind the Redwood Curtain, he thought. She taunted him mercilessly at his every misstep, badgered him, and called him names like “Gherkin.” Never glib, Pickle now found himself stammering whenever she was around. Yet for reasons he didn’t understand, Fawn was never far from his mind.

It was an awful distraction from trying to solve the late chief’s murder. Then another body was found in a redwood grove, killed nearly the same way as the chief. Fawn told him she believed it was the work of a serial murderer, the famous Seashell Killer, but Pickle had his doubts. Something didn’t add up.

In Fawn’s Justice, Pickle and Fawn ultimately overcome their differences and unravel a case of widespread corruption that involves money laundering, sex trafficking and murder. Through it all, their banter is effervescent, and their friendship goes from vinegar-sour to solid gold.

Buck Redfern

Ambitious Buck Redfern is the son of the Kirolowa Tribe’s chief, but that wasn’t enough for him. He saw a way to get rich – very, very rich. Together with help from his close friend, casino Accountant Winston Biehn, Buck has been siphoning tribal assets and running local companies out of business for years. It’s made Buck and Biehn wealthy men.

Buck enjoyed an uncomfortable but stable partnership with Biehn, but it isn’t long before it gets tested. Buck’s father, Chief Dan Redfern, discovered their illicit scheme, leading Biehn to Dan’s cold blooded execution. Though Buck hated to see him go, he understood the need for the Chief’s demise. An investigation was sure to follow, presenting him and Biehn with the danger of discovery.

To subvert the inevitable, Buck hatches a plot to plant his own kin in the currently empty role of County Sheriff. He convinces the Kirolowa Tribe to back his estranged half-sister in the election. Buck believes she’s never been anything but a bumbling, failed FBI agent. He calculates that even if she does turn up evidence against him, family sentiment will win out over justice.

Buck’s plan unfolds, Fawn wins the election, and she is installed as County Sheriff. As a legitimate investigation begins into the chief’s murder, Buck and Biehn slowly become a liability for others involved in their money laundering scheme. The new County Sheriff is getting dangerously close to uncovering the truth.

As all hell breaks loose, Buck tries to flee on foot, pushing a shopping cart full of cash. But he pays the ultimate price for his miscalculation when a hit squad levels him on the beach. A homeless man finds the cart, as the tide sweeps away all tracks – and Buck’s body – leaving no trace behind.

Winston Biehn

Mild mannered Winston Biehn is the long-time Accountant for the Kirolowa Tribe’s crown jewel, the Chimney Rock Casino on California’s North Coast. With help from his close friend Buck Redfern, son of the Kirolowa chief, Winston has perpetrated a gigantic fraud for years, siphoning Tribal assets and running local companies out of business. It’s made Buck and Biehn wealthy men.

But Biehn’s life is not at all sweet, despite the fact that he’s swimming in cash.

Winston and Buck enjoyed an uncomfortable but stable partnership – until Chief Dan Redfern discovered their treacherous deceit. Dan’s red hot anger could only be met with Biehn’s cold blooded execution. To make things even more complicated, a rogue FBI Agent, Dane Scott, has been moonlighting with a white nationalist group called the Republic of Cascadia. Together, Scott and Cascadia are blackmailing Biehn, forcing him into contract killings for them and muscling in on his money laundering.  Winston’s calm demeanor, his cunning, and his cerebral approach are the same traits that make him the perfect killer, hiding in plain sight.

As legitimate law enforcement investigates the chief’s murder, Winston Biehn slowly but surely becomes a liability for his Cascadia bosses. The new County Sheriff – Buck’s sister, Fawn Redfern – is getting dangerously close to uncovering the truth. Winston attempts to assassinate Fawn in her own home, but she’s a step ahead of him, and he’s caught in the act.

As Winston is released from jail, he pays the ultimate price for his failure when a Cascadia hit squad plants a bomb in his truck. Winston’s days as a contract killer end in a fiery death.

Gram Redfern

As the spiritual leader for the Kirolowa Tribe, Gram Redfern dwells in an ethereal place. The Tribe’s history is fraught with bloody and cruel treatment at the hands of White pioneers, who nearly exterminated them. Gram daily walks the beaches that were once stained red with the blood of hundreds of her ancestors.

Gram has spent a lifetime trying to balance her intimate knowledge of the past and her search for inner peace. It gives her cold comfort to know that the Tribe may have turned the tide – by hitting the Whites in their wallets. Indian Gaming has been very good to the Kirolowa with her son, Chief Dan Redfern, aggressively leading the way. But Dan’s stubbornness proves to be a fatal flaw, driving away his daughter, Fawn, forcing Gram to walk a fine line between family and politics.

Even though Gram is a powerful seer, strong emotions like love and fear cloud her vision. There are some events she can’t foretell, and she fails to warn Dan that his ruthless tactics have gone too far. Now she must live with the consequences. Someone has killed her only son, and an old grudge between the Tribe and her granddaughter has a fresh chance to be mended.

The Tribe backs Fawn in an election for County Sheriff. As she investigates Dan’s murder, Fawn turns to Gram to deal with her inner conflicts about her father, her heritage, and her own psychic abilities. Gram becomes the grounding force Fawn desperately needs.

Gram’s guidance helps Fawn find power in the seed of love that her parents planted in her heart. Fawn uses it to heal herself and the deep past for Whites and Kirolowa alike.