A Matter of Malice

Thumps DreadfulWater, a Cherokee ex-cop turned photographer living in the small town of Chinook, Montana, has just returned from two difficult months in Seattle, where he supported his girlfriend, Claire Merchant, through cancer surgery and chemotherapy. Claire grew withdrawn during treatment, and upon arriving back in Chinook, she dropped Thumps off and drove away alone. While he was gone, his friend Cooley Small Elk totaled his Volvo in an accident caused by an uninsured driver who has since fled town. His cat, Freeway, disappeared from the care of his neighbor, and his doctor warns that his diabetes medication is no longer effective, requiring him to begin insulin injections.

Chinook is in the grip of the "Howdy" program, a Chamber of Commerce initiative encouraging western-themed hospitality for tourists. Sheriff Duke Hockney, outfitted in cowboy gear for the campaign, recruits Thumps for a job with Malice Aforethought, a reality television show that re-enacts cold cases. The show is investigating the death of Trudy Samuels, a young woman from a wealthy local family whose body was found years earlier at the base of Belly Butte, a steep cliff. The original sheriff ruled the death accidental, but Trudy's stepmother, Adele Samuels, accused Trudy's boyfriend, Tobias Rattler, a young man from the reservation who later became a famous novelist, of murder. No evidence linked Rattler to the death, and the case went cold. The show's producers have asked for Thumps by name, which strikes both men as odd.

At the production office, Thumps meets Nina Maslow, a sharp producer who hands him the original police file and offers a generous daily rate. He also meets Sydney Pearl, the tough co-producer who carries a pearl-handled .38 revolver in a shoulder holster, and Calder Banks, the show's telegenic but insecure host whose acting career collapsed after a cancelled series. As Maslow leaves their first meeting, she drops a remark suggesting she knows about the Obsidian Murders, an unsolved serial killing on the Northern California coast that still haunts Thumps.

Bookstore owner Archie Kousoulas provides the Samuels backstory. Buck Samuels built Big Sky Oil into a fortune and constructed a log mansion called Black Stag. After his first wife died, he married Adele Price but refused to let her bring her son from a previous marriage. Trudy, Buck's daughter, grew up unhappy under her demanding stepmother and began using alcohol and drugs. She met Rattler in high school; both loners, they found companionship in each other, and Trudy reportedly stopped using substances. After Buck died, Adele's son Ethan Price came to live at Black Stag. A coroner's jury ruled Trudy's death "misadventure," and Rattler left Chinook immediately.

Thumps deduces the show's predicament: Without Rattler, there is no confrontation and no story. Maslow misrepresented the show's nature to lure Rattler in, planning to ambush him with Adele on camera. When Rattler discovered the deception, he withdrew. Thumps tracks Rattler to a Mesa Verde condo, where Moses Blood, an elder from the reservation who took Rattler in as a runaway teenager, is helping him stay hidden. Rattler insists he did not kill Trudy and does not believe she died by suicide. Meanwhile, Cooley tells Thumps that Claire has left town and no one knows where she went. Thumps learns that Freeway is alive and living with a Tibetan family whose children have grown attached to her. After seeing the cat content on the family's sofa, he leaves her food and favorite toy on their porch, quietly letting her go.

The case breaks open when Maslow's body is found at the base of Belly Butte, in the same spot where Trudy died. Rattler discovered the body while visiting with memorial flowers and called police. At the Tucker hotel, Maslow's room has been ransacked, with research files and a marked road map missing. Medical examiner Beth Mooney finds a wound behind Maslow's ear inconsistent with a fall. Reviewing Trudy's old files, Beth notes a similar pattern: intact manicured nails suggesting Trudy made no effort to save herself, and unexplained trauma noted by the original coroner. Duke arrests Rattler, though Thumps does not believe he is guilty. Moses Blood conducts an experiment at the cliff, rolling logs off the top and then shoving Thumps off the slope. Thumps catches himself on a narrow ledge, proving a conscious person would stop before the fatal drop. Anyone found at the bottom was unconscious or dead before going over. Pearl proposes a deal: If Thumps finds Nina's killer, Pearl will give him Maslow's research file on the Obsidian Murders.

Deputized by Duke, Thumps traces Maslow's phone records and GPS data. At Salgado Motors, he finds Trudy's original 1963 Corvette, bought from Adele years ago, with original paperwork still in the glovebox. A framed speeding ticket reveals the critical clue: Issued at 7:15 p.m. the night Trudy died in the town of Randall, the ticket shows Trudy was heading west toward Black Stag, not east toward Belly Butte.

Claire returns briefly and reveals she wants to adopt two young sisters, Deliah and Nadie Standing. She asks how Thumps feels about children and living together; when he hesitates, she leaves, giving him three days to decide.

Thumps reasons that the weak Samuels case would never have justified the show's expense unless Maslow had already solved it. Pearl confirms this, and Thumps deduces that Maslow must have told Rattler the solution, which means Rattler had no motive to kill her. Pearl asks Thumps to lead the on-set interrogation, and he reluctantly agrees. Under the lights, with cameras secretly rolling, Thumps reconstructs Trudy's death. The ticket proves she was alive and driving toward Black Stag. Rattler admits Adele paid him to leave Chinook for Dartmouth College. Ethan admits he told Trudy about the payoff to punish her. Enraged, Trudy drove to Black Stag and attacked Adele; Ethan intervened, and Trudy went over an interior balcony railing. Splinters in Trudy's palm match the log-house railing. Adele and Ethan admit they moved the body to Belly Butte, fearing arrest, without calling for help. Pearl reveals the cameras captured everything.

Thumps then determines that Maslow's murder connects not to the Samuels case but to the death of Amelia Nash, a Hollywood star killed alongside her boyfriend Donny Berlin in an apparent murder-suicide in Las Vegas. Nash had been Calder's co-star in a planned remake of The Streets of San Francisco, and Nash and Berlin were trying to seize control of the production, threatening Calder's role. Thumps realizes that Maslow's calls to WestAir, an airline that does not serve Chinook, were about checking whether Calder's flight out of Las Vegas the night of Nash's death departed on time. It had been delayed 90 minutes. Confronting Calder on set, Thumps lays out the case: Calder went to Nash's room, found her drunk and Berlin passed out, grabbed Berlin's suppressed pistol, and shot Nash twice. He staged the scene as a murder-suicide and caught a cab to the airport, where the delay meant he boarded his original flight, creating a false alibi. When Maslow discovered the delay, Calder killed her at Belly Butte. Calder grabs Pearl's revolver and pulls the trigger, but the gun clicks harmlessly: Pearl's pistol has always been loaded with replica bullets. Duke and Deputy Lance Packard, waiting downstairs as planned, confirm they heard the full confession.

In the aftermath, Claire calls to say the adoption has fallen through and she is leaving for New Zealand. Pearl honors her deal, delivering the Honda Element and Maslow's Obsidian Murders file. Thumps takes the file to Archie, who warns that revisiting the case is "a bad idea" but agrees to help. On his final morning, Thumps checks the street one last time for Freeway, climbs into the Honda, and begins the long drive west to the Northern California coast.