The Girl with Braided Hair (A Wind River Reservation Myste) Read online

  Vicky turned the ignition and backed around the yard. She drove forward, dipping down into the barrow ditch before crawling up the other side, then turned onto the road. Holding the wheel steady with one hand, she rummaged in her bag on the passenger seat with the other and pulled out her cell. She started to punch in the number for the sheriff’s department. She had something now. She and John O’Malley had come up with a name: Liz. And she’d found a woman who’d been at Wounded Knee, and that woman, she was sure, knew what had happened to Liz.

  She pressed the end key. Ruth Yellow Bull would not talk to Detective Coughlin. She would deny she’d ever gone to Wounded Knee, and who could prove otherwise? She would keep her secrets because…

  Because she was afraid. Vicky tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone dry, her tongue felt like a bloated twig flapping against the back of her teeth. Ruth Yellow Bull was afraid because the killer was still around and if she talked, if she told anyone what she knew, he would kill her.

  The noise of the cell ringing broke into her thoughts. She turned onto Plunkett Road and pressed the cell against her ear. “Vicky Holden,” she said.

  “Oh, Vicky.” Annie was shouting, as if Vicky were across the street. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you,” she hurried on, and Vicky realized she hadn’t checked the messages. “Adam wants to know when you’ll be in. He wants to get started on that discrimination case.”

  “Tell him I’m on the way,” Vicky said, surprised at the ripples of irritation running through her. It would be a big case, with either a major complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or a major lawsuit, unless Mammoth Oil agreed to settlement and stopped discriminating against Indians. There would be a lot of work; people to talk to, statements to obtain. They’d have to prepare an initial letter to Mammoth’s legal department. It was the beginning of a long and complex process, and she was also eager to get started. Of course she was. Wasn’t this why she’d come home, to help her people get their rights?

  She’d call Coughlin, tell him what she’d learned, and leave the case of a girl murdered years ago to the proper investigators, just as Adam had said. This wasn’t her fight.

  Then she realized that Annie was talking about a call that had come from a law firm in Denver.

  “What was the message?” she asked. She knew the firm—highprofile criminal defense attorneys for wealthy clients. She could guess the message, even as Annie launched into the explanation. They were defending someone named Theo Gosman charged with assaulting a woman in an alley. Would she be willing to be interviewed?

  Vicky didn’t say anything for a moment. There was no reason for her to consent to an interview with the defense attorneys for the man who had beaten the girl in the alley. But she knew the way the game was played. If she or Lucas or Susan refused an interview, it would be used against them in Gosman’s trial. The defense would try to make it look as if they were biased or trying to hide something.

  “Anything else?” she said. Her thoughts were spiraling like a gyroscope toward a single point: The girl in the alley would have been dead if Lucas hadn’t taken the side street. She could have been like Liz, beaten and shot in an empty canyon where there was no one about, no one to take a different turn and help her.

  And Liz’s killer was still around.

  “Diana Morningstar called,” Annie said.

  “The women want to talk again?” This was a good sign, she was thinking. Someone in the group might have learned something. They were all upset, on edge. A skeleton with no name might be any of them. Except that, now, the skeleton had a first name.

  “She says they’ve been putting flyers around the rez about the skeleton. Wants to see you alone. Tonight, she said. Wants you to meet her in the park by the river. There was something…”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Something about her voice. She sounded kinda scared. My guess, she doesn’t want anybody to see her talking to you.”

  Vicky said she’d be at the office in about thirty minutes. She pressed the end key, turned south onto Highway 287, and drove toward Lander.

  15

  1973

  MAIN STREET WAS almost empty, a couple of cars parked at the curbs, light glowing in the second-floor windows of a building. Circles of streetlights splashed down through the darkness and, half a block ahead, the stoplight melted from yellow into red. Liz gripped the steering wheel and tried to think. Loreen had driven the day they’d come to Lander to see Ardyth—Liz squeezed in the middle of the front seat of a pickup, Ruth leaning out the passenger window, banging on the side as they’d sped down Main Street, whooping and hollering like an Indian, she’d boasted later. Givin’ white folks what they expect.

  They’d driven down Main Street and turned—where?

  At the stoplight, Liz remembered, because they’d had to wait behind a white-haired old lady in a big pink car with big, chrome fantails. And why the hell could she remember that when she couldn’t remember how to get to Ardyth’s?

  They’d turned right.

  She had the rest of it now. She made the turn and drove into a residential neighborhood with bungalows and old trees drooping into the darkness over the lawns and cars along the curbs. A field of stars blazed in the black sky, and moonlight washed over the street. There had been a big white house on the corner, she remembered, like an old farmhouse. Ardyth lived in the little brown house in back. There were a couple of other buildings scattered about, too, probably left over from the farm. All she had to do was find the big white house on the corner.

  “The river is flowing.” Liz sang quietly as she drove toward an intersection. The sound of her own voice floated about her. She could hear Luna let out a long sigh in the back. “Gently it goes, taking the pain. Soon we’ll be going. Didn’t I tell you so? Everything’s gonna be real nice. Didn’t I tell you so?”

  She was going on instinct now, a feeling of bravery coming over her, like an invisible companion next to her in the front seat. It had to be here somewhere, the big white house. She drove toward the outskirts of town and took a parallel street back, stopping at every intersection, peering left and right. She’d gone three blocks when the façade of a two-story, white house loomed out of the moonlight on the next block. The Ford lurched as she pressed down on the gas pedal. She reached back to keep Luna’s box from sliding onto the floor, then turned into the gravel driveway next to the house and drove to the small brown house in back that looked like a little rich girl’s playhouse, with its peaked roof and flower boxes with wilted flowers at the windows. Lights shone in the kitchen window. There were no curtains, and she could see the row of cabinets and a framed picture of mountains slanting sideways on the wall. Ardyth walked into the kitchen, head bent toward something on the counter. Her head snapped up. She turned toward the window and peered out.

  Liz started across the strip of bare dirt between the car and the house, holding Luna’s box close, one arm looped over the top. Ardyth was already standing in the open door.

  “My God, Liz,” she shouted. “What’re you doin’ here?”

  It started to come out then, the fear and panic she’d been pushing down and trying to cover up with songs. Liz felt as if she were floating away from herself, looking down on the dark figure standing in a puddle of light at the opened door, clutching a cardboard box, weeping and shaking. Another figure stepped toward her.

  Then she was back in her body, Ardyth’s hand cool on her arm as she stumbled into the house.

  “This about AIM?” Ardyth said.

  Liz blinked into the bright kitchen light. “The cops killed Brave Bird,” she said, the words tumbling out, distorted and slurred. “They think I gave him up. I gotta find Robert. He’s the only one that can fix it.”

  “Shit. They’ll come after you.”

  “I need a place to stay until…” Liz stopped. The expression on Ardyth’s face started to harden like clay baking in the sun. She was glancing at the window, as if she expected another
car to come down the driveway. Then she looked at the cardboard box.

  “Jesus, Liz,” she whispered. “You’ve got the baby with you.”

  “Just a little while, until I get ahold of Robert.”

  “Loreen and Ruth know where I live.” Ardyth hadn’t taken her eyes from the box. “They’ll tell them, whoever’s after you.”

  “Robert’ll know what to do.”

  “You sure have a way of getting into trouble, Liz. Better hide the car in the shed out back.” Ardyth pivoted toward the counter and began rummaging in a drawer. “Lock the doors,” she said, freeing a padlock from beneath the clutter of knives and measuring spoons and other kitchen utensils.

  Liz set Luna’s box on the table, took the padlock, and hurried back outside. A gust of warm wind rounded the corner of the house and whipped at her as she sank into the car. She drove to the shed, then got out and yanked at the double wood doors that squealed on their hinges like trapped animals. She got back into the car and rocked across the threshold onto the soft dirt floor, the walls of the shed closing around her. She had to squeeze herself out the door and inch alongside the car, wincing at the rough wood walls that bit at her arms. She shoved the doors hard into the wind, snapped on the padlock, and ran back to the house.

  The cardboard box was gone. The table was clear, nothing but the faint gleam of light reflecting in the surface. “Luna,” she screamed. “My baby!” Liz plunged through the doorway into the living room behind the kitchen. “Luna! Luna!” she shouted. A column of light from the kitchen lay across the tan rug on the floor. The sofa and chair looked like shadows on the wall.

  “Be quiet.” Ardyth appeared in the doorway on the right—a moving shadow coming toward her. She leaned over and turned on the lamp next to the sofa. “You’ll wake her up,” she said, tossing her head toward the doorway. “You can stay in the bedroom. I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

  Liz clamped a fist against her mouth and tried to swallow back the scream that had formed in her throat. “She’s all I have,” she managed. “She’s everything.”

  She darted for the bedroom, feeling the heat of Ardyth’s eyes boring into her back. The bedroom was small. Moonlight filtered across the cardboard box on the chest. Liz bent over and straightened the blanket around the tiny body, then she looked around. Clothes hung on a rack along the wall. A narrow bed jutted into the room, taking up most of the space. She stared at the star quilt thrown over the bed. Most of her life she’d slept under the star quilt her grandmother had made. There was a clanking noise in the kitchen, followed by the sound of the refrigerator door opening and closing. She pressed her fist against her mouth to keep from sobbing and went back into the kitchen.

  Ardyth stood at the counter pulling the tab on a Coke can, and Liz was struck by the way in which her friend had changed in the last few weeks. She seemed taller and thinner, all angles and edges. Her black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, which gave her face a stretched look, like that of brown hide pulled across the top of a drum.

  “You better eat,” she said, glancing at Liz out of eyes narrowed into slits. She set the Coke on the table next to a plate with a sandwich cut in half.

  “I need to call Robert first,” Liz said. She walked across the kitchen, picked up the phone on the counter, and dialed Robert’s number. She closed her eyes and listened to the buzzing noise, her hand numb around the receiver. Her legs were like water. There was no answer, just the buzzing going on and on.

  She hung up and dropped onto the chair in front of the plate, aware for the first time of the emptiness expanding inside her. She wasn’t sure when she’d last eaten. Sometime this morning, she guessed, before she’d taken Luna to the clinic for her checkup. Afterward she’d stopped at Loreen’s to pick up the box of flyers on Saturday’s general council meeting that she’d promised to fold and deliver around the reservation. People gotta get involved. She could hear Robert’s voice in her head. Gotta get their asses over to the council meeting. Take part in what the Arapaho and Shoshone business councils are planning for them.

  Where are you, Robert?

  “Crazy,” Ardyth said, sitting down across from her. “They must’ve gone crazy. It was you that found the place for Brave Bird to stay. Helped him get to know the ropes, blend in with people on the rez. What was his real name?”

  “Daryl Redman,” Liz said. She bit off a piece of the sandwich, then took another bite and swallowed hard. The food seemed to drop into a vast, hollow canyon.

  “Yeah, I heard on the radio that Daryl Redman got shot at Ethete. I didn’t know who they were talking about until they said he went by the name of Brave Bird, wanted by the FBI in South Dakota for trespassing, robbery, assault on federal officers. Now the Feds know one of the leaders was hiding out here, they’re gonna be all over the rez looking for Robert and Jake and the others. They’re gonna be looking for you. They’re gonna want to talk to you, see what you know…”

  “I never told the police anything.”

  Ardyth threw up a hand, palm out, fingers spread. “That doesn’t mean the Feds won’t arrest you for harboring a fugitive or something. You can bet they know you were at Pine Ridge. They’re gonna suspect you. Loreen and Ruth, too. You’re all gonna have to watch it. No way will Robert want you picked up again. He’ll find you someplace to hide out.” She crossed her arms on the table and leaned over. “You should get out, like I did. Why didn’t you get out last fall in Washington after Jimmie got killed?”

  Liz didn’t say anything. She took another bite of sandwich and washed it down with a drink of Coke, and tried to push back the images flashing in her head, as if Ardyth had slapped a series of photographs on the table. She didn’t want them.

  “We were going to make a difference,” Liz said, trying to shift the conversation from the direction it was heading. She could hear the hesitancy in her voice.

  “We both know that’s crap,” Ardyth said. “Sure there were convoys of Indians arriving every day from all over the country. Thousands of Indians, and we thought that would be enough to make the president notice us. What a laugh! They promised us good places for the tribal leaders and the holy men to stay in, remember that? What did they get? Same as the rest of us got, rat-infested basements in old churches. Jesus, the toilets didn’t even work. Everything smelled like shit. You remember the rats? Big as cats, running over the cots they said we should sleep on. Like anybody got any sleep. Jimmie and Robert went around to all the churches, said we’d go to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, every damn Indian in the city, and demand our rights. You remember?”

  Liz nodded, and Ardyth went on about how she didn’t mind for herself and the rest of the ordinary Indians, but it wasn’t right to put the tribal leaders in rat-infested church basements. And the holy men, the spiritual leaders of the people! It just wasn’t right, not when any tribal chief from Timbuktu or someplace you never heard of that came to see the president got to stay in some nice hotel…

  Liz sat back and stared at the black and gray images fixed in her head. Ardyth’s voice rumbled on like a washing machine in the background. Jimmie looked so handsome in his white leather jacket as he walked through the people jammed in the basement. He jumped up on a table, waved his arms. You could have heard a pin drop. Everybody was looking at him, not at Robert, standing behind the table, holding it steady. People trusted Jimmie. For just a moment, his eyes had turned toward her. She’d patted her stomach and he’d smiled at the secret they shared. Then he’d shouted that first thing tomorrow, everyone should go to the BIA. “They’re not getting away with the same shit,” he’d shouted. “We’re here together. We are the people!”

  The crowd took up the chant as Jimmie and Robert strode back across the basement and disappeared up the steps. We are the people. We are the people. Even now, Liz could hear the sound drumming in her ears.

  After they had left, she’d gone with some of the others to get bread and cans of soup. The kids had started crying, they were so hungry, so someone had taken up a donat
ion. She could see herself walking down the dark sidewalk, part of a group of Indians with a purpose. Thinking about it now, she felt the same stab of pride that she’d felt then, the way a song brings back an old feeling. It didn’t matter about the basements. The Indian people were together, and that was all that mattered.

  She’d had to wait at the store while the clerk ran into the back for change. The others had gone on ahead. She was walking alone, juggling two bags of groceries, when she heard the loud thud and the sound of groans as she passed the alley behind the church.

  She whirled about and looked down the alley at the dark figure of a man bobbing in and out of the shadows. He stooped over and picked up something—it looked like a piece of metal that might have fallen off a car. He lifted his arm, and it was then, as he started swinging the metal club, that Liz saw the white jacket on the man sprawled on the asphalt. She dropped the grocery bags and ran into the alley, the sound of cans clanking on the pavement behind her mingled with the thud of metal against flesh and bones.

  “Stop! Stop!” She threw herself toward Jimmie’s body, but she was moving in slow motion, suspended in space, trying to cover his body with her own, barely conscious of the pain that flashed down her arm.

  She felt herself spinning around, crashing against the brick wall. Jake’s hand was on her throat. His other hand lifted the metal over her head. “You want what he got?”

  “You killed Jimmie!”

  “Shut up! I oughtta kill you, whore.” He threw a look down the alley toward the street. A truck lumbered by. Then a white police car.

  Jake pressed his hand over her mouth. “Shut up,” he said, a whisper this time. “You’re gonna walk outta here, go back to the basement. Understand?” The police car must have turned around, because it passed the alley again. “You open your mouth, I’ll kill you.”