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

  “You sure?” Father John said. Things weren’t making sense; the pattern that had started to emerge began to scramble.

  “I remember it real good.” Jesse gave a succession of nods, each nod hammering the memories into place. “The chief says to me and Allen, go check out the house, ’cause some guy called in a tip to the Feds.”

  “Guy? You sure he said guy?”

  Jesse nodded. “I’d remember if it was a woman.”

  Father John took this in for a moment before he said, “Who do you think it was?”

  “You think I haven’t had a lot of years of thinking on this? Way I got it worked out, some FBI snitch knew the cops would show up at the house and Daryl was gonna put up a fight. I figure somebody set him up—murder by police officer.” Jesse was shaking his head, a slow back and forth of sadness and resignation. “It happens.”

  “Somebody in AIM?”

  “That’s how I got it figured. Only AIM leader ever got caught on the rez was Daryl Redman. Rest of ’em hid out here long as they wanted. People looking after ’em, moving ’em around, keeping ’em safe. Must’ve been one of his AIM buddies wanted Daryl out of the picture. Otherwise we never would’ve found him.”

  “What happened to the others?”

  Jesse gave a shrug. “Moved out, most of ’em. New lives, new names.”

  “There might be some still around.”

  The man took a moment before he said, “Wouldn’t surprise me none. Might’ve gotten themselves new names and started fitting into the rez, like ordinary folks.”

  A phone started ringing. Jesse dropped his head and scanned the piles of papers tumbling over the table, eyebrows moving together in a puzzled line at the fact that there was no phone visible. It was then that Father John realized the ringing came from the cell clipped on his belt. He reached around, pulled it free, and gave a little nod in the direction of Jesse’s back as the man headed out of the cubicle.

  “Father John here,” he said. He could hear the clip-clop of Jesse’s boots across the concrete floor on the other side of the paneled partition.

  “Found the records you were asking about.” Banner’s voice boomed through the cell as if he were yelling across the reservation. “Turns out a couple of women named Elizabeth were arrested in the summer of 1973. Elizabeth Toldwell, fifty-two years old, public drunkenness, record as long as my arm for drunk and disorderly. Not the Elizabeth we’re looking for. It’s the other one. Twenty-one years old. Stopped for speeding on Seventeen-Mile Road and brought in on a bench warrant August 4, on a citation from two months earlier. Cited for public disturbance at a protest outside tribal offices in Fort Washakie and for refusing lawful orders to disperse. No-show on court date. Not surprising. From what I hear, there was a lot of that in those days. People cited for marching without a permit, blocking public buildings, generally turning the rez into a circus. Not many showed up for court.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Elizabeth Plenty Horses.”

  Elizabeth Plenty Horses. Father John let the name roll around in his head a moment. The skeleton—the fragile, cracked bones and the thick, dusty black braid—now had a name. Elizabeth Plenty Horses.

  “Address was a mobile home over on Seventeen-Mile Road,” Banner was saying. “Government houses there now. Mobile homes all cleared out.”

  “How long was she in custody?”

  “Overnight. Went before the tribal judge the next morning. Fined her three hundred dollars and let her go. She didn’t have any money on her. Here’s the list of contents in her bag: Lifesavers, pack of cigarettes, matchbook, small notepad with something like poetry scribbled on the pages, pencil, tissue, lipstick, six-cents worth of pennies.”

  “How’d she pay the fine?”

  “She didn’t. Somebody paid it for her. Name of Ruth Yellow Bull. Know her?”

  “It’s possible,” Father John said. He might recognize her if he saw her. There were so many faces filling albums in his mind, and not all of them had names attached. Still he felt as if he knew them—the powwows, the rodeos, the celebrations and meetings, even Mass on Easter and Christmas when, it seemed, everyone on the rez came. All the brown faces passing by, all of them familiar now.

  “She’s still around. Lives over on Mill Creek Road. Something else,” Banner hurried on. “Records say Elizabeth Plenty Horses had an infant daughter about a month old in the car when she was picked up. Baby went to social services while she was in custody.”

  “Thanks, Banner,” Father John said.

  “I’m sending this over to Coughlin. It’s his case.”

  “Right.”

  “What I’m telling you is that you and Vicky got what you wanted. Most likely you ID’d the skeleton. Soon as the coroner releases her, the elders can see about a burial. Far as you’re concerned, it’s over.”

  “Who killed her?”

  “What? We don’t know that.”

  “Then I’d say it’s not over.”

  “Coughlin can check dental records, make a positive ID. Might be some relatives still around. We can help locate them, if they’re on the rez. I’m serious about you and Vicky backing off after what happened at her apartment last night.”

  “What are you talking about?” The thrum of Jesse’s voice out in the garage was nearly lost in the blur of hip-hop noise, all of it far away. He was on his feet, unaware of how he’d gotten there, the blood pounding in his head. “What about Vicky?”

  “Somebody shot out a window in her apartment,” Banner said. He added quickly, “She’s okay, John. Nobody hurt. Coughlin thinks somebody’s trying to call her off this case. Sent a couple of warning messages.”

  She hadn’t told him! Why hadn’t she told him? He would have said the same thing Coughlin probably said: Don’t do anything else. Stay out of it. And she would have ignored him. She would have pushed on. He knew her.

  He thanked the chief for the information and pressed the end button, conscious of Jesse standing in the doorway, wondering how long he’d been there.

  “What do I owe you?” he said, pulling a thin wad of bills from his jeans pocket and dealing them onto the table, a ten, two fives, some ones. It was all he had.

  “On the house.”

  “Maybe your son can use it.” Father John pushed the money toward the stack of papers. He thanked the man again before he could raise any protest, and started forward. Jesse moved aside, and Father John hurried through the wall of hip-hop noise crashing over the garage, pressing in the number to Vicky’s office as he went.

  The phone was still ringing when he got into the pickup. Finally the answering machine kicked in: “Law offices of Holden and Lone Eagle. Please leave your name and phone number. Someone will return your call as soon as possible.”

  He hit the end key and called her apartment.

  “Be there,” he said out loud over the electronic buzzing in his ear. It was a long moment—four, five rings—before she said, “Hello.” He had to take a half second for the wave of gratitude to wash over him—that she was alive, that she was safe, that she was at the other end.

  “It’s John,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  That wasn’t true. He could hear the tension in her voice, the raw fear.

  “How’d you know?” Vicky said. Then, “Never mind. It’s probably all over the moccasin telegraph. It’ll be on the radio sooner or later.”

  “Listen, Vicky,” he began…

  “Not you, too,” she said. Anger in her voice now. “Don’t tell me to back away from this.”

  “I was going to tell you the girl’s name. It was Elizabeth Plenty Horses.”

  Vicky was quiet for so long that he wondered if the call had been dropped. “How did you find out?” she said finally.

  He told her about the police records, how the girl had been arrested on a bench warrant and held in jail overnight. How social services had taken care of her baby daughter.

  “A daughter,” Vicky said, her voi
ce low, as if she were speaking to herself.

  He told her that a woman named Ruth Yellow Bull had paid the three-hundred-dollar fine. “She lives on Mill Creek Road. I think I’ll stop by and see what she might have to say.”

  “I’ve already talked to her,” Vicky said. “She’ll say she never heard of Liz Plenty Horses. She’ll lie through her teeth.” She paused. “Give me forty minutes. I’ll meet you there.”

  19

  VICKY SPOTTED THE red Toyota pickup parked up ahead on Mill Creek Road. She slowed as she passed, gave Father John O’Malley a quick wave, then shot forward, watching the pickup jerk into gear in the rearview mirror and start after her. Little clouds of dust and gravel spit from beneath the tires.

  They were the only vehicles in sight. The road ran straight ahead, cutting through the brown, open plains flattened in the heat of the midday sun. In the distance, the horizon melted into a blue gray haze. It had been close to seven this morning before she’d crawled back into bed, limp with fatigue and fear and anger and the sense that she was alone—Hi sei ci nihi. After the Lander police and Detective Coughlin had left the apartment, pages in handheld notepads covered with black scribbling, Adam had attached a flattened cardboard box to the gaping space in the window, and they had swept up the pieces of glass and the shards, which oddly had made her think of the brokenness of the girl’s body. It was then that she’d started to cry.

  “I’m not going to South Dakota,” Adam had told her. “I’m not leaving you alone.”

  “It’s your uncle’s funeral. It’s your family. You must go.”

  “You come with me.”

  They both knew that didn’t make sense. There was the discrimination case to work on, people to interview. She had to stop by Charlie Crow’s office today to get the names of other Indians who might join the case. And Adam would be back as soon as he could get here. No more than a couple of days, he promised. She shouldn’t do anything else about the skeleton. Coughlin would handle everything from now on, and she’d agreed—out of the exhaustion and shock, she’d agreed to everything. Adam shouldn’t worry.

  And then Father John O’Malley had called and told her the girl’s name: Liz Plenty Horses.

  Vicky came over a rise that surprised her, camouflaged as it was in the vast sameness of the landscape. Ahead on the right, the brown house appeared like an alien growth that had dropped onto the plains. She slowed down as she came off the rise, then turned into the dirt clearing that passed for a driveway and drove across the barrow ditch. She parked in front of the house close to the wooden stoop and got out.

  The door of the pickup slammed behind her; Father John O’Malley’s footsteps scraped the dirt in rhythm with her own. They took the wooden steps on the stoop together. There was no time for the polite waiting in the yard, on the chance that Ruth Yellow Bull would open the door. She wouldn’t want to see them.

  Father John knocked hard on the frame of the screened door with squares of black wire jutting from the sides. He gave another hard knock, then looked at Vicky. The blurred noise of TV voices came from inside. Then the door was opening—a slow, hesitant slide. The sound of canned TV laughter mingled with the sweet smell of marijuana that wafted outside.

  “What do you want?” The woman peered around the edge of the door.

  “We have some information you might be interested in,” Vicky said, gesturing with her head toward the tall man beside her. “You know Father John from the mission?”

  “Nothing you got interests me. Get outta here and leave me alone, or I’m gonna sic the dog on you.” The door started to close.

  “We know about your friend, Liz Plenty Horses,” Father John said.

  The door snapped back. Ruth Yellow Bull stood in the opening, still gripping the edge of the door with one hand. Her other hand dangled at the side of her blue jeans, shaking. A German Shepherd stuck his nose through a broken square in the screen and emitted a low growl that seemed to work its way up from deep inside his entrails. The smell of pot was so strong that Vicky had to turn away to get a clean breath of air.

  “I don’t know any Liz Plenty Horses.”

  “You paid her fine at the tribal court in August of 1973,” Father John said. His voice was low and calm, the voice of the counselor, Vicky thought.

  “Three hundred dollars,” he went on. “A lot of money then.”

  “That’s a lie. You come here with your filthy lies, both of you. I want you outta here.” She kept her hand on the door and took a step backward, as if she meant to fling the door closed.

  “The Wind River Police have the records,” he said. “We’d like to talk to you. May we come in?”

  Ruth Yellow Bull didn’t move for a moment. Then she came forward and kicked at the screened door. Father John took hold of the handle as the dog lunged forward, slamming his large body against the screen. The frame shuddered, and for an instant, Vicky expected the screen to pop out. The TV voice inside let out a howl of laughter.

  “Stay!” Father John put his hand, palm up, in front of the dog’s muzzle. The dog jerked backward, his rear legs scrambling for a hold on the vinyl floor. Ruth had a grip on his collar then, pulling him back until they both blended into the shadows inside. There was a sharp bark, followed by the clap of a door shutting somewhere in the back of the house.

  Father John opened the door. Vicky stepped inside first, moving through a rectangle of light from the television screen—game show sounds of clapping and shouting: “Take it! Take it!” Daylight tunneled around the edges of blue curtains that drooped across the front window. The front door was still open, and sunlight shot across the vinyl floor into the dimness of the kitchen in back.

  Ruth came padding down a short hallway. She leaned over and turned off the television, then she slammed the door, leaving only the dim glow of light from the kitchen. “I told you, I don’t know nothin’ about her.” She was shaking her head, a quick, almost spastic movement back and forth. A piece of gray hair fell over her forehead, and she shoved it back into place.

  “Then why did you pay her fine?”

  “So I paid a fine, so what?” she said. “We got lots of people outta jail. Paid the fines, got ’em bail, whatever they needed. That’s what AIM did, helped Indians.”

  “You’re saying AIM gave you the money?” Vicky said.

  “Maybe. I told you, I don’t remember. Maybe I was just the messenger. Somebody says, get over to the tribal court and give ’em some money so somebody can get out of jail, so I did. We done here?”

  “Who sent you?” Vicky said.

  The woman shrugged.

  “I think that whoever sent you didn’t want Liz Plenty Horses in jail,” Father John said, still the low, coaxing voice and the tone with the underlying message: You can talk to me. It’s okay. “She was probably killed not long afterward. Is that why he wanted her out, so that he could blame her for being a snitch?”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “Someone who wanted her dead,” Vicky said. They were on the same track, she was thinking, she and Father John O’Malley, and for the first time today, she felt less alone.

  “Detective Coughlin will want to ask you the same questions,” she said. “He’ll come here.” Vicky swept a hand around the room, gathering in the invisible odor of pot. “If you talk to us, I’ll try to arrange for you to give a statement at his office.”

  Vicky let the suggestion and the implied threat—God, as obvious as the blue curtains on the window—hang in the room between them. She might have been in an interview room, she was thinking, with a client accused of a crime, claiming he was innocent—wasn’t him that sold that pot, stole that truck, beat his girlfriend—and she had just said: I can’t help you if you don’t level with me.

  Ruth Yellow Bull was working it over. She lowered her eyes to half-mast, as if she were focusing on some argument in her head. It was at least two minutes before she said, “What do you want from me?”

  “Tell us about Liz,” Vic
ky said.

  The woman walked over and sank onto the edge of the sofa. She gathered her hands in her lap and stared across the room. Vicky exchanged a glance with Father John; neither one said anything. This was a decision that Ruth had made, a frail, tenuous decision that could snap at the wrong word, the inappropriate encouragement.

  “Those bones can’t be Liz. She left the rez,” Ruth said finally. “Never liked being Indian. Always wanted to be white, so she went and got herself whiteized, my opinion. Wanted to be some big country singer, always singing songs, dreaming of the big time. Went to L.A. or Nashville or someplace.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Vicky said.

  Ruth’s gaze swiveled from Vicky to Father John, then back again. “I heard it,” she said. “I heard she took off, and we should forget about her.” She seemed to reconsider this, kneading her hands together. “I seen her the night she left, okay? I never told anybody, wasn’t nobody’s business. She came to the house, nine, ten o’clock. Said she was in trouble, needed a place to stay for a while.”

  “What was she talking about?”

  Ruth took a moment before she said, “She was a singer, all right, couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Told the police where one of the leaders was hiding. Daryl Redman was his name, came from Pine Ridge. Police went out and shot him. We had to do a lot of scrambling after that to find new safe houses before the police and Feds took out the other leaders. Wasn’t something AIM was gonna let go, her snitching. ’Course Liz said she didn’t have nothing to do with it, and she was gonna straighten it out. Wanted to stay here, her and the kid, but I told her, Jesus, Liz, Jake hears you’re here, he’ll beat the crap outta me.”

  “Jake Tallfeathers?” Vicky said.

  Ruth nodded. “Sonofabitch, ended up killing my sister, Loreen. Got off on some technicality. I heard he got himself shot in a bar up in Rapid City four or five years ago. Somebody sent me the newspaper clipping, said ‘AIM Leader Killed.’ Like I cared what the hell happened to him.”

  “What happened to Liz?” Father John said. “Where did she go?”