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

  Susan looked away at this, as if the knots of people strolling past the patio on the sidewalk had demanded her attention.

  “Adam and I are law partners,” Vicky said, wondering how they had managed to get through the zoo and the Museum of Nature and Science, the play at the performing arts center, and the hike into the foothills today without one of the kids bringing up the subject of Adam Lone Eagle.

  Susan was still staring out over the sidewalk, and Lucas pressed on: “Come on, Mom, tell us what we don’t know.”

  Vicky tried for a laugh. It sounded tight and forced. “If there were anything to tell, you would be the first to know.”

  “We already know.” Susan’s head snapped around. “Moccasin telegraph works in Denver and L.A., you know. We’ve heard all about you and Adam.”

  “He’s a good lawyer. I admire him very much.” Vicky wondered what other news the moccasin telegraph had delivered—that she and Adam were lovers? That Adam spent almost every night at her apartment?

  “Maybe we should go to the rez and have a talk with him,” Lucas said. “You know, what are your intentions toward our mother?”

  “His intentions? For heaven’s sakes, Lucas.”

  “His intentions are honorable, of course.” Susan directed the comment toward her brother. “Isn’t that what every man wants a woman to believe?”

  “Come on, you two,” Vicky said, reaching for a lighter tone. “I’d love to have you visit.” But not for a while, she was thinking. It wasn’t Adam’s intentions that she doubted; it was her own.

  Vicky got to her feet and headed back through the restaurant, aware of the scraping sound of chairs on stone and the footsteps of Lucas and Susan behind her. The air was close and stuffy inside, unlike the warmth of the summer evening on the patio. She was aware of the way the few diners still lingering over coffee or dessert lifted their eyes as they walked by.

  The nighttime streets of LoDo were busy. Sedans and SUVs crawling past the crowds that strolled the sidewalks and darted through the openings in the traffic. Lucas had to jam on the brakes to avoid two girls running across the street, waving and hollering at a knot of young people on the other side. Vicky felt her muscles tensing. She was no longer used to the congestion and traffic that had seemed normal when she’d lived in Denver. Then, after she’d gone home and started her law practice in Lander with the crazy idea that she could help her people, it was the open spaces that seemed normal. They had really never left her; they were part of her spirit. She was looking forward to the long drive tomorrow through the emptiness of Wyoming.

  “We’re out of here,” Lucas said. The tires squealed into a left turn onto a side street. The hum of traffic receded as he drove on. There was only an occasional pedestrian hurrying along the sidewalk. A couple of more blocks, another turn, and they were back in a stream of traffic crossing the Platte River. Ahead, lights twinkled in the hills of Highland, the familiar neighborhood of century-old bungalows and Victorians where Vicky had once lived. Lucas had bought a house not far from the house she had rented.

  On the other side of the viaduct, Lucas turned out of the traffic and into the side streets again. He drove slowly past the cars parked at the curbs and the dark tunnels of alleys. The headlights swept into the circles of light falling out of the street lamps.

  “Whoa! What was that?” Lucas hit the brake pedal, and the car jerked to a stop. Vicky threw out one hand to brace herself against the dashboard; the seatbelt bit into her shoulder. Then they were rocketing backward.

  “What’re you doing?” Susan shrieked from behind. Vicky could feel Susan gripping the back of the seat.

  “You see that?”

  “See what?” Susan said.

  The street was suffused in the soft moonlight. The houses were dark, except for a dim light in the second-floor window of a house farther down the street. The car came to a stop, then Lucas backed up a few more feet and made a sharp turn into an alley. He drove past a small group of people—three or four men, a couple of women hunched next to the fence of a backyard. In the headlights bouncing ahead, Vicky could see two figures: the tall, thick-shouldered man in a white tee shirt and blue jeans; the girl crumbled against a garage. The man lifted a boot with a high heel and rounded toe and kicked the girl in the stomach. Then he grabbed a fistful of her long, black hair and yanked her upward against the garage door, his other arm pulled back, fist clenched.

  Lucas was out of the car. He launched himself past the onlookers and threw his weight into the man, who stumbled backward, grappling for purchase on the chipped concrete apron of the garage, the twisted features of his face bobbing in the headlights, his mouth opened in a mixture of rage and surprise. Lucas grabbed the raised arm, but not before the man let go of the girl’s hair and drove a fist into Lucas’s middle. He twisted away, then reared back, head lowered. His fist caught the man’s jaw, knocking him off balance for a half second before the man came back, both fists pounding Lucas.

  Vicky managed to get the glove compartment open, then the console box, frantic to find a flashlight, anything she might use, barely registering the sound of Susan screaming behind her. “Call 911,” Vicky yelled, throwing open the door and running her hand under the edge of the passenger seat as she slid out. Finally her fingers found a cool, hard plastic object. The screaming stopped. She could hear Susan shouting that they needed help as she gripped the flashlight and ran toward Lucas who had managed to back the man against the garage door. She was aware of the girl’s soft cries of pain through the sounds of boots scraping the concrete, the hard thrusts of fists against muscles and bones, the quick gasps of breath. Lucas threw another fist toward the man’s jaw, just as he dodged sideways and butted his head into Lucas’s chest. In an instant it was Lucas backed against the garage door, the man gripping his throat with one hand, winding up for another punch into Lucas’s stomach.

  Vicky screamed and swung the flashlight into the side of the man’s head. He whirled toward her. Lucas dived for him with more force and anger than she could have imagined was in her son. He started pounding on the man, not letting up, until the man doubled over, dropping onto one knee, then the other, and finally folding onto the concrete, arms outstretched, unconscious. Even then she wasn’t sure that Lucas wouldn’t jump on top of him and continue pounding.

  “The girl, the girl,” Vicky shouted.

  Lucas took in a series of quick breaths, still standing over the prone figure, staring down at him. “Bastard,” he said. He swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “You filthy bastard.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Vicky could see Susan moving through the headlights like a wisp of smoke. There was no one else in the alley; the little crowd had disappeared. Vicky knelt down beside the girl and wrapped her hand around the thin wrist, her fingertips probing for the sign of a pulse. She was unconscious, bruises welling on her face and arm, grip marks on her throat. The noise of a siren swelled in the distance, the only sound apart from the sharp in and out of Lucas’s breathing.

  “Is she dead?” Susan’s voice was hushed, barely a whisper.

  “No,” Vicky said. She had the pulse now, faint and erratic. She was almost dead, she was thinking. If they hadn’t gotten here, the girl would have been dead.

  Lucas turned back to the man, and for a moment Vicky thought he might lift his foot and kick at the prone figure, but Lucas remained still, peering down at him, and she marveled at the restraint in her son, the control over himself, so unlike his father.

  A cacophony of sirens filled the air. Vehicles were approaching from both ends of the alley, headlights flashing over fences and garages and power poles. Lights had switched on in the houses behind the fences and dark backyards. She could hear a dog barking, doors slamming. The vehicles ground to a halt: three police cars, an ambulance. Doors opened and slammed shut and a group of officers in dark uniforms moved into a half circle around them.

  “What’s going on?” One of the officers tossed out the question. He glanced from
Lucas to Vicky, his gaze passing over Susan.

  “This girl needs help.” Vicky was still crouching beside the unconscious girl. The shaking had started. She felt it moving through her arms and across her back, down her legs. She wasn’t sure she could stand up, that her legs wouldn’t give way beneath her.

  A couple of medics broke through the half circle and went down on their knees beside the girl. Vicky tried to scoot away to give them room, steadying herself with one hand against the ridged wood of the garage door.

  “What about him?” The officer stepped over to the man stretched out on the asphalt, still unconscious. Another medic knelt beside him and probed at his neck a moment before his fingers came to a rest. He glanced at his watch.

  “He was beating the hell out of her,” Lucas said.

  “And you took care of that?”

  Vicky pulled herself upright along the door. She found the handle and leaned onto it. “My name is Vicky Holden and I’m an attorney,” she told the officer. “My son, Lucas. My daughter, Susan.” She gave a nod in the direction of each of her children. “We were on our way to Lucas’s house when we passed the alley and saw that man beating up on this girl. We drove into the alley to help her. There were other people here, just watching. They’ve left.”

  “Okay.” The officer took in a long breath, then let it out slowly, as if he were letting go of a different scenario he’d been constructing in his mind: alley fight between Indians and whites. It happened in this neighborhood, except that it would have been more usual if the fight were between Mexicans and whites.

  “We need your names, addresses, brief statements.” Another officer had pulled out a small notepad and was flipping through the pages with the tip of a pen. The medics still hovered over the girl and the man. Two medics were dragging stretchers out of the back of the ambulance.

  “We’ll also need complete statements at police headquarters downtown tomorrow,” the officer said.

  Vicky started to say that she was leaving for Wyoming tomorrow, that her daughter had to return to L.A. She stopped, aware of the medics sliding the girl onto a stretcher. She looked so small. So helpless. “We’ll be there first thing,” she said.

  “Any idea who the bystanders were?”

  Vicky shook her head.

  “We’ll talk to the neighbors, see if we can find them.”

  “The bastard should be charged with attempted murder and first-degree assault,” Lucas said.

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  “We can testify that we saw him beating the girl,” Vicky said. She was still shaking, and she could hear the shaking in her voice. She glanced at Susan, who had moved next to Lucas. Lucas had his arm around her. The color had drained from her face. “We all saw what happened.”

  After they had given their names, addresses, and telephone numbers, after they’d told the officers again what they had seen, they got into the car and Lucas started backing out of the alley. The ambulance had already pulled away with both the girl and the man inside. Only one of the police cars was left, the two officers walking up and down the alley, shining flashlights across the concrete and along the bottom rim of the fences.

  “God…”

  “Don’t say it, Mom,” Lucas said, but Vicky knew by the silence in which they drove on that both Lucas and Susan knew what she was thinking. It might have been Susan, alone in an alley in L.A., with some drug dealer or rotten boyfriend deciding to teach her a lesson. It was probably what had happened to the girl who was no more than a skeleton in the Gas Hills. It could have happened to Susan, and she could have ended up dead.

  But they didn’t know the rest of her thoughts: It might have been her. In their own home. At the hands of their own father.

  4

  WILLIE NELSON BLARED from the radio—“Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” A river of asphalt flowed ahead as far as Vicky could see, sunlight flashing on the bumper of a semi in the distance. On either side of the highway, the plains rolled and pitched and melted into a sky as clear as blue glass. Here and there a ranch house lifted itself out of the brown earth, but the only continuous signs of life were the antelope that had been racing alongside the highway for miles. She passed Sweetwater Station, a rest stop with picnic tables and a scattering of vehicles parked in front of the low brick building that housed the restrooms. Ahead were Cedar Draw, Sheep Mountain, Blue Ridge. And in the northeast, the Gas Hills, where the skeleton had been found.

  She’d been awake most of last night, drifting into a half sleep until the images of the unconscious girl curled in the alley and the bones of a young woman in the Gas Hills had collided in a nightmare that startled her into wakefulness. She’d stared into the darkness, knowing that Susan and Lucas were also awake, the images from the alley looping through their minds. When they were children, she’d always known if they were awake, lying quietly in their beds, and it was as if they were still connected to her by an invisible umbilical cord. She could almost see the images that must have played in Susan’s mind, the nightmare terrors spliced with pictures of the man kicking and punching the girl.

  And Lucas, staring into the darkness of the den downstairs, worrying about the girl. Oh, how well she knew him. Always worrying, just like when he was a child, the little spy in the house who knew everything, but was too small to do anything about it. The memory of Ben Holden was not as sacred to his son as it was to his daughter.

  They were at the police headquarters at eight o’clock this morning, she and Lucas and Susan, ushered into individual cubicles, giving statements of what they’d seen, what they had done. The girl was in serious condition; not that Detective Hopkins, who seemed to be in charge, had said so, exactly. It was what Vicky had heard in the undercurrent of conversation. Her name was Julie Reynolds. Julie Reynolds, nineteen years old, in intensive care at Denver Health Sciences, on a respirator. Her attacker was Theo Gosman, twenty-five and a member of a prominent Denver family. Already lawyered up, the detective had said, with the firm of Owens and Lattimore, known for obtaining acquittals of criminal charges against well-heeled clients.

  The sound of her cell ringing cut through her thoughts. Vicky fumbled in her bag on the passenger seat and extracted the small, plastic phone. “This is Vicky Holden,” she said, clamping the phone to her ear, her eyes still fastened on the silvery asphalt unfurling itself. Two golden-tail hawks swooped over the highway before rising into a long, flat glide, their shadows flickering on the plains.

  “Where are you, Vicky Holden?” It was Adam, and she knew by the lightness in his tone that he was glad to reach her.

  “Just passed Sweetwater.”

  Adam was quiet a moment. “Another hour,” he said. “How’d everything go? Kids okay?”

  They were fine, Vicky told him. She’d tell him later about the girl in the alley.

  “A group of women are wanting to see you.”

  “What? Who are they?”

  “From the rez. Annie knows them.”

  Annie Bosey knew everybody on the Wind River Reservation, Vicky was thinking, which was one of the reasons she’d insisted on bringing her secretary to the new firm that she and Adam had formed. “We need somebody more professional, more polished,” Adam had said. Someone more fitting with the type of firm they intended to build, the important cases they would handle on natural resources, land management, issues of tribal sovereignty. “Annie knows everybody,” Vicky had said. “And she needs the job.” Still in her twenties, divorced and on her own with two kids. It never left Vicky’s mind that she herself had been like that, struggling to look after Lucas and Susan in between the waitressing job and her classes at the University of Colorado in Denver. It had defeated her, and one day she’d driven the kids back to her mother’s on the reservation, promising she’d be back for them. But by the time she’d come back, with a law degree and a job at a Seventeenth Street firm, the kids were grown. They didn’t need her anymore. Adam had understood all that, she knew, and he’d agreed to let Annie stay on.

&n
bsp; “What do they want?” Vicky said.

  “I suspect Annie knows, but she’s not saying. They want to talk to you, that’s all. You planning to come to the office?”

  “I guess I am now,” Vicky said. She’d been planning to go straight to her apartment, unpack, and get caught up on the files she’d taken to Denver and never found the time to open.

  “I’ll have Annie let them know. Oh, and Vicky?”

  She’d been about to break off the call, the tip of her index finger brushing the end key. She waited.

  “It’ll be good to have you home.”

  “See you soon,” she said. She pushed the key and tossed the phone onto the bag crumpled on the seat. She was beginning to think that every time she left his sight, Adam Lone Eagle half expected that she wouldn’t return.

  THE BROWN FACES swiveled toward her as Vicky stepped into the reception area. Diana Morningstar and Mary Blue Heart leaned against the closed door to her office. Six other women were scattered about the room. Vicky searched for names: Elsie Barret and Rona Blackman on the folding chairs that Annie must have pulled from the closet. Nan somebody—what was the woman’s name? Janice Silver, Mickey Littleshield, Shana Graybull. They were quiet and reserved—it was the normal way—black hair flowing about their shoulders, hands clasped in their laps, brown eyes fixed on her.

  It was Annie, jumping up from the desk across the office, who said, “They’ve been waiting most of the afternoon.”

  Vicky tried for a smile that was part acknowledgment and part apology. “Better come in,” she said, starting for her office. The two women against the door stepped aside, and Vicky pushed the door open and walked to her desk, aware of the shuffling noises of the women starting after her. She hooked the strap of her bag over her chair and waited while they filed inside and bunched together along the back wall. Except for Diana Morningstar and Mary Blue Heart who dropped into the chairs in front of the desk. The appointed spokeswomen, Vicky thought.