CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

After the library, Starr spent Friday afternoon at her desk in the marshal’s office going through file after file from the BIA, discovering one missing girl after another—probably a decade’s worth—until her head swam with bodies found and not.

Winnie was gone for the afternoon, home with one of her grandchildren, who was sick with a stomach virus. Minkey had called to report that his door-to-door questioning on the rez had led to nothing, so she’d sent him to the station in Dexter Springs to search police reports for any crimes linked to the rez, but he hadn’t found anything. He’d been away only a couple of hours when she heard the door to the marshal’s office open.

“Hey, boss,” Minkey said. “This yours?” He held up a leather pouch secured with string.

“Nope.”

“Found it hanging from the door handle.”

“You look inside?”

Minkey shook his head and walked to her desk, where he gingerly set the object down and stepped away.

“Well, let’s hope somebody’s not sending us anthrax,” Starr said, trying to make a joke. Minkey blanched. She pulled on a pair of latex gloves, supplies she’d taken from the morgue the previous day, and loosened the string on the pouch so she could spill the contents onto the desktop.

“Huh,” she said. It didn’t look like much of anything. A handful of sand along with a rusted bottle cap. Some flowers with small white petals and yellow centers, dried and starting to crumble. A feather in variegated shades of blue.

“That’s a tail feather,” said Minkey, “from a blue jay. Did you know the pigment in that feather is actually brown, but it looks blue to us because of the way it reflects light?”

“You’re a regular Audubon field guide.”

Minkey’s face reddened. “What do you think this is? Some Indian thing?”

“Indigenous,” Starr said.

The office phone trilled.

“Marshal,” said Starr, then cradled the landline’s old receiver between her ear and shoulder as she listened. “How long? Where exactly? Okay, we’ll be right there.”

She hung up, grabbed the Bronco keys and motioned Minkey to the door.

“Trading Post,” she said. “Drunk and disorderly.”

In the Bronco, Minkey clicked on the passenger seat belt as Starr threw the vehicle into reverse.

“Minkey,” she said, shifting into drive, “how long have you lived here?”

“Here?” He looked out the window, across the open land slipping away to the west. “Oh, you mean Dexter Springs? Well”—he scratched his chin—“I moved here after I graduated from the police academy. For the job, you know. That’s been about two years.”

“I’m sorry,” Starr said. “That’s too bad.”

“Oh, it’s been okay. I mean, I like it here.”

“Give it time.”

“No, I really do. I know I’m still considered new, but I’m trying to work my way in.”

“Working in how?”

“Community-policing stuff. You know, volunteering when I’m off shift, joining the Lions Club, that kind of thing.”

“Why? Don’t you have better things to do on your own time? Like get rowdy, get around?”

Minkey laughed. “Not saying I don’t kick up a little, but I try to keep my head on straight. Don’t want to screw up my career.”

“In Dexter? You want to make detective?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

They drove on in silence, Starr considering her next question.

“My granddad, see, he was a Ranger,” Minkey said.

“Like a Texas Ranger?”

“Yeah, exactly. And he kinda raised me, well, not raised exactly, but had a big influence on me, the kind of man I wanted to be.”

“So why not become a Ranger?”

“Thought about it, but the police academy was more in my reach. I was figuring out how to pay for it, sending out a few applications for rookie-officer openings, and then I heard from Dexter Springs. It was the one municipality that offered to pay for my training at the police academy, so I took them up on it. I just can’t quit or take another job for three years, or I’ll have to pay the city back. Got about a year to go.”

Starr thought about the domestic scene she’d seen play out with Minkey and the woman on the rez. While Starr had been met with resistance at every turn, Minkey had settled into easy conversation. It was possible he was personable, even likable, but it was too coincidental, the way he showed up the day the body was found.

“Did you know the deceased?” She watched him closely, noticed how his hands moved.

“No, ma’am. But that doesn’t mean much. I don’t really know anyone from the rez.”

“Then why the hell did the mayor volunteer you for this?”

He shrugged. “Maybe I volunteered myself.”

Starr pressed the brake, parking outside the Trading Post’s front doors, and faced him.

“What?” he said. “I had my reasons.”

“You gonna tell me what they are?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with my ability to—”

Starr scoffed, then realized he was serious.

“I thought I could make a difference,” Minkey continued, “out here. More than writing citations for driving too fast down a city street. People on the rez could use someone on their side, someone who cares about the law. Who cares about them.”

“Well, you dumb bastard,” she said. This was some howdy doody shit if she’d ever heard it. “We’ll see how far that gets you. Nobody takes a job here unless they’re one of three things: desperate, delusional or both.”

Minkey turned a shade of red that matched the University of Oklahoma crimson she’d seen on stadium pennants, T-shirts, hats and license plates, and now a lawn flag hanging in the window of the Trading Post. Starr could see Junior inside, gesturing wildly at a cashier.

“Come on,” she said. “We got a live one.”