CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

SUNDAY

By seven o’clock Sunday morning, Starr was parked outside her office, watching pink fingers of light stretch across the sky. She’d stayed in the garage the night before, poring over Chenoa’s maps, studying her research, the newspaper articles she’d clipped. Starr had slept three hours, maybe four.

She felt for the joint in her pocket, swigged a series of long draws from the whiskey she kept stowed under the seat and rested her forehead on the steering wheel.

With any luck the building would be empty, at least for a while. She needed time to think, time to go through more files. She already knew Winnie would be in Dexter Springs most of the day, taking her grandchildren to their Biddy basketball games. Minkey was busy that morning too, but she’d asked him to come in to work for the afternoon.

For the time being, though, Starr was glad to be alone. She didn’t think she could stand being on the rez one more second, not any part of it. This job had brought the worst kind of trouble. Missing women. Murdered women. Memories of her own daughter.

She got out of the truck, slammed the door and walked around the back of the building. A pair of plastic lawn chairs were upended near the rear entrance to her office, the door rusted shut. She righted one of the chairs, brushed off a spider and settled in. The other chair, she pulled directly in front of her knees and then propped her legs on it. The wind picked up and rattled the brittle grass that had grown over the summer. She faced the wide expanse behind the building, her eyes drifting over russet and gold waves of long prairie grasses that undulated with the rise and fall of wind and earth. Beyond the grasses were ravines, their edges thick with trees and carpets of fallen leaves, the hollows dank and cold where the sun didn’t linger; instead, it passed over as quickly as a life. As quickly as her daughter’s life. Blink and it’s gone.

The old pain was there, swallowing her whole, and Starr wondered why she was still alive. She knew what had fueled her in those first days and weeks after Quinn’s death, but she’d killed that problem and left him as a warning in a South Side alley. She’d never been charged with the crime, which meant there were still people in Internal Affairs who knew Chicago was better with one less bad guy. The fact that their ruling came on the heels of Quinn’s funeral had been a small mercy.

Starr brought the joint out from her pocket and fired it, listening to the chatter of dark little birds that flocked from branch to grass and back again. She had no idea what type of birds they were, but the crest of a red cardinal was unmistakable when it alighted in a tangle of hedge trees to her left. Osage orange, Minkey called them, hardwood trees that dropped knobby green fruit the size of softballs. He seemed to know every living thing here.

For Starr, coming to the rez had been as much about losing herself as about finding someone, anyone. Chenoa. Maybe it was hubris, thinking she could walk out there and be the hero of someone else’s story. Why stand against the world and delay the death you crave when there’s no way to set anything right?

Her cell phone buzzed, cutting her thoughts.

“Starr.” She answered on the fourth ring, not even checking the caller ID.

“Please hold for Director Randall.”

Starr immediately straightened in her chair, then stood. Steve Randall was director of the Southern Plains regional office of the BIA, stationed out of Anadarko, Oklahoma. Her reporting agency.

After a few moments of silence and a couple of clicks that made her sure the call had dropped, Randall came on the line. Starr knew reception behind the building was spotty, but if she moved to a better location she’d risk losing the call altogether. She decided not to take her chances, so she stood still and erect, her attention focused.

“Director Randall here. Marshal Starr? Good.” He didn’t wait for her response. “Listen, how’s it going down there?”

“Good, sir, very good. Not fully equipped when I arrived, but that’s been handled and I—” she lied.

He cut her off.

“Here’s the deal. I recognize it’s highly unusual to ring you on a Sunday, it being the Lord’s day, but it’s come back to us that you’ve got a homicide down there. A vic from the rez and found on the rez?”

“Yes, and—”

“Okay, good intel, then. Haven’t seen a report yet, so that better be on my desk by noon tomorrow. Listen, I’ve got a committee meeting on the horizon with some higher-ups and I’m going to need you to get a handle on this. Not looking good for what we’re trying to do here, which is the right thing, of course, sending aid where aid is needed. But how well that aid works falls on you. It’s why we hired you, you know, with this being part of your”—he hesitated—“heritage and all.”

“Right,” said Starr, hoping she sounded convincing. She couldn’t tell him she’d been shut out of inner circles, turned away from doors on which she’d knocked, that the official BIA vehicle was vandalized during her first week on the job. Or that she had no idea who had killed the girl whose body had been discovered by the creek bed.

“I’m actually working that case right now, making progress. Good progress,” she added, hoping it didn’t sound like an afterthought.

She pictured the dead girl’s mouth, filled with white, chalky substrate. There was Chenoa, of course, who was probably missing. There were other young women, gone for years—and in the mouth of one victim, the same white substance found in Sherry Ann Awiakta’s throat. One more invisible girl whose family would never be the same.

“Better be progress,” said Director Randall, “because you’ve got one week to make this case, or we’ll have to go in a different direction. It’s not something I’d anticipated, necessarily, but there it is.”

“Different direction?” she said numbly.

“Yeah, hope you haven’t unpacked.”

Then he was gone. Whether the call dropped or he ended it didn’t matter.

Starr slumped back into the lawn chair. This job was her last resort. Her. Last. Resort. What was she going to do now? Where would she go from here? She couldn’t go back to Chicago and she didn’t have the money to set up anywhere else. Even if she did, detective work was all she knew.

Starr stayed in the lawn chair for an hour, then spent three more scanning the BIA cold cases still left in her office; she was searching for any kind of clue that could lead her to Sherry Ann’s killer. When it was nearly noon, she left for the Trading Post, where she grabbed a cellophane-wrapped turkey sandwich. No sign of Odeina.

She decided to head to Junior’s shack. So far he’d been the most talkative of everyone she’d questioned, even when she was threatening to take him in. Maybe he would tell her more about Chenoa. What she liked. Her secret hopes. Her plans. Maybe understanding Chenoa could lead her to something—anything—that would advance her search for Sherry Ann’s killer. Maybe it was a waste of time to think about Sherry Ann when Chenoa might be out there, alive.

Tracking information on the rez felt like wandering into a maze of funhouse mirrors. She’d learned that she couldn’t get anywhere by barraging anyone with questions. Every time she asked direct questions, their faces would turn to stone, the light in their eyes retreating in some way, and they would say nothing. Nothing of value.

Starr washed down the sandwich with three gulps of whiskey as she drove; then she rolled the window of the Bronco down to feel the brace of cool air. A local radio announcer rattled off the forecast: unseasonably warm today, with a cold front moving in; by Monday evening much of the region would see its first ice and snow, with heavier amounts along a line running parallel to Route 66. Starr wondered whether the cold snap would be anything to rival the lake-effect wind and snow that rolled off Lake Michigan into Chicago. She doubted it.

Director Randall had given her a week. Sherry Ann’s trail had already gone cold. And he had no idea that she had a more pressing problem. Chenoa. Maybe—just maybe—she could save at least one lost girl.