CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Starr spent the rest of the morning at the creek with Minkey, where she made him walk through his actions and conversations during the night he’d met Sherry Ann. Then she sent Minkey on his way and returned to the marshal’s office, where she could hear Winnie laughing before she even entered the room.

“Must be some story,” Starr said. Byrd was standing by the filing cabinets with Winnie, who was in stitches.

“Hoping I’d find you here,” Byrd said as the phone rang and Winnie moved to take the call. “Can we talk?”

Starr shrugged a shoulder and motioned to the chair by her desk.

“Maybe take a walk outside? I could use a little exercise.” He patted his protruding belly.

Starr held up five fingers to show Winnie how long she expected to be gone, and with that she and Byrd exited the building, leaving Winnie’s raised brows behind.

Once outside, Byrd turned not toward the main road, but to circle behind the building. For a moment Starr thought they might make use of the two ragtag lawn chairs near the unusable back door.

Instead, Byrd kept walking, making his way through the tall grass that led north toward the trees, toward the ravines and the caves that cut a line through the miles upon miles of wilderness area that belonged to the reservation. Starr saw now how beautiful it was, a tonal palette of bronze and gold with the deep ocher of autumn mixed in, and how it seemed to stretch on forever.

“The other day,” Byrd started slowly, so softly that she almost didn’t hear him at first, “I may have come on a little strong.” He made a noise meant to be a laugh, but it caught in his throat and he waved the sound away with his hand. He walked to her left, which she preferred, because she kept her service weapon on her right. He located a formerly invisible path that took them, step by step, away from the cinder-block building.

Starr glanced at the sky. It looked as though it might rain at any moment. A band of warmer air was trapped low among the clouds, keeping the moisture in limbo.

“Heard a winter storm warning on the radio this morning,” Byrd said. “Freezing rain, windchill. We may get some snow, earlier than usual.” He shook his head. “Climate’s gone crazy.”

They walked in silence a few minutes, Starr thinking of the old woman and watching for deer.

When Byrd stopped and turned around, the little rez town lay before them, her office at the outskirts as if it could keep the rest of the world at bay. She stayed silent, even longer than she had when interviewing suspects in Chicago. Silence. That’s what kept people talking, not filling space with noise.

“We used to organize search parties,” he said finally. “All volunteer, with people from our community, from Dexter Springs, anyone who would help. But you see what we’re up against.” He waved his arms at the expanse of land and pointed with his chin toward the main highway, which a few people from the rez still relied on to hitchhike to Dexter Springs. “I know what Odeina has been telling you, that we aren’t willing to look. It’s just that…” He trailed off.

Harmless, is he? Starr considered him on the sly. Would he be able to grab someone? Someone smaller, definitely. He probably didn’t have much stamina, though. He would need a strategy to keep someone under control. And he would know about control. Most people in positions of power, no matter how little power, knew how to conceal or promote agendas of their own. But that day, at his house…It had been so…weird. She’d had that same strange and swirling feeling that overtook her at Odeina’s when the old woman started telling her stories.

“Between you and me, I figure maybe it’s just Odeina that Chenoa is avoiding. Odeina has her problems. I mean, we all do, but…”

Something in the way he said this set off Starr’s radar.

“Ten years, and my daughter has never been found.” He looked at his watch as if it were a calendar, but the time was on his tongue. “I’ve been waiting for her, waiting for answers ever since. I’m angry that she slipped through the cracks. She was gone, and there was so much change. It was a mess when the tribal police disbanded. There were jurisdictional issues with other agencies. Eventually the BIA sent someone to investigate, but they left without a word. Never heard another thing about her case.”

Byrd pointed to the right and Starr saw that under the skeletal branches of a lone tree lay a large stone fronted with the worn colors of fake flower petals. Tears welled in Byrd’s eyes, clung to his lashes before splashing down his cheeks.

“We made her this memorial on the first anniversary of her disappearance,” he said, sweeping the back of a hand across his eyes. “We had to do something for…for closure. Now all this”—he cleared his throat—“life has passed by. I still come to talk to her here.”

Starr saw a faded photograph encased in a plastic sheath, tied with string to a nearby branch. She thought of all the files still in boxes in her office. Of the handful of missing person files in her Dexter Springs duplex. Of the smiling school pictures on missing person flyers. Of autopsy photos.

“What I’m trying to say…what I’m not doing a very good job of telling you…” He swiped at his nose, which had begun to run. “There were years after Loxie went missing when we could not afford any type of law enforcement on the reservation. We weren’t—we aren’t—a wealthy nation. She was not the first to go missing, but she was young, healthy, good in school. Had even transferred to Dexter Springs to finish out high school. She wanted to go to college and was hoping for a scholarship.”

“What do you think happened?”

“At first, it all seemed so normal. No, not normal. It was better than that. She was thriving, making new friends, relishing her studies. Then, one day, she went to a football game at the high school….”

Starr nodded. She’d driven past the stadium on her way out of Dexter Springs every day, an aging gray monolith. She’d seen it light the sky on Friday night.

“She didn’t come home. She—” He broke down then, sobbing into his hands, his belly shaking. “She never came home.”

“Is there a file, any information?”

“Might be,” he said. “I tried like hell to get copies of the investigation Dexter Springs started, but in the end they said it wasn’t their jurisdiction, so they turned it over to the feds. Far as I know, the BIA didn’t find any trace of her.”

“Nothing?”

Byrd shook his head.

“A few years ago I started to meet with the mayor over in Dexter Springs. She was an outsider, seemed receptive to my ideas. I thought maybe we could work together, our two communities, prevent this from happening again.”

“But you couldn’t, could you?”

His shoulders sagged. “That wasn’t the problem. We worked together just fine, as long as it involved the one thing Mayor Taylor really seemed to care about, which happened to be the same thing I finally realized was going to turn the tide for our people.”

“Oh yeah? What was that?”

“Money. Fund a police force for our nation, or a marshal service”—he gestured toward her badge, which shined darkly under the dampening sky—“and properly equip our schools with teachers who are paid a living wage, with new books and enough chairs for the students. Right now, they carry their chairs from class to class because we don’t have enough for all the rooms. There are so many things that will be made better with that oil money.”

“So that’s where you planned to get the funding, from Blackstream Oil?”

“Not at first. For a long time I didn’t know how I would bring more money to our nation, but I knew there had to be a way—had to be.” His voice grew more emphatic. “Then, one day, the mayor called me and I learned that it had been under our feet all along.”

“The oil.”

“Yes. Like everyone else, I thought the oil fields were tapped out around here. I didn’t think there was any oil that hadn’t already been drilled, but I learned that with fracking it was now possible to pull oil from places that had been unreachable before. Think of it: all that wealth trapped for millions and millions of years. And here we are, about to get rich from it.”

“What does this have to do with—”

“The missing women? It’s the other side of the coin, you see. It’s holding on to the ones who are here. With education. Health care. Recreation. Full pantries and freezers. It’s time to look after the living.”

Starr left Byrd standing at Loxie’s makeshift memorial; she wanted to chase a long shot. Inside her office, she sorted boxes, checking the dates marked on them, until she found what she was looking for: a water-damaged set of case files at least a decade old. She pulled a series of folders out and laid them on her desk.

Byrd said the BIA had briefly been on the rez after his daughter disappeared. What if…? Starr shuffled through the stack as she stood, looking for any victim labeled a Jane Doe. She heard Winnie answer the phone as it rang.

“Marshal,” said Winnie, covering the receiver with her hand. When Starr didn’t answer, she said it again, in a stage whisper. “Marshal!”

“What?” Starr didn’t look up. There were three bodies, three separate files, three possibilities—all from the time Byrd’s daughter was last seen. The first two weren’t a match. One victim was too old to be Byrd’s daughter. The other hadn’t even originated in Oklahoma but hours away, in Wichita, Kansas. Starr opened the third file.

“You have a call. From a director…” Winnie looked down at her own writing. “From a Director Randall. About a report he hasn’t received yet?”

“I’m not here.”

“But, Marshal, he can hear you.”

Starr slumped into her desk chair, stunned by what she saw. The thought that had tickled the back of her brain at the sight of Byrd holding Loxie’s picture had led her here, to this folder. Days ago she’d seen autopsy photos of a young female victim who, like the Awiakta girl, had a mouthful of white soil. But here, buried in paperwork, was the result of that BIA investigation on the rez that Byrd had mentioned. The victim had been unknown to Starr. Until now.

How difficult was it to complete an investigation, make proper notifications, pay a little fucking respect? The BIA had let all these files—this particular file—languish in some storage locker until she’d been hired on the rez. Now she had proof that Loxie’s body had been found, that her remains were interred as evidence all those years ago.

Starr shoved the files into a desk drawer and headed for the door. Air slipped from the room, making it impossible to catch her breath.

“Marshal? What do I tell him?”

Starr slammed the door. Outside, she paced near the parked Bronco, stopping every few steps to brace her hands on her knees. She had to think about what to do next. How was she going to tell Byrd that his daughter wasn’t missing? She’d already been dead for ten years—and found.

“Hungry?”

Starr leapt upright, reaching for her service weapon. It was Chak. He held a lifeless mallard by the neck, and waved it as his liver-spotted dog jumped at Starr’s waist.

“Ducks spook you too?” he said, laughing. “Ah, don’t worry. He can’t hurt you. He’s nothin’ but good eatin’ now.”

“Don’t you ever go to school? Truancy is against the law, you know, and I’m…” She tapped the badge on her uniform.

“Oh, hey, that van you were looking for the other day? When you talked to my dad? I seen it.”

Starr reached into the Bronco for the photo of Chenoa standing next to a VW van. “This van?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Saw it out there.” He pointed to the western edge of the reservation’s wilderness area. “By the old trailhead sign.”

Starr checked the sky. Two hours of daylight, maybe less, to get to the van, to get to the girl. It would be enough. She thought of the relief she’d see on Odeina’s face when she delivered the news that her daughter was fine, just fine, after all.

Starr bolted into the old Bronco, which thankfully roared to life when she turned the key.