CHAPTER FORTY

Starr didn’t know where to look. She didn’t know which direction to turn, or even whether she would have to drive or walk to start her search for Chenoa.

She leaned into where the window had been in the passenger door of the van, her body a bulwark against the elements, as if she could stem the tide of this scene, stem the tide of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Leaves were blowing into the van—orange and red, beautiful and dead at the same time. Red, thought Starr. There’s something about the red.

Red was…what? Another stack of binders dissolved in the back of the van, an imperceptible shift sending their slick covers crashing, papers and maps spilling out. Red, thought Starr. Red like the T-shirts at the Trading Post, with a painted handprint covering a woman’s mouth, its red fingers ranging to the side of her face, a symbol of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Red like the American burying beetles Chenoa sought. Red like blood. Red like the marks Chenoa made on these maps.

Starr rose to her tiptoes, leaned farther into the van and carefully pulled a creased paper toward her. Greens, browns, a mass of lines. A topographical map, Starr thought, like the one she’d taken from Chenoa’s room.

Someone, presumably Chenoa, had used a marker to indicate the likeliest locations of American burying beetle colonies, and the trails to reach them. There was an X on each of the places where Chenoa had looked for beetles and not found them, and a clear, open circle was around the one place that remained. Starr traced the thin red lines, all of them, ending with the only place left to explore. She recognized Chenoa’s writing, something she’d scrawled in the margin. Monday, it read, start here. Starr tapped the paper.

Manitou.

Here was a map to Chenoa’s world, one that literally translated the three-dimensional terrain into something flat, navigable. It was her only chance of locating Chenoa and making sure she wasn’t injured or worse.

Starr tried to shield the map from the rain, which was falling steadily now. On it she studied the hills, rivers and valleys to orient herself. There was Crawl Canyon. She followed its route until she found the wide bend in Turkey Creek where the Awiakta girl had been found. Farther south was the wilderness area, challenging terrain with hills and ravines.

The Manitou caves were nearly too far to go on foot, but what other choice did she have? And even if she made it in this weather, would Chenoa be there? If she didn’t find her, would someone else?

She already knew the answer.

Who would take action if she didn’t? The Sisyphean role seemed hers alone. The women, so many missing and murdered Indigenous women, were all connected. To one another. To me, she thought, to a mother tree. They were all one. They were red.

Starr tried to refold the map but couldn’t get it tamed, so she stuffed it inside her jacket. Then she leaned into the van to light the rest of her blunt, and smoked it while she checked her phone. No service. With Minkey gone, there was no one to call anyway.

Above her head leaves whirled and fell, and low, dark clouds roiled like a floodwater eddy, dirty and dangerous.

Starr went to the Bronco, opened a new bottle of whiskey and retrieved her backpack, then pulled on her gloves and followed a thin red line into the trees, which bent over her like grieving women.