CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

For nearly an hour Starr had been heading down what might be a trail, hoping to make it to Chenoa before the weather intensified. It was growing colder by the second, and her mind was starting to wander in the kinds of big loops she knew spelled trouble.

Her last great act as a Chicago detective had been to pull every thread connected to her daughter’s death until she finally cut one perp loose of his life entirely. After the shooting there’d been questions, but she’d eventually been cleared, with the condition that she leave not only the department but the state. It hadn’t mattered at the time. Nothing had.

She would have gladly gone to prison in exchange for the life she took. And she’d taken it all right. What did she owe now? These thoughts were dangerous, and she kept them behind a veil of smoke and whiskey.

The buzz of her cell phone sent Starr’s heart thumping.

“Winnie?” Starr answered.

“You can hear me?”

“Ten-two,” said Starr, the officer code for message received. What she wanted to say was ten-six: busy or out at call.

“What? Where are you?”

“Never mind,” said Starr. “I’m in the wilderness area, following a trail and looking for Chenoa. Found her van wrecked in a ditch.”

“Oh my stars,” said Winnie. “Should I call Minkey?”

“No, not Minkey. Definitely not. See what I find first.”

Whatever Winnie said next didn’t make sense to Starr, the signal cutting out every third word. Something about Minkey and middle school. She’d forgotten to tell Winnie that Minkey was fired, if she even had the power to fire a loaned officer. Either way, Minkey wasn’t allowed near this investigation or into the marshal’s office.

“…game of the season,” said Winnie, the call fading in and out. “…not as bad as I would have thought and—”

“Winnie,” Starr said, louder.

“Then he took an elbow to the eye—”

“Winnie, I’m losing you. I…” She was shouting now.

Starr heard a click, and checked the service bars on her phone—one bar. She was trying to dial when it rang again.

“Can you hear me?” Winnie hollered down the line. “Can’t hear you, but if you can hear me, I got a call from a Dr. Moore, out of…” Starr heard static, or maybe it was papers shuffling. She waited, running her hand across her forehead and then pinching the bridge of her nose. “…the medical examiner’s office,” Winnie said triumphantly. “Said you were waiting on some results from a sample you sent in?”

It was the blood she’d collected in an evidence vial when she was at the abandoned house after notifying Sherry Ann Awiakta’s father of his daughter’s death.

“She said the blood—” Static. “…not animal. The sample showed human DNA. Said to call her.”

It could be one more clue in Sherry Ann’s death. The abandoned house was remote, but near where Sherry Ann had lived—and where she’d been killed, by the creek. It could open new possibilities, new avenues of investigation. The abandoned house, Sherry Ann’s location by the creek in Crawl Canyon, the Manitou caves noted in Chenoa’s research. The locations were all within range of one another. They made up a hunting ground.

“One last thing, if you can hear me,” Winnie said. “You asked me to keep an eye out for black trucks like the one Chak said he saw by the creek, and I have one more to add to the list. Somebody in a black truck’s been coming onto the rez, might be a poacher. The tag came back with the name Horace-Wayne—”

More static, then the phone went dead.

“Holder,” Starr said. “Ten-four. That’s a big fucking ten-four.”

Starr hiked to the top of a rise, leaving behind thick tree cover. She ducked behind an outcropping of rocks to get out of the wind. It took four tries to get a call to go through. As she listened to it ring the medical examiner’s office in the basement of the hospital, she felt for the map in her coat pocket and pulled it free, wondering how far she had to go to reach the Manitou caves.

“Dr. Moore?” Starr shouted into the phone. “Bad reception. You got a match? An identity attached to the sample?”

Dr. Moore said something indecipherable.

“What?” Starr yelled into the wind. Winter had come on all at once, the temperature plummeting, the rain turning to sleet that stung her face in the biting wind. Starr watched pellets of ice fall onto the sleeves of her coat and build into drifts. “Who is it?”

“The sample had two separate profiles, actually. One matches Sherry Ann Awiakta. The other sample is unknown, but when I ran it against a few of your older cold cases, jackpot. Two more matches—” The line went dead.

The black truck. Holder’s truck. Holder’s sketchy behavior, coming onto the rez uninvited. She’d already cleared Minkey. And Junior. But that story about Holder stealing Junior’s kill, then trussing and butchering the deer…And Winnie had found at least one eyewitness who’d gotten the license plate of his truck when it was parked on the rez…. Had Holder been the one to watch all along? She’d had a bad feeling about him from the start, and she should have trusted it. It was too late for Sherry Ann, but maybe not for Chenoa.

A gust ripped the map away and it was gone on the wind, along with the careful X’s and the solitary O Chenoa had drawn. All the things Starr had studied from Chenoa’s room began clicking into place. The news articles. The federal government would levy heavy fines if certain species were disturbed, and the new highway Dexter Springs was building to move oil off the rez would go right through the beetles’ territory.

The deal everyone was banking on—Byrd, Blackstream Oil and the mayor—led right to the beetles. And the one woman who could prove they were there.

Chenoa. This was bad. Very bad.

Chenoa was missing. Gone. And thanks to Starr, she was twice gone too.