Yellow Bird

by Sierra Crane Murdoch

  One evening in February, Lissa called Paul. They did not speak for long. When Lissa asked about Robert Delao, Paul insisted he knew nothing more about the man.

  The next day, after work, Lissa opened an Internet browser and entered “Robert Delao” in the search bar. Delao had no address, no phone number. It was as if he didn’t exist. She went to a public records site and entered his name again. Now she realized why Delao had so little information online. He had spent his life “in the system.”

  His criminal record began in 1995 with a shooting in Spokane, Washington. He had been riding in the backseat of a car when a fellow passenger fired shots, injuring a member of an opposing gang. Delao had been twenty and belonged to the Sureños, a Latino prison gang that originated in Southern California. Three years later, he murdered a man and went to state prison for eight years. Shortly after his release in 2007, he and three other men held an elderly woman at gunpoint while attempting to burglarize her home. He faced twenty-four more years in state prison but served only three in a federal facility. Lissa found it interesting that Delao’s case was prosecuted by a U.S. attorney, while an accomplice’s case remained with the state. Delao testified against his accomplice, who in court stated that “Delao was a ‘good friend, old gang member, we go way back.’ ” The filing noted Delao had “cooperated” with the government, and for this “Mr. Delao received a safe harbor from all state prosecution.” In other words, he was a snitch.

  Lissa forwarded a news article about the armed robbery to Jill. Then she sent it to Paul, the former Blackstone driver.

  “Wow!” he replied.

  “Oh and there’s more,” Lissa wrote. “Murders, theft. Guy spent most of his life locked up. What does he do at Blackstone?”

  “He is basically running the damn company for James.”

  “Like a manager?”

  “He is in control. He only answers to James.”

  Minutes passed before a new message appeared on Lissa’s phone: “Never mention his name on Facebook,” Paul wrote. “I don’t want this news to be linked to me. No one else on that KC page even knows of his existence.” He added, “When was his last offense date?”

  Delao had been arrested in 2009 for dealing heroin, around the same time he was cooperating with federal prosecutors.

  “Wow,” Paul wrote again. “Please understand that I am worried only for my family. I just don’t want this fool trying anything stupid.”

  “I understand,” Lissa replied. “I really do. I won’t reveal anything.” That night, she wrote to Jill, “DO NOT MENTION TO ANYONE WHAT I JUST SHOWED OR TOLD YOU.”

  On other evenings, as Percy lay bandaged on the couch and the boys drifted in and out of the apartment, Lissa studied the documents she had collected at the courthouse in Oregon. James’s criminal record was thinner than Delao’s. It began in 1999 when James was twenty years old. His first wife, with whom he lived in Bend, reported a domestic assault, and not long afterward, she filed for divorce. Several months later, she alleged that James entered her house and raped her. Both charges were dismissed, and that was the last time he was accused of violent crime. In 2000, he stole steroids from a veterinary clinic and a trailer from a construction site. Eight years later, he was arrested for growing 542 marijuana plants in a barn behind his house.

  Lissa was less interested in the crimes James committed than in the way he went about committing them. He was brazen, stealing in broad daylight and lying about it to police. The barn where he grew marijuana was on the corner of two main roads. He had been discovered when he threatened a worker’s dog; the worker had complained to his own mother, who told a friend, who called the police. It was as if James thought, The more obvious the crime, the better. The fact that KC had disappeared in the middle of the day no longer struck Lissa as odd, nor did the stories James told to explain KC’s disappearance. James, she now realized, often told stories that drew on truth but were altogether bizarre. When caught stealing the steroids, he had claimed to be looking for a vaccine for his sister’s horse, when neither he nor his sisters had horses, police learned. The story he told about the trailer he stole was similarly unconvincing: He claimed to have purchased it with cash in a grocery store parking lot, not realizing that his dealer had stolen it.

  The documents contained other odd details. In 2010, an ex-girlfriend reported to police that James wrote “obsessive” letters to her from jail. He “bought her roses on a daily basis” while they were dating and was “obsessed with money,” she said. Another document noted that James had a habit of mentioning people whom his friends suspected did not exist. When questioned by police about his marijuana farm, James mentioned that a man named “Aaron” was in charge, but when police questioned Nathaniel Lancaster, a friend who had, in fact, helped James on the farm, Lancaster said Aaron was “just a made-up person that Henrikson tells people about to take some of the pressure off of him.”

  According to police reports, Lancaster had met James through a mutual friend with whom they raced motorcycles. Lissa suspected Lancaster knew KC, and one night she dialed his number, which she found in a report. Lancaster answered by text message. Lissa asked if he still spoke to James. “No,” he wrote. “I steer very clear of him.”

  “Good! That’s probably why you’re still alive!” Lissa replied. “I wanna talk to you about James. I’m a tribal member where KC came up missing. Just want anything I can get my hands on to find KC’s body.”

  “Well I value my life as well,” Lancaster wrote.

  “Do you know KC?”

  “Yes I raced with him and James.”

  “Who was Aaron?”

  “Aaron was fake.”

  “I see. Do you know Robert Delao?”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  “Gang banger. Snitch. Murderer.”

  “Nope…Never heard of that guy but that’s kinda scary.”

  Lissa asked if she could call him the next night. Lancaster agreed, but when Lissa tried to reach him, he did not answer, and when she tried him again some weeks later, she found that his number had been changed.

  With each dead end she encountered, Lissa was growing more frustrated. Then, one day, Mike Marchus, the Bureau of Criminal Investigations agent in Minot, called her back.

  He told her there was an agent in the Department of Homeland Security who worked with him in the Minot office. The agent was young, looking for new cases, and noticed on Mike’s desk the criminal record Lissa had given him in December. James’s drug charges intrigued the young agent, who had called Steve Gutknecht in Williston, offering to use his federal authority to acquire James’s phone records. The agent’s name was Darrik Trudell. Mike gave Lissa his number.

  The night Lissa first spoke to Trudell, she relayed their conversation to Rick: “The DHS guy sounded pretty aggressive and excited. Told me to call or text anytime with updates.” She had shared with Trudell everything she knew without giving away names of her sources. She told him about the truckers whose wages James allegedly skimmed and the investors whose assets he never returned. She told him about the men who left Blackstone fearing for their lives and the rumors that James was selling drugs. Trudell was mainly interested in the drugs, since in the documents Lissa had given Marchus, there was a suggestion that James had once tried to purchase a chemical used in copying prescription opiates. If investigators could arrest James for a drug violation, Trudell reasoned, then they had a better chance of gathering the evidence necessary to charge him with murder.

  The week after Lissa called Trudell, federal agents subpoenaed phone records for James and several of his associates. Trudell called Lissa with the news. “My job is done,” she later wrote to Rick. It would take investigators twelve weeks to interpret the records. Then, “It’s a wrap. Just a matter of time now so hopefully they find KC!”

  * * *

  —

  LISSA AND JILL were speaking
less and less. Before Christmas, they had often exchanged dozens of messages in a night; now, days passed without either reaching out. Even the messages they had exchanged before said altogether very little, containing few insights into Jill’s daily life and fewer into her past. Instead, Jill’s messages to Lissa grasped at friendship: “I don’t know what I’d do without u,” she texted. “U know how people have soul mates? To me u r my soul sister.” Lissa did not reply. A few days later, Jill wrote, “I love u more than words can say.” This time, Lissa wrote, “Love you guys!” and Jill replied, “Love you more!”

  The kinship Lissa had felt with Jill was fading. “I would call, but I don’t feel like it,” Lissa wrote to Jill one night. Her son CJ had gotten in a fight and been arrested, and Lissa had visited him in jail:

  During and after my visit I believe I have felt some of what you have felt. Pardon my directness. (You know how I roll.) This whole situation is NOT YOUR FAULT! Don’t you EVER take on guilt for “not doing enough,” or the shoulda, coulda, woulda’s! Now, regardless if KC is alive or dead forgive HIM! forgive YOURSELF for teaching him to behave that way and forgive him for coming up missing. Forgive him for not giving you the answers you seek. And mostly, forgive him for not displaying the same kind of love you showed him. And then…let him know you still love him no matter what happens….I love you Jill….and I know KC does too…Things were supposed to happen this way and just because we don’t understand why, doesn’t mean there wasn’t a justified larger plan of Gods.

  At the beginning of their search, Lissa had reasoned that once KC was found, Jill would allow herself to grieve. But the longer KC was missing, the more Lissa doubted this. She had begun to wonder if Jill cared less about finding her son than about the company she had drawn in the wake of his disappearance. Seven thousand people now followed the Facebook page, and although Jill had never met most of them, some, like Lissa, had become friends. Lissa could imagine losing a child was lonely, and if all Jill needed was for people to listen, Lissa was glad to. But over time it had become harder for her to listen, their phone calls a litany of the suffering Jill endured—marriage problems, poor health, the defamation suit, bank accounts drained by legal fees, the silence of investigators, and above all, the smugness of James and Sarah, whom Jill believed could get away with murder. These injustices were not insignificant, but they struck Lissa as cries for pity, not help. This was what irked Lissa most: When Jill appealed to her Facebook followers, it seemed that she, not KC, was the victim of a crime.

  “I’m sorry,” Rick told Lissa one day, “but you’ve got to take it easy on her. She lost her son. What would you do?” Rick thought he knew what Lissa would do. He figured she would kill James and go back to prison.

  Lissa mostly kept her frustrations to herself until one morning in February, when Rick wrote her asking if KC was found. Lissa opened Facebook and saw that Jill had posted a plea for KC to call her, having received a tip that her son was spotted vacationing abroad with a girlfriend.

  Rick thought this was absurd. “Great,” he told Lissa. “They’re in fucking Bora Bora drinking mai tais, and we’re all freaking out, and he’s not going to call because he’s had one too many mai tais? There’s no fucking way.” But Lissa was too angry to laugh. She posted a public comment on the Facebook page:

  This is not a daytime drama! The footwork has been done. It has been turned over to the authorities. Believe me it is just a waiting period. The page is starting to look ridiculous and uncredible. This isn’t about us or how many “likes”…its about kc…lets keep a FOCUS here!

  That night, Lissa received a private message from Jill: Why had she not written directly rather than embarrass Jill in front of her followers? The message fanned Lissa’s anger. “Please do not play the ‘victim’ card with me,” Lissa wrote. “I have seen why KC left and never looked back….In order to make any of this right you’re going to have to come clean with yourself.”

  “Take a look in the mirror,” Jill replied. Lissa was in no place to criticize her, given what Jill knew about Lissa’s own past. “Once an addict, always addict behavior.”

  “I don’t claim to be mother of the year,” Lissa wrote.

  Jill blocked Lissa from the Facebook page. The day after their fight, Lissa tried not to think about the case. That night, she wrote to Rick, “Tell you what she will never find someone from that rez to put their neck on the line for her like I did.” Some mornings later, Lissa woke with an idea.

  It involved Jed McClure, the Blackstone investor from Chicago who had written to Jill in the fall. Earlier that winter, Lissa had spoken to Jed. He had a formal manner, confident if a bit stilted. Lissa was not sure she could trust him, but she believed they shared a common goal—to force Blackstone off the reservation.

  Their reasons were different. It bothered Lissa that a company owned by white people could profit so easily from Indian land. It bothered her more that, if the allegations were true, the company stole from its workers, dumped toxic frack water, and trafficked drugs. It bothered her especially that her own chairman was partnered with this company and profiting from it. Jed’s reason was simpler: money. He was prepared, he said, to “take over Blackstone.” He had been talking to a tribal member, a friend of Tex Hall’s, who wanted to enter the oil business. If the friend could convince Tex to partner with him instead of with James, Jed would invest. First, he needed the money James owed him—he had sued for it—and then he needed James out of the way. The deal sounded crooked to Lissa, who did not want Jed profiting off her land, either, but it seemed to her that if he had money to spend, she might convince him to put it to good use.

  One night in late February, Lissa shared her idea with Jed: Perhaps they could make a flyer warning against James and Sarah and fax it to the companies that worked with Blackstone. Jed liked the idea and suggested they take it a step further: What if they printed copies of the flyer and sent a mass mailing? Jed would cover the expense if Lissa mailed them herself. Given that he was suing Blackstone, he did not want to risk having the flyers traced to him.

  That week, Lissa sent Jed copies of the documents she had gathered in Oregon, noting James’s arrests in chronological order, which Jed listed on the flyer. At noon the following Monday, Jed sent Lissa a draft. BEWARE: CON-ARTISTS AND THIEVES, the flyer read at the top. In the center were headshots of Sarah and James, their teeth strikingly white, and then a list of their identifying characteristics. At the bottom of the page, Jed had composed a cautionary note: “James is very charismatic and charming. He may claim to have money in order to build confidence with vendors or companies to steal from them. James and Sarah may also have been involved in the disappearance of former Blackstone employee Kristopher D. Clarke (K.C.), but have refused to cooperate with the BCI. Consider them dangerous!”

  “AWESOME!” Lissa texted from the welding shop. That evening, after she returned to the apartment, she studied the flyer again and noticed an error—Jed had spelled Sarah’s name wrong. “Sorry I’m such a critic. Just want it to b PERFECT,” she texted.

  Lissa hardly slept as she waited for the flyers to arrive. Each night as her brother and kids slept in their bedrooms, Lissa sat awake, the apartment lit by the kitchen light and the cold, blue radiance of her computer screen. She glanced at Facebook—Jill had posted vaguely about their fight—and closed it. She reread Jed’s messages. His suit was not going well. Sarah claimed Blackstone had not yet made a profit. Jed suspected that this was a lie, that Sarah and James had hidden their profits elsewhere. They offered to settle for $50,000, far less than what Jed believed he was owed. James suggested they meet in Chicago to talk about it in person, but Lissa told Jed this was a bad idea. “That’s what KC did,” she warned.

  Instead, Jed’s lawyers met with Tex Hall. Afterward, Jed told Lissa that Tex “denied all responsibility” for James’s failure to pay Jed. Her chairman’s rebuffs no longer surprised Lissa. In January, after she r
eturned home from Washington, she had mailed a copy of James’s criminal records—all 450 pages—to the tribal office. She had not expected a reply, nor had she received one, but, curiously, a new affidavit had appeared in the defamation suit against Jill. It had been filed by Tex’s girlfriend, a tribal member named Tiffiany Johnson, who was apparently fed up with the calls and letters she and Tex had received regarding Blackstone. “I have had businesses and friends and family approach me too many times in regards to the allegations being made to James and Sarah,” she wrote. “I am afraid for James and Sarah’s safety as well as my own since we Tex/Maheshu Energy are being brought up. We are now being attacked by this Jill Williams via telephone. I am now not only fearful for James and Sarah but now fearful for my family and self as well. I really feel that this Facebook page is violating our rights and privacy.”

  The affidavit was proof that Jill’s calls had, at least, reached Tex, and it was evidence that James and Sarah were as close to Tex as Lissa suspected. But while Lissa felt certain of this closeness, Tex denied it. On the last day of February, as Lissa was still waiting on the flyers to arrive, Jed asked a friend to fax the flyer to every oil-field company operating on the reservation. The fax to Maheshu included a summary of Robert Delao’s criminal record, which Lissa compiled for Jed, and a cover letter with a phone number for Delao’s probation officer. Several days later, Jed confronted Tex in a hallway of the tribal building. According to Jed, Tex tossed the flyer in the trash right in front of him. Tex claimed that he had met James only a few times, that his partnership was with Sarah—she owned Blackstone, not James—and that he hadn’t realized James and Sarah were connected because they did not share a last name.

  On March 8, 2013, Lissa drove Percy to a doctor’s appointment in Minot and then dropped by the police station for a scheduled meeting with the young Homeland Security agent, Darrik Trudell. She arrived at the station fifteen minutes early. “These fuckers always think we’re running on Indian time,” she later complained. “Hurry! Lol,” she texted Trudell as she paced the station lobby. It had changed little in the years since her arrests—scuffed linoleum floors, wooden pews snagged from either an old courtroom or a church, a drinking fountain set crookedly in the wall. A fixture by the door dispensed hand sanitizer, and when Mike Marchus, the Bureau of Criminal Investigations agent, appeared in the lobby, Lissa had taken a glob and rubbed it into her hands.