Called Home

by Melissa F. Miller

  He killed the engine and ran toward the woman. Her head was bent over a paperback book. She hadn’t even looked up at the noise. He grabbed her by the elbow.

  She jerked her head up and wrenched her arm away as he dropped his hand. She had to be somewhere between sixty or seventy. She was wearing a maid’s uniform. She gave him a knowing smile.

  “I think you mistook me for someone else,” she informed him as her bus pulled up.

  “Uh, sorry.”

  She tucked her book under her arm and walked forward. The pneumatic door opened with a whoosh, and the driver leaned toward the sidewalk to give Johnny an earful for parking so close to the stop. She mounted the steps and swiped her bus pass through the card reader.

  He stood there like a dummy and watched as she greeted the bus driver then chose a seat near the front. She turned toward the window, looked him full in the face, then reached up and pulled at her pink hair. It was a wig. She grinned at him and fluffed her salt-and pepper bun as the doors closed and the bus pulled away from the curb.

  He’d been played. He felt his blood pressure shoot up. He wanted to explode, kick a fire hydrant, scream obscenities until he was hoarse. But none of those responses would aid him in achieving his objective. So he stormed back to the Jeep, made an illegal U-turn, and returned to the garage at top speed.

  The pickup truck was gone.

  29

  6:45 A.M.

  Dahlia rested her head against the window and got lost in her thoughts as the bus rattled down the highway. The trip from Sioux Falls to Wall took a solid five hours, so she had plenty of time to think.

  Going home wasn’t an option. But if she hung around Sioux Falls or Vermillion, she might as well walk into the police station and turn herself in. She briefly considered heading north to Standing Rock. Tommy had a cousin there. But she was feeling shaky and unsafe, and if she couldn’t go home, she would do the next best thing and go to the place she loved best in the world.

  She closed her eyes and visualized the outcropping of rocks she and Tommy had hiked out to on their second date. At the northern edge of the reservation, rows and rows of striated rocks, red, gray, and brown bands stretched out as far as you could see, buffeted by long prairie grass that rippled in the wind.

  The formations were part of the Badlands, but tourists almost never ventured that far into the national park. In all the times they’d returned to the rocks for picnics with sandwiches and a couple beers they’d stolen from Tommy’s brother or to spread out a blanket and stare up at the sky so blue it hurt their eyes, they’d never—not once—seen another person.

  She just had to make it there. She felt in her pocket for her charm and rubbed it between her finger and thumb, the way she used to rub the silky edge of the filthy pink blanket she dragged around with her the entire time her mom was deployed. Then she ran through her plan, although calling it a plan seemed like a big stretch.

  With the help of the one-hour time difference between Sioux Falls and Wall, she’d get into town just before lunchtime, which was more or less perfect timing. The town was a complete tourist trap. And tourists loved nothing more than having lunch at the world-famous Wall Drug.

  She’d get a homemade donut and a cup of five-cent coffee and wait for the right candidates to turn up. She needed a mom and dad and at least one kid, old enough that they wouldn’t need to stop to change diapers but young enough that she wouldn’t have to field hard questions from a teenager. The sweet spot was probably a six-to-ten year old. The family would be staying either at the inn or in the cabins near the main visitor center, which, unless they were camping, exhausted their lodging options in the Badlands.

  That time of day, this time of year, she’d have plenty of options. The families would come down to Wall for a morning of trying on cowboy hats and buying trinkets. After they had lunch at the drugstore, during which mom and dad would drink their nickels’ worth of coffee and admire all the Western artwork while the kids loaded up on buffalo burgers and onion rings, she’d casually ask for a lift to the visitor’s center, less than a mile from where they were staying.

  If they were from one of the coasts, they’d be surprised—they always were. That always made her wonder what life was like in the rest of the country. Because in South Dakota, hitchhiking remained a time-honored means of travel. It wasn’t exactly like a person could call Uber for a lift from Wall, South Dakota, (population 872) to Interior, South Dakota, (population 104). Well, she supposed a person could, if she didn’t mind dying of old age during the wait. But, surprise or no surprise, giving some family a story to take back home about how they’d had a living, breathing Sioux Indian as a passenger would be her ticket to ride.

  The drive from Wall to Interior would take a half an hour, but she’d still have some traveling to do. Getting from Ben Reifel, the Badlands’ main visitor center, to her spot would be harder to arrange—but only slightly. The Badlands’ seasonal visitor center further south—White River, in good old Porcupine—was an hour away. It was closed now, but because it was located on reservation property (with a big teepee out front and everything), most of the rangers were pretty cool about giving the rez kids rides from one visitor center to the other even though it was an hour-long trip.

  She wasn’t worried anyone would recognize her. She and Tommy had rarely bummed a ranger ride. He had free access to his uncle’s old station wagon, when it was running. Thinking about Tommy and their spot was making the tears well up in her eyes so she squeezed them shut.

  Just keep it together until you get to Wall. You got this.

  30

  7:00 A.M.

  Roxanne stared at the phone—although, at this point, she wasn’t sure whether she was willing it to ring or willing it not to ring. After nearly an hour of calls, the only tips she’d received involved the whereabouts of the Jane Doe with pink hair. Apparently, pink hair was more noticeable in South Dakota than were two regular-looking Native American women, which made a certain amount of sense.

  But Ms. Pink Hair had been spotted everywhere from a gas station in Sioux City, Iowa, to a pharmacy parking lot in Wheaton, Minnesota, and eight places in between. None of these pink-haired women had been driving a pickup truck. And at least three of them were white. She’d returned her handgun to her locked drawer about forty minutes earlier.

  Despite the obvious deficiencies of the leads, the feds were insisting on following up on each one with a two-man team—one of hers, one of theirs. Her entire working team was currently out chasing dead ends. There wasn’t even anyone left in the office to send out to pick up breakfast. It was shaping up to be a long, boring day.

  The phone rang.

  She glared at the thing, warning it not to disappoint her again.

  “Bedrock Force Task Force. Do you have information regarding the murder of Mercy Locklear?”

  “Uh … it’s me.”

  “Arnetto? Why are you calling me on this line?”

  “I tried your cell—both of them, but you didn’t answer. I figured you were busy fielding tips.”

  She clenched her teeth. She’d muted her phones during the live television interview and hadn’t turned the ringers back on. Sloppy, Roxie. Really sloppy.

  “Have they left the hotel?”

  Arnetto coughed through his answer, garbling his response.

  “I didn’t catch that.”

  “I said I lost them.”

  He lost them. She counted to ten silently. Then she did it again. A vein in her temple—a vein that up until that very moment she hadn’t even know existed—throbbed wildly.

  “How?”

  “They split up. Well, they might have. I’m not really sure …”

  “Arnetto, you need to start explaining. Fast.”

  Then the words spilled out. “I got the call that they’d checked out of the room, so I was watching the truck, ready to follow them. Then a woman with pink hair walked past the garage exit from the direction of the hotel lobby. It wasn’t even six-thirty yet.
I figured it had to be her. So I chased her.”

  “But it wasn’t her.” For a heartbeat, Roxanne didn’t recognize her own voice—it was dull, flat. Deadened by defeat.

  “No. It was one of the hotel maids waiting for a bus. And the pink hair was a wig. By the time I got back to the garage, Jackman’s truck was gone. She must’ve gone out the back exit because she didn’t drive past me.”

  She closed her eyes. Rue Jackman had played them. Jackman and Truewind both. Her eyes flew open.

  “You said the woman with pink hair showed up last night at Truewind’s apartment with a bag, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And she looked young?”

  “Pretty young. Early twenties, maybe? I didn’t get a good look at her, and it was kind of hard to tell with all the makeup she was wearing. But she definitely wasn’t a sixty-five-year-old woman.”

  Roxanne jiggled her leg. She slid the blown-up picture of Dahlia next to the sketch artist’s drawing of the mystery woman and covered the pink hair with her hands. A definite possibility. Lose the nose ring and the get up, and it was a darn close match.

  “Don’t you get it? The hair was a wig. The pink-haired woman was Dahlia.” She pounded her fist against the top of her desk.

  “They’re still together,” he said slowly as comprehension dawned.

  “They’re still together, laughing their asses off at us. And we’ve got the whole state looking for a woman who doesn’t exist.”

  The line went silent for a long moment.

  “I’m sorry. I screwed the pooch.”

  He had. Arnetto had cratered their best chance at grabbing the girl, the box, and her friend. But screaming at him wasn’t going to accomplish anything. She blew out a long, slow breath. Then she said, “Forget it. Moving forward. Your new assignment is to drive down to the address on Rue Jackman’s license and see if they’re hunkered down there.”

  “That’s in Des Moines.”

  “Correct.”

  “That’s a four-and-a-half hour drive. Each way.”

  “Do you have something better to do, Arnetto?” Her voice was a knife’s edge.

  He answered in a hurry. “No, I’m not complaining. I just want to be helpful, and it seems that means staying local.”

  “Are you questioning an order?”

  “No! But, wouldn’t it be more efficient to have the Des Moines police check it out?”

  “No. One, I don’t want anyone else grabbing them up. And, two, if that is where they’re heading, they’re not going to be there until noon, at the earliest. Like you said, it’s a long drive. Start now and push your speed. Maybe you’ll overtake them on the interstate.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he managed in a strangled voice.

  “And, if you do find them, no more messing around. Don’t rear end them. Incapacitate them and bring me that damn box.”

  She slammed the phone down.

  7:05 AM

  Aroostine tugged the bill of Joe’s old baseball cap down over her forehead and kept her head bent over the home and garden magazine she flipped through as she stood in the short, yet slow-as-molasses line in the hardware store. At this hour, only one register was staffed, and the bright-eyed gardeners with their carts full of chrysanthemums and do-it-yourself types buying paint and plywood and who knew what else were all chatty and in no hurry to check out.

  She kept her face turned away from the security camera and faked a yawn. She turned the page in her magazine and inched her cart forward as the man in front of her finally started to load his items onto the belt. Almost there.

  The cashier struck up a conversation with the guy about the differences between eggshell and matte paint. Aroostine forced herself not to scream.

  Approximately six hundred years later, it was her turn to check out.

  “Hiya,” the clerk chirped.

  “Hi,” Aroostine said in her best approximation of a mid-Western accent. She unloaded a package of putty, a three-foot-long zinc rod, a two-pack of door stops, and a pair of twenty-dollar prepaid cell phones from her cart. Then she tossed the glossy magazine on the top of her small pile of items.

  “Working on a project?”

  She wondered what kind of project would require her collection of goods. No was clearly the wrong answer. But yes invited further questions.

  “Yes? I don’t know. I’m just picking up a few things my husband needs for a job.”

  “What’s he do?”

  She answered automatically. Luckily, Joe hadn’t been a dentist or an accountant, because the truth sort of made sense. “He’s a master woodworker.”

  “Lucky you. I bet your house is gorgeous.”

  She laughed lightly. “You know the saying the cobbler’s son has no shoes?”

  “Yep.”

  “The woodworker’s wife has no baseboard trim,” she confided.

  The woman behind the counter let out a whoop of amusement so loud it jolted Aroostine out of the fantasy world in which Joe was still alive.

  “Are you gonna want prepaid cards to go with your phones?” the cashier asked.

  “They don’t come with them?”

  “Oh, no. We keep those behind the counter. Criminals, you know.”

  Oh, she knew criminals, all right. Seeing as how there was probably an APB out for her and her truck right this second.

  “In that case, I’ll take two—the cheapest ones you’ve got. And this.” She snatched up a chocolate bar with vague healthful promises about antioxidants on the wrapper and added it to the stack.

  “Woman after my own heart.”

  Aroostine paid for her purchases with cash, using the smallest bills she had in effort to make the transaction unremarkable. Then she said a cheerful goodbye to her new pal and strode purposefully to the truck.

  The truck was a problem. She would have loved to rent a car until she was off law enforcement’s radar, but Rue Jackman didn’t have any credit cards. Aroostine Higgins had credit cards, but no driver’s license. Renting something was out of the question.

  She sat in the cab and used the truck key to saw open the packaging and free one of the phones from its shrink-wrapped prison. She tore open the cardboard sleeve, removed the prepaid SIM card, and popped it into her new phone.

  She powered it on. It was only partially charged. She dug through the glove compartment, found Joe’s spare car charger, and plugged the thing in. Then she spread her map out over her lap and checked the time. 7:30. Which meant it was only 8:30 in Pittsburgh, but she didn’t have time to wait until it was a decent hour to call.

  Luckily, Sasha and Leo were both used to calls coming in at all hours. She just hoped she didn’t wake the twins. She tapped in the digits from memory.

  Leo answered on the third ring, sounding alert. “Connelly.”

  “It’s Aroostine.”

  “Did you get a new number?”

  “Temporarily.”

  “Is something wrong? Sasha’s not here. She went to pick up the kids—they slept over at her brother’s place last night.”

  “It’s kind of early, isn’t it?”

  “That’s the deal, Riley and Ryan took them last night, so we get them back with the cousins so they can have a lazy Sunday. Is everything okay?” He was starting to sound worried.

  “Sorry, yes. Well, no. But it’s not about me.”

  “Do you want me to have Sasha call you when she gets back?”

  “No. I need to talk to you.” She took a deep breath. “I need a favor.”

  He answered immediately. “Name it.”

  “It’s a big one. And … it might possibly not technically be entirely legal.”

  “Qualified like a true attorney. Name it.”

  “It’s a really long story. The short version is I’m in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. A government-issued, encrypted satellite-communications device containing sensitive, possibly classified, national security information has been stolen.”

  “Okay. The first—”

  “T
here’s more. A college student’s been murdered. And a nineteen-year-old girl is on the run. She witnessed the murder and now she’s being framed for it.” She took an even deeper breath. “And so am I.”

  There was a heavy moment’s silence. Then, “Is that everything?”

  “Yeah, those are the highlights.”

  “What do you need?”

  “I have evidence that can clear both our names and implicate the real killer.” I hope.

  “Good. And?”

  “And I can’t trust local law enforcement or the Department of Homeland Security agents assigned to the matter.”

  “Wait—why is DHS involved? Is it an NSI?”

  NSI. She searched her near-encyclopedic knowledge of federal alphabet soup and came up short. She called up the image of her federal prosecutor’s handbook lying on her desk at home, but couldn’t recall that exact acronym.

  “What’s NSI?”

  “Sorry. A national security investigation.”

  “Oh, right. Yeah. Apparently, the underlying matter concerns critical infrastructure.”

  “South Dakota, huh? Pipeline?” he guessed.

  She sucked in a breath. She’d forgotten just how smart he was. “Leo, for real, the less you know the better at this point. For your safety. When this is all over, I’ll come to Pittsburgh and tell you and Sasha all the gory details over one of your fantastic family dinners.”

  “So you get a possibly illegal favor and a home-cooked meal out of the deal? Well played.”

  She laughed, a real honest-to-goodness laugh. “Something like that. So, what I need is an FBI special agent I can trust.”

  “Someone who has the authority to arrest anyone they believe to have committed a felony violation.”

  “Right.”

  “And this person needs to be reasonably nearby, I assume?”