I lifted my head slowly and glanced around. Jeff was nowhere in sight.
I snagged the flyer and tucked it into my pocket, exiting the truck quickly and closing the door silently behind me. I hurried across the lot to the corner. A couple strolled hand in hand down the sidewalk toward the bookstore. A glance down the cross street revealed an empty sidewalk, but when I turned and glanced behind me, I caught sight of Jeff just as he turned the corner.
I followed him, hurrying down Main Street to where it came to a dead end at the post office. I slowed as I came to the corner and peered cautiously down the cross street.
The street lights on the side street were spaced farther apart, the pools of light interrupted by shadow. Jeff walked down the opposite side of the street, stride unhurried. He began to whistle, and the tune reached me, soft and clear in the winter’s night air. I froze in place, breath caught in my throat. Alas, my love, you do me wrong.
I stepped back quickly, shoulder clipping the corner of the building. A startled gasp of air left me before I could contain it, but Jeff did not look back before he turned down a lane on the opposite side of the hardware store.
I thrust my hand into my pocket, reaching past the folded wings of the flyer to grip the canister of pepper spray. I kept an eye fixed on the spot where he had disappeared as I crossed the street. It was not a lane so much as a narrow alley between buildings, I realized as I approached.
The whistle was louder issued from the tight brick depths of the alley, mocking me with the tune, until it was suddenly cut silent by the groan of hinges and the heavy thump of a closing door. When I reached the mouth, I found the alley dark save for a sputtering light over a side entrance.
The echo of Greensleeves hung in the cold night air. I started to venture down the alley, but the memory of the dark basement, the tight space beneath the desk I had wedged myself into, and the soft, chilling taunts growing closer rooted my feet to the ground.
I retreated across the street, sheltering deep under the awning of the antique shop across from the hardware store. I studied the building. Like most of the stores in town, it was of brick construction, square and sturdy in that no-nonsense fashion from the early days of the frontier. Like the bookshop, it was two stories, and after a moment, lights illuminated the multi-paned windows of the second floor.
I stole back through town and left the flyer on the windshield of his Land Rover before heading to the inn. It seemed that we both knew where one another lived now, and the closed doorways in the shadowed corridor felt ominous and dangerous tonight. I hurried down the hallway, rushing to fit my key into the lock and gain the safety of my room. Once inside, I locked the door and searched the bedroom and adjoining bathroom. It was empty, and everything remained as I had left it this morning.
I let out an unsteady breath, and before I readied for bed, I dragged the chaise lounge across the room and wedged it against the door.
Fifteen
Truths and roses have thorns about them.
-Henry David Thoreau
HECTOR
I spent Thursday on the search team scouring the area for Amanda Thornton. Frank managed to follow her trail through town to a point almost halfway to Gardiner on the state road. She had either gotten into a car or been forced into one. My bet was on the latter.
Still, we searched in quadrants branching out from the road down to the river and up into the hills. Frank and I had been on countless searches together. This act of slogging through snow, poking through mounded banks, combing through the undergrowth never failed to bring back memories. Memories of a search when I had been seeking that banner of dark hair, that certain curve of hip. Memories of scrambling down ravines, fording rivers, trying to find that small body with a cherubic face that I had been so indifferent to.
In the first days and weeks, I had been terrified I would find them dead. But in the months and years that followed, I had been desperate. Dread at finding my girls had turned to despair at not finding them. And so they lingered still, not alive but not dead, not gone but not in my arms where I should have cherished and protected them and failed to do so. They were ghosts who dogged my step, caught in this unknown purgatory with no answers.
It had been what first led me to get a dog and train him. I had done the research and spoken with breeders across the west. When I first brought Bill, Frank’s predecessor, home, the dumb fucks at the police department had laughed and called the brown poodle Bob Ross. The first time I took him out into the field on a job that was not training, they had laughed when he had pranced off in the way that only a poodle can and disappeared into the woods. They had stopped laughing when we found him the next day, following the sound of his barking into the wilderness. He had found the four-year-old girl who had wandered off from her family at the campground. She had fallen down an embankment and broken her leg, and he had draped himself over her throughout the night, fending off the cold that would have killed her and the predators that would have done the same.
Every officer had shown up at the vet when I had taken Bill in to ease his way when he developed cancer at the age of ten. And no one had laughed when I brought Frank home six months later.
I called Frank back to me now and headed into town. The sun was setting, and the search would pick up tomorrow.
The search effort, made up of a handful of professionals and a number of volunteers, met at the local diner to discuss the strategy for tomorrow’s search. At least half the town was packed into the space, gathered around a map spread across two tables that had been pulled together.
I stayed at the fringes of the crowd in a booth in the corner, catching Maggie Silva’s eye as she passed with a pot of coffee in both hands. She stopped and topped off my mug. “I have Frank’s usual coming up. You need anything?”
The poodle sat across from me, and he grinned at Maggie, tail thumping against the vinyl seat. Only one person, years ago, had ever balked at Maggie allowing the dog in the diner. She had informed the man that dogs did not try to light up a cigarette in her establishment, steal her silverware, start fights, or piss all over the bathroom floor. If he had a dog who could vouch for him, he would be welcomed back, but until then, he could eat elsewhere.
I smiled at the memory. Being here in this crowd, catching the sidelong glances thrown my way, had tension tight about my neck and shoulders. It eased slightly with Maggie standing before me, dark face stern, eyes warm. She had been my wife’s closest friend, and, surprisingly, the only one who never doubted me. “Nah, Mags. This is fine.”
“Let me know if you change your mind.”
She moved away, and I listened as plans were made and quadrants were assigned for the search that would begin again at first light. The mood was somber. Men and women were angry and afraid.
“Hey, Hector,” a man called. I sighed inwardly, knowing what was coming when I glanced across the room and met Winona’s brother’s cold glare. “You have experience hiding bodies where no one can find them. Any advice on where we should search?”
The silence that fell over the diner was deafening and filled with undercurrents. These people had loved my wife. She was born and raised here. She had known everyone by name, worked at Thornton’s Market when Carl Thornton’s father still ran it, and returned home to their welcoming embrace after a short but successful career as a barrel racer. She had been their bright star, their golden girl. I had always been the stranger she brought home with her. The one who had crushed other men’s dreams of making her theirs, the one who had dampened her smile and tinged her laugh with unhappiness.
After she was gone, I was much more than that. Even the police, the very men I worked shoulder to shoulder with, thought I was responsible for her disappearance.
I held the other man’s stare. I could not even drum up anger any longer. It was as the kids were saying these days: I had no fucks left to give.
A plate clunked down on the table in front of me. It was Frank’s usual, three scra
mbled eggs with ham. I pushed it across the table to him, but his gaze was on Maggie.
“Jack, what have I told you about coming in here and spewing your hate in my diner? I don’t want my food soaking up your vile bitterness. Get out.”
The younger man stared at her for a moment before standing, collecting his hat and coat, and shoving through the crowd to slam out the door. A gust of frigid wind swirled inside before the door bounced closed.
“Maggie,” I said, voice low and full of warning.
“Shut up and drink your coffee, Hector.” She looked around the room, and heads ducked to avoid her gaze. “Anyone else who wants to voice old grievances instead of trying to find a woman who is in danger can get out right along with him.”
No one moved or spoke for several long minutes until she turned away from the crowd and dropped a bowl on the table. She filled it with water from the pitcher she carried and slid it beside Frank’s plate. He stared up at her, and some of the tension in her face eased as she combed her fingers through his topknot. “Eat your eggs, baby. I added extra ham for you.” He obeyed with enthusiasm, and she met my gaze. “I’m making you a burger to take home.”
Her face was still pinched in anger, and I knew better than to argue with her. “Thank you.”
She knew I thanked her for more than the food, and she patted my shoulder before she returned to work. A time was set to meet tomorrow morning, and the crowd dispersed. Everyone avoided my gaze on their exodus from the diner.
Once Frank finished his eggs and Maggie slid a foil-wrapped hamburger onto the table, I tucked a twenty under the edge of the plate and headed out to my truck.
I was not surprised to find the damage. I did not need to guess at who had dug their key into the side of my truck, gouging out a groove through the paint from just over the front driver’s side tire all the way around to the tail gate.
I glanced across the street and locked eyes with Jack through the windshield of his own truck. The street light illuminated the sneer on his face as he stared at me. He had adored his older sister, and when Winona introduced me to the family, he had been just a teenager. He had hated me on sight.
But since Winona and Emma had disappeared, his hatred had festered into something entirely more dangerous. I recognized obsession. I understood it. And I knew this man would try to kill me one day. He was simply biding his time until he thought he could do it and get away with it.
I lifted a hand in a mocking greeting and saw his face tighten before I opened the defaced door of my truck and motioned for Frank to load up. The poodle knew my routine, so when I turned back into town instead of heading home, he settled down in the passenger’s seat with a sigh.
When I came to the intersection of Spruce Avenue and Main Street, Ed’s truck in the public lot at the corner caught my eye. The shadowed figure behind the wheel had parked the rusty old vehicle to have a view down Main Street.
I turned down an alley across the street. The lane behind the shops on this side of Main was used for garbage collection, and I killed the lights as I crept down the gravel drive. I parked beside a dumpster and left the engine running with the heat on for Frank.
I crept down the dark alley between the hair salon and the laundromat. Warm gusts from the vents of the laundromat made the frigid air smell of dryer sheets. I stopped deep within the shadows. From this angle, I could see down Main Street to the public parking lot, and I had a partial view down Canyon Lane to the hardware store. I leaned against the side of the building and waited.
I did not have to wait for long. There was a shift of movement in Ed’s truck, and Evelyn’s silhouette ducked out of sight. Moments later, Jeff sauntered past the lot, hands tucked into his coat pockets, strolling casually down the sidewalk. I felt tension creep up my neck just watching him.
I knew Winona’s brother’s intentions to try to kill me. I understood Jack’s end game after years of watching and waiting, because I was plotting much the same with the man I studied now. Had I been able to get away with it, I would have snatched Jeff off the street years ago. I would have staked him out in the wilderness and slowly flayed the skin from his bones until he confessed to what he had done to my girls. And then I would have left him there for the animals to begin feasting on him before he was truly dead.
If he knew he was being watched, Jeff gave no indication. He moved in and out of the shadows cast by the buildings, a man ambling home one moment, a menacing phantom in the dark the next. Night, I had found, always revealed a man’s true nature.
I turned my gaze back to the parking lot and saw movement within Ed’s truck. The door opened, and Evelyn closed it silently behind her. She hurried to the corner, first peering down the street toward the bookstore, then down the cross street before turning and spotting Jeff just before he turned down Canyon Lane.
She followed him, sticking close to the sides of the buildings, footsteps careful and silent. Jeff turned the corner, and she picked up her pace, reaching the post office just as he crossed the street.
I was watching her when he suddenly began to whistle. Had I not been, I would have thought the tune was innocent and meaningless. But she acted as if she had slammed into a brick wall, staggering backward with the force of it.
She knew the tune, and he knew she was there.
He disappeared down the alley adjacent to the hardware store, and after several moments, she crept across the street. She stood there at the yawning mouth of the alley before retreating across the street and out of my line of sight.
My gaze lifted to the second floor of the old brick building, and lights soon lit the tall windows.
I lingered, and eventually Evelyn appeared around the corner, walking fast, gaze darting behind her. When she went past the parking lot, I left the shadows and moved to the mouth of my own alley to watch her. She strode all the way to where Jeff’s SUV sat in front of the bookshop and tucked something under his windshield wiper before returning to Ed’s ancient Chevy and driving away.
I retreated to my own truck. I opened the door, and Frank sat up from where he was curled in my seat. He moved across the center console and I climbed within, patting his side before I put the truck in reverse and backed down the lane.
As we headed home, I realized I was smiling. Something that might have been hope unfurled in my chest.
Sixteen
The rose has been the national flower
of the United States since 1986.
EVELYN
I downloaded the photos I had taken of the cradleboard yesterday as soon as I arrived in my office the next morning and grabbed Dr. Cobel’s contact information from the email Annette had sent me. I introduced myself and wrote that I had come across the cradleboard in a private donation and wanted to determine its origins. I attached the photos and then hit send.
In the repository, I moved the four boxes from the private donation to a separate shelf. I could not resist opening the box that held the cradleboard and lifting it from the depths.
What I loved most about my work was the unspoken stories these objects held. They did not always reveal their secrets to me. Some had been buried too far in the distant past to be anything but silent shards of abused and shattered nations. I mainly held slivers of the past. I could only guess at fragments of their stories. This cradleboard was a story. A partial story of a child’s start and a mother’s heart bound safe and close. I did not know the end of their story, but the painstaking care and exquisite craftsmanship was testament to the beginning.
I left the modern pieces in the four boxes and went to the storage room at the end of the repository. The corrugated acid- and lignin-free boxes all came broken down, and I built an artifact box to fit the cradleboard. I placed it gently within, set it on the shelf, and then continued with my work.
At noon, I took a break and had lunch at my desk. My inbox showed an email had arrived from Dr. Cobel an hour ago, and I eagerly opened the message.
Ms. Hutto,
<
br /> This is definitely Arapaho. The quilled disc is a traditional Arapaho design and is symbolic for protecting the brain of the baby. I would estimate it to be from the late 1800s. I am providing the contact information for Ohetica WhitePlume. She lives in Ethete on Wind River and is head of the Northern Arapaho Tribal Preservation Department. I know she will be interested in speaking with you about this item.
I grabbed the phone on my desk and dialed the number she listed at the bottom of the email.
A woman answered on the third ring. “Little Wind Casino.”
I glanced at the number again. “Ah, yes, may I speak with Ohetica WhitePlume?”
“One moment.”
Elevator music began playing in my ear and a minute passed before the phone was picked up again.
“Yes, this is Ohetica WhitePlume,” a new voice said.
I introduced myself and explained how I had received her name and why I was calling.
“Tell me about the cradleboard,” she said.
“I could email you photographs.”
She chuckled. “We don’t get much internet out here.”
I scrolled through the photos on my desktop and described the intricate quillwork, the disc and the ladder-like bands that fringed the edges. “Also, hanging from the laces, there are some pendants. There are three of them with beads and perhaps horsehair and—”
She interrupted me. “What did you say?” Her voice was sharp. When I told her of the decoration hanging from the laces again, she was silent for a moment before she said, “May I put you on hold for a moment?”
“Of course.” I tucked the phone between my ear and shoulder and finished eating the sandwich I had brought for lunch.
“Miss?”
I swallowed the last bite quickly. “Yes, I’m still here.”
“I know it is a lot to ask, but is there any chance you would be willing to bring the piece here?”
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