I checked my cell phone, but there were no messages or missed calls from Roberta. I drummed my fingers on my desk and then scanned Andrew James’s social media page and found a phone number. I dialed the number, and after a few rings, a man answered.
“May I speak with Andrew James, please?” I asked.
“Speaking.”
“Mr. James, my name is Evelyn Hutto. I work at the Park County Museum in Montana outside of Yellowstone. I recently came across one of your storyteller bracelets, and I wondered if you keep sales records.”
“I’m afraid I don’t, Miss Hutto,” he said, voice low and quiet. “Most of my sales are cash, purchased by visitors here at the canyon.”
I pushed my glasses up onto my forehead and rubbed my eyes. “If I were to send you some photographs of the bracelet I have in my possession, is there any way you could look at it and give me any information about it? Perhaps when you made it?”
“I can certainly take a look and see.” He gave me an email address and then said, “May I ask what this is about?”
I rubbed my thumb along the tarnished silver. The work was three dimensional, and I could feel the meticulous detail of the bracelet. “I found it at the museum, and I’m hoping to return it to its owner.”
After I ended the call, I took photographs of the bracelet from several different angles and then loaded them onto the computer and attached them to an email. The latter half of the day was dedicated to the NAGPRA collection, but my mind continually strayed to the private donation.
Before leaving work for the day, I photographed the contents of the private donation, capturing close-up details on each piece, studying them from all angles. I emailed the pictures to my personal account, and as soon as I reached the inn, I powered up the computer in the den and clicked through each photo numerous times. I uploaded the photos into an image search on the internet to see if any results came back. There were suggestions of tribes for some pieces, and I jotted down the information. Nothing came back as an exact match.
A touch on my shoulder startled me, and when I turned from the computer screen, I realized it was fully dark. The glare from the screen throbbed harsh and white against the back of my eyes and blinded me in the dim room.
“Sorry,” Faye said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I wondered if you’d like to join us for dinner. I made meatloaf.”
My stomach growled in response but I said, “I wouldn’t want to be any trouble.”
“You wouldn’t be. There’s plenty.”
I forced my mind away from the private donation for the next couple of hours as I ate dinner with Faye and Sam. When the meal was polished off and the kitchen cleaned, Faye hesitantly invited me to play cards with them. I readily said yes.
This little family roused my curiosity. The pair smiled at one another often. Sam would lean against his mother in an armless hug whenever nearby, and she would comb his hair back from his forehead. But Sam remained silent, and it seemed that Faye had largely followed suit. There was no ring on her hand to indicate the presence of a man in their lives, and when she invited me into her home in the adjacent wing of the house, I could see no hint that the family consisted of anyone but the two of them.
Their private domain was down the hall from the kitchen, past the laundry room, and it was tidy and clean and decorated with the same rustic elegance as the rest of the inn.
We sat on the floor around a coffee table in the living room and played a card game akin to rummy. The pair I played with were not grim, but they were straight forward, matter of fact, and quiet as they played their hands.
I had grown up playing bridge every Friday night with my grandparents and their friends. I was used to a livelier scene. I groaned when Sam laid down two sets of three before I could. I let out an appreciative whistle when Faye laid down a set of three and a straight run of seven. I gave a victorious fist pump when I was able to lay down a full run of ten a few rounds later.
Faye and Sam glanced at one another, lips quirked, and a hand later Sam whistled a trilling note when Faye was able to lay down all of her cards at once. She looked at him in surprise. Only because I was looking did I see the tremor that shook her smile.
She cleared her throat as she shuffled. “Two more rounds.” She hesitated and then said, “Good luck beating me. I’m trouncing the two of you.”
Sam’s gaze flew to her and his head tilted as he studied her expression. A smile spread slowly across his face until it split into a grin. It was the most animation I had seen on his face, and from the hitch in her breathing, I knew it surprised Faye as well.
He ended up going out first the last two rounds, and when Faye tallied the points and announced he had won, he mimicked my victorious fist pump in the air above his head.
I chuckled and extended my hand across the coffee table. “High five.”
His smile was shy as he reached over and tapped his palm to mine.
Faye put the cards away. “Time for bed, Sam. Go brush your teeth, please.”
He scrambled to his feet and disappeared into his bedroom. I stood and followed Faye back down the hall into the main section of the inn.
It had been a long time since I had anything that could be considered a social life. There had been a time when partying had been the main focus of my life and I had been constantly surrounded by those I considered friends. After the call had come and I had dropped out of college to return home, those friends had disappeared. None called, none stopped by to visit. Finishing my bachelors and getting my masters online had not facilitated any connections with my peers outside of a few email exchanges that had dwindled as the years passed.
When I had first started at the museum, I had tried to make room for friendship. Evelyn, his voice whispered in my ear, come out, come out, wherever you are. I shuddered and shoved the memory away. I had been ostracized quickly after the first time I had complained about Chad.
I missed companionship, I realized, the sheer pleasure of sharing connection and conversation.
“Thank you.”
Faye turned from checking the locks on the windows and the deadbolts on the doors. She studied me for a long moment. “You’re welcome. Thank you for…” She glanced away and I remembered the look on her face when Sam had whistled. “Thank you.”
Once in my room, I headed into the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face. When I reached blindly for my face cream as I patted my face dry, my hand knocked over the bottle of perfume on the counter. I heard the cap bounce to the floor and roll. I smoothed the cream into my damp skin and then donned my glasses and knelt to search for the cap. I found it in the corner behind the door.
I straightened and moved to replace the cap only to find the bottle empty. Brow furrowed, I felt along the countertop, wondering if the bottle had cracked and spilled when I knocked it over, but the vanity was dry. The bottle had been almost full when I left for Wind River Saturday morning.
My gaze strayed to the closed shower curtain, and fear crept with prickling tension over me. I wondered if the sudden rough saw of breath was my own sounding raggedly in my ears or someone else’s, waiting for me to turn out the light before they sprung from their hiding spot. I lunged for the shower curtain and shoved it aside so forcefully I yanked half of the curtain from its moorings on the bar above.
The shower was empty.
I whirled around, expecting to find someone behind me, but the bathroom was empty. I searched the room hurriedly as anxiety unfurled its sharp, thorny tendrils in my chest. No one lurked in the armoire or under the bed. My heart was lurching painfully behind my breast bone as I dragged the chaise in front of the door, and when I sank onto the end of the bed, I tucked my hands under my legs to quell their trembling.
He had been here again, stealing into my sanctuary, violating my space. Not even Greensleeves was a comfort, for when I hummed the old tune, I remembered how he had whistled the tune as I followed him home.
I left the bathro
om light on as I crawled into bed and drew the covers tightly around me, forcing myself to breathe deeply and slowly. I stared at the shadows on the ceiling, gaze darting to the door when I thought I caught a faint creak of movement outside my room. I rolled over so I could watch the door, waiting to see if the knob was jostled, but it remained still.
Sleep was a long time coming.
I woke the next morning exhausted and nauseated from the light snatches of sleep. Lying in bed shivering at the coolness of the sheets, I pulled the covers closer about me as I swallowed against the sourness in my stomach. A headache pounded in my temples. When I did manage to drag myself from bed, I moved immediately to the dresser to slip on a thick pair of socks and to pull a sweater on over my nightgown.
I switched the lamp on and paused. My philodendron was turning brown from the stems up, wilting and listless. I felt the soil in the pot, but it was still damp from being watered before I left for Wind River. Frowning, I fingered the leaves. They were dry and brittle.
A pang of sorrow struck me, and I wondered if the cold had been too much for the plant. I picked up the dying greenery and moved the pot closer to the window, hoping a bit of light would help.
I crossed to the window and dragged the curtains aside, glancing back to make sure the philodendron would receive the full advantage of the light through the day. Some slight sense of movement drew my gaze back to the window, and I searched the tree line. In the early morning hours, the light was low, the shadows gray. The sky was pink with the sun’s rise, and frost laced the edges of my window.
The movement came again and snagged my gaze. The slight sway, the flutter of the dress hem. I stood frozen, and my heart seemed to stutter in my chest before the pace lurched into a heavy, hot drum. I heard the choked sound of my own breath in my throat, and the first fingers of the dawn sun crept through the trees and touched her bare feet.
Galvanized, I shoved the chaise away from the door and bolted from my room. I took the stairs three at a time and did not realize I was yelling for Faye until she skidded through the doorway into the dining room as I flung open the front door. “Call 9-1-1!”
I did not wait to see if she responded. I leapt off the front porch and ran. My socked feet slid on ice and snow, and I fell as I reached the bottom of the sloped yard. I scrambled back to my feet and raced first to the tree. I grappled with the knot, tearing at the sinews, ripping two nails down to the quick, but the rope was tied too tightly around the rough trunk.
I wrapped my arms around her calves and braced her against me, struggling to lift her to ease the tautness of the rope wrapped around her neck.
It was too late. Creating slack in the rope would do her no good. She was stiff, limbs rigid, and with my cheek pressed against her thighs, I could feel the coldness of her skin against my face even through the soft floral print cotton of her dress.
My arms shook with the effort of holding her up. I tightened my hold on Amanda’s body, unable to release her and allow her to swing heavily at the end of the rope from which she hung.
Twenty
The National Crime Information Center reports that,
in 2016, there were 5,712 reports of missing
American Indian and Alaska Native women.
The US Department of Justice’s federal
missing persons database
only logged 116 cases.
HECTOR
“Frank,” I called. “Get to work.”
The poodle ignored me, circling a tree with a keen expression fixed upwards. Something was hiding from him in the branches above, but this was not why I had brought him into the woods this morning.
It was our weekly ritual now. I knew there was no scent of Winona and Emma lingering in the woods surrounding Raven’s Gap, even if they had been dragged into this wilderness. But still I searched.
The not knowing made their disappearance a wound that never healed. The lack of answers kept worrying the ragged edges of rawness, kept the bitter ache constant, kept the blood weeping at the surface. There was no scab, no scar. It was as fresh and tender now as it had been fifteen years ago.
I had spoken the truth to Carl Thornton. The not knowing drove you past the brink of sanity. Years passed, and the madness became a constant companion. You took it to bed with you at night and opened your eyes in its embrace in the morning.
“Frank!”
I realized my voice held more snap than I intended when his tail stopped wagging and his head drooped as he trotted through the snow toward me. I dropped into a crouch and extended my hand to him.
He rushed to close the distance between us, and I pressed my forehead to his, resting my hand on his neck. “I’m sorry. You’re right. We’ve had enough for the day.” He leaned against me. Forgiveness was something dogs gave far too easily.
To make amends, when we got back to the truck, I fetched his tennis ball from the cupholder and threw it for him. He bounded gleefully after it. All was right in his world again.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and when I answered, Joan was on the other end of the line. “It’s bad, Hector.”
When I made it into town fifteen minutes later, the scene beside the inn was an echo of the one at the campground cabin. The dress, the braided hair, even the pink polish on her toes were the same as Sarah Clemens, the young woman found at the campground. The scene was staged in the same careful manner as the cabin.
I glanced up the hill to where Martin Yates, the detective, was taking Evelyn’s statement.
“Isn’t that the woman who found the girl at the cabin?” Ted Peters asked as he finished photographing the scene.
She had. My mind churned with the implications.
The county coroner’s van parked in front of the inn, and Grover Westland carefully picked his way down the embankment. He studied the scene before walking a slow circuit around Amanda’s body.
He came to a halt beside me. “Shit.” He let out a breath. “Let’s get her down from there.”
A commotion drew my gaze to the top of the hill. “Fuck,” I breathed. “I’ll handle this.” I climbed the embankment in ground-eating strides and caught Carl Thornton’s arm as he scrambled down the slope.
“Amanda? Oh Christ. Is it Amanda?”
I jerked him around and dragged him away from the scene, not relinquishing my grip on his arm until we were across the street and the woman hanging from the tree was no longer in sight.
“It’s Amanda, isn’t it? I heard the sirens and thought maybe… But then I saw the coroner’s van.” He turned in a circle, hands fisted in his hair.
I waited until he met my gaze. “It is Amanda.”
He moaned and staggered under the weight of my words. “No. God, no. I have to see her.”
“Don’t.” I put a hand to his shoulder when he would have pushed past me and held him in place when he tried to shake me off. “Don’t let that be the image of her that sticks in your mind and visits you every time you close your eyes.” His shoulders began to shake under my hand, and he sagged against me.
I looked across the street and found Evelyn standing on the porch of the inn, staring at the scene unfolding at the tree line. Her arms were wrapped tightly around herself, and she leaned against the railing for support.
Sensing she was being watched, she dragged her attention from the work of the coroner and the other officers. Her eyes found me, and I held her gaze across the distance separating us.
“I couldn’t promise you I would find Amanda and bring her back to you,” I said quietly to the man whose world had just been destroyed. “But I can promise you I will find who did this to her.”
Twenty-One
I believe the only way to reform
people is to kill them.
-Carl Panzram
JEFF
I had not been able to resist staying deep within the tree line to ensure she understood what I was telling her. I had almost gone to her when she came running outside, and
my heart sank when she touched her. She should not have sullied herself like that. I wanted to go to her and yank her away, but then the other woman, the innkeeper, had arrived, and the moment to approach her had been lost.
Just as well. It was not time yet. I still had much to tell her. At the moment, I had one more part of the story to leave with her.
This one held sentimental value, and it was hard to part with it. It had been a gift to Rose in our childhood. It had been the gift of one child to another, but she had kept it with her, even when it became worn and frayed. She had understood the sanctity of my gifts. At least in the beginning.
In the beginning, we had shared everything. We were inseparable. Rose had promised we always would be, that she would always love me more than all else. But over the years I had seen the changes come over her. She no longer looked at me the same way. She no longer wanted to share herself with me. She had forgotten her promises, and she had ignored me when I tried to remind her of them.
Anger began to burn in my heart, and I strove to calm myself. Evelyn would understand. Evelyn would know the sanctity of a promise.
I waited until the police were finished, until they cut down that whore, bagged her, and carried her away like the garbage she was. Dissatisfaction gnawed at me. There was a difference between dining and feeding only to sustain oneself. That was all she and the others were. Sustenance. Not what I truly needed, not what I desperately craved. Rose had been the only one who truly sated me. Rose, and now Evelyn.
Once they were gone, I crept into the inn and into Evelyn’s room. I tucked my gift into her bed and smiled over the picture of innocence it made. I wanted to linger, but I had to be cautious now.
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