None of the images pulled up in the search results showed this exact kachina doll, but a number of trading posts and Native American art and jewelry companies came up in the results. I grabbed the contact information from half a dozen trading posts and companies and compiled an email, asking for information on this particular carving and the artist. I attached the photographs, hit send, and then returned to the repository and the NAGPRA collection.
On my lunch break a few hours later, a response from one of the art and jewelry companies waited in my inbox.
Miss Hutto, this is a Badger Hopi Kachina doll. It is considered the Chief Kachina during certain ceremonies. The doll you are in possession of may have been carved by Awenasa Tewaquaptewa. It bears some of her trademark work. I will attach her contact information.
I grabbed the phone on my desk and dialed the number listed in the email. A woman answered.
I read her name in the email again. “Hello, may I speak with Mrs. Tewaquaptewa, please?”
“This is she.” The voice on the other end of the line was as worn and cracked as old leather. “Who’s speaking?”
“This is Evelyn Hutto, ma’am. I work at the Park County Museum in Montana. I’m calling because I found a kachina doll in a private donation that was gifted to the museum, and I am trying to track down the original owner.”
“Is it one of mine?” the woman on the other end of the line asked.
“I think it may be. I contacted a Native American art and jewelry company, and they gave me your number and said that the carving resembled your craftsmanship.”
“But my name isn’t on the bottom?” A dry cough on the other end of the line punctuated her question. “I sign all of my work.”
“No, there’s no signature on the base. The company said they thought it was a badger kachina, and I—”
“That little bitch,” she wheezed.
“I…I’m sorry?”
“Text me a picture of the katsina.”
“Of course. Is this a cell phone number?”
“It is,” she said. “I’ll stay on the line. My granddaughter showed me how to look at texts while still on the phone.”
I grabbed my own cell phone, snapped several pictures of the doll, and sent them in a text to her number. I could hear her emphysemic breathing through the line as she waited for the photos to come through. Her voice was even rougher than it had been when she spoke again. “In our culture, the badger kachina is believed to have the power to heal the sick. I made this for my sister, gave it to her when she was diagnosed with cancer.”
“If it is your sister’s, I’ll be happy to return it to her.”
“My sister is dead,” she said bluntly. “She died three months after this katsina was stolen from her.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I hesitated and grappled for a way to phrase my next question. “Do you… Did anything else go missing when the kachina doll was stolen?”
“She took three hundred dollars in cash and my sister’s prescription pain pills as well.”
“She?”
“My sister’s granddaughter. She stole from my sister seven years ago. We haven’t heard from her since.”
“I…see.”
“Did she try to sell you the katsina?”
“No, nothing like that,” I said. “If you would like, I can return this doll to you.”
“No,” she said, voice abrupt. “No, I do not care to have it back. Thank you for reaching out to me. Do with the katsina what you will.” She hung up before I could get another word in, and I reluctantly returned the phone to the cradle.
I wondered what the likelihood was that the granddaughter had been as much a victim as the grandmother.
I grabbed my wallet from my purse, pushed back from my desk, and made my way to Annette’s office. “I’m going to run a quick errand while I’m on my lunch break,” I said after rapping my knuckles on the open door of her office. “Do you need anything while I’m out?”
She glanced up from her computer, expression harried. “No, thank you, though.” She did a double take when she saw the bruise across my cheek. “Are you okay?”
“I will be.”
I drove across town to Book Ends and was relieved to see Susan at the front desk.
Her automatic smile was welcoming, but it cooled slightly when she saw me, even as her brows pinched when she glanced at my cheek. “Evelyn. How are you today?”
“I’m well, thank you. Do you have a map collection?”
“We do.” Despite what Jeff may have told her, she was the consummate professional. She rounded the counter, motioning for me to follow her. “It’s mainly local maps. Are you looking for something specific?” She led me past the nonfiction section in an adjoining room.
“Do you have anything that shows just the western United States?”
“Hm…it doesn’t look like I have anything specific to the region as a whole. It looks like I have Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Yellowstone, and then some local maps. I can see about special ordering you something, though.”
“What about just a map of the US in general?”
Susan crouched to look at a lower shelf and snagged a folded map. She straightened and held it out to me. “Here you are.”
“Thank you.” I traced the folded edge of the map and pondered how I wanted to phrase my question. “You have a significant rare books collection here, don’t you?”
“We do. Book Ends started as an antiquarian bookshop. It was my father’s passion, and it was why…” She hesitated and glanced at me. “It was why I brought Jeff on when I took over the shop.”
“Do you travel often to maintain your rare book collection?”
“I don’t, no.” She did not say that Jeff did, but I sensed that was the other half of her unspoken response. Her smile was polite, but the friendliness she had shown me in past interactions was missing. She nodded to the map. “Are you sure I can’t order you something more specific?”
I followed her back to the front of the store. “No, this should be fine.” I handed over cash when she rang it up on the old-fashioned register.
“We didn’t have our book club meeting last night,” she said. “But we’re having a meeting tonight. More of a vigil to honor Amanda, really, and a community meeting. You and Faye are welcome to come.”
“I’ll be here,” I said. “I’ll invite Faye as well.”
When I made it back to the museum, I raided the supply closet and found a box of push-pins. In my office, I unfolded the map and pinned the full spread to the wall opposite my desk. Going down my list I had begun to compile, I added a pin to where Raven’s Gap would be if it showed up on the map, to the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, to the Navajo and Hopi reservations in the northeastern corner of Arizona, to the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico, and to the Tohono O’odham lands southwest of Tucson along the Mexican border.
I stepped back and studied the map. The pins were sprawled across the west and southwest with no discernible pattern between the four states aside from the fact that they were all pushed into the sections on the map labeled as reservation land. I remembered the statistics I had read about missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Native women living on tribal lands in America were murdered at an extremely high rate—in some communities, more than ten times the national average.
Five reservations and two women missing. I knew there were more, but I was not certain I would be able to find them. At the epicenter of it all, two women dead.
I pulled up the internet browser on my computer and searched for the website of The Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America. I searched their member directory by state, studying the map as I did so. An hour later, I pushed pins into Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona; into Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico; into Pueblo and Denver, Colorado; into Moab and Salt Lake City, Utah; into Pocatello, Idaho; and into Livingston, Montana. All cities with antiquarian booksellers, all cities with easy
access to Indian reservations. I jotted down the names of the booksellers and their contact information.
I grabbed my phone and dialed Roberta’s number once more. It rang through to voicemail again, and I hung up without leaving a second message.
I stared at the map for a long moment and then shook myself and returned to the repository and my work.
ß
The atmosphere at the book club meeting was tense. Husbands arrived with their wives. The women of Raven’s Gap were afraid.
Amanda had two boys, ages ten and six, I was informed, and there were already coordinated efforts from the women in town to aid Amanda’s husband with getting the boys to and from their extracurricular activities.
Because this was what women did in the face of tragedy. We rallied. We grouped together and coordinated efforts to provide normality. We doled out comfort with compassion and practicality. There was already a calendar going around town with people signing up to prepare a meal for the family.
I added my name to the calendar to take a meal to the Thorntons in three weeks’ time. The calendar was filled until the end of February. Faye had not been able to make it to the meeting tonight. Sam was not feeling well, and she had stayed home to put him to bed early. She had asked me to add her name to the list, so I marked her down in the following slot.
The conversation never strayed into book territory. Shock was the emotion that pervaded the group’s discussion. The women discussed the possibility of neighborhood watches, nightly patrols, and putting a buddy system in place.
I sat quietly and listened to the book club strategize. Jeff was nowhere in sight this evening. Tension hummed through me. When I stood, Susan glanced at me. “Bathroom,” I mouthed.
The sign for the restroom hung over an open doorway at the far back corner of the shop. The restrooms were down a hallway, and I veered past the labeled entrance and wandered farther down the hall. Four more doorways led off from the corridor.
I looked over my shoulder and tried the handle on the next door. It opened into a dark storage closet. The next two were locked. I turned to the door across the hall. Light bled from under the door, and the handle turned easily under hand.
I pushed the door open cautiously and glanced within. I knew immediately the office was Jeff’s. His jacket hung from a coatrack in the corner. A faint hint of his cologne hung in the air, and the room was as immaculate as his apartment. I slipped inside and closed the door soundlessly behind me.
Like in his home, laden shelves filled one wall of his office, but there was no Native American art interspersed with the tomes. I moved to his desk and tapped the space bar on the keyboard to wake his computer. A login screen blinked to life asking for a password. I abandoned the computer to search the desk drawers.
I darted a glance at the door as I searched. The drawers contained the usual miscellaneous items. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that hinted at whom he really was.
The day planner on his desk was a fresh one for the new year. When I flipped through it, I found the pages empty. Frustrated, I straightened from my crouch and moved around his desk.
A vase sat at the corner of his desk. A single rose stood in the glass. The flower was stunning, full and lush, the petals a deep crimson. I reached for it without thinking.
The sharp prick made me jerk my hand back, and the rose fell to the floor. A bead of deep red blood welled from the pad of my thumb, accompanied by a sharp throb.
“The rose has thorns only for those who would gather it.”
I started violently and spun.
“That’s a Chinese proverb,” Jeff said. He pushed the door farther open and leaned against the jamb. “You should come see my roses. I grow over a dozen different varieties in my greenhouse.”
I eyed him warily. His smile was amiable, but his eyes fell to the rose on the floor. His face moved, and when he looked up and met my gaze, every hair at the nape of my neck stood on end. Careful, a small internal voice warned. I imagined an animal had a moment of a heightened sense of self-preservation when they recognized they were in a predator’s sites, a quiet moment of realization before every instinct to run leapt to the surface. I imagined that moment felt exactly like this one.
“I was looking for the bathroom,” I said, and was amazed at how steady my voice sounded.
He shook his head and chuckled. “Ah, Evelyn.” He straightened and stepped within the office, closing the door behind him and tumbling the lock into place.
I backed around his desk. “Susan will miss me in the meeting.”
He smiled. “Susan is oblivious, completely wrapped up in herself and this store.” He moved deeper into the office, and I backed away in equal measure. “You’re in my office, searching through my desk. Do you want the password for my computer? It’s ‘rose.’ All lowercase.” He gestured to the chair behind his desk as he took the seat across from it. “Go ahead, sit down.” He lounged casually, sinking back into the chair, crossing an ankle over his knee and lacing his fingers behind his head. For all his relaxation, he reminded me of a snake poised to strike.
“I’m fine standing.”
He sighed. I watched every flex of movement and shift of expression, expecting him to lunge across his desk at any moment. “You should be careful,” he said. “The police already think you’re stalking me.”
The short distance to the door felt like a yawning chasm, and his desk between us was a flimsy fence keeping a predator at bay. “You and I both know I’m not the dangerous party here.”
He smiled. “Do I? Don’t all women have their dangers?”
“Is that why you kill them?”
He tilted his head and studied me, expression benign, eyes sharp. The silence grew between us, jagged and tense, and I only let my gaze move from him to glance at the locked door. “I think you need more time.”
He stood suddenly, plucking up the fallen rose as he did so. I took a quick step back. He did not approach me, though. He placed the rose carefully back in its vase and retreated to the door, flipped the lock, and swung it wide.
I remained frozen in place, not trusting the gesture.
“It’s time for you to leave now before I change my mind,” he said.
I wanted to flee, but I forced my feet to move in a measured pace. I approached him like I would a cobra, reluctantly and with slow, carefully placed steps, adrenalin thrumming through my veins. He stood in the doorway.
When I moved to edge past him, he struck, swift as a snake.
He grabbed my face, palm over my mouth, fingers and thumb digging into my cheeks. A startled cry caught in my throat, and my hands flew to his wrist. I flinched when he reached toward my face with his other hand, but all he did was push my glasses up the bridge of my nose, settling them back into place.
“You delight me,” he whispered, and I could feel his breath on my forehead. “You remind me so much of her.”
Then his hand was gone from my face. I lurched into the hallway, and this time, I did not quell the urge to run. I raced down the hall and into the brightly lit sanctum of the bookstore. I staggered, fear turning my knees to water. I put a hand against a shelf.
My heart was in my throat and rushing in my ears, but I glanced back. Jeff still stood highlighted against the shadows of the hallway in the doorway to his office.
I straightened and swallowed around the dry tightness of my throat. “I want my music box back,” I said, voice hard and steady.
I turned and moved between the books. I heard a low chuckle behind me, and then the whistled tune of Greensleeves followed me around the shelves.
Twenty-Five
We do whatever we enjoy doing.
Whether it happens to be judged good
or evil is a matter for others to decide.
-Ian Brady
JEFF
Rose had grown sharp with me as well in the end. A rose would always have thorns. I accepted that as her nature, and I never whittled away t
hose barbs. I took the blood with the blooms.
It took patience to tend to roses. They did not bloom for you immediately. Roses required time and effort, diligence and tenderness. They could not be rushed.
Evelyn was not ready. Not yet. I had to be patient. Giving her Rose’s gift had been the right decision. I had another gift for her, but the timing had to be perfect. Rose had mistaken this gift. I had slipped into her room in the middle of the night and left it on her pillow. She thought it had been from another man. I would not make that same mistake with Evelyn. She would know. There would be no misunderstanding between us.
I had been tempted tonight. I saw the way she watched me so avidly. She felt the pull between us. But anticipation would make everything sweeter. I could hold out and savor the unfolding of our story.
In the meantime, though, I had to at least curb that gnawing within me to have the patience to wait for Evelyn. I prowled after the woman when she left the book club meeting. She was the last to leave. She always was. She was always alone. She wore clothes that displayed the fleshy mounds of her breasts and the deep crevice between them that always looked warm and damp. Her makeup was always done with too heavy a hand, and she laughed too loudly at everything I said.
I could not recall her name as I dogged her steps in the darkness. She kept glancing around, the jerkiness of the movement betraying her nerves. She was right to be nervous, but I found it curious that she could sense me in the shadows stalking her. She always struck me as a complete idiot.
She did not live far away. I would have to be careful to ensure I was not seen. Her house was down the same road as The River Inn. So close to Evelyn. I wondered if my choice had been a subconscious one born of proximity to what I truly wanted.
Caught for a moment by my thoughts of Evelyn, I did not realize the woman had stopped in the middle of the street suddenly and turned. She stood in a wide round pool of light under a street lamp. She scanned the shadows beyond the light where I lurked.
Hunting Ground Page 17