The Girl with Braided Hair (A Wind River Reservation Myste)

by Coel, Margaret

  “AIM,” Vicky said.

  “You got it. American Indian Movement, Indians passing through from all over the country, protesting and raising hell, demanding Indian rights, hiding out from the law. Nothing but trouble and violence. Every law enforcement agency in the county was working overtime trying to keep Indians from killing one another, whites from killing Indians and vice versa.”

  “Part of the civil rights movement,” Vicky said. She had been in her teens then, trying to catch the eye of the basketball captain, studying for exams, riding her horse in the pasture. She could remember the whispered conversations between her parents in the kitchen, the protest marches in Fort Washakie and her father saying, “We’re staying home. It’s not our business what those Indians are doing.” It wasn’t until later that she’d realized it had been their business—Indian rights were their business. She had started dreaming about becoming a lawyer then, to help ensure that her people had rights. But that was before she’d met Ben Holden, just out of the army, home from Germany, and more handsome and confident than any high school boy she’d ever dated. It wasn’t until ten years later, after she’d broken away, that she’d remembered her dream.

  “Was she Indian?” Vicky said.

  “Yeah, she was Indian. Report says the flat shape of the face, projecting cheekbones and shovel-shaped incisors are consistent with Native American heritage. She was around twenty years old.”

  The women were right, Vicky was thinking. The girl was Indian and she was young. She kept her gaze on the detective, his head bent over the opened folder, eyes skimming another sheet. Then he started flipping through the other pages, taking a couple of seconds to digest each one before he shuffled them back into place. “Postpartum pits on the inside surface of the pelvic bones,” he said finally. “She’d given birth.”

  Vicky had to close her eyes against this piece of information. It was a moment before she opened them again. She stared into the blur of sunlight drifting over the papers on the desk, inching toward the folder. It was worse than she’d thought. It was not only the murdered girl. There had been a child.

  She said, “What about any young women reported missing at that time?”

  Coughlin gave her an exasperated smile. “Sixteen to be exact, between 1970 and 1975. Every one accounted for, either dead or alive. There’s nobody missing from this county at that time that we don’t know about. You know what that means? She came from somewhere else. Woman from another reservation, moving around.” He leaned across the desk. “There was a little piece of red cloth under the skeleton. I talked to some of my neighbors, old-timers who were around then. They tell me you could spot AIM Indians by the black hats or the red bands they’d wear around their hair. Looks to me like she was one of them. Came through here and met her fate. Bottom line, Vicky. Chances of ever identifying her are slim to nonexistent.”

  “Then whoever killed her got away with it.”

  “You know how many killers are walking around free? We’re not living in a perfect world. People commit murder and get away with it. Police do the investigations and, most of the time, they finger the murderer, but sometimes the evidence is missing—the hard proof they need to get the murderer convicted. So, case remains unsolved until…”

  “Someone comes forward. A witness or accomplice willing to testify.”

  “You got it. We’re looking at a murder that took place more than thirty years ago. Witnesses and accomplices could have moved on, could be anywhere. Could be dead, for that matter. So we got an old homicide with a victim most likely not from the area and nobody around who knows what happened.”

  “But if you could get her DNA,” Vicky said. She could see the faces of the women in her office, the dark eyes shadowed with fear and worry. Another woman murdered. No one held accountable.

  “Yeah, and what good’s that gonna do? What are we gonna compare it to? Same with a dental workup. We’ll get one done, and maybe we’ll get lucky and find her dental records. Don’t count on it.”

  “What about a facial reconstruction? You could distribute her photo to newspapers in the region, distribute it to all the reservations…”

  “We’re working on it now. Soon’s we get the reconstruction, we’ll distribute the photos everywhere, but I gotta remind you, this is a cold, cold case. This is a block of ice at the bottom of a frozen lake. Like I said, everything changes in thirty years. We have to be realistic about our chances.”

  “Is that what you want me to tell the women on the rez?”

  “Tell them we’re as concerned as they are. We want to find the SOB who did it. We’re never gonna close the case. But unless we catch a break, unless somebody knows something or heard something, unless we get something to go on…”

  He shrugged.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Vicky said, getting to her feet. She worked her way around the cramped space to the door. The detective was already there, holding it open and nodding her into the corridor.

  “I’ll see you out,” he said.

  VICKY SPOTTED THE white paper on the dashboard inside her Jeep as she crossed the asphalt lot. She reached the Jeep and stopped. Past the sunlight dancing in the windshield, she could make out her name printed in black on the front of an envelope. She glanced at the doors. The Jeep was still locked, just as she’d left it.

  She looked around. There was no one else in the parking lot, nothing but a row of parked sedans and pickups with the white vehicles of the sheriff’s department at the far end. The sound of a lawn mower whirred in the distance. The wind blowing over the asphalt was hot and sweet-smelling with the odor of newly-mown grass. A dump truck lumbered down the street, turned right, and disappeared behind the bungalows across the street.

  Vicky glanced back at the massive, beige stone building. Sunlight winked in the blank-looking windows. Nothing moved; there was no sign of life. The building might have been vacant. She fished her key out of her bag and pressed the open button on the remote. The lock buttons jumped up, and Vicky slid onto the seat and reached for the envelope. The air inside was so hot, she could hardly breathe. Leaving the door open, she ran a finger under the envelope’s flap and pulled out the sheet of paper folded in three. In the center of the paper, were thick, black capital letters: STOP.

  Vicky got out, slammed the door shut and hurried back to the building. In the entry, she told the blond receptionist that she had to see Coughlin again.

  “He might’ve left,” the woman said. “I think he was going out.”

  “Call him for me, please,” Vicky said. The man hadn’t left. There was no one in the parking lot.

  The receptionist had the receiver pressed to one ear. “That lawyer again. Says she has to see you.” She dropped the receiver. “He’s on the way. He has appointments, you know, so I hope you won’t be taking too much more of his…”

  The door on the left swung open. “What’d you forget?”

  Vicky stepped into the corridor and waited until he’d closed the door. She had no intention of providing the receptionist with any gossip to pass around. “This was on my dashboard,” she said, thrusting the envelope into the detective’s hand. “Whoever left it got into a locked car.”

  Coughlin worked the folded sheet past the flap, then stared at the word a moment. “You sure?” he said.

  “It was locked, Gary. But somebody put that inside. It’s part of the message. Whoever did it can do anything, get in anywhere. Somebody knows who she was,” Vicky hurried on. “Somebody here and now knows what happened thirty years ago.”

  The detective was shaking his head. “What else are you working on?” He waved the sheet of paper between them. “This could refer to anything.”

  “It refers to the skeleton.” Vicky could feel the truth of it. “The women came to see me yesterday. Somebody must have found out that I’d agreed to talk to you.” She shrugged. “I’d agreed to put some pressure on you, let you know the women want this case solved. Whoever it is was waiting for me to show up here. He wants me to
back off. He must be hoping that if nobody on the rez says anything, you’ll dump the case in the unsolved files.”

  “Okay, okay,” Coughlin said, and she realized she’d raised her voice. “I’ll check the outside security cameras, see what they picked up. I also intend to talk to people on the rez and shake things up a little. Somebody’s bound to want to talk about thirty years ago.”

  Vicky stared at the man for a long moment. That was not going to happen. People on the rez were not going to open up to a white man.

  She thanked him and made her way back across the entry and the hot asphalt to the Jeep, glancing around as she went, half expecting someone to materialize out of the haze of heat and the wind. There was no one.

  6

  1973

  THE LIGHTS OF Lander glowed in the black sky ahead. The Ford’s headlights flowed down the highway a short distance before being swallowed into the darkness. Liz felt suspended in space, plunging through a dark void, the only people left in the world, she and Luna. The baby had started to stir in the backseat, and Liz could hear the faint thrusts of tiny fists against the sides of the cardboard box. The baby would be awake in a minute, awake and hungry, and, oh God, she was out of formula. She’d given Luna the last can a couple of hours ago, just before she’d gone to the meeting.

  Liz hunched over the wheel, trying to keep her own breathing quiet, hoping that the hum of the engine and the rhythmic sweep of the tires on the asphalt would lull the baby back to sleep. In the dim light of the dashboard she could see the needle bouncing on empty. She tried to think how much money she had. A couple of dollars in her wallet. Some change in the bottom of her purse. There might be a few quarters in the jockey box, what whites called the glove compartment, some dimes or nickels on the floor. If she could get to Lander…

  She gripped the wheel hard, willing the car to keep going, conscious of the darkness rolling like clouds outside the windows. The baby was starting to make little wake-up noises. How well she knew everything about Luna, the sounds she made when she was hungry or needed a change, or wanted company. It was odd to know so much about someone that, just a month ago, she hadn’t known at all. Except that even before Luna was born, she’d felt the light kicks inside her and known her baby wanted something. Maybe for her to turn over or sit in a different position or go for a walk. Little by little she’d come to know her baby.

  The baby would want to eat. She had to get more formula, and that wouldn’t leave much for gas. Not enough to get anywhere, Liz was thinking. Not enough to get out of Lander, but Ardyth was in Lander, and in some part of her, Liz realized that, for the last thirty minutes, ever since she’d left Ruth’s, she’d been heading south toward Ardyth’s place. There was no other place to go.

  Ardyth LeConte had been living in Lander for almost a year, ever since she’d walked away from AIM last fall. “I don’t need any more of this shit,” she’d said. They were still in Washington, D.C., organizing cars for people to get back to the rez after the Trail of Broken Treaties, that had started with so much hope, had ended with so much pain. Liz had no idea how Ardyth had gotten back across the country. She hadn’t returned to Pine Ridge, and it wasn’t until Liz had moved back to the Wind River Reservation that she heard Ardyth was living in Lander. Got herself training as a nurse’s aid and a job in a nursing home. Become like them, that’s what Robert and Brave Bird, Loreen and Ruth and all the others said. Ardyth was whiteized.

  They’d come to see her once, Loreen and Ruth and Liz. They’d wanted to see how she was making out, for old times’ sake, Ruth had said. After all, they’d been through a lot together, and what sense was there in letting it all go because Ardyth decided to become white? They could stop by, say hello, see what it was like in the white world. And who knew? Maybe Ardyth was ready to come back.

  It was the beginning of June, Liz remembered, already hot, the wind blowing like a fan turned on high and the baby heavy inside her. Ardyth hadn’t been at home, so they’d hung around the yard awhile, sitting in the pickup with the doors open, feet dangling over the running board, eating the sandwiches and drinking the Coke they’d lifted off the convenience store, and waited. They were sure she’d show up, but now that Liz thought about it, Ardyth had probably been at work, because that’s what she did. She went to work every day, like a white woman in the white world.

  Luna started making gurgling noises that Liz knew would progress from whimpering into full, panicked cries of hunger. The lights ahead were more distinct, like torches burning on the horizon. The gas needle lay flat on empty, but a minute ago she’d caught it jumping below, and there was something about the engine, the kind of hesitancy that meant it was about to stop. She could feel her heart thumping against her ribs. Just a little farther.

  She drove around the bend into the edge of town. Streetlights flooded the pavement in front of the gas station and convenience store across the highway. Luna was crying, and the high, piercing wails almost masked the sound of the sputtering engine. Liz could feel the floorboard jerk beneath her. She shifted into neutral, coasted across the oncoming lane and rolled down the paved ramp to the parking lot in front of the store. When she shifted back into drive, the Ford jumped forward a few feet, which was enough to line up with the gas pump.

  She opened the jockey box and ran her hand under the papers until her fingers brushed the cool pieces of metal. She scooped out three quarters, then leaned over and swept her hand under the seat. About sixty cents worth of dimes, nickels, and pennies. She checked the bottom of her purse, found another quarter, and pulled the dollar bills out of her wallet. Stuffing the wad of money into her jeans pocket, she got out. She lifted Luna out of her box, put the baby against her shoulder, and, patting the small back, headed into the store. “It’s okay,” she kept saying, trying to ignore the weight dropping like iron in her stomach. “Get All Your Supplies Here” flashed in red and yellow lights inside the plate glass window.

  “Help you?” The man behind the counter laid a thick arm on top of the cash register, leaned sideways over the counter, and fixed her with watery blue eyes that looked as if he were weeping. He had hair that resembled yellow plastic, the way it stood out around his fleshy, red face. There were marble-sized pockmarks in his cheeks and across his forehead.

  “You got baby formula?” Liz had to shout over the baby crying.

  “Second aisle. I’ll walk you,” he said, swinging around the counter.

  Liz started after him along shelves stacked with candy bars and breath mints and chips. He had thick buttocks that swayed from side to side, and he kept glancing back at her, making sure she wasn’t helping herself to any candy bars, as if she wanted any of his stinking candy. She stroked the round back of Luna’s head; the damp black hair clung to her palm, like corn silk.

  “Here you go,” the man said, waving one hand over a shelf of baby formula.

  Liz stared at the price tag fixed below the cans and jiggled the baby in an effort to calm her. She could buy two cans and still get a few gallons of gas. She picked up the first, stuffed it in the crook of her arm next to the baby, and grabbed the second. “That’s all I need,” she said, the falseness of it clanging in her ears.

  “Okeydokey,” he said, ushering her ahead, not about to repeat the mistake he’d made when he let her walk behind.

  “What’re you doin’ in these parts anyway?” He swung his bulk around the end of the counter and waited for Liz to set down the cans, which he picked up one by one as he pressed the keys on the register.

  “What?” Luna was wailing now, tossing her head back, blinking up into the fluorescent lights. “Buying stuff. I need gas.”

  “What, the convenience store on the rez run dry?”

  “I’m visiting a friend,” she managed. Her throat felt dry and tight, her cheeks warm with anger. Why was she slipping into the role he expected of her? Indian girl with no rights—no rights to exist.

  “How much?”

  “What?” she said again.

  “You go
t somethin’ wrong with your hearing? How much gas you gonna put on your bill? You owe me a dollar fifty for the formula.”

  Liz pulled the coins and crumpled bills out of her jeans pocket and spread them on the counter with one hand. She pushed a bill and two quarters toward the register. That left two dollars and some change. She pushed the bills toward the others.

  “Two dollars,” she said, patting Luna’s back. She dropped her face and kissed the top of the baby’s head. “It’s okay, okay,” she whispered.

  “Your friend better be close by.” The white man jabbed at the keys. The register made a series of clanking noises before the drawer popped open. He stuffed the money into the narrow compartments, slammed the drawer shut and tore off the white receipt that had popped out of the top.

  “You got two bucks on number two,” he said, nodding toward the red and yellow lights blinking in the plate glass window. “You know how to pump gas?” His fingers were working the receipt into a ball. “Don’t want nothing busted up out there.”

  Liz picked up the cans of formula and, pressing them against her, pushed the glass door open with her foot and hurried back to the car. She set the baby into the cardboard box and crawled in alongside. It took a moment to locate the baby bottle wrapped in the diapers in her bag, pull the tab on one of the cans, and fill the bottle. All the while, Luna was screaming, arms and legs flailing. Liz picked her up and squeezed a drop of milk out of the nipple onto the baby’s pink tongue. A look of surprise came into Luna’s black eyes, then she latched onto the nipple, making loud slurping noises.