by Gwen Florio
“He’s got a collar, right? Tags?” Thor said. “Is your number on it?”
“Of course.” Charlie’s number was on the tags, too, but Lola decided not to give Thor another opportunity to bring up her connection with Charlie.
“He won’t be gone long. Someone will find him. Purebred border collie like that, they’ll either call you, or let me know. When he turns up, we’ll send him back to you with Dawg. He picks up extra money driving truck. Makes that Seattle run all the time. Say we find your dog today—the way Dawg drives, I’d lay odds he’d get him back to Magpie before you even get home.”
Lola slid a piece of pancake through a puddle of syrup. “Are you sure?” She herself was not sure at all. But she didn’t want to insult Charlotte and Thor.
“Positive.” He turned what was likely his final smile upon her. Lola wondered how old she’d have to be before she developed some immunity to the charms of handsome men. She’d found reassurance in Charlie’s homeliness, pushing away the notion that maybe she thought him more likely to stay with her solely through lack of options. Apparently, given that there might be a Charlie Junior out there somewhere, that wasn’t the case at all.
Charlotte busied herself at the counter, assembling food in plastic containers. She wore an old-fashioned bib apron, triple-pocketed and ruffled, over her scrubs. “I don’t want you eating road food. That stuff will kill you, or at least give you indigestion so bad you’ll wish you were dead. I’ve got an apple and banana in here for your fruit”—Lola had not thought fruit existed in the Brevik household—“and a piece of spice cake. And I’ll make you a chicken sandwich. White meat or dark?”
“Dark. Really, you don’t have to make my lunch.” Even to herself, Lola’s protest sounded insincere. At least, she thought, she felt guilty about the way Charlotte tended to her, while Thor appeared entirely unaware of the effort his wife expended on his behalf.
Charlotte, ever attentive, reinforced that guilt. “You’ll call us when you get there safe?”
“She won’t need to do that,” Thor said. “That sheriff of hers will call. Used to be I only talked with Charlie Laurendeau at those sheriffs’ meetings we have once a year. I’ve heard from him more this week than I have in the whole time I’ve known him.”
“He’s not my sheriff—oh, never mind.”
Charlotte put the lunch containers in a paper grocery sack and handed Lola the Thermos. “I just filled it. That looks like a good Thermos. It should get you through at least the first half of the trip.” She stood on the back step, coatless, arms crossed, as Thor handed Lola her bags, and then unplugged the battery cord and tucked the plug into the truck’s grille. Lola started toward the truck, and then stopped. She wondered what Charlotte’s life would be like when she left. She felt around in her pockets until she found a business card. She gave Charlotte a quick hug, slipping the card into Charlotte’s apron as she did so. She pressed her cheek to Charlotte’s, inhaling for the last time the teasing scent she’d never been able to define. “You can call me anytime.” Charlotte dropped her arms and stepped back. Lola wondered if she should have said anything at all.
Lola climbed into the truck. Thor joined Charlotte on the step. “Come back in the spring,” Thor suggested.
“I know. Ireland. The lupine.” She raised her hand in farewell and drove away from their house without looking back.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Lola headed east on Burnt Creek’s main street, tailgating a tripletrailer semi, eager to put the town in her rear-view mirror and to floor it on the highway until mountains rose ahead.
The semi’s lights flashed red, and Lola tapped her own brakes, impatient at the delay. A dog trotted across the street, weaving adeptly between the trucks. There was no mistaking it for Bub—it was brown, and loped easily on all four legs—but Lola’s throat constricted with new tears. She yanked at the wheel, turning onto a side street, and then another, her eyes scanning the sidewalks, the narrow spaces between buildings, looking for a spot where a black-and-white dog might curl up in hopes of warmth, of food, of his owner come to retrieve him. She started with the north-south streets, driving from one border of Burnt Creek to the other, then repeated the tedious process with the east-west grid. The sun inched upward, teasing with its false prospect of warmth. She took a second pass at the main drag, but thought she saw Dawg’s distinctive swagger heading down the street ahead of her, and hastily backed up and chose a different street. Thor and Charlotte believed her to be well on her way by now. It wouldn’t do for them to think she didn’t trust them enough to find the dog. Lola cruised Burnt Creek’s neighborhoods, street after street of small frame houses, many porches stacked high with cordwood, that hinted at the quiet community Burnt Creek must have been when those homes sheltered normal families instead of renting out every spare bedroom and pullout sofa and even floor space—extra for carpeted—to roughnecks and greenhorns. Her phone sounded, interrupting her reverie. Lola looked at the number. Jan.
“I’m on my way back,” she snapped into the phone. “I didn’t get anything. I’m sure those girls are here, but I haven’t got one good goddamned idea where. I busted my butt and ended up with squat and I’ve lost Bub besides.” She pressed her lips together, too late. The admission of defeat had already escaped. But Jan didn’t appear to have heard anything she said.
“Lola.” Her voice sounded small, far away. “Lola.”
Lola thought maybe the connection was bad. She shook her phone and checked the bars. They were full. She shouted into it anyway. “I’m right here.”
“Tina’s gone.”
Lola turned back onto the main street, into the path of an oncoming tanker. Its horn blasted so loud she dropped the phone. She waved an apologetic hand and pulled to the side of the street and felt around on the floor for her phone. “Lola,” Jan babbled from somewhere beneath the seat. “Did you hear me? She’s gone.”
Lola retrieved the phone and pressed it to her ear. Its surface was gritty. “I heard you. What do you mean, gone?”
“I mean she didn’t show up at work yesterday. We thought she was out on an assignment, but then the person she was supposed to interview called the paper, wondering where she was. Finch took the call and told the person that Tina was probably just running on Indian time and forgot about it. He didn’t think to tell either me or Jorkki about the call. So hours and hours went by before Jorkki got all twitchy about her missing her deadline and Finch finally said something, and by then her mother was calling—”
“God. Just like those other girls.”
Jan’s voice regained some of its old confidence. “Not just like them. Those girls had been in trouble for years. But this is Tina. Basketball star-honor-roll Tina. I doubt that girl has had as much as a sip of beer in her whole life. Charlie and all the tribal cops are shaking every tree and bush in the county, chatting up everyone who’s ever so much as said hello to her, to see if anyone’s seen her in the past day.”
“The past day? Just how long has she been gone?” Lola tried to keep her own voice calm, despite her rising fear.
“Her interview was set for three thirty yesterday. She left school at three and seems to have just dropped off the face of the earth. She was safe enough on the reservation, but coming down here to Magpie to work, with all these strangers driving through here on their way to and from the patch—” Jan’s voice trailed off.
Lola looked at her watch. Noon. She knew—and she knew that Jan did, too—that the first twenty-four hours after a person disappeared were crucial. After that, the chances of finding anyone alive plummeted. Tina had already been gone nearly that long. “I’m on my way back.” She cleared her throat and tried to speak with assurance. “I’m positive that by the time I get back, you’ll have found her. Maybe winter got to her. Maybe she just took off for Great Falls or Missoula, just to see some bright lights and people on the streets.” Knowing even as she spoke that her words were preposterous. For all the reservation’s problems, Tina loved the s
heltering arms of extended family, of its leisurely rhythms, of being on sure footing within its borders. She had a lock on a full scholarship to the state university in Missoula four hours away, but had spoken often of her trepidation of dealing with an allwhite world, and a crowded, bustling one at that.
Jan put Lola’s thoughts into words. “You’re an idiot. Just come on home.”
“On my way,” Lola repeated. “Wait—did you get my text about all these people dying out here? Not just dying, but getting killed? Did you ever talk to Charlie about it?”
“I tried. But I only got as far as saying ‘I just got a text from Lola’ and before I could say anything else, he gave me an earful about how he didn’t want to hear your name again in polite company. What’s with you two?”
“Never mind.” Lola figured it wasn’t the time to ask about Charlie’s child. She rang off. But she didn’t leave, not yet. The truck was parked across from the Grub Steak, the last place she’d seen Bub. She’d give it fifteen minutes more, she told herself. Given that she had a ten-hour drive, it wouldn’t make an appreciable difference. Then she’d leave. Although, as happy as she was to flee Burnt Creek, the thought of returning was scant comfort under the circumstances. Tina gone, and not a single way to view that fact as anything but ominous. Bub missing. Her relationship with Charlie tenuous. And the reservation in turmoil with the loss of the first decent jobs people had seen in decades. She wondered, yet again, if it had been a mistake to walk away from the suburban assignment her newspaper in Baltimore had offered her as a sop to downsizing her from Kabul. Magpie was, and always had been, small, obscure, and hardscrabble. She supposed she could leave and come back fifty years later and, but for a new crop of faces with familial resemblance to the old ones, nothing much would have changed—and that went double for the reservation. Baltimore, at least, would have had energy and options. Bub could have adapted.
Her breath had fogged the windshield as she sat in the truck. She pulled her sleeve down over her hand and rubbed a clear circle and scanned the street for Bub. She checked her watch. Seven more minutes. The truck’s cab smelled of the lunch Charlotte had packed her. She unfolded the top of the bag and extracted the sandwich from its plastic container and unwrapped the origami of waxed paper that enfolded it, and took a bite. It was, of course, slathered in mayonnaise. Still, it was delicious, the meat dark and moist. “I love dark meat,” she said, speaking out of habit to a dog who wasn’t there. She glanced around, even though she knew no one would have heard her, and took another bite. The words of the Sweet Crude’s manager came back to her, hawking the appeal of the darker-skinned dancers. Most of the clientele was white. “Where else are they gonna taste dark meat? Makes me think there’s a tanning booth in Double Derricks’ future.”
Lola had never heard the crude term before. Men had probably patronized Judith and possibly the other girls, too, solely because of the color of their skin, a thought that roiled Lola’s stomach anew. Lola thought back to Judith’s body in the snow, the way her brown skin had gone pale in death, making the ugly tattoo on her arm even more prominent. A slanted brand was called “running,” Charlie had told her. Had the brand been used on a calf, it would have signified the Running Heart ranch. Lola unwrapped another sandwich and lifted the top piece of bread.
“More dark meat.” Now that she knew the term’s other meaning, it made her squeamish to say it aloud. And yet she did. “Dark meat.” And again. “Dark meat. God.” No longer caring that she didn’t even have the pretense of a dog to talk to.
“Not chicken. Girls. Mama’s was exactly what Dave said it was. That place sells girls.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
She hit the gas so assertively that the truck’s wheels spun in the snow before the studded tires caught, shooting her into the street, where she narrowly missed a Grub Steak patron, whose curses followed her down the street as she sped toward the sheriff’s office. But when she got there, all she found was Dawg, feet propped up, lug sole boots dripping melted snow onto the desk, sliding a buck knife with precision beneath his fingernails.
“Where’s the sheriff?”
“You’re letting all the warm out again. He’s not here.”
Lola kicked the door open wider behind her. “I can see that. Where is he?”
Dawg held up the knife, inspected it, and blew something from its tip. He started on his other hand, working the blade beneath a yellowed and horny thumbnail. “Don’t know. Working on some trouble you stirred up, no doubt.”
Lola let go of the door. It slammed shut behind her. The room shrank. Dawg and his knife were three feet away. “What do you mean?”
“That girl from the titty bar. I saw you talking to her.” He wiped the knife on his pants. The blade was a good six inches long. It caught the fluorescence from the ceiling light and flashed it around the room.
“So?”
“So now she’s dead.”
Deciding to ignore Dawg’s unsettling comments, Lola reached for the doorknob. “I need to see Thor. Right away.”
“You mean Sheriff Brevik. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
“I don’t think so.” Lola would just as soon have stood in the middle of Burnt Creek’s main street and shouted her suspicions to strangers before saying a word to Dawg.
He held up his middle finger and shaved a sliver from the nail. “Might be he went home for lunch. Maybe a nooner with the missus. Woman like her can keep a man warm at night and in the daytime both.” He put down the knife and retrieved something from beneath the desk. A paper bag. White, with grease smearing its red lettering. “Mama’s.” He pulled a drumstick from the bag and gnawed at it. His laugh followed her out the door. She stood a minute on the other side and flashed her own middle finger before heading back to the truck.
LOLA RAN up the back steps to the Breviks’ house and pulled open the door, ever unlocked, and ran in without shedding her boots. Charlotte stood at the sink, up to her elbows in soapy water. Steam rose from its surface and her hair curled damply around her flushed face.
“Why, Lola. Whatever are you doing here? I thought you left hours ago. Did you find your dog? Honey, you’re tracking snow.”
Lola looked uncomprehendingly at the white patches melting across the floor. “I’m sorry. I need to talk to someone.”
Charlotte lifted reddened arms from the water and dried them on a hand towel. “Sounds like you’re in trouble. You’ll want Thor. I think he’s at the station.”
“I just came from there.” She followed Charlotte’s glance toward her feet and belatedly pulled off her boots. Charlotte handed her a paper towel. She wiped up the floor and carried her boots to the mudroom and tossed the sopping paper towel in the small trashcan by the back door. She padded back across the damp floor in stocking feet and sat at the table and gave reluctant voice to the kernel of a suspicion that had sprouted into full flower the minute she’d seen Dawg with his bag of fried chicken.
“I’m not sure Thor is the right person. Charlotte—”
Charlotte twisted a knob on the stove until the gas caught beneath the teapot. “Yes, Lola?”
“I think Thor and Dawg might be involved in something. Something bad.”
Charlotte opened a cupboard door and contemplated the boxes within. “Regular or herbal? I’m thinking herbal. You’re upset. It’ll calm you. Honey, I think you have a wrong idea in your head about Thor. I know you think he can seem hard on me. But, you’re not married, are you?”
Lola shook her head.
“Maybe someday you will be.” Lola took full note of the insult beneath the maybe. The same sort of dig Charlotte had aimed at her husband the previous day. “If that day comes, you’ll understand how complicated marriage can be.” She held up two teabags. “Which one?”
Lola pointed to the darker of the two. “This goes beyond however I might feel about Thor. If he and Dawg are mixed up in what I think they’re in, it could mean trouble for you.”
Charlotte put the teabag—the herb
al one, Lola noticed, despite her choice—into a cup and poured boiling water over it. “Whatever it is, I think you’d better share it with me.”
What the hell, Lola thought. Before she was halfway through her recitation, Charlotte’s arms were around her. “What a terrible thing. And you were right there at that place. Are you sure, though? It seems awfully farfetched.”
Lola let her head fall onto Charlotte’s bosom. “I’m almost positive. That’s why we need to talk to somebody. Somebody who isn’t Thor.”
Charlotte turned to the cookie jar. Lola jumped when it oinked. Charlotte sat the tea in front of her with a cookie on the saucer. “Losing that dog has hit you hard. You’re all worked up. Things will turn out fine. You’ll see.”
Lola picked up the cookie and put it down without tasting it and sipped instead at her tea. Charlotte rose and stood behind her. She massaged Lola’s neck with the sure, firm touch that Lola remembered from the first time they met, when Charlotte had examined the injuries inflicted by Lola’s attacker. “Your back is like a board. It’s no wonder. So many bad things have happened to you here. You’re overwrought.” She dug a fist into Lola’s shoulder.
“That feels nice. Thank you.” Something snagged at Lola’s skin. “Ow!”
Charlotte’s hands lifted away. Lola’s muscles snapped back into quivering tautness. “I must have broken a nail,” Charlotte said. “Sorry.”
Lola rubbed at the spot on her neck. “It’s fine. You’re right. I’m jumpy.” Charlotte sat down across from her. Lola blew on her tea and took another sip. “Do you think I’m crazy?” She felt crazy. Her tongue was fat in her mouth.
Charlotte’s head moved back and forth in slow motion. “No, honey.” The words came from far away.
Lola sat down her tea, very carefully, and watched the cup tilt onto its side. She tried to raise her hand and couldn’t. The amber liquid beaded up on Charlotte’s snowy tablecloth before sinking into it. “Oh, no,” she tried to say, but couldn’t form the words.