Called Home

by Melissa F. Miller

  She waited until he disappeared into the front of the office space then scooped up her bag and headed to the back of the office. She stood by the metal door marked ‘Emergency Exit’ and waited with one hand on the handle.

  “Dane Painter?” A gruff, too-loud voice carried through the quiet office.

  That’s not a pizza delivery voice; that’s a law enforcement voice.

  Her brain hadn’t finished registering the thought when her hand pushed down on the bar. She braced herself for an alarm, but none sounded. She flung herself into the stairway and plunged down the steps.

  As the emergency door swung shut, she heard raised male voices, shouting orders, and Dane’s higher voice, demanding to know what was going on. She hit the landing at the bottom of the stairs and raced through the exterior door. As she ran, cutting a diagonal path through the campus, one thought repeated in time with her footsteps and the thump of her bag bumping against her back:

  He doesn’t know my name. He doesn’t know my name.

  Dane couldn’t give her up, even if he wanted to, because she hadn’t told him her name.

  That was the good news. The bad news was he was useless to her now because it was too risky to try to contact him again.

  As she ran past Mercy Locklear’s apartment building and out onto the sidewalk, she noted the green Jeep, still illegally parked, now with a ticket tucked under its wiper. But that’s not what made her run faster.

  It was the three nondescript, dark sedans that formed a neat line behind the Jeep. The feds were here.

  She sprinted into the street without stopping to look for a break in traffic. She ran into the park and ignored the trail. She threw herself into the trees and ran blindly, her lungs burning and her heart thumping.

  She didn’t dare return to the encampment. Instead, when she couldn’t run any further, she slumped against the trunk of a big elm tree to catch her breath and gather her thoughts.

  16

  Aroostine smiled encouragingly at the resident advisor.

  “You say you’re a friend of Dahlia’s?” Her cornflower blue eyes were uncertain.

  “A friend of her mother’s, actually. I’m just passing through town, so I thought I’d stop and take her out to dinner. What undergrad would pass up a free meal, right?” She laughed.

  The girl nodded as if that made more sense. Aroostine felt about a thousand years old.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. ….”

  “Jackman.”

  “Ms. Jackman, but you stopped for no reason. Dahlia dropped out. She doesn’t live here anymore.” She lowered her voice as she broke the news.

  Aroostine frowned and gave her head a little shake. “That can’t be right, Janine. I just talked to Dahlia’s mom last week, and she didn’t mention anything about Dahlia leaving school.”

  Janine Clarkson’s smile was strained. “Um, sometimes people don’t tell their parents right away?”

  Aroostine waited a beat.

  “I can understand that. And I wouldn’t want to go behind Dahlia’s back and tell her mother what’s going on. That’s really her decision to make, don’t you think?”

  “Definitely,” the girl agreed. She hugged her notebook to her chest.

  “But here’s the thing. I have to see for myself that she’s doing okay. I don’t suppose you know where I could find her?”

  Janine glanced over her shoulder. Aroostine could see her chewing on the inside of her cheek as she decided how much to share. She kept her face neutral even though she desperately needed this girl to spill her guts.

  After a moment, Janine bobbed her head like she’d made up her mind. “Okay. I can tell you she’s not in any kind of trouble. In fact, she’s doing great. She left school because she got a job. A really good one that pays a lot of money.”

  A job? What kind of high-paying job could Dahlia Truewind have stumbled into.

  “She’s not a … dancer, is she?”

  “A dancer? Oooh, nooo. It’s not that kind of job. It’s a corporate job, with, like benefits and a salary.”

  “An office job? Where?”

  “Mmm, she didn’t ever tell me the name of the company. But it’s here in town, and they recruited her right on campus. Somebody came and spoke to her U.S. Government class. She was all jazzed about it afterwards.”

  Aroostine rubbed her forehead. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to learn, but this definitely wasn’t it.

  “I don’t suppose you know where she’s living, do you?”

  Janine shook her head. “No, but her old roommate might. Why don’t you wait over in the TV room and I’ll run upstairs and get Cassidy.” She pointed to a lounge area where three broken-down couches were arranged in a semi-circle facing a wall-mounted television. The room was empty, except for an Asian guy sleeping on one of the couches.

  “Great. Thanks.”

  The resident advisor headed for the stairs, and Aroostine turned toward the lounge. She lingered outside the door and scanned the flyers tacked up on the corkboard. She was more than mildly surprised that college kids still sold their old textbooks and sublet their apartments by pinning physical pieces of paper up on an announcement board. She assumed they covered their bases by also posting this stuff on electronic bulletin boards and social media sites.

  Her eyes passed over a poster for a concert and stopped on a handbill advertising a meeting of the Native American Student Union. She committed the contact name and telephone number to memory and then studied the rest of the board. Nothing else looked remotely promising.

  She turned and spotted Janine half-leading, half-pulling a sullen teenager down the stairs.

  “You must be Cassidy.” Aroostine walked over to the landing at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m Rue Jackman, a friend of Dahlia’s mom’s. Thanks for agreeing to talk to me.” She extended her hand. The girl looked at it with open disdain.

  “It’s not like I had a choice.” She twisted her arm out of Janine’s grip. “And this is a waste of time. Dahlia and I weren’t tight. We were randomly assigned as roommates. We shared space. For ten whole days. That’s all.”

  “Still. I appreciate anything you can tell me. So will her mother.”

  The sour-faced girl squinted at her. “Yeah, about that. Dahlia and her mom weren’t super close. I don’t even know if she’d want her mom to know what she was up to.”

  Aroostine’s patience with this overgrown brat was thinning, rapidly. She managed a tight smile.

  “Come on, you guys can talk in here.” Janine yanked open the door to the lounge and called to the sleeping guy. “Dylan, get up. We need this room.”

  He moaned and grumbled but pulled himself off the couch and shuffled past them.

  “Go ahead,” the resident advisor prodded Dahlia’s former roommate. “Or I’ll write you up.”

  Cassidy flounced inside and flung herself onto the recently vacated couch. Aroostine blocked Janine’s path.

  “Thanks. This won’t take long. Do me a favor and keep people out of here.” She pulled the door closed as Janine worked her mouth like a fish.

  She watched for a moment through the glass wall. The resident advisor folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the door. Good enough.

  She turned back to Cassidy. “Let’s make this quick. Do you know where Dahlia moved to?”

  “No.”

  “Did she take all her stuff?”

  “She didn’t have much.” She said it with a hint of a sneer. A little judgment of her less well-off roommate. “Her clothes and some makeup, mostly. All the furniture and, like, posters and stuff belongs to me.”

  Aroostine cocked her head. “Did she say if the place she rented was furnished?”

  “She didn’t say, and I didn’t care. Look, it was the beginning of the semester. I was busy, trying to get in the swing of classes and deciding which sorority I was interested in. I didn’t have time to waste yapping with somebody who wasn’t going to be sticking around.” She twirled a long strand of wavy hai
r around her index finger. “Especially not someone who only wanted to talk about her stupid job.”

  “What was the job?”

  An eye roll. “She said she was going to be a counter-insurgency specialist.” A snort. “As if. I’m sure she’s filing paperwork and filling out spreadsheets. But she acted like it was soooo glamorous.”

  Counter-insurgency specialist?

  “She joined the military?”

  Cassidy laughed. “No. It was a private company with a dumb name.” Her face went slack.

  It took Aroostine a second to realize the girl was thinking. She waited, but after a moment, Cassidy shook her head.

  “I can’t remember. Which is funny, since that’s all she talked about the last day or two.” She squinted. “Flintstone Something, maybe? I don’t know. She had this cheesy uniform that she was all excited about. A blue polo shirt and a pair of cheap khakis. She looked like a caddy at my dad’s golf club, but she thought she was the sh— … she thought she was so cool.”

  Aroostine wasn’t sure how much more of Cassidy she could take. It occurred to her that she might have jumped at a job, too, if her freshman roommate had been anything like this girl.

  “Can you think of anything else? Anything at all?”

  “Uh, not really. There was a logo on the shirt. But I’m not sure what it was.” She pulled herself off the couch. “Are we done?”

  “Sure. Thanks for your help.”

  “Whatever.” She paused and considered what she was about to say. “Look, I’m not sure Dahlia wants to be found. Like I said, we weren’t friends or anything. But I got the impression she was ashamed of where she came from. You know? Like, this dumb job is a fresh start for her. Maybe just leave her alone.”

  Cassidy gave a little shake of her blond hair, like a horse tossing its mane, and then strolled over to the door. She pushed it open, nudging Janine in the back. The RA turned and caught Aroostine’s eye. She nodded, and Janine moved aside to let the girl pass. Then Janine stuck her head into the room.

  “Are you all done?”

  She’d gotten everything she was going to get out of the roommate. “Was Dahlia friendly with anybody else? Someone living down the hall, someone she had classes with—anyone?”

  “Look, Ms. Jackman. I don’t know what to tell you. She was only here for a week and a half. People were still getting settled in when she left. She didn’t stick around long enough to make any friends, you know?”

  Aroostine sighed. “I get it. Thanks for your help, Janine.”

  “Sure.” She glanced down at her cellphone. “Just make sure you sign out at the front desk, okay? I have to go. We’re doing a spaghetti dinner for the freshmen.”

  She trotted off without waiting for an answer.

  Aroostine stopped at the desk on her way out. While she waited for the work-student to flip through the guest register to the correct page, she idly scanned the bulletin board over his shoulder one more time. Her eyes landed on the Native American Student Union’s flyer.

  Rally to support the Water Protectors and protest the police state tactics of mercenaries like the Bedrock Force.

  Flintstone Something? Bedrock Force. But, mercenaries?

  “Lady?” the kid behind the desk prompted.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  He shoved a pen toward her, and she scribbled her name and the time without taking her eyes off the poster.

  Aroostine tried a deli, a hookah lounge, and grocery store before she finally found a pay phone at a Laundromat about a quarter mile from the freshman dorm. The hot, saturated air hit her in the face as she walked inside.

  The place wasn’t very crowded for a Saturday. A few women glanced up from their conversations or from tending to their kids or sorting their clothes to note her arrival. A tall, gangly teenager wearing a basketball jersey was stretched out across three metal chairs with a Sioux Falls College cap covering his face.

  The payphone hung from the wall in the right front corner of the building, sandwiched in between a change machine and a vending machine that dispensed overpriced detergent and dryer sheets.

  She flipped through her wallet to find the scrap of paper where she’d jotted down Janice Truewind’s telephone number. It had been at least a decade, probably longer, since she’d had any reason to make a call from a payphone. She had no idea how much a call to East Shannon would cost.

  She guessed high and dropped several quarters into the slot then cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder while she punched in the digits. After an electronic pulsing tone, she heard ringing on the staticky line.

  One ring. Two rings. Come on, pick up. Three rings.

  After the fourth ring, an answering machine switched on:

  “You’ve reached Janice and Dahlia. Leave us a message, and we’ll call you back!”

  Aroostine’s heart constricted in her chest. Dahlia must’ve recorded the outgoing message—the voice was so lively and young. She waited for the beep.

  “Hi, this is … Carole’s friend. We met in Pennsylvania. I’m in South Dakota, and I have a question for you. I don’t have a number where you can reach me, so I’ll try you again tomorrow. I hope you can—”

  “Hello? Hello, I’m here. Don’t hang up!” Janice Truewind’s voice was frantic, breathless.

  “I’m still here.”

  “Did you find her? Where are you—Sioux Falls? Is she okay?” She fired the questions rapidly, one sentence tripping over the next without a pause.

  “Slow down. I just got into town. I visited the college, and I have a question. That’s all.” Aroostine spoke slowly and deliberately as if her calmness might be contagious. It wasn’t.

  “Okay, sure. What’s your question?”

  “Did you ever hear Dahlia talk about a company called Bedrock Force?”

  “Bedrock Force?” she echoed.

  “Yes.”

  Finally, Aroostine could hear the other woman taking a deep breath.

  Good.

  But when she let it out, she exploded. “She wouldn’t have anything to do with them.”

  She answered fast. A little too fast.

  “You sound awfully sure.”

  “Because I am.”

  Aroostine rubbed her forehead. “Okay, Janice. I don’t mean to rush you, but I’m on a pay phone. So could you explain why you’re so convinced?”

  “Fine. About a year and a half ago, when the protests at Standing Rock were still going strong, she drove me to a doctor’s appointment at the VA. There was a sheet on a bulletin board in the waiting room. Bedrock Force was looking to hire. I can’t remember the details, but it was a good wage, with benefits. And they gave a preference for veterans.”

  “And you were interested.”

  “Yeah. I figured, they’re a government contractor, so they can’t discriminate against me because I’m in a wheelchair. And we really could’ve used that money.”

  “But you didn’t get the job.”

  Janice laughed shortly. “I didn’t apply for the job. Dahlia threw a fit at the thought. She called me a traitor to the Lakota people for even considering applying for a job with that outfit. I tried to explain that someone like me would be doing office work, not beating back protesters, but she didn’t want to hear it. She was doing that internship with Carole back then. She was in her power to the people, one tribe united phase.” The words were laced with mild bitterness.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” Aroostine said more to herself than to Janice.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I’m still gathering information. But there is one more question I forgot to ask you when you were at my house.”

  “Shoot.”

  “What’s Dahlia’s favorite food?

  “Excuse me?”

  “Her favorite food. Does she have a restaurant she loves? Is she a meat and potatoes girl, a vegetarian? What would she eat if she could have anything she wanted?”

  Janice answered this one right away, too. But that was to be expe
cted.

  “Tacos. That kid is a sucker for a taco.”

  “Mexican? Or just tacos?”

  “Tacos.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “Wait, don’t hang up. When will you call again? Are you going to update me when you learn something?”

  “Like I said, I didn’t bring my cell phone with me. So I’ll only call when I have something meaningful to report or important to ask. Just hang tight.”

  “You could get a throwaway cell phone, you know.”

  But then you’d want the number, and I wouldn’t have an excuse to only talk to you on my terms, she thought.

  What she said was, “I could. But I don’t think it’s a good idea. You’ve got to trust me. If there is anyone else out there looking for Dalia, I certainly don’t want to lead them to her.”

  There was a heavy silence while Janice considered this. Then she said grudgingly, “I guess you’re right. But it’s killing me to be trapped here not able to do anything.”

  She could see that. Janice was a former soldier—a woman of action. And being stuck out on the reservation with no way to help and little information had to be driving her crazy.

  A memory of her mentor, the lawyer who’d hired her for her first job, popped into her mind. He always gave his clients an assignment. Even if he never used what they pulled together, it helped them feel invested in their case. Keeping Janice occupied was important. And there was always a chance she’d come up with something useful.

  “Well, there is something you could do.”

  “Anything.”

  “You said she broke up with her boyfriend right before she left for school.”

  “That’s right. Tommy White’s got no ambition. He’s never leaving Pine Ridge. And that didn’t sit right with her.”

  “He says he hasn’t heard from her since she’s been gone, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I’m wondering if they ever talked politics or current events while they were together.”

  Janice snorted. “It’s not like he’d have had a choice.”

  “Okay, good, then. See if you can find out if her views about Standing Rock ever changed or if she ever said anything about following your footsteps and joining the Army. Anything like that.”