by Jeff Altabef
Ella rolls her eyes. “I’ll never go to a dog park with her again. One time, three dogs jumped on top of each other just so she could pet them. She’s the Dog Whisperer.”
“Do you have one of your own?” the woman asks.
“No, Mom’s allergic.”
The woman shoots me a sidewise glance and says, “Thanks” to me, and, “Come on,” to Charlie. I watch as she leads the dog away. He keeps looking back at me, but she tugs him along.
“You could always walk dogs for a living,” Marlon says.
“Really?”
“What? Dog walkers make good money.”
“Let’s keep going.” I tug on Troy’s arm.
We scoot past the gallery toward 3rd Street. We take a right onto Dent’s road and stop at number 125, right next to Aunt Maye’s Big and Tall Western Outfitter. A blue neon sign makes it clear where we are.
“This store is perfect for you, Marlon,” I tease him.
He wrinkles his face. “I doubt they have my style.”
I grin at his oversized t-shirt and loose fitting shorts.
“Marlon likes casual chic.” Ella chuckles as she loops her arm around Marlon’s. I chuckle along with her, but a new pang of jealously stabs at me. They seem so close. Do they know how lucky they are?
A glass door stands to the left of the storefront. I check the names on the directory. J. Dent lives in apartment 302. The walkup uses a buzzer system.
“How are we going to get in?” Marlon asks.
“Should we buzz Dent?” Ella suggests. “Or maybe we should buzz everyone else and hope someone lets us in. Of course, there’s a third option.”
All eyes turn to me. This is my show. “I vote for the third option. We should surprise him.” I glance at Troy. “Can you pick the lock?”
He frowns, leans forward, and examines the lock. It’s an old pin and tumbler, something that hasn’t been updated for decades. By the time he looks up, Ella has already grabbed a bobby pin from her hair. Troy grins, takes the pin, and removes his keychain from his pocket, which has an assortment of small tools stuck in it. He slides out an Allen Wrench and goes to work on the lock.
This is not the first lock he’s picked. My old high school uses the same type. We’ve gone exploring a few times after school hours. Nothing bad, just bored kids looking for something to do.
Troy twists the wrench, the latch clicks, and the door opens. “After you,” he says as he holds the door open.
I lead us up the wooden staircase, and in a minute we’re facing apartment 302. Only three apartments are on the floor. 302 faces the street and has a simple red wooden door with brass numbers toward the top. My pulse accelerates. Some of the puzzle pieces are behind this door. I rap on it three times, wondering if Dent is home, wondering what we’ll learn.
We wait. Time slows. Marlon breathes heavily behind me. Anxiety surrounds us like moisture in a rain cloud. Just when I think no one is home, a rustling sound comes from inside the apartment.
As the noise gets closer, a high-pitched voice cries out, “It’s about time. The toilet won’t flush since this morning. I’m too old to wait all day!” The door opens and a thin, gray-haired woman stands on the other side. Her severe, gaunt face twists into a question. “Who are you? Where’s Carlos, the Super?”
I’m in front, so I manufacture my sweetest smile. “We’re looking for John Dent.”
A sad shadow drifts across her face. The expression is fleeting, as if she’s had much practice chasing it away.
“There is no John Dent living here. You have the wrong place. I’m Jane Dent.” She starts to swing the door closed, but she moves slowly, so I walk into the apartment before she gets the chance. I don’t know where this confidence comes from, but there’s more to the story, and I need some answers. My friends reluctantly follow me.
“I didn’t invite you in,” the old woman protests, but she moves to the side as we walk past her. The apartment is nicer than I expect—exposed brick walls, hardwood floors, and tall windows with a view of Old Town.
She shuts the door behind us. “So why are you looking for my John?” Her voice lilts, fading at the end. Her eyes pierce mine and sparkle like emeralds .
“John Dent wrote a newspaper article we’re interested in,” I say. “We thought we could ask him a few questions. It’s for a school project.”
The old woman leans against a dark blue couch. Behind her is a fireplace with a plain brick mantel with family pictures placed on the ledge. The largest picture shows a middle-aged woman with her arm around a young man’s shoulders. They have the same green eyes, her eyes. Other pictures flank that one - pictures of grandchildren and two women who also resemble her. They’re probably her daughters.
“John wrote a few newspaper articles, but that was a long time ago.” She crosses her arms against her chest. The sleeves of her thin yellow blouse droop from her wrists. “I can’t help you with any of them.”
“Do you know where he is?” I study her closely, trying to read her. “We need to talk to him.”
“My John died some time ago. You need to leave, or I’m calling the police.” She bites her lip.
I hesitate. There’s more that she’s not telling me. I can feel it. Troy has already started for the door, but I stay solidly in place. “When did he die?”
The old woman’s eyes flutter to the floor. “Four years ago. Now please go. I’m sure Carlos will be coming any minute.”
I nod, and we leave. When we reach the street, we bunch together in a huddle.
“That seems like a dead end,” Troy says.
“Really, Troy?” Ella says. “She was hiding something. It was obvious from her body language. Something happened to her son that she didn’t want to tell us.”
“She only had one picture of him on the mantel, and he looked like he was in his twenties,” I say. “I wonder when he really died.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Ella snaps. “We’ll go to the cemetery.”
“Let’s stop at Tito’s Tacos first.” Marlon licks his lips.
“I can’t believe you,” Troy jostles him with an elbow.
“What? I’m hungry.”
Packed as usual, a line stretches beyond the Tito’s Tacos food truck at least ten customers long, and when one leaves, another takes his place. Mostly day laborers that quit work early wait patiently for their turn, but a few others with collared shirts and khakis who might work in Old Town blend in, too. No one from Bartens is here. I’m not surprised.
Do I belong, or is it too late for me? Have my two years at Bartens changed me so much that Tito’s is no longer a place for me?
I grind my teeth. I feel comfortable with my friends but we’re not close like we were before Bartens. A distance has grown between us since I changed schools. It’s not any one thing, but the ease we used to have between us is not the same. I’m always one step behind, trying to catch-up and figure out the latest, like what’s up with Marlon’s brother. I should have known that he got that job with the Sheriff’s Department, but now these things, small but important events, slip by without me knowing.
Which world do I belong in?
It can’t be both. Sometimes I feel isolated, like I’ll never belong anywhere. Troy and Katie are really my only two links to both worlds. They’re the only two I can count on, but some days that’s not enough. There’s ice beneath my feet and it’s cracking. I’m afraid if I fall in, no one will be around to help me out. Sicheii wants me to be a rock, but if I’m a rock is it possible to be comfortable in both places like he says or neither?
What if I’m just not strong enough?
I take a deep breath and my lungs fill with a greasy, spicy scent that makes my mouth water. I imagine that odor lingering well after Tito’s Tacos is gone. It probably lives in the trees, the soil, the rocks....
The smell helps cleanse my thoughts and brings me back to my immediate worries. We sit on a picnic bench as far away from the food truck as possible. Marlon has alrea
dy eaten three tacos and launched himself into his fourth without any loss of enthusiasm. He is a taco-eating machine.
“So what do we know?” Ella asks. “Someone killed Roundtree and Brooks. They both died violently, within a day of each other, so both murders are probably connected.”
“Brooks, Roundtree, Hunter, Taylor, your grandfather, and one other person were in the photograph,” Marlon adds between bites. “And that article was removed from the newspaper’s website.”
“Yes, and John Dent died, and his mom lied to us about when. I have a strange feeling his death is connected to these two new murders,” I add.
“We don’t know that she lied,” Troy objects as he purses his lips. He looks frustrated and rubs his hands over his face, which is unlike him. “There may be no connection between the killings and the photograph. The picture was taken over twenty-seven years ago. That’s a long time. Brooks and Roundtree were both old and knew each other. There could be many other explanations for the murders.”
“True, but you have to admit it’s strange that the only edition of The Sentinel not online is the one with the photo. Marlon is right.” I frown at Troy. “Somebody doesn’t want us to see the article.”
Marlon beams a smile at me as he shovels the last bite of taco in his mouth. “Guess what’s my favorite day of the year?” he asks. A small river of pepper sauce leaks down the side of his face and splashes onto his t-shirt.
Ella hands him a napkin.
“Christmas?”
“Nope. October 4th.”
“Why?” Troy asks.
“October 4th is National Taco Day.”
“Great.” I smile and shake my head. “Let’s find John Dent’s gravestone so we can discover when he died. I’m sure his mother lied about that, and if she did, something else must be going on.”
“What about John Dent’s Secret Society article?” Ella asks as she rises from the bench and stretches. “What could Dent have been writing about?”
Troy shrugs his wide shoulders. “Outsiders have always believed rumors of secret societies involving magic or pagan rituals among the tribes. He probably wrote some nonsense along those lines. I doubt there’s much to it. If a secret society exists, they’re sure doing a good job of keeping it quiet.”
“That would be the point, Troy.” Ella rolls her eyes.
“Your attitude is starting to bug me.” I jab my finger at him.
“Why? Because I have a hard time believing there’s a secret society filled with people we know that’s been meeting for over thirty years. And this secret society has dangerous information that someone’s willing to murder to discover?” He uses air quotes when he says secret society, and I want to deck him. I know it sounds far-fetched, but the pieces are starting to fit together. There’s more to this mystery that I need to find out.
“Actually, Troy, there have been many secret societies that have gone on way longer than thirty years.” Ella starts ticking them off with her fingers. “There’s the Skull and Bones, the Freemasons, the Templars, the Illuminati—”
“Don’t forget about Area 51,” Marlon interrupts. “We all know the government has an alien corpse hidden in Area 51.”
Troy shakes his head and lifts his arms up in mock surrender. “I give up. Let’s go find the gravestone and discover when John Dent died. Maybe he was abducted by aliens.”
I walk briskly toward Ella’s Ford. Moving feels good. We need to find more puzzle pieces. Time is running out. The cemetery is huge, and the sun has started sinking. We don’t have much light left.
Ella pilots the Ford into the cemetery’s massive parking lot. The place is quiet—no more than ten cars are parked toward the entrance. All the locals use this cemetery, including the town’s five founding families. I don’t even know if there’s another cemetery around here.
As we walk through the gate, we hear the bubbling sound of the meandering creek that splits the burial grounds roughly in half. Narrow green bands dotted with grass and a few short conifer trees create a thin line on both sides of the stream. When the graves spread away from the water, clay, red rocky soil and the random cactus replace the grass.
“Let’s split up in two groups,” Ella suggests. “Marlon and I will cross the bridge and check the West side of the cemetery, and you two can stay on this side and check out the East side.”
Troy and I walk methodically down the rows of the dead. I spot a palm-sized piece of petrified wood and start tossing it and catching it as we go.
“I don’t understand why anyone would want to be buried in a box,” Troy says as he marches, head swinging from side to side. “I want to be cremated and returned to the earth, so my death will benefit other living things.”
“You sound like Sicheii.”
“That’s not a bad thing. There’s value in the old ways. You can’t ignore them.”
“The world has changed a lot since the old ways.” I trudge up and down the rows and keep my head down while I study the names. I call out the unusual ones to pass the time. Most of the gravestones are simple rectangles half buried in the ground. “To advance, we need to evolve. No one hunts buffalo with bows and arrows anymore, Troy.”
“You used to care more about our traditions before you went to that school.” Troy kicks some loose stones.
He’s right. I was closer to Sicheii back then and would spend lazy afternoons with Troy talking about Sicheii’s stories and the different spirits. We don’t do that anymore.
Troy romanticizes our past and believes the old ways are more than superstitions primitive people needed to get by. Technology replaces all those superstitions for me. Who needs the Wind Spirit to praise or Coyote to fear when we have Apple and the Internet and science and the super-mean spoiled sharks at Bartens to contend with?
We wander into the oldest part of the cemetery, and I find something odd on an old tombstone and hesitate. It looks like a circle is carved into the stone. Dirt has crusted over it, so I wipe off the brown bits of earth and stare at the marker for a moment and wonder if my eyes are playing tricks on me, but they aren’t. A Steven Holden died in 1845. Next to his name is a carving of two twisted arrows in a circle. The carving looks the same as Roundtree and Sicheii’s tattoo—exactly the same.
My chest tightens and goose bumps run up my arms. I squeeze the stone in my hand hard as I stare at the symbol and wonder what it means. Steven Holder doesn’t sound like a Native American name, but there was a time when young Native Americans were taken to “American” schools to change them into “Americans,” including changing their names. Maybe he was one of those people.
“Did you find something?”
“No,” I answer, reluctant to share the symbol with Troy or anyone else. The twisted arrows worry me. It’s connected to Sicheii and the more often it shows up, the more likely he’s in the middle of a storm. “This part of the cemetery is too old. We should head farther north.”
I glance down at my hand. I’ve reduced the petrified piece of wood to dust. Weird. They’re usually as hard as stone, but this one must have been defective. My phone pings.
Troy stops and stares.
“It’s from Ella.”
He slides over. “Let’s see what she found.”
I click on the text. It contains a photograph of a tombstone. I enlarge the photo. The writing is clearly visible: “John Dent, Born April 15, 1961 – Died July 26, 1986.”
My heart races. “John Dent died the day after his article was published.”
But that’s not the worst part. Next to his name is a carving of two twisted arrows in a circle.
We regroup in the parking lot near Ella’s Ford. Troy and I have been arguing the entire trip back to the car. He’s being stubborn. “There has to be a connection between John Dent’s death and the article. It can’t be a coincidence that he died the day after he published the story, Troy,” I say.
He just stares ahead, a blank expression on his face. I’ve seen that look dozens of times. He’s lost in thou
ght. The gears spinning in his head are almost visible. Usually he’d have no problem believing in a conspiracy, but since this one involves Native Americans, he’s struggling with it. He doesn’t want it to be true, but I don’t want my grandfather involved in this mystery and the evidence is starting to stack up. Sometimes things happen you can’t control.
“I think you’re right,” Ella says, “and did you see that weird symbol after John Dent’s name on his gravestone? I’ve seen it before, but I can’t place it.”
My heart skips. I was hoping to keep the twisted arrows a secret, but if Ella has already noticed it, I don’t have a choice. She deserves to know everything. I swallow the lump in my throat and say, “Roundtree had the same symbol tattooed on his chest, and I saw the same thing on another tombstone in the cemetery, an old one.”
“That’s why you asked us if Brooks had a tat,” Marlon says, “to see if he had the same one?”
“But why didn’t you tell us about the symbol right away?” Ella’s eyes sharpen and her hands fly to her hips.
I sigh. “My grandfather has the same tattoo on his chest. I don’t know what it means, but I’m sure he’s mixed up in this mess somehow.”
“The symbol was probably just a popular design thirty years ago. I’ve never seen it before,” Troy says.
“Perhaps it has something to do with this secret society Dent wrote about.” Ella purses her lips. “We need to visit Joe Hunter. He’s in the photograph. He should know something.”
Hunter owns a general store near the Reservation that makes the best flavored ices. He used to work in the store all the time, but now his nephew is usually behind the counter, which only makes the store more popular among teenagers because his nephew will sell beer to almost anyone.
“Hunter lives in Red Rock Commons,” Marlon says.
We all shoot him a look.
“What? My grandmother’s dating him.”
