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

by Coel, Margaret

  “Sorry to put you to any trouble,” Diana said. She was a slight woman in her late forties, a couple of years older than Vicky, with threads of gray glistening in her long, black hair. She’d been in the grade ahead at St. Francis Mission school, the prettiest girl in school, lit with energy and laughter. Vicky remembered wanting to be like her, the way Diana walked across the mission grounds, the little bounce in her step, tossing back the long, shiny black hair, and all of the boys watching. Now she was struck by the prominence of Diana’s nose, protruding from the thin face and sunken cheeks, like one of those flimsy noses kids wore on Halloween. Deep wrinkles spread from the corners of her eyes and creased her long neck. Her arms were thin, hanging from the sleeves of the white tee shirt with Blue Sky People written in blue across the front. Her legs might have been sticks inside her blue jeans.

  “You’re the only one we could think to come to.” This from Mary Blue Heart, nearly as thin as Diana. She was younger, still in her thirties, Vicky guessed, with a mass of curly, light brown hair inherited from a white ancestor and a complexion that changed from light to dark as she moved her head under the fluorescent ceiling lights. She wore a blouse that folded over the top of khaki slacks and revealed the little bulge of a still-new pregnancy.

  “You read about the skeleton out in the Gas Hills?” Diana asked.

  Vicky nodded. A front-page article in the Gazette. “Rock Hunters Find Human Skeleton.” A homicide. The victim had been shot to death. A bullet hole in the back of the skull. Not until almost the last sentence did the article mention that the coroner believed the skeleton was that of a young woman. There had been two other articles, asking for information on any young women missing from the 1970s. Contact the sheriff’s department. And Annie had brought up the skeleton several times before Vicky had left for Denver. “Heard anything?” she’d asked. “Lots of us are wanting to know who she was.” Which had let Vicky know that the moccasin telegraph was buzzing with speculation and theories.

  And here they were, women from the reservation drawn to an anonymous young woman, shot to death and left in the wilderness of the Gas Hills.

  “Mind if Annie joins us?” Vicky said.

  Diana and Mary nodded in unison, as if they’d wanted to ask, but hadn’t been sure of how to bring up the matter without being impolite.

  Vicky lifted the receiver and pressed a button. It was a moment before Annie picked up, and Vicky suspected she’d had to dart back to the desk from outside the office door where she’d probably been listening. She asked her to come in, then waited while Annie dragged a folding chair across the carpet, opened it at the corner of the desk and sat down.

  “I been telling everybody you’d help us,” she said.

  Diana nodded. “She died out there all alone.”

  “Except for the murderer,” Annie said.

  “That’s what’s got us upset,” Diana went on. “The bastard shot her and got away with it. Tied her arms back. Took her to that godforsaken place, put a twenty-two bullet in her head, and that was after he’d beaten her half to death.”

  “Tied her arms back?” Vicky said. The article hadn’t mentioned anything about that. It was the kind of information investigators liked to keep quiet, the kind only the killer might know.

  “My sister, she’s a clerk in the sheriff’s office,” Mary said. “That’s what she heard from some of the guys that went to the site. It was pretty bad, she says. Bones dragged out of the grave by animals, scattered around. She says they’re not doing much of an investigation. Just skipping over the fact that somebody murdered her, like she wasn’t important.”

  “She deserves more than that, right?” Diana tossed a glance over her shoulder at the women leaning against the back wall, arms folded across their waists. Two of the women started nodding. “Least she deserves is her own name. What does it matter that it happened a long time ago? She was alive once. I mean, she was like us, wasn’t she? Walking around, going about her business. Then some sonofabitch thought it was okay to kill her, punish her, most likely, for something she did that made him mad.”

  They were all nodding at this, and Vicky felt the knot start to tighten in her stomach. The dead woman could have been any of them. The girl in the alley. Susan. Herself. My God, what were the statistics? So horrible that she’d wanted to block them from her mind, regretting the fact that she’d come upon them. Homicide, the number one cause of death for Native American women.

  “I tol’ ’em you know Detective Coughlin,” Annie said. “You can tell him the women on the rez want answers, tell him no way should the killer be walking around free after what he done, tell him that woman needs to be back with her family, buried properlike along with people that loved her. You can tell him that.”

  “It’s a murder case,” Vicky said, threading her way through the logical, legal explanations forming in her mind. “There’s no statute of limitations on murder. Coughlin will investigate the death. That’s his job.”

  “Then why haven’t we heard anything else?” Diana leaned forward and clasped her hands around her bony knees. “Couple articles, that’s all. You know anybody missing, you should contact the sheriff’s office. I’d say, anybody that’s gone missing, the sheriff and the police oughtta already know about it. We hear that nobody at the sheriff’s office is talking about the skeleton anymore. It’s like that girl’s forgotten, left on a shelf out in the coroner’s property room.”

  Vicky started to say that the forensics tests probably hadn’t come back yet, then thought better of it. Behind the dark eyes trained on her, she could see the resolution and the fear. There was something about the girl, shot to death and left in the middle of nowhere, stripped to nothing but her bones, that held the women in its grip. At the least, the girl should have her name back.

  She said, “I’ll have a talk with Detective Coughlin.”

  “I said Vicky’d help,” Annie said.

  Diana Morningstar was the first to break into a smile, but it was slow in coming, like the gradual cracking of a clay mask, as if it had taken a moment for the news to become real. “Thanks,” she said. The others were nodding and smiling, pushing away from the back wall, starting for the door.

  Diana and Mary got to their feet and started after the others. Then Diana whirled back: “You’ll call?”

  “As soon as I learn anything,” Vicky said.

  Annie was on her feet, folding the chair. She waited until Diana had closed the door, then she said, “Adam’s been waiting to see you.”

  It always took her by surprise when she saw Adam Lone Eagle, as if she were seeing him again for the first time: the handsome, imposing look about him, the black hair flecked with gray and the dark eyes that shone with light, the blue shirt opened at the neck, the sleeves rolled over his brown, muscular forearms. Even when they’d spent the night together, then had gone different ways—she to court, perhaps; Adam to a meeting with tribal officials in Ethete—she always felt the little prick of surprise when she saw him again at the office—so like a warrior in the Old Time, a chief, walking toward her, the way he was now, crossing his office, arms outstretched, face relaxed in a smile that made him even more handsome.

  “Man, am I glad you’re back,” Adam said, gathering her to him. He held her close and laced his fingers through the back of her hair. The fabric of his shirt was soft against her face, and the faint odor of aftershave washed over her. She heard his heart beating. She was thinking that she must try to love him.

  “It’s been a long weekend,” he said. His breath was warm on her forehead. After a moment he let her go, except for her right hand, which he kept in his. “What’s with all the women?”

  She explained that they wanted assurance that the sheriff’s detective hadn’t forgotten the skeleton in the Gas Hills.

  “Why would they forget?” Adam let go of her hand, walked around the desk and sank into his chair. He combed his fingers through his hair. “Don’t tell me you’re going to waste a couple of hours over at the she
riff’s office so you can tell the women everything’s following its natural course.”

  “What if it isn’t?” Vicky perched on the edge of the chair in front of the desk. “What if the women are right and the investigation has been pushed to the lowest priority? It’s not like the woman was shot to death yesterday. It probably happened a long time ago.”

  “Okay. Then what?”

  “That’s what I intend to find out.”

  “Oh, Vicky.” Adam shook his head and lifted his eyes to the ceiling a moment. “Send Roger over to have a talk with the detective in charge.” Roger Hurst was the young lawyer, just three years out of law school, that they’d hired several months ago to handle the mundane cases—DUIs and divorces and leases—that walked through the door almost every day, the residue of her one-woman law practice, before Holden and Lone Eagle. She and Adam would concentrate on the important cases that made a difference. Indian lawyers practicing Indian law.

  “We’ve been over this,” Vicky said. “Sometimes there are going to be…”

  Adam lifted one hand, palm out. “I know, I know. Those cases that you can’t resist, you feel compelled…”

  “I promised them I’d be the one to talk to Detective Coughlin.”

  “Why, Vicky? Why does it matter so much? The woman, whoever she was, has been dead a long time. Maybe her family doesn’t know what happened to her, but surely they’ve come to the conclusion that she isn’t coming home. Maybe she’ll never be identified, and nobody will ever know what happened to her.”

  It was then that she told him about the girl in the alley, how Lucas had driven past the little crowd—standing there, watching. How he’d jumped out of the car and gone to the girl’s defense. How he’d stopped the beating. “It could happen to any of us,” she said, but what was still raw—a wound ready to break open—was the realization that it could have happened to Susan. “Nobody should get away with murder.”

  “So you’re gonna camp out at the sheriff’s office…”

  “And ask a few questions,” Vicky said, getting to her feet. “Are you free for dinner tonight?”

  “I was hoping you’d propose more than dinner,” Adam said.

  5

  THE BEIGE STONE building, bathed golden by the morning light, resembled the bluffs that rose unexpectedly out of the earth around Lander. Most of the building housed the detention center—the county jail—but the rear section was given over to the sheriff’s office. Vicky drove around the building and parked in a space marked Visitors. She walked across the asphalt that yawned like an alley between the rows of vehicles and the glass door next to the red Coco-Cola dispenser shoved against the wall. Black letters on the glass said: Fremont County Sheriff’s Office. Vicky let herself inside.

  The entry was small, an afterthought carved out of a corner when the mighty purposes of the building had been constructed. Squinting at the computer screen on the desk across from the door was a woman about thirty with shoulder-length blond hair brushed behind her ears and pinkish skin marked by a band of dark freckles across her nose and cheeks. It was a moment before she looked up. She didn’t say anything.

  “Vicky Holden,” Vicky said, snapping a business card on the desk. She’d probably been here a hundred times, but she’d never seen the woman. “Here to see Detective Coughlin.”

  The woman took another moment—the light gray eyes glancing at the card—before she said, “You got an appointment?”

  “I’d appreciate it if you would let him know I’m here.”

  The woman tossed her head to one side, as if she could toss away the disruption, and picked up the phone. The gray eyes fastened again on the screen. “You got a visitor, a Ms. Holden,” she said. Then she dropped the receiver and, still looking at the screen, said, “He’ll come and get you.”

  Vicky stepped away from the desk and looked around. Nothing but a pair of doors flanking the desk and cement-brick walls muffling the activity on the other side: the faint sounds of voices, doors shutting, people moving about.

  One of the doors swung open. Gary Coughlin, a big man dressed in blue jeans and dark, plaid shirt, leaned into the entry. “Vicky? Follow me,” he said, waving the folder in his other hand.

  Vicky brushed past him and waited until he’d closed the door and ushered her down a corridor with doors on either side. “Thanks for seeing me,” she said as he fell into step beside her.

  “Must say, I was surprised to get your call.” He veered sideways and handed the folder to a short, heavyset man who’d just emerged from behind one of the doors. “This what you’re looking for,” he said. The other man nodded and backed through the doorway.

  Coughlin stopped at the opened door across the corridor. He dipped his head a little so that the fluorescent ceiling light shone on the quarter-size scalp in the back of his dark hair.

  Vicky stepped into an office about the size of the entry. A wedge of sunlight bursting past the narrow window lay over the folders and papers stacked on the desk, taking up most of the space. A computer occupied a small table between the desk and a metal file cabinet. Pinned to the wall above was a map of Fremont County, crisscrossed with red and blue lines that marked off the boundaries of the reservation and the towns of Lander, Riverton, and Dubois from the vast spaces of the county itself—the jurisdiction of the sheriff’s department. On both sides of the map were framed photographs: Coughlin posing with a petite blond woman and two small, towheaded boys; Coughlin in a fisherman’s vest and waders, grinning and holding up a trout that might have measured two feet; the two boys in swim trunks and orange inflated vests running through the water at the edge of a lake; the blond woman in a long, white wedding dress.

  “So I been asking myself, which one of the Indians we picked up this week are you here about?” The detective had to turn sideways to work his way to the swivel chair behind the desk. “Got two or three DUIs, and Les Willows in again for loitering and public drunkenness. My opinion, old Les likes to pay us a visit from time to time and get sobered up. So who’s your client? I thought Hurst was taking on the small potatoes cases.”

  Vicky took the chair next to the door. “I’m here about the woman found murdered in the Gas Hills,” she said.

  The detective pulled a blank face. He let a couple of beats pass before he said, “You mean the skeleton. Under investigation, Vicky. You know I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation.”

  “That’s what I’m here about,” she said. “The investigation. People on the reservation want to know that the woman’s murder is being investigated.”

  “Well, what the hell do they think we’re doing here? Playing monopoly?”

  “Two articles in the paper, Gary. One asking for information on any woman who might be missing.”

  “It’s not like my phone’s been ringing off the hook with responses.”

  Vicky sat back in the chair, taking a moment before she said, “That’s it? Two weeks since the bones were found, and that’s it?” But that wasn’t it, Vicky realized. Coughlin was looking at the corner of the ceiling, avoiding her eyes, running the palm of his hand across his mouth.

  “Come on, Gary,” Vicky said. “There must be something you’re working on. I’d like to go back to the reservation and tell the women…”

  “Women?”

  “They’re very upset. They identify with that woman murdered in the Gas Hills. They think it could have been them or someone close, maybe a daughter.” It could have been Susan. “And the thing is, it doesn’t look like the sheriff’s office is placing a lot of importance on the murder.”

  The man waved a hand between them, fingers outstretched. “We both know that’s a damn lie. It doesn’t matter when the murder took place. We’re investigating it the same as if it happened yesterday.”

  “Then give me something to take back. Anything yet from forensics?”

  Coughlin leaned back and, lacing his fingers over his shirt, swiveled from side to side a moment. Finally, he said, “We got the report a couple of days ag
o. These things take time. It’s not like the lab had a lot to go on. Skeleton wasn’t even intact. Some bones were missing.”

  “What else?” Vicky felt the small office begin to blur around her. There was more! All of her attention narrowed on the man seated on the other side of the desk. When the detective didn’t respond, she said, “It’s a public record, you know.”

  “It’s an ongoing investigation, Vicky.” Coughlin took a moment, then he swiveled around, got to his feet and yanked open the top drawer of the file cabinet. He ran his fingers over the files crammed inside, extracted a thin folder, and slammed the drawer shut. Dropping back onto his chair, he slapped the folder onto the desk. “She was shot in the back of the head. Twenty-two slug found inside the skull.” He went on, eyes fixed on the top page. “Beaten before death. Several teeth missing; evidence of bleeding into the jaw bones. We gave all that to the Gazette. I’m not gonna give you anything that we won’t be releasing in the course of the investigation. Nothing that only the killer knows. You know the drill.”

  “What can you give me?” Vicky said.

  He shrugged, opened the file folder and started thumbing through the white sheets. “Trouble is, what we know so far is just enough to get people all agitated, bring up a lot of stuff from the past, and none of it’s gonna help our investigation. Just the opposite. Could throw up obstacles that’ll keep us from identifying the dead woman and figuring out what happened to her.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Date of death.” He pulled out a sheet and stared at the lines of black type. “Pieces of clothing found under the bones were pretty well disintegrated, but the lab managed to get some identifiable manufacturing marks. Heel on what was left of a boot was manufactured from the late ’60s to 1972. Metal studs on pieces of blue jeans turned out to be Levi’s made in the same period. Obviously murder couldn’t have taken place prior to the late ’60s. Based on the condition of the bones and the physical evidence, forensics ballparks the murder about 1973. Most likely in the warm months because the killer would’ve had a real hard time digging a grave in frozen ground.” He stared at the typed sheet a moment, then snapped the folder shut. “You know what was going on then?”