“Where is she?”
He turned cherry red under his mop of hair, and I thought maybe he’d start throwing fists. “You want to know where the trouble started? Find Alex. It’s him.”
27
I didn’t hold out much hope I’d find Alex at home, but it seemed like the place to start, so I took to the road. A meteor slammed into my windshield, and I flinched. Expecting spider-webbed glass and flaming upholstery, I was surprised as a heavy film of water spread across the windshield. Another burst exploded, more water. These weren’t raindrops but some kind of celestial weaponry. I rolled my window down a crack to smell the rain on the warm road. Making the grass grow? We’d be lucky if it didn’t leave craters in the hills to become blowouts when the rain quit. Unless, of course, this was the start of another Noah’s flood incident, and then it wouldn’t matter if I found out who attacked Kyle or not.
The rain settled into a steady rhythm as I drove through Dry Creek, noting the same people hanging out on the street, a few rusty vehicles scattered at the liquor stores, the same general feel of despair. The wipers carried the conversation on my way from Sand Gap, past the vehicle carcasses and sailing Walmart bags to Rita Red Owl’s trailer.
Sun burst from behind a cauldron of black clouds. Typical bipolar Sandhills weather.
Rita’s place looked every bit as forlorn and empty as it had before. If any vehicle had been there in the past two days, all traces were wiped out by the last squall. I parked close to the trailer and made my way across the mud and weeds and up the cinderblock steps to pull the decimated screen back and knock on the door.
No one answered. Maybe Kyle’s Aunt Birdie had taken Rita to her house after all. I waited a moment more, then tried the doorknob. It turned, and I creaked the dented door open.
“Hello?” I hollered through the crack.
A slight moan greeted me, and I shoved the door open. Whoever beat up Kyle might have taken Shelly and was after the whole family. The smell of spoiled potatoes and puke hit me full force and stopped me. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the dim light, and when they did, I saw Rita on her side on the living room floor.
I rushed to her and put my head close, nearly retching at her smell. “Rita. Wake up. Are you okay?” All the while I tapped on her cheeks, soft with wrinkles.
No blood on her clothes and she didn’t have a fever. A line of dried saliva and vomit ran from her mouth down her cheek, where it puddled. She moaned again and opened her eyes.
“Rita. It’s Kate Fox, Grand County sheriff.”
Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times, and her eyes fought for focus. “Sheriff?”
I put a hand under her shoulders and helped her sit up. “Are you okay?”
Her feet collided with a pile of beer cans, making them rattle. She squeezed her eyes closed and rubbed her temples. “He’s not here.”
“Alex?” I squatted in front of her, trying to ignore the stench of stale beer breath, unwashed body, and the puke.
She squinted at me and rolled to her hands and knees. “All of them. No one left here but me.”
I helped her to stand, and we wobbled toward the front door. “What do you mean?”
She leaned on the doorframe and swayed. “It was that man. He ruined me. I had a life and something to look forward to. You think Shelly had a future? What about me? I was gonna leave the rez.”
Rita’s blood alcohol level had to be well on the way to pickled. I wouldn’t get anything useful from her, but that seemed less important than getting her some help. “I’m going to take you into Sand Gap. Maybe go stay with your sister for a while?”
She let me lead her outside before her legs gave way and she plopped on a cinderblock. “He promised me. Said he’d love me and take care of me. And then what?” She swayed, and I clutched at her arm to keep her from careening off the side of the step.
“Leave me with a baby. I can’t do nothing with a baby. So I gotta stay on the rez and get married to some drunk.”
Tears sprouted. “I was gonna go to college, jus’ like Shelly. Had a scholarship. Gonna be a nurse.”
I managed to hoist her to her feet and drag her arm over my shoulder. I had to stoop to keep her feet on the ground.
“That man. He don’ care. Not abou’ his son. I tried to get him to pay, but he won’ give me nothing. Says he’ll send me to jail if I tell anyone about him.” She stopped and tugged on my arm so I looked at her. Her eyes widened to drive home the point. “An’ he can do it. He can.”
I dragged her a step before she staggered along with me.
She pounded the air with her free hand. “He don’ love Kyle. And tha’s what’s wrong with him.”
My heart stuttered. Kyle? I tried to keep my voice even. “Kyle’s father doesn’t love him?”
She flopped over, making me bend along with her. She jerked her arm from my shoulder, planted both hands on her knees, and retched before dropping to the ground. “Then they took Darrel.” She started to cry. “He was gonna take care of me. He promised.”
I wanted to get back to Kyle. “You mean Kyle’s father? He was going to take care of you?”
She twisted her head to look at me. “Darrel. My good boy. He wouldn’t leave me. But they killed him.”
For a tiny woman, Rita took a lot of wrangling. I succeeded in pulling her to her feet and began our trek to my car. A ding alerted me to a text, but I didn’t have an extra hand to check it. It would have to wait.
Rita wasn’t making any sense, and every time I asked about Kyle’s father, she wandered behind another hill.
I opened the back door, wedged the pump on the floor, and settled Rita into the back seat. She kept a running monologue about Darrel being the best of the lot, until we reached the highway and I tried to redirect her. I doubted I’d get any real information, but I’d had enough of her glowing tribute.
“Do you know where Shelly is?” I watched her in the rearview mirror.
She slouched against the back seat, her head barely above the windows. Her face contorted. “I tried to tell her. I said to leave the white boys alone. But Kyle got hold of her. Got her thinkin’ the white world is good. And they took her.”
An electric current shot through me. “Who took her?”
Rita started to cry again. “They got her. Gonna treat her like a whore. Gonna ruin her life. Like mine.”
Rita didn’t give me much, but her rambling made a kind of sense. It solidified a nagging thought I’d been inching toward.
“And Alex? Do you know where he is?”
She sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “He’s the one that did it. He made this happen.”
I took Rita to The Stop, and Gordon helped me get her into the store. We made a bed for her on a broken-down loveseat in Gordon’s office. He assured me he’d call his mother and get Rita to her house. With any luck, they’d keep her from going back to her trailer when she sobered up.
I practically ran to my car and pulled out my phone. I meant to call Pete but was stopped by the text I’d forgotten.
What a sucker-punch to the gut.
“Leave me alone.” Even though I knew, I texted back, “Who is this?”
I stared at my phone, and against all laws of physics, willed her to appear by my side. A toucan icon appeared on the screen to the ding of the new text alert.
Carly. I’d given her a stuffed toucan when she was tiny. Birdy Bird was her best friend, and she knew I’d understand the icon.
I typed fast. “Come home. I love you.”
I waited. Nothing. For a full five minutes, I clutched my phone. It took me a while before I realized I’d been repeating, “Please, please, please.”
Still nothing.
The calls I’d made to the men in Brian’s picture. Is this why she contacted me? Had news gotten back to Carly? If so, how? Who?
My first impulse was to call Baxter. But he’d climb all over me about interfering in the investigation. We’d have a go-around about the professional knowing how
to work a missing person case and about how I was too emotional and hot-headed.
What I needed to do now was find Kyle’s attacker. This was my job.
I continued with my original plan. I tapped my feet while I waited several light-years for the two rings it took for Pete Grainger to pick up.
After I identified myself, I started right in. “Did you get some rest?” The last thing I needed was a muddle-brained sheriff.
He hesitated. “Well, yes. I’m sorry about the shooting. But I’m better.”
“Can you meet me in Dry Creek?”
He didn’t question me. “Of course. When?”
“Now. I need you to go with me to Barnett’s place before he gets back from court.”
Grainger sounded grave. “Why?”
Wished he was driving and not jawing. “I’ll explain it all when you get here, but I need you to help me.”
“You know I’ll do my best, Kate. But can you tell me what this is about?”
I took a deep breath, every bit of me thudding with what I feared. “I think he’s involved in human trafficking.”
28
When Pete pulled into Frankie’s parking lot, I quit pacing and jumped in the passenger seat of his Bronco. He left it in park and turned to face me. “You’re wrong about Lee.”
I’d expected this. “I know you and Barnett are good friends. But everything points to this. I think it started a couple of years ago when these people moved onto the Olson place.”
Grainger gave me a quizzical look. “I thought no one lived there.”
I nodded. “They’ve been hiding out. Kept all the buildings looking abandoned on the outside but fixed up on the inside. They have it all barricaded like they expect World War III.”
“And you think Lee’s got something to do with them?”
“Barnett picks up the girls on the rez and hands them off to Marty and Rhonda, probably through the young guy who lives out there.”
Pete was full of explosive energy trapped behind the wheel. “Sounds farfetched.”
I was losing him. “I think they took Kyle’s sister and Kyle figured it out. That’s why they tried to kill him.”
Pete put the Bronco in reverse and backed out. He straightened the wheel and started us down the highway toward Potsville.
After a long time, he pulled in a deep breath and said, “Lee isn’t selling girls. I’ll show you what’s going on.”
Lee and Sally Barnett lived about two miles outside of Potsville, a twenty-minute drive from Dry Creek. On the way, Pete spoke in bursts. “Lee has a lot more bark than bite.”
“His teeth look pretty sharp to me,” I grumbled, watching the play of sunlight on the prairie as bear-like clouds tumbled across the sky. Would it kill Mother Nature to give us one whole sunny day, without driving rain and wicked wind?
Pete was like a dog without his daily run and yet he drove exactly sixty-five, the speed limit. “He’s not had an easy life.”
After seeing the folks in Dry Creek and on the rez, I didn’t feel a lot of sympathy for Lee’s harsh experiences. “Whatever he’s been through is no cause to treat people, especially the Lakota, worse than livestock.”
Pete rubbed his chin. “Lee’s got a lot more compassion than you give him credit for.”
“Ha.” I didn’t try to hide my disbelief. “I see him more like the Bad Samaritan.”
In his starched shirt, Pete hinted at a smile. “You don’t know him.”
I folded my arms and considered when the clouds would dump again. “He doesn’t seem like a terribly deep man, more like a mean dog with a broken leash.”
Pete flashed dark eyes at me and lectured as if talking to his kids. “Lee doesn’t hate the Lakota. Just the opposite. It kills him to see the poverty and wasted lives.”
“Uh-huh.” This attitude showed the same lack of clear thinking as shooting wildly in the parking lot last night.
“Lee would probably kick my butt for telling you this, but I think you need to know so you’ll understand him better.”
Understanding why a wasp stings didn’t make me want to invite one into my bedroom.
“When Lee was a kid, he fell in love. Hard. This wasn’t any young love thing, like the kids that have a different girlfriend every two months. They fell true and deep.”
This was like telling me tarantulas are sweet, just misunderstood. “Did you know Barnett then?”
Pete reddened and nodded. “Yeah. We got to be friends because I didn’t bust his balls over dating a rez girl. At that time, you gotta understand, it wasn’t accepted. A white guy dating an Indian. But Lee didn’t care.”
If Pete had stood by him then, no wonder they were such good friends.
“Lee and his girl decided to run off and get married. It was senior year, in the spring. About this time of year, actually. But Lee’s folks caught wind of it. They flew into a rage and took off to the rez, going to stop Lee. Guess Lee’s dad was so upset he wasn’t paying attention.”
My foot pressed against the floor of the Bronco, putting on phantom brakes.
“They had a head-on somewhere north of Sand Gap. His folks both died. The Indian that crossed the line and hit them was okay.” Pete paused. “Luck of the drunk.” That last bit came out more bitter than I’d ever heard from him.
To lose your parents in a sudden, violent way was a terrible thing. Still. “So Lee hates the Lakota because one man killed his folks?”
Pete’s eyes flicked to me and back to the road. “He doesn’t hate the Indians. Trust me.”
“What happened with his girlfriend?”
Pete’s tight ball of energy made me jumpy. “The accident hit Lee hard. He blamed himself for it, because that’s the way he is. Tortured. For a long time, maybe even still, he didn’t feel like he deserved happiness. And the girl faded from his life.”
A few moments of silence followed, and I left Pete to reminisce about his teenage years. Clouds scuttled across the sun, making a slow strobe of light. Pete broke the quiet. “Have you heard how Kyle’s doing?”
The image of his passive face against the white sheets tightened my chest. “No change when I called a couple of hours ago.”
He clicked his teeth in sympathy. “His sister is still missing as far as you know?”
I considered Pete. If he didn’t believe me that Barnett was kidnapping and selling girls, he’d still think Kyle’s injuries resulted from a drunken brawl. “I don’t know where she is.”
Pete sighed. “That’s too bad. Maybe if Lee had been able to find her, he could have helped her.”
I didn’t know Shelly, but I doubted having Barnett in her life would be helpful.
Pete slowed as we closed in on Barnett’s turn. “What about Alex? Do you think he knows something about the sister?”
“I haven’t been able to find him, either.”
Pete shook his head. “My kids aren’t much younger than Kyle’s sister. In fact, my boy is the same age as Alex. I can’t imagine them running around like that. They stay busy with school and church and 4-H. It’s a shame the way these rez kids are so neglected.”
Pete turned left onto a gravel road. Barnett’s house squatted on an acreage hidden from the highway by a low hill. The midcentury red brick ranch huddled close to the south base of the hill. A garage, small pole barn, and empty corrals made up the operation.
Pete stopped in front of the house. All that rain-fed grass grew so deep Barnett would need a machete to cut it back. Winter’s tumbleweeds and dead leaves choked the flowerbeds lining the house. A porch swing dangled by one chain, and an unraveling wicker rocker junked the entryway.
Neither of us moved. “You think Sally’s home?” I asked.
Pete seemed ready to shoot from the Bronco. “I didn’t know it was this bad.”
“What do you mean?”
Pete popped out and I followed, keeping an eye on the road. He walked away from the house, toward the barn. “Sally left a while back. Not long after both girls moved out.”
>
Barnett had two daughters. I didn’t know them well. I’d played against them in volleyball and basketball, but after high school, I didn’t keep track. “Barnett is divorced?”
Pete studied the house and grounds on our progress toward the barn. He rubbed his fingers together with nerves or impatience, or maybe they itched. “Could be. She’s gone is all I know. Wrecked Barnett. I know if Tammy ever left me, I’d die.”
Most people say that figuratively, but for Pete, it might be literal. “Barnett talks about Sally as if she still lives here,” I said.
“Well, Lee’s a loyal man. He doesn’t give up on those he loves.”
We reached the barn. “What are you showing me?”
Pete watched my face as he opened the door and swung it wide. He stepped back to let me see.
I’d figured the room would be an office off the side of the barn. Maybe a workroom or studio of some kind. Lots of ranchers have a place set up for a bunkhouse, maybe for night calving help. But Barnett wouldn’t need that since he only owned a couple of acres.
I didn’t expect the cheery room. Yellow ruffled curtains hung at the window, and a double bed with a flowered quilt made the place look like a girly bedroom. A small desk and lamp and well-worn velvet recliner completed the furnishing.
I turned to Pete. “What’s this?”
Pete’s eyes jumped to the window, and his smile strained. “This is where Lee brings the girls he kidnaps and sells.”
What? Did Pete say I was right?
Pete chuckled. “The girls in trouble. Not just girls, by the way. Lee collects the strays. He brings them out here and tries to help them. Sometimes he finds them schools and programs and sends them away. Sometimes they head right back to the rez and waste their lives.”
I walked into the room and ran a hand along the desk. “Lee is into rehabbing teenagers?”
Pete’s usual black-Lab exuberance faded. He frowned. “Mostly from the rez. Kids like Kyle’s brother and sister who don’t have anyone who cares about them.”
Kyle cared. So did Gordon. Shelly cared and even planned a sweat, which had been well attended. “If he’s such a do-gooder, why is it a secret?”
Bitter Rain (Kate Fox Book 3) Page 24
