Bitter Rain (Kate Fox Book 3) Page 10

  “My sister Diane is like that. When she sets herself to something, she’s one-track.” Like getting me to watch her dog. Which reminded me. “Come.”

  Poupon didn’t move. His gaze shifted to Kyle.

  Kyle gave his head the slightest twitch, and Poupon jumped up and followed us out.

  We clambered down the back stairs. “Shelly worries me, though. She’s kind of like you. She’ll do anything for her family, even if it gets her into trouble.”

  “I don’t let my family get me in trouble. But yeah, if I can help them, I do.”

  He accepted that. “But do they help you?”

  “Of course. They campaigned for me. Mom and Dad let me move back in when I needed it.”

  He poked at my shoulder. “You’re crazy for your clan, admit it.”

  Yeah. Maybe. I couldn’t imagine anything I wouldn’t do to bring Carly home.

  I opened the back door to rain pelting the pavement. We dashed to the cruiser, with Kyle stopping to toss the breakfast remains into the Dumpster and me opening the back door to let Poupon in. With my wipers beating a steady pulse, we drove north, speculating about the preppers and about the caller. Kyle thought Barnett had the right idea, that the caller got a ride back to the rez and left the car for dead.

  Kyle leaned back in his seat. “I ever tell you about Uncle Lloyd Walks His Horse and the flood?”

  “Why, no. You haven’t.”

  Kyle folded his arms. “Uncle Lloyd was a finder of lost things. One day, a man heard Uncle Lloyd tell someone where to find a ring they had lost. The man didn’t believe Uncle Lloyd had this gift, and he called Uncle Lloyd a liar. The man told Uncle Lloyd that he’d believe in the gift if Uncle Lloyd could find the marbles the man said his old man had lost.

  “It was well known the man’s father was crazy, but Uncle Lloyd, he said okay, he’d find the marbles.

  “That night it started to rain, and it rained for a whole week. There were floods, and the rivers overflowed their banks. Then finally, a flash flood roared down a gully and knocked the old man’s house off its foundation. When the man went out to help his father, the old man was sitting in the mud with a buckskin bag in his lap. He was so happy because when the house fell, the old man found his stash of toys from where he’d hidden them as a boy. He was especially glad to have his marbles back.”

  I glanced at Kyle. “You just made that up, didn’t you?”

  He gave me an innocent face and crossed his chest. “It’s the truth.”

  We sped past the turnoff to the Olson place, and I stared at the hills hiding their compound. This storm had erased the motorcycle tracks, of course.

  The rain didn’t let up as we closed in on the county line. The flashing lights of a wrecker shone through the watery morning. Maybe Stormy had broken free of his domestic duties after all. I squinted, suspicious because the wrecker didn’t look familiar.

  Kyle jumped when I slapped the steering wheel and shouted, “You’re kidding me.”

  Poupon let out a yip in his sleep but, other than that, didn’t budge.

  Kyle leaned forward and squinted out the wet windshield at the tow truck, its yellow lights flashing, backing into the pasture at the side of the road. “What?”

  “I told Barnett I’d handle this. That SOB called Schneiderman.” What a snake.

  “No,” Kyle murmured. Then louder: “Oh, no!”

  I pulled up to the wrecker and slammed on the brakes, but before we’d come to a full stop, Kyle’s door flew open and he jetted from the car.

  Red and blue flashed on the other side of the wrecker. I tucked my gun into my holster, forced myself into the rain, and walked a few steps closer. The light bar of the Spinner County sheriff’s Bronco only made my temper rise more. I swiveled and headed down the barrow ditch.

  Before I made it to where Slim Schneiderman knelt to attach the hook, Barnett caught up to me and grabbed my arm. He raised his voice above the rain. “He’s about got it loaded.”

  I squinted as cold rain pelted my face. My brown uniform spotted, bled, and deepened all over as it took on an ocean. “Oh, I’m not going to stop him.”

  Barnett’s lip curled. “That’s the first smart thing I’ve heard you say.”

  I yanked my arm from his grasp. “Gonna tell him to haul it to Hodgekiss. On Spinner County’s dime.”

  Barnett drew himself up, no doubt to give me the business, but something at the wreck drew his attention. Kyle rushed around the car, throwing himself to his knees in the wet grass and shimmying to peer into the back windows.

  Barnett raised both hands in the air and flicked them toward me as if batting a beach ball. He looked like he’d swallowed a cup of acid. “Fine.” A greyhound might have had trouble keeping up as he hurried to his Bronco.

  I trotted toward the wreck. The wheels of the Bronco threw gravel as Barnett spun out. He crossed the county line as I bent over to shout to Kyle. “What is it? Do you know who owns this car?”

  He answered in one anguished word. “Shelly.”

  11

  By the time I dragged Kyle to his feet, we both looked like we’d swum a lap or two around Grand County. A big rain in the Sandhills meant an inch over the course of a day, maybe a ten-minute downpour resulting in a quarter inch. This kind of unrelenting storm system was not normal.

  Kyle sounded breathless. “You got a call from a girl? It had to be Shelly. What did she say?”

  As if I could forget. “̔Please help me. We need you. I’m on my way from the rez.’” I didn’t tell him how the fear in her voice froze my blood. Or the helplessness that had tugged at me ever since.

  His dark eyes looked like they wanted to suck the memory from me. “Is that all she said?”

  Even if his bridled violence wasn’t directed at me, I stepped back. “̔I don’t know what he wants.’”

  He narrowed his eyes on my face as if answers were written there. “Who?”

  All I could do was stand in silence and shake my head.

  “Why did she call you? Why not me?” He ran a hand through his hair and shifted from foot to foot.

  “Did she think you were working Saturday?”

  A thought occurred to him, and he yanked his phone from his pocket and bent to shield it from the rain. “Saturday night. I went to the sweat on the rez. I wanted to put my phone in airplane mode so it wouldn’t ring. But Leonard Stands with Heart dropped the grandfathers.” He paused to explain. “The hot stones used to make steam are called grandfathers. I hurried to help Leonard. I must have automatically transferred the calls to your sheriff line out of habit since I do it whenever I work for you.”

  Technology at work. “So Shelly meant to call you.”

  He swiped his phone and punched a speed dial number. He stood still as a portrait. I wanted to pace the wet pasture. A girl came on the line, and he shoved the phone at my ear. “Is this the voice you heard?”

  “…I’ll call you back.”

  I gave Kyle a helpless look. “It wasn’t enough to tell.”

  He dialed again, and this time while we waited for the voicemail message, he said, “At least her phone is ringing.”

  A thousand scenarios ran through my mind where a ringing, unanswered phone didn’t mean good news. This time I was ready when he handed me the phone. “Hoka Hey. This is Shelly. I’m probably in class or asleep. Leave a message and I’ll call you back.”

  “Well?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. She was shouting and upset.”

  He grabbed the phone back and hit another number. I figured he was trying to locate Shelly, so I checked on Slim’s progress and gave him instructions to tow the car to Hodgekiss, then called to cancel the towing with Stormy. That was fine because Donna had decided they were staying another day.

  Kyle jettisoned past me and rammed the phone back into his pocket. “Let’s go.”

  I trotted after him to the cruiser. He started for the driver’s door and I shouted, “I’ll drive. But you have to tell me where we’re going.
”

  He balked at giving up the reins, but after a moment’s hesitation, in which we both took on another gallon of water, he stalked around the nose of the car.

  I started the engine, cranked the heat, and slid the car into gear. Poupon didn’t seem to notice our return.

  Kyle spoke quietly, quickly. “Head to the rez.”

  Tension roiled off him and filled the car. We drove in silence until I couldn’t take it anymore. “What’s your plan?”

  His neck looked like the trunk of an oak. Only his eyes moved as they watched the road beyond the windshield wipers. “My brother Alex didn’t answer, either. We’re going to my mother’s house on the rez. Seems like the best place to start.”

  Knowing Carly and how many times she’d slipped her halter and ran, I couldn’t stop myself from asking. “Has Shelly been in trouble before? Run away?”

  His lips flattened, but that was all the movement on the surface. I imagined he was twisting on the inside. “No. She’s a good kid.”

  This felt like poking someone’s bruise. “You said she would do anything for her brothers. Would she be helping out one of them?”

  A tick in his jaw. “I’ve only got one brother.”

  I glanced at him. He’d said he had two.

  His nostrils flared, and he said, “I’ve got one now. Alex is fifteen.”

  No sense in rushing him, since we had a ways to go before we reached the rez.

  After a time, Kyle spoke. “My other brother, Darrel, died two years ago, when I was in Afghanistan.”

  I hated that he’d gone through the pain of losing a sibling. I really hated that I knew what it felt like. Glenda’s wasted face flashed through my mind. Not her radiant, grinning expression, so full of mischief like her daughter, Carly. But the wan, pale skin stretched in agony across her bones. Eyes closed, struggling to stay alive and failing. I felt that gaping crater again.

  Glenda had died eight years ago, and sometimes life filled in the hole and I didn’t ache with sadness. But then something reminded me of the way she laughed or how she loved peaches, or someone mentioned losing a brother, and I felt the sucker punch of loss all over again. In many ways I’d learned to live with it, not crying every time I thought of her but letting that first wave of grief crash over and going on.

  “I’m sorry. It’s awful to lose a sibling.”

  Another jaw tick and this time, he turned his head to his side window. “The waste wasn’t his death. The real waste was his life.”

  I thought I understood but wasn’t sure. “What’s that mean?”

  His words shot out in angry volleys. “He was a drunk. Eighteen years old, high school dropout, unemployed. Another dead injun.”

  “Wow. That’s harsh.”

  He turned to me. I’d never heard him so bitter. “Yeah. That’s how life can be on the rez.”

  The windshield wipers whapped back and forth and water splashed from the road. “You’re a really great role model. I’m sure you did all you could. Sometimes kids are hell-bent on destroying themselves.” God, I hoped I wasn’t talking about Carly.

  He wanted to say something. The words dammed up behind his eyes, and I wondered if the lead sentence would go something like this: “Keep your patronizing comments to yourself and your happy white family.”

  That’s what I might have said if our positions were reversed. And I’d have been right. What did I know about growing up on the rez? But I went ahead and pushed more. It’s what Grand County paid me for.

  “If she wasn’t in trouble, why would she be on her way to see you?”

  His attention returned to the road ahead. “That’s what we’re gonna find out.”

  By the time we reached Dry Creek, the shabby settlement two miles from the reservation’s border, the rain retreated, huddling in the heavy, angry clouds, building strength as if to attack again.

  On the outskirts of the settlement, a brick ranch house lurked behind a tall cedar fence, only visible through the open driveway gate. This belonged to Frankie Delrose and his wife, Starla. They owned the largest of the four liquor stores and accounted for one half of the population of Dry Creek. They’d raised four kids; all had flown the nest but still counted in the last census.

  Technically, the owners of the other three stores claimed Dry Creek as their home, but they’d anchored single-wide trailers in the lots behind their stores and kept an old junker parked out front to meet the county residency requirement. Their substantial profits bought them beautiful homes in Rapid City or Broken Butte. They only stayed in Dry Creek if they opted not to drive the two-hour commute to a cheerier environment.

  Far from washing the town clean, the spring rain clogged the roadside with muddy runoff, making half-submerged boats of the snack wrappers and six-pack cartons. An abandoned Quonset hut with a metal overhang to shelter a concrete slab, and a house that burned down mysteriously a decade ago, welcomed us to Dry Creek. The carport and Quonset served as shelter and hangout for anyone too drunk to walk the two miles back to the rez. Every year, those spots served as the final resting site for a few unfortunates.

  There was nothing redeeming in Dry Creek. Since alcohol was prohibited on Antelope Ridge Reservation, Dry Creek fed off addiction. It was nothing but a sinister, sad, wide spot on the road to death.

  Kyle’s voice barely rose above the growl of the tires. “I’d like to burn this place down.”

  “I think that’s been tried a time or two.”

  His mouth turned up as if he’d smelled something rotten. “They’ve tried all kinds of things. When the reservation was started, the law said there couldn’t be liquor sales within fifty square miles of the rez, but then, in all his wisdom, Teddy Roosevelt took away the buffer zone.”

  I thought for a moment. “Didn’t someone try to get the buffer zone reinstated?”

  “Oh, sure. But our favorite sheriff, Lee Barnett, rallied everyone in Spinner and Choker counties to lobby the state to keep the status quo. He’s got a good buddy in Frankie Delrose, probably getting kickbacks.”

  Dry Creek made my heart hurt. “Anyone who thinks this town isn’t here only to serve alcohol to the rez is blind.”

  “Money can cause blindness, I’ve heard.”

  A Lakota man in baggy canvas pants and an unevenly buttoned shirt staggered across the parking lot of A-1 Liquor. He looked up, and it took him a moment to focus on the cruiser. He spun around and tottered in the opposite direction.

  Kyle closed his eyes. “They won’t shut this place down. They say the liquor stores will just pop up on the border, wherever they set it.”

  “It’s what, a two-mile walk to Sand Gap from here?”

  “It’s too close.”

  I drove down the middle of the road, feeling depressed and dirty. The rez and its problems of poverty, addiction, and early death didn’t factor into my daily life. Just over a hundred miles from where I’d complained endlessly about a small refrigerator with no functioning freezer compartment, and where I’d felt deprived because I’d never owned my own home, people were dying on the streets, alone and in pain. They didn’t have enough to eat, a decent roof over their heads, or cars that ran. No jobs, sketchy health care, and schools that might be more holding pens than places of education.

  Poupon sat up, stretched his front legs, and yawned. He gazed out the window, and as if it were too depressing to witness, he plopped back down and closed his eyes.

  Three Indians in saggy jeans and jackets colorless with filth and rain sat on the front porch of a boarded-up building with a wood awning and concrete steps. A forty-ounce Colt 45 can stood like a guard at the hand of one man whose head hung from his neck as if holding on by a stretched Slinky. The other two men rested their heads on the building, their legs splayed in front of them, eyes unfocused.

  Tucked away from the road, next to the boarded-up building with the optimistic Arts and Crafts sign, Frankie’s Smart Shop announced itself with a Pepsi sign that glowed against the dark sky. Frankie might sell a bag of c
hips or maybe a Mountain Dew from time to time, but his real business was beer.

  “Hell of a way to make a living.” My words slid out.

  Kyle’s eyes stayed on the wasted men on the step. “They say four million cans of beer are sold from Dry Creek every year.”

  Helplessness and defeat weighed me down.

  “Four million cans. The population of Dry Creek is twelve.” I had to strain to hear him.

  A stucco house, probably vacant longer than lived in, marked the edge of town. Large splotches of black paint pocked the side, covering graffiti, I imagined. A hand-painted sign stood a few feet from the highway showing a Jack Daniel’s bottle with “We Own You” stenciled in black.

  What words could I form to express my sorrow at the despair so visible? Trash, weeds, plywood-adorned buildings, bars on the windows, and men and women so hopeless.

  Tension drew his voice tight. “The life expectancy on this reservation is something like forty-seven for men, fifty-two for women.”

  Two miles from Dry Creek we came up to Sand Gap, the biggest town on the reservation. Not quite four thousand people, it had a school, a health center, and a few sad businesses. A gas station convenience store sat on an intersection, doing what appeared to be a big business. The sign out front identified the business as The Stop. The cars and pickups out front looked like abandoned vehicles, but anything with an engine that ran was sporting on the rez. We broke through the other side of town and Kyle directed me to an oil strip, a one-lane blacktop.

  Nothing but wet prairie stretched on either side of the cruiser. Here, in the middle of nowhere, I could imagine we drove through any ranch, not a depressing pocket of poverty. Grass greening in the rain, wildflowers waiting patiently for the sun so they could burst out like debutantes at their first ball. But Kyle’s words made it feel so very different.

  “You know the suicide rate here is one hundred and fifty times higher than the average.”

  I knew very little about the rez except we’d been warned since childhood to avoid it. We’d take a different route to Rapid City or for a weekend in the Black Hills. I’d been to the Wounded Knee memorial once many years ago. All I remembered was a rickety sign by the side of the road. It made me feel sad.