I never saw Walter Perry again. I kept an eye out for him, but if he was still in Denver, our paths failed to cross. Perhaps because no other man I met had Walter’s integrity — or perhaps simply because my lifestyle is incongruous with it — I chose never to marry. It’s a decision I’ve yet to regret.
In 1896, three years after I left Iowa, I heard from Uncle August that my father had died. Threshing accident it was, terrible shame — apparently, someone had emptied the water from the steam thresher’s tank, causing an explosion when the machine was fired up. Father, standing nearby, was effectively blown to bits.
No one besides August knew my whereabouts, and since he was not a blood relation, Father’s homestead passed to distant relatives in Cedar Rapids. Then August joined me in Denver. Our reunion was a delightful one, although he only stayed a few months before marrying a young widow and moving with her and her children to California.
And Rudiman? That lecherous soul was not difficult to locate. The day after the city fired McGovern, the undertaker dismissed the laborers and left Rudiman alone to close up the City Cemetery jobsite. The wretch did so in near darkness, swilling from a flask as he went about collecting pickaxes and shovels.
This time, I was prepared. As night fell, I selected from the discarded shovels the heaviest and sharpest one I could find.
Approaching Rudiman from behind, I swung with all my might and all my care — ensuring that when his head split open and his body collapsed, it did so into an empty, waiting, desecrated grave.
Tough Girls
by Erika T. Wurth
Lakewood
Entering the White Horse was like entering a dream. A dream of the past. My mother’s past. She had grown up here — in Denver, on Colfax, like a million other Indians, like her own mother. Now I was back to solve a crime. Another Indian woman dead, like so many others in our communities, no one but her mom giving a shit. Not the cops. Not her dad, who hadn’t been seen in a decade. No one else but me, a woman whose face, though allowed to grow much more cynical with age, so resembled hers.
“Naiche? Naiche Becente... of Apache PI?”
I nodded. “That’s me.”
“Thank the Creator!” The woman swiveled toward me on the old leather barstool. She looked to be in her early thirties, her eyes bloodshot with what I had to assume was lack of sleep.
I smiled cryptically. I had agreed to take her case, but that didn’t mean I was going to be able to solve it.
God, I needed a smoke.
The bartender was the only one in there besides me and my client — Betty was her name — and his eyes were riveted, fixed on the screen, the wild, colorful images of Fox News flashing, the sound turned all the way off, the jukebox blaring CCR’s “Up around the Bend.”
I sat down next to Betty and shook her hand loosely, and she thanked me profusely for coming, for agreeing to do the work for just the cost of travel and hotel.
“It’s fine. I got plenty,” I said. Which was nearly true. I made a decent living in Albuquerque where I had my practice, and I liked to do pro bono for other Natives. I loved Albuquerque — the original homeland of my people. Plus, rent was cheap, and I roomed where I worked, in a building downtown, a few doors from Java Joe’s.
“Nick!” Betty said, turning to the bartender, an edge to her voice.
It took him a minute to extricate himself, but he turned, a friendly smile on his face, his blue eyes the color of a small butterfly. “Beer for your pretty friend?” he asked.
I scoffed, and pulled my black motorcycle jacket closer, hooked my biker boots onto the metal of the stool.
Betty nodded and wiped at her brow. Took the last slug of her Bud, pushed it forward.
Nick swept it off the counter and replaced it with two more, settling back in front of the television.
“So,” I said, pulling my pack of cigarettes out of my pocket and packing it, hard, into my left hand. It helped me think. “Your daughter disappeared a month ago?”
Betty nodded. “Yes! And she’s sixteen, and a good girl. She doesn’t do nothing but stay at home and do her homework.”
“You said though that you suspected her friend... Macina Begay, she might know more than she’s saying?”
“Yeah, I told her to get that Macina out of her life. She’s a bad influence. I smelled alcohol on her breath more than once.” Betty sat back, crossed her arms over her chest.
“Huh.” I’d heard this kind of thing before. Mom sure that her girl was an angel being dragged down by some devilish friend. Turns out, it’s the other way around, but the parent just doesn’t want to see it. I’d been making some calls on my way up. Her girl — Jonnie — liked to party.
“I made some calls — school, where you said she likes to hang out. There’s been an older gentleman hanging around her, you know that?” I asked.
She sucked in breath. Then, “No.”
“You think of anyone that could be?”
She went silent, her dark green eyes moving rapidly. “My brother, he lives with us, he says he got some weird phone calls while I been at work. Says he don’t know for sure, but he thinks it’s my ex.”
“Why he think that?” I took a swig of my beer, wishing it was whiskey. I’d had a breakup of sorts a few days ago, and though it was another in a string of married men, this one had stung a little. More than a little.
“He says he can feel it. They were tight, back in the day.”
“Go on.”
“He picks up, it’s nothing but silence, then whoever it is hangs up.”
“You don’t think this is your daughter?”
“Started happening before Jonnie went missing.” She finished her beer in one quick swallow and sighed, heavy. I could tell she wanted another but was embarrassed to drink more in front of me. I ordered a whiskey for myself, a beer for her.
“You didn’t think to bring this up to me on the phone?” I asked, unhooking my boots.
“Well, I didn’t because there ain’t no proof. It’s just something my brother thinks. But then again,” she said, squinting, “it would be just like my ex. George Labont. He grew up near me, near the Fond du Lac rez, where my grandparents were from. When I was pregnant with Jonnie, George kept saying he couldn’t handle taking care of a kid, but he couldn’t handle not being in its life. He went on like that, getting drunk and disappearing for days, until finally he was gone for good. I’m lucky I had my brother, Michael. Would’ve been lost without him.”
“You mind if I ask your brother? What’s his last name?”
“Michael. Michael Cloud.” She peeled the label off the beer with a dark-brown finger.
“Mind if I ask Michael some questions?”
“Sure. Here’s his number.” She wrote it on a cocktail napkin. “He and Jonnie were close — been like a dad to her. He’s all broken up about it, says he wants to do anything to help.”
“Email me anything you got on your ex. Any pictures, old letters, anything. I’ll figure out if he’s back in town.”
“I bet it is him,” she said. “He was so screwed up. Maybe he kidnapped her. That bastard.” The shadow of old wounds gathered in her eyes.
“I’ll find out,” I said, not bothering to argue with her.
She dried her eyes, thanked me again, and I left her to drink alone. The White Horse was just my kind of bar, with its old booths, red-glassed chandeliers over aging pool tables, and various pictures of 1970s-style white horses everywhere, but I could tell she needed her space.