Blood Trail

In a few moments, Mrs. Thunder reappeared and said, “Principal Shoyo is waiting for you in there,” gesturing to an open door at the back.

Mrs. Shoyo was surprisingly young, Joe thought. She was dressed in a white blouse and business suit and wore a gold medicine-wheel pendant. She stood as Joe entered and they shook hands. Mrs. Shoyo had black hair that was swept back and piercing brown eyes. She was Native. He noted the pin on her lapel, a horizontal piece with a red wild rose on one side and a flag with parallel red and black bars on a field of white on the other side. The pin represented the two nations on the reservation: the rose the symbol of the Eastern Shoshone and the Northern Arapaho flag.

“Joe Pickett,” he said. “Thanks for taking a few minutes.”

“My pleasure,” she said, sitting back down.

He glanced at the wall behind her where she displayed photos of her family: three beautiful dark-haired, dark- eyed girls, a shot of her husband, he assumed, on a knee next to a dead bull elk he was very proud of; her diploma from the University of Wyoming; a certificate naming her one of the “Top 100 American Indian Women Leaders of 2001.”

“Mrs. Thunder said you were asking about one of my teachers, Alisha Whiteplume.”

“Yes,” Joe said.

“What about her?” Shoyo asked, her eyebrows arching, “Did she commit some kind of game violation?”

Joe laughed. “Not at all. I wish I weren’t wearing this uniform shirt right now. No, I’m here because she was last seen in the presence of a friend of mine I’m trying to track down. I was hoping she could help me find him.”

Mrs. Shoyo narrowed her eyes as if to read him better.

“I hope that’s all this is about because Alisha is one of my best, if not the best teacher I’ve got here. She left the reservation after graduating from here and went off and made a success of herself. Then she chose to come back, to help her people. She’s such a role model because she’s bright and attractive and her students always do the best on the aptitude tests. She’s also one of my closest friends.”

Joe now knew why Mrs. Thunder had flinched.

“Then you know of Nate Romanowski,” Joe said.

Mrs. Shoyo smiled gently, but Joe could see that she had placed an invisible shield between them. “Everybody knows Mr. Romanowski,” she said, which somewhat surprised Joe. “But my understanding is he’s in Cheyenne in jail waiting for his trial.”

“He’s out,” Joe said. “He’s supposed to be in my custody.”

“But he isn’t,” she said.

“But he isn’t,” he sighed.

“Are you saying you think Alisha is with him, wherever he is?”

“Possibly.”

“And by finding her you might find him.”

“That’s the idea,” he said.

She raised her hand and fit her chin into her fist, studying him across the desk, making a determination, he assumed, about how much she should tell him and what she should keep to herself.

“Is Alisha in trouble?” she asked.

“No.”

“Why should I believe you?”

Joe shrugged. “Because I’m telling you the truth. I just want to find Nate.”

Mrs. Shoyo nodded as if she’d come to a conclusion. She leaned forward on her desk and showed him her palms. “I’d like to know where Alisha is as well because I’m starting to worry about her. She called in yesterday morning so we could line up a substitute teacher. I didn’t talk with her, Mrs. Thunder did. Alisha told her she might be out for a few days so to try and get a good replacement. I don’t think we did, though. I think we hired a man who spends all his time telling the students how hip and sympathetic he is to them instead of teaching them math and science.”

Joe recalled the man in Alisha Whiteplume’s classroom: it fit.

Joe asked, “Did she say where she was calling from?”

“No, she didn’t,” Mrs. Thunder answered from just outside the doorway, where she’d been listening.

“You can come in, Alice,” Mrs. Shoyo said, doing a quick eye roll for Joe’s benefit. “Nothing goes on in this school that Alice isn’t aware of.”

“I understand,” Joe said, looking over his shoulder at Mrs. Thunder, who came into the room.

“I don’t think she was calling from her house, though,” Mrs. Thunder said. “I could hear the wind in the background, like she was outside somewhere. I assumed she was calling from her cell phone. I didn’t question her. It’s her right to call in sick and she hardly ever has until this year. She’s had trouble shaking cold after cold this year, and she’s missed quite a few days the past few months.”

“Outside,” Joe said. “Could you hear anything else? Background talk? Highway noises?”

“No.”

“And she didn’t call again this morning?”