Winter Counts(75)

After a few minutes Dennis came back, a somber expression on his face. “I called Mike. He’s heading back to the FBI field office. He’ll put out a BOLO in a few minutes—”

“What’s that? Like an APB?”

“Same thing, different word. Maybe send out an Amber alert, too. Every law enforcement agency in the state will be looking for a red Dodge Charger. Shouldn’t be tough to locate. We’ll trace his phone, too. That won’t be a problem—we already have the cell ID, no need for Stingray, but the FBI can use it if they need to.”

“Stingray?”

“It’s a device that tricks a cell phone into sending location data. Won’t be necessary. That’s our phone I gave to Nathan, so we have the cell identifier. Point is, we should have a handle on these guys soon. I ordered an aggressive search. When we find ’em, we’ll send multiple units, get Nathan back pronto.”

He stuck his phone in his pocket. “All right, let’s take off. I need to get to the field office; I’ll drop you off at your place.”

There was no point in arguing with him about going home. There was nothing I could do to help with this high-tech surveillance stuff. Dennis drove me back to my house, and I got out of the car. But I motioned to him to roll down the window. There was one last question I had to ask.

“Have you ever not found someone when you ordered a search like this?”

He looked me right in the eye.

“Never.”

“That’s good, because anything happens to him, it’s on you. Understand?”

He drove off without saying anything, the dust from the road drifting in the air.

I CALLED MARIE as soon as I walked in the door. She came over within minutes, and brought some food she’d cooked. I was too distracted to eat, so I drank some coffee and filled her in on what had happened. I told her about the call from Nathan, and the search the feds were conducting.

“What are we supposed to do now?” she said, putting away the food she’d brought.

“He said to wait for his call.”

“Are the Rosebud Police helping with the search? They know this area better than the state cops or the FBI,” she said. “All the back roads and unmarked streets.”

“Good point. I assume they’re involved, don’t know for sure.”

“Maybe I should call Ty Bad Hand? He’s tribal police—can’t hurt to check with him, right?”

“Sure, call him. See what you can find out. If the feds left the Rosebud cops in the dark, I’ll rip them new assholes.”

She walked away to the other room with her cell phone. While she made her call, I considered the drug buy and what we knew. Rick Crow had been with them, along with two people from the Denver gang, but not their leader, the one called Loco. Their cabin was empty, but they may have gotten another one in the area. Finally, Nathan felt worried enough to make a call with the emergency code. So where were they going? Maybe they had a new spot where they kept the heroin, and Nathan was trying to alert us to the new location. On the darker side, maybe they suspected—or discovered—that Nathan was wearing a wire. But how? He wasn’t wearing one of those old-fashioned microphones under his shirt. The wire was his phone and key fob.

I stared out the window and let my mind travel, trying to tease out the answer. Then I thought I saw something, far off in the fields beyond my house. It was just beyond my field of vision, but it looked like a pair of buffalo, slowly trotting in the grass. An older bull and a calf. But that was impossible. There were some bison over in Pine Ridge, but none around here.

Marie came back into our little living room, a somber expression on her face.

“I talked with Ty. He says they got the alert—whatever it’s called.”

“BOLO. Guess it means ‘be on the lookout.’”

“Okay. He says they’re helping with the search. That’s the good news. The federal cops included our people.”

Marie sat down and started picking at a hole in her jeans. The hole was about the size of a quarter, but she began to really go after it. Before long, the hole was the size of a half dollar. At this rate, her entire pant leg would be gone by the time I finished my coffee.

“Did he say anything else?” I asked. “About how the search is going?”

“No, he didn’t say anything about that. I’m sure they’re getting close.” Now she started to pull threads out of the hole and curl them into a little ball. It looked like a tiny globe in her hands, twisting and rotating as she fidgeted with it.

“Marie. Is there something else? I need to know.”

“Well, Ty Bad Hand is just local police. He’s not the best person for this sort of information.”

“Marie.” I moved over and sat closer to her. “Tell me.”

She took her little thread globe and put it on the table between us, a tiny planet of her making.

“Well, he said the first few hours are, you know, critical if an informant is taken. He said that if they don’t find the person in a day or so, he’s probably been . . .”

“Killed,” I said.

She didn’t say anything, just picked up her thread world and crushed it between her fingers, the little sphere now in disarray.

AFTER HEARING THAT, there was no way I could just sit around and do nothing. I told Marie that I was going to drive around and look for Nathan. I took my old car and drove aimlessly around the streets of the rez. There were children playing, packs of stray dogs roaming, and random men and women sitting, walking, talking. I wanted to shout at them, tell them to help me look for my nephew, that he was missing and needed to be found. Instead I drove up and down the byways of the reservation, looking for a red Dodge. Then it hit me. Why not check out Rick Crow’s trailer? I was sure the cops had already been there, but what could it hurt?