At the mention of cookies they vanished.

"Sit," she said. "Coffee?"

"Sure."

She poured two cups and joined me at the table. Mola.s.ses cookies were piled on a china plate.

I studied her over the rim of my cup. Geneva had been the prettiest girl in our graduating cla.s.s. Natural honey blond hair, dark blue eyes, razor sharp cheekbones, and a thin, regal nose. Early on she'd grown into a woman's body, full hipped and curvy, with big b.r.e.a.s.t.s the envy of every girl in school. I would've hated her if we hadn't been best friends since kindergarten.

She was still gorgeous even though she'd plumped out considerably. Now, deep fatigue lines were etched around her eyes, and she didn't smile as often as I'd remembered.

"Molly will be right down." Geneva sipped coffee, leaned back in the chair, and sighed. Probably the first time she'd sat down all morning. "How is Hope doing?"

"She sleeps a lot. She cries a lot. She doesn't talk much."

"I can't imagine losing one of my children." She shuddered. "I don't even know what to say. G.o.d. Molly and her friends are just numb. We all are. Stuff like this doesn't happen around here."

"I know." I bit down on a cookie and sighed softly because it was so crisp and sweet and tasty. I h.o.a.rded two more and glanced up guiltily when Geneva didn't keep the conversation going. As longtime friends we rarely had awkward pauses. It didn't matter if we hadn't seen each other in two days or two years, we always picked up where we'd left off. Her silence left me unsettled. "What?"

"I don't know how to say this."

"Then just say it straight out."

"Why are you talking to Molly?"

I snapped a cookie in half. "Has the sheriff been here to talk to her?"

"No."

"Then there's your answer. Dawson is doing nothing to find who killed Levi, and it isn't because he's busy working on the Yellow Boy case."

"No offense, but what can you do?"

"Figure it out on my own."

"Good Lord, the rumors are true. You are turning into your dad."

I blushed, but I wasn't surprised she'd made the connection. "Kids can't keep secrets. Somebody knows something. Even if I have to talk to every teenager on the rez and in the county to find out who might've wanted Levi dead, I'll keep at it until I get some answers."

"What happens if you run out of time? Don't you have to go back to active duty?"

I paused a beat too long because Geneva demanded, "Well?"

"I'm on medical leave."

The blood drained from her face. "What happened?"

"Had a freak eye injury that won't allow me to return to my former position." The army liked their snipers to take out targets on the first try. If I couldn't, there were plenty of younger shooters who could.

Geneva slapped her hands on the table. "I cannot believe you didn't tell me this before now. Jesus. I oughta smack you."

"You'd hit an injured soldier?"

"No. But I'm still p.i.s.sed off."

"You'll get over it. You always do."

Geneva made a face that read maybe I won't. "So is that why you've been dragging your feet? Because if you can't go back to duty, you might have to live here?"

"Have to live here? Nice dig."

"You know what I mean. You couldn't wait to get out and see the world. You never wanted to be a ranch wife with a half-dozen kids...." She clapped her hand over her mouth.

Wow. That was another good dig. I didn't react this time.

"d.a.m.n, Mercy. Sometimes I don't think before I open my mouth. I don't get out much."

"Forget it."

Geneva babbled to cover the awkward silence. "Sometimes I wish we could sell this place. Move into a split-level in Rapid City with three bathrooms. The kids could walk to school. Brent could get a normal job, and there'd be enough money for Dan to go to college. I wouldn't have to worry about making ends meet." Color spread across her cheekbones. "Sorry. Then I think about what Hope's going through and Estelle's going through... I got nothing to complain about."

"You will complain once you see what Krissa and Nikki did to the bathroom," Molly said from the doorway.

I faced her. "Don't you look bright and fresh."

"Only until I clean stalls later this afternoon."

Geneva scrambled out of her chair like she couldn't wait to get away from me. "The weeds in the garden are calling my name." She squeezed Molly's shoulders and left us alone.

Molly and I sat in silence. I could be polite or I could get to it. "Tell me about Levi and these kids he'd been hanging out with lately."

"I don't really know Moser and Little Bear, but I've heard they are bad news."

"How so?"

"Drinking and driving. Stealing stuff. Starting fights, especially with the cowboys." Her eyes met mine. "The white cowboys. Until recently Levi hung around Albert and Axel. Then Albert and Axel were both in Moser's group and they left Levi out. From what I've heard from Sue Anne, Moser and them guys didn't want Levi because he wasn't Indian enough."

How little they knew. But it fit with what Levi told me.

"To show you how mean those guys are, Moser and Little Bear teased Levi, letting him hang out with them sometimes, making him do stuff, acting like they might let him in, all the while knowing their elder wouldn't accept Levi into the club."

"Do you know who this elder was?"

"No."

"Did Albert want to leave the group after this leader wouldn't let Levi in?"

Molly nibbled her cookie like a mouse. Crumbs fell on the plastic tablecloth. She stayed quiet as a mouse, too.

I forced myself to be patient. "Molly?"

"No one can leave once they're in. I guess Moser and Little Bear told Albert he couldn't be friends with Levi anymore."

"Or what? What could they do to him?"

"Punish him."

d.a.m.n. This just got more and more bizarre. "What kind of punishment?"

"I'm not sure." She rearranged the cookies on the plate in a flower pattern.

I placed my hand over hers. When she looked at me with innocent eyes, I hated what I had to do. "My nephew is dead. His mother is home bawling her eyes out because she can't understand why someone killed her son. I need to know what these so-called friends are doing before they hurt anyone else."

"I can't tell you because I don't know. I'm white. I'm not in the group."

I needed a different tact. "Who would know about the punishments?"

A long pause. Then she softly said, "Sue Anne White Plume."

The Indian girl from the dance. Why wasn't her name on the list? "Was she dating Levi?"

"They liked each other a lot, but they were both quiet about it. I think they were sneaking around behind Moser's and Little Bear's backs."

"What's the best way for me to contact her?"

"You can't go to her house. Her parents are like total drunks. They'd freak out and use it as another excuse to beat her."

I forced myself to ignore the beat her portion of Molly's warning. "Does she have a cell phone?"

Molly shook her head. "She doesn't have enough money for food half the time, which is why she works at Taco John's."

Few kids in this country had it as bad as the kids on Eagle River Reservation. "When's her next shift?"

"She said she's working tomorrow from ten to two." Molly chewed her lip and pulverized the cookie in her fingers. "You won't tell her you talked to me? Because I don't want her to be mad."

"I'll try to keep you out of it. One other thing. If Sheriff Dawson stops by and asks you questions, I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention my name."

"Why not?"

"Let's just say the sheriff and I don't see eye to eye on a lot of things." I scooted back from the table and tried to lighten the situation. "Krissa said something about showing me some kitties?"

Molly smiled softly. "Poor things. She loves those little babies so much we tease her that she's gonna love them to death."

As if that were possible.

TWELVE.

Late the next morning I made the trek to the Eagle River Reservation. The scenery was spectacularly diverse. Flat land, which wasn't quite prairie and therefore not conducive to farming, gave way to the scalloped edges of hills outlined with scrub oak and misshapen cedar trees. A few flat-topped b.u.t.tes, colors ranging from b.u.t.terscotch to vanilla, were interspersed among the desertlike stretches. Sagebrush, sweetgra.s.s, and yucca were prevalent. Cattle grazed. The occasional deciduous tree peeked out from a ravine, a shimmer of green in an otherwise monochromatic landscape.

In the two hours before Sue Anne's shift ended, I figured I'd scope out the rec center, the ice-cream joint, and other places where Levi's friends hung out.

As I closed in on the town of Eagle River, cl.u.s.ters of houses appeared. Abandoned cars stood next to piles of garbage and bald tires. Old mattresses, busted refrigerators and stoves. Most homes looked worse than junkyards. Surprising that diseases like the bubonic plague weren't running rampant, since dead dogs and cats were discarded and left to rot on the side of the road.

Geneva's four-bedroom house crammed with six kids and two adults was nothing compared to the housing situation in Eagle River. Not uncommon for a dozen or more family members to live in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house. Indians had lived together like that for thousands of years.

Although I had some Indian blood, that lifestyle was a foreign concept to me. My mother hadn't been raised that way.

After my Minneconjou Sioux grandmother, Caroline Longbow, married my white grandfather, William Fairchild, he'd removed her from the reservation. Their only child, my mother, Sunny, cared little about her Indian heritage. She hadn't enrolled in the Minneconjou tribe and hadn't seen the point of enrolling her daughters. She'd taught us the Gunderson lineage was the only one that mattered.

Why hadn't that ever bothered me?

Several sprawling buildings housed the mult.i.tude of tribal offices. Most people employed on the reservation worked for the tribe, for the state, or for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Others worked at the Indian Health Services Hospital. In addition to early childhood development programs, there were two colleges.

Yet few young kids who'd graduated with marketable skills ever found jobs on the reservation, since there was zero economic development. A small number of businesses survived, a couple of convenience marts, the fast-food joints, a grocery store. The funeral home. Luckily the tribe funded the community center and rec center, or neither would've lasted.

As I drove through town, it saddened me to see little had changed in twenty years. Same decrepit buildings. More cheap housing.

I pa.s.sed several groups of kids, some as young as four and five, running around unattended. Many didn't wear shoes. Their clothes were tattered, their faces dirty, their hair matted and uncombed. I had to look away.

I'd seen some of the worst areas on the planet. Ghettos in big cities. Barrios in third-world countries. War-torn cities where death and destruction is a part of everyday life. This was somehow worse. Since we were the most prosperous nation on Earth, there was no excuse for such poverty and hopelessness. Shoving aside my morose thoughts, I pulled into Taco John's parking lot.

The lunch crowd had dwindled. Sue Anne worked the register. She didn't look at me as she asked, "Can I help you?"

I glanced at the menu. "I'd like a Taco Bravo, a large order of Potato Oles, a large Diet c.o.ke, and an Apple Grande."

Sue Anne poked the b.u.t.tons. "Would you like sour cream on the Taco Bravo?"

"Please. And on the Apple Grande."

"Is this order for here or to go?"

"To go."

"Your total comes to seven twenty-nine." The register spit out my ticket, and she grabbed a pen.

I handed her a twenty.

"Your name?" Sue Anne asked as she pa.s.sed back my change.

Taco John's still asked for a first name on every order? I remembered in high school my friends spent way too much time thinking up kooky names. Mine was odd enough. I said, "Mercy," and waited for her reaction.

She finally looked at me. "OmiG.o.d. I'm sorry. I can't believe-"