Denver Noir

Colfax and Havana by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

Aurora

The smell of the grease from the taquería downstairs overwhelmed me as I tried to review thirty pages of legal documents. I rented a small office — about the size of a walk-in closet — on the second floor of an old building on East Colfax in Aurora. The price was right, but my space was directly above the restaurant’s trash can and oil bin.

I’d landed in Aurora because it was cheap and because that’s where my clients lived. Driving under the influence, possession of narcotics, divorces, and custody actions — these cases were my bread and butter. A far cry from my dreams as a kid on the Rosebud Reservation of pursuing social justice for Native Americans, but I’d learned back in law school that a white knight job as a public interest lawyer required a trust fund or wealthy spouse, especially when your monthly student loan payments rivaled the GDP of many small countries.

But I’d made my peace with the loss of my ambitions to change society and argue Native cases at the Supreme Court. Now I focused on helping people with their legal problems so they could go on with their lives. That’s what I told myself, anyway. After I negotiated plea bargains with the prosecutor, I often saw my former clients back at Las Adelitas or El Metapan, drinking and drugging again. They’d send over a shot, and I’d toast their freedom to pursue the American dream of titanic inebriation.

Yeah, Aurora suited me. This part of the sprawling suburb consisted of modest single-family homes, scores of low-rent apartment buildings that resembled army bunkers, and dozens of Mexican restaurants, bakeries, and markets. Because of my brown skin and black hair, my clients assumed I was Latino, which worked in my favor. Not to mention, in this part of town, there was little chance of running into former law school classmates with their expensive suits and cars. I didn’t have to witness their barely concealed pity as they learned about my downward trajectory from Native social justice warrior to small-time street lawyer.

The directory panel in the hallway stated, LAW FIRM OF GRIFFIN GERMAINE, but it was only me. No receptionist, paralegal, or junior attorneys. The only extravagance in the office complex was a battered old Ricoh copier in the shared common area, for which I paid an extra twenty dollars per month, so long as I didn’t make more than three hundred copies. I used my own ancient Dell laptop, tiny laser printer, and off-brand scanner. A generic K-Cup coffee machine rested on top of some old Pacific Reporters. My diploma from the University of Colorado Law School hung on the wall, encased in a fancy cherrywood frame, a gift from the Native American Law Student Association, of which I’d been president.

I got up and closed the small window, even though it was hot. I needed my full focus for the legal papers that had just arrived on my computer screen. My former DUI client Nestor Vega had been hit by a delivery truck while crossing Havana Street on foot, and the doctor had said he might never walk again. The driver’s insurance company — known among lawyers by its nickname, Snake Farm — had refused to pay his medical bills or any pain and suffering compensation, arguing that he was intoxicated at the time of the accident and therefore responsible for his own expenses. Nestor had called me, asking if I would represent him again, and I’d jumped at the chance to handle a personal injury case.

Even though Colorado tort law was biased in favor of businesses and corporations, Nestor was looking at a million-dollar case, of which I’d collect one-third of the total settlement, more if the case went to trial. If I played my cards the right way, I’d be able to approach Snake Farm with a settlement offer by the end of the year. A payout of that size would mean that I could stop picking up small cases and volunteer for some pro bono work at the Native American Rights Fund. I could hang out at their cool office in Boulder and talk about Indian law again. Maybe even turn that into a full-time position if I did a good job on the pro bono work. Nestor’s case was the break I’d been hoping for.

But Snake Farm’s defense counsel — some meathead named Colt Jackson — was playing hardball, filing ridiculous motions, refusing to provide documents I requested, and not responding to my messages. There were a lot of these types in the legal profession, but this guy was one of the worst. I opened up Nestor’s folder on my computer, then my cell phone started vibrating.

“Germaine Law Office.”

A pause. “Griff, is that you?”

“Yes?” I didn’t recognize the woman’s voice.

“Hey, it’s Louise. From the Zephyr?”

The bartender from the Zephyr Lounge out on Colfax and Peoria. The place where I’d drowned many sorrows when I’d first moved to Aurora a decade ago. Louise had been in her thirties, tall with light-brown hair, porcelain-white skin, and a vintage thrift store sense of style. I remembered that she wore cool cat’s-eye glasses and a faux fur coat that looked like a leopard. She’d been kind to me, spotting me drinks when I didn’t have any cash. We’d even had a few sodden flings after some of her shifts. But there was never any weirdness between us. I’d moved my drinking down the street and lost touch with her.

“Louise, wow. Long time. How you been doing?”

“Well, you know, I’ve been better. But hey, I’m glad I found your number. I still had your card in my purse. It was buried at the bottom.”

Story of my life. “You still at the Zephyr?”

“Yeah,” she said, “but it’s not going so well. Ever since the med school opened, people don’t want to drink there. I got my regulars, but they’re dying off.”

The University of Colorado had moved its medical school to the old Fitzsimons Army Hospital facility awhile back, ensuring that a horde of doctors, medical students, and college administrators were just a couple of blocks from the Zephyr. But those folks weren’t interested in the bar’s 1970s art collection and dicey clientele. I felt guilty that I hadn’t been there in so long.

“Sorry to hear that. I’ll stop by soon, promise.”

She cleared her throat. “Actually, I was wondering if I could come by and see you.”

“What’s up?” I suspected she was gearing up to ask for money, but this well was dry. Bone dry.

“Well, I’ve got a divorce thing. So, do you still have your law degree or whatever? I mean, you’re a lawyer, right? Not selling cars or mowing lawns.”

This stung. “Sure am. What’s going on?”

Another pause. “It’s kind of embarrassing, but my ex-husband stopped paying his child support. For my daughter, Lily?”

I’d forgotten she had a daughter. I’d seen her once or twice at the bar, back in the day. A quiet little girl, sitting in one of the booths. She’d have to be a teenager by now. “Lily, right. Does he send the child support to the state office or to you directly?”

“Well, he’s supposed to send it to me. But I haven’t gotten a check in nine months, and I can’t reach him. You know, tips are really down right now, and I can’t make it without that money.”

I’d heard this story too many times. Child support in Colorado was usually not disputed, as it was determined by a formula based on the parents’ incomes and number of overnight stays. But the flaw in the system was collecting the money from those who were determined to dodge making their payments. A truly stubborn asshole could sometimes beat the system.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “I’m guessing you need some help.”

“God, yes. We’re about two months from being evicted, and that bastard won’t pay what he owes for his own kid. I can’t even afford Internet service anymore — Lily is going crazy.” Her voice was beginning to crack.

“Look,” I said, “why don’t you come to my office tomorrow and we can talk this over. I’m free in the morning; maybe ten a.m.? Bring all of the divorce paperwork you have.”

“Yes, absolutely! I can make that. Lily will be in school and I don’t work until two. Thank you, Griff. You’re a good guy.”

A good guy. It had been a long time since anyone had said that to me. Maybe things were changing.

The next morning, I put on my best tie and blazer and got to my office early. I threw out all of the trash, straightened the file folders on my desk, ran a dusting cloth over the books, and made sure the window was tightly closed to keep out the stink. Not perfect, but presentable.

Then I checked my email and E-filing account, hoping I’d gotten a response from opposing counsel in Nestor’s case. I’d requested the defendant’s insurance policy, but Colt had refused to produce it, even though this was standard procedure. I knew he was just playing games, trying to delay the case from moving forward so that Nestor would be willing to settle at a lower amount. My inbox was empty, so I decided to give Colt Jackson a call.

His office phone sent me directly to his voice mail, so I left a quick message: “Colt, this is Griff Germaine calling about the Nestor Vega case. I haven’t gotten a response to my RFP and I want to touch base on the driver’s policy. Are you going to send that over? Rather not bother Judge Stancil with a motion to compel. Let me know, please.” Hopefully my message would spur the asshole into doing the right thing and sending the policy over.

A few minutes after ten, I heard a knock on my door. I opened it and Louise stepped inside. Her hair was different, and the cool coat and eyeglasses were gone. She looked exhausted, and I could tell that the last few years had taken a toll on her. We hugged, awkwardly, and I motioned for her to sit down.

She looked around the office. “This is... nice.”

“Yeah, well,” I said. “Don’t know about nice, but it’s a good location for me. Most of my clients live in Aurora; it’s easy for them to get here.”

“Of course. That makes sense. Hey, thanks for meeting with me.” She set a tan folder on my desk. “Appreciate it.”

“It’s great to see you. Sorry it’s under these circumstances. I’ve been meaning to drop by the bar, it’s just that—”

“No need to explain. All good. Life goes on, right?”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m still waiting for my life to start,” I said, then paused for a second. Our eyes locked, and I looked away. I picked up her folder and took out a stack of papers. “So, tell me what’s going on with the child support.”

“That’s my bank statement on top. The last check I got from him was almost nine months ago. See the deposit for six hundred dollars? That was the last one he sent.”

I took a look at the other papers in the folder. I glanced at the financial statements and noticed that they’d used the state’s separation agreement template, rather than draft their own.

“You guys didn’t have counsel for the divorce?” I asked.

“You mean lawyers? No, Roger said we didn’t need them because we didn’t own any property back then.”

“Probably wasn’t a good idea.” I looked at the child support worksheet they’d completed. “What does he do? He work for someone?”

She shook her head. “No, he runs his own business. Handyman, some remodeling. I think he mostly gets paid in cash. You know, no receipts. I asked for his tax return, but he won’t give it to me.”

“What does he say about the child support? He explain why he’s not paying?”

She set her cell phone down on the edge of my desk. “That’s the problem. He’s kind of dropped off the face of the earth. I can’t reach him on his phone, and he moved from his old apartment, but never gave me his new address. I’ve checked on Facebook and all that, but can’t find him.”

“What about your daughter? Does she know where he is?”

Louise closed her eyes like she was concentrating, then started talking: “The shithead doesn’t care about her. After we split, she’d go to his place and spend a weekend with him. But I guess he lost interest. She hasn’t seen or talked to him for a long time.”

“You know anybody who might know where he is? Mutual friends or—”

“He doesn’t have any friends! Because he’s an asshole.”

I held up my hand. “All right, I get it. Is there anyone you can contact who might know his address?”

She shook her head. “No, I’ve done all that. I emailed his sister, his cousin, a couple other people. They just ignored me. I checked all the social media stuff, even bought one of those PeopleFinders searches. Cost me thirty dollars. The last address that came up was his old place. I already had that.”

“Do you know if he’s still in the state?”

“No clue. Although I doubt he’d leave. Where would he go? Maybe he’s dead. A girl can dream, right? But I think someone would have told me.”

I looked at the ex-husband’s financial statement for a moment, then put it back in the folder. “Okay, here’s my advice. First thing you do is contact the Colorado child support division at the Department of Human Services. They’re trained to find parents who won’t pay up. They can check his credit report, utilities, everything. If he’s in state, they’ll find him. If he left Colorado, there’s the federal parent locator service. They do the same thing, nationwide.”

She frowned. “Uh, how long does that take? I mean, it took me six months just to get my license plates from the DMV.”

I wondered how much to tell her. The reality was that the child support division was usually overwhelmed and underfunded. “I’ll be straight with you,” I said. “I hear there’s a pretty long lead time. It can take a year or more, but you can file for back child support when—”

“A year! I can’t wait that long. I’m about to get tossed out on my ass. What am I supposed to do?”

I raised my hands up in surrender. “Look, I hear you. These things take time. But maybe they’ll get lucky, find him right away.”

“I can’t count on luck! I’m about two shakes away from living in the motel across the street.”

She meant the Dust and Wind Motel, which rented rooms by the week, day, or hour. It wasn’t a place where you wanted to raise a kid.

“Louise, you know I wish there was some magic wand to wave, but if you don’t know where your ex is, you’re—”

She reached across the desk and grabbed my hand. “Please, Griff, isn’t there some other way? To get this thing going? For old times’ sake?”

I looked at Louise and remembered one night years ago when I’d been at my lowest point. I’d been on a two-day bender, convinced that my life was over because I didn’t have any clients, any prospects, or enough cash to support myself. I’d felt like a true failure — the only one of my Native law school classmates who couldn’t get a job at one of the good law firms. I’d stopped in at the Zephyr, and Louise saw I was in a bad way. She sat me down in one of the back booths, gave me coffee, and took me home with her when the bar closed. I spent the next day at her place, badly hungover but glad to be with another person. That time had meant a lot to me. And now she was asking for my help.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll do it.” I took her pile of divorce papers and put a binder clip on them. “It might be a long shot, but I can try and find him on my own instead of waiting for the state.”

“Oh, thank you, Griff!” She leaned across the desk and kissed me, which I wasn’t expecting.

“You’re welcome,” I said, and leaned back in my chair. I felt a little dizzy.

“Look, I want to pay you,” she said. “I don’t have anything now, but I promise—”

“This one’s on the house. Really. But remember, even if we find him, that’s just the start. We’ll have to file with the state, then try to get his wages garnished or his income tax return seized. No guarantees, okay?”

“I have faith in you,” she responded.

I wasn’t sure what to say. Any faith I had — in the government, the legal system, even myself — was long gone. If Louise believed in me, she was the last one.

For the next few days, I had to put Louise’s case on the back burner so I could get ahead on Nestor’s lawsuit. I’d received the results of Nestor’s medical examination, and the doctor had confirmed that he’d be confined to a wheelchair for the indefinite future. This was terrible for Nestor but good for our case, as it dramatically improved our position with the defense. There was no way the driver’s insurance company would take the case to trial now. Juries were immensely sympathetic to any plaintiff who entered the courtroom in a wheelchair. Nestor would never have to worry about money again. And, of course, this would mean that I could move to a decent office, buy a better car, and maybe show my face at the Colorado Indian Bar Association meetings again. I felt better than I had in a long time.

Then I heard my phone buzz.

“Germaine Law Office.”

“Is this Griffin Germaine?”

“Yes, who’s this?” I said.

“This is Colt Jackson. Just who the fuck do you think you are?”

It took me a second to orient myself to the call. “Sorry, what did you... What are you calling about?”

“That goddamn message you left on my machine! Threatening to go to Judge Stancil. For shit’s sake, he and I went to Stanford Law together. You really think he’ll grant a motion to compel for some nobody like you?”

I was speechless. I’d dealt with enormous assholes before, but this guy won the prize.

“Look,” I said, “I don’t give a gigantic turd if you went to Stanford Law and sucked off all nine judges on the Supreme Court. Just send the damn insurance policy. My client has a right to it, and that’s the law.”

He laughed. “You really don’t know shit about torts, do you? The law is what we say it is. And you’re not getting that policy. I’ve sent over all the docs you’re going to get.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll file the motion to compel. Your judge buddy denies it, I’ll file a writ of mandamus with the appeals court.”

“Hoo boy, you really are stupid, aren’t you? You file for mandamus against the judge, you’ll never win a case in his court again. My advice to you, Chief Geronimo or whatever you call yourself, is that you stick to your little criminal cases and go back to your teepee—”

I hung up. I’d reached my tolerance for racist shitheads for one day. I shut down my computer and starting walking to La Morena for some cheap beer and good tequila. It was karaoke night, and with any luck they’d play some rock and roll. I’d drink and pretend that I was on some faraway beach, safe from bigots and deadlines and doubt, just for a few hours.

The next morning, I shook off my hangover and turned to Louise’s matter. She’d given me the ex-husband’s name, date of birth, and last known addresses. Roger T. Haskell, formerly of Aurora, Denver, Wheat Ridge, and Commerce City. I did a Google search but didn’t find anything beyond the usual outdated social media profiles, voter registration, and family history sites. The state government databases didn’t yield anything useful either.

Having come up dry on the standard searches, I went to the site I saved for the most important cases. Only law firms, collection agencies, and law enforcement had access to the MegaUnion MLOxr database, but it wasn’t cheap. The company could track unlisted landline phones, legal judgments, arrests and convictions, assets and licenses, as well as names and aliases. But an extensive search could run a thousand bucks or more. I wanted to help Louise, but a thousand dollars paid for two months’ rent in my crappy office. Or some advertising in the Thrifty Nickle. Or maybe just some decent hooch and a box of Omaha Steaks. I entered Roger’s name and information and hovered over the Submit button.

What the hell. I clicked on it, and tried to mute the voices in my head telling me I was an idiot. After a few minutes, an email appeared in my inbox from MLOxr. The report was eighty-seven pages. Ten dollars per sheet plus a processing fee. As I’d feared, I was out nearly a grand.

I downloaded the report and started to read. The first part contained his complete job history since he was eighteen, his electric, gas, and water utility history, and a list of his relatives and associates and their addresses. The next section listed his bankruptcy and lawsuit history. He’d taken a Chapter 7 bankruptcy about fifteen years ago and discharged all of his debts. Interesting. There’d also been a civil lawsuit filed against him for nonpayment of debts around the same time. His criminal history revealed a third-degree assault charge in Denver that had been dismissed. I wondered if Louise knew about all this.

The last section of the report listed the trade names he’d registered with the state for his businesses. He’d filed a new business trade name just a year ago. End Zone Construction, registered in Highlands Ranch at an address I hadn’t seen anywhere else. Then I went to the list of relatives and associates, and found what I’d been looking for. The address for End Zone Construction matched the one for his associate, Sherry Chamberlain, and her name appeared on the trade name registration along with his.

It was possible that Roger had created a legit business with a new partner, but my money was on the likelihood that Sherry Chamberlain was his new girlfriend, and he was living with her and running his business from that address. Maybe he’d created the company to avoid paying child support or perhaps there was something else shady going on. Either way, I’d found him and could serve him with a motion for back child support. I’d call Louise and tell her the good news. Better yet, I’d go over to the Zephyr this afternoon and tell her in person. We’d have some celebratory drinks and toast a victory for the good guys.

Later in the day, I stuck the MegaUnion report in a folder and strolled down Colfax. It was a nice day, and I decided to walk the mile and half or so to the Zephyr Lounge. No point in driving, especially if I was going to have some drinks. First, I passed by Pasternack’s giant pawn shop and looked inside the windows. A few years ago, I’d had to pawn some electronic gear when I couldn’t afford groceries. Thankfully, Nestor’s case would pay out soon, or I’d have to pawn even more of my stuff. Then I walked by the old Fox theater and the Weedstar cannabis dispensary, which looked to be packed as usual. I came to Havana Street where Nestor had his unfortunate accident, and made sure to look both ways before crossing. There were a couple of food trucks by the Mexican supermarket, and I could smell the tacos al pastor they were selling. I sidestepped the line of people waiting to get inside the Guadalajara Mexican Buffet, and then walked by the Golden Chalet, the swingers’ motel that had been there for decades. The place had survived recessions, wars, and catastrophes — a testament to the enduring power of hook-up culture. For all of its flaws, I loved Colfax Avenue and its people. I missed the reservation, but Colfax had become my home.

Thirty-five minutes later, I made it to the Zephyr and walked inside, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. It had been a few years since I’d been there, but the décor looked to be unchanged. Lots of neon, velvet paintings of Jesus, Elvis, and Santa Claus, and old stuffed animals propped up on the stage in back. The place was empty, and I spotted Louise sitting down behind the bar, staring at her phone.

“Hello there,” I said.

“Hey, stranger!” She stood up. “Are you joining me for a happy hour cocktail?”

“Why not? Pour me your favorite.”

She grinned. “We don’t carry my favorite booze, but I can whip up some pretty good dirty martinis.”

She mixed the gin along with the other ingredients, then poured it into some old-fashioned martini glasses. We toasted and took a sip. The juniper taste of the gin complemented the saltiness of the olive juice.

“What brings you in, sir?”

“Got some good news for you. Outstanding news. I found Roger.”

“You did? Already? That’s so great!”

I opened the manila folder and took out the MegaUnion report. “I used one of the big skip-tracing sites to check him out. Some interesting stuff. Take a look at this.” I pointed to one of the pages.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“He took bankruptcy and got rid of his debt. All of it. You know about that?”

She shook her head. “Sure didn’t. Makes sense, though. Hey, you want another round?”

“Sounds good.” I turned to the next section of the report while she made the drinks. “Looks like he was arrested for assault too. He ever tell you about that?”

She finished shaking the cocktails and refilled each of our glasses. “Yeah, he mentioned it. I think he said someone owed him money. Does it say what he did?”

I took another sip of the gin. It was starting to go to my head. “No, just that it was dismissed. That tells me the DA gave him a diversion, let him wipe out the charge. But that’s from a while back. Check this out — I found some new info.”

She came around the bar and sat down next to me. “Yeah? Lay it on me.”

“See here? He registered a new business name last year. End Zone Construction. You ever hear of that business?”

“Nope. Sounds like a name he’d pick. Big Broncos fan.”

“The interesting thing is that the business address is listed in Highlands Ranch. You never lived out there, right?”

“No, we were out in Thornton. Other side of town.”

“I searched the address on Google. It’s not an office, it’s a house. A big one too. I’m guessing that’s where he’s living now.”

She gulped her drink and set it down. “Highlands Ranch? He can’t afford that. Doesn’t make sense.”

“Here’s the kicker,” I said. “End Zone Construction has two registered partners, and the second one owns the house.” I paused. “Looks like he might be living with a woman out there and using the address for his business. That’s why you couldn’t find him on the Internet. It’s her house. Her name is, uhh...” I leafed through the pages of the report, trying to find it.

“Sherry Chamberlain,” she said.

I looked up and saw that Louise’s face had crumpled. “Yeah, how’d you know?”

“The address — it’s on Mountain View Drive, right?” she said.

“That’s right, but—”

“That motherfucking bitch. No wonder she won’t answer my texts. She’s my best friend — well, used to be. Goddamn her.” She took her martini glass and threw it across the bar. It hit the brick wall and disintegrated into jagged shards, the sound ringing across the room. “She’s always been after him. Well, she can have the bastard.”

She moved back behind the bar, opened a drawer with a key, and started digging around inside.

“Louise, I’m sorry, I didn’t know any of this. I had no idea he—” I stopped when I saw what she’d taken from the drawer. A handgun. “Hey,” I said, “what are you doing? You’re not going to—”

“I’m getting what’s mine.” She grabbed her bag and stuck the gun in there, then started walking toward the door. “That son of a bitch owes me five thousand dollars. If he can’t pay it, his rich bitch can.”

I stood up. “Let me handle this. I’ll file the papers on him tomorrow, all right?”

She walked out and headed to the parking lot. I watched her fumble for the keys to her car. I could see her hands were shaking.

“Louise, stop! There’s nothing you can—”

And she was gone. I watched her pull out onto Colfax and head for the highway. She’d left the bar wide open. I pulled out my phone and called her. No answer.

I wondered what to do. I could call the cops and warn them, but that would only make matters worse. I realized I had two choices: drive all the way out to Highlands Ranch and try to settle things down, or go back inside the Zephyr and help myself to some free booze. I stared inside at the liquor bottles. Whiskey, vodka, tequila. I could get good and drunk and forget about everything. I felt bad for Louise, but nothing good would result from a confrontation with her ex-husband. Learning that Roger had taken up with her former best friend must have been the last straw after years of struggling to support her daughter. Her breaking point.

I remembered my own father’s breaking point, decades ago. Jobs were scarce on the Rosebud Reservation, and he’d been forced to travel to Nebraska to work for a local mechanic, sacrificing his health as he repaired hundreds of cars, trucks, and farm vehicles. His lower back pained him so badly that he couldn’t walk at times, couldn’t even make it to the bathroom. And then he got fired. His boss had said that there wasn’t enough business, but my dad knew the real reason. Some of the racists in Nebraska didn’t want an Indian working on their vehicle. I remembered that night, when he sat at our little kitchen table and wept. He didn’t know if he’d be able to provide for his family again, and the indignities of reservation life fell upon him all at once. He found another job after a time, but he was never the same. The father I’d known was gone, never to return.

I stared up at the sky for a moment, then walked back inside the bar and grabbed the folder with Roger’s address. I shut the bar door and started running back to my car. People stared at me as I made my way down the sidewalks, past the restaurants and liquor stores and pawn shops and motels. I ran as fast as I could.

Even going at top speed, it took over twenty minutes to make it back to my vehicle. I bent over and caught my breath, then tossed the folder on the passenger seat. I glanced at the clock. Six p.m. — the height of rush hour. The highway would be jammed. I tried calling Louise one more time, but she still didn’t answer. I wiped the sweat off my forehead and started the car.

As I’d feared, the traffic was terrible, and it took a full hour to get to the outskirts of Highlands Ranch, one of the outermost Denver suburbs. The GPS on my phone directed me to Santa Fe Boulevard and informed me that I was five minutes from my destination. My plan was to try to settle Louise down and broker a compromise. Perhaps I could get Roger to agree to an installment plan or a lump-sum payment. I’d appeal to his sense of fatherhood, if any of that was left.

The houses became larger and spaced farther apart. The lawns and bushes were immaculate. I took a right turn and pulled into a cul-de-sac. Then I saw them. Five police cars, the reds and blues flashing.

I was too late.

I parked halfway down the block and walked to the front door of the large house. Two police officers were chatting on the porch.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Sorry, crime scene. Need you to move back.”

I tried to look inside but couldn’t see anything. “I’m an attorney, here for Louise Hoffman.”

“You’re her lawyer?” the officer asked.

“Yes. Can you tell me what’s going on?”

The two cops looked at each other. “She took a shot at the owner of the house. Didn’t hit anyone.”

“No one got hurt?”

“Looks that way.”

Thank God. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. “Where is she?”

“On her way to County. You just missed her.”

I knew it would take hours for the police to finish taking statements and even longer for Louise to be processed at the jail in Castle Rock, so there was no point in sticking around. I stared at the mountains off in the distance. They seemed so close here, majestic and severe. After a moment, I turned back and headed home.

The next day, I was able to reach the assistant district attorney, who briefed me on what had happened in Highlands Ranch. Apparently, Louise had burst into the home owned by Sherry Chamberlain. As I’d suspected, Roger Haskell was living there, but he hadn’t been home when Louise had stormed in. Louise had yelled at Sherry and tried to shoot her, but had — thankfully — missed by a large margin. Sherry had run out of the house screaming, and neighbors had called the police. Louise had confessed to everything, which destroyed any chance she had of defending the charges against her.

The prosecutor told me that they’d be filing charges of attempted first-degree murder, felony menacing, and several firearms counts. My heart sank when I heard this. I knew how plea bargains worked, and I realized that the best Louise could get would be a reduction to second-degree attempted murder and the other charges dismissed. Second-degree attempted murder was a class 3 felony with a minimum sentence of ten years. That meant that, with good behavior, she’d serve no less than seven years in prison and probably more. She’d never see her daughter Lily grow up, and most likely, Lily would go live with her father, who didn’t appear to have much interest in parenting. If he wouldn’t take her, she’d enter the child welfare system.

I realized the scale of my failure to help Louise. I’d tried to do a good deed, and now my friend was headed for prison. Her family was destroyed, and Roger — the bad guy in all this — had come out unscathed. Everything I’d tried to do to help Louise had only made matters worse. Yeah, I’d made a mess of things, but maybe I could still help on the margins. I’d keep an eye out for Lily, and would even use some of the payout from Nestor’s case to help her. The least I could do.

So, it was time to get back to work. My DUI cases had dried up, but I still had Nestor’s personal injury lawsuit. That case was the best piece of luck I’d had in a long time. As I booted up my computer, I could sense that things were about to turn around for me. A new day, and a chance to finally get the respect I deserved.

My cell phone vibrated. I looked down and saw there had been five attempts to call me and one voice message. I picked it up and hit the button.

“Griff, it’s Nestor. Nestor Vega. Anyway, I been trying to call but can’t get hold of you. So I guess I gotta leave this message, hope that’s okay. Yeah, so, I wanna let you know that I hired another lawyer. I mean, you’re great and everything, but this guy Colt called me and said you’re not doing so well with my case. Like, totally messing it up. You know, I can’t work no more cause of my accident, and I really need that money. So I called that lawyer on TV — you know, the guy who calls himself the Big Fist, and I went ahead and signed the papers with him. Uh, yeah, I just wanna thank you for the work you done. That’s it. Later.”

I heard a rushing sound in my ears and the walls began to waver. A fury overcame me and rose up through my spine. That racist Colt Jackson had fucked me over royally. Never mind that he’d broken every norm of professional ethics — he realized he could screw me and get away with it.

I knew what I had to do. I kept a baseball bat under my desk for emergency situations. I’d take it and show him not to mess with a Native warrior. I pushed my chair back, reached under the desk, and grabbed the bat. It felt good in my hands, and I thought about what it would be like to take Colt out, inflicting some street justice on a jerk who deserved it.

Then I saw my reflection in the window — kneeling down on one leg, grasping the bat like a rifle. I realized that I looked like the famous photo of Geronimo, the one where he’s holding his weapon upright and scowling at the camera. Geronimo, whose real name was Goyahkla, the last Native warrior to surrender to the US military; he spent his final years in an army prison, only being released to appear in Wild West shows where he was trotted out as a curio for the spectators. Natives believed he had the power to foresee incidents that would occur in the future, even though he was unable to change or influence those events. I wondered if he’d been able to predict what was in store for him — the years of imprisonment, the demise of Native traditions, the loss of his culture. On his deathbed, Geronimo said to his nephew, “I should have never surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive.”

I pondered what my future would hold if I beat the crap out of Colt with the bat. Would I be upholding my honor and paying tribute to the spirit of Geronimo?

And then I felt foolish. It was ridiculous to fantasize about taking revenge on the asshole defense lawyer. I’d only end up in jail, where I’d experience the criminal justice system from the other side. I’d be validating everything that Colt and other racists had probably said about me and every other indigenous person.

I tossed the bat on the floor. As it rolled across the room, I realized that there was nothing left for me here, that I’d never ascend to the legal heights of which I’d once dreamed. The respect of my peers, the chance to win some courtroom victories, working for the causes I cared about — these things were beyond my grasp, and there was no longer any reason to keep fighting. Like Geronimo, it was time to surrender.

I grabbed my keys and started walking. I’d need to get a job, a real one, and I knew there was an opening at the Zephyr.

A Life of Little Consequence by Twanna Latrice Hill

Capitol Hill

By the time LaVonda returned from setting the table, the two men had nearly traversed the length of her block. She had watched them for over an hour and now it was dusk. As they approached her walkway, she closed her book and rose from her chair.

“You’d best come in,” she said, before either of them could speak. She ignored the screech of her screen and turned back into her apartment, settling herself in the middle of her slate-gray sectional. Even though she was wearing jeans, she crossed her legs delicately at the ankle.

The taller of the two men mounted the porch and stopped at the screen door. He was a large man, blond, with close-cropped hair that marked him as ex-military, but the fleshiness of his face and the protuberance of his gut told her that had been some years ago.

“We’re with the Denver Police Department,” he said, holding up the badge around his neck.

Don’t be nervous, LaVonda thought. She filled one of the coffee mugs from the carafe on her coffee table. “Black, or do you take sugar and cream?”

“I’m Detective Niedermeyer and this is my partner, Detective Delgado,” he said, inclining his head toward the other man, who followed him into the apartment. “Um, black is fine.”

“And you?” she asked the younger detective as she handed a cup of coffee to Niedermeyer.

Detective Delgado glanced at his partner before sitting on the chaise at the opposite end of the couch. “If there’s sugar, I’ll take some.”

LaVonda hoped her hands didn’t tremble as she filled the second cup. Delgado was maybe forty, with thick black hair and a neatly trimmed mustache above full lips. Dark tendrils curled above his collar. Thin trails of sweat trickled down his neck and his long-sleeved shirt clung wetly to his body. The tang of his musk teased her nostrils as he leaned forward and took the mug from LaVonda’s hands. She felt a slight quivering between her legs. Don’t get carried away, she thought to herself.

“We were hoping you might look at a picture for us,” Niedermeyer said.

Detective Delgado set his coffee on the tray, slid a piece of paper from the clipboard on his knees, and held it out to her. “Do you recognize this man?”

Don’t stare at him, she thought, turning her attention from the detective to the flyer in his outstretched hand. She took it and studied it for several seconds. An image, captured in black-and-white, looked back at her. The picture was a few years old and grainy, but the drawn face with the furrowed brow beneath an untidy Afro was clearly recognizable.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s Ronnie. But this looks like an old picture. He’s much older now.”

Niedermeyer flipped open his notebook and began writing on a large yellow legal pad. “How do you know him?”

How did she know Ronnie? He wasn’t a friend, not really. But he was more than an acquaintance. “He just hangs around the neighborhood,” she said. “Why? What happened?”

“He’s dead,” said Niedermeyer.

LaVonda pressed her fingers to her mouth and stared down at the picture. “Oh my. He’s dead. Really? But how?”

“Somebody killed him,” said Delgado as he took back the flyer. “Dumped his body in the schoolyard. Since he lived down the block, we’re just canvasing the neighborhood.”

LaVonda looked from one detective to the other. “But when? I just saw him yesterday.”

Yesterday, he had been with Toby, the live-in boyfriend of her upstairs neighbor, Allie. In the wee hours, when the pain in her back had forced her from her bed, LaVonda had gone to sit outside in the dark and had seen them, Ronnie and Toby, skulking about, getting into only god knows what kind of trouble. Toby spent more time with Ronnie than he did with Allie.

“Do you know who he associates with?” Niedermeyer asked.

LaVonda shrugged. “Ronnie knows everybody.”

“And you saw him yesterday?”

LaVonda nodded.

“Did you see him with anyone in particular?”

“Well,” she said, “sometimes he hangs out with Toby. My neighbor. Well, sort of neighbor. Toby lives upstairs with Allie. He and Ronnie hang out together sometimes.”

Niedermeyer stood. “So, we can find this Toby upstairs?”

LaVonda shook her head. “I doubt it. At least, not right now. He doesn’t have a regular gig but he gets those day jobs — you know, where you show up for same-day work. He’s basically a temp.”

“And his girlfriend — your neighbor — is named Allie?”

LaVonda nodded. “She works full-time. She’s a few years older than Toby, in her thirties.”

Niedermeyer wrote steadily on his legal pad.

LaVonda turned to Delgado. “Ronnie wasn’t really a bad guy. I wish I knew more.”

Both detectives pulled business cards from their pockets, and LaVonda took them. “In case you hear anything,” Delgado said.

“We can see ourselves out,” said Niedermeyer, turning toward the door.

Delgado took a last swig from his coffee, then stood. LaVonda held out her hand. He clasped it and LaVonda squeezed. It was warm and slightly moist; his grip was firm. She realized he was looking beyond her, at the pictures on the wall of her with friends, most of whom she hadn’t spoken to for the better part of a decade. She released his hand and followed the men to the door.

“You both have a nice evening,” she said as they made their way down the weathered steps of her porch. She stared at Detective Delgado’s back.

Turn around, she thought. If he turns around, it means he’s thinking of me.

LaVonda watched as the two men left her yard. They headed toward the end of the block without turning around.

LaVonda tossed Niedermeyer’s card on the coffee table. She brought Delgado’s card to her nose and inhaled deeply. Her stomach fluttered. She hadn’t been this excited since the regular UPS driver had gone on vacation and his replacement had brought a package to her door. She had been entranced by his hazel eyes, his 1970s ’stache, the way the muscles in his arms rippled. For weeks, she had yearned for his body, longed to feel his touch. Now she had a new man to fantasize about.

In her mind’s eye, she could see Delgado’s hands — those large hands, covered with a layer of smooth black hair. Hands that should be holding her, touching her. She needed to attract his attention, but how? Maybe if she had some key information about Ronnie’s murder, she could call him and he might come back to see her. But what if he didn’t come alone, or worse, asked her to go downtown to make a statement? She had learned from watching dozens of true crime shows that it was rarely wise to inject yourself into an investigation. And this wasn’t some TV show, this was real. Someone was dead — murdered. Someone she knew.

LaVonda burrowed into her stash, which she kept hidden in a small alcove in her dining room, and retrieved her bottle of pills. She struggled momentarily with the childproof cap, pressing and turning until the lid popped off in her hands. Her back was screaming. She knew it was best to try to stay ahead of the pain but she had delayed taking her meds for a couple of hours — hours spent sitting on the porch in a straight-backed wooden chair, watching folks meander by, taking little heed of the eclectic architecture that marked this community. Victorian mansions over a century old reigned, though many had been converted into office buildings or multifamily dwellings. They retained their majesty despite being nestled between twenty-first-century apartment buildings and overlooked by ever-invading condominiums that deigned to scrape the sky.

LaVonda lived in a historic house that had been subdivided into four family units. It had been affordable while she was working, but her settlement couldn’t cover the annual rent increases forever. Nonetheless, she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. The apartment had three bedrooms, a dining room and living room, a cavernous kitchen with minimal counter space, a good-sized bathroom, and laundry facilities in the basement. She had access to a small garage in the back — which she cherished, as street parking was practically nonexistent. She lived just off Thirteenth Avenue, so she was far enough south to see young professionals jogging or out walking their dogs, but close enough to East Colfax that a few people living on the streets shambled by each day. A decade ago, the city got serious about cleaning up Colfax and tried to shunt most of the transients away from the Hill, but LaVonda felt they were more than part of the local color — it was their neighborhood as much as hers.

East Colfax had once been a haven for prostitutes and drug dealers — and it still had its share of those — but now Denver’s main drag also featured ethnic eateries, trendy boutiques, and even a recreation center. Coffee shops, restaurants, and a couple of clubs were all within walking distance. But it wasn’t the shops that made Capitol Hill what it was — it was the people. The neighborhood was filled with young people, sharing apartments and group homes; urban professionals who enjoyed the easy commute to downtown; lovers of every gender and shade who entwined their hands as they crossed each crack in the sidewalks. It was a place for bohemians, for the colorful and the eccentric, the shady and the urbane, the lovers and the lost.

What you didn’t see here on the Hill were women pushing fifty, alone and barely getting by. Women like her.

LaVonda placed one tablet of oxycodone on her tongue and washed it down with a flat Diet Coke that had been sitting out since morning. She hadn’t gotten these pills from Ronnie, but from the pharmacy a few blocks east. There had been a short while when she had turned to Ronnie. Her pain-management doctor had suddenly closed his practice and it had taken her a few weeks to find a new one. Ronnie had sold pot before it was legalized and now dabbled in opiates. She hadn’t thought of Ronnie as her dealer, just a friend of Toby’s who was able to help her out in a time of need.

Toby, was, well, he was little more than a boy, and not a particularly bright one. Her maternal urges kicked in whenever she saw him. He was nice and well mannered, in his midtwenties, with unruly hair and a crooked smile. He was one of those kids who needed to wake-and-bake just to face the day. He was also a cigarette smoker, and even though she had quit five years ago, LaVonda looked forward to his visits and the few drags he let her take from his Camel Lights.

In her bedroom, LaVonda closed the blinds, then unzipped her jeans, shimmied out of them, and unrolled her Spanx. She felt an almost instant sense of relief as her belly fell free. Now she could breathe. She removed her blouse and unclasped her bra. As she reached for her shift, she caught sight of herself in the freestanding mirror. Her stomach wasn’t huge, but it was soft, flabby, and lined with stretch marks from the days when she was more than seventy pounds heavier. Even though her breasts were small, gravity had done its damage and, without support, they sagged. She stood in front of the mirror naked, examining her body. The ever-present pain she endured had ruined her appetite, and at first she had been thrilled to lose so much weight. She had not anticipated how much her body would change. She was no longer curvy, at least not in the right places. Her ass, once high and round and firm, was now flat and wrinkled. Her stomach was marked by a fifteen-year-old hysterectomy scar. It had been a bikini cut, but it had still created a line on her stomach, creasing it unattractively. Her thighs were dimpled and the flesh beneath her arms jiggled. She averted her gaze. Who could possibly want me? she thought.

She made her way down the hall, straightening one of the several diplomas and accolades that were hung there as she walked past. They were reminders of her life before the accident. She kept these artifacts free of dust, even though there was no one to notice them. No one really came by. At least, not anymore. As she passed through the living room, she retrieved the detectives’ half-empty cups and dropped them in the kitchen. A few lunch dishes remained, but they would have to wait. Right now, she needed to lie down.

LaVonda tightened the belt of her robe and stretched out on the couch, berating herself for spending all day on the porch like some little old lady. She was forty-six. It had been ten years since an SUV had barreled through an intersection near the Cherry Creek Mall and T-boned her, leaving her with a twisted spine and extensive nerve damage. The settlement had been adequate, it paid the rent, and for a long time she had thought she would never work again. But next week, she would start her new gig with a crisis line, taking calls from those who were reaching out for some kind of help. Some might call it volunteering; she considered it nonsalaried employment. She would matter again.

LaVonda flipped through the TV channels, waiting for her meds to kick in. She settled on Forensic Files.

The pounding at her door startled LaVonda, who was dozing lightly in front of the television. It was late — much too late for visitors. LaVonda crept to the front door in her bare feet and looked through the peephole. It was Toby.

She unlocked the door. He leaned his head against her chest. LaVonda pulled him into her and hugged him hard.

“I heard about Ronnie,” she said, as she stroked his back. “I’m really sorry.”

Toby looked up at her. He was handsome in an unkempt kind of way. His hair was too long, and when he didn’t wash it, he tied it back with a rubber band. His face was long and oval, his eyes spaced wide, his lips a little thin, but they, like his cheeks, blazed red. He was only about five foot six and he was soft — too soft. His hands were smooth and almost doughy, revealing a man who’d never done a day of hard work. Still, he went down to temp agencies on most days and usually ended up with some kind of gig. He was charming and that went a long way.

Toby pulled a crumpled pack of smokes from his pocket and waved them in front of her. LaVonda looked at the clock, then followed him onto the porch. He placed a cigarette between his lips and lit it, then passed it to her. LaVonda inhaled deeply, the smoke filling her lungs. Her entire body seemed alive. As she exhaled, a sense of relaxation coursed through her.

They smoked together silently for several moments. Toby let her have the last drag.

“Okay,” she said as she stamped the cigarette out in an ashtray on the railing, “it’s really late. You need to go home to Allie.”

“Wait. Hear me out.”

“Toby...”

“LaVonda, please.” He dropped his head and looked up at her through a veil of shaggy hair. “I have to talk to you.”

LaVonda let him take her by the hand and lead her back into the apartment. She nestled into a corner of the couch and drew her knees beneath her. “Well?”

Toby produced what looked like a fat cigar from his front pocket. He inhaled as he passed it under his nose, then proffered it to LaVonda.

She tightened her robe. “I don’t think so.”

“Come on,” Toby said, kneeling before her. “It’ll help you sleep. Just one toke.”

LaVonda sighed and shook her head. This was ridiculous — but it might help her sleep. “One toke. That’s all.”

Toby lit the blunt and LaVonda inhaled. Almost instantly, she felt warm. Her extremities began to tingle; her shoulders relaxed and her breathing deepened. She stretched out on the couch, next to the chaise where Delgado had sat, and rested her head back on her arm.

“Okay, Toby. What do you want to talk about?”

He exhaled a thick cloud of blue-gray smoke. “The cops are after me.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’ve been over to a couple of my friends’ houses. They even left a card upstairs for Allie. She won’t turn me in, though.”

LaVonda shook her head, thinking of how Allie clung to Toby as to a life raft. She was not love-smitten, she was just a woman trying to hang on to a younger man by buying his clothes and making him breakfast. Allie couldn’t understand that Toby would never love her, could never love her. He was hustling, always hustling. Allie was just a sugar momma.

“The cops were here too,” LaVonda said. “They had a picture of Ronnie.”

Toby sat beside her on the edge of the couch. “I still can’t believe it. Why’d they come to see you?”

“I think they were just canvasing the neighborhood.”

Toby stood and began stalking around the apartment. “So, what did you tell them?”

“I told them that you two were friends.”

Toby turned on his heel. “Why would you tell them that?”

“Toby, it’s no secret that you two hang together.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, squeezing next to her on the couch. “Yeah, I saw Ronnie early yesterday evening. I went over to his place, smoked a couple of blunts. Watched something loud on TV. He was fine when I left him.”

LaVonda leaned back on the couch. “Yeah, I saw you two late last night.”

“What do you mean, late last night?”

“Late. Really late,” she said. “My back was bad, so I went out to sit on the porch. It must have been after—”

Toby shook his head. “No. That’s not right. I left his house at eight. I didn’t go out with Ronnie last night.”

“Are you sure? I’m positive I saw—”

“Is that what you told the cops?”

“No. I mean, I said I saw you two together yesterday.”

“Well, after I left Ronnie’s place at eight, I was in with Allie all night. Just ask her.”

LaVonda stared at Toby for a long moment. If he wasn’t the man she saw with Ronnie, who was? The killer. She shuddered.

“Oh, LaVonda, what am I going to do?” He leaned over on his side and laid his head in her lap, burrowing into the fabric of her gown.

“If you didn’t do anything, I’m sure everything will be fine.” LaVonda felt completely relaxed. She toyed with his hair, brushing it back behind his ears, smoothing it across his forehead. She scraped her nails along his scalp. She pressed her fingers against his temples, rubbing them in firm circles.

“That’s nice,” he said, nestling his head deeper against her thighs. “That feels really nice.” He placed one hand on her knee.

She removed it. “Get a grip, Toby. I’m old enough to be your mother.”

“So?” he said, looking up her. “Maybe I like that.”

LaVonda’s mouth went dry. What does he want? I could never think of him that way. She gently pushed him from her lap and stood. “You’d best get upstairs to Allie.”

“But what if they come back?”

“There’s no point in you hiding from the police. Just answer their questions and be done with it.” She grabbed him by both hands and pulled him to his feet. “Time for you to go home, Toby.”

He encircled her waist with his hands. Suddenly, he dropped to his knees and pulled her gown over his head.

LaVonda’s pulse quickened. “What the hell are you doing?” she asked, pulling away.

“You’ll see.” She felt his hands on her thighs, rubbing them, parting them. Felt his mouth kissing the tender spot by her knee, then moving upward.

LaVonda tried to twist away, but Toby moved with her. He was nibbling her now, tiny little bites that tickled her flesh. She felt herself relenting, and her hands relaxed on his shoulders. Then she dug her thumbs in near his collarbone and pushed hard. “Wait! Wait!”

Toby sat on his ankles, continuing to caress her calves. “What?”

“Toby,” she whispered, “I haven’t even showered.”

He laughed. “You don’t have to.” He scrambled back under her gown. Then he was pulling down her panties and before she could object, his mouth was on her pussy, his tongue darting about, doing delightful things that hadn’t been done to LaVonda in a long time.

She fell back against the wall as Toby’s mouth became greedy and insistent. She closed her eyes, and found herself thinking of Detective Delgado. It was his scent that she breathed into her body, his hands that were kneading her thighs, his tongue that was dipping inside her.

“You like that, huh?” Toby’s voice interrupted her reverie. She clutched at his hair, forced him back between her legs. Waves of warmth spread throughout her body. She wasn’t sure she understood what was happening. She just knew that she didn’t care.

LaVonda was hot. She kicked at the sheets that entangled her feet until her lower legs were free. Toby lay beside her. Even in the darkness, she could see the pale skin of his hairless back. She was unused to sharing her bed, and he had left her very little room to maneuver. She was also lying in the wet spot. She rolled away from him and off the edge of the bed. She crawled around until she found her nightgown and robe where she’d dropped them on the floor. She clutched them to her chest and silently made her escape.

LaVonda headed to the alcove in the dining room. The room was dark, brightened only by the ambient light from streetlamps that filtered in through her windows. Still, she easily found her pills. She had never mastered the art of swallowing the tablets dry, so she wended her way to the bathroom, closed the door, and turned on the light. She popped an oxy, then hunkered down over the sink and drank deeply from the spigot. Water trickled from her lips and she swiped at her mouth with her sleeve. Her hands gripped the sides of the sink and she stared at herself in the mirrored medicine cabinet. She turned her face first to one side, then the other. It was still mostly unlined, except when she laughed. She pressed her fingers to her temple and cheek, tugging at her skin until it was taut. That was better. When she removed her hands, her face went slack. There were faint hollows under her eyes. She thought she saw a gray hair and looked closely at her scalp; it could have been a trick of the light. I look okay but I look my age, she thought.

Parts of her body still tingled from her interlude with Toby. He had been patient and had gone down on her for a long time until her body began to convulse. They had stumbled to the bedroom. He’d grabbed the back of her head and crushed her mouth with his. She’d felt dizzy as he’d pulled her nightgown over her head. His hands roved over her body. They were so soft and warm against her skin, skin that hadn’t been touched like this in so long. She’d fallen back onto the bed and he’d shucked off his clothes and climbed on top of her. Their bodies had fit comfortably. She was still limber enough to wrap her legs around his back as he nuzzled and suckled and kissed her repeatedly. She’d quickly felt herself coming again and she could just make out the smug smile on his face. He had come then too, as if he had been holding back, waiting for her to come first. He really is a nice boy, she thought.

Now she curled up on the couch in her living room, turned the volume of the TV on low, and flipped through the channels. Even as images flashed on the screen, she closed her eyes and replayed the night in her mind. Part of her felt awakened and alive, another part felt something akin to shame.

Why had she slept with Toby? He was certainly no Detective Delgado. He had caught her unawares but she had immediately surrendered. It had been so long since a man had touched her in a way that made her feel desirable. She may have been forty-six and past her prime, but she was still a woman, goddamnit. He had made her feel like one — twice. And yet, the mildest hint of disgust lingered. He was barely in his twenties, he was lazy, he let himself be supported by women. She hoped he wasn’t lining her up to be next. I’m not that desperate, she thought. Besides, he doesn’t really want me. Does he?

“Come back to bed,” Toby said.

LaVonda opened her eyes. Toby sat beside her on the couch. He pulled her feet into his lap.

“Let’s have a smoke,” she said.

Toby pressed his thumbs into the bottom of her foot. “We smoked the last one.”

LaVonda draped her arm over her face and sighed softly. “Damn. That would have been nice.”

“I’ll go get some,” he said, as he tugged gently at each of her toes.

LaVonda sat up. “Really? At this time of night?”

“The 7-Eleven is only a couple of blocks away.” Toby massaged her calf in long, languid strokes. “But I don’t have any cash on me.”

Her breathing became more shallow as Toby’s hands moved farther up her leg. “I do,” she said. “Do you really want to go?”

“Sure.” He laid her leg down on the couch and smoothed her gown around her ankles. “I guess I should put some clothes on.”

Toby disappeared into the bedroom and returned holding a small bundle of clothes. He stepped into his pants, then knelt beside her.

“Hey, why don’t you come with me?”

LaVonda laughed. “It’s almost three o’clock in the morning.”

“It’ll be good to get some air.”

“But that convenience store is like thug central. Nothing legit happens there this time of night.”

“It’ll be fine,” he said, tugging at her arms. “Come on.”

LaVonda let herself be pulled up from the couch. In the bedroom, she dressed in a pair of baggy jeans and a dark hoodie, tightening its strings beneath her chin.

“You look like some kind of hoodlum,” Toby said.

“Good, I’ll fit right in.”

The store, on Colfax, was notorious for prostitutes plying their trade and dealers pedaling their wares. LaVonda rarely went there. Even in daylight, she was afraid she’d step on somebody’s works. “I’m not so sure this is a good idea,” she said.

Toby laughed. “It’ll be fine.” He grasped her hand and led her out of the apartment.

LaVonda could hear traffic noise from East Colfax, even at this time of night. She noticed the occasional lighted apartment, but the street itself was decidedly empty. As they walked, LaVonda threaded her arm in his. He squeezed her hand.

We actually look like a couple, she thought. But LaVonda knew they weren’t. Maybe we just needed each other.

They turned into the alley that ran alongside the store. As they neared the back of the store, Toby stopped.

“What is it?” LaVonda asked.

Smiling, Toby walked her backward until her body was pressed against the brick wall. He kissed her, his tongue deep inside her mouth, and squeezed her ass with one hand.

“Not here,” she said. “It’s filthy.”

Toby chuckled, then kissed her again. She wrapped her arms around his back, holding him tighter. She hadn’t thrown on a bra, and her hoodie brushed deliciously against her hardened nipples.

After a long moment, Toby pulled back from her. He looked at the ground and kicked at a broken chunk of glass. “You know what’s funny?” he said. “If Ronnie had died back here, no one would have thought anything of it. They’d just think it was related to all the other shady shit going on around here.”

LaVonda took his face in both hands. “Stop thinking about it. At least for right now.” She leaned forward to kiss him.

“Maybe then the cops wouldn’t be after me.”

LaVonda leaned back against the wall. “They’re not after you. They just want to talk to you. You and Ronnie were tight. Besides, you walk along the edge of a dark world. Anything could happen.”

With his fingers, Toby traced the length of her nose, the line of her jaw. He parted her lips and slid his finger into her mouth. LaVonda closed her eyes, moving her mouth up and down on his finger. It tasted of sweat and cigarettes. He placed his open hand over her face. She licked his palm and gently bit at the pad of flesh at the base of his thumb. He cupped his hand over her mouth.

Suddenly, her body stiffened. She inhaled sharply as Toby pushed his body harder into her. Pain flared in her side. She tried to pull away but he held her head tight against his chest, his fingers tangled in her hair. LaVonda’s knees gave way and she slid down the length of his body.

She pressed her palm to her side. Her hand felt wet, sticky. She looked up at Toby, watched as he closed the knife with a soft snick and tucked it into his waistband.

LaVonda slid sideways onto the ground. Her mouth was open, her lips moving. Toby bent low, his ear to her mouth.

“Why?” she whispered, then began to choke and sputter.

“I really wish you hadn’t seen us when you came out on your porch last night. It’s a shame. I’ve always really liked you. But Allie will say I was in all night last night. Just like tonight.”

LaVonda’s eyes widened. “You... Ronnie... Why?” She coughed.

Toby shrugged. “He thought I was his bitch. I find all the customers for a few bags of weed? I deserved a serious percentage. Just a few dollars for everyone I brought in. He didn’t want to give it up.”

The coppery taste of blood was strong in the back of her throat. She still tried to talk. “But then, why did you... why did we...”

Toby nuzzled his face against her cheek, then pressed his lips to her ear. “You wanted it.”

LaVonda felt the knife against her throat. Tears slid from her eyes. I shouldn’t have slept with him.

But it was far too late for that thought.

Toby’s face filled her field of vision. Weakly, LaVonda pressed her thighs together. She knew that even though she’d washed herself, part of Toby was still inside her.

Good. She closed her eyes, tilted her head back, and arched her neck up to the sky.

Pieces of Everyone, Everywhere by Cynthia Swanson

Cheesman Park

Digging graves is straightforward labor, involving little more than brute strength and a sufficiently sharp blade. The job can be done with relative ease by even the most doltish of common workhands.

But here’s something many do not know: exhuming graves, by contrast, is art. One cannot simply thrust one’s spade in the ground, hack around until one hits upon some solid object, then mercilessly subtract shovelful after shovelful of raw earth until the grave’s remains, treasure-like, are exposed. Nor can one wrest such treasure from the ground, haphazardly tossing fragments to the surface and flinging them into any vessel conveniently nearby.

No. Such practices would be immoral. Moreover, they would, as my Uncle August said, invite misfortune. August believed, as do I, that regardless of circumstances, the dead deserve to lie peacefully. They should be disturbed only in the most dire of situations. If a body must be moved, it should be done properly and with reverence.

“There’s no cause to uproot them, Sam,” Uncle August told me. “If you have to do it, you better have a damn good reason. And you better treat them with respect.”

I had, and continue to have, no argument with that. All bodies, in my belief — both the dead and the living — should be treated with respect.

Uncle August and I had this conversation last year while standing in an Iowa cornfield. Plowing a new field, we encountered a shallow grave under a meager scattering of stones. We found no coffin, no shroud, not even a scrap of clothing — just a full, adult human skeleton set into the thick Midwest soil, all flesh that once graced the bones returned entirely to the earth. That the grave was unviolated by an animal was nothing short of providence.

No one besides our family had ever homesteaded that land, so the skeleton was either an Indian’s or perhaps belonged to some white man who, decades earlier, had been making his way west and died en route. Uncle August said his money was on the latter, because Indians are smarter than that — they don’t leave their dead lying about like so much rubbish. I suspect he’s right.

Either way, Uncle August said we were obliged to move the body appropriately. We returned to the barn and hammered together a solid though simple coffin. We lugged it to the field and eased the bones into place, carefully reassembling those separated from their neighbors. Then we moved the entire affair under a willow tree — where it should have been all along, as was obvious to both of us — and ensured the box was set accurately, buried deeply. The task cost us nearly a full day of plowing, but we accomplished it with respect.

Well. What would Uncle August say about my first job in my new city of Denver, Colorado? What would he say about the merciless, hack-job labor into which I had embroiled myself?

I choose not to think about it. When such thoughts enter my mind, I hang my head in shame.

Upon arriving in Denver, I’d spied the undertaker’s notices all over town. Posters were tacked to trees; advertisements took space in the local papers. Gravediggers needed for extensive exhumation project. Apply in person, E.P. McGovern, Undertaking and Embalming, 549 Larimer St. Strong white men only.

Inspecting one such sign, I inquired of a bystander how to find Larimer Street.

He glowered. “Cursed Tammany crooks. Think you’re free of them out here in the west? Think again, son.”

I shook my head. “Sir?”

“Mayor’s out of town,” the man explained. “Acting mayor is in deep with the local Tammany Hall cronies. Crooks pushed through a downright pointless contract to relocate those graves.” He shook his fist. “It’s nothing but taxpayer money lining wicked pockets, son.”

None of this made the least bit of sense to me. I asked again for directions to the funeral home.

“God’ll smite me, aiding such sinful jobbery.” He looked me up and down, appraising my shabby hat and coat. “But I can see you need the work.”

Indeed, I did. When the gentleman gave me directions, I thanked him and hurried away.

Applying for the job at McGovern’s funeral home, I was given a brief account of the situation. The graveyard in question, named City Cemetery, was located east of the Capitol and just a few blocks south of Colfax Avenue. For a time, this area had been the outskirts of Denver proper. As the city grew, a larger and more remote cemetery, Riverside, was established some miles north. At that point, City Cemetery was essentially abandoned — the graves uncared for, the tombstones crumbling, the entirety of it an eyesore. Now, the city intended to transform it into a park. The land would, as it was explained to me, become a green, grassy setting, intended for the leisure of those who lived nearby.

The next morning, upon arrival at City Cemetery, I glanced around at the nearby homes. They were nothing short of mansions, each larger and more elaborate than the next, positioned like well-trimmed rosebushes along the cemetery’s perimeter. No surprise that well-heeled homeowners were loath to gaze upon an unsightly public space.

The crew that assembled that day numbered approximately thirty, each stronger than the next. It was a warm spring morning — the type of day that, upon other circumstances, might inspire hope within the soul. In outlying cottonwood trees, sparrows chirped. Closer by, robins pecked for worms, and sunlight-seeking wildflowers broke through the dry earth. Along the boundary of the cemetery, curious onlookers gathered, arranged in a muddle that reminded me of the disorganized shelves at the unkempt country store back home.

The laborer next to me grinned. “What sport,” he said, striking the blade of his shovel into the scrub grass, where it met, clanging, against a rock. “What d’ya think we’ll find under there, lad?” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Nothing but thieves and degenerates, I hear. Bastards gettin’ what they deserve.”

Not entirely convinced of this, but disinclined to engage in argument within my first few moments on the job, I dipped my head just enough for my gesture to be recognizable as a nod.

In some areas of the soon-to-be-erstwhile City Cemetery, graves had already been exhumed. Long before undertaker McGovern was hired to finish the job, city officials had put out notices that any Denverite who had relatives at City Cemetery would be wise to have them removed to Riverside. The Jewish graves on the hill were relocated, every one of them, carefully and with respect, by families and synagogues. The Catholics negotiated a deal with the city to purchase their parcel of the graveyard, leaving those who had worshipped both God and the pope to continue peacefully resting in their current locale.

The remaining section of City Cemetery — “the Boneyard,” as I learned it was called — was where paupers, thieves, and unclaimed, disease-ridden bodies were buried. No surprise, then, that most of these bodies were unspoken for. Who’d speak for them?

Wagonful after wagonful of rudimentary caskets were brought forth and unloaded. “Dig,” the foreman — a bulky, weather-beaten fellow named Rudiman — instructed us. He told us not to attempt salvaging any containers we encountered; most, he said, would be cheap construction, not worth the cut-rate lumber comprising them. Instead, we were told to put the bodies in the delivered caskets, mark them with the identifying tags provided, and keep going.

“There are thousands of bodies in this soil!” Rudiman shouted to the assemblage. “You’ll be paid for each one you tag. The faster you dig, the more money you make. Have at it, men!”

Someone let out a holler: “Let’s do this, boys!” Enthusiastic spades were raised, and piles of dirt and rubble soon began to dot the landscape. Less inclined to revelry but nevertheless eager to demonstrate my strong work ethic, I grasped my shovel and began to dig.

“Respect them.”

I looked up. An elderly woman, threadbare shawl over her head and shoulders, had quit the onlookers and was making her way among the workingmen.

“Respect them, I say,” she told the laborers. “Say a prayer for each man’s soul as you raise him. Treat his body with tenderness — for tomorrow, it will be your own.”

They brushed her off. “Go away, old woman,” one man growled, raising his shovel in a half threat toward her. “Leave us to our toil.”

Across the clumps of earth, the woman’s eyes met mine. She hobbled over, gripping my shoulder, pulling my head toward hers.

“These men are unwise. But you possess prudence,” she whispered in my ear. “Do right by them, girl.”

She knew. How did she know? I’d hidden it so well — or so I’d believed.

Before I left Iowa, Uncle August had been the one who’d shorn my hair, handfuls of my rich dark locks stuffed into a bag for me to tote on my journey, in hopes of selling it at some future date. August loaned me britches, a belt, and two work shirts, one to wear and one for a spare. He handed me a long cotton cloth and told me to bind my — providentially small, anyway — breasts.

“You’re safer this way, Samantha,” he said.

I eyed him. How could I — whether dressed as woman or disguised as man — feel more threatened elsewhere than I was in my own home?

Three nights earlier, August had discovered my father at me. August did his best to haul Father away while I lay helplessly, my eyes filled with terror. August cursed and yelled and took the blows that blackened both eyes.

Only a few weeks prior, Uncle August and I had mourned the loss of my mother, who’d contracted influenza in early February. Before then, she’d done all she could to keep Father from me. So did August, once he knew. But like his sister and like me, August had no power over that man, who dwarfed him. Father had Uncle August by close to a foot and more than seventy pounds.

I’d inherited my father’s coarse facial features and his height, but not his girth. I was gawky and thin-limbed, my strength stringy at best. I could not fight off my father.

A disguise, on the other hand, I could manage.

And so it was Uncle August who helped me prepare for my journey — my mother dead and my father drunk and snoring in the barn. Harmless then, but he wouldn’t stay that way; we both knew it.

“Join me,” I said to August.

He shook his head. “You know I can’t, Sam. Not with what I owe him. He’d come after me — and where would that leave us?”

Father had paid for August’s passage from England — and paid, as well, the hefty gambling debt that caught August in Chicago, before he made his way west to our homestead. “I’ll keep working, pay off my debt. Then I’ll come to Denver, if I can,” August assured me. Gently, he touched my cheek. “I can pay your train fare and put a few dollars in your pocket. After that, you’re on your own. I’m sorry, Samantha. I’d do more, if I were able.”

“I know you would.” I nodded. “Thank you, Uncle.”

He reached into the pack beside his cot, the canvas knapsack he’d toted across the Atlantic, in which he kept all his worldly possessions. “I did set aside a small sum for this.”

Into my hands Uncle August pressed a slim volume — Poems: Second Series by Emily Dickinson.

I opened to the title page: Robert Brothers, Boston, 1892.

“Hot off the press, just last year,” Uncle August said. “I know you love your words, Sam.” In the lamplight, his eyes dimmed. “I wish things were different. You should’ve had the opportunity to continue your education. You should...” He drifted off, turning away from me.

I laid a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right. This gift means everything to me.”

I thumbed through the beginning of the volume. Several pages in, I stopped. Over my shoulder, Uncle August read, as well.

I looked up at Uncle August. “Thank you,” was all I could manage to whisper.

He gathered me into his arms. “You’re the pearl, Samantha,” he said. “You’re the pearl.”

I nodded at the old woman, who nodded back and left my side. I gripped my shovel’s handle, contemplating the humble tombstone at my feet. Ernest Smith, it read. 1855–1872.

No other words. Nothing indicating how young Ernest — aged seventeen at time of death, precisely my own age — had met his fate.

I bent to the ground, with my index finger tracing letters on stone. “What happened to you, Ernest?” I whispered. “What happened?”

The foreman, striding among the headstones, spotted me. “Get up,” he said.

I stood, shovel in hand.

Rudiman considered me. His eyes beheld my shorn, capped head, then took in my smooth cheeks and jaw. His gaze lingered at my collarbone, where the top button of my shirt was unfastened against the warmth of the day. From there, his eyes roamed the length of my body and came to rest on my long, booted feet.

He gazed upward, meeting my eye. “Get to work, boy,” he growled.

I took up my spade. My arms, in Uncle August’s shirt, were wiry. Plain of face, with no brothers to assume the fieldwork and no prospects for leaving my father’s homestead and becoming some other farmer’s wife, I’d left school at fourteen and taken my place in the fields. There, I’d been paid nothing for my work. But here on this rubbled turf, laborers would earn twenty-five cents for each body we removed from the ground and transferred to a new casket. Undertaker McGovern, I suspected, was being paid many times that amount by the city. Rudiman, self-importantly stomping amongst the workers, likely also received a healthy cut.

But I would earn nothing unless I started to dig.

Nonetheless, I was careful. I removed dirt from Ernest’s grave, the mound piling up until I encountered a rotting wooden box, sunk in the middle and exposing a skeleton’s torso.

Ernest had lain here for over twenty years, almost as long as the cemetery existed. What had he done? How had he died?

Gently, I shoveled my way around the decrepit box. When enough of the ramshackle casket was exposed to begin raising it, I set aside my spade and bent to the earth.

“Need a hand?”

A fellow laborer, young and handsome, smiled at me. I admired the well-defined shoulder muscles I discerned through his faded cotton shirt. His beard was full and neatly trimmed. I had to resist an impulse to touch it.

We each took one end of Ernest’s crumbling coffin. As we raised it, the bottom collapsed. A stench erupted, and I covered my nose with my neckerchief. The corpse, primarily skeleton but for a few persistent scraps of flesh, tumbled to the earth.

I fell to my knees. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered to Ernest Smith’s remains. “I should have been more cautious.”

My associate knelt beside me. “It’s all right,” he said. “You did your best.”

We looked at one another, and without a word folded our hands in prayer.

“May God have mercy on this dear, departed soul,” my companion said.

“Amen,” I finished. “Amen.”

On the second day, we sat amongst the dead eating our noontime sandwiches. I had my Dickinson with me, and I read beneath the shade of a cottonwood.

“Rise, you men!” Rudiman shouted. “Cease your loafing and get yourselves unloading.”

I looked up. A fresh shipment of caskets had arrived. Tucking the book into my knapsack, I got to my feet.

Hauling coffins from wagon to ground, we noticed something portentous.

Someone spoke. “Sir,” he said to Rudiman, “these caskets are mighty small.”

Shielding my eyes from the noonday sun, I observed that the man who spoke was none other than yesterday’s fellow precant over Ernest Smith’s remains. Again, my fingers itched to stroke the smooth hair along his jaw.

Rudiman approached, joined by our employer, E.P. McGovern. “What’s your name, man?” McGovern asked.

“Walter Perry,” came the reply.

McGovern lowered his hat over his brow. “Well, Perry, I don’t see as how it’s your place to ask questions. But as you ask, these caskets are all I was able to get on short notice.” He held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “You hear about the accident at that mining site out in Utah? Can’t tell you how many dead, but every remaining full-sized casket in Denver has been shipped west. Can’t find one to save your life — much less theirs.” McGovern waved a hand dismissively at the graves, then shook a finger in Perry’s face. “Way I see it, sir, you got two choices: either you find a way to fit these bodies in the caskets provided, or you set aside your shovel and leave the work to those who have the stomach for it.”

McGovern and Rudiman waited. Walter Perry eyed one man, then the other. Then he stuck his shovel in the ground and crossed the field. Exiting the cemetery, he broke through the assembled onlookers and disappeared.

The undertaker and foreman exchanged chuckles. “Anyone else?” McGovern called out. “Or are the rest of you real men?” He looked around the decaying field. “Your decision, gents.”

I felt my shoulders stiffen. I saw no possibility that a grown man’s body could fit into so small a casket. And yet, I lacked the courage to do what Walter Perry had just done — simply walk away.

My dilemma seemed to elude the others. Indeed, it appeared that they relished the task ahead. With fresh enthusiasm, shovels were raised. Skeletons were hacked apart — torso, upper limbs, pelvis, and lower limbs separated with the swift strike of metal on bone. Skulls were carelessly cracked from the rounded bone at the pinnacle of the spine. All of these bones were then crammed into tiny caskets, intended for children who left this world before their third birthdays.

Naturally, most of the disconnected frames did not fit, no matter how valiantly the men — at first — attempted ramming them into the miniature boxes. The remains of these unfortunate souls were, instead, distributed to secondary and sometimes tertiary caskets. “All the better,” one worker said. “We’re being paid by the casket, right?”

Overhearing him, McGovern grinned. “That we are, mister.”

Something else happened then too. Perhaps the men had exceedingly enjoyed the contents of their whiskey flasks during the noon hour. Or perhaps it was simply that the notion of what was being asked of them, the notion of dismantling and cramming adult skeletons into diminutive caskets, brought out something animallike in the workers.

I can’t say what it was. Regardless of the reason, tactics became increasingly macabre. Men warmed to the task, and their inhibitions, if they had any, loosened. They worked faster and rougher, gleefully shouting obscenities at one another and at the cemetery’s remains.

Then began the looting. Laborers examined bodies for jewelry. Cigar boxes filled with treasured possessions, buried alongside some of the deceased, were opened and rifled through. Anything of worth was stuffed into laborers’ pockets.

I glanced about. The old woman was nowhere to be seen, but I could hear her words in my head: Respect them.

I nearly put up my blade. How could I go on? How could I, recalling young Ernest Smith’s decomposed body, continue this mockery of a job that McGovern and his henchman Rudiman required? How could I — remembering my first exhumation, the one in an Iowa cornfield, remembering my uncle’s kind eyes and warm words — how could I, under these circumstances, attempt to transform such gruesome work into art?

But I needed the work. Afraid to try my luck at a boardinghouse, fearful my secret would be revealed, I’d been spending my nights in a bedroll, curled up in an alley off Colfax Avenue, all night slapping my palm against the dry dirt to ward off the rats who scurried and sniffed nearby.

My plan was to save up sufficient funds to take off my mantle of maleness. Using what I earned from this repugnant job, combined with what I could get for the mounds of hair stuffed in my knapsack, I’d buy myself a frock or two. Then I’d figure out what, in this new life of mine, came next.

And so I hoisted my shovel and commenced exhuming the next grave in my path. Trying, as best I could, to disassemble the corpse slowly and carefully — and then fit it like puzzle pieces into a juvenile casket.

I left the jobsite at dusk that evening, walking north on Franklin Street and turning west onto Colfax. My pack over my shoulder, I focused my eyes ahead, taking in the tableau of the under-construction Colorado State Capitol building and the setting sun dropping behind the Rocky Mountains.

Despite the ghastliness of my first job here, my sense of Denver was that it was a city of opportunity. In such an environment, one might achieve success — or better yet, happiness. Provided, of course, that one was able to find one’s footing.

As I breathed in the combined scent of horse droppings in the road, refuse in the alleys, and frying meat in the boardinghouses, I heard the clomping of boots behind me. Prickly, I forced myself not to turn my head, hoping that in refusing to acknowledge whoever trailed me, I might will them away.

The footfalls came closer, and hands grabbed both my arms. I twisted my neck, coming face-to-face with Rudiman and McGovern.

“You, boy,” McGovern sneered. “You work for me, don’t you?”

Swallowing hard, I nodded. “Please, sirs,” I said, in my practiced gruff voice, “take your hands off me.”

“We will not,” the undertaker replied. “Not until you explain yourself.”

I shook my head, feigning ignorance. “Sir?”

Placing a hand on the small of my back, McGovern thrust me into the closest alleyway, shoving me behind a wooden barrel beside a brick wall. My pack tumbled from my shoulder and rolled across the dirt.

McGovern nodded at Rudiman, who pressed on my shoulders until I sank to the ground. “You work too slowly,” Rudiman said. “You’re not man enough to be on this crew.” He pushed me backward, and my head snapped against the bricks. My eyes closed, then opened again, trying to focus on Rudiman’s jeering face. “But then again, you’re not man enough for anything — are you?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” I croaked.

“You know exactly what I mean.” Rudiman took one hand off my shoulder and gripped my chin, tilting it toward the twilit sky. “Such smooth skin,” he said, and his voice bore nearly the softness one might use when addressing a lover.

“Please,” I begged.

He shook my jaw from side to side.

Arms akimbo, McGovern eyed me. “You’re fired, boy.”

Jerking my head, attempting to release myself from Rudiman’s grasp, I said, “You owe me for two days’ work.”

“Such cheek,” McGovern snapped. “I owe you nothing. You deceived us — and liars deserve no wages.”

I stared him down. “Please tell your henchman to unhand me, sir.”

Rudiman chuckled. Grinning up at McGovern, he said, “Whad’ya think, boss? Let’s have some fun, eh?”

I opened my mouth to scream, but Rudiman clamped his hand over it.

McGovern shrugged. “I don’t get into any of that business.” He turned on his heel. “I’ve said all I have to say on the matter. What happens from here is of no concern to me.” He exited the alley.

Rudiman watched him go, then turned back to me. “Try to make fools of us,” he said. “I’ll show you a fool.”

He tightened his hand over my mouth. Forearm pressed to my collarbone, he snaked my belt from around my waist and tore at my britches until my body lay bare and exposed beneath him.

Afterward — after he buttoned his pants and left me lying in the dirt — I tried to catch my breath, half-naked and crumpled on my side.

In my mind, I played the prior moments back, wishing I’d had a knife or a gun. Or even a stick to poke in his eye.

Anything. Any object to make me feel less vulnerable than this.

Fumbling in the dark, I pulled on my tattered clothing and reached for my pack. I patted it, assuring myself that its humble contents — my bedroll, a flannel cloth to wipe my laborer’s brow, a shirt that had at one time been my uncle’s and at one time had been clean, and most importantly, my hair and my poems were safe and intact.

I doubted Rudiman would come back, but just in case, I made my way to a different alley. Was one safer than another? Likely not, but I had to take my chances.

There would be no sleep for me that night. Once the moon rose, I read by its faint glow.

Determined, I looked up at the sky.

I would be no such martyr.

The offices of the Denver Republican were two stories tall, composed of brick, with heavy cornerstones and a wide oak door. They’d be imposing to one who had fear.

But I no longer had fear.

Upon that morning, and every day of my life thereafter, this is what I stored in my heart: when we are filled with fear, no others fear us. But when the chin a man grasps becomes the chin tilted high and proud, above a neck long, upon shoulders squared, fear dissipates like a blown-over cloud.

“I wish to speak to the editor in chief, please.” Before the clerk seated at his desk could respond, I went on, “I have a scoop for him. I believe he will be most interested.”

Seventeen years later, on a warm day in the spring of 1910, I stood pencil and pad in hand amongst the crowd at the newly christened Cheesman Park. As each speaker took the podium, I scribbled notes for my story about the dedication of the park’s neoclassical marble pavilion. A thing of glory, the pavilion stood in the east portion of the park and oversaw the lush green lawns that last century’s city elders had envisioned — those green lawns that the Tammany politicians, now long gone, were unwilling to lay over paupers’ graves.

And yet, exactly that happened. After the Denver Republican broke the story — “The Work of Ghouls!” ran the headline — the city immediately shut down McGovern’s horrific operation. For a time, nothing else happened; the graves remained opened, pieces of everyone everywhere. Eventually, Denver’s first bipartisan mayor was elected, and a different company was hired to set the skeletal fragments into the earth from whence they came. At that point, properly reassembling corpses was impossible. Bones were transported as they were into the exhumed graves, covered and tamped down. Folks say the poor, restless souls still wander the park, especially by cover of night. I don’t doubt it.

After they followed my lead and scooped the story before any of the other papers got wind of it, I talked my way into a job as the Republican’s first female cub reporter. My initial stories were trivial, many of them relating to ladies’ charitable activities. Eventually, Ellis Meredith, suffragist and reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, took note of my work, finding in my stories the lyricism and authenticity I pursued regardless of subject matter. Ellis took me under her wing and helped me get hired on at the News as a beat reporter covering civic issues — a position I hold to this day.

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.

So did I.

Thing was, I already had a lead. A strong one.

And shit, I needed a smoke.

Honestly, if Judd — Jonnie’s reputed boyfriend — wasn’t sixteen, I’d have happily beat his ass.

“Like, I don’t know where she is?” he said, absentmindedly wiping at his nose. “The cops already asked me.” His expression was one of pure derision. He wouldn’t look me in the eyes.

“Uh-huh,” I said. I was rapidly losing patience.

The girl beside him snickered. I flit my eyes over to her. She was no other than Jonnie’s buddy, Macina Begay, who was looking at me beneath her long, straight, black eyelashes with a mixture of fear and hatred.

I’d been to Jonnie’s school before I met with Betty, and a number of kids had told me that Jonnie had been partying for a while with this kid — Judd. Even his T-shirt annoyed me. It was a Metallica T-shirt, and when I’d first approached him with “Cool shirt,” he’d merely squinted quizzically.

They were in the alleyway between the 7-Eleven and the diner, right where their friends had said they’d be. When they’d heard me, they scrambled to put a number of certainly highly illegal substances into their pockets.

“Yeah, I think you know more than you’re saying,” I said. “And you’re going to tell me what it is right now.”

Macina snickered again and leaned back on the chain-link fence.

I closed my eyes for a moment, centered myself. Remembered that these two were young, poor — that Macina was just a Diné kid trying to make it in a highly unfriendly city — and changed tacks.

“Look. If someone threatened you? I can make sure they’re the ones who feel threatened.”

Judd scoffed, and whipped his long, greasy-brown locks over his forehead in one small motion. “Yeah, right.”

That right there told me something. Someone had threatened them.

“Aren’t you worried about your friend?”

They looked at one another, Judd turning away then, Macina’s glance moving down to her shoes.

I was getting closer.

“Whoever threatened you? I can take care of it,” I said, glancing around and then showing them what was under my jacket — a Ruger .327. It was new. Shiny. “I’ve made a lot of men regret a lot of things.”

Macina’s eyes grew wide, and a speck of admiration began to creep into them.

“And I know how to keep them quiet,” I said. “I do it for a living.”

Macina opened her mouth.

“No! Don’t,” Judd said to her, wiping at his nose again, the skin of his short white fingers wrecked with cleaning chemicals.

“She’s scary. And I’m worried about Jonnie. I think...” Macina trailed off.

“Don’t say that!” Judd rasped, a teary edge to his voice.

“Lady, you promise if we tell you what we know, we’re not the next ones to go missing?” Macina adjusted herself against the chain-link fence.

“Yes,” I said. “Believe me. Men are scared of me.”

Judd still seemed unsure, but I could tell my gun had impressed them both.

Macina sighed deeply. “We was here with Jonnie before she disappeared. And some older Indian guy — older than you — he come over here and started barreling her way. We hang out together in this spot all the time, party. We’re tight.”

I nodded. I didn’t want to break her flow.

“He was grabbing her arm, yelling at her, she was fighting him. Judd and me — well, we were telling him he better leave her alone or we’d call the cops. He laughed. He said—” Macina stopped, her voice breaking.

“He said,” Judd started, “that he was her dad and that there was nothing we could do. That he had a legal right to do whatever he wanted with her.”

God, hearing that made me sick. But it confirmed my suspicions.

“Yeah, and,” Macina began again, apparently recovered, “I guess we figured that was true. But still, Jonnie didn’t want to go with him, said, ‘You’re not even my dad!’”

I nodded. That made sense. If he’d come around after all these years, especially considering what a deadbeat he seemed to be, there was no way Jonnie would’ve gone with him easy.

“He told her then,” Macina continued, “that she better go with him or there’d be consequences for her mother. And that she better shut up about everything.”

That was odd.

“Mind if I smoke?” Macina asked.

I pulled my pack out, lit one for myself, then offered Judd and Macina one. I guess that meant I was contributing to the delinquency of minors, but these two seemed to know what they were doing with their lives. And who was I to judge? I’d started smoking at twelve. So had my mother. And hers.

Macina closed her eyes, and it was clear the cigarette was working its cancer-like magic, as she looked better, refreshed, a quick, hot line of smoke shooting out the left side of her mouth. I understood. I wanted to quit — was always quitting — but then the damn things would pull me back in.

“Then he told us he’d call the cops on us if we told anybody about what had happened.”

“You see her after that?” I asked, removing a stone from the bottom of my left boot — another gift from my latest sort-of-ex. He was gone. But the boots? Those I’d love forever.

“No,” Macina said. “Nobody did.”

I got a description of the guy from them then. Tall. Medium-brown. Short hair, hazel eyes. “Pretty Indian-looking,” Macina said.

“Gotcha. He indicate at all where he might be taking her?” I asked.

They both went silent. “All he said was he was taking her home,” Macina finally said.

Also odd. But perhaps that was his logic. After this, I was planning on running his name through the system — but I had a friend at Fond Du Lac, and reservations were small, tight communities. If George was there — or had made the mistake of telling a friend or relative about his whereabouts — I’d find out.

When I talked to Betty on the phone, she confirmed that the description fit her ex, George — except for the eyes. But they could’ve gotten that wrong. Heat of the moment. I also asked if he’d been abusive in any way. She had to admit that no, he hadn’t — but that his drinking had stepped up hard during her pregnancy, before he disappeared, and his angst over the kid so wild, that it made sense.

“One minute he’d be talking about how he was too young for all of this. How he just needed to get away. And the next, weeping over the idea of my ever being with anyone else, the idea of anyone else raising our kid. Kept talking about how blood ties don’t break.”

Sounds like a man, I thought, but didn’t say.

I was sitting in my hotel on Colfax, not far from the White Horse, thinking about giving up for the day and going over for a drink, when my phone rang.

I put my stale cup of coffee down and picked up.

“You wanted to know about George Labont?” It was my buddy. He was also an ex — one from many years ago who’d come through Albuquerque for long enough to hook up with me, before he decided he needed to go back home. We’d kept it cool, though.

I sat straight up. “I do.”

“Got a number for you.”

“Hello?”

My heart was beating like a rabbit’s. I’d called the number a few times, though nothing but straight to voice mail. He was either busy or he didn’t want to talk to nobody. I’d gone over to the White Horse for a beer — after a stop at a Mexican restaurant called Asaderos Mexican for a quick dinner. Nick the bartender was pleased to see me. Had been talking me up about all of the Natives that used to grace his doors, years ago. It was mainly a dead joint now — cats wandering in and out, occasionally jumping on the bar, looking for a treat or a pet.

Jonnie’s dad had finally picked up.

“Who is this?” I could hear heavy breathing on the other end.

“It’s me,” I said, my voice breathy, low.

“Who?” he asked, softening.

I giggled. “You don’t remember? How could you forget?” I asked, my tone dulcet. “I know I couldn’t.”

“I—”

“That night,” I said, and sighed. I rolled my eyes and walked out for a smoke. The night was cloudy, no stars. I could see the lights of the Burger King next to me flickering.

“What was your name?” he asked.

“Cindy. I can’t believe you don’t remember the sound of my voice,” I said, mock-angrily, ending with another giggle.

“I’m sorry.”

“I was just... you know,” I said, lighting up, taking a puff, “hoping we could get together again for a drink, now that I heard you were back in town.”

A long silence.

“You are in Denver, right?”

Another silence. My heart sped up again.

“I... this must’a been a long time ago. I haven’t had a drink in fifteen years, um — what you say your name was?”

“Cindy,” I replied, listening hard. It didn’t seem like he was lying, but some men were good.

“And Denver, you know, I got a kid there, and an angry ex, to tell you the truth. And I ain’t been back there in, well...” I could hear him light up, the flame struggling to move, “over ten years. Though I been thinking about it.”

“That’s too bad,” I said. Shit. Shit. Shit. I’d call around, but this guy — unless he was serial-killer good — wasn’t lying. “Well, you know where to find me.” I hung up, hoping he wouldn’t call back. It was a burner phone anyway.

I finished my cigarette, and it began to rain.

I was back to square one, and I didn’t like it one bit.

Sitting in Betty’s living room in Lakewood was like sitting in my mom’s or one of my aunties’ houses on Colfax. My mom had left Denver after a breakup, telling her sisters that she was done with this city, ready to go back to the Chiricahua homeland in Albuquerque — though as far as I understood it, my family was originally from northern Mexico. But we’d always come back to Denver, back to Colfax, back to Lakewood, to Aurora. Back to the same large, sweeping T.C. Cannon and R.C. Gorman prints that were on the walls over the couch in front of me — the Indians gray-haired, old and beautiful, crows at their shoulders, their braids moving down their necks like living things. The couch was beige and rough, ancient multicolored afghans covering it, old powwow-bought blankets draped over the cracked leather La-Z-Boy.

And the great thing was, I could smoke indoors.

We were drinking coffee — Betty’d told me she’d just brewed a fresh carafe — and waiting for her brother. I’d wanted to ask him some questions — but he’d never showed. I’d made some more calls, and it turned out that George had been living in Minneapolis for the past ten years. That he was sober — he’d been telling the truth about that. I’d even gotten it on good authority that he was on the job — he’d become a mechanic — at the time that Jonnie was being accosted by the man outside the 7-Eleven. But Betty was having none of it. She was sure it was him. A little too sure.

Something had been poking at me.

I asked if I could see Jonnie’s room, and she told me of course, but not to feel disappointed if I didn’t find anything — that her baby had been an open book, and that even if there had been anything to find, she and the police had gone through it thoroughly, a few days after Jonnie had disappeared.

She followed me down the hallway, but at the doorway to the girl’s room, I told her that I worked better alone. She frowned, but acquiesced.

I waited for the sound of her footsteps to diminish completely before I went in. On the door was a handmade sign that stated, GET OUT!!!! Huh. That didn’t sound like Jonnie was an “open book.” It sounded like Jonnie — like most teenagers — wanted to be left the fuck alone. But though she was sixteen, and certainly at an age where drama was high, there was something about the plain black marker, the four exclamation marks.

The bed was little and covered in a bright-yellow and red star quilt. God, had I coveted those when I was a kid. Shit, I coveted them now. The walls were covered in posters of hip-hop stars — Lil Yachty, Young Thug, Playboi Carti — and one retro Lil’ Kim, in all of her leopard-print glory.

I sat down on Jonnie’s bed, closed my eyes. Unbidden, an image of my ex came to mind, his long, lithe brown body, his sensitive eyes. His expression of sadness when I cut him off, after I found out he had kids.

I shook my head.

“Let’s try this again,” I whispered. I thought of the pictures of Jonnie that Betty had let me borrow — her long brown eyes, her shy-but-bold smile.

My eyes snapped open.

I went over to her dresser, which she had painted black. There were pictures everywhere — her mother, even an old one of her dad, I had to guess — and friends — there was Judd and Macina — and baby pictures of herself, clearly. And cutouts of hearts, all black, pasted or taped to each picture. I opened the first drawer and slid my hand along. No. Then the second, third, the fourth and last — still no. I shut it, disappointed. My instincts were usually so on-point.

Wait.

I hunkered down on the old red-carpeted floor, some of the white hair from the cat I’d seen earlier sticking to me. I scooted. Ran my hand along the underside of the dresser. Bingo! It was duct-taped to the bottom. I pulled, and it came off, out.

I opened the journal, which was gold — but had more black hearts taped to it — and gasped. I’d been right. That poor kid...

My eyes narrowed in anger.

I was going to get that fucker.

“Hey there, Michael,” I said. I’d been waiting outside the restaurant for a while, smoking one cig after another, making sure I had every part of how this was going to go down lined up. It was a nice, breezy spring day, only a few clouds lining the horizon.

“Who are you?” His voice was drenched in suspicion, irritation.

I took a hit, put the smoke out in the dirt. But I didn’t move from my position leaning against the brick — I didn’t want this excuse for a human being to know that I was a threat, not just yet.

“Name’s Naiche. I’m a friend of your sister’s — and of Jonnie’s,” I said, watching him flinch.

“Jonnie’s been kidnapped by her dad.” His mouth was soft, his eyes brown — light brown — and he moved his tall frame like a snake. He was just about the same color as Jonnie’s father. Medium-brown. Just a shade darker than me. I’d wondered briefly about how Judd, and especially Macina, hadn’t seen Uncle Michael before — wasn’t Macina Jonnie’s best friend? But then I thought back to the girl in my high school who, come to find out, was being molested by her father — how she never let anyone spend time at her house. I had to assume that either Michael had banned guests, afraid they’d find out, or that Jonnie hadn’t wanted anyone else to get diddled by her nasty uncle.

He worked at a Mexican restaurant, not far from the one I’d eaten at only days ago. He wiped his hands down his apron, then pulled it off, exposing his stained blue work pants, and folded the apron up and slipped it into his pocket.

“Yeah, that’s what Betty thinks.”

“And she’s right,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “That piece of shit was never good for nothing. I was glad he left.”

I nodded. Then, “You didn’t show the other night. Your sister said that you and Jonnie were tight. That you were real broken up about her disappearance. That you’d do anything to help.”

He cocked his head. “You got another one of those?” He pointed to the pocket I’d shoved my smokes in.

“Sure,” I said, pulling it out, shaking one out for him.

I could see he was sweating. All I had to do was reel him in, slowly.

He took a hit, the smoke piling out in a nice, neat line.

“Work ran late,” he said, smiling, his lips a thin, neat, purple dash.

“Thing about that is, I called here. They said work didn’t run late.”

“They’re lying,” he responded, too quick. He took another hit, his hand shaking.

We smoked in silence for moment.

“You Apache, right?” he asked.

“I am. Chiricahua.”

He sniggered. “Figures. I dated an Apache girl once — White Mountain though. Real tall. And a real bitch. You got the same black eyes as her.”

“I am a real bitch, Michael.”

He glared at me.

I continued: “The other thing is, did you know Jonnie had a journal?”

He was silent now, the sweat on his brow growing more profuse.

“I found it,” I said, lighting another smoke for myself, squinting hard. “There sure is some awful shit about you in there.”

“She was like a daughter to me.”

Was. Past tense. This motherfucker. I had to assume Jonnie was dead. I already had, but this confirmed it.

“That’s a pretty nasty way to treat your daughter, Michael. Men go to jail for treating their daughters like that.”

His eyes narrowed again, almost to slits. “I ain’t got time for this,” he said, turning.

“Ah-ah-ah, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Fuck you, cunt,” he said.

I pulled my gun out, and he stopped.

“Thing is, some friends of Jonnie’s saw you take her the other day. And they can ID you. And when you add what I found in Jonnie’s journal — you molesting piece of shit — I’m guessing that wherever you go, the cops, this time, will pay attention to the evidence that’s finally right in front of their eyes, and they’ll find you. And Jonnie’s body.”

“Fuck you!” he said, turning to run. I’d hoped he do that.

I squinted. I was a great shot. My mom said that all Apaches had great aim. I wasn’t sure about that, but I knew I was good.

“Fuck!” He stopped in his tracks, clapping one hand over his right arm.

“I’m good at this. I clipped you on purpose — like a bird who’s about to spend his life in a cage. Your wings ain’t good for flying anymore. I’d stop now, or the next shot? Well, let’s just say that I’m debating: balls or heart? Of which you got neither, so it’s not like it’ll be a loss either way.”

“You fucking bitch!” he screamed, and bolted into the alley.

“Motherfucker,” I said, and went after him.

He was fleet of foot, I’d give the ballsack that, and gaining ground, turning one corner after another, until — fuck! — I’d lost him.

My God, this piece-of-shit man, this piece-of-shit life. I couldn’t let him get away with it, I just couldn’t. Jonnie’s journal had hurt me to my core. Year after year of it, him coming into her room at night, telling her to be a good girl, to be quiet — or he’d kill her mother. Until finally, one day, she’d had it. Had made the mistake of telling him that she was going to tell her mom — that’s when she’d disappeared. It had been her last entry. And I was sure as anything that when he hadn’t been able to persuade her to shut up, he’d killed her.

And now I was failing her, just like I’d failed so much in this life, never going after the right men, always in trouble with the police in Albuquerque for getting in their way — shit. I might as well give up, go home. He was gone, and Betty seemed determined to believe that her ex was behind this. Wasn’t it better to let the truth die?

I thought of Jonnie’s young brown face again — the love that her mother had for her. The fact that Jonnie was Betty’s only child. How she’d told me she lived for Jonnie. The fact that this man had taken this from her.

Fuck him.

I closed my eyes, went clear, then opened them

“I know you’re behind that dumpster, you shit-for-brains. There’s no other way out of this alleyway. You don’t come out? I’ll just shoot both your balls and your heart.”

He crawled out from behind it, scowling. “You’re just making things worse, you know that?”

I was silent.

“Betty’s already lost her child — I’m all she has left. Think about that.”

It was true.

“She wanted it,” he said. “I know she did. Always looking at me in that slutty way.” He chuckled. “Some girls are just born slutty.”

She had been eight when it had started — that was in her journal.

I wanted to kill him with everything I was.

I took a deep breath and called the cops.

Betty arrived with them. I guessed they’d called her.

I explained what I’d found, handed them her journal — told them I’d be happy to come to the station with them.

“I’m going to press charges!” Michael screamed as they cuffed him, put him in the car. “I didn’t do nothing to that kid!”

“He didn’t do it,” Betty said, the cops nodding. “I’m sure she just imagined things — kids do that. She loves her uncle!” She started sobbing then, great, jagged, near-hysterical sobs. “It’s white men who rape us, not Indian men!”

I closed my eyes. White men did rape Indian women, and the law was just beginning to shift to make them have to suffer the consequences for that. But Indian men raped Indian women too. They killed Indian women too. I knew, because I dealt with cases like this all the time in Albuquerque — the great violences brought upon all of our ancestors echoing in our souls, each generation seeing just enough incremental change to make me hope for an eventual avalanche of change.

“Betty, I read the journal. He raped her. He’s been coming into her room since she was eight years old — and he threatened you, that’s why she said nothing. But she was going to tell you. That’s when he snapped,” I explained.

She was silent.

“I’m sorry, Betty.” I ran my hand down the length of my dark hair. “I texted the kids who saw Jonnie the day she disappeared — they’ve ID’d your brother. He’s the one who threatened her — and I’m telling you, he killed her.”

Her lip trembled. “You whore!” she screamed. She chucked her purse at my head.

I ducked, picked it up, tried to give it back to her. She merely batted violently at my hand.

“I never should’ve called you!”

I nodded. This was why I always asked for half of my fee up front.

I walked over to my beat-up Honda and shut the rusting door. I wondered if and when they’d find the body. I thought again of Jonnie’s sweet face. I stared at myself in the rearview mirror, wiped at the mascara and eyeliner that had melted during the day, images of my ex floating into my mind. He was also a liar. I’d met him in the Anodyne, I’d been playing pool when he’d made his way over to me, told me he liked my biker jacket — said he liked tough girls. I’d come up smiling but cautious, shrugged out of my jacket, exposing my shoulders, the wind from the open doors grazing them. He’d told me he was getting a divorce. No kids though, he said. Good, I’d told him, I don’t do kids.

I put the car into drive. I was headed for the White Horse. Then home. Thank the Creator for home. There was always, at least, that.