The man took one heavy step into the room, his wild dark hair shining with rain, his lined face fierce, black eyes narrowed and fixed on me.

Sorrow sat up under the coffee table, banging his head with a hollow thump. I expected growling, leaping. My protector should have been at this intruder’s throat. Instead Sorrow crawled slowly out from beneath the table. He was on all fours, belly dragging. With a cowardly whimper, Sorrow approached the man, who seemed taller than he really was; he seemed like a growing shadow.

It was the dark raincoat. It was the dark hair. And those arms held wide at his sides, as if he might be reaching for a gun. Then there were the eyes, intent on staring me down. With an ungraceful upward push, I was out of my chair and standing behind it so I had something between this man and me. His face was set, lined, and furious. I was afraid this could be the last face I would ever see.

Sorrow whimpered. How shameful. Even with my own gulping fear, I felt disgust for my servile dog.

I looked quickly behind the man, expecting to see splintered boards where my door had been. The door stood open, rain blowing in, but it was intact. I’d locked it. I knew I had. Locked it as I always did because of just this kind of intrusion. Like my worst nightmare, the man hovered in my private, open space, glowering at me.

Sorrow reached one paw out and tapped the man’s black boot. He slithered closer and gave the boot a lick. Oh yuck, I thought.

“What do you want!” I screamed from behind my chair. Somebody in there had to have a backbone.

He reached behind and closed the door, trapping me in with him.

I didn’t want the door closed. Let the rain come in. Let the wind blow my papers everywhere. There was something too intimate about the two of us in my own space. Not enough air. He soaked it up and left nothing for me to breathe.

“I hear you are a smart woman,” he said, his voice deep and hesitant, as if he wasn’t used to a lot of words at once. He hunched his shoulders forward, making him even larger than he looked already. “I hear you work for the newspaper. I hear you haven’t been up in our country very long. You have things to learn. Stay out of tribal matters. None of what happens to an Odawa has anything to do with you. Do you understand me?”

He glowered, even took a menacing step forward.

“You have no right … I’m calling …”

He put up one brown and very lined hand. “We want our dead woman returned. We want nothing more in the newspaper. Stay out of what you don’t understand. And tell your friend, the deputy, we will be watching her.”

“I have nothing to do with the … body.”

“You have too much to do with it. You don’t belong in what is … our business.” He shifted his weight. “She will be buried. And you will leave us alone.”

He squinted at me. “That will be the end of it.”

I quickly sensed that the words were the only threat. I stood straighter, ready to take him on. “Somebody shot her. Don’t your people care about murder?”

“We care about our people.” He put a hand behind him, on the door knob. “We will do what has to be done. It isn’t your business. Nor is it Dolly Wakowski’s business.”

“Those other bones, that man, is probably Dolly’s husband,” I said, stepping out from behind my office chair. “She has the same rights you have.”

“Let her see to her own. We care … for the woman who was from the Odawa. She must be buried.” He took a deep breath.

“I work for the newspaper. This is a story. Does the woman have a name?”

He shook his head. His voice dropped. It was almost a growl. “Stay out of our business … or something you won’t like will happen to both of you.”

He straightened his back with effort and some pain. A momentary flinch crossed his harsh, incised features. As he spoke, he turned the knob and opened the door a little more, letting rain blow in.

“Are you threatening me?” I demanded, brave now that I saw he was leaving.

He only sighed and shook his head.

“I have a job to do and I damn well intend …,” I blustered.

“What’s done is done. Don’t keep snooping where you have no business … snooping. I came to warn you, that’s all. You and the deputy. She removed something from the water. We saw her and need to know what she took away.”

I didn’t have to ask which “water” he was talking about. The room grew colder and damper from the partially opened door.

“It can mean big trouble for her … what she did.”

This wasn’t something I could deny without digging a deeper hole for both Dolly and for me. I stood motionless, taking in one deep breath after another.

He reached down to tap the whimpering Sorrow’s head. “We’ll find out. Then we will go to her superior.” One of his deeper, chest-clearing breaths. “She’ll be charged with removing evidence from a crime scene. Trust what I say, we will have her job.”

He stepped toward me, away from the door, his hand out, holding a folded slip of paper. “My number,” he said, putting the paper into my reluctant hand. “Dolly Wakowski has to tell us what she took from Sandy Lake. Then it is over. No more stories.”

He bent and whispered to Sorrow, then stood, turned, opened the door fully, and went out. The door shut behind him with a soft catch of the latch.

I grabbed on to the brown chair with both hands, folding forward, shaking and feeling sick with fright now that he had left. When I could stand again, I went outside to look up my drive. No one there. I looked down toward my house, lost in clouds of mist and light rays. No one. Not a car. Not a tall man walking.

The lock on the door was intact. I tried it a couple of times—closing and opening. It seemed to work, maybe with a little play in it. I’d have to get Harry Mockerman over to look. There was no feeling safe anywhere now. Whoever the man was, he’d shown he could get to me.

I could drop the whole thing the way the man wanted me too. But I wouldn’t. If anything, I had to step up the pressure. Maybe I would write about an elderly tribe member who tried to intimidate the press. Maybe I would write about a tribe of Indians bent on covering up old murders. I was damned angry by that time and ready to take him on.

The only thing I could think to do right then was get into town and find Dolly.

I walked the shamed Sorrow back to the house. He sensed my disgust and anger and followed slowly behind, head hanging low, tail between his legs. There was no answer for how he’d let me down. Something between my dog and the man that I didn’t understand. The man was a stranger, and I was the woman who loved and cared for this animal. Another severe case of perfidy in my life.