Dolly was out on a domestic violence call when I got to the station. Lucky Barnard was in Gaylord. I didn’t know the girl at the front desk so I left a message for Dolly to call me at home later and went back outside to my Jeep.

I sat there, in one of the police station’s diagonal parking spaces, and tried to calm my brain. Sorrow was no help, leaping over the seat at me, dripping dog spit down my back. He probably had to pee. So did I, but there were only the choices of EATS (and I wasn’t up to being questioned there) or the BP station in town. I chose the BP for me and a field behind The Church of the Contented Flock for Sorrow. As he circled, hunting for the perfect spot, I figured what I had to do next.

I had to keep going—and even faster than we had been working. I would get right out to a pumping station and see if anyone remembered the man and his family. Then back to Peshawbestown and some real answers.

After sitting awhile, I found I wasn’t as scared, or mad, as I had been. The older man frightened me, that time he came to my studio. The other man—I’d only seen him those two times, neither had been really threatening, nor very friendly either. Probably it was the cemetery, I decided. They belonged there. I didn’t. I’d felt that all too keenly. I figured I was my own worst enemy, and if I ran into the men again I’d go right up to them and ask what they wanted …

But not in an Indian cemetery. Not in the dark. Not when there were no other people around …

___

The pumping station was down a grassy track, up a dusty back road, off a pot-holed county road. A large green-armed pump chug-a-chugged in a wide, weedy clearing. The place wasn’t easy to find, but I was lucky enough to catch two men checking gauges, hard hats on their heads, tool belts dipping around their waists, and big brown boots on their feet. Both in their mid-thirties, I figured they might be too young to help, but perhaps they knew someone who could. I let Sorrow run, since we had never made it to Dead Man’s Hill. He took off at one of his gallops, straight for the two men, leaping in the air around them, and woofing a hello.

“Emily Kincaid.” I stuck my hand out to first one of the disconcerted men and then the other before grabbing Sorrow’s collar and settling him down until I could let him go quietly sniff the earth and trees and any hole in the ground he could find. They had been surprised to find a woman driving in, the older man said. One who didn’t work for the company.

“I’m a reporter with the Northern Statesman …” I fudged my position a little and squinted up at the men in unrelenting sunlight. “Following up on a recent story. Maybe you heard about the bones found over in Sandy Lake?”

They nodded. One, with black hair sticking out from under his hard hat, deeply tanned skin, and sharp blue eyes said, “Awful thing. I used to go out there swimming. Gave me the creeps to think those dead folks might have been down there and me floating over them.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “not a pleasant thought. What I’m looking for is anyone who was with the company about thirteen years ago. Somebody who might remember a family—Native Americans, I think—who lived out by the lake. Guess they would’ve been squatters—since the property belongs to the oil company.”

The men exchanged looks. I wiped perspiration from my upper lip. For May, the day was getting abysmally warm.

“Not me,” the blue-eyed one said, shaking his head. “Just got hired on a month ago.”

I turned to the other man with a bad complexion and a tiny mouth. He nodded. “Think Willy Shimmers would’ve been around back then. I’ll give him a call for you, see if he can help.”

I wrote my name and number on a paper I found jammed in my jeans pocket and handed it to the man, thanking him for any help he could give. I called Sorrow and left with a wave to the two men’s backs. They had already returned to checking gauges.

The one thing I didn’t want to do was go directly home. What I did was park up on Willow Lake Road, in behind some tall bushes. I made my way down the hill obliquely, moving from tree to tree, sneaking up on my own house, as if I could sneak up on anything with my exuberant dog running on ahead. I got to the door, got inside, with Sorrow bashing the back of my legs to get ahead of me, and locked the door behind us. I locked every window, and when the phone rang I waited until the answering machine picked up and I heard Dolly’s voice before I grabbed the receiver.

“What’s going on?” Dolly demanded. “I heard you was in here looking for me.”

I told her about my trip to Dark Forest Cemetery and who’d been there, calling my name and chasing me.

She was quiet for a time. “Maybe you better get out of this, Emily. I don’t get why they’re after you, but that’s what it looks like.”

“Yeah, well you tell me how to get the word around that I’m not involved. What we need to do is move faster. I went out to the pumping station. There were two guys there but they weren’t with the company back when the family lived at the lake. They know someone who was and are calling him for me. I should hear soon.”

“I didn’t go back to Peshawbestown yet either. I still want to see if I can flush out those guys—or get more information on the Naquma family. Maybe we’d better …” She hesitated. “You want me to come out there? Are you scared they’ll come after you?”

“I was. But now … I’d just like to finish this. I don’t like being intimidated. That’s not who I am … I don’t think.”

She made a noise. “Last thing you are is a coward. Don’t let ’em get to you.”

“Let’s give it an hour,” I said. “If I don’t hear I’ll call the oil company offices and see if I can get ahold of this Willy Shimmers the men told me about, OK?”

“Then what?”

“If he can tell us, for sure, who the people were out there we’ll have something to go to the tribe with.”

“What about getting back out to Sandy Lake? We didn’t go through much of that burned-out house. Maybe there’s something …”

“Didn’t Brent send investigators?”

“I didn’t tell him yet. There wasn’t anything to connect the ruin to the Naqumas.”

We agreed to meet in an hour and a half, back at Sandy Lake. If she wasn’t there, she didn’t want me parking anywhere nearby, in case the men were out there too.

“Why don’t you just drive in and out until I get there? Don’t make a sitting duck out of yourself. Think I’ll bring Lucky with me. Wouldn’t hurt.”

___

After an hour without hearing from Willy Shimmers, I called the main office. The woman who answered said Willy wasn’t in but she would page him and give him the message. I gave her my name and number and made myself a pot of tea to pass the time while I waited. The water hadn’t even boiled when the phone rang. I let it ring, the way I had when Dolly called, then picked up immediately when a deep, male voice said he was Willy Shimmers, returning my call.

“Mr. Shimmers. This is Emily Kincaid. I’m with the newspaper and am following the story of the bones found at the edge of Sandy Lake.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice deep and slow. “Read about that.”

“Were you with the company thirteen years ago?”

“Been with ’em almost twenty years now.”

“Were you ever out around Sandy Lake back about thirteen years?”

He took his time answering.

“You don’t mean this has something to do with that Indian guide who built himself a shack out there, do you?”

I caught my breath. Here was a connection at last. “Was his name Naquma?”

“Never called him anything but Orly. Could’ve been Naquma. Lived out there for maybe ten years. The company never bothered him. Figured he kept other trespassers away, and there’s a lot of territory to police. We’re not into policing unless there’s reason.”

“Did he have a family?”

The man’s voice hesitated. He coughed. “Well now,” he started in that way of northern men who don’t want to pass along gossip, “I never saw a woman there, if that’s what you mean.”

“How about children?”

“Saw a few. Older ones.”

“Two?”

“Maybe three.”

“Girls? Boys?” This was another case of pulling teeth to get the story.

“A couple girls. One boy, that I remember.”

“Do you know what happened to them?”

I could almost feel him shaking his head. “Never did hear. One day I went out there and the shack Orly’d built was burned to the ground. The family was gone. I figured they moved on someplace else where he could get work taking out hunters and fishermen.”

“That’s what he did? A hunting and fishing guide?”

“Well now, that’s what he called himself. I talked to a couple of guys who hired him, and they said they’d never hire him again. Guess the guy drank a lot. Not very dependable, I heard.” He stopped talking and took a deep breath. “To tell you the truth, I felt sorry for those kids. That wasn’t a way for anybody to grow up. Couldn’t imagine how they got out to school—maybe hiking back to the road, but that wouldn’t have been easy in winter. The boy seemed smart and real quiet. Both girls were pretty. But they were like most Indians are. You know, kept to themselves. And probably old Orly was afraid of getting run off the property, so he never was too friendly. At least not with me.”

I thanked Willy Shimmers, got off the phone, put Sorrow out on the porch where we both pretended he wouldn’t be sailing through the taped-up screen and down to the lake in five minutes, and left to meet Dolly at Sandy Lake.