A sigh echoed to me. I figured she wouldn’t stick around, but I felt her stare as I feigned concentration on shuffling and reshuffling the papers in front of me like a Deadwood poker dealer.
“You’ve been through this before.” She paused and clarified, “On the civilian side, not as an FBI agent.”
Astute. I nodded.
“With who?”
“My nephew. Levi Arpel.”
“I remember that. Happened about a year and a half ago?”
“Sixteen months.” Hard not to keep track. Sometimes it felt as if that brutal day had been yesterday; other times it seemed years had passed since I’d found him.
“That’s right. You shot the guy who did it. Leo… what’s his face. The hippie teacher.”
I almost corrected her-it was Theo-but refrained because I refused to speak the man’s name. Still, I tensed. I suspected her next question would be to ask if killing him had offered me any closure.
Goddammit. I did not want to justify my act of self-defense, which had ended Theo’s life, or to wait for her to ask about some magical coping mechanisms for grief after a violent death. That fit into Carsten’s job description as VS, not mine.
I pushed back from the conference table, focused on sliding all my papers into a manila folder. “You’re free to go, Mrs. Elk Thunder.”
“Wait, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry. I just…” She sighed. “I feel guilty. Arlette had changed in the last month, and I just went about my own life, assuming she was just being a teenage girl. I should’ve tried harder, and I have to live with that.”
Big mistake looking at her. Her dark brown eyes brimmed. I softened my tone. “We will do everything we can to find out who did this to Arlette.”
“FBI party line.” She sniffed.
I rather pointedly held the door open for her. After she sailed through it, I pressed my back against the wall, waiting three full minutes before I ventured out of the room.
The building, constructed in the 1950s, had weathered tornados, an attempted burning, and vandalism-the aftereffects still lingered inside, years later. The place was a disaster. Shit was piled everywhere: broken office equipment, empty coffee cans, old uniforms, boxes overflowing with papers. I hoped they weren’t important papers, but since they were stacked next to filing cabinets marked ARREST RECORDS, I had to assume they were.
I wondered why no one cared to clean up or at least attempt to organize the mess. Taxpayers who complained about red tape and lost paperwork would have a field day in here. But the tribal police didn’t have to play by the same rules as county or federal cops. All areas, with the exception of the conference room, were dirty and jam-packed with junk. No wonder my dad had hated coming here. Now I understood Dawson’s frustration, too.