I turned on my squad lights. I couldn’t help but think about Stoner’s beautiful car rolled in the ditch or top-up on the road. Stoner’s yellow Buick towed to the junkyard in Ravalli where it’d be set up on blocks like a monument. Fog steamed the road. I searched the dim roadside for his car. My high beams couldn’t shatter the white darkness. My eyes watered. I switched my beams on low and crawled. I could have walked faster. I prayed Aida was safe and sleeping in my mother-in-law’s house. I saw only the snowdrifts of fog, then blackness. I wasn’t much concerned with Stoner’s plight. He was getting what he deserved. Even in my anxiety, there was a laziness about my search, an eerie calmness that came with driving so slowly, driving so deliberately almost as if nothing had happened.

The initial call for help had been made from the Perma Bar. Sanders County would be called too. Railer was called because he was a close backup but I wished he’d been left out. Everybody would be on their toes because Stoner’s power knew no boundary lines here. But Stoner would soon be getting his comeuppance. Yellow Knife was alive and healing.

My headlamps roiled in the haze. I could make out the lights of Grandma Magpie’s house and I didn’t feel good about abandoning my search for Louise to help the likes of Stoner. Just past the White Elk allotment the fog became so thick I rolled the window down and felt the wet chill on my face. I was afraid I would run into the wreck, or worse. I stuck my head out the window, desperate to find a marker, and then I saw the tracks, the distinct box trail where the car had passed and then fallen to the tracks below. I saw a man making his way up to the roadside. His face was busted up so badly I thought he was Stoner but he was not. I pulled my car over.

“Sir,” I said. “I’m Officer Kicking Woman. I was called to this accident.”

“I know,” he said. “I was the one who made the call.”

“Sir. Stay where you are. I’m coming,” I said. The man kept walking toward me. He tried to wipe his face on his coat. I saw his nose had been so badly cut it needed compression. He staggered a bit toward me and I recognized Jules Bart. I found myself thinking he wouldn’t be so good-looking now.