CHAPTER THREE
Lola Chee looked older than Kari remembered.
The last time they'd seen each other had been at Anna's funeral, a brief embrace in a crowd of mourners, and before that, scattered family gatherings throughout Kari's childhood.
Now, standing in the doorway of her small house near Tuba City, Lola seemed to have aged a decade in the space of a year.
"Thank you for coming." Lola stepped aside to let Kari in. "I know you're busy. I wouldn't have called if I had anywhere else to turn."
"Family doesn't need to apologize for asking family." Kari entered the house, taking in the modest living room with its worn furniture and walls covered in photographs. Many showed a teenage girl with full lips and defiant eyes. "Is that Tayen?"
"That's her." Lola's voice caught. "That's my niece."
They sat at the kitchen table, and Lola poured iced tea from a pitcher that sweated in the late afternoon heat. The windows were open, but the breeze did little to cool the room. Somewhere outside, a dog barked twice and fell silent.
"Tell me what's going on," Kari said.
Lola wrapped both hands around her glass, staring at the condensation rather than meeting Kari's eyes. "My sister Mary died two years ago. Car accident on Route 89. Tayen was sixteen at the time."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know."
"It happened fast. A truck driver fell asleep at the wheel, crossed the center line.
Mary didn't have a chance." Lola's voice was flat, reciting facts she'd clearly repeated many times before.
"She was a single mother, no family besides me.
Tayen's father left when she was three, never paid a dime of child support, never even sent a birthday card.
It was always just Mary and Tayen against the world. "
Kari thought about what it would be like to lose your mother at sixteen, to suddenly find yourself alone in a world that had shifted beneath your feet. She'd been thirty-two when Anna died, and even then, the grief had nearly broken her.
"I was going to take custody of Tayen," Lola continued.
"Had already started the paperwork. She was going to move in here, finish high school in Tuba City.
We had it all planned out." She finally looked up, her eyes red-rimmed.
"But Tayen ran. Just days after the funeral, she packed a bag and disappeared.
Left a note saying she couldn't stay here anymore, that she needed to find her own life.
She was sixteen years old, Kari. Sixteen. "
"What was she like before? Before Mary died?"
Lola smiled faintly at the question. "Headstrong.
Smart. Always talking about getting out, seeing the world.
She wanted to be an actress, or a model, or a singer.
Something glamorous, something that would take her far away from here.
" The smile faded. "Mary worried about her.
Said Tayen had too many dreams and not enough patience.
Said she'd end up getting hurt chasing things that didn't exist."
"Did you report her missing?"
"Of course. But she was almost seventeen, and she'd left voluntarily.
The police said there wasn't much they could do.
She wasn't in danger, she wasn't being held against her will.
She just... didn't want to be found." Lola's voice hardened with old frustration.
"I tried everything. Hired a private investigator with money I didn't have.
Put up flyers in every bus station between here and Los Angeles.
Called every homeless shelter, every youth hostel, every organization that helped runaways.
Nothing. It was like she'd vanished into thin air. "
"Until recently?"
Lola nodded and pulled out her phone, scrolling through something before handing it to Kari. "A girl who went to school with Tayen recognized her. In an ad. For makeup."
Kari looked at the screen. It showed a Glimmer profile for someone named Tayen Stern.
The profile photo was a professional headshot of a young woman with flawless makeup and carefully styled hair.
The same full lips from the photos on Lola's wall, but everything else had changed.
The defiant teenager had been transformed into something sleek and polished, like a rough stone cut and buffed until it gleamed.
"She's a model now?"
"Apparently. In Los Angeles." Lola leaned forward. "Scroll through. Look at her life."
Kari scrolled. Photo after photo showed Tayen at parties, on photo shoots, at restaurants that looked expensive.
Captions full of hashtags and exclamation points.
Living my best life! #blessed #modellife #L.A.vibes.
The transformation from reservation teenager to Glimmer model was startling in its completeness.
"She looks happy," Kari said carefully.
"Does she?" Lola's voice was sharp. "Look closer. At her eyes. At the way she holds herself in those photos."
Kari looked again, this time with a detective's eye rather than a casual observer's.
Lola was right. Beneath the professional lighting and careful poses, something was off.
Tayen's smile never quite reached her eyes.
Her posture in group shots suggested someone who wanted to shrink rather than shine.
And in the most recent photos, there were shadows under her eyes that no amount of makeup could fully conceal.
She scrolled back further, comparing older posts to newer ones.
The change was gradual but unmistakable.
Early photos showed a girl who seemed genuinely excited, her smiles wide and unguarded.
But over time, something had dimmed. The poses became more mechanical, the captions more generic.
The spark that had animated those first posts had slowly been extinguished.
"When was the last time she posted?"
"Yesterday morning. She used to post every few hours. Multiple times a day, sometimes. Stories, photos, everything." Lola took the phone back, sniffing hard. "But yesterday she stopped. Because I finally got the courage to reach out to her."
"What happened?"
"I sent her a direct message. Told her who I was, that I'd been looking for her, that I just wanted to know she was okay. I didn't ask her to come home, didn't make any demands. I just..." Lola's voice broke. "I just wanted to talk to her. She's all I have left of my sister."
"And she didn't respond?"
"Worse. Within an hour of my message, her account went dark.
No new posts, no stories, nothing. When I tried to message her again, it said the user wasn't available.
" Lola gripped the edge of the table. "She either blocked me or deleted her account entirely.
Two years of silence, and the moment I try to reach her, she vanishes again. "
Kari sat back, processing. A runaway teenager who'd reinvented herself as a model in L.A. A sudden digital disappearance after contact from family. It could mean many things. Tayen might simply not want to be found, might be running from a past she'd rather forget.
"And you think something's wrong?" Kari asked.
"I know something's wrong. I can feel it." Lola pressed a hand to her chest. "The same way I felt it when Mary died. Before anyone called me, before I knew what had happened, I woke up that morning and I knew. Something was wrong with my sister. And now I feel it again, with Tayen."
Kari understood that kind of knowing. Her grandmother Ruth would call it 'spirit knowledge,' the old awareness that traveled through generations like water through stone. Her father would call it pattern recognition, the subconscious mind processing information too subtle for conscious awareness.
Either way, Kari had learned to respect it.
"Lola, I have to be honest with you. Even if something is wrong, I don't have jurisdiction in Los Angeles. I'm a tribal police detective. My authority ends at the reservation boundary."
"I know that. But you're also a trained investigator.
You know how to find people, how to ask questions, how to see things others might miss.
" Lola reached across the table and gripped Kari's hand.
"Tayen is eighteen now. Legally an adult.
No one is going to look for her. No one is going to care that she disappeared right after her aunt tried to contact her. No one except family."
"What exactly are you asking me to do?"
"Go to Los Angeles. Find Tayen. Make sure she's okay.
" Lola's eyes were desperate. "I'll pay for everything.
Flights, hotels, whatever you need. I've been saving money since Mary died, putting aside a little every month, hoping someday I'd be able to bring Tayen home.
I'll spend every penny of it if it means knowing she's safe. "
Kari thought about the FBI investigation she couldn't participate in, the Naalnish case that was slipping further from her grasp every day.
She thought about Dorothy's eyes, about the promise she'd made to find answers.
She thought about the stack of her mother's files waiting at home, sixteen unsolved cases that might all be murders.
And she thought about Tayen Stern, née Tayen Chee, a girl who'd lost her mother and run from everything she knew, who was now living some version of a dream in Los Angeles. A girl who had gone silent the moment her past tried to reach her.
There was a good chance Tayen simply wanted to be left alone. But if that was the case, Kari would simply present that information to Lola. Lola would have to respect Tayen's boundaries, but at least she would know her niece was okay.
"I need to talk to my captain," Kari said finally. "And my partner. I can't just disappear without clearing it first. But if I can get the time off..." She squeezed Lola's hand. "I'll go. I'll find her."
Lola's face crumpled with relief. "Thank you. Thank you, Kari. I knew you would help. Anna always said you had a good heart."
The mention of her mother sent a small jolt through Kari's chest. "You talked to my mother about me?"
"Of course. We were cousins. We talked about everything." Lola smiled through her tears. "She was so proud of you, you know."
Kari blinked against the sudden sting in her eyes. Seventeen months, and grief could still ambush her without warning.
"I'll call you tomorrow," she said, standing. "Once I know whether I can get away."
Lola walked her to the door. Outside, the sun was setting over the desert, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple. The heat had finally begun to break, and the evening air carried the scent of sage and juniper.
"Be careful in Los Angeles," Lola said. "It's not like here. The city has a way of swallowing people whole."
"I spent ten years in Phoenix. I can handle a city."
Lola shook her head sadly. "L.A. isn’t Phoenix. And Tayen isn't just some missing person. She's family. Our family. Bring her home if you can. But if you can't..." She paused. "At least bring me the truth."
Kari drove home in the gathering dusk, Lola's words echoing in her mind. The truth. That was what everyone wanted, wasn't it? Dorothy Naalnish wanted the truth about her son. Kari wanted the truth about her mother. And now Lola wanted the truth about her niece.
The truth, Kari had learned, was rarely simple. And sometimes it was the last thing anyone actually wanted to hear.