Chee gave Eyebrow a hard stare. The other girl, her brown hair pulled back with a headband, never looked up.
“I had to chase them. That’s when I saw this on the ground.” Samuel reached into his pocket and pulled out a pistol. “It wasn’t there when I cruised by earlier, so I knew one of these two dummies dropped it.” He put the gun on the desk next to Chee and went back to leaning against the wall.
Eyebrow made a snorting noise.
Samuel was grinning now. “Hear that? They have what I call attitude. Bad attitude that needs an adjustment. Laugh at me all you want, baby doll. The last laugh will be on your own skinny behind.” A vein pulsed blue through the thin skin at his temple.
The girl jumped to her feet. “You think you can bully—” She took a step toward the guard, and he toward her.
Chee moved between them. “Young lady, sit down.” He gave Samuel a look. Chill, man. You’re the grown-up in this situation.
The guard stepped back to the wall.
“Anything else to add?” Chee said to him.
“Stupid little twerps. They’re all yours.” A wave of warm air rushed in as Samuel opened the door and went outside.
Chee sat in the desk chair and rolled it closer to the girls. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen.” Eyebrow spoke first.
“How about you, miss?”
Headband mumbled, “Sixteen.”
“Do you live around here?”
“No. We’re on vacation. Our dad brought us here. It was boring until we found out that Rhonda’s movie was here, too.”
“Your dad drove you out here?”
Eyebrow said, “Not here, to the hotel, you know, the one across the highway? He’s asleep. I drove to this place.”
Chee said, “Can I see your license?”
Eyebrow rustled through a purse as big as a duffel bag, extracting a lime-green wallet. She pulled out a laminated card and handed it to Chee. Her fingernails were green, too, with something glittery on the ends.
He took the card, one of those graduated driver’s licenses issued to teenagers in Arizona. Courtney Isenberg from Sedona. She’d turn eighteen next month. The license came with restrictions designed to ease the young person into the world of freeways and road rage. Among other limitations, the person who held it could not legally drive between midnight and five a.m. unless a parent or guardian was in the car with the young driver.
“Thank you, Courtney.”
He looked at the other girl. “What about you?”
“I left my wallet back at the hotel.”
“What’s your name?”
“Alisha. Alisha Isenberg.”
“Are you sisters?”
Alisha nodded. She looked up for the first time, and Chee saw that her eyes were swollen and her lips trembled.
“Tell me why you’re here.”
“Because of that jerk,” Courtney said. “We weren’t doing anything.”
Chee frowned at her. “You know what I mean.”
“We heard about the movie, and that Rhonda starred in it. We wanted to see her. That’s all.”
“Did you plan to shoot her?”
Courtney stifled a giggle. “Shoot her? Are you kidding me? She’s amazing. Everyone is crazy for her. I wanted to take a picture of her, or at least her trailer. We weren’t doing anything. She wasn’t even there. That mean guy said she went to Las Vegas.”
He turned to the younger girl. “How about you?”
Alisha looked surprised. “What?”
“Why are you here?”
“The same.”
Courtney said, “She’s the one who knows how to use a gun. Dad’s been giving her lessons at the shooting range. He’s all proud of her. He keeps it in the glove box, so she took it in case we saw a wolf or something.”
Chee felt his phone vibrate and ignored it. He looked at Alisha. “I’ve never seen a wolf out here. You have anything to add?”
Her eyes had filled with tears. “I want to go back to my dad and the hotel.”
“Does Dad know you two are out here?”
“I don’t know.”
Courtney said, “I don’t get why us being out here is such a freaking big deal.”
Chee wondered the same thing, but he had to do his job. He used his best policeman voice. “I’ll explain it. Besides the trouble you’re in for trespassing on a closed movie set, you are also trespassing inside the boundaries of a Navajo Nation park that’s closed to visitors at dusk. It’s dangerous to be roaming around here, especially at night. I’m here because a crew member got lost out there. I found her, but the next person might not be so lucky.”
“OK. Whatever.”
Chee had to wrap this up. He gave Courtney a hard look. “Based on your license, you’re not allowed to drive after midnight unless it is an emergency. You could lose your driving privileges over this incident.”
Her smirk disappeared.
He didn’t know exactly when she’d driven out, but his tactic worked.
Chee looked at the handgun, a well-cared for Glock. Loaded.
He put their gun in his pocket. “I’m going outside to make a call and think about what to do with you two. If you come up with some suggestions for me—appropriate consequences—let me know when I get back.”
He opened the trailer door and trotted down the steps into the still night air. Looking at his phone, he saw a text from Bernie: Everything OK here. Call when you can. He texted back Working now. Will call soon, and added Love you. Why hadn’t she typed that?
Samuel was standing outside the food tent, smoking a cigarette. He walked in Chee’s direction. “You gonna be working out here long?”
“Just a few days.”
“Where are you from?”
“Shiprock.”
“Where’s that?”
“New Mexico, up near the Arizona and Colorado border.”
“Is it a town?”
“Yes.”
“Sounds like the middle of nowhere.”
Chee said nothing.
Samuel dropped his cigarette to the dirt and stepped on it. “What about those girls?”
“What about them?”
“They’re hot. Especially the one with the headband. The one with the eyebrow ring has a mouth on her. But the little one . . .” Samuel smacked his lips. “She’s dynamite. I’m gonna be dreamin’ about her.”
Chee let the remark slide over him like oil on water, like slime on the surface of a lake. Time to head back to the trailer, get this settled.
The girls grew quiet when he opened the door. Chee sat down next to them. “What have you come up with?”
Courtney spoke. “We’ll sign a promise that we’ll never do this again. We’ll pick up trash along the road tomorrow like prisoners do. We could write an essay about trespassing and not having guns. I really need my license.”
The younger girl rubbed her arm and stared at the floor.
“What about you, Alisha?”
“Whatever,” she said. “I just wanna go home.” She looked pale, tired, scared.
Chee nodded. “I’ll think this over as we drive out of here.”