Name: Fort Peck

Tribes: Assiniboine
& Sioux

Population: 10,321

Native: 60%

Counties: Daniels,
Roosevelt, Sheridan,
Valley

"We still don't have results," he says. "It's weird. They said they did this blood test and that it was human. I don't know why they wouldn't give it to us. That was a very strange experience for me."

"It's a tricky case," Mackey says. "It's not clear who did it. The Follettes are suspicious of the tribal investigation. It has the smell of a cover up, intentionally."

Mercer won't comment about the blood found on the car.

Even if there were a suspect, Mercer says, he has to consider the perspective of the driver and the circumstances of when and how Sierra was hit. He can't assume the driver did something reckless or had malicious intent, he says. And, he doesn't consider Four Star and Wise Spirit, who were drinking that night, credible witnesses.

"I don't view this as something that would be readably provable," Mercer says.

The Pendleton jacket Sierra was wearing the night she was hit—a jacket that once was Verle's—is hanging in the Follettes' closet. There's a faded blotch of blood on the left arm.

"Sometimes it feels like those are the only things you have to hold on to, you know," Mary says as she starts to weep. "I used to hold the jacket and just smell it." But it doesn't smell like Sierra anymore.

It's hard for Mary to be the wife of a pastor who leans on his faith so heavily; she still thinks about the what-ifs. What if she hadn't offered to watch Trent for Sierra that night? And she can't forget the last days she had with her daughter.

"I was telling Verle the other day there is not one day that goes by that I don't think of her," Mary says. "I remember seeing a girl that looked like her and following her. There are a lot of points when I feel like I'm ready to give up."

But with no answers in Sierra's case, Mary won't give up. And she can't forget. She passes Sierra's cross every time she drives the 75 miles to Williston, N.D., for groceries; she passes it several times a day sometimes. Mary and Verle debated about moving away from Poplar after Sierra died, but they can't.

"I would like to think that something is going to happen," Verle says. "I wish they would realize that it's not just push it under the rug. People need to be treated like people."

Verle has coped with the loss of his daughter through his faith. "I wouldn't have wanted to go through this without God," he says. It comforts him to know that Wise Spirit prayed with Sierra as they lay on the road right after she was hit. Through Sierra's case, Verle hopes change will come in the tribal justice system.

"It was really hard for me being a dad; I wanna take care of my children," he says. "I felt like I let my daughter down because I wasn't there."

Three-year-old Trent is Sierra's legacy. Mary and Verle always wanted to have a big family. They always wanted to have a boy after their last daughter. They never did. It's like loosing a daughter but gaining a son, Verle says.

"I don't know what we did before Trent was here," Mary says. "In him I see a lot of his mom. It's almost like seeing your daughter. Verle always used to say Sierra should have been a boy."

Trent recognizes his mom in pictures. He watches a DVD the funeral home gave the Follettes, a collage of photos of Sierra set to music. It's what he knows of his mother. Trent bends to kiss the picture of her on the front jacket. His brown eyes remain fixed to the TV screen when the photos appear. He wears little John Deere boots with green tops. Sierra always dressed him in cowboy clothes and Mary and Verle try to do the same. When he's older they will tell him more about Sierra.

"I want him to know that he had a good mother," Mary says.