Below the caption, the article continued: After hearing the witnesses’ testimony, the magistrate had no choice but to find Thunder guilty of first-degree murder and the other two Indians guilty of being accessories to the heinous crime. The executioner has been sent for and should arrive by train on Tuesday next.
Father John glanced over the paragraph again. Something was missing. The magistrate had pronounced the men guilty and sentenced them to death, but . . . there was no mention of any defense lawyers.
He let out a long, slow breath and read on: The murdered woman was Bashful Woman, the daughter of Chief Sharp Nose, much revered among the Indians. She married a white man from Nebraska, Carston Evans, who runs one of the area’s biggest cattle operations on his ranch southwest of Thermopolis. Mr. Evans said that his wife was a good wife and mother to their two-year-old daughter. He said that his wife lived the Arapaho Way.
Evans. Father John leaned back against the chair and stared into the shadows of the stacks. Senator Jaime Evans operated a large cattle ranch that the man who was probably his grandfather had started. And his grandfather had been married to an Arapaho. They’d had a child. He wondered if the senator was also descended from Sharp Nose, then discarded the idea. If the man had any Indian blood, he would have made the most of the fact. Especially Senator Evans. He always portrayed himself as a man of the people, a Westerner, an ordinary rancher. Never mind that his ranch rode on top of an ocean of oil.
Father John closed the book and pushed it to the edge of the table, trying to work out what Christine Nelson might have made of the articles. She’d found the names of the other two warriors, Alvin Pretty Lodge and Ben Franklin, but Eunice Redshield had said that neither man had any descendants on the rez. Still, Christine had found illustrations to prove their identities in the Curtis photograph. But there were no illustrations of Bashful Woman, nothing to prove which woman in the village had been murdered.
And Christine had found something more: Senator Evans’s grandfather had been married to an Arapaho woman, the daughter of Chief Sharp Nose. Random pieces of history that might add up to nothing, he realized, except that Denise Painted Horse was part of the Sharp Nose family, and it was possible that Denise had owned a Curtis photograph, perhaps a portrait of Bashful Woman.
He made his way back along the stacks and up the stairs. When he flipped off the lights, a well of darkness opened below. For a brief moment, he felt as if he were standing over an abyss, like the past itself. He walked out into the library and waited while the librarian checked out a couple of books for a gray-haired woman.
Finally, the librarian came along the counter toward him. “Any luck in the dusty archives, Father?”
“What do you have on the Evans family?” he asked, dodging the question.
“Senator Evans? You mean the next president of the United States? He’s coming home to announce his candidacy in Cheyenne next Monday. Imagine having a Wyoming rancher in the White House. Are you a supporter?”
“He’s scheduled a visit to the mission,” he said, still dodging.
“Oh!” She nodded, as if that explained why he’d asked about the Evans family. “I think we have what you’re looking for.” She stepped around the corner and made her way down a row of shelves, her gaze traveling over the spines of books. Finally she pulled one free and walked back. “This should tell you everything you’d like to know,” she said, handing him the large book with a photograph of cattle grazing on the plains. “I had the pleasure of meeting the senator last year. He’s certainly a nice man. I can tell you, he has the support of everybody around here. After all, he’s one of us.”
Father John gave the woman a little smile and took the book over to an upholstered chair. He sat down and turned to the index. The Evans Ranch was listed on page forty-four. He thumbed the pages backward until he came to a full-page color photograph of a two-story frame ranch house with the peaked roof and wide front porch of another era. It looked as if other rooms had been built on through the years, attached to one side, then the other, stamping their own era onto the house: 1930s, 1950s.
On the next page, inside a box marked with thick, black lines, was the Evans family tree with the names Carston Evans and Matilda Hunter at the top. Other lines dropped to the names of three children: James, Mary, Barbara. It looked as if neither daughter had married, but James had fathered one child: Senator Jaime Evans.
Father John skimmed through the chapter on the family history. Carston Evans, raised on a farm in Nebraska, had come to Wyoming in 1904 looking for opportunity. Starting with a few head of cattle, he had built the Evans Ranch into one of Wyoming’s largest cattle ranches. Ten years after he began ranching, the elder Evans had discovered oil seeping into the pasture. Today the ranch is one of the state’s major oil producers. The Evans family has been active in local politics. Carston Evans’s son, James, served twenty years as county commissioner, and his son, Jaime Evans, continuing the family’s commitment to public service, was elected to represent Wyoming, first in Congress, then in the United States Senate.
There were photographs taken through the years. A head shot of Carston Evans: medium height and slight build, with a long face and prominent nose under a wide-brimmed cowboy hat. Casual photographs of his son and grandson posing on the front porch. And a full-page photograph of Senator Jaime Evans surrounded by a crowd of people on a stage, arms raised in victory, banner stretched overhead with large black letters that read EVANS FOR U.S. SENATE.
Father John closed the book. There was no mention of Bashful Woman. It was as though any image of the murdered Arapaho woman had been erased, as if she had never existed.
He considered this for a moment. If Christine wanted to identify the murdered woman in the Curtis photograph, she’d had to look elsewhere for a likeness.
Father John carried the book over to the desk and waited until the librarian uncurled herself from the computer and swiveled toward him. “Find what you were looking for?” she asked.
“Any chance that Christine Nelson looked at this book?” He tapped the cover.
The woman held his gaze a moment. Finally, she said, “I remember pulling the book for her. She sat over there”—a nod toward the chair he had just vacated. “She seemed disappointed.”
“Disappointed?”
“I don’t think she found what she was looking for.” She leaned toward him. “You didn’t, either, did you?”
“Not yet,” he said.
16
FATHER JOHN FOUND the CD he was looking for and inserted the disc into the player on the book shelf. He adjusted the volume until it was just right. Not too loud, or Damien would come down the hall to complain. He faced the bookshelf, allowing the music to float over him and lift, for a moment, the worry weighing on him all day. There was comfort in Verdi. You could count on the man to deliver the kind of music that was like a prayer, the way it seemed to put things into perspective and bring about a sense of peace.
He went back to the work at his desk that he hoped to finish before he headed over to the residence for dinner. A few more payroll checks to write, watching the balance drop closer to zero with each entry. It was like watching a thermometer drop outside. He was writing out the check payable to Christine Nelson when a gust of icy air swooped through the office and the front door thudded shut. He looked up as Ted Gianelli appeared in the doorway, clutching a thick, blue-covered book.
“Looks like we’ve got a lead on your curator,” he said, strolling across the office and dropping the book on Father John’s desk.
Father John pulled the book toward him. The cover was iridescent blue, with the name Eric Loftus in large, white letters across the top and The Secret War in gold letters on the bottom. The book must have been two inches thick.
“Help yourself to coffee.” Father John nodded toward the small table with Styrofoam cups and cartons of sugar and powdered cream stacked in front of the coffee pot. The coffee was starting to smell like burned sugar.
Gianelli w
alked over to the table and took his time pouring the coffee, stirring in cream and sugar, his head bent in the direction of the CD player. Deserto sulla terra, he said.
“You’re pretty good.” Was there any opera music the man didn’t recognize?
“Damn straight.” The agent settled into one of the chairs Father John kept for visitors and dropped his nose close to the Styrofoam cup. He sniffed a couple of times. “Brewed last week?”
“It’ll put hair on your chest, Ted.” Father John thumped the top of the book. “You bring me some bedtime reading, or does this have something to do with Christine?”
“Ever heard of Eric Loftus?”
“Must be a famous author.” Father John gave the book another thump.
“Famous rogue CIA officer, stationed all over the world. Moscow, Paris, Mexico City. The kind that knows better than his superiors and the whole damn United States Congress. Liked to take matters into his own hands. Retired from the agency five years ago and been living in Jackson, running a gallery of Plains Indian art and artifacts and writing his memoirs. God knows how they got by the CIA’s publications review board.”
“Why am I interested in Eric Loftus?”
“Your interest would be in the man’s wife.” Gianelli was enjoying this. “Attractive woman, brown hair, green eyes, good figure, and brains. Her name is Christine Loftus, otherwise known as Christine Nelson.” He paused, allowing the news to mingle with the melody of the aria. “We managed to connect the first three numbers on the license plate to a light tan Range Rover in Teton County, registered to Eric Loftus. Happens to own the gallery in Jackson. The agent up there paid the gallery a visit a couple of hours ago and had a chat with the man. Loftus claims his wife is the art expert, he runs the business side. Seems the woman has a history of bipolar illness. Goes like a house afire when she’s up, becomes suicidal when she crashes. Seems she also has a history of driving away when she’s in the manic stage, which comes on as soon as she decides she’s cured and stops taking her meds. Six weeks ago, she got in the Range Rover and drove off. Loftus never reported her missing. Said she’s done it before and always comes home.”
Father John took his eyes away and stared out the window a moment. The streetlamps around Circle Drive had come on, sending dim flares of yellow light into the curtain of dusk. The mission looked strange in the light, like the surreal vision in a dream. In years of counseling and hearing confessions, he’d convinced himself that he could gauge people, that he had his own inner lie detector. He’d been wrong about a woman who called herself Christine Nelson. He’d thought she was high-spirited, energetic, a workaholic. He’d missed that she was ill.
“Look, John,” Gianelli’s voice cut into his thoughts. “Is there anything else you can tell me about the woman?”
Father John locked eyes again with the man sprawled in the side chair, a notepad balanced on one thick thigh. He knew nothing about Christine Nelson, Father John was thinking. No, that wasn’t exactly true. “She’s good at her job,” he said. “She’s a professional with enough contacts in the art world to bring the Curtis exhibit here from the West Wind Gallery in Denver.”
Gianelli started scribbling on the pad as Father John explained that Christine had been trying to identify Arapahos in the photographs. She’d visited Eunice Redshield, and she was probably trying to find someone in the Sharp Nose clan who could identity one of the women in the photograph, the daughter of Chief Sharp Nose. And something else. Christine had tried to buy a photo from Eunice for a thousand dollars.
Gianelli stopped scribbling and leaned back in his chair. “Thousand dollars for a photograph?”
“An unknown photo taken by Edward Curtis.”
“So she could have met somebody in the Sharp Nose clan Monday night. How many people we talking about?”
“I’m not sure. There are probably numerous descendents. Denise Painted Horse was one of them.”
Gianelli let out a little whistle and went back to the scribbling. Scribbling and nodding. “Woman murdered, another woman missing on the same night. First thought I had was, maybe there’s a connection.” He looked up. “I checked the guest book from the museum after Banner’s men picked it up. Denise Painted Horse’s name isn’t there. Was there any connection, as far as you know?”
Father John shook his head. That was the problem. He couldn’t get the possibility out of his mind. Denise could have visited the museum, but if she didn’t sign the guest book, where was the evidence? Where was the evidence that Denise and Christine had ever met?
He said, “T.J. might know.”
“I wouldn’t say that T.J.’s being cooperative, thanks to Vicky.” The agent slipped the notepad inside his jacket and got to his feet. The features of his face seemed to lock together, as if he’d pulled a tight mask over his head.
“People here don’t think T.J.’s capable of killing anybody,” Father John said. “They know the man, and they twist him.”
Caro nome was playing now, filling up the silence a moment. Finally Gianelli nodded toward the CD player. “Well, Gaultier Malde wasn’t who he appeared to be, was he? Gilda was taken in by a handsome face. She trusted him.”
The fed started for the door, then turned back. “Problem is, T.J. lied about his alibi. If he can’t account for his whereabouts when his wife was shot . . .” He let the thought merge into the aria. “You can tell people that I have no intention of railroading T.J., but I’m not going to let a murderer walk away. If you learn anything . . .”
“I’ll get in touch,” Father John said, but the agent had already disappeared into the corridor. There was another whoosh of air, and the thwack of the door shutting reverberated through the floorboards.
Father John scooped the book off the desk. The metallic gold letters blinked on the blue cover. In the center was the shadowy figure of a man in a black coat, looking away from the camera toward what might have been a half-destroyed building in some Third World country.
Father John thumbed through the pages, scanning the first chapters. The path of a spy, from Cornell—political science, government studies, finance—to Harvard graduate school, zeroing in on foreign affairs. Graduation with honors and on to the CIA. They didn’t recruit him. Eric Loftus recruited the CIA, burning to defeat the enemies of his country.
Father John skipped over the next chapters—early years of training, first postings—and stopped at the chapter titled, VANISHING THE OPPOSITION:
Upon occasion, it became necessary to deal with a foreign agent in such a way that the security of our operations would be protected. Such an agent was a Mexican official that I shall call Señor Gomez. Señor Gomez had been one of our trusted assets for many years. The time arrived, however, when we discovered he had sold himself to a major drug cartel. In return for his assurance that a truckload of cocaine would not be stopped at the border, the drug cartel had arranged to place large sums of money in a Swiss bank account for Señor Gomez.
Since Señor Gomez had been useful to us, I naturally tried to convince the man that his best interests lay with the Americans. I had obtained photographs of him in his casita with a beautiful woman, whom I shall call Maria. In the privacy of Señor Gomez’s office, I laid the photographs on the desk. To my surprise, he started laughing. He laughed so hard that he began to choke. For a brief moment, I thought that our problems might solve themselves.
When Señor Gomez recovered his equilibrium, he told me to take the photographs to his wife, because she also enjoyed a hearty laugh. It seemed that the señor and his wife had a mutual understanding. She would look the other way when he visited his casita, if he looked the other way when she visited a two-bit bullfighter with a gored right arm. The señor flung the photographs at me and threatened to expose our operatives.
After serious consultations at the highest levels, it was decided that the matter of Señor Gomez had to be resolved. No matter the cost, we had to protect our operatives. Through a deep-cover asset, I passed the word to the leaders of the drug ca
rtel that Señor Gomez had double-crossed them and the next drug shipment would be seized at the border by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
On a Monday morning, Señor Gomez’s car arrived at his home to take him to his office. There was a new driver who explained that he had been sent by the government carpool. This did not alarm the señor, since his regular driver could be unreliable after the weekend. Señor Gomez got into the back seat of the Lincoln Town Car, which curved around the driveway and turned onto the major thoroughfare.
It was the last time that Señor Gomez was seen.
Father John closed the book and pushed it across the desk, a new picture taking shape in his mind. A small, dark-haired woman climbing into a Range Rover and driving away from Jackson. Away from a man who knew how to handle people who displeased him, away from a trained killer, a man who didn’t blink at having someone killed. Suppose she’d gotten as far as she could go with whatever money she’d managed to take with her? Over the mountain to a job at an Indian mission where Eric Loftus might never think to look. Suppose she was hiding, waiting for the opportunity to go even farther, looking for a way . . .
Then she’d stumbled on an unknown Curtis photograph and the possibility of more photographs on the reservation. Perhaps a lot of photographs. A woman with Christine’s background would know the value, and she’d know art dealers willing to purchase the photos. She could arrange the deals, take the commissions, and perhaps make enough money to get far away from Eric Loftus. She could lose herself and become someone else, someone Eric Loftus couldn’t find.
Except that Eunice Redshield wouldn’t sell.
But Christine had met someone who would sell—he was sure of it now. Someone willing to sell photographs of the ancestors.
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