The Silent Spirit (A Wind River Reservation Myste)

by Margaret Coel

  “I told you, nobody knows I’m here!” The scream turned into loud shouting. “Nobody! You hear me! You were supposed to be my friend.”

  Then the other voice, quiet, cajoling at first, and finally shouting: “What choice you got, Dede?”

  Vicky knocked again, then tried the knob.

  “You promised, Gayle. You promised, and you broke your promise and I’m gonna be dead.”

  The knob turned in her hand, and Vicky pushed the door open a few inches. The blond-haired girl—apparently Gayle was her name—was saying something when Vicky leaned inside and shouted over her: “I can help you, Dede. We have to talk.”

  There was quiet then, the exhausted quiet after a storm has passed.

  “Dede?” Vicky said.

  The door swung open, and the girl facing her was barely five feet tall, with cropped straw-colored hair and smeared circles of green mascara around green eyes. For an instant, Vicky had an image of the trapped coyote as the girl threw wild, desperate looks about the room. “Who are you?” Her voice had a hoarse, strangled sound.

  “I told you . . .” Gayle stood on the other side of the room that looked as if it doubled as a living room and bedroom, with blankets and pillows tossed about a black sofa.

  “Shut up!” Dede swung a fist out to one side. “Nobody’s talkin’ to you.”

  Vicky told the girl her name and said she was a lawyer.

  “I don’t need no lawyers, okay?” Dede kept opening and closing both hands into tight fists, the knuckles popping like kernels of corn.

  “I went to your house . . .”

  The girl cut in. “You gonna tell me something I don’t know? What business is it of yours if those guys trashed my house?” She walked across the room and sank into the pile of blankets on the sofa. She was crying silently, her shoulders shuddering. She leaned forward and pulled her arms around herself. “They killed Kiki,” she said, “and now they’re gonna kill me ’cause I seen ’em.”

  “Who are they?” Vicky sat down next to the girl. They, she was thinking. The man who contacted her—the choked, weeping voice on the phone, the hulking man with the gun in the backseat of the Jeep, the man who admitted that he had killed Kiki—wasn’t the only one involved in Kiki’s death. “I can help you if you tell me what you know.”

  “Help me what? Get killed? End up in the river like Kiki? I don’t need that kind of help.”

  “Listen to her, Dede.” Gayle plopped down on the armrest and reached for Dede, but the girl jerked away. “Tell her who they are.”

  Dede picked up the corner of a pink blanket and dabbed at her eyes. “Same guys that come to see Kiki after he moved in,” she said. “Geez, I hardly knew him. Met him at Tracers the Saturday before, and we got along real good, you know what I mean? Like he was a decent guy, didn’t do drugs or nothing. Sure, he told me he just got out of prison, but so what? Lot of guys do something stupid and go to prison. Don’t mean they’re bad people. So I asked him to move in, you know, ’cause I thought we was gonna get along real good. Sure, he was Indian, but I been with Indian guys. What difference does it make?”

  “Tell her what they said when they came to the house,” Gayle said.

  Dede shifted around and stared up at the blond girl. “You don’t want me here, do you? Why don’t you just say so? What’re you worried about? They’re gonna come here and trash this precious dump?”

  “Okay, that’s it.” Gayle jumped to her feet. She took a couple of steps across the room and turned back. “You know what? You’re right. I don’t need drug dealers in my life. I don’t need them coming here looking for you and tearing my place apart. So you tell her everything, or you get outta here tonight.”

  Dede slumped against the sofa and studied the piece of pink blanket bunched in her hands. It was a moment before she said, “They came to the house and they, you know, wanted Kiki to work for ’em again, set up some new connections on the rez so they could sell the stuff. He told ’em he was done with all that. It wasn’t his way anymore. I mean, he got serious. Told ’em to get out and not come around again. Just leave him alone, that kind of stuff. So they left.”

  “They left without any trouble?”

  “They owed him, Kiki said, ’cause he kept his mouth shut and took the rap and went to prison. He said they wouldn’t be back, and besides, all he could think about was those old silent movies. Geez, expected me to watch an old movie every night. Never went out anymore. It was like we was married. Put those stupid posters that he bought on the internet all over the walls.”

  “What did they look like?” Vicky said.

  “What, the posters?”

  “The two men.”

  “Indians, both of ’em. One was a big guy, had on a black leather jacket and big lace-up boots with thick soles. You know, working boots.”

  Vicky fought to keep her own expression neutral. A big man in a black jacket wearing working boots. It could be anyone. It could be the guy on the phone. “What about the other guy?”

  “Tall and skinny, wore a puffy jacket. Looked like a clown. Both of ’em were real ugly, and I was scared. I told Kiki we should move, ’cause they might come back. He said they wouldn’t come back and I should relax.”

  “How do you know they trashed your house?”

  “She seen ’em.” Gayle had taken one of the chairs at the chrome-legged table wedged near the doorway to the kitchen. She lit a cigarette, took a long draw, and blew a tail of gray smoke out of the side of her mouth.

  “Shut up, Gayle. Just shut up.”

  “Tell me,” Vicky said.

  Dede closed her eyes a moment, a mixture of resignation and fear moving through her expression. Finally, she said, “I heard the truck drive up. Same light-colored truck they came in before. I grabbed my coat, ran out the back door, and got into my car. I could see ’em inside throwing everything around. I heard ’em breaking things. I took off, and I didn’t stop ’til I was on the highway halfway to Casper. That’s when I turned around and came here.” She gave a little laugh. “I thought Gayle was my friend.”

  “Who were they?” Vicky said. She could feel her breath caught in her throat, the quiet enveloping the house.

  Dede took a moment. “Kiki called the big guy Jason.”

  “Jason Bellows,” Gayle said. “You heard of him? You want meth, cocaine, weed, you go see Jason.”

  Vicky didn’t say anything. She had heard the name on the moccasin telegraph, always the same news: Bellows is killing our kids. Why don’t they put him away? Why is he still walking around? But it was all about evidence, she knew, and Gianelli hadn’t been able to get enough evidence against the man to bring charges.

  And Jason Bellows could be the man she went to meet in Ethete.

  “Kiki didn’t pay any attention to the other guy.” Dede spread her hands in the air. “But I heard Jason call him something like Tray or Toy or something.”

  “Troy?”

  “Troy Tallfeathers, skinny, ugly guy,” Gayle said, flicking ashes into a glass. “I seen him lots of times at Tracers with Bellows. That’s where they hang out.”

  Oh, this was good, Vicky was thinking. A former client who might be involved in Kiki’s death. “Troy Tallfeathers is in jail,” she said. “I can go with you to talk to Agent Gianelli. If you tell him what you know, he can bring charges against both of them and arrest Bellows. They can’t hurt you if they’re in jail.”

  “Jail!” Dede spit out the word. “Until some judge lets ’em out, and then they’ll come after me. This how you’re gonna help? Get me killed?”

  Vicky had to look away. She was aware of the circle of light shining over the table, Gayle blowing out a stream of smoke. Dede was right. Troy was trying to get a deal now that might get him released. He had information that Gianelli wanted, he had said, information he was willing to give up if the assault and DUI charges were dropped. It was possible he had seen Bellows kill Kiki, and maybe it hadn’t happened in the way the voice had whispered on the telephone. Maybe it w
asn’t self-defense. Dede could identify Jason and Troy as the guys who trashed her house. She could implicate both of them in Kiki’s murder.

  And even if Troy wasn’t released, Bellows was walking around free.

  “You want to help?” Dede said. Something new in her eyes now, a soft, pleading look. “I need money to get outta here.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I got friends in Denver. They’re not gonna find me there.”

  Vicky was quiet a moment. She held her breath against the wave of nausea that washed over her. Dede Michaels wasn’t the only one who could implicate Bellows in Kiki’s murder. If Bellows was the man on the telephone, then he had admitted to killing Kiki. She had heard his voice. She had seen him in the entrance at Wal-Mart—a big man with dark features and dark, intense eyes. She could identify him.

  And yet something seemed wrong, out of sync. The man on the phone was upset, crying, and it was hard to imagine a drug dealer like Bellows crying over the fact he had killed someone. And as far as she knew, Bellows had never been in prison while the man on the phone had said he could never go back to prison.

  Still, she couldn’t be sure. You could never be sure of what a drug dealer—a killer—might do or say or how he might act to protect himself.

  She pulled her wallet out of her bag, took out sixty-five dollars—all that she had on her—and set it on the blanket folded on the girl’s lap. Dede grabbed the bills, like a starving dog pouncing on food.

  Then Vicky found a business card and set it on the blanket. “I need you to stay in touch,” she said. “Sooner or later the fed will arrest Bellows.” Whatever Tallfeathers knew, it was probably enough for Gianelli to charge Bellows with something. “As soon as he is in custody, it will be safe for you to tell the fed what you know. If Bellows did kill Kiki, you can help send him to prison for a long time, Dede.”

  The girl nodded, as if this was a possibility to which she had already given a lot of thought.

  THE ADMINISTRATION BUILDING at night always seemed to feel like an old building left abandoned by the side of a road. The floorboards creaking and groaning, the wind and snow pecking at the windows. No sounds of human voices or footsteps to disturb the atmosphere. Father John flipped on the switch halfway down the corridor. The fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling twitched and sputtered into life, sending dim columns of light over the portraits of Jesuits past, staring out through round, frameless spectacles, jaws set in certitude.

  He found the switch inside the door to his office. The place looked as if it had been ransacked: cardboard boxes stuffed with files scattered over the floor, the filing cabinet drawers hanging open. This morning Lucy had suggested his files needed some organization, and he had agreed. He hadn’t thought about the disorganization that would come first.

  He worked his way around the boxes to his desk and checked the little pile of messages. Nothing from JoEllen Redman. Then he made his way back through the boxes, flipped off the switch, and headed down the short hallway off the corridor for the small, galley-like room that served as the mission library. A small table stood in the center, and shelves of books and files stuffed with old records lined the walls. He turned the knob at the top of the single lightbulb that dangled from a chain. A circle of light sprayed the tabletop, leaving the shelves tucked back in the shadows.

  The records were here somewhere, the names of Arapahos who had attended the mission school. Come and teach our children, the old chiefs had said to the Jesuits after the Arapahos were sent to the reservation. The chiefs had taken the train to Omaha, a delegation of the tribe’s leading men, hoping to persuade the Jesuits. They would mark off part of the reservation for a mission. They would help build the buildings. A school and dormitory and big kitchen, an eating hall. They would build a house for the Jesuits and a church with a steeple that could be seen for miles. Their children would learn to follow the white road. They would learn how to read and write the white man’s words and figure things out with the white man’s numbers.

  He had found the record of that trip somewhere in the files not long after he had come to St. Francis. It had made him feel as though, somehow, he had stumbled into a job that was bigger and more important than anything he had planned for himself. He had felt connected to the old Jesuits in the portraits.

  He glanced over spines of the hardback folders on the shelves: Finances, Building Maintenance, Lists of Donors, Letters from Provincials, Lists of Pastors, Lists of Assistants. There they were: a series of folders containing records from the school. For most of a century, there had been a school at St. Francis Mission. Part of that time, Arapaho kids had lived in the old school building that was now the Arapaho museum. Kids used to riding ponies over the plains had sat cramped on wooden benches, bent over slate boards and tablets of paper, fingers curled around chalk and pencils, tracing strange shapes that the priests said were words and numbers.

  Father John ran his finger over the dates printed on the spines in faint black ink: 1880s, 1890s. The younger generation of Arapahos—Charlie Wallowingbull’s generation—would probably have been in the mission school around 1910. He lifted out the folder with the dates 1910-1920. It was heavier than he had expected, little motes of dust escaping from the cover, brittle, brownish paper stuffed inside.

  He sat down at the table, opened the top cover and began thumbing through the papers. At the top of each sheet, the date had been written in the neat, precise handwriting of one of the old Jesuits, conscious that what he wrote would belong to history. Father John started with the top sheet: 1910-1911. He glanced down the column of names on the left: Gus Yellowhair, Robert Oldman, Mary Running Bull, James Whiteman. All familiar names on the reservation, but none of them the names he was looking for.

  He picked up the next sheet: 1912-1913, and here they were: Charlie Wallowingbull. William Thunder. James Painted Brush. He had to smile at the first names. Which of the Jesuits in the corridor had given out the solid English names after deciding that calling a boy Wallowingbull or Thunder or Painted Brush wasn’t appropriate?

  He closed the folder and replaced it on the shelf. He had the sense that used to come over him when he was doing research in graduate school on some obscure event in American history, the sense that things were beginning to fall into place. The records confirmed what he had suspected. Charlie Wallowingbull, William Thunder, and James Painted Brush—standing apart from the other Arapahos and Shoshones in the photograph he had found on the internet—were friends. They had known one another since they were kids, they had gone to work in The Covered Wagon together, they had gone to Hollywood together. If anyone knew what had happened to Charlie, it would be a descendant of one of his friends. And Kiki had probably talked to Felix Painted Brush.

  A floorboard creaked. He had been so lost in the records, he hadn’t heard the front door open. He got to his feet and walked out into the shadows of the corridor.

  She stood in the doorway to his office, a perplexed look about her, as if she had wandered into the wrong building looking for someone who wasn’t there. She was wrapped in the black coat, the green scarf around her neck. Snowflakes glistened in her hair.

  “Vicky!” he said.

  She did a little jump backward, startled out of her own thoughts. “Oh, good! You are here,” she said. Her voice had a muffled quality, as if she were still outside speaking through the cold. “Do you have a minute?”

  “Sure.” He waved her through the doorway, stepped in behind her, and flipped on the switch. A white light flooded over the office.

  “I have to talk to someone,” she said.

  “Coffee?” Father John indicated the empty coffeepot on the small table near the door. He could make a fresh pot in five minutes.

  “Just talk,” she said. “Adam . . .” She spread her hands sheathed in black leather gloves. The snow had melted in her hair, leaving a silver sheen. “He wouldn’t understand,” she said.

  “Well, try me,” he said.

  18

  THE
GRIEVING, THE troubled, the addicted, the victims of abuse and neglect, the lonely and the confused, and the Arapahos who just needed someone to talk to found their way to St. Francis Mission at all hours of the day and night, the white steeple a beacon shining through the trees, drawing them in. Father John took the chair across from Vicky and wondered what had brought her at this hour. At least ten o’clock, he was thinking, because it was almost 9:30 when he had started working in the library. He didn’t want to glance at his watch. Vicky would catch the glance immediately and bolt for the door. He waited as she settled in. Removing her gloves, unbuttoning her coat, and throwing back the fronts.

  “The guy that’s been calling me may be a murderer,” she said finally. She wore a blue blouse that made her eyes look black.

  “The anonymous voice on the phone? You’ve defended murderers in the past.”

  “Of course. They all deserve the full protection of the law. Innocent until proven guilty, no matter how heinous the crimes.” She shrugged and glanced away a moment. “My job used to be to convince the jury of the lack of evidence or the extenuating circumstances that forced some scumbag to rape and strangle or shoot or beat to death some victim whose name I tried not to remember and whose face I can never forget. We send those cases to Roger now, Adam and I.”

  “What is it, Vicky?” Father John clasped his hands between his knees and leaned forward. How well he knew her, he was thinking. The way she fidgeted when she was upset, the way her brow furrowed in concentration, the intensity in her eyes. He hadn’t forgotten any of it.

  “The man admits to killing Kiki Wallowingbull,” she said. “In self-defense, he says. No premeditation, no intent.”

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “Now he could be threatening to kill Kiki’s girlfriend. He might have trashed her house. And get this. He doesn’t work alone. It turns out he’s teamed up with one of the firm’s clients, Troy Tallfeathers, who happens to be in jail at the moment for DUI and assault on a police officer. He’s hoping to get himself a deal. He could walk out of jail and kill the girl.”