The Silent Spirit (A Wind River Reservation Myste)

by Margaret Coel

  “Good,” Vicky said. “You told your mom where you were going, and you told her what had happened after you got home.” She nodded at JoEllen. “You can swear to the time he left and the time he returned. The thing is, Troy admits that it was midnight when he and Lennie went to the house and saw Bellows. Kiki had been unconscious for almost four hours. He died at the river where Troy left him.” Vicky looked back at the man slumped sideways in the cushions. “You didn’t kill Kiki,” she said. “Someday your son will be glad to know that.”

  Will sat very still, his eyes quiet, the only movement a vein pulsing in his temple. “What difference does all this make? Nobody’s going to believe this junk.”

  “We can confirm your story,” Father John said. “We’ve been talking to people Kiki talked to. We know what he believed. We know why he asked you to meet him.”

  “You ask too much,” Will said, defiance working back into his tone. “I can’t take the chance the fed will believe it. I can’t go back to prison. It’s like Great-Grandfather seen in Hollywood. You can’t trust whites.”

  “They can help us.” JoEllen was staring at her son, eyes narrow with pain and anxiety. “You can put all this behind you, get on with things.” But he was shaking his head, the bravado spreading across his features like an invisible rash. He was the shadowy figure in the window again, the man who had fired a warning shot.

  “Go on.” Will threw a hand toward the door.

  “We’ll go with you to talk to Agent Gianelli,” Vicky said.

  Will got to his feet, walked over to the door, and yanked it open. “The feds got their man, and they’re not gonna let him off no matter how many guys change their stories. Go on, get out of here.”

  Vicky waited a moment—for what? she wondered. That Will Redman, a man who couldn’t trust, who acted on impulse, might change his mind? Finally, she stood up, crossed the room, and walked out into the icy afternoon. The sound of Father John’s footsteps echoed behind her.

  They were about to start down the porch steps when Vicky turned around. “We’re going to wait five minutes in case you change your mind,” she said to the man holding on to the edge of the door. She could hear JoEllen sobbing.

  “IT’S NO USE,” Vicky said. They had been waiting at least ten minutes, the motor humming and the warm air flowing out of the vents. “He’s right, you know,” she went on. “Bellows will be convicted and chances are that Troy and Lennie and anyone else who knows the truth will never come forward. The case is closed.” She tapped her fingers on the edge of the steering wheel.

  “Maybe not,” Father John said.

  Vicky watched the door swing back. Will and JoEllen, bundled in bulky coats and scarves and gloves stepped out onto the porch. They hesitated a moment before starting down the steps.

  Vicky found the cell in her bag and called Gianelli as they headed toward the Jeep, the snow swirling about their boots.

  “I’m bringing in the man I told you about,” Vicky said when Gianelli had picked up. “He struck Kiki in self-defense. He thought he was dead when he left the house.”

  “You know the case is wrapped up, Vicky.” There was a tiredness in Gianelli’s voice, a mixture of impatience and eagerness to get on with something else.

  The rear door opened. JoEllen slid across the seat, and Will piled in behind her, both of them tight-lipped and silent and something else, Vicky thought: reconciled.

  “We’ll be there in thirty minutes,” she said before she closed the cell.

  34

  THE OLD MAN was sleeping, legs stretched out on the recliner, a buzzing noise issuing from his open mouth. Father John hesitated inside the front door. “I can come back later,” he said.

  “No. No,” Mamie said. Her fingers wrapped around the sleeve of his jacket and pressed into his arm. “He’s just resting a little. He wants to see you.”

  Father John unzipped his jacket and waited as Mamie walked over and shook Andrew’s shoulder. The old man seemed to spring to life. Head jerking back, boots paddling back and forth as if he were swimming. “Hey, Father!” He lifted one hand in a kind of benediction.

  “He’s brought us news about Kiki,” Mamie said, waving Father John to the straight-back wooden chair at the foot of the recliner. “Coffee, Father?” she asked, but before he could answer, she had vanished past the doorway into the kitchen.

  Father John sat down and shrugged out of his jacket. He set the file folder that contained the articles and photos on the floor. “How are you, Grandfather?” he said.

  Andrew lifted a reddened, knobby hand and waved away the polite pleasantries. “You found out what happened to Kiki?”

  He told him all of it then—how Kiki believed that William Thunder had killed his great-grandfather, how he had met one of Thunder’s descendants, Will Redman, at a house in Ethete, how Kiki had insisted he come with him to apologize to his grandfather, and how they had gotten into an argument. At some point Mamie handed him a mug of coffee, set another mug on the table next to the recliner, and settled into the upholstered chair in the corner. “Will tried to leave and Kiki threw a punch at him,” Father John said. “Will swung around and knocked him unconscious. It was an accident, Grandfather. It had nothing to do with drugs.”

  Andrew blinked slowly, absorbing the information. “Nothing to do with drugs.” He repeated the words as if he wanted to make certain he had heard them correctly. “Everybody will remember that.”

  Father John took another moment before he said, “Another man, Troy Tallfeathers, took him to the river.”

  A soft gasp came from the corner.

  “I’m sorry.” Father John glanced from Andrew to Mamie.

  Andrew lay his head back. His eyelids started to fall, and for a moment, Father John thought he would drop off into sleep, then he saw the tears spilling over the old man’s lower lids. “The boy was a hothead,” Andrew said. “All that anger he never could get rid of, like a wolf eating his insides, and he kept looking for ways to feed it. Drugs was a way for a long time before he come to his senses. Next thing we knew”—he looked over at Mamie—“all he talked about was how he was going to Hollywood and dig up the past, find out what happened to my dad ’cause it made him mad, he said, that we never knew. We had the right to know the truth, and he was gonna get it. It was like he was addicted all over again, still feeding the wolf.”

  Father John told them that Gianelli had investigated Kiki’s death and concluded that Will Redman had struck Kiki in self-defense. The U.S. attorney had chosen not to prosecute. But Bellows, Tallfeathers, and Lennie Musser had turned on one another and faced numerous charges from aggravated assault to distribution of controlled substances. “They could be looking at twenty years in prison,” he said.

  The old people stayed quiet for a long while, still reconciling themselves, Father John knew, to the fact that their grandson was dead. “So Kiki found out that one of Dad’s good friends killed him. William Thunder.” Andrew drew out the name as if he were sampling its taste on his tongue. “Used to cowboy together before they went off to be in the movie. Dad and Thunder and Painted Brush. They always stuck together.”

  “It looks like that’s what happened,” Father John said. A shadow of disappointment moved across the old man’s face, and he hurried on: “It’s the most likely explanation, even though there was no police report of his death, just as McCoy’s letter said.” Then he told him that the police had conducted only a perfunctory investigation into Charlie’s disappearance, and that the movie studio probably covered up what happened.

  “Why’d Thunder do such a fool thing?”

  Father John threaded his fingers together and leaned forward. This was the tough part, and yet Kiki had wanted to give his grandfather a gift of truth. He picked up the folder, slipped out the photo that Painted Brush had taken, and handed it to the old man. “It may have been over a movie star by the name of Missy Mae Markham,” he said. “She was in The Covered Wagon. It’s possible that Charlie and Thunder both fell in love
with her.”

  Andrew brought the photo up close to his face. “She’s real pretty,” he said. “Dad looks good, too. He was a fine-looking man.” He handed the photo back, and when Father John offered it to Mamie, she waved it away. “She must’ve gotten real mad when Dad got to Hollywood and told her he got married and had a kid coming.”

  Father John stared at the old man. He felt as if he were seeing him for the first time—the white hair tied in braids that hung down the red plaid shirt, the rheumy eyes and creased face, the arthritic hands that had just thrown a fastball into his chest. My God. There were so many hidden corners of the past, so many shadows and obscure places. It was like trying to find Orion behind a cover of snow clouds. Orion was there, you knew, but you couldn’t make out the shape.

  He slipped the photo back into the folder. “It’s hard to know what happened with any degree of certainty,” he said.

  The old man was nodding. “Dad would’ve come back to us otherwise,” he said. “Everybody said he just walked off, deserted us. Now we can say the truth.” He turned his head toward Mamie. “Tell everybody that wants to know.”

  Father John drank some of the coffee and thanked the old couple. He got to his feet, scooped the file folder off the floor, and handed Andrew the DVD of The Covered Wagon that he had slipped in front of the stack of printed magazine articles and photos. “Do you mind if I keep McCoy’s letter for a little while?” he said. He had meant to return the letter. And later this afternoon he had intended to drive over to Felix Painted Brush’s place and return the photo, but he still needed them. He promised to stop by again soon, let himself outside, and, shrugging into his jacket, headed for the pickup. He wondered who would care about a murder that took place in 1923. Maybe some of the old people who still remembered stories from that time. Ella Morningstar. Felix Painted Brush. He doubted that Will Redman or his mother would want to be reminded, but he decided that he would talk with them again.

  He turned the ignition and backed down the driveway. Then he rummaged through the papers and flashlight and tire gauge in the glove compartment, pulled out his cell, and drove onto the road. He had one message: The provincial’s office. He hit the play key and steered the pickup into the snow tracks as he listened to the voice of Father Bill Rutherford. “Sorry to miss your calls.” The voice sounded calm, cleansed of the usual notes of fatigue and weariness. “We seem to be playing telephone tag, John, but I do need to speak with you about the mission. Call me when you get this message.”

  Father John pressed the end key and turned onto Blue Sky Highway, aptly named, he thought, with the blue sky stretched over the snow-covered fields as far as he could see, the sun reflecting like fire off the hood of the pickup. He would return the call later. Now he pressed the key for Vicky’s office.

  It was a moment before Vicky was on the other end. “Do you have a few minutes for a cup of coffee?” he said, not knowing why he had suggested coffee. He could go to her office, and yet there was something formal and forbidding about the office. “There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

  “The coffee shop off Main,” she said. “Give me thirty minutes.”

  He told her he would meet her there, tapped the end key, and set the cell on the passenger seat. It was a good thirty minutes to Lander.

  HE SAW VICKY outside the plate-glass window before the door opened and the bell clanged into the coffee shop. She gave him a little wave. The front of her black coat hung open over a white blouse and dark slacks. He could see the glint of a silver necklace against her throat as she turned toward the counter. There were a few people seated about the other tables, reading newspapers and working on mugs of coffee with foam bubbling on top. Father John set the file folder in the center of the small table he had selected next to the back wall and took a sip of the plain coffee that he had altered with three little containers of cream.

  It was a few minutes before Vicky set a mug on the table and took the chair across from him. She let her coat drop over the back. “Is everything all right?” she said.

  He told her that he had just visited Andrew and Mamie. She gave him a half smile of understanding, then sipped at her coffee a moment. There was the familiar resolve in her eyes, but thinner and softer somehow.

  She set the mug down. “You told them what happened to Kiki?”

  He nodded. “I think there’s some comfort in the fact that Kiki hadn’t gone back to drugs. He was clean . . .”

  “Obsessed but clean.” Vicky shook her head and closed her eyes a moment as if she could shut out some of the senselessness of it. “How did he take the news about his father?” she said.

  Father John shrugged. “He always believed his father had been killed. He never knew who was responsible.” He opened the folder and shook out the contents. “It looks like Thunder was responsible,” he said, spreading out the photos and copies of magazine articles and the copies of the LA Police Department’s reports, “but something Andrew said made me think that might not be true.” He looked up at Vicky. “Andrew said that Missy Mae Markham must have been pretty mad when his dad told her he had gotten married.”

  Vicky went still for a moment. Then she turned her head and stared across the coffee shop. Finally she turned back, picked up McCoy’s letter, and read out loud: “Charlie didn’t show up for the show on April 10.” She dropped the letter and slid over the missing persons report. “McCoy reported him missing two days later and suggested the police talk to Missy Mae Markham. According to the studio, Missy Mae Markham was out of town and couldn’t know anything about the disappearance.” She pushed the sheet away. “Case closed.”

  Father John lifted the copy of the magazine photo of Missy Mae Markham and Jesse Lasky and studied the long light-colored Packard, the smiling, thin-haired man with the small rimless glasses lifting a hand from the steering wheel to wave at the photographer, and the beautiful woman with blond hair flying back and a white arm lifted in a languid wave. He handed the photo to Vicky. “Taken April 12 in Flagstaff,” he said.

  Vicky glanced at the photo before setting it down and picking up the photo Painted Brush had taken. She turned it over and read out loud the words scrawled by a mission Indian who had learned to read and write: Charlie and William with big move star Missy Mae Markham at Hollywood studio, April 10, 1923.

  “The studio moved fast,” she said, flipping the photo over the other sheets of paper. “They got her out of town immediately, before she could talk to the police or anyone else.” She spread her hands and gave a little laugh. “It makes sense. If an Indian had killed another Indian, maybe the studio would have gone to a lot of trouble to dispose of the body and make it look as if Charlie had walked away. But there were other ways they could have handled it, stories their PR people could have handed out. Two Indians got in a fight at the camp in Cahuenga Pass. One ended up dead. But if one of the leading stars was the killer, the studio would certainly have done everything possible to cover it up.”

  “William may have known the truth,” Father John said. He had been turning it over in his mind on the drive to Lander, examining the hypothesis from one angle, then the other. “He may have run into Missy that night when he rode up to the canyon. He could have found Charlie dead in his tipi.” He tapped one of the magazine articles. “She always had a bodyguard, the gossip columnists said. The bodyguard probably came looking for her, saw what had happened, saw William Thunder . . .”

  Vicky cut in: “Threatened him, told him to leave town and keep his mouth shut or he would swear he had seen Thunder commit the murder.”

  Father John nodded. It was the same scenario he had arrived at. “It explains why Thunder came back to the rez while the show was still going on. He moved his family to Oklahoma and told them never to trust white people.”

  “Had he stayed here”—Vicky smiled and shook her head—“there would always have been rumors and gossip, people speculating on whether he had killed his friend. In Oklahoma he could try to forget and hope people here w
ould also forget. And everyone did, except for Charlie’s family.” She paused and took another drink of coffee. “How do you think she did it?”

  Father John found another page of photos and held it up. At the top was the photo of Missy Mae Markham in a dark dress, one hand clutching a dark shawl, the other holding a pistol. “Taken at the Lasky Studio on April 10,” he said. Then he read the caption out loud: “Missy is an expert marksman who learned to shoot on her daddy’s ranch in Texas.” He set the page down. “Even prop guns can cause death at close range,” he said.

  “So she went to Cahuenga Pass, found Charlie in his tipi, and shot him.” Vicky stared across the coffee shop a moment, as if she were watching the scene play out. Then she picked up the photo of Charlie and William with the movie star. “Do you suppose Painted Brush knew the truth?” she said. “Is that why he took such pains to write that the picture was taken at the studio where Missy was making a movie on April 10, the day Charlie died?”

  Father John smiled at her. Then he piled the pages and photos together, squared the edges, and set them inside the folder. She had a way, he was thinking, of filling in so many missing pieces.

  They finished their coffee and walked outside. The sky was still blue, but the temperature was falling, and he could see their breath in the air between them. He nodded at the pickup parked at the curb. “Want a lift back to the office?” he said.

  She laughed at that. It was only a block away, she said, and then she was off, dodging the clumps of snow on the sidewalk. He waited until she had crossed the street. Then he got in the pickup and turned on the engine. Cold air whistled out of the vents as he opened the cell and pressed in Father Rutherford’s number. He listened to the buzzing of a phone in the provincial’s office a thousand miles away as Vicky disappeared past the redbrick building at the corner.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE