Buffalo Bill's Dead Now (A Wind River Mystery)

by Margaret Coel

  Vicky felt her heart take a little jump. Adam Lone Eagle was part of the past, out of her life now for a year and, if she was honest, longer than that. Even when they were practicing law together, sleeping together, and trying to make some sort of relationship work—even then he had moved out of her life. She tried to get hold of this new plan. Adam back in town, and she knew from the way he was observing her, the same way he had looked at her when he had first come into her life, that she was part of his plan.

  “You’ll be setting up a law office?” She tried for a neutral tone.

  “What about us?” Adam said.

  “We practice different kinds of law, Adam.” She could see Basil Weed seated in the chair in front of her desk in his red plaid shirt and blue jeans, brown, worn hands gripping his knees, struggling to keep back the tears that swam in his black eyes. Warriors didn’t cry, she knew, but he was telling her how the shop was all he had to feed his kids. And Dolly, traces of blue bruises under her eyes, not crying now, as if there were no more tears, and saying she was worried about the kids. Not herself. I can take it, she said. But the kids…

  Vicky shook her head at the images. When she and Adam had practiced together, Adam would have sent Basil and Dolly to Roger Hurst, the attorney they had hired to handle what Adam called the little cases. Cases that any first-year law student could handle. They would concentrate on the big cases that mattered. Indian rights to the minerals and water on Indian lands that corporations had been stealing for a hundred years. Adam would have dismissed even her most recent case for a client who had arranged with a dealer in Berlin to purchase Arapaho artifacts that had been in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. She had handled the transaction with a bank in Cheyenne, arranged for insurance and filed the necessary forms with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The client had donated the artifacts to the museum at St. Francis Mission. They would arrive today, and this afternoon, she intended to drive over to the mission to see them. The thought of artifacts like that coming home had given her a sense of excitement, of things being right.

  Adam stared out the window at the pickups and SUVs moving along Main Street as the waitress delivered the order. Then he leaned over the table. “I’ve given this a lot of thought,” he said. “You can practice your kind of law and help your people.”

  Vicky flinched at the dismissal in his tone, or had she imagined it?

  “I’ll continue with natural resources law.” He took a bite of hamburger. After a moment, he went on. “We can still work together in the same firm.”

  “The office isn’t big enough,” Vicky said. “Besides, we tried this before, and it didn’t work.” She picked at the chicken and a piece of lettuce. They had given up the spacious office on the second floor of a building two blocks away and she had moved back into the bungalow where she had practiced before Adam came along.

  “What is the real objection?”

  Vicky took another bite of chicken. She looked away, watching a couple walking arm in arm, heads thrown back, laughing, wind whipping at their jackets. “It won’t work, Adam.”

  “You talking about the law firm or about us?”

  “All of it.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Adam said. “Don’t tell me you don’t have feelings for me, that everything’s gone, because it isn’t true. I feel the same about you. No. Let me take that back. These months without you have only made my feelings stronger. The sense of what we lost is…” He hesitated. “As big as the outdoors. We can’t let it go, Vicky. We have to get it back.”

  “Oh, Adam.” Vicky set her face in her hands and rubbed at her eyes. If she could have willed things to work out between them in the past, they would have worked out. She had tried so hard. She had wanted everything to be perfect. He was a good man, and he loved her. She dropped her hands and pushed her plate to the side. She was no longer hungry. “My life is going along fine now.”

  “Your life is fine? There’s someone else? That priest?”

  “Please, Adam. John O’Malley and I are friends. You know that. We work together.”

  “You both help people,” he said, the dismissive note working through his tone again. “Well, I help people, too. I help them to get a fair return for leasing their mineral rights. I help them to have jobs and put food on the table for their kids.” He was quiet a moment, sucking in his breath. “I’m not giving up,” he said, placing both hands over hers and holding them steady and warm against the table. “I’m not giving up because I think you feel the same way about me as I feel about you. We can’t lose what might be our last chance.”

  The muffled sound of a cell phone ringing cut through the air. Vicky pulled her hands free, dug into her bag, and checked the readout. Annie, calling to say someone else had wandered in needing a restraining order or a divorce, or help with a DUI. She snapped the cell open. “This is Vicky,” she said.

  “Trevor Pratt called,” Annie said. “He’s at the mission.”

  “I’m on my way after lunch.”

  “Now, he said. It’s an emergency. The artifacts didn’t arrive.”

  “What do you mean, didn’t arrive?”

  “The cartons were empty,” Annie said. “Somebody stole the artifacts.”

  IN FRONT OF the museum, a lineup of vehicles. The SUV that Ted Gianelli, the local FBI agent, drove. A couple of silver Wind River police cars. The solemnity of the parked vehicles, as if they had arrived for a funeral service, sent a cold sense of foreboding through Vicky as she drove around Circle Drive. Everything about the mission had a photographic stillness. The administration building with John’s office in the corner of the first floor, the white stucco church, the redbrick priest’s residence, the old stone museum building where she had gone to school. A banner flapped over the porch: “Arapaho Artifacts from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. September 21 to January 10.”

  She got out of the Jeep, slamming the door behind her, and hurried up the steps. Her black leather bag with the file folder inside banged against her side. Before heading to the mission, she had stopped at the office to pick up copies of the financial, insurance, and transportation documents she had drawn up for Trevor Pratt. The museum door resisted her efforts; she had to jam a hip against the oak to push the door open. The corridor was empty and airless, the main exhibition hall ahead silent. She stepped inside. Everything was ready. Posters from the Wild West Show, an array of regalia and clothing displayed behind Plexiglas. There were black-and-white photographs of Show Indians—her own people who had gone with Buffalo Bill to faraway lands and come home changed, she imagined. How could they not have been? She stared at the large photograph of Chief Black Heart in a case on the far wall. Empty spaces around the photograph, waiting for the chief’s regalia.

  “Thought it might be you.”

  Vicky swung around. John O’Malley stood in the doorway, as tall as she remembered, red-headed, flecks of gray at the temples, smiling past the sadness in his expression, eyes as blue as the sky.

  “It’s true then,” she said. “The artifacts are missing.”

  “I’m afraid so,” he said. “Gianelli’s here.” He motioned her into the corridor, and Vicky stayed with him as they headed toward the drone of voices, like a hive of bees, in the far corner of the building. The syncopated tapping sounds of his boots and her heels rose around her.

  “Funny the way losses accumulate.” Thinking out loud, she realized. “They get heavier and heavier.”

  3

  A SCARRED OAK desk—a teacher’s desk from the past—occupied most of an office not much larger than a storage closet. Ted Gianelli, FBI agent, sat at the swivel chair behind the desk, scratching something on a small notebook opened in front of him. Seated a few feet away was Eldon White Elk, chair tipped back so far that his head brushed the plastered wall. Trevor Pratt stood beside him. Vicky could sense that she and John O’Malley had interrupted something because the conversation had stopped, and yet the words seemed to hover soundlessly over the desk.

  “Let�
�s start over.” Gianelli said, nodding a hello to Vicky. “What are we certain of?”

  “Bottom line?” Trevor said in a tight voice. Vicky could feel the rush of anger in the man. He gripped his arms across his chest and stared into the middle distance. “The artifacts were hijacked. Unless we move fast, chances of getting them back are zero.”

  A charged quiet dropped over the office. Vicky shot a sideways glance at John O’Malley. They were thinking the same thing, she knew. Black Heart’s headdress, breastplate, vest, moccasins, cuffs, all of his ancestor’s things that he had worn in the Wild West Show. Gone. Another part of her people’s history lost.

  “What makes you so sure?” Gianelli, rolling a ballpoint between his fingers, clicking the end with his thumb. Twenty years ago, he had played for the New England Patriots. He still had the broad, hardened shoulders, muscular look, and determined stare of an athlete. Except for the black hair gone gray, he looked as if he could still tackle anyone. Vicky had worked with him—and against him—on more cases than she wanted to remember. Murder, rape, burglary, fraud, assault. The major crimes that fell in the FBI’s jurisdiction on any Indian reservation, crimes her clients had happened to get mixed up in. The fed was fair and hardworking, stubborn as a dog digging up a bone.

  “I’m a collector,” Trevor said. “I know the Indian artifacts business, and the kind of thieves that go after them. Nothing is left to chance. We’re not dealing with thugs and amateur burglars that leave a trail of evidence to their front doors. They’ve already got a buyer, or they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble.” He jabbed a fist at the air. “The artifacts will disappear into thin air.”

  “When did the artifacts leave Berlin?” Gianelli said.

  “I talked to the dealer, Jens Heuter, before I came to the museum,” Trevor said. “Packing, shipping, everything done as usual. The cartons left Berlin yesterday morning en route to New York, Denver, and finally Riverton. Arrived here last evening.”

  “Moved from plane to plane, and a lot of time on docks.” Eldon slammed the front legs of his chair to the floor. “Four cities, two countries. Makes me sick to think about the opportunities.”

  “One thing we can be sure of,” Gianelli said. “This wasn’t a lone thief. There had to be a number of people involved.”

  “How can we know for sure that the artifacts were in the cartons when they left Germany?” Father John said.

  “Look, I know Jens,” Trevor said. “I’ve bought dozens of artifacts from him. He uses a company that specializes in transporting art and artifacts. Never been any problem with items disappearing.”

  Gianelli glanced over at Vicky. “Any documents that might help?”

  Vicky reached into the bag at her feet and pulled out the file folder. She thumbed through the pages Annie had copied, then handed several across the desk. “Here are copies of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife documents we arranged to have attached to the cartons. It isn’t easy transporting any parts from an endangered species into or out of this country. We used the photo of Black Heart wearing the eagle-feathered headdress in 1890 to prove the feathers were more than a hundred years old. We had Trevor’s affidavit that the headdress dated to the nineteenth century.”

  Gianelli skimmed through the pages. “I’ll check with U.S. Fish and Wildlife. They’ll know whether the artifacts were in the cartons when they came through New York.” He threw a glance at Trevor. “I assume the collection was insured.”

  Trevor gave a dismissive and impatient grunt. “Only a fool would ship valuable artifacts without insurance.”

  “Purchased by the museum?”

  “My client purchased both the artifacts and the insurance,” Vicky said. She handed him several other documents. “No amount of insurance can replace the artifacts. We want them found.”

  Gianelli was leafing through the pages. “How much did you say you paid the dealer in Berlin?” he said.

  “Half million,” Trevor said.

  “You bought insurance for a million.” Gianelli kept his head down, but he was looking up at her client.

  “We purchased insurance that covered the value of the artifacts,” Vicky said. “Standard procedure.”

  “Maybe so, but you’ll make a tidy profit if the artifacts aren’t recovered.” Gianelli lifted his head and stared straight on at Trevor. “Why would the dealer sell artifacts below their value?”

  “Jens needed the cash,” Trevor said. “Takes time to locate buyers. Europe, U.S., Asia, Middle East—collectors of memorabilia from the American West are everywhere. Dealers have to search them out. Museums and even collectors demand documents to prove provenance. It can take months, years to pull everything together and negotiate the best price on each piece. I offered to purchase the entire collection. I’d already done the research. Located photos and Wild West posters and programs that proved the artifacts belonged to Black Heart. The deal was worth the time and trouble I saved Jens, and like I said, he needed the cash.”

  “I thought he wanted the artifacts back with the people,” Eldon said.

  Trevor shook his head. “This is about money.”

  “But some European museums and collectors have returned items to other tribes at no cost to the tribes,” Father John said.

  “Trust me,” Trevor said, and Vicky could hear the angry impatience bubbling beneath the words. “Jens isn’t the altruistic type. Last couple years have been tough, with the economy going south.”

  Gianelli was stacking the sheets of paper and notebook inside a black leather case. After a moment he got to his feet. “There’s a chance the thieves will demand a ransom.” He glanced around the table. “If you hear anything, call me immediately. Understood?”

  “We want the artifacts returned,” Trevor said.

  “If you want them back, do as I say.” Gianelli tucked the black case under one arm, eased his way between the chairs and the wall, and headed into the corridor.

  No one said anything until the sound of the door slamming reverberated through the walls. Then Trevor turned to Eldon, and Vicky held her breath. She knew what was coming.

  “If you had kept quiet about the artifacts until they were safely here,” Trevor said, “this wouldn’t have happened. TV. Radio. Newspapers. Everybody talking about the Wild West Show Arapaho artifacts coming home. Every thief between here and Berlin heard the news. What did you expect would happen?”

  “We kept your name out of it.” Eldon got to his feet, and by the way he clenched his fists, Vicky understood that he and Trevor had argued before over the publicity. For the last couple of months, ever since Trevor had offered the artifacts to the museum, there had been a steady stream of newspaper articles, radio shows, and blog posts. She had heard Eldon going on about the artifacts on three different radio shows, advertising the Arapaho artifacts that would be in the Wild West exhibit. School buses should have been drawing up out front this afternoon, kids tumbling out for a preview.

  “You damn fool.” Trevor spit out the words. “You gave the thieves everything they needed. Told them who the dealer was, when the artifacts were expected to arrive, where to find the photographs and posters that authenticate the items. Everything.”

  “I have a museum to run here,” Eldon said, his lips barely moving. “We’re building this museum into one of the best small museums in the West. We have to keep the public in the loop. Rare Arapaho artifacts from the Wild West Show are a top draw. People have never lost interest in Buffalo Bill. We expected visitors from across the country. Even without the Arapaho artifacts, the show was gonna be a big draw. The artifacts would have made it a truly important exhibit. Why would I keep it secret? And another thing”—the director advanced a few feet along the front of the desk— “we needed funds to mount the exhibit, cover shipping and insurance costs for items we borrowed from the Cody Museum, print exhibit brochures, pay Sandra’s salary. The publicity made the exhibit happen.”

  Trevor spun toward the man. “Some exhibit!”

  John O’Malley stepped
over, shouldering between Trevor and the director. “This won’t bring the artifacts back,” he said. “You both know the world of artifacts, collectors, and dealers. Who could have taken them? How will the thieves dispose of them?”

  Trevor gave his head a hard shake. “None of you get it. There’s no time to stand around asking questions. The artifacts are on their way to the kind of people that never ask questions. They don’t care where the artifacts came from. What they want is wall power, something on their walls that is more unusual and rare than anything on the walls of their friends. Thanks to Eldon here”—he shifted his gaze toward the director—“the thieves had all the time in the world to find suitable buyers.”

  Nobody spoke for a moment, then Eldon said, “I’ll check the internet sites for lost and missing art items. I’ll post the list of artifacts and photos right away. Maybe we’ll get lucky and scare off the buyers. They might not like having their friends know the artifacts on their wall were stolen.”

  Trevor let out a rough guffaw, then, head down like a bull, charged into the corridor.

  Vicky caught up with him before he reached the front door. “We have to file the insurance claim,” she said.

  “Not yet.” He kept walking, flung open the door and went outside.

  Vicky was still behind him. “These things take time. Insurance companies drag out settlements as long as possible. We should get started.”

  He yanked open the door of a black SUV and dropped behind the steering wheel. “I said, not yet.” The door slammed and the engine roared into life. Vicky had to step sideways as the SUV jumped back, spilling bits of gravel over her. There was the hard, grating noise of shifting gears as the SUV spun forward and sped around Circle Drive.

  She sensed someone behind her and swung around. John O’Malley was coming down the steps. “How well do you know him?” he said, squinting in the sun, worry lines creasing his forehead.

  She didn’t know Trevor Pratt at all, Vicky was thinking. She said, “He walked into my office a few months ago and said he needed help filing documents with the government to transport Arapaho artifacts into the country and arrange a cash payment to a dealer in Berlin. He said he was a collector, owned a ranch south of Lander. A couple of weeks ago, he invited me to the ranch to see his collection. Beautiful artifacts. Sioux, Crow, Kiowa, Cheyenne. The kind of things you see in museums. He said they came from collectors around the world. I asked him why he needed me because it was obvious he had filed necessary documents in the past, and he told me the process was always smoother with a lawyer involved. Trust him, he said. He knew what he was talking about. How well do you know him?”