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

by Margaret Coel

  “Max is real busy,” the clerk said. “You want an appointment?” She nodded toward the computer, as if she could walk back to the desk, tap some more keys, and settle everything right away.

  “Tell him I’d like to speak to him about Petey’s wrongful termination.” When the woman didn’t move, Vicky added, “I’ll wait.”

  The woman seemed to consider this with some distaste, annoyance flickering in her eyes. After a long moment, she propelled herself around and disappeared past the door that bisected the left wall.

  Vicky glanced sideways at the young man thumping files onto the counter and making an effort to look interested in the contents. She should probably know him. Chances were she had seen him at powwows or rodeos. The rez was like a small town, everybody knew everybody, or thought they did because they saw the same faces day after day. He was about Lucas’s age. They could have gone to school together. She moved along the counter. “Vicky Holden,” she said. The young man jerked his head up and stared at her with the startled look of a deer caught in the headlights. “Are you from the rez?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “You must know Petey Many Horses.”

  He was shaking his head. “Seen the name is all. He worked out at the airport. Never come around the office that I know.”

  “You worked here long?”

  “Best get back to your desk, Jason.” The woman appeared at the counter and shot a glare of disapproval toward the young man who started backing away, colliding with the edge of the first desk, finally whipping around and heading toward his own desk.

  “Mr. Ritter’s too busy to see visitors,” the woman said. “I suggest we set up an appointment for another day.”

  Vicky noticed she had left the side door open. Max Ritter was most likely on the other side. “I suggest you explain to Mr. Ritter that my next stop will be the Gazette. I intend to make it clear that my client received a call from this office ordering him not to come to work the night the artifacts were stolen. No doubt the Gazette will contact Ritter wanting to know why the security guard was pulled off duty hours before the robbery.”

  A large man with graying hair combed over the top of his bald scalp, the veined, reddened nose of a drinker, and the bellicose attitude of a bluffer strode through the opened door. In a few steps, he was at the counter. He lifted the hinged section and gestured for Vicky to walk through.

  She followed him into the hallway and through an opened door into an office lined with filing cabinets. Ritter made his way around the paper-cluttered desk and dropped onto a black mesh chair. “Looks like you Indians like to play hardball,” he said.

  Vicky pulled a metal side chair out of a corner and sat down. “We like justice,” she said.

  “Don’t we all? That make you special? You think justice is giving that scumbag his job back?”

  “Petey was a good employee,” Vicky said. “On time, did his job satisfactorily. There’s nothing in his personnel file to suggest otherwise. Am I right?” God, she hoped Petey hadn’t held out on her.

  The man on the other side of the desk was breathing hard. A red flush had started to move up his neck into his cheeks. He seemed to be having trouble gathering his thoughts, constructing his narrative, and she pushed on: “If we have to file a suit, your records will be subpoenaed.”

  He clasped beefy-looking hands together and leaned over the desk. “Many Horses did not show up for his regular shift. Valuable artifacts were taken from the warehouse he should have been checking on. We could get our butts sued over this. Other clients might decide we don’t know what we’re doing and go with that company in Lander. Enough said. I had the right to fire him.”

  “Petey received a call from this office at 6:00 p.m. instructing him not to come to work. He was told his shift had been changed and he would work next Saturday night instead.”

  “Bunch of bull.”

  “Dean called him.”

  “Dean? There’s nobody named Dean in this company. Your client’s lying to save his own ass. You ask me, he took a bribe to stay away, give the robbers a free ride. No chance later that Many Horses would be called on to testify under oath about who he saw at the warehouse. Not with him out of the way, that’s how I see it.”

  “Does the office keep a log of phone calls?”

  “Of course we keep a log. No call went from this office to Petey Many Horses.”

  “Isn’t it possible someone could have made the call and not logged it in?”

  “Impossible. Anybody do that, I’d fire ’em. We keep meticulous records. It’s part of our business.”

  “The readout on Petey’s cell said the call came from this office.”

  Ritter lifted his head and sucked in another long breath. “That’s what he says.”

  “I intend to get his phone records. They will show the time the call came in and the origin. I trust you will consider reinstating him after you’ve seen the records.”

  “You consider backing off after you find out your client is lying?”

  “We have a deal?” Vicky said.

  “You gotta get the proof first.” Ritter shook his massive head.

  “Oh, I will,” she said.

  VICKY DROVE SOUTH on 749, the white-hot sun blasting the passenger window and lighting the leather seat, the stunted brush along the side of the highway flying past. She had no idea what the phone records might show. They could show anything, and she could have just made a fool of herself. The Indian lawyer jumping off a cliff for her lying client. All she had was Adam’s word that Petey and his mother were telling the truth, and Adam seemed to know. It kept coming down to that—he knew Mary and Petey Many Horses. He knew them from before; he knew them now. What she couldn’t be sure about was how well he knew them now.

  She had wanted to trust him.

  The implications stormed around her. If Petey was telling the truth, then someone at the office had called him off his shift the night of the robbery. Someone who was either involved or bought off. But who had contacted him? Who at Security Systems had been brought into a conspiracy? All the questions revolved like swirling water around the obvious answer: a number of people could be involved. Three, four, five? Locals, from the rez? Arapahos caught up in a plan to steal from their own people? But it wasn’t locals who had conceived the plan. That had taken outsiders, people who knew how to make Indian artifacts disappear, and where to sell them for the most money.

  And that kept leading back to Trevor Pratt, a man who had lived a double life, who still had contacts from that other life. A client she hadn’t known or even suspected was anything other than on the level.

  She had taken the turn into the reservation too fast, she realized as the Jeep swung into the oncoming lane. She fought to bring it back, tires howling on the asphalt. She tapped on the brake and kept the Jeep at forty past the small houses and wide stretches of pasture with ponies grazing lazily in the sun. She made another left, a comfortable speed this time, and drove through the shade of the cottonwood tunnel into St. Francis Mission. A few vehicles were parked around Circle Drive. A couple of Indians climbed down from an extended pickup and started across the drive and down the alley between the church and administration building, probably heading for some kind of meeting at Eagle Hall. She pulled into a parking space in front of the administration building and hurried up the concrete steps.

  Inside her footsteps rang through the wide corridor. Even before she looked into John O’Malley’s office on the right, she knew by the silent emptiness in the building that he wasn’t there.

  “Good afternoon.”

  The old man had stepped through the doorway at the far end and was walking toward her. Gray haired and pink faced with blue eyes that regarded her over the rimless eyeglasses slipping partway down his nose. For thirty years, John O’Malley had told her, Bishop Harry Coughlin had been in charge of the spiritual well-being, and at times the physical well-being, of thousands of Catholics surrounded by Muslims and Hindus of India. He moved with the
poise and confidence of a man used to his own authority, yet the kindness in his gaze and the turn of his mouth suggested that the authority had been softened and tempered by time. He seemed perfectly at home on the rez, as much a part of the mission as the old building and the wide, creaky corridor and the cottonwood trees outside the windows.

  “I was looking for… Father John.” Vicky had stopped herself from calling him John.

  “I believe you will find him at the museum.” The bishop stopped a few feet from her, close enough that she could make out the web of tiny blue veins in his cheeks.

  She thanked him and started toward the door, then turned back. “Any news about the director?”

  “I’m afraid not,” he said. His voice was etched with such a sense of dread and sadness, it sent a chill running through her.

  25

  THE SIGN ON the door said Closed. Vicky felt a jolt of surprise when the knob turned in her hand. She stepped into the dim coolness of the entry. Directly ahead, the exhibition hall floated in shadows, cut loose from its purpose. It should have been packed with tourists and school children and Arapahos learning about the lives of the ancestors, the “Show” Indians in strange lands, far from the plains, reliving their own lives. “John, are you here?” she called.

  Father John emerged through the doorway down the corridor, smiled, and motioned her forward.

  Even as she headed down the corridor, she could feel the ghosts of the place following at her heels. The Arapaho kids who had come to school here, riding ponies bareback across the plains, tiny bundles of belongings strapped to their backs. Her own ancestors had learned to read and write and speak English in the big, high-ceiling rooms that had been combined into the exhibition hall. She had gone to school here, before the school was closed for lack of teachers or money. She rounded the corner, past the sign that said Director.

  John was on his feet behind the desk covered with stacks of papers and file folders. “I was just about to call you.” He gestured with his head toward a folding chair, then dropped onto a swivel chair. “I’ve been trying to make sense out of the papers tossed about when they ransacked the office,” he said. Vicky looked over at the filing cabinet next to the window. The top drawer hung out partway. Empty spaces gaped among the folders left in the drawer.

  “What did they take?” he said. “What did they leave behind? I was hoping I might get an idea of what they were thinking.”

  “What were they thinking?”

  “Looks like they were interested only in files in the top drawer. The other drawers weren’t disturbed.” John looked over at the cabinet a moment, as if he were wondering if that was really the case or if he had missed something. She doubted he had missed anything. “Financial records in the second drawer, receipts for purchases of artifacts, contracts with other museums for the loan of artifacts, that kind of thing. Nothing seems to have been disturbed. The other drawers are filled with miscellaneous research notes and clippings probably collected by directors over the last five years.” He leaned forward and tapped the stack of empty file folders. A maze of freckles covered the top of his hand. “They knew what they were looking for,” he said. “Everything is missing in the folders marked: ‘Artifacts, Specialists.’ ‘Museums.’ ‘Experts.’ ‘Arapaho.’ ‘Cheyenne.’ ‘Sioux.’ ‘Apache.’ ‘Navajo.’ ‘Dealers.’ ‘Collectors.’ Probably everything Eldon had printed off the internet.”

  “They’re looking for a buyer.” Vicky felt a surge of certainty. It was all becoming clear. “They killed Trevor and they’re not sure how to dispose of the artifacts for the kind of money Trevor might have gotten.”

  “I think they took the entire file on Trevor.” John thumped the top of the folders. “Otherwise the file folder would be here. They didn’t take any chances of leaving behind something that might suggest Trevor was not who he said he was.” He sat back and regarded her a moment. “I did some research on Trevor,” he said.

  “You mean, Thomas Plink,” Vicky said.

  John gave a little laugh. “Why am I not surprised you already knew that? Convicted thief,” he went on, as if he were reading from a resume. “A year behind bars for illegally dealing in Indian artifacts. Eldon had been trying to track the artifacts on the internet,” he continued. “He thought they might show up for sale. Maybe he was suspicious about Trevor, so he did some research and found Thomas Plink, convicted artifacts thief. Maybe Eldon tipped his hand, mentioned his suspicions to the wrong person.”

  “I spoke with Trevor’s ex-wife,” Vicky said.

  “Let me guess. Julia Hyde? Former partner?”

  Vicky smiled. “She owns a Victorian antiques shop in Dubois. She spoke fondly of Trevor. They remained friends, she said. She also claimed that Trevor had left the old life behind. He was an expert on Indian artifacts, so he manufactured an impressive resume and started a legitimate business. He dealt with museums and the type of collectors he would have avoided in the past. Legitimate collectors who wouldn’t have recognized him.”

  John got to his feet, came around the desk and leaned against the edge, his forehead creased in the familiar way that she knew meant he was trying to bring opposing ideas together. “Trevor wanted to see Wild West artifacts returned to the Arapahos. He said they belonged here with the people. He had stolen artifacts from tribes in the past, and I think he was trying to make amends. He was looking for redemption.”

  Vicky jumped up and began trolling the center of the office: window, desk, chair, and back again. She could marshal her thoughts better when she was moving, as if the necessity to keep moving were part of her DNA, inherited from the ancestors. We were traveling people, her grandmother had told her. We could think best when we traveled. “It’s possible Trevor changed his name, but nothing else,” she said. Then she told him what Julia Hyde had said about the insurance scam her ex-husband had run in the past, and how Trevor might have set up the same kind of scam for the artifacts. She told him about the two men who had come to the ranch in Colorado looking for Trevor. “He kept in touch with the thieves he’d worked with,” she said. “He was smart. He fooled everybody. He certainly fooled me.” She stopped moving and locked eyes with John O’Malley for a long moment. There weren’t many people who had fooled him; she couldn’t think of any. She looked away. John had believed in the man. “The two men he stayed in touch with are most likely the white men in the car we saw racing away from Trevor’s ranch,” she said. “Hol Chambers and Raphael Luna. They had some kind of falling out…” She began circling again. “A falling out of thieves. They went to his ranch and killed him.”

  “We don’t know that for certain.”

  She stopped and spun toward him. “Come on, John.”

  He looked past her toward the window and Vicky followed his gaze. Deep shadows of late afternoon fell through the cottonwood branches and lay like soft blankets over the mission grounds. It was peaceful at the mission. Almost impossible to imagine a man abducted from here, an office ransacked. John brought his eyes back to hers. “A couple of outsiders were at the Arapahoe powwow two weeks ago trying to buy regalia from the dancers,” he said. “Could be the same men. They claimed they had collectors interested in Indian artifacts. Offered very little money.” He shrugged, as if that were obvious. “If they are the same men, we know two things about them. They were looking for artifacts and they are dealers.”

  “Logical,” Vicky said. He could be so infuriatingly logical. “Why isn’t it just as logical to conclude that two men racing away from a murder scene had committed the murder?”

  “Possible,” he said.

  Vicky went back to circling the office. “Who did they talk to at the powwow?”

  John walked around the desk and sank back into the chair. “They tried to buy a vest from Cam Merryman,” he said. “They were under the impression that Cam’s ancestor, Sonny Yellow Robe, had worn the vest in the Wild West Show. Turns out it’s a replica that Cam made from a photo. He has no intention of selling it. They also tried to buy a tann
ed hide dress from Wilma RunningFast that had belonged to her great-grandmother.”

  “So we know something else about them,” Vicky said. “They’re looking for artifacts with a history.” Logical, she was thinking. All of it logical.

  “You really believe Trevor was behind the theft?” John said. She could hear the doubt in his voice. He had sat back, elbows resting on the armrests, fingers tipied under his chin. “Working with partners from the past?”

  “They couldn’t have done it alone,” Vicky said. “They needed insiders.” She caught the flash of surprise in John O’Malley’s eyes. Arapahos stealing their own artifacts? She had long ago given up the notion that all crimes against her people were committed by outsiders. “Someone to notify them when the artifacts were moved to the warehouse,” she said, pulling at her fingers. “Someone at the security company to call off the guard. Someone who knew the security code to open the warehouse door.”

  He told her that the Riverton Police had obtained videos from the warehouse. “Three men in ski masks entered through the door, removed the artifacts, resealed the cartons, and disappeared.”

  Vicky could feel the smile creeping through her face. “What did I say? Trevor and his two old partners.”

  She perched onto the chair, feeling spent now, as if she had traveled a great distance across the plains. “I have a new client,” she said. “Petey Many Horses. He was fired from Security Systems for not showing up for work the night the artifacts disappeared. The thing is, the office called him and told him not to come in. All part of a conspiracy planned by a smart, experienced thief, Trevor Pratt. A man with connections. A man who knew everything about Indian artifacts, according to his ex-wife. What they were worth, who would buy them without asking questions. A man who could play both sides of the game. Sell the artifacts and collect the insurance.” She waved a hand to forestall any objection. “I’m guessing Trevor might have run into trouble moving the artifacts as fast as he had planned. His partners probably thought he was holding out on them. Perfect motive for murder.”