John didn’t say anything.
Vicky could feel the quiet settling over the office like a physical object, broken by the sound of water gurgling in a pipe somewhere and the distant yawning and stretching of the old building. After a moment, she went on. “They wanted to make sure Eldon couldn’t take his suspicions to Gianelli. If they’ve killed once…” She stopped, letting the words hang in the air between them a moment. “Trevor had the connections. They could be having trouble selling the artifacts. They could still be in the area, and someone on the rez might know where they’re hiding.” Vicky shifted in her chair until she faced the desk. “Do you know a Rap, early twenties, I’d say, named Jason?”
“Jason Gains?” John said. “Played first base for the Eagles a couple of seasons nine or ten years ago.”
That was when she told him that Jason Gains worked for Security Systems. She could see the young man, as if the image were burned onto her retinas: loping over to the counter, checking something on the lower shelves, cocking his head in her direction, ears practically sticking out like antennas. “I think he may have placed the call to Petey and told him not to come to work.” She took a breath and hurried on. “We should tell Gianelli what we know.”
“What do we know?” John said. “All we have are theories. No connections, no evidence.” He seemed to consider the consequences of this for a moment. “Let me talk to Jason,” he said, and the way in which he said it gave her a rush of shame. A white man who knew that the police or the fed interviewing an Arapaho about theft, murder, abduction would get Jason Gains fired and make it difficult for him to find another job off the rez. John O’Malley was right, she could feel the truth in her bones. She didn’t even know if the record from the cell company would prove the call had come from Security Systems, as Petey claimed. Before they talked to Gianelli, they had to have facts.
26
THE SUN BLAZED over the high, jagged peaks of the Wind River range and sent orange and magenta flames swirling across the sky. Miranda Lambert on the CD. Vicky stared at Rendezvous Road loping over the plains ahead and tried to tamp down the sense of unease that had come over her. There were no other vehicles in sight, nothing but the red-tinged brush and wild grasses doing a slow dance in the fields outside the windows. She tried to make herself relax, but her muscles felt as if they were glued together. A cacophony of thoughts banged in her head, like instruments playing different melodies. Somehow they had to be welded together into one harmonious piece, but she couldn’t figure out how to do that. A man named Thomas Plink who had become Trevor Pratt, shot in the chest in a horse stall; Eldon White Elk, abducted from the museum. God, let him be alive. White Elk knew the artifacts business, he knew how to use the internet. Maybe he could even figure out how to find buyers. They would keep him alive, those two white men, as long as they thought he might be of help.
There were other thoughts: Petey Many Horses, fired for following orders, and Jason Gains, slouching at the end of the counter, eavesdropping on her conversation with the receptionist. Jason Gains, the guy who had called off Petey? Well, John would talk to him and in five minutes have a good idea of whether he was involved.
What if he were involved? That brought up a whole other range of possibilities. Jason didn’t get the idea on his own to call the security guard and tell him not to come to work. Someone had given the instruction. Trevor? That made sense, she thought, tapping her nails against the edge of the steering wheel. The big man, pulling the strings. But how did he know Jason Gains? What made him think Jason would go along? She jammed a fist against the wheel.
Her cell was ringing, a Willie Nelson song that broke through “The House that Built Me” on the radio. Vicky held the wheel with one hand and jammed the Bluetooth in her ear. Slowing for a rabbit that scooted across the road, she said, “Vicky Holden, here.”
“Cell phone company just faxed the record for Petey Many Horses.” Annie’s voice, professional with a barely submerged hint of curiosity.
“Read me the calls for last Monday.”
“Looks like he got a call from Mary Many Horses at 1:00 p.m. Another call from Mary at 1:54 p.m.”
At least that tallied, Vicky was thinking.
“Let’s see,” Annie was saying. “Another call came in at 6:01 p.m. from Security Systems.”
Vicky exhaled a long, slow breath. “Thanks,” she said. She ended the call, picked up the phone, and scrolled to Petey’s number.
There was a buzzing noise, followed by Petey’s voice, tentative and scared. “Hello?”
“You can relax,” Vicky said. “The cell phone records confirm you got a call from the office.”
“I told you…”
Vicky cut in: “I spoke with your boss.”
“Old boss,” Petey said.
“Who do you know in the office?”
“What?” Petey said, then he blurted out: “Nobody. Mr. Ritter, that’s all.”
“None of the clerks in the front office?”
“I never went there.”
“What about a Rap named Jason Gains.”
“Oh, yeah. I heard a Rap started working there couple months ago.”
“Did you ever talk to him?”
“What about? I told you I don’t know him.” Vicky heard the shushing noise at the other end, as if the young man were sucking in breath through a straw. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You think he was the one that called?”
“Would you recognize the voice if you heard it again?” In the rearview mirror, Vicky saw the dark sedan coming out of the reddish sunset, coming on fast.
Petey made another shushing noise. “I’d recognize it.”
Vicky told him she’d stay in touch and ended the call, watching the sedan gaining on her. Traveling too fast for the road that bent into a curve ahead. She could see the cowboy hats bobbing in the windshield. The sedan couldn’t have been more than fifty feet behind her now. Over Miranda Lambert’s voice, she heard the sedan’s engine revving and straining, or was she imagining it? A hard knot tightened in her stomach as she pressed down on the accelerator, trying to put as much distance as possible between the Jeep and the two men in the dark sedan.
The first collision came at seventy miles an hour. The Jeep jumped ahead as Vicky pressed down on the gas pedal. She watched the road, the speedometer, the dark sedan coming after her all at once, feeling disembodied, like one of the spirits able to see everything. Another crash. The Jeep shimmied over the road. The CD jumped to another track. She gripped the steering wheel hard to right the Jeep and stomped on the gas. Eighty miles per hour, eighty-five, and still the sedan stayed behind her, a horrible appendage she couldn’t cut loose. Her heart jumped in her chest. She was barely aware of the sun glinting on the roofs of Arapahoe outside the passenger window. There was no one else on the road. She had the sense of galloping through space, the Jeep growling around her, music sputtering somewhere.
The next collision sent the Jeep hurtling toward the borrow ditch, rocking back and forth, plowing into the ditch, as if it were a living creature, a giant horse huffing and snorting as it attempted to right itself. She eased on the brake, but the Jeep was flying and she was flying inside it, held down by the seat belt that dug into her chest, gripping the wheel to keep from being flung out into space. The Jeep came down hard on the right wheels, teetered sideways, and went into a crazy half spin before it plopped onto its side. Glass shattered, brittle, sharp pellets spraying her face and neck and biting into her arms. The loud whooshing noise careened around her. Something gray and hard had burst from the steering wheel and pinned her against the seat. Strange, she thought. She was hanging above the passenger window, strapped against the seat, the huge gray air bag pressed against her windpipe. Past the gray bag, through the fractured windshield, she watched fragments of orange and red clouds twirling past one another. The music had stopped, leaving the eerie silence broken by the noise of glass plinking onto hard surfaces.
Footsteps came running across hard-packed dirt. T
he two men, coming for her! Vicky tried to find the seat belt release, but the bag was in the way and her fingers gripped air. The hot flash of panic rose inside her. The footsteps were close, like a gust of wind about to smash against her. Her fingers brushed the plastic button. Clenching her muscles for strength, she rammed the button down into the metal holder. The pressure in her chest and across her ribs released, but now the only thing holding her in place was the gray bag. She was on a horse rearing upward, the passenger seat and dashboard falling away. The footsteps slid to a stop, something knocked against the door. Pain seared her chest as she tried to twist past the bag to see who was outside. She would look them in the eye, yes, she would look the two white men in the eye before they killed her.
“Are you hurt?” It was a woman’s voice that echoed the panic banging like drums inside her.
“Don’t try to move,” a man said. “We’ve called 911. An ambulance is on the way.”
“Who are you?” Vicky heard herself ask. Her larynx felt tight; it was hard to catch a breath.
“We saw everything,” the woman said. “We turned out of Arapahoe when we saw that car speeding past. We saw it run you off the road.”
“Don’t move,” the man commanded, and Vicky realized she was still struggling to get free. Odd, she thought. Without the bag pushing against her, she would fall facedown into the glass pellets. From the distance came the wail of a siren, joined after a moment by the long lament of another siren. She fought for another breath as she felt her muscles relax against the seat. The gray bag, the outlines of the inside of the Jeep, and the pulsing colors of the sky closed down around her into a pinprick of light, then were lost in darkness. From far away she heard the man say, “Hold on. Hold on. Help is on the way.”
FATHER JOHN LEFT the papers and stack of folders on the desk—Eldon would return them to their rightful places. Dear Lord, let the man be alive. He turned off the light and started down the corridor. At the junction with the back hall, he switched on the overhead light and walked toward the back door that Leonard Bizzel had installed this morning. Leonard had taken care of the mission buildings for at least thirty years, making sure everything worked—faucets and drains, eaves and locks. A heart attack had slowed him down a year ago, but he still insisted that Father John call when he needed help, and Father John suspected that Leonard found it hard to accept the idea of another handyman doing his work.
The lock had been thrown, the door held fast when Father John tried the knob. A solid-core door, Leonard had told him. Not likely any burglar would break through. Father John retraced his steps down the hallway and was about to switch off the light when the front door opened. A dark figure, lit from behind by the orange light outside, stepped into the corridor.
Father John didn’t move; his fists clenched.
“Hey, Father. It’s Robert.” A nervous twang to the voice, as if Robert RunningFast had sensed Father John’s tenseness. The man moved past the shadows and into the light. “I stopped at the office. Nobody there, so I come over here. Got a minute?”
“Sure,” Father John said, starting back to the office. He’d gone a few steps when he realized the man wasn’t with him and turned around. Robert stood in the doorway to the exhibition hall.
“Lot of old stuff here,” he said, glancing around.
“Would you like to see it?”
“Nah.” He was shaking his head, but he hadn’t moved from the doorway. “What the hell. Go to a museum, you might as well see what they got.” He stepped forward into the shadowy hall. Father John followed and flipped the light switch. Ceiling lights stuttered into life, then the hall seemed to break free and fill up the entire museum.
Robert had walked over and was standing in front of the poster of Buffalo Bill. “Grandmother says he liked Indians,” he said. “You ask me, he wouldn’t have had much of a show without them. Looks like he knew what he was doing. You want people to come see your show, you have Indians and cowboys shooting each other.”
“There was more to the Wild West Show than that,” Father John said. He was about to launch into an explanation about how Buffalo Bill had wanted to educate audiences about life in the old West, the clash of civilizations as settlers threw themselves across the plains, into the wilderness. He stopped himself. The young man had moved on to the glass case exhibiting a beaded vest posed over beaded, high-top moccasins.
“1880s, 1890s,” Father John said. “Probably similar to the artifacts that were in the show.”
“Arapaho stuff was gonna go here?” Robert moved to the opposite wall and planted himself in front of three cases that had an unfinished look, with posters splashed on the walls and clear plastic glass holders and blocks arranged around the photos and programs on the floor.
Then Robert’s gaze seemed to land on something that pulled him sideways. He stopped in front of the portrait of Chief Black Heart.
“The artifacts that were stolen belonged to him.” Father John walked over. “Bernard Tallman’s great-grandfather.”
“Looks like him,” Robert said. “Yeah, I can see a real family resemblance. Who’s this?” He leaned forward and squinted at the typed plaque next to the photo of Sonny Yellow Robe.
“The chief’s adopted son,” Father John said.
“The Rap that stole the artifacts in the first place.”
“That’s not what his descendants think. Chief Black Heart didn’t believe it either.”
Robert shrugged. “Look at it,” he said, waving into the center of the gallery. “Nothing but old stuff. Who cares about hundred-year-old stuff?”
“Your grandmother cares.”
“She’s stuck in the past, like a lot of Raps. Where’s that gonna get you? Me? I’m looking at the future.”
“Would Wilma like me to put her grandmother’s dress in our vault?” Father John said, searching for a reason for the visit.
Robert threw his gaze around the hall again. “She already found a hiding place. You ask me, she heard the museum got broken into and the director got kidnapped. She had me take the dress out to my uncle’s ranch. He’s got a storage shed that’s so jammed full, he puts the dress in there nobody’ll ever find it.”
Father John didn’t say anything. A new thought had begun taking shape. He wondered how many other Arapahos might decide against allowing any of their precious old things to be exhibited in a museum that didn’t have enough security to prevent a burglary. They would have to increase the security; a solid-core door with a bolt wasn’t enough.
Robert had gone back to studying the photo of the chief. “So that’s what got stolen,” he said. “Eagle feathered headdress, vest, wrist cuffs. Even that flag shirt. Stuff he wore in the show?”
“Black Heart’s father also wore the items in battles,” Father John said. “He wore the headdress at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. They weren’t just show costumes.”
Robert didn’t move his gaze from the photo, as if it held some fascination. “Black Heart and Yellow Robe. Buffalo Bill himself. They’re all dead now.”
“They were alive once. Could be the items they wore are a witness to their lives.”
Robert jerked his eyes away from the photo, as if he were flinching from an electric shock. He walked over to a case in the middle of the room and stared down at the belt buckles, lariats, and hand-tooled boots, some of the items worn by Buffalo Bill himself. Father John looked past the young man at the unfinished cases, a quality of waiting about them. What an exhibit it would have been!
Robert rapped a knuckle against the edge of a case and turned toward him. “Can I talk to you?” he said.
27
ROBERT’S KNUCKLE TAPPING the glass case sounded like a metronome.
Father John studied the young man. Round shouldered, slouched against the case as if it would hold him up, eyes shadowed in concern, Adam’s apple jumping up and down. He hadn’t come to the mission to tell him his grandmother didn’t trust the museum for her ancestor’s dress. That was an excuse.
&
nbsp; “What is it?” Father John tried to keep his voice steady, the voice he hoped imparted confidence. In his head, he heard Vicky: They couldn’t have done it alone. They needed insiders.
“How can I help you?” He made another effort.
“Look,” Robert said, throwing out both hands like a kid protesting innocence to whatever misdeed he might be suspected of. “I needed the money. I want to go back to school. I been working hard, living with grandmother and trying to get enough money together…”
“Let’s start at the beginning,” Father John said. “Who offered you money? What did they expect in return?”
“Okay. Okay.” Now both hands were thrown in the air, as if the young man had surrendered to some inevitability. “I got a call from some guy. Don’t ask me, ’cause I don’t know. He said I didn’t need to know. He said there was a thousand dollars for me to do a couple things. Nothing would be traced to me, so I had nothing to worry about.”
Father John waited a moment before he said, “You were to call him when the artifacts were delivered to the warehouse?”
Robert nodded. His gaze stayed on the floor.
“You said a couple of things. What else?”
“He needed the security code for the door pad.”
“You knew he intended to steal Arapaho artifacts.”
“I didn’t know. It wasn’t my business what he wanted to do. I figured he’d sneak into the warehouse, take one or two artifacts. I never thought he’d clean out the cartons. I mean, the fed and cops would come after him like he was a wild grizzly gone crazy. One or two things, maybe nobody would’ve noticed. The collector that bought the stuff might holler, but that’d be the end of it. Besides…” A tremor came into his voice. He shifted his gaze toward the photo of Black Heart. “It’s nothing but a lot of old stuff.”
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