The Eagle Catcher

by Margaret Coel

  She dropped the suitcase on the wooden floor of the porch and riffled through her purse for the house key. The ringing started again. “Hold on,” she said under her breath, jamming the key into the lock. It crossed her mind it could be Larry, even though she’d let him off at his law office ten minutes ago. It would be like him to want to know if she’d made up her mind yet. Was she coming to L.A. with him? What was it to be? He’d pushed for an answer the entire time they’d been in Denver. Not the makings of a relaxing trip. Not when she didn’t know the answers, did not have a clue as to what she wanted to do. They’d taken the flight back to Riverton this afternoon in almost total silence.

  Leaving the suitcase on the porch, she hurried across the gray carpet in the small living room. Another long ring. The phone looked as if it might jump off the table next to the blue, flower-printed sofa. Tossing her bag onto one of the cushions, she sat down and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello? I’m here.” There was no longer any attempt to conceal the irritation she’d bottled up the last few days. She kicked off her sandals and scrunched her toes into the carpet, steeling herself against another plea for an answer, against an earnest apology for how things had gone down in Denver.

  “Vicky? I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  The voice at the other end caught her by surprise. She recognized it immediately. Father John O’Malley was the only man in these parts with that way of drawing out the first syllables of his words, as if he had a wad of cotton in his mouth. Straight out of Boston, she knew, although she had never been to Boston and had no intention of going. Denver was big enough, thank you, too big. And L.A. God, the thought made her stomach churn.

  This was her place, the Wind River Reservation where she’d been born almost forty-two years ago. The biggest concession she’d made to city life had been to rent this brick bungalow at the edge of Lander, halfway between the open spaces of the reservation and her law office on Main Street.

  “You okay?” There was no mistaking the anxiety in Father John’s voice.

  “What’s going on?” Vicky had worked with the superior at St. Francis Mission on a number of cases ever since she’d returned to the reservation two years ago: bailing some Arapaho teenager out of jail, getting some Arapaho alcoholic into rehab, arranging for some grandparents or aunts and uncles to adopt some abandoned Arapaho kid. He was a good man, for a white man. He seemed to care about the people here. And he was intelligent, very intelligent. But he was a priest, and she suspected that everything he knew he had learned out of books. She was aware of an uneasiness crawling over her skin. John O’Malley didn’t call her on Saturday afternoon with good news.

  “You heard what happened?” he asked.

  The uneasy feeling settled like chunks of granite in the pit of her stomach. “Tell me.”

  She could hear Father John draw in a deep breath on the other end of the line before he said, “Harvey Castle was murdered last night, Vicky. Someone stabbed him while he was sleeping in his tipi out at the powwow grounds.”

  Vicky sat bolt upright on the sofa. The gray carpet was dappled with yellow sunlight from the sliding doors that opened onto the patio out back. The whole living room seemed surreal, as if she had stumbled into a dream. The tribal chairman murdered!

  “Who?” she managed. Questions jangled against one another in her mind. Who would do such a thing? Why? For what possible reason?

  “Anthony’s been arrested. The FBI agent, Jeff Miller, picked him up a little while ago. He and Banner took him to Lander.”

  “To the county jail!” Of course. That’s where they took anybody arrested for murder. Vicky was on her feet now, carving out half circles in front of the sofa, moving in and out of the splotches of sunlight as far as the telephone cord would stretch. She felt slightly sick. Anthony was one of the most talented young people on the reservation. He was filled with possibilities, not just for himself but for Our People. Why was it that the most talented—the best and the brightest of the Hinono eino—self-destructed? Wrapped a pickup around the only tree in fifty miles. Drowned themselves in whiskey. Dropped out of school. Got mixed up in murder.

  This couldn’t be happening to Anthony, she thought. She had known him all his life, since the day he was born. He was almost the same age as her son, Lucas. But Anthony had a chance to make something of his life, and she knew how hard that was, how hard to catch and hold on to the slim, gossamer line that sometimes was tossed to you.

  “Anthony didn’t do it, I’m sure of it,” Father John said. There was impatience in his voice, as if he were implying that somebody—Miller and Banner—had blundered onto the wrong track and were too pig-headed to do anything but continue down it. “Unfortunately Anthony and Harvey got into an argument last evening out at the powwow grounds.”

  Hearing Father John suck in another deep breath, Vicky sensed his reluctance to tell her more. She waited until he finally said, “They found what looks like the murder weapon, a hunting knife. Could be Anthony’s.”

  So that was it. The murder weapon. A hunting knife that could be Anthony’s. God, Anthony could be in deep shit. She felt as if a pit had opened and Anthony was falling into it. Trying to collect her thoughts, she was quiet a moment. He was no murderer, Father John was right about that. It was out of the question. He might fly off the handle, but he wasn’t violent. She’d never known him to be violent. Harvey and Anthony ... Harvey was like a father to Anthony.

  There was little she wouldn’t give for a cigarette right now, she thought, making another half circle in front of the sofa; but there wasn’t one in her bag. Not one in the entire house, and there hadn’t been for over a year. She glanced at the silver watch on her wrist—a gift from Larry. It was a few minutes before three. “I’ll get over to the jail right away.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” Father John said.

  Vicky set the receiver down firmly. She was standing in the dappled sunlight, but she felt cold.

  She dropped down onto the sofa, trying to wrap her mind around the fact of the knife. The knife was a serious piece of evidence, like a wall of granite looming ahead. How could Anthony ever get around it?

  7

  VICKY WHEELED THE Bronco into the parking lot that butted up against the two-story, red-brick Fremont County jail and stopped in front of the doubleglass doors. She stepped out into waves of heat shooting up from the pavement like flames from a campfire. Sun gives himself for light and warmth, grandfather had told her when she was growing up. Well, sun was very generous today. But it always felt hotter in town than on the reservation. The asphalt and concrete and bricks captured the heat and stopped up the breeze.

  The air conditioning in the waiting room sent a cold splash of air across her face and arms, causing her to shiver involuntarily. She had made a quick change out of the jeans and T-shirt she’d worn on the plane this afternoon into a dark skirt and pale silk blouse, complete with nylons and black pumps—an attorney uniform. She’d clipped her hair back with a barrette her grandmother had beaded for her years ago, and she wondered if she had remembered to touch up her lipstick. She was of the opinion she looked half dead without it.

  The waiting room had all the personality of a meat locker, with its floor swathed in white tile and walls washed in institutional green. There were two rows of molded blue plastic chairs backed against one another and bolted to the floor. At the ends of both rows, round platelike tables floated on narrow chrome tubes. Little puffs of smoke twirled out of an ashtray on one of the tables. She pursed her lips, trying not to breathe in the smoke, wanting to do just that.

  At one end of the room was the glass-enclosed deputy’s station. Vicky knew the two deputies, a man and a woman, their eyes glued on a couple of closed-circuit television monitors that scanned every inch of the jail, even the parking lot and the roof. Usually she’d stop and chat, get their views on whatever it was that was going on, but not this afternoon. She didn’t want to hear any speculation that Anthony Castle might have murdered his
uncle.

  “Banner in the conference room?” Vicky called out as she walked past the station and down the hallway.

  “You got it,” a man’s voice called after her. She held her fist in midair and took a deep breath before giving the conference room door a quick rap. Then she turned the knob and walked in.

  Banner was standing in front of the window on the far side of the narrow room, a large, dark silhouette against the brightness outdoors. The new FBI agent was seated at the oak table that divided the room in half. He was writing in a small notebook that lay flat, a spiral spine of metal running between the lined, half-filled pages. He didn’t look up.

  Banner wheeled around as she shut the door, and she realized he had seen her drive up. The air conditioning hummed overhead.

  “You know Jeff Miller, Vicky?”

  “We’ve met,” Vicky said, recalling a brief introduction last week at the Lander Rotary club. It was as if she and the police chief were discussing someone who was not there.

  “You here as Castle’s attorney or friend?” Miller asked without looking up from his notebook.

  Vicky pulled out a chair and sat across the table from him. Before she had decided whether to respond to this white man, Banner said, “Could be Anthony’s gonna need both.”

  Miller laid his pen on the table and ran his hand carefully, almost caressingly, over the top of the opened notebook. Leaning back in his chair, he leveled his gaze at Vicky, as if expecting her to provide him with new material to consign to the pages.

  “We got a murdered tribal chairman and a lot of evidence against one suspect,” the FBI agent said. His voice was tinged with a Southwestern accent.

  “What evidence?”

  “Look, Vicky,” Banner said, “I don’t like this any better than you do. Anthony’s a hell of a kid, but that temper of his just might’ve gotten him into real trouble this time.”

  “What evidence?” Vicky asked again. Any patience she had for the BIA chief was fading fast. Both Banner and this white FBI agent seemed to think they had everything figured out.

  “Anthony and Harvey got into a hot argument last night out at the powwow grounds,” Banner said.

  “So?”

  “So Anthony could’ve come back in the middle of the night and finished the argument.” This from the agent.

  “That’s conjecture.” Vicky kept her eyes on the white man across from her, his face red-blotched and creased from too much sun. She could see the sunburned scalp in the part of his hair.

  “He took off when we went out to the ranch to pick him up for questioning,” Miller said. “Ran out the back door like a coyote with its tail between its legs,” the agent went on. This was the first Vicky had heard about Anthony running, and the fed seemed to sense this. He was enjoying himself. “Left us no choice but to arrest him on suspicion of murder.”

  “You had a warrant?”

  “I imagine the magistrate’s gonna oblige.”

  “On what grounds? Running out the back door?”

  “Resisting arrest.”

  “You had informed Anthony he was under arrest?”

  Banner gripped both sides of the table and leaned over the end. “No, Vicky. We just wanted to talk with him. We weren’t fixing to arrest him.” The chief shot a glance at the agent.

  “So Anthony could hardly have been resisting arrest,” Vicky said.

  “Let’s cut the crapola, counselor,” Miller said. He placed his elbows on the table, made a tent over the notebook with his arms, and rested his chin on his knuckles. “Nobody runs unless he’s got something to hide.”

  Vicky sensed the strength in the man, the determination. She forced herself to keep her eyes on his. “There is some explanation.”

  “How you gonna explain this?” Miller hoisted a large brown briefcase from the floor and set it on the table between them. Opening the lid, he pulled out a plastic zip-lock bag which he pushed toward her. A hunting knife lay inside. Leaning over, she could make out the initials AC on the silver band at the base of the handle.

  “Behold the murder weapon,” he said.

  “Well, might be the murder weapon.” Banner glanced again at the agent. “We won’t know for sure ’til we get some lab tests done.”

  The entry compartment was the size of a small closet. Vicky felt wedged in between the BIA police chief she had known all her life and this white FBI agent who had suddenly appeared in these parts, like a strange prickly pear cactus. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck. They were standing still, but she had the sense of plunging downward in an elevator, of anticipating the inevitable hard stop.

  How many times had she stepped into this compartment and waited for the electronic buzzer to swing open the door ahead and admit her to the inner sanctum of the Fremont County jail? On many of those occasions, John O’Malley had stood beside her, a tall presence looming over her, and she thought now what a calm and reassuring presence it was. She wished he were here now.

  The buzzer rippled through the compartment like an electrical charge, and they filed through the opened door onto the gray concrete floor of the cell block. Directly across a narrow hallway stood another glass-enclosed station with three deputies watching other television screens.

  One stood up, disappeared a moment, then reappeared outside the station. “This way,” he said, leading them down the hallway between whitewashed cinderblock walls. He halted in front of a cream-colored meta! door and slid a key into the lock. Pushing the door ajar, he said, “Knock when you’re ready.”

  Anthony rushed toward them, and for a second Vicky feared he would make a break for the door. Instead he stopped abruptly, arms dangling at his sides, like a little kid who didn’t know what to do next. She put both arms around him and hugged him. He was taller than Lucas and more muscular. It had been more than a year since she’d seen either Lucas or her daughter, Susan.

  Swallowing back the tears, she said, “It’s going to be okay, Anthony. Just tell Chief Banner and Agent Miller what you know.”

  “Have a seat,” Miller said. Swinging the briefcase he had brought from the conference room, he directed Anthony to the end of the oak table. The table covered most of the floor space in the narrow room. Miller and Banner settled in side by side while Vicky took a chair across from them. The agent plopped the briefcase onto the polished tabletop.

  “I have the duty to remind you that you are a suspect in the murder of your uncle, Harvey Castle,” the fed began.

  “That’s bull,” Anthony said.

  “Where were you last night after midnight?”

  Anthony clasped his hands together and laid them on the table in front of him. Vicky saw the raw stubbornness and barely contained rage in the young man’s eyes. It wouldn’t have surprised her had he blurted out that it was none of their business.

  “Just answer him,” she said.

  “I spent the night with a friend.” Anthony’s lips hardly moved.

  Miller had pulled the little spiral notebook out of his inside jacket pocket and flattened it on top of the table. He was already busy filling in the first couple of lines on one page. “Name?” He didn’t look up.

  “I left the powwow about eight o’clock and didn’t go back. So it doesn’t matter who my friend is.”

  Miller glanced up sideways, locking eyes with the young Arapaho at the end of the table. “Not good enough. I need a name,” he said. Anthony didn’t flinch.

  Vicky saw it all in a second’s flash, as if a moving picture had fast-forwarded in front of her. Anthony had spent the night with a girlfriend, and the girlfriend was someone he wanted to protect. That meant she was from around here, and, more than likely, she was white. If Anthony didn’t want to divulge her name, no power on the face of the earth was going to make him do so even if he had to sit out the rest of his life in Leavenworth for a murder he didn’t commit. Vicky felt the muscles tightening in her throat.

  “You’ve got your answer,” she said to the agent. “My client has an alibi.
He was with a friend at the time of his uncle’s murder. Should you come up with any real evidence against him, backed up by scientific tests, which is doubtful in the extreme since he’s innocent, we will supply the name.”

  She shifted in her chair toward Anthony and shot him a look meant to warn him against blurting out “the hell we will.”

  Miller bent over his notebook. “Refused to answer,” he said, pen scratching the paper.

  Banner leaned forward. “You and Harvey get into some kind of fight last night?”

  “No fight. Argument.”

  “What kind of argument?”

  “What kind?”

  “Yeah. What was it about?” the chief persisted.

  Anthony drew in a long breath, as if to pull in a string of thoughts. “About how, for no good reason, he changed his mind about buying the Cooley ranch, about how some oil company will probably buy the ranch now, and Arapahos will never get back what used to be ours. That’s what it was about.”

  “You expect us to swallow some bull story that you and your uncle got into a violent argument over some land deal?” Miller had stopped writing, but kept his pen poised over the next empty line.

  “That’s your characterization,” Vicky said, laying her forearms on the table. She felt more relaxed, more in control now that she knew Anthony had an alibi. “There’s no evidence the argument was violent.”

  “You want violent arguments? Why don’t you talk to Ernest Oldman?” Anthony’s words came like a blast from a shotgun.

  “What are you talking about?” Banner asked.

  Anthony shrugged. “Ernest got into a lot of arguments with Harvey this summer. They were all violent. Last week he came out to the ranch drunker’n a skunk. Stood out at the gate and shouted his head off ’til Harvey went out. I went out, too, case Harvey needed help. You never know about drunks.” He shot a glance at Vicky, took a deep breath, then went on. “He was shouting something about his per capita being cut way back and Harvey not taking care of it. Like it was Harvey’s responsibility.”