The minute the green-garbed doctor stepped into the waiting room, Father John knew Charlie was dead. “Mrs. Taylor?” the doctor said, moving toward the councilman’s wife. From the look of terror on her face, she also knew what the doctor was about to say to her.
21
THERE WAS NO traffic on Seventeen-Mile Road. The morning was hazy and cool, but a blinding sun was climbing out of the east. Father John snapped down the Toyota’s visor. Ahead the plains, brown and parched, lengthened into the gray-blue sky. It was a kind of miracle how, at certain times of day, in certain light, the earth and sky flowed together as if they were one. A couple of white clouds with dark edges drifted along in a promise of rain that would probably come to nothing. More than likely, it would be another hot day.
Father John slowed the Toyota a short distance beyond the intersection with Goes-In-Lodge Road, just before Seventeen-Mile Road angled north. It was the only bend for miles in the two-lane road that shot straight as an arrow across the reservation. Charlie’s gray pickup lay on its side out in the field a good fifty feet. He wondered how fast Charlie had gone into the curve.
He’d passed the site last night on his way home from the hospital, but it had been too dark to see anything other than the shadowy hulk of the truck. He wanted to walk around in the daylight before Banner and his men and a phalanx from the state patrol converged for an investigation. Not until Father John eased the Toyota off the road and down into the barrow ditch did he notice the blue pickup parked in the scraggly bushes.
He wasn’t the only one checking out the accident. Father John slowly got out of the Toyota, taking in everything: the wrecked truck, the bushes, and the yellow sunflowers in the ditch, the road a few feet above. Just then Ned Cooley stood up on the far side of the pickup and began walking around it, cowboy hat pushed back on his head, hands in the pockets of his tailored gray pants.
Meadowlarks trilled to one another through the morning quiet as Father John made his way across clumps of sagebrush, avoiding the prairie dog holes. He could feel his muscles tensing, the way they did when he was a kid in Boston walking through a strange neighborhood.
The rancher leaned against the tilted tailgate of Charlie’s pickup, waiting. There was no trace of surprise on his face, nothing but the complacency of a man used to being in charge.
“Charlie Taylor a friend of yours?” Father John asked as he approached.
Ned lowered his eyes, folded his arms, and crossed one leg over the other. Gravel scraped under his boots. “All these Indians are friends of the Cooley family.”
Father John walked slowly around the pickup. The sun flared off the tilted windshield. The hood and engine had been pushed back almost into the front seat. He wondered how they’d gotten Charlie out. “Think this was an accident?” he asked.
The other man guffawed. “Of course it was an accident.”
“What brought you out here so early?” Father John stopped next to the rancher, still leaning against the tailgate. Without answering, Ned squared his shoulders, dug his hands into his pockets, and began strolling along the pickup. his attention on the exposed axles and driveshaft. Finally he said, “Always hate to see something senseless like this.” A speech. He was the candidate in a roomful of supporters. “Soon as I’m governor, I intend to do everything in my power to erase the scourge of alcohol from this reservation.”
“Charlie didn’t drink,” Father John said, studying the tailgate where Ned had been leaning. It had a deep, rounded dent that pushed into the bed itself. It was hard to tell if the gray paint had been scraped off, or if those were flecks of dark paint.
Suddenly Ned whirled around and took a couple of steps forward. He was squinting in the sun which had already burned off most of the morning haze. White clouds drifted like snow over the Wind River Mountains, but everywhere else the sky was radiant blue. “That so? You seem to know everything on this reservation. You make everybody’s business your own and go around interfering in people’s lives. That doesn’t work here, Father O’Malley. We got our own ways, and we don’t like outsiders interfering. That’s why your boss is gonna send you back to Boston or someplace else real soon.”
“Maybe,” Father John said, locking eyes with the rancher. There were no maybes, and Father John knew that the other man understood this. It was Ned Cooley who was interfering in his life, calling the Provincial, telling him God knows what to get Father John removed from St. Francis. If the Provincial ordered him to another assignment ... Well, he had taken the vow of obedience. He would have to go. He swallowed back the anger rising in his throat like hot phlegm.
All of a sudden, Ned turned and started across the field. Father John watched him climb into the pickup. It wasn’t long before it spun out of the barrow ditch onto Seventeen-Mile Road, doing fifty into the curve.
22
BANNER AND JEFF Miller were outside the red-brick tribal offices when Father John pulled into the parking lot. The morning sun burned with a white heat, and a hot wind sent tumbleweeds scuttling across the asphalt. The two officers of the law stopped talking as Father John got out of the pickup and walked over.
“Looks like we might have another murder. State patrol says Charlie’s pickup was rammed from behind. He was pushed off the road.” The fed looked as if he expected a denial from Father John. “It’s time I got your boy into custody before somebody else gets killed.”
“Are you saying Anthony killed Charlie Taylor?” Father John exchanged a quick glance with Banner. There was no mistaking the worried look in the chief’s eyes.
“A sure bet,” the agent said. “Evidence says he killed his uncle. Lab report came back yesterday. A couple hairs we picked up in Harvey’s office came off Anthony’s head. And guess whose fingerprints are on the knife?”
“How many times did Anthony visit Harvey’s office? Probably every time he was back from school. And whose fingerprints would you expect to find on the knife if not the owner’s? If there weren’t any other prints, it only proves the murderer wore gloves,” Father John said.
Exasperation flared in the agent’s eyes. “I don’t get you two,” he said, turning to the police chief. “You have to be hit over the head with a baseball bat before you face facts? I’m taking this case to the U.S. attorney today, soon as the state patrol finishes its report on Taylor’s accident which, I suspect, wasn’t an accident.”
The fed stepped off the sidewalk and marched across the asphalt lot to the tan jeep parked next to the Toyota. Swinging open the jeep’s door, he hollered, “Want to bet your boy says he was with his girlfriend last night?”
Father John strode out after the agent and placed both hands on the door just as the engine kicked over. Leaning down so his face was only a few inches from the fed’s, he asked, “What possible motive would Anthony have for killing Charlie Taylor?”
“As soon as I find out, you’ll be the first to know,” Miller said, ramming the gear into first. Father John stepped back as the jeep rolled past him.
Banner closed the door to Harvey’s office the moment they were inside and brushed the flat of one hand across his forehead, wiping away little beads of perspiration. “Miller could be right about Charlie’s accident. First the tribal chairman is murdered, and now a councilman has a very suspicious accident. We could have some kind of conspiracy going on.”
The hit-man theory flashed through Father John’s mind. It was never far away, although he didn’t like to admit it. Settling into Harvey’s chair, he told the police chief what Charlie had whispered before he died.
“Why didn’t you tell the fed?”
“I wanted to think about it first. Besides, he didn’t ask me.”
Banner grinned. Then he said, “No accident. Charlie was right about that. But the numbers? What was he trying to tell you? That somebody forced him off the road by ramming his pickup three times, ten times? Jesus, there’s nothin’ but puzzles everywhere we turn. All except for the case Miller’s building against Anthony.”
“Ho
w long before the grand jury returns an indictment?” Father John asked.
‘Two, three days. Miller talked to Anthony again. He knows about Melissa. Now he’s got the motive, the weapon, and the fact Anthony could’ve driven to the powwow grounds and back to Cooley’s old place without Melissa ever knowin’ he was gone. Anthony’s alibi has all the strength of a gnat.” Heaving a deep sigh, the police chief hauled out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead.
Father John glanced at the stacks of file folders on Harvey’s desk waiting for his attention. He was a third of the way through the manuscript and so far he had found nothing. It could be a waste of time, and time was what they didn’t have. They were missing something here, some proposition in the syllogism, some path they should take. What was it? Why couldn’t he see it?
“We tried talking to Ernest,” Banner said. “He swears up and down it wasn’t him that made this mess here. Hospital’s got him pretty sedated, plus they got him on a twenty-four-hour watch.”
“They think he’s suicidal?”
Banner nodded. “You heard, didn’t ya? Jenny took the kids and went down to Denver. She’s got a sister there.”
This was the first time Father John had heard of it. Usually he heard all the gossip, but he’d been so preoccupied the last couple days that he hadn’t returned phone calls, and he hadn’t been out talking to people. He hadn’t even had the time to visit Ernest. Jesus, the poor bastard. He remembered how he’d felt those first few days at Grace House, sick as a dog, the earth dropping out from under him.
“One thing’s for sure,” Father John said. “Ernest didn’t push Charlie off the road last night, and I don’t think he’s got it together enough to have planned Harvey’s murder, no matter how upset he might’ve been over the dry wells.”
“Another puzzle, those damn oil wells being shut down,” Banner said, drawing his lips into a thin line. “We done some checkin’. Harvey asked for a report last week, but Marvin Antelope—he’s that Crow the council hired on as resources director—says he’s still workin’ on it. The council don’t have the report yet, and that means Harvey didn’t know anything more about why those wells were shut down than the rest of us.”
“Dead end,” said Father John. “Just like this is turning into a dead end.” He thumped the knuckles of his index finger against the folders.
The police chief picked up the top folder and began thumbing through the pages. “It would’ve been a great book all about Our People. Maybe, when all this is over, you could finish it for Harvey.”
“I’d like to,” Father John said. He didn’t want to tell the police chief that, come September, he probably wouldn’t be at Wind River Reservation, that the wheels were already turning to have him shipped elsewhere. Instead he launched into an explanation of Harvey’s system, how each folder contained a separate chapter, and each chapter had an outline, a typed manuscript, research notes, and photographs. He was checking through everything in the folders, but so far nothing was missing.
Banner had pulled out a stack of black-and-white photographs and was flipping through them. “These look pretty recent,” he said.
Father John glanced over the chief’s shoulder. “They’re from one of the last chapters,” he said. “Harvey had started at the beginning and was bringing the history up to the present.”
The chief let out a low whistle. “Wonder how he ever got a hold of this,” he said, holding one of the photos out at arm’s length. “That was the first time anybody ever took my picture.”
Father John leaned forward to get the photograph into focus. He recognized the canyon of the Washakie, the dirt road climbing upward, the jagged granite cliffs on both sides. A group of people—they looked like Arapahos, about seventeen or eighteen years old—posed alongside some pack horses, holding the reins, smiling into the camera. At the far left, one boy, thin and shy-looking, sat his horse. “That’s me,” Banner said, laying a pudgy brown finger against the image.
Father John’s attention was drawn to the young man on the right, his arm around one of the girls as if he were pulling her close, claiming her. He looked like Anthony. The girl was slender, in blue jeans and a short-sleeved blouse. Light hair hung below her cowboy hat which partly shaded her face. Harvey and Dorothy Bennett were staring at him from the past, frozen in time.
So the rumor was true. Two or three times he’d heard the grandmothers clucking about Harvey and a white woman. One had even mentioned her name: Dorothy Cooley. But Harvey had never mentioned her, and Father John had dismissed the rumor as unlikely. Not everything the grandmothers gossiped about was rooted in fact.
“When was this taken?” Father John asked.
“Mid sixties, I guess. We took a pack trip up Washakie Creek, beyond the reservoir. My girlfriend just got a new camera, so she lined us up and took our picture. I haven’t seen it in years.” Banner’s eyes remained fixed on the photo.
“Dorothy Bennett was one of your friends?”
“Dorothy Cooley then.” The police chief looked up. “It was a long time ago. All us kids grew up together. Went to different schools, of course, but Dorothy always hung around with us Indian kids. Nobody else around here for her to associate with. She and Harvey ...” He stopped, shaking his head. “It was sad, now you think of it. There was no way anything was ever gonna come of it. But that summer,” Banner pointed to the photo again, “they were together all the time. Tried to keep it secret from their folks, and it’s not easy keepin’ secrets on the rez. If Anthony and Melissa hadn’t been down in Laramie, their romance wouldn’t have stayed secret long. Anyhow, the Cooleys found out about Dorothy and Harvey.” Sighing, Banner laid the photograph back in the folder.
“What happened?”
“Old man Cooley was still alive then, so he and Ned sent her packin’ off to school somewhere in the East. A couple years later we heard she got married. That’s about when Harvey married that gal from Cheyenne. Didn’t last long. They were like a team of oxen pulling in different directions. Then, about ten years ago, Dorothy got divorced and moved back to the ranch with her little girl.”
“I’d heard the gossip about Dorothy and Harvey.”
“Old news,” the police chief said. “There was nothing between ‘em when she got back. Oh, they were polite to each other whenever they met. I saw ’em talkin’ over at Blue Sky Hall once. But, hell, there was nothin’ going on. Everybody would’ve known if it was otherwise. Besides, Dorothy’s a Cooley to the bone.”
“She was parked outside during Harvey’s wake,” Father John said.
The chief’s eyes widened into two black discs. “I heard that might’ve been her Caddy there, but it was gone by the time I got outside.” He was silent a moment. Then, “Don’t get your hopes up that it means anything, John. The girl in that photo couldn’t murder anybody. She couldn’t even spur her horse.”
23
VICKY TOOK A step closer to the oak conference table and peered down at the large map of the Wind River Reservation.
“This what you wanted?” Marvin White Antelope leaned toward her, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a tetherball. His black hair, slicked back, brushed the collar of his light-blue shirt. Tapping the map with a pencil, he looked at her above wire-rimmed glasses. His breath smelled stale and sour like cigarettes and old bologna, and Vicky instinctively pulled back.
“Business council hasn’t seen my report yet,” he continued. “I shouldn’t be showing you this.”
“I appreciate it,” Vicky said, running her index finger from one clump of black dots on the map to another. The dots marked the location of oil fields on the reservation.
“You owe me.”
“Right.” Vicky let her finger fall on a cluster of dots in the center.
“So have dinner with me tonight.”
“I’m busy.” Her finger moved to another cluster along the reservation’s western boundary.
“Tomorrow night, then.”
Vicky felt his eyes boring into her. She
jerked her head upward and met his gaze. “No.”
“You’re a fine-lookin’ woman, Vicky,” he said, his smile curling into a smirk. “Woman Alone. That’s your new name, right? You’re too beautiful to be alone.”
She looked back at the map, ignoring the comment. After a moment Marvin started to roll it up. “Nobody should see this before the council gets the complete report.”
Vicky flattened her hand in the center, pinning the map to the table. “You might need some legal advice sometime.”
“Can’t think what about,” he said, rolling the map tightly to the point where her hand lay. “Why do you care about the oil wells anyway?”
“The tribal chairman has been murdered, and now it looks like another councilman has been murdered. Several wells on the reservation suddenly stopped pumping for no reason anybody seems to know. Does all this strike you as strange?” She drew in a long breath, then went on. “Anthony Castle is a suspect in his uncle’s murder, and I happen to be his lawyer. I can get a subpoena, or you can let me see this map.”
The Crow Indian, who had found his way south from Montana and into the job of resources director, kept his eyes on her as he slowly uncurled the map. “I’m doin’ this under protest.”
Vicky took another breath. “Are these the wells that stopped pumping this summer?” She pointed to the black dots on the southwest.
“So far’s we know.” Marvin’s words were terse, business-like.
“What about over here?” Vicky moved her finger to the cluster of black marks near Fort Washakie. “Or here,” she said, lighting on another cluster further north.
“All pumpin’, far as I know.” Marvin tapped the pencil on the table, as if he had better things to do than this dead-end meeting.
“So these are the only wells that have gone dry.” Vicky’s finger moved back to the dots on the southwest. “Odd.” she said, partly to herself.
The Eagle Catcher Page 15