The Story Teller

by Margaret Coel

  Vicky stepped back over to the bed and lifted the rest of her clothes out of the carry-on. She wasn’t sure what to make of the changes in her friend’s life. She said, “I want to hire an investigator. Any suggestions?”

  Marcy drew in a sharp breath at the abrupt change in conversation. She stared at Vicky a moment, as if trying to refocus her thoughts. Then: “Your old friend Pat Michaels is still the best. Hold on.” She brushed past the door, and in a moment she was back, snapping two business cards on the dresser. “Someone else would like to hear from you,” she said.

  Vicky glanced at the black type on the pair of cards. One read Pat Michaels, Investigations. The other, Steve Clark, Denver Homicide Detective.

  “I ran into Steve yesterday,” Marcy was saying, “so I mentioned you were coming to town. Well, I wish you could have seen how his eyes lit up, although, of course, he tried to hide it. But he hasn’t forgotten you, Vicky.” She prattled on: Steve had given her his card in case Vicky wanted to call. Not that he expected her to call after all this time, but it would be good to hear from her. Talk over the old times.

  Vicky slid the card under that of the investigator, a memory shooting past, like an old film on fast forward. Two outsiders. She, an Arapaho woman, divorced from her husband, separated from her kids, and handsome, cocky Steve Clark, fresh from a stint with the Navy SEALS. Compared with the other students at CU-Denver, they were grizzled veterans of life. And they were friends, that was all. She had just broken her marriage vows and ended the relationship she had thought would last a lifetime. She didn’t want other vows, another relationship. The last she had heard of Steve Clark, he had married a childhood sweetheart.

  “He’s been divorced awhile,” Marcy said, as if she’d seen into the memory. “The marriage didn’t work out. They were never on the same planet. You were the one he’d always hoped—”

  Vicky held up one hand. “Thanks for the message,” she said.

  “You’re not going to call, are you?” It was a statement. “He’ll be disappointed.”

  “I’m not going to call.” Vicky turned toward the bed with the little pile of clothes beside the carry-on and began unbuttoning the front of her attorney dress.

  “Well,” Marcy said, backing toward the door. “The pasta awaits.” Her footsteps made a soft, padded sound as she retreated down the hallway. Then: “Whenever you’re ready” floated back like the last stanza of a song.

  Vicky shrugged out of the dress. She pulled on the clean, stiff blue jeans and allowed the soft cotton T-shirt to float over her shoulders. She slipped into the sandals, beginning to feel more relaxed, more like herself, without her lawyer clothes. Leaning toward the mirror, she removed the barrette at the nape of her neck and brushed her hair in long, smooth strokes. Her hair fell about her shoulders, thick and black, still shiny—her best feature, she’d always thought. She was not beautiful. No, she would not describe the face looking back at her as beautiful. It had always surprised her when some man insisted otherwise. She’d always felt she should argue, set the matter straight. Eyes as black as slate, set much too far apart, a too-long nose with that little hump, cheekbones too prominent, and lips much too full. She touched up her lipstick. No, not beautiful, but after seeing so many white faces today, the golden-brown face in the mirror looked . . . well, different, as if it belonged in some other place or time. She clipped back her hair with the barrette and turned away. She was who she was.

  Picking up the top business card, she walked over to the nightstand, perched on the edge of the bed, and tapped out Pat Michaels’s number.

  “Yeah?” The voice on the other end sounded raspy from too many cigarettes and cool nights hunkered down behind a steering wheel, watching shadows.

  “Pat, it’s Vicky Holden.”

  The line seemed to go dead. Then: “What’re you doing in town, beautiful Indian maiden?”

  “Please, Pat.”

  “Sorry, I forgot you never liked that stuff. Have to keep my thoughts to myself. So, talk to me.”

  “I’m working on an agreement with the Denver Museum of the West.”

  “Ah,” the investigator said, as if a picture had come into focus. “NAGPRA rears its ugly head. A disagreement, more likely, between the Arapahos and the museum. Tell me I’m right and bolster my confidence.”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Vicky said. “I’d like to know more about the curator, Rachel Foster.”

  Another “ah” came across the line, drawn out and nasal-toned. “A museum curator. One of the upstanding types. Always hardest to uncover anything interesting. No rap sheets. Police never heard of them, except maybe for a prowler call in their neighborhoods. What are you looking for? Anything specific?”

  “Anything unusual,” she said. “Anything that might drive a museum curator to violate her trust.”

  “You need the information yesterday, right?”

  Vicky smiled. She’d always liked Pat—thirty pounds overweight in rumpled slacks and jackets that looked as if he’d slept in them, which, most of the time, he probably had. She’d worked with him on many cases during her years at the firm. Pat Michaels had always been straight with her. She said, “Yesterday would be fine.”

  “Get back to you tomorrow,” he said. She gave him Marcy’s number before pressing the disconnect button. Then she pulled her bag across the bed and fumbled for the little pad on which Annemarie had scribbled the numbers. Flattening the pad on the nightstand, she punched in the number of Todd Harris’s grandparents, Doyal and Mary. An intermittent buzzing noise was followed by a click. “Hello?” An old man’s voice.

  “It’s Vicky Holden, Grandfather,” Vicky said. Then she launched into the usual pleasantries, the polite dance—how had they been? Fine, just fine. Finally the time was ready. “Have you seen Todd lately?” she asked, her voice calm.

  “Not seen him for, oh, a couple weeks,” Doyal said, a slow drawl. “Todd’s real busy at school.”

  Another round of pleasantries followed before Vicky ended the call, the sense of alarm growing inside her. She pushed it away. Why couldn’t she accept the obvious explanation Doyal had offered? Todd was busy at school, hunkered down in the stacks at some library, trying to finish his thesis. No wonder no one had seen him.

  In the kitchen, she found Marcy dropping a wad of linguine into a pot of water. Steam curled up toward the copper pans dangling over the island that divided the kitchen from the living room. Vicky perched on a stool. A TV squatted on the counter behind the island, a newscaster’s voice droning softly through the bubbling water.

  “Wine?” Marcy hoisted a long-stemmed glass half-filled with deep red liquid and took a long sip. “Or are you still a teetotaler?”

  Vicky nodded. She had always been a teetotaler. Ben was the one who drank; she had watched the alcohol steal his soul. When he was drunk, he turned into someone she didn’t know or understand, not the man she loved. It was when he was drunk that he’d hit her.

  Suddenly Vicky found herself focusing on the newscaster’s voice. Another homicide. Latino or Native American male. Early twenties. She was off the stool and, in two steps, in front of the TV. She turned up the volume. “Denver police say the body was found this morning near the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River. Exact cause of death is unknown, but the police believe it is homicide.”

  “My God,” Vicky said, half to herself. “I’ve been trying to reach a young man from the reservation. He’s not around. His fiancée is worried he’s in trouble.”

  “This is the city.” Marcy shrugged. “People turn up murdered from time to time. Chances are the victim isn’t anybody you know.”

  Vicky was already around the island. She hurried down the hallway, ignoring Marcy’s voice calling behind, “Dinner’s about ready.” In the bedroom, she found Steve Clark’s card on the dresser where she’d left it. She carried it over to the phone and tapped out his number.

  7

  The detective sounded both glad and surprised to hear from h
er: the exuberant tone, the questions tumbling out. How long was she in town? When could he see her? Vicky explained she was calling about the body found in the South Platte River.

  There was a slow intake of breath on the other end, a long sigh. “What do you know about it?”

  “A young Arapaho, a graduate student, could be missing,” Vicky said. She was beginning to feel like an overanxious mother. She had no proof Todd was actually missing. He might even have gone back to the reservation, for all she knew. Maybe he was in one of the cars on I-25 below while she’d flown overhead. And even if he had dropped out of sight for a while, what evidence connected him to the body dragged out of the South Platte River?

  She realized Steve had asked if anyone had reported the student missing, that he was awaiting the answer. She said, “I don’t believe so. But no one has seen him in the last few days.” She told him about stopping by the apartment, about the papers and mail.

  “What’s his name?” The detective’s voice steadied into an official rhythm.

  “Todd Harris,” Vicky said. Then she blurted out the rest. Twenty-four years old. About five foot ten. Black hair. Dark complexion. Handsome, a nice kid. About to finish a master’s degree in history at CU-Denver. She was thinking this could be a mistake. Calling police attention to an Indian kid in Denver, when there were probably a thousand rational explanations for the unclaimed mail, the stacks of newspapers.

  “Physicals could be close,” the detective said. “But we don’t have an ID yet. I’ll call you as soon as we get one. You’re at Marcy’s, right?”

  For an instant Vicky had the sense Steve might think the missing student and the news of a homicide were just fortunate coincidences she’d seized upon in order to call him, a way of saving face. Hurriedly she said, “I can identify the body, if it is Todd.”

  A clanking noise sounded over the line, as if the detective had just set something down on a hard surface—a coffee mug perhaps. “You don’t want to do that, Vicky.”

  “I’ve known Todd all his life,” she persisted. He was the same age as her own son, Lucas.

  “You don’t understand.” A stern note came into the detective’s voice. “The body was floating in the river at least twenty-four hours before it got hung up on rocks and bushes near Confluence Park. And there’s something else.”

  Instinctively Vicky flinched, as if to ward off some unseen blow. She waited.

  “There’s no good way to say this,” the detective began. “Looks like he was beaten to death, Vicky. The face isn’t what you’re gonna want to see every time you close your eyes the rest of your life. We’ll have a positive ID by tomorrow.”

  Vicky pressed the receiver hard against her ear, silently cursing whatever it was that pushed her forward. She could have a relaxing dinner, a long heart-to-heart with an old friend, and a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow she would know whether it was Todd who had washed up in the South Platte River or some other poor kid. Except she knew there would be no eating or sleeping, no respite from the anxiety fluttering inside her. She said, “I want to know tonight.”

  A soft shush came over the line, as if the detective had taken a pull from a mug of hot coffee. “I was just about to leave the station.”

  “I’ll come right away,” she said.

  * * *

  Steve was waiting outside the front entrance to the Denver Coroner’s Office, a five-story brick building across from the Denver Health Medical Center in an old, dust-strewn part of the city wrapped in the roar of traffic. Vicky had made the drive in twenty minutes, after leaving Marcy in the kitchen with a platter of linguine swimming in some kind of green sauce, saying she would explain later. Marcy had handed her a house key, which Vicky dropped into her handbag as she slammed out the front door.

  A hot breeze plucked at her T-shirt, and the sidewalk burned through the soles of her sandals. Steve came to meet her, hands in the pockets of his tan slacks, the fronts of his blue blazer pulled back. She would have known him anywhere—the squared shoulders and sandy hair—lighter now, about to be invaded by gray—the dark eyes focused and intent.

  “You look great, Vicky,” he said, his eyes traveling over her.

  “I appreciate this, Steve,” she said.

  He moved closer and took his hands from his pockets. He let them dangle at his sides, as if he had considered putting his arms around her but had thought better of it. She extended her hand. His grasp felt warm and reassuring. “You sure you want to do this?” he asked.

  “Let’s just get it over with.”

  Steve stepped aside, ushering her to the glass outer door that gave onto an enclosed entry. She waited as he pressed the button on the intercom in the outside wall. Suddenly the inner door swung open, and a young woman in a gray pantsuit stepped across the entry and opened the glass door. They followed her into an L-shaped waiting room, slabs of beige tile on the floor, and two rows of metal, straight-backed chairs against the green walls. Like a million waiting rooms, arranged for people who had nothing, really, to wait for. The air-conditioning hummed from a metal vent next to the ceiling, belching a stream of cold air that smelled of floor wax and antiseptic. Vicky shivered involuntarily.

  “Meet Priscilla DeAngelo, the coroner’s investigator,” Steve said, taking Vicky’s arm and turning her toward the pantsuited woman with short, brown hair and eyebrows penciled into a look of efficiency. Then: “This is Vicky Holden. She might know the homicide we brought in this morning.”

  Vicky shook the woman’s hand and told her she appreciated the opportunity to view the body.

  “Not a problem.” The investigator gave a quick shrug, as if to say it was a problem—a huge inconvenience to stay late because some woman had a hunch she knew the victim in the latest homicide in the news. But once in a while the hunches, the out-of-the-blue calls, paid off, which was why she had agreed.

  Flinging open an inside door, the investigator led the way down a corridor, past a series of closed doors before stopping abruptly and pushing one open. They followed her into a small room, with heavy drapes along the wall on the left, a small sofa on the right. There was a faint chemical odor, like air freshener.

  “You sure, Vicky?” Steve asked, placing an arm lightly around her shoulders. Glancing up, she saw the worry behind the focused gaze, the hint of vulnerability that had made her trust him, had ensured they would become friends that day thirteen years ago when she had bumped into him on the steps of the North Classroom building and dropped her books and papers. He had scooped them up, apologizing all the while, when she was the one at fault.

  She nodded, and he guided her toward the draped wall as the investigator yanked on a cord. Slowly the drapes parted against a wide window. On the other side, a figure bundled in white sheets lay on a gurney. Only the face was visible.

  Vicky gasped. Her vision was filled with the dark face, the mashed cheek, the eye lost in a lump of flesh, the bulge above one ear. With all the outrage, she recognized Todd Harris.

  She spun around, past Steve and the investigator, and ran out the door and down the corridor toward a door with the small sign: WOMEN. She barely made it to the row of white enamel sinks before the retching began, shuddering and violent, as if her insides had erupted. Nothing came. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, a fact for which she was grateful. After a moment she turned on the cold water, splashing it over her face. Anger gripped her shoulders and tightened the muscles in her chest, like some force of memory passed to her by the ancestors. Another of the Hinono eino slaughtered. Another broken body of a warrior. And for what reason? When would the slaughter stop?

  She dipped her face into the water cupped in her hands, allowing the cool wetness to run along her neck and down the front of her T-shirt. Finally she pulled some paper towels out of the holder and began blotting her face. Her hair was wet; a clump had worked loose from the barrette and fallen over her cheek. She pushed it back, surprised at the face that peered at her from the mirror, at the horror in the eyes.

  “I�
��ve got to ask you a few questions,” Steve said as she stepped back into the corridor. He was leaning against the opposite wall, hands stuffed into the pockets of his slacks.

  Vicky held on to the edge of the restroom door—solid and certain in her hand. In an instant Steve was at her side, leading her past the viewing room—the door closed now—and into a larger room with a conference table in the center. The investigator was already seated on the far side. Steve pulled out a chair and waited until Vicky sat down before claiming the place beside her, saying something about it never being easy the first time. She caught the note of sympathy in his voice.

  “I’ve seen death before,” she said, her own voice trembling with anger.

  Producing a small spiral notebook and pen from inside his blazer, the detective asked, “Who is he?”

  “Todd Harris,” Vicky said, then repeated what she’d told him earlier on the phone, adding Todd’s address and the fact that he was a graduate student at CU-Denver. The detective’s pen looped across the page, making a scratchy noise. She told him Todd’s grandparents lived in Denver.

  Steve stopped writing. “They’ll have to identify the body.”

  Rifling through her bag, Vicky found the little pad with Annemarie’s scribblings. She slid it along the table. “They’re old people,” she said.

  “We’ll send a car.” Steve nodded toward the investigator who lifted herself out of the chair and sidled around the table toward the corridor.

  “There’s something you should know.” He turned sideways toward Vicky after the investigator was gone. “This has all the markings of a drug murder.”

  “What!” Vicky pushed her chair back and jumped to her feet. She started pacing around the end of the table, down the other side, and back—a full circuit. “You’re wrong, Steve,” she said, retracing her steps. “Not Todd.” She stopped, placed both hands on the table, and leaned toward the man who sat quietly watching her. “You didn’t know him. He was thirteen when his parents were killed in an automobile accident. His brother was only eight. They were shifted back and forth among relatives—a couple of years in Denver with the grandparents, back to the reservation with other relatives. That’s how they grew up. The only thing Todd wanted was to be a good brother. Everything he did was to show his little brother how to do it. That’s why he worked hard and went to college. Now you’re saying a kid like Todd Harris used drugs? Is that what he wanted to teach his brother?”