“I seen it on TV,” he said to Father John. “I said to the wife, ‘Might be some poor Indian kid caught up with a bunch of no-goods. Sometimes them kids come off the rez and don’t have no city sense.” His gaze trailed back to the group, as if for confirmation. “No city sense. Get lost here. Take up with the wrong people. Start thinkin’ they’re gonna get rich, like that’s what matters.”
“I never thought it was gonna be Todd in that river.” This from a younger man who joined them. Probably not much older than Todd, with black hair pulled back into a ponytail. “Todd was a good guy,” he said. “Goin’ to school. Gonna make something of himself. Gonna help the people. Never hung around with no rough guys.”
There was the clap of a back door slamming, a growing chorus of voices in the kitchen. A young woman with black braids stepped through the door and walked over, sidling next to the man in the ponytail. She waited quietly as the man went on talking about how Todd was a good kid, how the old people depended upon him. “Why’d anybody want to murder him?” the man asked.
Father John said, “We should have some answers as soon as the police finish their investigation.”
A hopeful notion, Vicky thought. How much time would the police spend on a botched drug deal? A dead Indian?
The young woman who had been standing there suddenly backed away and disappeared into the kitchen. Vicky wished she had added her own comments to the halting search for answers, the hopeful suggestions. Had she spoken, perhaps the woman wouldn’t have left, wouldn’t have felt she had nothing to contribute. Serious matters were men’s business. An image of herself flashed in front of Vicky: she was leaning past the kitchen doorway, straining to overhear what Ben and the other men were saying. The calves lost in the storm, the downturn of the beef market—serious matters that affected her and the kids. Yet she had stayed in the kitchen and waited until Ben called for more coffee, some of those chips, and that hot chili sauce.
Vicky pushed away the memory. “The police will want to speak with you,” she said to the man in the ponytail. “They’ll want the names of Todd’s friends.”
“Todd never brought any friends around,” he said. Then: “’Cept for that girl.”
Vicky drew in a sharp breath. There was a girl. She was right after all. Which meant his murder came down to something simple and stupid—a mugging. She could accept a mugging. She would never accept a drug deal.
“What’s the girl’s name?” Father John asked. His tone registered the same level of determination she was feeling. No matter what the police said, she and John O’Malley would want to know why a kid like Todd had ended up in the rocks and weeds of the South Platte River.
“Julie somebody,” the man in the ponytail said. “Lakota. Todd said she was related to the Wolf people up on the Rosebud.”
The screen door opened again and a couple stepped inside, the woman carrying a pajama-clad baby. Behind them came several men. The newcomers moved wordlessly toward the old people and grasped their hands, first Doyal’s, then Mary’s. From outside came the sound of doors slamming, boots scuffing the sidewalk. Headlights blinked through the curtains at the front window.
Vicky caught Father John’s eyes. There was weariness there, a gathering of grief. Without saying anything, they stepped over to the old people and paid their condolences again. Then they made their way through the crowded room and out the door.
A shiver rippled over Vicky’s shoulders as they walked down the sidewalk, and she wondered if it was the evening air or the cold sense of death inside her. She felt slightly sick, and she realized she hadn’t eaten all day.
“I know a place where we could get a bite,” she said, glancing up at the man beside her.
“I’ll follow you,” John O’Malley said.
10
They settled into a booth with Naugahyde seats cracked from use. Headlights on Sheridan Boulevard streamed into the darkness beyond the plate-glass window. From the kitchen came the noise of dishes and pans clanking together, and every few moments a waitress burst through the heavy swinging doors, a loaded tray hoisted high overhead. Other late diners occupied booths and tables scattered across the restaurant. A couple of men straddled stools at the counter, hunched over plates heaped with french fries and hamburgers.
Vicky turned her attention to the man across from her, scarcely believing he was here. The familiar face: red hair with flecks of gray at the temples; blue eyes filled with light; tiny laugh lines at the corners of his mouth; an almost unnoticeable cleft in his chin. He sat tall in the booth, handsome in a quiet way, a kindness about him, a comforting presence. She had tried hard over the last few weeks to put him out of her mind. How difficult it was to have him in her life as a friend, a dear friend, but only a friend.
A waitress appeared and took their orders. Hamburgers, coffee. How many times had they sat like this in some restaurant, talking about how to help somebody in trouble? A couple trying to reclaim their kids from social services. A kid who had violated probation. And the homicides they’d found themselves involved with—the tribal chairman, the drug dealer in a ditch, the cowboy who’d come home to right an old wrong. Another murder now—a young man they had both believed in—and they were together again.
There was so much she wanted to ask him as she waited for the waitress to finish filling their coffee mugs. Why had he returned from Boston? How did he happen to be here at the right moment, when the people needed him, when she needed him? She was still trying to phrase the appropriate questions when he asked what had brought her here.
It startled her to realize their thoughts were following the same track. She took a sip of hot coffee before telling him how the tribe had hired her to recover the Arapaho artifacts from the Denver Museum of the West, how one of the most important objects, an Arapaho ledger book, seemed to be missing.
Father John leaned across the table toward her, eyes narrowing, she thought, into a darker shade of blue. “There must be an explanation.”
“I’ve given the museum until Friday to come up with one,” Vicky said. Then she told him the curator claimed she had never heard of the ledger book, yet she knew the exact value—$1.3 million. There was so much else she wanted to talk over with him—her desire to do a good job for the tribe, the museum’s exhibit on the Sand Creek Massacre that left out any mention of Arapahos—all the thoughts that had occupied her mind this afternoon and had seemed so important before she’d learned about Todd.
Instead she said, “The police think Todd’s murder had something to do with drugs.”
“Drugs?” Father John clasped his hands around his coffee mug, his eyes steady on hers. “How could they think that?”
“Steve,” she said, then corrected herself. “Detective Clark. An old friend.” She caught the brief change of expression in John O’Malley’s face as he looked away—how many men had she known in her life? “We were at CU-Denver at the same time.” She hurried on, wanting to explain. “He’s a good detective, I’m sure. Sharp and very dedicated.”
“He’s wrong about Todd,” Father John said, looking back at her, a hint of anger in his voice.
She said, “They found heroin wrapped in dollar bills in his pockets. He had a pager on his belt.”
“I don’t care what they found,” Father John said. “It could have been planted to make it look like a drug murder.”
Vicky smiled. She had missed their talks, the way he always tuned in to the direction of her thoughts, sometimes before she knew where they were headed. She sipped at her coffee as the waitress delivered two plates of hamburgers and French fries, a bottle of ketchup. The moment the waitress turned away, she said, “Todd came to the reservation last weekend. He was upset about something. He wanted to see you.”
Father John was shaking the ketchup over his fries. He looked up. “My assistant told me,” he said. “Do you have any idea what was going on?”
“That’s what I intend to find out.” Vicky bit into her hamburger. It was as tasteless as cardboard,
not like the food she remembered here. She tried a couple of fries that had the flavor of stale grease, and pushed the plate aside. Then she told him everything else she knew: the stuffed mailbox at Todd’s apartment, his failure to see Mary and Doyal in a while—a sign of disrespect.
Father John took a bite of his own hamburger. After a moment he said, “Let your friend the detective sort it out, Vicky. He’ll find Todd’s friend Julie. Maybe she’ll know something.”
“That doesn’t mean she’ll tell the police,” Vicky said. “But she might tell me.”
Father John took a quick swallow of coffee, eyes narrowing again. “Look, if Julie does know something about Todd’s murder, it could be dangerous for you. Let the police do their job.”
“But will they?”
“You said yourself your friend is a good detective.”
“A dead Indian washes up on the banks of the South Platte. He looks like a drug dealer, probably dealing to other Indians. Another case of Indians killing Indians, just like the warriors killing other warriors over the best hunting grounds. Only the hunting grounds are drugs. Do the white authorities really care?”
“Of course they care,” Father John pushed his own plate to one side. Clumps of greasy fries clung to the rim. “A human life is a human life. Murder is murder.”
“I’d like to believe that, John. But unless the police start thinking this wasn’t just another drug murder, that’s how they’re going to handle it. Meanwhile the killer will be busy covering his tracks. Todd’s murder might never be solved.”
“Look, Vicky,” Father John began—the conciliatory tone he always used, she knew, when he was trying to bring her around to the most logical way of thinking. “This isn’t the reservation, where you know everybody and understand how things work. Denver is a big city. If you start nosing around and asking questions, you could stumble onto whatever it was that got Todd killed. It could be dangerous.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t want to see Todd’s killer brought to justice,” she said, an edge in her tone.
“You know better than that.” Father John leaned closer. “I just don’t want to see anything happen to you.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me.” Vicky shrugged, picked up the coffee mug, and took another sip, wishing she felt as confident as she hoped she sounded. “I’m going to see if I can find Todd’s new girlfriend, Julie, and talk to her, that’s all.”
“What if Julie is involved?”
Vicky set the mug down hard on the table. This was something she hadn’t considered. She closed her eyes a half second, then opened them on this new possibility. “Todd was a great kid,” she began, groping for an explanation that would seem logical to the man across from her. “Why would he associate with anyone who might get involved in drugs or murder?”
Father John picked up a fork and rapped it against the table. “You’re a difficult woman, Vicky.”
“You happen to be a priest, John O’Malley. Your experience, I would suggest, is quite limited.”
“You expect me to believe all women are as difficult as you?” He pushed the fork away and smiled at her a moment. Then he reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a small pad and a ballpoint. “Where are you staying?” he asked.
“Are you going to check up on me? Warn me about getting into trouble?”
“I want to satisfy myself you’re still alive,” he said, the pen poised over a clear sheet of the pad. Vicky gave him Marcy’s telephone number and watched him print the numbers on the page and under them, in block letters, VICKY. On another page, he jotted down other numbers. A quick tear, and he handed her the page. “Doyal and Mary asked me to hold a memorial service in Denver, so I’ll be at Regis for the next few days. This is the number. Will you call me if there’s anything I can do?”
Vicky brushed his hand as she took the paper. Knowing she could call him, that he would be close by, buoyed her confidence and gave her a sense of comfort. She slipped the paper inside her handbag as they slid out of the booth and strolled together to the counter. There was a moment when they argued over the check, a moment when they both tried to force a ten-dollar bill on the woman behind the cash register, another moment when they all laughed.
Outside in the parking lot, he waited as she sank behind the wheel of the Taurus. Leaning toward her, he said, “Promise me something.”
She turned toward him, knowing what he was about to say, wanting to hear the words.
“Promise me you’ll be careful.”
* * *
By the time Vicky parked in front of Marcy’s house, a cold tiredness had crept through her. It was nearly midnight, and she longed to sink into bed and abandon herself to sleep, but the light falling past the slats of the mini-blinds at the windows told her Marcy was waiting.
As she walked up the sidewalk she heard the soft staccato of drums. The door swung open, and her friend stood in the opening; the flickering light behind her cast fingers of shadows over her face and the long blue-splashed kimono she was wearing.
“You’re here!” There was excitement in Marcy’s voice.
Vicky walked past her into the living room, where round, thick candles winked from the glass top of the coffee table and the little tables at the ends of the sofas. Another woman, also in a kimono, sat cross-legged on a woven rug, curled over a small drum, like the drums Vicky had seen all her life at powwows and celebrations on the reservation. The woman rapped the drum with both palms—a gentle thumping noise that reverberated across the wood floors, the white walls.
“Come, come,” Marcy ordered, taking Vicky’s hand and pulling her toward the drummer. “This is my friend Louella Barkley,” she said. “Louella has been waiting all evening to meet you.”
The pounding stopped as the other woman lifted her eyes. They were blue gray, calm and watchful in a white, doughy face. Her blond hair was caught in two thick braids that hung over her bosom and folded into her lap. She reached one hand upward: squared red nails, gold rings, a row of gold bracelets jangling at her wrist.
“My pleasure,” she said. There was a shrill, airy quality to her voice, as if she were blowing a whistle.
“Louella was a Cheyenne princess in her past life,” Marcy said. “You must hear her story.”
Vicky let herself down slowly on one of the white sofas, numb with sadness and her own tiredness. The drummer’s eyes followed her.
“I feel we were friends in the buffalo days,” Louella said, air cushioning the words. “When your people came to the village to trade with my people, we used to sit in front of Grandfather’s lodge. My grandfather was a great chief.”
“Of course,” Vicky said.
Louella closed her eyes, perhaps viewing some lost world. “We played with dolls our grandmothers made for us. We were only little girls when we met, but we stayed friends through the summers. Oh, how I remember my older brother watching you. You were very beautiful.” She gave a quick shrug, and her eyes flew open. “If only you had belonged to our people, we might have become sisters-in-law.”
“Tell me,” Vicky began, her voice thick with irritation, “did the spirits give you a vision of our past lives?”
“Oh, yes,” Marcy cut in. She had settled in the sofa next to Vicky. “Louella had a dream in which she saw her entire past life. Since then she has been blessed with the ability to dwell in two realities. She has integrated the present with the past. While she’s at work in her bookstore—a place of peace, Vicky; I must take you—Louella remains immersed in her other, more authentic life.”
The other woman gave a brief, wan smile. “My life is finally meaningful, now that I am one with my past identity.”
“I’ve also been crying for a dream,” Marcy said. “I pray the spirits will send one so that I may increase the peace in my own life.”
Louella waved one arm above the drum; the bracelets made a clanking sound. “I must warn you, it is very difficult and unnatural to maintain your inner peace in the city.” She shifted her gaze t
o Vicky. “You are so fortunate to have the reservation, where one can exist in close harmony with the spirits.”
Vicky was thinking of the three-room houses, the thin-board walls, the bare-dirt yards with white tanks standing on spindly legs and filled with propane gas that never banished the cold, the snow peppering her blanket on winter mornings when she was a kid, and the struggle—the never-ending struggle—just to live.
She said, “Perhaps you should come to the reservation.”
“Yes. It would be a wonderful experience.”
“You could open a bookstore, one with a coffee shop.”
“You mean, move to the reservation?”
“Yes, why not? I could help you work out the legal details.”
“Live there permanently? But it’s so far away. In the middle of Wyoming, I believe.”
“You really must consider it.” Vicky got to her feet and turned toward Marcy. “And now you’ll have to excuse me,” she said. “I’m exhausted.” She stepped around the coffee table and walked down the hallway to the bedroom.
Just as she was about to close the door, Marcy appeared. “I’m so sorry if we offended you, Vicky,” she said.
Vicky gripped the edge of the door, trying to sort through her feelings. Had she been offended by Marcy and the Cheyenne princess? She didn’t think so. She felt sorry at the seeming emptiness in their lives. She said, “Is there nowhere for you to turn, nowhere to go in your own culture, Marcy, that might help you?”
Marcy jerked backward, as if she had been struck. The color drained from her face. Instantly Vicky regretted the words. But they had been sent into the world, and someday, she knew, their sting would return to her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered as her friend turned and started down the hallway. She watched Marcy retreat into the living room, then closed the bedroom door, shutting out the drums—a hard thump, thump, thump.
11
Vicky awakened into a vacant quiet, the sun drifting lazily past the white curtains; she had slept the sleep of exhaustion. Marcy was nowhere about, but she had left a pot of hot coffee and a plate of muffins on the kitchen counter. After showering and slipping into the other attorney dress she’d brought—a soft linen the color of sage—Vicky ate one of the muffins and sipped a cup of coffee in the early-morning coolness on the back patio, grateful for the solitude and the chance to collect her thoughts. She hadn’t wanted to call Annemarie in the middle of the night to tell her about Todd. She would call the girl this morning. Although what difference could it make when Annemarie got the news? It would still be the end of plans and hopes, of her life as she had believed it would unfold, and a horrible thrust into a new and unexpected life where, somehow, Annemarie would have to find her way.
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