He threw the ball again after Walks-On brought it back, dropped it at his feet, and nosed it forward. This time, he threw as far as he could to give the dog a good run. It was the running that made it worthwhile, the journey.
“JOHN, HAVE A minute?”
Ian came down the stairs as Father John let himself into the residence. He nodded and turned into his study on the other side of the entry, conscious of Ian’s steps behind him. He could hear Elena bustling about the kitchen, the clanking pans and running faucet. He propped himself against the edge of the desk and waited while Ian closed the door. This would be a private conversation, out of the housekeeper’s hearing and not yet ready for the moccasin telegraph, and Father John knew what it was about.
“How’s Vicky?” Ian said.
Father John smiled. They both knew this was only the polite preliminary to what was really on Ian’s mind. And yet, Ian had heard their voices; he knew who had rung the bell before dawn.
“Frightened,” he said. “A man broke into her apartment last night. He would have killed her if she hadn’t gotten out.”
Ian stuffed his hands into the pockets of his khakis and stared absently across the room, as if he were trying to puzzle out a new thought. “Elena says you and Vicky have both been asking questions about the skeleton,” he said finally, taking a longer detour around the real subject. “Looks like Vicky’s put herself into real danger.”
“She’s going to Denver for a couple of days.” Father John reached around, pushed away a stack of papers, and perched on the edge of the desk. “What are you suggesting?” he said. “That we should back off? Let a murderer continue on with his life, as if the girl he murdered didn’t count?”
Ian was still tracking something, Father John realized, following the invisible target moving inside his head. “What would prevent the murderer from coming after you?” Ian said. “If he thinks you and Vicky are onto him…”
“We have no idea who he might be.”
“But he doesn’t know that, does he? He thinks you’re getting close. That would explain why he wanted to kill Vicky before she could tell the authorities whatever she’s learned. He’ll think you know what she knows. You see where I’m going with this?”
Father John nodded. Ian was right. He should have realized it, but he’d been worried about Vicky, that she’d get off the reservation and go to Denver where she’d be safe. And then a new thought: the killer had found Liz Plenty Horses in Denver.
He pushed the thought away; it was more than thirty years ago.
“I’ll watch my back,” he said, but this new realization was taking hold of him. Whoever had shot out Vicky’s window and broken into her apartment might come here. He was vaguely aware of Ian clearing his throat, shifting his thoughts, moving on to what he’d really wanted to talk about.
“Have you gotten back to the provincial?”
“I told him you’d like to take the sabbatical,” Father John said. He’d finally spoken to Father Rutherford yesterday. “I said you were interested in spending time in Rome.” There were other people at the mission, he was thinking. Father Ian, Elena, kids playing baseball, people coming for classes, volunteers, committee members. It was the people he had to protect. He’d have to cancel the classes and meetings for a while.
He was aware of Ian’s voice droning on, background noise to his own thoughts, incessant and blurred. Reiterating about how he’d been giving Rome a lot of thought, how he could contribute to the dialogue on indigenous peoples…
St. Francis was their mission, their place; they wouldn’t want everything canceled. They’d come anyway. He had to have an escape plan. Not by the road. He’d have to tell people not to run out onto Circle Drive. Not to run through the cottonwoods in the direction of Seventeen-Mile Road—the killer would expect them to go that way. Everyone should know to run through the brush and trees toward the river. They could hide in the willows, make their way along the riverbank…
“John!” The sharpness in Ian’s voice made a clean slice through his thoughts.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You’re the one the provincial wants in Rome, right?” Ian was shaking his head. “I figured as much.”
“Listen, if there’s any trouble…”
“In Rome?”
“I’m talking about the mission. If the killer should come here looking for me,” Father John said, “everyone should run for the river. That would be the safest route out of the mission.” The escape route Father Leary had mapped out in 1973.
“What! What are you saying? Some madman could start shooting up the mission? My God, John. The cops have to stop him.”
“We have to cancel everything for a few days, give Elena some time off.”
“You’re serious.” The stunned look of incredulity flashed in Ian’s expression, as if the truth—the enormity of what he’d brought up—had hit him with full force.
A series of raps sounded on the door, followed by Elena’s voice: “Breakfast!”
Father John stood up. “I don’t want to alarm her.”
“Alarm her? Tell her to go home because a crazy man might come around and shoot at the pastor and everybody else? Why would that alarm her?”
“I’ll just say that I’d like her to take some time off.” Father John walked past his assistant and pulled the door open. Warm, moist odors of oatmeal and fresh coffee floated down the hallway. He followed the odors into the kitchen where Elena stood over the table, dishing heaps of oatmeal into two bowls.
“Whatever you two are talkin’ about, seems to me it can wait until after breakfast,” she said, scraping the pan and dropping a last spoonful of oatmeal onto the top of a steaming heap.
“Looks good,” Father John told her, as Ian walked around the table and sat down. She gave Father John an appreciative smile, then set the pan on the stove and opened the refrigerator. “I’d like you to take a little time off,” he said.
She flung her arm around first, milk slopping out of the container in her hand, then brought herself about, finally facing him. “You worried about the shooting in Ethete last night?”
“What shooting?”
“Nothing to do with the mission. It was a drug deal, you ask me. That’s why she got killed. Cops think so, too. Said so on the radio this morning.”
“Elena, who was killed?”
“One of that Yellow Bull family. Never much good, that bunch. Don’t surprise me they come to a bad end. Ruth Yellow Bull.”
Father John shoved the chair against the table and headed back down the hall. He was running when he reached the sidewalk in front of the residence, Walks-On a blur that started alongside him, then fell back. Running full out across the grounds, past the church, and down the alley, the sound of his boots on the gravel thudding around him. He stopped on the other side of Eagle Hall. The guesthouse was vacant; he could sense the hollowness of it, like a false-fronted structure with nothing behind. Vicky’s Jeep was gone.
VICKY PULLED INTO the curb in front of the small café on Main Street in Rawlins and turned off the ignition. The sound of the engine died into the morning quiet. She took hold of the steering wheel again and gripped hard, trying to stop the trembling that threatened to take her over. She’d just reached Rawlins, tapping on the brake to ease the Jeep into the city’s speed limit, when the news had come on the radio—all the news you need to know—the announcer, a man with a deep voice meant to be comforting, she supposed, while he related that a two-year-old had been run over in a Riverton driveway, and three cars had crashed on 287, and the sixty-eight-year-old Arapaho woman, grandmother of two boys that she looked after, had been found shot to death this morning when her daughter dropped off the boys. Wind River Police say the victim was Ruth Yellow Bull, a long-time resident of Ethete. Mrs. Yellow Bull had a record of two arrests for possession of marijuana. Police believe her murder was drug related.
Vicky had hit the off button. She hadn’t wanted to hear any more. It wasn’t a drug dealer or buyer
who had come after Ruth Yellow Bull; it was the man who drove the silver sedan parked in the alley, the man with the black knit face mask pulled over his head who had knelt at her door, picked her lock, and let himself inside. The man with the gun handle jutting from the pocket of his dark jacket.
Now she stared at the window of the café, Breakfast All Day painted in white letters across the plate glass, and wondered how she’d gotten here. When had she turned off the highway that ran through town and detoured to the business district, as if the café was where she’d been heading all along, as if it were her usual stop? This was where they’d stopped for breakfast, she and Ben, at the oddest hours, she remembered, sometimes in the middle of the night or in the middle of the afternoon, on their way back to the rez from a rodeo in Cheyenne or the big powwow in Denver. They would stop here. And now, this was where she was, as if the little café were still a part of her life after all these years. It wasn’t possible to jettison everything, she thought. Parts of the past just hung on.
Hung on for Ruth Yellow Bull who had talked to her—twice—and had paid with her life. And—here was what was ridiculous, when you thought about—she’d kept her secrets. She hadn’t given up any of the leaders. If Ardyth LeConte hadn’t called Diana, they never would have found her. They never would have found a woman now going by the name of Mary Hennings.
And yet the killer must have thought that Ruth was a snitch, and snitches had to die.
She glanced at her watch. Five minutes had passed since she’d nosed into the curb and turned off the engine, and the man in the white shirt behind the counter inside the café had been tossing glances outside at the Jeep. She got out, went into the café, and found a small, vacant table across from the counter. She sat down facing the door. It was absurd, this sense that the door might open and he would step inside. He had no way of knowing she was on her way to Denver. And yet, he intended to kill her. He would find her.
She felt her muscles tense against the fear kindling inside her like a flame that might consume everything, her ability to think, make decisions, save herself. When the man from behind the counter walked over, she told him she wanted a cup of black coffee. She’d planned to stop somewhere along the highway for something to eat, but the thought of food made her stomach lurch. She sipped at the coffee when it came, drawing down the warmth and the comfort. She left some change on the table.
Back in the Jeep, she flipped open her cell and pushed in the number for the mission. Across the empty stretches through which she’d driven, the golden-brown expanse of plains with arroyos running like faults in the earth and antelope leaping past clumps of dried brush, the phone in John O’Malley’s office was ringing.
Then the familiar voice: “Father John.”
“He killed Ruth Yellow Bull.” She blurted out the fact.
“I know. Where are you?”
“Rawlins. I’m about to get back on the highway. God. Did he kill her before he came for me? After?”
“I don’t think you should pursue the safe house in Denver. Someone there might let him know.”
“We’re close, John. We’re so close to the truth that he’s in a panic. He’s desperate. We can’t stop now.”
The cell was quiet, vacant sounding, so that for a moment she thought the connection had dropped. Finally, he said, “It’s too dangerous, Vicky. I’m going to call Coughlin. Tell him what Ruth told us. Let him put things together.”
She said that was a good idea, then added: “Don’t worry about me.” She pressed the end key, then the menu key. She scrolled to Mary Hennings’ number and pressed send. Another wait through the electronic buzzing noise, the man at the counter still looking through the plate glass window every couple of minutes, as if he would have liked to listen in on her conversations, as if there might be something different about them, something dangerous. Then the woman’s voice, tentative and hurried: “Hello?”
“It’s Vicky Holden,” she said.
“I heard the news on the radio.”
“Is there somewhere you can go for a while?”
“A friend’s place in Bozeman. I’m about to leave now. When’s it gonna stop, all that violence from back then?”
“He’s bound to make a mistake,” Vicky said. “Detective Coughlin will get him.”
“When, Vicky? After he kills more women? After he kills you?”
“You’ve got my number,” Vicky said. She was about to tell Mary Hennings to call if she heard anything, but she realized that the call had ended.
She turned the ignition and crawled back down the street to the highway. Once past the city limits, she pressed down on the gas and drove east on Highway 80, semis looming in the rearview mirror and swooshing past, the gradual hills rising and falling through the bare, open plains, finally dropping into Laramie. She kept going, climbing out of town, driving through the great expanse of nothingness until she was in Cheyenne.
She was heading south on I-25, traffic flowing toward her and around her, when the cell started ringing. She kept one hand on the steering wheel and flipped up the lid. She caught Adam’s name in the readout. “Hi,” she said. Her voice sounded flat and dulled with exhaustion over the whir of the tires and the noise of a passing truck.
“I’ve got the address of the safe house,” he said.
27
“WHAT CAN I do for you?” Detective Coughlin sat down behind the desk and waved Father John to the small chair with wooden armrests jammed between two filing cabinets.
“I’m here about Ruth Yellow Bull’s murder.”
“Wrong office.” Coughlin picked up a pen, as if he was about to jot something on the white notepad squared in front of him. “Feds got that case. Not our jurisdiction, fortunately. We’ve got enough on our hands.”
“Same man tried to kill Vicky last night. He’s the one who shot out her window and shattered the windshield of her Jeep. He sent two warning messages.”
“Last night’s homicide was the result of a drug deal, Father. Feds are pretty sure of it. Victim’s been on the radar of both the Feds and the Wind River police for sometime. They suspect she was dealing marijuana. Somebody got real mad at her. Maybe she forgot to pay off her supplier, and he sent a collection agent. Woman was sixty-eight years old. You’d think she’d know better.”
He shook his head, then stopped, folded his arms across his chest, and leaned forward. He rested his arms along the edge of the desk. “What is it? What do you know?”
“We’ve been talking to people, trying to find out about the skeleton.”
“I got that much from Vicky.” Coughlin started leafing through a stack of folders at the side of the desk and extracted one from the center. He pulled it over and opened it. “Liz Plenty Horses. We verified the ID by some old dental records at the Indian Health Service,” he said, fingering through the sheets of paper. “What’s the victim got to do with her?”
“Ruth Yellow Bull and Liz Plenty Horses were friends. Vicky went to see Ruth a few days ago. We both talked to her yesterday.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“I’m telling you now,” Father John said. “She wouldn’t have talked to you or any other cops. You know that.”
“Yeah? Suppose you tell me what she talked to you about.”
“Liz Plenty Horses came to Ruth’s house in the summer of 1973, looking for a place to hide. That means she was frightened.”
“Yellow Bull tell you that? She was frightened?”
Father John shook his head. “She turned her away. She said Liz was a snitch, that she was responsible for one of the AIM leaders, a man named Brave Bird, getting shot to death in Ethete.”
Coughlin was shuffling through the pages now. He pulled one out and set it on top. “Chief Banner sent over the report,” he said, glancing down the page. “Lakota named Daryl Redman, aka Brave Bird, shot to death by Wind River police officer in altercation. Anonymous call…” He stopped and looked up. “Male voice called the local FBI agent and said that Brave Bird w
as hiding in Ethete, and Wind River officers were sent to check it out. Murdered girl didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Father John was quiet. “Somebody wanted both of them dead,” he said after a moment. “Brave Bird and the girl. Ruth knew who it was.”
“She tell you that?”
“It was what she didn’t tell us. I think she was scared. She didn’t want to be labeled a snitch. But she made the mistake of telling the man she was protecting that Vicky had come to see her. He couldn’t be sure how much information she might have divulged, so he killed her to keep her from talking to anybody else, especially you. He tried to kill Vicky to make certain that whatever she’d learned didn’t go any further.”
Coughlin stared across the desk at Father John for a long moment. “Okay,” he said finally, “I’ll take your theory to the Feds. See if we can make sense out of who’s behind this.”
“Whoever it is was the actual FBI snitch.”
The detective picked up the pen and flipped it across the desk in the direction of his gaze. “Thirty-how-many years ago? Some informer working for an FBI agent who hasn’t been around in decades? There were a dozen FBI agents here then. Which one used the informer? Come on, Father. That’s going to be a dead end, and you know it.”
Father John started to get to his feet, then sat back down. “There’s something else,” he said.
“Something else?” Coughlin was still planted in his chair. He closed the file folder, reached for the pen and held it poised over the white pad. “You mean there’s more you’ve picked up from Indians that aren’t gonna talk to the cops, even if they end up shot to death?”
“Another connection between Ruth Yellow Bull and the murdered girl,” he said.
The Girl with Braided Hair (A Wind River Reservation Myste) Page 25