“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know, and that’s the truth. He called somebody. Pickup drove up with three or four drunks, and Arnie ran out, jumped into the back. They took off.”
“What time did he leave?” The woman was shaking her head, as if the time couldn’t matter. “It’s important,” Vicky said.
“He didn’t stay long. I started making him dinner, but he said he didn’t have time.”
“An hour ago? Two hours ago?”
“He come here straight from the hospital. One of his no-good friends dropped him off. Then he called somebody else, and next thing I knew, he was gone. Three hours ago, I’d say.”
“If he comes back, tell him to call me. I don’t care what time it is. Have him call.”
Vicky sat in the Ford a couple of minutes, watching the light go out in the window, listening to the sounds of night, the shush of the wind, the crackle of an animal’s footsteps. The car was stuffy, the warm breeze blowing through the opened windows like the air out of a vent. Still she felt cold and clammy and a little sick to her stomach. Arnie had left the hospital with every intention of killing Steve Mantle, finishing unfinished business. The man would not be placing any more outsiders on local ranches. Anybody who took his place would get the message.
God, what had she done? Confronted Arnie about shooting at the cowboys, trying to scare them off? Reigniting all the festering resentments, the anger and hopelessness of Arnie and his buddies? Spurred him on to taking care of the man responsible for parceling out the jobs? And all the time she had been hoping that Arnie’s crime was hanging around with bad guys—shooters—that the most Arnie could be charged with would be conspiracy. It would have been tough enough, but conspiracy she could have handled. She could have built a defense that he hadn’t known what the others were up to. At the least, he hadn’t approved, hadn’t gone along. But this . . .
This was murder, planned, carried out. If Arnie had left the clinic to murder a man, that meant Arnie was the leader. The others might be conspirators, but Arnie . . . God, leaving court-ordered rehab was the least of Arnie’s problems now. She fought the impulse to jump out of the car, run off into the darkness, and throw up.
Finally she turned on the engine. Fingers shaky, slipping off the key. She made herself take a deep breath, then another. She wondered if John O’Malley had heard the news about Steve Mantle. This afternoon—it seemed like a month ago—John had gone to Steve’s office, gotten the news about the cowboys Steve had sent to Broken Buffalo Ranch. Two by two, like dancers in a powwow, hiring on, leaving.
She pulled out her cell, found John O’Malley’s number, and hit send. It took a moment before the buzzing noise started. The engine hummed around her, the breeze whipped a piece of hair into her eyes. She pushed the hair back and tried to tuck it behind her ear. “Sorry to miss your call.” John O’Malley might have been sitting in the passenger seat. “Leave a message and I will call you back.” She waited for the beeping noise, then said, “It’s Vicky. Please call me.”
She drove back through the dusty streets of Arapahoe, left onto Rendezvous Road, right onto Seventeen-Mile Road, trying to push her thoughts into some kind of order that made sense. She could be wrong about Arnie, and she whispered a prayer to the Creator: “Let me be wrong.” She had to find him. The instant she saw him, she would know.
She laughed at the thought. She hadn’t known anything about Arnie Walksfast. She had thought he had been involved in an assault in a bar. She hadn’t seen the turbulence and hatred beneath the surface. The idea of trying to talk him into returning to rehab seemed faintly silly now. A murderer showing good faith by returning to rehab? She would be laughed out of court.
The surface, she thought. Stay on the surface. All she knew was that, at five o’clock, Arnie Walksfast had walked away from rehab. Her job was to talk him into going back. The rest was conjecture, the what-might-have-happened. The Riverton police would have to sort it out.
Traffic had thinned out, but lines of cars and pickups moved along Seventeen-Mile Road. Looming in the headlights was the billboard with the shining white words: ST. FRANCIS MISSION. She slowed for the right turn, ignoring the horn that erupted behind her, and plunged into the tunnel of cottonwoods, which cast long shadows over the road. She pulled onto Circle Drive and drove slowly around the center of the mission. Dim lights shone in the windows of the administration building, the church, and the museum; night lights that were always left on, she knew. The residence was dark, closed up for the night. No sign of John O’Malley’s red Toyota pickup. No vehicles anywhere.
He was a priest. He could have been called out. To the hospital, to a house where someone needed to talk to a priest. So many people who needed him more than she did.
She completed the circle and drove back through the cottonwoods. Trying to think, trying to remember. What was the name of the restaurant where Lucy worked? A bar and grill in Riverton, she remembered that much, but there were several in Riverton. She worked nights, late, which probably meant the place served liquor.
She was back on Seventeen-Mile Road, heading to Riverton, when her cell phone rang. It took a moment to find it in her bag. She stopped at the intersection with highway 789. “Call from John O’Malley” appeared on the screen. She slid her fingertip over the answer bar. “Have you heard the news?” she said.
“Are you talking about Steve Mantle?”
“Yes. There’s more.” Then she told him about Arnie leaving rehab. She could hear herself going on and on about her fear that Arnie and his buddies had killed Mantle until a pickup behind her honked. At the next break in traffic, she turned left onto the highway, still babbling, all the worry and tension of the evening leaking out.
“Where are you now?”
“I’m on my way to talk to Arnie’s girlfriend. She works at the”—she had it then, as if the name had dropped into her head—“Diamond Bar and Grill.”
“I’ll see you there.”
30
STEAKS CHOPS BBQ blinked yellow and red on the neon sign close to the curb in front of the redbrick restaurant. Rows of cars and pickups crowded the parking lot next door. Vicky waited for an SUV to back out of a parking space, then pulled into the slot. A trio of people were weaving their way among the parked vehicles, and she followed them toward the front. The big door with glass inserts sighed on pneumatic hinges when one of the men yanked it open. He held it back, a doorman bowing and smiling, as she joined the others pushing into the crowded entry. People everywhere, standing against the walls, hovering around the hostess desk, sitting on small benches. Vicky thanked the man. “Happy to oblige, ma’am,” he said, shutting the door behind him. A Texan, she guessed.
She slid past the crowd toward the desk. The hostess was about twenty, tall and white-skinned with black hair piled on top of her head and a harried look that gave her an exhausted, older-woman look. She kept her head down, eyes glued to a seating chart with assorted red checks on the square, black outlines of tables. “Excuse me,” Vicky said.
“Sorry, you have to wait your turn.” The young woman never lifted her eyes. “We’re super busy. I can’t help everybody at the same time.”
“Is Lucy Murphy on tonight?”
The hostess looked up. Eyebrows raised, shiny red lips revealing a row of tiny, white teeth. “No personal stuff while the waitstaff is serving. Manager will throw a conniption fit. You’ll have to call her tomorrow. She’s supposed to come in at five, but she was plenty late tonight. You want a table? Half-hour wait.”
Vicky waved away the offer. The woman had told her what she wanted. Lucy was here now. Through the low murmur of conversations, the impatient tones, Vicky heard the door behind her sighing again on its hinges. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed a tan cowboy hat bobbing above the heads of the people packed into the entry. She tried to make her way toward him, slipping past arms, wedging herself between backs. Exc
use me. Excuse me.
“Lucy’s here somewhere,” she said when she reached John O’Malley. There was a worried sadness about him, the lines at the corners of his eyes deeper, permanent looking. “We can go into the dining room and look for her.”
He nodded, and she turned around and threaded her way back through the crowd, aware of John O’Malley behind her and the way people parted for them. The dining room was packed, people seated at tables and in the booths, waitstaff in white shirts and black slacks or skirts, scurrying about with trays of food perched shoulder high on their palms. She spotted Lucy in the far corner, bent over a table, delivering plates of food. The girl stood up straight, lifted the tray off a serving table, and swung toward them. She stood still, as if an electric current had coursed through her. Then she pivoted about and pushed through a swinging door. A flare of noise burst over the dining room: clanging metal, running water, someone shouting. For an instant, Vicky glimpsed the rows of metal tables, white-coated cooks bustling about. Then the door swung shut.
“She’s scared. She’s going to run.” Vicky could see the look of understanding that flashed in John O’Malley’s face. He ushered her ahead, back to the entry, through the crowd, and out the door that another man in a ten-gallon hat, probably also from Texas, was holding open. They hurried around the building, half walking, half running.
An alley ran along the back, cars and pickups parked at random, trash barrels overflowing against a wooden fence, a collection of small metal containers lining the back wall. A solid black door in the center of the building burst open. Lucy came running out, clutching a red bag and a stash of black-and-white clothing, fingers working the buttons on a pink blouse. The door made a hollow whacking noise behind her.
Vicky closed the space between them. “Lucy! Don’t be frightened.” The girl’s eyes were lit with fear. “This is Father John from the mission.”
“Go away. Leave me alone.” Lucy was trembling, backing toward the alley, knocking over a metal container that clanked and rolled along the pavement. “I don’t know anything, I swear. Arnie’ll kill me.”
“He threatened you?”
“Told me to stay out of his business. Go away. I can’t talk to you.”
“Where can we find him?” John said. “We won’t have to talk to you. We’ll talk to him.”
“You don’t get it.” The girl started shaking her head, swallowing tears. “I’ll be arrested. I’ll be charged with aiding him. That’s what he told me. I gotta keep my mouth shut or I’ll be in a lot of trouble.”
“You picked him up at the clinic?”
“He said it was okay. He said the judge changed his mind, so he could leave. Soon’s he got in the car, he told me to keep my mouth shut if I knew what was good for me. That’s when I knew he wasn’t supposed to leave rehab, and I was his accomplice or something.” She looked back at the door. “I’m gonna lose my job, walking off like I just did.”
“You can go back,” Father John said. “Tell us where Arnie is and go back to work.”
This seemed like a new and fantastic revelation. Lucy looked at them with wide, dark eyes. “You won’t tell him I told you?”
“We’re trying to help him,” Vicky said. “I’m hoping he’ll let us take him back to rehab before the probation officer knows he left.”
Lucy gulped down a couple of breaths, looking between them and the solid, black door. “I need this job, but Arnie can’t know I talked to you. He said he had business to clean up.”
“Business? Where?” Vicky could feel the knot tightening in her stomach. Clean up by murdering the man responsible for putting outsiders in jobs?
The girl shrugged. “All I know is, Arnie did business with drinking buddies, a bunch of lowlifes.”
“Do they hang out at a bar?” John said.
“He said he was going to the rez.”
“A drinking house?”
The girl nodded. “Ansel Night Hawk’s place. His girlfriend doesn’t care. She drinks with ’em.”
* * *
THEY DROVE SOUTH on 789, past the warehouses and liquor stores and camper rentals, past the trailer park, and turned onto Seventeen-Mile Road, heading deeper into the reservation. Traffic was lighter, but still steady. An occasional truck passed; lights from oncoming vehicles flashed across the pavement. A field of stars danced in the sky. They had taken John’s old pickup, parked in the rear of the parking lot near the back door of the restaurant. The girl had stood there, looking small and helpless as they backed out of the lot. Vicky had wanted to jump out of the pickup, run to Lucy, and tell her again to go home. She could feel the exhaustion moving through her like a cold draft.
“Ansel and Arnie used to play for the Eagles,” John O’Malley said, and Vicky realized he was lost in his own memories. “Good kids, both of them.”
Vicky told him then about her fear that Arnie and his drinking buddies could be responsible for the cowboys missing from the Broken Buffalo.
“You think they might have killed them?”
She was quiet a moment, sorting her thoughts into compartments: Anything Arnie had told her was privileged. But she had her own theories. Theories based on nothing except her own growing uneasiness and diminishing trust in her client.
“I spoke with Jaime Madigan’s fiancée,” John said. “She reported him missing last fall, and she has been in touch with Gianelli and the BIA police every few weeks. There’s no sign of Jaime.”
“So they’ve stopped looking.”
“Unless something turns up, they don’t have anything to go on.”
“How can cowboys disappear and nobody cares?”
“Nuala cares. Josh Barker’s friend has come here looking for him. The prosecutor must have tried to find Rick Tomlin so he could testify against your client.”
“They’ve run into blank walls. Reg Hartly thinks he might stumble onto something at the ranch, but as soon as he hits the blank wall, he’ll leave.”
“You believe the cowboys are dead?” Father John turned north onto Blue Sky Highway, leaving most of the traffic behind. An occasional pickup rose in the oncoming lane. The houses set back from the road were dark.
“I can’t shake the feeling, John. I hate it; I don’t want to believe it. What business did Arnie have that was so important he had to leave rehab?” Vicky leaned her head back against the seat and stared at the headlights floating into the darkness. “He’s my client, but who is he? A guy who beat up a cowboy in a bar? A murderer? How can I help him if I don’t know?”
John O’Malley didn’t say anything. He understood, and it was enough.
She could see the glow of lights off the road ahead, the dark shadows of parked vehicles. She thought she heard the faint trace of hip-hop on the breeze, but she wasn’t sure. There were no other houses around, no other traffic, just the glow of a drinking house where kids and young people went to drink. Sometimes for days, until someone dragged the kids away.
The pickup was slowing down. Tires scraped the pavement, the engine rattled. They veered right, crossed the borrow ditch, and slid onto the hard dirt washboard of a yard. The headlights flicked over a group of men standing around and lounging on the stoop, shadowy and dark, hunched over beer cans, music thumping in the nighttime silence. The door to the house was open. John pulled in next to a dark sedan with a silvery-primed passenger door. He started to tell Vicky to wait, then changed his mind. She would do what she wanted. He got out, leaving the engine running, the headlights on. Three of the beer drinkers started toward the pickup.
Vicky threw open her door and jumped out. She hurried around the hood and stopped next to John O’Malley, a phalanx of two, she thought, against big, strutting drunkards. “We’re here to see Arnie Walksfast,” John said.
“Don’t know any Arnie Walksfast,” one of the men said. He was in his twenties, shirtless, with long black hair pulled back from his face and tra
iling over his naked shoulders. He wore blue jeans that rode low on his hips and flip-flops that made a swishing noise on the dirt. “Anybody know an Indian named Arnie Walksfast?” he called over a brown shoulder. “Nope. Nobody. So turn around and drive that old wreck out of here.”
“Hey, maybe they want a drink first?” Another Indian had staggered off the stoop and planted his boots a couple of feet apart, shifting his weight from one to the other. “Get them a drink! What kind of Raps are we? Forgetting our manners.”
“I’m Arnie’s lawyer.” Vicky could hear the tenseness in her voice. “Tell him I’m here. I can help him.”
“Help him?” A fourth man had walked over, and now they stood together, smirking, headlights strobing over their faces. “He don’t need no help. We don’t need no lawyers around here.”
“Is he inside?”
“What?” The Indian blinked and looked around, as if he’d given away the game. “I never said he was here.”
“You heard that?” the first Indian said. “Nobody said he was here, so get out before . . . we have to do some damage. Break a couple legs. Never like beating up ladies, but ladies don’t come calling where they’re not wanted.”
Another Indian appeared in the doorway. He had big shoulders and a big head that rolled on his thick neck. “Knock it off, you bums,” he shouted. “This here’s Father John.” He picked his way across the stoop, gripping the shoulder of an Indian sitting on the concrete edge. “Show some respect. Hey, Father,” he said, tottering forward, in and out of the headlights. He let out a loud belch.
Night of the White Buffalo: A Wind River Mystery Page 21