“You and every other lawyer in the county. Nobody else has been foolish enough to get involved. Birdsong’s a murderer, Vicky. Nobody wants him back on the rez, except Amos. Best leave Travis where he belongs.”
“I don’t believe he got a fair trial, Norman.”
“Him and every other murderer at Rawlins.”
“I promised Amos I’d look into the case. I think that’s what you’d want me to do, if Travis were your grandson.”
“Travis Birdsong was my grandson, I would’ve sat him down a long time ago and explained the facts of life. He’s Arapaho, not some crazy guy. Amos, he was always looking the other way. Couldn’t see anything but good in that boy, and where’d that get Travis? Behind bars, that’s where. Bad enough the Drowning Man’s gone. We don’t need to dredge up the fact that those two Arapahos stole that glyph seven years ago. I tell you, Vicky, you bring up that old case, you’re gonna lose a lot of friends.”
And what was that? Vicky leaned into the back of her chair. A veiled threat? If she pursued Travis’s case, Lone Eagle and Holden shouldn’t expect any more work from the Arapaho tribe? “No one was charged with stealing that petroglyph,” she said.
“They were guilty.” The certainty in his voice was thick enough to slice. “Maybe we could’ve gotten that glyph back, if Travis hadn’t gone crazy and killed Raymond.”
“I understand, Norman.”
“Listen to me, Vicky. I’m asking you personally not to drag up that old murder case. Let it be. It’s no way for you to be helping people around here.”
She told the councilman that she would think about it. Then she replaced the receiver, picked up her bag and briefcase, and went into the outer office.
“Get Michael Deaver’s office on the phone,” she said to Annie as she headed to the door, barely aware of the secretary swiveling from the computer across to the desk. “Tell them I’m on the way over. I need to talk to Deaver. Then call the Wyoming Department of Corrections and arrange for me to visit Travis Birdsong on Friday.” Vicky yanked open the door and glanced back. “One more thing. See if you can locate an attorney who used to practice in Lander. His name is Harry Gruenwald.”
Annie lifted her chin. Her hand was suspended above the phone. She shot Vicky a look of incredulity. “You’re gonna get involved with Birdsong?” she said, as if she hadn’t heard anything else. “You sure, Vicky? People around here won’t like that much.”
“So I’ve heard,” Vicky said. “Just make the arrangements.” She stepped into the corridor and pulled the door shut behind her.
9
FATHER JOHN STOOD at the wide window overlooking the runway at the Riverton Regional Airport. A few minutes earlier, the turbo-prop had taxied to a point about fifty feet from the terminal. A metal staircase rolled to the door, and a short line of passengers began filing down the steps. Father Lloyd Elsner was easy to spot, a small man in dark slacks and shirt, standing on the landing, blinking into the sunshine. Other passengers bunched in the doorway behind him, impatience printed in their expressions. Finally the man started down, balancing himself on each step before venturing to the next. He walked around the cluster of bags that several airport workers had extracted from the plane’s belly, selected one, and moved into the line of passengers heading across the tarmac, shoulders stooped, gray, balding head thrust forward, the black luggage with a red belt around the middle bouncing behind.
Father John stepped toward the man when he emerged through the door. “Father Elsner,” he said, stretching out his hand. “Welcome to Wyoming.”
“You must be Father John.” The other priest grasped his hand as if it were a rope guide across unfamiliar territory. The firmness in his grip lasted only a second before it seemed to drain away. He had a weathered face, with a deep cleft that divided his chin, and watery blue eyes that blinked around the terminal now, as if he were trying to get his bearings.
“Good of you to come for me,” he said, blinking up at Father John.
“Pickup’s this way.” Father John motioned toward the double doors on the other side of the terminal. “Let me get this.” He reached around, took the luggage handle out of the old man’s grip, and led the way outside.
They walked to the parking lot under a blinding sun. The sky descended all around them, as clear as a crystal blue mountain lake. There was the sound of tires crunching gravel as a car drove out of the lot, then only the noise of the flag flapping in the hot breeze on top of a metal pole. Father John helped the old man into the pickup, hoisted the luggage into the back, and got in behind the wheel.
He was a psychologist, Lloyd Elsner said as Father John drove along Highway 26, curving down from the flat rise where the airport was located. Not the kind of psychologist most people think of, you understand, not Freudian, but, of course, he’d finished his doctorate in psychology. But that was many years ago, oh, many years ago when there weren’t that many people interested in the stuff. Always interested him, though, trying to figure out how people worked. So the Society had made him a counselor. Yes, that had been his career, years of counseling troubled students at various Jesuit schools. Well, they weren’t all troubled, of course, but searching, looking for their way.
The midday traffic was light through the outskirts of Riverton until Father John caught up with a truck belching black exhaust. He crawled through the center of town behind the truck, past the flat-faced brick buildings with store windows winking in the sun and people strolling along the sidewalks, while Father Lloyd talked on. The man was like a windup top that couldn’t stop spinning until the spring had finally released. Or was it that he was lonely, Father John was thinking. Unaccustomed to someone listening?
The truck lumbered across an intersection, and Father John turned right and kept going through the southern part of town, past garages and warehouses and drive-through liquor stores and the bare lots that wrapped across the fronts of trailer parks. They’d retired him—the old priest was saying—yes, retired him when he was still young, still a lot to do. He’d been sixty-five then, it was true, and maybe somebody like Father John didn’t think that was so young, but he should just wait. He’d see. Sixty-five didn’t mean you should be put out to pasture, like an old horse, people just waiting for you to die. He’d tried to keep his hand in, offer his services, but living in retirement homes, well, it wasn’t as if there were a lot of opportunities. Maybe he wasn’t in such great shape anymore. Doctors didn’t want to tell him outright, of course, but he could hear what they didn’t say. He was a psychologist, after all. They thought he was dying, but he had his heart medication. Working just fine. He could help out at the mission. Yes, he was looking forward to being useful while he was at St. Francis.
Father John took his eyes away from the asphalt rolling ahead and glanced at the man. “The provincial said you were looking for a quiet place to make a retreat.”
“Retreat.” The other priest dropped the word between them, as if it were a rock that might sink out of sight. “John. I may call you John, right? I’ve been on retreat for the last seventeen years. What else would you call retirement homes? Retreat from life. I’d rather you put me to work. Anything at all. I was a good counselor.”
“We have a lot of people who want to talk to a priest.” Father John slowed down for another right turn, and they were on the reservation. The landscape opened up, a house here and there set back from the road, surrounded by wide areas of prairie with nothing but sagebrush and clusters of gnarled cottonwoods.
“There’s a small office across the hall from mine,” Father John said. “We can clear it out for you.”
“Sounds like we have a perfect fit, John. So that’s home.” The old priest gestured past the windshield toward the sign looming just ahead over Seventeen-Mile Road. St. Francis Mission.
“It’s home,” Father John said. He turned into the mission grounds, drove past the flat-roofed school with the tipi-shaped entry, and slowed onto Circle Drive, pointing out the buildings: the administration building a
nd church, the Arapaho Museum, the residence. Behind the residence was the baseball diamond that he and the kids had made out of a grassy field that first summer at St. Francis, when he’d started the Eagles. The kids had needed a baseball team, he’d told himself, and he’d needed a team to coach.
“Baseball practice every afternoon,” he said. “You might want to come over and watch.”
“Good. Good.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Father John could see the old man nodding. Nodding and smiling, a kind of half smile, as if the mission brought back fond memories. “You’ll have the guesthouse,” he told the other priest. They were bumping down the dirt driveway that ran between the church and the administration building. Directly behind the building was Eagle Hall and, another thirty feet beyond, the square house with the board siding and the scuffed white paint.
He helped the old man out of the pickup, then lifted the luggage out of the back and showed him into the house. Living room with a worn sofa and chair, bookcase with paperbacks neatly stacked on the shelves, lamp with a faded gold shade that might have been shielding lightbulbs for fifty years. “Bedroom’s in the back,” he said, leading the way into the small alcove with barely enough room for a nightstand between the bed and the old highboy that served as a closet. He set the luggage on the bed and went back into the living room. “Kitchen’s there.” Nodding to another alcove off the living room. “In case you want to make yourself a cup of coffee. Meals are at the residence. Breakfast at seven.”
“Never liked getting up early. One advantage to being retired, I don’t have to do it anymore.”
“Come over to the house anytime you like. Lunch is usually around noon—sandwich, soup. Dinner at six.” He didn’t have the heart to tell the old man that Elena expected the priests to be on time. A bit like boot camp, he sometimes thought. He was seldom on time, and it looked as if Lloyd Elsner might also fail to live up to the housekeeper’s expectations.
He left the old man heading into the bedroom to unpack—“Get settled in,” he’d said—and followed the fresh tire tracks back down the alley. He parked in front of the administration building and let himself through the heavy wood door into the corridor lined with the framed photos of past Jesuits staring through rimless glasses, keeping watch over the place, he always thought. The plank floor, streaked with sunlight from the front window and worn into little pathways by more than a century of footsteps, stretched past his office on the right to Father Ian’s office in back. He went into his office, checked the answering machine—no messages—and headed down the corridor.
Ian McCauley was at his desk, bent toward the columns of numbers moving down the computer monitor. “Everything go okay?” he said, not looking up. A bald spot, the diameter of a quarter, interrupted the man’s sandy hair on the crown of his head.
Father John told him that he’d left Lloyd Elsner at the guesthouse. “He’s a counselor,” he said. “Sounds like he’s had a lot of experience. Says he’d like to be useful. He can use the office across the hall.”
The other priest rolled his chair back, and, behind his eyes, Father John could see him shifting the gears in his head. “Rachel Roanhorse came in this morning,” he said after a moment. “Having trouble with her son. Fourteen-year-old hanging out with a fast crowd. She’s afraid he’ll get involved with drugs. I talked to her awhile. I think she has reason to worry, John, so I suggested she bring the boy over for a talk. It’ll be good to have a trained psychologist around. By the way,” he went on, riffling through the papers scattered next to the computer, the gears shifting again, “call came while you were out. I jotted down the information somewhere.”
“Who was it?” The dealer, or whoever had the petroglyph, Father John thought, watching the other priest glance at a sheet of paper and toss it aside.
“Here we go.” Ian yanked a paper out of the stack and handed it across the desk. “Reporter from the Gazette. Wants to stop by and ask you a few questions. Should be here any minute,” he said, glancing at his watch.
“Did he say what it was about?”
“She, John. Aileen M. Harrison is a woman.”
SHE LEANED INTO the upholstered cushion of the chair that stood at an angle to Father John’s desk, a beautiful young woman in her early twenties, he thought, probably not long out of college, with deep blue, watchful eyes suffused with an intensity that made her seem older than her years, blond hair that brushed the shoulders of her white blouse, and long legs crossed one over the other. She opened a small notebook, smoothed the pages, and produced a pen from somewhere in the bag she’d hung off the arm of the chair. She smiled at him. “I’m sure you know what this is about,” she said.
She had been coming through the door as he’d started back down the corridor to his office, and she’d been a tornado of words. She was Aileen M. Harrison, and he would be Father O’Malley, she guessed. He’d told her that she guessed right and ushered her into his office. She liked the M, she told him, although he hadn’t asked why she used her middle initial. It implied professionalism, she said, and she was proud to be a professional journalist. She would always use her middle initial. She’d been hearing about him forever, well, ever since she’d started at the Gazette three months ago.
When she drew a breath, Father John said, “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage. You could be here about any number of things.”
“The stolen petroglyph, Father.” There was a slight edge to her tone, as if she’d thought he was teasing and she didn’t appreciate teasing. “You must know my paper broke the story.”
“I read the article.” He was thinking that he’d read past the byline, which had probably been Aileen M. Harrison.
“It wasn’t an easy story to get.” She glanced around the room a moment, the memory bringing a tiny smile to the corners of her mouth. “No one wanted to admit that a two-thousand-year-old piece of art had been stolen from Red Cliff Canyon. I had to request the theft report that the tribes had made to the BLM. Director there said they’d had to call in the FBI agent to handle the investigation; they’re short staffed, you know. Only one officer to investigate thefts on hundreds of square miles of BLM land. Of course Ted Gianelli—he’s the fed that’s taken over the case—said he couldn’t comment except to confirm that the petroglyph was missing. Ongoing investigation, and all that. But Duncan Barnes, an antiques dealer who knows what he’s talking about, valued the petroglyph at a quarter million. And get this”—she had warmed up to the subject—“when I confronted the tribal officials they actually requested that we hold the story. Imagine! A valuable petroglyph stolen! We’re hardly in the business of holding important stories the public has a right to know about.”
She looked down and began scribbling something in the notebook. “After all,” she said, as if it were an afterthought, “the petroglyphs don’t belong only to the tribes. They’re on public land. They belong to all of us.”
“How did you hear about the theft?”
“What?” Her head snapped up and the blue eyes blinked at him. Then she smiled again, but the intensity in her eyes made them look darker. “We’re in the same kind of business, Father. We both keep secrets and protect sources. You must gather all sorts of information in the confessional, but I’m sure you’d never divulge the source. Confidentiality is part of our business.”
“Not quite the same, Ms. Harrison.”
“You may call me Aileen.”
“Priests don’t publicize what they learn in confidence.”
“Well, we reporters protect our sources.” She moved forward slightly and jabbed the pen toward him, as if to emphasize the point. “My source wished to remain anonymous. Naturally I verified the information after I got the tip. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I ignored the tip.”
She waited a moment, as if she expected him to argue the point, and when he didn’t say anything, she hurried on: “Frankly, I see my job as the opportunity to educate people. I was astonished that a tribal leader asked me not to run the story
. I can’t identify him, of course, but he even tried to convince me that the story would bring curiosity seekers to the canyon and endanger other petroglyphs, which is absurd. The fact that the canyon is so remote and deserted most of the year”—she paused, punctuating the air with the pen—“is what endangers the petroglyphs. The more people know about the petroglyphs, the less likely someone will attempt to steal one. When people hereabouts realize how old and valuable the rock art is, they’ll want to protect it. As you can see, I’m passionate about my profession.”
“I can see that,” he said. She was so young, he was thinking. Like his students in prep school, idealistic, convinced the world would change, if only they worked hard enough.
“I’m here to verify other information I’ve received…”
“From an anonymous source?”
“…that you were recently contacted by the people who may have stolen the petroglyph and have it in their possession.”
“Have you thought about the possibility that your anonymous source may be the thief?”
The girl—she wasn’t much more than a girl—lowered her eyes and went back to scribbling in the notebook, but there was something about the way she kept her eyes lowered, even when she’d finished writing, that suggested she had considered the possibility and that it had bothered her—a conundrum she hadn’t quite known how to solve, and so she had decided to push on.
She glanced up. “Is my information correct?”
“Sorry.” Father John shook his head. “I don’t have any comment.”
“No comment? Am I to understand that it is correct? That the thief initiated contact with you as someone the Arapahos and Shoshones can trust? Did you relay the message, Father?”
“Whoa! Hold on.” Father John got to his feet and walked around the desk. “What I said was, I don’t have any comment.”
Aileen M. Harrison hesitated a moment, as if she were trying to wrap her mind around the notion that he expected her to leave. She began lifting herself out of the chair. There was so much disappointment in her expression, it bordered on grief. She turned past him and walked ahead into the corridor. Sliding to a stop at the front door, as if it were a barrier that had risen unexpectedly before her, she looked back. “I have other ways to verify the information, you know.”
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