The Drowning Man

by Margaret Coel

  “You get your proof tonight.” The same raspy voice, the slow intakes of breath, as if the man were struggling to draw enough oxygen into his lungs. “You listening?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Drive north on Federal. You’ll see the gray sedan. No feds and no police. You listening?”

  “Where will I find the sedan?” Federal would be a long stretch of shadows bunched around the dark, faceless buildings behind arcs of streetlights. There would be a small procession of vehicles stopping at the red lights, jumping forward to close the space left by the vehicles ahead.

  “It’ll find you.” The line went dead.

  “Emergency?” Father Ian’s voice cut through the quiet.

  Father John set the receiver into the cradle and glanced up at his assistant standing in the doorway. “I have to go out for a while,” he said.

  “This about the stolen petroglyph?” Disapproval rang in the other priest’s voice.

  Father John nodded. He got to his feet and headed into the entry. The other priest had to step back to give him room—disapproval even in that. He’d told Ian about the ransom message after the Indian had stopped him in Ethete. A mistake, he thought now. “Stay out of it,” his assistant had warned. “It really isn’t our business, John. We’ve got the mission to run. Isn’t that right? We need to concentrate on increasing attendance at Sunday Mass. Get more people involved in the programs. Be an influence for good here, help the people with their problems. Isn’t that our mission? Be reasonable, John. Let the FBI handle the petroglyph business.”

  He started to explain, then glanced at Ian’s hard-set face. It would be like talking to a rock. The other priest was shaking his head, mouth drawn into a tight line.

  And yet—here was the thing that had nagged Father John in the middle of the night—Ian could be right. The stolen petroglyph wasn’t his business—their business. Their business was to run the mission, and Father Ian McCauley—oh, there was no doubt about it—intended to run St. Francis Mission the way it should be run, on a sound financial basis, raising money from corporate donors—his latest suggestion—and tailoring the programs to fit the budget. Well, that would be a different approach. There was no doubt about it. Ian McCauley would be the perfect replacement when the provincial sent the pastor somewhere else.

  But other voices had cut through the nighttime wilderness. Amos Walking Bear’s. Norman Yellow Hawk’s. We gotta get our petroglyph back. He knew that when he closed his eyes again, he’d see the grief and fear in the black eyes arranged around the table this evening. The Drowning Man could become part of everything else that had been lost.

  Father John headed outside, conscious of his assistant standing in the entry, the sense of disapproval blowing like a gust of wind down the sidewalk after him.

  In ten minutes he was in Riverton, driving north on Federal, scanning the parking lots in front of the stores and restaurants and office buildings. He’d waited until he’d turned off Seventeen-Mile Road before he called Gianelli and told him the meeting was set. The gray sedan would be somewhere on Federal. The Indian would probably be the one who handed over the proof that they had the petroglyph. The caller had said no police, no feds.

  “We’re on this, John,” Gianelli had said and clicked off.

  Where was the sedan? He thought he’d spotted it a block back, sunk in the shadows of a parking lot, but as he slowed down, searching the vehicle for some sense of familiarity, he’d seen that it was a Chevy. The Indian had driven a Ford.

  A horn blared behind him. Father John glanced up, expecting the sedan to materialize in the rearview mirror. A light-colored pickup crowded his bumper. He pushed down on the accelerator and went back to checking both sides of the street. The supermarket lights blazed through the plate glass windows, glass doors sliding away for people moving in and out. Cars and pickups were scattered in irregular rows around the parking lot. The redbrick façade of the city hall and the police department looked black against the gray night sky. Three police vehicles were parked on the side. And across the street, empty parking lots stretched in front of darkened, flat-faced shops. Gas station, restaurant, lights still blinking in the windows, a few vehicles outside. On the corner ahead, a large, block-shaped motel.

  He saw the gray sedan then—in the corner of the motel’s parking lot, pointed toward Federal, the dark shape of the Indian behind the steering wheel. Father John flipped on the blinker, but before he could swing into the lot, the car shot out into his lane and continued north.

  So this was the game. The Indian leading him somewhere else to give him the proof. Speeding off somewhere, two taillights bobbing in the darkness, then veering into the oncoming lane and jumping ahead of another vehicle. Father John pressed down on the accelerator and caught up to a truck. He waited for an oncoming vehicle to swoosh past, then pulled out—the accelerator tight against the floor, the Toyota shimmying and bucking. The truck’s headlights swung right and extinguished themselves; the lights of Riverton fell back. He had the sense of plunging into a black pool after the blurry red lights that kept getting smaller and smaller.

  Then the lights started to grow. This is where the Indian would give him the proof, Father John thought, on a deserted highway. But the sedan kept going. Ahead, on the left, the dark shape of a building came into view.

  This would be it. Except that the Indian didn’t pull over. A package of some sort flew out of the car’s window and skidded over the highway in the rim of the Toyota’s headlights. Father John lost sight of it for a second before it jumped back into the light, then lay still and deserted in the middle of the road. The Indian’s taillights were dissolving into a single red glow.

  Father John hit the brake pedal and skidded to a stop. The package was behind him now. He could make out the light-colored shape, but maybe he was only remembering where it had landed. He started backing up, hugging the side of the road to make certain that he didn’t run it over.

  He stopped next to the package, got out, and picked it up. An oversized white envelope, the contents firm, as if whatever was inside was solid and true. He slid back behind the steering wheel. Leaving the door open, he worked in the dim overhead light until his finger had loosened the flap. A warm gust blew into the cab and sent a dust cloud rolling through the yellow headlights. An animal somewhere was making a chirping noise.

  He had the sense that someone was watching from the darkness, staring into the light that flooded out around the Toyota, like a peeping Tom staring through a lighted window. He tore back the flap and glanced around. On the other side of the road was an old log cabin that looked abandoned, slivers of starlight filtering through the gaping doors and windows. The porch sloped across the front, and part of the roof was missing.

  He turned his attention back to the envelope and pulled out the contents. Two pieces of cardboard. Flattened between them, an eight-by-ten photograph of the Drowning Man. He held the photograph up in the light flaring from the ceiling. It was either the petroglyph or a good imitation. The carved gray image loomed out of the pinkish stone: a human figure, truncated arms and legs flailing through the rippling water. He could make out the chisel marks along the edges of the stone. To the right, propped up against something, was the front page of this morning’s Gazette.

  Father John slid the photograph back into the envelope between the pieces of cardboard. As he shut the door and pulled into a U-turn, he saw the headlights coming toward him. Beyond was the faint glow of lights from Riverton. The headlights started flashing—on off, on off. A horn blared, and Father John realized that the white SUV behind the headlights was Gianelli’s.

  He stopped at the side of the road and waited as the SUV swung across the lane, the headlights blinding him for an instant, until the vehicle pulled in ahead. A door slammed, and the agent walked back through the stream of lights to his passenger window.

  “The caller said no feds, no cops,” Father John said.

  “You get the evidence?”

  “So
meone could have been watching.” Father John gestured with his head in the direction of the old log cabin.

  “The evidence, John. I asked the Riverton PD to keep an eye on you. We know you followed the Indian’s car from the motel.” He held out one hand. “What do you have?”

  “A photograph of the petroglyph with today’s Gazette. Listen to me, Ted. The caller could have been waiting inside that old cabin. He told the Indian to toss this”—Father John tapped the envelope against the steering wheel, then handed it to the agent—“on the highway in front of the cabin. He picked a place where there wasn’t anyone around.”

  “Okay. We’ve got unmarked cars watching for the Indian. Maybe we’re finally catching a break here. We ran into a wall on the license plates. They were lifted off a car in Denver two weeks ago. We find out where the Indian’s staying, it’ll lead us to whoever’s behind this.”

  “You arrest the Indian, it’ll be all over.”

  “I’m aware of the risks. Don’t tell me my job.” Gianelli held up the white envelope. “Go on back to the mission.”

  In the rearview mirror a dark shape, like a gathering force, was coming up from behind. Gianelli cocked his head sideways and stepped back, a reflex motion, Father John realized, as if the agent expected the force to collide with the pickup. In a rush of noise—whirring tires, straining engine—a dark truck with headlights off swept past, plunging toward the glow of Riverton and leaving in its wake watery images of metal and red taillights.

  “The caller,” Father John said, but he was talking to himself. The agent had already snapped open his cell and was pressing it against his ear. “We have what looks like a brown pickup heading into town. No headlights. See if you can pick it up.”

  Gianelli snapped the cell closed. It disappeared inside the pocket of his vest. “Go back to the mission, John,” he said again.

  “Listen to me, Ted. The petroglyph…”

  But the agent had swung around and was already lowering himself behind the steering wheel of his SUV.

  19

  A HANDFUL OF people were scattered about the church for the early Mass, Ida Morning Star in her usual place in the front pew, Luke White half sitting, half kneeling behind her, a few other elders. Seated in the back were four or five of the younger generation—younger than the elders by a decade or so—who had started coming to daily Mass. But where were the other familiar faces? Connie Buckman and JoAnn Postings? Where was Norman Yellow Hawk?

  “Let us pray together,” Father John said. There was the scrape of kneelers pushed back into place as the congregation shuffled to their feet amid the murmur of voices: “I confess to Almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned…”

  It was never routine, never automatic, moving through the prayers. Each time he said Mass, Father John thought, was like the first. And yet the sense of peace and quiet that drifted over him with the murmured prayers was familiar, as if he had stepped again into the quiet center of things away from the noise and confusion.

  He’d been awake most of the night. Tossing about in the stuffy bedroom with the window thrown open and not a whiff of air moving, the bedclothes tangled on the floor somewhere, unable to stop the images moving through his head, like a DVD on automatic replay. The white envelope flying through the air and skidding over the highway, the photo of the Drowning Man. And the dark pickup speeding past after Gianelli had stopped him on the highway.

  “No police,” the caller had said.

  “I believe in God, the Father Almighty…” Father John could hear the sound of his own voice—half a word ahead—leading the congregation. His thoughts were still on last night. If the caller had been in the pickup, if he had seen him—how could he not have seen him talking to the fed?—he and the Indian would disappear, just like seven years ago.

  “Dear Lord,” he prayed. Silently now, breaking the bread for the offertory. “Don’t let the people lose any more than has already been lost.”

  HE CROSSED THE grounds in the first daylight, the sun already warm on his shoulders and the peace of the Mass settling like fine rain over the mission. The house was quiet, too. No sounds floating down the hall of water running, spoons clacking against pans, cabinets shutting. He found Father Ian seated at the kitchen table in a pool of light, working at a mug of coffee, the Gazette opened in front of him.

  “Where’s Elena?” he said.

  The other priest shrugged, his gaze still on the paper. “Looks like the BLM is going to allow the logging companies to widen the road in Red Cliff Canyon. Vicky Holden is quoted as saying that the BLM has refused to extend the period for public comment. ‘The government agency demonstrates its willingness to allow the destruction of what is sacred to native people,’ she says.”

  Father Ian snapped the paper shut. “Surprised me Elena wasn’t here when I came down for breakfast. I made the coffee.” He pulled a face. “Sorry. Never was very good at getting the ratio of water to coffee quite right. There’s a little dry cereal left.”

  Father John poured the bronze-colored liquid into a mug. He was thinking that Vicky must have decided that the only way to stop the road through Red Cliff Canyon was by appealing to the public. He shook some cereal into a bowl, tipped in the milk, then carried the mug and the bowl over to the table. “Did Elena call?”

  The other priest shook his head and got to his feet. “I called her house, but nobody answered. She’s probably on the way.”

  Father John took a bite of cereal, listening to Ian’s boots thud down the hallway and up the stairs. He couldn’t remember Elena ever being late. She usually let herself in through the front door while he or his assistant was at Mass. When he got to the kitchen, coffee was brewing and the oatmeal was ready. There was a pile of hot toast on a plate. He glanced at his watch. If Elena wasn’t here in thirty minutes, he’d drive to her house to make sure she was okay.

  He pulled the Gazette across the table and scanned the front page as he finished the cereal, aware at some point of Ian pounding down the stairs. The front door slammed shut. He was still sipping at the coffee and reading through the article when the door opened. There was the sound of footsteps in the hallway again, hurried this time, as if his assistant were running.

  Father John glanced around.

  The other priest was gripping the doorjamb, his head bobbing into the kitchen. “You’d better come, John,” he said.

  Father John jumped to his feet and followed the other priest back down the hall and out the front door. He saw the crowd gathered in front of the administration building, cowboy hats and black heads floating above the tightening circle. Several other people were hurrying over from the pickups and trucks that had pulled into Circle Drive. A couple of pickups had driven onto the grass in the center of the drive, and still more vehicles were turning into the mission, metal bumpers flashing through the stand of cottonwoods.

  Father John burst ahead of Ian and started running across the grass, around the parked pickups. He spotted Elena huddled with a group of grandmothers. Norman Yellow Hawk stood at the edge of the crowd, his dark eyes following Father John.

  “What’s going on?” Father John said when he reached the man. The circle started to break up. People began drifting around, closing in—his parishioners, he thought, his people. He was aware of Ian elbowing his way through the crowd and of the silence that seemed to freeze everyone in place.

  “You seen this?” Norman held out a piece of paper the color of the sky folded in half, and Father John realized that the others were also holding blue sheets of paper.

  He took the paper and, not looking away from Norman, began unfolding it. He glanced down. The thick, black letters bolted off the paper like sand blowing into his face, burning and stinging his eyes.

  BEWARE

  PEDOPHILE PRIEST ON RESERVATION

  Below was the photograph of a man in his forties, dark haired and handsome with the deep cleft in his chin, dressed in a black suit with a white Roman collar, smiling frankly into
the camera, white teeth contrasting with his tanned skin. And the eyes—something about Lloyd Elsner’s eyes, open and unflinching, yet veiled.

  Father Lloyd Elsner is now at St. Francis Mission. He has

  sexually abused many children. Do not allow your children near

  the mission. He will ruin their lives.

  This man is dangerous.

  I know because I am one of his victims.

  Typed at the bottom of the page was the name David Caldwell.

  Father John stared at the photo of Lloyd Elsner taken at least thirty years ago. He was aware of the barely perceptible intakes and exhalations of breath around him, the way in which everything seemed suspended in a void—the circle of people, the mission grounds stretching away—and the rage rising inside him like molten lava erupting from the center of the earth. His heart was thumping in his temples.

  It was a long moment before he managed to lift his eyes from the sheet of paper. He made himself take another moment, draw in a long breath, before he said, “This is a very serious accusation.” His voice sounded tight and choked. His saliva was hot. He tried to relax his jaw muscles. “I promise you I’ll find out if there is any truth in it.” Then he turned and worked his way through the crowd, shouldering past Norman, past Elena, past the others who had trusted him. Trusted him. My God, this was their mission, their place, and they had trusted him.

  “I assure you”—Ian’s voice breaking through the quiet—“that neither Father John nor I would ever allow…”

  Father John broke into a run, his boots pounding the loose gravel across Circle Drive, down the alley, the church and the administration building blurring on either side. He crunched the sheet of paper in his fist. He was near the guesthouse when he heard footsteps running behind him, and Ian’s voice again: “Hold up, John.”