The Drowning Man

by Margaret Coel

  “Dear God, the poor old man,” Ian said, his hand cupping the top of the man’s head.

  “He pushed me away.” Vicky was moving now, trying to slide out from under the dead weight of Lloyd Elsner. “He pushed me down.”

  “Are you okay?” Father John said, but he knew the answer in the way that she was extricating herself from beneath the old man’s body. He lifted Lloyd’s shoulder as Ian raised the man’s arm. Vicky slid sideways and rolled free. It was then that Father John saw the blood smeared across the side of her face, the dark redness soaking into her tee shirt.

  “Don’t move anymore,” Father John said. “You could have been shot.”

  She shook her head and started pulling herself upward.

  “Are you sure?” He placed his arm around her shoulders to help her sit up, unable to take his gaze from the bright smear of blood down the side of her shirt. He realized that she was crying, the palm of her hand flattened over her mouth.

  “He came out of nowhere.” The words were blurred with grief. “I shouted for him to go back, but he kept coming. He was looking at the truck, and he hit me so hard, I went down. They started shooting at us.”

  Father John looked over at the twisted body of Lloyd Elsner, the gray, shrunken face, the slack jaw. The old man might have fallen asleep with his eyes open, staring into the sky, except for the pool of blood widening around him. “I have to take care of my people,” he’d told the priest. “You’re going to have to leave.”

  Father Ian made the sign of the cross on the old man’s forehead. “Dear Lord in heaven,” he said, “have mercy on his soul.”

  Father John repeated the prayer, then pulled Vicky closer, nearly sick with relief that she was alive.

  There was a new outburst of shouting. Gianelli started across the drive, taking long, purposeful steps, swinging both arms, loosening the muscles, Father John thought. A tall, thin man was grappling with two officers, who swung him around and pushed him facedown onto the hood of the pickup. Another officer snapped handcuffs around one of the man’s wrist’s, then the other. The cowboy hat slipped off revealing a blond head and a reddened, wrinkled scar across one side of his face. Other officers were leading the slim man with rounded shoulders over to a police car. The man’s cowboy hat was pushed back. A mass of black hair fell over his forehead.

  Vicky gasped.

  “Who are they?” Father John said.

  “Ollie Goodman and the man he’d said was an assistant. Justin Barone.”

  33

  THE DOOR BUZZER sounded just as the phone started to ring. Vicky tightened the belt on her white terry-cloth robe and hurried down the hall. She lunged for the phone with one hand and held on to the towel wrapped in a turban around her head with the other.

  “Hello?” She had to shout over the buzzing noise.

  “You got what you wanted, Vicky.” It was Deaver’s voice.

  “Hold on a minute.” She carried the receiver over to the intercom. “Who’s there?”

  “Adam.”

  Vicky pressed the intercom button and turned her attention back to the phone. “What did I get, Michael?”

  “Your client is being transported as we speak to the detention center in Lander. He’ll be kept separate from Goodman and Barone. We find out that he’s lying about a contract on his life, and he’s gonna find himself back at Rawlins in solitary.”

  “Travis won’t be going back,” Vicky said, striving for more confidence than she felt. She could hear the elevator whirring in the corridor. “I’m counting on your help in court, Michael.”

  “Yeah, well, that depends on your boy spilling his guts. Just so you know, Ollie Goodman and Justin Barone have been charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, assault, battery. You ask me, you’re the luckiest lady around. Could’ve been you dead this morning. Gianelli said you were the target.”

  Vicky swallowed hard and blinked back the moisture welling in her eyes. She didn’t feel lucky. She’d stood in the shower for a long time, staring at the water washing down the drain, pink with Lloyd Elsner’s blood.

  “…said Barone has been operating gangs of thieves for years,” Deaver went on, and it took Vicky a moment to realize that he was still talking about the fed. “Goodman has been his right-hand man in this area. Benito Behan was their intermediary. The feds have had Barone in their sights in the past, but he always managed to slip away. It’s possible that Goodman might decide to talk. He was hollering for an attorney the minute he was cuffed. Officers that took them to Lander say he was crying like a baby, saying he was just taking orders. Thought Barone wanted to scare people, not kill anybody. Bottom line, Vicky, I’ll support your petition and ask the judge to grant bond pending completion of another investigation. If it turns out there’s evidence that Travis didn’t kill Raymond Trublood, I’ll stipulate to vacating the conviction totally. Your client still won’t be out of the woods, though. Gianelli will probably expect a guilty plea on the theft of the petroglyph. If Travis is lucky, the fed will go for time already served, and your client will be free.”

  “Thanks, Michael.” There was a single sharp rap on the door, and Vicky started fumbling with the safety chain.

  “Gianelli is gonna interview your client at five o’clock. I’m giving you a heads up. Like I said, if he’s full of bullshit…”

  “I understand.” Vicky pushed the end key and opened the door. She stared for a moment at the handsome Lakota filling the doorway: The broad, straight shoulders, raised chin, and narrowed eyes focused on her, like a warrior face-to-face with the enemy. She backed away, dropped the receiver into its cradle, and rebalanced the damp weight of the towel on her head.

  “You okay?” Adam said after a moment. He moved inside and shoved the door shut with his boot.

  Vicky nodded. She let herself down onto a stool at the bar dividing the kitchen from the dining area. She could still hear the cacophony of sirens and see the police cars pulling into the mission, the phalanx of officers swarming about. Somehow she’d made her way into John O’Malley’s office, reporters following. Questions had burst like gunshots. Why did they want to kill you? How did the priest get shot? A pedophile, right?

  And she, with Lloyd Elsner’s blood crusting on her blouse and skin, trying to unscramble the questions jamming in her head, until John had stepped between her and the reporters. “Take your questions to the fed,” he had told them.

  She’d stayed at the mission awhile, giving the fed an initial statement, sipping at the coffee that John O’Malley had handed her. Outside, she knew, men from the coroner’s office had rolled the old man’s body into a gray bag, placed it in the back of a van, and driven away. Finally she had said that she wanted to go home. “I’ll have an officer take you,” Gianelli had told her. John O’Malley had said he’d take her, but she remembered getting to her feet and telling them that she would drive herself. She had wanted to be alone, and now she had to face Adam.

  “We have to talk, Vicky.” He sat down next to her.

  “Travis has been moved to Lander.” She’d blurted out the comment, making an effort to focus on the present.

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass,” Adam said. The vertical lines between his eyebrows deepened. He pulled his mouth into a tight line.

  Vicky took her eyes away. Travis Birdsong was her client. Everything that had happened, her doing: the brown truck following her, the gunshots meant for her and striking the old priest.

  “I care about you,” Adam said. “I want you alive, which doesn’t seem to be high on your priority list. You would have been killed this morning if that priest hadn’t happened to get in the way.”

  “He saved my life, Adam.” Vicky held on to the edge of the counter to keep from sliding onto the floor. She could see the old man loping toward her—the image was seared into the back of her eyelids. She could hear herself yelling, “Go back! Go back!” But he’d kept coming, looking at the truck—daring the men inside—as if he’d wanted the bullets that were meant for her
.

  “It’s been a rough day,” she managed. “Can’t we talk later?”

  “It’s now, Vicky.” Adam got to his feet and walked to the other end of the bar. It was a minute before he locked eyes with her again. “There won’t be any logging trucks going up and down Red Cliff Canyon. Bud Ladd called this morning. Said the timber companies had decided on the alternate route. Didn’t sound happy about it. Said the BLM believed they had made the correct decision on Red Cliff Canyon. The alternate route has its own problems. A short section crosses a wetlands; a lot of people won’t be happy. But I got the impression that the timber companies didn’t want the publicity. They didn’t like the idea of the public thinking they were destroying a sacred place. That was your doing, Vicky. It’s what you do best, getting the best deals for your people from the white folks that run things around here. What I don’t understand is why you don’t want to do it.”

  “That’s not true, Adam.”

  “Oh, it’s true, all right. You intend to file a motion to vacate the conviction of a killer that nobody wants out of prison. I had a long talk with Norman Yellow Hawk this morning. The tribes are grateful to have the Drowning Man returned. They’re very happy about the BLM decision, but that doesn’t mean they want Travis Birdsong back. I can read between the lines, Vicky. The tribes don’t want to work with a law firm that tries to get new trials for killers like Birdsong.”

  “What are you suggesting, Adam?” Vicky knew the answer, but she wanted him to say it. It would be his call. There would be no going back, and she could see the truth of it fluttering behind the stone mask he’d pulled on.

  “Say it,” she said.

  It was a moment before the fluttering stopped, and Adam’s expression became quiet and resolved. “We can’t go on like this. I assumed you were working things out with the BLM, when you were in an ambulance on your way to the hospital. This morning, Annie rushed into my office screaming. She was hysterical. She’d heard you’d been shot. You were dead. I was on my way out the door when the phone rang. You weren’t dead after all. Some poor old guy that got in the way—he was dead. I needed time before I came over here. I had to do some thinking.”

  For a moment, Adam let his gaze linger on the yellow legal notepad she’d pulled out of her briefcase and left on the bar: the scribbled notes about the BLM and Red Cliff Canyon, the stolen petroglyphs, Travis’s case—all of it mixed together.

  She would not be the one to say it, she was thinking as Adam started pounding the edge of the bar with a clenched fist. Finally, the rapping noise folded into a solid, final thud that sent a shiver running beneath the tile. The white knuckles disappeared into his brown hand the way snowcapped peaks dissolve into the clouds.

  “I’m in love with you, Vicky,” he said.

  She flinched backward. This was not what she’d been expecting.

  “That’s my problem, I realize. I’m under no illusions that you love me. I’ve been hoping that would change. Maybe it’s time…”

  The mask began to change; it was like watching spider cracks run through stone. Vicky held his gaze and nodded. “You’re right. It’s time.” She saw herself back in a one-woman office handling DUIs and leases, writing an occasional will, representing Arapahos accused of murder or rape or who knew what other heinous crime, and some—oh, this was the thing—some would be guilty. And what good was that? Her own people would turn to Adam Lone Eagle for the cases that mattered, the cases that involved oil and gas and timber and water.

  She hurried on: “We’ll split up the firm. I’ll start looking for new office space.”

  “What? That’s not what I want. I want to keep the firm. You can practice the kind of law that you want. It’s what you have to do; I know that now. I’ll practice the kind of law I want. We’ll collaborate on important cases. We’re a good team, Vicky.”

  Vicky got to her feet and walked over to the window on the other side of the dining table, wanting to put some distance between them. It would be so easy, she knew, to give in to the tears and sense of relief growing inside her. “What about Julie?” she said.

  Adam looked away. It was a moment before he said, “She has a line on a job. I’ve worked out arrangements for her to settle matters with the IRS. She’s all right.” Then he locked eyes with Vicky again and added, “She’ll probably need me again in the future. I’m all she’s got.”

  So that was how it had to be, Vicky thought, a compromise on both of their parts, each trailing remnants from the past. She said, “I intend to do everything possible to see that Travis is exonerated.”

  Adam nodded.

  “The tribes might drop the firm.”

  “I’ve spent a lot of time today thinking about that.” He circled into the dining room toward her, his hands jammed into the pockets of his khakis. “The tribes might drop us, but they’ll come back because we’re the best and they know it. You saved Red Cliff Canyon; you saved the petroglyph. They’ll come back, once the controversy over Travis Birdsong dies down.”

  “There won’t be enough evidence to convict him again. I doubt that Deaver will refile the charges. The truth is, no one may ever be convicted of Raymond’s murder. It could have been any one of them: Lyle, Marjorie Taylor, Goodman. Even the mastermind, Barone. Any one of them could have been in that barn. The problem is that Raymond’s brother and Norman and the rest of the Joint Council will always assume that Travis is guilty.”

  “It’ll be old news tomorrow.”

  “I’m not going to make any promises.”

  Adam lifted a hand into the space between them. “I don’t want to hear any. The next time one of the grandfathers or grandmothers comes begging for your help, I know what you’ll do.” He left the rest of it unspoken, ghosts of words hanging between them. “The point is, we’re partners, right? If you’re in danger, I want to know. I want to be there to protect you.”

  “Oh, Adam,” Vicky said. “I don’t expect anyone to protect me.”

  “You hear what I’m saying? I don’t want you to feel alone. I want to stand with you, whatever you’re doing.”

  “The smaller cases can still go to Roger,” Vicky said, wanting to give a little.

  Adam nodded, as if that were another promise he’d just as soon she hadn’t articulated.

  “Gianelli’s interviewing Travis at five,” Vicky said, throwing a glance at the clock over the stove. It was close to four.

  Adam nodded, then started backing toward the door, holding up both palms in the Plains Indian sign of peace. “It’s settled then, right? I’ll see you at the office tomorrow. We’ll go on, Vicky, you and me.”

  She gave him a smile and watched him pull open the door and head into the corridor. “Law partners,” she said as the door closed on Adam’s large, retreating figure.

  TRAVIS BIRDSONG WAS already seated at the table in the interview room when a deputy waved Vicky inside. She took the chair next to him, still feeling rushed from hurrying about, glancing through her notes while she pulled on a dark skirt and a blue silk blouse and stepped into a pair of black pumps. Her hair was still damp. She tried to slow herself down, regain her balance.

  “How are you?” she managed.

  “Better now that I’m outta Rawlins.”

  “You should know that Ollie Goodman and Justin Barone tried to kill me this morning. They shot a priest at St. Francis Mission. The man is dead.”

  “I heard on the radio,” he said. “You think I’m surprised? The way I got it figured, it was Goodman that shot Raymond.”

  “You said that Goodman had left the ranch. You didn’t see him when you rode down from the pasture.”

  Travis tossed back a strand of black hair. “I guess I came to some wrong conclusions. Maybe he never left the ranch, that’s how I see it now. He could’ve driven around to the back of the barn where there’s a real good view of the red bluffs. I seen him out there workin’ once. Had half a picture of the bluffs painted on his canvas. Truck was over in the trees in the shade. He could’ve gotten
into the barn through that back door we never used. I figure he was waitin’ for Raymond inside. Raymond never seen what hit him. Goodman went out the back, got in his truck, and took one of the back roads off the ranch.”

  It was only a story, Vicky was thinking, told by a convicted man desperate for a new trial. “Gianelli’s going to want evidence, Travis,” she said.

  “I got proof of what was going on,” he said. “I haven’t told you all of it.”

  34

  THERE WAS THE thud of a door shutting, the scuff of boots on tile. Vicky saw the brown uniform moving on the other side of the window that separated the interview room from the corridor. Then, a knock and the door swung open.

  “Fed’s here,” the officer said. “You ready?”

  Vicky nodded. She could sense Travis tensing beside her as the sound of the officer’s footsteps retreated in the corridor.

  “You sure the fed’s gonna help me?” he said.

  Vicky turned toward the Arapaho. “There aren’t any guarantees, Travis.”

  He slumped toward the table and dropped his head into both hands, a perfect picture of despair. “All I got,” he said, “is what I seen and heard.”

  “It’s your best chance.” Vicky waited a moment; then she told him that he would have to give up the petroglyph.

  “What?” The man’s head snapped back; his hands drifted over the table. “What’re you talkin’ about?”

  “The truth, Travis,” Vicky said. She was taking a gamble, she knew. She had no proof, yet it made sense. She pushed on: “The only way you could have gotten the money to pay Gruenwald after you were released from prison was by selling the petroglyph that you and Raymond had taken. That means you know where it is. Raymond must have told you where he put it.”

  It was a long time before Travis said anything, and for a moment, Vicky thought that he might jump to his feet, bang on the door for the guard, and walk away. But where could he go? Back to Rawlins where someone was waiting for him?