The Shadow Dancer (A Wind River Reservation Myste)

by Margaret Coel

  “I think anybody might be capable, if they’re pushed hard enough.” The agent stood up and faced her. His eyes were as still and opaque as stone. “Do you own a pistol?”

  Aunt Rose let out a little groan.

  “Of course not.” Vicky made her voice hard to match his eyes.

  “Where did you go after you left the restaurant?”

  “I drove around for a while and went home.”

  “Anyone see you? Friend? Neighbor?” He was shaking his head in answer to his own questions. “Look, Vicky, I want to help you. Give me someplace else to look.”

  “I told you, Ben’d had trouble with two Lakota ranch hands. He met with them just before he came to the restaurant.”

  “Roy He-Dog and Martin Crow Elk.” The fed nodded. “Ben’s assistant says the Lakotas left last week. They’re probably at Pine Ridge by now.”

  “Ben said they were still here.”

  “He could’ve been mistaken, or . . .” The agent hesitated. “Maybe you misunderstood.”

  “I’m telling you the truth.”

  Gianelli let out a long sigh; his shoulders sloped forward. “I have to ask you again not to leave the area.”

  “You’re saying I’m under suspicion for homicide.”

  “Everybody’s under suspicion, this point.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Vicky—” he began, but she cut him off.

  “From now on, if you want to talk to me, you’ll have to contact my lawyer.”

  “You’re a lawyer.”

  “Right. A fool has herself for a lawyer.”

  The fed pulled his lips into a thin line above his squared jaw. “That’s the way you want it.” He slipped the notepad back inside his sport coat, and walked to the door.

  She turned away. The sound of the door closing came like a shot behind her.

  “That white man’s crazier than Hugh Holden.” Aunt Rose sounded quiet and determined.

  Hugh Holden. Vicky could feel her heart knocking. Ben’s brother knew how persistent Ben had been. Hugh would confirm everything the fed already suspected. She had a motive to kill her ex-husband; she had no alibi.

  She said, “I have to get back to Lander, Aunt.”

  8

  It was half past seven when Father John drove out of the mission grounds and turned onto Seventeen-Mile Road. Blue Crow Software opened at eight, and he wanted to be there. Before he’d left, he found Father George in his office at the rear of the administration building—down the corridor lined with the tinted pictures of past Jesuits at St. Francis Mission—and told the man he’d be back in a couple hours. The pale gray eyes had flickered up from the computer monitor. One hand rose in acknowledgment.

  “There’ll be a lot of phone calls.” He’d tried to warn the other priest. Everyone on the rez had probably heard about Ben Holden’s murder by now. The moccasin telegraph was efficient. The phone would be ringing off the hook with people wanting to talk, trying to figure it out.

  He’d offered Mass this morning for Ben Holden. Lord, give him your peace. He’d prayed for Vicky and for the family. Give them your strength. The few old people scattered about the pews had joined in the prayers, voices rumbling through the quiet. The early light streaming through the stained glass windows played over the wrinkled brown faces lifted toward him. They made him a priest, he’d thought, the people who needed him. Just as sick people made someone a doctor and people in need of justice made someone a lawyer. He drew his priesthood from the people.

  Then let me be the kind of priest they need.

  After Mass, he spent a half-hour at his desk going over the annual report, checking the quantified data that Father George and the new members on the board would be scrutinizing. He totaled the numbers of participants in the programs that Arapahos couldn’t find elsewhere, at least easily: religious education, baptism, confirmation, marriage preparation. The numbers looked good. But good enough for reasonable men charged with recommending the best use of limited resources?

  Dear God, he hoped so.

  Just before he’d left, he’d dialed the number of Amos Walking Bear, the president of the parish council. The elder had answered, his voice clear and sharp. He’d probably been up for hours. They spent ten minutes talking about Ben Holden’s murder, and Amos had broken the news: The family wanted an Arapaho ceremony. The funeral wouldn’t be at the mission.

  Father John had stopped himself from asking why the Holdens didn’t want a Catholic funeral. The answer hovered at the edge of his mind. When Vicky hadn’t gone back to Ben in the past, the man had blamed him. The Holdens probably also blamed him. He and Vicky were friends. Just friends. And yet, the truth was—he couldn’t hide from the truth—she was important to him. He had never meant to love her; it had just happened. He had the odd feeling that Ben and the Holden family had seen a part of him that he’d tried to hide, but it was like his shadow. It was visible.

  Father John realized that the elder had switched to the subject of the parish council. “Might get some of the members to a meeting tonight,” Amos said.

  That was great, he’d said. Then he’d told the elder that he’d see him at seven o’clock and pushed the disconnect button. For a moment, he thought about calling Vicky. She’d been on his mind all night—there in his dreams, small and vulnerable, looking at the fed with wide, questioning eyes, as if she were struggling to comprehend what the fed had just told her: Stay in the area.

  He’d replaced the receiver. It was still early. Aunt Rose was probably up, but Vicky might still be asleep. He hoped so. She needed the rest, and Aunt Rose wouldn’t want him disturbing her. He tried to ignore the unsettling feeling that always came over him when she went to her people on the reservation, as if she’d gone into another world through a door he couldn’t enter.

  Now he turned south on Rendezvous Road. The plains opened around him, a rough cut of brown bluffs and hidden arroyos that swallowed up the thin strip of blacktop stretching ahead. Scattered clumps of sagebrush bent sideways in the wind. In the far distance, the mountains emerged through the white haze.

  He rewound the tape in the player beside him. The machine clicked and whined and finally spilled out the opening notes of Faust. After a few miles, he slowed around a wide bend. The road looked different in the daylight, but this was the spot where Ben Holden had been shot, no doubt about it. Tiny yellow and blue wildflowers poked through the brush in the barrow ditches on both sides of the road. There were no other vehicles in sight, no houses, no sign of human life, only the sweep of the plains and, on the west, the foothills striated yellow and blue in the sunshine.

  The yellow police tape stretched down the other side. He hit the stop button on the tape player, pulled across the pavement, and got out. A bee was droning over the ditch, and somewhere a crow was cawing. The breeze was already hot, and the tape fluttered between the metal poles stuck in the dirt at the edge of the blacktop. Beyond the tape was a rectangle of flattened brush and wild grasses where the truck had been parked. A faint trace of tire tracks led to the flattened area. No sign of skid marks. Gianelli had been right. Ben had intended to stop.

  Father John walked about thirty feet down the road to the end of the tape, his eyes hunting the ground for other patches of flattened grass. The breeze swept along the ditch. Nothing looked disturbed.

  He crossed the road and hunted his way back. No indication of another vehicle off the road. He crossed back over to the pickup and slid behind the steering wheel, trying to form a picture in his mind of what had happened. Brown truck looming out of the dimness, headlights scraping the blacktop. The truck slows, pulls off the road, stops. No engine trouble, no flat tires, no reason to stop. Unless there was something up ahead, larger than a person standing by the road. A vehicle stopped in the road.

  Father John started the pickup and turned back into the southbound lane. Vicky said that Ben had gone looking for two Lakotas yesterday. They’d ripped him off, and Ben Holden was the kind of man to take matters into
his own hands. The Lakotas could have guessed he’d take the shortcut across the reservation on his way back to the Arapaho Ranch. They could have been waiting. A truck parked across the road could block both lanes.

  Gianelli was a good investigator, Father John told himself, slowing down the main street of Hudson. The agent would put it all together. He’d probably found the Lakotas by now, taken them in for interviews. Unless . . .

  He gripped the wheel hard. The Lakotas were in South Dakota, swallowed up in the emptiness of a reservation like Pine Ridge. The FBI might never find them, which meant that Ben’s murder might never be solved and Vicky . . . Suspicion would cling to her like a black shadow the rest of her life. He swallowed back the dry knot of anger in his throat. He and Vicky had worked together to help so many people, and now she was the one who needed help. He had to find a way to help her.

  He passed the semi on the straightaway outside of town and leaned onto the accelerator, eating up the miles into Lander. Twenty minutes later he found a parking space a half-block off Main Street and walked back to the office of Blue Crow Software.

  At the desk inside the door was a young woman with a dusting of freckles across her pale cheeks and dark hair that fingered the shoulders of her blue blouse. He was looking for Dean Little Horse, he said.

  The welcoming smile froze in the pale face. “Dean Little Horse.” She enunciated each syllable as if she were testing a foreign language. Then she flattened her hands on the desk and levered herself to her feet.

  “What’d you say your name is?”

  He hadn’t said. Now he told her his name and said he was the pastor at St. Francis Mission.

  She nodded. That made sense. Indian priest looking for an Indian. “One moment.” She sidled around the desk, then took off almost at a run across the green carpet, down an aisle between rows of cubicles. She knocked on a door in the rear and slipped inside.

  Father John waited. The clack of keyboards sounded through the low electronic buzz that permeated the air. Two men in T-shirts and khakis emerged from one cubicle and crossed into another, heads bent together, voices hushed and tense.

  Finally the woman came back across the office. “Tom can see you now.” She nodded toward the door. Standing in the opening was a short, dark-haired man in a blue shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows and blue jeans.

  Father John made his way down the aisle and took the man’s extended hand.

  “Tom Miller. People around here call me boss, but not to my face.” He gave a forced laugh that ended on a high note. The man probably hadn’t hit thirty yet. He ushered Father John into a small office with a desk perpendicular to a window that looked out on a parking lot next to an alley.

  “Have a seat.” Miller nodded toward the red plastic bucket chair in front of a filing cabinet. He sat down behind the desk, lifted one hand, and started rubbing his shoulder, the corners of his mouth turned up in discomfort. “Hardball. Pulled the deltoid. Thanks to spending way too much time in front of computers since I started the company. We make the software that keeps your water flowing out of the faucets.” Pride seeped into the man’s voice. “It’s our software that opens the gates at Bull Lake Dam and lets out the right amount of water. So you’re looking for Dean Little Horse.”

  Father John took the bucket chair. He removed his hat, hooked it over one knee, and said that was right. “When’s the last time you saw him?”

  “That would be . . .” Miller stopped rubbing his shoulder a moment and stared at some invisible calendar behind his eyes. “Thursday. Left work early. About four, I’d say. Hasn’t shown up since.”

  Father John took a couple of breaths. “Has he called? Offered an explanation?”

  “Nada.” The man’s fingers carved a circle into his shoulder. “One day he’s in his cubicle writing code, next day he doesn’t show up. I figure it’s some Indian thing. You know, somebody dies, so he has to go to the ceremonies, take care of family business.”

  “Has Dean not shown up for work before?”

  Miller dropped his hand and settled back against the chair, forehead scrunched in concern. “Come to think of it, can’t say that’s the case. Dean’s a reliable guy. When his grandmother started calling here, I decided he’s got himself into trouble. Too bad. Dean’s a genius at problem solving, and him taking a powder leaves us in the lurch. We’re developing software for dams in five states. We gotta push the product out the door.”

  “What do you know about his girlfriend?”

  “Girlfriend?” The man gave another snort of laughter. “Best advice my old man ever gave me—he ran a Fortune Five Hundred—was, stay out of your employees’ personal lives. I don’t ask, and they don’t tell.”

  “Dean have friends around here?” Father John nodded toward the door.

  Miller shrugged. “Shares cubicle space with Sam Harrison. Not in yet. You might catch him later.”

  Father John stood up and thanked the man, who had started to his feet before gripping his shoulder and sinking back. “Maybe you should see a doctor,” Father John said.

  “Doctors. What do they know?” He lifted a couple of fingers in farewell.

  Father John let himself out and walked back down the aisle, aware of the eyes swiveling toward him from the cubicles. The receptionist’s desk was vacant.

  Outside, the street was nearly deserted. A couple of vehicles moving past, two businessmen making their way up the sidewalk, briefcases brushing the sides of their pressed blue jeans, a young woman pushing a stroller, hugging the shade under the store awnings. He turned the corner and jaywalked to the pickup across the street. He was about to get behind the steering wheel when a man darted out of the alley behind the software offices.

  “Hey!” The man waited for a couple of pickups to pass, then started across the street. “You the guy looking for Dean Little Horse?”

  Father John slammed the door and stepped into the lane. “You a friend?”

  “Sam Harrison. Just drove into the parking lot out back. Boss said you wanted to see me.” The man looked like a college kid, with curly brown hair, an eager, handsome face, and questioning eyes behind the round glasses with thin wires clipped behind his ears. He was dressed in khakis and a striped beige shirt. A gold chain glinted around his neck.

  “What can you tell me about Dean?” Father John was thinking that Harrison must have come in the office from the back parking lot while he was exiting the front.

  “You up for a cup of coffee?” The man glanced toward the corner. A pickup came down the street, honked, veered around them, honked again.

  “Let’s go.” Father John led the way across the street. They walked in silence down the sidewalk and around the corner to the coffee shop with the pink saucer and cup painted on the plate-glass window, blue steam rising from the cup. The man insisted upon paying for a couple of mugs of coffee at the counter. They sat down on the metal ice cream chairs at a round table with fake marble on the top.

  “ ’Bout time somebody got serious about finding Dean,” Harrison said. Behind the round glasses, questions and concern mingled his eyes.

  “Where do you think he is?” Father John took a sip of coffee.

  The man shook his head and cradled his mug in both hands. “I thought we were friends, you know? Dean and I got along real good. First Indian I ever got to know. That’s something, isn’t it? Lived next to the rez all my life and never got to know one of the Indians.” He took a drink of coffee and seemed to contemplate this. “Maybe I got it wrong, about us being friends. Maybe he didn’t trust me after all. Me, being white. If he was in trouble . . .” He let the words drift over the table.

  Father John set his mug down. “You think Dean’s in some kind of trouble?”

  “Maybe. He got real quiet the last few weeks. Real short tempered, which wasn’t like Dean. Bit my head off a couple times. He was working on upgrades for the software at Bull Lake Dam. Boss says I gotta take over the project now.”

  Father John worked at his own coff
ee again. Then he set the mug down and pulled the notepad and pencil out of his shirt pocket. “I hear Dean had a girlfriend. Any idea who she is?”

  “Janis some Indian name.” The man shrugged.

  “Arapaho?”

  “Yeah, but not from around here. Oklahoma Indian, Dean said. Came up here last winter. He met her at a party on the rez. Man, she must’ve been something. Gorgeous, Dean said. A real fox, you know what I mean? Dean was in love for sure. Said she was real spiritual. I asked him once what he meant, and he said, ‘Part of our tradition. You wouldn’t understand.’ ”

  “What do you think he meant?” Father John prodded. Something stirred in the back of his mind, remnants of gossip, and then he had it. Indians from other places were coming to the rez to join the shadow dancers.

  Harrison pushed his mug aside and stared out the painted window. “Come to think of it, Dean said something about some ranch in the mountains she went to live on. She’d come to town now and then, and he’d be real happy. Then she’d go back to the ranch, and he’d be a bear. Afraid he was never gonna get her back. Worrying all the time about Janis.” He snapped his fingers. “Beaver, that’s her name. Janis Beaver.”

  Father John jotted down the name, then slipped the notepad back into his pocket, drained the last of his coffee, and got to his feet. “If you hear from Dean,” he said, sliding the metal chair into place, “ask him to call me. Doesn’t matter what kind of trouble he’s in.”

  Harrison tilted his head back and gave him the kind of solemn, focused look he used to get from the best students in his American history classes.

  He walked quickly back to the pickup, checking his watch as he went. Almost ten. Time to drive up to the shadow ranch and make it back to the mission before the Eagles practiced at four. He slid behind the steering wheel, flipped open the glove compartment, and pulled out the cell phone a couple of his parishioners had given him a few weeks ago. He seldom used it, and when he tried, he found that, more often than not, it didn’t work on the reservation.

  Now he punched in the numbers for Information, then called Eldon Antelope, one of the dads who helped coach the baseball team. An answering machine picked up. “If I’m late for practice,” he said. “Take over, will you?”