“Father O’Malley,” he said.
“Yes, of course. Father O’Malley’s here to see you.”
A second passed before Sam Harrison emerged from the maze of cubicles. “Come on back, Father,” he said, waving him into the aisle.
Father John followed the young man past vacant cubicles with monitors gleaming with iridescent images of mountains and lakes and dams. They turned into a cubicle with two desks set at right angles. A long, fluorescent lamp emitted a glow of light over the papers and the computer monitor on one desk. The lamp on the other desk was turned off; the monitor was dark.
“I heard the news,” Harrison said, brushing his brown curly hair off his forehead and sinking into a chair in front of the monitor filled with tiny words and numbers that seemed to make no sense. Father John took the chair in front of the blank monitor.
“Dean! Man, I can’t believe it,” Harrison said. “Just yesterday, a police officer was here, asking questions, nosing into Dean’s files.” He nodded toward the blank monitor. “Why’d anybody want to kill him?”
“I need your help,” Father John said.
“Anything, Father. You name it, and I’ll do it.” Harrison scooted his chair forward.
“Did he ever mention an Arapaho named Ben Holden?”
The young man tilted his head toward the ceiling. “Not that I can recall.” He looked back. “Wait a minute. Isn’t that the Indian got shot the other night? Big man on the rez?”
Father John said that was the man. “What about the Arapaho Ranch? Dean ever talk about the ranch?”
Harrison was shaking his head. “Dean wasn’t the cowboy type. He was a desk jockey.” He gave another nod toward the monitor. “Liked putting computers through their paces. What’re you saying, Father? Dean’s murder has something to do with the murder of the big guy?”
“I’m not sure.” Father John got to his feet. It was a long shot; he’d been grasping for some connection. Nothing tied Dean Little Horse to Ben Holden, except for the fact they’d been shot by a twenty-two. “Look, Harrison,” he said, “if you think of anything . . .”
“Hold on, Father.” The young man jumped up, pushed back the chair that Father John had just vacated, then sat down in front of the blank monitor. He flipped a switch; blue, red, and yellow icons began to form in the white light. Harrison leaned closer and clicked on the mouse by the keyboard. Black boxes of text replaced the icons. He tapped on the keys, and tiny x’s appeared in one box.
“Dean and I, we worked pretty close,” he said. “Troubleshooting glitches in our software. You know, gate doesn’t open at the dam way it should, we find out what the computer’s ordering and tell it to order something else. He had my password. I have his. Made life simpler.”
A column of names began scrolling downward. “Police officer printed out Dean’s contacts. Mostly clients, looks like. Dam operators. People we work with every day. Hold on.” He hunched forward and clicked the mouse. The scrolling stopped. “Whatd’ya say the big man’s name was, Ben Holden? Here we go.” A blue line highlighted a name and e-mail address that began with BH.
“Let’s see if Dean saved the messages he sent out.” Harrison clicked again. “Here we go. Good old Dean. Saved everything.”
Lines of text started to form. Father John leaned around the young man and peered at the monitor. “Urgent!” appeared in the subject box. The message read: “I’m a Rap like you. Must talk to you immediately. I know about the day box.”
The e-mail had been sent on Sunday at 8 P.M.
“I’ll get a printout.” Harrison was on his feet, striding into the corridor.
So there was a connection, Father John thought. Dean had tried to get a hold of Ben Holden. But he didn’t know Holden—he’d had to explain that he was also Arapaho. He’d wanted to give Holden some information: he knew about a day box. It was urgent. Urgent enough to get them both killed.
Harrison stepped back into the cubicle and handed him a printed sheet of paper. “Hope this helps find whoever shot Dean.”
Father John thanked the man and made his way back down the aisle and into the late afternoon heat. He walked back to the pickup, fished the cell phone out of the glove compartment, and left another message for Gianelli: “I’ve found the connection.”
25
Vicky kept her eyes on the belt of gray asphalt rolling under the hood of the Bronco and struggled against the feeling that the sky and the plains were closing in on her. She’d checked her messages when Adam dropped her off at the office. Four or five calls from Aunt Rose. Two calls from the mission priest, her secretary’s term for John O’Malley. Oh, and a call from Norm Weedly. The JBC had decided to pursue other avenues concerning the Wind River and Bull Lake. Thank you very much for your efforts. Your fee will be mailed shortly, his exact words, the secretary said.
Vicky tightened her grip on the wheel and turned onto Blue Sky Highway. She understood. Gianelli thought he’d solved Ben’s homicide, and the JBC had decided not to retain a lawyer about to be indicted for murder. No matter what Adam said, she intended to find out how the Lakotas or Marcia Bishop or whoever had shot Ben had gotten Aunt Rose’s gun. Adam wouldn’t approve. He was the type of lawyer—it was obvious—who expected clients to follow his advice. She was the same. She wouldn’t keep a client who didn’t follow her advice. It hit her that tomorrow she’d probably be arrested, and she wouldn’t have a lawyer.
She eased on the brake and turned into the bare-dirt yard in front of Aunt Rose’s house. The old woman was already at the door, as if she’d been waiting for the sound of the Bronco. She looked disheveled, sleepless. Her eyes were bruised red from crying.
“Oh, Vicky.” She reached out, took Vicky’s hand, and pulled her into the house. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t understand.” She started sobbing and taking in great gulps of air.
Vicky hugged the old woman. She could feel her trembling beneath her cotton dress. “We’ll figure it out, Auntie.” She guided her to the worn upholstered chair, then perched on the ottoman and waited until Aunt Rose had dug a tissue out of the front of her dress and dabbed at her eyes.
“The fed was here first thing this morning.” She waved the wad of tissue at the door. “What’s the FBI want with an old lady, I said. He said, what do I know about Ben Holden getting himself shot? He wanted to know if I got a gun. I seen clear as day what he was up to. You got it all wrong, white man, I told him, but he kept wanting to know if I owned a gun. I said no. Well, that was the truth, ’cause Lester was the one that owned the gun. So the fed said, your husband had a license for a twenty-two pistol. So what if he did, I says, and then he told me that Lester’s gun killed Ben Holden.”
The old woman paused. Moisture glistened in the creases of her brown face. “I went back into the bedroom to get the gun and prove he was crazy; the fed was right behind me. I opened the dresser drawer and . . .” She dabbed at the tears, smearing the moisture across her cheeks. “Maybe I put the gun somewheres else, I said. I started looking everywhere, pulled out the drawers, looked in the closet. I’m telling the fed how I’m an old woman, and maybe I got forgetful and put the gun someplace I can’t remember. But it’s nowhere.”
Aunt Rose dropped her face into her hands and emitted a soft, wailing noise. Her shoulders shook. Vicky patted her hand and said it was okay, everything would be okay. She wished she believed it.
“You’re wrong, Vicky.” Aunt Rose glanced over the wad of tissue. “The fed thinks you shot Ben. He wanted to know all the times you been here.” Her features rearranged themselves into a look of defiance. “I told him, I’m not talking to you no more without a lawyer.”
Vicky smiled at the image of Aunt Rose standing up to Ted Gianelli. “You may have to answer the question in court.” She made her voice matter-of-fact. “You’ll have to tell the truth.”
The truth, she was thinking: She’d come to Aunt Rose after Ben was killed; she’d spent three days here after she’d returned from Denver. She always came to Aunt R
ose when she was off-balance. But there was another truth. Somebody else had taken the twenty-two.
“Would you like some coffee?” she said after a moment.
The old woman nodded, and Vicky went into the kitchen. She found the coffee canister, measured out the grounds, filled the glass container—going through the motions, her thoughts on Gianelli. He would have talked to the neighbors down the road. Arapahos paid attention; they knew who was visiting who. It kept the moccasin telegraph humming. He would know the exact dates she’d been here.
She stared at the brown liquid dripping into the glass container and tried to breathe slowly. She could feel her ribs squeezing her heart.
After a moment, she poured a mug of coffee, then found a notepad and pencil by the phone and went back into the living room. Aunt Rose lay with her head tilted back against the chair.
Vicky set the mug on the table next to the chair and dropped back onto the ottoman. “Listen, Auntie,” she said, “have any whites stayed here? Anyone connected to the Bishop Ranch?”
Aunt Rose locked eyes with her, surprise mingling with disbelief in the woman’s expression. “What’re you talking about?”
“Marcia Bishop, Ben’s girlfriend. Has anyone stayed here who knew her?”
In the way that the old woman shrugged, closed her eyes, shook her head, Vicky knew she was clutching at shadows. It wasn’t Marcia Bishop who had found her way into Aunt Rose’s bedroom and taken the gun.
She said, “How about any Lakotas, Auntie? Two Lakota ranch hands stole dynamite from Ben. They might have been looking for a place to hide out.”
“Lakotas? Lakotas took dynamite? What’re they gonna do? Blow up our reservation?”
“Roy He-Dog. Martin Crow Elk. Do those names ring a bell?”
Aunt Rose sat very still, like a child searching for the right answer to please the teacher. Finally she shook her head.
“What about Indians from other tribes,” Vicky pressed on.
“I know Lakotas when I see ’em. Even if they said they was some other tribe, I’d know ’em.”
Vicky felt the vise clamping in her chest again. “Let’s start with the most recent visitors and work back.”
Aunt Rose shifted her gaze to some point across the room. “Two girls social services sent last Saturday. Stayed the night.”
Vicky wrote Saturday. Two days before Ben was killed. Then she made a note to check identities with social services.
“Week before,” Aunt Rose went on, “Mark Shield stayed a couple days. Dad goes on a drunk once in a while, and Mark comes over. He’s a good boy.”
Vicky wrote down the name. She knew the Shield family. Mark was about fourteen. “Before Mark,” she said.
“Well, that’d be, about a month ago. Let me see—couple girls stayed one night. They were from Montana.”
Vicky held the pencil over the notepad and waited.
“Come here to join up with the shadow dancers. Seen all about ’em on the Internet. Cop stopped them late at night on 287 for driving too fast and they told him where they were going. So he tells them to come here first, get some sleep and food, before they headed into the mountains. Maybe he was thinking they might change their minds, but soon’s they woke up in the morning, they took off.”
“Did you get their names?”
“Sue and Mary. They was sisters. Last name was Buckle.”
Vicky wrote down the names, then shadow ranch. She felt a little surge of excitement.
“Gun was here when they left,” Aunt Rose said.
“Are you sure, Auntie?”
“Oh, I’m sure. I was doing some spring cleaning. Gun was right there in the drawer where Lester kept it. Let me see, there might’ve been somebody else . . .”
Vicky dropped her head into her hand. It was impossible. The truth was, anyone could have walked into Aunt Rose’s house and taken the gun. No telling how many people knew about it. People worried about Rose White Plume taking in strangers, and Aunt Rose assured them, just as she’d assured her. No need to worry. I got Lester’s gun.
“Janis . . .”
Vicky dropped her hand. She felt her heart turn over. John O’Malley said he’d talk to a girl named Janis—what was her last name?—at the shadow ranch.
“Stayed here couple weeks ago. Oklahoma girl.”
Oklahoma girl! Vicky felt as if the gears had suddenly snapped into place. The girl was from Oklahoma.
“Come to the rez last winter,” Aunt Rose was going on. “Seen the shadow dancers at Ethete and decided to join ’em. Met Orlando himself. Oh, she wanted to live up at the ranch in the worst way, but her boyfriend, well, he didn’t want her to go. So she showed up at the door.” She paused, as if she were groping for the memory. “Wanted to know if she could stay a little while. Needed a place to think. I don’t know how she heard of me.”
Vicky didn’t say anything. Everybody’s heard what a soft touch you are, she was thinking.
“All she talked about was Orlando,” Aunt Rose went on. “How he’s the son of Wovoka. How the new world didn’t come before, but now it was gonna come. No more trouble and suffering, no more kids getting kicked around. I figured she’d been kicked around plenty, poor girl, and sure enough, one morning she gets up and says she had a vision. Orlando was calling her, and she had to go. Last week, her boyfriend comes looking for her, and I had to tell him she went to the ranch. Dean Little Horse. Seemed real nice. Too bad what happened to him.”
Vicky stared at her aunt. “What happened?”
“You don’t get the moccasin telegraph in Lander?”
She heard the news on the radio this morning, Vicky was thinking. Nothing earthshaking. And this afternoon, Adam was playing a jazz CD, and she hadn’t turned on the radio on the drive to Aunt Rose’s. She could think better with the noise of the wind crashing through the Bronco.
“What, Auntie?” she pleaded.
“Found his body out in the foothills. Shot to death, like Ben.”
Vicky sprang to her feet. “What else have you heard, Auntie?”
The old woman shook her head and looked up at her. “Last I heard—Josephine Cleary called just before you drove up—they don’t know who shot him. He’d been dead three, four days.”
Vicky started pacing. The door. The window. The ottoman. She sat back down. “Think, Auntie. Could Janis have taken the twenty-two?”
Aunt Rose’s lips moved silently a moment. Then she said, “Can’t say for sure. Maybe it’s what happened.”
It was what happened. Vicky could feel the truth of it. The girl named Janis had taken the gun to the shadow ranch, which meant the Lakotas had been at the ranch. They’d brought the dynamite to Orlando! Ben must have gone to the ranch and confronted the Lakotas Monday afternoon. They’d grabbed the gun—a perfect weapon, registered to someone else. They probably didn’t even know it was registered to the uncle of Ben’s ex-wife. They’d followed Ben to the restaurant, then to Rendezvous Road.
Vicky jumped up and began carving out another circle over the braided rug, conscious of Aunt Rose’s dark eyes following her. There was more. Dean had probably gone to the ranch and tried to get Janis to leave. Probably caused trouble, and someone—the Lakotas?—had shot him. They could have used the same gun.
And yet . . . Gianelli had already checked the ranch. The Lakotas weren’t there, but . . . they had been there. She was going to have to convince the fed to get a search warrant. She had to get some evidence.
It hit her like a clap of thunder. The dynamite could still be at the ranch. If she could get a photo . . .
“I’m sorry, Auntie,” she said, starting for the door, grabbing her black bag from the table as she went. “I have to go.”
Aunt Rose’s voice behind her, as if she’d seen into her head: “You’re not goin’ to the shadow ranch! The dancing’s going on. Outsiders aren’t allowed.”
Vicky opened the door and turned back. “What did Wovoka preach, Auntie? How was the new world supposed to come?”
; Aunt Rose stood very still a moment, as if she were trying to grasp a memory. Then she staggered backward into the table. The mug turned over and a stream of coffee ran onto the floor. “He preached . . .” She hesitated, then swallowed and started again. “The new world’s gonna come after the great event. The Ghost Dancers was supposed to dance for four days. Every six weeks they danced for four days. They was supposed to keep dancing until the great event happened. There was gonna be an explosion and a great flood that would wash the earth clean. They didn’t know when the event was gonna happen, but it was gonna be on the last day of the dance.”
Vicky stood very still, trying to pull from her memory what Norm Weedly had said: They’re starting the dance today. That was Monday and this was Thursday, the fourth day.
Today was the last day!
“I’ll call you later, Auntie.” Vicky wheeled about and ran outside to the Bronco. She jammed her key into the ignition and shot onto the road, past Aunt Rose standing on the stoop, gesturing with both hands, as if she could pull her back.
26
It was almost six when Vicky reached Lander. Offices and shops had closed an hour ago. She left the Bronco in the lot behind her apartment building and ran up two flights of stairs. In the living room, she leaned over the desk, struggled to catch her breath, and played back her phone messages. Adam Lone Eagle’s voice: They had to talk. It surprised her that the man was still in town. She deleted the message.
Two calls from Lucas. He and Susan were leaving tomorrow. Could they get together tonight? Call as soon as you get in. He left the number. They were still at Hugh’s house.
She picked up the receiver. The familiar longing clung to her like a worn dress. She’d hardly seen the kids since they’d arrived for Ben’s funeral, and tomorrow Lucas would be starting for Denver, Susan for L.A. How would they hear that she’d been indicted? From the radio? Somewhere between Laramie and Cheyenne? She had to talk to them first, prepare them. God only knew what Hugh Holden had told them.
The Shadow Dancer (A Wind River Reservation Myste) Page 18