“What?” Lela tried to turn back, but he pushed her hard and she stumbled against the hood, her legs still jellylike. “We gotta call the police,” she managed.
“You crazy?” He gripped both of her shoulders and leaned over her. The smell of whiskey on his breath made her want to retch. “You didn’t see nothing, and you ain’t calling nobody.” His fingers bore into her muscles until she felt the tears pressing against her eyes.
“It’s a body, Tommy,” she managed. “We got no choice.”
He released her, and she wobbled sideways against the pickup, trying to get her balance. In a flash, she saw his hand stretched over her, then felt the hard crash of his palm against her cheek. Her head jerked backward. She crumbled onto the ground, her balance gone now, as if some gyroscope inside her had been turned off. She dug her fingers into the dirt, collapsing into the pain that was spreading through her head.
Tommy was next to her, his black boots a few inches from her face. “Why’d you do that?” she said, feeling like a little girl again, dad standing over her.
“So you get it straight. You keep quiet. It ain’t your business.”
Lela managed to scrape through the dirt to the hard ground underneath, then push herself upright along the black boots, the baggy camouflage pants, the shirt with the jagged armholes, the sculptured arms. He was looking beyond her toward the party. She turned her head to follow his gaze. Headlight beams crisscrossed one another in the darkness. There was the pounding sound of the stereos, far away and faint as a memory. She could make out the dark blocks of pickups and the shadows flitting about, dancing maybe, getting laid, getting high, like every other Saturday night this summer. Everybody’d be stoned by the time she and Tommy got back. God, why’d they have to come to Double Dives in the first place?
She looked back at Tommy, his face striped with thin slats of shadow and light, and in his expression she saw a fear as raw as meat.
“You know who it is, don’t you?”
“Shut up.” He leaned toward her, fists dangling at his sides.
“You had something to do with it.” Lela pushed on, her voice thick with tears. “You and the so-called rangers.” She thrust her head in the direction of the party. “Like any of you was ever in the army. Whatd’ya do? Whack somebody on Captain Jack’s orders? What? One of them guys you been hassling at the casino, just cause they went and got themselves jobs. You ever think maybe you oughta get yourself a real job, ’stead of hanging around doing Captain Jack’s dirty work?”
At the edge of her vision, Lela saw the fist come up, but she was already darting alongside the pickup out of range. “Get in.” He threw his fist toward her like a club, then started around the hood toward the driver’s side. “We’re getting outta here,” he called over his shoulder.
Lela remained where she was, her head throbbing, Tommy shouting to hurry up. He was already behind the steering wheel, twisting toward the window, his face distorted. He pounded on the horn, sending out impatient blasts of noise that bounced about the cottonwoods and obliterated the sound of his voice. She pivoted around, surprised at the surge of strength within her, and started running, zigzagging and darting through the trees, taking a diagonal path toward the river. She didn’t know where she was going, only that she couldn’t get into the pickup. She couldn’t pretend the hand wasn’t there. It was in the dirt, trying to get out.
2
A THICK HEAT had settled over the Wind River Reservation most of the summer. Now it was the third Monday in August, the Moon of Geese Shedding Their Feathers, according to the Arapaho Way of keeping time, and no sign of rain or cooler temperatures. One hot day had stretched into another, and today was no different. The sky was cloudless and was the crystalline blue of a mountain lake, with the sun still high in the east, glinting off the little houses that were set back from either side of Seventeen-Mile Road.
Father John O’Malley, pastor of St. Francis Mission, turned onto Highway 789 and mopped at the sweat that was prickling his forehead. He wished he’d thought to bring along a bottle of water, but he hadn’t thought of anything, except that one of his parishioners could be dead.
The phone call had come about ten minutes ago. He’d just gotten to his office in the administration building. It was Art Banner, chief of the BIA police on the Wind River Reservation. Someone had reported a body at Double Dives. Not a body, exactly. A hand protruding from the ground. They were at the site now recovering the remains—a whole platoon of police officers, sheriff’s deputies, investigators from the coroner’s office and the Wyoming crime lab, and Ted Gianelli, the local FBI agent. Did Father John want to come over?
He’d felt as if a set of weights had dropped on his chest. Chances were it was a dead Arapaho. One of his parishioners, one of the brown faces that turned up at him during the homilies at Sunday Mass. Or someone else from the reservation, someone he knew. After eight years at St. Francis, Father John knew just about everybody.
And Double Dives was on the reservation, an empty, sagebrush-studded bluff that broke off into an oasis of cottonwood trees along the Wind River, not far from the place where the Arapahos had camped when they’d first come to the reservation more than a hundred years ago. Now the only people who went to Double Dives were the gangs that hung out there, drinking, drugging, racing pickups. Double Dives was wide open. Even the BIA patrol cars stayed away from the place.
“Any idea who it could be?” Father John had asked.
“So far, about all we know . . .” There had been a pause on the other end of the line, the noise of the chief gulping in air. “Poor bastard got shot in the head.”
Father John had been barely aware of the clack clack noise of a keyboard, the whir of the printer coming from the office down the hall. His assistant, Father George Reinhold, was probably still working on the mission finances. The man had spent most of the weekend trying to balance the books.
“I’ll be right over,” Father John had told the police chief. He’d grabbed his cowboy hat from the coat tree inside the door, and, after calling to the other priest that he had an emergency, he’d slammed out the door and headed across the mission grounds. Walks-On, the three-legged golden retriever he’d found in a ditch a couple years ago, had bounded toward him, a red Frisbee clenched between his teeth, a hopeful look in his eyes.
“Sorry, buddy,” Father John had said before he slid into the old Toyota pickup parked in front of the residence. He’d had to coax the engine into life—jiggling the key in the ignition, the growing sense of dread gripping him like a sharp pain. He’d had a busy couple of weeks: three funerals for starters, which meant wakes and visits to the families; counseling sessions almost every day; and meetings with the social committee, the youth group, the religious education teachers—endless meetings—plus practice every afternoon with the Eagles, the baseball team he’d started for the kids the first summer he’d been at St. Francis; and, in the evenings, the AA groups and the Gamblers Anonymous group he’d started last month.
Now he eased up on the accelerator and turned right onto Gas Hills Road. He drove several miles east into the bright sunshine. Around a curve, and then a left turn onto an open bluff studded with sagebrush and littered with bottles and cans and the carcass of an old truck. He bounced over the ruts, the windshield fractured by the sun, the line of utility poles running outside the window, and large, black birds circling overhead. Ravens, he thought, with purple-black feathers that shone in the sun and beaks that flashed like lightning against the sky.
At the edge of the bluff, the ruts pitched downward into a grove of cottonwoods along the river. Scattered about were several white BIA police cars that looked gray in the sunlight. Around the police cars were other vehicles—an ambulance, a couple of SUVs, a gray suburban with the blue insignia of the Fremont County Coroner on the sides.
Father John parked behind one of the police cars. Groups of officers, some in uniform, others in slacks and short-sleeve shirts, were milling about. A couple of officers moved t
hrough the trees, making a sharp, clicking noise. The instant he shut off the engine, he could hear the sounds of the river through the buzz of voices. He got out into a wedge of shade.
Chief Banner was already making his way over, the light glinting off the silver insignias on his navy blue uniform shirt, his thick head thrust forward like a bull working through the herd. “Coroner’s still recovering the body,” he said when he was a couple of feet away. “Slow business. Don’t want to disturb any evidence. We’re searching the area, taking photographs and making diagrams. Grave’s real shallow, so whoever did it was most likely in a hurry. Looks like an animal had started working at the dirt and uncovered the hand.”
Father John glanced beyond the chief at the circle of investigators about thirty feet away. Five men, down on their knees, hunched over the grave. They might have been praying, he thought, except they were jabbing and brushing at the earth with small tools that flashed in the sun. A couple of photographers stood over them, pointing cameras this way, that way.
“Anybody reported missing?” Father John asked. He was thinking that nobody deserved to be left in this desolate place.
The chief shook his head. “Doesn’t mean somebody didn’t go missing and nobody thought to make a report. All we got is a body, most likely a homicide victim.”
Emerging from the trees was Ted Gianelli, the local fed, all two hundred and twenty pounds of him in tan slacks, white shirt, and blue blazer, looking as quick on his feet as the linebacker he’d once been for the Patriots. “Girl spotted the hand last night,” he said, as if he’d been part of the conversation. “You know her? Lela Running Bull?”
“I know the family,” Father John said. “Wayne Running Bull comes to the mission once in a while.”
Banner let out a loud guffaw. “Whenever he’s sober enough to find the keys to his truck.”
Father John didn’t say anything. Wayne had been having trouble staying on the wagon ever since his wife died in a traffic accident two years ago. The hardness, the absoluteness of her death, had been following Wayne like a ghost. Nonalcoholics never got it. Just stay off the bottle, they said, but they didn’t get the way alcohol sopped up the pain, like a sponge, and made it possible to go on for a while—in the face of the absoluteness. It had been eight years since he’d had a drink, Father John was thinking—not since the year he’d spent at Grace House trying to recover—but there were still times when his defenses were down and the absoluteness came over him. Still times he’d been willing to trade almost anything for a whiskey.
And Wayne—Wayne was struggling to raise a daughter, Lela. The girl couldn’t be more than fifteen.
“How’d she take it?”
“Spooked the hell outta her.” Gianelli took in a breath and squinted into the sunlight, as if he’d caught a glimpse of one of his own ghosts. “She was out here drinking and raising hell with a bunch of kids. Spotted the hand coming up through the ground and went running to her aunt, Mary Running Bull. Lives over in the trailers on the highway with her two kids. You want to say some prayers?”
This was the reason Banner had called, Father John thought as he followed the chief and Gianelli over to the grave site. A couple of investigators moved aside, and he went down on his knees.
He stared down at the outlines of a figure in the dirt. There had been so many bodies. It never got easier. The sleeves of a plaid shirt had been brushed clear, misshaped hands flopped to the sides, the right hand bent upward toward the sun. The face looked fallen, already decomposing, with smudges of dust on the leathery skin. The right side of the head, above the ear, looked as if it had been bashed in, a mixture of hair and black, congealed blood. The eyes were open, locked in fear. The corpse didn’t resemble anyone he knew, white or Indian, but it was difficult to tell. It hardly looked human.
“God forgive you your sins, whatever they may be.” Father John spoke out loud, as if the man were alive, sitting across from him in the confessional. “God have mercy on your soul.” He was aware of the quiet settling over the area, broken only by the sound of boots scuffing the dirt and the river lapping at the banks.
After a moment, he got to his feet. “Does Lela know who he is?” he asked, looking from Banner to Gianelli.
“Not that she’s willing to admit.” This from the fed. “Soon as we get an ID, I’ll be talking to her again.”
“She was pretty upset last night,” Banner said.
“Where is she?” The girl was fifteen, Father John was thinking. She’d seen a human hand protruding from the ground. She might need to talk to somebody other than the law.
“A couple of my men took her home,” Banner said. “We told her to stay there.”
3
FORTY MINUTES AFTER he drove out of Double Dives, Father John turned off Yellow Calf Road and bumped across the dirt yard. He parked in front of a cube-like, bilevel house with pink siding that looked pale and yellowish in the sunlight. La Traviata blared from the tape player on the seat beside him. Overhead, rabbit-shaped clouds scudded through the blue sky. The white mountain peaks were hazy in the distance.
Father John pressed the off button on the player. “Ah, perche venni” seemed to linger a moment before giving way to the quiet. As he let himself out, the screen door clacked open and a disheveled hulk of a man shambled onto the stoop. Wayne Running Bull looked like he’d just crawled out of bed: faded blue jeans low on wide hips, yellow shirt hanging open over a bulging belly. His black hair sprang like wires out of the braids that hung down his chest.
“How ya doin’, Father?” The Indian sank onto the top step, as if he were letting go of a large weight, then clasped his hands between his knees. His hands were shaking.
Father John walked around the pickup. The smell of whiskey hit him like a fastball out of nowhere. “You okay, Wayne?”
“Hey, don’t worry none about me. I’m doin’ fine.” The Indian pulled his elbows in close to his sides and gripped his hands until his knuckles popped out like white marbles. “Hey, Father.” He tilted his head back and squinted into the sky. “I got some Jim Beam. How about a drink? What’s the harm? Nobody’ll know. Let’s have a little drink on it.” Planting both feet on the concrete step, he started to lift himself upward.
“Drink on what, Wayne?”
The Indian dropped back down. “On how nobody’ll ever know.” He gave a sharp laugh that rattled in his throat.
Father John folded his arms and leaned back, away from the whiskey wafting toward him like an invisible cloud. He could almost taste the whiskey—it was so familiar—almost feel the heat of it spreading through his chest.
He said, “Missed you at AA last week.”
The Indian shrugged, then nodded toward the rear of a brown truck protruding past the far side of the house. “Got me a couple flat tires, Father. Not gettin’ around so good these days.”
“Look at yourself, Wayne. You’re shaking. You need help. Let me take you into detox in Riverton.”
“Detox! I need a drink, Father. I don’t need no detox.” The Indian lifted one hand and began kneading his forehead.
Father John looked away. A light breeze was raking the patches of grass that sprang up around the yard and pushing little balls of dust down the road. Dear God, he thought. That’s how he’d been, nine years ago when his superior had come to his room and said, you need help, John. You’re shaking. Look at yourself. He could still see the other priest standing in the doorway, rigid with disgust and contempt. He’d said, what kind of priest are you? And Father John had answered—oh, he remembered it as if it were yesterday—he’d answered the truth: A lousy priest.
He brought his eyes back to the man slumped on the step, still kneading his forehead. Wayne Running Bull had a cache of whiskey. He wasn’t ready to quit yet.
He said, “Is Lela here?”
“My kid? Whatd’ya want with her?”
“I want to talk to her about the body she found at Double Dives last night. Where is she?”
“Police come driv
ing up with her last night.” The Indian spoke slowly, taking a breath every couple of words. “Said she was some kind of witness and she oughta stay home. I told her to go to her room and get some sleep. She looked like hell. I went back to bed. When I woke up, she was gone. I don’t know where she went off to.”
“She’s fifteen years old, Wayne. You’re the only parent she has.”
Moisture started pooling in the man’s eyes. “Angela left me, Father,” he said in a voice hoarse with tears. “Left me with the girl. What do I know about raising the girl? How am I supposed to know what she’s up to?”
Father John swallowed hard. Was that how he’d been? Blaming everybody, everything? What had he known about being a priest? How was he supposed to know how hard it would be?
The Indian was shaking his head. “Week ago, Lela packed up her clothes and left with some guy. I don’t know who he was. Drove a brown truck. Kept the engine going the whole time she was getting her stuff. Shithead! Exhaust filled up the whole house.”
Father John watched the man a moment. Then he said, “Your daughter’s had a shock, Wayne. She needs help. If you hear from her, ask her to call me.”
At this the man blinked, and for a moment, he almost looked sober. “Lela’s got her boyfriend. He’s the only one she’s gonna trust to help her.”
“All the same, ask her to call me.” Father John stepped closer to the stoop and leaned over the man. “When you’ve finished the last of your bottle, Wayne, call me, and I’ll take you to detox,” he said, then he walked back to the pickup and got in behind the wheel. It was like sliding into a hotbox.
Wayne Running Bull was hunched over in the side mirror as Father John drove out of the yard and onto the road. And then the man and the house and the yard were gone, lost on the other side of a rise, and all that was left in the mirror was a cloud of dust rising behind him.
4
Killing Raven (A Wind River Reservation Myste) Page 2