He found the woman in his office in the front corner, slumped in one of the side chairs, as if she’d just crawled away from an accident. A white woman with light brown hair and pale skin, dressed in blue jeans and a yellow T-shirt. Still in her twenties, he guessed, with a world-weary look that she wore uneasily, as if it had come without her knowledge or permission.
She raised her head and fixed him with gray, flat eyes. “You Father O’Malley?”
“How can I help you?” he asked, blocking the surprise in his voice. Usually the people who came looking for him were Arapaho.
“I’m Mo Pearson,” she said.
He recognized the name. Last night, Ted Gianelli, the FBI agent, had called and said they’d ID’d the homicide victim found at Double Dives: Rodney Pearson, who lived on Two-Valley Road outside Riverton and worked in the Mexican Flat oil fields. Did Father John know him? The answer had been no. And this morning, he’d read the article in the Gazette. Rodney Pearson was survived by his wife, Mo.
He pulled over the other side chair and sat down, facing the woman. “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Pearson.” His voice was low.
She gave a quick nod of acknowledgment. “Call me Mo.”
“How can I help you, Mo?”
“You said some prayers over him out at Double Dives, right?”
That was right, he told her.
She started laughing, a brittle sound edged with hysteria. Then she ran her fingers over her cheeks, wiping away the moisture. “You know how funny that is? Rodney would’ve had some kind of heart attack if he’d seen you praying over him.” She stopped, as if she’d remembered something. “If he hadn’t already been dead. He never believed in priests and God and all that stuff.”
Father John let a couple seconds pass, then he said, “God believed in him.”
“What?” She squinted at him for a long moment, as if she were trying to comprehend. “Whatever,” she said finally. “I just wanna get the bastard that killed him.”
“Who do you think it was?”
“You saying you don’t know?” She jerked her head back and fixed him with a look of disbelief. “Looks like nobody knows. Sure as hell the fed don’t know. Spent most of yesterday asking me stupid questions. Who’s your husband hang with? Who’s he work with? Who’s he sleep with besides you? I said, nobody, so shut up.” She set an elbow on the armrest and propped her chin in the palm of her hand. A thread of tears ran down her cheek and through her fingers. “Why’d he have to ask stupid questions like that? I told him who killed Rodney. Some Indian, that’s who did it.”
“What makes you think so?” Father John could almost smell the stench of anger and hatred clinging to the woman like bad perfume.
“Who’d Rodney work with at the oil field? Indians. Who’d he hang with, go drinking with? And all the time telling me, Mo, honey, you and me gonna hit the big time. How the hell was we gonna hit the big time with him hanging around with a bunch of Indians?”
“Look, Mo,” Father John began. “Agent Gianelli’s a good man. He’ll check out everybody your husband knew, and if an Indian’s guilty, he’ll have him charged with homicide. You’ll see justice done.”
She lifted her head and gave a shriek of laughter. “Damn right, I’ll see justice done. All you gotta do, Father O’Malley, is tell me who did it.”
Father John leaned forward and clasped his hands between his knees. “Listen to me, Mo. I have no idea who killed your husband. I’m very sorry it happened. It was terrible. It shouldn’t have happened. I’ll do anything I can to help you.”
“They talk, those Indians.” She was shaking her head up and down. “Oh, I know how they gossip. They brag about everything.” She shifted sideways and shot him a defiant look. “All you gotta do is listen, and sooner or later, one of ’em is gonna blurt out that he shot Rodney like he was a deer he scared up out of the brush. Maybe come in your confessional, begging for forgiveness like, and then all you gotta do is tell me who it is.”
Father John leaned into the back of the chair, not taking his eyes from the woman. Was she asking for his help so that she could kill the person who had killed her husband?
He said, “What do you plan to do?”
She kept her eyes locked on his. Her face dissolved into what passed for a smile, as if they were conspirators. “Like you said, it shouldn’t never have happened, and justice is gotta be done.”
“If I hear any gossip,” Father John leaned toward the woman, “I’m going to call Gianelli. The fed will track down the killer.”
She shook her head so hard that her whole body picked up the rhythm. “The fed’s never gonna find Rodney’s killer, ’cause you and me both know the Indians aren’t gonna talk to him. They’re gonna clam up when he comes around, like they don’t know nothing. But they’ll talk to you, right? I mean, you being the Indian priest and all. They think you’re one of ’em.”
“You’ve had a terrible shock, Mo. You’re still in shock, and you’re angry. That’s normal, but what you’re thinking about is wrong. Give yourself some time. You’ll start thinking differently. Is there someplace you could go for a while? Somebody you could stay with?”
“Relax, Father O’Malley.” She waved a thin hand between them. The smile sat frozen on her face, and mockery flashed in the gray eyes. “All I’m asking is that you find out from them Indians who the bastard was that killed Rodney. I know you’ll go to the fed, but you can tell me, too, can’t you? That way I can make sure the fed does his job. You’ll be doing the Indian a big favor, ’cause if the fed don’t find him real soon, Rodney’s got friends that’re gonna take care of it. You know what I mean?” She swooped up the small brown purse next to her feet and dug out a pen and notepad. After scribbling something on the top page, she ripped it out and handed it to him, then jumped to her feet.
“Killer’s gonna get what’s coming to him,” she said, backing to the door. “One way or the other. Like you said, justice is gonna be done.”
And then she was gone. The sound of the front door slamming shook the plastered walls of the old building.
Father John walked over to the window. The kids were circling around Father George as they came across the field, lugging the canvas bags filled with bats, balls, gloves, and helmets. Six or seven pickups were parked around Circle Drive waiting to take the kids home. And Mo Pearson was climbing in behind the steering wheel of the blue truck. The muffled noise of the chain saw drifted over the voices of the kids, squealing and shouting, and the sound of an engine kicking to life.
After a moment, gray exhaust burst from the tailpipe and the truck sputtered onto Circle Drive. Father George reached out and pulled back one of the kids as the truck accelerated past. He stared after it a moment, shaking his head, then ushered the kids toward the waiting pickups.
Father John turned away and sank into the chair behind his desk. He glanced at the paper in his hand. An address on Two-Valley Road, phone number, name: Mo. Why had she come? To pressure him to find her husband’s killer by threatening some kind of vigilante action?
The woman was right about one thing. Arapahos had a way of shutting down when the fed came around. But Gianelli was a dogged investigator; he never gave up. He’d keep coming around until somebody let something slip, and then he’d have the murderer . . .
It could take time, that was the problem. And Rodney Pearson’s friends would be out in the oil field looking for his killer. They could decide one of the man’s coworkers was guilty, and then what? Pay him back in kind? Shoot him in the head? Bury him at Double Dives? Good Lord. There would be a war between the locals and the Arapahos.
He tried to push away the thought, debating whether to call Gianelli. What would he say? Mo Pearson believed that her husband’s friends would go after his killer? The woman was obviously in shock. She could be in shock for days, weeks, and the problem was, she might convince Rodney’s friends that the only way he could have justice would be if they saw to it.
Mo Pearson was right about something
else. There was someone on the reservation who might know about her husband’s murder. He rolled a pen across the top of the desk. He should have seen it before. Lela Running Bull had left her dad’s house as soon as she could get away. Why? So she wouldn’t have to talk to Gianelli again? What was she hiding? The girl was scared. He could feel the truth of it, like a fly ball floating into his glove. She hadn’t called the mission today. She didn’t want to talk to anyone.
But he had an idea of someone who might know how to get ahold of the girl.
He got to his feet, grabbed his cowboy hat from the coat tree in the corner, and walked to the front door. Father George was just coming inside.
“Before you go anywhere,” the other priest said, “there’s something you ought to know.”
Father John turned and followed the other priest down the corridor, past the sepia-toned photographs of the early Jesuits at St. Francis Mission, faces wavy behind the old glass, eyes pale, and distant, peering out from behind rimless spectacles. He turned into the office at the far end.
The other priest was already behind the desk, thumbing through a stack of bank statements. The man had been handling the mission finances since he’d arrived three months ago, a job Father John had been glad to relinquish. Always more bills than funds in the mission account, always juggling payments. Which bills to pay this month? Which to set aside and hope the phone company, the utilities company, or some other company would give the mission some slack, that was George Reinhold’s job now.
The man actually liked it. He had a complete trust in numbers. “They are what they say they are,” he’d said. Definite. Pure. Precise. Not unlike his own philosophy, which was as solid and unmovable as granite. The man even resembled granite, with thick chest and arms, a large head that set directly on his shoulders. No matter what happened, you could always lean upon granite, which Father John realized, probably accounted for the way the Arapahos had taken to the man. There was comfort in the strength of certitude.
“The bank called this afternoon,” the other priest said. “It appears we’re overdrawn.”
Father John nodded. It wasn’t the first time.
“By more than a thousand dollars. They covered two checks, but they want the money.”
“Thousand dollars?” Father John pushed away from the doorjamb. “How’s that possible?”
The other priest tapped the bank statements. “Obviously the bank’s made a mistake. I’ve gone over the deposits and debits. Everything balances. Don’t worry. I’ll drive over to Riverton tomorrow and get it straightened out. Meanwhile,” he picked up a stack of envelopes. “What do you suggest we do about these bills?”
“Hold on to them,” Father John said.
The other priest took it in with a grunt. “We can’t keep operating in the red . . .”
Father John interrupted. “We’ve been in the red before. Money has a way of finding us when we need it.” Dear Lord, he thought, he was beginning to sound like the elders. “You have to believe in miracles, George.”
The priest shot him a pained look. “I’ll call the telephone company and tell them we have a little miracle coming. Should arrive any day now.”
Father John left the man still peering at the pile of envelopes, and retraced his steps down the corridor to the front door. Then he jogged across the grounds to the pickup. In ten minutes, he was heading east toward the trailer park were Mary Running Bull lived.
8
THERE WERE A half dozen trailers with gray aluminum siding that slid to purple in the shade of the cottonwoods. Trucks and cars stood outside the trailers, and clotheslines, some sinking with towels and sheets, hung between the trees. He started to pull over at the side of the road. He had no idea where Mary Running Bull lived. He’d have to work his way from trailer to trailer, starting with the closest.
And then he saw her, the heavyset woman with long black hair, standing in the doorway of the white trailer, a toddler slung on one hip. She stared in his direction a moment before stepping back out of sight. The door slammed shut.
Father John drove ahead and stopped, then made his way across the churned dirt and dried brush and knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again. “Father O’Malley, Mary,” he called. “I’d like to talk to you. It’s important.”
Several seconds passed before the door creaked open. Mary Running Bull stood back in the shadows. From somewhere inside came the subdued noise of a television. The woman might have been a high-school girl, he thought, dressed in short, cutoff jeans and a pink blouse tied at her waist, with a tiny silver earring in one nostril. She leaned sideways and adjusted the round-faced little girl on her hip. The child was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and specks of red jelly dotted her face like measles.
“Come on in, Father,” Mary Running Bull said, a sharpness in her tone that failed to mask the notes of defeat and weariness.
He stepped into the stuffy space with a closet-sized kitchen at one end and, pushed against opposite walls, a sofa with an Indian blanket thrown over the cushions and a small table with a half loaf of bread, jars of peanut butter and jelly, and paper plates on top. In the corner, another child—a small boy—sat cross-legged on the uneven vinyl floor in front of a television that had cartoon characters jumping across the screen, falsetto voices that punctuated the metallic music. The boy gripped a sandwich in his pudgy hands.
“Just getting the kids some supper,” the woman said in what might have been an attempt at polite small talk, except Father John had the feeling she was stalling.
“Lela’s not here,” she said after a moment. “That’s why you came, isn’t it.”
“I want to talk to her.”
“Well, you’re gonna have to get in line. Police, FBI. They all been around wanting to talk to Lela. I told them the same thing I’m telling you. She’s not here.”
The woman crossed in front of him, set the little girl down next to the boy, then stepped into the tiny kitchen and folded her arms, leaning back against the counter. Behind her, shoved against the wall, were cereal boxes and a couple of soup cans. “I been telling Lela Tommy’s no good,” she blurted, as if unpinning an idea that had been wound in her mind. “Get you pregnant, I said. That’s all he’s good for, so he can brag to his buddies. No way is he gonna stick by you, I told her.”
She threw a glance over at the two children and exhaled a long breath. “Lela’s like me. Can’t tell her anything. Gonna have to learn the hard way.”
She was silent a moment, and Father John waited. The crackle of metallic music floated between them. Finally, she said, “I was going to college.” She nodded, as if she wanted to convince herself of some half-forgotten reality. “Wyoming Central. I really liked college. It was like, you know, the world started getting bigger.”
“What happened?” he asked.
“Found out I was pregnant.” She started laughing, and, for a moment, he thought she might burst into tears. “Some no-good I’d gotten mixed up with that summer. So I had to quit school and get a full-time job. Got on at the supermarket over in Riverton. I was lucky. Then Jeb was born, and everything was going real good, until my no-good boyfriend starts coming around, being real sweet and saying we were gonna get married, and then I was pregnant with Amanda, and Mr. sweet-talking, no-good sonabitch was gone.”
She pushed away from the counter. “Don’t know why I’m going on like this. Besides, don’t get me wrong, Father. I love my babies, and my auntie, she takes care of them while I’m at the store, so things are okay. I’m making it okay.”
He started to say he was glad to hear it, but she’d only stopped for a breath and was already hurrying on. “Sometimes I think about what I was learning. Programming and business management, and I try to hold on to it, you know. I try to remember. I don’t want it to go away, ’cause I think someday . . .”
She spun around to the sink, turned on the faucet, and, leaning over, started splashing water in her face. Her shoulders were shaking. She reached out like a bli
nd woman and patted the counter until her fingers curled around a towel. Then she turned back, mopping at the mixture of water and tears that ran down her face and matted the sides of her hair. “God, I don’t know why I’m going on like this. You must think I’m some kinda nutcase.”
Father John put up his hand, palm forward in the Plains Indian sign of peace. “It’s okay, Mary,” he said. “I understand. You’re worried that Lela will do the same thing.”
“Lela’s real stupid for a smart girl.” She tossed the towel back onto the counter. “She oughta graduate from high school, go to college, get herself a good job.”
“What’s she frightened of?”
The woman stood very still, her face taut.
Father John pushed on. “That’s why she’s hiding. She’s frightened of something.”
Mary moved to the table and—hands shaking—busied herself smearing peanut butter and jelly on a slice of bread. She slapped another slice on top, cut diagonal pieces and, leaning over, handed one to each child. Then she went back to the kitchen, glancing at him out of the corner of one eye as if to confirm that he was still there.
He waited.
“Lela came running in here a couple nights ago, white as those plates.” Mary settled back against the counter and gestured with her chin toward the paper plates on the table. “Looked like she didn’t have any blood in her, ’cept for the welt on her cheek. Said she seen a hand coming up from the earth in Double Dives. I said, we gotta call the police, and Lela started crying and said he’d kill her, too.”
“Who, Mary?”
The woman gave another shrug. “Tommy Willard, I guess. The sonabitch likes to knock her around. Why’s he gonna kill you? I said, unless he doesn’t want you talking to the police. Maybe he had something to do with the dead body, I’m thinking. So we had a big fight. Lela was crying and screaming. But somebody was dead out there, and Tommy didn’t want her saying anything. And now I knew about it, and if we didn’t call the police, all of a sudden I’m some kind of accomplice. I don’t know what her and Tommy been up to, and I got my kids to think about. So I called nine-one-one. Lela was crying hard and saying how she hated me and how we were both going to pay. Cops were here in five minutes. Said she had to take them out to the Dives and show them where she’d seen the hand. She was shaking so hard, she could hardly walk. She said nobody could see her driving around in some cop car. I had to get my neighbor to watch the kids so I could ride with her over to the Dives.”
Killing Raven (A Wind River Reservation Myste) Page 6