“You’re the one who’s going to pull the trigger, Dennis?” Vicky said. “You’re going to kill your own people?”
The Indian was quiet. The gun bobbed in his hand.
“He’s an apple,” Adam said. “Red on the outside, and whiter than white on the inside. Enjoys doing the white man’s dirty work.” He made a sucking noise and spit a wad of phlegm onto the ground. “He’s like the Indians that led the soldiers to the villages.”
“Yeah?” Dennis took a step forward. The barrel looked like an abyss rising toward them. “I’m alive. You’re dead.”
“I believe that’s enough.” Lexson waved at Light Stone and Barrenger. “Take them over into the trees.”
“You know what happened to the Indians that betrayed their own people?” Vicky said. “The white men killed them, Dennis. They used them and killed them because they couldn’t really trust them. Lexson doesn’t trust you, either, Dennis.”
“I’ve heard enough,” Lexson said. “Pull the trigger.”
Vicky saw the hesitation, like the flare of a light behind the Indian’s eyes. “That’s why Lexson had you hide in the hotel for five days,” she hurried on. “He was afraid you’d start thinking about what Captain Monroe said, how the casino is a den of thieves ripping off our people. Sooner or later Lexson’s going to start thinking about how much you know. And he doesn’t like to take risks, Dennis.”
“Pull the trigger now, Dennis!”
“Listen to Vicky,” Adam said. “Lexson’s going to kill you. Don’t you have a wife? He’s going to kill her, too, and anybody else he thinks you talked to.”
Vicky moved toward the Indian. “The ancestors will turn from you. They won’t claim you. You’ll walk the earth through eternity . . .”
“Now, Dennis!” Lexson shouted.
The gun jerked upward as Dennis swung toward the man next to him. There was a moment, one awful moment, when Lexson’s mouth opened in a wide, unbelieving circle and his eyes turned white with fear before the gunshot shattered the air and his cheek exploded into little pieces of flesh and skin and a fountain of blood.
“Bastard!” Barrenger lifted the shovel and smashed it into Dennis’s head. The Indian staggered sideways, surprise and pain shooting through his expression, then stumbled onto his hands and knees. The gun slid over the ground. Barrenger lifted the shovel again, but Adam was already diving for him. He caught him around the waist and rammed him backward. The shovel clattered against the van. The air was punctuated with grunts and the sharp sound of fists smashing into flesh. And then Barrenger lay sprawled on his back, arms and legs splayed, chest heaving. His glasses lay smashed next to his head. Adam stood over him, gulping in air.
The gun, Vicky thought. Where was the gun? Stepping around Light Stone’s still form, she spotted the silver sheen in the dirt near the van. Adam had spotted it, too, she realized, and had dropped to his knees reaching for it.
Out of the corner of her eye, Vicky saw Barrenger push himself to his feet and lunge for the shovel.
“Adam, look out!” she yelled, but the man had already lifted the shovel overhead. She heard herself scream as Adam turned toward the shovel that smashed into his face.
He crumpled sideways, groaning, and drew his knees up to his chest. Black blood pooled across his face, like oil seeping from the ground.
Vicky started for him, then stopped. Barrenger had moved between them, lifted the shovel again, face contorted in rage, eyes narrowed almost shut.
“Get down on the ground,” he said. “First I’m going to have a piece of you.”
35
FATHER JOHN SAW the lights glowing in the trees below the bluff. He held down the accelerator and went airborne over the ruts. The tires skidded back over the hard ground, the banging noise in the engine as insistent as the beating of his own heart. It was a moment before he realized the engine had stopped and the pickup was moving forward on momentum.
He jiggled the key in the ignition and pumped the gas pedal, but the pickup was starting to grind to a stop. He flung open the door, jumped out, and started running, surrounded by silence, like the void at the end of the world.
The gunshot came out of nowhere, crashing around him like a strike of lightning.
“No!” he shouted, running as hard as he could for the edge of the bluff, plunging past the pickup’s headlights and into the darkness. He was at the dropoff when he saw the van below, lit up like a cabin in the trees, the interior lights shining in the windows, the headlights running through the moonlight and shadows.
Next to the van was Vicky, a figure looming over her, their shadows merging with the shadows of the trees.
Father John started down the steep pitch of the two-track, his boots sliding in the dirt. At the bottom, he headed into the trees, his eyes still on the glow of lights. The branches scraped at his hands and tore at his shirt. He was still about thirty feet away when he heard Vicky scream into the night.
He sprinted across a clearing for the van, his consciousness concentrated into a pinprick of reality that he grasped in pieces: A man was looming over Vicky, lifting a shovel over his shoulder like an ax.
Father John threw himself against the man and grabbed hold of his neck. His other hand went for the shovel. The man was gasping, coughing as Father John gripped the splintery wood handle and yanked it forward and backward until it floated free. Then he pulled the man’s head back until he feared he’d snap his neck. He let up a little and, with his other hand, took hold of the man’s right arm, and, yanking it up along his spine as hard as he could, pushed him down over the hood of the van. The man let out a long gasp, like air escaping from a tire.
“I’ve got the gun,” Vicky shouted behind him.
He didn’t take his eyes away. His fingers were glued to the man’s wrist, pressing his arm into his spine. With his other hand, Father John gripped the man’s shoulder and rammed it hard against the hood. It was then that he realized the man was Barrenger.
“Take it easy.” Barrenger was gulping in air, and Father John could feel his lungs inflating beneath the sweat-soaked shirt. His own lungs were burning; his heart hammering.
“It’s okay, John,” Vicky said, quieter this time. He was aware of her beside him, arms outstretched, a gun gripped in both hands. “I’ll shoot him if he moves.”
Father John took in a couple of breaths. “I’ll tell you what you’re going to do,” he said, giving the arm a jerk upward that made Barrenger cry out again.
“You’re going to get down on your stomach. Got it? You heard what Vicky said. One wrong move, and she’ll shoot you.”
The man was nodding. Gasping. Nodding.
Father John eased up on the arm, then let it go. It dangled over Barrenger’s buttocks a moment, like a bobbing fish. Gradually he moved the arm sideways and pulled himself up from the hood, rubbing at his shoulder.
“Get down.” Father John tightened his grip on Barrenger’s other shoulder. He thought he heard sirens in the distance, but he couldn’t be sure he wasn’t imagining the sound, he wanted so much for the sirens to be there.
Barrenger dropped to his knees, then to his hands before flattening himself against the ground.
“Take the gun, John.” Vicky thrust the black metal object at him. “I’ve got to see about Adam.”
Father John gripped the handle still warm from her hand and backed up, taking in the scene for the first time. Barrenger on his stomach near the front of the van, still gasping and coughing; another man lying unconscious behind the van. Indian, it looked like, his black hair matted with blood. Not more than five feet away was the body of a third man, still and lifeless, half of his face gone. Father John realized that it was Stan Lexson.
And Vicky, kneeling beside Adam Lone Eagle, who was curled to one side, arms wrapped around his knees, rocking and groaning. She had torn off a strip from the man’s shirt and was pressing the wadded cloth against his cheek.
Dear Lord, what went on here? Who had the gun? Lexson? Maybe, Father Jo
hn thought, then discarded the idea. A man like Lexson didn’t do his own dirty work. He gave it to someone who worked for him. Who? Barrenger was wielding the shovel, not the gun. That left the Indian with the smashed head. Or Adam.
Father John looked back at Vicky. She was sobbing quietly. “It’s all right, Adam,” she kept saying, soothing him. “Everything will be all right.”
Father John understood now. It was the other Indian who’d had the gun. The other Indian who was supposed to kill both Adam and Vicky, but, for some reason, had turned the gun on the man who was his boss.
He looked away. Through the trees, he could see the red and blue lights flashing on the bluff. The sirens were louder now; they were real.
36
ACROSS THE BROWN stretch of land, the white house shimmered in the sun. All around was nothing but empty earth melting into the blue sky. Vicky drove with the windows down, the summer smells of unplowed dirt and wild grasses blowing through the Cherokee.
Lately she’d been noticing everything about the reservation, imprinting the sights and smells and the quiet in her mind so that she would remember, if she had to leave. With each passing day, the possibility seemed more real. She didn’t want to leave; the reservation was home. But she couldn’t stay if she couldn’t make a living practicing law. And she couldn’t practice law if she didn’t have any clients.
The phone had stopped ringing. Last week, she’d had to let Esther go, and this morning, when the phone rang, she’d been so surprised, she’d stared at the inert object a moment, wondering if the sound was real, before she’d finally answered.
“That you, Vicky?” the voice of Will Standing Bear had boomed over the line. “Sure is a pretty day,” he’d begun. And then had followed several moments of pleasantries before he said, “Sure would like to visit with you, if you got time one of these days.”
Oh, she had the time all right. A procession of empty days stretched ahead. “I can come by this afternoon,” she’d told the elder.
Lexson had been right about one thing, she thought, watching the road flow toward her, like a stream coursing through an arroyo. Nobody liked a whistle blower. The day after Lexson was killed, the Business Council had closed the casino, and a couple hundred jobs had melted away, including her own. Her people blamed her. Not Lodestar Enterprises or Stan Lexson, even though the FBI had launched an investigation into the casino operations. A dozen employees, including Matt Kingdom, had already been charged with conspiracy to commit fraud, loan sharking, tax evasion.
Some of those charged were people Kingdom had placed in jobs—people he could trust to look the other way when the casino skimmed profits, took cash out of the register in the restaurant, altered the books in the hotel to show fewer rooms rented. Of course Kingdom had trusted them. He’d gotten them good jobs, and even if he took a cut of the paychecks, they still owed him. Her people had even spoken up for Kingdom at last week’s Business Council meeting. He’d gotten them jobs, they’d said.
She could imagine the rumors flying over the moccasin telegraph during the days she spent giving statements to Gianelli and the Wind River police.
A traitor to the people. She’d explained how the casino had been siphoning off money. Don’t belong here. She’d gone over the details about the night Barrenger and the pit boss—Felix Slodin from Mississippi—had taken her to the casino. She’d even gone back to the hotel room with Gianelli and three other agents and explained how she’d jumped from the balcony. She remembered looking down at the asphalt lot eight floors below and swallowing back the acid in her throat to keep from being sick.
Now she was left with a couple of old cases to wind up, a client or two in need of help, including Catherine Bizzel. It had taken some talking to get the district attorney to agree to a plea bargain. It was the woman’s first offense. Fifty-two years of a worthy life; a moment of desperation. Instead of going to prison, Catherine would make restitution. That would take a couple years, Vicky knew, but John O’Malley was willing to let the woman work off her debt at the mission no matter how long it took.
Vicky turned into the dirt yard and tried to set her tires in the ruts leading to the house. The tailgate of a brown truck jutted out from the corner, which meant Will and Josephine were home, most likely in the brushshade. Vicky took the brown bag of gifts and started around the house, making her way down a column of shade between the truck and the paint-chipped siding. She found the old couple seated inside the brushshade, the elder over a newspaper, the grandmother drawing a needle and thread through a piece of fabric. Drops of sunshine fell through the branch walls and spattered the dirt floor.
“Have yourself a chair,” Will said, looking up and beckoning her forward.
Vicky stepped inside, dropped the brown bag on a folding chair, and sat down at the table, aware that the elders were reading her manner like a book. They’d heard the gossip on the moccasin telegraph, gossip that hadn’t reached her. It was the reason Will had called, and for half an instant, she regretted having come. It was the elder who would admonish her, tell her she’d overstepped, done more than he’d expected. She’d brought about the closing of the casino.
“Get yourself some fry bread and coffee,” Josephine said, nodding toward the plastic covered bowl, thermos, and stack of mugs in the center of the table.
Vicky thanked the old woman and explained that she’d eaten not long ago—breakfast, hours ago; she had no appetite—hoping she didn’t sound ungrateful. It was impolite to refuse a gift, especially a gift as precious as food.
They talked about the weather, the upcoming powwow—awkward snatches of conversation thrown like a blanket over the real subject. The people had been cheated, that was true, but they’d had something. Now they had nothing.
Finally, Will went quiet, drawing into some deep place within himself. Then, in a low voice, he said, “You did right by the people, Vicky. Maybe they don’t know it now they got themselves all worked up about the casino, but they’re gonna know it soon.”
Vicky felt a wave of relief. No matter what the spectators in the courtroom might think, the judge who mattered the most had found her not guilty. “Thank you, grandfather,” she managed.
“Casino ain’t gonna stay closed forever,” the elder went on. “What we gotta get are some honest people that know how to run the place. Business Council’s already interviewing companies that want to work for us.”
Vicky glanced away. The wind whistled through the branches. In her mind, she could see the companies, an ever-widening black circle of ravens over the casino. What would prevent them from stealing from her people?
“Before the council makes any decision”—Vicky turned her attention back to the elder—“they’re gonna appoint a commission with five people on it. Not just three where a strong chairman can run things.” He shook his head and stared off into the distance a moment. “Matt Kingdom was a smart man.”
“Maybe too smart,” Josephine put in.
“Darn right, he was too smart,” Will said. “He seen how Lexson was gonna rob the people. All that money flowing away, so he decided to get himself some. Money ain’t gonna do that Indian any good in prison.”
The old man sighed, then went on. “New commission’s gonna have five smart people investigate the companies that wanna run the casino. Then the commissioners are gonna oversee all the operations. The elders asked Billie Lean Bear to come home and help the people,” he said, and Vicky understood that Will was the elder who had called Lean Bear. “Remember Billie? Been an accountant in San Francisco last fifteen years. And we got us a couple guys with good business experience.” He named two other Arapahos who had left the reservation for an education and never returned.
So the tribe was calling back the best, Vicky thought. She could imagine Will’s pitch on the telephone: The people need you; you gotta help.
“About all we need now is a good lawyer or two.” A hint of amusement flashed in the old man’s eyes. “You know any?”
“I could think of
a couple,” Vicky said.
“You think they’d be willing to help the people?”
“If the people wanted them.”
“We want ’em, that’s for sure. Lawyers you’re thinkin’ of, could they be that Arapaho lawyer in Lander and that Lakota lawyer?”
“Could be.”
“You tell ’em the commissioners are gonna get paid real good. Business Council figures the casino’s gonna have a lot more profits, once people ain’t stealing. You think them two lawyers are gonna be interested?”
Vicky smiled at the irony. She’d been working at the casino—for a bunch of crooks—caught between her duty toward her clients and her duty toward her people. Now she’d be working at the casino, but her clients would be her people.
She said, “I suspect it’s the best offer either one of those lawyers has had in a while.”
“Soon’s the casino gets up and running again, the people are gonna see all the profits that should’ve been coming in. Business Council thinks it’s gonna be a couple million more this year. That’s when people are gonna thank you, Vicky.” Will kept his eyes on hers. “Josephine and me, we’re thanking you now, daughter, just to hold on ’til the people get around to it.”
THERE WAS A lightness to the evening, Vicky thought, as she drove back across the reservation. The sun was still riding over the mountains, and a mixture of shadows and light played across the land and the houses springing up here and there. She passed the casino, the blue neon sign dark, the parking lots empty, a diminished look to the walls of stucco, the rows of empty balconies, the expanse of glass across the entrance, as if everything the casino had promised, those large and grand promises, had been deflated, reduced to a more manageable size, a better size.
She was still a half-block from her apartment when she spotted Adam’s green truck parked at the curb. She pulled in close behind. He was already walking toward her before she got out. The large red scar across his cheek made her want to cry.
Killing Raven (A Wind River Reservation Myste) Page 24