Eye of the Wolf

by Margaret Coel

  It was a few moments before the medics emerged from the bedroom, carrying the stretcher with the small body nearly lost under blankets. He followed them outside, closing the door behind him. The crowd was larger now, like tumbleweeds bunched together on the sidewalk. An elderly woman with thin gray hair pulled the fronts of a red sweater around herself and came toward him. “Is she gonna be okay?” she asked.

  He said he hoped so.

  “I live across the street.” The woman nodded at a tan duplex nearly hidden behind a row of bushes. “Sure don’t like to see trouble come to young people.”

  A guffaw erupted from the crowd. “She brought it on herself, you ask me.” It was Mrs. Teters’ voice.

  The ambulance had started backing out of the drive and into the street. There was the sound of gears crunching. Then the ambulance burst forward, siren screaming.

  Father John started for the pickup, cutting around the crowd that still blocked the sidewalk. He slid behind the steering wheel, pulled a U-turn, and followed the ambulance toward Federal Boulevard.

  “YOU MUST BE Father O’Malley.” The woman standing in the doorway at the end of the corridor was probably still in her thirties, slim and beautiful with finely sculptured features and dark, intelligent eyes.

  Father John got up from the hard plastic chair where he’d been sitting for almost an hour. The emergency waiting room was familiar: the worn chrome and plastic chairs lining the walls, magazines thumbed through and wrinkled, tossed onto small tables, green vinyl floor gleaming under the fluorescent ceiling light. Dear Lord, he’d been here so many times.

  “I’m Eleanor Henderson, ER physician,” the woman said. She held out a hand with clear nails at the tips of long, graceful-looking fingers. Her grip was surprisingly strong. “We have Edie Bradbury stabilized, but she lost a lot of blood. She’s lucky she hasn’t lost the baby.” She paused. “It’s possible that she might abort. I think it’s best to keep her here for a day or two. In cases like this . . .” She paused again, and drew in her lower lip. “There’s always the danger that the patient may keep trying until she succeeds. She’s conscious, if you’d like to see her for a few minutes.”

  Father John followed the doctor down the corridor past a series of closed doors. Oblongs of white light washed over the beige walls and gleamed along the floor. A faint antiseptic odor hung in the air.

  The doctor stopped and nudged open a door on the right. “You’ll find her in there,” she said.

  Through the slim crack, Father John could see the foot of a gurney. He pushed the door back and stepped into a bright room barely large enough to accommodate the gurney and a bank of steel cabinets on the opposite wall. The contours of the slim figure made a slight disturbance in the white blanket draped over the gurney. The girl lay still, arms at her sides on top of the blanket, rows of gauze bandages running from her wrists to her shoulders. Dangling from a steel pole above the gurney was a clear plastic bag half full of liquid attached to a plastic tube that disappeared past the edge of the bandages near the girl’s elbow. There was a skeletal look about her face. She kept her eyes closed, but he had the sense that she was awake, and that, past fluttering eyelids, she’d seen him enter the room.

  “How are you feeling?” he said, touching her hand. Her fingers had dug into the folds of the blanket.

  It was a moment before the lips started to move, almost an involuntary reflex, he thought, around whatever words were trying to emerge. “Why’d you come?” she managed.

  “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “To the house.”

  He understood then. Edie Bradbury hadn’t expected anyone to stop by the house and find her in time.

  “I’m glad I did.” Her hand felt like a chunk of ice beneath his palm.

  “You should’ve let me alone. I don’t want to live anymore.”

  He was quiet a moment. Then he said, “What do you think Trent wants?”

  “What?” Her eyes flew open, and she stared up at him with such a mixture of grief and surprise that he had to force himself not to turn away.

  “Trent loved you,” he said. “Don’t you think he’d want you to go on? He’d want you to live. Try not to forget that.”

  The girl shifted her gaze away and stared upward into the light glaring through the plastic panels that covered the ceiling. “My baby?” she said, directing the question to the light.

  “You didn’t lose your baby, Edie.” The girl’s hand twitched beneath his own. It was a moment before he realized that she was crying. A faint sheen of moisture glistened at her temples.

  “He killed Trent.” She spoke so softly that Father John had to lean over to catch the words.

  “Who, Edie? Who killed him?”

  She stared up at him, eyes wide and bright with fear. “Jason said he was gonna make Trent pay, that he was nothing but an Indian. He went and shot him, so I wouldn’t have him anymore. I wouldn’t have nobody but Jason.”

  Father John started to say that she must tell Detective Burton what she’d just told him, then stopped himself. He knew by the fear burning in her eyes that she would never implicate Jason Rizzo in the homicides.

  “Is there anyone I can call for you?” She was shaking her head, but he pushed on. “How about your parents? Brothers? Sisters?”

  “My father, or whatever you want me to call him, took off so long ago, I don’t remember what he looked like,” she said, the words coming in a rushed whisper. “And Mom . . .” The girl tried for a laugh that sounded like a small hiccup. “Soon’s I turned fifteen, her boyfriend told her to tell me to get lost, so that’s what she did. So it was just me and Trent and the baby. Now it’s just me.”

  “And your baby.”

  “It’s not gonna be enough, Father.” She was sobbing now, a skim of moisture running over her temples and glistening on her cheeks.

  “If you like,” he said, “you can come to the mission. There’s a guest house . . .”

  “Sorry, Father.” The doctor slipped past the door. “We have a room ready for her now.”

  He pressed the girl’s hand a moment, trying to impart as much reassurance as he could, and said that he’d be back tomorrow. Then he made his way past the doctor and the two attendants who had crowded into the room and headed back down the corridor.

  As Father John walked into the waiting room, a large man spun around, blocking the path to the exit. He looked about thirty, with short reddish brown hair and a black mustache that curled upward toward flushed cheeks. He had on a black leather jacket that hung over the waist of his blue jeans and sported silver chains draped in a half-circle over the top of the sleeves and silver studs on the wide collar folded back over half of his chest.

  “You the priest?” He hooked his hands onto his hips.

  “Who are you?” Father John said. So this was Jason Rizzo, he was thinking.

  “I’m here for Edie, okay? You got a problem with that?”

  “What do you want?” Out of the corner of his eye, Father John saw the woman behind the counter on the left get out of her chair and step backward until she’d disappeared past the edge of a cabinet.

  “How come they let you see her, and they won’t let me? You must be special, that it? You being the Indian priest around here. Guess people like to lick your boots.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to see you,” Father John said.

  “That what she told you?” The man started tossing his head, a horse fighting the reins.

  Father John ignored the question. “How’d you know she was here?”

  “I got friends. Neighbor lady gave me the news when I stopped by the house. I hear Edie’s Indian sleazebag got himself shot. Few less redskins around here, and that’s okay by me. She should’ve listened to me. I warned her not to take up with Indians.” He was shaking his head, emitting a strangled noise, like a half-laugh. “What’s she thinking? That I’m gonna tolerate that kind of disrespect?”

  Somewhere behind them, a door squealed on its hinges.
Father John glanced around. A burly guard in dark blue trousers and a light blue shirt, holstered gun riding on his hip, walked over and stopped next to Jason Rizzo. “You’re gonna have to leave,” he said.

  Rizzo’s lip curled back into his mustache. “You ain’t got no cause.”

  “Let’s go.” The guard took hold of the man’s arm and, turning him around, walked him toward the exit. Leaning forward, he yanked open the glass door and waited until the other man had sauntered past.

  “I’ll be back,” Rizzo was shouting. Then he was darting around a brown pickup parked at the curb, lowering himself behind the steering wheel. He turned his head and glared through the passenger window as the pickup shot forward, laying down a trail of black exhaust that floated toward the door.

  14

  QUIET HAD SETTLED over the office, except for the sound of warm air escaping from the vents and the dim hum of the fluorescent lights overhead. Traces of moisture clung to the window in the conference room. Vicky read through the last page of the Endangered Species Act, then set the page onto one of the stacks that she’d arranged in rows along the polished table. She had the office to herself. No clacking keyboard, no telephone ringing. Adam had left for lunch fifteen minutes ago, and a few minutes later, Annie had poked her head through the door and said she was going to lunch. And—just to let her know—Adam would be back later than usual.

  Vicky pulled over a copy of the Wyoming Wolf Management Plan and thumbed through the pages. Then she fanned out the pages in one of the stacks. The sections matched. Ah, but here was the problem. In the first plan the state had submitted to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, wolves would be trophy animals in the northwestern part of the state. Everywhere else, wolves would be predators. They could be shot on sight. And what kind of place would it be? she thought. Everything tamed and controlled, and no more wildness? No more wolves? The plan had been rejected.

  She set the copy of the state plan to one side and picked up the folder marked “Proposed Wind River Wolf Management Plan.” Leaning back in the rounded leather chair, she opened the folder against the edge of the table and skimmed the first page. They were walking a fine line, she was thinking. The tribal plan had to agree with federal regulations as well as with whatever new plan the state was drafting. Adam was right. They would have to go to Cheyenne and meet with both the federal and state wildlife people.

  There was the smallest change in the atmosphere, an almost imperceptible stream of air rippling over the pages spread in front of her. Vicky sat very still. Nothing but the background noises of the office, the muffled noise of traffic on Main Street. Surely Annie had locked the front door when she’d left.

  And yet . . . someone was here. Vicky could feel another presence.

  She got up from the table, opened the conference room door, and walked down the hall that emptied into the front office. No one was there. The upholstered chairs, the small oak tables in the corners, Annie’s desk facing the door, file folders stacked next to the computer, the oak chair pushed into the well—all normal. Yet there was something unfamiliar about the room. She had the sense that she was seeing it for the first time through the eyes of a stranger.

  She was about to turn back into the hall when she heard the muffled scuff of footsteps on carpet. Across the office, next to one of the upholstered chairs, the door to her private office was closed. But Adam’s door a few feet farther along the wall—Adam’s door was ajar.

  Vicky walked past the secretary’s desk. “Adam?” she called, pushing the door open. The tentativeness in her voice hung in the air.

  “Oh, hello.” The woman across the room turned away from the window that framed a view of the redbrick building across the street, the gutters tipping forward under a ridge of snow. “I’m waiting for Adam. He must’ve stepped out for a moment.” She paused and gestured with her head toward the front office. She could be an actress, Vicky thought. Tall and gorgeous and young—How old could she be? Mid-twenties? Light brown hair sharply cut in slices dipped to the shoulders of her dark leather jacket, and black boots wrapped around her legs all the way to the hem of her tweed skirt. “I’ve been dying to see Adam’s office. You must be Vicky.”

  She was advancing across the carpet, past the desk, the side chair, blue eyes lit with enthusiasm, a slim hand extended. “I’m Samantha Lowe,” she said.

  She’d known who the woman was even before she’d heard the name. “Adam’s at lunch,” Vicky heard herself saying. She took the outstretched hand, aware of the tiniest whiff of perfume.

  “He’s left already?” The light in Samantha Lowe’s blue eyes dimmed with disappointment. “Oh, I was hoping to give him a ride to the restaurant. She wrapped both hands around a green bag and began kneading the leather. “He’s probably already there, wondering where I am.”

  “You’re meeting Adam for lunch?” Vicky heard the note of surprise in her voice.

  “Oh, I can’t tell you how helpful Adam’s been,” the woman bubbled on with all the lightness and enthusiasm of a teenager. “I guess I was pretty naïve thinking I could just move to town, hang out my shingle, and clients would beat a path to my door. Lander seemed like a great town to live in. All those historic buildings restored on Main Street, and flower planters and old-fashioned streetlights. I loved it, but I really didn’t know anything about the business side of setting up a practice. Thank goodness for Adam. He’s taken me under his wing and kept me from making a lot of costly mistakes.”

  She paused and drew in a long breath. “Well, I guess I don’t have to tell you,” she said, waving the slim white hand toward the front office. “I’m sure he’s done the same here. You and Adam must be very busy.” A confidential tone now, as if they were two girlfriends discussing their latest dates. “It must be wonderful to be in a firm with a lawyer who has so much experience. Adam says you’ve agreed to send clients my way. I’m very grateful.” She stepped forward.

  Vicky moved to the side of the door. “I’m sure Adam’s waiting,” she said, weak with the sadness and disappointment washing over her.

  The young woman slipped past. She was as slim as a shadow, Vicky thought, except for the high, rounded breasts that filled out the front of her leather jacket, the shapely hips, and the curve of her calf muscles beneath the leather boots. She opened the outer door and turned back. “We know,” she said, as if she wanted to underline the unspoken comment hanging between them, “that Adam Lone Eagle isn’t the type of man who likes to be kept waiting.”

  Then Samantha Lowe was gone, the blond hair and dark leather jacket moving past the rectangle of glass next to the door, starting down the stairs, as graceful as a ballerina.

  Vicky walked across the outer office and threw the lock on the door. Then she went into her private office, took her coat off the hanger behind the door, and pulled it on. Leaning over the desk, she scribbled a note for Annie: “I’m working at home this afternoon.” She lifted her briefcase and leather bag out of the desk drawer and went back to the conference room where she stuffed the management plans inside the briefcase before walking back through the quiet of the office and letting herself out, making sure the lock was set before she closed the door.

  Fool. Fool. Fool. What was she thinking? She headed around the corner of the building and down the narrow walkway that divided the brick walls from the parking lot, lifting her face into the chilly, moist air, the briefcase rigid at her side, one hand gripping the handle of the bag slung over her shoulder. From behind her came the slushy noise of traffic and the faint smell of exhaust. Why had she thought that a man like Adam Lone Eagle—who stopped women in their tracks when he walked by—could ever be faithful? He was like the chiefs in the Old Time. It was their duty—responsibility—to take many wives. But that was the Old Time, when a woman needed a man to hunt and bring her food to eat and skins that she could make into clothing and tipis. So she looked the other way when he took other wives. But this was now.

  Vicky stabbed her key into the lock of the Jeep until, fi
nally, the lock button jumped up. She didn’t need Adam Lone Eagle. She yanked open the door, threw her briefcase and bag across the front seat, and got in behind the steering wheel, shutting the door so hard that the vehicle seemed to rock. It was ironic, when you thought about it. After ten years with Ben Holden—ten years of lies—she’d sworn that she would never be so trusting again. So naïve, as naïve as Samantha Lowe peering out at the world through blue eyes that cast a lovely hue on everything.

  She had to jiggle the key in the ignition before the engine sparked into life. She’d have to break things off. That was as clear as the red sedan parked ahead. There could be nothing more between them. No more late dinners and long nights where he made her feel warm and comforted and not alone. Where he made her forget all that had been with Ben and all that would never be with John O’Malley—all the memories and yearnings—as she and Adam had floated together in what was present and possible.

  There would be nothing personal between them. Nothing but the law firm. Vicky shifted into reverse and shot backward into the lot. A horn blared. She hit the brake and glanced over her left shoulder at the orange sedan stopped behind her. Then she pulled back in and waited for the sedan to drive past, her thoughts on the law firm. Who was she kidding? Adam was not the kind of man to walk into the office every day, nod a pleasant good morning, sit down on the other side of the conference table, and hammer out some legal document, as if they’d never been lovers. There was a good chance he would want to dissolve the firm. He could open another office in Lander, go his own way. And take the tribal business with him.

  God, the horn was still blaring, like a cow bleating into the cold. “I’m waiting for you to go,” she said out loud. Then she dipped her head against the rim of the steering wheel. Adam would go, she thought.