Eye of the Wolf

by Margaret Coel

  The woman opened the door wider, a mixture of distrust and curiosity moving through her thin face. She was still a teenager, Vicky guessed, dressed in jeans and a baby blue tee shirt that looked too small. She had the reddened eyes and the lifeless look of a meth addict.

  “Who are you?”

  “Frankie’s lawyer. Will you please get him.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  Vicky placed one hand on the door trying to hold it open, but it slammed shut. She was conscious of the wind gusting around the yard now, pitting her face with little flecks of moisture. She gave the door another rap. “I’m not going away,” she shouted.

  A couple of minutes passed before the door inched open again. “He’s not here.” The girl was in the shadows, and her voice sounded far away.

  “Right,” Vicky said, starting down the stoop. “Tell him not to call me when he gets arrested for murder,” she called over her shoulder.

  “Wait!”

  Vicky looked back. The girl had opened the door wider and jammed herself into the opening. “You think Frankie’s gonna get stuck with them murders?”

  “I’m positive of it.”

  “He’s innocent.”

  “A lot of innocent people end up in prison.”

  “He’s not here. I’ll see if I can find out where he is. Okay?”

  Vicky said that she’d wait in the Jeep. It was obvious the girl didn’t want to invite her inside, which was just as well because she didn’t want to go inside. She didn’t want to see whatever was there. It was enough to get a whiff of the odor.

  She crawled back into the Jeep and turned on the engine, trying to fight back the sense of futility that had dropped over her like a heavy blanket. At least the girl seemed to glimpse the trouble that Frankie could be in.

  Warm air was exploding from the vents as the girl came out of the house. Coatless, hugging her arms in the cold wind, she loped for the Jeep, and Vicky realized that she was almost barefoot, nothing but thin-strapped sandals kicking and sliding through the mud and snow.

  Vicky rolled down the window, and the girl stuck her head in the opening. Specks of moisture clung to her long black hair and speckled the shoulders of the blue tee shirt. Behind the masklike set of her face was evidence that the girl might have been pretty not long ago—the finely pointed nose and full lips, the sharp cheekbones. She kept rubbing at her thin arms, which were purplish red with cold.

  “Frankie says he’ll see you at the office.” She seemed to find this amusing. For an instant the masklike face cracked into a barely perceptible smile.

  “And where might that be?” Vicky asked. She was tired of this game.

  “Cowboy over in Riverton.”

  “The bar?”

  “He said you’ll find him at his desk in back. Unless he feels lucky and decides to shoot some pool.” Also amusing, judging by the little laugh that gurgled out of the girl’s throat.

  “Tell you what . . .” Vicky had to stop to swallow back the disgust, a hard knot rising in her throat. A beautiful, young Arapaho girl mixed up with Frankie Montana, hanging out at a drinking house, strung out on drugs. “Frankie can call my office and make an appointment.”

  “I know you’re Vicky Holden.” The girl was leaning into the Jeep. Her breath had the sour smell of someone much older, someone sick. A kind of terror had come into her eyes. “You gotta help Frankie. All kinds of deputies been asking questions around the rez.”

  “Did they come here?” Vicky gestured with her head toward the house. No one inside would have opened the door, she was thinking, and unless they had a warrant, Detective Burton could only guess what was inside. But the next step would be a warrant, and who knew what circumstantial evidence Burton would find that could tie Frankie to the murders.

  “Not yet. But they’re gonna come around. I just don’t wanna . . .” She hesitated, a debate playing out behind her eyes. “I don’t wanna be here when they show up.”

  “Is that why you want me to help Frankie? To keep the law from poking around?”

  The girl flinched backward and blinked several times. “Frankie and me are in a relationship, you know what I mean? I’m his woman.”

  “You’re his woman,” Vicky said. The girl was probably all of seventeen.

  “Yeah. Maybe Frankie’s not the greatest, and maybe he gets a little crazy sometimes, and I don’t always know what he’s gonna do, but that’s when he’s . . .” Her features settled back into the lifeless mask, and it struck Vicky that the girl was good at donning the mask, like an actress.

  “So if you’re Frankie’s lawyer,” the girl hurried on, “you’re not gonna tell anybody what I say, right? I mean, you’re not gonna tell the deputies stuff that might hurt Frankie.”

  “You mean the fact that he drinks and probably uses drugs? I think they know.”

  “Well, that’s the only time he gets crazy, you know, when he’s drunk or . . .” She let the thought hang in the air between them.

  “Using drugs,” Vicky said. The girl blinked an affirmation.

  “He can’t go back to jail, Frankie can’t,” she said, the mask cracking again. “It about killed him when they locked him up over in Lander for hitting some guy. I mean, thrown into a cage like some animal in a zoo. I seen when he got out that he wasn’t the same. That’s when he started drinking big time and shooting up. That’s what made him crazy, that stupid jail. Would’ve gotten locked up again last year for breaking and entering, if you hadn’t got him off. Like them rich people’s houses up in the mountains wasn’t just begging to get broken into. I mean, they don’t even need them houses, ’cause they got big houses someplace else. Most the time, they don’t even go to them mountain houses, and all that stuff’s sitting in there, nobody using it. So Frankie took a few things. So what’s the big deal? No way was he gonna go back to jail. He’d do anything to stay out of jail. He’d even . . .”

  “What? What would he do?”

  “I don’t know,” the girl muttered. She started backing her head out of the Jeep, as if she’d like to reel back everything she’d said.

  “What would he do?” Vicky persisted.

  The girl was rubbing her arms hard and stomping her feet. Her teeth were chattering. “Forget it,” she managed. At that, she turned and started running for the house, still hugging her arms. The backs of her legs looked purple. The tee shirt was plastered against the knobs of her spine.

  “Tell Frankie to call me,” Vicky called, then she rolled up the window, put the gear in reverse and backed across the yard and out onto the road. That’s what made him crazy. He gets a little crazy sometimes. Vicky stared at the snow-splotched asphalt cutting through the patchwork of brown and white prairie. The girl’s words ran through her mind like an endlessly looping melody. She wondered how crazy Frankie had gotten on Saturday—how much booze, how many drugs? Maybe Frankie had decided to end the feud with Trent Hunter and the other Shoshones once and for all out at Bates.

  He’d do anything to stay out of jail. The rest of what the girl had said was rolling around in her head now. He’d even . . .

  Vicky could guess the rest of it. There was nothing Frankie Montana wouldn’t do to stay out of jail. He might even kill the three men who tried to put him there.

  She could almost believe it, except that Lucille didn’t think so. And that was the point, wasn’t it? It was Lucille who had confided that Frankie lied to the sheriff about his whereabouts on Saturday. She wouldn’t have mentioned that Frankie had lied if she thought her son might actually be guilty of murder. Lucille would have protected him.

  She gripped the steering wheel, pumping the brake pedal and pulling to the side at the same time. As soon as an oncoming pickup had lumbered past, slush spitting out from the tires, the motor growling, Vicky yanked the wheel around, made a U-turn, and headed toward Riverton.

  17

  SHE HAD ONLY a vague idea where the Cowboy was located. Somewhere on north Federal. She’d driven almost out of town and turned back before sh
e spotted the square building with the peaked roof and brown shingled sides and the parking lot in front. An assortment of vehicles crowded around the pole that hoisted a rectangular sign: “Cowboy Bar & Grill.”

  Vicky parked in an empty slot, grabbed her bag off the seat, and started around the old sedans and pickups. The muffled beat of a country song floated past the wood door. She pushed the door open and stepped into a long room that resembled a log cabin, with chinked log walls and iron chandeliers with fake candles hanging from the ceiling beams and cowboy music coming from speakers over the bar. A pale light washed over the plank floor that vibrated beneath her feet. It took a moment to adjust to the dim, smoky air.

  There was an odd mix of people about: three or four cowboys straddling the stools at the bar on the right and, sitting around the tables, groups of what might be college students—twenty-somethings with mussed hair and slept-in sweatshirts—hunched over books opened next to bottles of beer. The atmosphere was charged, as if each group resented the other.

  Vicky scanned the tables at the far end. At his desk in back. No sign of Frankie. She had the same feeling of futility: Frankie and the girl playing a little joke, laughing their heads off back at the house.

  Then she spotted him through the wide doorway across from the bar, standing next to a pool table, intent upon chalking a cue as if it were the most important thing he had to do.

  Vicky made her way around the tables. A couple of the college students looked up with blank eyes, their thoughts on whatever was in the books, probably aware of a change in the atmosphere as she’d walked by. But the eyes of the cowboys at the bar, they were following her.

  “Well, hellooo there,” one called. “Haven’t seen a classy lady like you around here.” The others joined in a laugh that rumbled down the long polished wood.

  “What can we get you?” The bartender leaned across the bar, joining in the fun.

  Vicky shook her head and kept going: around a couple of more tables, through the doorway, past a group of men huddled together, counting out dollar bills.

  Frankie looked up from the end of the pool cue. “Well, well,” he said, a satisfied grin spreading across his brown face. “You must’ve wanted to see me real bad.”

  “We need to talk, Frankie.”

  “Wait for me in my office. I’m just about to lift twenty bucks off this here white dude.” He poked the air with the cue toward the tall, blond man across the room.

  “I’m not waiting.” Vicky nodded at the pool table. “Your choice.”

  Frankie went back to chalking the cue. He crinkled his forehead and blew a little puff of chalk out over the green felt table. Then he tossed the cue to one of the cowboys who’d been peeling out bills. “Shoot this one for me, George,” he said. “Show this here college boy how to pocket them balls. I got me some business to attend to in my office.”

  Frankie sauntered past her, brushing her shoulder—deliberately, Vicky thought. She started after him into the main room. The bartender uncapped a beer, and Frankie scooped it off the bar as he passed, not slowing a beat. When he reached the last table, he dropped down in the wooden, barrel-shaped chair and tipped back, wrapping his boots around the front legs.

  “Be my guest,” he said, motioning with the beer bottle toward the chair across from him.

  Vicky glanced around. The nearest occupied table was a good twenty feet away. The music was still pouring out of the speakers over the bar—Willie Nelson, “Nothing I Can Do About It Now.” She hooked her bag over the back of the chair, sat down, and folded her arms on the table. Leaning forward, she locked eyes with the grinning man rocking his chair back and forth. “Let’s be clear about something,” she said, keeping her voice low, the words distinct. “Your mother came to see me today. She’s worried about you. That’s the only reason I’m here.”

  “So now you’re gonna be my lawyer again?” Frankie tossed his head back and gave a little snort. “Well, you don’t have nothing to worry about. I didn’t kill nobody.”

  “Detective Burton has you tagged as the prime suspect,” Vicky said. “He thinks you had the motivation, and you owned a rifle, which happens to be the weapon.”

  “I already told you.” Frankie dropped the front legs of his chair and leaned toward her, pressing his chest against the edge of the table. “What kind of lawyer are you, you don’t remember things? My rifle got stolen out there in the parking lot.” He lifted the beer bottle in the direction of the lot. “Some bastard broke my lock and took it out of the rack. You don’t believe me, go look at the broken lock.”

  Vicky didn’t say anything for a moment. Maybe Frankie was telling the truth. Maybe his rifle had been stolen, which meant that Trent Hunter and the Crispin brothers had lied to the police when they’d said that Frankie had a rifle when he’d assaulted them. It made sense, she thought. The Shoshones were fed up with Frankie. They could have lied about the rifle to make certain that Frankie didn’t slip out of the assault charge. Frankie would probably slip out anyway. She’d filed the motion to dismiss the assault charges, and the tribal judge had scheduled the hearing for next week.

  “You had the time to shoot the men Saturday,” she said.

  “No way. I got an alibi. I was home, tucked in safe and sound from Friday to Sunday. Ask my mom. Just her and me, watching TV. She fixed me some chicken soup and we . . .”

  Vicky held up one hand. “Stop it, Frankie. Tomorrow you won’t remember what kind of soup she made you. You might start thinking she made you tacos.”

  “Tacos, yeah. That’s good. She made me tacos.”

  Vicky waited a moment. Willie Nelson had finished and the clank of bottles filled in the quiet. Back in the pool room, somebody yelped, and somebody else let out a shout: “Okay!” When the music started again—some female singer that she didn’t recognize—Vicky said, “You’re willing to let your mother perjure herself for you?”

  “She’s gonna say what I tell her.”

  Behind her, Vicky heard the boots hitting the floor. She glanced up as the bartender walked up, leaned over, and rapped his knuckles on the table. Light gleamed on the man’s bald head. “This Indian even offer you a beer?” he asked.

  Frankie tilted back on his chair again and looked up at the man out of squinting eyes that barely masked contempt. Then the eyes turned to Vicky. “What d’ya want?”

  Vicky shook her head. “I won’t be here long.” She waited until the clack of the man’s boots was lost in the beat of the music before she said, “You know what I think, Frankie? I think you were at the drinking house.” She pushed on, ignoring the bolt of surprise that shot through his expression. “You were high on something. Maybe you were stoned senseless, I don’t know, but you don’t want Burton or any of the police on the rez near that house. So when he came to talk to you about the three murders, you said you were home. And you knew that your mother would back you up. All of your problems would go away. The house would still be safe and, with an airtight alibi and a witness, you couldn’t be charged with the homicides.”

  Frankie took a long swig of the beer and grinned at her, something like appreciation flickering in his eyes. “Maybe you’re okay after all,” he said. “You know, you’re pretty good looking for an older babe. Hard to think you got kids as old as me. How old are you? Forty something?”

  Vicky glanced at the fake-candle light dangling overhead. Then, looking back at the man, who was taking another swig from the bottle, enjoying himself, she said, “It won’t work, Frankie, all your scheming and dodging. Sooner or later, Burton’s going to find the house and talk to your girlfriend and whoever else hangs out there, and somebody’s going to tell the truth. That you were at the house Saturday. But you know what? They might not remember you there the entire day.”

  “Jennie’s gonna say what I tell her. She knows what’s good for her.” Frankie tipped the bottle back, drained the last of the beer, and, dropping the front legs of the chair onto the floor, set the bottle down hard on the table. “You’re so smart,
you got any better ideas?”

  Vicky leaned back. Another female singer now, something about a foolish love. There was a long riff on the guitar. It was possible that Frankie had bought himself time with his fake alibi. Just possible that Burton might look somewhere else and maybe by the time he’d figured out that Frankie was lying, he’d have the murderer. Unless . . .

  Vicky tried to push back the thought that she was sitting across from the man—the grinning, arrogant man—who had taken the lives of three human beings. She was aware of the smoke in the air, the acrid mix of beer and whiskey odors. She felt a slight nausea coming over her. A chair scraped over the floor, like a flat note on the guitar.

  “The way I see it,” Frankie said, still grinning, “I’m not going to prison for something I didn’t do.” The grin dropped from his face, replaced by a look of such hostility that Vicky blinked and pushed back hard against the rungs of her chair.

  “You know what that’s like? Locked up in a cage like a monkey? Nothing but concrete and steel everywhere you look. Concrete floor and walls, concrete bench, and concrete everywhere. A crummy cot with a crummy blanket and a stinking toilet. Noise twenty-four seven, shouting and cursing, and boots walking up and down outside, some smart-ass guard knocking his stick on the window and shouting, ‘Wake up, Indian!’ Like I was ever sleeping, and them bringing in some garbage on a tray and saying, ‘Breakfast.’ After the first two weeks, I couldn’t remember what the sky looked like. You know what that feels like? Not being able to remember the sky? Get it pictured in your head. I’m not rotting in some cell ’cause somebody decided to take out those Shoshones.”

  “You could end up in prison on drug charges, Frankie. The tribal judge could schedule a trial on the assault charges, and you could be banished from the reservation.”

  “You gonna be my lawyer, or what?”

  “It depends,” Vicky said. She waited a moment, then went on. “Are you going to follow my advice? Don’t say anything to anybody. Don’t lie. Just don’t say anything. If Detective Burton contacts you again, call me. And get yourself into a rehab program. Try to find a job.” The man had held jobs before. A series of jobs over the last five years, most of them dead end and low paying, but at least he had worked. “Make yourself look like less of a murder suspect,” she said.