The Man Who Fell from the Sky

by Margaret Coel

  Vicky jotted down notes below notes she had already made. At the top of the page she had written Interview with Luke Wolf. Member of the Wolf family. In the Old Time, the name was Soldier Wolf.

  “Why would she allege neglect? Is there any history of your neglecting your son?” Vicky could hear the tenseness in her voice. So much neglect and abuse on the rez. Women beaten half to death, children beaten. Drugs, alcohol, always some excuse. Other clients had sat across from her, claiming innocence. Never would hurt the wife or kids. No reason for a judge to issue a restraining order, keep him away from his own home, his own family. She had checked out the stories and found the judge had made the right call. She had advised her clients to go into rehab, get a job, turn their lives around. Then they could go back to court. She knew when the client walked out of her office, shoulders slumped, head thrust forward, that he was walking back to the drugs and the alcohol.

  “What did your ex-wife claim?”

  “I’m telling you, I took good care of Sam when he was at my place.” Vicky nodded. She wanted to believe him. She always wanted to believe. “Dorie’s girlfriend called her and said Sam was running the streets. So Dorie calls social services and says, ‘You got to get Sam away from that no-good dad of his.’ She’s got herself a boyfriend and she wants him to be Sam’s dad now. She told me they’re gonna be a family and she doesn’t need me screwing things up. My boy’s everything to me. All I thought about in Afghanistan was going home and watching him grow up.”

  Vicky scribbled more notes. Denies social services allegation. Never neglected child. Wife has ulterior motive. “You better start at the beginning,” she said. “What made Dorie’s friend call her?”

  “The woman’s a busybody. Lives next door to the place I’m renting in Riverton. Sam was outside playing in the backyard. No way was he running in the street. He’s four years old. I was keeping an eye on him.”

  “You were sober?” The question hovered over the desk.

  “I might’ve had a few beers. Don’t mean I wasn’t paying attention. Some lady from social services knocks on the door. She’s got a cop with her and next thing I know, I’m getting a Breathalyzer test and the lady’s driving off with Sam.”

  And that was critical, Vicky thought. The Breathalyzer test. She could guess the rest of it. Social services had entered the life of Luke Wolf and taken it over. “Did you admit to neglect?”

  He was nodding slowly. “Through no fault of my own. I made it clear, no fault of my own. Now I have to go to rehab, therapy, counseling. I got to take off work, and if I take off any more, I’m gonna lose my job.”

  “Let me get this straight.” Vicky set the pen down and looked at the man until he locked eyes with her. “The woman who made the allegation is a friend of your ex-wife’s.”

  “She and Dorie was in cahoots. I’m pretty sure Dorie had her watching my place every minute Sam was there, waiting for something to go wrong. Now all I got is supervised visitation rights. Can’t even see my boy without some old bag sitting there watching everything, listening to everything we say. And Dorie is claiming Sam has nightmares after he sees me, so she wants my visitation rights taken away.”

  She had seen it before, Vicky was thinking. A disgruntled spouse with future plans that didn’t include the father of her child. Usually, the mother trying to push the father out of the picture. “Has Sam seen a therapist?”

  “Oh yeah. Dorie takes him to some quack play therapist who says Sam acts scared and worried when he plays, ’cause he’s been neglected. It’s nuts. Sam’s scared he’s never going to see his dad again. You have to help me. I love that kid. I’d never neglect him.”

  “But you were drinking.”

  He nodded. “I had the TV on, but I was keeping an eye on the backyard. Sam was fine.”

  Drinking. It wasn’t going to be easy to convince the court to dismiss a dependency and neglect petition. “I’ll have to get records from social services and talk to the therapists,” she said. “Any witnesses who would testify to your good character?”

  “There’s my sister. My mother. Sam misses his grandma. They need to reconnect. I need to reconnect with my little boy.”

  “Anyone else?” What else would family members say? Luke’s a good guy. Never neglected his son.

  “You can ask the neighbors in the village where Dorie and me lived.” Vicky knew the housing area, Easter-Egg Village, with government houses painted pink, yellow, blue. “They’ll tell you they never heard any disturbances. No domestic abuse calls from our house. I took good care of her and Sam.”

  “Okay.” This was something to go on. She could confirm he had never been accused of neglect—or abuse—in the past. “I’ll need the names and telephone numbers of your family members and neighbors. I can request a court hearing to review social services’ finding.” She waited a moment before she plunged on. “There are no guarantees, Luke.”

  Luke Wolf got to his feet, hope flooding his expression. He was moving backward toward the beveled-glass doors, thanking her, thanking her, as if she had already gotten the petition dismissed. She could hear the phone in the outer office start to ring. He gave her a little salute as he yanked open the doors, then swung around and walked into the ringing noise that abruptly cut off. She heard Annie’s voice speaking to the caller, and the outside door slamming shut.

  Then Annie appeared in the doorway. “Call for you. He won’t give his name. Says it’s about Robert Walking Bear.”

  “Where is he calling from?”

  “The readout is Unknown. He sounds like he spoke Arapaho before he spoke English.”

  You could hear the familiar inflections on the rez, Vicky was thinking. She lifted the phone. “Vicky Holden.”

  “Robert sends you a message.”

  Vicky was conscious of her own breathing. In and out. In and out. She realized she was listening for what might come next, something that made sense, but the voice was silent.

  Finally she said, “If you mean Robert Walking Bear, he’s dead.”

  “His spirit’s not at rest.”

  “Who are you?”

  “The messenger.”

  “What’s your message?”

  “Be at the coffee shop at eleven forty-five.”

  Before Vicky could say anything else the line went dead. She got to her feet, went into the outer office, and told Annie to try to get the caller back. Annie jabbed at a couple of keys, then pressed another key for the speakerphone. First came the speeded-up sound of electronic blips, then the buzz of a ringing phone before the noise stopped, as if it had reached a natural end.

  “My guess, it’s a pay phone,” Annie said.

  “He wants to meet me at the coffee shop in thirty minutes.” It didn’t give her much time to get there. Her next appointment wasn’t until two o’clock.

  Roger had walked out of the back office and placed himself at Annie’s shoulder, a sheaf of papers in his hand. “Who wants to meet you?”

  “He wouldn’t give his name,” Annie said. “Most likely from the rez.”

  Vicky gave a nod of agreement “He says he has a message from Robert Walking Bear.”

  “You’re not going, I hope.” Roger leaned past Annie and set the papers on her desk. There was a self-assuredness about the man, the set of his broad jaw, the steadiness in his hands. “When you get a moment, I need these copied.” He looked up sharply. “You shouldn’t go.”

  “Ruth doesn’t know what happened to her husband. She has the right to know. Maybe this caller . . .”

  “Anonymous caller,” Annie said.

  “He may have information. The coffee shop will be crowded. I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Roger said.

  Vicky smiled. “If he sees my bodyguard, he won’t make contact.”

  It was close to noon and people were filing into the coffee shop. Vicky bough
t a cup of black coffee and carried it out to a small table on the sidewalk that two high school girls had vacated, leaving behind latte-smudged plastic glasses and crumpled napkins. She pushed them aside and sat down. A good place in full view of the door. People coming and going, white people mostly, a couple of businessmen in white shirts and blue jeans, a woman who looked Shoshone, swinging a briefcase. Chairs scraped the pavement as people sat down. A low tingling noise of conversation circled the tables. Vicky scooted her own chair out of the sun that beat down on the back of her neck and watched the traffic pass, half expecting a pickup or SUV to pull into the vacant space across the street and an Arapaho man to get out and hurry toward her. He had the advantage. She was the only Arapaho woman here.

  Roger strolled across the street as if there were nothing on his mind but a leisurely cup of coffee and a sandwich. Straight into the coffee shop, without a glance her way. She could see him through the plate glass window, queuing up at the end of the line, checking on her from the sides of his eyes. She sipped at her coffee and tried not to smile. She had felt alone lately, disconnected from her own people, from the best part of herself. But here were Roger and Annie making sure she wasn’t alone.

  Roger came out with a coffee mug in one hand, a wrapped sandwich in the other, and took the last vacant table over in the corner. She looked away, not wanting to catch his eye. The girl who had waited on her inside came walking over. “You Vicky Holden?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have a phone call.” She rolled her eyes toward the inside of the shop. “Manager says to tell you we don’t accept personal calls at the shop. He’s willing to make a one-time exception.”

  Vicky pushed back from the table and followed the girl inside. The air was heavy with the sweet odors of baked pastries and fresh coffee. The phone dangled on a curly cord from the white box on the wall at the end of the counter. “Manager says to make it short,” the girl said as Vicky walked over and picked up the phone.

  “Vicky Holden. Who is this?”

  “Robert sends you a message.”

  “Robert . . .” Vicky let the word hang on the line. Dishes clattered, a door slammed shut. “What is this all about. You know he’s dead.”

  “Murder.”

  “What?”

  “Robert can’t rest until he gets justice.”

  “You’re saying he was murdered? Who are you and how do you know this?”

  “I seen it happen.”

  “You should go to Ted Gianelli, the FBI agent. He’s handling the investigation.”

  “So he can investigate me? I don’t think that’s a good idea. I seen it, I know what happened, so I must’ve done it, right? He’ll listen to you.”

  “I don’t know anything about what happened.” A man in a white apron standing behind the counter turned and glared at her.

  “You’re a lawyer. You know the fed and the coroner; they know you. You can tell them the truth.”

  “The truth? Who are you? This is crazy . . .” Vicky realized the line was dead, as inert as the countertop she leaned against. The man in the white apron was shaking his head at her. She replaced the phone and went back outside. An elderly couple had taken her table and stashed her coffee mug against the empty plastic glasses and wadded napkins. She kept going without looking at Roger. Down the sidewalk, around the corner to where she had left the Ford. A white truck gunned past. She wondered if the anonymous caller were behind the wheel, if he had been watching her go into the shop to take the call. Ruth was sure that her husband’s death was an accident, and it looked like an accident. My God! Murder!

  She slid onto the hot leather seat, started the engine, and rolled down the windows. The wind stirring around her was hot and dry. She couldn’t shake the image of the lake where Robert had died. Water lapping the rocks, darkening the dirt and sand. Brush sagging into a swamp at the edge of the lake. And farther along the road, the ash-strewn circle of a campfire. Someone could have been watching the lake, watching the truck barreling toward the road and stopping. The driver’s door opening, Robert getting out. A passenger getting out the other side. What if Robert hadn’t fallen into the lake and drowned? What if someone else had been involved and whoever was at the campsite had seen the whole thing? I seen it happen.

  She tried to shrug off the idea. An alternate story, that was all. The oldest trick in the defense lawyer’s handbook: feed the jury an alternate story of what could have happened, even if there was no evidence that it had happened, and the jury will find it difficult to convict beyond a reasonable doubt. Always the possibility something else could have happened. There was no evidence anyone had been present at the campsite when Robert died. But there were tire tracks to the campsite. Tire tracks that could have been a week old. Left over from last summer.

  But if what the caller said was true, he had witnessed a murder, and if he had seen the murderer, chances were good the murderer had seen him. Which meant he was in danger. A man frightened of coming forward, frightened that Gianelli would scrutinize him instead of following up on what he had to say. Frightened the killer would learn his identity and come after him. Surely he would have identified the killer if he had recognized him. He would have given her something concrete to take to the fed. What he had given her was useless, a tiny spark catching in her mind. She knew she would not be able to ignore it.

  She dug her cell out of her bag and tapped in the first numbers of Gianelli’s office, then ended the call. She wanted to go back to the lake and have another look around, but first she wanted to talk to the white man who had found Robert’s body.

  The small, white shop with Fergus Auto Body painted in black letters across the front window stood on the south side of Main Street. A bell over the door jangled when Vicky entered. The place was all brown—vinyl floor, paneled walls, and counter. Voices came from behind the rear wall. Vicky stepped to the counter and pressed a metal bell. It was a couple of minutes before a large man with dark, curly hair and big arms came through the back door. “Help you?”

  Vicky said she would like to speak to Alan Fergus, and the man nodded, as if to say, You found him. Then she told him she was a friend of Ruth Walking Bear’s.

  “Real sorry about her husband,” Fergus said. “Sure a shock for my boy, seeing the body. I’ve told the FBI agent all I know.”

  “I went to the lake after Robert died,” Vicky said. “There were a lot of tire tracks, but the coroner, the FBI agent, and other law enforcement had been there. I was hoping you might remember if there were tracks other than those from Robert’s pickup.”

  The man tapped thick fingers on the countertop and squinted toward the window behind her. “Maybe,” he said. “I wasn’t paying real close attention. Might have been tracks around a campsite where I turned around.”

  “The campsite farther along the road?”

  “Yeah. Hard to tell for sure.”

  10

  THE ROAD SEEMED steeper, the curves tighter. Occasionally columns of deep, black shade blocked the sun. Vicky gripped the wheel, keeping an eye out for rocks that might have hurtled downslope since yesterday. She had called Annie before she started into the mountains and asked her to reschedule her afternoon appointments. “Where are you?” Annie had wailed. “Roger saw you leave the coffee shop. By the time he got to his car, you had driven off.” She had told her secretary she talked to the man who had found Robert’s body and was now on her way to Bull Lake. That had brought on another wail. “You’re going alone?” She told Annie all of it then, what the caller had said, the fear that had come down the line like an invisible current.

  Now it was the conversation with the anonymous caller that ran through her mind. Robert, murdered. It didn’t make sense. Surely if he had been murdered, there would have been a sign of struggle. Something indicating his death had been violent. But the coroner had even suspected Robert might have drowned himself. And something else that didn’
t make sense: why had the caller waited so long to come forward?

  Come forward? She gave a scoff of laughter. He hadn’t come forward at all. He was hiding in anonymity, expecting her to go to the fed with his crazy accusation. And not even an accusation. He hadn’t accused anyone, which meant he might not know the so-called killer. Or if he did know the killer, he hadn’t wanted to name him.

  She came around another curve and plunged into a long, black shadow that felt like an eclipse of the sun. Then out again into the clear, bright light. In the rearview mirror, she saw a white truck dart into the shadow. A lot of white trucks in the area. She had no reason to believe it was the truck she had seen at the coffee shop. But the feeling of unease crept over her like invisible insects. There hadn’t been any other traffic on the road; she had been completely alone, just her and the mountain. Now someone was behind her. She pressed down on the accelerator and took the next curve so fast that the Ford rocked on the axles. She kept going, wanting to put as much distance as she could between herself and the white truck, and all the time telling herself this was a public road, she didn’t own it.

  But Robert hadn’t come here to die. He had never been depressed, Ruth said. He was exuberant about life, excited about what he was doing. On a treasure hunt! He hadn’t come to be killed! Had he known a killer was waiting, he wouldn’t have come.

  The lake below came into view, smooth and placid, rolling shades of deep blue and purple edged with silver in the sunlight. A beautiful place, she was thinking, to die.

  God! She was as crazy as the caller, buying into his story. Most likely the cause of death was accidental drowning. Why couldn’t she leave it at that? Refuse to take any more calls from Anonymous and let the fed handle whatever might come next.

  But that was the problem. Something terrible might come next. The caller could be in danger. She had heard the terror running below the confidence in his voice. The same masked terror she had heard in the voices of witnesses testifying against their will, scared almost into incomprehension, eyes bobbing around the courtroom—the floor, the ceiling—everywhere except on the defendant they were condemning.