Wife of Moon

by Margaret Coel

  He perched on the edge of the desk, not taking his eyes from her. “Talk to me,” he said.

  “T.J.’s disappeared.” She stopped pacing for half a second, as if to make sure he’d heard. Her eyes were clouded with worry, and little worry lines dug into her forehead. Then, moving again: “I talked to Vera a little while ago. She’s beside herself with worry. T.J.’s been gone for almost two days. I think he’s cleared out of the area.”

  “Why would he do that?” Father John asked, but he was beginning to understand. There was only one reason for T.J. to flee, and that was why Vicky was here.

  “Suppose he’s guilty, John.” Pacing again, combing her fingers through her hair.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, arranging the facts in his mind. Logic was in the facts. “T.J. was at his office when Denise was killed. I talked to him after he’d found her. He was devastated. He blamed himself . . .”

  Father John broke off. Vicky was staring at him with such intensity in her eyes that he had to force himself not to look away. It couldn’t be true, he thought. He’d known T.J. and Denise for eight years. He couldn’t imagine that it was true.

  “He wasn’t at the office Monday evening,” Vicky said. Her voice was low, almost apologetic. “His alibi isn’t worth dirt, and he knows it. It’s taken me less than a couple of days to prove he was lying. It probably took Gianelli less time than that. T.J. took off because he knows he’ll be indicted.”

  Vicky walked over and stood in front of him. He could feel the charge in the air between them, his own worry mixing with her anger and disappointment. “What T.J. doesn’t know is that he has another alibi. All he has to do is come back and explain that he’d been protecting his girlfriend in Riverton. Marnie Rankin. An insurance agent. Blond, beautiful, and stupid about men. She’ll swear to anything that T.J. says. All I’d have to do is put her on the stand and listen to her lie. Someone on the jury will believe her and persuade the rest of the jury of reasonable doubt. T.J. will walk out of the courtroom a free man.”

  “You spoke to the woman?”

  Vicky nodded and went back to pacing. “I could feel her desperation. She’d do anything to keep T.J.”

  “Okay, Vicky,” Father John said, trying to arrange what she was saying into a logical order that made sense. “Let’s say the woman is lying and T.J. wasn’t with her Monday evening. That means T.J. hasn’t told the truth about where he was. It doesn’t mean he killed Denise.”

  Vicky walked over and stared out the window. “Eight months ago, T.J. bought one hundred thousand dollars worth of life insurance on Denise. That isn’t all. Denise found out about Marnie Rankin and intended to divorce him. T.J. wouldn’t have wanted a divorce. He was proud to be married to the great-granddaughter of Sharp Nose. It gave him status. So, he has motive and he had the opportunity.”

  She turned back to him, and for a moment he thought she might start to cry. “I had this crazy idea that I could become a lawyer and make a difference. I could help people who didn’t have anywhere else to turn—Indians who didn’t know they had any rights. I wanted to make sure the system recognized their rights.” She looked away again and ran the palm of one hand across her cheeks. “I didn’t become a lawyer to help wife murderers walk free.”

  He understood now. “Listen, Vicky,” he said, his voice low and calm. “This isn’t about you and Ben. T.J. isn’t Ben, and you aren’t Denise.”

  “Oh, God.” Vicky dropped her face into her hands a moment. “I’m supposed to be professional. When I think of T.J. now, I see Ben’s face. He would have killed me if I hadn’t left.”

  “You’re human, Vicky, that’s all. A human lawyer.” He let the quiet settle around them a moment. “You could tell T.J. to find another lawyer.”

  She started pacing again. Shaking her head. Pacing. “Believe me, I’ve thought about it. But everyone on the rez would think that I knew that T.J. was guilty. Even if he was acquitted, no one would ever believe him or trust him again. He’d have to leave the rez.”

  “Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? You don’t know that T.J. is guilty.” He paused. “You don’t have to be the judge, Vicky. You just have to make sure that the man’s rights are protected.”

  Vicky threw her head back and laughed. It sounded like a strangled cry. “You sound like Adam,” she said.

  Oh, yes, Adam. There was Adam Lone Eagle now, hovering like an invisible presence beside her. Father John looked away. He wanted her to be happy. He prayed for her to be happy and at peace. He wanted her to go on with her life and have a future. He just hadn’t counted on Adam Lone Eagle as part of the future.

  Father John stood up and walked over to the window. Walks-On was stretched into a patch of sunshine on the sidewalk in front of the residence. Gold flashed in the cottonwoods, and in the distance, the mountains looked purple, rimmed in orange. Of course there would be another man for her, he thought. There would be Adam.

  “Guilty or innocent,” Vicky was saying behind him. “Adam says it doesn’t matter. Just give the man the best defense possible.”

  And then she was next to him. He felt a jolt of surprise at the sadness in her eyes when he turned toward her. “Is anybody what he seems, John? Is everyone just a collection of images that they project to hide who they really are? I’ve known T.J. most of my life, but I didn’t know him at all. He could be a murderer.”

  She turned and went back to the desk. “I thought I was getting to know Adam. We’ve gone to dinner, talked a lot. Two lawyers, both lonely, looking for true love and all the other clichés. That was us, I thought.” She waved one hand, as if to dismiss the whole of it. “The only thing Adam’s interested in is a law partner. He thinks we should start a firm together.” She gave a little laugh. “What is it you baseball players say? I’m striking out here. Marnie Rankin and I, both holding onto some image in our head that has nothing to do with reality. She’s convinced herself that T.J. loves her, even after he’s broken up with her.” She stopped. “What, John? What is it?”

  The questions took him by surprise. It was if she had seen the questions forming at the edge of his own mind, no more than shadows. “Did the woman say why T.J. had wanted to end the relationship?”

  “Another woman. What else?”

  Father John went back to the desk and sat down in the chair, trying to remember what Damien had told him: how he’d gone to the tribal headquarters to see T.J. and Savi Crowthorpe in an attempt to include St. Francis Mission in Senator Evans’s visit to the reservation. Suppose Christine had gone along to talk about the Curtis exhibit and the way it combined Arapaho culture and history. Suppose she’d mentioned that she wanted to identify people in the Curtis photos and was looking for members of the Sharp Nose family. Suppose T.J. had introduced her to his wife.

  “What are you thinking?” Vicky asked, the same intensity lighting her eyes.

  “The curator at the museum disappeared Monday night,” he began.

  “Oh, John.” She interrupted. “I’m so sorry. I read about it in the Gazette. You must be very worried, and here I am, going on about . . .”

  “Vicky, it’s okay.” He held up the palm of his hand. “It’s just that she disappeared the same night that Denise was murdered. I’ve been trying to find a connection between them.”

  Vicky kept her eyes on his. “T.J.,” she said.

  “I’m starting to think so.” He hesitated. “Turns out that Christine is married to a former CIA agent by the name of Eric Loftus, who isn’t happy that his wife drove off and left him. She was here, trying to get on her feet. She’d tried to purchase vintage Curtis photographs from Eunice Redshield and Max Oldman, probably hoping to sell them.”

  Vicky seemed to take this in for a moment. Then she said, “If she found photographs, there could be more.”

  “Exactly. I think she figured that someone in the Sharp Nose family might own photographs since . . .” He broke off. “Come on, I’ll show you,” he said, getting out of the chair and ushering her ahead into the ent
ry. The clack of their footsteps reverberated off the wood floor into the silence of the old building. He flipped the light switch in the gallery and kept going—past the hundred-year-old images of Plains Indians posing for the camera, solemn-faced and dignified, as if that were the image they wanted the future generations to know them by.

  He stopped in front of the photographs of the Arapahos and lifted one hand toward the village. “Christine wanted to identify the woman in this photograph who was killed while Curtis was shooting the scene.”

  “Another woman murdered?”

  “Bashful Woman,” he said, tapping the glass. “The daughter of Chief Sharp Nose. She was in the village.”

  Vicky didn’t say anything for a long moment. “I remember hearing about her. The chief’s favorite child. She died young. I remember the elders didn’t like to talk about it. They said it was not good to dwell on the bad things in the past, that dwelling on old evil might invite it back.”

  He told her that the woman had married Carston Evans, Senator Evans’s grandfather, and that they’d had a child.

  Vicky lifted her chin and stared at the ceiling. “I never heard that the senator is descended . . .”

  “He’s not,” Father John cut in. “I don’t know what became of the child, but the senator is descended from the second wife, a woman from Nebraska. The man was in the village when Bashful Woman was shot.” Father John let his own gaze run over the figures in the village, so small and distant, yet so real and alive looking. Most of the faces of the men were shadowed by cowboy hats. It was impossible to distinguish a white man from an Arapaho.

  Father John moved his hand over the warriors riding down the slope. “Christine was able to identify the three men,” he went on. “Thunder is on the right. He’s Eunice Redshield’s ancestor. The others are Alvin Pretty Lodge and Ben Franklin. Eunice says they don’t have any descendants on the rez. All three men were hanged for Bashful’s murder, but Eunice says they were innocent.”

  Vicky frowned. “There must have been a trial, John. If Bashful Woman was shot in the village, there would have been witnesses. Surely if there was any evidence the men were innocent, it would have been presented to the magistrate.”

  He waited a moment before he said, “They didn’t have a lawyer, Vicky.”

  She turned away from him then and faced the portraits on the side wall. When she turned back, he saw the flash of light in her eyes, and the calm resolve moving through her expression.

  “They might have been innocent,” she said. “T.J. might be innocent.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  22

  THE BUNGALOW HAD the vacant end-of-the-day look, with the light fading in the dusk and the moon already bright, sending dark shadows over the lawn and obscuring the words ATTORNEY AT LAW, on the sign. Vicky parked the Jeep and hurried up the sidewalk. Work had been piled on her desk—leases to review, a will to draft—when she’d gone to see Marnie Rankin in Riverton. She’d intended to be back in the office by late afternoon, but she’d gone to the mission instead, as if the Jeep had driven itself, propelled by the turmoil in her mind. It always came down to John O’Malley. She could trust John O’Malley, and who else could she trust? No one, no one.

  She started to unlock the front door, then realized that the door was already unlocked. It wasn’t like Annie to forget to lock up. Vicky pushed the door open and stepped inside. Seated in one of the visitor’s chairs was a large man with reddish hair, cropped short, wearing blue jeans and a dark sport coat over a turtleneck sweater. Legs crossed, elbows set on the armrests, a cigarette in the thick fingers curved next to the side of his head. He moved the cigarette to his mouth and inhaled. The red tip glowed in the dim light.

  “Who are you?” Vicky said. She held the door open, conscious of the cold air sweeping past her legs.

  Puffs of gray smoke came from the man’s nostrils. “I was beginning to think you’d knocked off for the day.” He had a gravelly voice and little eyes, black pebbles lodged beneath bushy eyebrows and the thick wedge of his forehead. “Another ten minutes and I would have had to seek you out at your apartment.”

  “You haven’t told me who you are.” Vicky held her place and gripped the door knob.

  The man took another drag from the cigarette. “Let’s say, a husband searching for his missing wife.”

  “Eric Loftus.” The words came in an exhalation of air. “You should try the FBI.”

  “Nobody around here knows shit.” The man’s mouth widened in a parody of a smile. “They don’t know where your client, the tribal official, has gone off to either, but I think you know.”

  “How did you get in here?”

  Loftus gestured toward the door with his cigarette. “You must have left the door unlocked.”

  “The door was locked.”

  “Well, it is a mystery, isn’t it?”

  “It’s breaking and entering.”

  He laughed at that. “I prefer a mystery, like the disappearance of my wife and T.J. Painted Horse.” He shook his head and laughed. “First thing he’ll have to do is take a new name, like Christine did. Oh, I taught that woman well.”

  “Please leave.” Vicky pushed the door back toward the wall. A dog was barking somewhere, a sharp sound wave breaking through the atmosphere.

  Eric Loftus considered the cigarette burning into a small stump in his fingers. “Do you believe in coincidences?” he asked.

  “Get out.”

  “I’ve read the local paper and talked to a number of people around here.” The man’s eyes were still riveted on the cigarette butt. “I’ve discovered a remarkable coincidence. Take last Monday night, for example. My wife left a museum on the reservation and drove off. On that same night, another woman on the reservation was shot in the head. The two instances occurred a few miles apart. Remarkable, don’t you agree?”

  Vicky tightened her fist around the door knob. Someone else, T.J.’s mistress had said. She realized that it had probably occurred to John O’Malley that the new woman in T.J.’s life might be Christine Loftus. But where was the proof? The woman could be anybody in Fremont County.

  “What makes you think your wife knew T.J. Painted Horse?”

  “It’s been my experience that coincidences don’t exist.” Eric Loftus squeezed the burning tip of the butt between his finger and thumb, his eyes not leaving hers. A trail of gray smoke curled over his hand. “Coincidences are a façade, a mask, if you like, that only appears to be the truth. The truth is something else altogether. I asked myself, What is the truth behind this façade? What is the relationship between two events on the same evening, which appear to be unrelated?”

  “There’s nothing I can tell you, Loftus.

  “We can stay here all night, if you like.” He let the butt drop into the glass vase on the table next to the chair.

  “Get out now.” Vicky gestured with her head toward the outdoors.

  “It strikes me that they could be together, your client and my wife. Christine was always attracted to the dark, swarthy types. One time in Mexico . . .” he shook his head and stared across the room. “A little incident, best forgotten. In any case, I removed the temptation from my wife’s line of vision, shall we say.” He brought his eyes back. “I figure your client and my wife are holed up together in a cheap motel. A replay of Mexico, I’m afraid, and I assure you that it will end the same way. My wife is a very sick woman, counselor. Oh, when she’s up, she’s higher than the moon. She can do anything, climb right into the sky. But when she crashes . . .” He shook his head. “All you have to do, counselor, is tell me what your client said about my wife. It could be the information I need to find them.”

  “You’re crazy if you think I’m going to tell you anything,” Vicky said.

  Eric Loftus uncrossed his legs and got to his feet, a slow unfolding of muscles and strength a few feet away. “Don’t say that to me.” His voice was tight and controlled. “Don’t ever say that.”

  A ringing phone burst through the q
uiet. Vicky glanced over at the desk, her hand still gripping the doorknob. A second ring. Third. She let go of the knob and began moving sideways, away from the door and into the office. Without taking her eyes off the man on her left, she reached for the phone and pressed the receiver to her ear. “Vicky Holden,” she said. She could hear the tremor in her voice.

  “Vicky?” It was Adam’s voice. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  “I’m not okay, Adam.”

  “I’m over on Main. I’ll be there in two minutes.”

  “I’ll see you in two minutes.” Vicky stared at the man across from her.

  “Very clever,” Loftus said as she hung up. “Don’t think that this is over. When you don’t expect me, when you think you’re all alone, I’ll be there. I’ll be watching you until you lead me to T.J. Painted Horse.”

  He stepped past her through the open door, and Vicky slammed the door behind him and threw the lock. She moved to the window and watched Loftus walk down the sidewalk, cross the street, and get into a dark-colored SUV, assuring herself that he was gone. The SUV pulled into the street as Adam’s green Chevrolet truck came around the corner. For a half-instant, she thought the two vehicles would collide, but Adam swerved out of the way and slid to a stop at the curb. The SUV was gone.

  Vicky opened the door as Adam was running up the sidewalk. “What the hell’s going on?” He stepped inside and slammed the door behind him. “Who was that guy?”

  “Eric Loftus.” A blank look came into Adam’s eyes, and she started to explain that the curator who’d disappeared from St. Francis Mission was the man’s wife. He laid a finger over her lips.

  “I don’t care about the man’s wife,” he said. “What happened here?”

  Vicky took hold of his wrist and pulled his hand away. She managed a smile. It seemed so silly, putting out an SOS, calling in a warrior. Loftus would have eventually left on his own. The man was swagger and bravado, the kind that liked to intimidate people. Maybe he liked that more than he wanted to find his wife. Or maybe . . .