Buffalo Bill's Dead Now (A Wind River Mystery)

by Margaret Coel

  On the tables were coup sticks, painted and wrapped in red cloth, trailing eagle feathers, used by warriors to approach the enemy. Not to kill him, but to touch him with the tip of the stick—to count coup—and prove his own courage. There were lances decorated with eagle feathers that hung off the edge of the tables, and smaller head ornaments, feathered and beaded. The cabinets were filled with beaded armlets, bracelets, medicine bags, rattles. In one corner, a large painted stick used to play games stood next to a painted shield.

  “He’s not home.” Vicky swung about and almost hurled herself back onto the porch, as if she had to get out of there. The house was like a cemetery, Father John thought, filled with all that used to be and now was lost.

  “Maybe the barn,” he said, walking out after her, pulling the door shut behind them. He couldn’t shake the image of the speeding sedan. Neither could Vicky, judging by the mixture of resoluteness and dread in the way she stood looking out over the ranch.

  They headed down the steps and along the side of the house. Gusts of wind swept down the dirt road and smashed Vicky’s slacks against her legs. Except for the sound of the wind and the scuff of their footsteps, a deep quiet suffused everything. The horses stood motionless at the fences, as if waiting for something that might never occur.

  Through the opened door to a shed next to the barn, Father John could see a small tractor in the center and tools aligned against the walls. No sign of Trevor. The barn looked unused, the wide door pulled shut. Most likely, Trevor had closed the door himself after he saddled one of the horses, then had ridden out into a pasture where he ran a herd of cattle. Or maybe he had taken an old truck to check on the fences. Nothing unusual about the ranch, Father John thought, except the quiet and emptiness. And yet the uneasy feeling had fastened itself onto him like a chain. The speeding car kept rolling through his head. “Wait here,” he said, touching Vicky’s arm. He could feel the tension moving through her.

  “I’m going in with you,” she said, plunging ahead.

  He hurried past, grabbed the metal handle on the right and slid half the door across the other half. A long shaft of sunlight shot across the concrete barn floor and illuminated the stalls on either side. Blankets and tack filled the shelves and hung from the hooks on the front walls. “Trevor!” he called. His voice bounced over the concrete and around the stalls. Bales of hay were stacked in a loft overhead.

  “Trevor?” He started down the middle of the barn, checking the stalls as he went. Clumps of hay and water stains on the floor, a shovel upright in a corner. Then something different, out of place. A large wooden club had been tossed into a disturbance of hay and dust near the rear stall. He hurried toward the stall, moving ahead of Vicky. “Trevor,” he said again, his voice coming back to him, tight and dry.

  He saw Trevor the instant he reached the stall, slouched in the back corner, head sideways, eyes fixed on the floor, arms akimbo, like a drunk who had slumped down and couldn’t get up. A dark stain spread across the front of his light-colored shirt. In an instant, Father John was down on one knee beside him about to check the man’s carotid artery when he saw the dark splatters across the plank wall behind Trevor’s right shoulder. He pressed his fingers along Trevor’s neck. The skin was warm; there was no pulse.

  Vicky folded onto her knees beside him. “Oh, my God,” she said.

  Father John didn’t say anything, aware of the sound of her breathing beside him.

  “The car we saw. It must have just happened.” She threw a glance over one shoulder, as if the men speeding past might materialize in the barn. Then she drew a cell out of her bag and started punching the keys. “Come on,” she said, under her breath.

  Father John looked back to the dead man beside them. Trevor Pratt, benefactor to the mission, benefactor to the Arapahos. The artifacts belong with the people, Father John remembered Trevor saying the day he had driven onto the mission grounds, stomped up the concrete steps of the administration building and dropped into one of the chairs Father John kept for visitors. I found them for sale on the internet and jumped on the opportunity. They wouldn’t be available for long. Too many dealers and collectors eager to get their hands on Indian regalia from the Wild West. I knew right away I had to buy the stuff. Called the dealer in Berlin, got him out of bed. Two in the morning over there. Softened him up as soon as I told him what I wanted. We made a deal right then. All I knew was that the regalia belonged to Chief Black Heart, leader of the Arapahos in the Wild West. Frankly, I would’ve paid a lot more if I’d known then what I learned later. How Black Heart’s father wore the regalia in old battles like the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Trevor had laughed, and Father John remembered how the laughter had sounded like a cough rumbling out of his chest. That German didn’t know the whole story or he would have held out for more. The artifacts belong at the museum where Arapaho people, schoolkids, you know what I mean? can come and look at them as many times as they want.

  Vicky’s voice, shaky, not like her voice at all, cut into the memory: “A man has been killed,” she was saying into the cell. “The Lazy Z Ranch at the end of a ten-mile dirt road off Highway 287.”

  Father John made the sign of the cross over Trevor’s forehead. “May God take you to himself,” he whispered.

  “Yes, that’s it,” Vicky said. “The junction just south of Willow Creek Road.”

  “May God have mercy on your soul. May he look upon the good in your life and forgive any sins you may have committed.”

  Vicky leaned in close and stared down at Trevor, the cell phone gripped in one hand. Poking out of her bag was the brown envelope that contained papers for Trevor to sign. A gust of wind swished across the concrete floor. “I’m so sorry, Trevor,” Vicky said finally, her voice choked now. Father John saw the moisture gathering in her eyes. “So sorry.” She pushed herself to her feet and headed back through the barn.

  THREE WHITE PICKUPS with green stripes and “Fremont County Sheriff” splashed across the sides stood in front of the barn. Officers in tan uniforms moved in and out in a slow, methodical way, as if the murder of Trevor Pratt was part of the day’s schedule. It had taken twenty minutes for the pickups to roll onto the ranch. Father John had stayed in the barn a few moments, praying silently over the still body of Trevor Pratt. Then he had found Vicky sitting on a log beside the fence and dropped down beside her. Together they had watched the dust clouds gathering far out on the road, coming closer. “How do you stand it?” she had asked, her eyes on the clouds. “Praying over dead bodies. So many senseless deaths.”

  There was no answer, and in the sad smile she had given him when she turned toward him, he knew she understood. At one time, he had needed props to hold him up. Jim Beam, gin, whatever he could get his hands on. Rubbing alcohol once, desperate for a drink. And that was before he had ever prayed over someone whose life had been taken. Teaching American history classes in a Jesuit prep school in Boston, a future with a doctorate and a position in some Jesuit university—that had been his path, until the alcohol had sent him veering in another direction. After rehab, an Indian mission in the middle of Wyoming with Father Peter Roach, the only Jesuit who had agreed to give him a chance. There were times here when he had longed for the props. The senseless deaths, the sad history. But Father Peter’s voice had stayed in his head: “I believe in you, son. You can make it.”

  He had made it almost ten years, and yet he could taste the thirst coming on him now, feel the dread knotting in his stomach. Would it never leave him?

  “When was the last time you saw the victim?” The sheriff’s investigator had walked over. Tall and wiry with light, short-cropped hair and a plug of tobacco in one cheek. He introduced himself as Detective Colsky.

  Father John got to his feet. “Yesterday at the mission,” he said. He and Vicky had already told the investigator and his partner, Detective Janson, a big, jowl-faced man with a pillowlike paunch above the belt of his Levi’s, what they knew about Trevor Pratt. How he had materialized out of nowhe
re, offered to donate valuable Arapaho artifacts to the museum, and hired Vicky to handle the details. How the artifacts were stolen before they could be delivered to the museum. When Trevor hadn’t shown up at Vicky’s office today, they had driven out to the ranch to have him sign the insurance forms.

  As he talked, Father John had read the irritated look Colsky threw his partner: Murder in Fremont county fell in the sheriff’s jurisdiction, but missing Indian artifacts might be in the fed’s. Gianelli would have to be brought in.

  “I had the feeling…” Vicky hesitated, lifting herself off the log, her eyes fixed now at some point in the pasture, “…that Trevor knew who had taken the artifacts. He knew where they were.”

  Colsky considered this a moment, squaring his shoulders, drawing himself taller by an inch or two. “He give you any names?”

  Vicky shook her head.

  “Not much to go on.” Colsky shrugged. “We’ll check out the house. Might come up with something. I’m going to need both of you to come into the office tomorrow and give your statements.”

  Vicky started down the driveway, and Father John fell in beside her. If Vicky was right about Trevor, and she was usually right, he was thinking, then the thieves could still be in the area. Which left the possibility that the artifacts were here as well.

  9

  THE QUIET OF dusk had settled over the mission grounds when Father John pulled up in front of the residence. The transition time, when the day’s activities had ended and the evening’s hadn’t yet begun. The old trucks and sedans that appeared on Circle Drive throughout the day had disappeared. Social committee and Ladies Sodality and adult education classes ended. Kids picked up from after-school day care in Eagle Hall. Everyone gone home.

  He let himself through the front door, expecting Walks-On to bound out of the kitchen, snuggle against him and lick at his hands. There was no sign of the dog. The mission quiet had invaded the house, Father John thought as he headed down the hallway. Elena would have left by now, but his dinner would be warming in the oven. The sharp smell of barbeque filled the kitchen. The dog’s bed spread across the far corner. Food bowl empty; water bowl half-full. He walked past the table and looked out the window. Walks-On wasn’t in the yard.

  No sign of Bishop Harry either, no footsteps overhead or muffled undercurrents of TV noise. Sometimes, after spending the day answering phones and counseling parishioners in the back office of the administration building, the old man liked to walk down by the Little Wind River. And Walks-On had a sixth sense for when the bishop was headed for a walk. He would bark and howl from the yard or house until the bishop came and got him.

  Father John retraced his steps through the house and took the path through the wide swath of wild grass in the center of Circle Drive. He crossed the drive and walked down the graveled road that divided the administration building from the church. Past Eagle Hall, past the guest house. He had just turned into the narrow path that led through the cottonwoods and pines to the river when he saw the bishop coming toward him. Walks-On loped ahead, bounding up and down. From close by came the sound of the river lapping the rocks. A thick odor of damp pine suffused the air. He reached down, patted the dog’s head and scratched behind his ears. “Good run, buddy?” he said. The dog’s coat was cool and wet.

  “Sorry you couldn’t join us.” The bishop’s boots slapped at the hard dirt. A deep pink flush ran across the old man’s face, but he looked invigorated, even younger than he had seemed this morning, slumped at the table, sipping coffee. Father John had ignored the provincial’s instructions to insist upon the old man resting. Resting was likely to have killed him, he thought now. He enjoyed the old man. Wandering down the hall to his office and chatting, listening to stories about India, reaffirming his own intention to be the kind of priest that Bishop Harry was.

  “I heard the news.” Moisture in the old man’s eyes had started to fog his glasses. “Terrible. Terrible.” He paused for a moment, removed his glasses and wiped at them with a handkerchief he had extracted from his jacket pocket. “The phone started ringing late this afternoon. Seems one of the deputies at the ranch texted his brother about the murder, and the brother is married to an Arapaho.” The bishop shrugged. He had been at the mission long enough to accept that the moccasin telegraph was as efficient as the internet. “Folks started putting things together. Trevor Pratt, Indian artifacts dealer, murdered. Likely he was the anonymous donor who had donated the missing artifacts to the museum. What about the artifacts? Had they been found yet? The callers sounded very disappointed when I told them that, to my knowledge, the artifacts had not been recovered. I assume that is the truth.”

  Father John told him it was. They might never be recovered, he was thinking, even if they were still in the area. It was as if they had disappeared into a sinkhole that plunged into the depths of the earth. If Vicky was right, any idea about who had stolen them could be gone with Trevor Pratt. He couldn’t shake the image of the man who took up a lot of space, big shoulders and voice, confidence spilling off him, crumbled in the back of a horse stall.

  Walks-On had already run down the road toward the center of the mission. The bishop started after him. “I understand you and Vicky found the body,” the bishop said as Father John fell into step beside him.

  Father John started to explain that Vicky had taken insurance forms out to the ranch and he had gone along, wanting to talk to her about the accusations Mickey Tallman had made against Cam Merryman. The words lodged in his throat. He didn’t want to get into the rest of it, how he could have called Vicky, how he didn’t have to go to her office at all, how he had wanted to spend the time with her.

  “I’m sorry.” Bishop Harry turned toward him. In the old man’s eyes, Father John could see he had filled in the blanks himself.

  “Does it ever get any easier?”

  “Encountering death?” the bishop said. Father John knew the old man had deliberately taken a different turn. “Asking God to have mercy on the poor soul? In my experience, the sadness and senselessness of a violent death never leave you. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I think about the little boy who found his way to the mission in Patna. Skinny and beaten, shaking so hard he could hardly stand. We tried to protect him, but his father sent the police who took him away. He died a few days later. I think of the girls, so many girls we tried to protect. Also hauled away and we learned later of the terrible things that happened. One was burned to death by her mother-in-law. Such a pretty girl she was, with large, trusting brown eyes.” He hesitated. “You must pray, John, that it doesn’t get easier because that would mean you had lost part of your own humanity. It would mean you had learned to protect yourself by pushing the horror into a separate com partment in your mind, forgetting about the victims. Better to remember than to forget. Pray for their souls always. Pray for the brokenness in the world.”

  They walked past the guest house. They both knew he had been asking about Vicky, Father John realized. But how to deal with the victims, the motionless, blood-crusted bodies, the senseless deaths—that was another question to which he longed for answers. Ahead, two pickups stood in front of Eagle Hall. Father John could hear the commotion inside as chairs and tables were set up. The faint odor of coffee drifted outdoors. “I can take the AA meeting tonight,” the bishop said. “You go on to the house and get your supper.”

  “It’s okay,” Father John said. “I’d like to take the meeting tonight.”

  1860s Cheyenne artifacts from the wars on the plains. Handcrafted bows and arrows, Winchester rifles, tobacco pouches, war shields, war bonnets. Recently purchased from a small-town museum in eastern Colorado that closed its doors. Items have been stored in temperature-controlled environments and are in excellent condition. Contact Trevor Pratt, antiquities dealer, Lazy Z Ranch, Lander, Wyoming.

  Vicky scrolled to the top and searched for a date. The streetlight outside glared across the bottom of the screen, and she got up and snapped the curtains shut. The apartment instantly
seemed smaller, more intimate. She had just sat back down at the laptop on the dining room table when the crack of what sounded like a gunshot came from the street below. She felt her heart start up, then told herself it was only a truck backfiring. Cowboys leaving the bars, heading out to the ranches. God, she wasn’t herself. This afternoon had unnerved her, made her jumpy and scared. She had to get herself together.

  She struggled to focus on the black text filling the screen. There was no date. The advertisement might have been placed yesterday or two years ago when Trevor said he had moved to the ranch. Thirteen pages had come up when she had typed in Trevor Pratt. She moved to the next page. Most of the sites seemed to be ads that Trevor had placed, like the one for the Cheyenne artifacts. But here was something different: a short article from a trade magazine dated eight years ago:

  Word is that none other than the mysterious Trevor Pratt brokered the million dollar sale of Plains Indian artifacts to a private collector in Santa Fe. Pratt is considered the authority among dealers in such artifacts. We understand that he has been accumulating the items from members of various tribes. We hear that the Sioux, Crow, and Blackfeet tribes were outraged at the sale of their patrimony. They claim to have asked Pratt for the chance to bid on the items, but he refused. Our own efforts to reach Pratt have been unsuccessful. Rumored to be a recluse on a ranch somewhere on the plains of Colorado, he did not respond to numerous phone messages. No dealer is under any compunction to offer Indian items to the tribes before putting them on the market, but it might make good business sense to allow tribes to bid. Pratt seems to have made up his mind ahead of time that the tribes could not match the million dollar bid, but the brouhaha could make it more difficult for Pratt to purchase items from tribal members in the future. On the other hand, the episode might only bring more attention to the mysterious Mr. Pratt, who always seems to get top dollar for Plains Indian antiquities.