The Ghost Walker

by Margaret Coel

  “What does Gary look like?” Father John asked.

  Vicky shrugged. “Like a white man. Tall, muscular, blond hair, stubbly face, as if he can’t quite grow a beard. Why?”

  “Gary picked me up Sunday night on Rendezvous Road after I’d found the body.” He didn’t tell her Gary had come close to running him down first and had then left him stranded in a blizzard at Jake Littlehorse’s garage. Vicky was worried enough about Susan.

  They picked their way down over the boulders and hurried to the Toyota. Neither spoke. Father John knew she was probably thinking what he was thinking. If it wasn’t Gary in the pickup just now, he would still be in the house with Susan.

  16

  Whoever the driver was, he’d left the gate open. Father John drove the Toyota past and stopped next to the ranch house. “Gary must have thought he’d scared me off,” Vicky said.

  “He didn’t know you.” Father John swung out of the pickup and followed her to the front door. She turned the knob and pushed the door open. As they walked in, a tall, thin-shouldered young man with dark, straggly hair lifted himself off the sofa and stumbled against the small table, sending a couple of empty beer cans scuttling across the top. He looked as if he’d just awakened and the world wasn’t yet in focus.

  “Susan’s not up yet, Mrs. Holden,” he said, deference in his tone. He had on a red shirt, ragged at the elbows, with the collar partly turned under and the V-neck exposing a dirty gray T-shirt. His jeans were smeared with grease, and he was in stockinged feet. There were holes in the toes of his black socks.

  Vicky brushed past him and into the kitchen. Father John followed, watching her retreat down a dim hallway, then he stepped back to the living room. The young man looked about to go after her, but Father John blocked the way. “Are you Ty?”

  “What’re you doin’ here?” the young man asked. Something about the question made Father John wonder if Ty knew who he was. He switched off the idea. Even if Gary had mentioned giving Father O’Malley a ride last Sunday night, how would Ty know he was Father O’Malley? He’d never seen this young man before.

  “I’ve come with Mrs. Holden. I’m Father John O’Malley from St. Francis.”

  “Oh, man, this is gettin’ really squirrely.” Ty staggered backward, his eyes darting about as if he expected something to materialize. He shook his head, a frantic motion. “Susan isn’t leavin’ here.”

  The jerky movements, the explosion about to erupt—Father John knew the signs. Drugs or alcohol, the behavior was the same. There was a sense of helplessness about the kid—he wasn’t much more than a kid, probably in his early twenties. But the wrong word, the wrong tone, and anger would burst forth like a bronco out of a chute.

  He kept his voice calm. “Susan belongs in treatment. Her mother wants to help her.”

  “I been lookin’ after her. Me and Susan, we’re gonna get married. You think I don’t care what happens to her?” The young man’s tone rose; his fists clenched at his sides.

  “Of course I don’t,” Father John said. “I’m sure you love her.”

  Ty’s fists relaxed a little, and Father John felt the tension begin to evaporate.

  “I been helpin’ her cut back, but last night, after her mom left, she got pretty stoned, you know? Like, man, she passed out on me. I got scared she was gonna stop breathin’ or something, but she come out of it, and this morning she wanted another hit ’cause, you know, she’s feelin’ pretty sick. I say, no way.”

  “What’s she on?” Father John decided to take a chance on the dissolving tension. Any information might prove helpful.

  “Pot.” The young man shrugged.

  “Anything else?”

  Ty ran one hand through his hair. “Just pot.”

  “Where does she get it?”

  “Hey, man, what is this?” The tension rolled back between them. “You think I’m her supplier? She was smokin’ out in L.A. before I met her. She brought her stash with her. I been tryin’ to get her off it.”

  Sure, Father John thought. You’re on it yourself, whatever it is. Just then a shuffling noise sounded, and Vicky came into the living room, one arm around the thin shoulders of a young woman in green sweats, a younger version of Vicky herself. The girl looked dazed, as if it were an effort to place one foot after the other. The small suitcase in Vicky’s other hand scraped against the wall, and Father John took it from her.

  “You shouldn’t be goin’ nowhere, Susan,” Ty said, a rising panic in his tone. “Gary’s gonna go crazy if he finds you gone.”

  Susan turned blank eyes on the young man and leaned against her mother. Father John slipped his free arm around the girl’s waist to keep her from listing sideways as they made their way to the front door. He’d seen enough drug overdoses in enough emergency rooms to know by the raspy sound of her breathing that the girl was in trouble. It would be a race to the Lander hospital.

  As he pulled the door shut, Father John caught a glimpse of Ty watching them. The young man was capable of serious resistance, yet he was letting them take Susan away. He must care for her, and Father John was glad for that. Not since he was a kid back in Boston had he had to fight somebody off, and it wasn’t something he wanted to do again. But if Ty had tried to stop them, he would have had no choice.

  * * *

  Father John and Vicky sat on the small sofa outside the emergency room of the Lander Community Hospital, waiting for the stocky, middle-aged nurse to appear through the swinging door and deliver another of her intermittent reports. They’d given Susan a shot of Adrenalin. They’d taken a urine sample, but the lab report wouldn’t be back for a day. Susan claimed she only smoked some pot, but they knew that wasn’t true. The girl was scared. A good sign. A psychiatrist was on the way to talk with her. Maybe she’d tell the truth. It would be easier to help her if they knew the truth.

  “What do you think it is?” Vicky interrupted.

  “The symptoms—respiratory depression, nausea, diarrhea—point to some type of opiate.”

  “Opiate.” Vicky spit out the word. “You mean heroin.”

  “I’m afraid so.” The nurse nodded before retreating behind the swinging door.

  Father John placed his arm around Vicky’s shoulders. The trembling was there again. He said, “If Gary and the others have brought heroin to the reservation, Banner needs to know.”

  “What are you saying?” Vicky jerked away. He was surprised at the intensity in her eyes. “The police would swarm all over Susan. She’s too sick to handle that now.”

  “Vicky,” Father John began, “this could be about more than drugs. This could be about murder. There’s a dead body out there someplace, and Gary could be involved.”

  Vicky was shaking her head. “You’re saying Susan might know about a murder? No. You’re wrong. I know my daughter. She might use drugs, she might even be on heroin. . . .” Her tone rose until she was almost shouting. “But she would never be involved in murder. Don’t you see, those men have used her to get on the reservation. She thinks they’re going to start a legitimate business. She doesn’t know anything about what they’re doing.”

  Father John leaned back against the sofa and regarded her. This wasn’t the best time for logic. She was too upset to think clearly. He reached out and took her hand. “Okay,” he said.

  They waited, mostly in silence, until the nurse reappeared. Susan’s heart rate and blood pressure were stabilizing, but they were going to admit her to the psych unit for twenty-four-hour observation. After that, well, it depended upon whether she would agree to long-term treatment. Her mother could see her for a few minutes.

  Vicky pushed herself up from the sofa. Before she disappeared through the swinging door, Father John took her hand again. He extracted a promise she would call 911 if she even felt Gary’s presence nearby.

  17

  Highway 287 slid ahead like a conveyor belt, asphalt-streaked where the morning’s traffic had worn away the snow. Light gray clouds dipped among the Wind River Mount
ains, but the stretch of milk-white plains glistened like fireflies in the sun. Father John missed the sounds of his favorite arias floating around him. He would have liked La Bohème now, or perhaps Faust. He drove absently, one finger on the rim of the steering wheel, his thoughts three years back when he’d looked up from his desk one morning and saw Vicky in the doorway.

  “You don’t know me,” she had said. She was wrong. He knew her immediately, this striking Indian woman in a blue suit, holding a briefcase. The grandmothers had been clucking for weeks over the return of the hu:xu’wa:ne’h, the lawyer. They called her Hisei:ci’:nihi. Woman Alone.

  He had worked with her ever since, not for any grand notion of justice on an Indian reservation, but for the occasional fragment of justice for the man in the drunk tank, the kids lost in the bureaucratic maze of social services, the girl injured by a drunk driver. He had never expected such a gift, to have a woman like her at the edge of his life. Just to know she walked the earth at the same time and in the same place as he did was enough for him, and he was grateful. In different circumstances— But he couldn’t imagine that. In different circumstances, he would not be the man he was.

  He hadn’t expected the gift of his priesthood either. It was an unfolding that had begun when he was an altar boy serving the early morning Mass at St. Marys. As the bell jangled through the apse at the elevation of the host, the sense had come over him of God’s presence in the world, and of the priest, holding the host high, witnessing that presence.

  A “calling,” the church called a vocation to the priesthood. He had tried to stop up his ears. When he looked into the future, he had seen himself with a wife and a bunch of kids. He’d had girlfriends from the age of twelve, most of whose names he’d forgotten. He’d never missed a prom or a frat party, and senior year at Boston College he’d met Eileen. The thought of her was still charged with pain, not because he’d loved her, but because he’d allowed her to love him when he knew he had been called elsewhere. The day he’d told her he was entering the Jesuit seminary, she’d become hysterical, had begun pulling off her clothes and screaming he was a fool. He’d been in the seminary three months when she and his brother Mike ran off to New York and got married. He never thought of Eileen without uttering a prayer for forgiveness.

  Absorbed in his thoughts, Father John nearly missed the turn onto Plunkett Road. He hit the brake pedal, which sent the Toyota into a skid. Heading toward the ditch, he steered into the skid until the pickup straightened itself.

  At the top of a rise, he spotted Ike Yellow Calf’s pickup backing out of the Depperts’ driveway, which meant Marcus was still missing. It was time to bring the police in on this. Why was it every time he mentioned the police to an Arapaho lately, he met a wall of resistance? If the old people still resisted, he resolved to tell Banner himself and take the responsibility.

  Father John parked in the snow-packed tracks vacated by Ike’s truck. Newly chopped logs had been stacked against the fence and, most likely, piled beside the old people’s stove. The kitchen cabinets were probably full. Ike was a good man, in the Arapaho Way. He was generous and thoughtful of others.

  Inside, the house looked much the same, with Deborah hovering around and Joe propped in the recliner, the outsized casts pointing into the circle of heat. Color had seeped into the old man’s face, but worry still lodged in his eyes. In both old people Father John sensed an attitude of resignation. They’d heard about the body by now. They’d probably heard stories about the ghost walking around. They would have put two and two together.

  When Father John told them it was time to notify the police, they nodded, as if they’d already come to that conclusion. As he stood to leave, Joe grabbed him by the sleeve. “It might be some time before the police get around to lookin’ for the boy. You keep tryin’ to find him, okay? His grandmother and me, we gotta know what happened to him.”

  * * *

  He had almost convinced himself he must be paranoid, thinking a green Dodge truck was following him, but now he wasn’t so sure. There it was in the rearview mirror, staying with him down Plunkett Road and through the turn onto Ethete Road. As far as he knew, the only man upset with him right now might be Gary, the white man with the stubbly beard who didn’t want Susan Holden to leave the ranch. But he and Vicky had taken the girl only this morning, and the truck had been shadowing him for two days now. Besides, Gary drove a gray Chevy truck.

  As he turned into the main street of Fort Washakie, the truck fell back, and by the time he nosed the Toyota into the parking lot of the Wind River Law Enforcement Center, it had disappeared. He got out and crossed the pavement, slick with melted snow that had re-formed into ice. The sky had turned pale blue, with traces of snow clouds floating past the early afternoon sun.

  The lobby was almost empty: two Arapahos waiting on the metal chairs, thumbing through magazines. Father John caught the clerk’s eye behind the glass enclosure and mouthed “Chief Banner.” She nodded and disappeared. After a moment she opened the door, and he slipped past. The corridor felt damp and smelled of wet wool and floor polish. Banner’s voice floated toward him.

  Father John stopped at the open door, waiting for the chief to finish his phone conversation. “. . . Couple of DUIs, disorderly, the usual. We’ll fax over what we got,” the chief said as he alternately picked up and dropped a file folder on top of a stack of others on his desk.

  Banner replaced the receiver and waved Father John to a chair. “I’ve been leaving messages all over the rez for you,” he said.

  The office felt warm and close as Father John sat down. “You found the body?”

  Banner gave a little shake to his head. “Almost three million acres on the rez, all snowed under. The fed says he needs an airplane and infrared to search for the body, but nobody’s got that kind of budget. That body’s not gonna turn up ’til spring.”

  If not the body, then what was on the chief’s mind? Father John shifted in the chair as Banner pulled a yellow pad from under the pile of folders and clicked a ballpoint. “I understand you talked to a girl named Annie Chambeau yesterday.”

  Father John felt a flicker of surprise. The moccasin telegraph often turned out to be more efficient than he imagined. Banner must have heard Marcus was missing and had started looking for him. He leaned back, feeling a little more confident. The bigger the team on the playing field, the better the chance of finding the young man—or his body.

  “Homicide,” Banner said, tapping the ballpoint on the yellow pad.

  “What?”

  “Annie Chambeau caught a .32 slug in the chest last night.”

  18

  “Coroner says victim was shot sometime between nine and midnight.” Banner had flipped open the folder and was scanning the top page. It looked like a fax. “About eleven P.M., victim left girlfriend’s house on Sweetwater Street and returned to the Grand Apartments, number three-F, to retrieve personal items. Victim did not make contact by midnight, and girlfriend notified Lander police. Call received at 12:06 A.M., by which time a unit had already been dispatched in response to a call at eleven fifty-five from Mrs. Herbert Skinner, resident of apartment one-A, reporting gunshots. Unit arrived at 12:10 A.M. and located victim. Perpetrator had evacuated premises. Police contact made with victim Friday night last. Victim issued citation for disturbing the peace. Contact also made Saturday night. Victim reported intruder had broken into her apartment.”

  “Dear God.” Father John thumped his fist against the worn arm of the chair, disbelief and anger careening through him like a heat-seeking missile. In his mind’s eye, he saw the girl across the table from him, hunched under a worn red coat, her hand trembling as she lifted the coffee mug, her life tangled and confused. No one had the right to deprive her of the future or the redemption it might have held, to efface her humanity, to reduce her to one among many inanimate objects—victim, perpetrator, premises.

  “Girlfriend says victim met with you yesterday,” Banner was saying. “Detective Loomis at the La
nder PD asked me to find out what the meeting was about.”

  Father John had come here to report Marcus Deppert missing. That was all. He hadn’t intended to tell Banner where to find the man who had driven the Chevy pickup near Rendezvous Road Sunday night, not yet. He had decided to give Vicky a little time. Now everything was changed. Now a girl was murdered. A girl connected to Marcus, whose body might have been in the ditch. And Gary might be responsible. It could have been Gary who ransacked Annie’s apartment.

  It was tenuous, this theory, full of holes. He had no evidence, just hunches. He felt as if he’d walked onto the mound and suddenly found out the game wasn’t baseball. He wasn’t sure of the rules. He drew in a long breath, then started at the beginning, explaining how he’d talked to Annie Chambeau on the chance she might know the whereabouts of Marcus Deppert.

  “Marcus Deppert missing?” The chief looked up from the yellow pad. “There’s no missing person’s report.”

  That led to a side explanation on how the old people didn’t want the police involved, to which Banner nodded, as if he understood and would have done the same in their position. “That boy has a history of gettin’ himself into trouble. No tellin’ what he’s up to this time.” The chief’s ballpoint pen made little scratchy noises on the pad.

  Father John continued. The white man who had broken into Annie’s apartment Saturday night and ransacked the place had been looking for Marcus.

  Banner stopped writing and resumed tapping the pen on the pad, as if it were a drum. “You sayin’ there’s a connection? Marcus missing. Victim murdered.”

  Father John hesitated a moment. “Marcus could have been murdered, too. It could have been his body in the ditch.”

  The chief shifted forward. “Couldn’t be Marcus. Ghost is always opposite of the true person, you know. This ghost is a hell raiser, just like Marcus. It’s already caused a lot of trouble. Six vehicular accidents never should’ve happened—hell, one guy rolled his truck in his own driveway. Plus, Grandmother Petey slipped in her bathtub and damn near drowned, and Herman Running Wolf walked into his barn and dropped through the floor five feet. Barn floor had been perfectly good. . . .” He stopped for a moment and shook his head. “Ghost that’s walkin’ around now was a pussycat in true person.”