The Lost Bird

by Margaret Coel

  Bringing her gaze back to the woman across from her, Vicky said, “I’ll make some inquiries.”

  The actress pulled back the flap of her bag and produced a gold pen and leather-sheathed checkbook. Snapping open the cover, she began writing. Then she got to her feet and laid a check on the desk.

  “I knew you would help me,” she said. “I don’t want any publicity. You understand the public thinks it has a right to my business. I hope I can trust you to be discreet.”

  Vicky glanced at the amount on the check. The actress must have mistakenly added an extra zero. Then she realized the zeros were correct. She looked up. “I can’t accept this.”

  “I’ll pay whatever it takes to find my family,” Sharon said. “You can reach me at the Hell’s Corner Dude Ranch.”

  • • •

  The afternoon was beginning to gather into dusk when Vicky left the office. Long, gray shadows swept down the brick building and chilled the parking lot, but the Bronco still held the day’s warmth. She switched on the ignition, let the windows down, and tuned in her favorite country music station. Her thoughts were on the famous movie star who seemed so lost. Sharon David had hurried out of the office, past Laola bubbling about how great she was in Ranger Woman, how she should have won the Academy Award. The moment the actress was gone, Laola had stuck her head around the door to say she was also leaving.

  “We’d better keep this quiet,” Vicky told her.

  The girl’s face fell, and Vicky knew that ten minutes after Laola had walked out the door, the news would have been flashed over the moccasin telegraph to every house on the reservation: Sharon David here looking for her Arapaho family! Not news Vicky wanted bantered about; not if she wanted to keep her own inquiries discreet.

  After Laola left, Vicky had spent the best part of an hour checking the figures for Sam’s settlement and jotting down notes on the interview with Sharon David. The idea of an Arapaho woman giving up her child had begun to seem even more preposterous. She should have told the actress any further inquiries would be a waste of time. But she hadn’t. The amount on the check had stopped her objections. An amount large enough to pay Laola’s salary for several months with some left over for other office expenses. An amount large enough to calm her ongoing fears about keeping the office open. She was going to have to earn the retainer fee.

  Now Reba McEntire’s voice spilled through the Bronco as Vicky pulled out of the parking lot and joined the evening traffic moving past the flat-roofed, brick buildings on Main Street. The leaves on the aspen trees that dotted the sidewalk shimmered a deep amber color in the graying light.

  She drew up at a stoplight, her mind still on the unexpected new client. Sharon David. Arapaho. What would the press make of it, if the news ever came out?

  Suddenly the Reba McEntire song stopped. A man’s voice came on: “We bring you this late-breaking story from our news bureau. A homicide has just been reported on the Wind River Reservation. A man was shot this afternoon as he emerged from a red Toyota pickup on Thunder Lane. The victim has not yet been identified, but a spokesman at the Wind River police headquarters confirms the victim was a priest at St. Francis Mission.”

  3

  Vicky felt as if an unseen force had hurtled through the atmosphere and reconfigured the world. The stretch of asphalt ahead, the trucks and cars at the curb, the brick buildings beyond the sidewalk—everything melted into the shadows, into a gray blur. The radio voice droned on, background noise with no meaning. Somewhere a horn was honking. Tires squealed as a pickup jerked past, the driver shaking his fist and shouting through the open window. She struggled for her breath, a hard lump in her chest, unable to think where she had been going, what she had been doing when the earth had spun out of orbit.

  Gradually the realization came over her, like a slow-burning fever, that the light had turned green. She sat holding on to the steering wheel, a frail grip on reality. Finally she managed to inch the Bronco around the corner and alongside the curb. The tears were coming now, warm on her cheek, salty on her lips. She continued to grip the wheel, trying to still her shaking, to stop the earth from rumbling beneath her. John O’Malley dead! “No!” she cried. Her voice sounded strange and disconnected over the growl of the engine, the music pouring from the radio. “It can’t be!”

  Memories flooded over her, a strong current that bore her along. She had no will to resist. John O’Malley meeting her at the juvenile detention center to help some kid picked up for disturbing the peace or reckless driving; sitting across from her and discussing the best way to help some single mother keep her child; leading the prayers at a wake in Blue Sky Hall; striding across the grounds at St. Francis Mission, suddenly looking up as she stepped out of the Bronco. The familiar smile that broke across his face whenever his eyes fell on her.

  She had met him nearly four years ago—yesterday, it seemed. She’d opened her law office two weeks before. No matter what advice she gave, her first clients had looked away, stared out the window, or studied their boots and wondered out loud what Father John would say. She’d decided to drive over to St. Francis Mission to meet the man who had woven such a spell over her people.

  She’d arrived unannounced. The door to his office in the administration building stood open; he sat at a desk across the small room, head bent over a clutter of papers. At first she thought he was ignoring her. She rapped on the pebbly glass, a sound of impatience. He’d looked up instantly, then jackknifed to his feet. She was surprised at how tall he was—about six-feet-four, she guessed—but there was something graceful and well put together about him: broad shoulders that filled out the plaid shirt, whose sleeves were rolled up just below his elbows; muscular forearms sprinkled with freckles; large hands with long, slender fingers.

  He was younger than she had expected, somewhere in his early forties, and handsome in a way that suggested he was unaware of the fact. His hair was red, fading into blond, with a few gray specks at the temples. He had light blue eyes that seemed to take her in at first glance. She was used to men looking at her; she was aware of the appraisals, the sly smiles. But she felt as if John O’Malley had seen into the lonely, private place inside her.

  “You don’t know me,” she’d blurted, realizing it wasn’t quite true.

  “Come in.” His smile was open and welcoming.

  She had known as she walked across the office and extended her hand that they would be friends. His grip was warm and strong, and she had allowed her hand to stay in his a moment. Then he had stepped around the desk and, with one hand, swung a straight-backed chair close to the corner. He waited until she sat down before returning to his own chair. They had talked for the best part of an hour. At one point he’d stepped over to the coffeepot on a metal table near the door, filled two mugs, and handed her one. Then he’d sat down again, sipping at his coffee, listening as she babbled on. She had done most of the talking, she had realized even then, although she couldn’t remember now what she had talked about. Only that she could talk to this man, that he was listening.

  Now she realized that she had been drawn to him at that first meeting. Her feelings had been sudden and sure, like a thunderstorm rising over the mountains. Not, as she’d always thought, a gradual unfolding in the hours and days they had spent together helping people through divorces and deaths, even trying to prove a young man innocent of murdering his uncle and stopping the construction of a nuclear waste facility on the reservation. John O’Malley was the man she had turned to when she had to rescue Susan, her twenty-one-year-old daughter, from drug dealers.

  Lawyer. Counselor. They made a good team. But he was a priest, a fact she respected and never forgot. She’d tried to hide her feelings and ignore the growing sense he was doing the same. They had arrived at a mutual, unstated resolve: they never called each other, they never met, unless there was a legitimate reason—someone who needed their help. Months had passed when they hadn’t seen each other.

  Months, she thought now, sobbing silently. Preciou
s lost time they might have been together. She should have told him how she felt, that he was the man who filled her thoughts. But she had never told him. And now . . . now he was dead. She dug through the black bag on the seat beside her until her fingers closed over a wad of tissues, which she dabbed at her eyes. The blur beyond the windshield gave way to the shapes of passing cars and trucks, the dim glow of headlights. Pulling on the wheel, she made a sharp U-turn and slid back into the traffic heading north, her reflexes on automatic.

  She caught Highway 789 and drove on, slowing through Hudson, speeding up as the restaurants and small houses dropped behind. Automatic. Automatic. Soon she was plunging through the graying dusk. Headlights swept over the asphalt ahead and, all around, the sky dipped into the earth, like an inverted bowl of blue-black glass. On she drove, ignoring the passing trucks and cars, the pickup that swung around her, tires squealing, her entire being collapsed into a pinprick of necessity. She had to go to him.

  She took a left at Arapaho Crossing, accelerating in front of an oncoming semi, its horn bellowing like the cry of a mad bull. On Seventeen-Mile Road, she passed the mission cemetery sprawled on top of a dark bluff and began sobbing again, wiping at her eyes with one hand, steering the Bronco down the narrow road with the other. A line of pickups and cars were stopped ahead, waiting to turn in to the mission, and Vicky slowed behind them. With a fist at her mouth to quiet the sobs, she followed the red taillights onto the narrow, straight road lined with cottonwoods. Branches arched across the asphalt, forming a tunnel of darkening gold.

  In the headlights Vicky could make out the forms of cars and pickups parked around the mission grounds, the groups of people hovering in front of the church and walking toward the residence. She parked in front, next to a brown pickup, and hurried up the sidewalk, passing several grandmothers—a parade of mourners—carrying casserole dishes and platters of cakes. Lying next to the sidewalk was Walks-On, the golden retriever Father John had found in a ditch and rushed to the vet. The dog had lost a hind leg, but he could run and fetch and snatch a disk from the air. Now the red disk lay beside him.

  The front door stood open as she came up the cement steps. People drifted past the shadows of the entry, moving through a hushed murmur of grief. As Vicky stepped inside, she saw Elena talking to a group of elders in the living room that opened on the right. Catching her eye, the housekeeper came toward her. In the dim light, the woman looked older than her seventy years, her face creased in shock and confusion. Strands of gray hair sprang from a series of bobby pins, as if she’d forgotten to smooth them into place.

  The irony swept over Vicky like a cold wind. Elena never forgot anything that had to do with taking care of the priests at St. Francis Mission, which she had done for more years than anyone could remember. So many priests through the years to cook and clean for, look after, mother. They had come and gone, but she had remained, taking in the next priest the Provincial sent, training him in the routine: breakfast at eight, lunch at noon, dinner at six. There was a day for everything—laundry on Mondays, cleaning on Tuesdays. Everyone on the reservation knew that Elena expected the priests to stay in step and that John O’Malley was almost never in step.

  She put her arms around the housekeeper, trying to comfort herself by holding the old woman who had known him so well, had spent every day in his house, had loved him like a son.

  “Oh, Vicky.” Elena pulled back and swiped at her eyes with a thick wad of tissues. “He was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die out in the road like a dog.”

  “Where is he?” Vicky heard her own voice, distant and disembodied against the sounds of grandmothers coming through the door, the hushed conversations in the living room, and people shuffling through the hall to the kitchen.

  Elena nodded toward the closed door on the other side of the entry. “You’ll wanna go in the study,” she said. “Chief Banner and that fed, what’s his name, Ted Gianelli, are gonna want to see you.”

  Vicky gave the door a soft knock before pushing it open. As she stepped inside, the room seemed to fall away: the desk with papers and books tumbling over the surface and the Bureau of Indian Affairs police chief perched at one corner; the bookcases stuffed with books and folders; the pair of blue wingback chairs with the FBI agent sitting in one, a polished black boot swinging into space. She shut the door and leaned back, holding on to the knob to keep from sliding to the floor, her eyes locked on the man across the room, the light from the lamp shining in his reddish-blond hair. John O’Malley.

  4

  Father John crossed the study and grabbed Vicky by the shoulders, fearing she would crumble to the floor. She was in shock. He knew the signs from too many trips to emergency rooms: face leached of color, eyes shiny with pain.

  She stepped into his arms and buried her face against his chest. He was dimly aware of Gianelli and Banner on their feet beside them as he ran one hand over the silk of her hair, the curve of her head, his own breath mingling with the smell of her—the faint smell of sage.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair, struck by the inadequacy of the words. He led her over to the nearest wingback and eased her down onto the cushion.

  “I’ll get some water.” Banner’s voice sounded behind them, followed by the click of the door opening, closing.

  Father John perched on the armrest, one hand on Vicky’s shoulder, aware of the rapid pace of her breathing—in-out, in-out. He was stunned by her grief. He’d had no idea she was close to Father Joseph. She must have known the priest when he was here before. She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old, a second-grader in the mission school. But her family might have adopted the young priest. It often happened. An Arapaho family taking pity on a man stationed far from his own people, inviting him to dinner and birthday parties, making him part of their family. There was so much he didn’t know about her, he thought, a lifetime of people she had loved.

  The door creaked open. At the periphery of his vision, Father John saw the bulky frame of the police chief: the dark blue uniform trousers and dark blue shirt, the outstretched hand holding a glass of water. Vicky took the glass and raised it slowly to her lips. Banner stepped back toward the agent, who stood at the side of the desk, both hands stuffed into the pockets of his suit pants, red tie hanging limply down the center of his starched white shirt. The other men were like him, Father John thought, helpless at the sight of grief.

  Vicky tilted her head and looked up at him with an intensity that brought the warmth into his face. She said, “I thought it was you.”

  The words hit him like the sting of buckshot. He got to his feet and walked back to the window. Outside a band of light lingered over the mountains, and faint streaks of yellow and red traced the dark sky. He tried to steady himself, regain his equilibrium. The pain and grief he’d seen in her eyes were for him! He had never imagined, never intended . . . I have done this all wrong, he thought. They could be friends, that was all. He knew his own weaknesses. He had never wanted to snare anyone else in them, and the knowledge that he had done so compounded his guilt. A woman in love with him; a murdered priest. Both should have been avoided.

  He forced himself to turn back to the room. Banner was half sitting on the edge of the desk; Gianelli had dropped into the other wingback chair. They were watching him—Vicky, the two men. “It should have been me,” he said.

  “Don’t say that!” Vicky jumped to her feet. Water spilled from the glass over her hand. “Don’t ever say that.”

  “She’s right, John.” Banner swung around the desk and sat down in the leather chair behind it. Fingers curled over the armrests. “You’re surmisin’, John,” he said. “Until we find the guy who pulled the trigger, we don’t know what happened out there.”

  “Joseph was driving the Toyota pickup,” Father John said, the words an angry staccato. “Everybody on this reservation knows I drive that Toyota. The minute Joseph stepped out, he was shot.”

  “Okay, okay.” Gianelli scooted his bulky
frame toward the front of the wingback. From his coat pocket, he pulled out the small pad he’d been writing on earlier. Then he produced a pen. “Let’s stay with the facts,” he said, flipping through the pad. “Father Joseph took the call around three-thirty. Right?”

  “We’ve been over this,” Father John said. He felt choked with impatience. The fed and the police chief had already knocked on the doors of the few houses out on Thunder Lane. No one had seen anything. They’d gone through the mission: Father Joseph’s bedroom and office, the Escort. Nothing. Gianelli had copied Joseph’s computer files, which, Father John suspected, contained scholarly papers and letters and notes on mission programs. For the past forty minutes they had been in his study going over the same question: why would anyone want to kill a seventy-two-year-old priest?

  “We’re going over it again.” Gianelli’s voice was calm. The pen ran across the pad, like a mouse skittering over the floor.

  Father John turned back to the window and stared at the purple shadows creeping over the grounds as the fed summarized what they’d been talking about: the caller said his mother was dying. He asked for a priest. Father Joseph agreed to go.

  “That the story, John?”

  Father John waited a moment before turning back. Vicky and the men were staring at him. They were his friends, the few close friends he had. An FBI agent who hailed from Quincy, next door to Boston, who knew more about opera than he did, who had four little girls and a wife who turned out steaming platters of spaghetti and ravioli; an Arapaho police chief who’d spent his life on the reservation, savvy and compassionate, with a son on the BIA police force; and Vicky. Since the first day she’d walked into his office, almost four years ago, he’d been struggling to contain his feelings for her, praying she would never feel the same about him. Prayers that had gone unanswered.