The Lost Bird

by Margaret Coel

  Both Arapahos were quiet, eyes steady, faces unreadable. He refilled his coffee mug and started down the hallway, wondering if he’d won the argument.

  A group of grandmothers were letting themselves out the front door; the cool evening air drifted down the hallway and bit at his face and hands. He turned in to the study, avoiding the prolonged good-byes, the reiteration of grief and condolences that fed his own guilt. The front door thudded shut as he sank into the leather chair at his desk. The study was dark. Obelisks of moonlight crisscrossed the carpet and speckled the papers in front of him.

  He heard the shuffle of footsteps in the hall, the front door opening and closing several more times. Gradually the quiet of death began to settle over the house. He knew it well. So many houses where he had sat with bereaved families, engulfed in the quiet. Now it was here. He dropped his head into his hands and prayed silently for the soul of Father Joseph. He prayed for himself, for the strength to deal with his guilt. And he prayed that—someday, someday—he would conquer the terrible thirst that was turning his throat and mouth into dust.

  Finally he flipped on the desk lamp and pulled the phone into the puddle of light, dreading the call he had to make. He lifted the receiver and punched in the Provincial’s number.

  6

  The metallic voice of an answering machine sounded on the line. “You have reached the Wisconsin Province of the Society of Jesus. Our office hours are . . .” Father John hit the pound button to fast-forward the message. “If this is an emergency, please stay on the line.”

  The bland, irritating sounds of canned music replaced the voice. Father John took a draw of coffee and stared at the piles of paper awaiting his attention: letters to answer, thank-you notes to send to strangers who kept St. Francis operating with a few dollars stuffed into envelopes and mailed off to Indian Country, a place they’d never seen, phone messages to return. He shuffled through the top of a pile. Elena had taken several phone messages this afternoon. Most from parishioners. One caught his eye: Mary James called. Wants you to call back. Important. Below the message was a number. He tossed the paper aside. He did not know anyone named Mary James. It would have to wait.

  There was the sound of footsteps in the hall followed by a rap on the door. Elena peered around the edge. “Leonard and me are gonna be leavin’ now,” she said.

  He thanked her for everything she’d done.

  “Your dinner’s in the fridge.”

  Another thank you.

  “You sure you gonna be all right?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “See you first thing tomorrow,” she said, backing into the hall, pulling the door toward her. The hinges squealed like a small, frightened animal.

  “Elena . . .”

  The slammed door sent a little ripple through the floor. He heard the receding footsteps, the thud of the front door, and he knew that it didn’t matter if a crazed gunman was on the loose. Elena would come to the mission anyway. She would block the door herself if she thought someone meant to harm him. Tomorrow Leonard would also be here, and the volunteers who worked at the museum in the old school. He could order them to stay away, and still they would come. He felt humbled by the loyalty and love he had found here.

  As for Vicky—he exhaled a long breath. She would ask questions around the reservation, and somewhere there was a killer who would learn of her interest. With a sickening clarity he understood there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t protect her. He couldn’t protect the people at the mission.

  A tinny melody, irritating in its familiarity, burst over the line. It struck him he had spent his entire life among stubborn people who dug their heels into the ground and held on to their position, no matter how foolish it might be. Who better than his own people, the Irish? He was a bit like that himself, he knew. Contrary, his father had called him when he’d announced he was going into the priesthood. “Why be so contrary, Johnnie? You got a great future ahead of you. A couple years in the minors, you’ll be pitchin’ at Fenway Park, and that will be grand. The whole family’ll be there to cheer you on. Eileen, too. The girl loves you to distraction.”

  “I want to be a priest, Dad.”

  “And would you tell me something, boy? How you gonna pitch fastballs from a pulpit? The Lord give you this talent. He’ll be wantin’ you to use it. And what about Eileen? You wanna break the girl’s heart?”

  “A priest, Dad.”

  “God almighty, the Lord put breath into a contrary lad.”

  Father John closed his eyes against the bittersweet memory, the irritating melody jangling in his ear. He had loved Eileen, and he’d been good at baseball. He might have made a different life, but something had intervened. A vocation, the Church termed it. A calling. It had come in the spring of his senior year at Boston College, with the scouts taking him to dinner and visiting his family. It was as if he had been struck to the ground by the force of it, like St. Paul struck down on the road to Damascus. He had understood he was to be a priest, a Jesuit. He would teach history at Georgetown or Fordham or Marquette. His would be a quiet, scholarly life, writing papers and books, influencing students.

  That wasn’t how it had gone, not how it had gone at all. He’d spent most of a year in Grace House trying to parse out what had happened, how he had become an alcoholic priest who had let down his family, his superiors, and everyone who had believed in him. When he came to St. Francis, he had welcomed the emptiness of the reservation, as if the great open spaces could cover his shame. Gradually he’d been drawn in by the people until, instead of losing himself, he felt he had begun to know himself. Now this: someone here wanted him dead.

  “Wisconsin Province.” The man’s voice startled him out of his thoughts.

  “This is Father O’Malley.” He gripped the receiver tightly against his ear and added: “At St. Francis Mission.”

  He could hear the quiet intake of breath on the other end, the unspoken thoughts: Who? Where?

  “In Wyoming.”

  “Oh, yes, Father O’Malley. The Provincial is in the office between eight and five. You can reach him tomorrow.”

  “I have to talk to him now.” Father John heard the stubbornness in his tone. “Put him on.”

  There was a short silence, a muffled cough. The voice said, “Is this some type of emergency?”

  “Father Joseph Keenan is dead.”

  Another silence. “I see. Well, that’s very unfortunate.”

  “He was murdered.”

  A gasp, like that of a small bellows, sounded through the line. “Please hold.”

  The canned music returned. The imitation of a waltz, light and merry, the strains of an imaginary ballroom: ladies in gowns swishing across the floor, gentlemen in tuxedos. Hardly appropriate for the news he had just delivered. He drained the remainder of the coffee. It was cold and thick as syrup. Then he picked up a pen and began tapping the edge of the desk, a crescendo of impatience.

  “John, what’s this all about?” Father William Rutherford’s tone was peremptory, annoyed, the tone Father John remembered from their days in the seminary together. Television noise sounded in the background.

  Father John explained. Father Joseph had taken a call to an isolated part of the reservation. Someone had shot him.

  “Good Lord.” Shock and disbelief sounded in the Provincial’s tone. “What’s going on out there?”

  Father John was quiet. He didn’t know the answer.

  “Some kind of drive-by shooting? Are there gangs on the reservation?”

  Father John said he didn’t believe so.

  “A random shooting? A lunatic?”

  “The FBI is investigating.”

  “The FBI! My God.”

  “They handle homicide cases on reservations.”

  “Oh, yes,” the Provincial said, as if he’d momentarily forgotten some important piece of information that it was his job to remember. “Well, Joseph Keenan dead,” he mused. “I believe he was prepared. Yes, I believe he went there
to die.”

  “What?” Father John tossed the pencil across the desk. The Provincial had a doctorate in psychology, he knew, but he was in no mood for psychological babble. Nobody went someplace to be shot.

  “Joseph’s prognosis was not good,” the Provincial was saying. “His heart disease was quite advanced. You knew that, of course.”

  “No, I didn’t know that,” Father John said. He was thinking that had the Provincial mentioned the fact, he would have suggested that, perhaps, a mission on an Indian reservation might not be the best place for a man with advanced heart disease.

  “He was fully aware his time was limited,” Father Rutherford said, a steady, matter-of-fact tone. “Joseph Keenan was not a man content to await his death in a retirement home. When he heard I was looking for an assistant priest at St. Francis, he came to the office and insisted on taking the job. I turned him down, of course. Frankly, I didn’t think a man in such poor health should be sent back into the field.”

  Father John could feel the guilt curling inside him like a snake gathering its deadly strength. An old man with advanced heart disease, who’d spent the day driving across the reservation—that was the man he’d allowed to take an emergency call miles away.

  Father John picked up the coffee mug. Empty. It didn’t matter. Coffee was a poor substitute. Slamming down the mug, he struggled to follow what the Provincial was saying: Father Joseph had kept coming back, determined to return to St. Francis Mission.

  The Provincial hesitated, as if searching for the argument he’d used to convince himself when he’d given in to the old priest’s entreaties. “Frankly, John,” he said finally, “I wasn’t having much luck finding anyone else, so I agreed to send him there on temporary assignment. Just until I found a permanent man. Joseph had very fond memories of St. Francis Mission.” A pause, then: “Yes, I believe he went there to die. Of course, he couldn’t have known anything like this would happen. But he knew his time was approaching. He chose the place, and left the rest in the hands of God.”

  Father John pushed back in the leather chair, tilting the front legs off the carpet, trying to make sense of what the Provincial said. Something was missing, the logic skewed. Even if Father Joseph had been a popular pastor and people still remembered him, he hadn’t been on the reservation in thirty-five years. He’d had a distinguished career, other assignments. Why would he choose to spend his last days here? Unless the man had nowhere else to go, no one he wanted to be with.

  This new thought filled Father John with sadness. Was this the culmination of a priest’s career? In the end there was no one? Suddenly he realized Father Rutherford was talking about the funeral arrangements, saying he would contact Joseph’s family.

  “He had a family?” Father John heard the surprise in his voice. A family made the man’s decision to come to St. Francis all the more perplexing.

  “A couple of nephews, I believe,” the Provincial said. “I’ll have to notify them. In the meantime . . .” Another hesitation. “We must take the necessary precautions, John. We don’t know what Father Joseph’s murder is all about, do we?”

  Father John admitted that was true. He had a theory, which he realized he hadn’t mentioned to his superior. What was there to say? Someone had shot the wrong priest?

  “We don’t know how far this may go,” Father Rutherford went on. “This could be a hate crime against the Church.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, we don’t know. I want you to take a leave of absence until this is settled. Go to Boston. Visit your family.”

  Father John set the front legs down hard and stared at the lamplight flickering against the blackness of the window across the study. He’d gone to Boston in the spring. The last thing he wanted was another awkward visit with his brother, Mike. It was as if, after twenty-five years, Eileen still stood between them. His brother’s wife. The woman he would have married had he not gone into the seminary. That was the reason he hadn’t mentioned his theory about Joseph’s murder: the Provincial would send him somewhere he didn’t want to go.

  “I can’t leave St. Francis,” he said, his tone firm. “There wouldn’t be anyone to say Mass. The fall classes and programs are already—”

  The Provincial cut in: “I can’t have another priest killed. There are fewer and fewer of us, you know. I can’t take any chances.”

  “Look, Bill,” Father John began, marshaling his argument into what he hoped would have the force of logic. “I know the FBI agent and the police chief here. They’re first-rate. They have some strong leads.” A bit of a stretch. Gianelli and Banner were groping in the dark. He hurried on: “They’ll have Joseph’s murder solved in a couple of days. There’s no sense in closing down the mission.”

  The Provincial was quiet a moment. Then: “Do you have a gun?”

  “Of course I don’t have a gun.”

  “A rifle or something. Don’t you go hunting? Isn’t that what the Arapahos do?”

  Father John wondered how far out in the wilderness the Provincial thought he lived. Did he think the Arapahos still hunted buffalo? He said, “I don’t hunt.”

  “Let me make certain I understand. Should whoever murdered Joseph show up at the mission, you have no way to protect yourself. Is that true?”

  Father John glanced at the lights dancing in the window, the blackness beyond. “Give me a couple days, Bill,” he said.

  There was a long, considered pause on the other end of the line. “I don’t like it.”

  “A couple days.”

  The Provincial was quiet. “All right,” he said finally. “You’ve got two days and then—”

  “Good.” Father John interrupted. He didn’t want to receive an order he would find painful to obey. “Let me know about the funeral arrangements.”

  He hung up quickly and made his way down the darkened hall into the kitchen. The light above the stove cast a thin yellow glow over half of the room, leaving the other half in shadow. A soft snoring noise came from the corner where Walks-On lay on his blanket, his hind leg stretched back at an angle, as if to make room for the missing leg.

  Father John lifted the coffeepot. It felt light in his hand. He slammed it down and whirled about, his gaze on the gray-shadowed cabinets, the counters. There was no alcohol at the mission. That was the first rule he set for every new assistant, even an eminent scholar like Joseph Keenan. No alcohol! What he didn’t explain was the fear behind the rule—his fear that he would be the one to consume any alcohol brought on the premises.

  Now he wished a bottle were here, hidden in a cabinet behind the canned goods, wedged behind boxes of rice and pasta, stashed under the sink with the can of cleaner and bottle of dishwashing liquid. But there were no whiskey bottles in the kitchen. None at the mission.

  Unless—the thought came like a light streaking through the night sky—Father Joseph had brought a bottle with him. Why not? A man used to faculty cocktail parties and dinners, conference banquets. Joseph had nodded when he’d mentioned the rule, but the bottle might have been packed in one of the suitcases or cardboard boxes. It could still be here.

  Father John hurried down the hall and up the dark stairs. Moonlight slanted through the small window over the landing and bathed the upstairs hall in a soft white light. He strode to the closed door halfway down the hall and pushed it open, flipping on the light as he stepped inside. Gianelli and Banner had left the room tidy: bed made up like an army cot, blankets tucked at the corners; books neatly arranged on the small bookcase; magazines stacked on the desk; shaving kit on the bureau. He flung open the closet door and swept one hand across the shelves above the hanging clothes, pushing aside a couple of sweaters, an umbrella. Nothing. He checked under the bed, behind the drapes, the usual hiding places. He knew them well. He pulled open the bureau drawers, lifting out the clean shirts and underwear. Then the desk drawer, rummaging through the folders. Still nothing.

  He slammed the drawer shut and sank onto the edge of the bed. My God, he thou
ght. What was he doing? Desecrating a dead man’s things, and for what? A drink. An almighty, all-powerful drink.

  He switched off the light, closed the door, and made his way back downstairs to the kitchen. After brewing another pot of coffee, he sat at the table a long while, sipping on the steaming, black liquid. A calmness gradually came over him and with it the understanding that he could not wait for Joseph’s murderer to try again. On edge, riven with guilt and thirst. Like a fly pinned to a board, awaiting the merciful blow. There would be no more murders. He understood what he had to do.

  7

  Vicky pointed the Bronco west on Ethete Road, darting in and out of the pale bands of moonlight. Clouds had rolled eastward to reveal a clear sky and a sea of stars. A rim of light outlined the high peaks in the distance, and flat, violet shadows drifted down the foothills like smoke.

  She drove on automatic, her thoughts on John O’Malley. The killer had missed him this afternoon, but he would try again. After the mourners and well-wishers had driven out of the mission grounds, after Elena had finished tidying up and said good night, after Leonard Bizzel had checked the buildings and gone home, the killer would return. In the blackness of the night, when John O’Malley was alone.

  Or would the killer wait for him to dash across the grounds to a meeting, or walk to the altar for Mass? Is that when it would happen? Or would there be another dying woman begging for the last sacrament? Vicky felt her whole body grow tense, her heart thump with the certainty that, if an emergency call came, he would go.

  She peered into the darkness beyond the sweep of headlights, pulling her thoughts back to the moment, surprised that she could have missed the narrow sign for Stewart Road. She knew the geography of the reservation—the swells and dips of the earth—as well as she knew the contours of her own body. She searched the shadows for a familiar landmark.