She asked if she could stay in the guesthouse. He’d hesitated at that. The silver sedan had been at the mission yesterday. “Just tonight,” she’d said, a firmness in her voice that met his hesitation. She hurried on, explaining that Coughlin would have Mister in custody tonight, and tomorrow, Adam would be back.
“Yes, of course,” he’d said. He didn’t want to think of her alone in her apartment, a killer on the loose.
He peered across Circle Drive toward the road that tunneled through the cottonwoods, willing the headlights to appear, shimmering through the trees and lengthening across the grounds, but there were no headlights.
He was about to sit down at his desk when he heard a faint rumbling noise. This time, looking out the window, he watched the headlights gather and shoot across Circle Drive. Behind the headlights, he recognized Vicky’s Jeep.
Father John went to the front door. He was halfway down the sidewalk when the Jeep slid into the curb and Vicky got out. She slammed the door behind her and came to meet him. The night was hot, probably only a few degrees cooler than the afternoon, but she was pulling the front of a sweater around her, as if she wanted to ward off whatever chill had come over her.
He placed an arm on her shoulders and ushered her into the residence. “Have you eaten?” he said.
THEY SAT AT the kitchen table. She took a few bites of the sandwich he’d made for her—bologna, mayonnaise, and a leaf of lettuce—and sipped at the fresh coffee he’d brewed. “It doesn’t matter if Mister pulled the trigger,” she said. “He and Jake Tallfeathers are accomplices in her murder. They went and got her, dragged her back to the rez so that some psychopath with a grandiose vision of himself could silence her forever, make certain she never told anyone about Jimmie Iron’s murder in Washington, D.C., or who the real snitch was.”
“You’re saying someone else killed her,” Father John said, and that meant, he was thinking, that even if Mister were arrested, the killer would still be on the loose.
Vicky nodded. “He couldn’t trust her. She’d been picked up by the police, held in custody for twenty-four hours. No telling what she might spill if the police picked her up again. And chances were, they would pick her up. They knew who she was, a vulnerable girl with a baby and no one to protect her. No one to hire a lawyer for her. They would have held her as long as possible, putting pressure on her. Tell us what you know about AIM and we’ll let you go. Whoever her killer was, he knew how it worked.”
Father John got up, refilled her mug, and poured a little more coffee into his own. He set down the coffeepot and glanced out the window. The backyard, the baseball field, and the dirt road that the silver sedan had taken were lost in the darkness, but there was no sign of movement, nothing out of the ordinary. He took his chair again and thought of telling her about the silver sedan, then decided against it. He’d tell her tomorrow. She looked exhausted tonight, her eyes red rimmed with fatigue and strain.
Vicky set her mug down and pulled her bag off the back of the chair and around to her lap. She drew out her cell and began pressing the keys. Then she stared past his shoulder. “Put me through to Detective Coughlin,” she said after a couple of seconds. “I know he’s off duty. This is Vicky Holden and it’s urgent. He knows what I’m calling about.”
She threw Father John a half smile of exasperation and began tapping out a rhythm on the tabletop with her fingertips. A long moment passed before she said, “Do you have him yet?” She paused. “He couldn’t have just disappeared, dropped off the face of the earth. He didn’t know you were coming after him. Why would he run?” Another moment passed before she said, “I’ll check back in the morning.” She pressed a key, snapped the phone shut, and set it on the table.
“Mister’s on the run,” she said. “Coughlin thinks he got nervous after Ruth Yellow Bull’s murder. He could be heading for Pine Ridge. He has relatives there. There’s an alert out for him. The highway patrol will pick him up.” There was little conviction in her voice, and Father John had to glance away from the tiredness in her eyes.
“You need to sleep,” he told her. He’d decided that he’d stay awake tonight, watching, in case the sedan returned.
They walked back through the residence and out to the Jeep. The night was still warm, and a deep quiet had dropped over the mission. Across Circle Drive, the church and administration building loomed out of the darkness, washed in a mix of moonlight and the glow from the street lamps. “I know the way,” Vicky said, giving him a little smile over the rim of the door as she got into the Jeep.
Well, that was true, he thought. Still he preferred to ride along with her tonight. He rapped his fingers on the hood as he walked around and got into the passenger seat, and—strange, this—despite her protest, Vicky waited until he’d pulled his door shut before she started the engine. How well they knew each other, he thought. He wondered if she’d sensed his worry about the mission, or even sensed that the killer had also come here. In any case, she knew he wouldn’t let her go to the guesthouse alone, fumble with the key in the dark, search for the light inside.
The Jeep’s headlights bounced over the gravel road, the edge of the lights catching the sides of the church and the administration building and throwing a column of light toward Eagle Hall. A few old cottonwoods lined the road, and here and there a stray branch dangled over the road. The guesthouse was ahead, a dark, blocklike shape against the pale moonlit sky.
Vicky parked in front and left on the headlights while Father John got out and, pulling the keys from his pocket, went to the front door. He kept to the side so as not to block the light, inserted the key and pushed the door open. He reached inside for the light switch, just as the headlights went off. There was a moment of darkness: the sound of Vicky’s door slamming shut, her footsteps on the gravel. His fingers found the switch, and light burst out of the round glass fixture on the living room ceiling.
It was then that the sound of a gunshot crashed around them. “Get down!” Father John shouted. He hit the switch and turned off the light. God. They’d been sitting ducks in a shooting gallery, both of them, backlit by the light inside. He hunched over and ran toward Vicky, crouched against the front tire of the Jeep. Another gunshot then, blasting the air. Wood shattered in the front door where he’d been standing a half second ago. He felt the sharp pricks, like needles, driving into his back.
“You okay?” he said. She was so quiet, as quiet as death. He took hold of her shoulders. “Vicky! Are you hit?”
“No. No,” she said. It was almost a whisper, a half-strangled noise in her throat. “I’m okay.”
Another shot, then, slamming into the Jeep, rocking it sideways as if it might lift off the tires and collapse into a heap. There was the sound of glass shattering, and shards of glass rained over them. He was firing wildly, whoever he was, firing from the cottonwoods across the road. He knew he had them pinned down by the Jeep.
“We have to get out of here,” Father John said. They had to get into the cottonwoods and scrubby pines on the right side of the house, then zigzag through the brush to the river. They could lose him there, he was certain. He knew where to cross the river—there was only the one place for a mile—and once they were on the other side, they could run for a house set back from Rendezvous Road. But first they had to run along the front of the guesthouse, he was thinking, and that would be dangerous—dark crouching figures moving against the white shingles. The killer would spot them in the moonlight.
The gunfire erupted again, and Father John realized that, this time, the bullet hit the passenger side of the Jeep. He could hear the window caving in, glass crashing over gravel. The killer was expecting them to make a run in that direction, he realized. They had only a moment before he grasped his mistake.
“Go left and run for the river. I know the place to cross.” He nudged Vicky forward. She started running, bent over herself, arms swinging, propelling her forward. He took off after her just as another shot exploded against the right side. The killer hadn�
�t seen them! They had another second of grace. He could hear his heart thumping.
“Run for the trees and keep going,” he said, but she knew that. She was already darting crablike across the bare dirt and the scattering of sagebrush, and he was running after her. Another second was all they had. “I’m behind you,” he said, not sure if she’d heard him.
The killer was onto them now, coming after them. The ground shook with a bullet that sprayed the dirt and brush. They lunged for the trees—he’d caught up to her now, close behind, shielding her—and they kept going, zigzagging around the trunks of cottonwoods that rose like black columns ahead. A broken branch caught at his shirtsleeve and swiped the nape of his neck. He felt the cool line of trickling blood. From behind them came the scuff of boots in the brush, hesitating, then advancing.
Vicky veered to the side, stumbling over a branch, and Father John reached out to steady her. Another explosion rent the air, and at that same instant—odd, he thought, as if they were one event—a sharp pain drove into his shoulder and lit his arm on fire and then his chest, a flame burning through his body, and he was aware of his left arm suddenly limp at his side, a heavy appendage that no longer belonged to him. His boot cracked against a fallen branch and he felt himself reeling sideways through the darkness and pain, Vicky a dark blur in the trees ahead. He tried to push on; he was still running, he thought, and yet why had his feet stopped moving? When had they turned into lead, barely lifting off the ground? He couldn’t believe he was falling—he couldn’t allow it to happen—and yet a clump of sagebrush was rising toward him and he felt himself sinking into it, all of his awareness now concentrated on the blinding light of pain.
31
VICKY PLUNGED THROUGH the tangle of brush and fallen branches, the shadows of cottonwoods and the faint puddles of moonlight. Behind her, John’s hard gasps of breath and the sounds of his footsteps mingled with her own. The Little Wind River was ahead; surely she was only imagining that she could hear it rushing over the boulders. And yet, they must be getting close, and I know the place to cross, he’d said. She tried to hold on to that thought, darting ahead, listening for him behind her. Then she realized she was alone.
She stopped and looked back, trying to make him out in the darkness, moving around the trees. Keep zigzagging. But the sense of being alone swelled into the darkness, and she knew, then—the realization squeezing her heart—that he must have been hit. She started back, a blind woman feeling her way. Which way had she come? Where had she left him behind?
“John!” she shouted. The gunshot followed, aimed in the direction of her voice, she realized. She felt the force of the bullet dislodge the air around her. She kept going, moving toward the killer, her eyes searching the shadows. Then she saw it: a disturbance that lasted only a moment and disappeared. She made her way toward what she’d seen. Her breath was stopped in her throat; her hands had turned to ice.
“John?” she said, softly this time, and in response came a moaning sound that cut through her like a serrated knife. She darted toward the sound and, in the corridor of moonlight, she saw him crumpled on the ground, branches of sagebrush bristling about him.
“Oh, God, no!” she said, throwing herself down beside him. In the dim light, she could see the blood pumping out of his arm, the black puddle growing on the ground.
“Go on,” Father John said, the words coming in a rush of breath.
“Shhh.” She laid a finger against his lips. “Save your strength.” She grabbed his shirt with both hands and attempted to tear it. It was like steel. She bent close, took hold of the fabric with her teeth and pulled hard. The ripping noise burst through the quiet. She kept pulling and ripping until she had a strip, then another strip. She tied the strips together, willing her hands to stop shaking.
“Run,” he said.
“I’m not going anywhere.” She managed to loop the strips around his arm, feeling her way until she’d positioned them above the bleeding. He let out a groan of pain as she tightened the knot, but it wasn’t tight enough. Blood was still pulsing from his arm. She twisted the knot with one hand and ran the other hand along the ground, searching for something—anything strong enough. Her fingers bumped against a cold, hard object. A rock, but oblong and flat, not like a rock at all. A piece of rock, sheared from something large and useless. And this she could use. She gripped it hard, not wanting to drop it into the darkness, and managed to tie it into the knot she’d already made. She started twisting again, using the rock for leverage, leaning close. The bleeding was stopping. God, let it stop.
She was barely aware of the beam of a flashlight washing over them, her thoughts on the bleeding. Yes! It had stopped. Then she understood that, behind the beam, stood the killer. She held the twisted knot in place and blinked into the light, trying to make out who he was, but there was only a black figure, absorbing the moonlight, like the trunks of the cottonwoods.
“Don’t move.” The voice from behind the beam was low and controlled and…familiar. She’d heard the voice before; this was someone she knew.
“How many more people do you intend to kill?” She was shouting into the darkness. “Haven’t you killed enough?”
“Doesn’t look like it, does it?” The voice again, cold and calculating. “You’ve forced me to do this, you and your priest friend, digging up the past, poking around in what isn’t your business. What business was it of yours if some stupid girl got herself killed? Why should you care?”
She recognized the voice now. She could see him pushing back in his chair, fist tapping the edge of the desk. Mister here’s a good man. He’s got the same rights as everybody else. And she understood. There was only one man Liz had trusted. The man who had sent her to the safe house and knew where she was. The man who had sent Jake and Mister after her. And that man was still Mister’s friend.
“Liz Plenty Horses was innocent,” she said, “and you knew it. You set her up to be killed, didn’t you, Robert? Robert Running Wolf, right? Wasn’t that the name you used then? You convinced everyone else she was the snitch. But you were the one who was the snitch, isn’t that right? You were working with the FBI in Washington, and Jimmie Iron found out. So you ordered Jake to kill him. Did Brave Bird find out, too? Is that why he had to die? Or did you just want to make sure nobody else took control? And what about Liz? She’d begun to figure things out, right? You saw the chance to eliminate Brave Bird and put the blame for being a snitch on her. She had nowhere to go. You sent her to Denver, so people would think she’d left the rez. Then you sent Jake and Mister to pick her up and bring her back. You wanted to kill her yourself. Why? To make sure the job was taken care of?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. We were at war, you understand? War! The hell with Vietnam. We were at war right here in Indian country. Things happen in war, get it? So sometimes you have to work with the enemy. A little give-and-take. You give ’em a little and you find out what they’re up to. You gotta know what the hell you’re doing. You can’t have stupid people in charge. They’d bring the enemy right into the camp, with their stupid policies, so they have to be eliminated. Get it?”
“Why did you have to beat her to a pulp before you pulled the trigger?”
“All that bitch had to do was tell Mister and Jake that she was the one, she was the one ratted out Brave Bird, then everybody would’ve believed it. But would she say it? Would she? No. All she had to do was say it, for the good of the mission.”
“And what mission was that?”
“Indian rights, you stupid bitch. AIM was fighting for Indian rights! That was our mission! You think they let you into law school ’cause you’re so brilliant? They let you in ’cause they had to. They didn’t have any choice, unless they wanted a big discrimination lawsuit. You think we weren’t watching law schools, making sure they didn’t discriminate against Indian applicants? You and your partner, you got AIM to thank for your fancy degrees and your fancy office. We made everybody sit up and take notice. We made ’e
m give us our rights. You think anybody wanted Indians to have rights before AIM came along? We went to the barricades for you and your kids and all the other Indians with fine jobs and houses. We protested and we demonstrated and we fought like hell, and we used the courts against ’em, made their own courts say that we had rights. You should’ve said thank you, that’s what you should’ve done. Thank you and went on with your business. So some people got killed. People die in war.”
Vicky saw the motion, the rent in the darkness as he lifted the rifle. “Now you’re gonna die.”
Then, brightness everywhere, flooding through the night, and the loud voice reverberating through a megaphone: “Drop the gun!”
Charlie Crow was illuminated in the floodlights: the flabby build and rounded shoulders, the black hair brushed back from the pockmarked face.
“Drop it!” The voice burst through the floodlights.
He took his time, bringing the rifle down alongside the pant leg of his jeans, still holding on.
“Now, Crow! Rifle on the ground!”
Vicky huddled close to Father John and kept her hand on the stone tied inside the knot, holding it as tightly as she could. “Try to hang on,” she whispered, but she saw that he was unconscious, his breathing slow and ragged. She bent over him and laid her face against his cheek, the cool dampness of his skin. “Don’t leave me, John,” she said. Her voice was choked and heavy. “Please don’t leave me.” In the dark that rimmed the perimeter of light, she could hear boots crunching the brush and undergrowth.
The rifle jerked upward, the barrel turned on them. She felt her breath stop—everything stopped—and she had the sense that she was floating overhead, looking down on a couple huddled together, waiting for the bullets to rip them apart. She was aware of her own hand gripping the stone, and that was what brought her back to herself. This was what she had to focus on; this was all she could do. She could keep the tourniquet tight around John’s arm. She felt her pulse racing, her own blood coursing through her body, the screams strangled in her throat.
The Girl with Braided Hair (A Wind River Reservation Myste) Page 29
