Killing Custer

by Margaret Coel

  “Wait here,” John said, swinging out. He left the motor running, headlights cutting across the back of the pickup.

  Vicky opened her door and got out. The faint noise of giggling and the slurred sound of voices drifted in the air. “Hello!” John called.

  The red dot of a cigarette rose out of the pickup bed, and behind it, the head and wide shoulders of a man caught in the headlights. “Who’s there?” The voice strained with the effort to sound sober. The second red light also floated upward with a woman’s voice, bleary and full of alcohol. “You cops? We haven’t done anything wrong.” A bottle clinked against the pickup bed.

  “Claire? It’s Father John and Vicky Holden.”

  The woman seemed to snap to attention, as if the alcohol had drained from her body and left her sober. “What do you want? Ollie’s all right. Nothing’s happened to my boy. He’s sleeping in the house.”

  “Ollie’s staying with Lester Makepeace.”

  “What? He’s sleeping inside. I checked on him. You think I don’t care about my kid? I love that boy more than anything.”

  Except alcohol, Vicky thought.

  “You never checked on the kid yet.” The man took a long draw from the cigarette and the red light flared against his face. A cloud of smoke rose around his head. “You was gonna check on him soon’s we finished the bottle.”

  “That’s a big, fat lie!”

  “We’re here about Angela,” Vicky said.

  “My know-it-all, higher-than-God sister? Too good for us. Got off the rez like a bat outta hell, said she was never coming back. Like white people were gonna treat her good. Like they give a hoot about Indians. What’s she gone and gotten herself mixed up in?”

  John O’Malley moved closer to the side of the pickup, as if he wanted to be ready to reach for the woman, steady her. “I’m sorry, Claire. Your sister was killed tonight.”

  The woman sank against the rear window of the cab. Her eyes rolled back until she was staring out of white sockets. John took hold of her hand as the man beside her slipped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into his chest.

  “You better know what you’re talking about, coming out here and scaring her to death.”

  “The police found Angela’s body at her place a while ago.”

  The woman made a rhythmic, muffled noise into the man’s shirt.

  “I’m sorry,” Father John said again.

  “Who done it?”

  “The police don’t know.”

  “They’re never gonna find out. Arapaho girl killed? Who cares?” Claire lifted her head and made an effort to turn sideways. Eyes black and wild looking now. “What’d he do to her?”

  “The coroner believes she was strangled.”

  “Who do you think might have done it?” Vicky said.

  “Take your pick. Any white man in town. I told her, stay away. Nothing good’s gonna happen to you across the border. Keep with your own people.”

  “Is there anything we can do for you?” John O’Malley said.

  The Indian man gave him a long, appraising look. “I’m gonna take care of her just fine. We don’t need your help.” He cocked his head toward Vicky. “Yours, either. Go back to your white friends.”

  * * *

  JOHN BACKED THE pickup out of the yard and onto the road, then shifted into drive and drove north, deeper into the rez. “Colin will want to know. He left this morning, but Lou will know how to reach him.” He gave her a sideways glance. “Colin’s a person of interest in Garret’s murder. Copspeak,” he said. “I knew he’d gotten scared after Madden wanted to interview him a second time. Mike Longshot is also scared. They were the only Arapahos who went to the theater to hear Garrett speak. He went on and on about Custer’s exploits. I can’t blame either Colin or Mike for being upset.”

  “Upset enough to kill the man?”

  John O’Malley shook his head. “Upset enough to want to be absolutely sure they wanted to teach him a lesson, remind him of what happened at the Little Bighorn.” A faint pink light had begun to glow in the eastern sky, and the headlights searched the pink haze. Vicky felt his eyes on her again. “They both need a lawyer,” he said. “Mike’s staying at the guesthouse. I told him I’d bring him to your office tomorrow.”

  Vicky was quiet a long moment. How to explain? The words fell away. “I can’t help him. I can’t help either of them.” She could sense the disappointment and questions in the silence between them. “I’m representing Garrett’s widow,” she heard herself say. Representing a white woman, when her own people needed her. How had it come to this? Maybe Claire and her boyfriend were right. She had become like a white person. “It would be a conflict of interest,” she managed. “There are other lawyers.”

  “Adam?”

  “He’s too close to me.”

  John flinched, she thought, but then she told herself she had imagined it.

  22

  THE SKY FELL all around in long streaks of red, magenta, pink, and orange. Sunrise always brought a sense of renewal, Vicky thought. A new day, new opportunities, new things coming, but not this morning. This morning she kept her eyes straight ahead. An occasional house passed, bathed in pink. John had flipped the switch on the CD player on the seat and the music of some opera—Cosi fan tutte, he had told her—drifted over the hum of the tires. She was grateful not to have to keep up a conversation. It had always been like that with John O’Malley. Often there was no need to talk.

  The hard knot of failure tightened inside her. She could see Angela’s face, still and final. No more experiences, no more joys or sorrows, no more laughter. The girl had kept something back—Vicky had felt it; she hadn’t challenged her. Later, she had realized what it was. So obvious, she thought now. Skip Burrows’s office ransacked, computers taken. The man in the mask had returned, looking for what Angela had hidden.

  Angela, trying to be brave, when she had been scared.

  “You couldn’t have prevented it.” John’s voice floated through an aria, as if he had read her mind. “Try not to blame yourself.”

  “I could have taken her someplace else. A motel the killer wouldn’t have known about.” The pickup started to slow down, making rattling, coughing noises as they turned onto a dirt road. The sky had faded into a palette of pastels, and the prairie had turned to gold. “I think she had a flash drive with office files on it,” she said. “It was what the killer wanted.”

  John was quiet a moment. “She must have known he would come after it. Maybe she thought she could trade it for Skip’s life.”

  “Bargain with a killer? What chance did she have? I should have found a way to help her.” Vicky took a moment, trying to bring into focus the thoughts jammed in her mind. “Skip Burrows could be dead,” she said. “He had a briefcase of money that he’d withdrawn Friday. There was something on the office computers the killer wanted. People were always in and out of Skip’s office. Anyone might have seen Angela insert the flash drive. The killer couldn’t risk leaving it in Angela’s possession.”

  They were rolling east, a few houses outside, gold and pink under the sky. John made another turn, and the pickup bounced down a dirt road toward a ranch house. Left onto a graveled driveway. He stopped behind a green truck. Vicky managed to let herself out, legs heavy, dragging her forward, the sense of failure weighing her down. She followed John O’Malley around the truck to the small, white house that glowed in the first rays of the sun. He had just lifted his hand to knock when a man’s voice inside said, “Come in.”

  He pushed the door open. “Lou?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  Vicky stepped into a narrow living room. John O’Malley close beside her, brushing her shoulder. Shadows fell over the sofa and easy chair, the small tables scattered about. The window blinds were closed, and the house had the feeling of early morning, the smell of freshly brewed coffee in the air. Ever
ything about the living room was neat and orderly—the stack of newspapers on the table, the balanced look of the lampshades, the pictures that might have been hung with a level. Across the room was an alcove that extended from the kitchen. Seated at one end of the table, hands curled around a mug of coffee, eyes half-closed, was Lou Morningside.

  “Priest and lawyer.” The Arapaho shook his head. “Sit down. I need a minute before I get the bad news.”

  Vicky took the chair next to Lou. She was quiet. It was John, seated at the end of the table, who said, “We’re here to get a message to Colin, Grandfather,” he said, using the term of respect for an elder.

  “Colin?” Lou’s eyes snapped upward. He straightened his shoulders toward John O’Malley. “You mean, he’s not dead? He’s okay? You aren’t telling me they found his body in a ditch somewhere? I been worrying myself sick about that boy. Up all night waiting for him to get home, straining my ears so hard they’re about to fall off. I been debating with myself about going into Lander to look for him, but where would I go? Some old Indian wandering around town in the middle of the night, waiting for a cop to pull me over. What business you got here? I didn’t see how that would help Colin.”

  “I thought he left for Pine Ridge,” John said.

  “Drove halfway there, then turned around. Blew in last night. Ate himself some supper and took a snooze on the sofa, then woke up and said he’d be back later. That’s all he said, but I know the boy. I told him he should’ve gone to his Crazy Horse relatives and not come back until they solved that Custer murder. The police are going to put it on him. Him and his Crazy Horse regalia. No call for him and Mike to go into town and listen to the lies about the Old Time, but they went anyway. Now the cops can’t take their eyes off them. He came back ’cause of that girl. Got to worrying about her, thought he had to come home and save her from herself. Loved her since they were kids. Soon as he tore out of here, I knew something bad would happen. I could feel it in my bones.”

  He stopped. Jaw hanging slack; eyes switching between her and John. “That’s why you come here. You’re gonna tell me what happened. What’d Colin do? Take her away, like Crazy Horse did his woman?”

  Vicky leaned toward the old man. “We came to tell Colin about Angela.” She tried for a soft tone, the kind she would have wanted if someone told her something horrific had happened to one of her own kids.

  “What about her?”

  “Angela was murdered.”

  “Murdered!” The Arapaho kept repeating the word. “Murdered. Murdered.” He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. The kitchen nook had gotten lighter, sunshine filtering past the flimsy curtains at the window. “Colin didn’t do it,” he said, looking again between her and John. He shifted toward Vicky. “You gotta help him. You gotta make those white detectives know there’s no way he would’ve harmed that girl. She meant everything to him. Just about killed him when she left the rez. Little ranch we got here wasn’t good enough. All the ceremonies and celebrations, powwows and picnics, having her own pony to ride over the prairie—none of that was good enough. She wanted a white life on the other side of the border.”

  “What time did Colin leave here?” John said.

  Vicky caught his eye, and in that instant she knew what he was thinking. Angela’s landlady had seen a man around the rental house. She could have seen Colin. The sense of failure turned into a deep feeling of dread.

  “Must’ve been about eleven. I was getting ready for bed. I begged him. ‘Colin, don’t get involved in that girl’s business. Stay out of it. You got enough worries.’”

  “What do you think she was involved in?” Vicky said. She was thinking that Angela could have told Colin about the flash drive. He had realized the danger she was in and gone to help her. Bring her back to the rez. Hide her where the killer couldn’t have found her.

  “All I know is the white lawyer she worked for disappeared. I heard there was a fight and the office got trashed. Angela was his secretary. So I asked myself, What did she know? What was she up to? I told Colin, ‘It’s white man’s business. Stay out of it,’ I said. ‘If that girl got mixed up in what don’t concern her, that’s her problem.’”

  He scraped the chair backward and, laying the palms of his hands on the table, pushed to his feet. “Not minding my manners, I been worried about the boy. Should’ve offered you coffee,” he said, stepping along the counter. “Just made a new pot.” Lou poured the coffee into a pair of mugs and set them on the table.

  “Thank you,” Vicky said. She could use a cup of coffee, a jolt of caffeine, anything that might help her get a grip on the unfolding day.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “It’s awful what happened to the girl. She was a pretty thing. Colin couldn’t ever get her out of his mind. But she was headstrong as a mule. Nobody could tell her anything. She would’ve been safe here with Colin. Nobody would’ve hurt her.”

  Vicky sipped at the coffee. The warmth radiated through her and settled into her stomach. She began to feel as if she were coming back to herself. “Where do you think Colin is now?”

  “I wish I knew.” Lou lowered his gaze to the table and the half-full mug. He twisted it between his hands. “I’m praying he’s driving back to Pine Ridge. He seen she was okay, and he took off to save himself.” He looked up at John O’Malley a moment, then turned sideways toward her. “All the boys are scared. Hiding out, trying to stay away from the police, but that Lander detective won’t let up. Keeps coming on the rez. Either got the fed with him or one of the BIA cops, keeps it legal. Otherwise he don’t have any business on the rez. One after the other, he finds the warriors that rode in the parade Sunday. All it took was one snitch wanting to stay out of the clutches of that detective to give up a name. That got Madden started. One name, then another. There’s all kinds of clubs he can hold over their heads. Outstanding DUI, traffic ticket, probation. He rides them hard, threatens trouble if they don’t cooperate. So they cooperate. Well, don’t blame them. They tell the truth. All the warriors wanted to do was remind the Custer guy who was boss. He might brag all he wanted about the great things Custer did killing our people, but at the Little Bighorn, the tables got turned. The warriors sent a message at the parade.”

  “But the idea was Colin’s,” John said.

  Lou nodded. “Madden’s taking a hard look at him and Mike Longshot. Mike’s the one that trained the warriors how to race the horses in a tight circle. Something else about him . . .”

  “I understand,” John said.

  “Some of these modern warriors forget the Creator makes us the way he wants us. In the Old Time, Mike would’ve been holy. Nobody would’ve dared hurt him.” Lou leveled his gaze again at Vicky. His eyes were like black pools, shiny and sad. She clutched her hands into fists and waited for the words. “Those boys need a good lawyer. You always take care of our people.”

  “It’s different this time, Grandfather,” Vicky said. “I have a conflict of interest.” Her own words sounded tight and far away. God. Two young Arapahos who could stand trial and be convicted of murder on nothing but flimsy circumstantial evidence. They were in the proximity, they were Indians, they hated Custer. And now this: Angela, Colin’s ex-girlfriend, murdered, and every chance that Colin had gone to her house tonight. Colin could be in even more trouble than Lou imagined. She heard herself stumbling: Other lawyers in the area; someone would represent them. Lou had already turned away. She could see the beads of sweat on the profile of his forehead and nose.

  * * *

  THEY THREADED THEIR way across the reservation and over the border through Hudson, the sky a perfect blue and the prairies, arroyos, and sand hills clear in the morning light. “I can’t recommend any lawyers. I can’t be involved.” Explaining, explaining to the white man behind the steering wheel, when he hadn’t asked for any explanation. He understood. Explaining for herself, she thought. All the years getting a law degree, trainin
g in a Denver firm, preparing to help her people, to change the way matters had always been. She would use the white man’s law for her people, instead of against them. A one-woman crusader. She turned and laughed into the passenger window.

  “I know a couple of lawyers.” John glanced over. She could feel the warmth of his eyes on her. “I’ll see if they’ll take on Colin and Mike.”

  She didn’t say anything. The reality was like a boulder that had dropped between them. The Indian lawyer was representing a white woman.

  23

  SUNLIGHT SPLASHED THE pews and the few old faithfuls scattered about. Father John lifted his hand and made the sign of the cross over the little congregation. “Go in peace,” he said, the last words of the Mass. He walked down the aisle and out into a morning that promised a hot day, his mind full of Angela Running Bear, a girl he couldn’t remember meeting. Perhaps years ago, with her sister, Claire. Two little girls squirming next to their grandmother at Sunday Mass. After their grandmother died, they had never come back.

  He had offered Mass for the girl. He had asked the congregation to pray for the repose of the soul of Angela Running Bear, who had died tragically last night. Wrinkled brown faces had looked up at him with uncomprehending eyes. Only a few heads nodded, as if the news hadn’t surprised them. A girl who had left her own people, gone off to be somebody else.

  News about Angela’s murder hadn’t reached the moccasin telegraph yet, or there would have been more people at Mass. There was always a crowd after a tragedy, as if it took a tragedy to remind people of their own mortality. But the news was probably filtering across the border by now. People discussing it over coffee and doughnuts at the senior center. Over the tanks at the gas stations as they filled up their pickups. In the convenience store where Mike worked. There would be a big crowd at Mass tomorrow.