Killing Custer

by Margaret Coel

  One by one the parishioners walked out and he took their hands, the roughened palms warm against his own. “What happened to her?” they wanted to know. “She was murdered,” he said again and again, the words scratching at his throat. “The police are investigating.” One of the grandfathers shook his head. “So many murders. Cops will be looking at the rez, wanting to blame an Indian. More trouble,” he said.

  After the last pickup had driven around Circle Drive and into the cottonwoods, Father John walked back through the church. The sound of his boots on the carpet broke through the heavy stillness that always permeated the church after the congregation had filed out, as if some of the energy, the breath, of the people who had knelt in the pews were still present.

  He knelt on the altar step and prayed again for the soul of Angela Running Bear, and for the people who had loved her. Claire and Colin Morningside. Ten minutes later he had hung his alb and chasuble in the sacristy, placed the Mass books in the cabinet, and retraced his steps down the center aisle. He crossed the mission grounds to the residence. Sporadic gusts of wind whipped at the wild grasses, and birds chirped in the cottonwoods. Walks-On rose off the stoop and came loping to meet him, gripping a Frisbee in his teeth. Father John managed to coax the Frisbee free, then threw it across the field enclosed by Circle Drive. The dog went after it, brought it back and, this time, dropped it at Father John’s feet. The game went on for several minutes, until he threw the Frisbee in the direction of the residence and ran after the dog. “More later,” he said, letting himself through the front door. The dog stood on the stoop shaking the Frisbee, disappointment flashing in his brown eyes.

  The bishop had already eaten breakfast and was sipping at what was probably a third mug of coffee when Father John walked into the kitchen. “You didn’t get much sleep,” the bishop said.

  He hadn’t gotten any sleep, Father John was thinking. He had stayed up late working on the budget that never wanted to balance itself; it lived in the perpetual state of hovering over a cliff. Then he had taken a book to bed—Custer in the Civil War—and had been about to drop off when the phone rang. Detective Madden. A young Arapaho woman murdered. The detective thought he might like to know.

  Elena stood at the stove ladling oatmeal into a bowl. He wondered if she had heard the news, but the moment she turned around and set the bowl on the table, he knew that she had. “My nephew called first thing this morning. Told me about Angela Running Bear.”

  “I’m afraid it’s true.”

  “God have mercy on her.” The bishop set the mug onto the table.

  Father John pulled out a chair with his boot and sat down in front of the oatmeal. He was aware of the hollow space in his stomach, but he didn’t feel hungry. He reached for the mug of coffee Elena handed him and took a couple of long sips. The kitchen went quiet. He could feel the unasked questions floating over the table. After a moment, he told them what he knew about the murder. He was thinking that he didn’t know much.

  “What did that girl get herself mixed up in?” Elena said. “Boss kidnapped, place ransacked. You ask me, the poor man is dead. Now Angela murdered. What did they have going on?”

  Father John took a drink of coffee and stared at the woman. She had seen enough to cut a straight line through the conjectures and theories and possibilities to what was most obvious: whatever Skip Burrows had been involved in, he had also involved his secretary. Father John poured milk over the oatmeal and took a spoonful. It was like swallowing a lump of coal. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Madden would look first to the rez, to Angela’s Arapaho connections. Family. Ex-boyfriend.

  “Sometime in the middle of the night,” the bishop said, “I thought I heard a pickup on Circle Drive.”

  Father John stopped eating and waited for the old man to go on. “We usually don’t get visitors that late. Took me a while to get out of bed, but when I got to the window, everything looked quiet. No sign of any vehicle.”

  Father John pushed his chair back and headed down the hallway. He slammed out the door and took off running, down the sidewalk, across Circle Drive, and through the field, across Circle Drive again and down the driveway bathed in the shadows of the church and the administration building. He was aware of Mike’s horse stomping and whinnying in the makeshift pasture behind the church. He ran on. A pickup stood next to the side of the guesthouse, almost lost in the shadows. When he got close, he saw the bumper sticker: Crazy Horse Lives.

  He knocked on the door of the guesthouse. He was breathing hard. Before he could knock again, the door swung open. Mike stood in the doorway, disheveled and sleepy-eyed. He moved backward and Father John stepped inside. In the narrow kitchen off the living room was Colin Morningside.

  “Texted me last night and said he needed a place to stay,” Mike said.

  Colin turned away from the counter and the cereal bowl with the spoon sticking up above the edge and walked to the doorway. He leaned a shoulder against the frame. Wide-awake, tense, and wired, as if he might burst across the room and out the door. Blue jeans and checkered shirt looked worn and wrinkled. One knee poked through a wide tear in his jeans.

  They hadn’t heard about Angela, Father John was thinking. The moccasin telegraph would be buzzing by now, but they must not have checked their phones or text messages. “I have bad news,” he said. “We’d better sit down.”

  “Sit down?” Mike dropped onto the armrest of the sofa. He looked as if a gust of wind had blown him over.

  “You’re going to tell us Madden’s looking for us,” Colin said, straightening himself in the doorway. “He’s had us in his sights since Garrett got shot.” He was shaking his head. “He’s been harassing warriors all over the rez. Doesn’t surprise me if one of them said, ‘Yeah, Colin could’ve done it. Crazy Horse hated Custer. Surrounded the cavalry so he could kill that white man.’”

  “Listen to me Colin. The news is about Angela.”

  The young man regarded him for a long moment, sizing him up, wondering what the priest at St. Francis Mission knew about Angela Running Bear that he didn’t know. “She’s okay.” He shook his head, as if to brush off whatever initial concerns he might have felt. “I saw her last night, and she’s fine. She’s still living in that rental house in Lander.”

  “She was murdered last night,” Father John said. “I’m sorry, Colin.”

  The Arapaho’s face went perfectly still, as if his breath had stopped in his throat. His eyes narrowed into hard, black slits. For a moment, Father John thought the man would fall facedown onto the floor. A strangled gasp came from the sofa, and he was aware of Mike struggling to his feet, leaning over the armrest, holding on. Then Colin stepped back and swung a fist, like a sledgehammer, onto the counter. The cereal bowl skittered to the edge and crashed on the floor, splashing Cheerios and milk over the linoleum. The spoon spun like a top into the living room.

  “Who?” The word gurgled out of his throat. He was still leaning forward, pounding the counter, but now the pounding was a metronome of helplessness.

  “The police don’t know yet.”

  “She was fine when I saw her.”

  “Did you talk to her?”

  After a moment, the pounding stopped and Colin turned around. “She didn’t want to talk to me. I must have left five or six messages. Told her I was coming for her. I wanted to get her out of there. She didn’t even call me back. I wanted to bust down the door and take her, so she’d be safe. All I did was look in the window. Saw her sitting there like she knew what she was doing. What business did I have to pull her away? What did I know about her new life in Lander? Nothing. That’s when I knew it was over between us. She made it clear when she came to the ranch Monday afternoon that she didn’t want me in her life.”

  “You shouldn’t have come back,” Mike said.

  Colin stared into space, swaying on his feet. “I couldn’t stop loving her. Worrying about her. Couldn’t
sleep. I’d close my eyes, and there she was. I could see the shadows around her, like dark spirits at her heels. She was in danger. I felt it in every part of me. I decided to give it one more chance. Crazy Horse went and got his woman. I had the notion I could do the same. I should’ve saved her.” The words came like a long wail of grief. “I should have taken her away. What did he do to her?”

  “It looks like she was strangled.”

  “Strangled! Oh God, why did I leave her there?”

  Father John gave him a moment before he said, “What time were you there?”

  Colin sank against the edge of the counter and rubbed at his eyes. “Around eleven thirty. I wasn’t thinking about the time.”

  “The landlady might have seen you.” Father John could hear the tight worry in his voice. “She claims she saw a man in looking in Angela’s windows.”

  Colin nodded. “I walked around the house, trying to decide what to do.”

  Father John could hear Madden’s voice: The killer burst through the back door.

  “So Madden’s got another reason to arrest me. He figures I shot Garrett and had nothing to lose by killing Angela. He’ll say I killed her ’cause she broke up with me.”

  “He’ll need solid evidence.” Dear Lord. Madden would build two murder cases against Colin. “You both need to talk to a lawyer.” He glanced from Colin to the man straddling the armrest. “I’ll make a couple of phone calls.”

  “You said Vicky Holden can help,” Mike said.

  Father John shook his head and told them that Vicky was already representing Garrett’s widow. The helplessness he had sensed in her was as strong as if she were standing beside him. “It would be a conflict of interest.” Echoing her words. “There are other good lawyers in the area.”

  “I’m out of here.” Colin pushed off the counter and flung himself through the doorway and across the living room. He yanked open the door. “You got any sense, you’ll come with me,” he shouted over one shoulder. Mike jumped off the armrest and followed him out the door.

  Father John stepped onto the stoop and watched the pickup skid backwards, then shoot down the driveway. He could hear the motor screaming through the cottonwoods and out on Seventeen-Mile Road. He might have tried to stop them, he thought. It would have been the logical thing to do. Running to Pine Ridge would make them look guilty, add ammunition to whatever theory Madden was entertaining. They should get a lawyer, take their chances. A couple of Arapahos? What did he know? They would be safer at Pine Ridge.

  He walked back to the residence. When he got into the office, he intended to call Mike’s mother and find out what she wanted to do about the horse. He wouldn’t tell her where Mike had gone. The less she knew when the cops came around, the better it would be.

  24

  “I’VE BEEN WORRIED.” Adam stood in the center of the kitchen, freshly showered, crisp white shirt and blue jeans, hair still damp. Gripping a coffee mug in one hand. Coffee smells filled the apartment. From outside came the muffled sounds of the morning traffic and Lander coughing to life.

  Vicky shut the door behind her. She should have called him, let him know where she was going. A simple phone call. It was wrong and distracted of her not to think about him. Woman Alone. She shook her head at the name the grandmothers had given her. She had been Woman Alone for so long, she had forgotten how to be anything else.

  She started to apologize when Adam lifted his other hand, palm outward in the Plains Indian sign of peace. “I understand. You went to the rez to notify relatives. Tough job.” He shook his head.

  “I keep wondering what I could have done.” Vicky walked over to the counter that divided the kitchen from the small dining area, took a stool, and let her bag fall on the floor. She dropped her face into her hands. She couldn’t shake the image of Angela Running Bear, back straight, shoulders squared, rushing toward the front door, as if she knew where she was going. She was aware that Adam had set a mug of coffee in front of her. The aroma floated like clouds around the image.

  “You’re not psychic. She told you what she wanted to tell you.”

  Vicky sipped at the coffee, grateful for the warmth and the faint feeling of normality. “The last thing I told her was that I couldn’t help her.”

  “You didn’t have a choice.”

  Vicky stayed with the coffee. It was true. Her client was Belinda Clark, and the minute Madden had let on that he was looking at a connection between the murder of Belinda’s husband and the abduction of Angela’s boss, she knew she had a conflict of interest.

  “Angela wasn’t the only one I couldn’t help,” she said. “Lou Morningside, Colin’s grandfather, is pretty sure Colin went to her place last night. The landlady may have seen him. Angela had broken up with him when she started working for Skip. Now Madden will think Colin murdered Angela. He’s already convinced that Colin and Mike Longshot conspired to murder Garrett. It fits his scenario. Crazy Horse leading the charge against Custer. Both Colin and Mike need legal representation, and I can’t help them.”

  “There are other lawyers. The court will appoint lawyers . . .”

  Vicky waved away the rest of it. She knew how it worked. Court-appointed attorneys, straight out of law school, their only experience with Indians was passing them on the street, and somewhere, deep in their hearts, believing Indians were different. Who knew what Indians might do?

  “You practice law in a white town. A white woman walked in needing a lawyer and you agreed to represent her. Were you supposed to turn her away at the door? Tell her to get a white lawyer and wait for Arapahos to come in? I don’t remember anything in the oath we took specifying the type of people we should help.”

  “You don’t understand.” Vicky got up and stepped around the counter, brushing Adam’s back. She rinsed her mug in the sink.

  “I’m trying.”

  She turned and faced him. “I crossed the border, like Angela. Became part of another world the way she did. Caught up in other ways, other problems. My own people need me, but I’m too busy with them.”

  “Come on, Vicky.” She heard the familiar, rising note of anger in Adam’s voice. “We both practice close to the courts, close to the jail. What sense would it make to practice on the rez and spend time driving back and forth to Lander? So you’re on the other side of the border. So what?”

  Vicky watched him while he was speaking, the way his mouth moved around the words, as if he were translating from Lakota to English, the way his black eyes bore straight into her. A formidable opponent in the courtroom or the conference room, Adam Lone Eagle. He had a great ability to convince anybody that he was right. Except for her.

  “I know it makes sense . . .”

  He cut her off before she could say the rest of it—“to you.” “We both have work to do.” He swung around the counter, picked up the briefcase on the dining room table, and started for the door. Holding the door opened, he looked back. “Tonight?”

  She didn’t say anything, which he seemed to take for a yes because he nodded, stepped into the corridor, and closed the door behind him. She listened to the tread of his footsteps retreating down the corridor, the elevator rattling into life.

  * * *

  VICKY GOT TO the office before Annie or Roger had arrived. No smells of freshly brewed coffee, no phones ringing, no sense of bustling about. Just the residual stillness of the night. She opened the windows that overlooked the backyard, dropped into the swivel chair, and turned on the computer. The morning breeze ruffled the blank pages of the legal pad on her desk as the computer whirred into life and icons settled onto the screen. She thought about Colin. Worrying about Angela, feeling guilty about leaving her alone in Lander, as if she were stranded in another country with no way to get home.

  Colin, going to Angela’s place last night. God. If Madden couldn’t find enough evidence to charge Colin with the murder of Edward Garrett, he wouldn’t ha
ve any trouble finding evidence to connect him to Angela’s murder. Boot prints outside the house. Fingerprints who knew where? The landlady peering out the window, certain she could identify the man she saw. A white woman who probably thought all Indians looked alike. And Colin, returning for his woman, like Crazy Horse.

  Vicky typed “wife of Crazy Horse” in the search engine and watched the black lines of text come up. Pages of Web sites, but only one or two looked interesting. She clicked on “Crazy Horse and Black Buffalo Woman” and glanced through the text.

  From the time they were children, Crazy Horse had loved the solemn-faced, black-eyed girl, but when they were grown, she married another Sioux warrior, No Water. The marriage didn’t stop Crazy Horse from loving her, and one day, he went to her camp and took her away. No Water bided his time, but eventually he came after her and shot Crazy Horse in the face. His father begged him to let the matter drop, not to take revenge. Keep peace within the tribe, and Crazy Horse listened. He carried the scar from No Water’s bullet the rest of his life.

  A whoosh of air lifted the top page of the legal pad as the front door opened and closed. On the other side of the beveled glass doors, Annie and Roger moved about, a blurred dance step. There was the low murmur of voices. The phone rang twice, then stopped. Vicky looked back at the text. She hated the doubt nipping at her. God, she was thinking like a defense attorney, trying to convince herself her client was innocent so that she could convince a jury. Not asking her client if he was guilty, not wanting to know the truth. Truth? Some clients were guilty.

  “Morning, Vicky.” The beveled doors opened and Annie stepped inside, Roger close behind, the same worried, tired, up-most-the-night look on their faces. “Can we talk?”

  Vicky closed the Web site and motioned them to the chairs on the other side of the desk. The first whiff of brewing coffee trailed after them. “You’ve heard?”