Night of the White Buffalo: A Wind River Mystery

by Coel, Margaret

  She waited until Lucy Murphy had resettled herself into one of the visitor’s chairs, then she said, “How can I help you?”

  “I couldn’t sleep all night.” The girl had a halting, singsong voice. “I decided you were the one I should talk to. You’d know what to do.”

  The girl took in a shuddering breath. She kept her hands, slim and pink, clasped together on the thighs of her blue jeans. A silvery ring with a big white stone that looked as if it had come out of a vending machine sparkled in the light from the desk lamp. “I mean, you are Arnie’s lawyer.”

  “Is this about Arnie?”

  “You could say so. I’m worried about him. I mean, I love the guy. I know he’s Arapaho and I’m Polish, but so what? We love each other. So I don’t want him in any more trouble, but I don’t want to get myself into trouble. It’s just that, well, there’s something he didn’t tell anybody. I got to thinking, if the cops find out, and they know that I knew and didn’t say anything, it could go bad for both of us.”

  “If you are asking me to represent you, I must tell you . . .”

  “No.” The word came as a shout. “I want to do what’s best for Arnie, put everything out on the table so there won’t be any surprises.”

  “You had better tell me what you’re talking about.”

  Another shuddering breath. Lucy Murphy stared into the center of the desk, as if what she wanted to say was laid out between a folder and the legal notepad Vicky had started making notes on. “That night at the bar in Riverton, me and Arnie was having a few beers, minding our own business, not paying any attention to the cowboys over at the booths. Music was playing real loud, lights were swirling over the dance floor that isn’t any dance floor like I’ve ever seen, nothing but a little space between the booths and tables. A cowboy and some girl was dancing, and lights were swirling, and I thought, Jesus, this place thinks it’s a club in LA when it’s nothing but a two-bit cowboy bar. I mean, I been to real clubs.”

  “What happened?”

  “Arnie grabs me by the hand and practically drags me out to the so-called dance floor even though I kept saying I didn’t feel like dancing, thank you very much, ’cause the beer was sloshing around inside me and what I really needed was to go to the ladies’ room. You don’t say no to Arnie. Maybe that’s why I love him because, you know, he knows what he wants and he goes after it. It’s very—how do you say?—powerful, takes your breath away. Sweeps you along and you’re glad to go because, I mean, where else you gonna go? So we started dancing and this cowboy cuts in.”

  “Did you know him?”

  Lucy gave a quick nod. “Rick Tomlin.” She hesitated. “He wasn’t just any cowboy.”

  And here it was. Vicky looked up from the name she had just jotted onto the pad. She waited for the girl to go on, but the words seemed to have stacked themselves inside her throat. She was coughing, clasping the hand with the big ring over her mouth, coughing and shuddering. Finally she said, “We used to be together, me and Rick. He was okay. I liked him, except he wasn’t like Arnie, powerful and knowing where he was going and taking me along. Soon’s I met Arnie . . .”

  “Where did you meet?”

  “At the same bar. Ironic, huh? I guess that’s what set Arnie off. Rick cutting in just like Arnie had cut in before. I mean, when Arnie cut in, I seen my destiny. We started dancing and, let’s just say, when I left I didn’t go home with Rick.”

  “What did Arnie do when Rick cut in?”

  The girl sucked in a long breath. For a moment, Vicky thought the girl would jump to her feet and run out of the office.

  “Look, Lucy,” she said. “You were there when the fight started. You had better tell me what really happened.” Odd, she thought, that Lucy Murphy’s name was nowhere on the prosecutor’s witness list.

  The pale blue eyes darted about the office and finally settled on a space behind Vicky’s shoulder. She still didn’t say anything, was just breathing hard, as if she had run up a mountain trail. Finally, in a little voice, a child’s voice: “Arnie told Rick to back off, ’cause he didn’t want to fight. The cops get called and who goes to jail? The Indian. I seen it happen before. Trouble was, Rick didn’t back off. ‘Looks to me like you got the wrong gal,’ Rick says. ‘You got a gal that belongs to me.’”

  “Well, I started shouting how I don’t belong to nobody except, well, Arnie, and that was my choice. Next thing I know, Rick punches Arnie in the jaw. I mean, he was roaring like a bull. Arnie picked up a chair and hit him over the head. Then he grabbed me and pushed me out the door. He throws the keys at me, and says, ‘Get out of here. Don’t come back.’ I drove to my place. A trailer I been renting south of Riverton. Hour later, one of Arnie’s buddies shows up. ‘Stay here,’ he tells me. ‘Don’t talk to anybody.’ I asked him what happened, but he said it wasn’t my business. Just stay out of it. I heard later that the fight moved out to the parking lot and Rick was claiming that Arnie assaulted him. The tribal cops went to Arnie’s place, handcuffed him, and dragged him off to jail, wouldn’t even let him put on his shoes.”

  Vicky leaned over the desk. She knew what had happened, a bar fight between two drunken cowboys, white and Indian, the details spelled out in Rick Tomlin’s complaint. What was new was that the fight had been over Lucy Murphy, and the girl could have corroborated Arnie’s claim of self-defense. Rick had attacked Arnie. “Why didn’t you tell the police the truth?”

  The girl had gone back to studying the pale hands clasped in her lap. “You don’t know Rick,” she said. “We was together a really long time, six months at least. We was gonna get married soon as he collected his pay at the ranch. It was gonna be our stake. We were gonna head up to Montana, get out of Indian country. He was gonna work on another ranch close to some town so I could get me a waitress job like I got here at the Diamond Bar and Grill.”

  “There are tribes in Montana.”

  “Well, we was going where they weren’t.”

  “You were scared of Rick?”

  “Like I say, you don’t know him. He’s got a big temper. I been staying out of his way ever since the night I took up with Arnie. It was okay long as Arnie was around, but with Arnie in jail I’d be on my own. I had to talk to the cops when they came looking for me over at the grill. I didn’t have a choice. I told them I didn’t see anything. I told them I ran out the minute I saw Rick coming toward me and Arnie. I never told them about the fight or what it was about. I never told them Rick started it. What if Rick came looking for me? Besides, there was other witnesses. Arnie’s Arapaho buddies and all those cowboys with Rick. Let them sort it out. Trouble is, the cops believed the cowboys.”

  Vicky sat back, trying to fill in the blank spaces, the things the girl hadn’t said. Rick Tomlin, cowboy with no love for Indians, had succeeded in getting Arnie Walksfast charged with assault in a bar fight. Arnie had been looking at time in Rawlins. And the witness whose statement might have kept Arnie from being charged had kept quiet. What didn’t make sense was the idea of Rick Tomlin backing off and disappearing when he had every chance of putting Arnie into prison.

  The girl was shaking her head. A piece of blond hair fell across her eyes and she yanked it backward, as if she could pull it out. “All I know is Rick hated Arnie ’cause I took up with him. He could never let things go. He held on and held on until he could get even. I think he came to the bar looking for Arnie and me. You ask me, Rick and those other cowboys were planning to beat up Arnie, put him in the hospital.”

  “Do you know the other cowboys?” Witnesses on the prosecutor’s list, she was thinking.

  “Just cowboys that work on the ranches around here. None of them looked familiar, but I wasn’t looking real hard. I seen Rick walking over—the way he walks, real cocky like he’s the king of the cowboys, and I started shaking, and Arnie says, ‘Don’t pay him no mind. Just stay calm.’ Then hell broke out and I ran out of there. Next thing I know
Arnie’s the one in jail charged with assault. That would’ve made Rick real happy. Something else I know. Rick never would have taken off right before he was gonna get even with Arnie.”

  13

  ARNIE WALKSFAST SLUMPED at the end of a long metal table in the recreation room. Eyes straight ahead as Vicky walked over. The clack of her heels on the vinyl floor reverberated around the blue walls painted with figures of cartoon characters dancing about. Arnie had a defeated look about him, sunken into himself, clasping and unclasping his hands on the table. Vicky slid onto the chair at an angle from him.

  “We need to talk.”

  Slowly, as if it required great effort, Arnie turned his head. His eyes looked glazed, unfocused. Vicky wondered how clearly he saw her. “How you feeling, Arnie?” she said.

  “How’s rehab?” His voice was a high falsetto, then he switched back. “Nothing matters except what you want. Get this whole thing over, put old Arnie into rehab. Well, what about me? Puking out my insides all night. Can’t even keep water down. Can’t sleep. So they shot me with junk. Drugs to get me off drugs.” Switching again into the falsetto, he said, “This’ll help your nausea. Be a good boy. Take your medicine.” He gave a shrug that was like a tremor running across his shoulders. “My head’s big as a boulder, might even drop off. Blood pressure shoots up and down, all over the place. I got the shakes. I wish I was dead.”

  “I’m sorry, Arnie.” Vicky laid out a yellow legal pad and a ballpoint.

  “That’s supposed to make it easier?”

  “You’ve been through rehab before. You know it will get easier.” She had never been through rehab, she was thinking. What did she know? Only what she had heard from other clients across the same table in this recreation room, toys and tricycles stacked in the far corner next to a couple of kid-size tables and chairs with yellow daisies painted on the blue surfaces. She had seen enough alcoholism; Ben Holden had drunk enough for both of them. She had never wanted the seesaw life: binges, rehab, binges, rehab. The life that Arnie Walksfast had chosen—or maybe, stumbled into.

  Vicky forced herself not to look away from the man. The crooked nose broken too many times, the deep, black caverns under his eyes, the leathery, smoke-hardened face. “Your girlfriend came to see me. She’s worried about you.”

  “Lucy should mind her own business.”

  “You didn’t level with me, Arnie. You forgot to mention the brawl was over Lucy. She had been Rick’s girlfriend, until she dumped him and took up with you. You said Rick threw the first punch. Your buddies backed you up, but it was your word against Rick’s and all of his cowboy buddies. Lucy could have helped you.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “What difference? Rick Tomlin had motive to attack you. You were defending yourself and your girlfriend. He threw the first punch, but when the fight moved outside, he ended up unconscious. How was I supposed to defend you, if you didn’t bother to tell me the whole story? What else haven’t you told me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The rest of it, Arnie. What happened to Rick Tomlin?”

  “He took off.”

  “Convenient for you. If Rick wasn’t around, he couldn’t testify against you. You were looking at a felony conviction and time in prison. Seems like a powerful motive to make sure the main witness doesn’t testify. Did you have anything to do with his disappearance?”

  Arnie planted himself against the back of the chair, lifted his chin, and looked at her down his long, crooked nose.

  “What are you, the prosecutor? You’re supposed to be my lawyer.”

  “I need the truth.”

  “Rick Tomlin is a no-good sonofabitch, beat up Lucy, acted like he owned her.”

  Vicky shifted forward to the edge of the chair. She was gripping the ballpoint so hard, white knuckles popped on her fist. “What did you do?”

  “How do I know what happened to him? The bastard left, that’s all I know. Maybe he got fed up with the Broken Buffalo Ranch. Don’t hire Raps or Shoshones, did you know that?” He shrugged. “Just as well. No Indian’s gonna take what they hand out.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Work the hands like dogs. Sunup to sundown. Bunk in a drafty old shack with a couple of thin blankets. Lucky to get a few squares. Aren’t there laws against keeping slaves?”

  “Nobody has to work for the ranch. Maybe they pay well.”

  “When they pay. All I know is what I hear them white cowboys complaining about in the bar. Soon’s they knock off for the day, they head into town. Can’t blame them. Nobody at that ranch gets back pay ’til the owners take some of the bulls and calves to market. Keeps the cowboys hanging on, waiting. They get paid, they take off.”

  “Lucy said Rick wouldn’t have left before the trial. He wanted to see you in prison. The prosecutor could take another look at Rick Tomlin’s disappearance and decide that you had something to do with it.”

  “Bull.”

  “If you did, I need to know.”

  “So you can get me more time in rehab? Sent off to Rawlins for ten years? The way I see it, what you don’t know won’t hurt me.”

  Vicky didn’t take her eyes away. Arnie Walksfast was lying. She had seen enough clients stammer and blink, run tongues over lips, avert their eyes, clasp and unclasp their hands, lie around the truth. She could feel the hard knot of tension in her stomach. “What did you do?”

  Arnie shrugged and went back to staring at some point across the room.

  Vicky gave him a few minutes, then picked up the legal pad and slipped it into her briefcase. She dropped the ballpoint next to the pad and got to her feet. “You should find another lawyer. I’ll notify the court I no longer represent you. I’m sorry.”

  He looked up at her. “You’re sorry?”

  “For your mother. It will be hard on her if you end up in prison.” Vicky swung about and started for the door.

  “Hold on.” A note of panic flitted through the man’s voice. Behind her came the scrape of a chair.

  Vicky turned back. Arnie was leaning across the table, fists clenched, tendons popping in his neck, like a rodeo rider about to drop onto a bucking bronco in the chute. “Okay. Okay.” He lifted one fist, as if he were giving the signal for the gate to open. “Let’s do this.”

  Vicky took her time walking back over. Waiting until Arnie Walksfast had sat down, feeling slightly light-headed with the surge of adrenaline. The slightest movement on his part and she would flee the room. She had seen the clenched fists; the black, brooding eyes; the anger flooding the features of Ben Holden. She had learned to escape. She had made a permanent escape.

  She took her chair, repositioned the legal pad, and gripped the ballpoint. “What happened?”

  “Nothing actually happened. I mean, we didn’t beat him up or anything like that.”

  “We?”

  “Some buddies. They don’t like white cowboys coming here and taking our jobs.”

  “You said the Broken Buffalo doesn’t hire Indians.”

  “Yeah. If the white cowboys weren’t around, they’d have to, wouldn’t they? Lots of Indians don’t like those dudes. So we put a little pressure on Rick Tomlin.”

  “What kind of pressure?”

  “He came into Riverton, we told him he wasn’t welcome. Guys waited in the parking lot for his old truck to drive up. Told him to turn around and drive outta there if he knew what was good for him. Some guys got into it. Tried to run Tomlin off the road one night. Another time . . .”

  “Keep going.”

  “Maybe somebody took a couple shots at his truck.”

  “You did that?” My God, was she was looking at the shooter who had been terrorizing the rez?

  “I don’t know who did it. I don’t mind telling you I thought it was a good idea. Get off a few shots to make those white cowboys thin
k twice about staying around. Took some random shots at other pickups so the cops wouldn’t put it together that Raps were trying to run off the white cowboys at the Broken Buffalo.”

  “I have to know if you were part of this.”

  “I’m telling you, I don’t know who did the shooting. Nobody got hurt, but I figure Rick Tomlin got the message that he was—how do you say?—persona non grata. I figure he collected his pay and got outta here, like we wanted.”

  “What was your role, Arnie?” When he didn’t say anything, she said, “I don’t want to hear it from the prosecutor.”

  “How’s he gonna know anything?”

  “The first one of your so-called buddies that gets arrested for jaywalking or throwing a punch is going to make a deal and serve you up. What was your role?”

  “Maybe I told my buddies that Rick Tomlin was a no-good sonofabitch, taking jobs, stirring up trouble. Maybe I said we should drive the guy off the rez.”

  “So you instigated a terror campaign against the witness in your criminal case.”

  “He took off, didn’t he? There’s no more felony charges. I took the plea bargain, and here I am in lousy rehab.”

  Vicky waited a moment, trying to marshal her thoughts. The case was like a bucking bronco running wild. “If the prosecutor gets wind of your part in the shootings, you will be charged with a serious offense of intimidating a witness. You’ll be looking at a long time in prison.”

  “Well, you’re not going to let that happen. You’re my lawyer. You’re here to see I got my rights.”

  “Was Lucy involved?” The girl might decide to tell the police what she knew to save herself.

  “She was with me once when I was following Rick real close. Gave his bumper a nudge, thinking he’d go off the road.”

  Vicky had to look away. No wonder Lucy Murphy thinks Arnie had something to do with Rick’s disappearance. She thinks the worst, expects the worst, and she is frightened—not only of Rick. Vicky could feel the weight of the silence that engulfed the room. Muffled voices from the hallway filtered through the closed door. “Is that all of it?” she said finally. “You swear you did not harm Rick Tomlin?”