Night of the White Buffalo: A Wind River Mystery

by Coel, Margaret

  Father John took a minute before he told her he wasn’t sure. “I suggested it, but she seemed reluctant. I think she was half-afraid he might have wanted to get away. Maybe wanted to leave her. What about Tomlin? Does he have any family? Anyone looking for him?”

  “An ex-girlfriend.” Vicky had started pacing again. “I doubt she would file a missing person report. The same is true for Reg Hartly. He is determined to find Josh himself. He thinks if he can get hired at the ranch, he might find something or someone who knows where Josh went.” She came back to the desk and faced him. “Something else, John. Reg Hartly’s truck was shot at last night.”

  Father John was quiet a moment. Then he said, “What about the other cowboys? Were they shot at?”

  Vicky looked away, and he realized there was something she wasn’t telling him. She was an attorney; he was a priest. They kept secrets. After a moment, she looked back. He could see the worry darkening her eyes. “I’ve asked Annie to get the names of the other shooting victims,” she said. “Maybe you can convince Jaime’s fiancée to file a missing person report with the FBI. I’ll talk to Reg Hartly and Tomlin’s ex-girlfriend.” She started into the corridor, then turned back again. “Let’s stay in touch.”

  * * *

  VICKY STOOD IN the rippling shade of a cottonwood and tried to call the number Lucy Murphy had left with her. The mission was quiet; nothing but the sounds of the wind in the branches. She liked the quiet here, a sign of strength and permanence, John O’Malley part of it. “Hi! Little ol’ me here, but not here, if you get my drift.” A high-pitched, cheery voice that barely camouflaged the dark emptiness underneath. “I like messages, so leave me one.” A buzzer noise sounded, and Vicky said, “Lucy, it’s Vicky Holden. I would like to talk to you. If you are home, please pick up.” She waited through the silence. “Call me soon.”

  She checked her text messages: one from Annie: “Talked to Arnie’s mother. Says Lucy lives over in the trailer park off 789. She doesn’t know the number.”

  Vicky slipped the cell into her bag and walked over to the Ford. The trailer park was ten minutes away. Finding a white girl in the maze of metal trailers anchored to the ground and occupied by an ever-changing parade of white and Indian residents would probably take much longer.

  Within minutes she was on the highway, slowing for a right turn onto a ribbon of dusty asphalt that wound through the trailer park. The place looked as if it had been left behind. No children in the dirt playground, swings dancing in the wind. She drove slowly, watching each trailer for a sign someone was home. Finally, a line of wash flapping next to a trailer with a little metal porch attached in front. She pulled in next to the porch and waited. It was impolite to knock and force herself upon whoever lived here. If someone was inside and wanted a visitor, the door would open. She waited a few more minutes, then got out and slammed her own door hard in case no one had heard her drive up. She took her time on the metal steps, then rapped on the door, leaning in close for sounds of movement: the scrape of a chair, a running faucet suddenly turned off.

  The door opened slowly. A white woman in her twenties, black roots in her long blond hair and a baby with chubby legs on one hip, blinked into the sunlight as if she were trying to bring the world into focus. She was leaning sideways with the weight of the baby. “No soliciting. Can’t you read signs?”

  “I’m not selling anything.” She hadn’t always read signs, she was thinking. She had missed a lot of signs in her life. “I’m looking for someone who lives in the park, and I was hoping you could help. Doesn’t look like anyone else is at home.” Vicky shot a sideways glance at the trailer next door. “Do you happen to know where I can find Lucy Murphy?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “I’m Vicky Holden. I’m the attorney representing Lucy’s boyfriend.”

  “She in some kind of trouble?” The baby kicked his chubby legs and waved a blue plastic spoon. The girl adjusted him on her hip.

  “No.” Dating Arnie could be trouble, Vicky was thinking. “She may be able to help me.”

  “I don’t like sending strangers to people. I mean, I don’t feel good about it.” The baby poked the spoon into her neck. She tried to take it away but gave up the effort when he let out a piercing scream. She switched him to her other hip and leaned in the opposite direction.

  “Could you call her?” Lucy hadn’t taken her call, but she might take a neighbor’s call. “I have her number.”

  The girl seemed to consider this. “I’ve got it. Wait here.” She shut the door. The baby started screaming again, probably because she had set him down. After a moment, she was in the doorway, the baby slung back onto her hip, gulping big, wet sobs. “She says she knows you. Number thirty-nine. Just keep going around the curve.”

  Vicky thanked her and headed back to the Ford. She could see the girl and the baby framed in the side-view mirror as she pulled onto the dusty asphalt.

  * * *

  LUCY MURPHY STOOD on the tiny metal stoop of the trailer with the number thirty-nine plastered next to the door frame. She was barefoot, in cutoff jeans and a wrinkled white T-shirt, hair mussed, eyes sleep-blurred. “I don’t have time to talk. I gotta get ready for work.”

  “I only need a minute.” The girl didn’t move, anxiety and something else—sadness—pouring off her like perspiration. Finally she kicked the door open and stepped backward inside. Vicky followed. The trailer might have been any trailer in the area. Narrow table and bench of red plastic, worn pink. Tread marks in the throw rug, green vinyl floor popping up at the edges. A sink, stove, and miniature refrigerator configured somehow beneath a window with a long, vertical crack. A curtain across the aisle to the back. Tobacco odors mixed with the musty, closed-up smell.

  “This about Arnie?”

  “I’m here about Rick Tomlin.”

  The girl rubbed at her eyes with bunched fists. “He’s gone. I made up my mind I’m not worrying about him anymore. He didn’t worry about me. Cut out of here without even a ‘so long, been nice to know you.’” She shrugged a couple of times, as if she were working out kinks in her shoulders. “I’m with Arnie now. Only . . .”

  “What?”

  Lucy looked at some point in the middle of the trailer. “We been having problems lately. He don’t want to see me. Blames me for getting him into all this trouble. He says if it wasn’t for me, Rick wouldn’t have come after him at the bar and they wouldn’t have gotten into the fight.” Her voice started buckling; she was struggling to hold back the tears. “I don’t understand. I love him, you know. Yesterday was our anniversary. I went to the rehab center, and the nurse said he wasn’t seeing visitors. He wasn’t seeing me. Not even on our three-month anniversary.”

  “How long had you been with Rick?”

  “Rick?” She blinked, as if she were trying to pull a new image into mind. “Two months, I guess. It was rocky, I give you that, but . . .” She hesitated, searching for the rest of it. “At least I knew he loved me, even if he lost control sometimes. Not like Arnie. All about me one day and don’t want me around the next.”

  “Listen, Lucy. I need to know if you filed a missing person report on Rick?”

  Astonishment crossed her face. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you were close to him. Did he have family somewhere?”

  “An old man he hadn’t seen in fifteen years. Rick pretty much grew up in foster homes.”

  “So you were the only one who might have filed a report.”

  “Arnie would’ve killed me. He wanted Rick gone.”

  “Enough to make it happen?” Oh my God. She could be hanging her own client. Arnie had sworn he hadn’t done anything other than shoot at Rick’s truck to force him to leave the area, and, God help her, she had believed him. Or was it that his mother had never stopped believing in him and she had been caught up in a delusion?

  “No! No! No!” The girl
was shouting. “Arnie’s a hothead, but he’s not evil! He wouldn’t deliberately hurt anybody. I mean, he had to defend himself when Rick punched him in the bar. You think I should’ve filed some kind of report? With the cops? No way. I don’t want Rick coming back. He’ll think I snitched on him. He’ll tell whatever lies he can tell to make sure Arnie goes to prison.”

  “There may be other cowboys missing from the Broken Buffalo. If the fed and the police get missing person reports, they will investigate.”

  “What are you doing? You’re Arnie’s lawyer. You’re supposed to keep him out of prison, not put him in. I’m not gonna help you hurt Arnie.”

  “What about helping Rick?”

  “What?”

  “You loved him once, didn’t you?”

  “That’s a long time ago.”

  All of three months, Vicky was thinking. “What if he’s hurt? What if he was taken someplace and can’t get away?” The possibility seemed real and immediate, not just something she had seen in the newspaper or on the internet or on TV. “I could go with you to see Agent Gianelli.”

  “Forget it. I’m not going. If Rick turns up, he’ll beat the crap outta me. And Arnie will dump me.”

  Vicky didn’t say anything, and the girl hurried on: “He hasn’t dumped me yet, if that’s what you’re thinking. He loves me.”

  “Where are you from, Lucy?”

  “Kansas. Nowheresville, Kansas. I ain’t ever going back if that’s what you’re gonna suggest.”

  Vicky moved toward the door, grabbed the handle, and pushed the door open. It was as light as cardboard. She stepped out onto the stoop, then looked back. “Think about it.”

  “I’m not going to the police.”

  “I meant about going home.”

  26

  THE SUN BLAZED white over the Wind River range, and an orange, red, and violet panorama streaked the sky. Trout Creek Road, running ahead, was tinged in orange. Father John readjusted the visor against the glare off the hood. The bishop seemed relaxed in the passenger seat, staring over the half-open window at the passing scrublands. The swoosh of the wind melted into the sounds of La traviata. Traffic was heavy, with more cars in the oncoming lane than in the intermittent line of vehicles ahead.

  Father John checked his watch. Nearly seven. The Broken Buffalo Web site listed viewing hours as eight a.m. to eight p.m. He and Bishop Harry should have enough time to walk out to the pasture. He had called Sheila Carey before they’d left the mission and told her the bishop would like to see the calf. She would leave word at the gate, she said.

  “How long will they keep coming?” Out of the corner of his eye, Father John could see the bishop nodding toward the truck with the Utah license plate ahead.

  “It could go on several years.” Father John tried to ignore a sense of alarm flitting like a ghost at the edge of his mind. Years, season after season, out-of-state cars and trucks crossing the reservation, crowds pouring through the wide-open spaces. How many might stay? Settle on a ranch in the area, start a business in Riverton or Lander? This was a land of few people, not yet taken over. It belonged to itself. And yet . . .

  He heard himself saying that the newcomers would be good for the local economy.

  “Perhaps.” The bishop gave a little laugh. “Change will come. It cannot be stopped.”

  Father John followed the Utah truck into the turn onto the two-track. Little brown circles of dust splattered the windshield. He slowed down to give the truck more space. Another mile and they were bouncing over the ruts toward the gate ahead. Beyond, the setting sun outlined the roof of the log ranch house. A cowboy had directed the truck into the parking lot. Father John pulled up close to the gate. Carlos walked over and leaned toward the driver’s window; the beginnings of a beard bristled on his jaw. “Mrs. Carey said you can drive up to the house. She’s gonna escort you to the pasture herself.” He waved at another cowboy, who lifted the gate, and Father John drove through.

  Sheila Carey was coming down the porch steps when he stopped the pickup. “Carlos called and said you were on the way up,” she said as Father John let himself out of the pickup. He started around to the passenger side, but the old man was already out, stretching his shoulders, glancing about the ranch. Small groups of people were waiting by the fence that enclosed the pasture. He introduced Sheila to the bishop, who stopped stretching and shook the woman’s hand.

  “How are you doing with the crowds?” Father John asked.

  “Had to take on more cowboys than I planned.” The woman hooked her thumbs into the pocket of her blue jeans. The wind blew strands of reddish hair across her face. “We’re managing just fine. I’ll walk you out to the calf.”

  Father John and the bishop fell in on either side of the woman as they started down the path beside the fence, past the groups waiting. Fastened to the fence about every twenty feet were large metal canisters with slits in the tops. On the outside, painted in black, were the words: DONATIONS FOR SPIRIT. Another group, returning from the pasture, huddled around one of the canisters. He watched as people took turns stuffing bills through the slit.

  “People want to help take care of the calf,” Sheila said, leading the way around the group. “I don’t mind saying Spirit costs a lot of money. Oh, I’ve thought about selling her, but how would I keep her safe? Most ranchers would kill her for the meat. They don’t want the trouble. I see what she means to Indians. Whites, too. All kinds of folks know the calf is a sacred sign from the Creator.” She stopped and looked up at him. “People here from Chicago this morning.”

  They were leaving more of the noise and confusion behind the farther they walked, moving closer and closer to nature. A soft, quiet wind rippled clumps of grass and sagebrush and plucked at the barbed-wire fence. Another group was returning, stopping to put bills into the canisters. Sheila waved and nodded in appreciation.

  The bishop was doing fine on the hard, smooth-trampled path, one foot planted after the other, eyes on the pasture, as if he might catch an early glimpse of the calf. Ahead, the fence was solid with gifts: paper flowers, small cloth bags, bunches of tied grass, envelopes, photographs, a couple of knit caps, a baby rattle, packages of cigarettes. All rustling in the wind so that the fence itself seemed to be swaying.

  They had walked past the gifts when Sheila said, “We’ll stop here. You brought your camera?” She was looking at the bishop. He leaned toward the fence and shook his head. “I only want to see the calf.” And not capture its spirit, Father John was thinking. Old people, traditionalists on the rez, would understand.

  The buffalo herd had gathered under the cottonwoods, a large, brown circle, placid and content. “They’re protecting Spirit,” Sheila said. “So many people looking at her. They know she needs quiet. I’m sorry, but we may not see her.”

  Then the herd seemed to break apart, a few wandering out of the trees and into the pasture, stopping to graze as they went. A large buffalo came toward the fence, nodding and snorting. Scampering behind was the white calf. A chorus of ahs went up from the group stationed farther along the fence. Sheila was shaking her head. “She’s come to see you.”

  The bishop stood very still, gazing across the space between the barbed wire and the white calf. “She is very beautiful,” he said after a moment. “Praise God for this blessing.”

  On the way back, the bishop stuffed a couple of dollars into one of the canisters. Another group had started out to the pasture, and a couple of women stopped to feed a canister. They were almost at the house when Father John spotted Vicky and Adam waiting in the last group. He thanked Sheila Carey, told the bishop he’d be just a moment, and walked over.

  Adam barely nodded, but Father John stuck out his hand anyway. “Good to see you.” The Lakota’s hand was smooth and hard. “Any luck?” He looked at Vicky.

  “Lucy Murphy refuses to file a missing person report. What about Jaime’s fiancée?”
<
br />   “I haven’t heard anything yet.”

  “What are you talking about?” Adam moved closer to Vicky, as if to shelter her.

  “Cowboys missing from this ranch. Driven off, most likely.” Vicky took a couple of breaths. “Reg Hartly’s working here.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw him riding in the pasture when we parked.”

  “Maybe you can ask him about filing a report.”

  “I doubt I’ll get to talk to him.” Vicky nodded at a point beyond his shoulder, and Father John turned around. Sheila Carey stood on the porch watching them.

  A cowboy walked over to escort the group, and Father John headed back to the pickup. The bishop was sitting in the passenger seat, door flung open to the breeze. Father John slid onto his seat, aware of Sheila Carey hurrying down the steps. The friendly hostess, the keeper of the sacred calf, gone, he could see, and in her place, an angry, distrustful woman who gripped the top of the window with both hands and leaned toward him. “You and that lawyer have something to say to me?”

  He waited a few seconds to let the tension evaporate before he said, “Some cowboys seem to have disappeared. They had worked here. Rick Tomlin. Jaime Madigan. Josh Barker. Any idea of where they were headed?”

  “I don’t babysit the hired help. Leave it alone.” Sheila spun around, ran up the porch steps and into the house. The door slammed like a clap of thunder.

  * * *

  QUIET LAY OVER the residence. The bishop had gone upstairs an hour ago, and the mission itself seemed to have settled into a deep slumber. Father John filled a mug with the coffee he’d just brewed and went into his study. He made his way around Walks-On snoring on the pillow in the corner and dropped behind his desk. The laptop was open, the screen glowing blue and pink around the icons. He had been searching the internet again for news about the calf at Broken Buffalo Ranch. Dozens of sites—Facebook, YouTube, Web sites, blogs—had materialized. The news had spread everywhere. There was even a blog in Belgium. Trips offered by specialty travel sites to “Experience the sacred buffalo calf in the wilds of Wyoming.” Traffic crowding the ranch this evening, visitors yet to come—it was just the beginning. He could feel the hard knot tightening in his stomach.