The Spider's Web

by Coel, Margaret

  “I’ll be staying with Ella,” Marie said, as if she wanted to reassure him that Ella would not have to spend the night in the hall alone. Relatives always stayed with the corpse.

  Father John glanced toward the rear door. A few people had begun shouldering their way outside. He couldn’t see Roseanne. Most of the people were lining up in the center aisle to speak with Ella, express their condolences. He kept a hand on Ella’s shoulder a moment, then shook hands with Jerry, who was on his feet, eyeing those straining to get close to the family, as if he wanted to protect them. Father John told Ella good-bye and started for the side door. Maybe he could catch Roseanne in the parking lot.

  22

  GROUPS OF MOURNERS straggled out of the hall, looking as if they had wandered into a neighborhood that was once familiar but had changed now that Ned Windsong was no longer there. They stood about, heads bobbing in and out of the circles of yellow light from the overhead lamps. A column of light washed out the front door across the graveled parking lot. Father John spotted the small, dark figure hurrying past the vehicles at the end of the lot.

  He took off running, conscious of the scrape of his boots on the gravel. “Roseanne!” he called.

  She threw both arms over her head and ducked around a pickup, as if to shield herself from a wall of falling bricks.

  “It’s Father John,” he said, moving in closer. She was pressed against the passenger door, the whites of her eyes enormous in the shadows.

  “You scared the hell outta me,” she said, dropping her arms and tossing her head about, taking in the knots of people wandering down the row of vehicles. “What do you want?”

  “Are you okay?” He kept his voice calm. “You’re settled in the house?”

  She gave a half shrug. “They came for me today.”

  “Dwayne and Lionel?”

  “They seen me at the convenience store in Ethete. I shouldn’t have gone there, but I needed groceries. They must’ve been driving by. Jesus, why don’t the cops pick them up?”

  “It’s a big reservation,” he said. And they are like smoke, he was thinking. Visible for a moment, then gone. “What happened?”

  She ran her fingers through her hair, tucking a strand behind her ears. Her silver earrings glinted when she moved her head. “Followed me to the Sun Dance grounds. I ran down the ditch and got away. They think I been talking to the fed and I can connect them to Ned. I only talked to the fed once, and that was because I couldn’t get away. I mean, I was at Berta’s when he showed up. What was I supposed to do? I’m not a snitch.” She lifted her hands and pressed her fingers under her cheekbones. “They won’t believe me. They’re gonna keep looking ’til they find me. They’re gonna kill me.”

  “What do you know about them?” Father John said. “Where could they be hiding?”

  She gave him a wide-flung look, as if she were taking him in with the whole reservation. Then she pulled in her shoulders and pushed past him.

  “Wait a minute,” he said following her, but she kept going until she reached a blue sedan nearly hidden between two pickups. She lunged for the driver’s door, jammed a key into the lock and started to drop behind the steering wheel. He took hold of her arm and turned her toward him.

  “You know where they’re hiding, don’t you?” he said.

  “They’ll kill me.”

  “Not if they’re in custody.”

  “Leave me alone.” She twisted in his grasp. “I don’t know where they are.”

  “But you have a good idea.” She was staring up at him with the same wide eyes, like a wild animal in a trap, scared and innocent and vulnerable. He had been guessing, he realized, reading in between the lines, following his gut instincts, but now he knew that he had guessed right. “The fed and the police have spent three days looking for them,” he said. “They’re going to find them eventually, but until they do, you’re in danger. Do you understand? The sooner Lionel and Dwayne are arrested, the sooner you’ll be free.”

  “Don’t you get it?” She bit at her lower lip. “If I snitch, I’m dead.”

  “You can use a pay phone and give the fed an anonymous tip,” he said.

  She yanked her arm away and ducked inside the car. He closed the door behind her and stepped back as the engine turned over and the sedan slid forward, then headed across the lot and out onto Seventeen-Mile Road. He watched the red taillights until they dissolved in the darkness.

  Vicky came toward him as he started past the vehicles. Another small lone figure, backlit by the glow of light from the hall. Little groups moved in waves around her. She kept the same, steady pace, and even in the dark he could feel her eyes on him.

  “Ned’s former girlfriend?” she said when he closed the gap between them. “Too bad she was in such a hurry to get away. I wanted to talk to her.”

  “She was worried that Hawk and Lookingglass might be here.” He glanced around at the cars and pickups pulling out of the slots and inching across the lot. There was every possibility the two men had been waiting in a pickup, staring out of the windshield, watching for Roseanne, but he hadn’t seen any vehicles pull out behind her sedan. “They followed her today. They want to intimidate her so she won’t give up their hiding place.”

  “She knows where they are?”

  “She has a good idea.”

  “For godssakes, John. She has to tell Gianelli. Marcy’s in danger.” Vicky drew in a long breath and stared past his shoulder at the vehicles crawling past. The putrid smells of exhaust rolled through the air. “Marcy has cooperated. What about Roseanne Birdwoman? Is she cooperating?” She hurried on before he could say anything. “My guess is that she isn’t. She doesn’t want to be a snitch—isn’t that her excuse? But she’s in a position to confirm what Marcy has said and tell Gianelli where the killers are hiding. Doesn’t she realize the dangerous game she’s playing? If they followed her today, that means they’re on the rez. They could figure out that Marcy’s at the mission. She shouldn’t stay here. She should go back to Oklahoma where her father can protect her.”

  “Listen, Vicky,” Father John said, “Marcy had somewhat of a breakdown this afternoon.” He told her about the girl, drunk and wandering down the path to the river, tearing at her clothes and railing against her father. “She’s been trying to get away from her father most of her life. She won’t go to him.”

  Vicky gave him a look of incomprehension, as if they were talking about different girls. “Larry Morrison loves his daughter,” she said. “He knows she’s been under the kind of stress that would buckle people with a lot more experience. So she had a couple drinks? It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Marcy needs professional therapy,” he said.

  “What she needs is for Dwayne Hawk and Lionel Lookingglass to be in custody.” Vicky started walking in the direction of her Jeep, parked across from the empty slot where Roseanne’s car had been, and Father John walked with her. “I know the girl,” she said, opening the driver’s door and turning toward him. “Talk to Roseanne, John. Convince her to cooperate with Gianelli.”

  She was about to fold herself behind the wheel when Father John said, “I’ve been thinking about the burglary ring.” The idea of Ned breaking into houses in Lander and Jackson Hole had been free-falling in his mind with no logical stops, no conclusions that made sense, and he realized he had wanted to talk it over with Vicky.

  She looked up at him. “What about it?”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Donald Little Robe told me that Ned went to Jackson Hole to get away from something, start a new life. But if he had wanted to get out, what made him stay with it?”

  “Maybe Jackson Hole had even bigger, richer homes,” Vicky said. “Ned and the others had a good thing going,”

  “He warned Roseanne to stay away from them, that they were no good.”

  She hadn’t taken her eyes from his. Holding on to the edge of the door, her face was half-lit inside the Jeep. “What are you getting at?”

  “Ned k
ept trying to break with the ring. I don’t think he was the leader, the guy calling the shots. And I don’t think Hawk and Lookingglass could have influenced him to stay in after he got to Jackson Hole. I think somebody else is involved, somebody with a hold over him.”

  Vicky shook her head. “They had a hold over him,” she said. “Do as we say, or you’re dead. Ned came back to the rez, started preparing for the Sun Dance, announced he was done with the past. They killed him to keep him from talking. It’s as simple as that.”

  She turned away and ducked inside the Jeep, and he shut her door. He waited until she pulled into the line of vehicles snaking across the lot, then walked toward the Toyota. The hall door was closed, leaving only the stream of headlights bobbing through the darkness and the dim circles of overhead lights. Vicky was probably right, he thought. Ned wanted enough money to buy a ranch, and that was what pulled him back into the burglary ring. Still he couldn’t shake the notion that if Ned had thought Hawk and Lookingglass might come after him, he would have been prepared. He would have heard them drive into the yard. He wouldn’t have opened the door for a couple of guys who wanted to kill him.

  Ned hadn’t expected to die that night at the hands of Dwayne Hawk and Lionel Lookingglass.

  THE SKY WAS filled with stars when Father John turned onto Circle Drive, the cone of headlights sweeping ahead. The streetlamps cast waves of light over the grounds that gave the mission a surreal look. Beyond the lights, the old buildings bunched in the darkness, flat black shadows looming out of the past. He turned off the Salome CD and let the nighttime silence drift through the cab. It was easy to imagine the bustle of the mission a century ago, horse-drawn wagons and carts swaying around the drive, Arapaho kids racing about the school yard, the smells of hay in the fields and the neighing of horses in the corrals, the odors of fresh bread wafting from the bakery. Always the past and the present yoked together, he thought, neither able to break free. It was in the silence that he felt connected to something bigger than himself, a whole history that had caught him up with all the old Jesuits—the Black Robes—who had come before him.

  He parked at the residence and hurried down the shadowy sidewalk. Light glowed in the living room window, and for a moment, he let himself hope that Bishop Harry might still be up watching TV. He wouldn’t mind a little company, another mind to try out his theory that somebody other than Ned and the two men accused of killing him controlled the burglary ring. The minute he let himself inside, he knew by the subdued noises emanating from the living room that Bishop Harry had gone upstairs to bed and left the TV on, a kind of welcome for the pastor, as if someone were here.

  Walks-On skidded out of the kitchen and down the hallway sleep dazed, blinking in the light that Father John had snapped on. He patted the dog’s head and scratched his ears, then led him back into the kitchen where he shook dried food into the blue enamel bowl and refilled the water bowl. He drained a mug of lukewarm coffee from the container, set the mug in the microwave and watched the oven whir and blink into life. He heard the noise then, the thump and scratch of boots on the back step, followed by the kind of quiet that made him wonder if he had heard anything at all. There hadn’t been any engine sounds, and he hadn’t seen any parked vehicles outside, but it was always possible that someone had parked in back of the residence. He stopped the microwave and listened. He could feel his neck muscles stiffen with tension. His hands curled into fists. Walks-On had stopped eating and lifted his head. A low growl emerged from his throat. His hair stood up along his spine.

  The noise came again, unmistakable this time. A deliberate pressure of human weight on the wooden steps that led to the back porch and the outside door to the kitchen. There was a rhythm in the way the sound came and went as the intruder climbed a step, stopped, then climbed another. Then the rhythm mixed itself up like a jazz riff, point and counter point. There were two intruders.

  He realized that the door was unlocked—the little lever turned vertical instead of horizontal. He lunged for the door just as it burst open and two men—Arapahos, black-haired and dark-eyed, the rancid smells of whiskey and vomit pouring off them—threw themselves into the kitchen. He managed to back against the hard edge of the counter as Walks-On jumped on one of the men and sank his teeth in the fleshy, flailing arm.

  23

  “CALL HIM OFF! Call him off!” The big man with a black ponytail flailed at the dog with his free arm and jumped about as if he were on hot coals.

  Walks-On backed off and, gathering rage-infused momentum, lunged again at the man’s arm as a small, black pistol with a muzzle that seemed as big as a cannon rose in the other man’s hand.

  “Don’t shoot!” Father John grabbed the dog’s collar and jerked him backward. It took almost all of his strength; the dog was like a mountain lion, throwing himself at the intruder. The gun waved about. “Don’t shoot!” he shouted again. He pulled Walks-On in close and moved between him and the gun.

  “Jesus! I’m bleeding!” The big man sounded like he might burst into tears, and Father John reached around, grabbed a dish towel off the counter and tossed it to him. He caught it in mid-air and jammed it against his arm. A thin strand of blood trickled toward his elbow. “Kill that mangy beast,” he said.

  “There’s not going to be any killing here,” Father John said, willing his voice to be calm and authoritative. A bit of legerdemain, he thought, as if he were the one in control. Walks-On jumped against his leg. “What do you want,” he said.

  “You gonna shoot that dog or what?” the big man said, pressing the towel to his arm.

  “Shut up, Lionel,” the other man said. He kept the gun thrust into the empty space between him and Father John, but he no longer waved it about. Knuckles popped like miniature snow peaks in his brown hand.

  “Dwayne Hawk and Lionel Lookingglass,” Father John said. He had known who they were the instant they came through the door. “What are you doing here?”

  “Where you keeping her?” Dwayne said. He was thin and wiry, a good half foot shorter than his partner, but he looked more menacing, gripping the gun and fixing Father John with narrow, black eyes under the cliff of his forehead. His black hair was cut short, and part of his left ear was missing.

  “Who are you talking about?” Keep him talking, Father John was thinking. Find a place to engage him. The first rule of counseling.

  “The bitch that fingered us for Ned’s murder.”

  “Jesus, my arm’s hurting like hell,” Lionel said. “I need a doctor. That dog got rabies?”

  Walks-On growled and snapped, and Father John tightened his grip on his collar. “Take it easy,” he said, not sure whether it was meant for the dog or the two men. “He’s had his shots. You’re not going to get rabies.”

  “You don’t shoot him now, I’m gonna do it, I swear. I’ll come back here with a shotgun and blow his brains out.”

  “I told you, shut up,” Dwayne said. He moved forward and pointed the gun at Father John’s chest, eyes squeezed into angry slits. Dots of perspiration blossomed on his forehead. “The white girl. Where’d you put her?”

  Father John could feel his heart catapult against his ribs. “The fed has her in a safe place,” he said.

  The Indian was quiet a moment, the slit-eyes looking Father John up and down. “Funny, we heard she’s right here at the mission. You been keeping her safe so she can tell her lies and get us locked up for killing Ned. Only we didn’t do it, see? It don’t matter what she says, we didn’t know he was dead ’til we went to pick him up. Figured he’d been stuck with that white girl long enough, needed to get back to his own kind.”

  “Tell your story to the fed.” Father John tried not to look at the gun. “You have a witness.”

  “Yeah.” Dwayne gave a snort. “Roseanne, the snitch. Talking to the fed, connecting us up with Ned. She needs to keep her mouth shut, she knows what’s good for her.” He shifted his gaze sideways toward Lionel, flopped down on a kitchen chair, clasping the towel against his arm. B
eneath his fingers, the towel was turning red.

  Father John followed his gaze. “You need ice,” he said. Still holding on to the dog’s collar, he started for the refrigerator.

  “Don’t move!” The gun jutted into the center of the kitchen, like a cannon moved into firing position.

  “I need to go to the hospital.” Lionel was moaning and fidgeting.

  “Take it easy.” Father John pulled Walks-On closer. “I’m just getting him some ice.”

  “You wanna die?” The voice was hard-edged, as sharp as steel. The gun was gripped in both of Dwayne’s hands, and he had contracted into a shooting position, as if he were on a firing range.

  Father John stayed where he was and looked at the man no more than four feet away, and yet a chasm of linoleum and empty fluorescent-lit space opened between them. A thousand half-formed thoughts tumbled through his head. What had happened to Dwayne Hawk? Where had he come from and what had he endured? What was he on? What kind of drug could stifle any sense of empathy or common humanity that might keep him from pulling the trigger. He said, “I’m not moving. You can put the gun down.”

  “Where is she?” Dwayne hissed the question. Little specks of saliva appeared at the corners of his mouth.

  “I told you, the fed . . .”

  “Save it,” Dwayne said. “Where you keeping her?”

  “What are you going to do?” Father John kept his eyes locked on the Indian’s and tried to ignore the gun waving between them. “Intimidate her into changing her story? What if she did? The fed will still want to talk to you, get your version. He won’t give up until he finds you. You and Lionel can’t hide forever.”

  “Jeez, Dwayne,” Lionel said, pushing himself to his feet. “We gotta get outta here. I need help.”

  The other man shrugged off his partner without glancing at him. He opened his mouth as if he were waiting for the words forming in his throat to push their way out. Before he could say anything, Father John said, “If you didn’t kill Ned, who did?”