Eye of the Wolf

by Margaret Coel

  “THIS MIGHT HURT a little.” The medic was bending so close that Father John could see the lint caught in the zipper of the man’s gray jacket. He felt a crack of pain breaking across the side of his face.

  “Okay, looks like that’s the last splinter embedded in your cheek. Now for a little antiseptic,” the man went on, swabbing Father John’s cheek with a liquid that stung like acid. “You should get to emergency and have this stitched.”

  Father John stared into the dusk, his jaw clenched against the pain. Odors reminiscent of alcohol floated in front of him. “Just put on a Band-Aid,” he managed.

  The medic was probably in his twenties. He looked like a twelve-year-old, with slim, capable hands and traces of acne on his face. “If you don’t get stitches, you’ll carry a half-inch scar below your cheekbone,” he said.

  “Just the Band-Aid.” Father John waited while the man pressed something adhesive over the top of his cheek, then he thanked him, swung off the gurney, and ducked out the opened rear doors of the ambulance into the cold air that crept through his jacket and into his bones. The pain had subsided into a mild stinging sensation. The Band-Aid felt like a poultice. Father John had the sense that he was peering across a white ridge. He patted at the gauzy patch and made his way toward the pickups parked in the mouth of the gorge.

  “There you are, John.” The man coming toward him, blue, red, and yellow lights swirling over his stocky frame and fleshy face, was Andy Burton, Fremont County detective. Head thrust forward, shoulders slightly hunched, a man not to be hurried. Father John had met him on numerous occasions, usually when Burton was investigating a crime that had occurred in the county but involved someone on the reservation. The battlefield was in Fremont County, outside the reservation boundaries. And Burton was in charge.

  “I was about to head over to the ambulance to have a talk with you,” he said. “What’s the medic say? You gonna be okay?”

  “He said I’m fit as a fiddle.”

  “Yeah, you look it.” The detective moved in close and squinted at the Band-Aid. “You’re lucky you aren’t one of the bodies out there,” he said, curving a gloved thumb back toward the canyon. “Could’ve been a bullet that hit your face instead of a piece of tree stump. You wanna explain why you didn’t call us instead of heading out here alone?”

  Father John jammed the sheet of paper with the message written on it into Burton’s hand and told him that he’d wanted to check the battlefield and make certain the message wasn’t some kind of a joke.

  The detective held the paper up in the flashing lights. After a moment, he said, “Not unusual for a killer to return to the site of the crime, do a little gloating. Maybe he was hoping you’d show up after you got the message. Looks to me like the killer not only wanted the three Indians dead; he wanted the Indian priest dead, too, for some reason. I gotta tell you,” he said, shaking his head, “you and Vicky Holden are a pair.”

  “Vicky!” Father John stared at the other man, surprised at the way the sound of her name had startled him, unlocking a flood of unwanted emotions. He and Vicky had worked together on dozens of cases over the past six years: DUIs, suicide attempts, domestic abuse, even homicides. They made a good team, priest and lawyer. So many cases and memories, and the feelings that he wished he could ignore. He’d made a point not to call her. It had been three months since he’d talked to her.

  “What does Vicky have to do with this?” His voice sounded brittle in the cold.

  “I’m just saying . . .” The flashing lights sparkled in the man’s dark eyes. “You know that if Vicky had been the one to get that message, she would’ve been out looking around by herself, just like you. One of these days, you’re liable to get yourselves in a situation you can’t handle.”

  A procession had begun moving out of the shadows in the canyon: a line of men carrying three bags that bulged with the weight of bodies. The sound of boots on the snow and the low murmur of voices cut through the stillness. Groups of deputies stepped back, re-forming into new groups, as the procession came through the splash of lights, then moved off to the left toward the van that, Father John knew, belonged to the coroner.

  “Since you figured out where the bodies were,” Burton turned back, “what else have you figured out? What do you think happened out here?”

  Father John was quiet a moment, marshalling his own thoughts into a logical order. Finally he said, “The killer intended to re-create the Bates Battle.”

  Burton was staring at him, perplexity and interest mingling in the man’s expression, and Father John hurried on: “Eighteen-seventy-four. It was the last massacre of the Arapahos before they were sent to the reservation.”

  The doors of the coroner’s van cracked shut, and Father John felt his muscles clench. For an instant, he’d thought it was a rifle shot. He said, “I think the killer posed the bodies to make them look like the bodies of warriors in the old photographs of battlefields. It’s probably how the bodies looked after the Bates Battle.”

  “You’re saying that somebody’s reliving a battle from the nineteenth century?” Burton stared at the van that had come to life, yellow headlights flaring ahead, red taillights blinking. He threw up both hands and looked back to Father John. “Well, that’s just great. We got some nut running around trying to relive history. Any of the dead men look familiar to you?”

  Father John shook his head. Across an expanse of grayness splotched with lights, the van was making a slow U-turn, the wheels digging a path through the snow, sagebrush raking the sides. Another moment, and the vehicle was heading out of the valley toward the dark shadows of the bluffs in the distance. He was thinking that he’d tried to identify the faces—the frozen faces—but he couldn’t remember ever seeing them before. Maybe at a powwow or some other celebration, he couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t know them. And yet, over the years, he’d gotten to know most of the Arapahos . . .

  “They could be Shoshone,” he said.

  “Same conclusion I been coming around to.” The detective spoke hurriedly, pleased to confirm his own thoughts. “Hard to tell from the frozen faces what tribe they might belong to for sure, but Larry Miner over there”—he gestured with his head toward one of the deputies standing a few feet away—“says he thinks one of the dead men might’ve filed a complaint with the police on the rez against an Arapaho a couple of days ago. Can’t be sure until the coroner gets the IDs. We found a pickup off in the trees. Might belong to one of the victims. Plates are gone. Glove compartment cleaned out. It’ll take a while to ID the owner. What is it, John?” The detective leaned forward, his sour breath coming toward him.

  “It makes sense,” Father John said, thinking out loud now. Then he told the other man that it was Shoshones who had led Captain Bates and his troops to the Arapaho village. He stopped and drew in a couple of breaths. In his head was the tinny, mechanical voice. Revenge is sweet . . .

  “So you’re saying,” the detective began, searching for the words, “that the murdered men represent Shoshones who attacked Arapahos a hundred and thirty years ago, and now we got a crazy Arapaho looking for revenge? Oh, my God.” He started pounding one gloved fist against the other. “I don’t want to go there, John. If the Shoshones think an Arapaho killed three of their men, there’ll be full-out war on the reservation. One tribe fighting the other, just like in the past. God, John. Arapahos and Shoshones been getting along now for more than a hundred years. Maybe the tribes don’t love each other, but they don’t hate each other anymore. Kids go to school together. There’s even some families that are intermarried. We can’t have these homicides tearing people apart.”

  “It’s a theory, that’s all,” Father John said, trying to ignore the sound of the mechanical voice in his head.

  “Yeah, a theory.” The detective jumped on that. “Let’s not draw any conclusions until we get IDs and investigate why the men came out here. Could be a drug deal that went bad, or just plain bad blood between a few individuals. No sense in getting people rile
d up on the rez when we don’t know what took place.”

  Father John let his gaze trail over the knots of deputies making their way toward the vehicles. Tomorrow they’d be back, he knew, searching the snow for bullets and cartridges and footprints, anything that might point to the killer, and they might come up with the same theory. Three dead Shoshones on the Bates Battlefield, revenge killings for a nineteenth-century massacre. And tomorrow the moccasin telegraph would flash the theory like lightning across the reservation.

  God help us, he thought. The whole reservation could go to war.

  6

  VICKY CLIMBED THE flight of stairs and let herself through the wood door with the plaque at the side that read, “Holden and Lone Eagle, Attorneys-at-Law.” Annie’s chair was vacant, swiveled left toward Adam’s office. The murmur of voices, low and serious, wafted past the closed door. Vicky headed toward her own office on the right, shut the door behind her, and dropped her briefcase on the desk. A curious lightness had come over her as she’d driven back across the reservation, eating up the miles between the tribal courthouse in Fort Washakie and her office in Lander, like an invisible weight gradually lifting from her shoulders as the snow-traced asphalt unrolled ahead.

  Frankie Montana was lucky for now; the man didn’t even know how lucky he was or how close he was to disaster. Banishment. It was hard to imagine anything worse. Even a prison sentence held the promise that, eventually, a man could return home. But banishment meant never again setting foot on the reservation, never attending the Sun Dance or the powwows, never going to family get-togethers, high school basketball games, church services. It meant being banished from the life of the Hino’no ei.

  A door thumped shut in the outer office, followed by muffled footsteps crossing the carpet and the sharp rap of knuckles against her door. Vicky hung up her coat in the closet and turned back as the door swung inward. Adam Lone Eagle leaned into the opening a moment, then stepped inside and pushed the door closed behind him.

  “Got a minute?” There was a hard, unsettling edge to his voice.

  “What is it, Adam?” Vicky stepped over to the desk, not taking her eyes away. Adam’s face might have been sculptured in stone, jaw thrust forward and light blazing in his black eyes, as if he had a fever. The little scar at the outer edge of his cheek was pulsing ragged and red. She knew him well enough to know when he was angry. It was like the force of storm clouds building over the mountains, about to explode over the plains. It had never exploded over her. Still Vicky could feel her muscles tense, the shadow of that other life with Ben Holden moving at the edge of her memory. She and Adam had been lovers now since the fall—lovers and law partners, a thin line to navigate, she’d argued, but Adam had tossed aside her objections. He wanted both, he’d said. He wanted all of her, and they would make it work out.

  “We have to talk,” he said.

  “Have a seat.” Vicky gestured with her head toward one of the side chairs, but it was clear that he had no intention of sitting down. She stopped herself from dropping onto her own chair and faced him across the desk.

  “You’d better tell me what’s bothering you,” she said, trying for a placating tone. God, she hated that tone. Ben, honey, what’s bothering you? The ultimate defensive position imprinted in her from that other life, ready to spring into action. Ironic. The tone had seldom worked.

  “Bob Posey called again this morning.” Adam waited a couple of beats, letting the information float between them. Director of natural resources on the Wind River Reservation, Posey was a Shoshone with the power to hire law firms for the important matters—water, oil and gas, gold mining, timber, exactly the type of law in which she and Adam intended to specialize. “We’ll be the best damn Indian lawyers in the country,” was the way he’d put it when they’d agreed to start a firm together. “Any tribe that has a problem protecting its natural resources will come to us.”

  “He wants an answer.” Adam pushed on. “What’s it going to be, Vicky? Are we handling the proposal to manage wolves on the reservation or is a law firm in Cheyenne going to get the retainer?”

  “Of course we’ll handle it.” Vicky could hear the surprise in her voice. “We settled this last week, Adam.”

  “We don’t have time to practice natural resource law and defend the two-bit criminals like Frankie Montana.”

  “The tribal judge released Frankie on a personal recognizance,” she said, struggling to ignore Adam’s tone. Then she told him the Shoshones who had filed the complaint were the only witnesses and that she would file a motion to dismiss.

  “That’s supposed to reassure me? How long before Montana’s back here with some other charge? The man’s a loser, Vicky. He’s one step from being locked up, if not on this week’s charges, then next week’s. I don’t get it. I thought we’d agreed to move away from defending two-bit criminals so we can concentrate on the kind of matters that make a difference to our people. Why are you bothering with Frankie Montana?”

  “I told you, Adam.” Vicky felt as if she were on the stand, an unwilling witness being badgered by the prosecutor. “I don’t intend to see an innocent man go to prison. And Frankie’s mother and I went to school together. She asked me to help her son. I’m not going to turn away from people I know.”

  “You know everybody on the reservation, Vicky.” Adam swung around and walked over to the window. Through his blue shirt she could see the muscles of his back flex with each breath. The flecks of gray in his black hair shone in the light. For several seconds, he stared outside at the snow blowing across the flat roofs of the buildings across the street. “I’m not saying that losers don’t deserve an attorney,” he said, turning back, “but we don’t have the time to handle everything. How about the new lawyer down the street? Samantha Lowe? She just opened her office, and she’s hungry for work. She called me last week, and we went to lunch . . .”

  “Lunch?” Adam hadn’t mentioned lunch with the new lawyer in town. The woman was beautiful, according to the gossip she’d heard from Annie. Great figure, flowing blond hair, in her twenties, not long out of law school. It didn’t surprise her that a beautiful young attorney looking for work to be shuffled her way would invite the male partner in a firm out to lunch.

  Adam came back across the office, something new in his expression, softer and placating and—was she imagining it?—guilty. “I’m not Ben Holden, chasing every skirt on the horizon.”

  Vicky exhaled a long breath that left her feeling as if there were still knots of hot air in her lungs. That was the problem, wasn’t it? The shadows of her life with Ben blocking the light in this new relationship. God, would she ever be able to trust any man?

  “I’m sorry, Adam,” she managed.

  He looked away at that, the muscles of his face shifting back into the hard, sculptured look he’d worn when he’d walked into the office. “Samantha needs work,” he said.

  Samantha. Something in the way that Adam pronounced the name made Vicky look away.

  “All you have to do, Vicky, is refer people like Montana down the street to the new lawyer in town.” Adam had turned away. “They’ll have good representation, so your conscience will be clear, and we can practice the kind of law we agreed to practice.”

  “Samantha Lowe isn’t native.”

  “That doesn’t mean she isn’t competent.”

  “It means Frankie wouldn’t trust her.”

  “That would be his problem, Vicky.” Adam locked eyes with her again. “What’s it going to be?”

  “We’ve met the deadlines.” Now Vicky stepped around the desk, unable to hold herself still any longer, propelled across the office by the frustrations and suspicions churning inside her. She reached the window and let her eyes sweep across the traffic crawling through the slush on Main Street below, aware of the sound of the phone ringing in the outer office. Finally she looked back. Adam had perched on the edge of her desk, black eyes narrowed on her. “We filed the motion to appeal with the federal court in Cheyenne on th
e water management decision,” she began, then she rattled off the other deadlines they’d met on the cases they were handling for the Wind River tribes.

  Adam kept his face unreadable, not interrupting or giving any indication that she was going on about things he knew very well. When she’d finished, he said, “You work all the time, Vicky. You come in early. It’s eight or nine in the evening when you leave. Last weekend, I suggested that we go to a lodge in Yellowstone where we could watch one of the wolf packs. You were too busy. You had work to finish up. No weekends off for you.” He shook his head. “I miss you, Vicky. It’s been almost two weeks since we’ve even had dinner together.”

  Vicky swung around and stared down at the traffic again. Adam was right. Frankie Montana had consumed the day, and for what? To keep him out of jail? To keep him from being banished? The man enjoyed teetering along the edge of a cliff from which, sooner or later, he was bound to plunge. There were other cases stretching back through the months since she and Adam had become partners. DUIs and adoptions and wills. Leases on small businesses that Arapahos were struggling to start in Lander or Riverton. The phone calls, the pleading, desperate voices—Can you help me, Vicky?—that had made up the bulk of her business when she’d practiced alone, the desperate voices that had followed her to the new firm.

  She walked back to the desk. “Get me Samantha’s number,” she said.

  Adam’s face cracked into a smile. “How about a trip to see the wolves next weekend?”

  “You’re pushing, Adam.” Vicky smiled back at him.

  There was a double rap on the door and, not taking his gaze from her, Adam stepped backward and yanked the door open. Annie slid inside, moving into the line of sight between him and Vicky, head bobbing from one to the other.

  “Oh, my God.” The words came like an exhalation of air. She clasped her hands in front of her mouth and fixed her gaze on Adam. “My girlfriend just called me with the news. Her boyfriend works for the sheriff’s department.”