Night of the White Buffalo: A Wind River Mystery (16 page)

“NOW FOR THE
news. Another random shooting took place on the reservation last night.”

Vicky had been about to turn onto Ethete Road when the news program started. She had spent the last hour meeting with Charlie Red Deer, one of the elders, confined to his bed now, a stick figure beneath the white sheets. Wanting her to draw up his will. Connie Red Deer had bustled about, delivering glasses of water, while Vicky made notes. There wouldn't be much to leave four daughters. A hundred acres of scrub brush, a few ponies, a herd of ten cattle.

She kept her foot on the brake and stared at the radio in the dashboard.

“The shooter fired a rifle at a passing truck on Highway 789 north of the casino. Driver of the truck, identified as Reg Hartly, a Colorado resident, was not injured, although the bullet entered and exited the truck bed. State patrol combed the area east of the highway where the shot came from but were unsuccessful in finding any evidence. This is the fifth random shooting on the rez this year. Anybody with information should contact BIA law enforcement.”

Vicky shifted into neutral and switched off the radio. Except for the warm gusts of wind blowing past the open windows, the Ford was quiet. She was grateful for the silence. Reg Hartly. Why hadn't he mentioned the shooting when she'd run into him last night at the casino? Had it happened later? Another white cowboy in the area. Arnie's friends could have assumed he was looking for a job they believed should go to them. But Reg wasn't looking for a job.

Someone honked behind her. She glanced in the rearview mirror at a pickup sliding in close. A cowboy in a black hat glared at her over the steering wheel, then lifted his hand and pointed toward the road. Vicky put the gearshift in drive and turned left, watching the pickup charge to the right, swinging back and forth, tires squealing. She found her cell in her bag and pushed the button for the office.

“Vicky?” Annie's voice was loud, tense. “You heard the news?”

“I just heard. I need you to call the rehab clinic and tell them I have to see Arnie Walksfast.”

“I understand.” Vicky wondered if Annie did understand. She hadn't told Annie or anyone else what her client had confided in her about the shootings, but that didn't mean Annie hadn't absorbed the truth somehow. Or heard rumors on the rez.

“What have you heard about the shootings?”

“Nothing solid.”

“But you've heard something.”

“You know how gossip is.”

“On the moccasin telegraph?”

“Speculation, that's all. Maybe the warriors decided to run off cowboys from out of state. Might be hoping word will get around this isn't a real friendly place for outsiders. You ask me, the Indians are hoping they'll get hired on the local ranches.”

“Have you heard any names?”

“Nobody's snitching, if that's what you mean. Besides, it's just rumor. Could be some nutcase in Riverton shooting at folks. Tell you the truth, people are scared. So far the shooter's targeted white outsiders, but who knows when he might decide to shoot at locals? I mean, can he always tell the difference? Somebody's going to end up like that white rancher. You think they're connected? The shootings and the murder?”

Vicky could hear the sound of dread in Annie's voice. It matched her own feeling. “I don't know,” she managed.

“Father John called. He wants to see you sometime today.”

Vicky told her to call him back and say she would stop by the mission in a couple of hours. Then she ended the call and drove toward Riverton.

*   *   *

THE WAITING ROOM
was cool; an air-conditioning unit hummed overhead. Vicky had tried to sit in one of the plastic chairs pushed against the wall, but she found herself pacing back and forth. The glass doors at the front radiated the sunshine. Beyond the doors was the long driveway that ran across the front of the clinic, and beyond that, the parking lot. A few cars scattered about. She had parked in the front row. The nurse in green scrubs who had met her in the waiting room said Arnie was still in physical therapy. Did she want to wait?

She would wait, Vicky told her.

Finally the solid metal door across from the front opened, and the same nurse—blond hair pinned into a bun, light, pale skin and light, pale eyes—motioned her forward. “He's resting in his room.”

Vicky followed the woman down one corridor, then another, past a row of windows that looked onto a gymnasium, patients walking treadmills and lifting weights. A mixture of Indians and whites, trying to work off alcohol and drugs. The nurse had stopped at an opened door and ushered Vicky inside. “He meets with the psychotherapist in thirty minutes.”

Arnie Walksfast was propped up on the bed, half sitting, half lying, irritation pooling in his black eyes. “Mind if I don't get up? Had enough frickin' exercise today.”

“We need to talk, Arnie.” Vicky closed the door, walked past the metal chair kept for visitors and stood at the side of the bed. “You heard what happened last night?”

“This is rehab. It's not the moon.”

“Let me lay it out for you. Sooner or later the cops will track down one of the shooters. When that happens, he'll start shouting names to save his own neck. If you are involved, you will be indicted for conspiracy to commit murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and a whole lot of other charges the prosecutor will think up.”

“What do you expect? I'm gonna call somebody and stop the shootings? I'm not the boss. I told you, a bunch of us decided to make it tough on the bastards coming here for our jobs.”

“You know who's involved.”

“I'm not gonna snitch, if that's what you're getting at.”

“You're going to wait until some random cowboy gets killed? A man's already been killed. Every law enforcement agency in the area is working the case, and sooner or later they're going to turn up the shooter. If your buddies had anything to do with it, you could end up in prison for the rest of your life.” Vicky took a long moment, her eyes fastened on the man slumped on the bed. The smallest twitch in his cheeks, a tightening of his lips? She wasn't sure if she imagined them.

Finally she said, “I can arrange for you to talk to Ted Gianelli.”

“You crazy? I'm not talking to any fed. What kind of lawyer are you? You want to throw me to the wolves?”

“We make a deal. You tell him what you know about the shootings, and in return, he might be willing to cut you some slack.”

“No frickin' way!” Arnie bolted upright. Vicky felt the crack of a knee against her hip as he swung both legs over the side of the bed. “What I told you is—what do you call it?—confidential. You can't tell anyone, or I swear I'll find some way to ruin you. Maybe even . . .”

“What? Shoot at me while I'm driving down the highway? Hope to frighten me enough to leave the area like you and your friends are trying to do with the cowboys? I'm trying to help you, Arnie. You can close down these shootings before it's too late.”

“Go to hell!”

Vicky took a long moment. Her tongue felt dry against her teeth, miniature tombstones in her mouth. “I think you had better find another lawyer. I'll inform your probation officer I'm no longer representing you.” She swung around and started for the door.

“Wait a minute.” She glanced back, holding on to the doorknob. “They'll take me out if I snitch.”

“Who?”

“What does it matter? You snitch, you die. Maybe not next week or next month. But nobody forgets. I'll be driving down the road some night and a truck will crowd me, force me into a ditch. I won't see the guy coming for me. Most I can do is get a message to one of my buddies to knock it off.”

Vicky didn't say anything. Admitting he had the influence to stop the shootings meant Arnie was involved. Sooner or later Gianelli or the state patrol or some other cop from some other agency would break the case wide open, and Arnie's mother would be in her office, begging Vicky to save her son.

But Arnie Walksfast would be alive. She turned away, flung the door open and retraced her steps down the corridors. The nurse in green scrubs glanced up from the clipboard in her hand. “Everything okay?”

Vicky kept going.

*   *   *

SHE SAT IN
the Ford, breeze blowing in her hair, aware of her heart thumping against her ribs. Why did she care so much? Another Indian, a warrior, on his way to life in prison, and there was nothing she could do. Nothing
right
. She had been hoping to appeal to his sense of self-preservation, and maybe she had. He knew how to stay alive, and he understood he would be dead if he talked to Gianelli.

She turned the ignition, backed into the lot, and drove onto the street, heaviness weighing on her. There was nothing she could do except forget he had told her about the random shootings. And Dennis Carey's murder had been different; he had pulled over and waited for his killer.

The afternoon heat was unrelenting, a fireball falling out of the sky. She drove through town. People everywhere, wandering the streets, stacking up outside shops and cafés. How many more on the way? When she had checked the internet this morning, she'd been stunned by the number of sites on the white buffalo calf. Bloggers in Venezuela and Geneva talking about the calf. My God, would they all come? The rez could collapse under the weight. And how could Sheila Carey handle the crowds?

She drove south on 789, where she settled behind a pickup taking its time, the cowboy behind the wheel looking about, as if to get his bearings. She wondered where the shooter had hidden in wait for Reg Hartly. She understood the truth now. The shootings were not random. Arnie had admitted his buddies had shot at Rick Tomlin to force him out of the area. And now Reg Hartly, another white cowboy who could be taking a job. Maybe Josh Barker had been a target.

She slowed for a right turn and headed west. Looming over the road against the heat-whitened sky was a blue billboard with large white letters that shone in the sun:
ST. FRANCIS MISSION
. She made a left, plunged into the long shadows through the cottonwoods, and took a deep breath. The air was cooler here, the heat at bay. Then out of the tunnel and back in the sunshine as she curved around Circle Drive. Annie would have called the mission, but John O'Malley could be anywhere: visiting elders at the senior citizens' center, stopping by to see the shut-ins, making the rounds of parishioners in the hospital. Anywhere. But the old red Toyota pickup that looked as if it had escaped from a junkyard stood in front of the administration building.

She pulled in alongside, found her cell in her bag, and called the office. “I need some information,” she told Annie. “See if you can get the names of the people whose vehicles were shot at.”

Annie said she would get on it, and Vicky was about to hit the end button when she remembered something else. “See if you can find out where Lucy Murphy is staying.”

She let herself out of the Ford and made her way up the familiar concrete steps.

“SEMPRE LIBERA” DRIFTED
through the office like white noise, punctuated from time to time by Bishop Harry's voice down the corridor. Phone calls were still coming in. And, Father John had to admit, the old man had the patter down, encouraging people to go and see the white calf for themselves. So many sacred things in the world, it is good to
see
them.

He finished going over the numbers for this month's budget, checking and rechecking the columns on the laptop in the faint hope the sum might land somewhere outside of the red zone. No matter how hard he tried to keep the expenses within the mission's income—a nebulous amount that depended on the generosity of strangers—there were always unexpected expenses. Sandy Moon's new baby, born last week without an esophagus, flown to a hospital in Denver. Last Sunday he had taken up a special collection so Sandy could stay in a motel close to her baby, but in the end he'd had to take money out of the mission budget. The so-called budget. He laughed out loud, as if St. Francis were a business with defined income and expenses.

He had just closed the program when he heard the scrunch of tires on Circle Drive. The noise stopped. A moment later a door slammed. There was the tap-tap-tap of familiar footsteps on the concrete steps. The wind must have caught the front door, because it cracked shut, sending a tremor through the old floor. He got to his feet as Vicky walked into the office. “Have a seat. What can I get you? Coffee? Coke?”

“Water.” She dropped onto a side chair.

“I can do that.” Father John went out into the corridor and took the first right into a little hallway that led to the archives and what passed for a kitchen. Nothing more than a closet, really: sink, small refrigerator, one cabinet stuffed with paper cups, a can of coffee, and an assortment of mismatched glasses. He filled two of the glasses with cold water, then added a couple of ice cubes from the freezer tray, which sent the water cascading over the sides and into a puddle on the floor. He found a towel, swiped at the puddle, and carried the glasses back into the office.

“Annie said you wanted to see me?” Vicky took the glass he held out for her. No longer sitting; pacing in front of the window, a small, shadowy figure backlit by the sunlight. He was used to the way she liked to talk and walk at the same time. So many things about her he had become accustomed to.

He sat on the edge of the desk and took a drink of the cold water. Even the thick old walls hadn't kept out the day's heat. “I spoke with Steve Mantle at Ranchlands Employment. Do you know him?”

Vicky shook her head. “But I've heard of the business. They place cowboys on ranches in the area.” She sipped at her water, watching him over the rim of the glass. “Did they place anyone on the Broken Buffalo?”

“Six cowboys in the last year and a half. Jack Imeg and Lou Cassell were the first hired. Then, last fall, Jaime Madigan and Hol Hammond. In April, the ranch took on Rick Tomlin and Josh Barker.”

“Let me guess,” Vicky said. “All from somewhere else.”

“That isn't the only pattern. In each case, two cowboys were hired together and left together. Mantle said that was unusual. Cowboys might decide to move on, but not at the same time as the guys they were hired on with.”

“Josh Barker? Mantle has records that Barker was hired at the Broken Buffalo?”

“He and Rick Tomlin worked there two months.”

Vicky swung around, walked to the door, then came back. She finished the water and set the glass down on a tablet at the corner of his desk. “A cowboy by the name of Reg Hartly has come here to find Barker. I asked Sheila Carey about Barker myself. She flew into a rage, told me to mind my own business.” She started pacing again. From the desk, past the window, to the door. Around and around. “Barker's disappeared. No one knows what happened to him. He's not the only one. Rick Tomlin was the main witness against my client, Arnie Walksfast . . .”

Father John nodded. He had heard that Rick Tomlin hadn't shown up for the trial. He told her that Reg Hartly had stopped by the mission hoping he might know something about his buddy.

“The prosecutor tried to find Tomlin, but Dennis Carey insisted he had packed his gear and left.”

“That's what the Careys told Mantle about the other cowboys. Decided to move on to Montana or Idaho. Jaime Madigan's fiancée came to the mission last winter. She was also hoping I might have heard where he'd gone. I have a call in to her now. The woman I spoke with thought I was calling with news about Jaime, which means he is still missing.”

“Rick Tomlin. Josh Barker. Jaime Madigan. Three out of six cowboys missing from the Broken Buffalo. The others may also be missing, but no one has come looking for them.” Vicky stopped pacing and put up one hand to stop the objection he was about to make, as if she had read his mind. “I know there's no proof that anything happened to them. Cowboys move around. Isn't that the cowboy myth? Riding toward the sunset? What about Jaime's fiancée? Did she file a missing person report?”

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.”