The Drowning Man (17 page)

Father John walked with the kids, an even larger bag slung over his shoulder. Behind him was Del Baxter. She'd gone to school at St. Francis Mission with Del. He'd played first base on the baseball team. An odd memory to pull out of the past; it had been so many years ago. She didn't recognize the elderly man loping along with the kids. Reddish face and a slight stoop, talking as he walked, waving both hands in front, his white head swiveling between Del and the kids.

Father John broke ahead and hurried toward the boy with the cowlick, wobbling under the bulky bag. He reached down, grabbed the strap, and lifted the bag. Together they stepped off the curb, swinging the bag between them. She wasn't sure he'd seen the Jeep until he veered over.

“This will just take a few minutes,” Father John said, leaning toward Vicky's window. He might have been expecting her, she thought, as if he'd guessed that sooner or later she would show up and want to talk about the stolen petroglyph. The boy grinned at her before looking up at Father John, and she was struck by the trust in the boy's eyes. These were his kids.

“There's coffee in the office.” Father John nodded toward the administration building. “No guarantees on the taste.”

In the side-view mirror, she could see the line of pickups and cars building up—parents coming to pick up the kids. The late-afternoon sunlight fell through the cottonwoods, and there were great globs of shade that lay over the patch of grass in front of the administration building and the paved alley that led past the church to the Little Wind River. “Think I'll take a walk to the river,” she said.

IT WAS QUIET
in the cottonwoods. Vicky could hear the water lapping at the banks before she spotted the river flashing silver through the brush. This was where her people camped when they first came to the reservation, a straggly lot, Grandfather used to say, more dead than alive, exhausted from the years of fleeing across the plains ahead of the soldiers and their rifles. The children were sick and hungry, most of the warriors were dead, and finally, those who were left—survivors, all of them—gathered on the riverbank. The spirits of the ancestors were still here. She could sense their presence. She found herself returning again and again when she needed their strength.

She reached the river, picked up a pebble, and skipped it over the surface. She watched it bounce until it dipped below the current. It was then that she heard the footsteps and the crack of branches. She spun around. John O'Malley ducked around a branch and came down the path toward her.

“Looks like you have a guest,” she said, although she wasn't sure why she had blurted it. There had been times when she had stayed at the guesthouse. The mission was a sanctuary. It was silly to think she was the only one who might come here to regain some equanimity.

Father John stopped beside her. “Retired priest,” he said. “Father Lloyd Elsner. He'll be with us awhile. How have you been?”

Vicky shrugged. It was startling how blue his eyes were, and the way he had of seeing more than she wanted to reveal. She turned away from his gaze and told him that Amos Walking Bear had asked her to file an appeal for his grandson, Travis Birdsong. She hurried on, saying that she knew nothing about Travis, except that he'd been convicted of manslaughter. She'd never met him.

But as she talked, other thoughts tumbled across her mind: Maybe Travis had been one of the kids at a powwow or rodeo, as anonymous as the kids running across the mission after baseball practice. She'd been away so long—ten years in Denver going to college and law school and working at a Seventeenth Street law firm, ten years of another life on another planet. The reservation had changed when she'd returned; so many people had come and gone and grown up. Her own children, Susan and Lucas, grown up, on their own. She had changed, too, of course, but there were times…there were times when she still felt like the scared Arapaho girl she'd once been on the reservation.

Father John walked over and picked up a pebble, taking his time, considering. He sent the pebble skipping over the water. The river bent out of sight around a cluster of trees. He threw another pebble, then said, “The jury found Travis guilty.”

“Everybody assumed Travis and Raymond Trublood had taken the petroglyph and that Travis had shot his friend. The thing is, neither one was charged with the theft. What did you think?” Vicky held herself very still, scarcely breathing.

After a moment, John O'Malley turned to her. “I visited Travis in jail before the trial. Travis swore he didn't know anything about Raymond's murder. He was certain he'd be acquitted.”

“Did you believe him?”

“He didn't act like an innocent man.”

“How do innocent men act?”

“Don't tell me all your clients are guilty.” A flash of amusement came into the blue eyes. “They're eager, Vicky. They want to tell everything they know. They want to help the police find the real killer so the police will get off their backs. Travis clammed up. I told him he should do everything he could to help himself. He told me to save my advice. He had complete trust that his lawyer would prove the whole thing was some regrettable mistake. I don't think he comprehended the danger he was in.”

“He had a lousy lawyer.”

Father John took a couple of steps farther along the riverbank. “I knew Raymond,” he said. “He came around from time to time and helped coach the Eagles. He'd been a pretty good ballplayer in high school, but he was a cowboy at heart. Loved working with horses, working in the outdoors. I remember the day he showed up for practice and said he'd gotten his chance. After knocking around a lot of ranching jobs that went nowhere, he'd hired on with the Taylor Ranch. ‘Beautiful spread,' he told me. ‘Fine herd of cattle that I'm gonna help build and some of the prettiest horses in the county.'”

Father John looked back. “I remember thinking that a part of him was already on the ranch. Raymond had been in his share of trouble, probably got fired a few times. He'd had a tough life. Father killed in a bar fight when he was about six, older brother Hugh in prison for assault. Raymond was accused of robbing a gas station once, but the charges were dropped. The station attendant couldn't identify him. When it came right down to it, the attendant admitted that all Indians looked alike to him. The job at the Taylor Ranch was Raymond's chance, and I remember telling him not to mess up. He said he was through messing up. He was going to be strong. The kids hated to lose him. They followed him out to his pickup. They were still waving after he drove out of the mission. A couple of months later, he was dead.”

“I'm sorry, John,” Vicky said.

“It was stupid and senseless.”

“Murder always is.” Vicky waited a moment before she told him that she'd talked to Marjorie Taylor and the ranch foreman, as well as an artist named Ollie Goodman who had been at the ranch the day Raymond was shot. “Everybody's convinced Travis is guilty.”

“But you don't agree,” he said.

Vicky could feel the calmness in John O'Malley's voice flowing through her. She began to feel steadier. “I don't know what to think,” she said. “Goodman says he saw Travis and Raymond digging in the mounds below the petroglyphs. If they were stealing other artifacts, they might have taken the petroglyph.”

“Even if it's true, it doesn't make Travis guilty of killing Raymond.”

“But that was the only motive the prosecutor had. He managed to let the jury think that Travis had shot Raymond over the money they'd gotten for the glyph.”

Vicky was dimly aware that she'd started pacing, carving out a small circle in the stubby grasses, trying to carve a path through the tangle of thoughts. “If Travis was part of the theft, why didn't he try to help himself? He could have cooperated. Named the other people involved and helped the tribe recover the petroglyph. He was charged with first-degree murder. He could have gone to prison for life. As it turned out, the jury convicted him of voluntary manslaughter. Fifteen years in prison! That's eternity for an Arapaho. A big black hole that stretched in front of him, and he was dropped into it. Yet he kept maintaining that he was innocent.”

Vicky stopped pacing and stared at the tall, redheaded man watching her from the riverbank. “I'm going to Rawlins to talk to Travis. I'm thinking about representing him, filing a petition for post-conviction relief, getting the judge to grant a new trial.”

“What's bothering you, Vicky?”

My God, how well John O'Malley knew her. She felt the blue eyes fix her in place. It was a moment before she said, “Norman asked me on behalf of the tribe—an unofficial request—to stay out of the case. Let Travis serve the rest of his time in prison. If I continue—he didn't say so, but I heard it loud and strong—the tribe won't be sending any more business to the firm.”

Vicky walked over and dropped onto a fallen log. “The thing is, John, I can't shake the notion that Travis Birdsong was convicted of a crime he didn't commit. I keep thinking the prosecutor could be partly right. Maybe Raymond was involved in the theft, and someone wanted him dead. It just wasn't Travis. Whoever shot Raymond got as far away from the reservation as possible and took the petroglyph. That would explain why the tribes were never contacted again. Now another petroglyph's been stolen. Probably the same Indian that contacted the tribes seven years ago delivered the ransom message to you. I think the same people took both petroglyphs, and one of them is a murderer who's been walking around free for seven years while Travis Birdsong's been in prison.”

That's when John O'Malley told her that he'd gotten a call the previous night from a man who wanted to make a deal with the tribes. A quarter of a million dollars for the petroglyph. “I told him we need proof that he actually has the glyph. He said he'd call back.”

“Then it hasn't been sold yet.” Vicky felt a surge of hope, like a jolt of electricity that immediately dissolved into a new worry. The thief was still hoping to collect from the tribes without the risk of selling the petroglyph on the illegal market. But what about the risk of collecting the ransom? Everything would have to go smoothly, quietly. No police or FBI agent, no newspaper articles and interviews that might link the two stolen petroglyphs, no television anchor blathering on about a lawyer trying to reopen the case of an Indian shot to death after the first petroglyph was stolen, no newspaper reporter writing front-page stories. Nothing that might lead to a new investigation of Raymond Trublood's death. Nothing that might scare off the real killer.

“You may not hear from the man again,” she said.

“Why do you say that?” Father John sat down on the log beside her.

“The moccasin telegraph already knows I might try to help Travis. If the news gets to the Indian or the man who called you, they'll leave the area.”

“You can't turn away from a man who might be innocent.”

“Travis deserves another chance. He deserves a good defense.” She hesitated a moment, then got to her feet and started back along the path toward the center of the mission, aware of the reluctance seeping through her. There was tranquility in this place. The sky was turning into shades of blue and purple; a strip of sunlight hovered over the mountains in the distance. The feeling of evening had begun to settle in ahead of the evening itself. John O'Malley would have people waiting for him, things to do. She was aware of the sound of his footsteps behind her.

“Promise me you'll be careful, Vicky,” he said as they crossed Circle Drive toward the Jeep. “We don't know why Raymond was shot, but if your theory is right, he must have posed some kind of threat. Whoever shot him got away with it. There's nothing to stop the killer from killing again if he feels threatened.”

Vicky gave him a smile meant to be reassuring, but she had the limp feeling that she was only trying to reassure herself. She got behind the steering wheel and started the engine. John O'Malley stepped away as she pulled out onto the drive, but he remained in the rearview mirror, looking after her, until she turned onto the road shaded by rows of cottonwoods.

She passed the school and was about to turn onto Seventeen-Mile Road when she pulled the cell phone out of her bag and punched in the office number. The secretary picked up on the first ring. “Vicky? Thank God. I've been trying to get ahold of you.”

“What's going on?” Vicky said, trying to focus on the office, the ordinary problems that might arise.

The hum of a passing pickup cut through the sound of Annie's voice: A man had come to the office this afternoon. Arapaho, but she didn't know him; well, maybe she'd seen him somewhere on the rez, but she couldn't place him and he wouldn't give his name. He'd walked out, and thirty minutes later he was back.

“What did he want?”

“You, Vicky. He wanted to see you. He made me nervous, the way he kept pacing around.”

“Did he say what it was about?”

“‘ When's she gonna be back,' that's all he kept asking. I said he should make an appointment, but he walked out again. Slammed the door, too.” She was hurrying on, notes of alarm sounding in her voice. “I don't like him, Vicky.”

“Is Roger still in the office?” The Indian could be in some kind of trouble and needed a lawyer—the kind of case Roger handled.

“Roger? Roger went over to the jail to see the guy that got arrested on a DUI last night. He's not back yet. I'm here alone. I've been waiting for you to call.”

“Okay,” Vicky said. Someone in trouble. DUI, divorce, job discrimination. “Lock up and go on home. If he comes back tomorrow, Roger can see him.”

She was about to punch the end key when Annie said: “Wait, Vicky. I forgot to tell you, it's all set. You can see Travis Birdsong at the prison tomorrow, first thing after lunch.”

 

THE SKY HAD
turned to slate, and dusk was closing in when Vicky slowed along Main Street in Lander. Traffic consisted of a few cars and trucks straggling home. An occasional pedestrian hurried along the sidewalk, past storefront windows that had darkened. A man was locking up one of the shops. Vicky turned into the lot next to the flat-faced yellow brick building where the office of Lone Eagle and Holden took up a corner of the second floor. She parked in her reserved slot, turned off the motor, and considered calling Adam on her cell, then thought better of it. She'd check the messages at the office first, see if there was any word from Bud Ladd. Adam would want an update. She'd call him later.

She let herself in through the outside door, crossed the tiled entry past the upholstered chairs arranged around a small glass table, and started up the stairs that curved along the wall on the left, her footsteps echoing around her. The air conditioner hummed overhead, and as she climbed, she moved in and out of columns of cool air. Below were the rows of doors to the first-floor offices. They looked as if they'd been sealed. Every other tenant in the building had probably left for the day.