The Ghost Walker (11 page)

Father John stepped over to the wall map. Sunlight washed out the tiny black letters of the northern
Shoshone lands: Crow Heart and Burris and Pavillion, Bushwhacker and Wild Licorice Road. He waved one hand in the sunlight. “Somewhere up north would be better. Tourists could stop on their way to Yellowstone Park.” He moved his hand to the southern part of the reservation, near the Popo Agie River and Highway 287. “Even better. Closer to the people in southern Wyoming and Colorado.”

“We don’t agree on the best location,” the director said.

“What about the Arapahos and the Shoshones? Will they agree when you get around to telling them?” It rankled Father John that the plans had been made in secret, that the mission would be sold before anyone realized what was going on.

“The matter will be presented to the Arapaho business council at next week’s meeting,” Eden Lightfoot said. “Make no mistake, Father O’Malley, it will be approved. And since the site is located in the Arapaho part of the reservation, the Shoshone council will rubber stamp the approval.”

Father John walked over to the door and laid one hand on the knob. Turning toward the director, he said, “The general council will make the final decision.” It was a bluff. There was no guarantee the Arapaho elders would call a general council, but at the back of his mind was something Thomas Spotted Horse, one of the four holy men, had once told him: The
Hinono eino
rule themselves. No matter what the business council decided, the elders might summon the people, just as in the Old Time, when the people had traveled across the plains to come together and decide the best road to follow.

The director got to his feet. A blood vessel pulsated in
the center of his forehead. “Ridiculous,” he said, sprinkling little dots of saliva over the desk top. “The business council has been elected to make economic decisions based on the advice and expertise of professionals. This is not a matter for a general council and the maunderings of traditional old men. I’d advise you not to attempt to involve the elders.”

Father John let himself out of the claustrophobic office and retraced his steps down the hallway. The receptionist glanced up, an expectant look about her, as if she’d been waiting to hear how the meeting went. Ignoring her, he strode out the front door and got into the Toyota. The pickup shot across the parking lot and out onto Ethete Road.

Even if a general council were called, he was thinking, there was a chance the people would vote for the recreation center and the promise of jobs. In that case, he would have to pack his bags and move on to another assignment, wherever that might be. He didn’t want to think about it. He wanted to believe the Arapahos would vote for the mission, if they had the choice.

Eden Lightfoot obviously thought so. It was obvious the director didn’t want a general council. But that depended upon the elders. Father John resolved to swing by Thomas Spotted Horse’s ranch the first chance he got.

11

T
he Toyota shuddered through the icy slush that lay over the streets of Lander. The Grand Apartments, two piles of yellow bricks, three stories high, straddled a half block at the northern edge of town. A narrow alley ran between the buildings, while a small convenience store had been jammed against one corner. Sometime during the fifties, with uranium and iron ore mines at full blast, the Grand Apartments had sheltered mining engineers and their families, middle-class, white. Now they were home to white and Indian alike, old and young, most on welfare.

Father John wheeled the Toyota close to the curb and walked up the sidewalk. Jagged cracks of cement popped through the hard-packed snow. He had been here many times—to talk somebody into entering alcohol rehab, to visit the parents of a teenaged boy killed in a car crash, to try to convince some high school kid to stay in school. The people at the Grand Apartments were struggling.

The front door, gray and flimsy-looking, stood slightly ajar, its hinges loose. Inside the small entry was another door, propped open with a cement block. A tangle of wires poked from the stucco wall. Sometime in
its history, the Grand Apartments had boasted an intercom.

He stepped around the cement block. The hallway was seedier than he remembered, with its trail of crumpled paper, fast food containers, and cigarette butts. A stairway hugged the wall on the right, while several doors marched down the left wall. He knocked at the first door. It opened slightly, and a shadow moved fleetingly past the crack. Then the door slammed shut. He knocked again and waited, but it was obvious the person behind the door had no intention of opening it again. Glancing down the dim hall, he counted eight doors. Assuming the same number on each floor in two buildings, Annie Chambeau might live in any one of forty-eight apartments.

He sighed and started down the hall. Before he reached the next door, he heard the scratching sound of the first door’s knob turning.

“Who are you?” It sounded like an elderly woman.

“Father O’Malley from St. Francis Mission,” he said, retracing his steps. The door stood open about three inches, the length of the guard chain. A small, white-haired woman in a print dress peered at him, blue eyes watery and outsized behind her bottle-thick glasses. Arthritic fingers gripped the door edge.

“I heard of you,” the old woman said. “You that Indian priest. Why’d you come here?”

“I’m looking for Annie Chambeau. Can you tell me where she lives?”

The old woman leaned into the crack. “I’m a respectable widow,” she began. Father John waited. Old people liked to work up to the point, clarify matters before confiding relevant information. “When I first come here,” she was saying, “this was a good place. Then those
people come, and the place went to rack and ruin. Loud parties, drinkin’, fightin’ all the time. I don’t go outdoors no more, except to get groceries. I don’t never open my door.”

Curiosity probably compelled her to open the door often, Father John thought. Still, he could sense the old woman’s fear. It was real. He reminded her about Annie Chambeau.

“You tell those people to go back to the reservation where they belong, will ya, Father?” she said. “You tell ’em they should keep with their own. Maybe they’ll listen to you.” She drew herself up and peered at him a moment. “Three-F,” she announced. “You can take the front stairs.”

He thanked her and started up the stairs. Before he’d gone halfway, she called, “Be careful, Father.”

The floors grew progressively dimmer as he ascended, and the third floor was almost pitch dark. Light bulbs dangled from cords along the ceiling, but none was lit. Gray daylight filtered through a dirty window at the far end of the hall. Father John stopped at the door with the little strip of metal and two screws in the center, all that was left of the letter
F.
He rapped a couple of times.

There was a scuffing noise inside, followed by a thump, as if a chair had fallen onto a hard floor. He knocked again, the old woman’s warning echoing in his ears. Another scuffing noise, then the wham of a door slamming. The front stairs. The old woman had told him to take the front stairs. Somebody—Annie, most likely—had just gone down the back.

Father John ran to the far end of the hallway and tried a door that probably led to the back stairway. It was locked. He sprinted back the way he’d come and descended the front stairs two at a time. The old woman
peered through the crack in her opened door as he passed. Outside he cut across the snowy yard and turned into the narrow alley, which lay in shadow, the air washed with ice.

A young woman was coming toward him, pulling a red coat around one shoulder, jabbing her arm into the sleeve. She looked up. A mixture of shock and fear crossed her face. Suddenly she pivoted around and stumbled, reaching out against the brick wall to catch herself. Then she took off running.

“Annie, wait,” Father John called, but she had already disappeared around the building. By the time he emerged from the alley, she had crossed the snow-packed space in back and was attempting to pull herself up a solid wood fence, her red coat dangling off one arm.

Father John stopped about ten feet from her. “Don’t be afraid,” he said calmly.

“Leave me alone,” she screamed, whirling around, like a cornered animal, eyes darting for some way out. Her breath came in jabs, as if she couldn’t catch it. She was shaking.

He said, “I’m Father O’Malley from the reservation. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m looking for Marcus Deppert, and I thought maybe you could tell me where I might find him.”

An expression of relief came into the young woman’s dark eyes. She swallowed hard and began tugging the coat around her thin shoulders while shoving an arm into the empty sleeve. He wanted to help her, but he kept his place. He didn’t want to frighten her again.

“Everybody’s lookin’ for Marcus,” she said, gripping
the coat around her. “I’m freezin’ to death. Could we get a cup of coffee or somethin’?”

*    *    *

Annie Chambeau had stopped shaking, but there was a little tremor in her hands as she clasped the mug of coffee and dipped her head to take a sip. She sat hunched under the red coat, which draped around her shoulders like a ceremonial cape. She wasn’t more than twenty, Father John decided, and she could have been beautiful. She had the green eyes and light complexion of some distant white man who had probably come to the plains to trade whiskey and guns. From the Arapaho came the coal-black hair and high cheekbones, the graceful nose with the little arch near the top. But over it all was the gray pallor, the emaciated look of the alcoholic. He could recognize it a mile away.

They sat at a small table, next to the plate-glass window, the only people in the convenience store besides the woman behind the counter. Father John took a long pull from his mug, then asked if she knew where he could find Marcus Deppert.

“Do I look like his keeper?” the girl asked. “Some blond guy showed up at my place Saturday night lookin’ for him. I thought you was him, the blond guy. He just pushed his way in. Where’s Marcus, he says. Hell, how do I know, I say. So he pushes me down on the couch and starts tearin’ my place apart. Tears stuff off the bed, pulls my clothes out of the closet, and then goes to the kitchen and takes his arm like this—” She made a sweeping motion over the white Formica table-top. “Throws dishes and stuff all over. Crazy-like, ’cause I didn’t know where Marcus was.”

The girl looked out the window. After a moment she picked up the mug again. The trembling had increased.

“Did he hurt you?” Father John asked.

Annie shook her head. “Just ruined a lot of my stuff. It might’ve been him come back yesterday, but I ran out the back and got away.”

It might have been Mike Osgood, Father John was thinking. The FBI agent had said he would talk to the girl about what happened at Friday night’s party. On the other hand, Annie could be right; it might have been the blond man again.

“What did he say while he was tearing up your apartment?”

The girl made a low
hmmmmp
sound. “Said I should tell Marcus he’s a dead man.”

Father John took a long breath. Marcus was in trouble, all right. “Did you call the police?” He knew she hadn’t, even before the look of incredulity swept over her face, as if she were trying to figure out what planet he existed on. People like Annie Chambeau and Marcus Deppert never thought the police were on their side.

“What’re they gonna do? Nothin’. Reason I know is that old witch down on the first floor called ’em. She’s always callin’ the police. She called ’em Friday night, too, just ’cause me and some friends was havin’ a good time. I wish she would’ve called ’em faster Saturday night. Maybe they would’ve got that bastard before he took off.”

“When’s the last time you saw Marcus?” Father John heard the pinched tone in his voice. He didn’t like the thought crowding at the edges of his mind: Did the man who wrecked Annie’s apartment find Marcus and kill him? Was it Marcus’s body in the ditch?

The young woman took another long sip from her mug. “Friday night,” she said after a moment. “After not callin’ or comin’ around for a month, all of a sudden
he comes to my party. I thought . . .” Annie stopped. She traced the rim of the mug with one finger. “I thought he come back. Only he didn’t. He just run in and look around like he was lookin’ for somebody. I said, how you been? What you come here for? He shook me off, like I wasn’t nobody, like we didn’t live in that apartment together all last year.” Annie tucked her head down, and Father John saw she was crying.