The Girl with Braided Hair (A Wind River Reservation Myste) (19 page)

“It was a man who called in the tip,” Father John said.

Ruth opened her mouth, as if she might take in a deep breath and let out a yell. Instead she clamped her lips into a dark line and leaned forward. “Liar,” she said.

“I spoke with the officer who shot Daryl Redman. The tip came from an anonymous caller. It’s possible the caller was the snitch. It was a man’s voice.”

The woman gripped her hands together and brought them to her mouth a moment. Then she flung out an arm, took hold of the armrest, and pushed herself off the sofa. In a couple of steps she was at the door, flinging it open. “Get out!” she screamed, tossing her head toward the outdoors. “Get out!”

Vicky walked across the room and, stepping past the woman, went outside. She stepped off the stoop and started across the yard, conscious that Father John O’Malley was close behind her. She heard him thanking the woman.

“Lies!” Ruth shouted. “All lies, everything.”

Vicky swung around. Father John O’Malley had stopped a few feet behind her. They were both staring at the woman on the stoop, shouting that everything she’d said was a lie, her hands flailing the air. She took a gulp of air and went on: “That detective comes around, I’ll tell him how you threatened me, said you was gonna tell the cops a bunch of lies about me smokin’ pot. So I tol’ you a bunch of made-up lies, like you wanted.”

She backed into the house, yanking the screened door shut behind her, and started fiddling with a latch that didn’t seem to work. Her jaw was clamped tight. A loud hissing noise escaped through her teeth. “You,” she said, jamming a finger against the screen at Vicky, “oughtta stay out of what’s none of your business.”

Vicky turned around and got into the Jeep. She started the engine, backed around Father John O’Malley’s pickup, and drove across the barrow ditch. Out on the road, she shifted gears and pressed hard on the accelerator. Not until she was over the rise and out of sight of the house did she pull over. It was then she realized she was trembling. She had the sense that Ruth Yellow Bull
knew
someone had shot out her window last night. She
knew
that someone wanted her dead.

The red pickup pulled in behind her. In the side mirror, she watched Father John O’Malley walking up alongside the Jeep. She pressed the button and waited for the window to drop. “What just happened back there?” she said, fighting the trembling that threatened to hijack her voice.

“She faced the truth,” he said. His eyes were searching the emptiness of the plains that rolled away from them. “I think she’s been hiding from it for over thirty years.”

“She knows what happened to Liz. She knows the killer,” Vicky said. She could feel the truth of it, as if the truth had materialized next to them. And there was something else: “She’s scared. She wants us to think that nothing she told us is true.”

“She just didn’t tell us all of it,” Father John said, bringing his eyes to hers. “But she might have told us more than she realized. She said Liz was low on gas, so she gave her a little money. It’s possible Liz got the gas in Lander.”

“The old guy that runs the convenience store just as you come into town has been there forever. It’s a long shot.” And yet, Father John O’Malley was right. Ruth had given them more than she realized. “I can try to find Ardyth LeConte,” she said.

“Let Coughlin trace her.”

“And if he finds her? What then? Do you really think she’ll talk to him? Do you think Ruth Yellow Bull’s going to tell him anything?”

“You have to be careful,” he said. “Is Adam around?”

She shook her head and told him about the funeral in Pine Ridge.

“You’d better stay at the mission for a while.”

Vicky heard the sound of her own breathing, the shush of expelled air. “I’m not running away,” she said. “I have work to do. I have an office and an apartment. I have a life, and Ruth Yellow Bull and the killer, whoever he is, are not going to take that away.” She squeezed her eyes shut a moment, trying to push away the images in her head—the girl in the alley, the girl out on the prairie. “They’re not going to run me off the way they ran off Liz.”

“Listen, Vicky,” and his hand was covering hers. She could feel her hand shaking inside his palm. “Call me when you get home tonight. Call me if anything seems unusual, if you see anyone…”

She was about to say, “I’ll be fine,” then pushed the words away, unable to muster the false bravado that was necessary. She let her hand stay inside his a moment before she made herself pull it free. “Annie tells me there’s news about you on the moccasin telegraph,” she said. “Rumor is that you’re going to be leaving. Going to Rome. Is it true?”

Father John looked back at the prairie a moment. Then he said, “It’s a rumor, Vicky.”

“You’d tell me if you were leaving?”

“You’d be the first to know.”

She gave him a little wave that was meant to assure herself, she realized, and started pulling forward, slowly at first, until he’d stepped back. Then she turned onto the road and pressed down on the accelerator, catching a glimpse of him in the mirror, watching after her. Nothing would be the same, she was thinking, without him.

“HERE WE GO.”

Charlie Crow ushered Vicky down the corridor and into his office. She’d just stepped inside the tribal building when he emerged from an office on the left, crossed the foyer, and, without breaking stride, beckoned her to fall in beside him.

“We got Mammoth Oil on the ropes,” he said, walking around the oak desk with a couple of stacks of papers on one side and a yellow pad opened in the center, black marks, like doodles, scribbled halfway down the page. He slapped the file folder he was carrying onto the pad, pulled the swivel chair in from the wall where it had been pushed, and sat down.

“On the ropes?” Vicky took the metal chair across the desk. She found the notepad and pen in her bag and wrote the date and the name—Charlie Crow—on the top line.

“Look at this.” Charlie thumbed through a file folder, extracted a sheet and, leaning so close to the desk that the edge cut into his fleshy middle, handed her the paper.

Vicky glanced at the letterhead: Mammoth Oil Company. She skimmed the two short paragraphs, then went back and read through them. The black printed words, slander, libel, defamation of character, harassment, cease and desist, jumped off the page. Should Charles Crow and Lyle Bennet, also known as Mister, continue to defame the reputation and character of Mammoth Oil Company, the company will have no choice but to take appropriate legal action.

She set the sheet on the desk and waited for the explanation that the man was about to provide. Swiveling side to side, fixing his gaze on some point past her shoulder, forming the words, the sentences in his head, coming up with some excuse—she could sense it—for whatever he’d done to precipitate the letter.

The swiveling stopped. “I called the legal department,” he said. “Told them we had a problem.”

“Are you handling the matter yourself? You no longer need Adam and me?”

“This was a couple weeks ago, after Mister come to me, said he got laid off for no reason. Told me about the drug testing that was going on. Little rule for Indians only. Hey, you Indian, take this cup and go pee. Made me so damn mad, I picked up the phone, called the head guy—course, he was too busy to talk to an Indian—so I got his secretary, Mr. Keating’s assistant, she said, and I told her what they were going to do: stop discriminating against Indians. Real simple. You think some white guy in the CEO’s office oughtta get it.”

“Anything else you haven’t told us?”

“Said I wanted Mister reinstated, or I’d go to the newspapers about their discriminatory practices.”

Vicky could fill in the steps from the CEO’s office to the legal department to the letter on the desk. The phone call would be construed as a threat. It was the last thing that she and Adam had intended. They had intended to send a letter
asking
the company for negotiations before any further action was taken. Now Mammoth Oil would be geared up for a fight. She and Adam would have to file a complaint with the EEOC. They were looking at long, drawn-out proceedings before Mister and the others saw any justice.

“They refused to reinstate Mister,” Charlie was saying, “so I went to the tribal council. They okayed filing a complaint or even a lawsuit, and I called you and Adam. Where is he, by the way?” He cocked one ear toward the door as if he expected to pick up Adam’s footsteps in the hallway.

“He had to go to Pine Ridge for his uncle’s funeral,” Vicky said.

“I’m still thinking about bringing in the press.” Charlie passed over the news as if the death of Adam’s uncle meant nothing, as if she hadn’t even told him.

She raised her hand, palm outward. “Don’t do anything else.”

“What we have is a helluva lawsuit. Got the names here of more Arapahos and Shoshones employed by Mammoth.” He went back to thumbing through the stack and pulled out another sheet. “Eight men, all victims of discrimination.”

“Still employed?” Vicky said. “There may not be any damages.”

“Rights violated every couple of weeks. I call that damages.” Charlie Crow stared at her. “We got a lawsuit here, we’re going after those bastards, and they’re going to have to pay. Adam’ll agree. When the hell’s he getting back?”

Vicky snapped the notepad closed and stood up. “We’ll file a complaint first,” she said. “Another thing, when you call our firm, you get both Adam and me. If you don’t like that, I suggest you take your problem to another firm.”

“I just might do that.” Charlie started to get up—a slow unfolding over the desk, hands on the edge pulling himself forward, then upward. “Far as Mammoth knows, Holden and Lone Eagle’s the firm we retained. I can always tell ’em different.”

“You’ve informed them that Mister has retained legal counsel?” This whole interview was rushing past like a fast-moving river. She felt herself paddling to stay afloat. The company was already aware of a possible complaint before the EEOC or a civil lawsuit. They were readying their defense; they’d fired the first shot, and she and Adam were still trying to figure out whether they even had a legitimate complaint. They hadn’t interviewed the other Indian employees. And Mister? All they had was his word about what had happened.

“Wouldn’t surprise me if Mammoth sent somebody over to your place last night, left you a little message.”

“What?” Vicky said. “How do you know about that?”

“Somebody firing shots at your window?” He gave a low laugh that rumbled in his throat. “Anybody on the rez hasn’t heard by now? Police chief himself was here first thing this morning, had a sheriff’s detective in tow, somebody named Coughlin, asking people up and down the hall about AIM. AIM thirty-some years ago!” He picked up the notepad and let it drop from a height of a couple of feet. It skittered across the desk. “They think the skeleton they dug up out in the Gas Hills is some woman mixed up with AIM. Wasting a lot of time and money on ancient history. What the hell’s the matter with them? We have Indians getting rights violated every day. Mammoth Oil treating Indians like dogs, and what’re they doing about that? You ask me, Mammoth heard we’re working with lawyers and they went after the lawyers. Dangerous business you’re in, counselor. People don’t like lawyers poking into their business.”

Vicky started for the door.

“Maybe you should stop,” he said.

She swung around and faced him, the word reverberating in her head. Two messages left on her windshield, one word: STOP. She studied the man, the dark skin, the squint wrinkles across his forehead, the eyes like black, opaque stones, the slicked black hair trimmed in an arc above the ears with the gray edges at the temples. Now his voice, drumming in her head: Seventy-three? I was in Nam, getting shot at by the gooks.

He gave her a quizzical look, then his expression rearranged itself into a half smile, the thin lips barely turning up. “All I’m saying is, maybe you ought to watch your step.”

Vicky turned back and started down the hallway. Charlie’s voice rumbled after her: “Have Adam give me a call.”

She crossed the foyer, yanked open the door, and went outside. Mammoth Oil, sending a goon to shoot out her window when the two messages hadn’t stopped her? The idea was ludicrous. And yet, Charlie had called the company before the first scrap of paper appeared on her dashboard. She and Adam had met with Charlie and agreed to look into filing a complaint. Then, the bashed in windshield, the second note. STOP. And last night, the gunshot that might have come at any time, but hadn’t happened until Adam walked toward the window. She’d assumed the notes, the gunshot—all of it—were about the murdered girl, trying to frighten her, call her off. But it could have been Adam who was targeted last night.

It was possible—and this was a new idea—that somebody meant to frighten both her and Adam away from—what? Filing a complaint against Mammoth Oil Company? Bringing a major lawsuit?

She let herself into the Jeep, turned the ignition and sat for a moment, listening to the engine purr into its regular rhythm, feeling an odd sense of relief. The messages, the warnings, maybe they didn’t have anything to do with the murder of Liz Plenty Horses. Maybe no one was trying to stop her from finding out what had happened, maybe nobody cared anymore.

But every part of her knew that wasn’t true. The elders cared. Women on the rez cared. And it wasn’t Mammoth Oil Company trying to warn off Diana Morningstar.

She shifted into reverse, backed the Jeep into the lot, then drove out onto Ethete Road. She stopped for the red light at the intersection, pulled her cell out of her bag and pressed in the keys for the office.

Annie picked up: “Holden and…”

“It’s me,” Vicky said. The light turned green, and she started through the intersection. “Any calls?”

“Diana Morningstar called about thirty minutes ago.”

“Did she leave a number?”

“Didn’t want to. Said she’d call you later. Adam left a message before I got in this morning, said neither one of you would be in today. You okay? I heard about the shooting.”

Vicky said she was okay. Then she told the secretary she’d be at the office in thirty minutes.

THE PARKING LOT
at Ray’s gas and convenience store was vacant, except for the green pickup next to one of the pumps, a cowboy in a tan Stetson working the wet squeegee over the windshield. Father John slowed past the pickup and nosed into the curb in front of the entrance. An old man with gray hair and small, rimless glasses riding down his nose was stooped over the cash register, peering at him through the plate glass.

Sleigh bells rang into the convenience store as Father John let himself through the door and stepped over to the counter. “Lookin’ for something special?” the man asked.

“I’m Father O’Malley from St. Francis,” Father John said. “You have a minute?”

The man’s face was pockmarked with freckles and old scars. The vertical wrinkles between his eyes looked as though they’d been drawn by brown pencils, and now they were drawing together in one deep line. “You planning on buyin’ something, or just jawing?”

Father John pulled a dollar bill out of his jeans pocket and flattened it on the counter. “I’ll help myself to a cup of coffee,” he said. He walked over to the coffee servers against the wall, filled a foam cup of black liquid that had probably been sitting in the container all morning, poured in a couple of envelopes of powdered cream, and walked back.

“What’s this about?” the old man said. He was drumming bony fingers on top of the register, throwing glances at the pickup still next to the pumps.

“You heard about the skeleton found in the Gas Hills?”

“What about it?” he said, still drumming.

“It might be the skeleton of a young Indian woman who stopped here for gas in the summer of 1973.”

The old man looked at him over the top of the glasses, as if he were expecting him to go on, and Father John said: “You were here then, right?”

“Nineteen seventy-three? What, you think I look like some kind of computer? You think I remember every Indian gal ever come in here?”

“I was hoping you might remember her. She had an infant with her.”

“Yeah, like that’s something new.” He pulled his hands off the top of the register and folded his arms over a thin chest, as if he were hugging himself in the cold. He began plucking at the sleeves of his yellow shirt.

“She came for gas, and she might have gotten something for the baby. Maybe some formula.” Then he remembered something else: “She wore her hair in a long, black braid.”

“Used to rob me blind,” he said.

“What?”

“Yeah, some of them AIM girls back then. Driving down Main Street, raising hell, shouting all about their rights. Well, I got rights, too. Never was no call for them to come in here and clear out my shelves, way they did. Oh, they didn’t think I saw ’em, but I saw ’em all right. Trouble was, I tell the cops, and next thing I know, somebody’s gonna throw a firebomb through my window. So I shut up, is what I did. Tried to keep an eye on ’em best I could.”

“You know the girl I’m asking about? She was one of them?”

“Black braid hanging all the way down her back. Yeah, yeah, she was one of them.” He lifted one hand and clapped his upper arm. “Seen her with her baby lots of times. Come in here with the others, stuff their pockets, all of ’em. No call to do that, like I said.” He stopped, tilted his head back and appraised Father John, as if he were seeing him for the first time. “You that Indian priest, right?”

Father John said that was right. It was how white people in Lander and Riverton thought of him, he knew. The Indian priest.

“Well, I want you to know something. I always treat Indians real fair, always have. Felt sorry for her the night she come in alone, just her and the baby. Offered to give her some formula, if I recall. Yeah, I think I gave her four or five cans of formula. Offered to pump her gas for her, even let her have a little more.”

“Any idea of who the others might have been?”

“Never got no names. I wasn’t lookin’ to fraternize with Indian girls, you know what I mean? They got their ways, we got ours. Always say, stick to your own.”

“Did she mention where she was going?” Father John took a sip of the coffee. It was stale and bitter.