The Girl with Braided Hair (A Wind River Reservation Myste) (24 page)

She backed across the cement floor, took hold of the metal railing, and was about to fling herself down the stairs when she understood. That’s what he would expect her to do—run down the stairs and out of the building. She pivoted about and started running up the stairs, bent forward, pulling herself along the railing. She swung around the landing and started up the next half flight. There was a sucking noise as the door opened below, a change in the atmosphere as if the oxygen had been pulled down the concrete steps. She could hear the sound of her own breathing—or was it his breathing, the quick ins and outs through the knit mask? His footsteps were on the steps below, the steady plodding of the hunter after a trapped animal. He was coming
up
the steps.

She reached the top landing, yanked open the door that led to the roof and stepped out onto the rough surface that grabbed and tore at her feet. Sirens were howling in the distance. She slammed the door and pressed herself against it. It made her want to laugh, the image of herself trying to hold the door against the weight of a six-foot man. She threw her gaze around the gray expanse of roof with little specks glinting in the moonlight. It was as clear as a frozen lake. There was nothing, nothing.

Then, stacked against the ledge that ran around the periphery, she saw the two-by-fours. She ran over, pulled one off the stack and dragged it back to the door. His footsteps thudded on the metal steps, taking his time—where was she to go?—checking his gun. She propped the end of the board under the door knob and pushed it into place until it was solid. The sirens were coming closer. Red, yellow, and blue lights flashed in the air like the residue of fireworks.

She heard the knob clicking as she darted back and dragged the next board from the stack. Below she could see the police cars racing along the street—her street!—the sirens swelling into a loud crescendo. She pulled the board toward the door, which was throbbing now with the blows of his weight. Her breath caught in her throat as the board propped under the knob started to give way. She stood the other board on end and held on tight, ready to slam it into him the minute the door opened. The noise of the sirens rose around her, engulfing the building, and then—nothing but the soft sound of the wind swirling over the roof. Below on the street and out over the town, there was only quiet, like the quiet at the end of the world.

The door had stopped throbbing. She leaned into it. Far away, receding like a nightmare, she could hear his boots clacking down the metal steps. She hurried across the roof toward the front of the building. Three police cars were drawn up at the curb, officers were running across the sidewalk toward the entrance. Mrs. Burton must have called the police. “In the alley,” she shouted, but it was too late. The officers had disappeared from view, melted into the building.

She ran back toward the stack of two-by-fours and looked down as the man emerged from the building and ran across the alley. He flung open the door and slid behind the wheel. The sedan had started moving even before his arm shot toward the door and pulled it closed.

Vicky went to the door, kicked the board free, and headed down the steps. The officers were coming down the corridor as she stepped onto her floor. “He’s in the alley,” she heard herself shouting, but through the panic in her voice, she knew that the man in the silver sedan was gone.

FATHER JOHN SWAM
upward toward the alarm, then realized the noise had stopped. He lifted himself out of bed. The digital clock showed 3:35. Too early by two hours for the alarm, but the clanging noise had started again, rising through the floor, he realized, from the front door below. He pulled on a pair of blue jeans and stuffed his arms through the sleeves of the shirt he’d tossed over the chair. Then he went into the hallway, flipped the light switch, and started for the stairs, fumbling with the buttons on his shirt.

Ian’s door swung open. He leaned against the frame and blinked into the light, pajamas that looked a couple of sizes too big hanging off his shoulders. “I’ll get it,” Father John said, waving him back. Emergencies came at this hour, and he was wide awake now.

Halfway down the stairs, he caught sight of Vicky through the window next to the front door—standing on the stoop, arms crossed and head bent, small and alone. He yanked the door open and reached for her. She took hold of his hand and allowed him to bring her inside. It struck him that her hand was as cold as if she’d been lost in a blizzard.

“What’s going on?” he said.

She stood in the entry, staring past him, still gripping his hand, as if she might fly away if she were to let go. “He came back,” she said. Pinpoints of light flashed in her dark eyes, tiny explosions of panic and fear.

He led her into the living room, trying to swallow back the acrid taste of anger and fear—fear for her—rising in his throat. She sank onto the sofa, and he pulled a side chair around and perched at an angle next to her. “Tell me about it.”

It started coming then, water rushing over a dam—not in any logical order. The silver sedan in the alley, the man crouched at her door, picking the lock, Mrs. Burton looking out and Vicky telling her to go back inside, the presence of someone in the apartment earlier, the sound of sirens crashing against the building and she, up on the roof, jamming the two-by-four under the doorknob. He had to supply the logic himself, trying to fit what she said into a chronological order.

“You’re okay now.” He took her hand again and held it between his own hands, feeling the warmth start to return. “You’re safe here.”

“I had to get out of the apartment.” A strange calmness—resignation edged with fear—had settled into her voice. Still, she was beginning to sound more like herself, her voice closer to the one he heard sometimes in his head, like fragments of a song that came unexpectedly, background music to whatever else he might be thinking about. “There were half a dozen cops looking at everything, checking everything. What were they looking for? He was gone! I kept telling them he’d parked in the alley. One of the officers said, not to worry, he’d already radioed the dispatcher. They’d have him within minutes. But the thing is, they didn’t get him. He got away. He’s still out there!”

“He’s not here.” Father John kept his own voice soft and calm.

“The police think he must have hidden the car in a garage close to the apartment. Otherwise they would have spotted him. There aren’t that many streets…” She was shaking her head, and in the brightness of her eyes, he could see her moving again toward panic. “The road to the rez is wide open. They’d pick him up, if he were still driving. He planned everything. He came to kill me. He wants to kill me! I don’t know how I can hold on.”

“You can hold on to me,” Father John said, still striving for the calm note. It was harder and harder to hit. He was thinking that what he’d said wasn’t the truth; that he’d probably be in Rome soon. He patted the top of her hand. “He can’t hide forever.” He made himself go on. “He’s scared. He’s taking risks. Sooner or later, he’ll make a mistake and the police will have him.” He waited a moment. “I can make some fresh coffee.”

She nodded, and he let go of her hand, got to his feet and started for the kitchen, her footsteps behind him in the hall. She sat at the table while he rinsed out the glass container, poured water into the coffeemaker, fumbled with the filter, and finally managed to scoop in the coffee and flip on the switch. Then he sat down across from her. “The owner of the convenience store at the edge of town remembers her coming in,” he said. The burbling noise of boiling water drifted over the table. “She bought gas and some baby formula.”

“The baby’s name was Luna.”

Father John was quiet. It brought that night into sharper focus: A girl named Liz Plenty Horses fleeing for her life with her infant. A baby named Luna.

“My God, think how scared she must have been when they came for her at Ardyth’s,” Vicky said. There was a catch in her voice, and for a moment, Father John thought she might start to cry. “She kept trying to call Robert Running Wolf. She said he would straighten out everything. He was the only one she trusted.” She stopped for a moment and the sound of liquid dripping into the container swelled into the quiet. Odors of fresh coffee wafted across the kitchen. “He sent her to the safe house in Denver.”

“Robert Running Wolf,” Father John said. “Who was he?”

“One of the leaders. Probably dead now, Ardyth thinks. He’d been hiding out on the rez, but she heard he left that summer, after Liz disappeared, and went to Minneapolis. There were a lot of AIM members there. A lot of the leaders are dead. They were boozing and drugging. Jake Tallfeathers stepped in front of a truck.”

The dripping rhythm had stopped. Father John got up and went over to the sink. He found two mugs among the dishes drying in the plastic rack, poured the coffee, and set the mugs on the table. Then he pulled a container of milk from the fridge and topped off his coffee, turning it milky brown. Vicky always took her coffee black; he remembered that about her.

“The leaders could have been killing one another,” he said, dropping back onto his seat.

“What?”

He told her what he’d learned from Joe in the park this evening. How Jimmie Iron, Luna’s father, had been mugged in Washington, D.C., and nobody had suspected anything else. Mugged in an alley. Could happen to anyone. “But Joe thinks one of the leaders had ordered the killing, and he thinks Jake was involved. It’s the reason Joe got out of AIM and came back here. He heard that Jake got hit by a truck. He doesn’t think it was an accident.”

Vicky sipped at her coffee a moment before she got to her feet. She trailed the tips of her fingers over the table top, then broke free, carving out a half circle from the table to the window to the counter and back. She always paced when she was trying to sort out a tangle of thoughts. Father John took a long sip of his own coffee and waited.

“Why? What was going on?” She stopped pacing and stared out the window. Beyond the pane, he knew, was the darkness that swept across the backyard and the baseball field. “They’d gone to Washington to get the government to recognize Indian rights. Why turn on one another? It was the government they were fighting.”

He’d been thinking about it. Tossing about in bed—for how long?—before he’d finally drifted into oblivion. Trying to make sense out of it. Indians trying to help other Indians, and turning on one another, just like in the Old Time, with the tribes fighting one another while the soldiers attacked the villages and helped the flood of outsiders carve off Indian lands.

“They must have had some kind of falling out.” Vicky turned away from the window. “Maybe they were jockeying for position, fighting over who was going to make the decisions, call the shots. Maybe one of them wanted to be the top man; maybe he didn’t want any interference, anybody else second-guessing him. He wanted to be chief.”

She paused. “He might have wanted Brave Bird dead, too,” she said. “He probably got rid of Robert Running Wolf. Anyone who challenged him was killed.”

Father John nodded. It was the conclusion he’d reached last night, somewhere in the darkness when he was still aware of the minutes, then the clock clanging the hours and the dim strip of light from the streetlamps outlining the curtains. Jimmie Iron. Jake Tallfeathers. Brave Bird. And now, a man named Robert Running Wolf.

“Liz was set up.” Vicky slid back onto her chair and took a quick drink of coffee, her thoughts now in the kind of order that allowed her to stop pacing. “Whoever wanted him dead called in the anonymous tip that Brave Bird was hiding in Ethete. He counted on the Feds coming in like gangbusters. He knew Brave Bird well enough to know he’d come out shooting. Death by police officer. But there’s something I don’t get…” She gripped the table and started to rise again.

Father John reached across and took her hand, holding her in place. “Why Liz?” he said, and she nodded. “He must have wanted her dead, too.” Another conclusion that he’d pried out of the shadows in the bedroom. “He needed a reason to kill her, a reason that wouldn’t turn the other members against him. He made her into a snitch.”

Which only raised another question, he realized. What had she done? What had she really done that she had to die? And it wasn’t until this moment that he knew the answer. “Liz
knew
too much. She wasn’t the snitch, but Banner said there were snitches then—AIM members that talked to the Feds. Liz could have known who the snitch was on the rez. She might have known who had killed Jimmie Iron in Washington. She’d probably heard the same gossip that Joe had heard. At any moment, she could have brought the world crashing down on the man who killed her.”

Vicky was nodding, and he understood that she’d reached the same conclusion. “The others—Jimmie, Brave Bird, even Jake—might have known who the snitch was. He had to keep them from talking.” She took a moment before she said, “He’s still here. He could be anyone. Lakota or Cheyenne or Crow or anyone of the people from a half dozen tribes who have blended into the background on the rez and put the past behind. Nobody remembers anymore why they’re here or when they came. He was in hiding here in the seventies. There weren’t a lot of people who knew him, and in any case, he’s using another name now. Just another Indian, running a ranch, maybe, working for the highway department.” She shook her head. “He has no intention of giving up whatever life he has now.”

“He could be an Arapaho,” Father John said.

Vicky’s expression froze for an instant, and he saw that she knew the truth of it, that she hadn’t wanted to believe. One of her own people breaking into her apartment this morning, planning to kill her. “He was the man in the truck when Jake came for Liz that night. He was the one. Somehow he must have found out where Robert Running Wolf had sent her, and he went to the safe house after her. I’m trying to find the address,” she said. “I have to go to Denver tomorrow to give a deposition on the assault on the girl. While I’m there…”

Father John put up the palm of one hand. “Before you begin checking out safe houses, we’d better talk to Coughlin.”

“And tell him what? That we have a theory about some anonymous AIM leader who killed three men who were crowding him? Then killed Liz Plenty Horses before she went to the Feds and told them what she knew about Jimmie Iron’s death? Told them their snitch was a killer? Where’s the evidence, John?” She leaned over the table, and this time, she took hold of his hand. “If I can find the house and track down somebody who was there when they came for Liz, I might be able to get a name. Then we’ll have something concrete to take to Coughlin.”

“Listen to me,” he said. He turned her hand in his palm and held on tight, not wanting to let her go. “Whoever he is, he knows you’re after him. He’ll put two and two together and figure out that you know about the safe house. Anyone still in Denver who is willing to talk will be in danger.”

“What other option do we have?” Vicky pulled her hand free and stood up. He could see the energy draining from her in the way she stood, the weariness moving across her shoulders. Yet there was something else—he knew it well—the determination flashing in her eyes.

He got to his feet. There was no dissuading her. He could only pray for her safety—God, keep her safe. “I’ll take you to the guesthouse,” he said. “You should try to get some sleep.”

FATHER JOHN STRUCK
out first, half running down the alley between the church and the administration building. The headlights of the Jeep flared behind him and swept ahead, casting a flickering yellow light over the bare dirt, the cottonwoods and the clumps of stunted, twisted brush. He had the guesthouse unlocked before Vicky had parked in front of the stoop. He opened her door for her, then walked around, threw open the tailgate and lifted out a small piece of luggage. She went ahead into the little house—how many times had she been here? He’d lost track. The lamp next to the sofa switched on. So many other times when she hadn’t had anywhere else to go. It was safe here, he’d told her. A safe house.

God, let it be so. They’d both been asking questions around the rez, talking to people, probing into the past. And yet, it was Vicky’s apartment where the killer had gone. The windshield of her Jeep that he’d shattered with a bat.

Father John set the luggage next to the bed that took up most of the room attached like a shed at the rear, then walked back into the small living room. Vicky was standing next to the opened door, arms hanging at her sides, and he was aware again of the determination and weariness, like alternating currents running through her. She should get some sleep, he told her again, and that was when she moved toward him and stepped into his arms.