The Spider's Web (16 page)

“I hope you’re right,” he said.

Vicky drew in a long breath that flared her nostrils. “You don’t like her, do you?”

“I don’t know her,” Father John said. He was wondering if she could read his thoughts, the way he sometimes read hers. Something about the girl was off key, not quite right. He looked away, but he could feel Vicky’s eyes on him.

“You do think she was involved in Ned’s homicide?” she said. “Even though there is no evidence. She loved Ned Windsong. She was going to marry him. You’re the last one I ever thought would fall into this trap.”

“What are you talking about?”

Vicky started moving about, carving out a little circle on the rug. “Blame the outsider. An Arapaho man is shot to death, the white girl is in the house, so she must have something to do with it. The outsider, the other, must be guilty. She swung around and faced him. “It’s easy to turn against outsiders. They never really belong, you know.”

“That may be.” He felt as if she had hurled a dart into his chest. “It has nothing to do with my misgivings about Marcy Morrison.”

“You admit that you don’t like her.”

“What difference would it make?”

“Gianelli will pick up on it. He’ll wonder why the pastor doesn’t trust the white girl. He’ll want to interview her again, probe into her life, instead of arresting the killers and letting Marcy Morrison go back to Jackson Hole and forget about this nightmare.” Vicky made another circle around the rug, slower this time, as if some of the anger had begun to dissipate. “You don’t understand her,” she said, stopping in front of him. “She’s absurdly naïve. Her mother left when she was six. Something stops when that happens, some emotional development. A part of her is still six years old, wanting her mother and trying to understand why her life has changed.”

“Vicky,” Father John said, reaching for her, then pulling his hand back. “She is not your daughter.”

She stared at him a long moment, then looked away. “You think I’m too involved,” she said.

“What do you think?”

“I want to help her. I don’t want her charged as an accomplice to a murder she couldn’t have committed.”

He could hear the thrum of an engine on Circle Drive, the sounds of scattering gravel. He pushed to his feet and went over to the window. The red pickup slowed past the administration building, the girl hunched over the wheel, blonde hair folded around her shoulders. The pickup disappeared into the alley.

Father John turned back to Vicky. The way she was looking at him made him feel as if he had failed her somehow. “Your client is back,” he said. Vicky swung around, hurried into the corridor, and slammed the door. Little tremors ran through the old floorboards.

Father John sat down at his desk. He could hear the bishop’s footsteps approaching. The old man stopped in the doorway a moment, then walked into the office and settled into a side chair. “Couldn’t help but overhear,” he said.

Father John waited for the rest of it: the innuendos and accusations that surfaced from time to time, like little campfires never completely put out. The pastor and the lawyer—such good friends. What else was between them? Even the old man had heard the rumors.

“She seems like a very nice lady,” the bishop said.

“She’s a good lawyer,” Father John said. “She cares about her . . . clients.” He had started to say “people,” but Marcy Morrison was not Arapaho.

The bishop remained quiet, like a confessor waiting for the penitent to continue.

“It’s not what you think,” Father John said, and the bishop nodded.

“I make no judgments about the lives of others,” he said. “When I was sent to India, I was young, wet behind the ears, and lonely as hell, stuck out in Jharkhand for five long years. Not many of my own kind around. There was a young woman, red-haired, beautiful, working in a dispensary. She was a nun. Went out with a cart every day, collected sick children, brought them to the mission. We often worked together, and I must admit, I thought about leaving. The priesthood, you understand. I had dreams that she and I could do the same work, but we would be together. I came to love her.”

“Why didn’t you leave?” Father John said.

“The same reason I became a priest in the first place. It was my journey.” He set both hands on the armrests and lifted himself to his feet. “In time I was transferred to Patna. I heard she was transferred to the Philippines. I daresay our lives went on as they were meant to do.” He started for the door, then turned back. “I tell you this so you’ll know you are not the first priest to find yourself attracted to a worthy woman.”

Then he was gone, the soft noise of his footsteps in the corridor, the muffled sounds of a chair scraping the floor in the back office. Father John set his elbows on the desk and dropped his face into his hands. He could still see her—that first time she had come to his office. Black shoulder-length hair and large black eyes, and not beautiful exactly, but something about her—intelligence, intensity, and compassion shining through.
So you’re the new pastor I’ve heard so much about.
He had felt his heart stop.

He supposed he had decided even then that he could love her from a distance.

VICKY STARTED THE Jeep and left the gear in park. Sunlight splayed the administration building. Behind the windows on the right, John O’Malley had probably gone back to his desk. She felt a sharp pang of guilt over what she had said. After all, there were times when she felt like the outsider, and he was the insider. He cared about the people as much as she did. They had always been on the same team, and that was what had stung her, she knew. She had expected him to see Marcy Morrison as she did: a young woman caught up in something dreadful, with consequences that were more serious than she realized. But something about Marcy Morrison bothered him. She had sensed that and lashed out. She slammed a fist against the edge of the steering wheel. She wanted John O’Malley to be with her, on her team.

And yet he wasn’t the only one with misgivings. What was it Ella had said?
Maybe she had something to do with it?
Other people on the rez probably thought the same thing. She closed her eyes against the sharp fact that what she had said in the office was often true: sooner or later, outsiders were turned upon. She had never meant to say it to John O’Malley.

She backed into Circle Drive, then shifted into forward and drove to the guesthouse. She stopped next to the pickup. It was quiet except for the sound of the wind swooshing through the wild grass and moving in the cottonwood branches. She was about to knock on the door when it opened a few inches and Marcy peered around the edge. “I didn’t know you were coming,” she said.

“We need to talk.” Vicky waited, and when the girl didn’t move, Vicky placed her hand on the door and pushed it open. Shadows swallowed the living room—tee shirts, jeans, towels tossed over the sofa and chair, bottles of fingernail polish and lotions crammed on the little table. “We can talk outside, if you prefer,” she said.

Marcy started forward, and Vicky stepped sideways, making room for the girl on the stoop. Marcy pulled the door shut and folded onto the top step. She leaned forward, hugging her bare knees. A silver watch with tiny diamonds that Vicky hadn’t noticed her wearing before looked like a bracelet on her thin arm. She wore her cutoff jeans, ragged at the edges, and a white tee shirt that outlined the knobs of her spine. She was barefoot, her feet turned inward, pigeon-toed. Bright red polish shone on her toenails. “Why are you here?” she said. “The SOBs that killed Ned got arrested and want to drag me into it?”

Vicky sat down beside her. The question came like a bolt of lightning. “Why would you think that?” she said.

The girl shifted toward her. Her eyes were dull, encased in black bruises. “Isn’t that what everybody’s saying? Everybody hates me here. They want me sent to prison for something I never did.”

“That’s not true.” But there was truth in it, Vicky knew. “In any case, I intend to see that doesn’t happen.” She took a second before she went on.“I want you to think hard. When Hawk and Lookingglass burst into the house, what exactly did they say?”

“Roseanne Birdwoman was probably waiting outside. Don’t forget her.”

“Were they looking for stolen items?”

“What? I don’t know?”

“The house was ransacked, Marcy. They were looking for something.”

Marcy dipped her head into her knees. “I don’t know anything about this,” she said out of the side of her mouth, her voice slurred.

“You never saw any of the stolen items? You don’t know what they were or where Ned might have kept them? Except for that one time in Jackson where Hawk and Lookingglass took cartons out of Ned’s truck. Is that right?” Vicky held her breath. The less the girl knew, the harder it would be for Gianelli to tie her to the burglary ring or, for that matter, to Ned’s murder.

“All I know is what he told me,” Marcy said.

“He told you?” Oh God. This wasn’t good.

“Told me he had some stuff he was gonna unload. Never said where he got it. I put it together.” Her head sprang back and she stared straight ahead. “I’m not stupid. I mean, when he gave me this watch, I said, ‘Wow! Where the hell did you get this?’ All he said was, ‘Never mind.’ I didn’t need to know.”

Vicky reached over and lifted the girl’s arm. The watch was beautiful. She had no idea of what it must be worth—more than she could imagine spending on a piece of jewelry. Stolen from a home outside Lander or from one of the vacation homes in Jackson Hole. She had a sinking feeling, as if she were bobbing about on the hard concrete stoop. Marcy Morrison had accepted a piece of jewelry from Ned that even she admitted she wondered how he could afford. Gianelli could make the case—it would be easy—that she had accepted goods knowing they must have been stolen, which would make her an accomplice.

“It’s the only thing he ever gave me,” Marcy said. “Course when we got married, he was gonna give me a gold ring. He said he had it ready.”

Vicky sank against the black metal railing. “Did he ever actually tell you he had stolen the jewelry?”

The girl turned sideways. Her eyes had become green saucers. “I told you, I didn’t have nothing to do with it.” She ran a finger over the face of the watch. “You think ’cause I’ve got this watch, the fed’ll think I was involved?” For the first time, a note of fear sounded in her voice.

“If he asks whether Ned gave you anything, whatever you do, don’t lie,” Vicky said, trying for a calm, reassuring voice that would mask her own nervousness. “And don’t volunteer any information.” She was thinking that Marcy Morrison was capable of saying anything off the top of her head, even with Vicky sitting beside her. “Do you understand?”

The girl looked as if she was about to burst into tears—small face scrunched, pink lips pulled in. “I’m in trouble, aren’t I?” she managed. “Soon’s those guys get arrested, they’re gonna lie. They’re gonna say things about me. It’ll be my word against theirs. What am I gonna do?”

“Nothing. You let me worry about it.” Vicky got to her feet and went down the steps. She looked back at the girl still huddled over herself. “Don’t go anywhere,” she said. “Someone could recognize your pickup and follow you to the mission. Hawk and Lookingglass could hear where you’re staying.” The girl flinched backward, as if she had been hit. “I’m not trying to frighten you,” Vicky said. “Just stay close by until they are in custody.” She glanced around at the grounds—so peaceful and quiet. It was hard to imagine any danger here. “I’m sure your father would hire a guard—”

“No bodyguard!” The girl jumped to her feet. Her legs were shaking; goose pimples were popping on her pink skin. “You don’t know my father. He wants to watch me all the time. He’d never take the guard away. I can’t have any guard!”

“Okay.” Vicky put up her hand. “Call me if you need anything. And . . .” she hesitated. “Father John’s good to talk to, if you want somebody to talk to.”

She left the girl standing on the stoop as she drove back down the alley. She wasn’t sure why she had mentioned Father John, except that—in the smallest moments—she had glimpsed something in Marcy Morrison that John O’Malley must have seen, something broken and patched back together in rough, uneven pieces.

 

 

“LARRY MORRISON CALLED,” Annie said as Vicky let herself into her office. “I said you’d get back to him.”

Vicky stood at the desk a moment, reading over the message sheet that Annie had handed her. Then she said, “How are things with you and Robin?”

“Everything’s going to be fine.” Annie tossed her head back, and Vicky watched her trying for a confident stare.

“The court issued a restraining order this morning,” Roger said, emerging from the hallway. He walked over and set a hand on Annie’s shoulder. “Robin comes anywhere near her, all Annie has to do is call 911. And I have no intention of leaving her side.”

Vicky let out a long sigh. He had no idea, she was thinking, no experience with the determination of men like Robin or Ben Holden. Annie had the experience; she knew Robin would never give up, that he would stalk her, stay on her every move, plead and promise until she weakened and forced herself to believe he had changed. But Annie had deferred her own judgment to the man patting her shoulder.

“Be careful,” Vicky heard herself saying. Then she asked Annie to call Larry Morrison and went into her own office. She sat down at her desk and stared at the copies of the timber contracts arranged in a neat stack. She would check them over and have Roger deliver them this afternoon. The phone rang once, and she picked up the receiver. “Mr. Morrison,” she said. “I understand you called.”

“How’s my little girl?” The voice was hurried and gruff.

“I just saw her at the mission,” Vicky began.

He interrupted. “Well, how is she?”

“She’s scared,” Vicky said. “The FBI agent has interviewed her, and she identified the killers’ photographs.”