The Spider's Web (30 page)

“Why did she leave the mission so abruptly?”

“She had a breakdown,” Father John said, the image of the girl flailing about in front of him. “I tried to calm her. I told her that I thought she needed help.”

The bishop nodded. “You had seen into the core of her, the part she was hiding. Naturally she wanted to get away. We always want to escape the prying eyes of those who see into our most secret places against our wishes. But as you say, there’s no evidence to link her to a crime. This has been a trying time. So many senseless deaths, but death is always senseless. It casts a pale over everything, puts people off balance. No wonder you’re tossing about at night, imaging all sorts of things. The girl has her own psychological problems, but that doesn’t mean she will ever return to the mission. I suspect she is trying to run away from the sadness and loss she has experienced. She will find that is impossible, of course, but she’s probably miles away.”

“You’re right,” Father John said, getting to his feet. Marcy Morrison had run away. He stood in the doorway and went over the next couple of days’ schedule with the bishop—the educational committee’s elections for a new chairperson, the social committee meeting to discuss a possible fund-raiser to purchase supplies for the kids before school started in the fall. Then he walked down the corridor to his own office, trying to convince himself of the logic in what the bishop had said. The Sun Dance would take place next week. The people would come together and pray, and things would begin to return to normal. Still, the uneasy feeling followed him, like the bespectacled eyes in the portraits along the walls.

 

 

THE YELLOW POLICE tape flapped in front of the small yellow house. Vicky stepped over the tape and tried the front door. Locked. She followed the tape around to the back door, and this time the knob turned in her hand. The door creaked into the dingy kitchen with cabinet doors hanging open and plates, cereal cartons, and newspapers scattered over the counters. She made her way into the living room. The sofa cushions had been upended, the drawers in the cabinet and tables were open, crumbled sheets of paper poking over the tops. A couple of chairs lay on their sides.

She headed down the hallway, stopping to peer into the two bedrooms. Mattresses pulled off the beds, linens tossed about, drawers open, and clothes and towels on the floor. A dark blackish stain spread over the center of one mattress. “Everything’s on the table,” Gianelli had said. She could hear his voice in her head, see the way he had watched Marcy Morrison while he interviewed her. He had always suspected her, she realized. And he and the Wind River Police had done a thorough job of searching the house for the murder weapon, but they hadn’t known where to look.

She crossed the hall into the small bathroom with the yellow shower curtain tossed in the tub. On a ledge above the sink was an electric shaver, a bottle of aftershave, and a black comb that had probably belonged to Ned. She opened the cabinet and stared at the shelves, empty except for a bottle of aspirin. There was no hint of Marcy Morrison, no feminine combs or brushes or lipsticks. She got down on one knee and studied the wall behind the pipes that jutted from the toilet. Nothing but the sameness of the white wall. She felt a sense of relief. She had taken a chance, crossing the police tape, walking through a crime scene, suspecting that her own client had hidden the murder weapon. And she was wrong.

Then she spotted the thin lines in the wallboard on the far side of the toilet, as faint as a spiderweb. She had to get on both knees to reach around the toilet and push on the wallboard within the lines. The piece broke free and fell forward. Inside the wall, was a small space big enough to hide a gun, but there was nothing there.

THE SUN DANCE grounds spread below, a field of white tipis shimmering in the sun. From the rise, Vicky could make out the brush shades scattered among the tipis with cottonwood saplings piled up the walls and over the roofs. There were corridors of shade on the grounds, a hum of activity. She could hear a baby crying. This was how it was in the Old Time, she thought. Villages scattered about the vastness of the plains, and where the plains buckled and lifted themselves, a warrior would stand guard. She knew the stories. They ran in her blood.

She followed the road downhill and left the Jeep at the far edge of the parking area. Thursday evening, the beginning of the Sun Dance, and people stirring about, little groups flowing around the tipis toward the center of the grounds. She hurried along with the others. The lodge poles that would be pushed up to the center pole lay in a circle around it, the bark and branches stripped, the cream-colored meat exposed. A line had started to form, and people had begun moving toward the poles. Everyone carried strips of fabric—reds, blues, yellows, greens, whites—and one by one, they leaned over and tied the fabric around one of the lodge poles. Each piece was a prayer flag, a sign of the prayers that would be offered during the Sun Dance.

She had brought her favorite scarf, red with a blue, green and yellow design, the colors of her people. She shook out the folds as she approached a lodge pole, then stooped over and tied on the scarf.
Take care of Ned Windsong. Let him be with the ancestors.

She stepped back and watched the line dipping and swaying until each pole was nearly obscured by the thick, colorful prayer flags. Annie was near the end of the line, pushing her two children ahead. She leaned back to reassure Roger who stayed close behind her, looking awkward with a piece of fabric in oranges and violets draped over his hands. They had been back in the office two days now, and everything had returned to normal, all the office rhythms restored, as if a man named Robin Bosey had never appeared. The Lander Police had arrested Robin before he’d gotten to the boundary of the reservation the morning he had burst into the office. An hour later, Annie had gotten the news and packed the kids. She and Roger were home by mid-afternoon. Robin was still in the Fremont County Jail awaiting transportation to the prison in Rawlins, but someday he would be free, Vicky knew. Annie knew it, too, she realized, watching Annie bend over to tie her fabric and help the children tie on theirs. Annie looked up and gave Vicky a little wave.

A hand brushed her shoulder, and she knew from the touch that John O’Malley had come up behind her even before she heard him say, “How are you?”

She turned and faced him. “I’m okay.” She smiled up at the handsome, sunburned face, the blue eyes, and crinkly laugh lines under the rim of his tan cowboy hat. “You were right, you know.”

“Not about everything,” he said.

“I haven’t seen Roseanne. How is she doing?”

“She and her aunt Martha went to Denver to stay with relatives.” He nodded toward an area across the grounds where, Vicky knew, the Birdwoman family had camped for years. It was a small, vacant space. “The Sun Dance would have been hard without Ned,” he said. “Maybe she’ll find peace being with family.” He took a moment before he went on. “I’ve talked to Gianelli. Roseanne won’t be charged. She shot Adams in self-defense, and her aunt witnessed the whole thing. Adams would have killed them both. He was carrying the 9mm Beretta that he used to kill Hawk and Lookingglass.”

“Well, you were certainly right about the mastermind in the burglary ring.” Vicky gave him a smile. “Adams was close to bankruptcy a year ago, at least that’s what the moccasin telegraph says. He must have gotten the idea to save his ranch by robbing empty houses. Hawk and Lookingglass were working on the ranch, so he brought them in. Trouble was, they ran into alarm systems.”

“And his wife’s nephew was an electrician who knew how to circumvent alarm systems.” Father John shook his head. “Ned wanted his own ranch more than anything else. The thing is, he didn’t like burglarizing houses. It put him out of balance.”

He glanced in the direction of the center pole, and Vicky followed his gaze. At least two dozen men were lifting the pole upright. They hoisted it across the ground a few feet, dropped the end into a hole, and braced the pole in place. They would construct the Sun Dance Lodge now by building the side walls and pushing up the poles covered with prayer flags to the center pole, like the rafters of an open-air roof. “Ned should have been here,” he said.

Vicky waited, and after a moment, he went on. “Gianelli thinks that after they broke into a number of houses around Lander, Adams decided to move the operation to Jackson Hole, where he could make bigger hauls by breaking into fewer homes. So he talked Ned into moving there and used an old army connection to get him a job that would get him inside the houses.”

She started walking, and Father John stayed beside her. Other people trailed past, heading for the camps. He said, “I think Ned wanted out before he went to Jackson Hole. It’s possible Adams let him think he could make a clean start there.”

“Then drew him back in?” Vicky said. Ned was a good electrician, she was thinking. He could have kept the job in Jackson as long as he wanted. Eventually he might have saved enough money for a down payment on a ranch.

“Adams knew how to play him.” Out of the corner of her eye, she could see John O’Malley shaking his head. “A few more break-ins, some expensive items, and Ned could get his ranch. He wouldn’t have to wait any longer. According to Gianelli, Adams had connections in Denver where he sold the stolen goods. Every month, Hawk and Lookingglass drove a ranch truck loaded with stolen goods to a warehouse. There was every opportunity to hold out on him, and Adams knew it.” He waited a moment before he went on, “A falling out of thieves, Gianelli called it. Hawk and Lookingglass shot Ned, and Adams shot them.”

Vicky kept to the side of the road, John O’Malley in step beside her. Ella’s camp was ahead. She could see the woman’s head bobbing about the brush shade, Ned’s relatives and friends gathered around. “They think I took the part of the outsider,” she said, nodding in the direction of the camp.

“You tried to protect your client’s rights,” John O’Malley said. “Everyone here would expect you to do the same for them. Ella knows that. She asked me to invite you to supper.”

“Does she still believe Marcy was involved in Ned’s murder?”

It was a moment before John O’Malley answered. She could sense the thoughts turning in his head. “Maybe she’ll always think so,” he said. “She called Marcy “Niatha” and said she was as clever as a spider. Have you heard from her?”

Vicky shook her head. “Even her father has no idea of where she is. But he can find her, he told me. All he has to do is cut off her credit cards and close the bank account, and she’ll call him.” She walked on for a moment, then turned toward him again. “As long as there isn’t a scandal that would affect the Glory and Success Ministry, and Marcy stays out of trouble, I doubt he’ll do anything.”

The sun had started to drop, an orange ball flaring over the mountains and bathing the peaks in orange light. The western sky was a tapestry of oranges, reds, and magentas that reflected in the white tipis. Now, Vicky knew, after months of preparing the dancers, the Sun Dance grandfathers would begin feeding their Sun Dance grandsons and their families. When they had eaten, the dancers would gather their bedrolls and line up outside the lodge. They would enter the lodge as their names were called. It would take a while, she knew. She remembered Sun Dances when the last dancer wasn’t placed inside the lodge until after midnight. Then the drums and singers would start. And every morning for the next three days, the dancers would line up at their places inside the lodge, face the opening to the east, and dance as the sun rose. People would come from across the camp and stand outside the lodge. At first there would be the complete silence of the plains, but the moment the sun had fully risen, the women would begin to tremolo. Then the people would return to their camps. And on Sunday evening, the dancers would face the West as they waited for the evening star. Then they would dance out of the lodge.

Most of the crowd was back in the camps now, getting ready for the evening meal, Vicky knew. She was quiet, conscious of John O’Malley beside her. She wondered what he thought, this white man from another place, another past. “I think Ella’s right,” she said finally. Then she told him what Larry Morrison had said. How Marcy had taken his .380-caliber SIG P232 and hidden it inside the bathroom wall, how he had found the hiding place after she left for Denver, and how the pistol was gone.

“But there isn’t any evidence she was involved,” he said. “Gianelli is convinced that either Hawk or Lookingglass got rid of the pistol after Ned was shot.”

Vicky took a moment before she told him about going to Ned’s house yesterday. “I found the place in the bathroom where Marcy cut out a small piece of wallboard. The space behind it was big enough to hold a gun.”

“What are you saying?”

“She hid the pistol along with the latex gloves she must have used. I think Ned had wanted to break up with her. I think he must have told her she had to leave. She lives for revenge, her father said. He feared she had intended to kill him and his wife.” Vicky glanced over at one of the camps, the people milling about, children running around. “He told me she used to hurt herself,” she went on. “Bang her head against the wall, knock herself unconscious. She knew how to do it.”

John O’Malley stepped away, then turned back, eyes narrowed in comprehension. “She could have gone to Ned’s house for the gun and the gloves the night she left the mission,” he said. “She was probably worried that sooner or later Gianelli would find them. She’s destroyed them by now. There won’t be any evidence to link her to Ned’s murder.” He paused, keeping his gaze on her. “The case is closed, Vicky.”

“She left the mission because of you,” Vicky said. The ground seemed to shift under her feet, and an icy feeling cut through her. “She knew you would put things together. If you heard that she had stolen her father’s pistol, you would inform Gianelli. You were the one who saw into her, John. She knows that you know what she’s capable of.” She put a hand on his forearm. Beneath the thin cotton of his sleeve, she could feel the knots of his muscles. She could not imagine what she would do if anything were to happen to him.