The Spider's Web (5 page)

The knocking sounded again, hard and rapid with impatience.

Roseanne made her way around the bed and down the hallway. Combing her fingers through her hair, wiping at her eyes. Across the living room, past Mervin sprawled on the sofa, his face crunched into a pillow, a guttural noise spitting from his mouth. The knock, knock, knock came again.

She floated toward the sound, managed to grip the knob and pulled the door open. She knew who the man was before he held up the wallet with the badge and said that he was Special Agent Ted Gianelli. He had big hands and thick fingers. She had seen him driving by on the rez once and someone—Ned, she remembered—had said, “There goes the local FBI. Don’t get in his way.”

She was in his way now, because it was obvious he intended to come inside. “I’d like to talk to you and whoever else is in the house,” he said. She hung on to the door. He could push past her, if he wanted. He looked too big for the stoop—boots planted near the sides, shoulders squared, a cowboy hat tipped back. He blocked the sun.

Roseanne moved backward, holding on to the door as he walked past, afraid she might crumble to the floor. She knew the truth now. Something in the fed’s manner—serious, official, and worn-looking, as if he carried a heavy burden.

“Looks like you had quite a party last night,” he said, tossing a glance backward.

Roseanne looked past him. Beer bottles and disposable cups littered the yard; a beer keg lay on its side. Little trails of smoke rose out of the smoldering campfires. Tracks and ruts crisscrossed the dirt.

“What’s your name?” he said.

“Roseanne Birdwoman.” Her voice sounded unfamiliar, as if a stranger had spoken her name.

“Who’s that?” Gianelli nodded toward Mervin who had propped himself up a little and was staring past half-closed eyelids.

“Mervin Oldman,” Roseanne said.

“Time to wake up, Mervin.” The fed walked over and held the wallet about a foot from Mervin’s face. “I have some questions about last night. Anybody else here?” he said, turning back to Roseanne.

“I’m here,” Berta called. She was still halfway down the hall. She had stuffed herself into a white tee shirt and blue jeans that looked too small. There was a roll of fat above the top of her jeans. She padded into the living room in bare feet. “Berta Oldman.”

“This your place?”

Berta shrugged. “Sometimes.”

Roseanne watched the white man’s face. It was hard to make him understand. Probably the house belonged to Mervin now, but she wasn’t sure. It had been his father’s, but his father was dead. And Mervin had a couple of brothers who lived in Colorado, so maybe it belonged to them, too. But Mervin was here most of the time, and Berta was here to look after Mervin. And Roseanne had found herself coming here more and more often after Ned had gone to Jackson Hole. All those days and weeks waiting for him to call and ask her to come. And the call never coming. Berta was the only one she could talk to.

“Get anybody else out here,” Gianelli said.

Berta shifted around and went back down the hall. Roseanne could see her leaning past the doors to another bedroom and the bathroom. She padded back. “Just us,” she said.

The fed retraced her steps down the hall, looking past the doorways. Then he walked back. “You know Ned Windsong?” he said, glancing from Berta to Roseanne and finally Mervin, who had set both feet on the linoleum and was wide-eyed, a pink blanket thrown over his shoulders like a cape.

“Yeah, we know Ned,” Mervin said. “He okay?”

“He was shot to death last night.”

Roseanne felt as if she were spinning about, doing the grass dance at a powwow, her feet lightly tapping the floor, barely connecting. She realized it was the room that had started spinning. She threw herself toward a wood chair and dropped onto the hard surface.

“You all right?” The fed took a step toward her, one arm extended, ready to hold her up.

She gripped the sides of the chair. “Why didn’t they save him?” Oh, God. She should have called 911 right away. Jumped out of the pickup and dialed the number. So what if Dwayne and Lionel had tried to stop her? If they had killed her? What did it matter?

“He was dead when the ambulance arrived,” Gianelli said. “Did you call 911?”

Roseanne shook her head. He could see through her, she thought. See that she should have called. She sank back against the chair. The room had gone blurry at the edges; Berta, behind the sofa, and Mervin, standing up, clutching the blanket around his naked shoulders.

“Somebody made the call from this house.” Gianelli turned toward the sofa. “Who was it?”

“Could be anyone,” Berta said. “Fifty, sixty people around here last night.”

“Where’s the phone?”

Berta nodded toward the kitchen.

“Somebody went to the kitchen and used the phone,” Gianelli went on. “Anybody go into the kitchen?”

“Lots of ’em,” Berta said. “Looking for beer or something to eat.”

“How long were you here?”

“I been staying here.”

“What about you?” He nodded at Mervin.

“Same.”

“So you were both here last night. You must have seen someone use the phone.”

Berta shook her head. “There was a party going on. People coming and going. You think we’re some kind of policemen? We don’t watch everybody.”

“What about you?”

Roseanne forced herself to look up into the man’s white face. He had black hair streaked with gray, and she wondered if he had kids. There was a kindness that protruded through the tough exterior.

“Roseanne come with the others after the party got going,” Mervin said. “Around eight o’clock, I’d say.”

Gianelli turned back and waited. A second passed before Mervin said that he noticed the time because he was wondering when they were going to show up.

“They?”

“Ned. Dwayne Hawk. Lionel Lookingglass. Some girls. Party never gets going ’til they get here.”

“You’re saying Ned was here at eight o’clock last night?’

“Ned never come.” Mervin shook his head. “Dwayne and Lionel and Roseanne come about then. Ain’t that right, Roseanne?” he said, a pleading tone in his voice.

Roseanne saw the look that Berta threw along the sofa. Don’t say anything, Berta had told her. You don’t have to say anything.

The fed turned to her. “Ned was supposed to be with you?”

Roseanne shook her head. “I haven’t seen him for a while.” Two weeks ago—another lifetime, another world—she was thinking. She saw herself standing on the stoop, rapping at the door. She had heard that Ned was back from Jackson Hole. It was all over the moccasin telegraph, how he moved back into his grandfather’s house. She had waited two or three days, sure that he would call, before she had gone to his house.

“Ned never showed up,” Mervin said. “That’s all I know.”

“What about you?” Roseanne watched the fed’s boots moving in her direction. “Ned a friend of yours?”

“He was friends with lots of people.” Berta’s voice came from behind the sofa.

“How good a friend?”

The tears started then. She dipped her face into both hands, feeling the warm moisture seep between her fingers. She could sense the room freezing into place. From far away came the sounds of breathing. She saw herself back on the stoop outside Ned’s house. She had knocked two or three times before the door opened and he stood in front of her. He looked thin and tired. She was struck by the worry lines that creased his forehead. She hadn’t remembered them. “Hi,” she said, and her voice had sounded weak and scared. She had pushed on. “I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

He had walked outside and sat down on the top step. He was still handsome, the curve of his cheekbones and the black eyes set back under the hood of his brow, strands of black hair brushing the top of his ears. She had sat down beside him, conscious of the warmth of his body close to hers, the slender, graceful curve of his fingers. “I was gonna call you,” he said. “Soon’s I got things straightened out.”

She had asked him what things, and he had shrugged and told her that he had pledged the Sun Dance. It was late, he knew. The other dancers had been preparing for most of the year, but Donald Little Robe had agreed to be his spiritual grandfather and help him get ready. “Everything’s gonna be fine,” he said. “I’m gonna get the strength I need.”

“I thought you didn’t call because it was over with us,” she had said.

“Things got complicated.” He turned toward her then, and she had seen the look in his eyes—a plea of some kind, for forgiveness or understanding. It had confused her. She could almost see herself blushing. She would forgive him anything. Surely he knew that.

“I’m just gonna get through the Sun Dance,” he said. “Start a new life. Everything’ll be okay.”

What things? she had wanted to say. But the look in his eyes had stopped her. She had gotten to her feet, made her way back to her car and driven out of the yard, knowing it was over, everything crashing down around her.

The boots came closer, and she could feel the white man leaning toward her.

“Your friend was murdered,” he said. “If you know anything about it, you had better tell me. You could be charged with withholding information in an investigation, maybe even assisting in a homicide.”

“I loved Ned,” she said, lifting her face and looking past the fed at Berta.

“I made the call,” Berta said.

Gianelli glanced around, then looked back at Roseanne. “Tell me the rest of it.”

She swallowed hard. Her throat had turned to sandpaper. “I didn’t know we were gonna pick him up,” she said. Then she told him how Dwayne and Lionel had stopped at Ned’s house, how they were inside only a few minutes before they came running out and said that Ned had been shot. Maybe the white girl, too. She had tried to call 911, but Dwayne had stopped her. She told Berta about it when she got to the party.

“What about the white girl,” Roseanne said. “Is she dead, too?”

Gianelli shook his head and said that the white girl was in the hospital. She had been assaulted, but she would be okay. “She saw the assailants, two Indian men,” he said.

Roseanne doubled over against the sharp pain that plunged like a knife into the middle of her. A new image now, burning itself into the back of her eyelids. Dwayne and Lionel, insisting they had to stop by Ned’s place and pick him up. Going into the house and running out. Shouting that Ned was shot! And now this white man with his facts: shot by two Indians. She tried to fit the pieces together in her mind. Dwayne and Lionel could have gone to the house earlier and killed Ned. They could have taken her to the house later so that she could swear they had found him already dead. If the fed suspected them, she was their witness. But the pieces didn’t fit; nothing made sense. If they’d had anything to do with Ned’s death, they wouldn’t have gone back to the house. They had told her to keep her mouth shut. They would kill her if they knew what she had told the fed.

“What is it?” Gianelli said.

From outside came the explosion of a motor gearing down, the sound of tires digging into the earth. Roseanne got to her feet. The fed was already at the front door, and when he threw it open, she saw the white truck jump the borrow ditch and careen onto the road, dust balls rolling behind. She could make out the shapes of the familiar heads in the front seat.

“I swear to you,” Berta was saying, “I didn’t know they was coming around here.”

“Hawk and Lookingglass?” Gianelli said.

It was Mervin who said, “Looks like their truck, all right.”

VICKY HOLDEN HAD just sat down at her desk and turned on the computer when she heard the front door open and shut. The brick bungalow on a side street in Lander, with the plaque on the door that said Holden and Lone Eagle, Attorneys-at-Law, was quiet this morning, the faint sounds of wind tapping the windows. Sunshine glowed in the beveled glass doors that separated her private office from the reception room. Usually, Annie Bosey, the secretary, opened the office, started a pot of coffee in the alcove that served as a miniature kitchen, and was tapping on the computer keys when Vicky arrived. But Annie hadn’t been at her desk this morning.

Now Vicky saw the dark figure of Annie dart past the corner of the beveled-glass doors. There was a thudding noise—a stack of books dropped onto a hard surface—followed by drawers squealing open. The phone rang. Annie’s voice, sharp and impatient. Vicky waited until the red light disappeared on her own phone, then went into the reception room. Annie was at the computer, her index finger stabbing the keyboard.

“Everything okay?” Vicky said.

“Why is this thing so slow.” Annie kept her eyes on the blank screen.

Vicky walked over and perched on the edge of the desk. She could still picture Annie Bosey the day she had come through the front door. “I hear you need a secretary,” she had said, “and I’m a good one.” It was a one-woman law firm then, specializing in DUIs, adoptions, wills, and criminal cases. “Bottom line,” Annie had pushed on, “I got two kids and a lousy husband that I just kicked out. I need a job and I’ll work my butt off.” Vicky had hired her on the spot.

She had insisted on taking Annie along when she and Adam Lone Eagle formed the firm dedicated to natural resources law on Indian reservations and moved into a fancy office on the second floor of a glass-and-brick building on Main Street. Then the bungalow had become available again, and she had moved the firm again. With Adam spending most of the time working for the Crow tribe in Montana, the bungalow was just the right size for her and Annie and Roger Hurst, the associate lawyer that she and Adam had hired.

“What’s going on?” Vicky said.

“New client.” Annie nodded toward the phone, her eyes on the screen. “Wants to talk to you right away. Says it’s an emergency. Donna Bearing had to cancel her appointment this morning.” She looked up. Her eyes were puffy and red. “So I told the guy you’d see him.”