The Thunder Keeper (16 page)

He jumped up, grabbed his jacket and hat again, and headed back out into the rain.

T
hunderbird Motel. The red-and-blue sign, blurred in the rain, hovered over the flat roof of a strip mall. Father John drove through the parking lot to the rear, where a yellow stuccoed building with cookie-cutter-identical doors and windows stood next to the alley. A last-chance place, he thought. Whole families squeezed into tiny rooms—Indians, derelicts, drugged-out teenagers, and people who were hiding out, like Eddie.

He parked next to the brown pickup in front of a door at the far end. Pulling down his cowboy hat, he made his way around a puddle that had replaced a slab of concrete and pounded on the door. Rain drummed around him, nearly obliterating the faint television noise coming from inside. He knocked again, then stepped to the window and peered through the slit in the curtains. Lamplight shone over the mussed bed, the dresser with food cartons scattered over the top.

He walked along the building, dodging the water that poured off the overhang and spattered the concrete, and let himself through the door marked
OFFICE
in smudged block letters on the glass pane. Odors of damp cigarette smoke and stale coffee rushed around him. A middle-aged man with gray bushy hair that matched his eyebrows sat
behind the counter that divided the small room.

“Yeah?” The man pulled his eyes away from the television on a metal shelf in one corner.

“I'm looking for Eddie Ortiz.”

“You the guy that called a while ago?”

Father John nodded.

“Last room thataway.” The man gestured with his head toward the opposite end of the motel.

“He doesn't answer.”

“Must've gone out for a beer.”

“His pickup's still in front.”

The man gave a noncommittal shrug.

“Let's check the room,” Father John said. “I want to make sure he's okay.”

The man eyed him a moment, making up his mind. Finally he said, “Who'd you say you are?”

Father John gave his name and said he was from the mission.

“Oh, yeah. The Indian priest.” The bushy eyebrows rose in a kind of recognition.

“What about the room?”

A half second passed before the man slid off the stool, almost disappearing behind the high counter. There were sounds of a drawer opening and shutting, keys rattling. He walked around the counter. A short, stocky man in a white T-shirt with wide suspenders that rode over his protruding belly and hooked into the belt of dark, rumpled pants. Without saying a word—metal key ring jangling—he opened the door and went outside.

Father John caught up and led the way. The man's sneakers made a squishy sound on the wet pavement behind him. At the door in front of the brown pickup, Father John waited while the man jammed a key into the lock and nudged the door open with one foot.

Father John moved past and went inside. The room was empty. The bed looked as if Eddie had just crawled out of it, leaving behind piles of sheets and blankets. A soap opera flickered on the television set in one corner.

He checked the bathroom: a towel wadded on the vinyl floor that was peeling back from the base of the tub, a shaving kit on the back of the toilet.

Next he flung open the closet door, every muscle in his body tense with the expectation of finding Eddie Ortiz crumpled on the floor like the towel. Except for a shirt and jacket that dangled from wire hangers, the closet was empty.

“Like I said, he went out.” The manager was planted in the doorway, jiggling the keys, bored and impatient.

“Has anybody else been looking for him? Did you see anyone?”

“Hey.” The man rolled his shoulders. “I just take the money at the zoo. I don't tend the animals.”

Father John walked over. “Listen, you . . .” He had to stop himself from saying “moron.” “When Ortiz comes back, you tell him to call me. Father O'Malley at St. Francis. It's important. You got that?”

The man blinked up at him, then stepped backward, across the walkway and into the rain that poured off the overhang and turned the white T-shirt gray against his shoulders. He jerked forward, one hand brushing at the wet shirt, and took off in the direction of the office, moving fast, sneakers slapping on the concrete.

 

F
ather John got into the Toyota and negotiated his way back through the parking lot and out onto the street, where he jammed down the accelerator, willing the old pickup to go faster. He drove north through Lander, staring past
the wipers moving back and forth, back and forth, taking the intersections as the lights turned red, the voice in the confessional loud in his head:
There's gonna be more murders.

He made a left into the parking lot that wrapped around the convenience store where he'd met Ali a couple days ago. The Toyota's tires squealed to a stop near the entrance. He jumped out and pushed through the double-glass doors, taking in the whole store at a glance: the young woman herding two kids past the candy racks, the red-faced, bald-headed man at the counter where the girl had been.

“I'm looking for Ali Burris.” He walked over to the counter.

“Well, now . . .” The man's thick fingers drummed on the glass countertop. “Better get in line. Lots of people wanna find that little Indian gal.”

“When do you expect her?”

“Who can say?” He shrugged. The tapping harder now. “Supposed to be here twenty minutes ago. You see her anywhere?” He gave a mock look around the store.

“I'm Father O'Malley from the reservation,” Father John said. “Ali could be in trouble. Have you tried calling her?”

“Now, if I had a number, I'd be on the goddamned phone, wouldn't I? Telling her to get her ass over here. Got me a meeting I'm supposed to be at. It don't make me happy to hang around waiting for her to come dragging in here whenever she gets good and ready. Time don't mean nothing to them Indians.”

Father John struggled to ignore the remark. “Tell Ali to call me at St. Francis when she comes in,” he said.

“Oh, I'm gonna have a lot of things to tell that bit—” The man bit his lower lip over the word. The red in his
cheeks deepened. “I ever see her again, that is.”

Father John started for the door, then turned back. “What do you mean, I should get in line? Who else is looking for Ali?”

The man shook his head, as if the answer was obvious. “Couple boyfriends come around. White guys she picked up in Denver, my guess. One of 'em comes in here twirling his sunglasses, even though it's raining cats and dogs outside, like he was a hotshot movie producer. Wanted to know where Ali was.”

Father John stepped back to the counter, conscious of the tension gathering inside him. “When?”

“Maybe thirty minutes ago. Just before she was supposed to come in. I told him to hang around, she'd be showing up. Sure got that wrong.” He shrugged again.

“What did the guy look like?” Father John heard the tightness in his voice.

“Like anybody.” He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Some guy, that's all. Couple inches taller than me—about six feet, dark hair, blue sport coat, fancy loafers. Twirling those sunglasses.”

Father John drew in a long breath. The tension was like a pit in his throat that he couldn't swallow. The description matched Eddie's description of Buck Wentworth.

“What about the other guy? You said there were two.”

“Stayed outside.” The man nodded toward the window and the parking lot beyond. “I seen him out there. Had on a red baseball jacket, that's all I know.”

That would be Delaney. The pieces were falling into place now.

“What were they driving?”

“What's this all about?”

“Just tell me.”

The man rolled his eyes again and shrugged. “One
sweet SUV, white, riding high.” He leaned over the counter and shot a glance toward the woman and kids still hovering around the candy section. “You wanna know what got me?”

He paused, then said something about not being able to figure out what a couple of white guys in an expensive rig like the SUV seen in that little Indian gal.

Father John heard only part of it, a buzz of background noise to his own thoughts. Wentworth and Delaney had shown up just as Ali was due to come in. They were waiting for her in the parking lot. She never reached the store.

Okay, he told himself. You don't know that for a fact. Think rationally, logically. Eddie and the girl aren't stupid. They could have spotted the white SUV earlier and gone to the res together to hide out a while. They could both be safe.

“What else did he say?” Father John kept his voice low, controlled.

“Funny thing.” The man had begun tapping the counter again. “Just asked when she was supposed to be here, then went on outside. Didn't leave no messages, if that's what you mean. Like he was gonna see her before I did.”

Father John spun around and pushed through the door. Wentworth and Delaney were mopping up, just as Delaney had said in the confessional. Mopping up the last two people who might alert the sheriff and the tribes about a secret diamond deposit at Bear Lake.

He found a quarter in his jeans pocket and pushed it into the slot in the phone on the brick wall outside. Huddling out of the rain, he dialed the sheriff's office and asked for Matt Slinger.

“Sorry. Detective Slinger's not in.”

“Then put another detective on,” Father John said. He
gave his name and told the operator it was an emergency.

The line went quiet. Behind him, the rain beat on the parking lot, and passing cars splashed through the puddles in the street. Finally a man's voice: “Detective Kowalski. What can I do for you, Father O'Malley?”

He leaned closer to the phone and told the detective about Eddie Ortiz and Ali Burris, taken captive about thirty minutes ago by two men from Denver—Buck Wentworth and Jimmie Delaney. They were driving a white SUV.

“Hold on. I'm writing as fast as I can.” A hollow sound filled the line. Finally the detective said, “You say the two Denver guys took the man and woman by force?”

“That's exactly what I'm saying. They were both afraid of them.” Father John drew in a long breath. There wasn't time to explain. “Look,” he said, trying to separate what he'd heard in the confessional from everything else he knew. “Eddie told me that Wentworth and Delaney followed him and Duncan Grover from Denver.”
Careful.
“Eddie believes the Denver guys killed Grover.”

“We talkin' about the Indian that committed suicide?”

“It wasn't a suicide,” Father John said. He heard the exasperation in his tone. “Slinger's been reinvestigating Grover's death. He thinks Grover may have stumbled onto something at Bear Lake.”

“Somebody helping themselves to the petroglyphs.”

“The point is . . .” Dear God, there wasn't enough time to get into the possibility of a diamond deposit. “Eddie says that the two men came up here planning to kill all of them, the girl, too. They've already killed Grover. You've got to stop them before they kill the others. Shouldn't be too hard to spot a white SUV with green plates around here.”

“You know how many square miles we cover here,
Father? More than nine thousand. That SUV's had a half-hour start. They could be thirty miles in any direction. You got any idea where they might be heading?”

He knew. Suddenly he knew. It was logical. Logic was about patterns, and Delaney understood patterns. He'd gotten involved in murder, then come back to the sacrament that had been healing and comforting when he was younger. The priest would protect him, he knew, but the priest would also do whatever he could to prevent other murders. Delaney would send a message, like a neon sign flashing in the rain.
Look at the pattern, Father O'Malley, and stop the murders
.

Grover's death looked like a suicide; Eddie and Ali would look like suicides, too. Grover had died at Bear Lake. The others would die there. Two more Indians imitating Grover, choosing to die in a sacred place. It would even seem logical to the outside world.

“They're on their way to Bear Lake,” he said. “Wentworth and Delaney intend to throw Eddie and the girl off the cliffs, just as they did Grover.”

“How d'ya know all this?”

“Listen to me, Detective!” He was shouting now. “You've got to get some officers out there right away!” He slammed the phone down and made a dash through the rain to the Toyota. Thunder cracked in the distance, and lightning lit up the ridges of the mountains. The storm was centered to the north, over Bear Lake, he realized. The spirits were angry.

The engine burst into life, and he pressed down the accelerator and pulled out into the street. He glanced at his watch. Almost five-thirty. It would be dark soon. Within moments he was speeding north on Highway 287 toward Bear Lake.

V
icky watched the black sedan in the rearview mirror. It had been there on I-25, on the exit ramp to I-80. She had first noticed it about ten miles north of Denver. Always the same distance behind. Other vehicles moved in between, but when they pulled away, the sedan was still there.

She was getting paranoid, she told herself, imagining the sedan was following her. First Vince Lewis murdered, then Jana Lewis. She was nervous. A black sedan had killed Lewis.

Vicky pressed hard on the gas pedal, picking up speed—the needle hovering at eighty, the gray asphalt rolling toward her. She glanced into the rearview mirror. The sedan had dropped back until it was nothing more than a dark smudge on the horizon.

She took a deep breath and relaxed her grip on the steering wheel. Traffic was light. A few cars and trucks and semis in the oncoming lane. A line of semis ahead. On either side of the highway, the vast, limitless plains spread as far as she could see, merging into the sky. She could make out the dips of the arroyos, the gentle rise of the plateaus, covered with wild grasses raked by the wind. The land was part of her, in her blood—a blood memory
passed down from the ancestors. No matter where she went, she could never leave the plains behind.

She'd filed the brief with the appellate court this morning, then arranged to take the rest of the day off to drive to Laramie, wondering now if the appointment with Charles Ferguson was an excuse to escape onto the plains. The meeting would probably be a waste of time. The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality had confirmed that no letters of authorization had been issued to take samples of soil on state land in central Wyoming. Nor had any licenses to explore been issued. She'd also contacted the state land office. No mineral leases had been granted to explore for diamonds in central Wyoming, and no permits issued to mine diamonds there.

Vicky gripped the wheel against the force of air from a passing semi. Tiny specks of dirt and rock pinged on the windshield. Nathan Baider's men could have found a deposit and could be working it without the necessary legal steps. The penalty was high—ten thousand dollars a day—but Wyoming was a big state. She doubted the state had enough mining inspectors to cover the vast expanse of undeveloped areas in central Wyoming alone. Lewis had died trying to tell her something. She owed it to the man to find out what it was. She owed it to her people.

The Laramie roofs shimmered on the plains ahead, and Vicky let up on the accelerator and again glanced in the rearview mirror. The black sedan was there. She felt her heart take a little jump.

Still there as she took the exit onto the flat wide pavement leading into town and drove past the car dealerships and motels and box stores that bunched closer and closer together as she neared the center.

“You're not the only one going to Laramie,” she said
out loud, startled at the fear in her voice. She shot through a yellow light and passed a pickup, pulling away from the sedan. Another glance in the mirror. The sedan had disappeared.

The campus came into view on the right, two- and three-story redbrick buildings surrounded by lawns and concrete walkways and cottonwoods that had probably been there in the Old Time. Through the trees, she could see the yellow-brick geology building.

“Can't miss us,” Ferguson had said on the phone. “We're the only yellow building around here.”

She found a vacant parking place on a residential block and walked back to campus. There was an instant when she thought she saw the black sedan in the next block, but then it was gone.

Inside the building, she studied the directory a moment before making her way down a narrow corridor to a door with
CHARLES FERGUSON
printed in black letters below the glass pane. She knocked.

“Come on in.” The friendly voice on the phone yesterday, as open as the Wyoming plains, gave her a sense of normality and security.

She stepped inside and stopped. The room looked like a storeroom, with cartons, books, and papers crammed onto shelves against the walls and various-sized glass containers filled with specimens of rock and soil stacked on the metal cases that jutted into the room.

A slim, fit-looking man rose from the desk wedged beneath the window. Outside was the redbricked view of another building. “Professor Ferguson?” she said.

“Most folks call me Charlie,” he said, motioning her forward. He looked about thirty-five, with short-trimmed brown hair and the ruddy complexion of a cowboy who spent his days herding cattle. He wore blue jeans and a
plaid shirt, the sleeves rolled up around muscular forearms. Instead of cowboy boots, he had on brown, lace-up hiking boots.

“I'm Vicky Holden.” She picked a path around the metal cases and held out her hand.

“Pleased to meet you.” He gave her a wide friendly smile that accentuated the tiny squint lines at the corners of his light eyes. When he shook her hand, she could feel the strength in his grip.

He nodded toward the chair next to the desk and told her to have a seat. On the wall above was a map of Wyoming similar to the map in Nathan Baider's office. Pins with various-colored heads—red, blue, yellow—dotted the periphery. There were no pins in the center.

“I appreciate your taking the time to see me,” she said, settling on the hardwood chair.

The professor sat down in an oak swivel chair and regarded her a moment. “You're not the first woman I've met who's interested in diamonds.”

“I'm only interested in the prospecting part,” she said.

“Well, now . . .” He smiled. “That could be a first. How can I help you?”

Vicky took in a deep breath. It still took her by surprise the way white people got right down to business. She said, “Do you know of any diamond deposits in central Wyoming? Any reason for prospectors to look for deposits on the reservation?”

“The reservation?” Ferguson's eyebrows shot up, and she braced herself for a firm “no.” Hoped for the answer, she realized. She could stop wasting her time and start believing that Lewis's death had nothing to do with her people.

Ferguson cleared his throat, a professor about to deliver a lecture. “Mining companies,” he began, “usually deploy
prospecting resources in areas with the best chance of success, which would be near known diamond deposits. As you can see”—he waved toward the map—“most deposits are on the southern border. Several companies operate mines there. The biggest is Baider Industries, which owns three mines. Although . . .” He paused, as if he'd just remembered something. “The Kimberly closed down its operations last month. Mine played out.”

“The Kimberly!” Vicky stood up and peered at the map a moment. She'd seen the Kimberly Mine on another map—in Nathan Baider's office. And yesterday John O'Malley had left a message, wanting to know about the Kimberly Mining Company. She'd asked Laola to run a check on the company with the secretary of state's office. She wouldn't have to wait for the report. The company was a subsidiary of Baider Industries.

“Is it important?” Ferguson was staring at her.

“I don't know,” she said after a moment. She was thinking that if the Kimberly Mine had played out, Nathan Baider could be desperate to find another deposit. He was anxious to produce more diamonds that could be certified on the world market. Maybe he got reckless and sent a crew to the reservation without taking the time to work through the tribal bureaucracy and secure the legal permits. Maybe . . .

Except there were no pins with rounded, colored heads in the center of the map.

She turned to the professor who was watching her, questions mingling with the concern in his face. “Are you telling me there aren't any diamond deposits on the reservation?”

“We don't know that,” he said.

Vicky sat back down. “What do you mean?”

Ferguson rearranged his angular frame in the chair and
drew in a long breath. “It has to do with the peculiar geographical formation underlying Wyoming,” he began. “The entire state happens to be underlaid by a craton that is intruded by the largest field of kimberlite pipes in the United States. The pipes erupted like volcanoes about four hundred million years ago from ninety to one hundred and twenty miles below the earth's surface, bringing up diamonds and other minerals. So far we've recorded forty diatremes, the upper portion of the volcanic structures, in Wyoming. Hold on.” He jumped up and disappeared in the maze of metal cases. In a moment he was back. “Kimberlite rock,” he said, handing her a chunk of dark gray rock that resembled solidified lava. It was lightweight and dense.

“Hard to believe diamonds come from such ugly ducklings,” he said, dropping back in the swivel chair, a fond gaze on the rock in her hand. “Some geologists believe Wyoming will someday be one of the world's richest diamond producers, right up there with Africa.”

Vicky glanced up at the map of Wyoming, a vast, empty space of mountain ranges and plains. “Why the reservation?” she asked, locking eyes with him again. “If diamonds can be found anywhere, why would a mining company decide to look on the res?”

Ferguson shrugged. “There's always the possibility that someone stumbled on a pipe. Sometimes prospectors find other minerals that come from the pipes—pyrope almondine garnets, sapphires, and chromium diopside, which is the color of emeralds. They wash them out of a creekbed, then trace them upstream until they locate the kimberlite pipe they washed from. They start digging. Take test samples of earth, looking for diamonds.”

Vicky was acutely aware of the maze of metal shelves around the room, the glass containers of rocks and
minerals and residue—the earth reduced to small physical parts. So different from the way she always thought of the earth: a whole being with its own spirit. And yet, for this scientist—the light eyes seldom leaving the kimberlite rock in her hand—the earth's spirit was in each small part: diamonds, trace minerals, ugly-duckling rocks.

“What about trace minerals?” she said. “Have they been found on the reservation?”

Ferguson didn't say anything. He reached past her, retrieved a small vial the size of a prescription bottle, and handed it to her. “Garnets and sapphires,” he said. “I washed them out of the creekbed there.” He pointed to a spot on the map that Vicky guessed was about fifty miles north of the reservation.

She held the bottle up to the window, turning it slowly in her hand. A layer of red and blue grains sparkled in the light. Then she stood up and studied the area he had pointed to. Dubois to the north, Table Mountain and Indian Meadows farther south, creeks crisscrossing the area. To the west, the direction from which the creeks flowed out of the mountains, was the Shoshone forest and, over a ridge, Bear Lake, a place of spirits, important to her people.

She sank onto her chair and closed her eyes. The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to form a clear image. She'd assumed that Vince Lewis had wanted to tell her something about the reservation. She was wrong. Nathan Baider had found diamonds at Bear Lake. A diamond mine would drive the spirits away. The Arapahos and Shoshones would lodge complaints with the state, file lawsuits, do everything possible to protect the area, which explained why Baider had to work in secret. Vince Lewis had died trying to warn her so that she could warn the tribes, and his wife must have known what was going on.
She must have confronted Nathan Baider. If Duncan Grover had come upon the secret, it would explain why he had been killed.

“Are you all right?”

Vicky's eyes snapped open. Charlie Ferguson was bending over her, as if he might take her pulse, his own eyes narrowed with worry.

“I'm okay,” she managed. She made herself take a long breath. “Suppose Baider Industries located a diamond deposit at Bear Lake. What would be the next step?”

Charlie Ferguson looked startled. “Bear Lake Valley? That would be highly controversial. They might want to keep it secret. Wouldn't want tourists and rock hounds trampling the area. They should get a mineral lease and authorization, but they might not. They might want to see what they'd found first. Dig a prospect pit about twelve hundred feet deep and take out a few thousand pounds of rock. The average diamond yield is point-zero-five carats to seven carats per ton of rock. If the sample rocks showed gemstone-quality stones, they'd want to make a bulk commercial test with about ten thousand tons of rock. At some point they'd probably file for a mining permit.”

“How much time are we talking about?”

“An established mining company that knows the ropes—”

“Like Baider Industries,” Vicky cut in.

The man shrugged. “Let's just say the process would be smooth.”

“A mine could be operating before anyone realized what was going on?”

“Possibly.”

Unless someone like Vince Lewis decided to blow the whistle, Vicky was thinking. She turned back to the map: a blue-and-green blur with red, yellow, and white pins
jumping out at her. After a moment she realized the professor had sat down, and she took her own chair.

“How large is a diatreme?”

“Anywhere from a few acres of surface area to a mile in diameter.”

“How can I find the kimberlite pipe in Bear Lake Valley?” she said.

Ferguson exhaled a long stream of air. “You could try panning for trace minerals downstream from the valley . . .” He hesitated. “You could hire a plane to fly over the valley and do photo imaging, the way DeBeers locates new deposits in the interior of Australia. A very expensive process, I might add.”

Vicky shifted forward, a sense of excitement gathering inside her. “What about satellite imaging? Could satellite sensors detect a kimberlite pipe?”

The professor shrugged. “Sensors can detect the color of your hair,” he said. “Problem lies in interpreting the data. It takes highly trained geologists. Some work in government labs. Others are at commercial satellite companies that sell the imaging data.”