Winter's Child (20 page)

Vicky followed the
man who had sat next to her down the metal steps and across a swath of snow-blown concrete. A blast of frigid wind went straight to her bones. Inside, the terminal resembled an aquarium in the bright lights. She was still shivering as she made her way through the small crowd beyond the baggage trough.

She didn't see them at first, but there they were: Annie and Roger, hurrying forward, worry etched on their faces. The roads must be terrible, Vicky thought. She had left her own car in the parking lot, but here they were, good friends, come to fetch her.

Then she understood it was something else by the way Roger swung her bag out of her hand and started for the door, and Annie fell in beside her. “It's Vince.” Annie kept her voice low, throwing a glance toward the people milling about. Vicky could feel a knot tightening in her stomach. The sounds of greetings and conversations surged around them, and Annie didn't say anything else until they were through the door.

“They found him.” Annie stayed close beside her, the two of them picking their way along the snowy trail that Roger stomped out toward the short-term parking. “He's been holed up in a drinking house. A so-called friend snitched him out. Police have surrounded the house, and Vince is refusing to come out. He has a gun, and he's threatening to kill himself.”

Roger held the doors of his SUV open while Annie got into the passenger seat and Vicky lifted herself onto the rear seat. She pulled her scarf around her chin and snuggled into a little warmth.

“We figured you'd want to get out there right away,” Roger said, turning on the ignition, looking over one shoulder as he backed the SUV out of the parking space. She could see the worry lines below the cap pulled halfway down his forehead.

“Betty's beside herself.” Annie joined in, straining around to catch her eye. “She's scared to death Vince will either kill himself or come out shooting and let the police do it. He's terrified of going to prison.”

“Where is she?”

“She's at the house by now, I'm sure. She must have called a half dozen times to see if you'd gotten back yet.”

They were driving through Riverton, past the restaurants, shops, gas stations shimmering in the falling snow. Vince. Vince. She had worked out a deal with the prosecuting attorney. All he'd had to do was come with her and surrender. He would have been in rehab now. Safe in rehab.

But Vince had wanted to drink, and the force of it—the sheer need for alcohol—was stronger than anything else. Where had he run into Lou? At the bar where Betty had gone looking for him? And Lou had recognized the force of want in his eyes. He had
smelled
it. He'd offered Vince money for a simple job: follow a man with a briefcase, wait for the best opportunity, run him down.

Roger made a right onto the reservation. The windshield wipers made a lazy, droning noise against the snow at the edges of the cleared crescents. Ahead, the sign for St. Francis Mission looked blurred and wavy. Betty would have called John O'Malley, and he would have gone immediately. Vicky could feel herself relax a little. John would do everything possible to keep Vince alive.

*   *   *

The blue and
red lights on a cluster of police cars swirled in the snow. Several yards behind the cars stood the house itself—a shack, really—a collection of logs and sticks left over from the days when the government believed shacks were good enough for Arapahos. Thick snow lay over a roof that might collapse at any moment, except the roof had held on through decades of winters. It would hold on tonight, unless a volley of gunshots blew it to pieces. Vicky shivered at the thought.

Roger maneuvered the SUV through the barrow ditch and into the yard. He stopped behind one of the police cars. An ambulance stood nearby, an ominous sign, preparation for the worst. Vicky got out and slammed the door, searching the little groups of people milling about, BIA police in bulky uniform jackets, ear flaps dangling from their caps, plainclothes officers bundled in sheepskin jackets.

She spotted John O'Malley over by a floodlight mounted on a metal tripod. As if he had felt her eyes on him, he broke away from a group of officers and started toward her. Voices all around were subdued and tight, and it struck her that the voices of the enemy in the Old Time must have sounded like that before the warriors swooped down on a village.

She had started toward John O'Malley, snow blowing in her face, aware of Annie on one side, Roger on the other, when Betty
White Hawk—hatless, hair streaked white, face twisted in hysteria—jumped in front of her. “You've got to stop them!” She was shouting, throwing her arms about, gloves dangling off her hands.

Vicky took hold of the woman's shoulders. “What's happened?”

“He's going to kill himself if they”—the words sounded like a long wail; she waved a flapping glove around—“don't go away. He wants them to leave him alone.”

She was aware of John O'Malley beside her. Annie and Roger had stepped away to give him room and, behind them, she could see Michael Lefthand, the BIA police chief, and another officer start over.

“We've been trying to talk him into coming out,” John O'Malley said. “He wants to talk to you.”

“Then we have to go in.”

“Not going to happen.” The police chief shouldered in beside her.

“Vince is desperate, Michael. I'm his lawyer. I have the right to talk to him. Father John is his pastor. We have to convince him to surrender peacefully. He's facing a charge of attempted robbery. It's not worth a life.”

“I get it, but Vince is not listening to anybody's pleas.” The chief threw a glance sideways. “No offense, Father. We have a SWAT team ready to take that shack and bring him out.”

“They'll bring out a dead body,” John O'Malley said. “Is that what you want?”

“Nobody needs to die tonight.” Vicky stared at the chief until she was sure she had his full attention. “Let us try.”

The chief lowered his head, considering something about his boots. A clump of snow slid off the brim of his hat. A couple seconds passed before he looked up. “You get one chance. If Vince White Hawk refuses to talk to you, we go in. Got it?”

Vicky nodded, and she and John O'Malley followed the chief over to the floodlight. He took a megaphone from another officer and handed it to Vicky. “One chance,” he said.

The megaphone was heavy, unbalanced. Vicky held it to her mouth and pushed it up with her other hand. “Vince, it's Vicky.” Her voice boomed around the yard as if they were in an echo chamber. “Father John and I are coming in.”

Silence. The shack might have been empty, left with nothing but ghosts.

“No going in unless he's on board,” the chief said. “You could be walking into a bullet.”

“Vince, can you hear me?” Vicky heard her own voice, swollen and shaky. “I have to know if you hear me. Open the door a little.” She waited. The door remained fixed, shadowy and flimsy-looking. God, the SWAT team would overpower it in a second. “Vince! We can help you. Let us help you.”

Still nothing. “Better let it go.” It was Roger's voice behind her, joining in. “It's too dangerous.”

She glanced up at John O'Malley. In his eyes was the same resolution that had gathered inside her. She tilted the heavy megaphone upward again. “It's just Father John and me, Vince. You know we're not armed. We're coming inside to talk to you.”

“No, you are not,” Chief Lefthand said.

Vicky pushed the megaphone into his chest and started across the yard after John O'Malley, who was already halfway to the shack. A flurry of movement and the sound of angry voices erupted behind them.

“Vince! We're coming.” John O'Malley's voice came back to her in a freezing blast of wind. “Open the door. Nobody's coming in but us.”

He had reached the door now, Vicky so close behind she could feel the warmth of his jacket. The door trembled under his fist. Nothing but the hushed silence that had settled over the shack and the yard, as if she and John O'Malley were alone. Two or three seconds passed—a lifetime—before she heard the clicking noise, and John turned the knob. The door creaked open. “Vince!” he called.

John O'Malley stepped inside, and she was right behind him, moving into a tiny space of shadows and gray light framed in the front windows. Over in the corner, a space heater emitted a red glow. A blanket, the only other sign of human habitation, had been tossed near the heater. Seated cross-legged on the bare wooden floor a few feet away, the red glow playing over his face, was Vince White Hawk, hands shaking, dangling off his knees.

Vicky got down on one knee beside him, conscious of John O'Malley sinking beside her. “Let us help you, Vince,” she said. He wore the same dark sweatshirt he had worn the last time she'd seen him. Torn jeans, exposing bony, bruised-looking knees. Tucked inside the waistband of his jeans was the black metal handle of a pistol.

“You can't help me.” The words came like a hoarse cough.

“I'm going to see that you are taken to the hospital.” God, the man needed help, whatever he had done. Day after day of steady drinking. He could have been dead. “I'm going to try to work out the same deal with the prosecuting attorney. You'll plead guilty to harassment and he'll drop the attempted robbery charge. You'll be sentenced to jail, but you'll spend the time in rehab.”

“It's your chance for another start,” John O'Malley said.

Vince didn't move. He might have been a sculpture in a park.
Indian Sitting Alone.
Without looking up, he said, “You don't get it.”

“Oh, I get it,” John O'Malley said. “I've been where you are. I
know all about second chances. And one thing I know for sure: you don't turn them down.”

The floodlight burned through the window behind her, and white light striped Vince's face and sweatshirt. He might have been behind bars, she thought.

Vince lifted his face, blinked into the light, and tried to scoot backward. The effort tipped him sideways, and John O'Malley set a hand on his shoulder to brace him. Vince was shaking. The space heater was no match for the cold air that invaded the old shack. Vicky got to her feet, scooped up the blanket, and wrapped it around Vince's shoulders. He shuddered into it.

“Nobody's gonna make me a deal.”

“There are no guarantees,” Vicky said. “I'll do my best.”

“They think I killed somebody.”

“You tried to rob somebody,” John O'Malley said.

Vicky took a moment before she said, “Did you?”

Vince rocked backward, as if she had struck him with an anvil, eyes wide with fear, jaw moving with the impact of words trying to escape. One hand reached for the gun. “You'd better get out of here. Get out, both of you.”

“I'm your lawyer,” Vicky said. “Whatever you've done . . .”

“Nobody's gonna believe me. Even you think I killed that man.” He gripped the gun and yanked it out. “I'm warning you. Get out!”

“Take it easy, buddy.” John O'Malley's voice was calm, normal. “Put the gun away.”

Vince was waving the gun like a flag. He kept his eyes on Vicky. “The cops'll never believe me.” Tiny bits of spittle peppered her face. “I'm not going to prison for a murder I never did.”

“I know what happened to Clint Hopkins.” And she did, Vicky realized, as if the figures in the scenarios she had imagined had
reassembled themselves. It wasn't Vince behind the wheel of the black truck. Either Lou or Debbie Bearing had been driving, because Vince had taken the money and disappeared.

“You didn't kill him.” Vicky sat down on the floor, not taking her eyes from the gun. Steadier in Vince's hands now. “Lou offered you money to do a job, isn't that right? You were desperate for a drink, so you took the money. But you didn't have it in you, did you Vince? You couldn't kill a man.”

John O'Malley had turned toward her, and she could see in his expression that he understood part of it. She hadn't had time to tell him what she had learned in Denver. The same truth that Clint Hopkins had uncovered, the truth that had gotten him killed.

“Clint Hopkins knew enough to send the Bearings to prison,” she said. “They wanted him dead.”

Vince was blinking into the light again, all the muscles of his face creased in concentration. “Lou never told me what the guy did. Just said he'd be at a meeting in downtown Lander later that night. He always carried a briefcase. I was supposed to wait for him to come out . . .” He gulped, as if something hard had lodged in his throat. “Lou gave me a thousand dollars. Said there'd be another thousand after I did the job. I took the money and . . .”

“Disappeared,” Vicky said.

“I'm not a killer.”

“Give me the gun.” John O'Malley held out his hand. “It's your second chance, buddy.” A long moment passed—Vicky could hear her heart hammering in her ears—as the dance went on: holding out the gun, pulling it back, holding it again, and, finally, setting it into John O'Malley's hand.

“We're going out together,” he said. “Vicky and I will go first. You'll be right behind us.”

Vince moved his head in what passed for a nod, then made an effort to get to his feet, scooting forward, trying to push himself upward. A great effort that came to nothing until John O'Malley took hold of his arm and lifted him up.

At the door, John O'Malley shouted that they were coming out, that Vince was unarmed. There was a change of plans then, since Vince was stumbling and weaving about. Vicky stepped out alone into the flood of white light, the falling snow like black flies in the light. Walking behind her, John held on to Vince.

“Your mother's waiting for you,” she heard him tell the young man.

The woman came
out of the house and ran toward the car parked in front. Coat open, sides flapping in the breeze that stirred the snow and sent little white clouds spiraling upward, head bare, scarf flapping around her neck. Betty White Hawk, a dark figure against the bright sunshine that had emerged this morning and scrubbed through the last of the snow clouds.

Vicky pulled the Ford in behind the car. A mixture of surprise and expectation flashed across Betty's face. She stood in the opened driver's door, stopped in motion. Vicky slammed out and walked over, boots crunching the snow.

“I been waiting all morning.” Betty sounded tense, accusatory.

“I've been at the prosecutor's office.” Vicky closed in on the woman. “I came as soon as I could.”

“How is he?”

“Vince is in the hospital. He's under arrest.”

“The deal?” Betty looked as if she might jump out of her skin.
She slapped away the scarf that blew across her face and blinked into the brightness. The sun had set the snow ablaze.

“Peters withdrew the deal. He's upset over last night's standoff. Vince didn't help himself by hiding out and threatening to kill himself.”

“I know. I know.” Betty lifted both hands in supplication. “He's my son, and I love him. All he could think about was getting a drink. You said you'd help him.”

Vicky let a long moment tick by. Betty didn't know the rest of it: her son had accepted money to kill a man, had declined to do the job, and had taken off with the money. Neither did Peters, which, if the truth ever came out, would mean charges of conspiracy to commit murder and probably a host of other charges Peters would be happy to come up with.

“I'll meet with him after he's had time to think. A guilty plea means Peters wouldn't have the expense of a trial. In exchange, Vince would serve his sentence in a treatment facility.”

“Guaranteed?”

“It's what I'm asking for.” And hoping to conclude, she was thinking, before Peters became aware of Vince's role in a homicide.

Betty swung around and looked away, through the glare of the sun at the blowing puffs of snow. “We both trusted you.”

“I'm doing my best.”

“I have to get to work. If I don't show up today, I'm toast.” Betty started sinking onto the seat, her attention directed to the steering wheel, the ice-crusted windshield.

Vicky leaned into the opened door. “There is something I need you to do.”

This interrupted the woman's attention, and her head jerked around. “Visit Vince? They won't let visitors near him.”

“I want you to tell the fed what you told me about the Bearings and the death of your husband.”

Betty's mouth went slack. She squinted into the sun. “I never told anyone, except you.”

“It's important. A child's future is at stake.”

“It happened a long time ago. What does it matter? I gotta go.”

“It matters, Betty. There's something else I have to put together, then we'll go to see the FBI agent together.”

The woman gave a quick, dismissive laugh. “I lost my husband that night. I lost Rickie. All I have left is Vince and my husband's reputation. He was a hero to folks around here, a great husband and a great dad. And he lost his life in a senseless accident. You want me to take his good name from him? Tell the fed he was a thief?” She started crying, her voice shaking. “My son's going to prison. Treatment facility, whatever. He's going
away.
And you want me to destroy all I have left? Everybody thinking how lucky I was to have had such a good husband?”

“Please think about it.” Vicky felt the door yanked out of her hand. The subject closed now, the conversation over. The engine sputtered into life and the car jolted forward, then swung into a U-turn, and gunned across the yard, snow spitting from the tires.

*   *   *

St. Francis Mission
was quiet, drenched in the sun, the buildings sharp against the blue sky. The Toyota pickup stood nosed against the front stoop of the administration building. Vicky pulled in alongside and hurried up the steps. John O'Malley was coming across the office toward her as she came through the door.

He reached out and took her hand. “I've been expecting you.”

Last night, so much had been left unsaid after Vince had finally agreed to surrender. What choice did he really have? And they had walked out together, the three of them, into the crowd that pulsed about the floodlight. The rest of it had happened fast: Chief
Lefthand pulling Vince's hands behind his back, clamping on handcuffs, and pushing him down into the police car. She remembered shaking with cold and uncertainty as the car drove off. Vince on his way to the Fremont County Detention Center, where it would be up to a doctor to decide if he needed hospitalization. But he was alive.

She had been aware of Annie and Roger moving in close. They would drive her home and, as they started toward Roger's SUV, she had nodded at John O'Malley and mouthed the words: “Thank you.” Then they had driven off, and Vicky remembered shaking with cold all the way to her apartment in Lander. It had taken hours to warm up, hours before she fell into an exhausted, black sleep. By morning the Ford had materialized in the parking lot. She wasn't sure when Annie and Roger had picked it up at the airport.

Now she dropped onto a side chair and let her coat slip from her shoulders while John pulled up a twin chair and sat across from her. “How is Vince?”

That was all it took for the words to rush forward. She told him everything she had told Betty: Vince in the hospital, the prosecuting attorney reluctant to cut another deal, her own hope—faint, unrealistic—that he would come around and she could get Vince committed to a treatment facility.

John O'Malley hadn't interrupted, had just nodded, understanding it all. Finally she jumped up, brushed past him and walked over to the window. The mission grounds looked quiet and peaceful. Beyond, the reservation stretched into the blue sky, the sun beginning to sink, and the shadows turning the snow blue-gray. She looked back. John had abandoned his chair and was half sitting on the edge of his desk, waiting.

“Is it about the Bearings?”

She nodded and told him what she had learned in Denver. A man trying to pick up his life after his wife was murdered, his child
stolen. She could still see the photo in the silver frame: Jason Becket, a dark-haired woman, and a small boy, and the other photo of an infant snuggled in a pink blanket. She told him about the carjacking in Denver five years ago, the young mother trying to get her baby out of the backseat and slipping under the wheels. The carjackers were a man and a woman, possibly Indian. They had driven on: the woman in the stolen car, the man in the truck.

“There was a witness who claims she can identify the couple,” she said.

“It was five years ago.”

“A traumatic event like that is probably etched in her mind.” Vicky started circling the space in front of the desk.

“You think it was Lou and Debbie Bearing.”

She didn't stop, just told him what Betty had said about her husband's death. “They were car thieves. That's how Lou got parts for the cars he fixed. Only in Denver, they got something more. An infant strapped into the backseat. They had killed a woman and driven on. Driven on! With an infant in the backseat!” She stopped. A chill began at the base of her spine and shot into her neck. “What if they had panicked and abandoned the baby? Left her in a trash barrel, thrown her into the weeds. Anything.”

“But they didn't. They took care of her.” She heard the touch of compassion in John O'Malley's voice, as if he had seized on a small, decent thing.

“And when their neighbor asked about the baby crying every night, Debbie told her not to worry. It wouldn't last much longer. My God, John. The baby had become a problem. She could link them to the death of her mother. They had to get rid of her. Drop her on a doorstep and drive off. But the Little Shields might have called the police. The Bearings took a huge risk, John. A huge risk.”

Vicky started pacing again, wearing a circle around the center of
the office, trying to corral her thoughts, all the coincidences, the connections. There was still a crucial gap, the piece she couldn't put into place.

“Why the Little Shields?” She stopped pacing and faced him. “Why take the infant to them? Myra told me they knew of the Bearings, but they didn't
know
them. They had never spoken to them. Yes, they had lost their own baby, and news would have spread on the moccasin telegraph, but other couples had lost children. They weren't the only bereft couple on the rez.”

“Unless . . .” Vicky dropped onto the chair, feeling light-headed, the air knocked out of her with a new thought working its way into her mind. “Unless the Bearings hadn't gone car stealing at all. They had gone baby snatching. Baby snatching for a bereft couple. In Denver, a big city, far from the rez. No one would connect an abduction in Denver to the reservation.”

John perched on the chair in front of her and leaned forward, everything about him tight with concentration. She could feel him trying to arrange this new theory into a plausible, cohesive order, some kind of logic. “There isn't any proof, Vicky.”
A terrible thing to contemplate, to accuse someone of.
She could read the message in his eyes. “They didn't know one another. Why would the Little Shields believe the Bearings would do something like that?”

Vicky was quiet a moment, aware of John O'Malley watching her, seeing
into
her. “In any case,” she began, arranging her thoughts, listening to them tumble out, word by word, “I have to tell the Little Shields what I learned in Denver. Tests will determine if any of this makes sense. Jason Becket may not be Mary Ann's father after all, and then . . .” She threw out both hands. “None of this speculation will matter.”