Eagle, Kathleen (26 page)

"That's
my
question!" Reese barked. The dog whined.

Dexter
nodded vigorously. "I'll see what I can do for you, Blue."

The
nurse sounded like a chipmunk, chattering to Dexter's back as she marched
behind him to the double doors. "Do you know who that is?" Dexter
said. "That's Reese Blue Sky."

She
was busy discrediting the importance of the name as the doors swung closed
behind them.

Dr.
Eugenia Flynn introduced herself as a temp, which meant that she was a
volunteer who had come out of retirement to help alleviate the shortage of
medical doctors in Indian country. And it meant that she was a busy woman.
Reese assured her that he didn't mean to distract her from any human patients,
but didn't know where else to go.

"I
wouldn't even be talking to you except that my shift is over and I'm going to
bed," the wizened woman told him as she approached the dog. Crybaby
growled. "If he bites me, you're all getting the boot."

Helen
helped Reese control the animal while Dr. Flynn irrigated the wound so she could
assess the damage. "It looks like a bullet grazed him. Laid him open along
the flank right down to the bone. I'd say he's one lucky dog. A little to the
right, and some coyote hunter would be trying to convince you it was an honest
mistake."

"The
hunters who come around our place lately don't stick around to explain."

"It's
hard to understand that kind of cowardice, isn't it?" She turned the water
back on and washed her hands in the sink. "He'll need stitches, which I
can't do here or I'd be in a heap of trouble."

Reese
offered a charming grin. "Heap plenty trouble, huh?"

"When
troubles come, they come not in dribbles, but in heaps," the woman said as
she mopped her hands with a paper towel.

"Well,
I've had my share recently, Doctor, and I'd really like to spare this
mutt."

"I
knew your father," she told Reese. She turned to include Helen. "He
was a wonderful man."

"Crybaby
was with him when he died." Reese knew he had her when Dr. Flynn
questioned the reference with a funny look. "That's his name. Crybaby."

"Ah,
Roy," she said with a wistful chuckle. "Crybaby, indeed. There's one
painkiller we have here that can be used for dogs. That would be lidocaine.
We'll take him over to my place. My kitchen table never gets much use,
anyway."

***

Helen
was late for work that afternoon, but no one said anything to her. She wondered
if the word was out that she was Carter's brother's girlfriend. If so, she
didn't have much time to get her job done and file some kind of a report.
People would be too careful around her if they thought she had those kinds of
connections.

She
knocked on the door to Carter's office and stuck her head in when he responded.
"Do you have a minute?" she asked.

"Take
all the time you want. I'm staying at the hotel. Sarah and I need to get out of
each other's hair for a while, if you know what I mean." He stood up
behind his desk and greeted her with an easy smile. "She likes you a lot,
by the way. She told me she thought you had a nice, uh"—he gave a rolling
gesture—"way about you, and you were easy to talk to, which apparently she
did, and I'm sure you got an earful about me."

"I
wouldn't say that."

"No,
of course you wouldn't, because you watch and you listen and you take it all in
and you figure us all out." He folded his arms and tipped his head to one
side. "You got Reese figured out yet?"

Backlit
by the afternoon light from the office window, Carter looked a lot like Reese.
It was a stronger resemblance than she'd ever noticed before, and she felt it
tug at her heartstrings. He was just a man who'd gotten in over his head. She
truly hoped he hadn't sold his soul as a consequence.

"I
know about his heart condition," she said.

"Well,
that just about makes you family. One thing about Indians, you know, they're
good about keeping each other's secrets." He drew a deep breath and nodded
as he blew it out slowly. "The main thing is, he has to take care of
himself. He's not immortal. He's not a god, like everybody thought. He has to
take medication. He has a close relationship with a cardiologist. He can't
be..."

"Can't
be what?" Upset? He'd been pretty upset over Crybaby, but the dog was
going to be fine, and Reese was fine. "What are you worried about?"

"I
don't know if I should have encouraged him to get on the council. I thought it
would just be something he'd sit in on for a few meetings, just ride out the
rest of the term, not get too serious about it. I mean, you start getting too
serious about it, that's major stress."

"Which
isn't good."

"Not
for Reese."

"Not
for any of us." Including Carter, she thought. Good men had been known to
do foolish things under stress. "I was wondering if we could watch some
surveillance tapes together."

"You
wanna watch movies with me?" He laughed. "You could get me in
trouble, Helen. Sarah thinks I'm cheating on her as it is, but she wouldn't
want to hear that we've been..." He sat on the edge of his desk and peered
up at her. "Or, you could save me a lot of trouble."

"How?"

"Forget
the tapes and just worry about Reese. Worry about him getting himself all
worked up over something he knows nothing about. Help me persuade him to let it
go. Let Ten Star have the contract."

Intentionally
or not, he was giving her a peek at his hand. Helen's pulse tripped into higher
gear. "Why?"

"Because
they built this place. Switching horses in midstream is dangerous. You lose
your momentum, for one thing." He lifted one shoulder. "And people
get hurt."

"People
like your father?"

He
shook his head. His eyes cooled. "My father got hit by a truck. He wasn't
switching horses."

"He
was talking about it, recommending it loud and clear."

"Reese
doesn't need to be rabble-rousing over the management contract. Ten Star's not
perfect, but we could do worse. They got this place up and running. They've
been as fair with us as—as anybody else would be. It's business." His
voice dropped to a gentler register. "So, for the sake of his health,
Helen, I think we need to persuade Reese to back off and just go with the
flow."

"Jones
is cheating the house," she said. "Did you know that?"

"You're
sure?"

"Absolutely.
Aren't you seeing it on the tapes?"

"I've
seen him pay a loser, and I've called him on it. He wasn't paying
attention."

"It's
more than that." The looks they exchanged said they both knew he realized it.
She looked down at the floor and said quietly, "I just thought I should
report it."

"I
appreciate that," he said, and when she looked up again, he asked,
"What about Reese?"

"You
have more influence over Peter Jones than I have over Reese."

"I
don't believe that for a minute." An open handed gesture said that he was
asking for a personal favor. "You don't even have to push, Helen. All you
have to do is give him something else to think about. That's all he needs. Not
a cause to sacrifice himself for, but something good and promising to think
about."

"Is
it really Reese you're worried about?"

"Yes,"
he insisted. "Yes, it is. He'll tell you his condition is no big deal. He
tells me it's none of my business. Which could almost be true, if you consider
how little contact we've had in recent years. But it
is
a big deal, and
it
is
our business. Because we care about him."

He
looked her in the eye, and she saw that he meant it. His brother was important
to him. She wasn't sure about his father, or his father's dog, or his father's
people, but his brother mattered to him.

"Don't
we?" he asked.

"We
do."

"Somebody
shot my dog," Reese told the two men who were waiting for him on the
playground. He bounced the orange ball once before firing it across the court
to Titus. "Parted his hair down one side," he said, turning to assist
the wounded shepherd emerging like an elder from the backseat of the car.

"Hell,
it ain't time to be hunting coyotes." Decked out in blue sweats with a Law
and Order emblem, Dozer strode across the blacktop. "Not if they're
looking for pelts."

"My
guess is they were hunting for something less hairy, and I'm not sure what. A
window screen was cut, but it didn't look like they got in. Crybaby must be a
better watchdog than anybody gave him credit for."

"So
who's watching the place now?" Dozer braced hands on thighs as he
straightened, knees cracking, after take a cop's look at the victim.

"Nobody.
They can take whatever they want. But Crybaby and me are onto them, and we're
keeping an eye out for each other."

He'd
called his friends the night before and told them he needed to shoot some
hoops, preferably early in the morning, before the courts were overrun with
kids. Sunup, he'd said, and the sun had just appeared on the purple horizon.
Both men had beaten him to the playground.

"You
think they might be after you?" Titus tested his aim. The ball kissed the
backboard and dropped through the hoop.

"No."
Reese caught Titus's chest pass and injected more conviction when he got rid of
the ball. "Hell, no. Who'd be cutting on a screen to come after me?"

"Somebody
carrying a gun," Dozer pointed out as he caught Reese's pass and returned
it directly.

"Somebody
who's a piss-poor shot, hoss," Reese said, crouching now, dribbling close
to the ground, challenging Dozer with a sly grin. "Somebody who cuts and
runs without too much threat. Whatever he was after, he couldn't have wanted it
too bad. What's your best shot now, Doze? The game is Horse."

"Maybe
breaking and entering isn't normally on his schedule," Dozer suggested,
thinking like a cop. "Anyway, what would they want from you, Blue? Besides
an off-hand J?"

"A
better question is, who's
they?
Nothin' but net on an off-hand J,"
Reese said, calling his shot. If he made it, the game of Horse required the
other players to duplicate it. His jump shot was legendary. He took a
left-handed twenty-five-foot shot, releasing the ball from the top of his jump,
which made him nearly unblockable. The swisher dropped into Titus's hands.
Reese grinned. "I got no off hand."

"You
can call the shots, but don't change the question, Blue. That's my game. What
have you got in that house?"

"Nothing
of any value." Reese caught Titus's pass and turned the ball over to
Dozer. "To most people."

"We're
not dealing with most people." Dozer took Reese's wing spot, following his
lead to the letter to duplicate the shot.

"His
papers?" Reese watched Dozer's shot hit the rim. "My father's papers.
Letters, notes, mostly stuff that has to do with the council. And the casinos.
And you've got H, Doze."

"Just
gettin' warmed up. These papers, are you talkin' stuff that every other
councilman would have in the drawer?"

"No,
not necessarily," Reese said. Both Titus and Dozer were looking at him
now, and Tims had the ball. Reese shrugged. "At the council meeting the
other day, I did say that I'd been reading through my father's papers and I had
some concerns about Ten Star's management, mainly about where all the money was
going. Said I was in no big hurry to sign on with them again."

"Draggin'
your big Blue heels?" Titus said, grinning. Titus was no fan of Ten
Star's.

"Gotta
use them for something."

"Who
investigated the attempted break-in?" Dozer wanted to know. "You
should've called me. Did they check the dog for—"

"I
didn't report it. I didn't see the screen until I got back from getting Crybaby
fixed up, when I went to open up the windows in the house. So nobody else knows
about the break-in part, and I'd just as soon keep it that way for now."

"How
about your woman?"

"Helen
was with me when we found the dog, but she doesn't know about the rest. I don't
want to give her any more to worry about."

"Yeah,
that's cool." Dozer hooked hands on hips and studied the ground.
"Listen," he said, but barely audibly, "I've been kinda nosin'
around Law and Order, trying to figure out who knows what about the hit-and-run,
and the best I'm coming up with is that some guys don't know much about it and
they're frustrated about it. They feel like we do, like somebody's gotta catch
this guy. But others, a couple guys, you say anything to them, they set you
straight right now. They don't know a damn thing, and they don't wanna
know."

"They're
scared?"

"Looks
like."

"Not
just Gene and Earl."

Dozer
squinted into the rising sun. "You think about who your dad was up
against, Blue. He was Preston Sweeney's main opposition."

"Over
the Ten Star contract."

"And
the chairmanship. Hell, your father was gonna beat him out for chairman. So
what it looks like to me is, if you're a cop and you want to stay a cop, in
this case you're better off not knowing. You let the FBI do their work, you
stay out of their way. It's an Indian victim, and how many do they solve,
right?"

"He
was a councilman," Reese said, suddenly realizing what that had meant to
him whenever he'd spoken of his father. Too damn little.
He's on the tribal
council. It's sort of like a governing committee.

"And
that's our business. Bad River Sioux Tribe."

"He
was my father." Too little, too late.

"That's
our business." Dozer laid a hand on Reese's shoulder. "Bad River
Lakota."

"It's
got to do with Ten Star."

"I
believe you're right about that. And I'm thinking they're bad news."

"Hell,
I've known that for two years," Titus crowed.

"I
never heard you say it," Dozer chided.

"I've
been thinking it." Titus bounced the ball. "Now I'm thinking about my
famous behind-the-head bank shot from the top of the key."

***

Helen
sat on the front step of the furnished garden apartment she had sublet, waiting
in the long shade of early evening, watching the end of the quiet street where
Reese's car would soon appear around the corner. He had called her and asked if
he could stop by, said he would bring supper and that he had some news. She
didn't mind that he was late. She was eager to see him, but she had something
on her mind, too.

Someone,
the one who could never be far from her thoughts. Those thoughts had been
growing heavier each day, just as her son had when she'd carried him in her
body and then in her arms. Now she could no longer carry him at all, and that
thought—
that
thought—weighed a ton. He was growing up fast, and his
needs were changing.

Children's
voices drifted from the riverbank on a soft summer breeze, their chatter
punctuated by the occasional pop of a bottle rocket left over from the month
past. If Sidney were here he would beg to go down there with them, promise to
be careful, swear he'd just hang back and watch. Within five minutes he'd be
setting up for the next blast, that boy of hers. He had to try things.

Tonight
she would say something. She wasn't sure what she was going to say exactly, but
it wasn't fair or right to spend another hour with Reese without—

Oh,
God, without
telling him.

She
was such a coward she could hardly form the thought. It was too chancy, and
there was no way to hedge her bets. She'd called the attorney she had consulted
in the past and asked her to go over it all one more time. Once Sidney's
paternity was established, Reese could— could he still?—yes, he could get
custody, and he could do it through the tribal court. The federal court would
back the tribe, and the state court would probably cooperate. There were plenty
of precedents. In this case there would be plenty of sympathy and an abundance
of money on the father's side, not to mention his whole tribe. She had no
reason to think he'd do such a thing, other than the fact that Sidney might be the
only child he'd ever have. No reason to think they couldn't work things out
amicably, other than the fact that she had kept his son from him all these
years. If he didn't resent that, he wasn't human.

But
he
was
human. He was a good man, decent, distinguished, distinctive, and
distinctly mortal. Suddenly there was more at stake than the risk of losing her
child. She had long wrestled with guilt over denying her son a father, but now
she was responsible for denying a good man his only child. She could no longer
suppose that Reese was too young to be a father, or too busy with his career,
or too rich, or too arrogant, or too self-absorbed, or any of the other
probabilities she had used as donkey tails and tried to pin on his
larger-than-life image. She had done it now, killed all assumptions. She had
risked everything on this time they'd shared.

Whatever
made her think she could seal this interlude off from the rest of their lives?

It
wasn't a question of thinking. She was acting on anything but reason. He'd stayed
too long, and she loved that he had. She'd gone too far, and she'd loved even
that. Selfish woman that she knew full well she was, she didn't want to lose
him. She didn't want to lose her son, either. Right now, in this shaky moment,
she had them both. Her footing was unsteady. Soon, when the balance tipped, she
would fall. But for right now, she had love on both sides.

She
stood when the big white Lincoln appeared at the top of the hill. She brushed
off the seat of her shorts and pushed open the gate to greet him when he
unfolded himself from the car. He kissed her and held her as though their
coming together revitalized him, and she wondered what his news was. Was it
more pressing than hers?

Hers
had kept for over twelve years. It would keep for a few more minutes.

Reese
let Crybaby out of the backseat, and Helen dropped to her knees in the grass to
greet her friend, let him lick her face even as she tried to get a look at his
wound.

"He
hasn't started chewing yet, but if he does, I'll have to go looking for one of
those collars," Reese told her. "Are you hungry?" She looked up,
and he produced a paper sack. "You're working that weird shift again, and
I'll bet you haven't eaten all day, so I've got that covered. Big Nell's Indian
tacos to go."

"Actually,
that weird shift is going to put me in bed early tonight."

"I
can cover you there, too."

"I
have Diet Coke and water." She peeked in the sack. Paper plates, napkins,
plastic utensils. Nell packed a nearly complete picnic.

"Two
waters for me and my pal, ma'am. One tall glass and one bowl."

"Let's
go out back," Helen said, leading the way around the side of the plain
white building that truly did resemble a Saltine box. "It's too hot
inside."

"We
should go to my place. I just put in a couple of air conditioners. They were
delivered with my new bed."

"You
really are settling in." She smiled. Her sandals flapped against her
heels. Crybaby stuck nearly as close to Reese's heels.

"I
may keep the place for a while. No reason to be as stubborn about comfort as ol'
Roy Blue Sky. I offered to do some fixing up for him, or have it done, but he
liked things the way they were, he said."

"It's
an efficiency house. Feels very male." She set the bag on the picnic table
that was shaded by two rustling cottonwoods in the backyard. "Your father
struck me as a man who had learned to live comfortably in his own skin."

"Old,
worn leather." He looked down at his own hands, braced on the tabletop as
he climbed over the bench. "I used to like watching him use a hammer. A
couple of good whacks and he could bury a nail in a fence post. I'd still be
pounding away. He had the touch."

"That's
exactly what he said about you," she told him, and he questioned her with
a look. "We were talking about fathers and sons and how it feels to lose
yourself and find yourself in your child, and he was saying that he thought you
had inherited his stubbornness."

She
watched him remove the plates from the bag, then the napkins, dealing them out
on top of the plates. Incredibly long hands, larger versions of Sidney's. She
remembered the OB nurse remarking about the length of Sidney's hands and feet.
"Well, who knows whether you can inherit such a thing, huh? But some
things... Reese..."

He
looked up from the job he'd assigned himself.

"Water,"
she said quickly. "I'll get it."

She
went to the house for ice water—glasses for them and a big bowl for Crybaby—put
it all on a tray, and started toward the door. Then she stopped, set the tray
down, and opened the kitchen drawer. There was Sidney smiling up at her, all
washed and combed for last year's school photographer. He was wearing a Denver
Nuggets T-shirt. What would his father think of that? She'd taken the picture
out and put it back in the drawer a dozen times at least. Now she tucked it
into the pocket of her shorts, snatched up the tray, and backed out through the
screen door.