Eye of the Wolf (31 page)

TWENTY MINUTES! TWENTY
minutes could mean the difference between life and death for Charles Lambert. Father John swerved through the traffic on Federal, passing a truck, taking a sedan on the inside lane. It was starting to snow again, squishy flakes—part water, part snow—plopping on the windshield. He jammed down hard on the accelerator and raced through the intersection as the light flashed red. Finally, the outskirts of town, the strip malls and flat-topped buildings fell behind, and then nothing but the empty asphalt that stretched into a billowing curtain of snow ahead.

“I don't get it, John,” Vicky said. Neither of them had spoken since they'd driven out of the mission, and now, the sound of her voice, punctuating the thrum of the engine, the swish of the wipers, and the rhythm of the tires, took Father John almost by surprise. He'd gotten used to the silence, to his own thoughts, even though he'd been aware of her in
the seat beside him, staring straight ahead, one arm braced on the curve of the windowsill.

“Why did he wait until now to confront his wife?” she said. Her voice was low, percolating up out of a deep space. “Surely Lambert guessed that his wife might have been responsible for the murders of his students.”

“He didn't want to know, Vicky.” Father John glanced over at her. She had lifted her hand from the sill and was combing her fingers through her hair. “He didn't want to believe it. He probably told himself it couldn't be true, so that he and Dana could go on with their lives. Nobody had suspected her, and there was a warrant out for Frankie Montana. Everybody assumed Frankie was guilty. It made it easy for the professor to go along with the same assumption.”

“Easy to live in denial,” Vicky said.

Out of the corner of his eye, Father John could see that Vicky had turned away and was looking out the passenger window at the snow billowing over the open fields. He wondered who she was talking about now, Professor Lambert or herself.

She brought her gaze back to the front. “The professor saw his new book getting a lot of attention that it wouldn't have had if the Shoshones hadn't been murdered. A man who'd been writing books for years now had a best seller. Then you showed up today and told him that his wife had been seen with the Shoshones at the Cowboy Bar and Grill. He must have realized it was only a matter of time before Burton figured out that Dana had a world of experience with recording studios and that she'd recorded a tape at the college two weeks ago. There would be a search warrant and police shuffling through their home. They might even find the tapes. You forced the man to face the truth.”

And if the man is killed, Father John was thinking, Dear God, how would he live with that?

“It's not your fault, John,” Vicky said, as if she'd seen into his mind. “Whatever happens, you're not the one responsible. Dana Lambert is
the one with the gun. Her husband must have threatened to expose her. He has his reputation to think about. He's a well-known scholar. Better to denounce his wife than for people to suspect that he might also have been involved in the murders. She has no choice but to shoot him. And she'll find a way to make it look like a Shoshone committed the murder. Some poor dupe she's probably already lined up. She's smart, John. She's clever and she's desperate.”

Father John glanced over again. What Vicky said was logical, and Dana Lambert was following her own logic to its horrible conclusions.

And they were twenty minutes behind, he was thinking. Twenty minutes, an eternity.

Vicky's arm flashed in front of him. He felt her hand tighten over his against the rim of the steering wheel. “Just drive,” she said.

They were passing through Lysite now, but Father John didn't slow down. After half a block, general store on one side of the road, abandoned gas station on the other, and they were out of town, careening onto dirt roads with nothing but the expanse of empty bluffs and canyons and white, sagebrush-studded flats melting into the leaden sky ahead. A layer of new snow clung to the rock-faced ridges in the canyons below. He could feel the rear wheels skidding and lifting off the ground as they bounced over the ridges.

Another vehicle had been here ahead of them. Not long ago, a single vehicle had left two clean lines of tire tracks in the snow. Father John struggled to hold the wheel steady while he pulled the cell out of his coat pocket. “See if you can get Burton,” he said, handing the cell to Vicky. “Tell him we're on the way to Bates and there are tracks ahead of us. Unless a deputy's on the way, the tracks were made by the Lamberts.”

He was aware of Vicky tapping the buttons, pressing the cell to her ear, then removing it and studying the readout. “Roaming,” she said. She set the phone against her ear again. A couple of moments passed before she said, “Get me Detective Burton.” Then, an anxious note in her voice, she said, “It's cutting in and out, John.”

Father John kept his eyes glued on the road ahead, trying to steer the pickup around the ruts. They were swerving from side to side, he realized, and he could see that Lambert had done the same—an old man driving with a gun in his ribs.

“Hello?” Vicky said. “Hello? Hello?” Then she was giving their location to whoever was on the line, talking about the tracks. “Is there a deputy on the way? Hello? Hello? Damn it!”

Vicky slammed the cell against the palm of her hand, then pressed it again to her ear. “Are you there?” She was quiet a moment. Turning sideways, she said, “Burton's been trying to radio the deputy out here. The man's on another call, away from his truck.”

“Get somebody else out here, Burton.” Father John heard himself shouting. “A man is about to die.”

He was pounding his fist against the wheel. They were in the middle of nowhere. The badlands, locals called the area. A few ranches ten miles apart, dry bluffs, and scrubland with barely enough grass for the straggling flocks of sheep and the antelope whose tracks intersected the tire tracks now and then, and nothing else, no other sign of life. A place of death, he thought, good only for a massacre.

“It's dead.” Vicky was staring again at the readout. She tossed the phone on the seat between them.

The snow was heavier, as if the sky had opened up and was showering white flakes through the gray daylight. They were coming off the top of a bluff now, winding downward toward the thin lines of trees that ran along the canyon floor. The tracks were getting harder to spot, layered between the snow and the shadows of the canyon closing in. Bluffs rose on either side, topped with the sheer rock faces that loomed overhead.

Father John kept the pickup heading down the middle of the canyon, climbing over rocks and brush, bouncing through the ruts. Sometime back the engine had begun sending up a faint knock of protest, which was getting louder, more persistent. He ignored the knock and gripped
the steering wheel hard, willing the old pickup to keep going. The battlefield was just ahead now. He knew by the rocks and boulders starting to climb out of the canyon floor and up the steep slopes of the bluffs.

“There's the car.” Vicky jabbed an index finger against the windshield.

He'd seen it, too, the dark shadow rising out of the white earth, parked at the mouth of the canyon. He steered the pickup for the shadow.

“Maybe we're not too late,” Vicky said. He could hear his own desperate hope in her voice. Footprints churned through the snow on either side of the blue sedan, footprints leading farther into the canyon. He eased on the brake and skidded to a stop. “Listen to me, Vicky,” he said, turning toward her. “I want you to stay here.”

“So Dana Lambert can shoot her husband and then shoot you?” Vicky pulled her black bag off the floor and began rummaging inside. “What are you planning to do, John? Stop her with words?”

He stared at her. He would have to sneak up on Dana Lambert the way a wolf approached its prey—silently, swiftly. He would have to knock the gun out of her hand before she realized he was there. The chance was slim, nonexistent. What other choice did he have? Talk to her? Try to reason with her? Dear Lord, Vicky was right. The woman would shoot him and her husband.

“This works better than words.” Vicky extracted a small, black pistol from the bag. She held it in the palm of her hand. “We'll take this,” she said, glancing over at him. “I took it from Frankie. I didn't give it to Burton yet. To be honest, I forgot it was still in my bag. I wasn't thinking too clearly when he came to the hospital last night.”

“You didn't tell me you had a gun,” he said, but Vicky was already out of the pickup.

“You would have insisted I leave it at your office,” she said.

Father John followed her into the falling snow, heading past the sedan along the zigzagging footprints, as if they had gone in single file: the professor first, his wife behind him. Every few feet on the right was a round indentation where Lambert had planted his walking stick.

The quiet of the canyon swallowed the faint sound of their boots. There was the occasional
whoosh
of snow dropping off the brush or falling from the branch of an isolated tree.

He could see the couple now, standing close together, like trees bent into the snow. He looked back at Vicky and motioned toward the figures, but she had already spotted them. She was nodding, pulling the gun out of her coat pocket.

He started off again, walking faster, aware of the sound of Vicky's breathing behind him and the thumping of his own heart. The Lamberts hadn't spotted them yet. They seemed to be talking, a couple out on a hike, caught in a spring snowstorm, discussing whether to turn back.

It was then that the gunfire erupted, like a cannon exploding through the quiet.

“No!” Father John shouted, and then he was running, running toward the dark figure still standing and the other figure crumpled into the snow. They were too late! They were too late! The words pounded in his head, like the thud of his boots in the snow.

The figure began turning toward them, lifting one arm. And at the end of the arm, Father John could see the black pistol. They were in the line of fire, he and Vicky, like ducks in a shooting gallery, easy marks for Dana Lambert. Except . . .

Except that it wasn't Dana Lambert. Father John could see the woman's dark hair splayed in the snow. The person aiming the gun was the professor.

Father John stopped. He reached around for Vicky and brought her up close behind him, as if he could protect her. The thought made him want to choke. “Don't shoot, Professor,” he called out. “We want to help you.”

The man started walking forward, holding out the gun, stabbing the walking stick into the snow, closing the space between them until he was no more than a dozen feet away. Snow fluttered between them. Snow sat like new hair on top of the white mane.

“Not even God can help me, Father O'Malley.” His voice was
calm, the professor making an obvious point. “I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you were the one to follow us here, although I expected Burton would come to find us. You have made this unfortunate affair your business, although I admit to being stymied as to your reason. Who is that hiding behind you?”

Father John kept one arm behind him, his hand wrapped around Vicky's. He felt her pull free and move to his side. Then he saw the pistol come up, both hands gripping the handle.

“Drop your gun, Professor,” she said. She was trembling, Father John realized. He could see the slightest tremor in her hands.

“Well, what is this?” Professor Lambert said. “Shall we have a shoot-out at the OK Corral? Would this be our
High Noon
?” He snorted with laughter. “I suggest you drop your gun, or I shall be forced to shoot the good father here. Shall we have a contest? Would you care to wager a bet on whether you can shoot me before I shoot Father O'Malley?”

Vicky didn't move for a moment. Then she dropped her arms at her sides, and Father John heard the soft thud of the gun in the snow. “You don't have to kill anyone else,” she said.

Lambert's face contorted into a smile, like ice cracking on a pond. “Let me guess,” he said. “You're the lawyer who ran off with Frankie Montana. Am I correct? And you are determined to prove the man innocent when he is nothing but a blight on the human community. It's unfortunate that you and Father O'Malley couldn't have let justice take its course. It's of no consequence that Montana doesn't happen to be guilty of murdering the young men out here. He was guilty of other crimes, was he not? Crimes, I might add, for which, I believe, you had a hand in helping him evade responsibility. It would have been right if he had finally been brought to justice.”

“You're insane,” Vicky said.

“Hardly.” The man gave another snort of laughter. “I have never been more rational or, may I add, more determined.”

“Your wife needs help, Charles,” Father John said. “We have to get her to a hospital before we're snowed in.”

The man tilted his head toward the prone body a few feet behind him. Snow lay in the folds of the woman's coat. The toes of her boots were covered in snow. “I assure you that no powers on this earth can help my wife. She is quite dead, which, again, is only just.” Lambert took a half-step closer, moving the gun until, Father John realized, it was pointed at his heart. “She has deserved her fate.”