Eye of the Wolf (5 page)

“So you're saying,” the detective began, searching for the words, “that the murdered men represent Shoshones who attacked Arapahos a hundred and thirty years ago, and now we got a crazy Arapaho looking for revenge? Oh, my God.” He started pounding one gloved fist against the other. “I don't want to go there, John. If the Shoshones think an Arapaho killed three of their men, there'll be full-out war on the reservation. One tribe fighting the other, just like in the past. God, John. Arapahos and Shoshones been getting along now for more than a hundred years. Maybe the tribes don't love each other, but they don't hate each other anymore. Kids go to school together. There's even some families that are intermarried. We can't have these homicides tearing people apart.”

“It's a theory, that's all,” Father John said, trying to ignore the sound of the mechanical voice in his head.

“Yeah, a theory.” The detective jumped on that. “Let's not draw any conclusions until we get IDs and investigate why the men came out here. Could be a drug deal that went bad, or just plain bad blood between a few individuals. No sense in getting people riled up on the rez when we don't know what took place.”

Father John let his gaze trail over the knots of deputies making their way toward the vehicles. Tomorrow they'd be back, he knew, searching the snow for bullets and cartridges and footprints, anything that might
point to the killer, and they might come up with the same theory. Three dead Shoshones on the Bates Battlefield, revenge killings for a nineteenth-century massacre. And tomorrow the moccasin telegraph would flash the theory like lightning across the reservation.

God help us, he thought. The whole reservation could go to war.

VICKY CLIMBED THE
flight of stairs and let herself through the wood door with the plaque at the side that read, “Holden and Lone Eagle, Attorneys-at-Law.” Annie's chair was vacant, swiveled left toward Adam's office. The murmur of voices, low and serious, wafted past the closed door. Vicky headed toward her own office on the right, shut the door behind her, and dropped her briefcase on the desk. A curious lightness had come over her as she'd driven back across the reservation, eating up the miles between the tribal courthouse in Fort Washakie and her office in Lander, like an invisible weight gradually lifting from her shoulders as the snow-traced asphalt unrolled ahead.

Frankie Montana was lucky for now; the man didn't even know how lucky he was or how close he was to disaster. Banishment. It was hard to imagine anything worse. Even a prison sentence held the promise that, eventually, a man could return home. But banishment meant never again setting foot on the reservation, never attending the Sun Dance or the
powwows, never going to family get-togethers, high school basketball games, church services. It meant being banished from the life of the
Hino'no ei.

A door thumped shut in the outer office, followed by muffled footsteps crossing the carpet and the sharp rap of knuckles against her door. Vicky hung up her coat in the closet and turned back as the door swung inward. Adam Lone Eagle leaned into the opening a moment, then stepped inside and pushed the door closed behind him.

“Got a minute?” There was a hard, unsettling edge to his voice.

“What is it, Adam?” Vicky stepped over to the desk, not taking her eyes away. Adam's face might have been sculptured in stone, jaw thrust forward and light blazing in his black eyes, as if he had a fever. The little scar at the outer edge of his cheek was pulsing ragged and red. She knew him well enough to know when he was angry. It was like the force of storm clouds building over the mountains, about to explode over the plains. It had never exploded over her. Still Vicky could feel her muscles tense, the shadow of that other life with Ben Holden moving at the edge of her memory. She and Adam had been lovers now since the fall—lovers and law partners, a thin line to navigate, she'd argued, but Adam had tossed aside her objections. He wanted both, he'd said. He wanted all of her, and they would make it work out.

“We have to talk,” he said.

“Have a seat.” Vicky gestured with her head toward one of the side chairs, but it was clear that he had no intention of sitting down. She stopped herself from dropping onto her own chair and faced him across the desk.

“You'd better tell me what's bothering you,” she said, trying for a placating tone. God, she hated that tone.
Ben, honey, what's bothering you?
The ultimate defensive position imprinted in her from that other life, ready to spring into action. Ironic. The tone had seldom worked.

“Bob Posey called again this morning.” Adam waited a couple of beats, letting the information float between them. Director of natural resources on the Wind River Reservation, Posey was a Shoshone with
the power to hire law firms for the important matters—water, oil and gas, gold mining, timber, exactly the type of law in which she and Adam intended to specialize. “We'll be the best damn Indian lawyers in the country,” was the way he'd put it when they'd agreed to start a firm together. “Any tribe that has a problem protecting its natural resources will come to us.”

“He wants an answer.” Adam pushed on. “What's it going to be, Vicky? Are we handling the proposal to manage wolves on the reservation or is a law firm in Cheyenne going to get the retainer?”

“Of course we'll handle it.” Vicky could hear the surprise in her voice. “We settled this last week, Adam.”

“We don't have time to practice natural resource law and defend the two-bit criminals like Frankie Montana.”

“The tribal judge released Frankie on a personal recognizance,” she said, struggling to ignore Adam's tone. Then she told him the Shoshones who had filed the complaint were the only witnesses and that she would file a motion to dismiss.

“That's supposed to reassure me? How long before Montana's back here with some other charge? The man's a loser, Vicky. He's one step from being locked up, if not on this week's charges, then next week's. I don't get it. I thought we'd agreed to move away from defending two-bit criminals so we can concentrate on the kind of matters that make a difference to our people. Why are you bothering with Frankie Montana?”

“I told you, Adam.” Vicky felt as if she were on the stand, an unwilling witness being badgered by the prosecutor. “I don't intend to see an innocent man go to prison. And Frankie's mother and I went to school together. She asked me to help her son. I'm not going to turn away from people I know.”

“You know everybody on the reservation, Vicky.” Adam swung around and walked over to the window. Through his blue shirt she could see the muscles of his back flex with each breath. The flecks of gray in his black hair shone in the light. For several seconds, he stared outside at the snow blowing across the flat roofs of the buildings across the street.
“I'm not saying that losers don't deserve an attorney,” he said, turning back, “but we don't have the time to handle everything. How about the new lawyer down the street? Samantha Lowe? She just opened her office, and she's hungry for work. She called me last week, and we went to lunch . . .”

“Lunch?” Adam hadn't mentioned lunch with the new lawyer in town. The woman was beautiful, according to the gossip she'd heard from Annie. Great figure, flowing blond hair, in her twenties, not long out of law school. It didn't surprise her that a beautiful young attorney looking for work to be shuffled her way would invite the male partner in a firm out to lunch.

Adam came back across the office, something new in his expression, softer and placating and—was she imagining it?—guilty. “I'm not Ben Holden, chasing every skirt on the horizon.”

Vicky exhaled a long breath that left her feeling as if there were still knots of hot air in her lungs. That was the problem, wasn't it? The shadows of her life with Ben blocking the light in this new relationship. God, would she ever be able to trust any man?

“I'm sorry, Adam,” she managed.

He looked away at that, the muscles of his face shifting back into the hard, sculptured look he'd worn when he'd walked into the office. “Samantha needs work,” he said.

Samantha.
Something in the way that Adam pronounced the name made Vicky look away.

“All you have to do, Vicky, is refer people like Montana down the street to the new lawyer in town.” Adam had turned away. “They'll have good representation, so your conscience will be clear, and we can practice the kind of law we agreed to practice.”

“Samantha Lowe isn't native.”

“That doesn't mean she isn't competent.”

“It means Frankie wouldn't trust her.”

“That would be his problem, Vicky.” Adam locked eyes with her again. “What's it going to be?”

“We've met the deadlines.” Now Vicky stepped around the desk, unable to hold herself still any longer, propelled across the office by the frustrations and suspicions churning inside her. She reached the window and let her eyes sweep across the traffic crawling through the slush on Main Street below, aware of the sound of the phone ringing in the outer office. Finally she looked back. Adam had perched on the edge of her desk, black eyes narrowed on her. “We filed the motion to appeal with the federal court in Cheyenne on the water management decision,” she began, then she rattled off the other deadlines they'd met on the cases they were handling for the Wind River tribes.

Adam kept his face unreadable, not interrupting or giving any indication that she was going on about things he knew very well. When she'd finished, he said, “You work all the time, Vicky. You come in early. It's eight or nine in the evening when you leave. Last weekend, I suggested that we go to a lodge in Yellowstone where we could watch one of the wolf packs. You were too busy. You had work to finish up. No weekends off for you.” He shook his head. “I miss you, Vicky. It's been almost two weeks since we've even had dinner together.”

Vicky swung around and stared down at the traffic again. Adam was right. Frankie Montana had consumed the day, and for what? To keep him out of jail? To keep him from being banished? The man enjoyed teetering along the edge of a cliff from which, sooner or later, he was bound to plunge. There were other cases stretching back through the months since she and Adam had become partners. DUIs and adoptions and wills. Leases on small businesses that Arapahos were struggling to start in Lander or Riverton. The phone calls, the pleading, desperate voices—
Can you help me, Vicky?
—that had made up the bulk of her business when she'd practiced alone, the desperate voices that had followed her to the new firm.

She walked back to the desk. “Get me Samantha's number,” she said.

Adam's face cracked into a smile. “How about a trip to see the wolves next weekend?”

“You're pushing, Adam.” Vicky smiled back at him.

There was a double rap on the door and, not taking his gaze from her, Adam stepped backward and yanked the door open. Annie slid inside, moving into the line of sight between him and Vicky, head bobbing from one to the other.

“Oh, my God.” The words came like an exhalation of air. She clasped her hands in front of her mouth and fixed her gaze on Adam. “My girlfriend just called me with the news. Her boyfriend works for the sheriff's department.”

“Just tell us . . .” Vicky had to stop herself from saying the rest of it:
And skip the drama.
Every bit of gossip that floated off the moccasin telegraph and down the telephone line into the office was a monumental, earthshaking bit of news that Annie felt her duty to pass on immediately.

“They found three bodies,” the woman blurted.

“What?” Adam tilted his head toward the young woman.

“Three men were found out in the middle of nowhere at the site of some old battle. Gates, Lakes, something like that.”

“The Bates Battlefield?” Vicky caught the flash of recognition in Adam's eyes. He knew. The Bates Massacre had almost destroyed her people, sent the survivors scurrying around the plains to other tribes, willing to trade their customs and language, their very identity, for enough food to stay alive.

“Murdered, Vicky,” Annie said. “Shot down just like warriors in the Old Time, like there was some kind of battle that went on again out there. Father John found them.”

Vicky felt Adam's gaze shift toward her, and she made her own expression unreadable.
The face of a rock
. The sound of grandmother's voice in her head like the strain of a familiar melody.
Nobody can see inside a rock, Vicky. You remember that when you don't want anybody to know what you're thinking.

John O'Malley, she was thinking, aware of the little stab of pain, like a needle pricking her heart. Someone must have called him and sent him
out to the battlefield. Someone worried or in trouble. Someone who knew that he would go. John O'Malley would always go. She closed her eyes a moment. God, let me forget the man.

Then, another thought—the killer could have sent John O'Malley to find bodies that could have remained hidden in the snow for a week. The killer must have
wanted
the bodies found.

“What else did you hear?” Adam turned his full attention to Annie, and Vicky realized that he had deliberately turned away from her own rock-hard face. It struck her that grandmother could have been wrong, that someone might see inside a rock.

“They looked like warriors.” Annie stumbled on. “I mean, the bodies were staged so they looked like they fell in battle. Somebody arranged their arms and legs. I mean, how weird is that? One of the bodies was propped up against a tree stump. And Father John . . .”

“What about him,” Vicky cut in, ignoring the glance Adam threw her way.

“Somebody shot at him while he was out finding the bodies. He got hit.”

Vicky gripped the edge of the desk. She felt as if the floor were moving beneath her, the walls of the office closing in, sucking out the air.

Adam's voice floated through the vacuum tightening around her. “Is he okay?”

Annie's voice “He's fine. Just a nick on his face. Didn't even go to the hospital. Too stubborn.”

Oh, John O'Malley was a stubborn man, all right, Vicky was thinking, waves of relief washing over her. He knew
who
he was. A priest. He would never be other than who he was.

“Three men shot to death,” Adam said, as if he were trying to wrap his mind around the immensity of the fact. “Who are they?”

Vicky stared at Adam, scarcely able to get her own thoughts around the notion that had flashed into her mind.

“If the sheriff's office knows,” Annie went on, “they aren't saying. Waiting to notify relatives, I guess, but everybody thinks the dead guys
must've been doing drugs. I mean, why else were they out in the badlands? My girlfriend said they looked like Shoshones.”

Adam took hold of the edge of the door. “Thanks, Annie,” he said, nodding toward the outer office. “Let us know if you hear anything else.”