The Drowning Man (10 page)

Deaver: After high school. So that would be about four years ago, would it not? Travis left your home four years ago, so you don't know if he continued to follow the Arapaho Way.

Walking Bear: I know.

Deaver: When was the last time you saw your grandson?

Walking Bear: I'm seeing him right now. I seen him yesterday in the jail.

Deaver: And before that?

Walking Bear: Week before the murder, he come to the house.

Deaver: Did he tell you how things were going at the ranch?

Walking Bear: He didn't say much.

Deaver: Was that unusual? Your grandson whom you raised like your own child not wanting to talk? Was it because something had happened between him and his friend, Raymond?

Walking Bear: He didn't say.

Deaver: Didn't say anything? Anything at all?

Walking Bear: Said he might be looking for another job in the summer.

Deaver: I see. He was planning to leave the ranch, which might suggest, would it not, that there was some trouble, some reason that he wanted to get away.

Gruenwald: Objection. Calls for opinion.

 

Vicky smeared the last lines with yellow highlighter. “Where have you been, Gruenwald?” she said. Out loud again, as if he had come through her door and were shambling across her office. “Asleep?”

 

Deaver: Mr. Walking Bear, you stated that Travis didn't even like killing varmints, even though there were times he had to do so. What might those times be?

Walking Bear: Coyotes or fox getting after the calves. Sometimes he had to shoot them, but he didn't like doing it.

Deaver: But he did it anyway, isn't that true? Why, Mr. Walking Bear? Because they represented a threat, and Travis Birdsong thought he was justified in eliminating any creature that he perceived to be a threat.

Gruenwald: Your Honor, this is outrageous.

Judge: Yes, it is. The jury will ignore Mr. Deaver's remarks.

Deaver: No further questions for this witness.

Gruenwald: Your Honor, the defense has no further witnesses.

 

Vicky stared across the office. The image of the lawyer was clear as a colored poster that might have appeared on the wall. The man had called Amos Walking Bear without any idea of what the old man might say. Deaver had moved in for the kill and turned Travis's grandfather into a witness for the prosecution. But Deaver had also given the defense an opening: He'd shown that Travis could have used the weapon earlier to kill coyotes. Gruenwald could have recalled Andy Lyle to the stand. He could have asked if Travis had ever used the shotgun to shoot coyotes and fox. He could have hammered home the point that Travis's fingerprints on the shotgun did not prove he had killed Raymond. He could have planted more than reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury.

But he didn't do any of it.

Vicky slapped the transcript on top of the pile of papers growing on her desk. She knew the rest of it. The reiteration of the evidence by Deaver, and Gruenwald's pitiful defense summation that didn't address any of Deaver's arguments. She tapped her fingers on the cover of the transcript. What was she missing? Everything was in place for a conviction, except…

Except for the motive. Where was the motive? The stolen petroglyph? Neither one had been charged with the theft. Travis and Raymond got into a fight two days before the murder? So what? People got into fights; cowboys got into fights. It didn't mean someone ended up shot to death. They'd grown up together. They were friends. Chances were, they'd gotten into fights in the past, and nobody had been killed.

But Deaver had supplied the motive. The man was clever, she had to give him that. He'd gotten Mrs. Taylor to mention the stolen petroglyph; he'd managed to reinforce what everyone on the jury was probably already thinking: Travis had shot Raymond over whatever money they'd gotten for the petroglyph. There was a climate in the courtroom—it lifted off the pages of the transcript like dry dust—that they were both guilty, which made it easy to assume that Travis was also guilty of shooting his friend. True, the judge had instructed the jury to disregard the prosecutor's comment, but the words had been spoken, they existed. They had lived in the jurors' minds.

And it explained why the jurors had brought in the verdict that they did. They had assumed that Travis and Raymond had gotten into another fight, probably over money, and that Travis had grabbed the shotgun and pulled the trigger. A crime of passion: voluntary manslaughter.

Still—and this was the part she couldn't get around—there was no evidence to link a seven-year-old theft to the petroglyph stolen last week. Amos Walking Bear was grasping at straws. An old man, longing to see his grandson free again before he himself died.

Vicky had pulled her bag out of the bottom drawer of the desk and gotten to her feet when the phone rang. She picked up the receiver. “Norman's on the line,” Annie said.

“Put him through.”

The line went dead a moment, and Vicky dropped back into her chair. Then, a clicking noise. The chairman's voice boomed in her ear: “Vicky, what's going on?”

She waited a beat before she said, “I e-mailed the proposal an hour ago, Norman. Didn't you get it?”

“We're looking it over. That's not what I'm calling about. Gossip around here says you're taking up Travis Birdsong's case, gonna get that SOB out of prison.”

“Amos Walking Bear came to see me.”

“You and every other lawyer in the county. Nobody else has been foolish enough to get involved. Birdsong's a murderer, Vicky. Nobody wants him back on the rez, except Amos. Best leave Travis where he belongs.”

“I don't believe he got a fair trial, Norman.”

“Him and every other murderer at Rawlins.”

“I promised Amos I'd look into the case. I think that's what you'd want me to do, if Travis were your grandson.”

“Travis Birdsong was my grandson, I would've sat him down a long time ago and explained the facts of life. He's Arapaho, not some crazy guy. Amos, he was always looking the other way. Couldn't see anything but good in that boy, and where'd that get Travis? Behind bars, that's where. Bad enough the Drowning Man's gone. We don't need to dredge up the fact that those two Arapahos stole that glyph seven years ago. I tell you, Vicky, you bring up that old case, you're gonna lose a lot of friends.”

And what was that? Vicky leaned into the back of her chair. A veiled threat? If she pursued Travis's case, Lone Eagle and Holden shouldn't expect any more work from the Arapaho tribe? “No one was charged with stealing that petroglyph,” she said.

“They were guilty.” The certainty in his voice was thick enough to slice. “Maybe we could've gotten that glyph back, if Travis hadn't gone crazy and killed Raymond.”

“I understand, Norman.”

“Listen to me, Vicky. I'm asking you personally not to drag up that old murder case. Let it be. It's no way for you to be helping people around here.”

She told the councilman that she would think about it. Then she replaced the receiver, picked up her bag and briefcase, and went into the outer office.

“Get Michael Deaver's office on the phone,” she said to Annie as she headed to the door, barely aware of the secretary swiveling from the computer across to the desk. “Tell them I'm on the way over. I need to talk to Deaver. Then call the Wyoming Department of Corrections and arrange for me to visit Travis Birdsong on Friday.” Vicky yanked open the door and glanced back. “One more thing. See if you can locate an attorney who used to practice in Lander. His name is Harry Gruenwald.”

Annie lifted her chin. Her hand was suspended above the phone. She shot Vicky a look of incredulity. “You're gonna get involved with Birdsong?” she said, as if she hadn't heard anything else. “You sure, Vicky? People around here won't like that much.”

“So I've heard,” Vicky said. “Just make the arrangements.” She stepped into the corridor and pulled the door shut behind her.

FATHER JOHN STOOD
at the wide window overlooking the runway at the Riverton Regional Airport. A few minutes earlier, the turbo-prop had taxied to a point about fifty feet from the terminal. A metal staircase rolled to the door, and a short line of passengers began filing down the steps. Father Lloyd Elsner was easy to spot, a small man in dark slacks and shirt, standing on the landing, blinking into the sunshine. Other passengers bunched in the doorway behind him, impatience printed in their expressions. Finally the man started down, balancing himself on each step before venturing to the next. He walked around the cluster of bags that several airport workers had extracted from the plane's belly, selected one, and moved into the line of passengers heading across the tarmac, shoulders stooped, gray, balding head thrust forward, the black luggage with a red belt around the middle bouncing behind.

Father John stepped toward the man when he emerged through the door. “Father Elsner,” he said, stretching out his hand. “Welcome to Wyoming.”

“You must be Father John.” The other priest grasped his hand as if it were a rope guide across unfamiliar territory. The firmness in his grip lasted only a second before it seemed to drain away. He had a weathered face, with a deep cleft that divided his chin, and watery blue eyes that blinked around the terminal now, as if he were trying to get his bearings.

“Good of you to come for me,” he said, blinking up at Father John.

“Pickup's this way.” Father John motioned toward the double doors on the other side of the terminal. “Let me get this.” He reached around, took the luggage handle out of the old man's grip, and led the way outside.

They walked to the parking lot under a blinding sun. The sky descended all around them, as clear as a crystal blue mountain lake. There was the sound of tires crunching gravel as a car drove out of the lot, then only the noise of the flag flapping in the hot breeze on top of a metal pole. Father John helped the old man into the pickup, hoisted the luggage into the back, and got in behind the wheel.

He was a psychologist, Lloyd Elsner said as Father John drove along Highway 26, curving down from the flat rise where the airport was located. Not the kind of psychologist most people think of, you understand, not
Freudian,
but, of course, he'd finished his doctorate in psychology. But that was many years ago, oh, many years ago when there weren't that many people interested in the stuff. Always interested him, though, trying to figure out how people worked. So the Society had made him a counselor. Yes, that had been his career, years of counseling troubled students at various Jesuit schools. Well, they weren't all troubled, of course, but searching, looking for their way.

The midday traffic was light through the outskirts of Riverton until Father John caught up with a truck belching black exhaust. He crawled through the center of town behind the truck, past the flat-faced brick buildings with store windows winking in the sun and people strolling along the sidewalks, while Father Lloyd talked on. The man was like a windup top that couldn't stop spinning until the spring had finally released. Or was it that he was lonely, Father John was thinking. Unaccustomed to someone listening?

The truck lumbered across an intersection, and Father John turned right and kept going through the southern part of town, past garages and warehouses and drive-through liquor stores and the bare lots that wrapped across the fronts of trailer parks. They'd retired him—the old priest was saying—yes, retired him when he was still young, still a lot to do. He'd been sixty-five then, it was true, and maybe somebody like Father John didn't think that was so young, but he should just wait. He'd see. Sixty-five didn't mean you should be put out to pasture, like an old horse, people just waiting for you to die. He'd tried to keep his hand in, offer his services, but living in retirement homes, well, it wasn't as if there were a lot of opportunities. Maybe he wasn't in such great shape anymore. Doctors didn't want to tell him outright, of course, but he could hear what they didn't say. He was a psychologist, after all. They thought he was dying, but he had his heart medication. Working just fine. He could help out at the mission. Yes, he was looking forward to being useful while he was at St. Francis.

Father John took his eyes away from the asphalt rolling ahead and glanced at the man. “The provincial said you were looking for a quiet place to make a retreat.”

“Retreat.” The other priest dropped the word between them, as if it were a rock that might sink out of sight. “John. I may call you John, right? I've been on retreat for the last seventeen years. What else would you call retirement homes? Retreat from life. I'd rather you put me to work. Anything at all. I was a good counselor.”

“We have a lot of people who want to talk to a priest.” Father John slowed down for another right turn, and they were on the reservation. The landscape opened up, a house here and there set back from the road, surrounded by wide areas of prairie with nothing but sagebrush and clusters of gnarled cottonwoods.

“There's a small office across the hall from mine,” Father John said. “We can clear it out for you.”

“Sounds like we have a perfect fit, John. So that's home.” The old priest gestured past the windshield toward the sign looming just ahead over Seventeen-Mile Road.
St. Francis Mission.

“It's home,” Father John said. He turned into the mission grounds, drove past the flat-roofed school with the tipi-shaped entry, and slowed onto Circle Drive, pointing out the buildings: the administration building and church, the Arapaho Museum, the residence. Behind the residence was the baseball diamond that he and the kids had made out of a grassy field that first summer at St. Francis, when he'd started the Eagles. The kids had needed a baseball team, he'd told himself, and he'd needed a team to coach.

“Baseball practice every afternoon,” he said. “You might want to come over and watch.”

“Good. Good.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Father John could see the old man nodding. Nodding and smiling, a kind of half smile, as if the mission brought back fond memories. “You'll have the guesthouse,” he told the other priest. They were bumping down the dirt driveway that ran between the church and the administration building. Directly behind the building was Eagle Hall and, another thirty feet beyond, the square house with the board siding and the scuffed white paint.

He helped the old man out of the pickup, then lifted the luggage out of the back and showed him into the house. Living room with a worn sofa and chair, bookcase with paperbacks neatly stacked on the shelves, lamp with a faded gold shade that might have been shielding lightbulbs for fifty years. “Bedroom's in the back,” he said, leading the way into the small alcove with barely enough room for a nightstand between the bed and the old highboy that served as a closet. He set the luggage on the bed and went back into the living room. “Kitchen's there.” Nodding to another alcove off the living room. “In case you want to make yourself a cup of coffee. Meals are at the residence. Breakfast at seven.”

“Never liked getting up early. One advantage to being retired, I don't have to do it anymore.”

“Come over to the house anytime you like. Lunch is usually around noon—sandwich, soup. Dinner at six.” He didn't have the heart to tell the old man that Elena expected the priests to be on time. A bit like boot camp, he sometimes thought. He was seldom on time, and it looked as if Lloyd Elsner might also fail to live up to the housekeeper's expectations.

He left the old man heading into the bedroom to unpack—“Get settled in,” he'd said—and followed the fresh tire tracks back down the alley. He parked in front of the administration building and let himself through the heavy wood door into the corridor lined with the framed photos of past Jesuits staring through rimless glasses, keeping watch over the place, he always thought. The plank floor, streaked with sunlight from the front window and worn into little pathways by more than a century of footsteps, stretched past his office on the right to Father Ian's office in back. He went into his office, checked the answering machine—no messages—and headed down the corridor.

Ian McCauley was at his desk, bent toward the columns of numbers moving down the computer monitor. “Everything go okay?” he said, not looking up. A bald spot, the diameter of a quarter, interrupted the man's sandy hair on the crown of his head.

Father John told him that he'd left Lloyd Elsner at the guesthouse. “He's a counselor,” he said. “Sounds like he's had a lot of experience. Says he'd like to be useful. He can use the office across the hall.”

The other priest rolled his chair back, and, behind his eyes, Father John could see him shifting the gears in his head. “Rachel Roanhorse came in this morning,” he said after a moment. “Having trouble with her son. Fourteen-year-old hanging out with a fast crowd. She's afraid he'll get involved with drugs. I talked to her awhile. I think she has reason to worry, John, so I suggested she bring the boy over for a talk. It'll be good to have a trained psychologist around. By the way,” he went on, riffling through the papers scattered next to the computer, the gears shifting again, “call came while you were out. I jotted down the information somewhere.”

“Who was it?” The dealer, or whoever had the petroglyph, Father John thought, watching the other priest glance at a sheet of paper and toss it aside.

“Here we go.” Ian yanked a paper out of the stack and handed it across the desk. “Reporter from the
Gazette.
Wants to stop by and ask you a few questions. Should be here any minute,” he said, glancing at his watch.

“Did he say what it was about?”

“She, John. Aileen M. Harrison is a woman.”

 

SHE LEANED INTO
the upholstered cushion of the chair that stood at an angle to Father John's desk, a beautiful young woman in her early twenties, he thought, probably not long out of college, with deep blue, watchful eyes suffused with an intensity that made her seem older than her years, blond hair that brushed the shoulders of her white blouse, and long legs crossed one over the other. She opened a small notebook, smoothed the pages, and produced a pen from somewhere in the bag she'd hung off the arm of the chair. She smiled at him. “I'm sure you know what this is about,” she said.

She had been coming through the door as he'd started back down the corridor to his office, and she'd been a tornado of words. She was Aileen M. Harrison, and he would be Father O'Malley, she guessed. He'd told her that she guessed right and ushered her into his office. She liked the
M,
she told him, although he hadn't asked why she used her middle initial. It implied professionalism, she said, and she was proud to be a professional journalist. She would always use her middle initial. She'd been hearing about him forever, well, ever since she'd started at the
Gazette
three months ago.

When she drew a breath, Father John said, “I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage. You could be here about any number of things.”

“The stolen petroglyph, Father.” There was a slight edge to her tone, as if she'd thought he was teasing and she didn't appreciate teasing. “You must know my paper broke the story.”

“I read the article.” He was thinking that he'd read past the byline, which had probably been Aileen M. Harrison.

“It wasn't an easy story to get.” She glanced around the room a moment, the memory bringing a tiny smile to the corners of her mouth. “No one wanted to admit that a two-thousand-year-old piece of art had been stolen from Red Cliff Canyon. I had to request the theft report that the tribes had made to the BLM. Director there said they'd had to call in the FBI agent to handle the investigation; they're short staffed, you know. Only one officer to investigate thefts on hundreds of square miles of BLM land. Of course Ted Gianelli—he's the fed that's taken over the case—said he couldn't comment except to confirm that the petroglyph was missing. Ongoing investigation, and all that. But Duncan Barnes, an antiques dealer who knows what he's talking about, valued the petroglyph at a quarter million. And get this”—she had warmed up to the subject—“when I confronted the tribal officials they actually requested that we hold the story. Imagine! A valuable petroglyph stolen! We're hardly in the business of
holding
important stories the public has a right to know about.”

She looked down and began scribbling something in the notebook. “After all,” she said, as if it were an afterthought, “the petroglyphs don't belong only to the tribes. They're on public land. They belong to all of us.”

“How did you hear about the theft?”

“What?” Her head snapped up and the blue eyes blinked at him. Then she smiled again, but the intensity in her eyes made them look darker. “We're in the same kind of business, Father. We both keep secrets and protect sources. You must gather all sorts of information in the confessional, but I'm sure you'd never divulge the source. Confidentiality is part of our business.”

“Not quite the same, Ms. Harrison.”

“You may call me Aileen.”

“Priests don't publicize what they learn in confidence.”