The Drowning Man (13 page)

Vicky remained seated. If she got to her feet, she knew, the woman would usher her to the door. Andy Lyle had already moved to the side, one hand gripping the knob, ready to fling the door open. “What makes you think that?” she said.

“Why else would they show up here, out of the blue? We're not exactly on the beaten track. They could hang out here for a long time before anybody knew where they were.”

“Travis's grandfather said that Travis came to the rez to see him.”

Marjorie Taylor tossed her blond hair back and looked over at the foreman, who yanked the door open. “The old man said what he thought was gonna help Travis.”

“What Marjorie's saying,” the foreman put in, “is those two Indian cowboys stole the petroglyph. Who knows what else they'd been up to? They came here 'cause they had something to hide.”

Vicky got up. She thanked Marjorie Taylor for her time and, brushing past the foreman, stepped outside. She started walking down the road, then turned back. The woman stood on the stoop, a head shorter than the man behind her in the doorway, both of them watching her. “Where can I find Ollie Goodman?” Vicky said.

Marjorie tossed her head in the direction of Dubois, another three miles north. “Got a gallery over in town.”

The man rolled his eyes and shook his head. His mouth was set in a tight line, but Vicky could almost hear the words bunching behind his lips: “Stubborn woman, doesn't take advice.”

Vicky swung around and hurried toward the Jeep.

DUBOIS BRANCHED FROM
Highway 287 like a flag stretched from a pole. Another eighty miles, and the highway crossed into Yellowstone National Park, a fact that brought countless tourists through town every summer day. Vicky followed the traffic down Mercantile Street, looking for a vacant place along the curb. It was a town straight out of the Old West. Except for the SUVs and pickups crawling along a street wide enough in which to turn a wagon train, you could picture the gunslingers facing each other, revolvers drawn, and ladies with long skirts and parasols parading along the wooden sidewalks under the roofs that jutted from flat-fronted buildings. Behind the windows blinking in the sun were restaurants, gift shops, bars, Western-wear shops, a bookstore, local museums and art galleries, offering everything tourists, or even the locals, could want. It was hard to tell the two groups apart. Everybody was dressed the same, in jeans, boots, and cowboy hats.

There were no vacant spaces, and Vicky drove on, hunting the signs over the shops and galleries for some hint of Ollie Goodman. She reached the end of the commercial district and turned into a street lined with small bungalows. As she made a U-turn, intending to retrace her route down Mercantile, she spotted the small sign propped on a single post in front of a Victorian house painted the light green color of new grass.
Goodman Galleries Western Art.
She left the Jeep in the driveway and followed a brick-paved sidewalk to the wooden porch with a swing on one side and a small, white, wrought-iron table and two chairs on the other. Through the oblong beveled glass window in the door, the paintings on the walls inside collided into different colors and shapes, like the glass pieces of a kaleidoscope. She opened the door and stepped into what had once been a living room. A bell continued jangling into the quiet for a moment after she shut the door.

The room was filled with paintings hung in uneven rows, stacked in corners and against the Victorian loveseat, the scattered chairs, and the desk on the far side of the room. Mountains and pastures, horses, barns. The paintings captured the sweep of the plains in the sunshine and the reflection of the sky in the mountain streams. There was a musty odor in the room, a combination of oil and turpentine and dust, yet the paintings seemed alive, as if the actual landscapes had been transferred to the canvases.

Several paintings on the left, above the loveseat, depicted the Taylor Ranch: the old house, gray against the sun-washed vermilion walls of the bluff. But it was the collection on the right wall that drew her. Six paintings of the petroglyphs in Red Cliff Canyon, arranged in two rows that extended from the ceiling molding almost to the gray carpet. Vicky moved closer. She was aware of her heart jumping. The spirits themselves might have been in the room, the images were so clear and intense. Gray lines of figures carved into sand-colored rocks striped with shadow and light, sheltering under branches of pines.

“Can I help you?”

Vicky swung around, startled by a female voice erupting into the silence. A small, middle-aged woman emerged through the door next to the desk. Her dark, gray-flecked hair pulled back into a bun fastened with two black lacquered sticks that stuck out above her head, she wore a red dress with a skirt that flowed over the tops of her black cowboy boots and a belt of silver medallions that draped around her slim hips. Through the door, Vicky could see the clutter of papers and cartons that covered the surfaces of a desk and a sagging yellow sofa with rose-colored flowers.

“I'm looking for Ollie Goodman,” Vicky said.

“And you are?” The woman had green eyes narrowed into slits, as if she were staring into the sun.

“Vicky Holden. I'm an attorney. Is Ollie available?”

“An attorney?” The green eyes flew wide open. “Whatever has Ollie been up to?”

Vicky tried for a smile that might set the woman at ease. “I have a few questions he may be able to help me with. It will only take a few moments.” She glanced at the opened door, half expecting a man to materialize.

“Ollie's not here,” the woman said. “What makes you think Ollie can help?”

“He's familiar with a murder case I'm looking into,” Vicky said. “When could I see him?”

“Murder! I can't imagine that Ollie could be of any help.” The woman tucked a little strand of hair into place. “He's busy painting. Spends the summer working in his cabin. I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere for your answers.”

Vicky extracted a business card from her bag and held it out to the woman. “Please give him my card and ask him to call me.” When the woman made no movement toward the card, Vicky walked over and set it on the edge of the desk. Then she dug a pen out of her bag and wrote “Travis Birdsong's case” in the quarter inch of white space above the black letters of her name.

She stepped back to the woman. “Tell him that it's about the shooting death seven years ago at the Taylor Ranch.”

The woman seemed to freeze, breathing halted, features hard set, as if Vicky had thrown ice water in her face. “Ollie has nothing more to say about that,” she said.

“It's important,” Vicky said. “It's possible the wrong man was convicted.”

“That Indian? Travis whatever his name was?”

“Birdsong.”

“He's guilty as hell. He tried to run away after he pulled the trigger. What more do you want? Read the newspapers. It was bad enough after it happened, reporters and a lawyer coming around, asking a lot of questions. Ollie wasn't there.”

“Lawyer?”

“You know, the prosecutor that sent that murderer to prison where he belongs.”

“What about the defense attorney, Harry Gruenwald?”

“I don't remember. Ollie had a belly full of that murder.” She was moving backwards now, reaching around for the door handle. “Do us a favor,” she said, yanking open the door. “Forget about Ollie. Don't bother him.”

Vicky held the woman's gaze a moment, then stepped through the opened door. She got into the Jeep and pulled the key out of her bag, then the cell phone, aware of the dark head moving at the edge of the window in the front of the house. Michael Deaver had questioned Ollie Goodman; the man was a dogged prosecutor. But what about Travis's defense attorney? Why hadn't he bothered to find out what Goodman might have seen before he left the ranch? For that matter, why hadn't he bothered to confirm that Goodman had, in fact, left the ranch?

Vicky jammed the key into the ignition, rolled down the windows, and checked her phone calls. A hot breeze swept through the Jeep. The dark head had moved to the center of the window now, impatience and defiance radiating from the woman's rigid shoulders. Adam had called twice.

She tapped the cell against the rim of the steering wheel. She'd been putting off calling Adam; that was the truth. She hadn't wanted to hear his voice, to be lulled again into a sense of well-being, of business as usual. She hadn't wanted to be put off her guard.

And yet that was silly. They were law partners; they had business together that had nothing to do with any personal relationship.
Personal relationship.
Well, that was a laugh. She'd thought she was in a personal relationship. She had no idea what Adam thought, and it didn't matter, she realized. It no longer mattered. They were just law partners.

She tapped in the number to Adam's cell. It rang once, and he was at the other end. “Vicky? I've been trying to reach you all day.”

“I've been busy,” Vicky said.

“What about the proposal?”

“The BLM turned it down.”

“Turned it down?” A note of incredulity sounded in Adam's voice, and Vicky felt the slight sensation of another prick, as if the BLM wouldn't have turned down the proposal had he been the one who wrote it.

A door slammed. The woman stepped off the porch and started down the brick sidewalk. Her hair had come loose and was blowing back like dirty straw.

“I'm going to meet with the BLM director tomorrow.” Vicky watched the woman coming closer, fists clenched at her side.

“Tomorrow? That doesn't give me much leeway, Vicky. I'm pretty tied down here for another day or two. Julie's affairs are in a bigger mess than I'd suspected.”

“I'll handle it, Adam.”

The woman was at the passenger door, waving her hands. “Get out of here,” she shouted. “I told you, Ollie's not here. You can't see him!”

“What's going on?” Adam's voice loud in her ear.

“I said, I'll handle the BLM. There's no need for you to be here.” Vicky pressed the button on the door. The passenger window began to rise. The woman took a step back, still flinging her hands about.

“You're trespassing.” She was shouting, the words becoming more muffled as the window rose higher. “I want you out of here. I'm going to call the police.” The trapped air inside the Jeep was instantly hot and stuffy.

“You okay, Vicky?” Adam said.

“Hang on a minute.” Vicky put the vehicle into reverse and backed out of the driveway, one eye on the woman throwing her arms toward the Jeep as if she could push it into the street.

She shifted into forward and drove toward the stop sign, jiggling the buttons on the air conditioner until she felt a stream of cool air rushing over her, pressing the cell to her ear. “You still there?”

“What's going on?”

“Everything's okay. I'll let you know how the meeting comes out.”

“Where are you?”

“Dubois,” Vicky heard herself say. She watched the traffic on the right, then the left, waiting for an opening.

“You're in Dubois? What are you doing in Dubois?” A beat passed, and Vicky turned left onto Mercantile and fit the Jeep into the slow-moving parade of traffic in the central part of town. “Oh, I get it,” Adam went on. “You're following up on the old man's crazy claim that his grandson was wrongly convicted of shooting somebody. Right? You're going to handle the case, aren't you? Despite everything we've talked about.”

“Listen, Adam…”

“No, you listen. You don't have time to do everything. We hired Roger to take on cases like that. I thought we had an agreement, Vicky. I trusted you.”

Vicky steered the Jeep into a right turn onto the highway. She could feel the hot rush of anger in her cheeks, despite the cool air floating about her. “Travis Birdsong did not get a fair trial.”

“The man is probably guilty.”

“He didn't get a fair trial, Adam.” Vicky pressed down on the accelerator. A blur of wild grasses and sagebrush passed outside the window. “I'm on the highway,” she said. “I have to go.”

She took the cell from her ear, ignoring Adam's voice, the garbled words coming through the hot plastic in her hand, her fingers searching for the feel of the end key. She pushed the cell into her bag and gripped the steering wheel hard, the blur moving faster outside the windows. She drove for the reservation.

DUNCAN'S ANTIQUES TURNED
out to be a low-slung brown building that resembled a double garage set back from the highway at the end of a graveled drive.
BARGAINS
loomed in large white letters shimmering in the sun below the peaked roof. It was close to 2:30 in the afternoon, the heat radiating off the gravel, when Father John parked in front of the stall on the right. The overhead door was open. He stepped inside and made his way across the dirt floor, past the metal wagon wheels, farm tools, sleds, and parts of old trucks that loomed through the shadows. It was probably ten degrees cooler inside, the air oily and redolent of odors from the past.

He'd intended to get away from the mission earlier, but Father Ian had left to visit parishioners at Riverton Memorial, and the phone had rung almost nonstop. He'd grabbed the receiver on the first ring, hoping this was the call—this was the man with the petroglyph. He'd had to fight to keep the disappointment out of his voice. Parishioners wanting to arrange baptisms for new babies, register kids for the next session of the summer education classes, inquire about the Friday-night socials for teenagers that he planned to start next week to give the kids someplace to go and something to do. After each call, he'd stared at the silent phone, willing it to ring again, willing an unfamiliar voice on the other end. Then he'd gone back to the piles of papers in front of him—letters to answer, the summer budget to pull together.

Budget, that was a laugh. Donations rose and fell in the summer. Parishioners traveled to Oklahoma or Montana to see relatives, or went to the powwows around the West. Some Sundays there were only a handful of people in the pews; other Sundays were standing room only, depending upon the number of tourists wanting to attend Mass at an Indian church.

The mission lurched from week to week, he and Father Ian shuffling the bills, paying the most pressing ones, setting aside others for later, and he, at least, counting on what he called the little miracles, the donations that fell out of envelopes with postmarks from obscure towns he'd never heard of and notes saying, “This is for the Arapahos.” Strange, the way the little miracles arrived when he most needed them. About the time he was ready to concede that they should cut back on programs, the miracles arrived. Which still astounded his assistant, always certain that the most recent check would be the last, wondering how responsible, sane men could run a mission on miracles.

When Father Ian had gotten back from visiting Joe Moon and Marian Pretty Horse in the hospital, Father John had pushed the papers still awaiting his attention to the corner of the desk and headed across the grounds for the pickup. Eagles practice started at four, and the antique dealer's gallery was a good forty minutes away. He would have to push the speed limit to make it back to the mission on time.

He let himself through a door to the other half of the garage and stepped into a cavernous room that emptied into a series of other rooms stretching into the shadows. He had the odd sense that he had stepped into a past containing personal items of individuals, but not the individuals themselves. Display cases stood haphazardly around the concrete floor, as if they'd taken root wherever they'd been shoved. He threaded his way around the cases, studying the array of Indian artifacts laid out on the dusty glass shelves: pipes, beaded vests, moccasins and necklaces, bows and arrows, rattles, leather quirts, amulets, fans, feathered staffs and headdresses, beaded breastplates. On the side wall beyond the display cases were beaded ceremonial dresses hung between the painted skulls of cattle and buffalo.

Paintings of Western scenes covered a half wall that jutted between two rooms—mountains and bluffs silhouetted against a vast blue sky, fishermen wading in a stream, cowboys lounging against the porch railing in front of a gray building bleached in the sun,
SALOON
tattooed in black letters on a board hanging from the roof. The paintings looked old, colors dark and faded, scenes enclosed in bronze frames that had turned to shades of brown.

Next to the oblong window that looked out onto the parking lot were four large paintings of petroglyphs. The white carved figures leapt out from the background of reddish gray rocks, dark green pines, and blue sky. Father John walked around the display case to get a closer look at the painting on the right. He recognized the human-like figure with the square head and the truncated arms and legs that seemed to be in frantic motion, and the curved lines that looked like waves enveloping a drowning man. The petroglyph had stood at the mouth of Red Cliff Canyon until someone had chopped it out of the rock and taken it away.

“Like 'em?”

Father John turned around. The voice had materialized out of nowhere. For the first time, he noticed the counter in the shadows beyond the half wall. He could make out the shiny bald head of the man seated on the other side. Looming out of the papers and boxes piled on top of the counter was an old cash register with designs embossed in the metal sides. The bald head began slowly rising until the black eyebrows and the fleshy face appeared over the cash register. A short, square-set man leaned over the counter and gripped the edge. Then he started forward, lurching from display case to display case, holding on to the edges as if they were railings. His boots made a scuffing noise on the concrete floor.

“Are you Duncan?” Father John felt as if he were calling out across time.

“That's me. Local artist painted them glyphs.” The man pushed out the words between gasps of breath. His face was flushed, and his eyes so bright, Father John wondered if he had a fever.

“You heard of Ollie Goodman? Lives in Dubois,” the dealer went on. “Gettin' real famous, Ollie is. Big galleries in Santa Fe and Tucson sell his stuff nowadays, but me and Ollie, we go back seven, eight years now. I was sellin' Ollie's paintings when nobody else'd give him the time of day. That's how come he still shows some paintings here. Best price you'll get anywhere. Down in Santa Fe, you'll pay ten times what I'm askin', especially for a painting of that petroglyph on the right that I seen you lookin' at. You heard about the petroglyph that got stolen last week? Well, that's the one,” he said. His breath came in rapid bursts, as if he were struggling up a steep mountainside. “Lot of interest in it, I can tell you that. People stoppin' in every day wantin' to see what that petroglyph looked like. I already got three people wantin' to buy it, but I always say, first come, first served, you know what I mean? First guy puts his money down is gonna be the one walks out of here a lucky SOB.”

The man held out a wide hand with stubby fingers and a diamond the size of a marble glittering on a gold ring. “Don't believe I got your name.”

“Father O'Malley from St. Francis Mission.” Father John was surprised at the strength in the man's grip.

“You the Indian priest?” The man reared back. The bright eyes shot across Father John like a laser: plaid shirt, blue jeans, boots. “Guess everybody in these parts has heard of you workin' with them Indians like you do,” he said. “Me, I like them Indians. Never had any trouble with 'em. Come in and sell their stuff. I give 'em a good price. Always treat 'em fair.”

Father John didn't say anything, and the man took a step backward and swung his upper body toward a display case. “Take this stuff here.” The gold ring tapped the glass above a breastplate, the design of beads and porcupine quills broken in places, the leather gray and curled at the edges. “Old Indian come in here and said that beaded breastplate was his grandfather's. Needed some cash, he said, or he wouldn't be sellin' it. So I give him a good price, better'n anybody around here would've give him. Might take me awhile to sell it. Not like I can sell it real quick to a museum somewhere. Museums nowadays are real particular. Want proof where the artifact comes from. Just 'cause some Indian says it was his grandfather's, well, that don't mean anything. They think the Indian could've dug up a grave somewhere and stole the stuff. But me, I'm more trusting. I know the families around here. Indian says it's been in the family, I believe him. Sooner or later, the right buyer comes along, somebody appreciates old Indian things. Now you, bein' the Indian priest, might…”

Father John shook his head, his eyes still on the breastplate. It was old, very old, once owned by a warrior riding into…which battle? There had been hundreds on the plains. Confident that the thin piece of leather, the mix of beads and porcupine quills, would stop an arrow or a bullet.

“You have quite a collection.” Father John gestured toward the rows of display cases. “Ever have any petroglyphs?”

“Petroglyphs!” The dealer let out a howl almost of pain. “I'm runnin' a legit business here, Father. Somebody brings me a petroglyph, I'm gonna be like a museum. I'm gonna want a lot of proof where it come from. Federal law against takin' artifacts off public lands and sellin' 'em. I'm not lookin' for any trouble with the law. Truth is,” the man began, leaning forward, his voice lowered to a confidential tone, as if he were about to confess. “I had a small petroglyph in here two, three years ago. Chopped out of the rock a hundred years ago by some rancher clearin' his land. In the family ever since. They had photos goin' back a long time of that old petroglyph propped up next to a barn. So I said okay. Sold that sucker in three days. Should've held on to it longer. Could've gotten a lot more.”

Father John nodded toward the painting of the stolen petroglyph. “Is that how you knew the Drowning Man is worth a quarter million?”

“Minimum.” The dealer was shaking his head. “Reporter comes around wantin' numbers. Makes a better story, I guess. Nobody cares if some picture on a rock gets stolen, but lots of people get interested when it's worth big money. So I give her the minimum value, based on my experience and…” He glanced up at the ceiling a moment. “Dealers talk, you know. I hear how much some of those glyphs go for.”

“You mean, from dealers who sell them?”

The man hesitated a moment, as if he'd lost his way and wasn't certain that the path he'd found himself on was where he wanted to be. He shifted his gaze toward the painting. “Don't know 'em personally,” he said. “I hear the gossip, that's all. We got our own antiquities telegraph, just like them Indians got their moccasin telegraph.”

He jerked his gaze back to Father John. “You want to know the truth? There's lots of crooks in this business. The fed came around here askin' a lot of questions. Who do you know? Who's gonna handle a stolen petroglyph? I tol' him, crooked dealers are around, but I don't know 'em personally. I stay away from all that. I run a legitimate business. It's like I tell my customers, you better know the dealer you're buyin' from, or you could be layin' out a whole lot of money for a stolen artifact, and that could get you in a whole lot of trouble.”

The man shrugged and drew in a raspy breath. His chest heaved against the sweat-blotched yellow shirt. “Thing is, lots of rich people are willin' to take the chance. I mean, what are the odds that some federal agent is gonna knock on your door and demand that you turn over the stolen petroglyph you bought from some crooked dealer? I say the odds are all in the rich people's favor, and they know it. So they don't ask questions, you know what I mean? They want an Indian pipe that's been dug up from an old grave or a petroglyph that's been chopped off a rock, they buy it.”

“What have you heard about the stolen petroglyph?” He was pushing, Father John knew, but Duncan was talking, and when people started talking, they often kept going, saying things they hadn't intended to say.

“Nothing.” The dealer lifted his shoulders and let them drop in a forced shrug. “It's like that glyph fell into a black hole.”

“The tribes would like to get it back,” Father John said.

“What for? They can't put it back up in Red Cliff Canyon.”

“They can protect it and keep it with the people. Petroglyphs are sacred.”

“You ask me, whoever took that sucker's gonna make a whole lot of money. He ain't givin' it back to the tribes, not after all the trouble he went to.”

“Maybe the tribes would pay to get it back. I was thinking,” Father John hurried on, pushing against his own hope now, “that you could put the word out on the antiquities telegraph that the tribes are interested in making a deal.”

“What's in it for you?” The dealer cocked his head back, and Father John had the feeling that he was being appraised, as if he were some type of Indian artifact.

“I'd like to see the petroglyph back where it belongs.”

“You want my opinion, you're too late. That sucker went to the same place that other stolen glyph went to some years back. They're both sittin' in the gardens of mansions out in California or maybe New York. Maybe Aspen or Santa Fe. Fact is, they're gone. Rich folks sittin' around, sippin' cocktails, sayin', ‘My dear, wherever did you find
that?
'” He'd switched into a falsetto and lifted an invisible cocktail glass in a mock toast. “‘ Oh, just something I picked up,'” he went on, still in the falsetto. “‘ Nothing, really.' Yeah, nothin',” he said, his usual voice now. “A little quarter-million, maybe half-million nothin'.”

Father John was quiet.
Don't let it be true
, he was thinking. And yet the logic was there. Logic was relentless. Why would the thief hang around and wait? There were too many uncertainties, too many maybes. Maybe the tribes would agree to buy back the petroglyph. Maybe the tribes could raise the money. Maybe the thief could hand over the petroglyph and collect the ransom without getting caught. Maybe. Maybe. And all the time, there were buyers with the money and the desire for something different, something unlike all the other things they owned, something with a hint of scandal and danger that made the petroglyph all the more attractive.