The Drowning Man (34 page)

“You said that Goodman had left the ranch. You didn't see him when you rode down from the pasture.”

Travis tossed back a strand of black hair. “I guess I came to some wrong conclusions. Maybe he never left the ranch, that's how I see it now. He could've driven around to the back of the barn where there's a real good view of the red bluffs. I seen him out there workin' once. Had half a picture of the bluffs painted on his canvas. Truck was over in the trees in the shade. He could've gotten into the barn through that back door we never used. I figure he was waitin' for Raymond inside. Raymond never seen what hit him. Goodman went out the back, got in his truck, and took one of the back roads off the ranch.”

It was only a story, Vicky was thinking, told by a convicted man desperate for a new trial. “Gianelli's going to want evidence, Travis,” she said.

“I got proof of what was going on,” he said. “I haven't told you all of it.”

THERE WAS THE
thud of a door shutting, the scuff of boots on tile. Vicky saw the brown uniform moving on the other side of the window that separated the interview room from the corridor. Then, a knock and the door swung open.

“Fed's here,” the officer said. “You ready?”

Vicky nodded. She could sense Travis tensing beside her as the sound of the officer's footsteps retreated in the corridor.

“You sure the fed's gonna help me?” he said.

Vicky turned toward the Arapaho. “There aren't any guarantees, Travis.”

He slumped toward the table and dropped his head into both hands, a perfect picture of despair. “All I got,” he said, “is what I seen and heard.”

“It's your best chance.” Vicky waited a moment; then she told him that he would have to give up the petroglyph.

“What?” The man's head snapped back; his hands drifted over the table. “What're you talkin' about?”

“The truth, Travis,” Vicky said. She was taking a gamble, she knew. She had no proof, yet it made sense. She pushed on: “The only way you could have gotten the money to pay Gruenwald
after
you were released from prison was by selling the petroglyph that you and Raymond had taken. That means you know where it is. Raymond must have told you where he put it.”

It was a long time before Travis said anything, and for a moment, Vicky thought that he might jump to his feet, bang on the door for the guard, and walk away. But where could he go? Back to Rawlins where someone was waiting for him?

“That glyph's all I got,” he said finally. “It's my ticket outta the rez. I paid for that glyph. I paid…”

“It belongs to the people.”

“…seven years of my life.”

“Gianelli is going to want to know where it's hidden.”

“C'mon, Vicky. It's not like it's the Drowning Man. I wasn't gonna take a sacred glyph.”

“All the petroglyphs are sacred. You know that.”

Vicky was aware of the rhythm of footsteps, the rustle of movement in the corridor. The door opened again and Ted Gianelli stepped inside. He let the door close behind him, then pulled out the chair across the table and sat down, not taking his eyes from Travis. “Your attorney tells me you're ready to talk about the stolen petroglyphs and other artifacts,” he said.

Vicky exchanged a quick glance with Travis. The Arapaho exhaled a long breath, as if he were letting go of some deep, hidden part of himself. “What do you want to know?” he said.

“How'd you get involved, Travis? Suppose you start your story there.”

Travis leaned back and clasped his hands on the table. He ran his tongue back and forth over his lips for a moment before he began:
“I'd been workin' at the Taylor Ranch maybe two, three weeks, when Raymond rides up alongside me and says, ‘You interested in makin' some extra cash?' We was out in the pasture pitchin' hay to the cattle. Nobody around, just him and me. It was freezin' cold, I
remember that, and I was tryin' to keep movin' just to keep from freezin' to death. ‘Sure, I'm interested,' I told him. So he says that Mrs. Taylor and Lyle know a guy that wants to buy a petroglyph. Gonna pay a lot of money. All we gotta do is get the petroglyph.

“Well, that wasn't gonna be easy, I was thinkin'. Lyle says, don't worry. He's got the hammers, chisels, and crowbars. It was gonna take some time, but nobody goes up Red Cliff Canyon in the winter. I said I had to think on it. The canyon's sacred, you know. Spirits live up there. I wasn't real anxious to disturb the spirits.

“‘ Think about ten thousand dollars,' Raymond said.

“That was more money than I'd ever seen, so I said, Okay, I'm in. That afternoon—it was startin' to get dark—we drove up into the canyon to meet Mrs. Taylor and Lyle and decide on the glyph to take. We got to the curve where you could see the Drowning Man. Well, there were four pickups parked right in the middle of the road. Beyond was nothin' but snow as smooth as glass. You couldn't see the petroglyph for the people standin' in front.

“Raymond and me hiked up the slope through the snow, and Mrs. Taylor says, ‘This is the glyph we want. You think you can handle it?'

“I was feeling real strange now, wishing I hadn't gotten into this. Besides Mrs. Taylor and Lyle, there were a couple other white guys. Tall, blond guy with a scarred face came around the ranch to paint his canvases. Name was Ollie Goodman. Standin' there, leanin' on his crutch. The other white man was shorter, had black hair with snow sprinkled in it, like he'd walked under a branch. He was dressed real nice in a gray overcoat with a red scarf tucked in the front and fancy boots that he kept stompin' around in, like he wasn't happy with 'em gettin' messed up in the snow. I remember he kept smokin', lighting a new cigarette off the last, tossin' the butts into the snow.

“That was when I started thinking this was the guy that wanted the glyph, and he wanted the oldest, most beautiful glyph in the canyon. I knew the spirits brought me there for one reason: I had to protect the Drowning Man. So I said, ‘We can't get that glyph.'

“The man in the gray coat says to Mrs. Taylor—I mean, it was like Raymond and me wasn't even there—‘You told me they were up to the job.'

“Don't worry, Justin,” Mrs. Taylor said. She was bowin' and scrapin'. She looks me in the eye and starts goin' on how he's an expert on Indian artifacts and knows what artifacts are gonna sell, and me and Raymond would do like she tells us.

“I knew then that they was the ones diggin' up grave sites and stealin' Indian artifacts for years. There were all those rumors about outsiders taking our artifacts, since nobody ever seen any for sale in the local shops. All the time, it was locals stealin' 'em for this outsider named Justin.

“‘ It's really quite wonderful,' the Justin guy says. I mean, he talked like some fuckin' professor. He had on black leather gloves, and he kept rubbing 'em together, like he couldn't wait to get his hands on the Drowning Man. ‘Look at the way the artist has carved the image with such definition and precision. A true artist, a Michelangelo of the plains. The patina couldn't be more beautiful. This petroglyph is very old, fifteen hundred, two thousand years. There'll be no problem moving it. If the tribes don't pay for it, half a dozen clients will bid against each other for it.'

“‘ We'll cut it out okay,' Raymond said. All he was thinking about was getting his hands on ten thousand dollars.

“I was real nervous. If I said I didn't want no part of it, what were they gonna do to me? Let me walk down that mountain? I didn't like the way Andy Lyle was watchin', just waitin' for me to say something stupid.

“So I said, ‘You want a beautiful glyph that's real old with perfect patina? I know a better one.'

“Mrs. Taylor looked real hesitant. She started to say something, when Justin clapped his gloves and interrupted. ‘Better petroglyph than this? I'd like you to show me,' he said.

“I started climbing upslope through the snow. They were huffin' and puffin' behind me, all except for Goodman. No way was he gonna make it up the slope. ‘How much farther,' Mrs. Taylor shouted,
but I just kept goin', trying to remember where my grandfather took me to when I was a kid. The petroglyph was real beautiful, I remembered, but it wasn't the Drowning Man, and it was high enough up the mountain that it'd be awhile before anybody would see it was gone. I was hopin' the spirits wouldn't know either. I was thinkin' that maybe we could just take it, and everything would be all right.

“Mrs. Taylor kept shoutin', ‘Where is it?' and I could hear Justin grunting like he couldn't catch his breath, probably mad as hell that the snow was ruining his fancy boots and the bottom of his fancy slacks. Then Lyle gets next to me. ‘You wouldn't be leading us on a wild goose chase, would you?' he says. ‘Justin Barone is a very important man.'

“I closed my eyes, and I said to the spirits, ‘You gotta help me find the glyph, 'cause I can't find it, and they're gonna take the Drowning Man.' When I opened my eyes, I seen the glyph upslope a little farther ahead, right in front of me.

“Justin Barone said it was beautiful all right, every bit as old as the other glyph, and what he liked about it, I could tell, was that the carved image was bigger, and it was a similar motif, he said. That's what he called the image. Motif. He started clapping his hands, sayin', ‘Perfect, perfect.'

“‘ Any problem getting it down the mountain?' he wanted to know. I said no problem. We'd put it on a tarp and pull it down like a toboggan.

“Then Mr. Justin Barone said, ‘This is the glyph I want.'”

Gianelli was filling in the lines of the notepad, working fast, his pen making little scratchy sounds. “Did you see this man again?” he asked without looking up.

Travis shook his head. “Took Raymond and me about a week to cut out the glyph, and every night, Mrs. Taylor wanted to know how we were doin'. She'd say, ‘I gotta call the gallery and let Mr. Barone know.' Always wanted to make sure we didn't hurt the carving. ‘The boss wouldn't like that,' she'd say. She called him the boss.”

Travis leaned over the table. “I didn't kill Raymond,” he said. “I think he told Mrs. Taylor and Lyle that if he didn't get more money, he was goin' to the fed and blow the whole deal. He was gonna name everybody involved, including Mr. Justin Barone.”

 

“
WELL, WHAT DO
you think?” Vicky tried to match her stride to Ted Gianelli's as they crossed the parking lot. The sun hovered in a white haze over the mountains, and the day's heat was still lifting off the asphalt.

The agent stopped and turned toward her. “Justin Barone owns the Barone Fine Arts of the West Gallery in Santa Fe. We've suspected him of trafficking in illegal Indian artifacts for some time, but we've never been able to connect him to any specific thefts. There are always layers of people between him and the people he hires to steal the artifacts. All I've got now is the word of a man convicted of manslaughter. If his story is true, it's the first time I've heard of Barone venturing into the field himself. He relied on Belhan for that. Hard to believe he let his guard down.”

“I met him at Goodman's cabin in Red Cliff Canyon.”

Gianelli stared at her for a second or two. “You're certain?”

“Goodman was the main local connection,” Vicky said. “He sells his paintings in Barone's gallery.”

And then she had it. “Travis and I could both identify Barone. Travis could connect him to the theft of the petroglyph seven years ago. I could connect him to Goodman and the local gang. It made us dangerous, Ted. Raymond was dangerous, and Barone ordered him killed. He ordered Behan killed before the police could question him. He wanted Travis dead. He wanted me dead. Everyone who was dangerous had to be killed.”

“We have him, Vicky,” Gianelli said. “We finally have that bastard.”

FATHER JOHN PULLED
up in the Toyota pickup behind the line of vehicles parked on what passed for a road across the high mountain valley. He got out and started across the meadow toward the little crowd assembled near the only tree visible: a gnarled, stunted pine that looked more dead than alive. Vicky stood next to Gianelli. The Indian next to Amos Walking Bear had to be Travis, thinner, older looking, shoulders sloped in resignation. There were several uniformed deputies and two men working shovels in the ground and tossing dirt onto the pile growing under the tree. The sun stood overhead in a blue sky scrubbed clean of clouds, as placid and clear as the pond that glistened across the valley. An almost imperceptible breeze rustled the stalks of grass. Rising over the valley were the jagged peaks of the Wind River Range. Except for the clunking and scraping sounds of the shovels, the valley was suffused in quiet, like the quiet of outer space.

Vicky broke from the crowd and came toward him, one hand holding her hair back in the breeze. “Glad you could make it,” she said, falling in beside him.

“Thanks for letting me know.”

“I figured you'd want to see another petroglyph recovered.”

That was true, Father John thought. He wanted to see both petroglyphs back where they belonged. Not in Red Cliff Canyon—that was impossible. They could never be returned to the place where they had stood for two thousand years. But they would both stand in front of the tribal offices in Fort Washakie, fixed in cement, safe. At least, that was the news on the moccasin telegraph, and Vicky had confirmed it when she'd called yesterday.

“Goodman's started talking,” Vicky said now. She stopped walking, and he turned toward her. “He's scared, John. He knows he's in way over his head. He's been passing small artifacts to black-market dealers in Santa Fe and Scottsdale for years. Stealing the petroglyphs was the next step. Then, it was murder. The sheriff's deputies found an eight-inch knife in Goodman's studio. They think the lab will confirm that it was used to kill Behan. He's already been charged with homicide for Father Elsner's death.”

She shook her head, and he realized that there were images imprinted in her mind, just as there were in his, that she would like to shake away. “According to Deaver, Goodman's telling everything he knows about Barone's operations in five or six states. He's hoping that by cooperating, the court might spare him from the death penalty.”

“It's over,” Father John said, and in that instant, someone standing at the tree let out a cry of joy. The little crowd pressed together, heads bent. Amos Walking Bear folded himself onto both knees and peered into the wide depression in the ground.

“They found the petroglyph.” Vicky broke into a run.

Father John ran after her, careful not to pass her: she should see it first.

Vicky reached the group and dropped beside the elder. No one else moved. They might have been in a trance, Father John thought, everyone staring down. Amos pulled a handkerchief from the back pocket of his trousers, leaned over, and began brushing at the thin layer of dirt, a slow, reverent motion. Travis lifted his chin and looked away, across the meadow at the traces of snow lining the high peaks.

“Seven years,” Gianelli said when Father John stepped next to him. “And it's still beautiful.”

Father John stared at the carved image emerging beneath the swipes of the white handkerchief. It might have been a duplicate of the Drowning Man, the boxy, human figure with a flattened head, truncated arms and legs, deeply incised in the pinkish-gray rock. The rounded eyes stared up at the sky with a look of surprise. With each pass of the white handkerchief, the image became clearer and sharper. The bronze-toned patina glistened in the sun.

It was then that Father John noticed the moisture leaking from the corners of the elder's eyes.

The two officers laid down their shovels, picked up crowbars, and began gently edging the petroglyph onto its side. One of the deputies withdrew two thick leather straps from a green duffel bag slung against the tree trunk. Father John knelt down and set both hands on top of the cool rock to steady it as the other men, working with crowbars, slipped a strap around first one end, then the other.

When the straps were tight, they began hauling the glyph out of the ground. Father John held on to the edge of the stone, trying to keep it steady as it rose into the daylight. And then the petroglyph was free.

The officers pulled it onto a tarp that was spread on the ground. Then they pulled the tarp across the grass and up a metal ramp into the back of a white pickup with
BIA Police
stamped in blue and yellow on the side. They slammed the tailgate, got into the cab, and headed down the road, trailing a brown cloud of dust.

Other officers were leading Travis Birdsong toward a Fremont County Sheriff's vehicle, a gray SUV. Amos Walking Bear started after them, then turned to Father John and Vicky.

“Ho'hou'!”
he said, lifting a weathered brown hand in a half salute. “My grandson's gonna be free. He shouldn't've gotten mixed up in this.” He nodded toward the tree that had sheltered the hiding place. “He was wrong, but he never killed anybody. Fed says he's gonna have to go to federal court. Probably get probation and time served for taking the glyph. Might have to pay a fine. But he's gonna come back, live a good life. That's what he wants. Live back with the people, like the petroglyphs.”

Father John and Vicky walked the old man over to the gray SUV where a deputy held open the rear door. Another deputy was inside, bent over the wheel, jiggling the ignition. The engine coughed into life, sending a thin black stream of exhaust out of the tailpipe. The old man slid into the back seat next to Travis. After shutting the door, the officer got into the front and pulled the door shut as the vehicle swung back onto the road following the pickup that had shrunk into a white square far down the mountain. Gianelli's SUV pulled out behind.

Vicky tilted her head back and stared at the sky a long moment, working her fingers into the muscles of her shoulders. “I started thinking…” She paused, looking up at Father John out of the corners of her eyes. They were the only ones left in the high meadow, the breeze riffling her hair. “In the middle of the night, I started thinking about you and the mission and wondering whether your boss, the provincial, will retaliate.”

Father John hesitated. It was true that he'd refused to allow Lloyd Elsner to remain at St. Francis, and now the man was dead. When he'd called the provincial, Rutherford's voice had been as hard as stone: “I'll get back to you.”

Father John had hung up with a sense that, in the corner office of a gray-stone building on a traffic-snarled street in Milwaukee, Bill Rutherford and the other Jesuits who administered the province would reach the same conclusion: If Father John O'Malley had been taking care of his job as the pastor of St. Francis Mission instead of involving himself with stolen petroglyphs and homicides, an old priest might still be alive, living out his days in seclusion somewhere. And that Rutherford would…

“Transfer you somewhere else.” Vicky's voice cut through his thoughts.

He looked away. He'd tried to ignore the possibility, but it was like a chisel scraping at the edge of his consciousness. He couldn't get away from the rhythmic, grating noise of the words:
somewhere else, somewhere else.

“Tell me, John. Did he put you on notice?”

Father John shook his head. It wasn't like that. Nothing definite, just a lingering sense that time was running out. He said, “I'm always on notice, Vicky,” trying to make light of it, smiling at her.

“The provincial's wrong if he thinks you could have prevented Father Elsner's death,” Vicky said. “There wasn't anything you could have done to save him, and that's the truth.”

The truth. Ah, that was hard to grasp, hard to wrap up in a tidy package. There were always pieces that kept flying away like the motes of dust in a sunbeam.

“I can't shake the image of the old man coming toward me,” Vicky said. “Last night, I kept seeing his eyes, like dark slits, pencil marks, and the expression on his face! It was more than just determination. It was fierce resignation. God.” She shook her head, as if the image might fly away. “I'd thought that he pushed me down to save my life. I've been feeling so guilty. I was the one who was supposed to die, not that old man. But he wasn't even looking at me. He was looking at the truck and walking straight toward it, half running toward it, doing a little hip-hop. He was going toward the gun, John, and I was in his way, so he pushed me down. He wanted to die.”

Father John kept his eyes on hers a moment. He'd been unable to shake his own images of the white-haired, stooped old man, and the sound of despair ringing through his voice: “There's no place for me, is there? I shall always be hounded.”

Father John placed his hands on Vicky's shoulders. He could feel her trembling. “What matters is, he pushed you down, Vicky, and you're alive. You'll go on. Lloyd Elsner is in the hands of God.”

“But what about…”

Father John held up one hand. “And so are we,” he said.