The Ghost Walker (31 page)

Sheldon turned toward Father John. “Well, Father O’Malley,” he said. “I wondered how long it would take you to find our lab. The girl told you, right?” The lawyer shrugged. “That’s unfortunate. And everything could have been so simple. You could be looking at a nice vacation on a white sandy beach in Antigua if you hadn’t insisted upon meddling. I regret very much that matters have reached this stage.”

“Here they come,” Ty shouted from outside.

“Listen, Sheldon, Susan doesn’t know what you’re up to. Her mother is taking her to Denver this afternoon so
the girl can enter treatment. None of this is any concern of theirs. Do something decent, and tell Gary to take them back to the mission.”

“Decent?” The lawyer’s eyebrows shot up in mock surprise. “I’ll leave that to you, Father O’Malley. It’s somewhat late for me,” he said.

Father John heard the rustle of footsteps and turned around just as Vicky and Susan stepped through the opened door, Gary behind them. The girl’s eyes had a dazed look behind her glasses, as if she were having trouble making sense of things, but Vicky’s eyes flashed with rage. Then he realized Gary had a pistol jammed into her back. “Here they are, Mr. Sheldon,” he said. “Just like you ordered. Anything you want, you can count on me.”

“Shut up,” Sheldon said. Gary’s head snapped backward, as if he’d been struck. The professor flinched, one hand grabbing the edge of the table. “If it hadn’t been for your stupidity,” the lawyer went on, his eyes riveted on Gary, “we wouldn’t have this problem. With hundreds of miles around here, you dump Dolby’s body where any fool can find it, then you blow away a girl in her apartment, and shoot two people in a motel, for God’s sake. Now we’ve got the FBI and the police swarming everywhere.”

“Sheldon?” Vicky turned toward Father John, and he saw all the pieces come together in her eyes. She had grasped the whole picture. He shot her a warning look:
Don’t say anything. Don’t let them know what you know.
She stepped closer to Susan, as if to protect her, and Gary followed, the gun still in Vicky’s back.

The professor inched forward, one hand outstretched. “Is that a gun? My God, another gun? Get out, you fool, you stupid bloody fool.”

The lawyer ignored him and advanced on Gary, driving a fist into his arm. “You now have the chance to redeem yourself.” He glanced around at Father John. “You like that, Father? Redemption? That’s what life’s all about, right?” Turning his attention back to Gary, he said, “You have created this problem, and you are going to take care of it. All three of these people will disappear out there in all that space. And nobody’s going to stumble on the bodies. Not ever. Do you understand?”

Suddenly the professor bolted toward the doorway. He was nearly outside when Gary yanked him back with one hand, sending him sprawling onto the carpet, his chubby legs peddling the air. His glasses flew under the table. Slowly he twisted his bulky body around, crawled over and picked up the glasses, then got to his feet. He extracted the white handkerchief again and mopped his forehead. “I don’t want to know what you’re going to do,” he said, looking from Sheldon to Gary, as if expecting to be thrown again on the carpet.

Susan started to cry, and Vicky slipped an arm around her shoulders. Father John stepped between them and the lawyer. “Let them go,” he said.

“Now why would I do that?” There was amusement in Sheldon’s eyes.

“I’ll speak to the elders and the business council on behalf of the recreation center. The Arapahos will think that the Jesuits—that I—have abandoned them, and it will make it easier for them to accept your proposal. The Z Group should appreciate that, after all the problems you’ve had.” Father John saw in the lawyer’s expression he’d hit the bull’s-eye.

Sheldon stared at him a moment. “I’d be a fool to accept your conditions. There won’t be any opposition to closing St. Francis Mission after the pastor disappears,
along with his lady friend and her daughter. Run off together. Oh, my, the scandal.” The lawyer straightened his shoulders and nodded to Gary. “Take them outside. Walk them over to that gorge where you brought Dolby’s body.”

“Listen to me, Sheldon,” Father John said. “The police know about the lab. They’re on their way here now.” He was stalling; the chances of Banner showing up were becoming more and more remote.

The lawyer let out a loud guffaw. “If that were the case, Father O’Malley, you wouldn’t have come here.”

“Let’s go,” Gary said, stepping behind Father John and pushing the pistol hard against his back. He followed the two women through the doorway.

“Not Susan.” Ty’s voice came like a blast of cold air. He moved into the doorway, blocking Gary. “Mr. Sheldon, you promised me nothin’ would happen to Susan if we brought you to the reservation. You said she wouldn’t never know what we was doin’.”

“Get out of the way, Ty.” Sheldon’s voice came from inside.

“I told ya, not Susan,” Ty shouted. Father John glanced around just as the young man raised the shotgun and leveled it through the doorway. Gary was coming toward him, arms extended, pistol aimed.

“Run,” Father John shouted, stepping between the women, grabbing them around the waist and propelling them toward the trees. The frantic, hysterical voice of the professor pierced the air, like the wail of a wild animal. “
Don’t shoot!
”

Father John flung the women in front and pushed them down, throwing himself on top, cradling Vicky’s head under his right arm. There was a sharp, sporadic popping noise and then the roar of explosion, of wood and glass shattering, of metal shredding. He felt the ground tremble,
the blast of hot air rush over him, and something as hard as a baseball thud against his arm. The noise reverberated through the air, as if they were inside a barrel. Then there was the sound of fire and the putrid, acrid smell of smoke. Someone was screaming—a woman. The sound was muffled in the snow, and from somewhere, floating as if in a dream, came the sound of sirens.

He struggled to get to his feet. It was as if they’d been welded together, he and Vicky and Susan. Chunks of wood and stainless steel and glass, pieces of plastic bottles, lay strewn in the snow around them. A thick beam lay a few inches from where his arm had sheltered Vicky’s head. Then he saw the red streak, like a ribbon in Vicky’s hair.

“Oh, God, no!” he heard himself shouting. He laid the palm of his left hand flat against her neck. He could feel her pulse, or was he imagining it? “Vicky, Vicky,” he said.

She began moving beneath his hand. Slowly she turned her head and stared at him, shock and fear in her eyes. “I think I’m okay,” she said, her voice hoarse as she tried to sit up. He placed his left arm around her waist and pulled her away from Susan, who was also starting to move. She was crying softly.

The sirens seemed louder as he helped them both to their feet, aware he could only use one arm, aware of the pain spreading like acid up his right arm, across his shoulder and chest. The sleeve of his parka was soaking up blood. Susan was weaving, and Vicky kept one arm around the girl’s waist. He kept his good arm around Vicky’s as they started for the road.

The barn lay flattened, as if it had been pulled into a crater with wooden planks strewn around the edge. Flames leapt from the center, expelling a cloud of blue-black smoke. Suddenly sirens drifted off into the air, and two police cars and a dark 4×4 jerked to a stop in
the middle of the road. Banner slammed out of the lead car and ran toward them. There was the dark blur of other policemen, of a man in a topcoat running behind him, and then someone was guiding him into the front seat of a police car. He didn’t resist. He knew he was losing a lot of blood.

*    *    *

He sat sideways with the door flung open, his boots planted in the snow. One of the policemen had attached a kind of splint to his arm and wrapped it with tape to keep it from moving. He couldn’t move it anyway, but the gauze stuffed around the splint seemed to stanch the bleeding. He could see Vicky and Susan over by the body sprawled in the snow—Ty’s body. Susan knelt beside it, and Vicky stood over her, a hand on the girl’s shoulder.

Banner and the man in the topcoat leaned over the door. Father John recognized Mike Osgood, the FBI agent he’d met in Banner’s office last Monday. It seemed like a year ago. The agent started firing questions: How many in the lab? How’d you and the women get out? What the hell happened?

Father John fielded them one at a time. Three in the lab, one outside. He listed the names, and both Banner and the agent nodded their heads, as if they had already figured that much. He wasn’t sure why he and Vicky and Susan were still alive. They wouldn’t be, if Ty hadn’t stepped into the doorway, between them and Gary. What happened? A falling out of crooks. Glancing from the agent to the police chief, he asked, “How did you get the warrant?”

“Warrant?” Banner stepped back and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his parka. “Turns out we didn’t need one. Soon’s we got the FBI report on the names you gave us, we headed up here. There was nothing on Nick Sheldon, other than he got himself disbarred in
California a couple times. Nothing outstanding on Gary Rollins and Ty Jones, even though they got records from here to Lander. But Morrissey Porterfield . . .” The chief shook his head.

“A true genius,” Osgood said. “One of the few chemists capable of producing fentanyl in a lab like this. We’ve been looking all over the country for him, ever since the L.A. agents raided a lab out in the San Bernardino valley. He was slippery. He managed to crawl through a window as the agents came through the front and back doors.”

“And the Z Group?”

A sadness came into the agent’s eyes. “We have an idea of who it might be. Unfortunately we can’t confirm it. All our sources are dead.”

Banner leaned over the door again. “One thing you don’t have to worry about. The Z Group won’t be closing down the mission.”

Grabbing the door handle, Father John began leveraging himself to his feet. “You better stay put,” the chief said as Father John walked past him and the agent and started for the body in the snow. He took a deep breath to steady himself. His legs felt a little wobbly. The acrid smell was still in the air, flames still lapped at the rubble of the barn, and in the distance the sound of another siren was coming up the mountain.

He knelt down beside Susan, aware of the girl’s soft sobbing. Taking her hand in his, he said, “I’m sorry.”

“I really loved him,” she said.

“I think he loved you very much,” Father John said. There was no greater love—the young man had given his life. He made the sign of the cross on Ty’s forehead. Then he said the ancient prayers out loud: “Protect him,
Dear Lord Jesus; raise him up; show him Your mercy which is all encompassing, which you offer to us all.”

He got to his feet, and Vicky walked beside him toward the road. The ambulance skirted around the police cars, stopping not far from them. The moment the siren cut off, there was only the soft crackling noise of the flames, the faint shushing of the wind.

36

H
oward Bushy was a natural, but so was Scott Nathan. Howard snatched the basketball and sprinted downcourt for a dunk, with Scott right behind, barely missing the block. Father John jumped up from the bench along the cement wall. Pain traveled along his arm, into his hand, to the tips of his fingers. He had to remember to move more slowly, with patience. It wasn’t easy. The cast ran from his elbow to his wrist, a dead weight. His arm itched, and he wanted to rip off the cast and fling it into the winds. He forced himself to concentrate on the game.

Patrick had divided the kids into the Indians and the Warriors. They kept coming, always running, playing quick transition games. The Warriors had already run up a ten-point lead, but the Indians would never admit defeat. Howard made a three-pointer, and Scott took the inbound pass and headed downcourt looking for an opening, dribbling, one arm extended. The Indians moved in for an attempted steal.

“Where’s the defense?” Father John yelled, jumping forward. He realized he had stepped onto the court.

The whistle screeched across the gym. The boys held their places, eyes on the coach, who came down the
sidelines. “Father, do you mind?” Patrick said. “We’re working out some tactical plays here.”