The Lost Bird (5 page)

The irony swept over Vicky like a cold wind. Elena never forgot anything that had to do with taking care
of the priests at St. Francis Mission, which she had done for more years than anyone could remember. So many priests through the years to cook and clean for, look after, mother. They had come and gone, but she had remained, taking in the next priest the Provincial sent, training him in the routine: breakfast at eight, lunch at noon, dinner at six. There was a day for everything—laundry on Mondays, cleaning on Tuesdays. Everyone on the reservation knew that Elena expected the priests to stay in step and that John O’Malley was almost never in step.

She put her arms around the housekeeper, trying to comfort herself by holding the old woman who had known him so well, had spent every day in his house, had loved him like a son.

“Oh, Vicky.” Elena pulled back and swiped at her eyes with a thick wad of tissues. “He was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die out in the road like a dog.”

“Where is he?” Vicky heard her own voice, distant and disembodied against the sounds of grandmothers coming through the door, the hushed conversations in the living room, and people shuffling through the hall to the kitchen.

Elena nodded toward the closed door on the other side of the entry. “You’ll wanna go in the study,” she said. “Chief Banner and that fed, what’s his name, Ted Gianelli, are gonna want to see you.”

Vicky gave the door a soft knock before pushing it open. As she stepped inside, the room seemed to fall away: the desk with papers and books tumbling over the surface and the Bureau of Indian Affairs police chief perched at one corner; the bookcases stuffed with books and folders; the pair of blue wingback chairs with the FBI agent sitting in one, a polished black boot
swinging into space. She shut the door and leaned back, holding on to the knob to keep from sliding to the floor, her eyes locked on the man across the room, the light from the lamp shining in his reddish-blond hair. John O’Malley.

4

F
ather John crossed the study and grabbed Vicky by the shoulders, fearing she would crumble to the floor. She was in shock. He knew the signs from too many trips to emergency rooms: face leached of color, eyes shiny with pain.

She stepped into his arms and buried her face against his chest. He was dimly aware of Gianelli and Banner on their feet beside them as he ran one hand over the silk of her hair, the curve of her head, his own breath mingling with the smell of her—the faint smell of sage.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair, struck by the inadequacy of the words. He led her over to the nearest wingback and eased her down onto the cushion.

“I’ll get some water.” Banner’s voice sounded behind them, followed by the click of the door opening, closing.

Father John perched on the armrest, one hand on Vicky’s shoulder, aware of the rapid pace of her breathing—in-out, in-out. He was stunned by her grief. He’d had no idea she was close to Father Joseph. She must have known the priest when he was here
before. She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old, a second-grader in the mission school. But her family might have adopted the young priest. It often happened. An Arapaho family taking pity on a man stationed far from his own people, inviting him to dinner and birthday parties, making him part of their family. There was so much he didn’t know about her, he thought, a lifetime of people she had loved.

The door creaked open. At the periphery of his vision, Father John saw the bulky frame of the police chief: the dark blue uniform trousers and dark blue shirt, the outstretched hand holding a glass of water. Vicky took the glass and raised it slowly to her lips. Banner stepped back toward the agent, who stood at the side of the desk, both hands stuffed into the pockets of his suit pants, red tie hanging limply down the center of his starched white shirt. The other men were like him, Father John thought, helpless at the sight of grief.

Vicky tilted her head and looked up at him with an intensity that brought the warmth into his face. She said, “I thought it was you.”

The words hit him like the sting of buckshot. He got to his feet and walked back to the window. Outside a band of light lingered over the mountains, and faint streaks of yellow and red traced the dark sky. He tried to steady himself, regain his equilibrium. The pain and grief he’d seen in her eyes were for him! He had never imagined, never intended . . . 
I have done this all wrong
, he thought. They could be friends, that was all. He knew his own weaknesses. He had never wanted to snare anyone else in them, and the knowledge that he had done so compounded his guilt. A
woman in love with him; a murdered priest. Both should have been avoided.

He forced himself to turn back to the room. Banner was half sitting on the edge of the desk; Gianelli had dropped into the other wingback chair. They were watching him—Vicky, the two men. “It should have been me,” he said.

“Don’t say that!” Vicky jumped to her feet. Water spilled from the glass over her hand. “Don’t ever say that.”

“She’s right, John.” Banner swung around the desk and sat down in the leather chair behind it. Fingers curled over the armrests. “You’re surmisin’, John,” he said. “Until we find the guy who pulled the trigger, we don’t know what happened out there.”

“Joseph was driving the Toyota pickup,” Father John said, the words an angry staccato. “Everybody on this reservation knows I drive that Toyota. The minute Joseph stepped out, he was shot.”

“Okay, okay.” Gianelli scooted his bulky frame toward the front of the wingback. From his coat pocket, he pulled out the small pad he’d been writing on earlier. Then he produced a pen. “Let’s stay with the facts,” he said, flipping through the pad. “Father Joseph took the call around three-thirty. Right?”

“We’ve been over this,” Father John said. He felt choked with impatience. The fed and the police chief had already knocked on the doors of the few houses out on Thunder Lane. No one had seen anything. They’d gone through the mission: Father Joseph’s bedroom and office, the Escort. Nothing. Gianelli had copied Joseph’s computer files, which, Father John suspected, contained scholarly papers and letters and notes on mission programs. For the past forty minutes
they had been in his study going over the same question: why would anyone want to kill a seventy-two-year-old priest?

“We’re going over it again.” Gianelli’s voice was calm. The pen ran across the pad, like a mouse skittering over the floor.

Father John turned back to the window and stared at the purple shadows creeping over the grounds as the fed summarized what they’d been talking about: the caller said his mother was dying. He asked for a priest. Father Joseph agreed to go.

“That the story, John?”

Father John waited a moment before turning back. Vicky and the men were staring at him. They were his friends, the few close friends he had. An FBI agent who hailed from Quincy, next door to Boston, who knew more about opera than he did, who had four little girls and a wife who turned out steaming platters of spaghetti and ravioli; an Arapaho police chief who’d spent his life on the reservation, savvy and compassionate, with a son on the BIA police force; and Vicky. Since the first day she’d walked into his office, almost four years ago, he’d been struggling to contain his feelings for her, praying she would never feel the same about him. Prayers that had gone unanswered.

He said: “The call came for me.”

The fed started to protest, but Father John interrupted. “Classes and meetings start in the mid-afternoon. Anybody who knows this mission knows they can find me in the office then.”

“You weren’t there today.” This from the police chief.

That was true. Father John glanced back at the window.
“You’re saying whoever made that call knows the mission routine?” Banner asked.

“I’m saying the caller thought he was talking to me.”

Gianelli held up one hand. “Wait a minute . . .”

“I told you, I heard Joseph on the phone,” Father John said. “He didn’t give his name. The caller said what he had to say and hung up. It was a brief conversation. I shouldn’t have let Joseph go.”

“You’re wrong, John.” Vicky set the glass on the desk—a hard thump in the quiet. Then she walked across the office to him. The color had returned to her face, and her eyes were flashing. “Father Joseph answered an emergency call. He was a priest. You couldn’t have stopped him.”

A part of him—the logical part—knew she was right. The afternoon scene reeled across his mind, like a black-and-white film in slow motion. The incredulous look on the old man’s face.
“Teach confirmation class?” The quick shake of the sandy-haired head. “Surely you’re not serious. I’m afraid my teaching experience is severely limited to graduate students in philosophy. What in the name of all that is good and holy would I say to a roomful of adolescents?” The Escort door opening, the old man sliding behind the wheel. “I shall return in time for dinner.”

Father John had started to walk away when a loud, thumping noise, like pieces of metal clanking together, erupted from the Escort. He’d turned back. The other priest was already out of the car. “It would appear my means of transportation does not wish to move from this spot,” he’d said, and Father John had tucked the folder and Bible under one arm and dug the Toyota key from the pocket of his blue jeans. He’d tossed the
key to Father Joseph, who reached across the hood and grabbed it out of the air.
A good catch
, Father John remembered thinking at the time. Oddly it had made him feel easier about the long drive Father Joseph had ahead of him.

He’d spent the next hour explaining the sacraments to twenty kids who probably wished they were somewhere else. He hadn’t given Father Joseph another thought. Not until after class. He was heading home, and Elena was coming toward him, hands thrust forward as if to ward off some terrible evil. A chill had run through him. “What is it?” he’d called.

“Oh, Father,” Elena blurted out when he reached her. Lifting her apron, she crumbled it in front of her mouth. It was difficult to understand what she was saying.

“Take a deep breath,” he’d instructed, setting one hand on her shoulder. “Tell me.”

And she had told him: she, kneading bread and the phone ringing. Leaving the dough on the counter and walking into the hall to pick up the phone. Chief Banner saying two patrolmen out on Thunder Lane had found Father Joseph’s body next to the Toyota. Saying the old priest had been shot.

Now, in the quiet of the study, Father John realized Gianelli had asked a question and was waiting for a reply.

“I’m sorry,” he said, switching his thoughts to the present.

“Father Joseph,” Gianelli said. “What day did he arrive?”

Father John glanced about the room. Two weeks ago Friday? Saturday? “I don’t know,” he said. “He’s been here about two weeks. Not long enough to make
an enemy who would want to kill him.” He was quiet a moment. “Father Joseph had been the pastor here in the 1960s.”

“Maybe somebody’s been harboring a grudge,” the agent said.

“For thirty-five years? Come on, Ted.” The notion seemed preposterous, beyond the bounds of logic and understanding.

“Everybody liked Father Joseph back then.” The police chief tilted back in the chair and laced his fingers over his blue uniform shirt. “I’ve got good memories of the man. I was just a loudmouthed, know-it-all teenage kid with long braids and a bad case of acne, but he always had time for the likes of me. Steered me and my buddies on the right road. I wouldn’t be sittin’ here right now, weren’t for that priest.”

Gianelli jotted something onto the pad. “Let’s say you’re right, John. Somebody intended to shoot you. Anybody real mad at you lately?”

Father John exhaled a long breath. Here it was, the question he’d been asking himself: who wanted to kill him? The drunk he’d asked to leave a meeting in Eagle Hall a couple of weeks ago? The kid he’d dressed down for bringing a joint to the teen dance last Friday? Somebody he’d counseled? He’d been striking out lately with marital counseling. Four couples had decided on divorce. Did they blame him? One of the husbands? One of the wives? He didn’t have the answer.

“Any more trouble with Sonny Red Wolf?” Banner asked.