The Spirit Woman (14 page)

The next message had already started. The deep tones of a man's voice now. “Vicky, Wes Nelson. You must be busy up there in the boondocks. No luck reaching you at the office. Hope you get this message.” Vicky sank onto the chair next to the desk and took a sip of water. Her throat felt tight with fury. She forced herself to concentrate on what the voice was saying. The firm needed her expertise and sensitivity to tribal cultures. They had some complicated cases involving natural resources on reservations in New Mexico and Arizona. Probably go all the way to the Supreme Court. She could be a part of it, make a difference for her people. She was too good a lawyer to waste her time. He was waiting for her call.

“What's this?”

Vicky felt her heart pounding. She swiveled around. Ben stood in the dining alcove, framed in the darkness of the kitchen, fists bunched at his sides. He must have used the back door.

“Just business,” Vicky said, pulling herself to her feet. Her legs were shaky, her heart still kicking.

“You're thinking about going back to Denver.”

“I don't know.” Vicky forced herself to hold her place, wedged against the desk.

“You don't know? You don't know?” Ben walked over to the sofa and swept her briefcase to the floor with his fist. Then he turned toward her. “What's going on, Vicky? I thought we had a future here. I thought we were working on something.”

“The managing partner . . .” She hesitated, powerless against the heat in his eyes. She stumbled on. “There's an opening in the firm. He's offered me the chance to work on some important cases for different tribes. The cases could set precedents and help our people.”

“What's that got to do with you? You're helping our people enough.”

“I do divorces and custody battles. I sue people over unpaid bills. I write wills. I represent drunks in county court, and none of it helps Indian people. I've been offered the chance to practice the kind of law that can make a difference.”

Ben came toward her, arms outstretched, concern working into his expression now. The new Ben, the man she had gone back to, the man she had to be wary of. “You don't have to do any of it,” he said in a low voice. “We'll get married again, make it official. We'll live out at the ranch. You can say good-bye to all the hard work and worry. The kids'll come back to the res, and we'll be a family again.”

Vicky blinked at the images flashing into her mind. She hardly recognized herself—cooking for the celebrations, looking in on the elders, wondering when Ben would come home, who he was with, if he was sober.

The silence thudded between them. After a long moment Vicky heard her own voice: “There was a message for you. A woman called to tell you not to come by tonight.”

His expression dissolved from comprehension to annoyance. He sucked in a long breath. “She doesn't mean anything to me, Vicky. You know that.”

“What about the woman at the Highway Lounge who keeps asking my secretary about you?” Vicky pushed on.

“So I stop at the lounge for a beer once in a while. What's the big deal?”

“You're an alcoholic, Ben.”

“I can control it now. It's not a problem.” His eyes grew more watchful, defying her to say otherwise.

The phone started to ring, and Vicky reached for the receiver.

“Let it ring,” Ben said. “We have to settle things here.”

“It's already settled.” Vicky glanced nervously at the phone. It could be one of the kids, Aunt Rose, Grandmother Ninni, someone who needed her. “Everything broke apart thirteen years ago, Ben. We can't put it back together.”

The ringing stopped, giving way to the click of the answering machine. “Vicky, John O'Malley. I've been trying to reach you.”

She picked up the receiver. “I'm here.”

“Good.” The familiar voice gave her a sense of calm. “I've just talked to Gianelli. He has a positive ID on the skeleton. It's Charlotte Allen.”

The receiver felt heavy and inert in her hand. She was only half aware of the man watching her from across the room. “Does Laura know?”

“I doubt it.”

“I've been trying to call Laura since Wednesday,” Vicky said. “She hasn't been around.”

The line went quiet a moment. “Listen, Vicky, Theresa Redwing just called. Laura had arranged to see her yesterday. She never came.”

“I'll try her again,” Vicky said. Then: “Thank you, John.” She dropped the receiver and lifted her briefcase from the floor. Inside she found the scrap of paper with Laura's telephone number. Grabbing the receiver again, she dialed the Mountain House.

“This isn't about other women or my having a beer now and then.” Ben's voice cut through the buzz of a phone ringing on the other side of town. “This is about you and the fact you've got the hots for that priest.”

“Don't be ridiculous.” The buzzing was interminable.
Pick up, somebody.

“You think O'Malley's gonna chuck the priesthood for you.” Ben threw his head back and gave a hard shout of laughter. “Oh, I got it now. It's a real clear picture.”

Still the buzzing noise sounding into a vacuum. Vicky dropped the receiver. Stepping around him, she scooped her coat and bag from the sofa and started for the door. He grabbed her arm, the force of it jerking her partway off her feet. “You're going to meet him, aren't you?”

“I'm going over to a friend's place. She's in danger. Something could already have happened to her.”

“You're lying.”

“I have to go,” Vicky said, pulling her arm free.

T
he white Victorian house, a collection of gables and turrets, brooded over a side street on the western edge of town. Light shone through the oblong windows, illuminating the wide wooden door, the columned porch, and the dried stalks poking from the brick planters on either side of the steps. Vicky drove down the driveway along the side and stopped in the turnaround that separated the house from the garage. Laura's blue SAAB wasn't there. Above the garage was a second story with windows that mimicked those in the house. A pale light flickered over the front door.

“Laura?” Vicky called, hurrying up the outside stairs. The wind had come up, carrying the unmistakable smell of snow. An array of small sheets of paper flapped from strips of tape on the front door. Vicky saw her name on several messages: Wednesday, Thursday, today. There was another message today from John O'Malley, and two yesterday from Theresa Redwing. She rapped on the door, then tried the knob. It turned in her hand.

She stepped inside and pushed the light switch. A lamp over the table stuttered into life, flowing over a space that resembled a cheap motel room, trashed by the last occupant. Yellow legal-size sheets of paper were strewn over the table. Blankets and sheets were crumpled on the bed; the dresser drawers gaped open. A pencil of light escaped from beneath the door on the far wall.

Vicky made her way across the room, numb with apprehension. She shoved the door open. White enamel came at her—sink, toilet, tub with a pink curtain stacked at one end. Standing out in relief against the white tile floor, like rose petals scattered about, were blotches of blood. Laura was not there.

Struggling to keep her thoughts rational, Vicky walked over to the nightstand. She stopped herself from lifting the receiver. Whoever had been here may have used the phone. She started for the door, taking in the room again—the pages torn from a notebook still on the table. No sign of the brown folder, no sign of Charlotte Allen's manuscript and red leather journal.

“Everything okay up there?” A woman shouted from the foot of the stairs.

Vicky hurried down, her hands shaking on the railing. “Are you the landlady?”

“Claire Shultz. I manage the place.” The woman had short, dark hair that framed a narrow face with large, anxious eyes. A gray jacket hung around her shoulders like a cape, sleeves flapping in the wind.

“We have to call the police.”

The manager stood riveted in place, eyes darting to the top of the stairs and back. Suddenly she turned and crossed the cement paving to the house. Vicky followed her into a boxcar-shaped kitchen with an arrow of light shining over the stove. The phone was wedged on the counter between two pots of purple African violets. She dialed 911 and waited, the buzzing noise accompanying the sound of her own breathing. When the operator picked up, she gave her name and explained that a woman, a professor named Laura Simmons, was missing from the Mountain House and that her room had been ransacked. There was blood in the bathroom. Claire Shultz gasped.

Vicky hit the disconnect button and—on automatic now, holding her breath—tapped the number for St. Francis Mission. One ring, two, and then the familiar voice. “Father O'Malley.”

“Something terrible's happened to Laura.” She blurted out the words.

“Where are you?”

“At the Mountain House.”

“I'm on my way.”

She set the receiver in place and faced the manager. Struggling for the steady voice of the courtroom, she said, “Did you see anyone going to Laura's apartment?”

“This is a respectable apartment complex.” Claire Shultz was wringing her hands, a blank look of disbelief and shock in her expression. “Miss Simmons said she was a college professor.”

“Did you see anything?”

The woman's eyes fluttered, and she reached back and gripped the edge of the counter, swallowing once, twice. “I told you, this is a respectable place. Since Miss Simmons didn't say anything about being married, I didn't like her having men coming around. I don't approve of liaisons”—her tongue stumbled over the word—“between unmarried men and women. St. Paul to the Hebrews, chapter thirteen, verse four, says—”

Vicky interrupted, “What men? Did you see them?”

“Well”—Claire Shultz made a little clicking noise with her tongue—“I heard the cars comin' and goin' down the driveway. And I saw the man here last Tuesday night. Same man come around about an hour ago.”

“What did he look like?”

“Big shoulders, lots of dark, curly hair, wild like one of them old hippies you see around the coffee shops.”
He's very handsome, Vicky, with thick, curly brown hair.
My God, Vicky thought. The man Laura had just broken up with. The man who'd been calling and following her—stalking her—had followed her here. Vicky felt her heart take a jump.

There was the sound of an engine cutting off outside, then the crackle of a police radio. Blue and red lights fluttered through the window behind the manager. Vicky pushed open the door and hurried across the cement apron. A tall, blue-uniformed police officer who looked about thirty was levering himself out of a white police car, a studied expression on his pale face. The radio sputtered behind him.

“You the woman made the call?” he said, approaching her as if he had all the time in the world, as if Laura were not missing and there was no blood on the white tile floor.

Vicky gave him her name and said she was an attorney. Then she told him what she'd found, that her friend was missing. Glancing at the woman huddled near the back door, she said, “This is Claire Shultz, the manager.”

“Wait here.” The officer turned and started up the stairs, boots pounding on the wood steps.

Vicky hugged her coat around her. The wind was sharp, chilling her to the bone. Headlights trailed down the driveway as another police car pulled in behind the first. The doors swung open and two detectives lifted themselves out and walked over. Vicky recognized the tall man with the slight build, the hunched shoulders, and hollow space in his chest beneath the lapels of a tweed topcoat. Bob Eberhart. She had worked with him on numerous cases; anytime an Indian got into trouble in town, she got the call. A fair man, Eberhart. He treated Indians the same way he treated everybody else.

“What's going on, Vicky?” he said, walking over.

She began explaining: a friend from Colorado, a professor named Laura Simmons, was gone. There were signs of a struggle. She tilted her head toward the second story of the garage.

“Stick around a couple of minutes.” Eberhart threw out the request as he and his partner started up the stairs. In a few minutes he was back, a small notepad clutched in one hand, pen in the other. “You say the missing lady's a friend of yours?”

Vicky nodded. The first police officer had come down the stairs with the other detective, two broad-shouldered men flanking Eberhart, blocking out the faint light in the kitchen window. They kept their eyes fixed on her and she went on: “Laura's car isn't here, and I've been trying to reach her since Wednesday.”

“Well, I taped her messages on the door.” The manager had walked timidly forward and was standing off by herself, leaning into the conversation. “I figured she'd come back sooner or later.”

Vicky stared at the woman. What had she been thinking? The messages had accumulated for two days; why hadn't she notified someone? She'd told the woman she was Laura's friend. She could have called her.

Looking back at Eberhart, she said, “Mrs. Schultz said a man was here earlier. It could be Laura's ex-boyfriend.”

Eberhart shifted his gaze to the middle-aged woman. “You see the man?”

The manager nodded slowly. “Three nights ago he come around.”

“You saw him again tonight?”

“Yes,” she said haltingly. “A fine-looking man, I'd say.” She raised one hand. “Please understand I don't approve of single women inviting men into their apartments. This is a very respectable, Christian establishment—”