The Spirit Woman (23 page)

The screeching noise came again, like the cry of an animal out of the darkness. Vicky pushed back the quilt and waved one hand at the nightstand table. Something hard thudded on the floor. She forced her eyes open. The screeching had stopped. A band of sunshine lay across the tangled quilt and ran up the side of the far wall, illuminating the familiar pink flowers in the wallpaper. She felt herself relaxing again, moving back into sleep, a sense of warmth enveloping her. No one knew she was at Aunt Rose's.

She'd packed a nightgown, a little makeup, a shirt and blue jeans and driven across the reservation in the middle of the night. Fled back to the reservation, just as she'd done in the past when the world was too frightening, too overpowering. Once she'd fled the reservation for the same reasons, but even then she'd come back. After ten years in Denver, she'd come back. Ben would start thinking about that. He'd be knocking at Aunt Rose's door sooner or later, begging, pleading. He was sorry; he loved her. She knew it all by heart.

Just as she'd scrunched up the pillow and burrowed into it, there was a soft rapping on the door. It creaked open. “Your secretary called.” Aunt Rose's voice was low and comforting. “Third time this morning. Seems real worried. I finally told her you were here, just so she'll quit worrying. Told her you'd call back.”

Vicky was fully awake now. As she pushed herself upright against the headboard, she caught the frozen shock in the old woman's expression. Instinctively her hand flew to the bruises on her shoulder, but it was too late. Aunt Rose was across the small room, prying her fingers free, eyes fastened on the purplish-blue marks, the angry imprints in her flesh.

“Ben did this to you.” The rage in her aunt's voice surprised her. It was the same rage she'd heard in John O'Malley's, and in that moment she knew: they both loved her.

“We had an argument,” she said.

Aunt Rose plopped down beside her, sending waves of motion through the mattress, and Vicky felt her face in the old woman's hands, the gentle fingers probing the skin of her cheeks, chin, neck. One arm was lifted up, turned, scrutinized, then the other, as if she were an accident victim and Aunt Rose the emergency-room doctor.

“It's okay,” she said, and winced at her own words. How many women had sat across her desk, fingering the bruises running along their cheeks, dabbing at the swollen, blackened eyes, and said, “It's okay. He don't mean to hurt me. He loves me”? And she had said it was never okay.

“He didn't hit me, Aunt,” she hurried on. “He grabbed me, that's all.” An assault, she knew. John O'Malley was right. It didn't matter, because she could never report it, and that was something John O'Malley would never understand.

“I'll call the office,” she said, slipping out of bed, away from the old woman's gaze. She shrugged on the wool robe, worn soft over the years, that Aunt Rose had wordlessly laid over the foot of the bed Saturday night. She'd probably known then. She hadn't said anything yesterday, but Vicky had felt the knowing eyes on her at breakfast and later when she'd sat wrapped in a quilt on the sofa, unable to get warm, staring out the window at the blue-gray bulge of mountains and the ragged scar of Sacajawea Ridge, wondering: How many knew about your hidden life? Captain Clark, surely, his knowing eyes following you through the days.
The captain had intervened on one occasion; he thought Toussaint might kill her.

Now Vicky padded down the short hallway into the kitchen. The cold linoleum floor against her feet brought a flood of pleasant memories from childhood. Aunt Rose was her mother's sister, which meant, in the Arapaho Way, she was also her mother. Aunt Rose's home was the same as her own. She was safe here; she belonged. She picked up the phone and tapped out the familiar number.

“Vicky Holden's office.” Laola's voice slammed the memories into a far corner of her mind. She heard herself asking about the day's schedule, giving instructions. Cancel this, cancel that. She wasn't ready to face the world yet; she didn't know how she would make her way. Wes Nelson had called again from Denver. He wanted her answer.

“I've been thinking,” the secretary went on. “If you go to that Denver firm”—a pause—“maybe I could go with you?” Vicky felt the muscles in her stomach clench at the idea of the young Arapaho woman adrift in the city.

She said, “We'll talk about it later.”

There was a moment of disappointed silence before Laola said, “Ben's been calling. Says he's worried about you. Says to tell you—”

“I know what he said.”

“Father John, too.”

“What?”

“Called a couple times. Wants you to call him right away.”

Vicky thanked her and hung up. She'd been certain that John O'Malley would never call again.

She lifted a mug out of the cabinet above the phone and poured herself some of the coffee Aunt Rose had probably brewed a couple hours ago. The pungent odor had wafted into her dream, she realized now. She was seated on the cold, hard ground, watching the men dance around the campfire, booted legs rising and falling against the flickering flame, and someone—a dark, bearded man—handed her a hot tin mug. She held the mug in the flaps of the blanket wrapped about her shoulders to keep from burning her hands and dipped her face toward the steam, her heart beating in rhythm to the pounding boots: love, fear, love, fear.

“You stay as long as you want,” Aunt Rose said.

Vicky whirled about. She hadn't heard the old woman enter the kitchen, but she'd already set a box of cereal and a carton of milk next to the bowl on the table. Vicky sat down and sipped at the hot coffee, still trying to separate herself from the dream. “I should get back to the office,” she said.

“Let it wait.” Aunt Rose sat at the end of the table; her hand, soft as rose petals, reached out and covered hers. “You take all the time you need to decide about Ben.”

Vicky met the other woman's eyes. Aunt Rose had always loved Ben. Everybody loved Ben, but they didn't know the Ben she knew. She said, “It can't work between us anymore.”

“I thought maybe he was changed,” Aunt Rose said.

“We were both wrong, Aunt.”

She watched the old woman push herself to her feet, pour a cup of coffee, and settle back into the chair. The barrage of well-meaning, prying questions was about to begin. In an effort to head them off, she said, “I've been worried about a friend who's missing in Lander.”

“That history lady going around the res asking a lot of questions about Sacajawea.” Aunt Rose gave a nod of understanding. “I seen the newspaper. Sounds like she had some kind of row with her boyfriend, just like . . .” She left the thought unspoken.

“There's another possibility,” Vicky said hurriedly. “Laura could've run into the man who killed another professor twenty years ago.”

“You talkin' about the skeleton Father John found by the river?”

Vicky nodded. “They were both doing research on Sacajawea. Laura came here to finish the biography the other professor had started. She thinks Sacajawea's memoirs are here somewhere, and a man named Toussaint knows where they are.”

“She go see Anna Scott?”

“Who?” Vicky couldn't place the name.

“Old Shoshone lady used to collect all sorts of stories from the older generation before the Shoshones got around to starting the cultural center. Probably told most the stuff to the people at the center, but she might've kept some of it here.” She made a little fist and tapped the side of her head.

“Where does Anna Scott live?”

“Up in Casper with her daughter. Got real sick twelve, thirteen years ago, so her daughter come and got her. I hear she's still going on. Too tough to die, that old woman.”

Vicky got to her feet. On the counter near the phone she found a pencil and a stack of notecards. “What's the daughter's name?” she asked.

Aunt Rose shifted in her chair and threw her head back, as if she might pull the name from the ceiling. “Let's see. Something like Earlene, Eileen, Emmaline. That's it, Emmaline Scott. Married a white man in Casper with a name that sounded like a girl's.” She dropped her head and snapped her fingers. “Emmaline Kay, that's her name.”

Vicky wrote the name on a notecard. She doubted that Laura had gone to Casper; there hadn't been time. But if the woman had been collecting bits of Shoshone history, surely Charlotte Allen would have talked to her. And yet—Anna Scott's name wasn't in the journal. Still, Anna Scott could know Toussaint. And she might know about the memoirs.

The phone started screeching again. Vicky picked up the receiver and handed it across the counter. “How's it goin'?” Aunt Rose said after a moment. Her tone was light, as if everything here was fine. Why wouldn't it be the same at the caller's house?

“You don't say.” A darker note. “When d'ya hear about that?”

Suddenly the woman pressed the receiver into her stomach and said, “Moccasin telegraph's got some news, Vicky. Police found a body.”

Vicky gripped the hard edge of the counter. “Where, Aunt? Where did they find it?”

“Buried in some trees out by the road just past Dinwoody Lakes,” she said. “Couple miles up Sacajawea Ridge.”

Vicky said, “I've got to call the police.”

A moment passed as Aunt Rose concluded the call, then handed her the receiver. She tapped out Eberhart's number. An unfamiliar voice sounded at the other end. Sorry, the detective wasn't in. Did she want to leave a message?

Vicky gave her name and told the operator that she was a lawyer and a friend of the missing Laura Simmons. She'd just heard that a woman's body had been found on the res.

There was a brief pause, then: “Eberhart's at the site.”

F
ather John spotted the white police cars in the distance as he came around a sharp curve. He let up on the accelerator, keeping his eye on the cars and the dark uniforms moving among the ponderosas on the slope below the road. As he swung downhill onto the path the pickup bed reared off the ground, then settled back, tires kicking up a cloud of dust and snow. The police cars were nudged at the edge of the trees. Beside them was the coroner's wagon.

He pulled in behind the last car, jumped out, and started running down the snow-scarred hill toward the figures in the trees. And then he saw it, almost completely hidden, like the remnants of an old tank—the blue SAAB with ponderosa branches piled over the roof and hood and built up along the sides. The wind burst through the trees, obscuring the sounds of voices.

Gianelli climbed toward him, digging his heels into the slippery ground. “You know Laura Simmons if you see her?” he called.

He said he would, and the agent swung around and started down the slope alongside him. “State lab people are just about to bag the body,” he said.

Two men in bulky down jackets and slacks—the lab people, he guessed—were stooping over something white crumbled on the ground, like a mound of snow. A stretcher lay nearby. Suddenly one of the men straightened up and began unfolding a large, gray plastic bag. Detective Eberhart stood to one side with Chief Banner and two other Wind River police officers—a contingent of local law officers, Father John thought. He said, “What happened to her?”

“Pretty badly beaten,” Gianelli said. “We won't know if the injuries caused the death until we get the autopsy results. You want my opinion, they caused it all right.” He jammed both hands into his pockets and spurted ahead.

“Hold on,” he called to the man with the gray bag. The man looked up, surprise on the pale, pinched face. Eberhart and Banner and the other officers stepped back, forming a corridor as Father John walked closer, his gaze on the coat bunched around the thin legs, the shoeless feet and torn hose, the fine-boned hands thrown back and opened in supplication, the blond hair falling around the sides of the smashed and swollen face.

He dropped to his knees and made the sign of the cross over the lifeless body. “Dear Lord, take care of this woman. Have mercy on her soul, and forgive whatever sins she may have committed in this life, and take her to Yourself.” He stayed on his knees a moment—they might have been alone, he and the dead woman. The only sounds the wind rustling in the trees. Finally he pushed to his feet. “It's Laura Simmons,” he said to Gianelli.

The agent was shaking his head. “God, what a mess. Looks like she was beaten in the car. Front seat's covered with dried blood. Then the killer dragged the body down here and started to bury her. Either he didn't have the tools, or the ground was just too damned hard, so he piled some brush over her and made a half-assed attempt to hide the car. Left tracks all over the place. We should have some good prints. Expect we'll have enough evidence to charge Toby Becker.”

It made sense, Father John thought. His theory—his and Vicky's—was logical, and logic had nothing to do with something like this. What was it Banner always said? Look at the most obvious. The killer's usually standing in front of your face. Becker was the most obvious. And yet—

“Look, Ted,” he said as they walked back up the hill. “Laura could have met with Toussaint.”

“Toussaint!” The agent stopped and turned toward him. The stale odor of coffee and fatigue vaporized between them. “There's nobody with that name within a hundred miles—a thousand miles. Maybe we've got two historians working on the same biography who turn up beaten to death. But we've got a boyfriend with a history of battering Laura Simmons. Who knows? Maybe Charlotte Allen had a boyfriend, too. Maybe that's what these women had in common. If you've got something else, John, other than a vague theory you and Vicky cooked up, let me have it. I need an actual name, something definite.”