The Spirit Woman (25 page)

The corridor was long and wide, a succession of doors that opened onto tiny rooms with white-haired occupants slumped in overstuffed chairs or propped up in white-sheeted beds. No different from the nursing homes he'd visited in Lander and Riverton, Father John thought. The same television noise, the clinking dishes in a dining room somewhere, the faint antiseptic odor. It was the people who were different, filled with different stories of the past. He would miss his visits with the old people.

Emmaline made an abrupt swing through one of the doors. “Visitors are here,” she called, a loud, cheerful voice.

Father John followed Vicky into the room with a narrow bed in the center and a window that gave out over a patch of wintery grass. A tiny woman sat primly in an upholstered chair, hands clasped in the lap of her pink dress, gray hair pinned back along the sides, the toes of her black oxfords barely touching the floor. Emmaline was already making the introductions: Vicky Holden, the lawyer I told you about; Father John, the mission priest.

The old woman gestured toward two wooden chairs wedged between the window and the bed. “Have a seat,” she said in a tone not meant to be challenged.

“Thank you for seeing us, Grandmother,” Vicky said as she took one of the chairs Father John pushed into a small circle facing the old woman. Emmaline took the other. He stood behind Vicky.

“Come see me anytime,” Anna Scott said. “I like to hear all about the reservation.” She leaned so far forward that Father John braced himself to reach over and catch her. “Who's that white woman they found murdered up on Sacajawea Ridge?”

“How'd you hear about that?” Emmaline's eyes opened wide in surprise.

“I got TV.” Anna tilted her head toward the TV set almost hidden behind the door. “Whadd'ya think I'm doing here all day, vegetating?” She waved a bony hand at Vicky. “They know who she was yet?”

“Laura Simmons,” Vicky said. “A friend of mine from Colorado. She was a history professor, Grandmother. She'd come here to research Sacajawea.”

The old woman settled back into the cushions. “You don't say. Just like that other professor come from Colorado twenty years ago and got herself murdered. Everybody thought she wandered off in the mountains like Sacajawea and got lost. 'Course Sacajawea never got herself lost.”

Her daughter laid a hand on the woman's shoulder. “Now, Mom, don't get yourself excited.” She glanced up at Father John. “Mom's blood pressure isn't good, you know.”

“You're the priest that found her, aren't you, Father?” The old woman shook free of her daughter's hand.

That was right, he told her. Did she know Charlotte Allen?

“Of course I knew Charlotte.” The woman shifted her gaze around the room, remembering. “Short white woman, not very big around, with brown hair. Pretty good-looking, for a white woman, and very smart, I'd say. Drove out to the ranch two, three times to ask me about Sacajawea. Said she already heard the stories I told her. She was looking for something written down that was gonna prove Sacajawea was really buried here.”

Anna Scott nodded slowly, the memories flooding over her now. “I knew what she was after. Used to be a notebook with Sacajawea's stories that the agent's wife wrote down. Only one that ever wrote 'em down. All the Indians kept the stories in their heads.” She lifted an index finger and traced out a circle in the gray hair. “Some historians come around a long time after and wrote down what the Indians said, but Charlotte said them stories wasn't good enough. They was written down too late, wasn't fresh enough. She wanted the notebook, all right. Only problem was, the agent's wife had put it in the agency, and it burned down. Would've been better if she'd just kept it under her mattress. I remember sayin', ‘Charlotte, you think that notebook's just been waiting for you? If it was around, I would've written about it myself.' ”

“A man convinced her the memoirs survived,” Vicky said.

“Oh, yeah.” The old woman shrugged. “Charlotte believed somebody was gonna get her the evidence. Imagine, a smart woman falling for a line like that. Well”—another shrug—“I figured she wanted to believe'cause she wanted that evidence so bad. It must've left a sour taste in her mouth. She kept on thinking it was gonna come to her.”

“Grandmother,” Vicky said, a persistent tone, “do you know who the man was?”

Anna shook her head. Vicky glanced up at Father John. Disappointment mapped her face.

“I remember asking two, three times,” Anna Scott went on. “She always told me he didn't want anybody to know he had the evidence. I said, ‘Charlotte, why's he gonna give
you
this precious thing?' And she said”—the head still shaking—“ ‘Anna,' she said, ‘you wouldn't understand.' ”

“She was in love with him,” Vicky said.

Anna smiled. “She thought I didn't understand. She thought I was never in love with a man, wanting to believe all his promises. How'd she think I got myself Emmaline here?” She reached across the armrest and patted her daughter's hand.

“Thank you, Grandmother,” Vicky said as she got to her feet. There was a mixture of discouragement and fatigue in the way she moved.

Father John reached over and took the old woman's hand. It was light as a leaf. “You've both been very kind,” he said, nodding toward Emmaline.

“You don't have to go.” Anna Scott scooted forward in the chair. “I like to talk to people.”

He wanted to tell her he'd be back, but that wasn't true. Tomorrow he would be gone. “I'm sorry,” he said, part of his mind already at the mission. He'd left Kevin alone again, and for what? A wild-goose chase to prove an unprovable theory. The man in Charlotte Allen's journal was a phantom.

Just as he started for the door, where Vicky stood waiting, Anna Scott said, “I got my suspicions.”

He turned back. Vicky had moved beside him. “About the man?” she asked.

“Now, Mom,” Emmaline said. “You shouldn't be spreading gossip.”

The old woman jerked her head toward her daughter. “I like gossip. You hear lots of things, see things, too, if you just keep your eyes and ears open, and you know what? Most the time they're true. I seen something in Charlotte when she got to talking about the people she met on the res. Something come into her eyes, and her voice went kind of soft whenever she talked about the student that was doin' research for his dissertation, and I remember thinking, Yeah, she's got herself in a tizzy about him, no matter he's a lot younger'n her. He's the one told her he's gonna get her the precious evidence. Oh, and he was handsome all right, that Shoshone, all muscles and a smile that, I tell ya, it'd make your heart leap around.”

“Robert Crow Wolf.” Vicky said the name so quietly, Father John wondered if he'd heard correctly.

“How'd you know?” The woman flinched at the stolen punch line.

“I didn't,” Vicky said. “Until this moment.”

“D
o you know Crow Wolf?” Father John heard the sound of his own voice over the soft music—Verdi now,
La Traviata.
He took his eyes from the highway a half second and looked over at Vicky. She'd been so quiet since they'd left Casper, he wondered if she'd fallen asleep.

“I've met him several times. A handsome and charming man, the kind women always like, at first. Twenty years ago he was probably even more attractive. A young graduate student, making himself an expert on the early days of the reservation. Yes,” she went on in a musing tone, “I can understand what Charlotte saw in him for a while.”

“What are you saying?” Dried stalks poked out of the snow in the barrow ditch, marking the edge of the asphalt. Snow fluttered in the headlights.

Vicky exhaled a long, quiet breath. “Charlotte probably came to her senses. Sometimes it takes a while to see that a handsome, brilliant, charming man may not be all he seems. She probably took a closer look and saw someone ten years younger and still in graduate school. After all, she was a professor. And . . .” She hesitated. “She was white; he was Indian. It might have been a passionate love affair, John, but Charlotte didn't see ‘future' written on it. A good reason to keep the affair secret.”

The logic was locked into place now, Father John thought, the patterns a seamless whole. “Crow Wolf must've hit upon the idea of the memoirs when Charlotte tried to break things off. She never mentioned Toussaint in the journal until he brought up Sacajawea's memoirs. And then she wrote it down.” He smiled at the consistency of it; of course, a historian would keep a record of something as important as the memoirs, even if she'd kept the name of the source in her own code.

“He could have loved her,” Vicky said.

The idea surprised him, shaded the logical propositions ever so slightly. He'd assumed Crow Wolf was only using the woman, an older, established scholar in a position to further his own career. An attractive woman willing to get involved with him. He hadn't thought Crow Wolf might have fallen in love with her.

“The man never would have taken such a gamble if he hadn't been desperate to hold on to her,” Vicky was saying. “He made up a story about the memoirs surviving the agency fire, hoping that if he held on to Charlotte long enough, she'd decide to stay with him. He must've copied a lot of information into an old notebook and told her it was the memoirs.”

She sighed, an expulsion of air, and went on: “He's not the first man to promise the moon to keep a woman from leaving. Who knows what lies Sacajawea's husband fed her to get her to stay with him? You've got to hand it to men like that. They can be very persuasive.”

That was true, Father John thought. Crow Wolf had even persuaded Charlotte that he intended to give her the memoirs, instead of publishing them himself.

“Oh, I can imagine what happened,” Vicky continued. He winced at the realization that she was talking about herself now. “Oh, how he loved her. No one would ever love her the way he did. They were meant to be together, two halves of a half-consumed peach. She was his woman. What more could she ask? And all the time the tension was building because he knew she was leaving. Finally he exploded. And he got away with it, John, for twenty years. He would have gotten away with it forever if he hadn't panicked when Laura showed up with the journal. He had no idea what Charlotte might have written.”

Father John was quiet a moment. Riverton lay ahead, like a miniature Christmas village blinking in the snow. “When I asked Theresa if she'd talk to Laura, she already knew Laura was on the res looking for information on Sacajawea. Phyllis Manley had called her after Laura came into the cultural center. Theresa must've called her granddaughter, and—”

“Hope told Robert.” Vicky finished the thought. “He had no idea of what was in the journal. But he knew that Charlotte's body had been found. He must have figured that sooner or later Laura might connect him to Charlotte's murder and turn the journal over to the fed. He had to get the journal.”

She shifted forward on the seat. “My God, John. Now Crow Wolf's promised the memoirs to Hope Stockwell. What if they've been having an affair, and she's decided to break it off? He could be using the same excuse to keep her.”

Hope Stockwell. Father John could see the young woman. Beautiful, hopeful, ambitious. And trusting. She might not even think of authenticating the memoirs that came from a scholar like Crow Wolf. But if she did . . .

“We have to see Gianelli,” he said. “We have a name now.”

The snow was lighter as he drove through the wide, flat streets of Riverton and turned onto the slick pavement of a fast-food restaurant. Inside Vicky went to the order counter while he found the phone in the corridor near the rest rooms. He dropped a quarter into the slot and dialed Gianelli's number. In the background was a clatter of dishes, a medley of shouts. Finally the ringing stopped.

He hung up on the answering machine and tried the agent's home number. The phone rang into a vacuum. He pushed the disconnect lever. Vicky was at his shoulder, holding a large white food bag. “Gianelli's not in,” he told her, fishing another quarter out of his jeans pocket and dialing Banner. The operator picked up on the first ring. He identified himself and asked for the police chief. A hollow sound came on the line followed by the familiar voice: “What's going on, John?”

“Vicky and I . . .” He paused. They had a theory, but what proof did they have? An old woman's suspicions that Charlotte Allen had been involved with Robert Crow Wolf? Their own suspicions that the Shoshone was the man Charlotte wrote about in her journal? It didn't add up to proof that Crow Wolf had killed the woman. It certainly didn't prove he'd killed Laura.

Before he could go on, the chief said, “Gianelli's already filled me in on that crazy theory you and Vicky came up with about some guy named Toussaint.”

“Robert Crow Wolf killed Charlotte Allen and Laura Simmons,” he said.

A whistle of exasperation sailed over the line. “Robert Crow Wolf never killed anybody. He's a good man, John, one of the best. So what if he might've known the victims? They're all historians.”

“It's more than that.” Father John could tell by the exasperation in Vicky's eyes that she was following the conversation. “Crow Wolf made promises to Charlotte that he couldn't deliver. She challenged him, and he killed her. He killed Laura because he thought she had the evidence to connect him to the murder.”

“Look, John, you're way off the track. Crow Wolf might have a reputation for liking the ladies, but he's no murderer. Gianelli got some lab reports this afternoon. Toby Becker's fingerprints are all over the Simmons car. The fed flew out of here about an hour ago with a warrant for the man's arrest. Said he wanted to bring the bastard back. Took a real personal interest. You know he's got four daughters, and he wants to protect 'em from slimeballs like Becker. He'll bring Becker back tomorrow.”