The Spirit Woman (27 page)

Vicky's hands trembled against the cold steering wheel as she backed out of the yard. She felt limp with frustration. She shifted into forward and drove into the snow falling on Rabbit Brush Road. Hope had convinced herself she was in love with the man who could give her the memoirs. She didn't want to hear the truth. She wanted to believe. The will to believe, John O'Malley called it.

How many times, Vicky thought, had she seen the truth and turned away? The years when Ben had stumbled into the house, spinning out some wild story about a sick calf that needed tending, the smells of whiskey and another woman on his clothes and skin and breath? Still she had believed.

She had believed him again. Not because she still loved him. Because she'd wanted to put the broken pieces of their family back together. Because she'd wanted to belong somewhere again.

She eased up on the accelerator. A thin film of snow lay over the asphalt that disappeared into the darkness beyond the headlights. Despite the heat from the vents, she felt chilled. If only Theresa could convince Hope not to see Robert tonight! Gianelli would be back tomorrow, and she and John O'Malley would go over everything with him. Gianelli was a logical, rational man—he and John O'Malley, she thought, two of a kind. Solid and dependable. He'd see the logic.

And then? Vicky gripped the wheel hard, fighting the trembling that wouldn't stop. And then Robert Crow Wolf would walk away, because there was no evidence. He'd have a dozen stories, all plausible, to explain why he couldn't have killed Laura. Unless he were to confess.

Vicky laughed out loud, surprised at the sound of her voice against the hum of the engine and the kerplunk of the tires on the slick asphalt. Robert Crow Wolf would never confess. He'd gotten away with murder for twenty years and he'd get away with it again.

She gripped the wheel hard, the tips of her fingers digging through her gloves into her palms. Robert Crow Wolf was still looking for the journal. He was picking it up tonight, Hope had said. She'd meant the memoirs, but it was the journal Crow Wolf intended to get tonight. Suddenly Vicky realized where he would go to look for it.

She pushed down on the accelerator; the Bronco shimmied on the wet asphalt. A mile passed, then another. She could feel her heart jumping in her chest as she turned south onto 132 and drove on. Darkness swam outside the windows. On Seventeen Mile Road she turned east, her thoughts collapsed into a pinprick of determination. She had to get to St. Francis Mission before Robert Crow Wolf showed up. She had to warn John O'Malley.

F
ather John slowed the Toyota through the balloons of light filtering over Circle Drive. There were no cars or pickups about. The mission had that vacant feeling of evening, after Elena and Leonard and Lindy and all the volunteers had gone home and before people arrived for whatever meeting happened to be scheduled. He never minded the quiet. Dinner in the kitchen, talking over the day with the other priest, when there was another priest, or listening to an opera alone.

He parked next to the Harley and started up the sidewalk. The house was swallowed in darkness, yet Kevin was obviously here. Maybe watching television, he thought as he stepped inside. He hung up his jacket and glanced into the living room. The TV was off; no sign of Kevin.

In the kitchen he found Walks-On curled on his blanket in the corner. The dog raised his head and gave him a sleepy appraisal before nestling back down. On the table between the two place settings was a sheet of paper: Elena's instructions for dinner. Odors of tomatoes and onions and stewed beef rose from a pan on the stove. Kevin hadn't yet eaten.

He retraced his steps down the hall, climbed the stairs, and knocked on the other priest's door. There was only stillness. He knocked again, then looked inside. The room of a tidy man: the narrow bed tightly made; blankets tucked under the mattress military style; the cleared dresser, as if any articles that might have occupied the surface had recently been swept away; a pyramid of papers, folders, and small notebooks stacked in the center of the desk next to the computer and printer.

He closed the door and hurried back downstairs and, shrugging into his jacket as he went, headed across the grounds. Something was wrong; the bitter taste of it rose in his throat. Kevin had been at the mission an hour ago; he'd probably answered the phone in the administration building.

He took the steps two at a time. The front door was unlocked, a good sign that Kevin was still here. He hurried down the shadowy corridor toward the light leaking from the office at the far end. “Kevin?” he called.

The office mimicked the other priest's bedroom: papers neatly arranged on the desk next to a closed laptop; a row of books perfectly upright on the shelf. He walked back to the door leading to his own office and flipped the light. Everything just as he'd left it this morning.

He could feel the muscles constricting in his arms. His hands balled into fists, the taste in his mouth now so bitter he could hardly swallow. What had happened to Kevin? Why hadn't he locked up when he left? He started for the front door, then stopped. He'd left Alva's revolver in the desk! He crossed to it and yanked open the drawer. The gun was still there, black metal gleaming in the light. He ran his fingertips lightly over the cold surface, then shut the drawer and went back outside, leaving the lights on. If anyone was about, he wanted the lights on.

The church was dark, but Kevin could be inside praying or meditating, Father John told himself. He unlocked the door and went in. The same routine: flipping on the lights, walking down the aisle, checking the empty pews for some sign of the other priest. The red votive light blinked in front of the tanned hide tabernacle to the left of the altar.

After checking the sacristy—no one there—he let himself out. The lights blazing through the stained-glass windows mingled with the lights from the administration building. The mission was coming alive.

He strode down the center of Circle Drive to the hulking, stone-block museum at the end of the curve. His boots thumped into the silence as he came up the steps and crossed the porch. He was about to insert the key when he realized the door was slightly ajar. He stepped inside. He was not alone; he could feel another presence, as real as the lattices of light over the entry.

He started down the corridor, all of his senses alert now, watching, waiting for someone to jump out of the triangular shadows floating in the corners. Even before he reached the end of the corridor, he saw that the library door was also ajar. He moved slowly along the wall until he could see most of the room. Light filtered through the windows and glowed around the papers, the upended, smashed cartons, the bookshelves toppled onto the floor. Father Kevin was in one of the chairs, his leather jacket unsnapped, a wild look of surprise visible in the shadowed contours of his face. Seated across from him was an Indian he knew, Robert Crow Wolf, one arm extended over the table, a finger cocked on the trigger of a silver pistol.

“Come in, Father O'Malley.” The Shoshone's tone was quiet and confident, hinting of amusement. “We've been awaiting your arrival.”

“In the dark, Crow Wolf?” Father John walked in and reached for the light switch.

“I wouldn't do that.”

He dropped his hand.

The Indian gave a bark of laughter. “I have the wolf gifts, Father O'Malley. I can see my enemy in the dark. Besides, it would never do for someone to happen by and pay us a little visit before we finish our business.”

“What is it you want?” Father John kept his voice calm.

Another loud noise that passed for laughter. “In the interest of good manners, I will assume you don't know. I have reason to believe that Laura Simmons left a document here. It belongs to me, and I simply came to retrieve it.”

“You could have asked, Crow Wolf.” Father John gestured at the papers creeping over the table and littering the floor.

“Oh, but I did ask. Unfortunately Father Kevin here maintains he doesn't know what I'm talking about.”

“He's torn up the place.” Father Kevin sounded amazingly calm and determined for a man held at gun-point. “He's crazy.”

“Crazy?” Crow Wolf seemed to find the epithet amusing. “I prefer to think of myself as cunning as a wolf.”

“Mad as a hare.” Kevin tilted his hand toward the upended shelves. “Nobody sane does this to historical records.”

The Shoshone shrugged. He turned slightly and raised his gun until Father John could see that it was pointed straight at his heart. “Perhaps you'll be good enough to give me the documents Laura stashed here.”

“What if I don't, Crow Wolf? Will you kill us, too? Just like you murdered Charlotte Allen and Laura Simmons?”

Crow Wolf's hand twitched; the gun seemed to jump, then steadied. “You've got the story all wrong, Father O'Malley. I'm not a murderer.”

Father John saw the look of recognition in Kevin's eyes. The other priest had also recognized the undertones of self-absolution and excuses in counseling sessions, in the confessional.
I'm not a bad person.
He said: “You had an affair with Charlotte Allen, and you went to Laura Simmons's apartment the night she disappeared. Both women were beaten to death.”

The Shoshone kept his gaze on the pistol extended in front of him. Finally he said, “It wasn't my fault Charlotte died. She hit her head against the table leg. It was an accident.”

“An accident? You were beating her at the time.”

The man jumped from his chair, the gun shaking in his hand. “She said she was leaving me.” It was a scream that bounced around the walls and the toppled shelves. “After everything she'd promised. She was going to get me a position at CU, and we were going to be together. Lies! All lies! Oh, I should've known I couldn't trust her. She insisted on keeping our relationship secret. Gave me a big story about having some boyfriend back in Colorado, but that wasn't it. That white woman just didn't want to be seen with an Indian.”

“You promised her Sacajawea's memoirs, which don't happen to exist.” Father John struggled to keep his gaze from the gun waving a few feet from him.

“I only wanted her!” A scream of pain. “Why didn't she understand? I gave her the notebook with the memoirs.”

“They were forged.”

“She could have used it. I wrote down different versions of the stories the Shoshones told years ago. Nobody would've questioned the notebook. But, oh, no, she had to make sure it was real. She wanted to give it to the experts. I tried to tell her it wasn't necessary.” The man's voice shifted into a sobbing, pleading tone. “I tried everything. I loved that woman, and she was going to ruin me. She said I'd forged historical documents. I'd never teach in any history department. I didn't mean to hurt her, but she fell and hit her head. Nobody would've believed it was an accident. I would've gone to prison. What university would want me after that? I had to bury her and make it look like she'd taken off on a hike in the mountains. She was always going hiking alone. Nobody questioned that she got lost, until Laura Simmons . . .” He spit out the name. “She shows up here with Charlotte's journal. Jesus, I never knew she was keeping a journal, writing everything down, keeping a record, when all the time she kept saying to me”—he switched into a falsetto voice—“ ‘We must keep this a secret, my darling.' ”

The man was waving the gun in a frantic, jerky motion. “Enough of this,” he shouted. “Just give me the damn journal.”

“Is that what you said to Laura before you beat her to death?”

“You're trying my patience, O'Malley. I'm not one of your penitents sobbing out my sins in the confessional. I'm the one who was sinned against, not those two bitches. If Laura Simmons had left the journal in her apartment when I sent her out to Willie's ranch, I could've gotten it. I wouldn't have had to go back there Wednesday night and try to reason with the woman. She thought she was so clever. Cleverer than any Indian. ‘I'll make you a deal, Robert,' she said. ‘You'll give me Sacajawea's memoirs and I'll give you the journal.' She was gurgling in her own blood and she still believed the memoirs were real.”

Father Kevin levered himself slowly upright. “You killed two women over memoirs that don't exist?”

“Oh, they existed, all right,” Crow Wolf said. “As real as a vicious hound dog in their minds. It didn't give either of those bitches any rest, yapping and chewing at them all the time.” He was shaking his head. “It was beautiful. They wanted those memoirs to be real so they could be real.”

“What happened to Laura, Crow Wolf?”Father John asked. “Another accident while you were beating her up?”

“Why the hell should I tell you all this?” A look of panic and alarm crossed the man's face.

“Perhaps you want to unburden your conscience and change your life,”Father Kevin said. “Surely you don't want any other murders on your conscience.”

“I'm not a murderer!” Crow Wolf shouted. “I would've given Laura the damn memoirs if I'd had them. What do I care about some woman's story? Let the female historians write their revisionist history, I don't give a damn. I only wanted the journal. It's about my life; it's mine. She should have given it to me, but, no, she had to see the memoirs before she'd tell me where she'd put the journal. And she was going to have to make certain they were legitimate, of course. She shouldn't have done that to me.”

“So you started beating her,” Father John said. The words were constricted with anger.

“She should've told me. All she had to do was tell me, but she wanted those memoirs more than she wanted to live. What happened was her fault, the stupid bitch.”