Wife of Moon (15 page)

THE BUNGALOW HAD
the vacant end-of-the-day look, with the light fading in the dusk and the moon already bright, sending dark shadows over the lawn and obscuring the words
ATTORNEY AT LAW
, on the sign. Vicky parked the Jeep and hurried up the sidewalk. Work had been piled on her desk—leases to review, a will to draft—when she'd gone to see Marnie Rankin in Riverton. She'd intended to be back in the office by late afternoon, but she'd gone to the mission instead, as if the Jeep had driven itself, propelled by the turmoil in her mind. It always came down to John O'Malley. She could trust John O'Malley, and who else could she trust? No one, no one.

She started to unlock the front door, then realized that the door was already unlocked. It wasn't like Annie to forget to lock up. Vicky pushed the door open and stepped inside. Seated in one of the visitor's chairs was a large man with reddish hair, cropped short, wearing blue jeans and a dark sport coat over a turtleneck sweater. Legs crossed, elbows set on the armrests, a cigarette in the thick fingers curved next
to the side of his head. He moved the cigarette to his mouth and inhaled. The red tip glowed in the dim light.

“Who are you?” Vicky said. She held the door open, conscious of the cold air sweeping past her legs.

Puffs of gray smoke came from the man's nostrils. “I was beginning to think you'd knocked off for the day.” He had a gravelly voice and little eyes, black pebbles lodged beneath bushy eyebrows and the thick wedge of his forehead. “Another ten minutes and I would have had to seek you out at your apartment.”

“You haven't told me who you are.” Vicky held her place and gripped the door knob.

The man took another drag from the cigarette. “Let's say, a husband searching for his missing wife.”

“Eric Loftus.” The words came in an exhalation of air. “You should try the FBI.”

“Nobody around here knows shit.” The man's mouth widened in a parody of a smile. “They don't know where your client, the tribal official, has gone off to either, but I think you know.”

“How did you get in here?”

Loftus gestured toward the door with his cigarette. “You must have left the door unlocked.”

“The door was locked.”

“Well, it is a mystery, isn't it?”

“It's breaking and entering.”

He laughed at that. “I prefer a mystery, like the disappearance of my wife and T.J. Painted Horse.” He shook his head and laughed. “First thing he'll have to do is take a new name, like Christine did. Oh, I taught that woman well.”

“Please leave.” Vicky pushed the door back toward the wall. A dog was barking somewhere, a sharp sound wave breaking through the atmosphere.

Eric Loftus considered the cigarette burning into a small stump in his fingers. “Do you believe in coincidences?” he asked.

“Get out.”

“I've read the local paper and talked to a number of people around here.” The man's eyes were still riveted on the cigarette butt. “I've discovered a remarkable coincidence. Take last Monday night, for example. My wife left a museum on the reservation and drove off. On that same night, another woman on the reservation was shot in the head. The two instances occurred a few miles apart. Remarkable, don't you agree?”

Vicky tightened her fist around the door knob.
Someone else,
T.J.'s mistress had said. She realized that it had probably occurred to John O'Malley that the new woman in T.J.'s life might be Christine Loftus. But where was the proof? The woman could be anybody in Fremont County.

“What makes you think your wife knew T.J. Painted Horse?”

“It's been my experience that coincidences don't exist.” Eric Loftus squeezed the burning tip of the butt between his finger and thumb, his eyes not leaving hers. A trail of gray smoke curled over his hand. “Coincidences are a façade, a mask, if you like, that only appears to be the truth. The truth is something else altogether. I asked myself, What is the truth behind this façade? What is the relationship between two events on the same evening, which appear to be unrelated?”

“There's nothing I can tell you, Loftus.

“We can stay here all night, if you like.” He let the butt drop into the glass vase on the table next to the chair.

“Get out now.” Vicky gestured with her head toward the outdoors.

“It strikes me that they could be together, your client and my wife. Christine was always attracted to the dark, swarthy types. One time in Mexico . . .” he shook his head and stared across the room. “A little incident, best forgotten. In any case, I removed the temptation from my wife's line of vision, shall we say.” He brought his eyes back. “I figure your client and my wife are holed up together in a cheap motel. A replay of Mexico, I'm afraid, and I assure you that it
will end the same way. My wife is a very sick woman, counselor. Oh, when she's up, she's higher than the moon. She can do anything, climb right into the sky. But when she crashes . . .” He shook his head. “All you have to do, counselor, is tell me what your client said about my wife. It could be the information I need to find them.”

“You're crazy if you think I'm going to tell you anything,” Vicky said.

Eric Loftus uncrossed his legs and got to his feet, a slow unfolding of muscles and strength a few feet away. “Don't say that to me.” His voice was tight and controlled. “Don't ever say that.”

A ringing phone burst through the quiet. Vicky glanced over at the desk, her hand still gripping the doorknob. A second ring. Third. She let go of the knob and began moving sideways, away from the door and into the office. Without taking her eyes off the man on her left, she reached for the phone and pressed the receiver to her ear. “Vicky Holden,” she said. She could hear the tremor in her voice.

“Vicky?” It was Adam's voice. “What's wrong? Are you okay?”

“I'm not okay, Adam.”

“I'm over on Main. I'll be there in two minutes.”

“I'll see you in two minutes.” Vicky stared at the man across from her.

“Very clever,” Loftus said as she hung up. “Don't think that this is over. When you don't expect me, when you think you're all alone, I'll be there. I'll be watching you until you lead me to T.J. Painted Horse.”

He stepped past her through the open door, and Vicky slammed the door behind him and threw the lock. She moved to the window and watched Loftus walk down the sidewalk, cross the street, and get into a dark-colored SUV, assuring herself that he was gone. The SUV pulled into the street as Adam's green Chevrolet truck came around the corner. For a half-instant, she thought the two vehicles would collide, but Adam swerved out of the way and slid to a stop at the curb. The SUV was gone.

Vicky opened the door as Adam was running up the sidewalk.
“What the hell's going on?” He stepped inside and slammed the door behind him. “Who was that guy?”

“Eric Loftus.” A blank look came into Adam's eyes, and she started to explain that the curator who'd disappeared from St. Francis Mission was the man's wife. He laid a finger over her lips.

“I don't care about the man's wife,” he said. “What happened here?”

Vicky took hold of his wrist and pulled his hand away. She managed a smile. It seemed so silly, putting out an SOS, calling in a warrior. Loftus would have eventually left on his own. The man was swagger and bravado, the kind that liked to intimidate people. Maybe he liked that more than he wanted to find his wife. Or maybe . . .

“What is it, Vicky?” Adam leaned so close that she could make out the faint strands of gray hidden in his black hair and the worry moving in his dark eyes.

Vicky glanced away, letting her gaze rest on the chair where Loftus had sat, the back cushion still folded in on itself from his weight. The odor of smoke hung in the air. “Maybe Loftus knows where his wife is,” she said, bringing her eyes back to Adam's. “Maybe he's responsible for her disappearance, and all of this”—a wave toward the chair—“is just the image of a concerned husband looking for his wife.”

“You wouldn't be alone so much if . . .”

“I know,” Vicky said. “I've been thinking about your offer.” A business proposal, that was all, and the reminder bit into her like a wooden splinter. “I don't believe it's a good idea, Adam.”

“You're wrong, Vicky. It's the best idea either of us has had in a long time. Look,” he hurried on. “I have an appointment with a realtor to see some office space tomorrow, so I'm staying in town tonight, and I was hoping you were free. We can argue about it over dinner.”

A PHONE WAS
ringing across the distance. Vicky felt paralyzed, frozen to the door, fixed in place by the icy glare of the man looming over her. If she could get to the phone, Eric Loftus would leave the office. It was John O'Malley calling. No, that wasn't right. Adam was on the line. She had to pick up the phone and tell Adam . . .

Vicky sat up in bed. She was shivering, her nightgown clinging to her like an extra skin. It was a half-second before she realized that the ringing phone was on the nightstand. She threw herself across the bunched pile of blankets and grabbed the receiver. The green iridescent numbers on the clock looked shimmery, like numbers blinking under water: 2:39.

“Hello,” she managed.

“Vicky? Is that you?”

The familiar voice made a clean cut through the fog in her head. “T.J.? Where are you?” A sense of relief washed over her, then gave way to discomfort and dread.

“I've got to see you right away,” he said. “I know what happened.”

“What are you talking about?” Vicky could hear the sleep still in her voice.

“I know who shot Denise.”

Vicky swung her legs over the bed and pressed the receiver tight against her ear. She'd left a window open a little, and the cold draft blew across her bare legs. “Tell me what you know.”

“In the mountains.” His voice cracked. “I went up into the mountains and fasted and prayed for a way out of all this. I kept hoping that it was somebody who'd come after me and killed Denise 'cause I wasn't home. But all the time, I knew the truth. I just didn't want to see it. But up in the mountains, it was like I could
see
Denise getting shot right in front of me. That's what the spirits gave me, Vicky, the true thing, and I saw what I had to do. I have to tell the fed the truth, even if I don't have the evidence. I gotta say what is true. It can't be a secret any more. Oh, I know they don't think I'm ever gonna tell the truth. They think I'm scared shitless, and truth is, Vicky, I was scared, but the spirits gave me strength, and it's time everybody knows what happened.”

“Listen to me, T.J.,” Vicky began. She could picture the man in her head, gaunt, dehydrated, hungry, and probably drinking. He was drinking. “You're not making sense,” she said. “Try to eat something and get some sleep. We can go over this in the morning.”

“No, you listen to me, Vicky.” The words came down the line like shots bursting out of a shotgun. “I know where the evidence is.” He coughed into the line. It sounded as if he was choking. “This is big, Vicky. I'm telling you, this is big. I gotta see you right away.”

Vicky was quiet a moment. “Where are you?”

“At the house.”

“The house! It's a crime scene, T.J. It's still part of the investigation. The fed hasn't released the house yet. Go to Vera's, and I'll meet you there.”

“No! Leave Vera out of it. It's enough that they killed my wife. You want them to kill Vera, too?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Just get over here, Vicky, before I lose my nerve.”

“You're asking me to violate the crime scene, T.J.”

“You're my lawyer. You've got to help me. The fed's trying to get me indicted for Denise's murder. That'll be just perfect. They kill Denise and I go to prison. You've got to come now, Vicky.”

Vicky let a couple of seconds pass. She kept her eyes on the shimmering numbers. 2:45. “I'll meet you in front of the house,” she said finally.

She was about to hang up when he shouted, “Hurry. You have to hurry. They're waiting for me somewhere. I know that's what they're doing, 'cause I know the truth.”

Vicky cradled the receiver between her shoulder and ear. “I'll be there as soon as I can,” she said.

The line went quiet, and for a moment she thought they'd been disconnected. Then T.J. said, “There was something else I saw in the mountains, Vicky. The moon was swirling through the sky, laughing and taunting me. Moon was daring me to tell the truth about Denise's murder. It's like Moon wants to kill me, too.”

Vicky was on her feet, struggling to pull her robe around her shoulders. The man wasn't thinking straight. “Listen to me, T.J.,” she said. “Just stay quiet and wait for me. I'll hurry.”

 

SHE WAS OUT
of the apartment in ten minutes, driving north on 287, the moon white and bloated looking in the silver sky. She could imagine T.J. in the mountains—three days with a bottle of whiskey and no food or water, the moon hovering overhead, growing fatter each night. No wonder the man believed that the moon was taunting him.

She'd stared at the phone a moment after she'd hung up, debating whether to let someone know where she was going. Adam, maybe. She'd discarded the idea. If they were partners, she could call and leave a message, but they weren't partners. In the end, she'd headed out, she realized now, leaving nothing behind that might hint to her whereabouts.

God, she was as crazy as T.J. She stared at the asphalt unfurling into the headlights. Off to meet a client in the middle of the night, a man who might be a murderer. She should have told him she'd see him at the office in the morning and hung up. Why hadn't she? What was it in his voice—the desperation beyond the words—that had made her agree?

Vicky turned onto Blue Sky Highway, eating up the miles, flashing past the little houses set back from the road, silent cubes washed in the moonlight, nothing but open spaces spreading through the darkness. Outside Ethete now, she took a dirt road on the right, then drove into T.J.'s yard and stopped close to the house, the front fender bumping against the yellow police tape stretched between stakes in the ground. The windows were dark. No sign of anyone around, and T.J.'s pickup was nowhere in sight. It occurred to her that this was a joke, a sick excuse to lure her out here perpetrated by a desperate man.

Then, at the far edge of the yard—the pickup, merging with the elongated shadow of a cottonwood. She bumped across the hard ground and drew up at a right angle to the pickup, her headlights splayed across the cab. She got out and opened the passenger door. There was no one inside.

She glanced around, jamming her hands into her coat pockets and shivering in the cold, half-expecting T.J. to appear, but nothing moved. Except for the high-pitched wail of a coyote in the distance, there was no sound. She got back into the Jeep and pulled a U-turn toward the police tape, then stopped, her fingers wrapped around the steering wheel, the engine humming into the void. T.J. must be inside.

Inside, sitting in the dark. Frightened. She'd heard the fear running through his voice. He'd parked the pickup in the shadows, hard to see from the road. He might have fallen asleep, she thought, exhausted from spending days in the mountains.

Vicky got out and stepped across the tape. The toe of her sneakers caught the edge, and she had to catch herself from falling. She walked up to the concrete stoop and knocked. A hollow sound, as if she were knocking on a false door with nothing but space behind it. She started pounding with the heel of her fist. “T.J.,” she called. “Are you there?”

The coyote cried again, closer now, as if the animal was circling it's kill. Vicky tried the doorknob. It turned in her hand, a cold and inert ball of metal. Shoving the door open, she called out again: “T.J.?”

Still no answer. She stepped inside and reached around, patting the wall until her fingers found the light switch. A dim light cascaded from a globe in the ceiling down over the center of the small living room. She stood perfectly still, struggling to make sense out of the chaos before her: overturned sofa and chairs, foam leaking from the cushions, lamps twisted and smashed on the vinyl floor, picture frames strewn about, shards of glass twinkling in the light.

She started to back through the door when she saw something—the smallest movement—through the doorway to the kitchen in back. “T.J.,” she called again. God, he could be in the kitchen. He could be hurt.

She flung the door back against the wall, willing the cold air to fill the room, and began picking her way through the chaos toward the kitchen. She stopped in the doorway and, leaning sideways, fumbled for another light switch. A fluorescent bulb on the ceiling flickered into life. Vicky stared at cabinet doors hanging open, drawers tossed upside down on the floor, utensils poking from beneath the sides, broken dishes and glasses scattered among the jumble of papers. Across the room, the back door stood open a few inches.

In the far corner—something moving. Vicky stood frozen in place, her breath a hot coal in her throat. A cat meowed, and she exhaled as the cat skittered past, its fur like a whisper against her jeans. The animal fled through the back door, pushing it open another couple of inches.

It was then that she noticed the glint of light outside. She stepped across the debris and peered past the door. Light from the kitchen flared out into the yard toward a small shed. The door was ajar, and inside she could see something small and metallic caught in the moonlight.

She hesitated. She should go back to the Jeep, she told herself. Lock herself in and call the police on her cell. But an hour ago, T.J. had called her from the house. He wanted to tell her the truth about Denise's murder. In that hour, something terrible had happened. T.J. was still here somewhere; she could sense his presence.

She gripped the doorjamb and pushed off across the yard. She stepped into the shed, taking in at a glance the cartons stacked in neat rows on the shelves and hanging from a hook, the silver harness glinting in the light.

She took another couple of steps and gasped. T.J. lay face down on the dirt floor, his body wedged against the lowest shelf on the right. Blood pooled around his head, matting his hair and soaking like spilled black paint into the dirt. He was naked from the waist up. Arms pulled behind him; shoulders out of the sockets, jutting like knobs against his skin. A brown belt wrapped around his wrists. She couldn't take her eyes from the bronze arms glistening in the dim light and the black gashes cut into his arms like graffiti.

She flinched backward, her body moving on its own, her eyes still locked on the body, as still as a log washed out of the abyss. She couldn't breathe. She felt as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the shed. It was a half a moment before she managed to pull her gaze away from the body. She pivoted around and ran outside. Across the swatch of light, around the corner, and down the side of the house. She was
almost to the front when she dropped onto her hands and knees and vomited until she felt empty inside and there was nothing but the sound of her own dry retching in the quiet.

She lifted herself upright and leaned against the rough siding a long moment before she felt sure enough to start for the Jeep. She crawled behind the steering wheel and, hands shaking, dug through her black bag until her fingers wrapped around the cold plastic of her cell. She tapped out 911 and pressed the phone hard against her ear while trying to steady her hand. “This is Vicky Holden,” she managed when the operator came on the line. “I'm at T.J. Painted Horse's place. Send an officer right away. Someone's been killed.”

T.J.'s been killed, she thought. She pressed the end key, dropped the phone into her lap, and wrapped her hands around the steering wheel, holding on as hard as she could. She couldn't stop shaking. This was crazy. She'd gotten everything wrong. She'd been so sure that T.J. had killed his wife, and now T.J. was dead. And whoever had killed Denise had been waiting, biding his time, like a mountain lion watching its prey. The moment T.J. had returned to the house, the lion had pounced.

It hit her that Eric Loftus could have found her client after all and tortured him. Tortured T.J. until he had told Eric everything he knew about his wife.

Vicky stared into the moonlight skittering over the house, trying to see past the images imprinted on the back of her eyes. The gashes on T.J.'s arms, the welts blossoming around the brown belt tightened on his wrists. She was going to be sick again. She held onto the steering wheel and made herself take in several breaths and exhale slowly. God, would the images ever go away?

She peeled her fingers off the wheel and picked up the cell. Her fingers pushed in a number—working on their own, as if they knew what was necessary. She listened to the buzzing sound of the phone ringing at St. Francis Mission, and after the third ring, the familiar voice: “Father O'Malley.”

Sleepy and disoriented and matter-of-fact at the same time, as if he were used to answering the phone at four o'clock in the morning.

“T.J.'s been killed,” she said, her own voice seemed to come from a vacuum.

“Where are you?”

“At T.J.'s place. I found him in the shed.” There was the cry of a coyote, she thought, or a siren. She couldn't be sure, it sounded so far away. She said, “The police are coming.”

“I'm on my way,” he said.