The Lost Bird (6 page)

Vicky wheeled around. “What trouble?”

“Red Wolf and some of his followers held a demonstration
at the mission last spring,” Father John said. “They chanted and marched around with some signs.”

“I can guess what the signs said.” Vicky kept her eyes on his. “‘White man must go. White man off reservation. White man not wanted here.’”

Father John gave a little shrug. “Something to that effect.”

The police chief got to his feet and walked around the desk. Leveling his gaze on Vicky, he said, “Red Wolf and some of his gang blocked the mission entrance out on Seventeen-Mile Road. Had to send a couple of my boys over to remind them we got trespassin’ laws on the res. Ordered ’em to get their tails out of here.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this, John?” Vicky asked.

“It was over in a few hours.”

“It’s never over with Red Wolf,” Gianelli said. “It could be important. The man hates whites. All kinds and shapes. Thinks whites don’t have the right to live here or anywhere else, for that matter. Wants Indians to take back the land. He and his followers stay holed up in that compound out in the foothills, stewing in their own hate.”

The agent raised himself out of the wingback and stepped over to the police chief. “Red Wolf’s already spent ten years at Leavenworth on a manslaughter conviction for beating a guy to death in a fight. No telling what he might have taken it into his head to do next.”

Banner let out a long sigh. “My boys would’ve arrested him for trespassin’ if John here had agreed to press charges.”

“Look,” Father John said. “Red Wolf held a demonstration. It doesn’t mean he decided to—” He stopped. The notion seemed impossible, incomprehensible.

“Assassinate you,” Vicky said, the hint of a tremor working through her voice. The room was quiet a moment before she continued: “You’re the most visible white man here, John. Killing you would make quite a statement.”

Father John stared at her. It was hard to imagine that kind of hate. “Red Wolf knows he’d be a suspect. Why would he take the risk?”

“Red Wolf likes to take risks,” Gianelli said. “I’ll have a talk with him. Find out how he spent the afternoon.”

“Hold on.” Banner faced the agent. “You go walkin’ into Red Wolf’s compound and start askin’ questions, you might want some of my boys along.”

Father John understood. Homicide on a reservation was a federal matter; Gianelli was in charge. But the police chief didn’t like staying in the background, not with a killer loose in his territory.

Gianelli nodded and started for the door. Then he turned back. “I want a list of names, John. Anybody else who might have a beef with you.” Another start. Another halt. “One more thing. Stay out of this investigation. Keep your head down. Keep a low profile. Stay close to the mission. If the killer got the wrong priest, more than likely he’ll try again. And next time . . .” He gave his head a slow shake, yanked open the door, and walked out.

The chief followed. As he closed the door, he said, “Be careful, John.”

“You have no intention of doing what they say, do
you?” Vicky stood close to him, and as he turned toward her, he saw their reflections in the window—two shadowy figures against the blue-gray evening outside.

“How do I know who wants me dead?”

“I mean, you’re not going to stay out of the investigation.”

Father John took a moment before he said, “What do you expect me to do? Wait until Joseph’s murderer shows up at the mission?”

“Let me help you.”

“No, Vicky,” he said, surprised at the harshness in his voice. Then, a softer tone: “Stay out of this.”

She said: “When I came here this afternoon, I thought you were dead. I felt as if . . .” She hesitated, then, her voice low: “I don’t ever want to feel that kind of pain again.” She held his eyes, and in that moment Father John had the sense that something was changing between them, that she would not return to the mission, that he might never see her again.

“I don’t want to see you dead,” she said, in the same hushed voice. Abruptly she turned and walked across the study. Pausing at the door, she glanced back. “Somebody on the res knows what happened this afternoon and why. I’m going to get the answers.”

Before he could say anything, the door opened. The buzz of voices in the entry slipped through the opening, and she was gone, closing the door behind her. The study seemed empty, the trace of sage lingering in the air.

He drew in a long breath, trying to contain the anger and worry rising inside him. He was thirsty, and his tongue felt as dry as a piece of cracked leather in his mouth. He wanted a shot of whiskey. One shot, and he could walk into the living room whole and
confident, visit with the mourners, bluff his way past the guilt that pressed down on him like hundred-pound weights.

An innocent man had died in his place. He owed the man something. He had to find out why somebody had wanted to kill him and had shot Joseph instead. Before another innocent person died.

5

T
he living room was filled with people: grandmothers on the sofa, gray heads bobbing in the circle of light cast by the table lamp; elders on straight-back chairs somebody had brought from the kitchen and lined up in front of the television across the room; groups of young men standing around, black braids dangling beneath baseball caps; and two women in upholstered chairs, jostling babies on their laps. A microcosm of the reservation, Father John thought as he came through the archway. Here to mourn the death of a priest.

Several people held paper plates covered with half-eaten sandwiches, potato chips. Stacks of empty plates lay scattered over the coffee table among the books and magazines. Almost everyone had a foam cup in hand; the aroma of coffee filled the room.

One of the young men broke from the others and stepped toward him, hand outstretched. His grip was firm. “Sorry to hear about Father Joseph,” he said, disbelief in his voice. The others joined in. “Sorry. Sure too bad. Real good heart, Father Joseph.” A litany of condolences.

Father John made his way around the room, greeting
the elders and grandmothers, shaking hands, thanking people for coming, the words like dry leaves in his mouth, his own burden of guilt heavy inside him.

One of the grandmothers, Esther Tallman, inched forward on the sofa, balancing a foam cup and a plate with remnants of crusts and chips. “I won’t ever forget Father Joseph,” she said, moisture pooling in her eyes.

Father John nodded.

“’Cause he never forgot about me and Thomas. Sure, he might’ve gone away, but that don’t mean he forgot us. Soon’s he got back, he drove over to see how me and the kids was doin’ now Thomas is gone. I was glad to tell him everybody’s doin’ okay.” The woman let her eyes roam the room, remembering. “Father Joseph was real young when he first come here. Wouldn’t’ve thought he’d spent enough time on earth to have any sense. But he helped us through hard times. So Thomas give him an Arapaho name.
Ni’ho: no’oyeihi.
Means Red Hawk. He was a good man.”

Father John gave the woman a nod of understanding. Few men could be considered good in the Arapaho Way. Those who were humble and generous, who placed others before themselves.

The woman talked on. Father John hardly listened. He was thinking that for two weeks he’d lived under the same roof with a man he didn’t know at all. There had been so many assistants—a parade of priests marking time, passing through on the way to more interesting and prestigious assignments. The faces blurred in his memory.

Another man passing through
, Father John remembered thinking as he’d helped Joseph Keenan unload two suitcases and a couple of cardboard boxes from
the Escort—the total of the man’s worldly possessions. They’d talked on several occasions in the last two weeks. On a warm evening last week they had sat on the patio after dinner drinking coffee. Father John had asked about St. Francis Mission thirty-five years ago. Had Joseph’s responses been noncommittal and abrupt, as he’d thought, or had he simply not taken the trouble to draw out the other priest? Had he not wanted to get to know someone who would soon be saying good-bye? There had been so many good-byes. Was that why he’d stopped asking questions? They’d spent the rest of the evening talking about the World Series, for God’s sake. The memory stung. He blinked it back and, excusing himself, made his way through the crowded room.

He found Elena in the kitchen ladling a casserole onto paper plates. Spread across the oak table were half-empty casserole dishes and platters piled with sandwiches and brownies. He knew she was preparing plates of food for the elders and grandmothers to take home. The rest she would send to the shut-ins, the sick, people out of work. It was no secret who could use extra food. The moccasin telegraph kept everyone up on the news.

“You should eat something, Father,” Elena said, the familiar scolding tone laced with undisguised concern. So like his mother, the way she tried to stuff food down his skinny frame when he was a kid.

“Maybe later,” he said, pulling a foam cup from the stack on the counter next to the coffeemaker. He poured himself some coffee. It was the thirst he wanted to satisfy.

Leaning back against the counter, he wondered how he would tell the woman that he didn’t want her at
the mission for a while. Everything had changed. If the killer had intended to kill him, and not Father Joseph, everyone at the mission could be in danger.

The housekeeper was snapping sheets of plastic wrap over bowls and plates as if the task might fill up her thoughts. For the first time he saw the pinched look of grief in the woman’s round, flat face.

“Did you know Father Joseph in the 1960s?” he asked. He wasn’t sure how long Elena had been the housekeeper at St. Francis, only that it was an indeterminate length of time. “Long as I can remember,” was the way she’d put it whenever he’d asked. And when she disapproved of something he planned to do, she would remind him she had been here long enough to know that it would never work.

Now she raised her eyes to his and shook her head. “Alvin and me wasn’t even livin’ on the res then.” Reluctance seeped into the words, as if she didn’t like admitting to a time when she was not the housekeeper at St. Francis.

Father John gestured toward the casseroles and sandwiches. “People thought a lot of Father Joseph,” he said, still absorbing the fact that his temporary assistant had once been a much-loved pastor here.

She gave a little nod, and he saw that she was fighting back tears. “All he was doin’ was tryin’ to help somebody. He was a real good priest.” She lifted the corner of her white apron and began dabbing at her eyes. “If you’d been the one that got the call, you would’ve been shot. Then what would we’ve done?”

Her words stung him; he hadn’t expected them. She was grieving for
him
, the man the murderer had intended to kill. “Oh, Elena,” he said, setting down the mug and placing his arm around her.

She huddled next to him, trembling. “I don’t want nothin’ to happen to you.” Her voice sounded thick and muffled against his shirt. “You’re like my own son, John O’Malley.” Suddenly she pushed him away and lifted her head. A little smile played at her mouth. “Big, tall, redheaded, Irish son. Imagine the Lord givin’ me such a boy! So stubborn, too. And such a worry. What was He thinkin’?”

From outside came the crack of boots on the back steps. Another instant and the door swung open. Leonard Bizzel stepped inside, trailed by Walks-On, who loped over to the corner and stared forlornly into an empty bowl.

“You doin’ okay, Father?” the caretaker asked. He was in his late forties, close to Father John’s age. A big man, with the narrow, finely chiseled face of the Arapahos, and kind eyes. Like most men on the reservation, he wore blue jeans and a plaid shirt, the rolled back cuffs exposing thick, brown forearms and wide, capable hands.

Father John nodded. He waited until Leonard shook some dry food out of a bag into the dog’s bowl. Then he said, “I’d like you both to take a few days off.”

“What?” Elena reared back from the table, eyes shiny with surprise. “Leave you here all alone? You’d never eat a bite. You’d starve to death.”

“What’re you sayin’, Father?” This from Leonard.