The Man Who Fell from the Sky (9 page)

“Hello!”

She flinched, almost dropping the sack of groceries. Where had he come from? She hadn't seen anyone in the parking lot, no one near the building. She could hear her heart thumping against her ribs. She looked around, wondering how she could not have seen a white truck. But there was no white truck among the parked vehicles. It was a moment before she recognized the man coming toward her.

“Cutter,” he said. He was smiling, a big, lazy grin. “Didn't mean to startle you.” He leaned toward her, reaching for the bag. “Let me help you.”

“I'm fine.” She swung the bag out of his grasp.

“Tried to call you this afternoon. Annie said you were out of the office. Anything I can help you with? You're not sick, are you?”

“No. No. Nothing like that.”

“It's just that, well, you look a little tired, and I was wondering . . .”

“It's been a long day.” She started to step past him. “So if you'll excuse me . . .”

“Hold on.” She could feel the strength in his fingers as he gripped her arm. “I've been waiting for you. I was hoping we could have dinner.”

“I don't think so.” She felt herself beginning to relax. The white truck had put her on edge, that was all. Here was someone from the past, returning to his own people. “Not this evening. As I said, it has been a long day.”

“All the more reason to have a nice, relaxing dinner. It's been years since I've had a steak in Hudson. How about it? What's in that bag? A container of salad? You can do better in Hudson.”

It was foolish, she knew, even as she started nodding, smiling at this man who was smiling at her. She had no memory of Jimmy Walking Bear, called Cutter now. And yet he had been in her past, a fellow student at the mission school. And here he was, handsome and thoughtful, wanting to take her to dinner.

“I'll meet you at the restaurant,” she told him.

“I can wait for you upstairs.” He threw a glance at the top floor of her building, and she wondered for a moment if he knew her apartment number. “I'll drive.”

“I'll meet you at the restaurant in thirty minutes.” She shouldered her way past him.

THE RESTAURANT WAS
crowded. An undercurrent of voices mixed with the clank of dishes and the noise of the kitchen door swishing on its hinges. A hostess with blond hair and freckled face led Vicky through the dining room past the tables with families and couples bent over baked potatoes, salads, and steaks that overlapped the edges of the plates. Cutter shifted out of a booth along the wall, his face set in a wide smile. “Thank you,” Vicky said to the hostess, but the woman was nodding at Cutter, as if she expected a pat on the back for having delivered the right woman.

“You look good,” he said, his eyes on Vicky. He gave an absentminded wave to the hostess, who turned and started back. “I'm glad you changed your mind.”

“I should be home catching up on work.” She was thinking of the reports on Luke Wolf that social services had sent over this afternoon. A lot of reading to get through.

“Work will always be there.” Cutter took a long look around the restaurant. “This place brings back memories. Whenever Dad sold a beef, he'd bring us here for dinner. Only happened once a year. Times were tough on the rez. How about you?”

“We hardly ever ate out.” Grandmother's house, the closest they came to going “out.” Buffalo stew and hot fry bread, a campfire, stories around the campfire. It was better than any restaurant. Memories kept rearing up in front of her, those old days, and she realized how much she missed them. The man across from her had been on the rez at the same time, a brown-faced boy, probably experiencing the same things.

A waitress who looked like a younger version of the hostess—blond hair and freckles, a slash of red lipstick— took their order. Vicky waited until the woman had walked away before she asked Cutter what it was like to leave the rez as a kid.

He was quiet a moment, staring off into the restaurant as if he were trying to pull memories out of the tables and booths, the red wallpaper. “I never liked Oklahoma,” he said. “We had family there, but it wasn't the same. I had cousins here, and grandparents. I always felt the relatives in Oklahoma wished we would go home. I left soon as I was old enough. Went to Texas and got jobs in the oil fields. Finally wised up and enrolled at Texas Tech. Took six years, but I came out a petroleum engineer. Went right back to a job in the oil fields in management for a lot more money.”

He smiled at her, expecting her to pick up her own story, she guessed. She looked away. Cutter Walking Bear was a handsome man, long black hair flecked with gray, and black deep-set eyes that she could feel boring into her. She would have to keep her balance. It was too soon after Adam to become involved in a relationship. She caught sight of the red-haired man at the table across
the dining room and, for a disconcerting instant, thought he was John O'Malley. With a wife and two little kids. She shook away the notion. It was absurd the way she thought she saw him—on Seventeen-Mile Road, at a powwow—when he was nowhere in her life.

She realized Cutter was reciting her own life to her: divorced from Ben Holden, seven years in Denver earning a law degree, another couple of years at a big law firm there, and finally—home. He left out the rest of it: Susan and Lucas growing up on the rez with her parents, the snatched weekends with her children getting so tall, growing away from her, the sadness inside her that she had missed the best part of her life.

“What is it?” Cutter said. “Did I get it wrong?”

“You got it right.” She forced a smile and waited while the waitress delivered the steak dinners.

“I regret I didn't come back sooner.” Cutter sliced off a piece of steak and began to eat. He studied the table, examining something she couldn't see. “Robert was sure he was going to find a lot of money. I went along a few times
.
Chance to get to know my cousin, and now he's dead. I had a job interview that day with Fowler Oil in Casper. I keep thinking if I had been with him, I could have helped him . . .”

“How could you have helped him?”

“Talked him out of going up there by himself.”

“Ruth said he's been going treasure hunting by himself for years.” Vicky took a bite of steak. Tender and delicious. There was no mistaking fresh meat, Grandfather always said.

“Ruth didn't know he brought me along.”

“I'm surprised he wanted someone else around when he found Butch Cassidy's treasure.”

“Butch Cassidy's treasure! Who really believes that? Robert just liked getting away.”

“From Ruth?” Vicky waited before she took another bite. Ruth had never given any hint that she and Robert were having trouble.

“From everything. Haven't you ever wanted to get away? It's peaceful in the mountains.” Cutter dipped his fork into the baked potato and the rivulets of butter and sour cream. After a moment, he said, “Ruth told me you took her up there yesterday. I refused to take her when she asked me. ‘What's the point?' I told her. What good would it do? I had no intention of going back there. It's a sad place, a place of death.”

“She wanted to see where Robert died.”

“So what did she see? Nothing. The investigators have already checked the place. They should let Robert's spirit rest in peace.”

Vicky continued eating, half-aware of the sound of Cutter's voice going on about Ruth and Robert. It was the second time today someone had mentioned Robert's spirit being unable to rest. She thought about telling Cutter she had gone back to the lake this afternoon, then pushed away the impulse. This afternoon, there had been something—a torn, charred piece of map. There had been the white truck and the anonymous caller who said he had a message from Robert. She felt a chill run through her. Spirits sending messages made no sense in the world where she lived now, the white world, a law office, the courts. And yet the old ways were still part of her. Robert's spirit would not rest until his body had been properly buried and sent to the ancestors. She wondered if the Arapaho across from her would understand; he had been away so long.

“Are you okay?”

Vicky tried for a reassuring smile. Yes, of course, why wouldn't she be okay? Straddling two worlds, not at home in either. “What were you saying?”

“It's best if Ruth can put this behind her, instead of dwelling on it.”

“Put behind her husband's death?”

“Sooner or later, she has to. I think we can help her start now.”

Vicky ate a little more, then set her fork down. “How do you propose we do that?”

“By not encouraging her to ask so many questions. I understand she wants to know how the accident happened . . .”

“How do you think it happened? How could Robert have accidentally drowned?”

“See? That's what I mean. Those are the questions Ruth keeps asking. No one else was there, so no one knows.”

“What if someone else was there?”

“What? Are you saying someone else was there?”

Vicky could hear the low, tense voice of the caller.
My name don't matter. He was murdered. “
I have no idea,” she said. “Any time someone dies alone in what appears to be an accident, there are always questions.”

Cutter pushed his own half-eaten dinner aside and leaned toward her. “Look, Ruth needs to start healing. The longer this investigation goes on, the harder it will be for her to move forward. We're her friends, and we have to help her.”

Vicky didn't say anything. She wondered if Ruth was the reason he had wanted to have dinner with her. She could see Ruth on the day Robert had died, pivoting toward the front door every time someone new arrived, tense with expectation. Who else had she been expecting except Cutter, the cousin who had come back to them, made himself welcome in their home?

“How well do you know Ruth?”

“Like I said, we were just getting reacquainted when Robert died. All I remember about Ruth from when we were in school is
that she was annoying. Robert was my cousin. I want to help his widow in any way I can.”

“Walking Bear? That you?” A large man in a tan cowboy hat and a blue-striped shirt stopped at the booth. In his hand were a dinner check and a credit card that he waved at the table. “I heard you were back. Good to see you.”

“Help me out.” Cutter smiled up at the man. “You look familiar, but I've been away so long I've forgotten more names than I ever knew.”

“Wayne. Wayne Shadow. Hell, we used to shoot hoops over at the mission school.”

“Wayne! Sure I remember.” Cutter stuck out a hand and gripped the other man's hand. “You know Vicky Holden?”

The man gave her a dismissive sidewise glance. “Ben Holden was a good friend of mine,” he said.

Vicky remained quiet. People on the rez still remembered Ben Holden—handsome, friendly. He could do anything, tame a wild horse, ride a bronco, round up a herd of cattle. Bring the world crashing down around her. They didn't know him.

“You back to stay?” The man gave his full attention to Cutter, as if she weren't there, and she realized that, in some way, when she had divorced Ben Holden, she had ceased to exist on the rez.

“That's my plan. I have a line on a job with Fowler Oil in Casper, but I'm hoping to work in the oil fields on the rez. I'm here to make up for lost time. What have you been up to?”

“Hired on with the school district as a bus driver couple years ago. Still live in the family place. You remember how we used to race the ponies out in the pasture?”

“Yeah, but I'm drawing a blank. Where was the place?”

“White Horse's place west of Ethete. Been in the family since
Arapahos came to the rez. Butch Cassidy himself used to hide out there after a job. You see that movie bunch on the rez? Making a film about old Butch? Hell, we got stories in the family that film crew would like to get ahold of. They offer enough money, I'd be glad to talk to them.” He turned to Vicky, a slow, reluctant motion. “You know how I could get in touch with them?”

Vicky shook her head. “Sorry.”

The man rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “Lot of stories on the rez about Butch and his gang. Trouble is, people are going to give them away. I'm thinking about getting up a union of all the old families with stories. We agree on a price, and everybody's paid the same or nobody talks. What do you think?” He gave Vicky a half glance. She remained quiet.

“Makes sense to me,” Cutter said.

“Sorry to hear about your cousin. Is it true he was looking for old Butch's buried treasure?”

“So I've heard.”

“Claimed he had the original map that Butch himself drew up. What a crock of you-know-what. Walking Bears was poor as prairie mice. Never had a place where Butch could've hid out. My bet is, no Walking Bear ever laid eyes on Butch except if he happened to ride by. Hey!” He stuck out his hand again. “Don't be a stranger. Stop by the place for dinner next Sunday.”

“Thanks.” Cutter looked at Vicky. “I may have other plans.”

Wayne Shadow gave a two-finger salute and started for the front of the restaurant. A black-haired woman with a baby on her back and a toddler in hand hurried after him.

The waitress cleared the plates and brought cups of coffee. Vicky sipped at the hot liquid a moment before she said, “Ruth said Robert got his map from his grandfather.”

“I hear you can buy maps lots of places.”

“You think that is what he had? A map for tourists?”

“Listen, Vicky, I tried to talk him out of looking for treasure. It's a fool's game. But the man was obsessed. Let's forget Robert for a while, okay? I want to talk about you.”

Vicky finished her coffee and set the mug down. “I'm a lawyer with a pile of work to review, and I'm afraid it's time for me to say good night.” She slid to the end of the booth and got to her feet.

Cutter stood up beside her. He picked up the check the waitress had laid at the end of the table. “Let me take care of this first and I will follow you home.”

“That's not necessary.” She thanked him for dinner and headed for the front door.

*   *   *

SHE WAS COMING
around the curve into Lander when she realized the dark truck had been behind her for the last couple of miles. Cutter behind the wheel, she knew, by the tilt of his cowboy hat, the straightened set of his shoulders. He was taking the long way to the rez. He was following her.

She eased up on the accelerator and turned into the residential area. Past brick bungalows with lights flickering in the windows, in and out of circles of light from the streetlamps. She pulled into the parking lot, hurried to the glass-enclosed entryway, and jabbed a finger at the elevator button. There was the truck again, parked at the curb, Cutter waving as she stepped into the elevator and pressed the floor button. Then she hit the close button and braced herself against the metal railing as the elevator clanked upward.

Cutter Walking Bear, she was thinking. Making sure she reached home safely. A warrior looking out for women and children, the
helpless. God, she wasn't helpless. When she saw him again, she would thank him and make it clear she wasn't helpless. When she saw him again, she thought. He would be back.

She hurried down the corridor, let herself into the apartment, and flipped on the light switch. She walked over and looked out the side of the window. The truck was still at the curb.