The Girl with Braided Hair (A Wind River Reservation Myste) (15 page)

She felt herself spinning around, crashing against the brick wall. Jake’s hand was on her throat. His other hand lifted the metal over her head. “You want what he got?”

“You killed Jimmie!”

“Shut up! I oughtta kill you, whore.” He threw a look down the alley toward the street. A truck lumbered by. Then a white police car.

Jake pressed his hand over her mouth. “Shut up,” he said, a whisper this time. “You’re gonna walk outta here, go back to the basement. Understand?” The police car must have turned around, because it passed the alley again. “You open your mouth, I’ll kill you.”

She’d tried to nod, she remembered, but he was pushing her head back against the brick. She stared past his hand at Jimmie, lying so still, folds of the white jacket turning black with his blood.

“Get outta here,” Jake said, releasing her.

Liz slumped against the wall a moment. Her body had turned to rubber; she wanted to throw up.

“Go!” Jake pulled her off the wall and shoved her toward the street.

She remembered looking back at Jimmie as she’d stumbled forward, the alley and the dark brick walls, even Jimmie, blurred with her tears. She tripped over a can of soup, and hit the pavement. Red hot pain seared her shoulder. She lay in the alley, gravel biting into her face, and sobbed out loud, barely conscious of Jake moving around her, picking up cans, stuffing them into a brown bag.

Then she felt herself being yanked upward, and she scrabbled to get a hold on the pavement. Jake shoved the grocery bag at her. “I should’ve killed you,” he said. “Get back to the basement before I change my mind.”

“Liz?” It was Ardyth’s voice cutting through her thoughts. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” She tried for a reassuring smile. “Just thinking about Washington.”

“Whole thing was stupid, when you think about it.” Ardyth shifted in her chair and stared at some point across the kitchen. “We show up at the BIA building. All we want is to talk to the commissioner, demand decent hotels for the tribal leaders, get an appointment to present our grievances to the president. Thing was, we had a snitch with us.”

“What? You sure?”

Ardyth shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. “Of course, I’m sure. Why do you think there were armed riot troops that showed up at the BIA? Soon’s we got there, we were surrounded by troops. Jesus, just like the Old Time with the soldiers surrounding the villages. We didn’t have any choice except to take over the whole damn building. Called it the Native American Embassy, for godssake. Robert got everybody organized. I had to work in the stinking so-called laundry, washing out dirty underwear in sinks, hanging ’em on ropes we strung around the basement. We were so busy we didn’t even hear about Jimmie getting mugged and beat to death for a couple days.”

Liz closed her eyes a moment. “I was working in the kitchen when I heard.”

“Yeah, I felt really bad for you since you were gonna have his kid and all. You said, soon as the occupation was over, you were gonna leave AIM. Only you didn’t leave. Why not?”

“I just changed my mind, is all,” Liz said. She’d been cleaning up the kitchen after supper when Jake had burst through the door. He was drunk, and she’d wondered where in hell he’d gotten alcohol. Leave me alone, she’d said, but he’d started circling her, keeping his eyes on her, and she’d thought he might kill her then. She could hear the muffled noise of music coming from a radio somewhere, and the sounds of voices floating down the corridor beyond the door, but if she screamed, no one would hear her.

“What do you want?” she’d asked.

He’d grabbed hold of her braid then and pulled her across the room into the closet they’d turned into a pantry. He’d kicked the door shut, so there was just the two of them in the darkness, with only a rim of light at the bottom of the door. The air was thick with the smell of whiskey; his breath was hot on her face.

“You know I could kill you,” he said.

“You’re not going to kill me here. The cops won’t let anybody leave until they find out who did it.”

He was quiet a long moment before he said, “Don’t even think about taking off.”

“You don’t need me,” she’d said.

“Oh, you’re wrong. I need you right by my side so I can watch you every goddamn minute. You’re gonna stay around, got it? You’re gonna forget what happened. Jimmie and me, we had a beef, that’s all. Not your business, so forget about it. You leave, and I’ll hunt you down. Wherever you go, I’ll find you.” He’d gripped her throat then and began squeezing. “I’ll break your neck.” Finally he’d let go and stumbled out of the closet. She’d listened to him crashing around the kitchen before she heard the door open and shut. Still, she’d waited several minutes before she’d left the kitchen and gone up to the room she was sharing with Loreen and Ruth and Ardyth.

“So why didn’t you?” Ardyth said.

“What?”

“Get out after the occupation? We could’ve been killed there, you know, if the soldiers had stormed the place. We were just damn lucky Nixon didn’t want Indian blood on his hands right before the election, so he called off the army.”

Liz shrugged, thinking how she’d gone to Robert, told him everything, and how Robert had said it was AIM business, not any business of the cops, and he’d handle Jake. He’d see that AIM took care of her, too, with the baby coming. She shouldn’t worry; and that was it—wasn’t it?—the fact that she had nowhere else to go. She hadn’t seen her mother in almost two years. She didn’t even know where her mother was now. All she had was AIM. “I just decided to stay on for a while,” she said.

“You really believed all the crap, didn’t you? AIM could make a difference, and everything was going to change.”

“Something like that.”

“Yeah.” Ardyth was shaking her head. “Now look at the fix you’re in. You better get ahold of Robert tomorrow, ’cause you’ll have to leave here.”

“
BEI MANNERN, WELCHE
Liebe fuhlen” rose over the sound of the wind rushing through the opened windows. Father John slowed through Fort Washakie, past the tribal office building, the sun glinting on the bronze sculpture of Chief Washakie in front. He saw the heads turning in the passing pickups, the surprise registered in people’s faces. He was used to the attention his operas drew as he drove across the reservation. “We know where you are,” an elder once told him. “We hear you coming.” There was the kid who stopped him in the hall the day he’d been invited to speak about the Plains Indian wars at Wind River High School. “What’s so great about opera?” the kid had asked. “Live with it awhile,” he’d told him. “Then you tell me.” He’d loaned him his tape of
Madame Butterfly
. “Start with Puccini,” he’d said.

He parked in the lot adjoining the squat, redbrick building with the sign that said, Wind River Law Enforcement. The front door was as heavy as steel. He let himself into a small cubicle with a tiled floor, concrete walls and an antiseptic odor. Behind the window above the counter on the right, two officers in gray uniforms were hunched over a stack of papers on a side table. The heavyset one looked up, then walked over and bent toward the metal communicator. “Hey, Father,” he said. “How can we help you?”

One of the Connellys, Father John thought. Arapahos with an Irish ancestor who came to Mass from time to time, usually at Christmas and Easter. “Chief Banner in?” he said.

“Hold on. I’ll get him.” The officer moved sideways toward a telephone and picked up the receiver. “Father John’s here.” His voice sounded muffled away from the communicator. He stepped back. “Be out in a minute. How’s everything at the mission?”

Everything was fine, Father John said, which seemed to satisfy the officer because he gave a nod, stepped back to the side table, and started thumbing through the stack of papers the other officer had set aside. Father John crossed his arms and leaned against the concrete wall. He’d been here more times than he could count. Beyond the inside door was a corridor with offices on either side. Another corridor led to the tribal jail at the back of the building. There was a visiting room off that corridor—the concrete walls, the narrow view through the window of the exercise yard with concertina wire wrapped around the top of the walls. He’d talked to dozens of inmates in that room. They usually began with, I didn’t do it, Father, and moved on to, I didn’t mean to do it.

He wondered about the girl named Liz. Why had AIM believed she’d talked to the police? Had she been arrested? Brought to the jail? And in the visitor’s room, a detective, sitting across the table, promising her—what? That charges against her would be dropped? All she had to do was provide the names of AIM leaders hiding on the reservation.

The door next to him swung open, and Chief Art Banner leaned forward. He was on the far side of middle age, a good six feet tall, with a wide chest that strained his gray uniform shirt and a large head balanced on a thick neck. He had short-cut black hair sprinkled with gray and dark eyes that had an opaque look, crowded with too many sights. Father John shook hands with the man, then followed him down a corridor and through an open door on the left.

“How you been?” the chief said, nodding to the plastic chair in front of the desk. He worked his way between the metal file cabinet and the edge of the desk and sank into a swivel chair. Behind him, the window framed a view of a pine tree and the street beyond.

“Okay,” Father John said. He sat down and hooked his cowboy hat on one knee. The polite preliminaries had to be observed, he was thinking, even in the police chief’s office. It took a few minutes to discuss the Eagles’ game last Saturday. The Eagles had ended the Lander team’s unbeaten record: 6 to 5.

“Heard you called this morning,” Banner said, finally guiding the discussion to the point of the meeting. “Figure it must be important for you to come over here.”

Father John told him it was about the skeleton in the Gas Hills.

Banner pulled a file folder out of the stack pushed to one side of the desk and set it down in front of him. “Got a copy of the forensics report,” he said. “Indian girl, maybe Arapaho, around twenty years old, killed in 1973. Hard case, this one. Skeleton might as well be prehistoric. We got about the same chance of finding out who killed her. Sheriff’s jurisdiction, Detective Coughlin’s problem. My guess is, he’ll lose it in the files.” He set both elbows on the folder and clasped his hands in front of his mouth. “You heard something?”

“Her name was Liz,” Father John said. “She was Arapaho.”

“And your source would be…”

“A park ranger. Indian called himself Joe.”

Banner leaned back against his chair, hands still clasped, elbows dug into the armrests. “Let me ask you, John. You give him any money?”

“A few bucks. I know where you’re going.”

“He’ll tell you her name was Tinker Bell and she came from Neptune, if he thinks that’s what you want to hear.”

“Not this time,” Father John said. He’d heard so many lies in the confessional and in counseling sessions, he could almost hear them coming before the other person had uttered the words. It was like having an invisible antenna attached to his skin. “He said she was part of AIM.”

Banner unclasped his hands, shifted forward, and brought his fists down onto the desk. “You know the beehive this could stir up? AIM had anything to do with that killing, it’ll tear the reservation apart. Half the folks out there”—he tossed his head back toward the window—“think AIM walked on water, could do no wrong, certainly wouldn’t kill some girl. Doesn’t mean they were members, necessarily. Lot of folks were fellow travelers, hanging back and cheering AIM on. Other half thinks AIM was a bunch of thugs that wanted to take over the reservation. Hated their guts. AIM tore the reservation apart. I doubt the sheriff’s office is gonna want to stir up those feelings based on the ramblings of some park ranger named Joe.”

“The killer could still be on the reservation. Somebody left a message on Vicky’s dashboard. It said, ‘Stop.’”

Banner nodded. “Coughlin sent over the report. Thought we ought to know an Arapaho might be in danger. Security cameras picked up a nondescript male opening the door of the Jeep. Cowboy hat pulled so low, his face was hidden. Didn’t look like anything unusual. The guy is a pro, whoever he is. Made it look like he was using a key, instead of jimmying the lock. Message he left could mean that either he or somebody else doesn’t want anybody probing into what went on back in the seventies. Let the past be. People that supported AIM, lot of ’em changed their minds as time went on. Maybe somebody doesn’t want to remind folks that he was involved with AIM. Look at it this way, if you used to be a Communist, you want to remind folks about it?”

“Look, Banner.” Father John leaned forward. “An AIM leader named Daryl Redman—went by the name of Brave Bird—was shot in Ethete by a police officer. It’s possible that Liz gave him up, and that’s why she was killed.”

“According to Joe.”

“It’s possible.”

Banner leaned back again, letting his fleshy hands fall from the armrests. “Nineteen seventy-three,” he said. He pulled in his lower lip a moment and stared into the corner of the room. “I just got back from Vietnam. Trying to get on the police force, stay out of trouble, stay out of the way of AIM and all their marches and demonstrations that, far as I could see, weren’t doing anything but causing trouble and making people anxious. I remember when that shooting went down in Ethete. Man, I thought there was gonna be a revolution. There were two camps; you were either on one side or the other. Either that Lakota was a saint, or he was the devil deserved to get shot. Only good came out of it, I heard, was that the other AIM leaders hiding here took off. I guess they figured if one had been given up, maybe others had, too.”

“How can I contact the officer, Jesse Moon? If the girl was the source, he might remember who she was.”

“Jesse Moon,” Banner said, staring at the ceiling now. “Haven’t thought about him for a long time. ’Bout ruined the man, that shooting. It’s not easy to take a human life, John. It marks you, opens up a raw place in your gut that never heals over. Not an experience I ever want to have, but if some dude comes out firing, I’m gonna shoot him and hope I get him before he gets me. That’s my job. Jesse said he didn’t want any more of it. Left the force. Come to think of it, I got hired on right afterward, so I guess he opened up a slot for me. Tell you the truth, I don’t know what became of him.” He took a second before he said, “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“We’d like to see the girl get justice,” Father John said.

“We?”

“Vicky and I.”

The chief made a tipi with his hands and smiled at him over the tips of his fingers. “You and Vicky, crusaders for justice,” he said.

Father John had to glance away from the knowingness in the chief’s eyes: Dear Lord, did everyone on the reservation
know
about his feelings for this woman? Was it so obvious? Was he so obvious that people could read him like a book? He had to force himself to look back at the man across from him. “Someone out there,” he said, nodding toward the window and backing away from the topic of Vicky, “knows what happened to the girl. We’re trying to locate that person, give Coughlin something to go on. We don’t want to see the case filed away. Neither do the elders,” he added. “They want to see her buried properly, with her own name.”

Banner blew out a stream of air and lifted himself to his feet. “I’ll see what I can get on Jesse and get back to you.”

“One more thing.” Father John stood up. “It’s possible the girl had been arrested prior to the shooting.”

Banner seemed to consider this a moment before he said, “I’ll pull the records.” He shifted his weight and went on. “One condition, John. You get any names of the girl’s associates, you come to me or go to Coughlin. Some of those AIM people might still be dangerous. No way are you to approach them. Understood?”

“Understood,” Father John said.

“Goes for Vicky, too.”

“I’ll tell her.”

HE WOULD TELL
her now, he thought, pulling the cell out of the glove compartment when he reached the pickup. He started to press the keys for her number, then hit the end key. He’d call her later, after Banner got back to him and he had something to tell her. He dropped the cell onto the passenger seat, turned on the tape player—“Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön”—and turned up the volume. The engine sputtered like a drumroll into the music. He drove out of the parking lot and down the street toward the highway, the aria almost drowning out the sounds of the clanking engine and whirring tires. Tamino sets out to find the girl abducted by the evil Sarastro. How fitting, he thought.

IT AMAZED VICKY,
how thorough Adam was. Meticulous and thoughtful in everything he did. It was the Indian Way. The Arapaho Way. “Be thoughtful in all things,” Grandfather had told her. She’d never forgotten his words, yet it was strange how she’d sometimes forgotten to be thoughtful. By the time she’d gotten back to the office, Adam had already mapped out the steps they would take to file a complaint with the EEOC, should Mammoth refuse to settle with Mister and the others. They’d spent the afternoon in the conference room—she on one side of the table, Adam and Roger on the other, papers piling up in the middle. Roger would handle the initial phase of chasing down the other Indian employees and arranging interviews. Grunt work, everybody knew, but no one called it that.

Then, while Adam went to his uncle’s funeral, she would get the rest of the names from Charlie Crow and begin interviewing people and documenting the elements of a complaint—dates of the forced drug tests, results. It was almost six o’clock before they’d gathered up the papers and slipped them into file folders. Roger had left fifteen minutes earlier, claiming an appointment, and Vicky and Adam had exchanged glances: an appointment with Annie. Another romance in the office, but like their own romance, Vicky thought, nobody discussed it.

“Where do you want to go for dinner?” Adam said, scooping up the file folders.

“I can’t tonight.” Vicky glanced at her watch. She had ten minutes to meet Diana at the park.

“Oh?” Adam walked around the table and held the door for her, disappointment and expectation playing across his face. She knew that he planned to leave early tomorrow for Pine Ridge.

“I agreed to see someone,” she said, brushing past. She started down the corridor, his footsteps behind her. She crossed the reception toward her office, then turned. Adam had stopped in the middle of the room, folders clasped under one arm, hands stuck in the pockets of his khakis. She had the sense that she was seeing him for the first time—the black hair tousled from the hours of work, the tiny scar beneath his cheekbone, the flash of pain in his dark eyes. His shirtsleeves were folded halfway up his brown forearms; his khakis were wrinkled. They should be together, she thought, in accord. She should agree with him. Wasn’t that what couples did?

Images of the girl in the alley flashed in her mind, like the frames of a black-and-white movie that she couldn’t stop watching. The man’s fist hitting and hitting, and Lucas rushing at him, and she behind Lucas, gripping the flashlight. The images always dissolved into those of a girl named Liz, alone in the Gas Hills with her killer.