The Girl with Braided Hair (A Wind River Reservation Myste) (31 page)

Vicky followed the last of the crowd to the grave, Adam at her side, and tossed the yellow rose onto the pile of flowers. “Rest in peace,” she whispered. “
Beni’:i:ho.
We have found you.”

THE CEMETERY WAS
deserted now, the last pickups snaking out to the road, red taillights catching the sun. Vicky retraced her steps across the sun-baked ground, through the rows of graves to Liz’s grave. The smell of the flowers wafted around her. She’d told Adam she needed a few more minutes and had headed back up the bluff.

“You have a beautiful daughter,” she said. Now this is crazy, she was thinking, talking to a skeleton in a casket. And yet, she felt as if Liz Plenty Horses were an old friend, someone she’d known all of her life, a girl like herself at one time. “You have a granddaughter, too. Does that surprise you? And a son-in-law. He seems like a good husband and father. And Inez was a good mother.”

Vicky looked past the grave at the brown plains running into the distance and the blue sky melting down. It would have been nice—appropriate somehow, she was thinking, if Liz’s hair had been unbraided, all of her troubles released. And yet, Vicky had the feeling that it had been done.

When she turned around, she saw John O’Malley coming through the graves toward her, wearing blue jeans now and a light blue shirt, his arm strapped across the front.

“Thought I might find you here,” he said when he reached her. “I haven’t had the chance to thank you.”

“Thank me?” she said. “I should thank you for helping me find Liz’s killer. Robert Running Wolf had gotten away with murder for a long time. He would have always gotten away with it.” Then she told him that she’d spoken with Coughlin yesterday. Mister had been arrested in South Dakota and brought back to the rez. He would be charged with kidnapping, aiding and abetting first-degree murder, and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Conviction on any one of the charges would put him in prison for life.

“You saved my life, Vicky,” Father John said.

She smiled up at him. “Didn’t you know,” she said, “it was partly selfish. I couldn’t stand the thought of your leaving.” She glanced away for a moment. “When are you leaving, John?”

“In two weeks,” he said. He turned his head in the direction of the mission grounds, the white steeple rising over the edge of the bluff. The movement seemed to cause a stab of pain in his wounded arm because he grimaced and drew in his lower lip a moment, and she realized that this—the subject of his leaving—was not something they should talk about. It was not negotiable. They’d both known this day would come.

Still, she pushed on. “I thought you didn’t want to go to Rome.”

“It’s a sabbatical.”

“That means you’ll be back?”

“There are no guarantees.” Father John moved the strapped arm forward about a quarter of an inch, then let it drop back into place, wincing a little, she could see. “No pitching for a while anyway,” he said, and Vicky could feel the effort it had taken, that little joke.

They started walking back across the bluff, striking a zigzag path around the mounds of graves, right, left, then across the road. She reached out and slipped her arm around his good arm, wanting to hold him here for a while longer. The mission lay below, deserted now, except for Adam’s pickup truck parked in Circle Drive. The administration building, the church and museum, the residence looked like an assembly of old buildings on a picture postcard. She could see Walks-On sprawled on the grass near the front door of the residence.

“I’ll come back after the sabbatical for Walks-On,” Father John said. “I don’t want to leave him behind.” Then he added, “With everything else.”

“Yes,” Vicky said. She let go of his arm then. “At least you can take Walks-On.”