Watching Eagles Soar (28 page)

Langford turned to the conductor. “I have no idea what this madwoman is raving about.”

“Oh, I think you do, Mr. Langford,” Stout said, still gripping the other man's arm.

Molly went on: “You couldn't take the chance of meeting Effie at the Vendome after you saw me leaving the lobby, so you decided to entice her to come to Denver and murder her on the train. It was your door that shut just after I saw the poor girl hurled over the ledge. You meant to throw her things overboard, too, but after I started shouting for the conductor, it was too risky for you to attempt to dispose of them. You planned to carry them off the train wrapped in your chinchilla coat. Your plan might have worked, Mr. Langford, if Effie hadn't brought along a companion who knew she did not get off at Como.” Langford pulled his arm free and lurched toward the opened door, but Molly threw her weight against it, slamming it shut. The conductor wrapped both arms around the other man's chest and wrestled him onto the seat. Standing over him, he said, “You will remain locked in this compartment, Mr. Langford, for the duration of the trip.”

“You'll regret this,” Langford shouted, his long legs tangled in the chinchilla coat. “I will see that you never work for another railroad. And this horrible woman will never, never be accepted in society . . .” Suddenly the man doubled over, lowered his head, and began sobbing.

Stout ushered Molly into the corridor. From outside came the mournful sounds of brakes screeching and the locomotive whistling as the train jerked into a slower rhythm. Laura was holding onto the window bar muttering over and over, “He threw Effie off the train.”

“He drugged her first, so Effie didn't know what happened.” Molly spoke softly. She wondered what would have become of her had she taken the tonic Langford had offered.

Stout inserted a key into the lock and tried the knob. Satisfied, he turned to Molly. “I commend you, Mrs. Brown. The railroad company will honor you.”

“Oh, no.” Molly held out both hands in protest. “I wouldn't want publicity.”

“I quite understand. You are a real lady, Mrs. Brown.” The conductor smiled and gave her a little bow. Then he began backing toward the gangway. “We are coming into Pine Grove. I must telegraph the police. Be assured that they will meet the train in Denver.”

A Well-Respected Man

T
he jangling noise grew louder, like a siren closing in from a far distance. Vicky Holden groped for the alarm clock on the nightstand and pressed the button. The noise continued. Struggling upright in the darkness, one elbow cradled in the pillow, she reached for the phone on the far side of the clock.

“Vicky, that you?” A man's voice, the words rushed and breathless. “Oh, man, I thought you wasn't there. They got me locked up in jail.”

“Who is this?” Vicky said. She heard the sleepiness in her own voice. The luminous numbers on the clock showed 5:22.

“Leland Iron Wolf.” Another rush of words. “You gotta get me outta here.”

An image flashed into Vicky's mind: lanky frame, about six feet tall, cowboy hat pulled forward, shading the dark, steady eyes that took in the world on their own terms, thick black braids hanging down the front of a Western shirt. Leland was about twenty-five years old, the only grandson of Elton Iron Wolf, one of the Arapaho elders. The old man had raised the boy after his parents were killed in an accident. Vicky had never heard of Leland in any kind of trouble.

“What happened?” she asked, fully awake now.

Words tumbled over the line: The police on the Wind River Reservation arrested him an hour ago. He was still sleeping, and there they were outside, pounding on the front door. They turned him over to the sheriff, and next thing he knew, he was in the county jail.

Leland hesitated. Vicky heard the sound of incomprehension in the short, quick breaths at the other end of the line. Finally: “They think I shot the boss. Killed him.
Nohoko
.”

Crazy indeed, Vicky thought. Killers did crazy things, but Leland Iron Wolf . . . He was not a killer. “Who was shot?” she asked.

“Jess Miller. My boss over at the Miller ranch. I got hired out there a couple months ago.”

Vicky knew the place—a spread that ran into the foothills west of Lander. The same spread that Jess Miller's father and grandfather had worked. The family was well respected in the area. Over the years, they had occasionally hired an Arapaho ranch hand.

“What happened?” She was out of bed now, phone tucked under her chin as she switched on the light and began riffling through her clothes in the closet.

“How the hell do I know?” Impatience and desperation mingled in Leland's voice. “I rode in from doctoring calves and picked up my pay at the office in the barn. The boss was alive and kickin', his same old mean self when I left.”

“What time was that?” Vicky persisted.

“About seven, almost dark. You gotta get me outta here, Vicky.” The words sounded like a long wail.

Vicky understood. For an Arapaho accustomed to herding cattle on open ranges, warrior blood coursing through his veins, there was nothing worse than to be locked behind bars. It was death itself. “I'm on my way.” She tossed the jacket and skirt of her navy blue suit onto the bed, then an ivory silk blouse. “Don't say anything until I get there—understand?”

“Hurry,” Leland said.

Vicky pushed the disconnect button, then tapped in the numbers of the sheriff's office and asked for Mark Albert, the detective most likely handling the case. He picked up the phone on the first ring.

“This is Vicky Holden,” she told him. “I'm representing Leland Iron Wolf.”

“Figured you'd be the one calling.” Sounds of rustling paper came over the line.

Vicky ignored the implication that only an Arapaho lawyer would take an Arapaho's case. She said, “What do you have?”

“Evidence Leland Iron Wolf murdered one of the county's prominent citizens.”

“Have you questioned him?”

“We Mirandized him, counselor, and he said he was gonna call a lawyer.” The words were laced with sarcasm.

Vicky drew in a long breath, struggling to keep her temper in check. “Give me the details.”

“Donna Miller, that's the wife, found Jess's body in the barn last evening about eight o'clock. Shot in the chest, right in the heart, to be precise. Shotgun that killed him was dropped outside the barn.”

Vicky said, “Leland left the ranch at seven.”

“Mrs. Miller says otherwise.” Vicky flinched at the peremptory tone. Mark Albert was a tough adversary. “The missus was in the kitchen around eight o'clock. Looked out the window and saw Leland going into the barn. Couple minutes later she heard a gunshot and ran outside. That's when she found her husband.”

Vicky could feel the knot tightening in her stomach.
His same old mean self
, Leland had called his boss. She said, “What's the motive, Mark?”

“Oldest motive in the world. Cash.” A little burst of laughter sounded over the line. “Jess Miller paid Leland in cash every Friday evening. Wife says Indian ranch hands always preferred cash to checks . . .” The unspoken idea hung in the quiet like a heavy weight: local bars prefer cash. “Besides,” the detective hurried on, “that's probably the way of Jess's daddy, and his daddy before him. Old families have their own ways of doing things. Point is, the cash box is gone.”

“A lot of people must have known about the cash,” Vicky said.

Mark Albert didn't say anything for a moment. Then: “There's something else. We got some good prints off the shotgun. They look like Leland's. We'll have confirmation in a few hours.”

Vicky stared out the bedroom window at the dawn glowing red and gold in the eastern sky. Prints. Motive. Opportunity. Mark Albert had them all, but that didn't mean Leland Iron Wolf was guilty. “When's the initial hearing?” she heard herself asking.

“One o'clock, county court.”

“I want to talk to Leland right away.”

“You know where to find him.”

* * *

T
he metal security door slammed behind her as Vicky followed the blue-uniformed guard down the concrete hallway. A mixture of television noise, rap music, and ringing phones floated from the cell block at the far end of the hallway. Odors of detergent and stale coffee permeated the air. The guard unclipped a ring of keys from his belt, unlocked a metal door, and shoved it open. Vicky stepped into a small, windowless room. “Wait here,” the guard ordered, closing the door.

Vicky dropped her briefcase on the table that took up most of the room. She shivered in the chill penetrating the pale green concrete walls. Leland had been locked up how many hours now—two? Three? He would be going crazy.

The door swung open. Leland stood in the doorway, eyes darting over the windowless walls, arms at his sides, hands clenched hard into fists. He had on a bright orange jumpsuit that looked a couple of sizes too large for his wiry frame. His black hair, shiny under the fluorescent ceiling light, was parted in the middle and caught in two braids that dropped down the front of the orange jumpsuit. He started into the room, shuffling, halting, glancing back.

Vicky held her breath, afraid he would turn around and hurl himself against the closed door. “Tell me what you know about Miller's death.” She kept her voice calm, an effort to hold the young man in the present. She sat down and extracted a legal pad and pen from the briefcase.

Leland sank into the chair across from her. He was quiet a long moment, calling on something inside of him. Finally, he said, “Somebody shot him is all I know.”

“He was alive when you left the ranch?”

Leland's head reared back. The ceiling light glinted in the dark eyes. “You don't believe me?”

“I had to ask.” Silence hung between them a moment. “Where did you go?”

Leland shifted in the chair and shot a glance at the closed door. “Just drove around.”

“Drove around?”

“I had some thinkin' to do.”

Vicky waited. After a moment, Leland said, “I got the chance to manage a big spread down in Colorado. They need a real good, experienced cowboy, so a buddy of mine working there gave the owner my name. I gotta decide if I'm gonna leave . . .” He exhaled a long, shuddering breath. “Grandfather don't have nobody but me, and he don't have much money, you know. If I go down to Colorado, it's gonna be real hard on him.”

Vicky swallowed back the lump rising in her throat. Leland had just confirmed the motive. With several thousand dollars, Elton Iron Wolf could get along for a while and Leland could move away. She pushed on: “Did you stop anywhere?”

The young man was shaking his head. “I think best when I'm just movin', you know.” A glance at the walls looming around them. “I drove up to Dubois and back. Got home about ten.”

Vicky made a note on the pad.
Dubois
.
No alibi
. She looked up. “Look, Leland.” She was searching for the words to soften the blow. “I'm going to level with you. Mrs. Miller says she saw you going into the barn just before her husband was killed. The detective says your fingerprints are probably on the shotgun.”

A mixture of surprise and disbelief came into the young man's face. “My prints are all over that shotgun. I took it out a couple days ago after some coyotes been killin' the calves.”

“Who knew you used the gun?” Vicky persisted.

“The boss's kid, Buddy. He rode out with me. Got a real kick outta watching me pick off a coyote. Helps out on the ranch when school's out. Pretty good cowboy for fifteen years old.”

“Any other ranch hands?”

Leland gave his head a quick shake. “That's it. Me and the boss and sometimes the kid. We pretty much took care of things. Boss didn't like a lotta people around, poking into his business was the way he put it. Him and his wife and those two kids, they liked their privacy.”

“Two kids?”

“Boy's got a sister, Julie. She's fourteen. Real pretty little thing. See 'em comin' down the road together after the school bus let 'em off. Just the two of 'em, like they was each other's best friends. Good kids. Real quiet like their dad.”

“You said Jess Miller was mean.”

Leland nodded. “Yeah, he could be mean all right, if he didn't like the job you was doin'. About the only time he had much to say was if he wanted to lay you out. Rest of the time, he kept to hisself. Tended his own business.”

Vicky could feel the jitters in her stomach: prominent rancher who minded his own business, close family, Indian ranch hand with fingerprints all over the murder weapon and a motive to help himself to the cash box. Selecting the words carefully, she said, “You may have to stay in jail awhile, Leland. Just until I can get to the bottom of this.”

Leland blinked hard. “What're you gonna do?”

“You'll have to trust me,” she said with as much confidence as she could muster.

* * *

T
he sounds of organ music resounded through the church as Vicky slipped into the back pew. Ranchers in cowboy shirts and blue jeans and businessmen filled the other pews. There were only a few women. Vicky recognized some of the mourners: the mayor was here, the chamber of commerce president, the owner of the steak house on Main Street, all friends of Jess Miller. She wondered if the murderer was among them. What had she expected to find by coming here? She was grasping, grasping for some way to clear Leland.

At the hearing yesterday, the county attorney had trotted out what he called
a preponderance of evidence
, and she had been left to argue that there was some other explanation. “I look forward to hearing it,” the judge had said. Then he'd denied bail and remanded Leland to the county jail.

Vicky exhaled a long breath and turned her attention to the Miller family in the front pew: the small woman dressed in black, a black lace veil draping her head, the thin-shouldered boy with sandy hair, the dark-haired girl throwing nervous glances from side to side.

The organ music stopped abruptly, leaving only the hushed sounds of whispering and shifting in the pews. A minister in a white robe mounted the pulpit, eyes trained on the family below. He cleared his throat into the microphone and began a flat, perfunctory talk: fine man in our community, cut down in his prime, loving wife and children, devastated by death. The heavens cried out for justice.

After the service concluded, Vicky kept her place, watching the mourners file past the family, nodding, shaking hands. Suddenly the boy wrenched himself sideways, and Vicky noticed the gray-haired woman approaching him. She bent over the pew, trying to get his attention, but he kept his head averted, as if the woman were not there. She moved tentatively toward the girl, then the mother. Both kept their heads down, and finally the woman moved away. She reached into a large black bag and pulled out a white handkerchief, which she dabbed at her eyes as she exited through a side door.

Vicky hurried out the front entrance and made her way around the side of the church to the parking lot. The woman was about to lower herself into a brown sedan. “Excuse me,” Vicky called, walking over.

The woman swung around, surprise and fear mingling in her expression. She pulled the car door toward her, as if to put a shield between her and the outside world.

“I didn't mean to startle you,” Vicky said. “You must be a friend of the family.”

The woman shot a nervous glance at the businessmen and cowboys filing toward the rows of cars and trucks in the lot. “I would say that family has few real friends,” she said. “I came for the children.” Slowly she reached a hand around the door. “Elizabeth Shubert. Lander High counselor.”

“Vicky Holden.” The other woman's hand was as smooth and cool as a sheet of paper. “I represent Leland Iron Wolf.”

“I thought that might be the case.” Elizabeth Shubert gave her head a slow shake. “I don't believe Leland is capable of murder.”

“You know him?” Vicky heard the surprise in her voice.

“I knew him when he was at the high school. A fine boy.”

“Mrs. Shubert . . .”

“Miss,” the woman interrupted.