Heaven's Keep (31 page)

“No,” the older Arapaho said.

No Voice glanced his way. “Message I got said that was the case.”

“They were snooping, that’s all.”

“Snooping? You sure got ’em trussed up good for snooping.”

“A misunderstanding,” the Arapaho said.

No Voice looked at the kid. “That right, Nick? Just a little misunderstanding?”

“Yes,” the kid said.

“I want them off Nightwind’s land,” the older Arapaho said. “I want them gone, and I don’t want them to come back.”

“Prefer charges,” No Voice said, “and I can guarantee they won’t be back.”

“No. No charges.”

“Where’s Lame?” No Voice asked.

“Gone.”

“All right.” The policeman was clearly not thrilled with the Arapaho’s position. “I’ll take ’em into Red Hawk, deal with them there.”

“We have a Jeep,” Cork said. “It’s down at the hangar.”

“Let’s get it and get you two out of here.”

“Mind cutting us loose?”

“I’m not inclined to do that just yet.”

He herded them into the back of his Blazer and drove to the hangar.

“Who’s got the keys?” he asked.

“I do,” Cork said.

No Voice opened Cork’s door. “Get out.”

After Cork complied, No Voice turned him roughly, took a pocketknife from a pouch on his belt, opened the blade, and slit the tape that bound his wrists.

“You drive the Jeep,” No Voice said. “Follow me to Red Hawk. I’ll keep your partner in my vehicle. Just a little insurance in case you’re inclined toward a different destination.”

In the Jeep, Cork followed No Voice back up the dirt track to the compound. The Arapaho and his grandson still stood in the shade of the outbuilding. Cork waved as he passed to let them know he bore them no ill will. They didn’t respond, just stood watching as the two vehicles kicked up dust on their way out.

R
ed Hawk drowsed in the May afternoon sun. Several pickups stood parked at the Chevron gas station and mini-mart. On the porch of the senior home across the street, two white-haired women rocked and watched No Voice’s Blazer and Cork’s Jeep crawl past. In the playing field behind the school, a bunch of kids were kicking a soccer ball around. No Voice pulled into the parking lot of the Reservation Business Center. He got out, opened the door for Parmer, and was in the process of cutting the tape that still bound Parmer’s wrists when Cork pulled alongside and parked.

“Inside, O’Connor,” No Voice said. After they’d entered, he pointed to the right. “End of the hall. I’m right behind you.”

As they approached, Cork realized they were headed to the office of Ellyn Grant.

“We’re expected?” Cork said.

“Oh, yeah. Go right in.”

Beyond the door, much of the large office was still occupied by the miniature rendering of the Gateway Grand Casino.

Ellyn Grant looked up from her desk. Her face was the color and hardness of desert sandstone. She’d been writing, but she put her pen down very deliberately.

“Thank you, Andy. You can wait outside.”

No Voice retreated and closed the door.

“Mr. O’Connor, we meet again. And you must be Hugh Parmer,” she said. “I’m Ellyn Grant.”

Parmer nodded and said, “Ah.”

“I understand you two gentlemen have concerns about our casino development.”

“Actually, Ellyn, my concerns go way beyond your casino.”

“I’d be interested in hearing them.” She flipped her hand in invitation toward two empty chairs, and the men sat. “Well?”

“I’ll tell you what,” Cork said. “You ask me a question, something you’d like to know, and I’ll give you an answer. In return, I’ll ask you a question and you give me an answer. Keeps us on equal footing.”

“I could simply have you thrown in jail.”

“Not here. No Voice has no jurisdiction over whites accused of breaking the law on the rez. But I suppose you might have the right influence with Sheriff Kosmo. Problem is that it doesn’t get either of us any of the answers we’re looking for.”

She weighed his proposition. “All right.”

“What would you like to know?” he said.

“That’s a question, Mr. O’Connor. I thought I got to go first.” She gave him a cool, satisfied smile. “It’s my understanding that you believe the plane that went missing with my husband and your wife aboard didn’t crash in the mountains. What do you think did happen to it?”

“I think it was flown somewhere and landed.”

“Flown where?”

Cork held up his hand to stop her. “My turn.” He leaned forward. “Is Lame Nightwind in love with you?”

His question clearly caught her off guard. “I’m sure I don’t know.”

Cork sat back. “Hell, if you’re not going to tell me the truth, I’ll just throw a few lies your way, too. We’ll get nowhere.”

For several seconds, she stared at him without blinking, and he thought of the Sphinx of Egypt.

“Yes,” she finally replied. “He’s in love with me.”

“He’s loved you since you were kids, isn’t that true?”

“My turn,” she said. “Where do you believe the plane landed?”

“My best guess at the moment is Nightwind’s airstrip. Forget about the question I just asked. I’m going to assume that he’s loved you forever. So my question is this: Do you love him?”

“No,” she said. “And yes.”

“Care to explain?”

“That’s another question.” She picked up the pen she’d been using and toyed with it. “If you think the plane landed at Lame’s airstrip, you must believe that he was involved. I’d be interested in knowing why you believe this.”

“We know that it wasn’t Clinton Bodine who flew the plane,” Cork told her. “I believe he was dead before the charter ever left the ground in Wisconsin. But everyone agrees that the pilot who flew out of Casper was Indian. Nightwind told me last year when I met him that he flew to a lot of powwows. So did Clinton Bodine. It’s not hard to imagine that at some point they bumped into each other. That was probably what gave Nightwind the idea for the pilot switch. We also know that your husband was opposed to the Gateway Grand Casino. He was a problem that needed taking care of.”

“What do you mean?”

“He needed to be removed from the picture. Killed. Which you helped with.”

“You think I would actually take part in something like that?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“Who you love more, your husband or the Arapaho. The way I see it, you were in trouble. Or more specifically, the Owl Creek Reservation was in trouble. You’d promised wealth you couldn’t deliver. You built your little casino thinking it would bring in good money to fund all your fine improvements. But it didn’t work out that way because Hot Springs is too far off the beaten path. All those millions of people headed to Yellowstone stay to the south or to the north, and neither the Blue Sky Casino nor the healing spring waters are enough to entice them to make a detour.

“So there you are, trapped. You’ve invested whatever resources the rez has in an enterprise that’s going south. Your husband’s answer is to open the reservation to gas and oil exploration, which you see as rape. Then maybe something like this happens: Some people come to you, offer you a sweet deal. They’ll carry your debt. Hell, maybe even provide cash for some of those improvements on the rez
so that your credibility holds together. And in return you use the sovereign status of the Arapaho to help these people build a casino, the biggest between Atlantic City and Las Vegas, at the doorway to Yellowstone. It’s a partnership that promises the kind of income you’d always dreamed of for the Owl Creek Arapaho. Only one problem. Your partners aren’t nice people. They’re the kind of people who make people disappear. And when your husband doesn’t come around to your way of thinking, he needs to be one of the people who disappears.”

“I had nothing to do with anyone disappearing.”

“No? You were with your husband in Casper before the plane left that morning, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And his glasses went missing?”

“I don’t really remember.”

“He would have been pretty blind without them?”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“Which would be necessary, because if he could see when he got on that plane, he’d have recognized Nightwind. Maybe Nightwind alters his voice some and your husband is none the wiser.”

“That’s absurd.”

“You want to hear something really absurd? You knew all along that the plane hadn’t gone down in Baby’s Cradle, but you and Nightwind kept pointing us there. Why? Because Will Pope’s vision was true and you had to misdirect us so that we wouldn’t be thinking about what his vision was really telling us. But we’re going to figure that out, Ellyn, and when we do, your whole card castle is going to tumble.”

“That’s enough,” she said. “We’re finished.”

“Let me tell you one more thing. If I were you, I’d be very careful and I wouldn’t travel alone. Because the closer we get to the evidence we need to prove these things, the greater a liability you become to the people behind all this.”

She laughed harshly. “I’ve dealt with tough people before, Mr. O’Connor. They don’t scare me. And if what you say is true, it seems to me that you and your friend are the ones who ought to be careful.
It would be much easier for these people, if they exist, to simply make
you
disappear.”

“True enough. On the other hand, the more folks we talk to, and believe me we’ve talked to a lot, the more will come asking the same questions if we vanish. Easier, it seems to me, to cut the threads that tie these bad people to the missing plane. And those threads would be you and Lame Nightwind.”

The door opened, and Dewey Quinn walked in with No Voice behind him.

“Sorry to break in like this, Ms. Grant,” Quinn said, “but I need to take these men back to Hot Springs. The sheriff would like to see them.”

“That’s all right, Dewey.” She gave Cork one last look that seemed chipped from flint. “Our business is finished.”

“Think about it, Ellyn,” Cork said. “And if I were you, I’d talk to Nightwind, tell him to watch his back.”

“Good day, gentlemen.”

Quinn and No Voice escorted them out to the parking lot, where Quinn shook hands with his colleague.

“Love to see ’em charged with something,” No Voice said.

“I’m sure Jim’ll let you know what he decides, Andy. Thanks.”

Before No Voice headed to his Blazer, he said to Cork and Parmer, “You men, I catch you on the rez again, I’ll be happy to dispense a little of my own Arapaho justice. Understand?” He got into his vehicle and left.

Quinn said, “Mr. Parmer, you mind driving the Jeep? I’d like to have a word with Cork on the way back.”

“No problem.”

They headed out of Red Hawk along the potholed road toward Hot Springs. Behind them, the sun was just dropping into the grasp of the mountains. The late afternoon light turned the sage nearly gold and made the barren hills seem dipped in honey.

“Sheriff’s pretty hot under the collar,” Quinn said.

“I can imagine.”

“Said you screwed him on a promise you made.”

“I guess I did.”

Quinn glanced his way. “Look, he doesn’t let me in on things sometimes, so I feel like I’m trying to play in a ball game but I’ve got no bat to swing with. You mind telling me what’s going on?”

Cork didn’t see any reason not to. While the sun finished setting behind them and the desolate land the Arapaho called home turned blue-gray in the twilight, Cork filled Quinn in completely.

“Ah, Jesus.” The deputy slapped the steering wheel. “It all makes sense now.”

“What makes sense?”

“Little things. They don’t seem like much separately, but when you put them all together they make a clear picture.”

“What little things?”

Quinn shot out a hot breath and seemed angry with himself. “When I was helping coordinate the search for the plane last year, the sheriff insisted I keep all the aircraft involved out of airspace over the reservation. He told me he wanted to be certain the most probable routes were given the highest priority.”

“Nightwind flew us over the rez on the way to Baby’s Cradle.”

“Sure. He’d know exactly where not to fly. The sheriff was almost fanatical about no one else going there.”

“I was under the impression you and the Civil Air Patrol commander made the decisions about the search.”

“Kosmo sometimes gave me certain directives, and that was one. And here’s the kicker. A few days before the plane went missing, we received a report of unusual activity on the north part of the reservation. Somebody spotted heavy equipment moving along one of the back roads up there. Only you can’t really call them roads. Anybody who doesn’t know the area well would get lost trying to follow them.”

“I tried following a few of those today,” Cork said.

“The concern was that somebody was doing some unauthorized prospecting on the reservation, probably oil and gas exploration. Happens sometimes. Kosmo and No Voice said they’d handle it. Went out, came back, claimed it was a bullshit report. Nothing to it.”

“What’s this got to do with the missing plane?”

“I’m getting to that. We had us a pretty severe drug problem a few years back. Mostly the problems came from the reservation.”

“We know about that.”

“I worked with guys from DEA who said that drug dealers will sometimes take a vehicle or a plane that’s been used to transport the product and bury it. Makes all the evidence disappear easily. Now, think about Will Pope’s vision, Cork. What if the cradle was a hole in the ground? These people buried the plane, and the snow that was falling covered it completely. The white blanket Pope talked about.”

Cork sat back, letting it all play out in his mind. “And that heavy equipment was used to dig the hole.”

“And probably to scrape out a runway.”

“You have any idea where this was?”

“I can check the files for the report to be sure, but I have a pretty good idea. There’s a box canyon up that way with a nice flat run right up to it. If I were going to create a landing strip, that’s where I’d do it.”

“Can you show me on a map, Dewey?”

“I’ll go you one better. I’ll take you there myself. I’ve got lots of vacation saved. I’ll take a day tomorrow. Ten miles north of town on the highway to Cody, there’s a cutoff for a road called Horseshoe Creek Trail.”