Killing Custer (11 page)

12

FATHER JOHN STOOD
at the window and watched Lou Morningside lift himself out of the pickup. He looked older than his years, bent with worry, face half hidden by the wide brim of his cowboy hat. He walked slowly and did a little hip-hop motion coming up the concrete steps. The old front door squealed on its hinges. Father John went out into the corridor. “How are you, Grandfather?” he said. “Just brewed some coffee. Would you like a cup?”

Lou nodded as he walked into the office. Father John stopped at the small metal table next to the doorway and poured two mugs of coffee. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the old man sink into a side chair and take hold of the armrests, as if to keep himself from falling out.

He handed Lou a mug, carried the other mug around the desk, and dropped into the old leather chair that squeaked and settled around him. He waited. It wasn't polite to make inane remarks, especially when the old man's worry was as obvious as his denim shirt and jeans and scuffed boots.
Cosi fan tutte
played in the background.

Lou had set his cowboy hat on the floor next to him. A band of gray hair was sweat-plastered to his scalp. He bent his head toward the mug and sipped at the coffee. “Cops came around yesterday,” he said, looking up. “BIA officer and Detective Madden. Asked Colin a lot of stupid questions. Did he own a weapon? A twenty-two, by chance? You ask me, they already made up their minds. They think he shot that white man 'cause he looked like Custer, and Colin looked like Crazy Horse. Had his hair tied up with grass and rubbed his face with dirt, like Crazy Horse. Colin's relatives at Pine Ridge gave him their stories passed down from ancestors at the Little Bighorn. Crazy Horse hated Custer. All the Indians hated Custer, except for the traitors and scouts that led him to the villages. They thought he was a fine white man.” He shrugged and gave a bark of laughter.

“You know what is really nuts?” Lou went on. “Crazy Horse didn't shoot Custer. The old Indians said Rain in the Face was the one that shot him. And there were other Indians that took credit. Blows up the cops' theory like a firecracker, only they won't listen. They just ask questions and don't hear answers.” He laughed again. “Indians stuck awls in Custer's ears after he was dead, because he never listened to what they had tried to tell him. How they didn't want to fight anymore.”

Father John took a long drink of his own coffee, trying to put the pieces together. Coming to Indian country, throwing what Custer had done into the faces of the people whose ancestors had suffered the consequences, didn't make a lot of sense. But Edward Garrett had been traveling the plains for years dressed like Custer, talking to audiences as if he were Custer, glorifying the massacre at the Washita River, the takeover of the Black Hills, the brilliance of the campaign that led to the death of his entire command. Sooner or later—maybe it was inevitable—somebody would have shot him.

And that was interesting. As if the man, Edward Garrett, had wanted to die, shot by an Indian like his hero.

“How's Colin?” he said.

Lou shook his head. “Old girlfriend of his, Angela Running Bear, came around late yesterday. Accused him of shooting Custer and taking her boss off someplace.”

Father John took another sip of coffee. “Skip Burrows?” he said. Odd that the girl assumed a connection between the death of one white man and the disappearance of another.

“What made her think Colin was responsible for her boss's disappearance?”

“He wasn't just her boss.”

Father John leaned back, pieces clicking into place now. “Do the cops know about Angela and Colin?” He was thinking Colin could be in a lot of trouble.

“Cops have ways of finding out things. Colin was pretty upset after she left, like she had turned a knife in him. Wouldn't eat. Laid around on the sofa all night. Finally got up this morning and went out to feed the horses.”

“Where is he now?” Father John said. The boy needed a lawyer. He would talk to him, urge him to call Vicky.

“Gone.” Lou shook his head and stared down into the mug. “I told him he had to forget the girl and think of himself. I told him to get out of here, go to Pine Ridge and hide with his Crazy Horse relatives. Colin didn't have anything to do with Garrett's death, but they're gonna blame him anyway. Him and Mike Longshot, 'cause it was Mike that drilled the warriors on the dare run. Case solved.”

Father John tried to bring the picture into focus. The cops might make a case that Colin had a motive to kill Garrett, but it was shaky. Built on a hard-to-prove theory that two men acted as if they believed they had lived in the past and were intent on playing out past lives. Motives to abduct Skip Burrows might be easier to construct, based on jealousy, revenge. The oldest motives in the world.

“Detective Madden might think Colin left because he's guilty,” he said.

Lou was quiet, as if what Father John had said was obvious, but Colin had to leave anyway—before he could be arrested.

Father John could sense the terror in the old man. Crazy Horse had been killed by policemen after he had been arrested. “How can I help?” he said.

Lou cleared his throat. His mouth worked silently around the words. “Talk to that white cop, Detective Madden. He's the one that's got the BIA cops all stirred up, trying to identify the Indians in the parade so they can question them. Looking for somebody that says, ‘Yeah, I saw Crazy Horse shoot Custer.' Indians weren't the only ones that hated Custer. Tell that to the detective.”

* * *

“HEY, FATHER JOHN.”
The big man straddled the corridor, gun holstered in the black harness that crossed the chest of his white shirt. “Just about to pay you a visit. Come on in.”

Detective Madden swung around, and Father John followed him past a row of closed doors and into a small office so tidy, it that might have been vacated weeks ago. Desktop gleaming in the fluorescent ceiling light, computer screen dark, keyboard squared with the edge of the desk, pencils and pens gathered in a blue coffee mug. Filing cabinets against the walls, drawers neatly shut. A philodendron with shiny, healthy leaves spread over the top of one cabinet.

Father John took a side chair and waited while Madden hoisted himself around the desk and dropped into a swivel chair. “I'm thinking one of those warriors knows what happened to Garrett,” he said. “Either pulled the trigger himself or saw the Indian that did.”

It was like being hit with a fastball, Father John was thinking. No time for polite preliminaries, for settling in and connecting. This wasn't the rez. “What makes you so sure it was an Indian?” he said.

The detective heaved his bulky chest over the desk. Nodding, the beginning of a smile at his lips. “Dressed up like Custer! Got up on the stage and bragged about his brave exploits conquering the West for civilization. Audience ate it up, clapped and cheered. I was there. Tell you the truth,” he said, exhaling a long breath, “we were expecting trouble. Maybe a riot. Only two Arapahos showed up. Colin Morningside and Mike Longshot. BIA Police have been real cooperative. We talked to both men. Funny thing, they don't know who was in the parade. Won't even admit they were in the parade. Oh, we can prove they were there,” he went on. “Morningside likes to dress up and play Crazy Horse. Weaves grass in his hair, smudges dirt on his face. He's done it before for parades and powwows. I have a dozen witnesses who will swear Morningside was in the parade. Longshot? The kid's a basket case. Didn't take much leaning on him before he started to talk. Then clammed up and said he was going to get a lawyer. Sooner or later we'll have the names of all those warriors. Somebody's bound to have priors, be on probation or parole. That's the guy who will confirm what happened.”

“Confirm? You already know?”

“We have two white men attacked one day apart. Garrett killed and Skip Burrows abducted. Who knows if he's still alive. Connection is Colin Morningside. Hated Custer, hated Skip for taking off with his girlfriend. I'd say that's a pretty good connection.”

“Look, Madden.” Father John leaned forward. “I've known Colin and Mike since they were kids. They're not capable of murder.”

“No? In my line of work, I have to think everybody's capable of murder.” He held Father John's eyes a moment, then looked away, considering. “There's money involved,” he said, looking back. “A lot of money. Both Garrett and Burrows had cleaned out their bank accounts recently. Money's disappeared.”

“How would Colin or Mike know anything about that?” Enough money, he was thinking, to convince Colin Morningside to get involved in murder? Flee to Pine Ridge? He could feel the muscles tightening in his chest. Madden didn't seem to know that Colin had left the area. It wouldn't look good for Colin when he found out.

“Then there's the girl,” Madden said. “Worked for Burrows. Says Garrett and Burrows were old army buddies, had themselves a disagreement last week. I suspect she knows a lot more than she's saying. You know her?”

He knew the family, Father John told him. Parents killed in a bar fight in South Dakota. A sister, Claire, and her boy. The boy played on the Eagles, the baseball team Father John had started his first summer at St. Francis. He tried to think when he had last seen Angela at any of the powwows or celebrations.

“I'm going to level with you, Father,” Madden said. He leaned back into his chair, relaxed looking. “We have one or more killers walking around, and we're chasing our tails trying to figure out who they are. We'd like your help. Talk to those Indians, let them know we want justice for a murdered man. Garrett was shot up close with a twenty-two. A powerful revolver, like a Ruger LCR twenty-two. We've eliminated every other possibility. No gunshot from the curb. No gunshot from a window somewhere. We want to find Burrows before he's a dead man. We're not looking to hang anybody. We're looking for the truth.”

“They think you've made up your mind an Indian killed Garrett,” Father John said. “If they thought . . .”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Madden threw up both hands. “You tell them we're looking at every angle. Right now we're looking at everybody with a connection to Garrett or Burrows. We're talking to everybody on Main Street. Somebody might remember seeing something. Tell them that.”

* * *

OUTSIDE, FATHER JOHN
rolled down the windows and switched on the ignition. The pickup spurted into life. A hot, dry wind blew through the cab. He flipped on the CD player on the seat beside him and turned up the volume.
Di scrivermi ogni giorno
burst around him. He pulled away from the curb, made a U-turn, and headed toward Main Street, trying to work the syllogisms into a logical sequence. Something was missing. Where was the evidence that Garrett's murder and Skip's disappearance were connected? It could be nothing but coincidence, and coincidences happened. He turned onto Main, heading back to the rez, then changed his mind. Lou Morningside's voice running through his head now.
Indians weren't the only ones that hated Custer.

13

THE
RV CAMP
looked busy and permanent, a small town inventing itself at the edge of Lander. People moving about and lounging in outdoor recliners close to the front stoops. Men bent over barbecue grills, smoke spiraling above their heads. Cars were parked at angles here and there; horse trailers stood beyond the RVs. Father John drove slowly down the dirt path that served as a main street looking for a familiar face. Clouds of dust swirled upward and smudged the windshield. He'd rolled up the windows halfway, but he could taste the tiny, dry granules. The CD player was playing
Soave sia il vento.
Ahead were a couple of men in the blue uniforms of the 7th Cavalry, antique looking with brass buttons and high stiff collars. He stopped beside them. “Where can I find Nicholas Veraggi and Philip Osborne?” He hoped he had the names right.

The men squinted at him through the blowing dust. Sergeants, standing straight and confident, as if Father John were a superior officer. “Beg your pardon, sir,” one of them said. “I'm afraid I don't know who you're referring to.”

“Benteen and Reno,” Father John said. If this was the game, he would play it. He felt as if he'd crossed a border into a past time resurrected and come to life around him.

“Last two RVs.” The sergeant held out his hand like a traffic patrolman.

Father John thanked him and drove on. Curious: in this past time, there were no children. Only men and a few women bustling about in long skirts with bonnets tied on their heads, and flushed, sunburned faces. He stopped next to the RVs at the end of the road.
Outback
was plastered in black along the side of the beige RV. The other RV was larger, with swirls of brown and white paint that, he guessed, were meant to suggest the wind whipping past. On the bumper was a large, white sticker with thick red type that said: Custer Lives
.

As far as he knew, the RV camp had materialized about two weeks ago. Each time he'd driven past, the camp had seemed larger. This was powwow and rodeo season in Fremont County, and he suspected a lot of the Little Bighorn reenactors were passing through. He wondered how long they would stay now that Garrett was dead.

He parked behind a dark blue, dust-smeared sedan lined up next to the two RVs. The instant he switched off the ignition, he heard the voices, angry and shrill, over the opera music. He hit stop on the CD player. The voices were louder, as if they came over a loudspeaker. He got out, slammed the door, and waited a moment before heading toward the metal stoop that slanted sideways at the door to the brown-and-white RV. His boots smashed the dried brush that poked through the dirt.

The voices stopped. The metal door slammed open, jingling and shaking on its hinges. A woman who looked to be in her fifties, with dark, curly hair that poked out of her blue bonnet, and a long, cotton dress with sleeves pushed above her elbows, flung herself down the wobbly steps. Picking up her skirt, she swished past him, as if he were part of the landscape, and hurried across the road. She stomped up the steps into a compact-looking RV with
Adventure
painted on the side. The sound of the door slamming reverberated in the wind.

Philip Osborne stood on the top of the steps and stared after the woman. He looked remarkably like the photos of Frederick Benteen, Father John thought. Silver hair mussed, as if he perpetually ran his fingers through it; light eyes narrowed into laser slits. He came down the steps, boots clanging on the metal. Behind him was Nicholas Veraggi, a big man with dark hair and black eyes shadowed beneath thick, black eyebrows. He had a small, black mustache. Uncanny how much he resembled Marcus Reno.

Veraggi leaned heavily on the flimsy metal railing as he came down the steps. Both men were in the uniforms of the 7th Cavalry. The smell of beer floated around them.

“Father John, isn't it? Guess you heard that,” Osborne said. He seemed to be the leader of the two, even though Veraggi, quiet and brooding on the bottom step, probably outranked him here in the trailer park. Benteen had been a captain, Father John was thinking; Reno, a major.

Osborne had an older, more mature look, and when Veraggi stepped down alongside him, Father John could see the puffed redness around his eyes, the bleary way he tried to focus. The look of a drinker. They were both drinkers. Father John could spot the truth a mile away, feel it in his bones before it was obvious to everyone else. Veraggi, the sloppy drunk who slurred and staggered. Osborne, the gentleman drunk who planted his feet carefully and gripped the railing, as if he always gripped railings to keep from toppling over.

The kind of drunk he had been, Father John thought. Smug, congratulating himself on pulling off another binge, planting his footsteps one after the other into the classroom, sure no one could tell. What a fool he'd been, an alcoholic fool. Everyone had known.

“Who is she?” he said, tossing his head toward the trailer across the road.

“Libbie.” Veraggi made a slurping noise with his lips.

“Name's Belinda Clark,” Osborne said in a careful, controlled tone. “Edward's wife. Taking his murder real hard.”

“I wouldn't say that, Captain,” Veraggi said. “The one she's mourning is the general. That's a blow you don't recover from, man like that, cut down in his prime. He would've done great things, had he lived. Would have been elected president.” He laid his head to one side and spit out a wad of phlegm.

“Yeah, and the moon would have evaporated,” Osborne said. “Sooner or later, Custer was going to lead the Seventh to disaster. He was a hothead. Thought about himself and his reputation first. The men whispered about it all the time. They were always worried. You didn't like him any more than anybody else.”

“You forget Libbie. Beer, Father?” Veraggi said.

“No, thanks,” Father John said. The man had already walked around the stoop and was rooting among the chunks of ice in a cooler. He lifted himself up with some difficulty, as if he were lifting a bale of hay, tossed a can to Osborne and popped open another can. He raised it to his mouth and gulped probably half the contents. Strands of white foam trickled down his chin. The smell of beer hit Father John in his rib cage, like an arrow shot from nowhere.

“That woman over there,” Osborne said, popping his own can, “is in love with money. Met up with Edward at the Little Bighorn reenactment couple years ago and latched on to him. Found out he had a big ranch outside Laramie. Married him two months later and started working on him to sell the ranch. Wants the money now. All she cares about.”

“She seemed very upset.”

“Blames us for Edward getting shot,” Veraggi said. He took another long drink of beer and belched. “Says we should've protected him from the wild Indians, come to his rescue. Backed him up. Says we let him die.”

Osborne gave a bark of laughter. “How were we supposed to protect him? Indians rose up out of nowhere. Raced around our command, double column of riders, whooping and hollering. All we could do to stay mounted, the horses were so spooked. Then the Indians rode in front, got back into formation, and kept going down Main. That's when I saw Edward on the street. Figured he got thrown. Reno and I”—he paused a moment, then went on—“we knelt over him. Telling him not to die. We was gonna get the medics. I saw that big hole in his chest, and it was like a vision, like I was back at the Little Bighorn on the hillside, staring down at the general's body.”

“Was his wife there?” Father John was thinking that, at least, Libbie Custer had been waiting for her husband at Fort Lincoln when he was killed. There was mercy in that.

Osborne and Veraggi were both shaking their heads. “Showed up yesterday,” Veraggi said. “Tore through the trailer looking for the money. Stomped over here and started blaming us. The woman is certifiably nuts.”

“Why would she blame you?”

“She's talking about Custer! Libbie never stopped blaming us for not coming to Custer's defense. Well, we were pinned down by Indians. All we could do to stay alive.” Osborne leaned forward and cleared his throat. Then he took another drink of beer, as if he'd had second thoughts. “Problem with being a reenactor,” he said finally, “you forget who you are. Riding in parades and arenas, reenacting the battle, I'm Benteen. You understand? The rest of the world, a hundred and thirty-some years, fades away like it never happened. I'm Benteen, and I have to follow orders and kill Indians.” He looked off into space a moment. “I pretty much am Benteen the whole season. First of October, the powwows, parades, reenactments stop, and I get in the trailer and go back to Tennessee and work in a bar until the season starts up again. I get into my own life. Philip Osborne, best therapist bartender in the state. Ask any drunk. He'll tell you. But it's like Benteen's in the next room, waiting to come out again.”

“You're saying Edward's wife is upset Custer was killed?” It seemed preposterous, but everything about the reenactors was preposterous and mysterious. He had a sense he was talking to ghosts.

“Edward's wife,” Osborne said, emphasizing the words, “is upset 'cause the money's gone.” He shrugged. “Says Edward withdrew the money he got from the ranch, and now it's disappeared. Says we took it. Hell, we didn't even know he'd withdrawn it.”

“Did anybody in the command know?”

Osborne was staring into space again, and Veraggi said, “Kept pretty much to himself. You heard of actors that get into the part and live the part for weeks and months at a time? That was Edward. He got into the part. He was Custer for the whole season, so he never showed up to drink beer or eat barbecue with the troopers.”

“Is that the same for you?'

“Nah.” Veraggi said, bringing his eyes back to Father John's, as if he had hoisted himself again into the present. “I can put Reno away long enough for a couple beers with the guys. Sometimes it's the same with Osborne here. Right?” He leaned toward the man in the captain's uniform. Neither one had missed many drinking bouts, Father John was thinking. “But I understand Edward. He was the best Custer impersonator ever. He was . . .” He hesitated, his eyes focused on the distances. “He was Custer.”

“Daughter hated all of it,” Osborne said. “Thought the old man was crazy. Didn't want anything to do with him.”

“She was the part of Edward that he wanted to hold on to,” Veraggi said. “You see her after her old man got killed?”

Father John told them that he'd driven out to the woman's ranch with Detective Madden to give her the bad news. “She mentioned that her father had intended to buy a ranch close by.”

“You ask me,” Osborne said, “that's where the money went. He put it down on a ranch, and that crazy wife of his wants it back. Last thing she wanted was another ranch.”

Father John took a step backward, away from the stench of sour beer. “The cops think one of the Indians shot Edward,” he said.

Osborne nodded. “That's what happened, all right.”

“Did you see it?”

“I told you, we couldn't see anything. It was like a tornado hit us. We were trying to survive.”

“I don't think any of the Indians were responsible.”

“Come on, Father,” Osborne said. “How long you been on the rez? Too long, you ask me. You want to think they're innocent victims. Well, you should've seen what those innocent victims did to our troops at the Little Bighorn. Scalped them, cut off private parts and stuffed them in their mouths, rammed stakes and awls in them. Jesus, there was no cause for that.”

Except desperation, Father John was thinking. And mindless anger at troops that had attacked their villages, killed and captured their women and children, burned their tipis and stores of food.

“It was a hard time on all sides,” he said. “What about your feelings toward Edward?”

“You accusing us?” Veraggi squeezed the empty can in one fist and tossed it under the metal steps.

“I'm not accusing anybody.” He kept his eyes on Osborne.

“You said some of the men in Custer's command didn't have much use for him. Anyone in the command feel that way about Edward?”

“Like I said,” Osborne began, “Edward kept to himself. He didn't socialize enough to get under anybody's skin. Only one that got to know him was his wife.” He gave a quick nod in the direction of the trailer. “Look, Father.” The man took a step closer. “Edward was an officer. He was a full bird colonel in Desert Storm. The first Iraq war. That's how we met him, Veraggi and me. He was the commander. Won medals for bravery. Took a bullet in his thigh. After the war, we kept an eye out for each other, you might say. Then a few years ago, we saw Edward was impersonating Custer, so we decided to join the Seventh Cavalry. Ride with the general. Let me tell you”—he leaned forward, stabbing each word into the air—“officers like Custer keep in their own tents. Sometimes he'd call the troops together and give them a pep talk, like tomorrow we'll meet the enemy and he will be ours. That kind of thing. But he wasn't kicking back and joking and drinking with the troops. I told you, Edward was Custer.”