Killing Custer (3 page)

Father John felt an uneasiness gnawing at him. It hadn't gone away, he realized, since he'd read the article in the
Gazette
. What the detective said was true. Arapahos lived by symbols, invisible pictures of reality. He tried to shake off the possibility that someone from the rez was involved, but he could see where the investigation would go. As clear and obvious as the foothills ahead. He closed his eyes, and the craggy, worried face of Lou Morningside appeared on the inside of his eyelids. His grandson, Colin, had dressed like Crazy Horse, the Oglala chief who had led the attack on the 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn.

“Revenge for massacres over a century old?” he said. “Sounds like a weak motivation to kill a man.” He didn't say what he was thinking: Colin should call Vicky right away.

“Never know what motivates a killer,” Madden said.

“What about the troopers? I got the impression that Veraggi and Osborne didn't care much for the man.”

“Nobody was armed. The city wouldn't give them a permit to carry. Don't need armed soldiers marching down our streets.”

“Neither were the Indians,” Father John said. “Most were half naked. How would they conceal a gun?”

“All the same. Indians hated Custer.” The car slowed down, and Madden swung right. At the end of a long, dirt driveway, a two-story log house nestled against the peach and red outcroppings that jutted from the sagebrush-studded earth. Shadowing the outcroppings and the house were peaks of the Wind River range. A young woman in blue jeans and a blue blouse leaned against one of the pillars of the porch watching them drive up.

“Bought the place last year,” Madden said, pulling in close to the porch steps. “Name is Dorothy Winslow. Only name on the title.”

The woman didn't move as they got out. She looked a lot like her father, Father John thought.

3

“DOROTHY WINSLOW?” MADDEN
stopped at the foot of the porch steps. Father John walked across the hard-packed driveway and stood next to him. “Edward Garrett's daughter? I'm Detective Madden.”

The woman on the porch above them blinked in response. She might have been in her forties, short and muscular with a sun-brushed look that came from spending a lot of time outdoors. Her hair was blond and she wore it long, like a veil that curled over the shoulders of her shirt. Eyes the same blue as the shirt, and intense. She lifted a hand in greeting. “You'd better come up.”

Father John followed Madden up the steps. The woman shifted her gaze to Father John. He could feel her eyes apprising him: cowboy hat, blue jeans, plaid shirt. “You some kind of clergy?”

“Father John O'Malley,” he said, “St. Francis Mission.” He put out his hand. The woman took his hand for a moment, then glanced at Madden and moved along the porch railing, as if she wanted to open some space around her. “How did it happen?”

“You've heard?” Madden said. News traveled fast across the rez on the moccasin telegraph, Father John was thinking. Up here, outside of town, it was the internet. “I'm sorry. Your father was shot.”

She tossed her head and let out a squeal that might have come from a tiny, trapped animal. She clasped her arms over her chest and hugged herself. “I knew it would happen.”

“You knew your father would be shot?” Madden had pulled the notepad and pen out of his shirt pocket.

“Call it a premonition, if you like,” she said. “I had a vision.” She pivoted toward Father John. “Arapahos know all about visions. I went to the theater last night to hear Custer, that is, my father channeling Custer. He gave his glorious victory speech from after he had routed Jeb Stuart at Gettysburg, saving the Union army, and practically winning the whole damn Civil War. He even bragged about his victories against the so-called savages on the plains.” She pushed herself off the railing, stepped across the porch and dropped onto the wide armrest of a wood chair. “On the drive home, the sky was gray, thick with clouds, and the road was dark. My headlights barely picked out the way. I remember leaning over the steering wheel, watching for deer or antelope. The clouds started to part, making a black, star-filled trail across the sky. The trail climbed over a ridge, and the clouds on either side looked like hills. I saw my father on horseback galloping along the trail, over the ridge, away from me. The clouds closed around him, and the sky turned gray again. I knew he would die. And you know what else? I had the feeling that maybe he deserved to die. I didn't go to the parade. I didn't want to see it happen.”

Madden scratched something in the notepad, then looked up and cleared his throat. “Anyone threaten your father? Any altercations he told you about? Enemies in the area?”

She shrugged and stared at the floor planks. “Indians,” she said. “Arapahos, whatever. Two of them came to the theater. They sat in the back row across the aisle from me. Stoic-faced and still as statues. I watched them the whole time Custer . . .” She broke off and lifted her eyes. “Sometimes I don't know who he was, my father or Custer. He went on and on about his glorious victory at the battle of the Washita against the murderous Cheyennes, one of his favorite themes. From what I've read, Washita was a massacre of a camp of peaceful Cheyennes. Women, children, and old men. Somehow the great Custer had missed the large camp of hostile warriors nearby. If he had waded into them, it probably would have ended his career eight years earlier. The whole time he was bragging about Washita, I kept my eye on those Indians. Half expected one of them to jump up and shoot him. He switched to the Little Bighorn, how it should've been his crowning glory. Would have made him president, except for the treachery of his subordinates, Reno and Benteen. They deserted him, he said. Nothing about Crazy Horse and his warriors, as if they didn't matter.” She shook her head, and Father John wondered if she was speaking of Custer or of her father. “Those Indians didn't even blink.”

“Would you recognize them if you saw them?” Madden asked.

“They looked Arapaho. Long faces, prominent cheekbones, hooked noses.”

Father John took a moment, trying to piece together a reason for anyone to come to Indian country, pretend to be Custer, and brag about fighting the Plains Indians. He asked if she had called her father and told him about the vision.

She nodded. “I called his cell the minute I got home and pleaded with him to cancel the parade. He laughed. What would the Seventh Cavalry do? Troopers from all over the country. The beginning of the season. He made one excuse after the other. Dozens of parades and rodeos scheduled across the West. Montana on June twenty-fifth for the reenactment of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Should they just cancel everything and go home? ‘Remember, Dottie'—he called me Dottie. He used that deep Custer-like voice he put on whenever he gave a speech. ‘To die in the saddle is a worthy death.' I'd heard him talk like that before. It was what Custer believed.”

Dorothy stared out across the yard as if she were expecting another vision. The dirt driveway stretched between mounds of sagebrush and brown sand hills. Gusts of wind swept off the hills and knocked against the logs of the house. The floor planks squeaked. After a moment, Father John asked if she might like him to call other family members.

“Others? There's no one but Dad and me,” she said, pulling her gaze away from the yard. “Mom died ten years ago. Dad stayed in the army a few years, then retired. After that, Dad became crazy obsessed with Custer. He no longer had any life of his own, so he decided to live Custer's.” She gave a little laugh that sounded as if she were choking. “He'd always been an amateur historian. Loved the Civil War. He could quote Lincoln word for word. But he was always drawn to Custer, and pretty soon he moved on to the Indian Wars. Following Custer around, I guess. It was like he was reborn. He was Custer. You believe in reincarnation, Father?”

“I believe we continue our journey after this life. We're in the hands of God.”

Dorothy stood up and walked back to the railing. The wind caught her hair and blew it across her face. She looked out at the yard through the flailing strands of hair a moment before sweeping it aside and tucking it behind her ears. “I believe in reincarnation.” She swung around, light flashing in the blue eyes. “I saw it in my father. He changed into somebody I'd never known and couldn't understand. As if Custer never died at the Little Bighorn, like it was all some terrible mistake for him to have been cut down at thirty-seven years old. So my father was reliving Custer's life, giving him more time.”

“I understood your father had a wife,” Madden said.

“Wife?” Dorothy tipped her head back and gave a forced laugh, as if the idea was preposterous. “Custer had a wife. The indomitable Libbie. The only reason my father married the woman was because she channeled Elizabeth Custer. Custer needed Libbie. Crazy.”

“How can I get in touch with her?” Madden asked.

“I wouldn't know. I met her once. That was enough. In her little calico frock and sunbonnet and lace-up boots, staring adoringly at my father. She was a big hit with the crowds at the Bighorn reenactment. The grieving widow.”

“Where was home?”

“For Custer? On the plains, galloping here to there. Oh, you mean my father. He traveled in his RV.”

“I've spoken with Nicholas Veraggi and Philip Osborne,” the detective went on. “They told me your father was buying a ranch outside Dubois.”

“Marcus Reno and Frederick Benteen.” The woman rolled her eyes. “Not exactly Custer's favorite people. I believe he detested them. Maybe he was just jealous. After all, they survived the Little Bighorn.”

“What about Veraggi and Osborne?” Father John said. “Did your father detest them?”

This seemed to stump her. She walked back to the chair and plopped down on the seat. “It's hard to say, isn't it? Where my father left off and Custer began?”

“Did your father close on the ranch?” Madden went on.

“I have no idea,” she said. “He and Mom had a ranch outside Laramie. Who knows when he was last there. He came to see me a couple of days ago and said he'd sold the ranch and intended to buy one near Dubois. He said he had invested the money he'd made off the ranch and expected to pay cash for the Dubois place. It would be for me, he said, when his time came. I told him it wasn't necessary. ‘You want to be a father now?'” She gave a sharp laugh. “A little too late, I told him. Besides, my divorce settlement left me just fine, thank you very much. Ronny Winslow may have been a womanizing sonofabitch, but he was a rich one. You ask me, the RV was Dad's permanent home. I don't think he had any intention of settling down again on a ranch. Do you really think Custer could have settled down?”

“Do you know the location?”

“He called it the old Stockton place.”

Madden's pen scratched at the notepad. “You've been very helpful,” he said, fishing a small wallet from his shirt pocket. He removed a card and handed it to Dorothy Winslow. “Call me if you think of anything else. Anything at all.”

* * *

THE HIGHWAY MELTED
into a shimmering white light under the blazing afternoon sun. Detective Madden peered through the sunglasses he'd pushed onto his face, both hands on the wheel. Knuckles popped like white pebbles. He hunched forward to see beneath the rim of the lowered visor. “A real mess on our hands,” he said. “Indians fighting whites. Not good for Lander or the rez. We've been trying to work together for years now. Something like this comes along and blows everything out of the water.”

Father John didn't say anything. He watched the light moving ahead like the mirage of a white-capped river. As long as Madden assumed one of the Indians had shot Garrett, there would be tension between Indians on the rez and whites in Lander and Riverton. Chances were, someone at the theater would identify the Arapahos Dorothy had seen, and Madden would start with them. Father John could almost hear Lou Morningside's voice: “Easy to blame us. Indians just waiting to go to town and shoot a white man. Makes sense to white people.”

“Until the investigation is over,” Father John said, “we don't know what really happened.”

“I get it, Father. You're holding out for the Indians, like you're one of them. You gotta admit Indians hated Custer back in history, and Indians don't forget. The way I see it, this was their chance to bring Custer down a second time.” He wiggled his shoulders as if to work out a cramp and went back to staring ahead under the visor.

Outside the land rolled away from the highway like waves on a brown ocean with debris of sagebrush and clumps of wild grasses floating on the surface. The sky dropped all around, the color of a blue wildflower. “Garrett could have had enemies.”

“Don't get me wrong,” Madden said, shooting him another glance. “I'm not the kind of investigator that starts with a theory of who's guilty and overlooks any evidence that proves otherwise. Those guys exist. Give a bad name to every detective in the country. We'll take a close look at Garrett's private life, business dealings. But we also have to talk to those Indians in the parade. Bureau of Indian Affairs Police will cooperate. They'll bring them in. Somebody saw something, and we have to find that person.”

Father John watched the rolling brown hills flatten into the outskirts of Lander. Sagebrush and wild grasses gave way to a string of warehouses, trailer parks, gas stations, and motels. Garrett's murder was the kind of case that crossed jurisdictions and involved police on both sides of the reservation's border. “This big an area, we have to cooperate,” the BIA Police chief had told him once. “Otherwise the bad guys could step across a line and disappear. Police can't cross the lines, so nobody would be looking for them.”

“You can help us, Father.”

“How's that?”

“Talk to the Arapahos at St. Francis. Any Shoshones on the rez you know. A murderer's on the loose, and it's to everybody's advantage—Indian and white—to bring him to justice. Tell them we're investigating everybody, not just Indians.”

Father John hoped that was true. He wanted to believe the man. But he'd been at St. Francis long enough to know how easy it was, despite all good intentions, to fall into the old mind-set: A crime committed in town? Indian must be guilty. Guilty of being Indian. “I'll tell them,” he said. He wasn't sure he could convince them.

Madden slowed down and pulled into the curb behind the red Toyota pickup. Everyone in the area knew the old pickup that Father John had driven since he'd arrived at St. Francis. Old then, and that was ten years ago. He had to smile at the idea that he couldn't go anywhere without someone spotting the pickup. “You can hear it coming,” Vicky Holden had once told him.

He thanked the detective, got out, and was about to shut the door when Madden held up a hand. “You'll call me if you hear anything, right?” he said.

“How about I call the BIA Police?” Father John said.

* * *

FATHER JOHN FOLLOWED
the curve of the highway into Hudson, then crossed the border onto Rendezvous Road and headed into the reservation. Clouds drifting across the sun cut some of the glare. Still he drove with the visor down against the bright sky, his cowboy hat pulled low. To the west were the small white houses of Arapahoe, and in the distance the blue, snow-streaked peaks of the Wind River range. He stopped at the sign on Seventeen-Mile Road, then made a right and headed for the blue billboard with the words
St. Francis Indian Mission
. Another right past the billboard and he was in the tunnel of cottonwoods. Mounds of fluffy white cotton lay like snow under the trees.

A sense of peace usually came over him as he drove into the mission, but not this afternoon. The mission was quiet, yet he couldn't shake the sense that the quiet was temporary, the quiet on a hillside before the battle. A knot of apprehension tightened inside him as he turned onto Circle Drive and drove past the yellow stucco administration building, the wide driveway that led to Eagle Hall and the guesthouse, the white stucco church with geometric symbols of the Arapaho painted in red, blue, and yellow, the old gray stone school that was now the Arapaho Museum. In front of the redbrick residence was a small tan two-door sedan. Someone with long black hair in the driver's seat.