Night of the White Buffalo: A Wind River Mystery

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Margaret Coel

Catherine McLeod Mysteries

BLOOD MEMORY

THE PERFECT SUSPECT

Wind River Mysteries

THE EAGLE CATCHER

THE GHOST WALKER

THE DREAM STALKER

THE STORY TELLER

THE LOST BIRD

THE SPIRIT WOMAN

THE THUNDER KEEPER

THE SHADOW DANCER

KILLING RAVEN

WIFE OF MOON

EYE OF THE WOLF

THE DROWNING MAN

THE GIRL WITH BRAIDED HAIR

THE SILENT SPIRIT

THE SPIDER'S WEB

BUFFALO BILL'S DEAD NOW

KILLING CUSTER

NIGHT OF THE WHITE BUFFALO

Anthologies

WATCHING EAGLES SOAR

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eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-60797-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Coel, Margaret, 1937–

Night of the white buffalo / Margaret Coel.—First edition.

pages cm—(A Wind River mystery; 18)

ISBN 978-0-425-26465-2 (hardback)

1. O'Malley, John (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Holden, Vicky (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Murder—lnvestigation—Fiction. 4. Arapaho Indians—Fiction. 5. Indian mythology—Fiction. 6. Wind River Indian Reservation (Wyo.)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3553.O347N54 2014

813'.54—dc23 2014017707

FIRST EDITION:
September 2014

Cover illustration by Tony Greco & Associates Inc.

Cover design by Lesley Worrell.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

I am especially grateful to Robert B. Pickering, Ph.D., for his engaging and informative book
Seeing the White Buffalo
, which sparked the idea for this novel, and to Dan O'Brien for his lovely book
Buffalo for the Broken Heart.

And a thousand thank-yous to my friends Laura and Ron Mamet on the Wind River Reservation for providing several close-up experiences with a buffalo herd from a flatbed bouncing over the pasture while Ron forked off bales of hay at feeding time.

Several people, including the Mamets, took the time to answer my questions with patience and generosity, thus keeping me from wandering too far afield of reality. Others pored over the unfinished manuscript and made helpful suggestions so that the story might ring true. My sincere thanks to: Michael Bennett, Fremont County and prosecuting attorney; Ed McAuslan, Fremont County coroner; Virginia and Jim Sutter, members of the Arapaho Tribe, all in Wyoming; John Dix, in Virginia, my nephew and go-to guy for anything related to baseball; and in Boulder, John Tracy, professor emeritus of the University of Colorado; Sheila Carrigan, attorney and former judge; Karen Gilleland; Beverly Carrigan; Carl Schneider; and my husband, George.

Not to be overlooked are my editor, Tom Colgan, and my agent, Rich Henshaw, who gave me excellent advice and suggestions for this story.

For some very special people in my life: Eleanor, Violet, Aileen, Sam, Liam, Lilly, and Fluffer Nutter.

“I shall see you again,” White Buffalo Woman told the people, promising to return in times of need.

—
Seeing the White Buffalo
, Robert B. Pickering, Ph.D.

Late June, the Moon When the Hot Weather Begins

THE CONFESSIONAL WAS
warm and stuffy. The round light in the ceiling shone on the pages of the novel he was reading and radiated heat around the small area. He could hear the wind picking up outside, the June beginnings of the hot, dry winds that would scour the Wind River Reservation all summer. A cottonwood branch scratched at the corner of the church like an animal nibbling at the stucco.

Father John Aloysius O'Malley flexed his legs in the cramped space and checked his watch. Ten minutes before five. Confessions ran from three to five every Saturday afternoon, and the last penitent had left twenty minutes ago. He had heard the church door open and close, had felt the swish of fresh air wafting into the confessional through the slats on either side. Usually the same handful of parishioners came with a litany of the same sins. Got drunk. Yelled at the kids. Had impure thoughts about the next-door neighbor. Forgive me, Father.

He hadn't heard anyone else enter the church, known as the new chapel the Arapahos had built at St. Francis Mission almost a hundred years ago, after the old chapel had burned down. He closed the Craig Johnson novel he was reading—Wyoming setting, people and places that seemed true and real—and switched off the light. Immediately the confessional felt cooler, or at the least not as warm. He had heard confessions at St. Francis Mission on the Wind River Reservation for more than ten years, longer than he had imagined he would be here. Six years was the usual assignment for a Jesuit, then on to a new place, new people, before a priest could become too attached, too set in his ways, too much at home.

He was at home with the Arapahos, a Plains Indian tribe he had once thought of as a footnote in a history book. Strange that he should be in this place. God worked in mysterious ways. Years of struggling with the thirst, in and out of rehab, stumbling through life teaching, or pretending to teach, in a Jesuit prep school in Boston. Then the assignment to an Indian reservation in the middle of Wyoming. He'd had to look up the place on the map. He had no idea where he was going. To the middle of nowhere, to the ends of the earth.

Father John got to his feet and was about to head out when the door to the penitent's side on his left opened. He sat back down. In the dim light he watched the large, muscular figure folding himself downward on the other side of the screen. The kneeler creaked and groaned; a little tremor ran through the wooden confessional. The man wore a dark cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes. He propped his elbows on the ledge and dipped his face into his hands. He looked like an immense, dark shadow. Sharp smells of tobacco, whiskey, and perspiration trailed across the screen.

“You there, Father?” He had the roughened voice of a man who spent his days in the wind.

“I'm here.”

“Can't remember what I'm supposed to do. It's been a long time.”

“Start with what's bothering you. What brought you here?”

The man didn't say anything for several seconds. His breath came in quick, shallow spurts, as if he were trying not to cry. Finally he said, “I come for forgiveness.”

“What are your sins?”

“I committed murder.”

Father John felt as if he had taken a punch in the gut. On the other side of the screen, inches away, knelt a killer who wanted forgiveness. He thought he had heard almost everything in the confessional or in his office during counseling sessions. Adultery, robbery, theft, all kinds of violence against fellow human beings, even rape. He had heard it all. But no one had ever confessed to murder. “How did it happen?”

“I know what you're doing. You're looking for some way to forgive me. Defend myself? Defend somebody else? It wasn't like that. I did it on purpose, what they call premeditated murder.”

“Why did you do it?”

“I didn't have no choice.”

“We always have choices.” Father John tried to recall any recent unsolved murders on the rez. There weren't any.

“Maybe in your world. I come from nothing.” The man was quiet for a moment, as if he had sunk into another time. “Lucky to get a bologna sandwich when I was a kid. Lived out of a truck. Dad always on the move trying to stay ahead of the law, until he took off. Left me and Mom and the truck, so Mom picked up waitress jobs, which wasn't so bad. Least we got some food. Took off when I was fourteen, been on my own ever since. What I got I worked hard for. I been trying to hold on, and everything was gonna go away.”

“Did the man you killed steal from you?”

“It wasn't nothing like that. Why did I think you'd understand?”

“I'm trying.”

“It was premeditated, okay? Get that in your head.”

“What do you expect from me?”

“I told you. Forgiveness.”

“Are you sorry for what you've done?”

“Sorry? Like I said, I had no choice. Why should I be sorry for something I had to do? Only one thing . . .” The man drew in a long breath and plunged his face deeper into his hands until only the crease of his cowboy hat was visible. “It's like there's no more sleep for me. I close my eyes and I see his face, the way he goes all pale when I lift the rifle, the way he tries to turn around, like he's gonna run away from a rifle. I know the thoughts going through his head, like I'm thinking them myself. We could've been the same man, killer and victim.”

Father John waited a moment before he said, “There's nothing I can say that you haven't already figured out. You know what you have to do.”

The man was rocking back and forth, shaking his whole body. “No police.”

“You know it is the only way to help yourself.”

“Help myself to prison.”

“Acknowledge what you've done. And accept your just punishment. Ask God for forgiveness.”

“That's what you're supposed to do. Tell me God forgives me. Go in peace. Go sleep. Say a Rosary or something. Isn't that what confession's all about?”

“Pray very hard for the courage and the strength to accept responsibility.”

“I don't know why I come here.” The kneeler groaned as the man shuffled his weight back and forth. “It's not like when Mom dragged me to some two-bit church in a flea-bitten town in Arizona or Nevada or someplace. She used her spit to wipe up my face and smooth my hair. ‘Tell the priest your sins and you're gonna be forgiven and everything's gonna be okay for us,' she said, ‘'cause God knows we're sorry for whatever we've done, like getting mixed up with that sonofabitch you think was your father and following that no-good all over creation. I'll say I'm sorry for doing that, and you can say you're sorry for back talking me all the time and being so lazy when I need you to help me out.' So I'd go into the confessional and tell the truth. How I beat up a kid in the school yard, stole money out of Mom's purse, smoked a joint. The priest said, ‘Don't do that again. Make an act of contrition. Say three Hail Marys. Your sins are forgiven.'”

“Do you know about atonement?”

“What?”

“It's not enough just to say we regret our sins.”

“I don't regret what I had to do.”

“But you know what you did, taking a human life, was a terrible thing. Deep inside yourself you know that, and that's why you can't sleep. You are going to have to come to terms with what you did. You have to begin to regret it and acknowledge it.”

“How's that gonna atone for anything? How's that gonna make up? The guy's still dead.”

“Until you acknowledge your guilt, you won't know. But God will give you the grace and the strength to know what might be done.”

“God, what a bunch of crap. I never should've come. I'm outta here.” The dark figure on the other side of the screen started to rise, and the wood creaked and shivered. He swung around, as if he might burst through the closed door, splinter the wood, send it flying across the vestibule.

“Hold on.” Father John got to his feet and flung open his own door, but the tall, dark figure in blue jeans and dark shirt was already across the entry. Lifting his right arm, as if to block a tackle, he pushed the door open and plunged outside. The door slammed shut, rocking on its hinges.

Father John took the entry in a couple of steps and ran outdoors. He stopped on the concrete stoop, unsure of which way to go. The quiet of a Saturday afternoon suffused the mission. No vehicles about. Only smears of boot tracks in the hard-packed ground below the concrete stairs. The yellow stucco administration building on the other side of the narrow dirt drive, the old stone museum at the bend of Circle Drive, the redbrick residence on the far side of the field of wild grass, all looked like a still life painting. The wind scythed the grasses and whistled in the branches of the cottonwoods scattered about the grounds.

He took the steps two at a time and crossed to the corner of the church. The dirt drive that ran past Eagle Hall was empty. At the far end stood the thicket of cottonwoods, sage, and willows that bordered the Little Wind River at the edge of the mission. Clouds of dust and tumbleweeds rolled down the drive.

No sign of the big man in the dark cowboy hat. A killer. Blown away on the wind like a ghost.