The Drowning Man (29 page)

The phone started ringing.

Father John picked up the receiver. “Father O'Malley,” he said again. His voice was tense.

“You got my message?”

“You killed your own man.”

“Your fault, Father. Surely you can't believe I would leave him in the hands of the police? We had an agreement, you and me. It made me start thinking maybe I can't trust you. Maybe I oughtta just call this off and get my money somewhere else. There's a lot of good buyers waiting for a petroglyph like this one.”

“The tribes are ready to make the exchange,” Father John said. His grip tightened around the receiver. He hoped that Norman hadn't sent the cash back to the bank.

“That a fact? You got the money?”

“I'll have it in an hour. I can meet you wherever you say.”

“You're the one that'll make the exchange, understand? Don't try to give me any bullshit about bringing along somebody else, some detective disguised like a cowboy. You try it, and the Indian won't be the only one with a knife in him.”

“I'll be alone.” Father John gave his assistant a glance. Ian was shaking his head, frowning.

“Tonight. Nine o'clock. Go to the strip mall on west Main, the one with the bowling alley. Park in front, walk across the street, and wait on the sidewalk. Bring the money.”

“Then what?” Father John said, but he was speaking into a vacuum, and in another second, the monotonous buzzing began.

He pressed the disconnect button, then tapped out Norman's number. Three, four rings, then the answering machine, and the deliberate voice of the councilman: “Leave your number. I'll call you back.”

Father John dropped the receiver.

“You can't go by yourself,” Ian said. He was wagging a finger, like a teacher admonishing a not-too-bright student. “It's too dangerous. The man's a murderer. Let the fed find a police officer built like you. Some guy dressed like you. Blue jeans and plaid shirt, cowboy hat. Somebody that's trained. He'll know how to handle things.”

Ian was right, of course, Father John was thinking. Everything his assistant said was right and logical. He should call Gianelli now, make the arrangements, some plan to fool the man, get an officer next to him before he knew what was happening.

…won't be the only one with a knife in him.

Father John shouldered past the other priest, grabbed his hat off the bench and yanked open the door. Norman had a good hour's start on him. He had to get to the tribal offices before Norman turned over the cash.

“It's our only chance,” he said before slamming the door behind him.

A NAVAJO TRIBAL
member was found stabbed to death last night at the Butte Motel. The victim has been identified as thirty-seven-year-old Benito Behan of Denver. According to a Riverton Police Department spokeswoman, the body was discovered by Father John O'Malley, pastor of St. Francis Mission, who had been called to the motel.

Vicky slammed on the brake and swung into the parking lot that fronted a restaurant on the outskirts of Rawlins. A dark sedan blared its horn as it shot past. She held on to the steering wheel and stared at the radio. The disembodied voice switched to something about negotiations on a new teachers' contract, and Vicky pressed the off button. John O'Malley must have gotten a call after he'd gotten back to the mission. For some reason, the caller had directed him to the motel.

And he had gone. He wanted the Drowning Man back with her people. But instead of the petroglyph, he'd found the Indian stabbed to death.

She swallowed at the lump tightening in her throat. What kind of people had Travis been protecting with his silence? The kind who had murdered Raymond and had now murdered the Indian? The kind who wanted to murder her?

It was a long moment before she felt steady enough to drive. A gust of wind whipped at the car, spinning contrails of dust down the street as she pulled out behind a pickup. The Sunday traffic was slow moving, meandering. She retraced the route she'd taken two days ago: west along an empty stretch of asphalt, left at the massive motel plopped down in the middle of the plains, then another empty stretch, the prison buildings shimmering in the sun ahead.

Officer Mary Connor escorted her again through the ID check and out into the van—moving deeper and deeper past the heavy chain-link fences and concertina wire. They reached the visiting room, where Travis sat upright on a plastic chair, staring at the white concrete wall, ignoring the TV high in the corner.

He jumped up and walked over as Vicky signed in on the clipboard that the officer at the desk had pushed toward her. She motioned him toward the row of interview rooms where Officer Connor stood waiting beside an opened door. The minute the door closed behind them, the officer moved past the window out of sight.

Travis said, “You got good news?”

Vicky waited until Travis had slid onto the chair before she sat down across from him. The red emergency button protruded from the wall next to her. “I want you to level with me,” she said.

“You file a petition? You talk to the judge? How's it look?”

“Are you listening to me? I want the truth.”

“You got the truth. I told you everything. I didn't kill Raymond.”

“The Indian was murdered last night, Travis.”

That stopped him. He blinked into the space and swallowed. His Adam's apple jumped in his throat. “Murdered,” he said almost to himself, as if he were trying to wrap his mind around the idea. “I didn't see nothin' about that on TV.”

“I just heard it on the radio. His name was Benito Behan. I think he was the contact for both of the stolen petroglyphs. I think you know him. You know who he works for, don't you?”

“Jesus, murdered.”

“The truth, Travis. Start with the petroglyph that you and Raymond chiseled out of the rock and removed from Red Cliff Canyon seven years ago.”

The Arapaho was shaking his head, sliding his chair back from the table. “They tried to pin that on me, the fed and the prosecutor, but they didn't have any proof. No way were they gonna make that stick, and they knew it.”

Vicky pushed herself to her feet. This was a waste of time. She couldn't help a man who wouldn't help himself. “You've already spent almost seven years here,” she said. “You'll be eligible for parole in another three. You can do the time.”

“I'll be dead.”

She sat back down. “What are you talking about?”

“They killed the Indian. They're gonna kill me. There's rumors goin' around—I heard 'em—somebody here's got a contract for a hit. Could be anybody. I'm eatin', takin' a shower, I'm all the time waitin' for somebody to stick me. There's no way I'm gonna make it three more years. I gotta get out now.”

“Tell me about the petroglyph.”

Travis hunched forward, his gaze boring into the table. Finally he lifted his eyes to hers. “This is between you and me, right? It's not goin' outta this room.”

“I'm your lawyer.”

He ran his tongue over his lips. “I'm not proud,” he said. Then he started talking, shifting his gaze to some point beyond Vicky's shoulder. “We drove up into the canyon, me and Raymond. We took a bag of tools, you know, chisels, hammers, crowbars. Hiked up the mountain and went to work. Heard the noise of a truck comin' up the canyon while we were still workin'. ‘Geez, he's gonna hear us,' I told Raymond, so we stopped chiselin', just waiting for some yahoo to come hiking up the slope, lookin' to see what was goin' on. But the truck kept goin'.

“It was beautiful, that glyph. Looked a lot like the Drowning Man, like there was water all around the spirit image. It was hell to pry loose, I can tell ya. Took all day to pry it out of the rock, and we were sweatin' like pigs. I could feel the way the spirit was holding on, making it real hard, like he was givin' us the chance to change our minds. But we got the glyph onto a tarp and pulled it downslope over the rocks and brush, and sometimes that tarp started goin' so fast, we had to hold on to it. Other times, geez, it was like haulin' part of the mountain. We pulled it up a ramp into the back of Raymond's truck, covered it with the tarp, and drove down the canyon. It didn't look so big, but it was like—I don't know—something really big and powerful riding behind us. I couldn't get Grandfather's voice outta my head. ‘It's sacred. You remember that, Travis.'

“And Raymond kept sayin', ‘We did it! We got a real pretty piece of art, like they wanted…'”

Vicky interrupted: “Who, Travis? Who were you working for?”

Travis looked out through the window over the empty tables and chairs in the visiting room. He didn't say anything.

“Marjorie Taylor and her foreman?” It was making sense, Vicky thought. The owner of a ranch struggling to keep the place out of foreclosure and a foreman willing to help her. “Is that why Marjorie Taylor came to the jail to visit you? What did she offer to keep you quiet? Is that why you never said anything?”

And then she understood. The minute Travis admitted taking the petroglyph, he would have confirmed his own motive for killing Raymond, just as the sheriff and the DA and the FBI agent had suspected. Oh, it was clear, Vicky thought. Gruenwald assuring his client that he'd be exonerated, and Travis understanding that all he had to do was keep his mouth shut. “If you'd told the truth, you would have been convicted of homicide,” she said.

Travis looked back and gave her an almost imperceptible smile. “That was part of it. I'm not proud of what I done.” He looked away again. “I started gettin' nightmares, you know. I was underwater, and it was cold and black except for this light beamin' down. I couldn't breathe, and my lungs were burstin'. I kept flailing my arms, tryin' to swim to the surface, and then I saw the spirit, and we were both flailing. We were both drowning.”

“Is that why you went to your grandfather's?”

“I told Andy I had a family emergency; I'd be back in a couple days. I still had the nightmare, even at grandfather's. It was like the spirit was following me; I couldn't get away. I tried to tell grandfather what I'd done, but I couldn't. I just couldn't let him know. So I went back to the ranch and told myself it was gonna be okay. We were gonna get ten thou each, Raymond and me. That was a whole lot of money, you know what I mean? I never had the way to get any money together before, and that was my chance. Maybe buy myself a little land, run a few head of cattle, build me a log house.”

Travis leaned back in his chair and stared at some point past Vicky's shoulder. “Raymond came into the bunkhouse the night after I got back from Grandfather's. Said, ‘The glyph's in a real safe place where nobody's gonna find it.' I said, ‘You crazy? Why'd you do that?' ‘We're going for the big enchilada, Travis,' he tells me. ‘We did all the work, took all the risks, and our cut is peanuts. We're gonna get our rightful share of the money, or they don't see that glyph again.' He said he was gonna tell 'em we wanted half. Fifty thousand each. Then he ended up dead.”

“What about you, Travis? Why didn't you end up dead?”

“'Cause they'd worked it so the sheriff thought I was the one that shot Raymond. Wasn't til I was already in jail they seen the petroglyph was gone.”

Vicky waited a moment before she asked what Marjorie Taylor had offered when she'd visited the jail.

“Offered fifty thousand, just like Raymond had wanted. All I had to do was tell her where the glyph was hidden. I told her, she got it all wrong. Raymond double-crossed me same as her. I reminded her I was at my grandfather's, so how the hell did I know where Raymond took the glyph? She knew I wasn't gonna say anything about stealing the glyph and get myself convicted. So she stopped comin' around, asking questions, trying to make me a deal. Everything was gonna be fine…”

“Except that you were convicted.”

“Yeah, I was convicted, and Gruenwald wasn't gonna bother with any appeal, and I've been tryin' to get outta here for seven years. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and the sounds around here in the night, they're like the sounds of hell. Boots clackin' and doors slammin'. Even the quiet is a loud noise. I stare into that yellowish dark and I know I gotta get outta here before they kill me. They killed Behan; they're gonna kill me for sure.”

“Who else was in on the deal, Travis? Benito Behan and who else? Who's running things? I need a name, Travis.”

The man got to his feet and leaned over the table toward her. “I've said all I'm gonna say. Tell Michael Deaver he gets the judge to overturn my conviction and give me a new trial and I'll give him a name. I'll give him a murderer.”

 

VICKY RETRACED HER
route through the prison complex—the van, the hot asphalt, the concertina wire gleaming above her in the sun, the officer at her side. She drove out of the parking lot and worked her way back to the highway, heading north now for the reservation, one eye on the rearview mirror. But there were no vehicles, nothing but the gray river of asphalt flowing behind.

And yet she knew that they would try again. Whoever they were, they would figure out that she was driving a blue Impala. She felt breathless, as if she were running. Running against time. They'd kill her and Travis for the same reason: They could not take the chance that the seven-year-old murder investigation might be reopened, not when it would lead directly to the ring or gang, or whatever they called themselves, that had stolen two petroglyphs and murdered two men.

She pulled her cell out of her bag, pressed the keys for directory assistance, and asked for Michael Deaver's number. No one by that name, the operator said.

Vicky pressed the phone hard against her ear and kept the wheel steady with her other hand. What had she expected? That the prosecuting attorney would have a listed home number? She asked for the Fremont County Prosecutor's Office. There was a blank silence at the other end, followed by the voice-mail message: “Michael Deaver's hours are Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. If you have called outside of those hours, please leave a message. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 911.”

“This is Vicky Holden,” Vicky said after the beep had sounded. The phone was like a cold rock against her ear. “If you pick up your messages, call me right away. It's about the murder of Benito Behan.”