The Eagle Catcher (23 page)

From somewhere came the soft gurgling of water pipes. He inched along the wall keeping his eyes on the hallway until his fingers touched the light switch. Before he could flip the switch, someone lunged out of the darkness, across the shaft of moonlight, and slammed against him, jamming his right shoulder into the wall. Pain shot down his arm all the way to his fingertips. He swung the tape player, but it flew out of his hand and thudded against something. There was the clack of boots on the tile floor, and then the sound of a door slamming shut.

Father John sank down against the wall. trying to catch his breath, which finally came out of some deep well inside him. Grasping his shoulder, he lifted himself up along the wall and moved toward the door. It took all the effort he could muster to let go of his shoulder long enough to yank open the door and slip outside. The parking lot was bathed in moonlight. The only vehicle there was the Toyota.

Leaning against the brick, he edged to the corner of the building and looked toward the back. Suddenly headlights were beaming down on him. He jumped back just as a jeep sped by, its wheels shooting out gravel. It swerved up a knoll and onto the highway.

Holding on to his shoulder and biting his lower lip against the pain, Father John made his way back into the building and flipped on the light. The little tape player lay against the wall, its top cracked, the
Magic Flute
tape hanging out. He bent over slowly to pick it up, then looked around for the keys.

Spotting them against one leg of the receptionist's desk, he set down the player, fingered the key ring, then wedged player and keys together in one hand. Pain pulsated down his right arm as he walked along the hall to Harvey's office.

The door was locked, and he had to go through the whole rigmarole again: Set the player on the floor, grapple with the keys, unlock the door, push it open, pick up the player. It made him slightly dizzy, and he had to lean against the jamb a moment to steady himself. The office looked the same as when he had left this morning. Whoever had attacked him hadn't gotten in, although Father John had no doubt that had been the goal. He had arrived just in time—just in time to get his shoulder dislocated. Perfect, he thought.

Grunting with pain, he sat in Harvey's chair and placed the tape player on the desk. Then he picked up the phone and punched in 911. “This is Father John O'Malley,” he told the operator. “Get me Chief Banner.”

The chief wasn't in, he was told, but the operator would put out a call for him. There was no sense of hurry in her voice, and Father John heard himself shouting into the phone that this was an emergency and that the chief should call him immediately at Harvey Castle's office.

He slammed down the phone and forced himself to take long, deep breaths and try to relax his shoulder and arm muscles. He didn't think anything was broken, but his shoulder was definitely separated. He'd separated it a couple of times before, pitching fastballs. His throat felt dry and scratchy, and every cell in his body was crying for something to drink. He forced himself to think of something else.

He had to get to emergency at Riverton Memorial, a good thirty-minute drive away, and that wasn't going to be easy with his right side convulsed in pain. Whoever had attacked him would be miles gone by now. “Where the hell are you, Banner?” he said out loud. “Come on, call.”

T
HE EMERGENCY ROOM whirled around as Father John sat up, swung his legs off the examining table, and willed the room to stop moving. His right arm rested against his chest in some kind of high-tech combination of buckles and bandages. They had wanted to give him a general anesthetic, but he'd said no, thank you, no general. That would be the beginning.

The doctor had seemed eager to talk him into it, explaining how much better it would be—relaxed muscles, less pain. Then he'd stepped behind the table. Suddenly he'd gripped Father John around the shoulder, and his dislocated arm had shot into its socket. A fireball had hit him, every muscle in his body had twitched, and little lights had flashed everywhere.

He'd rested on the table awhile as the nurse hummed around. At one point she came at him with a needle—“it'll feel better”—and he'd rolled to the side, nearly falling off the edge. “Okay, okay,” she'd said. “Have it your way. But you're gonna want something to get you through the night.”

Now he wanted out of here. He struggled off the table. The nurse grabbed his left elbow and, with surprising strength for a woman who barely reached his chest, steered him out the door. The waiting room looked like another Arapaho funeral, it was so full of brown faces: Anthony, Rita, some parishioners, Banner, and three or four BIA policemen. And Vicky. She took his arm from the nurse. “You okay?” she asked. Everybody was asking the same question.

 

The Toyota moved down Riverton's main street and slowed for the blinking yellow lights at the wide intersections. A couple of oncoming cars passed. Anthony was driving Vicky's Bronco right behind them, then Banner in his patrol car, then two other patrol cars and a couple of pickups. They were their own parade through town.

The Toyota's windows were rolled partway down, and a cool night breeze stirred through the cab. Father John shifted slightly to keep his right shoulder from touching the passenger seat—it'd been a long time since he'd been a passenger in the Toyota. Not since that first year at St. Francis when old Father Peter pulled rank as superior and insisted upon driving. It's a wonder they'd survived. He smiled thinking about it, and pain lit up his shoulder. He heard himself grunt.

“You're not going to take those painkillers, are you?” Vicky asked, her eyes straight ahead. He could see the moonlight in her hair as she smoothed back a few strands that had blown across her face.

“Nope, I'm not going to take those painkillers.”

She glanced at him, then turned her eyes back on the street. They were moving through moonlight and the dark shadows of Riverton's flat-roofed stores, motels, and gas stations. “Fact is, there's probably nothing you'd like more right now.”

“Actually I prefer my painkillers in liquid form.”

“You are one stubborn Irishman, John O'Malley.”

They were on Highway 789 now, heading south of town, and the Toyota speeded up. “Who hit you?”

“A four-hundred-pound Sumo wrestler.” Father John squirmed in the seat. There was no place to hide from the pain. “How'd you hear?”

“Moccasin telegraph.” She glanced at him, smiling. “If you must know, the police dispatcher is a friend of Rita's. She called Rita, who told Anthony, who called me. We thought you'd need somebody to drive you home. They usually put you under for these things.”

“It's nice to have a chauffeur anyway,” Father John said. He found that if he leaned his head against the window frame, his right shoulder floated in space, which relieved the pain a little.

“I was there twice, the emergency room,” Vicky said. “Courtesy of my husband.” She seemed lost in thought, and Father John waited for her to go on. “So I got a divorce, left my kids here with my mother, and moved to Denver.”

This was what she'd never told him, but for some reason she was telling him now. The tone in her voice was one he was accustomed to hearing in confessionals from penitents needing forgiveness.

“The thing was, Ben loved the kids. He was good to them, he really was. But in the divorce, well, I paid him back for what he'd done to me. I made sure he didn't get the kids. It just about destroyed him, although I hear he's getting on his feet now. But the kids ... well, they lost both of us.” She stopped, glancing quickly at Father John before turning her eyes back to the highway. “I don't know why I'm telling you this. It's over now. It's in the past, and the past is over.”

“Except,” Father John said, “it has a way of hanging around, demanding we understand it and weave it into ourselves so that we can go on.” He watched the Toyota's headlights dance over the asphalt ahead, illuminating the stands of cottonwoods along the highway, and thought of the hell she had broken out of, and the cost.

Vicky shifted behind the wheel, as if forcing her consciousness, her whole being, into another position. After a moment, she said, “Did you hear that Miller had Anthony in for more questions today? He's trying to pin Charlie's murder on him. That fed's not going to give up.”

Anthony hadn't said anything about that, but Father John wasn't surprised. Up at Washakie reservoir, the young man's mind had been on Melissa.

“Whoever trashed Harvey's office last Saturday didn't find what he was looking for. So he came back tonight,” Vicky continued, drumming her fingernails against the steering wheel. “I don't think it has anything to do with the oil on the reservation.”

“No?” Father John sensed they were closing in on the same path. He thought of what Will Standing Bear had told him about Mother Earth being more important than all of her gifts, but decided against telling Vicky right now. His shoulder hurt less if he didn't talk, and trying to follow her train of thought helped to take his mind off the pain.

“I did a little research this afternoon,” Vicky said. “I drove out on the county roads south of the reservation. All the wells on the Fremont County side are pumping, but right over the line on the reservation, several wells have supposedly gone dry. The storage tank for one of the county wells was being emptied, so I stopped and talked to the guy doing the work. He empties all the tanks in that area and hauls the oil to the refinery in Cheyenne. He said business has picked up this summer. He's been hauling out more oil than ever before.”

“Who holds the leases?” Father John asked. The pain in his shoulder was sharp and steady, and he tried rubbing lightly on the sling. He had to work to focus on what she was saying.

“Not leases,” she glanced at him. “Rights. I also spent some time at the courthouse. Last May, Western Resources, Buffalo Oil and Gas, and Intercontinental Oil bought the mineral rights from ranchers in the area. Mineral rights don't come cheap, but now those companies don't have to pay any royalties. They're pumping a lot more oil and raking in all the profits.”

“So the companies are doglegging,” Father John said. Vicky shot him a quick glance, and he saw the surprise in her eyes.

“You know about that?”

“I've heard about it. Oil companies drill slantwise into the oil basin under the reservation and help themselves to Arapaho oil. It's happened around here before. What I don't get is why Jasper Owens stands still for it. He holds the leases on the reservation wells. Wouldn't he suspect right away what was going on?”

“I did a little more digging,” she said, slowing for the right turn onto Seventeen-Mile Road. “Western Resources, Buffalo Oil and Gas, and Intercontinental Oil are all subsidiaries of Owens Oil Exploration Company. One big, happy family.”

Father John let out a long breath. “Jesus. I've misjudged Jasper Owens. I didn't think he was stupid. How long before somebody figured this out? Marvin Antelope ...”

“Forget him,” Vicky said. “My money says he's collecting a small percentage not to figure it out, which is why he's dawdled over getting out the report Harvey requested.”

“Harvey would've figured it out,” Father John said, thinking how thorough and organized and logical Harvey had been in researching Arapaho history.

“Of course,” Vicky said. “He would have gotten the business council to request a Bureau of Indian Affairs investigation, and Jasper would've been stopped, eventually .”

“So you think Jasper Owens stopped Harvey?” Father John tried the idea out loud, feeling his way around it. Parts made sense, but other parts didn't. Suppose Jasper had decided to preempt Harvey, kill him before he could take action? Had he also killed Charlie for the same reason? What was his plan? Murder the entire Arapaho business council?

“Why would he have to kill anybody?” Vicky asked. “That's the real question. Sure the doglegging would've been stopped, and Jasper wouldn't have made as much money this year or maybe next. But the penalties are zilch. All he'd have to pay the tribes would've been triple royalties for the time he was doglegging.” The Toyota had tumed off Seventeen-Mile Road and was slowing around Circle Drive at St. Francis Mission.

“And get this.” Vicky was shaking her head. “The BIA lets the oil companies estimate the royalties they would've paid if they hadn't been doglegging. So there's a lot of number-juggling to prove the wells wouldn't have paid out much anyway. They triple that and, bingo, they're home free. It's large-scale fraud, and everybody blinks at it.”

“I thought fraud was still a crime,” Father John said. He had caught her anger, and his shoulder tensed with pain.

“I called a law school friend of mine. She's with a firm in Chicago that represents some major oil companies. She said that the government usually makes a deal with the companies, so criminal charges are seldom brought. Deals are common, according to my friend. Welcome to the oil world.”

Vicky stopped the Toyota in front of the priests' residence, and Anthony pulled the Bronco in alongside. It looked as if they'd lost Banner and the other BIA patrol cars and the pickups somewhere on Seventeen-Mile Road. She flipped off the ignition and leaned against the door into the moonlight. “If Jasper Owens got caught doglegging—worst-case scenario—all he would've had to do was cough up a little money and continue on his merry way. Why would he commit murder, two murders?”

Father John smiled at her. “So how come the Sumo wrestler was outside Harvey's office tonight?”

“I don't have all the answers,” Vicky said. She jumped out, marched around the Toyota, and flung open the passenger door. Anthony was right behind her. They both looked ready to grab him if he stumbled getting out of the pickup. Dear Lord, he felt like some kind of invalid.