The Eagle Catcher (26 page)

F
ATHER JOHN TOOK the stairs at the administration building two at a time. The wind whipped across the grounds of St. Francis Mission, bowing the trees and flattening the wild grasses. Blue-black clouds rolled through a sky of mossy gray. He slammed the front door and ran down the hallway past his office to the mission archives, the heels of his boots clumping against the wooden floor.

He flipped on the light switch in a room about as big as an oversized closet. The saucerlike globe suspended from the ceiling cast a circle of light over a small oak table. Wind whistled around the edges of the window on the opposite wall, and cottonwood branches scratched against the pane. Father John had to turn sideways to get around the table to the shelves. Cardboard boxes stood upright on each shelf, like fat, gray books. He ran the fingers of his good hand along the numbers on the spines until he came to 2200- 2300.

He almost dropped the box pulling it off the shelf one-handed. Plopping it onto the table, he shook out the contents, as if he were shaking rocks out of a sack. Two leather notebooks skidded across the table, and he pulled one toward him and opened the cover. “Father Jaime Stanislau, SJ. Letters. 1886-1888.” It was the letter book with copies of letters written by the first Jesuit missionary at St. Francis. Each letter was numbered, beginning with 2200.

Nudging a wooden chair away from the table, he squeezed himself downward onto the hard seat. Thunder shattered the air and rattled the window as he thumbed through the loose letters looking for 2250. When he came to where it should have been, his heart stopped. The letter was missing. In its place was a small sheet of white paper with Harvey's signature, sprawling and confident, and the date, two weeks before his death. He and Harvey had made an agreement. Harvey could borrow whatever he wanted to copy. All he had to do was leave a note in place of the missing page.

With a sinking feeling, Father John picked up the second leather notebook. “Day-by-Day Accounts of My Mission to the Arapaho People on the Wind River Reservation of Wyoming.” It was Father Stanislau's diary. The pages were loose, and each page was numbered. He flipped quickly through. Page 2274 was missing, replaced by another note. He brought his left fist down hard on the tabletop, sending a shock of pain across his shoulders and into his sore arm. Ned Cooley had gotten the original records that told exactly how his great-grandfather had defrauded the Arapahos of their land. Father John was close. Close. But Cooley was a step ahead.

He had to struggle to line up the pages so the edges didn't hang outside the notebooks, then to get the notebooks back into the box. A sudden swoosh of air preceded another rumble of thunder and sent a small tremor through the old building. Suddenly Anthony was in the doorway, breathing hard, rain splotches darkening his T-shirt and gray sweatpants. “God, I'm glad you're here,” he said.

At the sight of the Indian, Father John jumped up, sending the chair crashing against the shelves. Charlie Taylor had worn that—a dark T-shirt and gray sweatpants—the day he was headed over to the high school gym to shoot baskets. And as he was dying, Charlie had tried to tell him something. He'd whispered four numbers. The combination for a locker. Charlie hadn't given the records to Ned Cooley—he had stashed them in his gym locker.”

“My God,” Father John said under his breath. Ned Cooley was still looking for the records. That's why he was out at the accident site yesterday morning, hoping they might be in Charlie's pickup, or thrown in the field nearby. “Something's going on, Father,” Anthony was shouting, and Father John had to force himself to focus on what the Indian was saying.

“Melissa's gone. I've been calling her all day. I finally got a hold of her uncle. He tried to tell me Melissa and her mother left for France. No way she'd take off for France without calling me. And two weeks before she's supposed to graduate? So I went out to the Cooley ranch. The little house is all boarded up as if they really did leave. I ran into one of the ranch hands, and he said Melissa and her mother flew out of Riverton yesterday.”

Anthony took a deep breath before going on. “I called the airport right away. They said they couldn't give me any information. So I drove out there, and one of the women at the counter was Arapaho. I said, you gotta tell me if Melissa Cooley was on any flights yesterday or today. She said, ask me a question I can answer. So I said, should I get a new girlfriend? And she says no. No! Melissa didn't fly out of here. So where is she?”

Father John felt his jaw clenching, his muscles tensing down his neck and across his shoulders. His whole right arm screamed with pain. What if Melissa and Dorothy had suspected something and had challenged Ned? He didn't want to think the man would harm his own sister and niece, but if he felt desperate ... He'd already killed twice to keep his secret. The women could be in danger. But he had to get the proof—the missing records—before he could convince Banner, or the Fremont County sheriff, or the FBI agent or whoever the hell had jurisdiction at the Cooley ranch to get out there.

“If Ned Cooley wanted his niece and sister out of the way for a while, where would he take them?”

“Why would he want them out of the way?” In an instant, the look of comprehension crossed the Arapaho's face. “You think Melissa's uncle ... you think he killed Harvey?”

“Where would he take them?” Father John heard himself shouting.

Anthony wheeled around as if he'd been shot out of a cannon. “The old cabin,” he hollered from the hallway. “They're in the old cabin.”

“Wait, Anthony,” Father John shouted again as he came around the table. By the time he reached the hallway, the Indian was already out the front door, and Father John ran after him. He flung open the door and hurried outside. Rain was falling in great white sheets, and the sky erupted in thunder as Anthony jumped into his jeep.

“Wait,” Father John hollered again, running out to Circle Drive and grabbing the door handle as the jeep lurched forward. “Be careful,” he yelled into the rain as he let go of the moving vehicle.

R
AIN PLOPPED ONTO the hood of the Toyota and washed over the asphalt moving toward him like a conveyor belt. Thunder roared overhead, coming out of the west—the place of the Thunder Beings—and lightning flashed through the air like neon lights blinking on and off. The old pickup shuddered and protested as Father John floorboarded the gas pedal. Before he'd left the mission, he'd dialed Banner's office only to be told the chief was out. Of course he was out. He was always out. Father John told the operator to get a couple of cars—BIA, sheriff, somebody—out to the Cooley ranch fast.

It was nearly five o'clock as he swung past the tribal offices. Vicky's Bronco wasn't in the parking lot. A short way down the road, he pulled up in front of Indian High School. Let it be open, he prayed, hitting the brake. He sprinted up the sidewalk, water sloshing over his boots and running off the brim of his cowboy hat, and yanked on the knob of the large metal door at the entrance. The door didn't budge.

“Damn,” he said under his breath as he ran around the building to the back door, each step sending shock waves into his dislocated shoulder. An old Chevy was parked out back. Good. Somebody was here, he thought, grabbing the knob of a smaller metal door. It inched slowly forward, and he slipped inside, clipping his arm on the door's edge. The pain made him groan. The rhythm of a bouncing basketball floated out of the gym and into the hallway, which was banked with lockers. One of them was Charlie's. But which one? There were at least fifty on each side of the hall.

Father John burst into the gym and strode out onto the floor interrupting a scrimmage. Three Arapaho high school boys stopped in place, startled. “Anybody know Councilman Taylor's locker?” he demanded.

“Nah, Father,” said the kid palming the basketball, a baffled look in his eye. The other two kids were shaking their heads. “I know it.” The voice came from behind, and Father John whirled toward the bench against the far wall where a younger boy was lacing up one of his hightops.

“He don't know nothin',” one of the older kids muttered.

“Show me,” Father John said. The boy jumped off the bench and marched into the hallway, and Father John followed.

“I saw him put his stuff in here.” The kid stopped in front of one of the lockers. “I don't know the combination.”

I
do, Father John thought. There were only two possibilities. He held the lock tight against the metal door with his left palm and twirled the knob. 3-33-10. The lock held. He swirled the knob a full circle, then tried again. 33-3-10. The shaft slipped free. “All right,” the kid said.

Father John opened the locker door. The inside was crammed with sweats, T-shirts, sneakers, towels, a deflated basketball. A pump tilted forward, about to fall out, and he jammed it back. He held his breath, scarcely believing his luck was holding. Charlie's wife hadn't cleaned out the locker. With one hand he pushed aside folds of terry cloth, T-shirts stiff with dried sweat, and plastic shampoo bottles. Then he gripped something flat and hard.

Father John pulled the plastic file box toward him. It came free, trailing the leg of gray sweatpants. He sank onto the shiny, waxed floor and set the box upright against the wall. The kid had gone back into the gym, and Father John was alone. Slowly he lifted the lid. The pages inside were thin and yellow with the musty smell of archives. He pulled out the first page. Page 2274 of Father Stanislau's diary, handwritten in precise, carefully formed, easy-to-read, yet tiny, script, the work of a precise, careful, logical man.

“January 17, 1887. This morning at 10 o'clock, Chief Black Night brought the leading men of the Arapaho to the mission. They said they wished to tell the Great White Father how the agent had falsely claimed part of their lands. They believe that as soon as the Father in Washington is told of the fraud committed against them, he will require the agent to return their lands. They said it has caused much hardship to lose these lands, which are the most desirable on the reservation because of clear streams and stands of good timber and nutritious grasses. They need the water and the grasses to preserve the last of their pony herd.

“I agreed to take their depositions and to forward them to officials in Washington. Accordingly, each of the leading men recounted how, in 1878, Agent Cooley held their annuities for many months. It was winter, and there was nothing to eat. The warriors hunted deer and small game, and so the people were able to stay alive. But the children were crying with hunger and many were sick in the freezing cold. Finally the leading men said they had no choice but to allow Agent Cooley to carve off a large part of their lands. They said he made them sign some papers. He would not give them the food and blankets that Washington had sent them until they signed the papers. They feared the papers meant their lands were gone forever, but it was never their intention to give over the lands. They had signed because they were afraid the people would die if they did not.

“I wrote all of it down exactly as the leading men told it to me, and they signed the depositions with their X's. Afterwards my two assistants and I also signed to prove to the government that three white men were witnesses. I immediately dispatched the depositions to Washington with little hope that anything will be done. The great bulk of their lands has been taken from these Indians, and this additional outrage will not, I fear, make any difference to the government. Nevertheless, these leading men have told the truth. My hope is that the future will know the truth.”

Father John returned the page to the file box feeling as if he had heard the words, not read them, as if the voice of a long-ago Jesuit priest had spoken to him. The thumping of the basketball reverberated down the empty hallway as he leafed through the other pages. It was all there. A copy of the actual letter Father Stanislau had sent to Washington. At the top of the page was the number 2250. And ten depositions, carefully written copies of the originals, each signed with an X. Under the signatures were the names of the leading Arapaho men. Black Night's name was on the first deposition.

There was more. Several typed pages stapled together and titled “insert.” It was the section Harvey had intended to include in the chapter on the early days of the reservation. And there was a letter from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to Father Stanislau, acknowledging receipt of the depositions and promising prompt redress.

Not so prompt redress, Father John thought, lifting himself stiffly off the floor. He had to get these records to Banner. This and whatever forged records it was likely that Vicky had found in the Fremont County courthouse. That they would be forged he was certain.

There was no sign of Vicky's Bronco at the tribal offices. Inside the receptionist was on the phone staring off into space, absorbed. “Any messages for me?” Father John waved to get her attention. She looked away. After a couple seconds, he realized she was talking to a friend, and he hit the disconnect button. She looked up, startled. “Father John!” Her voice was a whine.

He repeated his question.

“Chief Banner called.” A note of pained reluctance crept into her voice now. “Something about jurisdiction problems at the Cooley ranch. He said to call him. Vicky Holden called you. She said, and I quote, ‘He's gonna like what I found.' She said to meet her at the Cooley ranch.”

“What?”

The receptionist flinched, pedaling backward a couple inches on her chair, an automatic reflex.

“I'm just telling you what she said.” The whine was back.

“Listen to me,” Father John said. He was leaning over the desk. “Call Chief Banner right now and tell him ...” The woman looked as if she might burst into tears.