The Lost Bird (19 page)

“Seizure!” Father John fought to control the rising panic.

“We want to take every precaution,” the doctor said matter-of-factly. “If all goes well, you can take her home tomorrow morning. Now, if you’d like to see her . . .”

Gianelli interrupted. “I’d like to talk to her.” He
flipped open his identification case and introduced himself.

“Follow me, gentlemen,” the doctor said, turning toward the door.

The gurney took up the center of the small examining room. Megan seemed to be half-asleep, a white blanket pulled around her shoulders, red hair fanned over the little pillow under her head. An arm almost as white as the blanket rested on her stomach.

“How are you?” Father John leaned over her.

She gave him a faint smile. “I’ll live.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I’ll pick you up first thing in the morning, and then I think you should go home.”

“Where’s home?” The doctor threw a glance from the side counter where she was scribbling something onto paper attached to the clipboard.

“New York,” Megan said, weariness in her voice.

“It’s not a good idea to fly right away,” the doctor said.

“I’m driving.”

The white smock swung around. “You’re suggesting, Father O’Malley, that your niece set off tomorrow on a drive across the country?” She gave the pen a sharp snap against the counter. “She’s likely to have spells of dizziness, disorientation, and nausea. She needs to rest for several days. I suggest you get used to the idea of having a houseguest.” Another snap of the pen.

Father John brought his eyes back to Megan’s. She was paler than he remembered.

“You want me to leave?” she asked. It was a whisper.

“I want you to stay.” He smiled at her. Then, a nod toward the agent just inside the door: “This is Ted
Gianelli, an FBI agent. He wants to ask you some questions.”

Megan rolled her head toward the large, dark-suited man moving toward the gurney.

“Tell me what happened tonight,” Gianelli said in a patient tone. He might have been speaking to one of his own daughters.

As Megan repeated the story, Father John struggled again to swallow back his own anger. She might have been killed! He reached over and took her hand. He wasn’t sure whether the trembling was in her hand or his own.

“Did you see who attacked you?” Gianelli asked.

Megan shook her head. Strands of red hair squiggled over the pillow.

“Did you see anyone in the room?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Temporary amnesia,” the doctor interrupted. She was leaning against the counter, the clipboard clenched to her chest. “I’m sorry, gentlemen. She’s had enough for one night.”

•   •   •

“So far as you know, the intruder took only Father Joseph’s computer. That right?” Gianelli asked.

Father John stared at the man seated in the wingback chair, scribbling in a notebook. He felt as if he were watching an old movie. Three nights ago the agent had sat in the same chair, asking questions about Father Joseph, writing in the same pad. He had stood in the same place in front of the window, and the same shadowy darkness stretched beyond the black glass. They were no closer to finding Father Joseph’s murderer.

Outside, Chief Banner and several of his men were
combing the grounds, checking the buildings. They’d been here when he’d gotten back from the hospital—two white police cars parked in front of the residence, red and blue lights on the roof streaming into the darkness. He’d parked the Escort behind them. The headlights of Gianelli’s Jeep turning around Circle Drive had flashed in his rearview mirror.

Now the agent closed the notebook and shifted in the chair. “I’ve gone through Father Joseph’s files. A number of papers on various philosophical topics. Hard to understand.” He shrugged. “Some letters to colleagues around the world. I doubt whoever broke into his office was looking for any of it. There was also a long list of names and addresses. Professors at various universities, Jesuit colleagues, a few family members. About what you’d expect.”

The agent stopped and drew in a long breath. “What I didn’t expect were the Arapaho names.”

“Joseph had friends here,” Father John said. It seemed a simple matter.

The agent shrugged. “Only a few people on the list are still here. Esther Tallman. Some of the Holden clan. When I talked to them, they said they hadn’t heard from Father Joseph in thirty-five years. Not until he came back. Most of the others on the list left the res twenty, thirty years ago. It will take time to run them down. The addresses Father Joseph had were thirty-five years old.”

Father John crossed the room and sat down in the leather chair behind his desk. He said, “Any names of people from town?”

“You know somebody named Joanne Garrow?”

“No.” Father John had never heard of the woman.

“Funny thing,” the agent went on. “Garrow says
she hardly knew Father Joseph. He hadn’t contacted her since he left here. Why do you suppose he had her name?”

Father John raised one hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. There was much about Joseph Keenan he didn’t know. Much he was having difficulty trying to understand. He said, “Was Mary James on the list?”

Gianelli stared at him. “As a matter of fact, she was. But she also says Father Joseph didn’t contact her. I take it you know her?”

Father John told the agent about Mary James’s telephone call, about the meeting this afternoon. He mentioned the clipping he’d found in Father Joseph’s Bible. “She believes her sister was murdered,” he said.

Gianelli crossed one leg over the other. He swung a black loafer into the small space in front of the desk. “The woman’s delusional,” he said. “Every three or four months we get a letter begging us to look into her sister’s murder. We send her a regular form letter, the Mary James form, we call it. Says, sorry, but unless some new evidence comes to light, we must accept the coroner’s ruling. Then somebody gets murdered, and she gets busier. More letters. More phone calls. In her mind there’s always some connection. She thinks we should reinvestigate her sister’s death while we’re investigating the latest murder. So let me guess.” He waved an index finger like a baton. “She wants you to convince me there’s some connection between her sister’s death and Father Joseph’s murder.”

Father John looked away a moment. He’d counseled a couple hundred people. He’d known people with delusions. Mary James might be angry, frustrated, determined, but she was not delusional. He said, “Maybe there is a connection. Why would Joseph
have kept the clipping through the years? Why would he have Mary James’s name on his list?”

“I’ll tell you why.” Gianelli scooted to the edge of the chair. “She’s been writing to him. She told me she’d been begging him to come back and help solve her sister’s murder. She was like a dog that had gotten ahold of his leg. The poor man could never shake her off.” The agent glanced around the study, as if he were trying to pull from the air some explanation for the woman’s behavior. “Naturally I checked out her whereabouts the afternoon Father Joseph was shot. She was at her desk at the Mid-Central Bank. About a dozen people can vouch for her.”

“Look, Ted.” Father John kept his voice calm, logical. “Dawn James may have given Joseph some information. Maybe she was involved in something that weighed on her conscience. Let’s suppose she confessed to him. After her murder, he feared for his own life and left.”

Gianelli’s hands flew up. “Conjectures, John. An obsessed woman’s conjectures. Not enough to reopen a thirty-five-year-old murder case. We don’t have the resources, not with a killer running around. And not when, most likely, you’re the one the killer was after.” He paused and drew in a long breath. “Look,” he went on, a softer tone, “I had a talk with Sonny Red Wolf yesterday. He claims he was nowhere near Thunder Lane Monday afternoon. But someone may have seen him there.”

This was news. Father John leaned back, studying the agent.

“Lucy Travise,” Gianelli said, his jaw muscles beginning to flex. “White girl staying out on Thunder Lane with James Holden, Ben Holden’s nephew. Vicky
tried to talk the girl into telling the truth. Got Red Wolf’s attention real fast.”

Father John leaned forward. “What are you saying?”

“He gave her a scare, that’s all. Nothing came of it.”

A wave of dread washed over Father John. Was everyone he cared about in danger? Everyone whose lives touched his? Maybe he’d been the target after all, just as he’d first thought. Maybe Mary James’s theory, the yellowed newspaper clipping in Joseph’s Bible, the woman’s name in the list—maybe none of it had anything to do with Joseph’s murder.

“Soon’s we locate Lucy Travise—” the agent was saying.

“What happened to her?”

“She’s scared, John. Red Wolf’s been harassing her, trying to get her to leave the res, just like he’s been doing to other white people around here. She and James have gotten themselves lost, but, sooner or later, we’ll find her. If she can place Red Wolf out on Thunder Lane at the time Father Joseph was murdered, I’ll get a warrant for his arrest.”

A quicksand of ifs, Father John was thinking. In the meantime Sonny Red Wolf had tried to frighten Vicky and someone had attacked Megan. For half an instant he considered closing the mission and leaving. If he were gone, the people he cared about might be safe.

A hard thump sounded, cutting through his thoughts. The door opened, and a police officer stepped into the study, right hand looped over the handle of the revolver holstered at his waist. “We picked up a prowler out back of the house, Father,” he said. “Looks like we got the man who broke in here tonight.”

17

F
ather John walked over to the man slumped against the side of a police car, head bowed, hands cuffed in back, an officer beside him ready to discourage any idea of making a break for it. Banner and a couple of other policemen stood to one side. Robert Cutting Horse glanced up—a quick, furtive look. In the dim glow of the red and blue police lights, Father John could make out the man’s tight, strained expression, the stone-dead eyes. He was sick, and he was drunk.

Suddenly Robert shook himself into an upright position and stumbled sideways. Alarm came into the officer’s face. Banner reached out and grabbed the Indian’s arm. “My boys found him in the field behind the residence,” he said.

Gianelli stepped over. “What were you doing out there? Sonny Red Wolf send you over?”

“Sonny?” The Indian blinked. “He don’t know I’m here. He don’t want Indians goin’ to the mission.”

The chief said, “His truck is stuck in the ditch over on Raptor Road.”

“Is that where you left it while you broke into the buildings here?” Gianelli persisted, his voice tight.

“Broke in? I don’t know about ‘broke in.’” He slumped back against the car and started coughing. The handcuffs rattled against the metal. “Tell ’em, Father,” he said when the coughing stopped. A look of desperation came into the man’s eyes.

“What do you want me to tell them, Robert?” Father John moved closer.

“You told me to come over here.”

In an instant Father John understood. Robert had mistakenly turned onto Raptor Road, a half mile from the entrance to the mission. He’d run into the ditch and set out across the field on foot. It wasn’t Robert who had broken the lock at the administration building, ransacked Father Joseph’s office, found his way to the residence, attacked Megan. He was too drunk.

Father John turned to Gianelli. “I ran into Robert yesterday. He said he wanted to talk to me, so I told him to come to the mission. He’s right.” Partially right, he was thinking. He had told the man to come to the mission when he was sober.

Gianelli switched his gaze to the police chief. “Any weapons on him? Any sign of Father Joseph’s computer?”

Banner shook his head. “Truck’s clean. Nothing on his person.” Then, facing the Indian, he said, “Looks like another DUI, Robert. We’re gonna have to lock you up.”

The muscles in the Indian’s neck began to twitch. Suddenly he doubled over and started coughing again—a staccato retching, like that of an engine trying to catch.

Father John felt his own throat go dry. He said, “He should be in the hospital.”

“Well, we don’t have the budget every time we pick up a drunk—”