The Spider's Web (11 page)

“Okay, okay.” Vicky patted the girl’s arm. She looked at Gianelli. “My client has been through a horrific experience,” she said, starting to get up. “I suggest we continue this interview at a later time.”

“No!” Vicky felt the girl take hold of her arm, the thin fingers digging into her flesh. “They’re the Indians that killed Ned. I want them punished. I want them in prison forever.”

Vicky settled back in her chair. “Okay,” she said.

“What happened when they came to Ned’s place?” Gianelli said, a patient note sounding in his voice, as if he had just kicked over a rock and spotted something new and interesting to probe.

“They hung around, that’s all.”

“Hung around?” Gianelli said, still probing.

“They never came inside. I didn’t see them up close ’til . . .” Marcy let her voice trail off, then she went on, and Vicky could sense the effort she was making. “I heard them arguing outdoors,” she said. “After they left, I asked Ned who they were, and he told me not to worry, it didn’t have anything to do with me. Just something between him and some guys on the rez.”

“Any other time that you saw them?” Gianelli said. He had pulled a notepad out from under some papers and was jotting something down.

“Three, four times,” Marcy said.

Gianelli let the pen drop on top of the pad. “You’ve been on the reservation for two weeks, isn’t that what you said? You’re telling me you saw them three or four times in the last two weeks?”

Marcy shook her head. “I never said that. Only the one time last week. The other times were in Jackson.”

“Let me get this straight,” Gianelli said. “You saw Hawk and Lookingglass in the Jackson Hole area?”

“And that girl.”

Vicky shifted sideways. “We have to talk before you say anything else,” she said.

“No,” Marcy said.“I want to tell what I saw. Roseanne Birdwoman was with them in Jackson, and she came to the house with them that one time.” She leaned forward and grabbed on to the edge of the desk. “You should arrest her, too. Maybe she was waiting for them outside when they killed Ned. She could’ve been in the truck.”

“Did you see the truck they were driving?”

“White Ford. I looked out the window when I heard ’em drive up the night they killed Ned. I remember shouting, ‘Ned, those freaky guys are here again.’ Then they burst through the door.”

“Let’s get back to Jackson Hole,” Gianelli said. “Where did you see them?”

“At my condo in town. They stayed outside and talked real loud. I was watching out the window. They were real mad about something. They took some cartons out of Ned’s van.”

“What are we talking about?” Gianelli said. “Drugs?”

Vicky was on her feet. “Okay, this interview is over,” she said. “My client has positively identified Dwayne Hawk and Lionel Lookingglass as the men who came to Ned’s house last night, assaulted her, and shot Ned. There’s nothing else she has to say.”

“This goes to motivation, Vicky,” Gianelli said, standing up. “Why did they contact Ned Windsong? What were they involved with?”

“You’ll have to ask them.” Vicky leaned over and tapped the girl’s shoulder. “Let’s go,” she said.

It was a moment before the girl started to unfold herself from the chair. Vicky placed an arm around her shoulders and led her across the office, back down the corridor, and out the door. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears as they retraced their steps down to the sidewalk.

 

 

THERE WAS NO one in the office. The surface of Annie’s desk was cleared, the chair pushed in, the computer turned off. Annie and Roger had both left early. “This will take a few minutes,” Vicky said, ushering the girl into her private office.

Marcy dropped into a side chair. “You’re mad at me,” she said, and for a moment, Vicky thought she might burst into tears.

“I’m not mad at you, but if I’m going to represent you, you’ll have to trust me,” Vicky said, walking around the desk to her own chair. “Tell me everything you know about Dwayne Hawk and Lionel Lookingglass and Roseanne Birdwoman. There can’t be any secrets between us, because if there are, I can’t help you.”

“I don’t understand,” the girl said. “I was telling the truth.”

“Okay, okay.” Vicky waved a hand between them. “You didn’t mention them to me.”

“I already told you. I didn’t think about them until I saw the photos. Then I knew who they were, and I remembered that Roseanne was with them. Ned said she wouldn’t leave him alone, like she was obsessed with him. He couldn’t get away from her. He had to go to Jackson Hole to get away. No way was he ever going back to her...”

“He had a relationship with her?”

“It was over.” Marcy scoffed, as if she were clearing her throat. “He met me, and he never wanted to see her again. She just wouldn’t get the message.”

“What was inside Ned’s van?”

“What?” The girl blinked as if she were trying to shift her thoughts away from Roseanne Birdwoman.

“Drugs? Is that what this is all about? Ned was killed over drugs?”

“No! I told you, he didn’t do drugs.”

“Listen, Marcy,” Vicky said, leaning forward. “If Ned was involved in drugs, if he had possession, if was dealing and you knew about it and helped him in any way, you could be charged as an accomplice. You could be in serious trouble.”

Such a blank look came on the girl’s face that Vicky wanted to shout at her. God, no wonder Larry Morrison had hired a lawyer. The man knew his daughter.

“It wasn’t drugs,” Marcy said, the little girl voice again. “I think they might’ve been, you know . . .”

“I’m not clairvoyant,” Vicky said.

“Stealing stuff. Breaking into houses. But Ned wasn’t doing that anymore. I told you, he was gonna dance in the Sun Dance.”

Vicky sat back and studied the girl on the other side of the desk. A white girl with a televangelist father who had said, ‘Send me your bill. I don’t care what it is. Just take care of my little girl.’ A white girl with a condo in Jackson and a pickup and no doubt an annual allowance that was more than Vicky had seen in the first twenty-five years of her life. And she had no inkling that if Ned was involved in a burglary ring, she could also be implicated. She wondered how long it would take before Gianelli had Hawk and Lookingglass in custody. A day or two. The minute they told him what was going on, he would want to talk to Marcy Morrison again.

“Did Ned tell you what he had been doing?”

Marcy was shaking her head. “I figured it out. He never wanted me to know, ’cause he didn’t want me to get into trouble.” She started panting, as if she were having trouble getting her breath.

Vicky stood up. “Are you all right?”

“He’s dead now,” she said. “Doesn’t anybody get it? Ned is gone forever, and what am I gonna do?”

“Maybe you should go home.” Vicky sat back down. “Stay with your father for a while.”

The girl’s lips began moving silently. The blue vein pulsed in her forehead. Then she started speaking, enunciating carefully, letting each word hang in the air before she uttered the next one: “I will never go back there.”

“Then think about going back to Jackson Hole,” Vicky said. “You’ve identified the two men. There’s no reason you can’t go home.”

“They killed him,” she said. “I’m not leaving here ’til they’re arrested. All of them. That girl, too.”

ROSEANNE DARTED PAST the automatic glass doors and across the Walmart entrance, the day’s heat trapped with the rows of metal carts. “Have a nice evening.” The greeter, the old man with the sunken chest, waved a bony hand in her direction. She kept going. Out the glass door that swung toward her, across the sidewalk and down the rows of parked vehicles to the far lot where employees parked. The sun was dropping behind the mountains, and red, orange, and magenta shot across the pale gray sky. At some point, she realized, she had stopped thinking and become a robot. Going through the motions—bending, gripping, smiling. All of it a blur—the shelves and the fluorescent lights that glowed through the flat white panels overhead.

She stayed close to the parked vehicles, sunlight sparkling in the bumpers and dancing on the hoods. Swinging her backpack around, she pulled out her keys, robot eyes straight ahead, feet moving toward the blue sedan. The hot asphalt burned through her sneakers. A dry breeze snatched up pieces of trash and tossed them in the air. She inched sideways between the sedan and a pickup, letting the backpack drag over the asphalt, and jammed the key into the lock.

He grabbed her from behind, an arm like an iron bar pressing against her neck, a fist dug into her stomach. “Shut up,” he said. Dwayne’s voice in her ear, the sour breath flowing across her cheek. Then she was spinning about like a puppet and jammed against the door, her vertebrae pressed into the window frame. The scream erupted in her throat, but he had placed a hand over her mouth and dug his fingers into her cheeks.

“You gonna scream?” He leaned over her. The black eyes were wide with the joke of it. “You think them fat white tourists are gonna come running and save you from a big, bad Indian?”

She tried to push down the terror rising inside her. No one could see them. They were at the far end of the parking lot scrunched down between her car and a pickup. She could scream her lungs out, but in the heat and wind, with the traffic grinding along Federal Boulevard and vehicles belching in the lot, no one would hear.

“You snitch on us?” he said, and she felt the pressure of his hand giving way.

“No,” she managed.

“Come on, Roseanne. Word’s out the fed’s looking for me and Lionel. How did he freaking hear about us? I told you to keep your mouth shut.”

She could feel herself slipping downward, her legs folding beneath her. “I don’t know,” she said. Her mouth had gone dry, her tongue was a piece of sandpaper grating her teeth. She could picture herself in the front room at Berta’s, spilling out her guts when all she had to do was keep quiet. Except that Berta had blurted out the truth.

“The fed already knew,” she managed. She could hear the hollowness in the lie, and she pushed on. “All I told him was that you and Lionel found Ned’s body. I told him that Ned was already dead when we got to the house. It’ll help you. Don’t you see?”

He made a grunting noise under his breath and looked away, and for the first time, Roseanne glimpsed the fear running through his eyes. “How did the fed know we went to the house? Nobody could’ve told him but you.”

“Somebody must’ve seen us,” she said.

He stared at her for a long moment, but she could see that he was beginning to accept the possibility. “What if the fed thinks we killed Ned and went back to the house afterward? He’ll pin it on us. Lionel and me will rot in prison.”

“There’s no reason for him to think that.” She was shivering, arms shaking. There was reason. She could feel the truth of it. Something between them and Ned. He had warned her to stay away from them. Oh God. Why didn’t she listen? All she had been thinking about was getting back at him, doing what he had told her not to do.

“What else did you open your mouth about?” he said.

“I told you all of it.”

“What else, Roseanne?” The tips of his fingers plunged into her shoulders like darts.

“I told him you came running out of the house like you’d seen a ghost.”

“What about the business?”

Roseanne stared at the brown face a few inches from her own, the missing curve of his left ear, the narrow, black eyes as opaque as stones, the purple lips and the pores cratered in the hooked nose. “What are you talking about?” she said.

“The way Lionel and me got it figured”—the fingers loosened; he took a half step back—“you snitched to the fed about the business, so he figures we had reason to take out Ned. Some business problem, like maybe he was cheating on us. Is that a fact? Was he cheating on us?”

“You’re crazy,” she said. The dark eyes pulled into slits, and she put up one hand. “I didn’t mean that. I don’t know anything about any business. I haven’t seen Ned since he got back from Jackson Hole.” Except for that one time, she was thinking, but no one else had been there. “He broke up with me. He was with the white girl. Maybe she said something to the fed.” God, she was going to cry. She could feel the moisture gathering behind her eyeballs.

“The white bitch that was in the house.” He seemed to consider this. “Where is she?”

She was aware that he had let go, and she had to grab on to the door handle to keep from crumbling onto the pavement. “The fed might have her in hiding,” she said. “’Cause she saw Ned’s killer.”

“Yeah? Well, she didn’t see me or Lionel.” His muscles seemed to relax; he ran the palm of his hand over his forehead, pushing the sweat into the edges of his black hair. “She keeps her mouth shut about the business, we’ll be okay. Unless...” He straightened up and looked past her across the roof of the sedan. “Who else would he have shot off his mouth to?”

“I told you, I didn’t see him.”

“That priest at the mission? Talked to him, didn’t he? Used to go over there, hang around, confess his sins, whatever.” He shrugged. “He knows what’ll happen if he says anything to the fed.”

Roseanne could feel her breath stopped in her throat.

“You hear where the white girl is, you call my cell.” He dropped the slit-eyes to her and smiled out of the corner of his mouth. She had called him yesterday. Going crazy, locked up in the house that reeked with whiskey, Aunt Martha on a tear, ordering her about—clean the kitchen, take out the trash, wash the freaking clothes. The house, the job six hours a day, and the image never leaving her mind of Ned and the beautiful white girl he wanted more than her. “Anything going on tonight, Dwayne?” she had said when he answered. “I need to get outta here.”

“You hear me?” he said.

She nodded.

“The fed comes around again, you stick to your story. About how we was shocked at finding Ned.” He swung around and started for the back of the pickup, then glanced around. “No hard feelings,” he said.