The Spider's Web (15 page)

He turned into the grounds, stopped on the flat expanse of wild grass and got out. The sun burned down, unforgiving. He walked away from the pickup. Then he saw her, a slight figure with black hair blowing back in the wind, dressed in jeans and a dark tee shirt and white sneakers that flashed in the sunshine. She kept her hands in her jeans pockets. Surprise crossed her face as she came closer. “You the priest?” she said.

“Father John,” he said, aware of her eyes taking him in, the blue jeans and plaid shirt, the scuffed boots and cowboy hat. “And you’re Roseanne.”

She nodded. “I hope it’s okay, meeting out here. I didn’t know where else to go. I don’t want anybody seeing me.” She glanced over her shoulder, a hunted look about her. “It’s always quiet here. Sacred grounds, you know. We come here for the Sun Dance. Otherwise, nobody’s here.”

“What are you afraid of?” he said.

“Can we walk?” she said, swinging about and starting off. He fell in beside her. “I guess I was hoping the ancestors might help me. Ned was going to dance this year, you know. He said the spirits would give him courage, the Creator would take pity on him. That’s where the Sun Dance Lodge will be placed. The Rabbit Lodge will be right behind it. It’ll be taken down as soon as the Sun Dance Lodge goes up.” She gave a little wave. “The Rabbit Men have already completed their vows to dance the Sun Dance, and they help the Four Old Men run the dance.” She stopped and turned toward him, a searching look in her expression. “Do you understand?”

“The Four Old Men are the ceremonial elders. They preserve the traditions.”

Roseanne nodded and started off again. “The ceremonial people pray for three days in the Rabbit Lodge before the Sun Dance starts. They pray for the Creator’s blessings. On the fourth day, the center pole that the dancers dance around is brought to the grounds. It’s a special time,” she said. “Traffic is stopped on the roads outside the grounds, and everything becomes very quiet. It’s like the whole world goes silent. The dogs don’t bark and children stop crying; it’s amazing. I remember how much I loved watching the men bring in the center pole. Then volunteers start to erect the Sun Dance Lodge. Over here,” she said, picking up her stride and waving him on. “Have you ever seen that?”

He told her that he had come to the Sun Dance every year since he had been on the rez.

“Pretty impressive, wouldn’t you agree?” she said. “Funny, how I remember all of it. I can almost see it taking place. The volunteers bringing in lodge poles and laying them out in a circle, and people tying pieces of cloth onto the poles. Prayer flags, symbols of our own prayers. Then volunteers set up the center pole and build the lodge around it. They set up other poles and pile up cottonwood branches between them for the walls, and then they lay the poles with the prayer flags across the top and push them up to the center pole. The prayer flags dangle over the lodge.”

She turned and started toward the opposite corner of the grounds, wandering through her memories, he thought. “The White Bulls always camped over there.” She waved toward a sweep of wild grasses. “The Yellowmans were next to them, then the Water family and behind them, the White Horse camp. Every family has a place, like in the Old Time. We were here.” She stopped and stared at the vacant patch of land. “The Birdwoman family. Grandmother and Grandfather ran our camp. My aunt Martha was the camp cook—every camp had a cook that either volunteered or got drafted. She used to be real pretty, I remember, flipping pancakes on the little portable stove, brewing coffee on the campfire. You could smell coffee everywhere.”

“What are you afraid of, Roseanne?” Father John asked again.

The girl took in a gulp of air. She looked as if she might burst into tears, nostrils flaring, eyes narrowing. She turned to the side and pressed her fingers against her eyes. “I’m afraid of losing all this,” she said, lifting a hand toward the grounds. “I can’t stop thinking about Ned. How he should be one of the dancers. He should dance every morning to the rising sun, pray all day in the lodge. Not eat anything. Not drink anything. Make a sacrifice for the people. It’s all gone for him.” She dropped her face into both hands and sobbed, her thin shoulders shaking.

He found a handkerchief in the back pocket of his blue jeans, handed it to her, and gave her a moment. “Are you afraid someone will try to kill you?” he said, taking a stab at it.

She crunched the handkerchief and ran it over her cheeks. Finally she looked up at him, and he saw that he had hit on the truth. The girl was not only mourning Ned Windsong, she was mourning her own life. “I know Ned trusted you,” she began, the words ragged and halting. “Did he go to see you after he got back?”

The sense of regret washed over him again. There were sins of commission and sins of omission, he was thinking. He said, “I had the sense he might have been in some kind of trouble. I’m sorry.” He took a moment. “I didn’t find out what it was.”

“I just found out.” The girl was searching his face, he thought, for anything he hadn’t told her. “He got mixed up in a burglary ring. First in Lander, then in Jackson Hole. I know Ned,” she said. “I know him better than anybody, better than that white girl he got involved with. He didn’t want to do that kind of thing. It wasn’t like him.”

“He did it anyway,” Father John said. This was what had been weighing on the young man, what had brought him to the mission. A need to confess, be absolved, go forward? But he hadn’t said anything about confession. What, then? The desire to talk about what was going on? Ned knew what he would have advised him: get out, make restitution in any way he could, do the right thing.

“It was his chance,” Roseanne said. “His only chance to get enough money for the ranch he wanted. All his life, he wanted his own ranch. We were gonna live there.” She was choking up again, swiping at her eyes with the balled-up handkerchief. “Soon’s he got enough saved up, he would’ve gotten out.”

“That’s why he was killed?”

“Lionel Lookingglass and Dwayne Hawk,” she said. “They wouldn’t let him out. They were afraid he’d snitch to the fed, but Ned would never have done that.”

“Anyone else involved?” Something wasn’t right, Father John was thinking. Ned and two other Arapahos—how did they plan the burglaries? Fence the stolen goods? Keep the whole operation quiet on the rez?

“Lionel and Dwayne, that’s all I know. I think they were running it. I think Ned must have been working for them. That’s why they killed him.”

Father John watched the girl a moment, the quick, nervous movement of her hands, the way her eyes shifted between the road and the place where the Birdwoman family had camped and Aunt Martha, who used to be pretty, had been the cook, as if what was coming down the road might erase the memory. “They’re afraid you’ll talk to the fed?” The white girl was in danger for the same reason, he was thinking. Not only was she a witness, she could provide the motive.

“They’re convinced I knew all about the burglary ring,” Roseanne was saying, “but, I swear, Ned never told me anything. Dwayne warned me to keep my mouth shut.” She looked hard at him. “They think Ned talked to you. They could come after you, too.”

“Is there someplace you can go until they’re in custody?” Father John said.

She gave a bark of laughter. “Like the fed’s gonna find ’em? They know the rez inside and out. They’ll move from house to house, and nobody’s gonna turn ’em in.”

“They killed an Arapaho.”

“That’s why nobody’s gonna call the fed, ’cause they don’t wanna be the next one to get shot.”

“What about you?” he said. “Any relatives they wouldn’t know about?” She was shaking her head, and he pushed on. “In Casper or Cheyenne?”

“Aunt Martha and me,” she said. “All that’s left of the Birdwoman family, except for some cousins in Denver. We hardly ever see them.” She looked away. “Now Ned’s gone. I don’t have anybody.”

He wanted to tell her she could stay at the mission, but Marcy Morrison was at the guesthouse. “How can I reach you?” he said. He was thinking of the parishioners, the brown faces in the pews this morning, the grandmothers and the elders. Someone would take in a girl with nowhere to go.

A light flickered in the girl’s eyes, as if she had guessed his thoughts. She recited her cell number, and he took out the pad and pencil that he carried in his shirt pocket and wrote it down.

THE SUN WAS like a blowtorch when Father John drove into the mission. On Seventeen-Mile Road, the pickup rattling,
Salome
blaring, Ned Windsong had consumed his thoughts. How did Ned get involved in a burglary ring? Who brought him in? Why? The need always came first, the fertile ground. Ned had wanted his own ranch. Then came the reality. On an electrician’s wages, it would mean years of saving, scrimping, dreaming. Then the opportunity had presented itself, and he had made a choice. He had chosen the ranch.

Father John pulled in close to the administration building and turned off the ignition. “Und wars die Hälfte meines Königreichs” rose into the wind a moment before he turned off the CD. He raced up the concrete steps, a question still pulling him: Who had brought the opportunity? Two men he tried to avoid and didn’t like?

He had yanked open the door when the Jeep came out of the alley, past the corner, and pulled to a stop. Vicky jumped out. The wind whipped at her skirt, and she held her hair back with one hand. “Where’s Marcy?” she said, hurrying up the steps.

“I don’t know,” Father John said. The girl’s pickup had been parked at the guesthouse this morning. He hadn’t checked on her, but Elena had taken over a bowl of oatmeal and a plate of toast. At least Marcy had opened the door—half-asleep, Elena said—and taken the food. “Bishop Harry might know,” he said.

“Your assistant is a bishop?” A flash of mirth replaced the worry in her eyes.

“Harry Coughlin,” Father John said. “Retired bishop, spent the last three decades in India. He’s supposed to be recovering from a heart attack.” He shrugged. “He likes to help out.”

Vicky brushed past the door he was still holding open, and he could see that the worry had implanted itself again. “Marcy shouldn’t have left,” she said over her shoulder. Father John followed her into the corridor, and she turned to face him. “She’s scared, John. She’s like a little girl. She doesn’t realize the danger she’s in. Now she’s gone off somewhere ...” She lifted both hands, as if nothing made sense.

“Ah, John, you’ve returned.” Bishop Harry’s voice came down the corridor. The fluorescent light glinted in the old man’s glasses, and the soft soles of his shoes made a squishing noise on the old wood floor. “I’m afraid your guest has flown the coop,” he said.

Vicky let out a gasp. “Flown the coop? Her things are still there. You don’t think . . .” She broke off, and Father John could sense the apprehension in the stiff way she turned toward him.

“Bishop Harry, meet Vicky Holden,” he said. “Marcy Morrison’s attorney.”

“Always good to have an attorney close by.” The bishop extended a thin, vein-riddled hand, which Vicky took for a brief moment.

“Did she say anything to you?”

“Oh, yes.” The bishop nodded. “Stood right in the doorway.” He tilted his head in the direction of Father John’s office. “Demanded to know where you were, John. I explained you were out. She didn’t like that very much. Naturally I offered my assistance, and she asked me to convey the message that she had to get out of here.”

“Did she get a call?” Father John said.

Bishop Harry shook his head. Calls to the mission came through the office. Still, she could have gotten a call on her cell.

“I spoke to Gianelli this morning,” Vicky said. “Every cop and deputy in Fremont County is looking for Hawk and Lookingglass. They’ve burrowed in somewhere. It could take days to find them. I should have insisted that Gianelli arrange for a guard.” A hint of reproach had come into her tone, and Father John knew that she reproached herself. “Her father could have hired a guard. Marcy’s like a child, and she needs protection.”

“May I interject?” Bishop Harry leaned forward, and Father John realized the old man had stepped back and had been watching him and Vicky. “The girl strikes me as quite headstrong. I believe she will do as she pleases. She said she was going stir-crazy—those were her words—locked up in a chicken coop.” He shook his head, and specks of light danced in his glasses. “I had the distinct impression that had you been in, John, she would have made the same announcement. Nothing you could have done would have stopped her, aside from physical restraint, and I assume we are not in the business of physically restraining our guests.”

“Did she say where she was going?” Vicky asked. She would go after the girl, Father John was thinking, if she had any idea of where to go.

“I’m afraid I did not have the presence of mind to inquire,” the bishop said. “May I add that I doubt she would have told me.”

“Anybody could spot her red pickup,” Vicky said, resignation seeping into her tone. “Hawk and Lookingglass could hear about it.”

“I’m afraid I must leave you to sort it out.” The bishop wheeled about and started back down the corridor.

“Do you have a minute?” Father John said, indicating his office. Vicky moved ahead of him. “Coffee?” he said. The coffeepot on the metal table behind the door was empty. It would take five minutes to brew another pot, but she shook her head. He tried not to smile. Somehow he had known she would refuse. He walked over and half-sat on the edge of the desk. “It’s possible that Ned was part of a burglary ring, along with Hawk and Lookingglass,” he said. “Others could be involved.”

Vicky was quiet, not moving from the center of the faded rug, her black bag dangling from her shoulder. “How did you hear this?”

“Someone told me,” he said.

She locked eyes with him for a moment before she said, “You think my client was involved?” She hurried on. “She’s not involved, John. She didn’t have anything to do with whatever Ned might have been up to.”