The Spider's Web (18 page)

She started scratching at her arm, digging her nails into her skin, and he realized she was yanking off a silver watch. She let it dangle, sparkling in the light. “The only thing Ned gave me. ‘This is for you,’ he said. ‘There’s lots more, too,’ he said. ‘I got you a big ring that you’re gonna love.’ The lawyer says that means I knew all about the burglary ring, and the FBI is gonna charge me.”

“Vicky said that?”

“I know what she meant.” Marcy swung the watch in a wide circle, turned sideways and flung it into the trees and brush. A small clanking noise sounded, then nothing. She started crying, flinging both arms about, spinning in a little circle. Then she stopped and began pulling at her tee shirt. “Ned give me this shirt, so that makes me guilty? They’ll say he stole all my clothes. I gotta throw ’em away.” She ripped the tee shirt into a jagged tear up the middle.

“Stop it, Marcy,” Father John said again, his voice low, the tone of a counselor. He felt helpless. There were fractures in the girl that he wasn’t trained to mend. “I know a good therapist in Riverton,” he said. “She can help you through this.”

Marcy flinched, as if he had hurled a rock at her. Her eyes had turned darker; he had the sense again that someone else was looking out of them. “No more therapists!” she screamed, wrapping the fronts of the tee shirt around her. “I had enough of therapists at the institution. Oh yeah,” she said, doubling over as if she might throw up, “my father put me there. For my own good, he told me, so I wouldn’t hurt myself or something stupid like that. I was twelve years old. I got to spend a whole year with a bunch of nuts, talking, talking, talking ’til it made me crazy.” She lifted her head and stared off into the trees. “I figured everything out,” she said. “I did what they told me. I smiled all the time. I offered to help out with the nut cases. I was the model patient, and the therapists told my father there was no reason he couldn’t take me home.”

She was smiling now, a broad, friendly, relaxed smile, the kind she had perfected in the institution, Father John thought. “Only problem was he didn’t want me back, ’cause he had a new wife—Deborah, or somebody; she didn’t last long. Then he met LuAnn. But I kept up my act, and I was good. Pretty soon, my father came and got me. ‘We have new rules in the house,’ he told me on the drive home.” She dropped her voice and lowered her chin. “‘Evenings you will spend in your own room and will not emerge to bother us. You will do your homework, and you will practice your violin. No TV, no internet, no cell phone. You will go to school, do as you are told, and stay out of our lives.’”

“I’m sorry,” Father John said. He waited a moment before he went on: “No one is forcing you to see a therapist now.”

She tossed her head back and laughed. “The minute my father got the bill, he’d think I was crazy and have me sent to some institution.” Turning slowly toward him, she said, “He could do that, you know. He’s Larry Morrison, the great savior. He can do whatever he wants.”

“Come on,” Father John said. “I’ll walk you back to the house.”

“I hate the house,” she said, but she fell in beside him. She was so small, barely reaching his shoulder, like a child plodding along in her flopping sandals, grasping her tee shirt around her. The faint smell of whiskey wafted toward him, and he swallowed back his own thirst. How quickly it came upon him, waylaid him when he was least expecting it. “It’s like the institution, all closed in, nobody around.”

“You went to town this morning and bought whiskey,” he said. “It won’t help, Marcy. I know.”

“It’s better than sitting there, thinking how Ned and I were gonna get married. He really loved me.”

“I want you to pour out whatever’s left in the bottle.”

“What?” she said. “No alcohol allowed in this fricking place?”

“One of those hard-and-fast rules. We don’t have many,” he said. They had reached the stoop in front of the house, and he let her go up the steps. “Ned’s wake is this evening. I can ask one of the parishioners to pick you up and see that you get safely back without anyone following.”

She spun around and locked eyes with him. “Wake?” She gave a little laugh. “That’s funny. Like Ned’s gonna wake up, only he’s dead forever. ‘You must learn to face reality,’ they told me in the institution. Well, I been facing it and I’m not going to any wake.”

“Bishop Harry and Elena will be here. You won’t be alone.” It was probably just as well that she didn’t want to go to the wake. He wasn’t sure she was strong enough to see Ned’s corpse in the casket. “If you want company, walk over to the residence.”

“Sure, I’ll do that,” she said, the voice of the good little girl promising to do as she’s told. He doubted she would go to the residence.

“Don’t forget about the whiskey,” he said, but she had already gone inside and closed the door. He would ask Elena to check on the bottle when she brought dinner over. If the girl hadn’t poured it down the sink, he would have to do so. For his own sake, he was thinking. Dear Lord, for his own sake as much as for the girl’s.

“WHAT THE HELL are you doin’?” The question sounded like buckshot behind her, and Roseanne swung around. Aunt Martha slouched against the doorjamb, eyes red and cheeks flushed.

Roseanne went back to stuffing a pile of tee shirts and jeans into the small suitcase opened on the bed. “What’s it look like I’m doing?” she said. She grabbed the pink cosmetic bag off the bedside table and smashed it on top of the clothes. Then she closed the lid and pressed down hard. Her hands were trembling. She was aware of the key in her jeans pocket, biting at her thigh as she thumped on the suitcase. She had picked up the key to Betty Mock’s house immediately after Father John had called. Dwayne and Lionel knew she lived with Aunt Martha, but they would never look for her at the other house.

“You running off with some no-good guy?”

“I’m not running off with anybody,” Roseanne said. The woman understood nothing; she stumbled around in her own alcoholic haze.

“You still owe me rent. Just ’cause you’re leaving don’t mean you get out of it.”

“Don’t worry,” Roseanne said. She put her knee on top of the suitcase and pulled the zipper. She had no idea where she would get the rent. She’d called work this morning and said she wouldn’t be in for a few days. “We got us a problem,” the supervisor said. “Store’s open every day, so we can’t have associates not showing up. You don’t take your regular shift today, don’t bother coming back.” Roseanne had started to beg—she wasn’t proud of that. “I just need a few days to straighten out some personal problems. Please.” The supervisor had hung up. She had held on to the phone a long time, a part of her hoping the supervisor’s voice would come back on:
Of course you can take the time. We need you here. You’re a good worker.
Finally she jammed the cell into her backpack.

She bumped the suitcase off the bed and picked up the backpack. She could feel the hard outline of the Colt under the canvas fabric. She started for the door, swinging the backpack over one shoulder, pulling the suitcase. Aunt Martha didn’t move. There was so much sadness in her eyes that Roseanne had to look away. Aunt Martha had been so pretty once, the prettiest woman Roseanne had ever seen, bustling about the camp stove at the Sun Dance grounds, singing to herself, calling everybody to come eat.

“I’m sorry,” Roseanne said. She could feel something inside her melting. “It’s about Ned’s murder. Dwayne and Lionel think I know something. I don’t know anything, but that won’t keep them from coming after me. It’ll just be for a few days.”

“You’re scaring me.” Aunt Martha’s eyes had gone wide. She looked almost sober. “They might come here?”

“Keep the doors locked.” Roseanne stuffed herself and the backpack through the small opening that Aunt Martha left in the doorway and pulled the suitcase past. She went down the hall and across the small living room, conscious of Aunt Martha plodding behind her. The sweet, stale odor of alcohol filled her nostrils.

“That’s who that guy was?” Aunt Martha said.

Roseanne yanked open the front door and looked back at the woman leaning against the wall, the picture of a black mustang dangling behind her. “What guy?”

“Dwayne or Lionel.” Aunt Martha tried for a shrug that sent the picture clattering to the floor.

“Someone was here?” Dwayne had come back, Roseanne was thinking. “What did he want?”

“I don’t know.” Aunt Martha stood very still, pressed against the wall. “I seen him parked across the road. Didn’t pay no attention at first, but after a while I seen he was still there. Watching the house. Made me mad. I didn’t know he was one of the guys that killed Ned. I went out and threw a bottle at him and shouted for him to go away. He drove off.”

Roseanne felt as if all of her muscles had gone into spasms. Her hand was numb around the handle of the suitcase. She drove her other hand hard against the canvas backpack to stop it from shaking. “Maybe you’d better come with me,” she said.

“With you?” Aunt Martha glanced wild-eyed about the living room, the half-filled whiskey bottles lined up next to the sofa, the cabinet door hanging open in the kitchen and the bottles jammed inside. “I can’t leave here.” She pushed herself off the wall and stumbled forward. “Where you going, anyway?” she said.

“Nowhere,” Roseanne said. She plunged out the door and crossed the dirt yard to her car. “Going no damn place,” she said to herself.

ROSEANNE LEFT THE car behind the convenience store and walked around to the entrance. She glanced about, taking note of the pickups at the gas pumps, Indians coming and going across the pavement. No sign of Dwayne or Lionel. She hurried inside past the line waiting to pay for gas and another line in front of the food counter waiting for hot dogs or cheese quesadillas. The blue and red plastic tables in the small eating area were all taken. Black heads bobbed about in the food aisles that ran toward the back of the store. She kept her head down as she headed for the aisles, avoiding the other shoppers. “Sorry about Ned,” they would say, and in their eyes she would read the truth: Ned had left her for a white girl.

She stashed a carton of eggs, a loaf of bread, a small carton of milk, and two cans of soup in her arms and made her way back to the cash registers. She could hide out for a while with her little stash. Dwayne and Lionel were like the plains themselves, melting into the distances, indistinguishable features of the landscape.

She paid for the items with her head down, not meeting the eyes of the heavyset cashier with the silver watch that cut into the flesh of her arm. Carol Makepeace, the badge on her black tee shirt said. They had gone to Wyoming Indian High together, at least until junior year when Carol had dropped out.

Thick brown hands counted out the change, then stacked the groceries inside a plastic bag. Hugging the bag to her chest, Roseanne darted out the door and around the corner. Down the little dirt path between the side of the store and the bumpers of parked trucks, reeking of gasoline. A strange feeling—definite and distinguishable—came over her. Someone was watching her. She could sense the eyes trained on her like a rifle. She hurried to the car, tossed the bag of groceries into the backseat, and got in behind the wheel. Her hand was shaking as she started the engine. The house that Father John had found was only a mile away, but she would have to take an indirect route. Whoever was watching would be behind her.

The white truck appeared in the rearview mirror as Roseanne drove across the vacant dirt strip behind the store and exited onto the asphalt. Two men in the front seat, shoulders bunched, cowboy hats riding low. Lionel at the wheel, Dwayne in the passenger seat. She pressed down on the accelerator and took a wide turn onto the two-lane highway, the rear end swaying, the tires skipping. She watched the truck bank into the turn and speed up behind her. A left turn now, and she was heading north, golden plains, dried grasses, and little pastel houses blurring past. The car was more flexible than the truck, the carriage narrower. She pulled the wheel right and took a diagonal route across a vacant field onto a two-lane dirt road that ran east, jolting over the hardened ridges of the sun-packed earth. The truck fell behind. She reached the corner and swung left.

She leaned her whole weight on the accelerator, the speedometer needle bumping at eighty-five. A brown cloud of dust rolled behind her. She made another turn and drove between two houses, then spun out onto a side road. Through the cloud of settling dust, she could see the pickup’s bumper glinting in the sun. She turned onto a two-track and drove onto the Sun Dance grounds. She had a feeling of being lifted out of herself, transported back to a hot summer, the sun beating down and her throat ragged with dust and thirst. Aunt Martha frying bread at the cook stove, all the relatives milling about. “Here they come,” someone called, and everybody ran out to watch the volunteers bringing in the center lodge pole.

She drove across the Sun Dance grounds. No other vehicles were in sight, except for the truck barreling behind. She was in the area where her family had camped. She could almost see the tipis, the cottonwood branches banked around the shade lodge in the center, the flash of Aunt Martha’s white apron. She took a sharp left, and the car started rolling back and forth. For a moment, she thought it would turn over. She gripped the steering wheel hard. There was a ditch that ran along the periphery. She used to run through the ditch with the other kids, splash in the thin stream. She remembered the feel of the cool water on her legs. She tapped the brake and stopped. Grabbing the backpack off the front seat, she jumped out and ran for the ditch as hard as she could. Her lungs were like hot stones inside her chest. Then she was slipping, the backpack banging her ribs, her arms flailing toward the sharp, prickly branches that snapped off as she grasped at them. She tumbled forward, rolled down a steep hill and crashed against the rocks and boulders. Stabs of pain went through her. She came to a stop alongside the foot-wide stream of water. Above, she could hear the noise of the truck’s engine, Dwayne’s voice over the quiet, peaceful sounds of the little stream: “You can’t get away, Rosanne! We got you!”