The Spider's Web (25 page)

He was nodding, as if the rest of the story were self-explanatory. “What happened?” Vicky said.

“What happened?” He shouted. “What happened? She kept coming to the club, hanging around outside my apartment. I’d come out of the dry cleaners, and she’d be waiting on the sidewalk. Everywhere I went, she stalked me. Begging me to take her back, saying we belonged together, nobody ever loved her except me and a lot of crap like that. She was a bloodsucker, and I couldn’t get her off me. A friend of mine owns this place, so I quit the club in Denver and moved up here, thinking I’d ditched her. Two weeks later, she showed up. Same thing started up all over again. I was about to take a job in Arizona when she met that Indian. That was my lucky day, ’cause she laid off me and went after him. So the poor bastard’s dead! What’d he do? Try to break up with her?”

“Two men broke into the house, beat up Marcy and shot Ned,” Vicky said. “There’s no evidence she had anything to do with it.” Except, she was thinking, there could have been a motive if Ned had wanted to break things off with her. She pushed the thought away. “There was no weapon in the house, and no evidence that Marcy had fired a gun,” she said, wanting to convince herself, she supposed. God, Marcy, who are you?

She stood up, went over to the desk and set her card down. “If you should hear from Marcy,” she said, “I’d appreciate it if you would give me a call.” Then she left Dave Hudson stationed beside the desk, like a statue, the tennis racket still balanced on top of the stringing machine.

The sun had dropped behind the mountain peaks by the time Vicky drove toward the town square, fit the Jeep into a vacant slot and walked to a little shop with black metal tables and chairs out on the sidewalk. She ordered a sandwich and soda, sat at one of the tables and tried to form a picture of Marcy Morrison from all the different pieces that the girl seemed to have broken into. Marcy Morrison, twenty-three years old, blonde hair and beautiful despite the bruised cheek and blackened eyes. Then a slow fade backward—seventeen, twelve, nine, six, until finally she was a little girl, barely a bump under the covers of her bed, crying in the night for her mother. That was the needy, frightened little girl that Dave Hudson had described.

Vicky finished the soda, crumbled the sandwich wrapper, and stuffed the trash into the metal container. Then she walked back to the Jeep and drove out of town. The air had turned cool; blue shadows rolled off the mountain slopes. She fumbled with the radio, finally tuning in a Western music station. She felt as if a hot iron had been set on her chest. Was that how it had been with her own children while she was in Denver going to school? She hadn’t known. She hadn’t known.

 

 

THE WHITE LIGHT of the TV blinked in the darkness of the living room, couples in tuxedos and long gowns dancing across the screen. The gray head of Bishop Harry poked over the back of the sofa. A bowl of popcorn sat in his lap. Father John leaned around the jamb. “I’m off to the social committee meeting,” he said.

The old man held up a fist full of popcorn and waved. “Do enjoy yourself.” He sounded as if his mouth were stuffed with cotton.

Father John hurried outside, down the steps and out to Circle Drive. Pickups and sedans were pulling into the mission, headlights flickering through the cottonwoods. Three pickups stood in front of the church. The air was cool, the breeze rustling the grasses, moving through the branches. He crossed the field, his mind on Vicky, wondering if she had located the girl, knowing that, if Marcy had gone to Jackson, Vicky would find her. This morning, at the feast at Eagle Hall after the funeral, Ella had told him she’d seen Vicky at the cemetery. What was she doing there? Ella had wanted to know. Why did she come? Couldn’t she see that the white girl had something to do with Ned’s murder? He had tried to tell her that Gianelli would sort it out and if the girl was involved . . . He had stopped at the shuttered look in her eyes, the implacable set of her chin.

He picked up his pace and darted through the headlights of a pickup. He was halfway down the alley, the lights of Eagle Hall streaming over the gravel, when he heard the footsteps pounding behind him. “Father! Father!”

He turned around and waited for James White Eagle to catch up. “Heard the news?” the man called, thick arms pumping at his side. He limped from one bowed leg to the other, as if he had just gotten off a horse and wasn’t used to the hard earth under his feet.

“What news?” Father John said.

James waited until he was close before he said. “Them two Indians the fed’s been looking for.”

“What about them?”

“Shot to death out in an old barn on North Fork Road. My nephew’s one of the officers out there right now.”

Father John nodded. It was the way the moccasin telegraph worked. “Are you sure it’s Hawk and Lookingglass?”

“Oh, it’s them, all right. Buddy, that’s my nephew, says there’s no doubt. Guess they won’t be shooting any more Arapahos.”

Father John set a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Can you handle the meeting tonight? Betsy Burton will help. She knows who’s been taken to the hospital or needs food.”

The Indian nodded. “You gonna go out there and pray over them?” he said. “Seems to me that type don’t need prayers.”

“We all need prayers,” Father John said.

THE BARN STOOD at the end of a dirt track, the kind of abandoned building people had forgotten was still there, leaning sideways from the wind and snow that had pummeled it for decades. The old Toyota bounced over the ruts, fighting the wind that swept across the flat, open ground and whistled through the cracks around the doors. Father John had gone a half mile down the track before the glow of police lights materialized in the darkness. He followed the lights around a curve and across the bare dirt yard. He parked behind the coroner’s van.

Officers stood in little groups, heads bent together. The subdued buzz of conversation filled the air like the noise of cicadas. Light glowed in the opened doors to the barn. Inside officers in gray uniforms milled about, snapping photographs, stooping to scrape something off the dirt floor and slipping it inside plastic bags. Gianelli came through the whirl of blue and red lights. “You made record time,” he said. “I just asked an officer to call the mission.”

“Moccasin telegraph,” Father John said. One way or the other, the news of homicides and sudden deaths, accidents, suicides, made its way to the mission. “Hawk and Lookingglass?”

“Officially, we don’t have the IDs yet. Unofficially”—the fed drew in a deep breath—“shot in the back of the head, execution-style. The killer wanted to make sure they were dead. See for yourself.” He nodded toward the barn.

Father John made his way around the vehicles and two uniformed officers who stepped aside. Straight-faced, eyes shielded, they gave him a perfunctory nod, as if he were part of the crime scene, one of the regulars who could be counted on to show up, like the coroner. Inside the barn, past the uniforms, the two bodies sprawled face-down on the dirt floor, legs askew, arms flung outward, as if some memory lodged in their muscles had sought to run before the bullets tore off the back of their heads.

He went down on one knee beside the bodies. My God! The thick-set neck and narrow shoulders of Dwayne Hawk, part of his left ear missing. The long, muscular torso of Lionel Lookingglass, the dirt-smudged bandage on his arm, the black ponytail splayed on the dirt. They were wearing the same clothes they had worn last night, the plaid shirts and grubby blue jeans, when Dwayne had turned the gun on Walks-On and threatened to take out Father John’s knees and elbows. Which did he prefer to begin with? The sole of Hawk’s left boot had a hole the size of a quarter, and Father John could see a piece of gray flesh. Surely there must have been someone who loved them. They must have families somewhere in Colorado or Oklahoma. Gianelli would notify the families; the coroner would arrange to send the bodies home for burial.

“Dear God, whatever these men may have done,” he said out loud, realizing that the officers gathered around had been waiting for him to say something. “Have mercy on their souls. You alone are the final judge. You alone know the secrets of our hearts and the brokenness and the pain of our lives. You alone can forgive our sins. We beg your mercy on Dwayne and Lionel who stand before you, because your mercy is all we can trust in.”

“Amen,” voices said around him as Father John got to his feet. Next to the rear wall, he could see the imprint of boxes or cartons that had been heavy enough to dig into the dirt floor. So this was where the burglary ring had stored the stolen items. An empty, forgotten barn. He wondered how long the items were kept before they were moved. Who made the arrangements to sell the stolen merchandise? Who had those kinds of contacts? Ned? Hawk or Lookingglass? Three Arapahos on a reservation? There was someone else, he was sure of it.

The officers kept their places as he walked back across the barn and out into the black night air that had turned cooler, with the wind picking up. The light bars on the police vehicles had been turned off, leaving only headlights shooting over the ground. The driver’s door on one of the police cars stood open, and an officer straddled the edge of the seat, one boot planted on the dirt. A radio crackled and buzzed. Through the shadows and dim light, Father John spotted Gianelli huddled with a couple of men by the coroner’s van. He waited. There was something he wanted to ask him, although the fed wasn’t good at giving answers. Asking questions was what he did.

Out on the road he spotted a single beam of light that gradually separated into two headlights. He waited as the headlights turned onto the track and juddered toward the barn. It was Vicky’s Jeep, but he had known that, he realized, when the vehicle was still on the road, as if he had sensed that she would be on the way. He walked over and opened her door as she pulled to a stop.

“How did you hear the news?” he said. She slid off the seat, looking tired and a little defeated, not like herself. Even in the dim light, he could make out the shadows under her eyes.

“The radio said the police had been called to a barn on North Fork Road where two men were reportedly shot to death. I had a feeling . . .” She broke off, then began again. “Hawk and Lookingglass?”

He nodded, then told her they had been shot in the back of the head. Executed, it looked like. Then he blurted out what he’d been thinking: Ned had also been executed, even though he’d been shot in the chest.

“The same weapon?”

That was the question he wanted to ask Gianelli. “I don’t know yet,” he said.

Vicky crossed her arms and hugged herself, as if she were freezing. The black bag she always carried hung off one shoulder. She looked small and vulnerable: such brave determination about her. “Marcy didn’t go to Jackson,” she said. “Have you heard from her?”

“No,” he said, looking back. The girl had wandered through his mind all day: at the get-together in Eagle Hall after the funeral, during the afternoon meetings, the counseling sessions with parishioners. He had found himself looking around at the sound of a engine, half-expecting the red pickup to appear on Circle Drive, the girl herself walk into his office or head for the guesthouse. But she hadn’t come.

He realized Vicky was saying something about the girl’s former fiancé, and he pushed back his own thoughts. “His name is Dave Hudson,” Vicky said. “Coaches tennis. He and Marcy met in Denver, and when he moved to Jackson, she followed him.”

“Followed him?” Father John said. Another image of the girl worked its way into his head. The wind moving in her blonde hair, the long, tanned legs, and the lost look about her. “Where can I find Ned Windsong?” she had wanted to know the day she came to the mission. The fiancé who had left without a forwarding address. “The way she followed Ned here?”

Vicky was quiet, glancing around the vehicles, the uniformed officers moving about, the coroner and his assistant disappearing inside the barn. “She’s my client,” she said finally. “I’m here to protect her interests, not make judgments.”

But she had already made them, he knew. He could see the worry behind the confident stare she gave him. “I talked to his boss in Jackson,” she was saying. “You were right about Ned moving there to start over. The manager said he’d gotten a call from Ned’s uncle, Jerry Adams. Turns out, they were old army buddies. Jerry said his nephew was looking for a job, and the manager agreed to take him on.” She stopped, not taking her eyes from his.

“Adams got him the job in Lander, too,” he said. “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Except that he was looking after his wife’s nephew. Marie and Ella probably nagged him about helping Ned. Anyway,” she said, hurrying on, “Ned was a good employee. The boss was sorry to see him leave. He has no idea of what Ned and the others were up to. Ned told him he was moving back to the rez to start over. I think he did intend to make a fresh start. Leave the past behind.” She took a moment before she said, “I’ve wondered if he would have confessed.”

She wasn’t talking about the confessional, Father John knew. “I don’t think he would have gone to Gianelli and implicated the others,” he said. “But I think he was wrestling with it. It was one thing to implicate himself, it would have been something else to send others to prison.”

“But they couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t snitch,” Vicky said, half to herself. “So Hawk and Lookingglass killed him, and now they’re dead. Maybe for the same reason, to keep them quiet.”

“Vicky, I’m glad you showed up.”

Father John wasn’t sure when Gianelli had walked over, but the fed was standing beside them, a bulky shadow backlit by the headlights. “I want to set up an interview with your client,” he said. “Tomorrow, first thing. My office or yours, either way.”

Vicky did a half turn toward the agent. “Surely you don’t believe Marcy Morrison had anything to do with this,” she said, nodding toward the barn.