The Spider's Web (26 page)

“Everything’s still on the table,” Gianelli said. “Coroner’s best estimate is that the two men in there have been dead for about twenty-four hours. Marcy Morrison left the mission yesterday evening. Where did she go? How did she spend her time? Simple questions that I’m sure your client won’t mind answering. She’s still the only witness to Ned Windsong’s murder, and she identified Hawk and Lookingglass as his killers. They came to the mission last night looking for her. Maybe she decided to take matters into her own hands and go looking for them.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Vicky said. “She didn’t know where they were hiding. Had she known, she would have said so. She wanted them arrested.”

“Somebody knew,” Gianelli said, and Father John saw the way he focused in on Vicky, slipping into another mode. This was what the man was trained for, interrogating people, gauging responses, reading the meaning behind the words. “Somebody with a disguised voice made an anonymous phone call from the Ethete convenience store a couple of hours ago and suggested I go looking for Hawk and Lookingglass at the abandoned barn on North Fork Road.”

“My client has nothing to hide,” Vicky said. Father John caught a faint flicker of worry in her eyes. “She wanted nothing more than for Ned’s killers to be brought to justice.” She stopped, and in the way that she turned toward the barn, he understood the rest of her thought:
now that has happened
. “As soon as I contact her, we can arrange the interview,” she said, turning back.

“Tomorrow.”

“She’s scared. She thinks they’re still after her, and she’s gone to a safe place. When she hears the news, she’ll call me.”

Gianelli nodded, but there was skepticism in his narrowed eyes. He did a slow turn and was about to start walking away when Father John said, “Was the same weapon used to kill Ned?”

The fed looked back and drew in a long breath. “No casings anywhere. Whoever did this was careful to pick them up. Ned was shot with a .380 caliber. I suspect those two in there”—he nodded toward the barn—“had a whole arsenal. We might find the .380 around here someplace.” He shrugged, then headed across the dirt yard toward the barn.

“What difference does the weapon make?” Vicky said. “Hawk and Lookingglass killed Ned. I take it they didn’t kill themselves, which means someone else is responsible.” She halted again, as if she kept coming upon arroyos that were too wide and deep to cross. No matter which way she turned, another arroyo opened up. Marcy Morrison had disappeared last night and the girl had a motive to kill the two men sprawled on the floor in the barn.

“It’s possible that whoever else was in the burglary ring killed Hawk and Lookingglass,” Father John said, wanting to ease the worry in her eyes. But he couldn’t shake his own uneasy feeling about the girl. What might she have decided to do to save herself? What was she capable of?

“Marcy’s sure to call tomorrow,” Vicky said, as if she were trying to convince herself. “If she happens to call you ...”

“I’ll tell her you’re waiting to hear from her.”

She nodded, and even in the shadows, he could see the mixture of apprehension and concern working through her features.

He waited until she had gotten into the Jeep, backed up and turned down the track, headlights flashing, red taillights flickering. Then he got into the Toyota and fished his cell out of the glove box. In the faint light spilling out of the box, he checked his watch. Ten minutes to eleven. He gripped the cell and thought about Roseanne, hiding out in a house that she hoped Hawk and Lookingglass would never stumble onto. She could have heard the news on the radio and figured out that two men shot to death in an old barn had to be Hawk and Lookingglass. She could be asleep by now.

He started to put the cell back in the box, a different picture forming in his mind. Roseanne, sitting up half the night, dozing a little, jumping at any nighttime noise—the sound of a rabbit skittering outside, the far-off howling of a coyote. He punched in the number of her cell and started the pickup while he waited the couple of seconds for the connection. Then the buzzing noise of the ringing phone, followed by her voice saying: “I’m not available. You know the drill.”

He set the cell back in the glove box, closed the door and eased the pickup down the track, over the hard ridges and out onto the road. In the side mirror, he watched the dark shadows of the official vehicles and milling figures recede in the diminishing glow of light.

FATHER JOHN SLOWED past the pastel-colored houses that rose like specters in the night. It had been a while since he had visited Betty Mock’s house. Her daughter had gotten married in California, and he had stopped by to tell Betty he wished them a lifetime of happiness. A few months ago, he heard the couple had gotten a divorce and Betty had gone to California to help with the new baby.

He spotted the house with the rectangular flower box next to the stoop and thought of the petunias overflowing the box and how Betty had followed him outside and dumped a glass of water on the flowers. He parked close to the stoop and got out. The house was dark and vacant-looking. A few dried stalks poked out of the flower box. He waited a moment, giving Roseanne a chance to peek past the curtains and see who had driven up. The sound of the pickup pulling into the dirt yard had probably frightened her. Perhaps she wasn’t inside, and the thought gave him an uneasy feeling. He stood absolutely still, waiting, unsure what he was waiting for. A dog yelped in the distance, or perhaps a wolf. The other houses down the road were dark and quiet. He might have been the only man on the reservation.

Still no sign of Roseanne.

He walked up the steps, knocked hard on the door and called out, “It’s Father John! Don’t be scared!” Dear Lord, the whole neighborhood had probably heard him. He leaned in close and said, “I have some news.”

The door opened about an inch. A tiny voice came through the dark crack.

“I came to tell you that Hawk and Lookingglass are dead,” he said.

The door swung open, a lamp switched on inside, and Roseanne stood in the opening, light flowing around her. She had on jeans and a rumpled white blouse, and she gripped a large, overstuffed pack against her chest so hard that he could see the knuckles popping in her hands, as if the pack contained everything she had in the world. “Dead?” she said, backing up. Her bare feet stumbled on the linoleum floor before she sank against the wooden armrest of a sofa. “How did it happen?”

He remained on the stoop a moment, then stepped inside, keeping the door open. The house was stuffy, closed up. The breeze moving through the door ruffled the pages of a magazine on the little table in front of the sofa.

“They were found shot to death in the barn,” he said.

“You saw them? I mean, how can you be sure?”

“I saw their bodies.”

“Oh God. Oh God.” She jammed a fist against her mouth and leaned onto the pack. For a moment, he thought she might slide onto the floor. “I did what you said.” She was shaking, and rocking back and forth, like someone in shock. “The fed will blame me. He’ll think I killed them.”

“Why would he think that?” Father John said, but he saw her point. She had made the anonymous call from Ethete, just as he had suggested. Whoever had killed Hawk and Lookingglass had known where to find them. If Gianelli knew she was the caller, he could suspect her of having something to do with the murders.

“I didn’t know they’d be dead,” she said. “It’ll look like I did it ’cause they were chasing me, threatening me. They said they’d kill me if I snitched to the fed.” She gulped in some air and stared up at him with wide, pleading eyes. “Oh God. You told him?”

“I didn’t tell him, Roseanne.”

“He doesn’t know they were after me?”

“Not unless you’ve told someone else who might have told him.”

She dropped her forehead onto the pack and grabbed at her hair with both hands. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t know who I’ve told stuff to. I can’t remember what I might’ve said at Ella’s or Berta’s. My whole life’s in the gutter. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know who I am.” She was crying now, her shoulders shaking. “I just miss Ned so much. Why did this have to happen? I was too scared to go his funeral this morning. I was so scared Dwayne and Lionel would be looking for me.”

“Listen to me, Roseanne.” Father John pulled over a metal folding chair and sat down. “Hawk and Lookingglass are the only ones who threatened you. They’re both dead.” He stopped himself from saying she needn’t be afraid anymore. He wasn’t sure it was the truth. “You should still be careful,” he said, “until Gianelli arrests the killer.”

“She did it, the white girl.” Roseanne lifted her head and stared at him with tear-bleared eyes. “She killed all of them. Ned, Dwayne, and Lionel.”

“What makes you so sure?” he said.

“I been thinking a lot,” she said. “All I do all day and night is think about the night we went to Ned’s house, Dwayne and Lionel and me. They were gonna talk him into going to the party. He used to like parties, ’til he got back from Jackson Hole and started down a new road. Dwayne and Lionel figured he wasn’t serious. I just wanted him to come along, you know, so maybe him and me could talk and maybe it could be like old times. I was hoping the white girl was gone, ’cause he’d told me he was gonna make some changes. So I went along with Dwayne and Lionel. God, I seen their faces when they come out of Ned’s place. They looked like they’d seen a ghost, and I knew something bad had happened. They never would have gone back to that house if they knew Ned was there, dead. They didn’t know the white girl was gonna say they killed him.”

Father John didn’t say anything for a moment, giving the girl a little time and space in which to gather herself. She was in shock, she was grieving. He couldn’t shake the feeling that it kept coming down to Marcy Morrison as the outsider, the one who was different, the one it was easy to blame. Ella blamed her, and Marie and Jerry Adams probably blamed her. For all he knew, every Arapaho on the reservation blamed her. But the evidence suggested she was as much a victim as Ned. She had been attacked, pushed against the wall. She had a bruised cheek and black eyes. But, unlike Ned, she was alive.

And she was gone. Running, hiding, scared. He tried to hold on to that image of Marcy Morrison, small blue veins rippling through her pale skin, not much more than a child, lost and alone, but another image kept coming through: Marcy Morrison screaming and tearing her clothes by the Little Wind River, out of control, a mad child. Who could predict what a mad child might do? He wondered if Gianelli had somehow glimpsed that part of her. Was that why he wanted to interview her about the murders of Hawk and Lookingglass?

He pushed the idea away. Still it lingered in his mind like a shadow. “Maybe you should stay here awhile longer,” he said.

“You said they’re dead.”

“Whoever killed them is still around.”

“She killed them, I told you. I’m not afraid of her.” Roseanne patted the top of her pack, and for the first time, he made out the sharp edges of a gun protruding through the blue canvas.

He started to suggest that she might want to talk to Gianelli, tell him everything she knew about the burglary ring. He stopped himself. It was ridiculous. Roseanne would never talk to the fed willingly. She was scared of being implicated in the murders, the burglaries, the whole ugly mess.

She sat very still, gripping the backpack, lost in some new idea. He watched the comprehension creep across her face as if she had read his mind. She would stay here, he realized, hiding. Not from Marcy Morrison, but from Gianelli.

He left her at the house; dawn began to glow in the sky and a weariness stalked his movements as he started the pickup and backed out of the yard. A killer was out there somewhere, walking around, laughing at the way Gianelli and a lot of uniformed officers were chasing themselves in circles.

 

 

IT WAS LATER in the morning than she had intended when Vicky let herself into the office. She hadn’t expected to get any sleep last night, thoughts of the missing girl tumbling in her head—the imaginary fiancé she had stalked the way she had stalked Ned, the other members of the burglary ring murdered, Gianelli insisting upon interviewing Marcy first thing in the morning. And she had no idea where the girl was. Instead of lying awake, she had crawled into bed and dropped into a black hole of exhaustion. She had a faint memory of reaching for the ringing alarm and retreating back into the hole when the noise stopped. The sun splinted the drapes when she finally awakened. She had bounded out of bed, showered, thrown on a blue sleeveless dress and sandals and run out of the apartment and down the stairs to the parking lot, her bag slung over her shoulder, her briefcase in one hand and, in the other, a stale bagel she had found in the kitchen.

The office was quiet, but it was the kind of quiet that settles in after the phone has stopped ringing. She had the sinking feeling that the best part of the morning had slipped past, and that she had missed something important. Marcy would have heard the news by now. She might have been trying to call her. Vicky could almost hear the relief in the girl’s voice.
They’re not after me anymore. They can’t hurt me
.

Vicky was about to shut the door behind her when the sound of a roaring engine stopped her. She swung around, conscious of the icy feeling that gripped her. The tan pickup squealed around the corner on two wheels, shifted into low and growled past. She peered hard out the door trying to get an imprint of the driver in her mind, but he sat low, sunk into a dark jacket, staring past the steering wheel. The pickup shot past and she shifted her eyes to the license plate. The numbers blurred into one another.

She closed the door and leaned against it a moment. Robin Bosey drove a tan pickup; hundreds of people around here drove tan pickups. How could she be sure that it was Robin? He could be in custody by now. She stared at Annie’s desk, the surface clear and shiny, as if Annie had never sat there, answered the phone, greeted clients, typed and printed out and collated a thousand documents. God. Nothing was the same; everything had changed. The work was still there. She could imagine it swelling inside the computer. A couple of corrections to the contract that the timber company insisted upon and she had agreed to; they wouldn’t change anything, but the section had to be retyped and proofed and sent to the tribal officials for approval.