The Spider's Web (3 page)

Father John nodded. The colored lights flashed in the blackness, the lights in the house glowed in the windows—a nightmare, he thought, something unreal and unholy.

“You sure you want to see him?”

“Yeah,” Father John said. He took a moment before following Gianelli into the house, across the living room, and down a short hallway. The house had been ransacked—drawers pulled open, chairs tossed about, cushions and pillows and clothes scattered on the floor. Police officers and technicians and a man in a yellow jacket carrying a camera parted as they approached.

A couple of other technicians and a gray-haired man that Father John recognized as the Fremont County coroner huddled over the bed. The coroner looked around, then they all stepped back, and Father John walked over. Ned was in the middle, sheets and blankets bunched around his body. Eyes open, the frozen stare of a corpse; mouth half-open and rounded in surprise or, Father John thought, the beginning of a shout. Part of his plaid shirt looked sucked into the blood-crusted hole in his chest.

Father John leaned in close. Making the sign of the cross in the air over the young man’s forehead, his mouth, his heart, he prayed out loud: “May God have mercy on your soul, Ned. May he take you to himself and show you his promise of everlasting life.”

The room had gone quiet for a moment, then someone said, “Amen.” There were small sounds of footsteps shuffling behind him. Father John stayed at the bedside, praying silently, a part of his mind screaming: This cannot be. Ned Windsong, full of life, stopping by the mission, two weeks ago? Then again last week? “How are the Eagles doing? Need an assistant coach?”

Father John had told him that he was welcome to help coach any time. But Ned hadn’t come back.

It wasn’t long afterward that the white girl had arrived.

“You said you talked to his girlfriend.” Father John stepped back and looked at Gianelli.

The fed gave a short nod. “Ambulance took the girl to Riverton Memorial. She was roughed up pretty bad. Said two guys burst in here shouting for the money Ned owed them. Hit her a couple of times when she tried to get in the way. Pushed Ned into the bedroom and shot him. We found her on the floor in a fetal position.” He nodded toward the empty space between the dresser and a chair.

“She called you?”

“No.” Gianelli took a second before he went on. “She might’ve been unconscious. It was an anonymous call. Let’s get outta here.” He took hold of Father John’s arm and steered him through the door and back down the hall into the living room. “Marcy Morrison’s her name,” he said. “White girl, twenty-two, about five foot seven, blonde. Pretty enough. You ever heard of her?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of her,” Father John said. He could see the dark red pickup slowing through the tunnel of cottonwoods that led into the mission grounds and pulling around Circle Drive. Oklahoma plates. And the girl with blonde hair climbing out from behind the steering wheel. The white tee shirt that stopped above the top of her blue jeans, the three inches of exposed pink skin. “She came to the mission two weeks ago looking for Ned. Said he was her fiancé.”

“Fiancé? And she didn’t know where to find him?” Gianelli kept his eyes steady.

“Some misunderstanding,” Father John said. “I told her I’d make inquiries, but she didn’t come back.” Father John took a moment. “She told me her name. She seemed to think I should know who she was.”

“Do you?”

“No,” he said.

FATHER JOHN FOLLOWED the red taillights ahead. Every once in a while a gust of wind pitched the old pickup off course. The night was silver in the moonlight, and black windows gaped in the houses set back from Plunkett Road. “You want to notify the family?” Gianelli had said. There was no one to notify except Ella, Ned’s aunt. She had raised him from the age of two, after his mother died and his father took off for Denver or Oklahoma. Ned was a teenager when he heard that his father had been killed in a car wreck in Texas.

Officer Henders, an Arapaho who looked about twenty-five, had offered to come along, and Father John was grateful. It was the hardest part of his job, knocking on doors in the middle of the night, bearing unbearable news. One minute, everything the same for the family, and in the next minute, everything changed forever.

He followed the police car into a right turn across the borrow ditch and around the sagebrush that dotted the dirt yard. The image of Ned Windsong stretched on the bed, a hole in his chest, alternated with an image of the wide, trusting face of Ella. He had seen her two weeks ago when he’d stopped by Ned’s house to tell him about Marcy Morrison. Ned wasn’t home, so he had driven over to Ella’s.

“Fiancé?” she had said, turning one ear toward him, as if she hadn’t heard correctly. She had let out a peal of laughter. “So that’s why he’s been acting so weird. Gonna marry a white girl? Well, that’s okay with me, long as it’s okay with him. I’m gonna have a talk with that boy,” she had said. “No sense in keeping secrets.”

The house had looked normal then, gray siding, greenish roof, Ella’s pickup nosed against the front stoop, a white propane tank anchoring the clothesline on the left side. Now the house looked desolate, like a vacant dwelling adrift on the silvery plains. Father John parked next to the police car and headed for the stoop, Officer Henders’s boots scuffing the dirt behind him. He knocked on the door and wondered how many of these calls the young man waiting at the foot of the steps had made; it never got easier, he wanted to say.

The door opened a few inches. Ella peered around the edge, shadows playing over her face. Her black hair was sleep-mussed; the hem of her white robe snaked past the door. She was still in her forties, but she looked older, worn down. He saw the picture that she was seeing: the priest and the policeman, the solemn looks plastered on their faces, and everything about them, he was sure, screaming the news. He watched the puzzlement in her eyes give way to understanding. She flung the door open wide. “No!” she screamed. She started backpedaling across the living room, crashing against a lamp that thudded onto the floor, glancing off the back of a chair, until she was pressed up against the far wall. “No! No! No!”

Father John stepped inside, the officer behind him. He found a light switch on the wall that turned on a lamp next to the sofa. A dim circle of light fell over the rug in the middle of the room. “I’m sorry, Ella,” he said. “We have very bad news.”

But she knew that already, doubled over now, both hands clasped against her mouth. “Oh, God, no,” she said, the words garbled in grief. “Not Ned. Tell me it’s not Ned.”

Father John walked over and placed an arm around her shoulder. She was dead weight, leaning against him, her slippers skimming the surface of the rug as he led her to the sofa. She dropped onto the cushion, as if she had fallen from the ceiling. He sat down beside her and slipped his arm around her again, aware of Officer Henders standing just inside the door, gripping his cap against his stomach. “I’m sorry,” Father John said again. “Ned was shot tonight.”

She snapped her head sideways and looked at him. Hope flickered in her eyes.

“He’s dead,” Father John said.

She dropped her face into both hands and seemed to pull inward, gathering herself around a new reality. The house was quiet. He could hear the in and out of the officer’s breath a few feet away, the faint creaking of boards and plaster in the night. “How did it happen,” Ella said.

Father John told her that he was shot inside the house. “His fiancée said—”

“The white girl.” Ella gave him another sideways look, than leaned into the back cushion. Her hands curled in her lap, small and red against the white robe.

“Two men burst into the house, shot Ned, and attacked the girl.”

“She call the police?”

“The girl was unconscious,” Officer Henders said. “Ambulance took her to Riverton Memorial. An anonymous call came in, and we’re checking the phone records.”

“Out of nowhere, two men bust through the front door and kill him?” Ella lifted both hands, then let them drop back into her lap. “Ned never hurt anybody. He came home to pledge the Sun Dance. He was working hard, learning the prayers and ritual, running and fasting, making himself strong. Those two men”—she brought her lips together in a thin line—“they took his life from him. They took everything. They should die themselves.”

Father John took her hands into his. “Can we call someone?” he said.

“Call Ned.” She was sobbing, great expulsions of breath that shook her body. “Ned looks after me. Ned comes when I need something.”

Father John let the grief play out a moment. He could feel the pulse throbbing in her hands. Finally she said, “Marie and Jerry. My sister and her husband. Jerry looked after Ned, hired him and his buddies on the ranch, seen they stayed out of trouble. Call Marie and Jerry.” She lifted a hand in the direction of the kitchen. “Number’s on the pad by the phone.”

“I’ll make the call.” Officer Henders crossed the living room in three steps and vanished through an arched doorway, as if he welcomed something to do. A column of light burst out of the kitchen and swept the shadows into the edges of the living room. There were beeping sounds as he tapped out the number, then the officer’s voice, a muffled drone, low and serious.

“It’s gonna be hard on ’em.” Ella turned toward him. Her eyes were wide and reddened, tears beading in the corners. “They treated Ned like he was their own. Jerry’s gonna want to know who did this. You know Jerry?”

Father John shook his head. He had met Marie a number of times when she came to the mission with Ella. Sodality luncheon or carry-in dinner. Once he had come across them wandering through the exhibits at the Arapaho Museum. Marie and Jerry Adams were ranchers, he remembered Ella saying. Owned a spread south of Lander. “Marry a white man and get yourself a big ranch.” She had thrown her head back and laughed.

“I’ll tell her you’re on the way,” the officer said. There was the click of the receiver dropped into the cradle. Out of the corner of his eye, Father John saw the officer walk past and resume his station at the front door. “Your sister and her husband should be here in about thirty minutes,” he said.

“If Jerry finds the bastards that killed Ned,” Ella said, “he’ll wanna kill ’em.”

 

 

JERRY ADAMS FILLED the doorway. Six foot tall with thick, rounded shoulders shoved inside a plaid shirt, a shaved head, prominent, red-veined nose and veiled eyes that surveyed everyone in the living room as Marie ran to the sofa and plopped down on the armrest next to her sister. Father John guessed the couple had made some phone calls, because the news had gone out on the moccasin telegraph. Ten minutes after Officer Henders had hung up, Janice and Lou Whiteman from down the road knocked on the door and traipsed inside, a shocked, half-awake look about them, Janice still in bedroom slippers, Lou tucking the tails of his shirt inside his belt. Then other neighbors and friends had flowed through the door, filling up the living room, bustling about the kitchen. The smells of fresh coffee drifted past the arched doorway. Officer Henders had left, and now it was just people gathered in grief, with Ella and her sister folded together, whispering and emitting little sobs, and people taking turns hovering over them, patting Ella’s shoulders.

How many nights had he sat with the grieving in the years he had been at St. Francis Mission? Hardly the path he had laid out for himself all those years ago when he used to think about the future, as if the future were a physical object he could shape and control. He would be a professor, teaching American history in a New England college, close to his family in Boston, but not too close. A cottage on a quiet lane, a nice wife, and two or three kids. He hadn’t seen himself as a priest. And yet it didn’t just happen. At some point, he had understood there was something else for him. A ridiculous idea, the priesthood. He had fought it for years. Surely there was a mistake, the calling meant for someone else. But the understanding had remained. And finally he had accepted.

Here I am, Lord.
He always liked Isaiah.
Send me
.

Jerry Adams shouldered his way past a group of people and planted himself in front of Ella. Father John got to his feet and waited while the man leaned over close and set both hands on the woman’s shoulders. “You don’t have to worry.” He had a deep bass voice that seemed to rumble around his chest. “We’re gonna take care of you. See you got everything you need, just like Ned would’ve done. He was a good boy.”

Ella nodded. She reached around and clasped one of the man’s hands and held on for a moment, biting at her lower lip, blinking up at him through tear-bleared eyes. “I don’t know who could’ve done it,” she said.

“Don’t you worry about that, either,” he said. “Whoever done it is gonna pay, and that’s a promise.” He straightened up and turned to Father John. “You the mission priest?”

Father John gave his name and shook the man’s hand. It was like placing his own hand inside a baseball mitt.

“I heard Ned used to come around and talk to you, that right?”

“Not so much lately,” Father John said.

“I guess he had other things on his mind. You seen the body?”

Father John nodded.

“Ned ever talk about somebody wanting to kill him?”

Father John was quiet a moment. Jerry Adams had deep-set black eyes that bored into him, waiting for the answer. Father John looked away. He had sensed something off-balance in Ned after he got back from Jackson Hole, but he had never imagined it might be this—that someone wanted to kill him.

He locked eyes again with the man. “Ned was looking toward the future. He had pledged the Sun Dance.”

Jerry Adams waved a hand between then. “Foolhardy thing, I told him. Takes a good year to prepare. He was cutting it short. You gonna run a marathon, you don’t cut the training short, not if you want to cross the finish line. Three days and nights those dancers have to fast. Don’t take any liquids, not even water. Have to learn all the ritual and prayers. I tried to tell him it wasn’t for him, but Ned was stubborn.” He threw a glance around the room, and fixed his gaze on two young men. “You seen any of Ned’s friends yet?”