The Spider's Web (7 page)

They both knew the rules, Father John was thinking. Donald would never repeat anything Ned had told him in confidence. But there were other ways. “Is there anything you can tell me that might help to find Ned’s killers?”

The old man took a moment, staring into space. His eyes were rheumy, the whites flecked with red dots. “Heard some Indians might’ve been getting into trouble,” he said finally. “Maybe Ned was part of it, maybe not. It was about the time he went up to Jackson Hole.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Kind that gets young men sent off to prison, ruins a lot of lives. Breaking into houses and stealing stuff.”

Father John sat back. He set his elbows on the armrests, blew into one fist and tried to search his memory for any accounts of burglaries. An article or two in the
Gazette
about break-ins in homes outside Lander, but that was several months back. About the time Ned left for Jackson Hole, just as Donald said. Both times Ned had stopped by the mission after he got back, Father John had sensed something gnawing at him. He should have confronted him, but he had decided to wait, thinking Ned would talk to him when he was ready. He’d been wrong.

Father John told the old man how sorry he was, then got to his feet. “The FBI agent will be around to talk to you,” he said, wanting to prepare him.

“Nothing else I can tell him.” Donald scooted himself forward, boots planted on the floor, and Father John set a hand on his shoulder and told him not to get up. The bones beneath the rough fabric of his shirt felt sharp and fragile at the same time. “You gonna do the funeral?”

Father John nodded. Ella had asked him to see that the boy was buried in the Arapaho Way. Not longer than three days after his death—that was long enough for his soul to walk the earth before he went to the ancestors. “Ella would like you to handle the Arapaho ritual,” he said, repeating Ella’s request, the image of the woman bent in grief floating around him like the memory of a sad melody.

Donald nodded. He blotted the moisture beneath his eyes with the back of one hand.

Father John left the old man leaning sideways in the sofa, eyelids drooping until his eyes had turned into black slits. He plucked his cowboy hat off the chair where he had tossed it, let himself out, and crossed the dirt yard to the Toyota pickup. The sun was hot on his shoulders and the bare strip of skin on the back of his neck. The wind ruffled his shirt, and the hot, dry smell of dust filled his nostrils.

He backed across the yard, then shifted into forward and bumped out onto Ethete Road. The music of
Salome
burst out of the CD player on the seat beside him the instant he pressed the on button.

 

 

GIANELLI’S WHITE SUV was nosed against the steps in front of the administration building when Father John pulled around Circle Drive. He could see the agent peering out the window of his office. He parked next to the SUV and grabbed the CD player. Walks-On, the golden retriever he’d found in the ditch that first summer he’d been at St. Francis, came bounding across the grounds toward him on his three legs, all that the car that had hit him had left him with. What had always amazed Father John was how Walks-On accepted what he had, as if it were enough. He patted the dog’s head a couple of times, then took the steps two at a time. He had left a message on the agent’s phone this morning after the two visitors in the white truck had tore around the baseball diamond and tossed out the rock with the message.

“Helped myself.” Gianelli waved a coffee mug as Father John came through the door. The coffee smelled fresh and strong, Bishop Harry Coughlin’s trademark. The muffled voice of the old man speaking on the phone came from the office in the rear. “Your new assistant said to make myself at home.”

Father John set the CD player on the desk, filled a mug for himself, then walked over and sat down in the worn chair that bore the imprint of his body. He guessed that Bishop Harry was the new assistant, although nothing was official. Just as nothing was official about his own position. He was still at St. Francis Mission, and that was what mattered.

Gianelli had already settled in one of the side chairs. “You read the message?” he said, nodding at the rock and the small white sheet of paper in the plastic bag at the corner of the desk. He had added the bag.

“Did you recognize either man?”

Father John shook his head.

“What kind of vehicle?”

Father John told him they drove a white Ford truck with damage on the left side that looked as if the driver had run into something solid.

“You think this is about Ned Windsong’s murder?”

“What else?” Father John pressed the button on the CD player and
Salome
swelled in the air. Something calming about opera, he thought, even the tragic dramas. With the first notes, he could feel himself begin to relax.

“Nobody captures the character of Salome with more lyricism and expression than Karita Matilla,” Gianelli said, waving his mug like a baton in the rhythm of “Ich will nicht bleiben.” Father John smiled at the thought of a former linebacker and a Jesuit priest listening to opera. It was a toss-up who loved opera more, or knew more about it. He had to admit that Ted Gianelli had an encyclopedic knowledge of opera trivia.

“Never know what you pastors have going on,” Gianelli said, pulling himself away from the opera and zeroing in on Father John. “Anybody who might be carrying a grudge?”

Father John shrugged. Parishioners sat in his office almost every day, pouring out their fears and problems, the broken relationships, the shattered hopes. He had counseled people that sometimes they had to let things go, let people go. There were women who had divorced abusive, drunken husbands. There had been times when the husbands had blamed him.

“This was about Ned,” he said.

“You know his fiancée witnessed the killing,” Gianelli said. “She’s got a lawyer. Vicky’s representing her.”

Father John took a drink of coffee and considered this. “Why would she need a lawyer?”

“Not unusual,” Gianelli said. “Smart thing to do, looking at it from her point of view. Right now, everything’s on the table. Nobody’s been cleared. The Wind River Police spent most the night bagging evidence. We’ll have the forensics report on fingerprints, boot prints, types of blood.” He rolled his shoulders and took a sip from the mug. “We’ll know if two men were actually in the house. What I don’t know is why a couple of Indians went to a lot of trouble to leave you a message. What is it they don’t want you talking about?”

Father John clasped his hands around his mug. “I figure they knew that Ned came to the mission a couple of times after he got back from Jackson Hole.”

“So what do they think Ned told you?”

Father John shook his head. He could feel the regret stabbing at him like a dull knife. “I had the sense that he wanted to talk, but he didn’t tell me anything.”

“Nothing?”

“He said he planned to dance at the Sun Dance, that he was changing his life.”

“That’s something.”

Father John stared at the man across from him—the thick head of black hair streaked with silver, the sunburned cheeks and forehead, the dark eyes staring out of a band of light skin left by sunglasses, the thick, linebacker’s shoulders inside the white shirt. Gianelli was right. Ned had wanted him to know that, whatever he may have done before, he intended to change his life.

 

 

BISHOP HARRY’S VOICE floated toward him as Father John walked down the corridor. The sepia-toned photographs of past Jesuits at St. Francis Mission—the serious eyes behind wire-framed glasses—followed him. He gave a little rap on the door jamb, stepped into Bishop Harry’s office and dropped onto a metal folding chair. The old man had arrived a month ago. Retired after thirty years at a mission in Patna, India, two heart attacks and two bypass surgeries. Looking for a place to recuperate, except the man wasn’t the recuperating type. He intended to earn his keep, he said. He would take his turn saying Mass, and he could answer the phone and run the computer as well as any pink-faced priest fresh out of the seminary, and he knew a few more things, too.

The bishop sat huddled over the desk with the phone pressed against his ear. He gave Father John a lifted eyebrow and nodded at something the caller had said. “Two months before the expected birth? Never too early to prepare for your child’s Baptism. We’ll expect you at the class Thursday, seven thirty p.m.”

Father John had to smile. The Right Reverend Harry Coughlin, used to overseeing the spiritual well-being of thousands of Catholics in Patna, India, registering an expectant mother for a baptism class.

“Yes, yes,” the bishop said. “Don’t worry. There’s no charge for the classes.”

Finally the call ended. The bishop hung up and swiveled toward Father John. He squinted in the sunshine that burned through the window. “I heard about the poor young man who was shot last night,” he said, tilting his head toward the phone. “Half a dozen calls. Folks upset, wanting to talk to the pastor. I told them they’d have to settle for the bishop. You had a late night. Pretty tough, huh?”

Father John nodded. “I guess I expected it might get easier,” he said.

“You would be the first priest who ever had that happen.” Bishop Harry shook his head. “Did you know the man?”

“Since he was about twelve,” Father John said. “Played for the Eagles a couple of seasons. Came by the mission from time to time, wanting to talk.” He let the memory gather in his mind. Ned Windsong, a teenager, all skinny legs and arms and brown, pimply face, saying he had dropped out of high school. Sitting on the stoop, scuffed boots planted on the step below, knees jutting toward his chin. He hadn’t wanted to come inside, he said, and Father John had sat down beside him.

“Why did you want to do that?” Father John had asked.

“What was it gonna get me?” The wind had been blowing that day, and he had turned sideways to catch what the boy was saying.

“What do you like to do?” he had asked.

The boy had leaned against the metal railing. “What do you mean?”

“You were a good outfielder. Had a strong arm. Seemed like you enjoyed playing ball. Anything else you enjoy?”

“Maybe.” Ned had shrugged. “I like building things. I’m good with my hands. What’s that got to do with high school?”

“You get a diploma, it will be easier to find a job where you can get some training. Learn to be a carpenter or electrician or plumber.”

“Yeah, right.” Ned had jumped to his feet. “Like anybody’s gonna hire an Indian.”

Father John had stood up beside him. “They’re going to hire somebody good at what he does, Ned.”

The kid had shrugged and gone down the steps, hands jammed into the pockets of his blue jeans. He was shaking his head as he got into a dark pickup with rust streaks across the side. “See you around, Father,” he had called, slamming the door.

Ned didn’t return to the mission, and three or four times, Father John had gone to Ella Windsong’s house to see how he was doing. He hadn’t been home, but his aunt had assured him Ned was doing just fine. Sooner or later he would find himself, she had said.

Then, last year, Ned had shown up. A young man, with knotted muscles in his arms and a confident look about him. He was an electrician, he said. Got his GED and graduated from a trade school in Casper. Working as an apprentice for the Silver Electrical Company in Lander. Might even get married one of these days.

“Any time you’d like to help coach the Eagles,” Father John had told him, “come on out.”

He had smiled at that, and a faraway look had passed across his eyes.

Father John realized the bishop had asked a question, something about the possibility that Ned had gotten himself into trouble. “Little Robe, his spiritual grandfather, thinks so,” Father John said. “God knows there’s all kinds of trouble on the rez. Alcohol. Drugs.” He paused. “Last time I saw him, he didn’t appear to be using, and he hadn’t been drinking.” He felt a surge of gratitude for the way the bishop had nodded and looked away, not pressing the point. They both knew Father John was an expert on alcohol. He could smell whiskey on someone walking down the street toward him. He hurried on: “He was preparing for the Sun Dance. He wanted the strength to live a new life.”

“That would suggest he intended to leave something behind,” the bishop said. “Perhaps someone did not agree with his plan.”

“He wanted to talk the last couple of times I saw him,” Father John said. “Maybe, if I had encouraged him...”

“Listen, my boy,” the bishop leaned forward. “All the talking in the world wouldn’t have kept him alive, if somebody intended to kill him. You mustn’t blame yourself.”

Father John waited a moment before he got to his feet. He gave the bishop a nod of acknowledgment and headed back down the corridor. It was good to have an older man around, he was thinking, an experienced pastor. No telling how many hard and unbearably sad things Bishop Harry had dealt with in India, how many senseless deaths. How many had he blamed himself for? Believed that if only he had done something else, said something, the world would have been different?

He turned into his own office, dropped into his chair, and snapped on the lamp. A circle of light flared over the stacks of papers. The bishop seemed strong and resilient, unbent. Lord, let me learn to be like that, he prayed.

ENGINES GEARED DOWN outside, tires crunched the gravel. Past the corner of the window, Father John saw a caravan of vehicles coming around Circle Drive, a blue SUV leading a silver Hummer, a red pickup in the rear. He stacked the papers he had been going through into a pile and headed for the corridor. He had reached the stoop as the three vehicles lined up side by side at the foot of the steps. A large man with a head of curly gray hair sprang out of the SUV with the agility of an acrobat. “You Father O’Malley?” he called, waving a bearlike paw.