The Spirit Woman (6 page)

“Wonderful.” Father Kevin gave a series of nods, as if he'd just confirmed an unexpected gift. “A primary source right here under the roof. I'll want to learn all about your life. Everything you can remember. And don't worry. This house is much too large for you to take care of alone.” His gaze took in the kitchen and the hallway. “First thing I'm going to do is hire someone to help you.”

He pushed back from the table and announced that he intended to unpack his boxes, make sure the tape recorder and computer had arrived in good condition. Then he was going to stroll about the mission. “Might as well get familiar with my domain,” he said, a glint of mischief in his eyes.

 

“What's he talking about?” Elena plopped down in the vacant chair. The sounds of the other priest's footsteps on the stairs echoed down the hallway.

“He'll probably make some changes,” Father John said. “He's the new pastor.” The words sounded strange, unreal, like a new phrase interjected into an old melody. He wished he disliked the man: it would be easier. But he didn't dislike Kevin McBride. There was something infectious about the man's energy and enthusiasm. He'd have to learn the ways of the Arapaho, but they would teach him, just as they'd taught
him.
The new pastor was going to work out just fine. Father John felt as if a stone had been laid on his heart.
Not my will. Thy will be done.

“I don't want no help around here.” Elena shoved Kevin's plate and mug to one side. “I don't want nobody messin' in my kitchen and gettin' the laundry all tangled up. I do just fine by myself, thank you very much. The house looks good, don't it?” A rising note of panic had come into her voice.

Father John drained the last of his coffee and got to his feet. He leaned over and patted the woman's shoulder. “Don't worry,” he said. “Father Kevin hasn't seen the accounts yet. He won't be hiring anybody else.”

 

In his study, Father John punched in the telephone number for the local FBI office in Lander. An answering machine came on the line, and he hung up. Gianelli was probably still at lunch. He decided to drive over and catch the agent as soon as he got back to the office.

F
ather John parked in front of the two-story, red-brick building that rose into the snow swirling over Lander's main street. He switched off the tape player and hummed “Ch'ella mi creda” as he jaywalked across the street, dodging a truck. He opened the metal-framed glass door, nearly colliding with Ted Gianelli.

“I was just on my way upstairs to call you.” The agent waved a slim folder. Dressed in dark slacks, starched white shirt, and paisley tie, he might have been an insurance salesman or a realtor, except for the black harness that held a holstered revolver next to his ribs. He stood just under six feet, with thick black hair, intense eyes accustomed to tracking whatever was going on around him, and the relaxed yet alert stance of the outside linebacker he'd once been with the Patriots.

“Let's go to the office,” he said, starting up the stairs braced against the wall on the left. Father John followed. A familiar melody, “O mio bambino caro,” drifted through the open door off the second-floor hallway. Waving the folder like a baton, Gianelli conducted the music as they walked down the hall and into the cube-shaped office. A stereo cabinet took up most of one wall. Still conducting, he dropped into the chair behind the oblong desk and pointed a remote at the cabinet. The aria faded into the background.

“Soprano?” he asked.

This was a game they played—opera trivia. If they'd kept score over the last couple of years, Father John figured he would have won hands down, but Gianelli never gave up. The man loved competition almost as much as he loved opera.

Father John took the chair at the corner of the desk. He was on firm ground with Puccini. “You might have me,” he said, shaking his head deliberately. “Could it be Renata Tebaldi?”

“Oh, you're good, John.” The agent pounded his fist on the desk. “Damn good. But you can't know everything about opera. You're not even Italian.” He opened the folder and lifted out a densely printed sheet of paper. “I take it you're here about the buried skeleton.”

“I met with some of the elders today,” Father John said. “They're worried it's one of the ancestors.”

“Oh, boy.” Gianelli dropped the sheet and tipped his chair back toward the window that gave out over snow blowing across the flat roofs on the other side of the street. Raising his hand, he loosened the knot of his tie. Wisps of black hair poked around the white cuffs of his shirt. “I was afraid of this. Tribes all over the country are raising a ruckus whenever bones are found on what they call their ancestral homelands, which could be anywhere. They're stopping scientific investigations into ancient peoples on this continent.”

“Can you blame them?”

“Please, John.” Gianelli ran a finger inside his collar. “Spare me the ‘how would you like it if they dissected your grandmother and paraded George Washington's remains through the reservation?' routine.” He picked up the sheet and started reading. “Shape of skull consistent with Caucasian female. Small supraorbital brow ridge and mastoid processes. Pelvic bones show no evidence of postpartum pits or a preauricular sulcus. Age, mid-twenties to mid-thirties. Permanent dentition, including three molars, in occlusion. Basioccipital suture is fused, medial clavicles are fused, almost no fusion of endocranial sutures. Hiking boots at site manufactured between 1974 and 1979.” He raised his eyes, as if to emphasize the point, then looked back at the sheet. “Levi rivets from blue jeans, same time frame.”

The agent slipped the sheet into the folder. “This is no ancestor. You found the body of a woman who was buried twenty, twenty-five years ago.”

“How did she die?”

“I'm getting to that.” Gianelli removed another printed sheet. “Probable cause of death, perimortem fracture of the right temporal, with edges of a portion of the fracture bent. Also incomplete fracture of right zygomatic bone.” He glanced up. “That's the cheekbone.” Reading again: “One horizontal fracture in the cranial vault radiating from point of impact above left ear. Another strike to the left supra-orbital and left zygomatic bone. Jaw fracture. Parry fractures of both arms and multiple rib fractures. Death consistent with traumatic fall or”—he paused—“homicide.” He dropped the sheet. “It's homicide, John. People who fall down don't end up in shallow graves down by the river.”

Father John didn't say anything. Outside the window, the snow was falling steadily. The music of
Manon Lescaut
softly enveloped the office: “In quelle trine morbide.” He said, “When will you have an ID?”

Gianelli's fingers tapped out a rhythm against the sheet. “You want the truth? Maybe never. These kinds of cases are the hardest to solve. We're running a check on people reported missing in the late seventies, but the woman could be from anywhere. It'll take a while to find possible matches. Even if we get lucky and come up with a lead, we may never track down the perpetrator after so much time. So you see . . .”

“She's not a top priority.” Father John finished the sentence.

“I didn't say that. She's been dead a long time.”

“I'm sure her family wants to know what happened to her.”

“You don't have to tell me my job.” Gianelli glanced away, then brought his eyes back. “Look, I've got four daughters. You think I like the idea of a world where this could happen to one of them? I'm going to do my best to solve this, John, but it might not be enough.”

Father John got to his feet. “I'll let the elders know about the report. They'll still want the woman to have a proper burial, even if she isn't an ancestor or one of the people. Frankly, so do I. If you get the ID in the next ten days, give me a call.” He put on his cowboy hat and started for the door.

“Next ten days? What're you talking about?” Gianelli walked around the desk, blocking his way.

“Doesn't the moccasin telegraph reach Lander?”

“Yeah, all the time. I hear everything those Indians think I oughta know. If they don't want me to know it, I don't hear it. You going on vacation?”

“I'm going to Marquette University to finish up a doctorate and teach history.” Father John had an odd sense that he was talking about someone else, someone he didn't even know. “The new pastor's already here.”

“What?” Gianelli looked stunned, as if a tailback had just turned the corner on him. “They can't send you away. The people need you here, John. I need you to run interference from time to time. You tell that to whoever's in charge.”

“The provincial.”

“Yeah, you tell him.”

“I've already mentioned it.” Father John walked around the man and opened the door. “It didn't do any good,” he said as he stepped into the hallway.

 

The snow was heavier as Father John drove north through Lander. It clung to the asphalt unfurling ahead and blew through the branches of the ponderosas. He crossed the reservation under a steel-gray sky and turned into the mission. As he came around Circle Drive, he saw Vicky's Bronco parked in front of the Arapaho Museum next to a blue SAAB that he didn't recognize, but visitors were always dropping by the museum. He felt his spirits lift. It had been two months since he'd seen Vicky. She hadn't called, and there had been no legitimate reason to call her. He parked next to the Bronco and hurried up the steps.

A
murmur of conversation drifted through the silence of the old school building, bouncing against the glass-fronted cases with Arapaho artifacts: painted parfleches, beaded moccasins, deerskin dresses, an Arapaho ledger book.

He followed the voices down the corridor to the library in what had once been a classroom. Vicky was at one of the rectangular tables that had replaced the ink-hole desks. Across from her, huddling inside a white coat, a small, blond woman with the blanched complexion of someone who spent too much time under fluorescent lights. A large brown folder lay on the table in front of her. Standing by a stack of cartons next to the row of metal shelves was Lindy Meadows, the Arapaho woman Vicky had helped him talk into taking the job as museum curator.

“John. We've been waiting for you.” Vicky glanced up. The slim brown hands were clasped on the table, fingers laced together. The ceiling light shone in her black hair, which fell loosely around the collar of her blue blouse. There was a faint blush in her cheeks, a hint of red in her lips. Her eyes narrowed with intensity the way they always did when she had something important on her mind. It surprised him. There was so little he had forgotten about her.

“My friend Laura Simmons.” A nod toward the blond woman across the table. “Laura teaches Western history at the University of Colorado. Lindy and I were just telling her about you.”

“I wouldn't believe any of it,” he said, shaking the blond woman's hand. He realized with a start that the dark bruise on the woman's cheek was the size of a fist.

“I'd say the museum speaks well enough for you, Father.” She gave him a nervous smile and turned away from his gaze.

Vicky went on, explaining that her friend was here to research a biography of Sacajawea.

“How can we help you?” Father John swung a chair over and sat down at the end of the table.

“I've been telling her about our collections.” Lindy thumped one of the cartons, as if she were leading a spelling drill. She might have come with the building, he thought, one of the teachers a hundred years ago, dressed in a white blouse and navy skirt, black hair pulled into a knot at the back of her head. She had the dark complexion and eyes of the Arapaho, and the businesslike manner. He hadn't worried about the museum since she'd taken over.

She gave the cartons another thump. She was still shelving and cataloging documents. Some oral histories here, she knew. Letters from Arapaho elders in the early 1900s that might refer to Sacajawea. No guarantees, but she'd try to locate them.

“I'd be very grateful.” Laura kept her face tilted sideways. The bruise might have been a shadow. “You never know where an important document might turn up.” A hint of anticipation and excitement worked into her voice.

Father John smiled. He'd almost forgotten the surge of joy at the smallest possibility of finding something new in the past. This was why he'd fought for the museum—gone to the mat with the provincial—to help the Arapahos preserve their own past so that scholars like Laura Simmons could understand what had really happened.

“There's something else.” Vicky turned toward him. “There could be some evidence on the res that proves that the old woman who died here was the real Sacajawea.”

Father John didn't say anything for a moment. He'd heard the stories about such evidence as long as he'd been here—the Jefferson Medal given to Sacajawea, which the old woman supposedly gave to her son, Baptiste. He'd never heard that any evidence had been found. “Sometimes”—he hesitated, then plunged on—“there's a powerful will to believe.” He'd seen it many times among his colleagues—the insistence that one theory or another must be true, regardless of contradictory evidence.

“What do you believe, John?” Vicky met his gaze.

She was always testing him, he knew. Was he really for the people? Or just another white man pretending that the truth of the past was important? The room was quiet, the other women watching him, too. He said, “When I came here I agreed with historians that Sacajawea died in 1812. William Clark himself believed she'd died.”