Watching Eagles Soar (16 page)

V
icky parked in the asphalt lot that abutted the dark brick building with Wind River Law Enforcement plastered across the front in tall, black letters. A row of white BIA police cars stood at the back of the lot. She let herself into the closet-sized reception room and waited until the gray-uniformed officer behind the glass window looked up. Before she could say that she represented Robert Hunting Bear, the officer was on his feet, as if he had been expecting her. In an instant the inside door swung open, and the officer nodded her into the hollow, concrete-walled corridor that led to the tribal jail on the right and the BIA police headquarters on the left. She could have found her own way to the conference room, but that would have broken the rules. She followed her escort down the corridor past rows of closed doors that faced one another like silent guards. A phone rang over the scraping noise of their footsteps. He opened one of the doors, and she brushed past him into a windowless room that might have been an underground cavern lit with white fluorescent lights. The local fed, Ted Gianelli, sat on the far side of the long metal table across from a thick-necked Indian with wiry, black hair that fell into the collar of his red plaid shirt.

“I believe your lawyer has arrived,” Gianelli said, holding her gaze.

Robert Hunting Bear shifted in his chair and glanced up at her. “Lawyer?” he said.

“Your father has retained me,” she told him.

“I don't need any lawyer. I'm not responsible for what happened to Tom.”

“Any evidence that implicates my client?” Vicky looked past Robert to the man with black, gray-streaked hair, methodically closing a notepad, as if he were folding a piece of laundry.

“Your client has motive and no alibi,” Gianelli said, finally lifting his eyes to hers.

“There could be others with motive. Any fingerprints on the pitchfork?”

“Tom's.”

“The killer would have worn gloves, wouldn't he? You're telling me you don't have any physical evidence against my client. Nothing with which to press charges. We're leaving.” She nodded to Robert, who shoved his chair back and scooped up the black cowboy hat and folded jacket from the chair next to him.

“We have a witness,” Gianelli said.

“A witness?” This was the first she had heard about a witness. “My client can't possibly be placed at the barn when his brother was killed, since he wasn't there,” she managed, hoping it was true.

“Father O'Malley saw the killer run away.” Vicky felt her heart jump. She sucked a breath through her teeth. John O'Malley would be a reliable witness. Whatever he said, the fed, the U.S. attorney, the judge, everyone, would believe. It would be impossible to discredit testimony from the pastor at St. Francis Mission. “Are you saying he has ID'd my client?”

“Not exactly.”

“Not exactly!” She could feel the tension begin to drain away. “That means you don't have jack. We're out of here.” She motioned Robert toward the door.

* * *

V
icky turned the ignition and listened to the Jeep spurt into life. Then she drove out of the parking lot, eager to put as much distance as possible between her client and the cold, implacability of the brick building dedicated to law enforcement. The large, dark figure of Robert Hunting Bear hovered in her peripheral vision, filling the passenger seat with enormous jeans-clad knees that jutted against the dashboard, shoulders that rose beneath the dun-colored jacket, and pawlike hands he kept clasped in his lap. He kept his black cowboy hat pulled low and stared out the window as she slowed through Fort Washakie, then turned south onto the highway and clamped down hard on the accelerator.

“Who did Father John see?” she said.

“I wouldn't know.”

“You weren't there?”

“That's what you told the fed.”

“I can't help you unless you level with me.” Vicky glanced over at the man. He kept his face turned to the window, and it struck her that she was looking at a man whose identity she was certain of, and yet she could never testify that Robert Hunting Bear was in her Jeep if she didn't see his face. She wondered how much of the fleeing man John O'Malley had actually seen. She pushed on: “The fed knows the ranch will go to you. He knows about the fight at the casino. He's going to build a strong, circumstantial case against you. Defendants are convicted every day on circumstantial evidence. If you and Tom got into another fight at the barn, if you picked up the pitchfork to protect yourself, you need to tell me now.”

He turned his head and she could feel the laser heat of his eyes boring into her. “What? And go back to prison? I'm never goin' back. I got my life straightened out. I got me a kid to think about now. I'm gonna run the ranch, take care of my father, and bring my kid here. His mother will be okay with it. Her boyfriend don't want my kid around anyway.” He exhaled as if he had been holding his breath for a long time. “I'm sorry about Tom. I thought we'd be ranching together, me and my brother, the way it was supposed to be. I never wanted nothing bad to happen to him.”

“So it wasn't you Father John saw at the barn,” Vicky said.

Robert Hunting Bear went back to staring out the passenger window.

* * *

O
tto was slumped in a recliner, ragged boots with torn stitching protruding into the living room. The house had filled with Arapahos—relatives, neighbors, elders who had spent their lives, like Otto, running ranches, brigades of grandmothers who arrived whenever someone died, wearing faces of practiced sympathy, carrying casseroles and cakes. People jammed themselves into the living room, spilled into the kitchen and down the hallway. The odors of coffee and fried bread and hot stew drifted through the low buzz of conversations. Father John perched on the edge of an ottoman in front of the recliner and sipped at the mug of coffee someone had handed him.

“Robert's all I got left,” Otto said. That was how it had been all afternoon, spurts of conversation that alternated with long periods of silence while the man wandered through his own thoughts. But now it seemed a torrent of words had worked their way up into his throat and were about to burst out. “I lost him once, but he came back. Never thought I'd lose Tom. He was always here with me. It looks like now I've lost both my sons.”

“Vicky will do her best to bring Robert home,” Father John said. He had already tried to assure the old man, but it was obvious that his assurances hadn't cut through Otto's fear. “Could I get you some more coffee?” he said.

The old man blinked at him as if he were trying to comprehend something so normal, so ordinary as coffee in the enormity of his loss. He gave a half nod. Father John had set his own mug on the lamp table and gotten to his feet when the front door opened. Beyond the Arapahos circling about, he watched Vicky Holden step inside. She glanced around the living room, her expression unreadable, yet fixed with determination. She caught his eye for a moment; then her gaze flashed to Otto in the recliner. She started over, and the crowd seemed to fall to the sides making a straight path across the linoleum floor. Conversations died back, like the wind lying down, and Father John realized that all the eyes were turned on the big Indian who had just come into the house, as if he had waited outside a moment before following Vicky.

He stayed a few feet behind her, moving through the living room without acknowledging anyone, his gaze on his father. He was probably in his thirties, but he could have been twenty years older, with a roughened face etched with experience and pain, and hooded, sad eyes. He wore blue jeans and a dun-colored jacket that swung open from a red plaid shirt. His black cowboy hat sat back from a strip of black hair that looked shiny and sweat-plastered to the top of his forehead.

He stepped past Vicky and leaned over the recliner and placed his father's hands between his own.

“Gianelli said you saw the killer,” Vicky said. She was standing close to Father John, her back to the people in the living room, who stayed quiet and watchful. He could see the deep reservoir of dread in her eyes.

He glanced at the big man hovering over the recliner, still holding Otto's hands in his own, saying something in a tone that was intimate and confidential. The front of the dun-colored jacket folded over the old man's arm.

Father John looked back at Vicky. “I saw a man run out of the barn,” he said. “I'm afraid I can't identify him. I never saw his face.”

An Incident in Aspen

“S
tay awhile.”

Bunny shivered at the tips of Derrick's fingers playing down her spine. She snuggled against him another moment, then swung out of bed. Party noises floated up from outside, drunken ski bums singing and shouting, girls squealing like rabbits. The condo was stacked in a complex of wood buildings so far out of Aspen she'd had to ask Derrick for directions the first time he'd invited her here after a day on the slopes.

“Sloan's at the house,” she said, rummaging for her own clothes in the litter of dirty clothes, ski boots, porno DVDs, cigarette butts, and plastic containers crusted with moldy food. “The slopes closed two hours ago. He'll wonder where I am.”

“So? The old man's never heard of après ski?” Derrick pushed himself up on his elbow. She could feel his eyes, black as concentrated night, following her. Panties on the chair, bra on the floor, turtleneck on the desk, ski pants flung against the closet door. She dressed quickly. Today had been a perfect ski day, but nearly every day this season had been crisp and sunny with crystal-blue skies, the kind of days Aspen was famous for. She and Sloan had arrived in February, and now it was the end of March. Another week or so, she knew, they would have Parker fly them in the jet to the house on the Costa del Sol for a few weeks' vacation, before the hot weather set in there. Then they would jet to the main house in Long Island before returning to Aspen. She wondered whether Derrick Fitzsimmons would still be instructing for the ski school. She finished dressing, shook out her sandy hair, and perched on the edge of a debris-laden chair to pull on her boots.

“You can't go back to him, Bunny.”

“We're having fun, aren't we?” She zipped up the boots.

“I want more than fun. I want you, Bunny. All I think about is you and him together. I can't stand it anymore.”

“My point, Derrick, is that this season has been fantastic. Can't we just leave it at that?”

“You don't love him,” Derrick said. He had gotten up, pulled on some jeans, and dropped onto the side of the bed. “You love me, and I'm crazy for you. If you don't tell him, I will.”

Bunny squeezed her eyes shut against the image of Derrick Fitzsimmons, all black hair and cocky attitude, bursting into the office Sloan kept in the center of Aspen, like some demented, half-stoned ski instructor, demanding that Sloan release her.

“What we have is all there is.” She sounded like a schoolteacher, she thought, admonishing an unruly adolescent student.

“Tell him you don't love him anymore. You want a divorce.”

“Impossible,” Bunny said. Drums had started pounding outside, and the noise reverberated off the walls. Through the window, she could see the big yellow caterpillars grooming the slopes, headlights flickering in the dusk. “You don't understand how things are.” She picked her jacket off the floor, shrugged into it, and walked over to the door.

“Well, why don't you explain it to me, since I'm so dumb . . .”

“I never said that.”

“You sure as hell treat me like a half-wit. I told you, we'll have a sweet life together.”

Bunny took hold of the doorknob and looked back at the man with black hair bristling on his chest and a ridge of knees poking through the tears in his jeans. “What kind of a future do you imagine for us?”

“Are you kidding me?” Derrick jumped up and began doing squats, bending, rising, as flexible as a lion. “Ski every day the whole season. Every damn day.”

“And when the season ends? Do I get to help you clear the slopes, haul out the fallen trees?”

“Only for a month or so, then we head west and spend five months rafting the Grand Canyon. Every night, sleeping out under the stars, and you haven't seen stars 'til you've been in the Grand Canyon. Fuck all night long. You know anything sweeter?”

He walked over and clasped both of her hands in his. “Tell Sloan tonight. You've put it off long enough.”

“And move in here with you?” She yanked herself free and flicked her fingers at the cluttered room.

“I was thinking I'd move in with you,” Derrick said.

The simplicity of his thought processes was so transparent, it was comical. Bunny zipped up her jacket and started to open the door when Derrick's grip on her arm pulled her back into the room. “Let him wait,” he said. “I'd do anything for you, Bunny. Tell me what to do! I'll break the news to Sloan myself. He might take it better coming from, you know, the other man.”

“No divorce. Do you understand?” Bunny heard herself shouting.

“What the hell is it? Money? You're one of the richest bitches in Aspen. What do you need his money for?”

God, Sloan would be stomping through the house, hollering for her, wondering where she was. She tried to marshal her thoughts into a logical order that Derrick Fitzsimmons could comprehend. “Sloan and I are the perfect couple. Harvey Sloan Pearl from Jefferson, Mississippi, with a software startup in his garage that sold for a billion dollars. Can you comprehend that kind of money, Derrick? How does that compare to the hundred-dollar tips the really big spenders lay on you?”

“We don't need his money.” Derrick had loosened his grip on her arm. “You got enough.”

“Even a billion dollars doesn't buy respect, which is why Sloan married Charlotte Amelia Buntsler, Bunny to her friends, descendant of the Old New York Buntslers who once owned half of Manhattan, but lost their fortune in the great stock market crash of 1929. You've heard of that, I presume?” She hurried on. “Now he holds membership in the best New York clubs, the best golf courses around the world, and I get to come along.”

Pinpricks of comprehension lit Derrick's eyes. “You telling me you signed a prenup?” He let out a cough of laughter. “What're you gonna be stuck with? Twenty, thirty million? Christ, we can live like royalty. Fly around in your jet. ‘Oh, Jeeves,'” he said, slipping into a falsetto. “‘Bring the jet around. There's a good boy.'”

Bunny leaned against the door, feeling a little weak with the effort of trying to make him understand. The image of Tanya Kendricks flashed in front of her. Two months ago, Clifford Kendricks, boy wonder of handheld media devices, had filed for divorce, and now a For Sale sign stood in front of Tanya's house. She had also signed a prenup, but the poor little Las Vegas showgirl hadn't really understood what it meant. She'd be lucky to walk away with enough money to remain in Aspen, most likely in some dingy condominium down valley. A virtual charity case, and Bunny had adopted her, including her in social events when she had been left off the invitation list, something that had never happened when Tanya was married to the boy wonder. At least at the proper kind of social event, Tanya might snag another billionaire.

“So, how much?” Derrick said.

Bunny tried to focus on the question. “How much would I get?” Such impertinence! He was like a bloodhound. Was there nothing that would send him off the trail?

“Ten million,” she told him.

Derrick's jaw actually dropped; his tongue lolled over his lips. “You crack me up,” he said. “Poor little rich girl, only worth ten million. We can live forever on ten million.”

“No Aspen house,” she said. “No houses in Spain and Long Island. No jet or personal pilot. Ten million for the rest of my life. I'd be broke in three years.”

Derrick started pacing, kicking at the clothes and other debris on the floor. He toed a fat ski glove and arced it against a wall. Then he swung toward her. “Tell me what to do,” he said. “I'll do anything you say.”

Bunny tried for a smile that conveyed the impossibility of the situation. Then she opened the door and hurried along the outside corridor into the drunken noise and the pounding drums and the heavy, wet snow that had started to fall.

* * *

T
he lights of Aspen glowed through the dusk and snow fog as Bunny drove the BMW up the winding, mountain road, past the hulking stone-and-wood houses that belonged to the right people. Lights had flicked on inside most of the houses, but some remained dark. People who dropped in to Aspen for a week or two of skiing before jetting off to milder climates. Tanya seemed to be at home; the Mercedes parked in front, lights in the upstairs windows, the outdoor lights marking the snow-scraped sidewalk next to the For Sale sign. She gripped the wheel hard to guide the BMW out of a skid. She could never be like Tanya.

No sign of Sloan's Audi in the driveway at the house, but he might have parked in the garage next to the guesthouse in back. She hurried up the front steps, jammed her key into the lock, and stepped into the entry of polished wood floors, floating steel stairway, and balconies with steel railings overhead. Bauhaus and Frank Lloyd Wright mixed together, was the way Sloan had explained his idea of a dream home in Aspen. The furniture was custom-made; leather chairs and sofas slung onto steel frames, steel and glass tables, floor lamps that might have been left behind by aliens. The lights that suffused the entry and the great room beyond reflected in the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the mountainside. Snow weighed down the pine branches and, far below, headlights floated through the valley. She turned to disarm the security system, then remembered it wasn't working. The repairman had assured Sloan the necessary part would be delivered by the end of the week.

She flipped on the bolt. Still she would be more comfortable when the system was up again. There had been several house break-ins in the neighborhood this season. She tried not to think about how easily the burglars had disarmed the security systems.

“Sloan!” she called, removing her ski jacket and trailing it behind her through the great room and the kitchen, her boots tapping out a sharp rhythm. “Are you here?”

The sound of her own voice reverberated around the glass, wood, and steel surfaces. She checked both her cell and the house phone for voice messages. There were none.

An hour later, she had showered, slipped on the black cashmere dress that Sloan always said complemented her figure. And that was funny. Derrick would have said, “Hot! Baby. Hot!” She pulled on her long, black suede boots with the five-inch heels, fastened the gold beads around her neck, and finished applying her makeup and brushing out her hair. Still no sign of Sloan. What was it he had said at breakfast? Something about a meeting on a possible investment? They would be late for the gallery opening, unfashionably late. Even more annoying, she would have to go alone, which made it look as if she were . . .
single
,
and therefore the prey of every divorced, former CEO on the prowl.
Let Tanya have them!

Tanya. She glanced out the window at the road coming up the mountain. Sloan's Audi was nowhere in sight. Then she called Tanya and listened to Tanya's cell ringing somewhere in the house down the mountain. When voice mail didn't come on, Bunny tried the house phone. Still no answer, and yet Tanya was home. She had seen the lights on and the Mercedes parked in front. Probably depressed, and who wouldn't be with that For Sale sign in the yard?

Bunny shrugged into her mink coat and headed outside to the BMW. She would stop at Tanya's on the way down the mountain. Even if she had to wait thirty minutes for Tanya to get dressed, it would still be better than going alone.

She drove around the curve onto Tanya's property and stopped next to the Mercedes. She might be the Good Samaritan, she thought, rescuing a friend from the fate the boy wonder had consigned her to. She picked her way across the sheen of snow that lay over the sidewalk and the porch, lifted the bronze knocker, and clacked it against the plate. She leaned into the door, expecting to hear the familiar rap of footsteps. Nothing but silence inside. She knocked again, struggling to banish the scenarios that flitted into her mind: Tanya upstairs, sunk into a bathtub of blood. Passed out on the bed next to empty prescription bottles. Because, she realized, that was what she might be tempted to do. She knocked again, and this time, footsteps padded down the stairs and across the entry.

The door flung open, and Tanya stood in front of her. Blond hair mussed, lipstick smeared, white hands shaking as she cinched up the pink peignoir that stopped at midthigh. She wore frowsy blue slippers, the kind you'd expect to see on a bleached blonde with a cigarette dangling from her mouth in Derrick's complex.

“Everything okay?” Bunny asked. Tanya looked startled, half-sick even.

“What are you doing here?” she said.

“Sloan is tied up in a meeting, so I came to take you to the art opening. Come on, get dressed. You'll be my date.”

“Who is it, honey?”

Sloan's voice came from the top of the stairs and slapped at Bunny with the force of an avalanche rumbling down the mountain. Bunny wasn't sure how she had gotten inside, but she realized she was standing in the middle of the entry surrounded by slabs of tile as blue as an aquarium, watching her husband coming down the curved stairway, looping a belt around the fluffy white robe he wore.

“This is awkward,” he said, moving in close beside Tanya.

Bunny felt as if she were floating near the ceiling, looking down on the bald spot in her husband's head and the rumpled hair of her own personal charity project. Sloan looked tense, wound as tight as steel, a sense of dread coming off him like perspiration, as if he expected her to make a scene, the kind a Las Vegas showgirl might make: scream and shout and burst into tears, pick up the crystal vase on the table and smash it into his face. But she was Charlotte Amelia Buntsler, trained to handle every situation with the appropriate decorum, which was why he had married her. She dug her heels into the tile to steady herself and said, “I had no idea you and Tanya were having a little afternoon affair.”

“You misunderstand.” For the first time, she saw how old and worn-out Sloan looked, features craggier, nose bigger and redder. She wondered why she hadn't noticed the gray hairs that stood straight up in his eyebrows. Tanya was at least twenty years younger. It was all perfectly clear: middle-aged man sliding downhill; beautiful, available, and desperate divorcée.