Watching Eagles Soar (5 page)

Now, in the dim light from the kitchen window, he looked around the yard. Nothing out of the ordinary. The dog was still barking as he dashed along the rear of the house. He stopped to sniff at a basement window before crashing through the bushes to get to the next window. The wind was knocking a cottonwood branch against the side of the house, and the clack-clack punctuated the noise the dog was making.

Probably a wild animal, Father John told himself again. A fox bedded down for the night in the shelter of the bushes, until Walks-On had plunged down the steps, raising a ruckus, and chased the animal off. The dog stopped barking and trotted over.

Father John patted the dog's head. Then Walks-On darted away and started running around the yard, his usual evening exercise. Father John went back up to the kitchen and poured out a mug of the coffee, black and thick with grounds, left over from dinner. He'd just started back down the hall for his study when the phone started to ring. The jangling noise swelled into the quiet.

He hurried past the door that led to the basement and crossed into the study. Setting the coffee mug at the edge of the stacks of papers that toppled over his desk, he reached for the phone. The tiny message light was blinking red. Someone must have called while he was at the meeting.

“Father O'Malley,” he said into the receiver.

“This is Molly Redman, Father.”

“What's going on?” Streaks of light from outside scribbled across the window behind the desk. Father John walked around, nudged the leather chair back with his boot, and sat down. He turned the switch on the desk lamp and pulled a yellow pad out from one of the stacks.

“Ethan's up to his old tricks again. Drinkin' and makin' trouble.”

Father John rummaged in the desk drawer for a pen, then stopped. He sat very still. Someone was outside the window: a presence behind him as real as the aroma of coffee wafting over the desk. He could
feel
someone watching him.

He swiveled around, pitched himself to his feet, and leaned close to the window. No sign of anyone outside. Nothing but the branches moving in the wind and the dim light fading into darkness at the edge of the grounds. But someone had been there a moment ago. Someone had been looking through the window; he was certain of it.

“Last night Ethan—”

“Listen, Molly,” Father John cut in. “Someone's here now,” he said. “Suppose you come to the mission first thing tomorrow morning.”

The woman started to protest—he could hear the reluctance in her voice. “I'm sorry, Molly,” he said. “We'll have to talk tomorrow.” Before the woman could say anything else, he hung up.

A few feet below where he was standing, Father John could hear the scrape of footsteps across a hard floor, followed by a thud. Whoever was in the basement had stumbled against something. The dog must have heard the noise because he started barking again, an explosive sound that burst through the house.

Father John went out into the entry. Keeping his gaze locked on the basement door, he stayed close to the wall, conscious of the sound of floorboards creaking under his boots. He moved past the door and pressed his shoulder against the frame next to the hinges. He could sense the atmosphere begin to shift as the footsteps came up the stairs and moved into the space on the other side of the door. His eyes were on the knob now, waiting for it to turn.

* * *

V
icky stared into the cone of headlights that pushed into the darkness on Rendezvous Road, barely aware of the shadows rushing past outside. Ten minutes ago, as she'd slowed through the one-street town of Hudson at the southern boundary of the reservation, she'd tried St. Francis Mission again, jamming the cell against her ear and willing the intermittent buzzing noise to stop.

The answering machine had picked up. “This is Father O'Malley . . .”

She'd hit the end button, tossed the cell across the seat, and, pressing down hard on the accelerator, drove onto the reservation, unable to shake the image from her mind: John O'Malley getting out of the pickup, walking across the grounds, starting up the sidewalk to the residence. And Lonny Hereford—Bad Heart—lunging out of the dark. Somewhere between the prison and the mission, the man could have gotten ahold of a weapon. A gun or a knife. Lonny would know how to get a weapon.

She had to warn John O'Malley. No telling how long it might take for a police car to arrive. Twenty, thirty minutes. It depended on where the car was. Nothing was close on the reservation; everything was surrounded by miles and miles of empty space.

Vicky turned right onto Seventeen-Mile Road, holding the accelerator to the floor, the speedometer needle jumping at eighty. Two miles. Three miles. Ahead the lighted sign loomed through the darkness. St. Francis Mission. She let up on the accelerator and made another right into the tunnel of cottonwoods that led to the mission grounds. A gust of wind swept through the trees, and for a moment, she had the odd, disconcerting sense that the tunnel itself was shifting around her.

She swung onto Circle Drive. Over in the trees, at the edge of the headlights, there was . . . the glint of metal. Vicky hit the brake pedal and skidded to a stop. She shifted into reverse and started backing up, turning the wheel until the headlights framed a pickup wedged among the trees.
Hidden.
Lonny Hereford was already here.

Vicky swallowed hard at the dry knot in her throat, shifted back into forward, and shot around Circle Drive. Of course Lonny had stolen the pickup. It was probably the first thing he'd done after breaking out of prison. Stolen the pickup and headed for the reservation. She could hear the man's voice on the telephone:
Seeing how Lonny might have some scores to settle . . .

* * *

T
he knob started turning, then stopped. A half second passed before the knob moved again, as if whoever was on the other side had considered the possibility that Father John could be waiting and had decided what to do. The door cracked open, then began moving into the hall. The hinges squealed like a small, trapped animal. Past the edge, Father John could see the tip of a man's boot, the green pants leg, the brown fist gripping a knife. The steel blade shimmered in the light of the hall lamp.

Come on. Come on.
A few more inches. Father John clenched his muscles, ready to throw his weight against the door and jam whoever was behind it into the frame.

Then it happened: A sharp knock on the front door, the sound of the door crashing open against the entry wall, and Vicky's voice: “John? Where are you?”

“Go back!” Father John yelled.

The man lunged past the basement door and swung around, jabbing the knife into the air. Father John ducked away, then grabbed at the man's arm and pushed it back. Lonny Hereford. The realization came like a flash of light in the darkness that Father John hardly had time to register. Lonny plowed into him, ramming his forearm across his throat. Father John gasped for breath. He could see the glint of the knife blade below his jaw. Bringing his fist up, he sunk it into the other man's soft belly, then pounded against his chest. The weight against his throat seemed to release, and Father John braced himself against the wall and swung hard at the man's arm. The knife clanked onto the floor.

“Just you and me, Priest,” the man shouted. He was breathing hard, the brown face contorted into a grotesque mask. Strips of black hair fell over the narrowed eyes. Fists bunched, he started moving forward.

Beyond the man's shoulders, Father John glimpsed the movement of shadow and light. There was the sharp crack of metal on bone. Lonny Hereford froze, the grotesque mask suddenly wiped away, and in its place appeared the fixed features of surprise. Then the man started crumbling, and Father John saw Vicky standing behind him. Both hands gripped the twisted shaft of the hall lamp. She started to raise the lamp again over Lonny's head, but the man was down, the bulky frame folded onto the floor.

Father John reached over Lonny and grabbed Vicky by the shoulders. “It's okay,” he said. “You took care of him.” Then he took the lamp out of Vicky's hands, unpeeling her fingers to get it loose.

“Are you all right?” she asked. Her voice was shaky, and her eyes were lit as if she had a fever.

Father John nodded. He wasn't sure. He felt a stab of pain with each breath, and his knuckles, he realized, were trickling blood. He crouched down and placed a finger on Lonny's carotid artery. The skin felt hot, the pulse strong. “He'll be okay.”

Father John pulled himself upright. “Thanks,” he said, watching her, trying to make sure that she was okay. “You have a pretty good arm. Great timing, too. What brought you here?”

“A lucky guess.” She was smiling at him, her voice steadier.

“I'm going to call the police.” Father John started down the hall. Through the front door, he saw the dark police cruiser slide alongside the curb, the kaleidoscope of red, blue, and yellow lights flashing over the roof.

“Looks like they're here,” Vicky said.

Day of Rest

The Fourth Commandment: Remember to keep holy the Sabbath Day.

“G
ood sermon this morning, Father.”

“Glad you approve.” Father John O'Malley took Nathan Birdsong's brown, outstretched hand. It had the firm strength of dried leather. He patted the Arapaho on the shoulder and reached for the next hand as parishioners spilled through the double doors of the church and out into the warm sun bathing the grounds of St. Francis Mission on the Wind River Reservation. Several others pressed into the half circle of Arapahos clustered on the sidewalk, waiting patiently to shake the pastor's hand and say a few kind words about this Sunday's sermon—even those he'd caught nodding off—before they headed around the corner of the church toward doughnuts and coffee in Eagle Hall.

It was a good ten minutes before Father John had greeted the last congregant. He bounded up the concrete steps of the stoop that passed for a porch in front of the white stucco church and stopped. Someone was watching him. He could feel the eyes piercing his back like a laser beam. He swung around, expecting to see someone who had been waiting to speak to him. Someone he'd failed to notice.

There was no one. The mission grounds might have been deserted, except for the pickups and cars parked around Circle Drive and the nearly imperceptible undercurrent of voices floating from Eagle Hall. Around the drive, the sun bounced and glittered across the priest's redbrick residence, the gray stone museum, and the yellow stucco administration building. It glistened in the water shooting out of the sprinkler on the grasses in the center of the drive.

Father John shrugged and turned back just as the church door sprang open and Leonard Bizzel stepped outside. The Arapaho had been the caretaker at St. Francis for so long that nobody remembered when he'd taken the job, only that he was part of the mission, much like the cottonwoods sheltering the old buildings. He was a big man, probably in his fifties now, judging by the gray running through his black hair, with the rounded, powerful shoulders and confident black eyes of a younger man. Every morning, Leonard assisted Father John at Mass, and on Sundays, he took special care to tidy up the sacristy, making sure that the prayer books, altar linens, and chalice were placed in the appropriate cabinets for the following week. When he finished, Leonard usually ducked out the sacristy door in back and headed to Eagle Hall.

“Been lookin' for you, Father,” the Arapaho said. “Everything's picked up and put away. You comin' to Eagle Hall?” He started down the steps.

“See you there,” Father John called after the man. The women in the parish handled the coffee and doughnuts on Sunday mornings, but Father John knew that Leonard would be hovering about like a raven, ready to swoop down at the first sign of an emergency—spilled coffee, upset plate of doughnuts, somebody looking for a folding chair on which to sit down.

Father John let himself inside the church and headed down the aisle, starting to shrug out of his chasuble as he went. The church was small—a chapel, really. Leonard had turned out the overhead lights and snuffed the candles. The air felt cool in the dim light that filtered through the stained glass windows and spattered red, blue, and yellow blotches over the wood pews. The altar ahead was almost lost in shadow, the red votive light flickering in front of the tabernacle that resembled a miniature tipi. Traces of gray smoke curled around the ceiling, and the faintest whiff of smoke mingled with the lingering smells of perspiration and perfume. A sense of serenity and eternity seemed to fill the vacant space.

The door opened behind him, sending a blast of hot air into the coolness. Father John turned around as the door thudded shut. The smallest tremor ran through the old wood floor. A large man faced him from the shadows, and for a moment, Father John felt again the laser beam piercing into him.

“Can I help you?” he said, tossing the chasuble over a pew.

The man was holding what looked like a paper bag. Leaning sideways, he stretched his free hand toward the door and clicked the bolt into place. Then he lurched forward until he emerged into the dim light, traces of red and yellow flitting over a brown face hardened like granite. “Looks like nobody's here 'cept you and me, Priest,” he said. His fingers rattled the paper bag.

“What's going on, Kenny?” Father John kept his voice calm, but he could feel his muscles tense. Kenny Yellow Plume was a drunk and a troublemaker. Father John started back down the aisle, removing his stole and the white alb. He set the vestments on another pew, freer now, wearing just his blue jeans and plaid shirt. The smell of alcohol floated toward him.

“Don't try to bullshit me, Priest,” the Indian shouted. He was swaying from one foot to the other, as if he couldn't make a solid connection with the floor. Then, in a lower tone, more menacing, he said, “Melba left me, like you tol' her. Took the kids and walked out. I can't find her nowhere. Yesterday some clown knocks on the door and hands me papers that say she's divorcing me. That Arapaho lawyer, Vicky Holden, wrote out the papers, made 'em all legal and final, like there's no more talkin', no more putting things back together for me and Melba. Ten years of being together thrown out like garbage.”

Father John stopped a couple of feet from the man. The stench of whiskey was so strong that he had to breathe through his mouth. He said, “Melba couldn't take your drinking anymore, Kenny.”

“That what you tol' her? ‘Melba, you can't take his drinkin'. You gotta take the kids and get out.'”

The man started pulling at the paper bag, hands shaking. Finally he yanked out a small, metallic pistol, letting the bag flutter to the floor. Father John could see down the barrel of the gun, an immense black tunnel.

“You don't need a gun, Kenny,” he said, surprised by the steadiness of his tone, the focused, relaxed feeling that came over him, as if all of his energies had turned to the gun. He had to make an effort to pull his eyes from the barrel. “Put it away, and we can sit down and talk.”

“You done enough talkin'.” Kenny's face cracked into a half smile, half sneer. “Melba's gone, and I got me a couple scores to settle. Sit down.” The gun jerked toward the last pew.

Father John moved sideways, backed into the pew, and dropped onto the hard wooden seat. His left knee cracked against the pew ahead. “What are you going to do, Kenny?” he said. “Shoot me?”

“You got about twenty minutes, my guess.” The Indian didn't take his eyes away—the laser eyes—while he shifted the gun into his right hand and tugged with the left at an even smaller object in the pocket of the blue denim shirt plastered with sweat against his chest. He withdrew a cell phone and flipped it open with his thumb. There was a half second when the laser eyes shifted to the phone as his thumb hit a couple of keys. Father John felt his muscles tighten again. He was about to spring forward when the laser eyes returned and the gun bobbed back toward him.

“Don't move,” the Indian shouted. He lifted the phone to his left ear, his boots still fighting for a purchase on the floor.

Father John stared at the black tunnel, aware of the silence pressing around them and the shades of mottled light flickering over the pews and the floor. It was hard to imagine—fifty feet away, beyond the walls of two buildings, parishioners were laughing, drinking coffee, munching doughnuts; kids were shouting and playing tag around the tables and chairs. They might have been on another planet.

He was alone with Kenny Yellow Plume, a man who intended to kill him.

* * *

V
icky Holden had just poured a mug of fresh coffee and was about to settle into the sofa with the Sunday newspaper when the telephone rang. She threw a glance at the phone on the desk against the wall. The window was open and a warm breeze billowed the sheer curtains into the living room. The carpet and walls were striped with sunshine. The phone rang again. She wasn't expecting any calls. The answering machine can take the message, she told herself. And yet, the ringing had already disrupted the quiet morning she'd been looking forward to. There was something unnerving about an unanswered phone. The call could be an emergency, someone arrested last night on a DUI or domestic disturbance or—who knew what? Someone sitting at the Fremont County jail in need of a lawyer.

She set the mug on the coffee table, crossed the room, and picked up the receiver. “Vicky Holden,” she said. She held her breath. She could almost feel the malevolence at the other end. The response was slow in coming. For a couple of seconds, there was nothing but the sound of breathing. Finally, a man's voice said, “You got twenty minutes to get over to the mission.” The words slurred into one another, the words of a drunk.

“Who is this?” Vicky felt her hand tightening over the plastic receiver.

“Twenty minutes, if you want to see the priest alive.”

She knew who the caller was now. It wasn't the voice that she recognized—she couldn't remember ever speaking to Kenny Yellow Plume. It was the anger, the craziness, washing through the slurred words. What was it Melba had said?
You don't know him, Vicky. He starts drinking and he gets crazy. No telling what he might do.
And Vicky had said,
You have to leave him, Melba. For your sake and the sake of the kids.
That's what Father John told me,
the woman had replied. Vicky could still see her slumped against the back of the chair, small, almost like a child. She took up only half of the chair. Mopping at her eyes with a tissue, strings of black hair hanging over her thin shoulders.

“Where are you, Kenny?” Vicky struggled to sound calm and rational, as if she were examining a witness in the courtroom, as if she were in control. She was playing for time, she knew, trying to pull her thoughts together, searching for the right words. She could feel the blood pounding in her ears. The man had been served the divorce papers yesterday. He'd gone berserk, just as Melba had predicted, which was the reason Vicky had made certain that Melba and the kids were safe at a friend's house in Casper before she'd had the papers delivered.

“Me and the priest are havin' a little party in the church, just waitin' for you. You better be knocking on the front door in twenty minutes, or the priest's gonna accidentally get shot dead.”

“I can't get to the mission in twenty minutes.” Vicky could hear the note of panic sounding in her voice.

“Well, you better get goin', lady, 'cuz that's all you got.”

“Listen to me, Kenny,” Vicky began, but she was speaking into a dead line. The buzzing noise pulsed in her ear.

She tapped out *69 and, keeping her eyes on the red numbers in the readout, scrambled for a pen in the drawer and jotted the numbers across the corner of the top sheet of papers stacked next to the phone. She ripped off the corner and stuffed it into the pocket of her blue jeans. Then she grabbed her bag and ran out the door of the apartment. Two minutes later she was down the flight of stairs and jamming the key into the ignition of her Jeep. She pressed down on the accelerator and glanced at her watch as the Jeep squealed out of the parking lot ahead of a sedan that swerved and honked behind her. Eighteen minutes left.

* * *

M
y God,
Father John thought. The minute Vicky walked through the door, Kenny would start shooting. He intended to kill both of them at the same time, before the sound of gunshots brought people stampeding into the church.

He kept his eyes on the Indian. The man needed a drink. Father John knew the signs: the sweat-glistened forehead, the widening circles of perspiration at his armpits. His hand was shaking so that the gun swung like a pendulum. He weaved back and forth, as unsteady as a broken branch in the wind. He'd just clicked off the cell and stuffed it back into his shirt pocket, but the laser eyes kept darting toward the door, as if Vicky might knock at any moment.

Father John shifted forward. Somehow, he had to get the gun before Vicky arrived. He said, “You don't want to shoot anybody.” It was the counselor's voice that came back to him in the quiet of the church—smooth, confident, and consoling.

The Indian regarded him from beneath drooping eyelids, the gun still jumping in front of his belt buckle. “Wasn't for you and that lawyer, everything would've been okay. I had me a wife.” His voice quivered, and for a second, Father John thought the man might burst into tears. “Two kids, the house. So me and Melba had some problems. What right you got to go poking into what's none of your business? I ain't got nothing to go on for, but I ain't dying alone.”

So that was it, Father John thought. After he killed them, he intended to kill himself. “You know what day it is, Kenny?” He didn't wait for an answer. “Today is the Sabbath.”

The Indian dipped his head and blinked hard, as if he were trying to grasp hold of something in the dimness.

Father John pushed on: “It's the day of rest, Kenny. The day to let go of everything that's bothering you, all the heavy burdens. Let them go for today. Tomorrow you can come to the mission, and we'll sit down and talk. You know that Melba doesn't want to divorce you. She wants you to stop drinking.”

Father John inched his way to the end of the pew and started to get to his feet. “Give me the gun, Kenny. We can figure things out tomorrow.”

A look of comprehension began to settle in the laser eyes. “You think I don't know what you're up to? Bullshittin' me? You're full of bullshit, you and that lawyer.”

“If you go into a rehab program . . .”

“Shut up! Shut up! I don't wanna hear no more words.” The pistol started bucking up and down, and Father John dropped back onto the pew. “Words, words, that's all you got. Melba ain't never coming back.” The Indian threw a glance at the door. “That lawyer don't get here in three minutes, you're gonna be dead.”