Wife of Moon (14 page)

Turning into the reservation now. On automatic, it seemed, as if the vehicle had received an electrical impulse that sent it into a right turn, then, after a mile, a left into St. Francis Mission without any direction from her. She was holding her breath. She had to talk to John O'Malley.

“Be here, John,” she said out loud over the noise of the tires churning over the asphalt on the straightway through the cottonwoods to Circle Drive, sun and shadow rippling over the mission grounds ahead. She could almost sense his presence—the calmness and strength of him—as if he were sitting in the Jeep beside her.

FATHER JOHN TOOK
the curve on Seventeen-Mile Road and eased on the brake,
Giorni poveri vivea
playing on high volume. Looming over the road ahead was the sign for St. Francis Mission. As the Jeep in the oncoming lane, red signal blinking, swung across the road, he saw Vicky at the wheel: the shape of her head, the set of her shoulders. He would know her anywhere.

He drove after her through the tunnel of cottonwoods, golden in the sun, and out onto Circle Drive. Vicky was getting out of the Jeep in front of the administration building as he parked next to her and hit the off button on the player, the notes of the aria lingering in the cab for a half-second, like a memory. It took him by surprise, as it always did, at how beautiful she was.

“I've got to talk to you, John,” she said when he walked around the front of the pickup. “As a priest. In private.”

He threw a glance at the SUV and three pickups parked on the other side of the Jeep. Father Damien had called a meeting of the
volunteers who had agreed to help with the senator's visit. There could be people in the corridor, craning their necks to see who was in the pastor's office and speculating on the reason. Then he remembered that Catherine had an appointment at Indian Health Services this afternoon, and he'd told her it was okay to close the museum for as long as she needed.

“I know a quiet place,” he said. He took Vicky's arm and guided her into Circle Drive. She seemed small and light beside him. He made himself turn away from the sun dancing in her black hair and from the familiar aroma of sage about her. He'd told himself that he'd forgotten all of that.

The museum was cool, with shafts of sunlight falling into the shadows and the dusty odor of the old building. Father John shut the door behind them and ushered Vicky into the office on the right. The instant he flipped the light switch, the fluorescent fixture overhead suffused the room in a white glow.

“Have a seat,” he said, but she was already pacing. Desk. Door. Window. She always paced when she was upset, or trying to work something out. How well he knew her, he thought. So many little things about her memorized.

He perched on the edge of the desk, not taking his eyes from her. “Talk to me,” he said.

“T.J.'s disappeared.” She stopped pacing for half a second, as if to make sure he'd heard. Her eyes were clouded with worry, and little worry lines dug into her forehead. Then, moving again: “I talked to Vera a little while ago. She's beside herself with worry. T.J.'s been gone for almost two days. I think he's cleared out of the area.”

“Why would he do that?” Father John asked, but he was beginning to understand. There was only one reason for T.J. to flee, and that was why Vicky was here.

“Suppose he's guilty, John.” Pacing again, combing her fingers through her hair.

“Wait a minute,” he said, arranging the facts in his mind. Logic was
in the facts. “T.J. was at his office when Denise was killed. I talked to him after he'd found her. He was devastated. He blamed himself . . .”

Father John broke off. Vicky was staring at him with such intensity in her eyes that he had to force himself not to look away. It couldn't be true, he thought. He'd known T.J. and Denise for eight years. He couldn't imagine that it was true.

“He wasn't at the office Monday evening,” Vicky said. Her voice was low, almost apologetic. “His alibi isn't worth dirt, and he knows it. It's taken me less than a couple of days to prove he was lying. It probably took Gianelli less time than that. T.J. took off because he knows he'll be indicted.”

Vicky walked over and stood in front of him. He could feel the charge in the air between them, his own worry mixing with her anger and disappointment. “What T.J. doesn't know is that he has another alibi. All he has to do is come back and explain that he'd been protecting his girlfriend in Riverton. Marnie Rankin. An insurance agent. Blond, beautiful, and stupid about men. She'll swear to anything that T.J. says. All I'd have to do is put her on the stand and listen to her lie. Someone on the jury will believe her and persuade the rest of the jury of reasonable doubt. T.J. will walk out of the courtroom a free man.”

“You spoke to the woman?”

Vicky nodded and went back to pacing. “I could feel her desperation. She'd do anything to keep T.J.”

“Okay, Vicky,” Father John said, trying to arrange what she was saying into a logical order that made sense. “Let's say the woman is lying and T.J. wasn't with her Monday evening. That means T.J. hasn't told the truth about where he was. It doesn't mean he killed Denise.”

Vicky walked over and stared out the window. “Eight months ago, T.J. bought one hundred thousand dollars worth of life insurance on Denise. That isn't all. Denise found out about Marnie Rankin and intended to divorce him. T.J. wouldn't have wanted a divorce. He was proud to be married to the great-granddaughter of Sharp Nose. It gave him status. So, he has motive and he had the opportunity.”

She turned back to him, and for a moment he thought she might start to cry. “I had this crazy idea that I could become a lawyer and make a difference. I could help people who didn't have anywhere else to turn—Indians who didn't know they had any rights. I wanted to make sure the system recognized their rights.” She looked away again and ran the palm of one hand across her cheeks. “I didn't become a lawyer to help wife murderers walk free.”

He understood now. “Listen, Vicky,” he said, his voice low and calm. “This isn't about you and Ben. T.J. isn't Ben, and you aren't Denise.”

“Oh, God.” Vicky dropped her face into her hands a moment. “I'm supposed to be professional. When I think of T.J. now, I see Ben's face. He would have killed me if I hadn't left.”

“You're human, Vicky, that's all. A human lawyer.” He let the quiet settle around them a moment. “You could tell T.J. to find another lawyer.”

She started pacing again. Shaking her head. Pacing. “Believe me, I've thought about it. But everyone on the rez would think that I knew that T.J. was guilty. Even if he was acquitted, no one would ever believe him or trust him again. He'd have to leave the rez.”

“Well, that's the point, isn't it? You don't know that T.J. is guilty.” He paused. “You don't have to be the judge, Vicky. You just have to make sure that the man's rights are protected.”

Vicky threw her head back and laughed. It sounded like a strangled cry. “You sound like Adam,” she said.

Oh, yes, Adam. There was Adam Lone Eagle now, hovering like an invisible presence beside her. Father John looked away. He wanted her to be happy. He prayed for her to be happy and at peace. He wanted her to go on with her life and have a future. He just hadn't counted on Adam Lone Eagle as part of the future.

Father John stood up and walked over to the window. Walks-On was stretched into a patch of sunshine on the sidewalk in front of the residence. Gold flashed in the cottonwoods, and in the distance, the
mountains looked purple, rimmed in orange. Of course there would be another man for her, he thought. There would be Adam.

“Guilty or innocent,” Vicky was saying behind him. “Adam says it doesn't matter. Just give the man the best defense possible.”

And then she was next to him. He felt a jolt of surprise at the sadness in her eyes when he turned toward her. “Is anybody what he seems, John? Is everyone just a collection of images that they project to hide who they really are? I've known T.J. most of my life, but I didn't know him at all. He could be a murderer.”

She turned and went back to the desk. “I thought I was getting to know Adam. We've gone to dinner, talked a lot. Two lawyers, both lonely, looking for true love and all the other clichés. That was us, I thought.” She waved one hand, as if to dismiss the whole of it. “The only thing Adam's interested in is a law partner. He thinks we should start a firm together.” She gave a little laugh. “What is it you baseball players say? I'm striking out here. Marnie Rankin and I, both holding onto some image in our head that has nothing to do with reality. She's convinced herself that T.J. loves her, even after he's broken up with her.” She stopped. “What, John? What is it?”

The questions took him by surprise. It was if she had seen the questions forming at the edge of his own mind, no more than shadows. “Did the woman say why T.J. had wanted to end the relationship?”

“Another woman. What else?”

Father John went back to the desk and sat down in the chair, trying to remember what Damien had told him: how he'd gone to the tribal headquarters to see T.J. and Savi Crowthorpe in an attempt to include St. Francis Mission in Senator Evans's visit to the reservation. Suppose Christine had gone along to talk about the Curtis exhibit and the way it combined Arapaho culture and history. Suppose she'd mentioned that she wanted to identify people in the Curtis photos and was looking for members of the Sharp Nose family. Suppose T.J. had introduced her to his wife.

“What are you thinking?” Vicky asked, the same intensity lighting her eyes.

“The curator at the museum disappeared Monday night,” he began.

“Oh, John.” She interrupted. “I'm so sorry. I read about it in the
Gazette.
You must be very worried, and here I am, going on about . . .”

“Vicky, it's okay.” He held up the palm of his hand. “It's just that she disappeared the same night that Denise was murdered. I've been trying to find a connection between them.”

Vicky kept her eyes on his. “T.J.,” she said.

“I'm starting to think so.” He hesitated. “Turns out that Christine is married to a former CIA agent by the name of Eric Loftus, who isn't happy that his wife drove off and left him. She was here, trying to get on her feet. She'd tried to purchase vintage Curtis photographs from Eunice Redshield and Max Oldman, probably hoping to sell them.”

Vicky seemed to take this in for a moment. Then she said, “If she found photographs, there could be more.”

“Exactly. I think she figured that someone in the Sharp Nose family might own photographs since . . .” He broke off. “Come on, I'll show you,” he said, getting out of the chair and ushering her ahead into the entry. The clack of their footsteps reverberated off the wood floor into the silence of the old building. He flipped the light switch in the gallery and kept going—past the hundred-year-old images of Plains Indians posing for the camera, solemn-faced and dignified, as if that were the image they wanted the future generations to know them by.

He stopped in front of the photographs of the Arapahos and lifted one hand toward the village. “Christine wanted to identify the woman in this photograph who was killed while Curtis was shooting the scene.”

“Another woman murdered?”

“Bashful Woman,” he said, tapping the glass. “The daughter of Chief Sharp Nose. She was in the village.”

Vicky didn't say anything for a long moment. “I remember hearing
about her. The chief's favorite child. She died young. I remember the elders didn't like to talk about it. They said it was not good to dwell on the bad things in the past, that dwelling on old evil might invite it back.”

He told her that the woman had married Carston Evans, Senator Evans's grandfather, and that they'd had a child.

Vicky lifted her chin and stared at the ceiling. “I never heard that the senator is descended . . .”

“He's not,” Father John cut in. “I don't know what became of the child, but the senator is descended from the second wife, a woman from Nebraska. The man was in the village when Bashful Woman was shot.” Father John let his own gaze run over the figures in the village, so small and distant, yet so real and alive looking. Most of the faces of the men were shadowed by cowboy hats. It was impossible to distinguish a white man from an Arapaho.

Father John moved his hand over the warriors riding down the slope. “Christine was able to identify the three men,” he went on. “Thunder is on the right. He's Eunice Redshield's ancestor. The others are Alvin Pretty Lodge and Ben Franklin. Eunice says they don't have any descendants on the rez. All three men were hanged for Bashful's murder, but Eunice says they were innocent.”

Vicky frowned. “There must have been a trial, John. If Bashful Woman was shot in the village, there would have been witnesses. Surely if there was any evidence the men were innocent, it would have been presented to the magistrate.”

He waited a moment before he said, “They didn't have a lawyer, Vicky.”

She turned away from him then and faced the portraits on the side wall. When she turned back, he saw the flash of light in her eyes, and the calm resolve moving through her expression.

“They might have been innocent,” she said. “T.J. might be innocent.”

“Yes,” he said.