Winter's Child (10 page)

Riverton looked deserted.
A few pickups crawling through the snow, streetlights casting a dim glow over the buildings that huddled in the shadows. Father John slowed on Federal and hunched toward the windshield, searching for the Buffalo Bar and Lounge. “On the corner ahead,” Betty said, but when it wasn't there, she told him to try the next block. The woman wasn't any more accustomed to visiting the local bars than he was.

There were a number of bars, you realized, when you started looking for one. Each bar an oasis of light and activity with music thumping into the night past the clapboard and shingled walls, the plate glass windows singed with frost.

Buffalo Bar and Lounge
pulsated in white letters on a sign ahead. The bar itself was a dark brick affair with traces of light escaping around the front door and shimmering in the window. Father John turned into the lot next to the bar and pulled into a vacant space.
The headlights washed over the words
Owner Parking
printed on the curb.

Betty was already out of the pickup. Stomping toward the front door, head bent in the falling snow. He followed her inside. The heavy wooden door rattled and creaked shut behind them. A warm fug of steam mixed with smells of beer and spicy barbecue filled the place. The wide mirror behind the bar reflected the half circles of light that dangled over the tables. A dozen customers lounged about the tables and hung on to the bar. Country music thumped through a loudspeaker.

Betty stood frozen in place, glancing about, taking it in: this was where Vince found new friends, friends who had helped him get a wad of money and the chance to escape.

“He's not here.”

Father John wondered how she could be so sure. It was hard to distinguish one patron from another. The same cowboy hats, long-sleeved shirts, blue jeans, and boots. The wide shoulders, tapered backs, and slim waists of men who worked outdoors. The off-shoulder blouses and swishing skirts and cowboy hats of the few women.

Aware of the heads lifting over mugs of beer, the eyes following them, he took Betty's arm and steered her around the tables to the bar. Cowboys had claimed either end of the bar, but the middle was vacant, and that was where he led her. The bartender was a big man, as big as a bouncer, with an apron tied around his waist and a methodical manner about him as he swished glasses in a sink full of soapy water. He looked over, not breaking the back-and-forth rhythm. “Dining room's closed.”

“We'll have something at the bar.”

“Yeah?” This seemed to take him by surprise. “Hold on a sec.”

Betty turned sideways and stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. “All I want is to find Vince.”

“What'll it be?” The bartender had moved toward them. He swiped a wet cloth over the bar.

“Two coffees.”

“Make mine a Coke.” Betty seemed to have caught on that what they needed was information, and information came at a price.

“Irish coffee? Bourbon and Coke?”

“Just plain,” Father John said.

The man shrugged, stepped away, and went about pumping Coke out of a nozzle and into a glass. Then he poured a mug of coffee and set them both down. “Never seen you in here before.” He put his hands on his waist, elbows crooked outward, and waited.

“Father O'Malley from the mission.” Father John nodded at the jar of creamer on the bar and the bartender slid it toward him. “This is Betty White Hawk. She's looking for her son, Vince.”

The man was shaking his head. “Look,” he said, as if he'd seen the picture and didn't like it, “customers come here for a little R and R, you know what I mean? Maybe they don't like folks knowing where they are.” He turned to Betty. “Sorry, ma'am, but that goes for mothers.”

Father John stirred some cream into the coffee and took a sip. “You know Vince?”

“I just said . . .”

“He could be in trouble. There might be somebody here who could help us find him. We know he liked to come here.” It might be true, he was thinking. “I hear he has friends here. Any of them around?” He turned and glanced about the tables, as if one of Vince's new friends might step forward and identify himself.

“What kind of trouble?”

“Nothing that involves the bar.”

“He tried to rob somebody, I heard.”

“His lawyer's taken care of that.”

Betty was sipping the Coke. She set the glass down. “He can be a hothead. I'm trying to keep him from getting into trouble.”

The bartender studied her for a moment, as if a different picture had started to form. The ATM robbery attempt had been taken care of, there wasn't any new trouble. Just the effort to keep Vince away from trouble.

“Tell you the truth, we never had more than a few words. Another Indian from the rez. They're all the same, pretty much stick to themselves. Have a couple beers, ignore everybody else just like the cowboys ignore them.” He shrugged. “I don't need any cowboy-Indian trouble. So Vince comes in once in a while . . .”

“Was he here last night?”

“I don't want any trouble.”

Father John gave him a nod of understanding.

“Came in early. Ordered a beer, carried it over to a table and had a powwow with another Indian. Only guy I saw him talking to last night. I seen them having a couple drinks together a few times.”

“Who was it?” Hope flared in Betty's voice.

“Ask him yourself.” He gestured with his chin toward a table over on the side where a thin, bent Indian sat alone, cowboy hat pushed back, empty beer glasses lined up in front. He was working at another beer.

Father John thanked the man, laid a few bills on the bar, and started after Betty, who was already halfway across the dining room, shoulders back, like a runner at the finish line. She stopped at the table as if she had hit an invisible wall and stared down at the soiled, rain-marked brim of the Indian's cowboy hat.

Father John moved in close, slid out a chair, and motioned Betty to sit down. He took the chair between her and the Indian, who was looking at Betty as if she had sprung, genielike, from an empty bottle.

“Don't recall inviting you.”

“Sorry to bother you.” Father John set both hands, palms down, on the table. He had no intention of leaving, and neither did Betty, a fact the Indian must have comprehended, because he gave a little nod and went back to looking over Betty, who was trembling, face flushed.

After a moment, the Indian shifted sideways. He had a jagged scar that ran across his cheek. “I seen you at the mission,” he said. “Who's this?” He tossed his head in Betty's direction.

“You know me.” Betty was leaning forward, fists clenched into small balls on the table. “You can't have my son. Tell me where he is, or I swear . . .” She let the rest of it hang like smoke over the table.

“Vince?” The Indian held a steady gaze. He might have been in a poker game.

“White Hawk.” There was something between them, Father John was thinking, something out of the past that nipped at the present. But that was true with a lot of families on the rez. Old animosities and conflicts, sometimes going so far back nobody remembered what they were about.

“Are you a friend of his?”

“Might've had a few beers with him.” The Indian lifted and dropped his shoulders, as if he were used to shrugging away uncomfortable moments. And yet there was something forced in the gesture, as if he were hiding a deep nervousness.

“What about last night?” Betty leaned even closer. Her breasts pressed into the edge of the table.

“What about it?”

“We're trying to find him,” Father John said. “Any idea of where he might have gone? Friends he might be with?”

“He never ran his social calendar by me.” The Indian gave another shrug. “So we had some beers a couple times. Don't make me his keeper.”

Father John leaned back. “You used to come to the mission?”

“Long time ago.”

“Your people still come? Let's see, that would be the Yellow Horses?” He was guessing. The Indian hadn't given his name. The fastest way to find out which family an Arapaho belonged to was to place him in the wrong family.

The Indian sensed the trap. A wily hunter. “Yellow Horses? Never associated with the likes.”

“I remember everything,” Betty said, keeping her eyes on the man. She leaned in closer. “Vince is all I've got. For God's sake, tell me where he is or . . .” She clamped her lips over the rest of it.

The Indian drew back, bringing the glass of beer with him. “Or what? You gonna cough up a lot of stuff nobody cares about anymore? Can't help you.”

Father John took a moment. Whatever lay between the White Hawks and this man was raw and unsettled. “Anyone else,” he said, glancing around, “who might have had a few beers with Vince?”

The Indian gave another shrug, finished the last of his beer, and lifted an arm into the air. “Far as I know, Vince tended to his own business. Good idea, I'd say.”

The bartender had sauntered over, an unhurried, end-of-the-night air about him. He wiped his hands down the sides of his apron. “About to close,” he said.

The Indian looked up sideways, brown neck muscles stretched
out of the collar of his Western shirt. He had a long, narrow face with a hooked nose, as sharp as a blade. “Another beer.”

“Haven't you had enough, Lou?”

Lou. Father John had it now. Lou Bearing. Lou and his wife—what was her name? Debbie—had come to Mass a few times when he had first come to St. Francis more than ten years ago. He hadn't seen them since, as if they had disappeared, taken a different path. It happened. Most of his parishioners retained their traditional Indian beliefs. Attended the Sun Dance every summer, went to the sweat lodges and healing ceremonies. The ancient ceremonies that connected them to the ancestors. They still came to the mission. Mass and confessions, baptism and confirmation, funerals. Arapahos were the most spiritual people he had ever been with. Pray and pray and pray some more, he had heard the elders say. Pray in every way.

It was possible that Lou and Debbie had decided to leave off with the mission and keep to the Arapaho ceremonies. Or leave off with all forms of worship. The moderns, the skeptics, those who didn't need any spiritual help because they didn't believe.

He wondered what it had been.

“Just bring me a beer,” Bearing said. “I don't need a lecture.”

“What about you?” The bartender glanced around the table, but let his gaze linger on Betty. The flush of hope had dissipated, and the pale, worn-out look had returned, making her seem older, tired out.

She waved away the question, and Father John said, “Nothing for me.” They were done here, he was thinking as the bartender walked away. Lou Bearing had told them everything he intended to, which was very little. It was what he left unsaid that counted. He knew Vince White Hawk. He drank with him. They'd been drinking together last evening and on other occasions before Vince had
miraculously come into a wad of money and started carrying a gun. He had been the only one Vince had talked to in the bar, which suggested that last evening's meeting had been set up, prearranged.

And there was more. Father John had the sense that the man was covering up something.

Father John stood up. Across the table, Betty pushed herself to her feet. She looked unsteady, holding on to the back of the chair. He took hold of her arm and started to turn toward the door, then stepped back. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the massive figure of the bartender carrying a mug of beer. He leaned close to Bearing. “Whatever trouble Vince is in might implicate you. If you know anything that could help find him, I suggest you help yourself by telling me.”

The Indian watched the mug appear on the table, then brought it to his lips. A foamy white mustache smeared the top of his lip when he set the mug down. “You threatening me?”

Father John rapped his knuckles on the table. “If you decide to help, you know where to find me.”

*   *   *

“What is it?”
They were outside in the pickup, the engine sputtering and trying to catch. “Why do you hate him?”

Betty sat hunched over beside him, her breath raspy. She kept her eyes down. “It happened a long time ago. Like he said: nobody cares.” Then she looked up at him with so much alarm and pain in her eyes that he leaned closer.

“Betty,” he said, “what is it?”

She was shaking her head. “He's going to kill my son.”

The door with
Clint Hopkins, Esq
. etched in the pebble-glass window was locked. Vicky tried the knob a second time, then knocked. A moment passed before a shadow moved across the glass and the door swung open. Evie leaned into the edge. Behind the small, wireless glasses, she had the flushed red-rimmed eyes of someone who had been crying hard.

“Sorry about locking you out.” She didn't look sorry. She looked sad and helpless as she gestured Vicky inside

Vicky walked past, taking in the front office at a glance. Desk swept clean, surface polished to a glow. A pair of upholstered visitor's chairs that looked as if they had been vacuumed. Filing cabinet with drawers closed—probably locked—and a small trophy on top with the figure of a golfer. Bookcases against one wall, books neatly stacked around a plant in a pottery bowl and a large, clear vase. The office of a man who was no longer there.

She turned around and realized the young woman was still leaning against the edge of the door. “Are you all right?” Evie Moran, the beautiful secretary Clint had hired out of high school and never let go. And Evie had not wished to leave. It could be true, the gossip. It always struck Vicky at how secretive and tight-lipped lawyers could be about a case, and how schoolgirl gossipy they were about one another.

“It's been so hard,” the young woman said. And she was young, Vicky was thinking. Maybe even younger than she had guessed yesterday, but yesterday the secretary had been in shock, drawn and pale. “I mean, Clint was . . .” She stopped and bit into her lower lip. The word she had been about to utter seemed to float in the air between them.
Everything
.

She hurried on: “Crazy people do crazy things. They get hurt, so they strike out, hurt everybody else.”

“What are you trying to tell me?” God, she could have hit on the truth. Last night in the restaurant with Rick, she had jumped to the conclusion that Clint's wife might have had motive to arrange his death. A wild conclusion, plucked out of her own exhaustion and shock.

“You said you didn't think it was an accident.” Evie was still clinging to the door. “That means somebody killed him.”

“We don't know for sure.” Vicky could feel the weight of the truth in Evie's words. “I believe the police think it was an accident. The investigation . . .”

“The hell with the investigation.” Evie slammed the door, sending little shock waves through the carpeted floor. “They can miss the truth by a mile.”

“What do you think happened?”

“Somebody wanted him dead and hired a killer. It happens, you know.”

Vicky waited a moment before she said, “Who would want him dead?”

“I'm not saying.” The young woman shrugged and rolled her eyes. “I don't want to be next. I've got to think of myself.”

“Are you referring to his law practice or to his personal life?”

Evie had been advancing into the room. She tripped forward, then caught herself. “How would I know about his personal life? I don't care what gossip you've heard. I was his secretary.”

Vicky absorbed this for a moment. Evie had heard the gossip. Legal secretaries talk to one another. “Do you think,” she said, trying to change direction, “someone believes you know whatever Clint knew?”

Evie gave another shrug and sank into a chair. Vacuum streaks ruffled the gray carpet at her feet. “All I know is, I'm out of here as soon as I can get away. I've been tidying up, putting things in order. It's the last thing I can do for Clint. He and a lawyer in Casper had an arrangement to close up each other's practices, if something . . .” She squeezed her eyes shut against the moisture clouding her glasses. “Shouldn't take long to close down. Adoption cases? Not exactly big ticket. A lot of cases Clint took pro bono. He didn't care about money. He fell for any kid with a hardship story. All he wanted was to get kids into safe, permanent homes.”

“I'm not following.” Vicky perched on the other chair and swiveled in a half circle to face the woman. “Why are you anxious to get away?”

“Maybe he stumbled onto something he shouldn't know. He was always on the internet. Somebody might think I know what he found.” The woman tilted her head back and laughed. “He kept things locked in the vault, the vault being his head. He was paranoid about people breaking in or hacking his records.”

Dead end. There was nothing there, Vicky was thinking. No sign
that Evie Moran believed Clint's wife was behind his death. She could see herself in the restaurant last night, arguing with Rick Masterson over what they had seen, grasping at the gossip and jumping to the conclusion that Lacy Hopkins could have been responsible.

She blinked back that train of thought. She had seen the black truck smash into Clint, toss him over the hood, and no explanations could change that.

“Did you find anything that might be helpful in the Little Shield case?”

Evie looked at her as if she were trying to place her, recall why she was sitting across the office asking questions. Finally, comprehension spread across her face. She jumped to her feet, walked around the desk, and yanked open a drawer, then thrust a folder toward Vicky.

“Clint's calendar for the last couple weeks,” Evie said. “People he interviewed on the Little Shield case. I checked his desk in his study to see if he had brought any work home. Funny, when you think about it. He trusted the doors on his house more than the doors here. I found this folder in the top drawer.”

Vicky took the folder. Most likely Clint had intended to bring it to her office. He would have explained the details missing from his notes. Without his explanation, she didn't expect any notations on his calendar to make much sense.

The folder contained two sheets, each representing a week, with the days across the top of each sheet. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday . . . Lines of tight, black writing filled the space beneath each day, the letters as upright as posts. There were various names, followed by comments and memoranda.

She slipped the sheets back into the folder. “Did you make a copy?”

“That is the copy,” Evie said.

“If you come across anything else . . .”

The young woman held up a hand, palm out. “I know Clint.” She swallowed hard. “There won't be anything else.”

*   *   *

All legal notes
are alike: a collection of terse facts. And the notes Clint had jotted on the calendar were the same, except they were more terse and less informative than Vicky had expected.

She lay the calendar pages on her desk, then began marking the names on each page with a yellow highlighter. A dull splash of daylight filled the window. From the outer office came the muffled sound of tapping, then the sound of the phone ringing. Through the beveled-glass doors, Vicky saw the distorted figure of Annie reaching for the phone.

Vicky took the list of contacts Myra Little Shield had left with her and started comparing the names on the list with the names on the calendar. They lined up chronologically. A methodical man, Clint. He had started with the top and proceeded through the list. The buzzer sounded, and she pressed the button. “Betty White Hawk on line one,” Annie said.

Vicky lifted the receiver, her gaze still on the pages. “Have you heard from Vince?”

She understood by the silence that the answer was no. A long moment passed before Betty said, “Last night I ran into a man that knows him. I think he knows where Vince is hiding out.”

Vicky waited, and finally the voice went on, low and precise, as controlled and deliberate as the upright letters of Clint Hopkins's handwriting. “I remembered Vince saying something about a bar, so we went to the Buffalo Bar and Lounge. We met up with Lou Bearing.”

“We?”

“Father John.”

John O'Malley. Vicky gripped the phone while the woman went on talking, the words blurring together with no logic or meaning. It had been a long time since she and John had worked together, a long time since anyone had needed both a priest and a lawyer, the excuse that brought them together. At times she had imagined making up an excuse, inventing a client. What a laugh. He would see through it immediately.

“Do you know him?”

“Father John?” Vicky tried to refocus her attention.

“Lou Bearing.”

The name was familiar. Vicky glanced down the names on the calendar. She had just run yellow smudges through the name Lou Bearing, listed three different times. Odd, she realized now. Clint had x-ed out three days between the first two mentions of Bearing's name and the last. Also odd: The name was not on Myra Little Shield's list. “What did he tell you?”

“Nothing. He didn't tell us anything. But the bartender said Vince and Lou had a couple beers together the night before last. And he'd seen them drinking together before that. You ever get that feeling when you know, you just know somebody's lying?”

“Who is Lou Bearing? What did Father John say?”

“I don't know. I don't know anymore.” There was an edge of hysteria in her voice. “I keep seeing cops at a crummy house somewhere and Vince going crazy. He won't let them take him.” She had started crying, loud sobs that bolted down the line. “He's gonna get himself killed.”

“Listen to me,” Vicky said. “I'll see if I can locate Lou Bearing. It's not too late. I can still bring Vince in today if I can find him.”

“Oh my God. You have to find him, Vicky. Please find him.”

Vicky was about to say she couldn't make any promises, she would do her best—a mouthful of platitudes that she realized were unnecessary. The line was dead.

She went back to comparing the Little Shields' list with the calendar entries. Clint had visited each person once, yet he had interviewed Lou Bearing three times. Twice on succeeding days, followed by three days that were x-ed out. The third visit was the day he had died. Next to the name, the spaces were blank.

She read through the calendar again. Alongside all the other names he'd written the same terse words.
Confirm
.
Will swear. Good parents. Child happy.

She sat back. What else would these contacts say, except that Eldon and Myra Little Shield had raised Mary Ann since she was an infant, they were good parents, and Mary Ann was happy. They would swear to that in court. They were all related to the Little Shields. Cousins, in-laws, cousins of in-laws: a whole web of relatives.

All the notes missed the main question: how had Eldon and Myra gotten custody of Mary Ann? Another relative, a social services employee, had gotten them some sort of paper that made them think they had custody. The relative had died, and the matter had been forgotten—a small child stuck in limbo. And the Little Shields hadn't called the police, because they didn't think they had to. The relative had taken care of the legalities. For five years, they stuck to the story they had created: Mary Ann had been placed in their custody as a foster child.

Was there no one who could swear to the truth, except for the woman who had left Mary Ann on a doorstep in the middle of a blizzard? Except for her, whoever she was?

She stared at the blank spaces around Lou Bearing's name. Three times Clint had talked to the man, yet he hadn't jotted down any comments.

Who was Lou Bearing?

She started through the Little Shields' list again, comparing it to the names on the calendar. Rosemary Little Shield was the last name on the list. Next to it, Clint had jotted the word
neighbor
. He had interviewed everyone in order. Nothing set him off course. Which meant Rosemary Little Shield had been the last person interviewed before Lou Bearing. And Lou Bearing could be her neighbor.

She stacked the sheets in order and placed them inside the file folder. She would have to follow Clint's trail, but she would start with Rosemary Little Shield.