Winter's Child (16 page)

Father John pulled
his mobile out of his pocket and pressed 911. Crumpled beside him, Debbie Bearing seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into the snow. There was one ring, then a voice asked what the emergency was. He gave his name and said he was at the home of Lou and Debbie Bearing west of Fort Washakie. Lou Bearing was hurt. Possibly dead. Debbie was in shock. “We need an ambulance.” Which could take a while, he was thinking. There were few patrol cars, few officers to cover the miles of empty space on the rez. “It's the house with the large barn in back.”

“Where is the injured man?”

“I'm not sure.” He wasn't even sure if the hysterical woman beside him knew what she was talking about. He leaned closer to Debbie, trying to get her attention. She had drifted off, gone somewhere else. “Where is Lou?”

She blinked at him, the effort to concentrate printed on her face. “The shop,” she said finally.

“I heard,” the voice on the phone said. “I'll hold on while you check.”

“I'm going to give the phone to Debbie,” he told the voice. “Talk to her while I'm gone.”

For a moment, Debbie didn't seem to understand. She recoiled from the phone, an alien object from outer space. “Tell the operator what you've told me, Debbie.”

She nodded, as if the sound of her own name had brought her back again, and reached for the phone. Her fingers were red and stiff with cold, and the phone started to slip. He closed her fingers around it, holding them there a moment, willing the warmth of his own glove into her hand. “Lou's dead,” he heard her say as he got to his feet and started around the house toward the barn.

A light-colored pickup stood close to the house. The snow all around had been disturbed. A lot of footsteps; he wasn't the first person to have walked about today. He stayed with the footsteps down the side of the house to the barn, where the footsteps had churned out big, messy circles, as if a tractor had run through.

One of the barn doors had been pushed open, and the sun glinted on the metal railings. Inside looked as dark as night. Just across the threshold, he could see smudges of snow prints on a hard-packed dirt floor that bumped into the darkness. “Anyone here?” He was shouting into a vacuum, the sound of his own voice echoing around him.

He moved farther inside. The shadowy hulks of vehicles rose in front of him. He patted the wall on the left, then the one on the right. Finally his fingers found a smooth plastic plate with a switch in the center. Lights flashed on, streaming down from metal poles in the corners, flooding over a black truck and a dark sedan lined up in bays. Tools spilled over the worktables alongside the vehicles.
More tools cluttered the benches against the walls and dangled from hooks on the walls.

He stepped toward the vehicles, scouring the areas in between, the spaces under the tables and benches, any place large enough for a body. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing he wouldn't expect to see in a garage: little pools of oil here and there, glinting in the light; oil-smeared rags tossed onto the benches; coveralls hanging from nails.

“Anyone here?” He spotted what looked like a broken baseball bat lying next to the wall. He stooped over and picked it up, feeling his muscles tighten, bracing for the unexpected. Someone could be here, someone involved in Lou Bearing's death. Anything could have happened. A disgruntled customer, an argument that escalated into violence. Metal tools everywhere, easy to grab, slam into a scalp. My God.

He reached the wall and turned, moving down the side of the black truck toward the hood, his own heart pounding in his ears. Still nothing. Then, there, sticking out from below the bumper, was a boot, dirty and worn-looking, and, oddly, not out of place on the soiled dirt. Attached to the boot, a jeans-clad leg. Another leg angled under the truck. The body of a man sprawled facedown, light shining on the circle of scalp near the top of what was left of his head. Spreading around him was a dark, glassy pool of blood. Blood splattered the metal bumper like flecks of black paint and smeared the wall three feet away. The ashy smell of blood filled his nostrils, the smell of death.

It took a moment to absorb what he was looking at. The blue jeans and brown jacket, the outstretched arms, as if Lou Bearing had tried to save himself. There was a black revolver a few inches from his right hand. “God have mercy on your soul,” he said.

He took a few steps backward, then swung around and started retracing his steps, walking slowly, searching the spaces and the shadows, gripping the bat, wanting to make sure no one else was here. He moved past the door and checked out the other side of the barn. Still nothing except the faint smell of blood and an odd change in the atmosphere the farther away he got from the body. He started along the side of the sedan and worked his way again toward the rear wall. A couple of brooms leaning against a table, metal pails stacked together, shelves lined with paint and aerosol cans, a container of brushes. He stooped down and looked underneath the vehicles, then glanced up at the rafters. Hiding places, but no sign of anyone, except for the body of Lou Bearing under the front of the truck.

Father John turned around and hurried out into the bright glare of snow and sun. He broke into a run around the house. Debbie Bearing was folded over in the snow. He could hear her moaning.

He knelt down beside her. She started rocking back and forth, moaning and mumbling, not making any sense. She gripped her knees to her chest, and he managed to pull the mobile out of her hand.

“Are you still there?”

“I'm here, Father.” The voice came from far away, another reality.

“A man is dead in the barn. He was shot in the head.”

“Lou Bearing?”

“His wife must have found him.”

Debbie was still rocking back and forth. He leaned over and patted her shoulder.

“You're sure he's dead.”

Yes, he was sure, he told the voice. He knew death. So many deaths since he had come to St. Francis. Accidents, fights, gunshots. “He's dead,” he said again.

“Try to keep the wife calm until the medics arrive.” The voice was steady and certain. How many times had the operator given this advice? Wife, mother, cousin, friend—keep them calm. “Do you want me to stay on the line?”

“No. We'll manage.”

He ended the call, slipped the phone into his jacket pocket. The woman was wobbling now, trying to get to her feet, to get a grip on the earth. “An ambulance is on the way,” he told her. “Shall we wait inside where it's warmer?” He started to take hold of her arm.

“No. No. No.” Debbie swatted at his hand, then lifted her own hands overhead. The screeching began again, the besieging of heaven. After a long moment, she seemed to catch her breath. “Don't take me in there. I can't go back there.”

“It's your home, Debbie,” Father John said, trying for reason, logic. What was he thinking? “You can wait in my pickup,” he said. It wasn't warm; he was never sure if the heater would turn on, and the engine had been cooling now for a while. Still, better than the snow.

She didn't protest. No screeching now, just low moaning and sobbing sounds. He held her arm and helped her onto her feet. She was surprisingly heavy for a small, compact woman. A solid build, thick arms he could feel through the weight of her jacket. She stumbled forward, boots skimming the snow, not connecting with the ground, and Father John placed his arm around her waist, holding her upright as they walked to the pickup. He lifted her into the seat, where she flopped back, breathing hard. Father John waited for the screeching to start again. It came at intervals, it seemed, the way grief came in waves. He reached behind the seat for the blanket he kept in back and pulled it around her shoulders, enfolding her in fleece. She was shivering.

“He left me.” Debbie spit out the words, like something hard and bitter in her throat. “He promised he would never leave me. We were in it together . . .” She stopped, as if in that instant she realized what she was saying.

“In what together?” Father John kept his voice low.

“A team. The Bearing team, that's what we were,” she said. “Lou and Debbie. Nothing was going to tear us apart. Oh God. Oh God.”

“Take a deep breath,” Father John said, and after a moment, that is what she did. Drew in a long breath, more docile now, following instructions, as if she had been lost out in the yard, circling and screaming, not knowing what to do, and now someone was telling her what to do. She let the breath out slowly, then drew in another.

“What will happen to me?” She looked up at him, then flicked her eyes away. “We had a pact. Why did he leave me? I was strong for both of us. God, he was drinking and going to bars, even though I told him I'd take care of everything. Don't worry. And everything was working out like I planned. Working out, working out.” The words sounded like the click of a metronome.

“Debbie, what are you talking about?”

He wondered if she knew herself. She seemed rational and irrational at the same time, flailing at something that welled inside her.

When she didn't say anything, he asked if there was someone he could call. “Family or friends? They'll want to be with you.”

She threw her head back and laughed. “I never thought he'd do it. I never thought he had the guts to do it. He told me lots of times he was done, fed up. This morning he started in. Shot his hand at the coffee mug, and spilled coffee, and said he was tired of it.”

“Tired of what?” What was she trying to tell him, to get off her chest?

“Waiting. Tired of the waiting, and so end it. Shoot yourself, I
don't care. He went out to the shop. He left so fast, I don't remember him going. He's sitting there with coffee dripping onto his jeans, and then he's gone, and I heard it. I heard the shot. I never thought . . . I never wanted . . . I killed him.”

Father John patted the woman's shoulder again and told her to take another breath. This was as tough as it got. There were no words.
Don't blame yourself.
He expected her to start screeching again, reaching for heaven. This would take time. Years. “I'm very sorry,” he told her. “There must be someone you want with you.”

“Just us. Our team, Lou and me. We did fine, didn't we? Nobody else. Don't let anybody else in. We told each other we're enough.”

Down the road, coming toward the house, coming fast, was the sound of sirens. A parade of vehicles: gray and white police cars, an ambulance, and a white van. They started to slow down. Father John stepped away from the pickup and waved them forward. One by one they turned, dipping into the ditch then up onto the yard, snow spitting beneath the tires, sirens fading and finally shutting off, leaving only a faraway echo.

The house looked
deserted. Holding its place in a row of other houses, cars at the curb, pine trees bundled in snow, and yet something different about it, as if the life had been sucked out. Vicky managed to fit the Ford between two sedans, then made her way up the un-shoveled walk.

The door was flung open before she reached the porch. Lacy Hopkins leaned outside, face drawn, blanched with questions. “What is it?”

“Vicky Holden.” A sheen of ice lay over the porch floor. Lacy stared around the edge of the door. No sign of recognition in her eyes, no memory of Vicky having been here the day after Clint's death. Another face in the crowd of people offering condolences. “I'm the lawyer who has taken over one of Clint's adoption cases.”

Lacy nodded. A flicker in her eyes, like the effort to remember. Then she said, “I wasn't expecting company.”

“I wanted to ask you about something.” They were standing outside, like two women waiting for a bus, Vicky thought. Lacy looked disheveled, as if she hadn't slept in a long time. Sandy hair uncombed and ropy, hanging over the shoulders of her gray sweatshirt. Veins throbbed in the long neck rising out of the sweatshirt. Her face looked as dry as leather, her lips flaky.

She motioned Vicky inside, then reached around and pushed the door shut. The house was hot and closed-in, as if the air had coalesced into a tight ball. Vases of flowers stood about the floor and crowded the tops of two tables, permeating the air with the sweet, sickly odor of a funeral home. The French doors in the far wall were opened, and Vicky could see into Clint's study to the polished, empty surface of his desk.

Lacy was looking about, surveying the living room as if she were seeing the disarray for the first time—flowers, piles of laundry on the sofa, magazines jumbled with empty food cartons on the coffee table, boots and shoes kicked off on the carpet.

“It won't take long,” Vicky said.

Lacy turned toward her. Surprise in her face now, as if she had just registered who Vicky was. “I guess you'd better sit down.” She stepped over to the sofa, gathered up a pile of clothing and dumped it onto the floor. “I remember you now. You saw the accident.”

Vicky nodded. “I'm very sorry.”

“You don't believe it was an accident.”

Vicky felt a little tremor of unease. “I told the police what I saw.”

Lacy nodded. “It was you, then. A detective told me a witness thinks somebody murdered Clint. Asked me all kinds of questions. Who would want Clint dead? Any threats? Arguments or altercations? How was our relationship? Problems in our marriage? Oh my God.” She was starting to cry, shoulders shaking. “It was an
accident! Can't we leave it at that? Isn't that bad enough? Do I really have to deal with all the suspicions, the gossip?”

“I'm very sorry.” There was nothing else to say. Vicky couldn't say she hadn't seen what she had seen.

“You're not the only one.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some other witness, out of the blue, decided my husband was murdered. Why are you doing this to me?”

Vicky let the question invade the space between them. There were no answers, no platitdudes that might soften the blow. Finally, she said, “I'm trying to settle an adoption case Clint was working on. The Little Shields' case.”

“You really believe I know about Clint's cases?” Lacy gave a hoarse laugh. “He kept them to himself. They were his life, all the little kids looking for homes. They were Julia and he was their”—she hesitated, staring at Vicky for a long moment before she plunged on—“warrior riding to rescue them.”

“I've been following Clint's footsteps.” Vicky picked at the words, moving through rocks and thistles. “I've talked to the people he talked to, and I've run into a dead end. There are several days unaccounted for on his calendar. I don't know where he went or who he talked to.”

“My husband lived in his head.”

A clock somewhere ticked in the silence.

“In his head. Always lost in a tangle of thoughts. Working things out. Planning. Plotting. Do you think he was easy to live with?” She gave another hoarse laugh. “It was like living with a robot.”

Vicky flinched. Was that what she had become? A robot? Obsessed with her cases? With the people who found their way to her office? The drunks and addicts and petty criminals like Vince White
Hawk, needing her help, taking over her life? Is that how the people close to her would describe her? Lucas in Denver, Susan in Los Angeles, her own children sending texts, leaving voice mails?

She realized the woman was talking about Julia being settled at school in Laramie, living her own life. “Clint didn't have to worry about her anymore, and I was . . . well, hereabouts somewhere. He barely noticed me.”

Lacy looked away, her face rigid, like a mask with tiny cracks breaking beneath the surface. For the briefest moment, Vicky allowed herself to wonder if the barely noticed wife had grown tired of being a cipher in her husband's life. She must have heard the gossip about Clint and his young secretary. Every lawyer in town knew, Rick Masterson had told her. Surely Lacy knew.

Vicky could feel the words skittering away. A coldness came over her, and she realized she was shivering in the hot, flower-drenched house. The woman slouched on the chair across from her, gray sweatshirt bunched around her waist, a clump of hair hanging over one eye, wondering . . . what? If the lawyer working on one of Clint's cases thought she might have arranged her husband's death?

“I didn't kill my husband, you know.” Lacy blurted out the statement. “There was a blizzard, and the truck driver didn't see him. It was an accident, a terrible, cruel accident. And here I am”—she lifted both hands—“with nothing to look forward to.”

“Do you have family, friends to talk to?”

“Do you really suppose it might do any good?”

Vicky leaned forward. “Your husband cared deeply about a child named Mary Ann Little Shield. He wanted to see her legally adopted by the parents who have raised her. I'd like to finish the work he was doing. I need your help.”

Lacy didn't take her eyes away, staring without blinking. After a
long moment, she said, “I have no idea where he went, if that's what you want to know. Just packed a bag, placed his laptop in his briefcase. It was like, ‘Oh, by the way, I have to go out of town on a case for a few days.'”

“Out of town? Did he say where?”

“Ask Evie. I suspect he told her.” Lacy shrugged. “She's probably at the office. A young lawyer from Casper will close Clint's practice. I have no idea whether he'll keep Evie on or throw her out in the street where she belongs.”

So Lacy had heard the gossip. Vicky got to her feet. “I'll keep you posted about the Little Shield case.”

“You do that.” Lacy nodded toward the door, and Vicky understood she could find her own way out.

*   *   *

Vicky sensed the
presence on the other side of the door. A movement, an almost imperceptible shift in the atmosphere. She knocked again. A small tremor ran through the hard wooden door followed by a punctuation of silence.

“Evie?” She leaned into the door. “It's Vicky Holden.” A moment passed before she heard the sound of footsteps approaching. She had called the office from her mobile on the way over. There was no answer, and she had decided to take a chance that Evie Moran was still here.

The door swung inward a few inches. The secretary stood in the opening, bracketed by the edge of the door and the frame. “I wasn't expecting visitors,” she said. “I'm about to leave.”

“This will only take a minute.”

Evie dropped her eyes and let out a long sigh, as if the excuse were too familiar to bother responding. “The new lawyer will take over next week. You should talk to him.”

“He won't be handling the Little Shields' case.” Vicky waited a beat before she went on. “May I come in?”

The secretary yanked the door back. She looked older than her years, slumped with worry. Her eyes were red-rimmed, like the eyes of a clown, and her hair stood out in patches, as if she had been pulling at it. She wore a pink blouse that hung over the top of her jeans, and she was barefoot, long painted toes splayed over the carpet. Behind her the office looked swept clean, everything in place: the surface of the desk clear, the side chairs squared to the front of the desk, magazines arranged on a small table against the wall, books stacked on a bookcase. She swung around, walked behind the desk, and dropped onto the chair. “I've been through everything,” she said. “I gave you what Clint left on the Little Shield case.”

“There's a three-day gap in his calendar.” Vicky perched on one of the side chairs. “I thought he might have taken time off to sort through the information he had, but Lacy said he went out of town on business. She didn't know where he'd gone.”

“What makes you think I would know?”

Vicky shifted in the chair. This wasn't going to be easy. Something had happened between the two women since she'd last talked to them. They had been in shock then; Clint not yet dead twenty-four hours. But now? They'd had time to think, connect dots. She wondered if Lacy had seized upon the rumors and confronted the secretary. And how had Evie responded? By accusing Clint's wife of arranging his murder?

“Clint might have mentioned something.” Stay with the subject at hand, Vicky told herself. Rumors, speculation—let the police sort them out. All she wanted were legal parents for a little girl.

“I told you, Clint didn't talk about his cases.”

Vicky nodded. Clint Hopkins, a lawyer who lived in his head, allowed his cases to take him over, consume him, so that nothing
else mattered. Like a robot, his wife had said. Programmed to focus on whatever case he was working on.

She tried a different tack. “I know Clint spoke to Lou and Debbie Bearing on two occasions before he left town. The day after he returned, he went back to their place, and that night he was killed. I think he must have found something he thought they could explain. Something he asked them about. Why else would he have gone back?”

“Then you should ask them.”

“I have. I'll have to find the answer somewhere else.”

Vicky kept her eyes on the woman across the desk until, after a long moment, Evie Moran got to her feet. “This is my last day here,” she said. There was a crack in her voice. “Everything's over. The new lawyer offered me a job, but I declined. Thank you very much.”

Vicky stood up. “I think you know where Clint went.”

The young woman was shaking her head. She squeezed her eyes shut against the moisture shining at the edges.

Vicky hurried on: “You don't want to tell me because you were with him.” It was a guess, the kind of stab in the dark she'd taken when she could feel a client was holding back. “Tell me, Evie. Help me conclude the case Clint cared so much about.”

Evie sank back into her chair, as if the air had gone out of her. She dropped her face into her hands and began sobbing, making little staccato noises. “Does everyone know? Lacy and you and everyone else in the world? Clint said it was our secret. He never told secrets. He never told anyone anything.”

“Where did you go?”

“I was only there one night. He said he would be busy. There was someone he had to talk to.” She dropped her hands and sat up straight, drawing on some new resolve. “He didn't say who it was.
‘I'm still figuring things out,' he said. I knew if I showed up before Saturday, I'd never see him. He wouldn't even talk to me, he'd be so engrossed in whatever he was doing. So I waited and flew down Saturday night. We spent the night together and drove home on Sunday. It was beautiful. Snow everywhere. Just Clint and me alone in a white world. Then he was gone.”

“Where, Evie? Drove home from where?”

“Denver.”