Eye of the Wolf (16 page)

PROFESSOR CHARLES LAMBERT
was a more imposing figure than he'd realized, Father John thought. Looming in the doorway over the knobbed walking stick that he'd planted a foot inside the office, face red and puffy looking, he wore a long black coat speckled with moisture that gave it the look of tweed. A bulky blue scarf was tucked inside the V of his collar, and white hair sprung from beneath the dark cap pulled low over his ears.

“So sorry to bother you, Father O'Malley,” he said, projecting the sonorous bass voice across the office. It occurred to Father John that students in the last row of an auditorium would have caught every syllable of the man's lectures. “Might we impose upon your good nature for a brief moment?”

“Of course.” Father John snapped the checkbook shut—one last bill to pay, one last check, and just enough money in the account to cover it. Somehow the financial situation at St. Francis Mission always seemed to even itself out, although he'd given up trying to find the logic.

“It's nice to see you,” he said, crossing the office. It wasn't until the professor shifted sideways that Father John saw Dana Lambert in the corridor behind her husband, nearly swallowed by the man's presence.

The woman swept past her husband, the skirt of her gray coat brushing against the walking stick. She was a small, slight woman who had mastered the trick of holding her head high so that she seemed taller. Her head was bare, and tiny flecks of moisture glinted like diamonds in her curly, dark hair. The bright red lipstick that she wore accentuated the paleness of her skin, the dark eyebrows above the green eyes, and the hollow spaces beneath her cheekbones. The red lips parted in a smile. “Hello again,” she said.

“Let me help you with your coats.” Father John stepped around the couple.

“No need, Father.” The sonorous voice floated above the woman's head. “We won't take but a moment of your time. I apologize for barging in on you at the end of your workday.”

Father John smiled at that. Another thing that he'd never fit into a logical sequence were the points at which his workdays began and ended.

“I called earlier. The other priest told me you were out for a while. Dana and I took a chance on catching you upon your return and drove over about four o'clock, I believe. We found the building open, but no one, I'm afraid, was here.”

Father John wondered what had called Ian away. The other priest was gone when he'd gotten back this afternoon. Door unlocked, phone ringing into an empty building. No note, nothing to indicate an emergency. He hoped there hadn't been an accident, with the roads wet and slushy.

Charles Lambert had balanced the walking stick against the front of his coat and parted a space between his glove and coat sleeve. Peering down at a silver watch that hung loosely on his bony wrist, he heaved a sigh. “Oh, dear,” he said. “The dinner hour, I'm afraid. Nevertheless, I do confess to a certain relief at finding you in.”

“Please have a seat.” Father John motioned to the two side chairs along the wall. “Can I get you anything? Coffee to take off the chill?”

“No. No. Don't trouble yourself.” Charles Lambert waited until his wife had peeled off her leather gloves, settled into a chair, and unbuttoned her coat, allowing the fronts to drape to the sides. Then he dropped down in the chair beside her.

“Ever since Charles learned the identities of the dead men today,” Dana said, “he's been insisting that he had to speak with you.”

Her husband leaned forward on the stick planted between his boots. “The poor, dead boys,” he said.

Father John nodded. “Your students.”

“Yes, my students. Good boys, all of them. Eager to learn everything about their own history.” The man was shaking his head. “They were sponges, couldn't absorb enough. I encouraged all the students to visit Bates, which is not only the closest battlefield, but a very important site since the massacre marked the culmination, if you will, of decades of hostility on the plains. The Arapahos were caught between two enemies—the Shoshones and the army troops.”

“Charles explains all of this magnificently in his new book,
Tribal Wars
.” Dana hadn't taken her eyes off the man. She'd shifted sideways and was giving him the rapt attention of a freshman student in the presence of a Nobel Laureate. “The book will be out in two weeks,” she added, moving her gaze from her husband to Father John. Light pricked her green eyes. “It's a brilliant accomplishment, Father. My husband takes the Bates Massacre and places it within the broader context of the general war on the plains, with the many consequences for the Indian people and their leaders. Chief Sharp Nose and the Arapahos claimed victory because they'd managed to drive off the Shoshones. Yet it was the Arapahos who were left to bury their dead. As my husband demonstrates, Bates is symbolic of the fall of a proud people, who remained proud despite the disaster. Proud and determined to go on. Does anyone believe that Napoleon and his soldiers were not proud and determined as they were driven from Russia? That
is the vision that my husband imparts. Arapahos represent people who may have been defeated but whose spirits were never conquered.”

“Thank you for the kind accolade, my dear.” Professor Lambert reached over and placed a gloved hand over his wife's bare hand. “Dana has been an enormous help with research and editing.” He spoke into the space between Father John and his wife, keeping his gaze fixed on his wife. “Naturally her insights and comments were invaluable. Nevertheless . . .”

He let the word hang in the air a moment, like a final note of an aria. Turning back to Father John, he placed both hands over the top of the walking stick. “I am tortured with the realization that I sent the boys to their deaths,” he said. His eyes clouded with sadness. “I can't help but believe that they well understood the importance of Bates, yet I suggested that they visit the site when there was no need for them to go. Terrible. Terrible,” he said, shaking his head.

“It was not your fault, Charles.” Dana Lambert scooted forward in her chair and turned toward her husband. “You couldn't have known what would happen. Tell him, Father.”

“Your wife is right, Charles.”

“I have dedicated my life,” the professor said, still shaking his head, “to young people, trying to help them understand the past and the way in which the past has created the world that we know today. Isn't that an important thing? I always believed it so. How else can we hope for a better world if young people don't understand the terrible mistakes made in the past, the ill-considered decisions, and the way in which evil can spread if people do not have a frame of reference with which to recognize it. Now three fine young men are dead.”

“You must stop this morbid line of thought, Charles.” The woman's voice rose with insistence. “It isn't good for your heart. You have so much to look forward to now that the book is coming. Newspaper and radio interviews. The speaking engagements you've accepted at how many universities? Five? Six? You must save your strength for the book.”

The man was quiet a long moment. “It is exhausting to contemplate,” he said finally.

“But I will be with you, Charles. You must remain focused on the importance of your work. All the years of research and writing are going to be rewarded. You deserve the reward, Charles. You must try to forget what has happened. Please tell him, Father.”

Father John rested his elbows on his thighs, clasped his hands, and leaned toward the man. “I'm very sorry,” he said. “The death of your students is a terrible tragedy.”

The man shot him a look filled with so much gratitude that Father John waited a moment before he went on. “Try to think about the deaths in the most rational way possible. You didn't send the men to Bates to be shot. You sent them to see the canyon and the slopes and the boulders so that they could better understand the way the massacre had unfolded. It was a logical suggestion that any professor worth his salt would have made.”

“Yes. Yes. You Jesuits and your logic.” The professor made a tight fist and thumped his chest. “There are places where logic doesn't matter. Here,” he said, “in the heart.”

“Father O'Malley is right, Charles,” Dana said. “We must be rational.”

“It'll take time.” Father John kept his gaze on the man.

“Thank you, sir, for that.” The professor gave him another look of gratitude. “My wife doesn't seem to realize that the heart has its own time and its own logic.”

Dana Lambert seemed to shrink back against the chair. Her husband let a long moment pass before he said, “There is something else I find difficult to get out of my mind. I'm unable to stop thinking that one of the other students is responsible for this reprehensible act.” He hesitated, staring into space, shaking his head. “The young woman. So talented and clever with words.”

“You don't know that she's involved, Charles,” the man's wife said, an edgy, impatient tone now.

“I don't
know,
but it is what I am coming to believe. I looked at each of the faces in class today. Is it you? I wondered. Or you? The seats of the murdered students were vacant, as was the seat of Edith Bradbury. One of the students said she'd heard that Miss Bradbury had been hospitalized. Naturally, my suspicions were aroused.”

“She was very affected by Trent's death,” Father John said.

The professor nodded. “I had seen the affection between them for some time. But recently . . .” He paused, then hurried on. “I believe that it had begun to cool, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about the message you showed me. Naturally, when I spoke to Detective Burton, I expressed my concerns. I'm sure he'll speak with her.”

“You didn't tell me you had spoken with the detective,” Dana said.

“My dear.” Charles glanced over at his wife, still pressing herself against the back of her chair. “There is much that occurs each day. I couldn't possibly burden you with the details. Well,” he said, leaning on the walking stick and levering himself to his feet, “we must take our leave. You've been most generous, Father O'Malley, indulging an old man's ramblings.”

Dana Lambert jumped to her feet beside her husband, setting one hand on his arm to steady him. “Please stop saying that, Charles. You are not old. You have much to look forward to.”

“My dear, it is your career that we will look forward to. My career is in the past.”

“You will see how important your scholarship is when
Tribal Wars
reaches the bookstores. Everyone will flock to buy your book.”

“Yes. Yes.” The man waved one hand in front of him. “We've absorbed enough of your time, Father. Your words have been comforting, as I knew they would be. I would appreciate your keeping me informed of any information you may receive about the murder investigation. It would be a great relief if I were not the one who unknowingly sent the boys to their deaths.”

Father John said that he'd let him know if he heard anything. Then he walked the couple out into the corridor and held the front door open.
“Watch your step,” he said, gesturing with one arm toward the little clumps of slush.

He watched Professor Lambert and his wife pick their way across the stoop and down the steps, a solicitousness in the way the young woman gripped the arm of the old man, not for her balance but for his. It made him think that she knew her husband's health was precarious, even if she pretended that he had a bright and long future ahead, almost like the professor's theory, of proud people refusing to admit defeat. And yet, there was something about the man's walk that made Father John wonder if Professor Lambert really needed his wife's assistance as much as he enjoyed it.

He waited until the blue sedan had backed away from the front of the building and headed out toward Seventeen-Mile Road, a mixture of pebbles and slush spitting from behind the tires. Then he went back to the office. He wrote out the last check and set the envelope on the pile of envelopes to go out in tomorrow's mail. Then he reached for the phone and called Riverton Memorial.

Yes, Edith Bradbury was stable and improving, the nurse assured him. She was resting now, and if she had a restful night, she should be able to go home tomorrow.

Home. A shoebox filled with memories of Trent Hunter, memories that had led her to slash her arms with a razor. She has nowhere to go, Father John was thinking. He said, “Please tell her I'll be at the hospital tomorrow. Tell her she can come to the mission.”

The nurse agreed to relay the message. He hung up, switched off the desk lamp, grabbed his jacket and hat, and let himself out the front door. Shrugging into his jacket, he crossed the grounds to the residence. A dim light twinkled in the living-room window. Ian's beige sedan was parked next to the pickup, both vehicles shimmering in the moisture that hung in the air.

The smell of alcohol hit him the instant he opened the front door.

THE SOUND OF
the buzzer sent an electric jolt through the room. Vicky laid the pen across the top of the yellow legal pad, the first pages full of the notes that she'd been scribbling. Other pages from the tribe's proposed wolf management plan were scattered over the table. She glanced at her watch: 6:47. The window across from the table framed a dim rectangle penciled with the yellow glow of the streetlights below. It looked like it might snow again—little flecks of moisture had speckled the windshield on the drive back to Lander—and the outside of the pane looked smudged, as if someone had flung a wet towel against the window.

Vicky walked around the sofa and leaned into the metal grille of the intercom next to the door. “Hello,” she said.

She knew who was there. For the last few minutes she'd sensed that he was on the way, picturing him hurrying up the sidewalk, letting himself into the entry. She'd felt his presence downstairs even before Adam said, “It's me.”

Vicky hesitated. He would know that she knew. Samantha Lowe would have told him she'd stopped by the office. Vicky squeezed her eyes shut at the bagful of explanations he would be carrying. She could imagine them all. They had been drilled into her heart years ago.
Quit your worrying. She's nothing to me. So we had a couple of drinks, danced a little, had a few laughs. So what? Trust me. Trust me.

And now, Adam. She'd thought they had a relationship. Wasn't that how Frankie's girlfriend had put it?
We're in a relationship. I'm his woman.
Why not face the truth? The truth was that she and Adam were sleeping together. And that was all there was. She'd thought it was going somewhere, that she was part of a couple again, no longer Woman Alone, as the grandmothers called her. No longer
Hi sei ci nihi.

“Vicky?” Adam's voice came through the grille, laced with impatience.

She pressed the door-release button. “Come up,” she said.

He was there in minutes, bursting through the door, arms loaded with two brown bags. He must have sprinted up the stairs, Vicky thought. The elevator, cranking and crawling to the second floor, would have taken longer.

“Took a chance you haven't eaten yet,” Adam said. He dropped the bags on the counter that divided the closet-sized kitchen from the small dining-room table with papers spilling across the top. “I know you like Chinese.”

If only Adam Lone Eagle weren't so handsome, Vicky was thinking. So confident and strong, a warrior at home in the outdoors, the black leather jacket fitted across his shoulders, the cuffs giving way to the gloved, capable hands opening the brown bags.

“You okay?” he asked, looking at her for the first time.

“I'm okay.” She didn't feel okay. She felt queasy with the sweet-sour smells of Chinese food filtering into the air and the presence of the man removing his gloves stuffing them into his pockets, unzipping his jacket.

“You didn't come back to the office after lunch,” he said, tossing the jacket over a chair. “I got to worrying about you.”

“I thought I'd work at home.” Vicky stepped over to the table. Her
legs felt shaky, and she gripped the back of the chair. “The problem, as I see it,” she said, “is that the Arapahos and Shoshones don't have enough rangers in the field to enforce any management plan.” She heard herself babbling on, like an eavesdropper listening in on the monologue of someone with a voice like her own. How would the tribes keep ranchers in the surrounding areas from tracking wolves into the Owl Creek or Wind River mountains and killing them?
Babbling. Babbling.
The fact they were protected wouldn't mean anything to a man with a rifle who'd just seen one of his cattle cut down, the insides spilling over the ground. There was so much hatred of wolves. It went back centuries, to the Europeans who first came to America, bringing their old hatreds with them.
Babbling.
So it made sense for the tribes to join forces with the state, but first, the management plans would have to be brought into agreement . . .

“Vicky!” Adam put up one hand. “Can we leave it alone for the evening? Let's just have a nice, relaxing dinner. You want to eat at the counter or the table?” He shot a doubtful glance at the litter of papers.

“I'm really not hungry, Adam. Maybe you should take the Chinese and go.”

Adam didn't say anything. He focused on the two brown bags a moment, then brought his eyes back to hers. “Let's be honest, Vicky. What happened this afternoon?”

Vicky turned away and walked over to the window. Samantha had told him.

Before she could say anything, he said, “Lucille Montana called a couple of hours ago. She wanted to know if you'd had any luck finding Frankie this afternoon.” A mixture of concern and irritation worked through his voice.

Vicky turned back. “Frankie could be charged with three homicides.”

“Maybe he's guilty.”

“Maybe he is, but I'm going to represent him.”

“We talked about this. I thought we agreed.”

“I'm sorry, Adam. I can't turn him away.”

Adam drew in his lower lip and looked over into the shadows of the living room beyond the light that circled the dining area and kitchen. He was drumming his knuckles on the counter, and the sound was like a miniature herd of horses galloping between them. “Nobody can defend an Arapaho but you, is that it?” he said, fixing her with a look so intense and cold that she flinched. “Your mission is to keep every Arapaho charged with anything, from driving on the wrong side of the road to killing people, out of jail.”

Vicky threaded the cord of the window shade through her fingers and looked past the blurred windowpane to the flare of yellow light over the street below. It was a moment before she felt the pressure of Adam's hand on her shoulder, and it struck her as odd. She hadn't heard him walk over.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “That was out of line.” His fingers kneaded into her skin now, warm and comforting through the soft wool of her sweater. “I want this to work between us, Vicky. You can't do it all. You can't defend guys like Frankie and still handle projects like wolf management. I need your expertise on the big cases. We're a good team, remember? We're unbeatable. Maybe we could hire another lawyer. Somebody to work for us and handle the Frankie kind of cases. That way, you could oversee them, make sure they're handled right. What do you think?”

Vicky shrugged away from his grasp and faced him. “Maybe we could hire Samantha,” she said.

Adam stared at her a moment, then walked back to the counter and slammed his fist down. “So that's what this is about. Samantha Lowe. She told me she stopped by the office. So you jumped to your own conclusions and decided to go back to where you feel comfortable—representing losers like Frankie Montana.”

“I want to trust you, Adam. I don't know how.”

“You're right. You don't know how, and that's your problem.” He was pulling on the leather jacket, zipping up the front, digging the gloves out of the pockets, jamming his hands inside the gloves. Then he walked over to the door and yanked it open. “Take your case, Vicky,” he said,
looking back. “See if you can keep your client from being indicted for homicide. I'm going to Cheyenne tomorrow and meet with the state fish and wildlife people.” He started into the corridor, then stepped back. “Oh, and Yellowstone next weekend? Watching the wolves? I have to pass.”

The door slammed shut. Vicky watched the small mirror hanging next to the intercom slide a half-inch sideways. All their plans, she was thinking, everything they'd talked about, the firm they were going to build, the important cases they would handle for tribes across the West, what a difference they were going to make—two Indian lawyers using the white man's laws to obtain Indian justice. And all the time, moving into the future together. Oh, she wanted to laugh, it was so preposterous, such a heavy weight hanging by such a fragile string as trust.

She would not cry, she told herself. She swiped at the wetness on her cheeks, turned back to the window, and pressed her face against the cold glass. Below, the door to the entry burst open. Adam emerged from the building, slightly blurred, as if he were a figure in a dream. He strode across the sidewalk to the pickup at the curb, got in behind the wheel, and pulled the door after him. The
thwack
sounded muffled and distant.

Nothing was as it should be, she thought, watching the pickup spin into the lane and start down the street, little smears of red taillights blinking. She'd wanted to make a difference for her people, but the tribal council had always found a firm in Casper or Cheyenne for the cases that mattered. Managing wolves and the other cases that were beginning to come would have all gone to one of those firms, too, if it hadn't been for Adam. They would be a strong firm, he'd told her. Arapaho woman, Lakota man. She was from the rez, and he was native. Both Shoshones and Arapahos could trust them. They would be unbeatable. And it was working. They'd hardly announced the opening of the new firm when the tribal officials had started to call.

She'd let her guard down, that was the problem. She'd begun to think about the future. Didn't he know she could tell when he got involved with another woman? Didn't he know she could sense the truth, as real
as an odor of perfume or the thick, oily smell of the Chinese food bursting through the brown bags.

She needed to get out of here. She walked over to the closet, pulled on her coat and gloves, and fumbled in her bag until she found her keys. Then, moving out into the corridor, she let the door
swish
shut on its own. The building felt like a vault, her own footsteps on the carpet the only sound—a muffled, hurried rhythm. She took the stairs and plunged outside into the evening heavy with moisture. The air felt wet and warm on her face, until she realized she was crying. She ran her gloves over her cheeks and crawled inside the Jeep.

She'd lost track of how far she'd driven—ten miles, fifteen miles—before she realized that she was heading northeast on Rendezvous Road toward St. Francis Mission.