Eye of the Wolf (19 page)

FATHER JOHN GOT
to his feet. He looked from Detective Burton to the deputies, all of whom had moved forward, tightening the circle around the body.

“Trent Hunter's cousin,” Father John said. “His name is Eric Surrell. I met him yesterday at the Hunter place. I ran into him later on Trout Creek Road.”

“Ran into him?” The detective thrust his head forward and began pounding his gloved fists together. The rhythmic sound was like that of an animal digging into the earth.

“Eric and two other Shoshones . . .” Father John hesitated, his gaze on the posed body. The right arm angled upward. “They ran me off the road,” he went on. “Took a bat to the pickup. Trying to send a warning that Shoshones weren't going to let Arapahos commit murder and get away with it.”

Burton was staring down at the body. “Ironic. Surrell's the one who was murdered. You report the incident?”

Father John didn't say anything.

“Let me rephrase that,” the detective said. He moved into the edge of a shadow, giving his face the look of a skull, eyes sunken beneath the ledge of his forehead. “Why didn't you report it?”

“It was a one-time occurrence. They made their point. Besides, they were frustrated and angry and . . .” He understood. “Three Shoshones had been murdered. It could happen to any of them.”

Something moved on the right of his vision, and Father John looked up. His muscles tensed. The last time he'd been at Bates, someone up the slope had shot at him. Now he could see the uniforms making their way over the boulders, leaning over, examining something, moving on.

“So another Shoshone's been shot. Probably hit with a rifle, like the last bunch.” Burton blew into the tunnel of his fists a moment. “We found a brown pickup over in the trees, cleaned out, no plates. Probably belongs to the victim. You know what this means, John?”

Father John didn't say anything.

“The rez could come apart. Shoshones and Arapahos will be tearing at one another's throats like a pack of wolves. It's a bad scene, no matter what spin you try to put on it. Shoshones are already convinced that Arapahos are bent on revenge for a massacre that took place so long ago that nobody oughtta give a damn.”

The man let his gaze roam over the slope. Two of the deputies seemed to be working their way down. “We've got a psycho on our hands,” he went on. “Somebody who gets his jollies killing people, leaving crummy messages, watching us run around trying to figure out what's going on, and digging up a helluva lot of bad feelings that oughtta stay buried.”

The detective started back through the canyon, and Father John fell into step, their boots crunching the snow. Finally, the man said, “You better not go back to Shoshone territory. No sense asking for trouble.
Soon's we get the ID confirmed, I'll see about getting a Shoshone pastor to pay the family a visit. You'd better stick with the Arapahos, see what you can do to keep them from getting riled up and start thinking Shoshones might look for their own revenge.”

Father John nodded. He was thinking that he'd have a talk with the elder, Ethan Red Bull.

“Think we've got something here.” A deputy intersected their path and stopped in front of Burton. He gestured over his shoulder toward the two uniforms behind them, both breathing heavily, the sound of air gusting from their lips. The older-looking man, with a bull neck and red face, stepped ahead. His gloves were wrapped around a rifle, the muzzle pointed into the sky. “Killer left us a souvenir this time,” he said, glancing around at the slope of boulders. “Winchester deer rifle, 30-30. Found it about a quarter of the way up.”

Burton's gaze ran upward over the slope. “Any sign of boot prints?”

“Maybe.” Another uniform stepped forward. He wasn't more than twenty-two, with the tall, gangly look of a kid who'd gotten his growth in six months.

The red-faced man nodded. “Couple places in between the rocks where it looks like a boot could've gone into the snow. We marked 'em. We'll show the evidence team. Maybe they can get some prints.”

Burton nodded, then started trudging again. Father John stayed with him, trying to concentrate on the investigation. That was logical, rational—weapon, boot prints—not the robotic voice of a psychotic killer.

He said, “The killer wanted the weapon found.”

They'd reached the vehicles before Burton stopped and turned to him. “You got it. The killer's been leaving clues. Two phone messages he thinks are exceedingly clever. So clever, as a matter of fact, that we're chasing our tails trying to figure out who sent them. We're not moving fast enough for this guy, so he wants to help us along.”

Father John looked off into the shadows falling among the vehicles. His jeans felt frozen and stiff. He knocked his knuckles together, a
prizefighter loosening up his fists. “It doesn't make sense,” he said. “Psychos don't want to get caught. They're laughing up their sleeves at how clever they are. Way too smart for the law.” He hurried on, working it out, the logical pieces tumbling into sequence. “He wants you to get close, but not too close. He wants to signal who he
might
be, but he won't give you anything to prove it. He thinks you'll never be able to prove it, and that only proves how smart he is.”

The detective was nodding. “You ever get tired of your job, we can always use a good man.”

“There won't be any fingerprints on that rifle,” Father John said, watching the man's eyes drop to half-mast in confirmation.

“Keep my offer in mind.” Burton lifted a hand in a quick wave, then started trudging back toward the body. Father John could see that the coroner had already joined the deputies. They were spreading a gray bag over the snow.

He threaded his way around the vehicles to the pickup. He was about to swipe his sleeve over the lacey film of snow on the windshield when he saw the light-colored SUV plowing along the road. It spun to a stop and the driver's door swung open. The crackle of a police radio burst into the quiet, then shut off. Liam Harrison ducked out of the SUV and started toward him, jamming his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

“We meet again, Father,” he called out, a cheery note, as if he were on his way to a hockey game. “I hear another man's been shot to death out here. You the one that found him?”

“Talk to Detective Burton.” Father John tossed his head toward the canyon.

“I don't get it.” The reporter stepped closer, his mouth drawn into a tight, determined line. “Indians getting murdered on this old battlefield, and you don't want the public to know what's behind it? Don't you think citizens have a right to know if we got our own tribal war in the States?”

“There's no war, Harrison.”

“Well, it looks to me like we got the battlefield, and now we got four dead bodies. So what would you call it?”

Father John got in behind the wheel of the pickup and pulled the door shut hard. He fished his keys out of his pockets with stiff fingers, turned the ignition, and shifted into reverse. Then he was making a U-turn and hurtling up the narrow road, the reporter framed in the side-view mirror, arms hanging at his sides, shaking his head.

ETHAN RED BULL
stood in the doorway of the small, blocklike house with gray siding that melded into the morning haze hanging over the reservation. Steadying himself against the door frame, he thrust his arm outside. He might have been shooing a horse into the corral. “Come on inside,” he hollered as Father John got out of the pickup.

Two minutes ago, he'd turned off the road and driven across the borrow ditch, tires grinding, engine racing. For an instant, he'd thought the pickup would stall nose down in the ditch, but the front end had crawled up the far side and the rear wheels had spit the old pickup out into the yard. He'd stopped close to the front stoop and waited.

He'd tried to call Ethan from his cell three or four times on the drive over from the battlefield yesterday evening. Finally, the call had connected. Eva, the old man's daughter, was on the line. “Dad's not feeling so good, Father. But he's been saying that he wants to talk to you. How about stopping by tomorrow morning first thing?”

“Want some coffee to warm your bones?” Ethan said, ushering Father John into a small, tidy living room, with crocheted doilies draped over the top of the brown sofa under the window and the recliner chair over in a corner.

A small, middle-aged woman with black hair streaked in gray and a face that was still pretty, despite the worry lines digging into her forehead, got up from the desk across the room. She came toward him, holding out her hand. “Nice of you to come by, Father. You eaten lately?”

The way the woman looked up at him reminded him of Elena, checking to make sure he'd eaten the dinner she'd left in the refrigerator. He
had to smile. Arapahos were always trying to feed him.
Come in. Eat. Eat. Eat.
They were known for their hospitality in the Old Time. Nobody left an Arapaho village hungry.

“I'm fine,” he said, trying to ignore the hollow feeling in his stomach. He'd gulped down a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee for breakfast, hurrying to take care of whatever awaited him at the office this morning before driving out to Ethan's.

“Let me get you a sandwich to go along with the coffee,” the woman said, as if she'd read his thoughts. Then she disappeared around the doorway to the kitchen in back.

“Make yourself at home.” Ethan had stepped around a small coffee table to the recliner and was hesitating, stopped in the motion of sitting down. The moment Father John took a seat on the sofa, the old man dropped onto the cushion.

“You go to the battlefield yesterday?” he asked. The man's eyes looked like black coals sunken between the cliff of his forehead and the sharp bones of his cheeks.

The question surprised Father John. Ethan had gotten right to the point. None of the polite preliminaries that were usually exchanged. What about all the snow? Spring sure taking long to get here. None of that. The murders at Bates had eclipsed the pleasantries. The moccasin telegraph had probably spread the news before he'd gotten back to the mission last night. “I was there,” he said.

From the kitchen came the dull clank of metal against something hard and the sound of a faucet running. The smell of coffee wafted across the living room, and Father John tried again to ignore the hungry feeling nipping at him.

“Same as before?”

Father John nodded.

The old man was quiet a moment, the black eyes fixed on the window above Father John's shoulder. “Another Shoshone massacred, like we was massacred at Bates,” he said finally.

Father John tried to muster as much confidence as possible. “Every law enforcement agency in the area is working with the sheriff's office,” he said. “People just have to stay calm.”

“Well, they're not calm.” Eva emerged from the kitchen, holding a plate with a sandwich and a bunch of potato chips in one hand and a coffee mug in the other. She set them down on the coffee table. “My boy's scared to death,” she said. “So are his buddies. Scared to go to Fort Washakie. Scared to pull into the filling station for gas or stop at the convenience store. Looking over their shoulders all the time, waiting for some Shoshone to jump 'em, maybe kill 'em, 'cause of some crazy Arapaho that's living in the past. There's going to be more killings, Father. Everybody's on edge, keeping their guns loaded.”

The woman had spun around and returned to the kitchen. In a moment she was back with another sandwich and another mug of coffee, which she set on the lamp table next to the recliner.

Ethan glanced up at his daughter. “You just fed me breakfast.”

“You might still be hungry.” She waved away the protest, went back into the kitchen, and returned with another mug. She pulled a hardback chair over and sat down. “Eat, eat,” she said, motioning toward the sandwiches with her mug.

“Thank you, Eva,” Father John said. He picked up the bologna sandwich and took a bite, then another. The cold, gray morning, the images of the bodies reeling in his mind—he was more tired and hungrier than he'd realized.

“Oh, I know there's crazies out there,” Eva said, crossing her legs and working her shoulders into some kind of comfortable position against the rungs of her chair. She took a sip of coffee and went on. “But crazy as Frankie Montana is, carrying on his grudge with Shoshones, nobody thought he was
that
crazy.”

“Killer's not Arapaho.” Ethan's voice boomed through the room, the voice of a chief speaking to the village.

Father John looked over at the old man, aware that Eva had lowered her mug and was also staring at her father. A moment passed. The house
was quiet: nothing except the raspy sound of Ethan's breathing. The muscles in his jaw flexed before he said, “We didn't have no place to go when we came here to
he'teini:ci'e.
Our lands gone, all the places that we called home, gone. Government kept telling the chiefs, ‘Don't worry. We're gonna find you a reservation,' and the chiefs kept saying, ‘Let us go to the Powder River country. Let us go to the Platte.' There was water in them places, not like the no-water land down in Colorado where the government wanted to send us. The chiefs said, ‘How we gonna live without water?' So they kept pestering the government. Things was desperate. The people was hunted all across the plains, like we was wolves the soldiers wanted to exterminate. Some of the young men, they'd get fed up. They was scared. They started going on raids, stealing food and livestock. Some ranchers got killed down by where Lander is now. So Shoshones went to Captain Bates and said, ‘We seen the Arapaho village out in the canyon in the badlands. We can get revenge on those killers.' That's how come Captain Bates and the Shoshones went out there.”