Killing Custer (8 page)

“Kill him?” Mike shook his head and gave a snort of laughter. “It was like Custer's spirit was living inside Garrett. Like I said, you can't kill an evil spirit. We wanted to show him what we could do. Show the Seventh Cavalry and all the white people watching the parade. Gallop around and fall into columns ahead of the troops. Take our rightful place. Remind folks that a bunch of so-called savages defeated the mighty U.S. Army.”

“What do you think happened?”

“Nothing happened, far as I saw. I was concentrating on riding, making sure all the riders kept tight turns. I wasn't watching the bastard and the other officers leading the cavalry.”

“It might be a good idea”—Father John hesitated, then plunged on—“to talk to Vicky Holden before you talk to the police.”

“I'm not talking to any cops.”

“They'll find you, Mike. Take my advice. Call Vicky.”

8

TH
E RINGING STARTED
as Vicky got into the Ford Escape. She found the cell in her black leather bag and checked the readout: Vicky Holden, Law Office. “I'm here,” she said, clamping the phone close to her ear against the sound of the wind whipping about the parking lot at the senior citizens center. She left the door open to allow the heat inside the SUV to escape.

“You have someone waiting to see you.” Annie's voice was so clear, she might have been sitting in the passenger seat.

“I thought the schedule was open,” Vicky said. She had spent the last two hours at a corner table that overlooked the gray asphalt ribbon of Ethete Road, sipping at a cup of coffee one of the grandmothers, Myra Red Horse, insisted upon refilling, while she met with clients who, as they had told Annie, preferred not to come into town today. First, explaining the adoption process to Will and Mary Whiteman. She had watched them cross the senior center, dodge the empty tables, and slip outside past the wood door, shaking their heads at the complications of adopting their own granddaughter. Not like in the Old Time, Mary had said. “We would've raised her then. No judge telling us what to do, no social workers inspecting the tipi.”

“You want the adoption to be legal and final,” Vicky had told them. What she had left unsaid was the hard reason: so your meth-addicted daughter and whoever her current boyfriend might be cannot take her away from you.

She had waited ten minutes before Bonner LeBois came through the door. Apologizing for making her drive across the border and north through the empty spaces of the reservation. She had spent another hour working out the details for the will that Bonner wanted.

“You won't believe this.” Annie was whispering now. “She says she's Elizabeth Custer.”

“Where is she?”

“In the outer office. I'm calling from Roger's office so she can't hear me. Roger said he'd be glad to talk to her, but he's been out all morning with the search party looking for Skip Burrows. Seventy, eighty people showed up. They walked the riverbanks, the dry creek beds, all the fields. No sign of Skip. Roger's trying to get ready for Jake Withers's court appearance this afternoon.”

Vicky didn't say anything. She was thinking about Jake Withers and the DUI charge, the kind of case Adam had insisted should go to Roger, leaving them free for important cases. When she and Adam had been a team.

“She said she'll wait however long it takes,” Annie was saying. “You want me to tell her you're out for the day? I can say you're not accepting new clients.”

Vicky found the keys in the outside pocket of her bag and turned on the ignition. Elizabeth Custer. Probably one of the reenactors. “Tell her I'll be there in thirty minutes,” she said, pulling the door shut. Then she slipped the cell back into her bag. The air– conditioning hummed above the hiss of warm air spilling from the vents. She lowered the windows, backed into the lot, and swung out onto the road.

* * *

ELIZABETH CUSTER WAS
a small woman in her thirties with the toned look of an athlete, a waist about the circumference of a dinner plate, and short, curly brown hair that stood out around the edges of her blue bonnet. She wore the kind of flowing, ankle-length dress Vicky had seen in photos of suffragettes in the early 1900s. Pale yellow, long sleeves, white lace cuffs and collar. She was pretty in a plain and unsmiling way.

“We can talk in my office,” Vicky said, opening the beveled glass doors and waving the woman through. From behind the desk, Annie shrugged and gave her a raised-eyebrow look.

“Let's begin by telling me your legal name.” Vicky closed the doors, made her way around the desk, and sat down. She waited while the woman gathered her long skirt in one hand and dropped onto the edge of a side chair. Crossing her legs, she dangled a white boot into the space between the chair and the edge of the desk.

“Belinda Clark may be the way the world”—she gestured with her head toward the doors and the world beyond—“knows me. But I think of myself as Elizabeth Custer.” Her mouth stretched into a smile that seemed awkward, unaccustomed. “Libbie,” she said. “I have been Libbie since high school, when I first read about her. Enormously strong, powerful, and dedicated woman. She never stopped protecting the reputation of her dear husband. Cut down so early in his brilliant life, only thirty-seven.” She shook her head at the injustice, and for a instant, Vicky thought she detected moisture brimming in the woman's light-colored eyes. “Libbie was not daunted. No matter what lies Benteen and Reno told, she countered them with the truth. Autie—that's what she called him—was a true military genius.”

“You're a reenactor?” Vicky said.

“For fifteen years now. You see . . .” She leaned forward and laid a palm on the surface of the desk. “I believe my body is a vessel in which Libbie's spirit continues on. Let's be honest, a powerful spirit like hers would want to live. I believe she chose me. Do you think I'm a lunatic?” She let both hands flutter in front of her. “It doesn't matter. It is as it is.” She spoke calmly, as if she were commenting on the warm, sunny day.

“How can I help you?” Vicky wasn't sure what to think. The woman believed she was the embodiment of a dead woman's spirit. She seemed harmless.

“My husband was shot to death yesterday.”

“Edward Garrett was shot to death.”

“He was my husband.”

“I'm very sorry,” Vicky said. “Were you at the parade?”

“I was driving to Denver to visit my sister. I had planned to spend a couple of weeks with her, then meet Edward at the Little Bighorn for the reenactment. Naturally, the instant I heard the news on the radio I turned around and drove here. I found our RV parked in the lot where we always park when we visit the area. They had moved his body to the morgue in the basement of an old court building, but after great persuasion on my part, the police allowed me to see him. To say good-bye.” She hesitated, her features calm, reflective. Belinda Clark, Elizabeth Custer—whoever she was, Vicky was thinking—had shown more emotion over the death of George Armstrong Custer.

“The police didn't believe we were married,” the woman went on. “I don't exactly carry my marriage certificate around in my bag.” She held up the string bag she cradled like a cushion on her lap. “We've been married two years. Kept it a secret for a while, since Edward wasn't keen on letting his daughter know. Eventually he spilled the beans. Dorothy Garrett Winslow did not approve of me. Well, that's a laugh.” There was no amusement in her voice or in the light gray eyes. “Little Dorothy, as Autie—I mean, Edward—called her, didn't approve of her father, either. All that traveling around the West, riding in parades and rodeos, giving presentations to Rotary Clubs and Lions Clubs and Kiwanis Clubs and dusty run-down theaters on the main street of Western towns that don't know they've already died and should be buried.”

She paused, tilted her head back, and stared past the brim of her bonnet at the ceiling fan, circling, circling. “It wasn't so odd, what we did. Look at all the great actors, the way they become whatever character they're playing. They become inspirited! It was the same for Edward and me.” She hurried on. “The point is, I am Edward's legal wife, entitled to his assets. Isn't that correct?”

“It depends,” Vicky said. “Did he have a will?”

“No.”

“What is your legal domicile?”

“Excuse me?”

“Where do you live?”

“The RV. We've lived in the RV since we got married. Edward had a ranch outside Laramie, but he sold it last year. The owner of the adjacent ranch offered Edward half a million dollars, so he took it. He told me he put the money in a bank. It was my job to trust him, the way Libbie trusted Autie. Believe in him, no matter what. But when I went to the bank, I was told the account was closed. I remember Edward talking about a great investment that would increase his money by thirty percent. What I want is to make sure that whatever money my husband had will come to me and not his greedy, mean-spirited daughter.”

“I'm going to need documentation,” Vicky said. “I'll need your marriage certificate. Bank records, brokers' records. Anything that can help me locate your husband's assets. I can ask the district court to open a probate action and appoint an administrator to determine your husband's assets. I'll get a subpoena to check the records. I will also need your power of attorney.”

The woman allowed the words to hang between them a moment. Then she rummaged in the floppy woven bag, pulled out a handful of papers, and handed them across the desk. “It's all there. I spent last night in the RV going through the important documents Edward kept in a small safe.”

Vicky laid the papers in front of her. Marriage certificate, Laramie, Wyoming, two scrawled signatures. A bank statement from Wyoming Central Bank on Main Street. She looked up at the woman across from her. “Zero balance,” she said.

“Nothing in an account that should have at least five hundred thousand dollars. When I saw that, I started asking people in town to recommend a lawyer. Stopped people on the street. In the restaurant. They recommended you. I want you to find out where the money went. It's true that Edward found a ranch near Dubois that he wanted to buy. I believe that is why he was so eager to increase his money. Some Realtor in Riverton, Deborah Boynton, was helping him. Very annoying, I must say. After calling the ranch outside Laramie a metal halter around his neck and finally dumping it, he couldn't wait to buy another one. Close to Little Dorothy, he said. They could get to know each other again. But the freedom we had with the RV! Travel across the plains, Texas to North Dakota, Kansas, Colorado. Always moving about. It was glorious. Libbie was never so happy than when she traveled with Autie. All those quiet, lovely evenings alone in their tent on the prairie. Autie writing his memoirs, Libbie stretched on a couch beside him, reading.”

“Where is the ranch? Perhaps the sale went through.”

“You ask me, Little Dorothy got her hands on it.”

“Not unless Edward gave her the money.”

The woman's face settled into a hard, angry mask. “He had no right. You'll help me? I'll sign whatever you need.”

Vicky stood up, walked over, and pushed open the beveled doors. She told Annie to draw up a power of attorney and prepare the documents to file a probate action to get a subpoena for the financial records of Belinda Clark and Edward Garrett. Then she asked her to arrange an appointment with an officer at Wyoming Central Bank.

When she turned back, Belinda Clark was on her feet, pleating her skirt between her fingers. “Dorothy Winslow is his daughter's name. I suspect you'll find the money went to her.” Holding her head high, the brim of her bonnet pointed forward, she moved past Vicky like a prairie schooner sailing over the plains.

9

ANGELA NOSED THE
blue sedan against the pasture fence and got out into the wind, which whipped her skirt and blew her hair across her face. The smell of burnt things, like a distant fire, was in the air. She pulled her hair back and stood looking out over the pasture. Five Appaloosas grazing and swishing flies with their tails. No sign of Colin. She leaned through the open window and pushed on the horn. Sharp, loud blasts ricocheted between the barn and the small, white house with a fresh coat of paint glinting in the sun. A horse neighed. It wasn't polite to announce her presence, demand that someone take notice. But she didn't live on the rez anymore.

“Colin!”

The barn door squeaked open. Colin—six feet tall with deep-set black eyes and slicked-back black hair, hooked nose and full lips, so handsome it made her feel unsteady—came walking out, wiping his hands on an oil-smudged rag. “What're you trying to do?” he called. “Spook the ponies?”

“I have to talk to you.” Angela threw another glance around the ranch. The pastures running into the sky, the log fence, the horses and buildings. Hers for the taking, had she wanted it. Marry Colin and be stuck on the rez until she turned into a bent, old grandmother, clacking her dentures. If he had been willing to come with her, how wonderful it would have been. Such a big world, so many places to see. “Leave here?” Colin had said, and the look he'd given her! As if she'd suggested they run off and join a circus. “My grandfather got this land from his father. If my father hadn't gotten cancer and died, the ranch would have been his. Someday it will be mine, and I'll pass it onto a son. Stay with me, Angela.”

She had left her sister's house and moved into Lander, as far away as the pitiful savings she'd managed to stash away would take her. On the other side of the border was what mattered. She'd seen the ad on the internet in the library. Law firm secretary. Apply online. She had e-mailed her application and checked her cell for two weeks before the call came. The minute she'd set foot in Skip Burrows's office, she knew she was where she belonged. Skip had liked her résumé. Two years' experience as a secretary in the Wind River school district; two-year certificate from the tribal college. He could see she was ambitious, he'd told her, and he liked that. Later he told her how he had liked even more the way she looked: black hair; lively, intelligent eyes; and curves in the right places.

“Let's find some shade,” Colin said, walking along the side of the house to the back stoop. He could be infuriatingly matter-of-fact, as if she were the pizza delivery girl showing up with a pizza. He unfolded two webbed chairs that had been leaning against the house and set them facing each other in a column of shade. “Water? Coke?”

“Coke. Why not?” Angela dropped into one of the chairs and waited. From inside the house came the sucking noise of a refrigerator door opening and closing, the sound of a can popping, and the scuff of Colin's boots on the linoleum floor. The screen door swung open. Colin came down the steps holding Cokes. He handed her an icy, sweating can and sat down across from her.

A long moment passed, Colin sipping, not taking his eyes from her, before he said, “You here about your”—the slightest hesitation, his Adam's apple working up and down—”boss?” he said.

“What the hell have you done?”

Colin took a long drink of Coke, then wedged the bottom of the can into the hard-packed ground. “I'm not following.”

“It's not enough you and your so-called warriors shot that crazy guy . . .”

“Hold on.” Colin rose a little off the webbed seat and dropped back down. “You sound like the cops. Lander detective shows up here this morning with a couple of tribal cops. Minds already made up. Waiting for me to confess, give them the names of the warriors riding with me. They're going to make our lives miserable. Drag us in for interviews, keep threatening to have paroles revoked or bring charges for crimes we didn't commit. I'm telling you what I told them. My boys had nothing to do with that white man getting shot.”

“Nobody believes that, Colin. You told me you had it all planned. You were going to show Custer and the Seventh Cavalry something. You didn't tell me you planned to kill him!”

He pulled his lips into a tight line and fixed his eyes on her, as if he might imprint the words into her skull. “I never ordered anybody killed. What we did was symbolic. A dare run. We galloped around the Seventh Cavalry, surrounded them before they knew what was happening, same as at the Little Bighorn. Warriors appeared all of a sudden, rose up out of the grass. Custer knew he and his cavalry were dead men. We wanted to show them we're still here. We're still strong. We defeated Custer.”

“You're lying.” For an instant, Angela thought he might rise up again. Toss the chair across the dirt yard, stomp off into the barn, and leave her sitting here with no answers, nothing. He had a quick temper. It had exploded on her more than once, but now she could see him struggling with himself, a dark flush in his cheeks.

She pushed on. “You told me you would be in charge, like Crazy Horse. You gave the orders. Kill. Kill. Kill.”

“Crazy Horse wasn't stupid,” he said. “Nobody's stupid enough to shoot some guy in front of hundreds of people. You know what I think? The shooter was up there.” He jammed a fist at the sky. “Shooting out of a window. Easy for the police to say killer must be an Indian. They have a real narrow theory that works for them.” He leaned forward, so close she could smell the Coke-sweet odor of his breath. “You don't give a damn about that Custer fellow. You think I have something to do with your boyfriend going missing.”

“They were friends, Skip and the guy that got killed. He came around the office a few times. They got into an argument. Cops are going to put it together, start thinking somebody was after both of them. Soon as they find out about us, they're going to say you wanted Skip out of the way. Dead, like Custer.”

“You forget, Angela. There's no us. Not anymore.”

She looked out across the pasture. The wind made the soft noise of a calf sucking a teat. Colin was right. There was no longer anything between them. What had she heard on the moccasin telegraph? He'd been seen around the rez with different women. What did she care? She had Skip.

Except that Skip was gone.

She bit at her lower lip and looked back at Colin. Full of himself, legs spread apart, boots dug into the dirt. “What is it?”

Colin took a few seconds before he said: “You ask me, you're in a lot of trouble. Did he finally dump you? That would make the cops think you had something to do with his disappearance.”

“He didn't dump me.”

“He was planning to.”

“You're lying.”

Colin leaned forward and clasped his hands between his knees. “You want the truth? After you broke things off and took up with Skip Burrows, I started paying attention. Checking up on him. I did it for you, Angela. You ask me, he's a big phony. Everybody's good friend. Just don't turn your back on him. Followed him to Riverton a couple times, straight to the house of a white filly. You want her name?”

“Shut up! Shut up!” Angela jumped out of the chair and stomped to the corner of the house. She forced herself to turn back. Is that where Skip had gone after he left her last night? Head buried in the pillow against the sounds of his footsteps in the alley, the faraway roar of the BMW's motor.

“The Realtor?” she managed.

“You sure you want to know?”

“Maybe she knows where he is.”

“Deborah Boynton. Works in a real-estate office off Federal. Red hair and green eyes that stop traffic. You'd better forget her. If she knows anything about Skip disappearing, you don't want to get involved.”

“You don't get it,” Angela said. “I love Skip. I'll do anything to help him.” She swung around and hurried to the hatchback. In ten minutes she was driving east on Seventeen-Mile Road with the sun lingering over the mountains behind her, the plains lit in gold and magenta, Riverton ahead.

* * *

ANGELA TURNED INTO
the narrow parking lot in front of the strip mall with doors and plate-glass windows stuck in a yellowish frame building. Slowing across the lot, peering at the signs on the plate glass. Nails, Tai Chi, Best Tacos in Town, Coffee and Donuts, Barber, Take-Out Chinese, Hometown Realtors. Even before she got out of the hatchback, she could see the real-estate office was closed. Photos of houses and apartment buildings plastered on the plate– glass window stood out in relief against the dark interior. Painted across the glass door was Open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

She stepped in close and started banging on the door. The glass shimmered under her fist. She peered inside willing someone to emerge from the shadows in back, wind past the wood reception counter and metal chairs lined against the side walls, and fling open the door.
Deborah Boynton?
the person would say.
Not here.
No one's here. Gone home for the day. And where's home?
she would ask.
Well, that depends on who wants to know.

“I want to know.” Angela realized she was screaming at the glass door and the emptiness on the other side. She leaned her forehead against the glass. Why hadn't she asked Colin where this white woman lived? Her legs felt like liquid. She had to prop herself against the doorjamb to keep from falling. What good was any of this? What did it matter who the white woman was or where she lived? Skip mattered.

She pushed herself off the prickly wood jamb and headed back to the car, feeling wobbly and disoriented in the dusk coming on, drifting across the parking lot like a dust storm. She pulled into the thin line of traffic on Federal and turned south onto Highway 789, driving past the warehouses, garages, and drive-through liquor stores swallowed in shadows.

Her thoughts were filled with Skip. Sunday evening at her apartment, so tall and forceful and handsome she had thought her heart might stop beating, standing in the middle of what passed for a living room in the day and the bedroom with the sofa bed pulled out at night, saying something about having to turn in early, a busy day tomorrow, something might come up. She remembered having a hard time following the words. She typed his memos and letters, prepared the legal documents and all those stupid reports. Everything. She didn't remember anything unusual that might have come up, except that his army buddy had been killed. Skip had brushed his lips against her cheek and said . . . What was it he had said? The last words he had spoken to her:
Remember the good times, little girl.

What had come up? A change in plans he hadn't thought to mention? An ex-girlfriend named Deborah Boynton back in the picture? Angela had never stopped wondering if Skip might be seeing
her.
She had tried to believe him when he told her it was over.

For a moment after he left, she'd had to stop herself from running down the outside steps, banging behind her the carry-on she had taken to Jackson, racing the half block to where Skip usually left the car, and climbing into the passenger seat, Skip at the wheel, taking them away. What else could matter?

The lights of Lander twinkled ahead. She drove toward Main Street and turned right, the car heading toward her place on its own, like a horse returning to the barn. Then she passed her turn and kept going toward the white-brick, two-story building at the end of town. The last place Skip had been.

The building looked dark and deserted, a lone streetlamp flaring over a corner of the parking lot. She turned into the empty stretch of asphalt that melted into the shadows. It was when she pulled a U-turn to drive back into the street that she saw the light flickering in the office windows.

She slammed on the brakes, jumped out, and ran to the door, struggling to pull her keys from the inside pocket of her bag as she ran. She jammed the key into the lock, pushed the door open, and darted down the dark corridor for the office. “Skip!”
she shouted. “Skip. Skip. Skip.”

The key wedged itself into the lock, past the strip of yellow police tape, and she pounded on the door. Shouting, her own voice rising around her. The door swung open and she threw herself inside, barely aware of the dim emptiness engulfing her, the shadow of her own desk floating like a ghost against the light from the street that filtered past the window. Barely aware of the large, black force at the edge of her vision until it crashed against her, driving her into the hard surface of the floor. She could hear the crack of her ribs. She couldn't breathe, and the blackness enveloped her like a heavy blanket.