Authors: Margaret Coel
The Dream Stalker (2 page)
to the Rev. Anthony Short, S.J., for continuing to offer such good advice and encouragement;
to Carl Schneider, Maura Schneider, Michelle Sirini, and John Dix, baseball aficionados, for looking over my shoulder in the baseball scenes;
to Deborah Haws for teaching me much about horses and their ways;
to Karen Gilleland, Ann Ripley, Sybil Downing, and Dr. Carol Irwin, for reading parts or all of this manuscript and suggesting the ways to improve it;
to Jane Jordan Browne of Multimedia Product Development for believing in me;
and to Judith Palais of Berkley Publishing for guiding me with such a deft hand.
Praise for the Wind River Mysteries
Berkley Prime Crime titles by Margaret Coel
Special Excerpt from
The Story Teller
1
R
ain pattered against the window and broke through the quiet in the study. Father John Aloysius O’Malley closed the thick, red-bound report and glanced at the clock on his desk. A little after midnight. The evening had gotten away from him. He switched off the lamp and, out in the front hall, scooped the phone from the small table before starting up the dark stairs of the priests’ residence. The long cord trailed behind. He always carried the telephone to the second-floor landing when he went to bed, in case someone needed a priest in the middle of the night.
The phone began to screech, sending a kind of electric shock through his hand. He felt his stomach muscles tighten as he sank onto a stair and picked up the receiver. “St. Francis Mission.” He heard the edge in his voice.
A hollow sound came over the line, then a whooshing noise, like a gust of wind. Father John could sense the human presence. “Hello?” he said. The tone was meant to be encouraging.
“This the priest?” A man’s voice, raspy.
“Father O’Malley. Do you need help?” He never got used to the late-night calls, although he’d been at St. Francis Mission on the Wind River Reservation now for seven years, the last three as the Jesuit pastor. He didn’t want to climb back into the old Toyota pickup tonight.
He’d spent the day driving through the rain across the southern half of the reservation where the Arapahos lived. The Shoshones lived up north, outside of his parish. He’d visited a few of his elderly parishioners—the lovely old people, as he thought of them. And he’d stopped at Esther Willow’s place to talk about the plans for her daughter’s wedding next month at St. Francis. Then he’d driven to Ethete and had lunch with Bobby Red Feather. Bobby was having a tough time since Mary left.
Two hundred miles or more he’d probably put on the pickup. He didn’t know the mileage for certain; the odometer had conked out a few months ago. But he didn’t need an odometer to tell him that every ranch, meeting hall, gas station, convenience store, every cluster of houses on the reservation stood miles apart from everything else. Wherever the caller was, it was bound to be a long drive in the rain.
“Do you need help?” Father John asked again.
The man coughed, a muffled, distant sound, as if he’d laid a hand over the mouthpiece. “You could say I might be needin’ some help,” he said before the coughing came again. After a moment he continued: “I keep seein’ it in my dreams. It keeps comin’ back on me. I seen the old man get hit in the head with the shovel. Today’s the day. Can’t keep it inside no more.”
“Who is this?” Father John was on his feet now, staring down the shadowy stairway, past the rain-blurred window next to the front door, trying to imagine the face of the man on the other end of the line. He was either drunk or sick—Father John wasn’t sure which—but the caller was Indian. He could tell by the familiar flatness in the voice, as if the man were speaking into the wind.
“My ride’s drove up. You come to Johnstown Road. A mile past the big curve, you’ll see the old cabin I’m stayin’ at.”
“Wait. Can’t you come to the mission?”
The hacking started again, strained and helpless. After a moment he said, “You come to the cabin. I’m dyin’.”
The click gave way to the monotonous electronic buzz, the voice of a machine. Father John left the phone on the stair and hurried down to the front hall. In the gloomy darkness, he pulled on his khaki jacket and set his cowboy hat on his head. He stepped into the study and grabbed the small leather bag in the top drawer of the desk. He might need his sacred oils tonight, he thought, slipping the bag past his jacket into his shirt pocket, next to his heart.
As he came back into the hall, he heard the muffled scrape of footsteps. A dark figure towered in the shadows at the top of the stairs—his new assistant, Father Geoff Schneider. “What’s going on?” The other priest’s voice was sleep-filled.
“I have to go out.”
“Hospital emergency?”
“Just somebody needing a priest.” Father John had a sense he should hurry; there wasn’t time for explanations.
His assistant started down the stairs, a dark robe cinched at his waist, pajama legs flapping at his ankles. His feet were bare. “At this hour? Who is it?”
“He didn’t say.” Father John yanked open the front door; the metal knob felt cool in his hand. The smell of moist earth floated into the entry. Rain drummed on the concrete stoop, a steady rhythm like that of horses racing across the hard ground.
“Wait a minute. Where are you going?”
“Johnstown Road.” Father John pulled the brim of his hat low on his forehead as he ducked outside. He was aware of his assistant in the doorway behind him.
“Are you nuts? Going all the way out to Johnstown Road at midnight to meet some anonymous caller?”
“He said he’s dying.” Father John started down the sidewalk. He felt as if the caller himself were pulling him forward. Specks of moonlight danced in the rain, like sand blowing in the wind.
“He should’ve called 911!” the other priest hollered.
“He called a priest.”
“Wait, I’ll go with you.”
“There isn’t time!” Father John shouted into the rain as he slid inside the Toyota pickup parked where the gravel of Circle Drive butted against the soggy grass. He stabbed the key into the ignition. The engine groaned and fluttered into silence.
“Come on,” he muttered, stomping on the gas pedal. The sense of urgency was like a physical presence beside him.
Finally the engine flared into life. Rain plunked on the roof, washed down the windshield. The wipers began carving out blurred half circles. He threw the gear into drive and wheeled past the buildings of St. Francis Mission: the old stone schoolhouse; the yellow administration building; Eagle Hall and the guest house; the new school; the baseball field, glistening like a black lake; the white church, its bell tower silver-blurred in the rain. It was the first Monday in May, the Moon When the Ponies Shed Their Shaggy Hair.
He turned left onto Seventeen-Mile Road, keeping the gas pedal to the floor as he passed two cars, the sense of urgency like a cold wind at his back. There was more traffic than he’d expected at this time of night. He slowed behind a 4×4 and waited for a line of oncoming vehicles before swinging again into the left lane. The Toyota vibrated around him. Past the 4×4, he pressed harder on the accelerator—a useless gesture. The Toyota was already wide open.
Keeping his eyes on the road, he pulled one of his opera tapes out of the glove compartment and slipped it into the cassette player wedged on the seat beside him.
The Toyota had never been equipped with a tape player, and the radio had conked out five years ago. He didn’t care. He preferred the company of opera. The opening notes of the overture to
Faust
filled the cab. Music was what he wanted, to sort his thoughts by, to assuage the uneasiness inside him.
The call could be some kind of ruse. He’d heard enough confessions, counseled enough people—he knew what people were capable of doing. Maybe he’d been set up for robbery. The idea struck him as so ridiculous he had to stifle a laugh. He had a few dollars and some coins in the pocket of his blue jeans. Nobody would rob a priest from an Indian mission. Nobody who thinks straight. But drunks didn’t think straight, he knew. When he was drinking, that was when he’d thought he made the most sense.
He turned north onto Highway 132, weaving past the traffic, pulling back into his own lane seconds ahead of oncoming vehicles. Another mile, and he let up on the gas and made a hard right turn, sending the pickup into a skid onto Johnstown Road. He’d left the traffic. Ahead was only the narrow gravel road caught in the headlights and the rainy darkness beyond. He passed an occasional clump of cottonwoods, an occasional oil pump—black shadows looming alongside the road.
Suddenly headlights flashed out of the darkness ahead and bore down on him. He jerked the steering wheel to the right, squinting to keep in view the edge of the barrow pit that ran like a ditch alongside the road. A dark truck passed, pelting the Toyota with wet gravel.
As he rounded a curve, he slowed down, scanning the darkness for a sign of the cabin.
A mile past the big curve
—he could still hear the caller’s raspy voice. He guessed he’d gone farther than a mile and was about to turn around when he saw the black hulk standing twenty feet back from the road ahead. He hit the brakes and stopped at an angle to the ditch. The headlights
washed over a log cabin huddled close to the ground, its tin roof shiny in the rain. It looked deserted; there were no vehicles in sight. He found it hard to believe this was the cabin, but it was the only structure he’d seen on Johnstown Road.
He grabbed the flashlight from under the seat and swung out into the rain, leaving the engine running, headlights bursting over the cabin.
“Avant de quitter ces lieux”
floated into the moist night air. His boots squished in the mud as he started toward the cabin. He could make out the squiggly patterns of tire tracks and boot prints. Somebody had been here a short time before. It crossed his mind the caller could have been in the truck he’d just passed. Maybe his ride had taken him to the hospital. Or maybe he had simply gotten tired of waiting and had decided the priest wasn’t coming.
He waved the flashlight over the cabin: missing chinks; rotting logs; broken window pane; plank door hanging on its hinges, half opened. There was a faint odor of wet horses, a sense of life having passed by. Rain pinged on the tin roof.
He pushed the door open. It squealed into the night, protesting the effort. “Anybody here?” His voice reverberated around him.
The flashlight splayed across a room no more than twelve feet square, and he took it in all at once, like the jumbled flash of a dream: the plank table and wood chair toppled sideways, legs stiff in space; the cardboard carton stacked with a couple of cans of food and an orange box with white letters—Wheaties; the poster tacked to the wall, edges curled inward—an old pinup of a naked woman, the curving sweep of thighs and breasts; the red-black wetness next to the poster, like paint hurled against the log wall; and slumped beneath the poster, a man. A man in blue jeans and dark shirt, with half of his face blown off.
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