The Dream Stalker (23 page)

From inside came the muffled jangle of the phone. She stabbed the key into the lock, but the ringing stopped just as she opened the door into the dark interior. She was about to pick up her briefcase when she heard the scrape of footsteps on the stairs. She stood still, hardly breathing, staring down the corridor. Suddenly a large figure rose out of the stairway and started toward her, silhouetted by the light behind. It was a man in a dark raincoat, hands at his sides.

She stepped into the office and slammed the door. Her hand found the knob, and she jammed in the lock button. Then she realized she’d left her briefcase in the corridor.

She opened the door partway and reached down for the briefcase, a black hump on the floor. “Hello,” the man said. She did not recognize his voice. He was standing over her—her eyes took in polished shoes, pant legs with crisp creases, the hem of a dark raincoat. She gripped the hard leather handle of the briefcase, aware of her heart pounding, and raised herself up, facing the intruder.

“Paul Bryant,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Vicky swallowed hard as she groped for the switch next to the door inside her office. Light cascaded around them, flashing in the man’s eyes. “I was hoping you’d return to your office,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Bryant?” Vicky held her place in the doorway. She willed her heart to resume its normal pace.

He smiled, showing a row of white teeth, a dimple in his left cheek. “My question first. You ran out of Blue Sky Hall last night without answering my question.”

“What question is that?” Vicky felt a surge of annoyance and impatience.

“Will you have dinner with me?”

“Mr. Bryant . . .” she began.

“Please”—he held up both hands—“my name is Paul. I’d like to call you Vicky, and I’d very much like for us to be friends. There’s a lot we should talk about, especially now with Matthew Bosse’s murder.” He shook his head. “A terrible thing. I can hardly believe it.”

Vicky drew in a breath and held it a moment. “I’m sorry, but I’ve work to do tonight.”

“I’m interested in the points on safety you’ve been talking about,” Bryant said, persistence in his tone. “I’m sure I can answer them to your satisfaction. And if I can’t, well . . .” He squared both shoulders and jammed his hands into the pockets of his raincoat. “I’ll have to reassess them. Believe me, Vicky, I’m interested in seeing that a safe storage facility is built here.”

Vicky felt her defenses relax. Maybe this was a chance to discuss her concerns about safety with someone who could do something. She hated the idea of the nuclear facility, would fight it with everything she had. But if the joint council voted to approve it—and it looked more and more as if that would be the case—she wanted it to be the safest facility possible.

As if he’d read her mind, watched it switching gears,
Bryant suggested the steak house a couple of blocks down Main Street.

*   *   *

They sat in a booth next to a plate-glass window. A thin stream of cars and trucks lumbered past outside, as did an occasional pedestrian bundled in a jacket or raincoat. The restaurant was filled with the odors of steaming coffee and charred meat. Over the soup and salad, Bryant talked about the councilman’s murder, how hard it must be for his wife. He’d stopped by the house to pay his condolences as soon as he’d heard. But he didn’t believe Bosse had been killed over the nuclear storage facility.

“What makes you think so?” she asked, surprised.

“The majority of the Arapahos and Shoshones support the facility.” He raised his fork, making the point. “I know you’ve tried to change that, and I respect your efforts, but the fact remains . . .” The unfinished thought floated between them a moment. “If it hadn’t been for Councilman Bosse, my company wouldn’t have considered the Wind River Reservation. He called our attention to the Legeau ranch as a suitable site. It seems to me he was doing what the majority of the people wanted. Why would someone kill him?”

Vicky said nothing. She had no intention of divulging the theories she and John O’Malley had come up with: Bosse’s change of mind; the conspiracy to ram the facility through, even if it meant murder. This white man was a stranger. She knew nothing about him, and John O’Malley had a way of being right: Bryant could be part of the conspiracy.

She shifted the topic to the safety issues. The moment she mentioned the storage containers, Bryant smiled and began a familiar recital: layers of impermeable steel, the most reliable, the safest, tested and approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They’ll last a hundred years.

As if he’d read her doubts, he said, “And future science will produce even better storage materials and technologies.”

Vicky took a bite of lettuce soggy with oil, marveling at the faith white people placed in science, the offhand way they regarded the future. She told him the future was not an arrow shot into the distance. The future and the past, all of time, were part of the present.

Bryant was quiet, his eyes on her as a waitress with streaked blond hair, rouged cheeks, and thin red lips brought them each a plate filled with steak and baked potato. Butter and sour cream coursed through the potato. As the waitress backed away, Bryant began talking again, pointing out the strengths and quality of the materials enclosing the radioactive waste.

Vicky picked at the edges of the steak and thought about the work back in her office. She hadn’t opened today’s mail or returned her calls. There was sure to be a stack of messages on her desk. Suddenly Bryant’s words caught her attention.

“Of course, even concrete structures aren’t strong enough to contain radioactive materials in case of an earthquake or some other act of God,” he said.

Vicky stared at the man across from her. He had made her point exactly. “There are no construction materials strong enough to contain such a disaster,” she said, testing to see if she had heard him correctly.

Bryant gave a quick nod. “Fortunately the likelihood of an earthquake at the Legeau ranch is zero.” He set down his fork and leaned toward her. “But let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that some act of God occurs. A tornado, for example. With the facility at the Legeau ranch, the nuclear waste would melt down into the earth, where it would be contained. Radioactive exposure to the atmosphere or to underground water channels would be minimal.” His eyes held hers a moment.
“Believe me, Vicky, if that weren’t the case, my company wouldn’t even consider the Legeau ranch.”

Vicky leaned back into the cushion of the booth and looked past the speckles of rain on the window at the sidewalk glistening with wetness. “How do you know the scientific reports on the ranch’s stability are accurate?” she asked.

“Because the studies were done by licensed geologists and hydrologists. The reports have passed the scrutiny of the Environmental Protection Agency. They’re accurate, Vicky.”

But what if they aren’t? she was thinking. She had never heard of the consultants who had prepared the reports. They weren’t the usual experts the tribe hired from time. And everything depended upon the stability of the earth at that particular location—the Legeau ranch. Suddenly she understood what she must do. It had been so obvious. Why hadn’t she seen it before?

The waitress appeared with a coffeepot and filled their cups. “You’re not from around here, are you?” She bestowed a smile on Bryant.

“No,” he said in a dismissing tone.

The waitress whirled about, carrying the pot to an adjacent table, and Bryant began talking about himself, as if the woman’s question demanded an answer. A native-born Chicagoan, he called himself. Lived all his life there, Lake Michigan in the backyard. Graduated from Northwestern, but took his MBA at Chicago. Then a number of interesting jobs. But the United Power Company offered the challenge he’d always wanted. Challenge and opportunity. After all, the country was full of nuclear waste, more generated every day. He liked running a company that was in the business of making sure nuclear waste was safely stored.

Another sip of coffee. Personal life hadn’t turned out so great. Divorced last year after fifteen years of marriage.
You got used to the same woman, her likes and dislikes, knew what size to buy her. Rough, the breakup. No kids, though. Probably for the best, as things turned out. What about her?

Vicky drew in a long breath, wondering why she was drawn to divulge herself to this man. Before she knew it, she was telling him about her life: born on the reservation, married young, like most of the girls; two kids, Susan and Lucas, grown up and on their own now in Los Angeles. She hurried through the rest of it: the divorce thirteen years ago, the move to Denver for college and law school, the move back. It amazed her how deliberate it all sounded, like an arrow shot at a specific target, when in reality her life had been a series of adjustments to plans that didn’t work out.

The man across from her never took his eyes away. He was very handsome, she thought, with cheekbones and strong chin visible beneath rugged-looking skin, gray eyes with little squint lines at the sides, as if he’d spent long days peering across the waters of Lake Michigan, and a full mouth that broke into easy smiles. He sat in a straight, relaxed manner, an aura of certainty about him that, she suspected, never left him, whether in the clubs of Chicago or a steak-and-potatoes diner in Lander. He seemed honest, with an open mind, a good heart. On the wrong side of the issue right now, but a good man nevertheless.

It struck her she’d never been attracted to white men until she’d met John O’Malley. She felt a stab of pain at the thought of him; she was a fool to think about a priest. She drained the last of her coffee and forced herself to smile at the white man on the other side of the table.

The waitress swung by with the coffeepot and refilled their cups before stepping reluctantly away. They lingered, chatting about his life in the city, hers on the reservation. He helped her into her raincoat, and they
strolled outside into the drizzle. When he asked where she was parked, she gestured at a point down the street. “I’ll walk with you,” he said, placing one hand on her elbow. His touch was firm.

Vicky held her raincoat closed, set the strap of her purse into the wedge of her shoulder, and bowed her head against the pinpricks of rain as they hurried along the sidewalk. Halfway past the parking lot next to the restaurant, she wrenched her arm free and stopped, frozen with shock. Bryant turned toward her. “What is it?”

At the edge of the lot, in the circle of the overhead light, stood a large black truck, chrome bumpers gleaming in the drizzle. Vicky dug into her purse until she found the envelope with the license number she’d jotted down at Bosse’s house. Hands trembling, she spread the paper open in the rain, glancing between it and the license on the truck. The numbers were the same.

Bryant followed her glance. “It’s the truck I rented,” he said.

Vicky reeled backward, as if he’d struck her. “You!” She shouted. “You tried to run me down. You followed me after the public hearing. You’ve been stalking me.”

“Vicky, what are you talking about?” Bryant came closer, tried to take her arm again, but she was walking backward, stumbling over a crack in the sidewalk.

“You’re trying to kill me.”

“That’s crazy!” he shouted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Vicky kept her eyes on the man, the way his mouth worked around the words. A part of her wanted to believe him, but she had heard so many people lie on the witness stand. People lied with such ease. “Someone in a black truck tried to run me down yesterday morning,” she said, forcing her voice into steadiness.

“Run you down?” A mixture of anger and concern crossed his face. He looked away, as if he needed a moment
to absorb the information. Then he found her eyes again. “You must believe me, Vicky. I rented the truck yesterday afternoon. Lionel had been chauffeuring me around, but I wanted to drive myself. Just dumb luck the truck is black.”

Vicky let him take her arm again, and they moved under the restaurant awning, out of the drizzle. “I would never do anything to harm you,” he said. “I’m very attracted to you; I hope to get to know you better. There were moments in there”—he nodded toward the red-brick wall—“when I imagined you felt the same way.”

Vicky said, “I’ve reported the incidents to the police. They’ll want to talk to you.”

Bryant seemed to hesitate before he said, “I welcome the chance to clear my name of any suspicion. Most of all, I want you to believe me.” He moved closer to her, as if he were about to kiss her, and she stepped away.

“Let me see you home,” he said, disappointment and anticipation mingling in his expression. “I’d like to know you’re safe.”

“I’ll see myself home.” Vicky turned and started down the wet sidewalk toward the Bronco.

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