The Ghost Walker (19 page)

T
he truck was on his rear bumper. Father John stomped on the gas pedal as he rounded the curve. The engine shuddered, and snow blew back alongside the cab. He didn’t want to lose control, not with the snow-drifted ditches falling away on both sides. They were the only vehicles on the road. This was no drunk behind him. This was somebody who, cold sober, wanted to see him in the ditch.

The truck was still there as Father John fishtailed onto Seventeen-Mile Road. He saw the truck make the turn and start to gain on him. It looked like the same driver he’d seen behind the wheel the first time: aviator glasses, hat pulled down on the forehead. He still couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.

Another truck appeared in the distance behind, and Father John let up a little on the accelerator. Aviator glasses wouldn’t put him in the ditch with a witness close by. The truck also slowed, keeping the same distance behind. They passed Givens Road, Arapaho Road, Blue Cloud Road. The sign for St. Francis Mission loomed ahead. Suddenly the truck was coming fast, the grille gleaming in the mirror. Just as Father John began to turn onto Circle Drive, he felt a hard thump and heard a long scratching noise as his head whipped
backward. He skidded to a stop in a flurry of snow and jumped out. The Dodge truck flashed past the spiky cottonwoods lining Seventeen-Mile Road.

Father John inspected the Toyota’s tailgate. It looked as if it had caught a fast pitch from a concrete ball. The left side was punched in and smeared with green paint. The top of the
T
was gone. He took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair. This didn’t make sense. If Aviator Glasses had wanted to run him into the ditch, he could have done so on Plunkett Road. Why had he followed him to the mission turnoff and rammed the Toyota just enough to dent it? A warning? Is that what the driver had delivered? A warning against what?

He got back into the cab, uneasiness gripping him. His neck felt as if it were locked in a vise. He was grateful the Dodge hadn’t run him off the road. The Toyota wrecked . . . the idea made him shudder.

He parked in front of the administration building and climbed the cement steps, part of which showed patches of snow. He made a mental note to ask Leonard, the caretaker, to take another swipe at them. The details of running the mission, he realized, were getting away from him.

Inside, the dim light from the ancient glass fixtures along the ceiling washed over the corridor, illuminating the portraits of the Jesuits of St. Francis past that lined the walls. A mixture of kindliness and cruelty, generosity and greed, all the human conundrums, shone out from eyes framed by little round glasses. A musty odor mingled with a faint smell, like that of burning oil, and the soft hum of the furnace in the basement seeped up through the wood floor. From further down the corridor came the tap-tap-tap sounds of Father Peter at his old Smith-Corona typewriter.

Before Father John could hang up his parka in his office,
the tapping stopped, and the old priest stood in the doorway. “The messages accumulate throughout the day. ‘Double, double, toil and trouble . . .’”

Father John threw up both hands, palms outward, in the Arapaho sign of peace. “Any word from the Provincial?” he asked, taking his chair. Stacks of papers, unopened mail, and messages toppled across the desk.

“The Provincial?” Surprise crossed Father Peter’s face. “You expected a call? Well, it would be welcome evidence he is aware of St. Francis Mission.”

“He’s aware, all right,” Father John said. “He’s about to confine it to the Jesuit archives. Students will research how once upon a time the Society of Jesus worked with the Arapahos. Some enterprising young seminarian will probably write a dissertation.”

The old man slumped against the doorjamb. “‘Can such things be, and overcome us like a summer’s cloud, without our special wonder?’”

Father John was thumbing through the stack of telephone messages. He stopped at one with
Urgent
scribbled across the top in Father Peter’s wobbly handwriting. “Nick Sheldon called?”

“Further bad news, I fear. He was quite annoyed not to find you in your office. I believe his exact words were you should call him immediately.”

“If not sooner,” Father John said, flipping through the rest of the stack. Another message caught his attention. “Thomas Spotted Horse came by?”

Father Peter stared at him, remembrance in his eyes. “We’re old friends, you know, so naturally I thought he’d come to see me. However, it was you he wanted to see. Disappointed you weren’t here. Thomas wonders if you might find time to stop out at the ranch tomorrow. You know the humble and polite way of the Arapahos.
Never would he say it was urgent, but if he drove all the way over here in that old truck of his when he can hardly see through those thick glasses, well, I would suggest to you it is urgent.”

Father John set the message to one side. “Did Vicky Holden call?” There was nothing to indicate she had.

The old priest shook his head and stepped back into the corridor. Then he reappeared around the doorjamb. “You haven’t forgotten about the meetings tonight?”

“No,” Father John said, although he had.

“I intend to take the liturgy committee,” Father Peter said as he started down the corridor. The old floor creaked under his steps.

That left Father John with the two other meetings jotted on his calendar: the high school religious instruction committee and AA. He didn’t want to miss either. He saw himself darting between the meeting rooms at Eagle Hall, a juggler with two glass balls in the air, both of which would shatter if he didn’t do something to save St. Francis.

Sighing, he lifted the receiver and punched in Vicky’s office number. The secretary informed him crisply that Ms. Holden was out. She couldn’t say when she might return. She hoped it would be soon since the pile of work, the depositions, the clients were waiting. Father John broke off the conversation, wondering what it was about his voice that inspired these uninvited confidences. Pushing back the cuff of his flannel shirt, he checked his watch. He had a little more than two hours before the meetings got underway.

21

T
he elevator bell rang into the hospital silence. Father John stepped between the parting doors onto the third floor of the hospital. Light from the recessed ceiling fixtures gleamed on the turquoise vinyl floor, and odors of disinfectant and floor polish wafted toward him as he started down the corridor. From somewhere came the clanking sound of a dinner trolley, but no one was in sight. Even the nurses’ station ahead was empty. A couple of computer screens on the low counter blinked into the void.

The door across from the station opened, and Vicky slipped past. Keeping one hand on the knob, she closed the door silently behind her. She looked like a teenager in the bulky red sweater and blue jeans. Her black hair shone almost silver under the light. Surprise crossed her face as she turned toward Father John. “Susan’s sleeping,” she whispered.

“How is she?”

“She has some tough days ahead. If we hadn’t brought her in . . .” Vicky lowered her face into her hands, and for a moment he thought she was going to cry.

He stepped toward her and placed one hand on her shoulder to reassure her. “Susan’s going to be okay now,” he said.

Vicky looked up and stared at him a moment as if willing herself to believe what he had just said. Then she slipped one hand into the front pocket of her jeans and withdrew a folded piece of white paper. “
Hoho’u h:3tone’3en
,” she said, handing it to him. “I am thanking you.”

“What’s this?”

“I had some time while they got Susan settled in the room. I called my law school friend. That’s the unofficial version of why Eden Lightfoot left the Cheyenne Agency and is now conferring the Harvard method of economic development upon us. You are up against one smart Indian, educated in one of your best schools.”

Father John unfolded the paper. It was filled with lines of clear, precise penmanship, the kind some scholarly old Jesuit had insisted upon thirty years ago at the St. Francis school. “All
t
’s crossed and
i
’s dotted.” He slipped the paper past his parka and into his shirt pocket. He would study it later.

“As for the Z Group,”—Vicky gave her shoulders a little shrug—“zilch.”

“What do you mean?”

“I had Ginger call the California Secretary of State’s office. The Z Group is listed as an assumed name under which a partnership called the Paulson Company does business in California.”

“Who owns the Paulson Company?” Father John felt the sense of excitement of the researcher about to close in on a critical piece of information.

“That’s just it,” Vicky said. “The state has no record of any company with that name. End of paper trail.”

He leaned against the wall. Nothing but shadows, specters—ghosts—everywhere he turned. “How can that be?”

“A couple of reasons,” Vicky said, locked in her lawyer tone now. “The company may simply have failed to file the correct documents, or they could be lost in the computer. The clerk promised to check further and get back to us.”

“In the meantime, we know nothing about Nick Sheldon’s client.”

“Not true,” Vicky said. “We know it is a development company capable of building anywhere, simply by the fact it selected this area. We know the people have done their homework—drawn up all the graphs and charts, put all the numbers through a dance. They can probably project profits over the next couple of decades down to a few dollars. Profits are what count for them—we know that.”

Father John stared past her down the quiet corridor a moment. Enough profits, he wondered, to try to scare him away from interfering with their plans?

“More bad news, I’m afraid,” Vicky said after a moment. “I talked with two members of the business council. In the last couple of days, Eden Lightfoot has met personally with each member to explain the Z Group’s proposal. Lobbying, I’d call it. Anyway, the council is pretty excited about the recreation center. My friends say—” She stopped, worry in her eyes. “It looks like a go.”

Father John blew out a puff of air. She had confirmed his worst fears: a major development company with the financial resources, determination, and political savvy to put St. Francis out of business. It was bad news, all right, and he hadn’t yet gotten to the bad news he’d come to tell her. “Vicky,” he said, “there’s something else we have to talk about.”

*    *    *

They sat at a square table in the far corner of the hospital cafeteria under fluorescent bulbs that flooded the tables with a white light. Except for another couple, heads together whispering, at a table across the room, they were the only ones there. A muffled shout from the kitchen, the clank-clank sound of dishes, the swish of double steel doors opening and closing sounded through the almost empty space. It smelled of onions and chicken broth.

Father John crumpled some saltines into his bowl of chicken soup, the way his father had always done. Vicky was sipping at hers. The time was not yet right to talk. After a moment she set her spoon down. “Does this have to do with the white men at the ranch?”

“It’s possible.” Father John kept his eyes on hers. “A girl named Annie Chambeau, Marcus Deppert’s old girlfriend, was murdered last night.”

Vicky leaned back against the metal chair. “I overheard the emergency room nurses talking about a gun-shot victim.” She shook her head. “The poor girl. There aren’t many Chambeaus left. Just her grandmother. She was Maisie Birdsong. She married Alfred Chambeau, the grandson of Charles Chambeau, one of the French traders in the Old Time.” Vicky paused. “Sorry. You don’t want to hear another Arapaho genealogy.”

Father John smiled. Arapahos were connected through the years, through the generations, their identities woven by strong, invisible ties.

“What does the girl’s murder have to do with . . .” Vicky paused, as if she’d answered her own question. She looked stricken.

He hurried to remind her about the body in the ditch, Gary near Rendezvous Road. The white man who went to Annie Chambeau’s looking for Marcus. It could all be connected.