Eye of the Wolf (4 page)

He went down on one knee again. Another man, judging by the wide shoulders beneath the dark jacket, the wide brown belt at the waist of the blue jeans, the heavy boot visible in the snow that had drifted over the legs. Hatless. Gloveless. There was the crusted blood, the torn black hole the size of a baseball in the back of the jacket. The body lay face down in the snow, both arms pulled high above the head so that the back of the jacket stretched into frozen wrinkles. Another pose, but this one was the pose of a chief running toward the enemy, both arms outstretched, palms up in the sign of peace—
We are friendly Indians—
before the bullet had slammed into his chest.

Father John said the same prayer out loud. His voice was tight with horror and dread. How many more bodies?

Another one, he realized, glancing over toward a clump of trees at the base of the slope on the left. How had he missed it? He pushed himself to his feet and walked over. Also a man, he could see, with the features of an Indian, dressed in blue jeans and a navy jacket opened over a light-colored shirt. In the center of the shirt, he saw the frozen puddle of blood. The scavengers had been here, too, pecking at the eyes and parts of the face. The body was propped upright against a tree stump, as if the man had sought a place to rest and had sat down, one hand relaxed in the snow. But the right hand was stuffed into the jacket pocket. A deliberate pose, Father John knew. He'd seen photographs of dead warriors, slumped against tree stumps and wagon wheels, one hand in a pocket.

Pulling aside one of the branches, he went down on both knees. “Lord, have mercy on us,” he began.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something on the opposite slope—the faintest movement, like that of a wolf prowling an outcropping of rocks. He raised the binoculars and scoured the slope until he'd
focused in on the spot. Hunched down among the rocks was the shape of someone in a dark jacket, a black hat pulled low over the forehead. It wasn't until the figure slid sideways behind a rock that he saw the rifle moving upward.

He threw himself down into the snow as the rifle shot cracked the air, the sound bouncing back and forth across the canyon. A nearby stump was hit, and little pieces of wood rained over his glove. He felt a sharp pain in his face, then something warm and moist trickling down his cheek. He ran his glove over the moisture; fingers and palm were smeared with dark red blood. The body had started to slump sideways, a slow falling into the snow. Father John inched himself around the body until he was behind a boulder where he pulled in his arms and legs and waited.

ANOTHER BURST OF
gunshots reverberated across the canyon, explosions of noise. Father John could see the bullet lines catapulting through the snow. A nearby sagebrush shuddered, as a bullet thudded into the tree next to him. Pain stabbed at his face. He could feel the hot, wet blood trickling along his jaw. He held himself very still. Four seconds, five seconds passed—God, a lifetime—before the firing stopped and the silence closed in.

He stayed still. The slightest motion, he knew, and the shooter would pick him out in the shadows. Hunched over, curled around himself behind the boulder, the collar of his jacket damp with blood and his heart thumping in his ears, he waited for the next eruption of gunshots, counting off the seconds that turned into minutes, conscious of a scraggly line of trees running along the base of the mountain slope a few yards away. If he could crawl over to the trees, he might be able to work his way out of the canyon and make a dash for the pickup. Dear
God. The pickup was stuck. It would be impossible to dig it out with a madman shooting at him. He was ten, fifteen miles from the nearest ranch, the temperature dropping. Unless he could dig out the pickup, or get the cell phone to kick in, he was a dead man.

The sound of the wind skimming the snow melted into the quiet. Another thought now, the shooter could have surmised that he'd been hit and was coming for him, coming for him with a rifle, intending to fire another shot—to execute him—then pose his body like the others. Father John skimmed the landscape with his eyes and tried to tighten his fists, a reflex motion. His fingers had gone numb with cold; his gloves felt as stiff as cement. A sharp cramp had settled into one leg and the pain in his cheek had turned into a persistent throb. There was no sign of any movement anywhere, yet he could feel the shooter waiting and watching, like a wolf waiting and watching for its prey.

He considered darting across the open area for the trees, then dismissed the idea. A dark shape moving across the snow! He'd be the target in a shooting gallery. He remained still, trying to count off the minutes until probably three or four had passed. God, it seemed like three or four hours! The odor of his own blood was sharp in his nostrils. From somewhere far off came a high-pitched howling noise that drifted overhead, then dissolved into the quiet. The wind howling down the slopes, he told himself. And yet there were wolves in the area.

This is the way it had been at the massacre, he realized. Arapahos pinned inside the tipis and hunkering down in the grass and brush, with the troops and the Shoshones firing into the village, and wolves howling in the distance. Then, a few warriors had broken out and clambered up the slopes, dodging among the boulders. The advantage shifted. Arapahos had begun firing down on the enemy, eventually driving them from the village.

He tried to push away the images. Dear God! He had to keep his imagination in check and stay focused. He let a few more minutes pass, then began inching himself upward along the boulder, pulling his feet under him until they were firmly planted in the snow. Gripping his cowboy
hat between two fingers, he moved his head away from the hat. To his right was a corridor of open space, no more than a few yards wide, he guessed, before the trees and the shadows began. With a flick of his wrist, he flung the brown cowboy hat like a Frisbee to the left. Gunshots cracked the air as he propelled himself across the open slot and into the trees. He crouched behind a small limber pine, more like a bush than a tree—a flimsy shelter—and held perfectly still, bullets streaking the air around him, smashing into the trees, furrowing the snow. There was some comfort in the realization that the shooter had to be shooting blind now, shooting into the shadows.

The afternoon light was fading fast, only a flush of light left in the sky and layers of black shadows dropping over the slopes and sweeping through the canyon. He waited another few minutes, conscious of the blood crusting on his face and neck, and then began moving along the trees, expecting the gunshots to explode again, but there was only silence and the muffled crunching of his boots in the snow. He kept going, sinking into a snowdrift at times and grabbing onto the branches to steady himself.

He was close to the mouth of the canyon when he heard the faint growl of an engine turning over. He stopped and bent his head in the direction of the noise. It seemed to come from far away, across a vast emptiness. And then it was a steady thrum that got louder for a moment before it began to fade, and he realized that the shooter was driving away.

Stiff fingered, he removed his right glove and fumbled in his pocket for the cell phone, nearly dropping it into the snow before he managed to grip the cold plastic. He jabbed at the on button and punched in 911, his eyes on the readout. Roaming. Roaming. Finally, the message, no service. He had to get out of the canyon.

He made a sharp left into a clearing and walked straight ahead toward the open expanse of snow and sagebrush, his muscles tense, waiting for the rifle shot—God, let the shooter be gone. There was no sound except for the
swoosh
of the wind. He tried the cell again and again. Still no service. He emerged from the canyon and started running. His
legs felt like lead pipes pumping through the snow; his breath floated ahead in gray puffs. Down the road, the pickup looked as if it were part of the frozen landscape.

It took a good thirty minutes, he estimated. Extricating the collapsible shovel from the other tools in the lockbox in the pickup bed, shoveling snow out from the rear tires, spreading the bag of sand—half full, crammed in the corner of the box—behind the tires. Then jiggling the key in the ignition until the engine finally turned over and rocking the pickup backward and forward, the tires kicking out the sand and snow, until he was free. Craning his head around to stare out the rear window, driving in reverse along the tracks—his and the shooter's—until he came to a spot where he was able to manage a U-turn. And every few minutes, he pulled out the cell, jabbing in 911.

He was starting the climb out of the valley, the bluffs looming above, the phone pressed against his ear, when the cell came alive: “Fremont County Sheriff's Office.” A woman's voice across a great distance.

“This is Father O'Malley,” he said, and he told her that he'd found the bodies of three men at the site of the Bates Battle, near Bates Creek north of Lysite.

“Bates Battle,” she repeated. “Deputies will be there as soon as possible, Father. It could take awhile.”

He eased on the brake, looking for another place in which to make a U-turn, and told the operator that he would be waiting near the battlefield.

“
THIS MIGHT HURT
a little.” The medic was bending so close that Father John could see the lint caught in the zipper of the man's gray jacket. He felt a crack of pain breaking across the side of his face.

“Okay, looks like that's the last splinter embedded in your cheek. Now for a little antiseptic,” the man went on, swabbing Father John's cheek with a liquid that stung like acid. “You should get to emergency and have this stitched.”

Father John stared into the dusk, his jaw clenched against the pain. Odors reminiscent of alcohol floated in front of him. “Just put on a Band-Aid,” he managed.

The medic was probably in his twenties. He looked like a twelve-year-old, with slim, capable hands and traces of acne on his face. “If you don't get stitches, you'll carry a half-inch scar below your cheekbone,” he said.

“Just the Band-Aid.” Father John waited while the man pressed something adhesive over the top of his cheek, then he thanked him, swung off the gurney, and ducked out the opened rear doors of the ambulance into the cold air that crept through his jacket and into his bones. The pain had subsided into a mild stinging sensation. The Band-Aid felt like a poultice. Father John had the sense that he was peering across a white ridge. He patted at the gauzy patch and made his way toward the pickups parked in the mouth of the gorge.

“There you are, John.” The man coming toward him, blue, red, and yellow lights swirling over his stocky frame and fleshy face, was Andy Burton, Fremont County detective. Head thrust forward, shoulders slightly hunched, a man not to be hurried. Father John had met him on numerous occasions, usually when Burton was investigating a crime that had occurred in the county but involved someone on the reservation. The battlefield was in Fremont County, outside the reservation boundaries. And Burton was in charge.

“I was about to head over to the ambulance to have a talk with you,” he said. “What's the medic say? You gonna be okay?”

“He said I'm fit as a fiddle.”

“Yeah, you look it.” The detective moved in close and squinted at the Band-Aid. “You're lucky you aren't one of the bodies out there,” he said, curving a gloved thumb back toward the canyon. “Could've been a bullet that hit your face instead of a piece of tree stump. You wanna explain why you didn't call us instead of heading out here alone?”

Father John jammed the sheet of paper with the message written on it
into Burton's hand and told him that he'd wanted to check the battlefield and make certain the message wasn't some kind of a joke.

The detective held the paper up in the flashing lights. After a moment, he said, “Not unusual for a killer to return to the site of the crime, do a little gloating. Maybe he was hoping you'd show up after you got the message. Looks to me like the killer not only wanted the three Indians dead; he wanted the Indian priest dead, too, for some reason. I gotta tell you,” he said, shaking his head, “you and Vicky Holden are a pair.”

“Vicky!” Father John stared at the other man, surprised at the way the sound of her name had startled him, unlocking a flood of unwanted emotions. He and Vicky had worked together on dozens of cases over the past six years: DUIs, suicide attempts, domestic abuse, even homicides. They made a good team, priest and lawyer. So many cases and memories, and the feelings that he wished he could ignore. He'd made a point not to call her. It had been three months since he'd talked to her.

“What does Vicky have to do with this?” His voice sounded brittle in the cold.

“I'm just saying . . .” The flashing lights sparkled in the man's dark eyes. “You know that if Vicky had been the one to get that message, she would've been out looking around by herself, just like you. One of these days, you're liable to get yourselves in a situation you can't handle.”

A procession had begun moving out of the shadows in the canyon: a line of men carrying three bags that bulged with the weight of bodies. The sound of boots on the snow and the low murmur of voices cut through the stillness. Groups of deputies stepped back, re-forming into new groups, as the procession came through the splash of lights, then moved off to the left toward the van that, Father John knew, belonged to the coroner.

“Since you figured out where the bodies were,” Burton turned back, “what else have you figured out? What do you think happened out here?”

Father John was quiet a moment, marshalling his own thoughts into
a logical order. Finally he said, “The killer intended to re-create the Bates Battle.”

Burton was staring at him, perplexity and interest mingling in the man's expression, and Father John hurried on: “Eighteen-seventy-four. It was the last massacre of the Arapahos before they were sent to the reservation.”

The doors of the coroner's van cracked shut, and Father John felt his muscles clench. For an instant, he'd thought it was a rifle shot. He said, “I think the killer posed the bodies to make them look like the bodies of warriors in the old photographs of battlefields. It's probably how the bodies looked after the Bates Battle.”

“You're saying that somebody's reliving a battle from the nineteenth century?” Burton stared at the van that had come to life, yellow headlights flaring ahead, red taillights blinking. He threw up both hands and looked back to Father John. “Well, that's just great. We got some nut running around trying to relive history. Any of the dead men look familiar to you?”

Father John shook his head. Across an expanse of grayness splotched with lights, the van was making a slow U-turn, the wheels digging a path through the snow, sagebrush raking the sides. Another moment, and the vehicle was heading out of the valley toward the dark shadows of the bluffs in the distance. He was thinking that he'd tried to identify the faces—the frozen faces—but he couldn't remember ever seeing them before. Maybe at a powwow or some other celebration, he couldn't be sure, but he didn't know them. And yet, over the years, he'd gotten to know most of the Arapahos . . .

“They could be Shoshone,” he said.

“Same conclusion I been coming around to.” The detective spoke hurriedly, pleased to confirm his own thoughts. “Hard to tell from the frozen faces what tribe they might belong to for sure, but Larry Miner over there”—he gestured with his head toward one of the deputies standing a few feet away—“says he thinks one of the dead men might've
filed a complaint with the police on the rez against an Arapaho a couple of days ago. Can't be sure until the coroner gets the IDs. We found a pickup off in the trees. Might belong to one of the victims. Plates are gone. Glove compartment cleaned out. It'll take a while to ID the owner. What is it, John?” The detective leaned forward, his sour breath coming toward him.

“It makes sense,” Father John said, thinking out loud now. Then he told the other man that it was Shoshones who had led Captain Bates and his troops to the Arapaho village. He stopped and drew in a couple of breaths. In his head was the tinny, mechanical voice.
Revenge is sweet
 . . .