Killing Custer (22 page)

“St. Francis Mission.” The voice was only slightly familiar.

“Is Father John in?”

“It's you, Vicky?” the Bishop said. “He's at Riverton Memorial. Colin Morningside was shot this afternoon.”

31

THE WAITIN
G ROOM
was empty except for Lou Morningside crouched on a plastic chair in a far corner, eyes fixed on the metal swinging doors in the opposite wall. Father John walked over, laid his hand on the old man's shoulder, then sat down beside him. He didn't say anything. It was enough that Lou knew he was there.

A long moment passed. Then Lou made a gurgling noise, as though he had to swallow the whole terrible reality before he could speak of it. “They tried to kill my grandson.”

“What do the doctors say?”

“Nothing. Just worked on him, peered down at him, punched needles in his arm, hooked him up to plastic bags.” His shrug was filled with hopelessness. “They're going to take him into surgery. Told me to wait out here.”

Father John felt the faintest prick of hope. Colin was alive! “We can pray for him.”

The old man nodded. “All I been doing. Praying and praying. I'm begging the Creator not to take him. Not yet. He still has a lot to do, so much good to do.”

Father John patted the old man's shoulder again, then clasped his hands between his knees and bowed his head. “Dear Lord.” He was whispering, but the words seemed to fill up the empty space. “Have mercy on your child, Colin. Remember him and hold him close to you. Have mercy on the doctors and guide their hands. We place our trust in you.”

He waited. Whatever had happened to Colin, Lou wasn't ready to talk about it yet. They might have been in a vacuum, the muffled sounds of traffic far away, the click of footsteps and traces of conversation wrapped in hospital quiet.

Several minutes passed before Lou cleared his throat again. “No need to shoot the boy. All they had to do was tell him what they wanted, where they were gonna take him. I been thinking on what happened since I got the call from the tribal police saying Colin was shot and I should get over to the hospital. He was so close to being free. Thirty miles from South Dakota, then over the border into Pine Ridge. Mike and him could've stayed there until this business got cleared up and the cops stopped blaming them for killing Custer. Stopped blaming Colin for murdering the girl he loved all his life, and started looking for the real killers. Instead they went after Colin and Mike. Got word to all the cops in Wyoming and South Dakota to be on the lookout for them. Well, they found them. State patrol pulled them over, handcuffed Mike, started to handcuff Colin . . .”

“He took off.” It was like a movie running in Father John's head. Colin, trapped like an animal, smelling the hopelessness. How would he ever prove himself innocent? Dear Lord, Madden had enough circumstantial evidence to file charges of murder against both Colin and Mike.

“Where was he gonna go? Nothing but the plains going on forever. Arroyos and hills and no water. Shot him in the lower back, crazy bastards. Didn't want him making it across the border.”

“Why did they bring him here?” Father John knew the answer even before he had finished the question. He tried to push down the thought that they had brought him close to home to die.

“It's good he's here,” Lou said. “He needs people around that love him.”

Father John glanced about the empty space. Odd it wasn't crowded with Arapahos, cousins and relatives so far removed that nobody was sure how they were related, friends and the grandmothers who always showed up to sit with the grieving. “Can I call someone?”

Lou nodded. “Lorene Morningside, my brother's granddaughter. I left the rez so fast, didn't call anybody.”

Father John slipped the cell out of his shirt pocket. It took a moment to find the woman's number, then he keyed it in and listened to the ringing noise that sounded close enough to be in the waiting room. Finally, a woman's voice, an anxious note in the way she said hello, as if she had been expecting bad news.

He told her Colin had been shot and was about to be taken into surgery at Riverton Memorial. He was in the waiting room with Lou.

“Oh my God.” He could hear the heavy, sporadic breathing, as if the woman had run up a hill. “I'm on the way.” What she didn't say was obvious: She would put out the word on the moccasin telegraph. She would make two or three calls, and the news would flash across the reservation. The waiting room would fill up.

Father John put the cell back into his pocket. Now there was only the waiting. Waiting and praying. He'd lost track of the number of times he had sat in this waiting room with parents and grandparents half-crazed with worry and grief, jumping off the seats the instant the steel doors swung open and a doctor from the labyrinth beyond appeared. You could always tell by the look on the doctor's face when the news was bad.

After a moment, he said, “What happened to Mike?”

“Took him to jail. Gonna charge him with conspiracy to murder, being an accomplice.” He shook his head. “Nothing makes sense. They're even looking for his mother. Say she tried to run down that Lander detective, so they're going to get her for attempted assault.”

Father John glanced out the glass doors at the thin steam of traffic crawling past the far side of the parking lot. He could picture Darleen Longshot driving a pickup attached to a horse trailer, a target as big as a house, down Seventeen-Mile Road. The cops would have pulled her over before she'd gotten home. Or they would have been waiting for her there. But he knew Darleen wouldn't have turned left onto Seventeen-Mile Road when she left the mission. She would have turned right and headed across the border into Riverton. The pickup and trailer would be parked in a shed in a trailer park where some of her relatives lived. Brownie grazing in the pasture. He felt the smile pull at his mouth. The woman had outsmarted a whole fleet of cops.

But they would find her. It was only a question of time. Mike and Colin would both face charges, and so would Darleen. He tried to ignore the spasm in his chest muscles. He couldn't shake the feeling that Colin and Mike were innocent. No matter the circumstantial evidence—it was still circumstantial. And yet he had watched other Arapahos sentenced to prison on circumstantial evidence not as strong as what Madden had against Colin: an eyewitness who could place him at the house where Angela Running Bear was murdered; a motive, since Angela had left him for Skip Burrows. By now an Arapaho warrior who had taken part in the dare run was probably willing to testify he had seen Colin pull out a pistol and shoot Garrett, willing to say Mike had covered for him, willing to say anything to stop the interviews, the suspicions, the chance of having his own parole rescinded.

The steel doors opened and a thin, wiry man in his forties, light-colored hair thinning away from his forehead, walked over. Father John stood up. Dr. Peter Mason was printed in black on the tag pinned to the man's white coat.

“Mr. Morningside.” He bent over the old man, who was staring up with black, rheumy, frightened eyes. “Would you like to see your grandson before we wheel him into surgery to . . .” He stopped, compassion and hope in the words, the tone of his voice, and the fact that he hadn't said, “tell him good-bye.”

Lou struggled forward in the chair, and Father John took hold of his elbow and helped him to his feet. He could feel the strength in the man, the sinewy muscles carved from years of hard, outdoor work, the work of a cowboy. Lou took a moment to steady himself, then started after Dr. Mason, who was holding open one of the steel doors.

Father John stayed with the old man down the green-lined corridor, smells of antiseptic floating in the air, hushed voices and clacking computer keys behind the closed doors. Around a corner and down another corridor. He could see the gurney ahead, the plastic bags hanging from steel poles, the yellowish hose running downward to the figure beneath the white sheet.

Dr. Mason lifted a hand, and three men in green scrubs stopped wheeling the gurney toward another bank of steel doors. He motioned Lou forward. The others made room.

Lou stood close to the side of the gurney, eyes fixed on the blood-drained face of his grandson. Colin's eyes were closed. Words formed in the old man's throat like a tentative rumbling of thunder. “My boy,” he said. “My boy, my boy.” Thin streams of tears started out of his eyes and gathered in the wrinkles of his cheeks. He touched the sheet over Colin's chest, then he gave Father John a pleading, beckoning look, as if he thought Father John might be a miracle worker, able to raise the dead.

Father John moved in closer, aware of the muscles in his chest, so tight that he had to gulp for air. He looked for some sign of life in Colin, a twitching finger, the flicker of an eyelid. Some will to live. Leaning over the gurney, he said, “Colin, it's Father John.” There was no response. He could hear his own heart hammering. He had been present at the deaths of so many people. It was never easy. He had the sense he was talking to a corpse. “Listen to me,” he said. “You are Colin Morningside. You are not Crazy Horse. You do not have to die. You must live. Your grandfather is here. He loves you and needs you. People are coming to the hospital, your relatives. They love you and need you. You must live for them, Colin.”

There was an instant before the gurney started rolling toward the steel doors, the attendants and Dr. Mason alongside, the figure under the white sheet silent and still, that Father John wondered if he had detected the faintest movement behind the closed eyelids, or had only imagined it.

He steered the old man by the elbow back along the corridors. Even before they'd reached the waiting room, he could detect the change in the atmosphere, the sense of fullness, the undertone of conversation. He pushed through the steel doors and watched as the crowd of Arapahos surged toward Lou, enclosing him and leading him into the center of the room. Black heads bobbing about, brown arms reaching for the old man, patting the stooped back. A dozen voices, all asking the same questions: “How is he?” “Is he going to be all right?” “Where'd they shoot him?” “What's the doctor say?”

Loreen Morningside turned to Father John. As short and thin as a girl, narrow face frozen in worry. He knew her from St. Francis, where she volunteered to teach preschoolers in Sunday school. Gone was the cheerful and laughing and positive woman he saw on Sunday mornings. “It will kill him to lose Colin,” she said.

Father John was quiet. There were no words, no platitudes that would allay the woman's worry, nothing but prayer and hope and the skill of doctors in the operating room.

“He didn't kill anybody,” she said. “He doesn't have it in him. Cops got up a theory, and started turning the rez upside down looking for the warriors in the parade.”

“What have you heard?”

“One of them said he saw Colin shoot that Custer guy, and Mike was right beside him.”

Father John felt his jaw clench. It was what he and Lou had feared. Somebody desperate.

“The warrior just got out of Rawlins,” Loreen was saying. “He's twenty-three years old, scared to death the cops will find some way to get his parole revoked. Says no way he can go back.”

Father John looked over at the new group of Arapahos pushing past the glass door. A full-bore investigation on the rez, showing up at all hours, pulling people in for interviews, and finally, finally making a connection. A part of him felt sorry for the young man willing to lie to stay out of prison himself.

Outdoors, beyond the relatives sweeping into the waiting room, he watched a woman dart across the parking lot and thread her way around the parked cars. Before she lifted her head, he had known it was Vicky.

Loreen was leading Lou over to a chair, and Father John managed to catch the woman's attention and motion that he was going outside. Vicky was coming through the ambulance bay when he stepped past the glass doors.

3
2

“TELL ME.” VICKY
stood still with the wind whistling across the asphalt, whipping at her hair, wrapping her skirt against her legs.

“He's alive. They're operating now.”

“Well, that's something,” she said. Her shoulders relaxed a little. The faintest look of hope flared in her eyes. And yet there was something else. He knew her so well. It was as if he had memorized her, all the different shades of emotion and worry.

“What is it?”

“I have to talk to you.”

A car door slammed behind them, and another group of relatives flowed toward the glass doors. He took her arm and guided her along the sidewalk to an iron bench in the shade of a cottonwood. Cigarette butts had been stamped out in the sand in the top of a small receptacle. The odor of tobacco smoke circled the bench.

He waited until Vicky had sat down, then sat down beside her. “What is it?”

She drew in a breath and gave him a long look. “I've been to two banks and talked to people who knew Skip Burrows.”

“Burrows?” He felt a little pinch of surprise. Burrows was the last person he'd expected her to be investigating.

“You don't understand,” she said, and he realized she had read his mind the way he often read hers.

“They're connected,” she was saying. “Burrows, Garrett. Even Angela. What it comes down to is, Burrows was running a Ponzi scheme. The Granite Group. He and Garrett were army buddies from twenty years ago, and when Garrett sold his ranch in Laramie, he invested with Skip.”

He was aware of her eyes searching his, waiting. “Let me guess,” he said. “Garrett found another ranch he wanted to buy and asked for his money back.”

“There was no money. At least not the full amount. I think Garrett threatened to go to the cops and blow the whole scheme out of the water. Angela told me they'd had a big argument in Skip's office and Garrett had stomped off. Friday afternoon, Skip withdrew all the money, then he called me. But I had already left the office. He didn't leave a message. I think he may have been panicking, looking for a way out.”

Father John took a moment, turning over the pieces of information, examining each piece and its relationship to the others. “You think Skip decided to plan his own disappearance?”

Vicky nodded, then looked away, gaze roaming the parking lot, another car of Arapahos pulling in. “He had to make sure Garrett didn't report him before he could leave the country.” She turned back. “Angela said he was building a house in Mexico. I suspect that's where he went. He took a briefcase of money, about four hundred thousand. I won't know the exact amount until I get access to records from the Granite Group. But there's more money, I'm sure of it, stashed away in the Cayman Islands or somewhere. He had investors in Jackson who liked belonging to a secret investment club that returned thirty percent. Of course, he had to keep finding new investors so he could pay off the old. The whole scheme was bound to collapse sooner or later. Garrett would have brought it down now.”

“Skip had him killed.”

Vicky lifted her hand and began rubbing her forehead, as if she could make the thoughts inside her head vanish. He understood. He didn't want to believe it either, he didn't want it to be true. “You believe he hired Colin to kill Garrett,” he said finally.

“I don't see how it could be anything else.” In her voice, he heard the same reluctance and sense of defeat that was moving inside him. “I've been turning it over and over,” she went on. “I think Colin must have told Angela he and the warriors were planning a dare run at the parade. Angela told Skip, and Skip saw his chance. He got in contact with Colin. It wouldn't have been hard. Angela probably arranged a meeting. He knew Colin thought of himself as Crazy Horse. He appealed to Colin's sense of reliving the past, getting justice once again for the tribes, defeating the Seventh Cavalry.”

She stood up and started pacing out a little circle. “Garrett didn't help matters by going on stage at the theater and bragging about Custer's massacres, like the Washita. It awoke so many memories, so many of the old stories. Children run down and shot. Women put into brothels for the army. Warriors killed trying to protect their families. All those memories still here, just below the surface.”

Father John had to look away. He tried to take in the whole scenario from her point of view. The old sorrows, the historical events pushed away, but never completely forgotten. Logical. Except he didn't believe it was true. He knew Colin Morningside. He had talked with him in the guesthouse. He had seen the fear in the man that he would be arrested and charged with crimes he hadn't committed.

“Nobody knows who actually killed Custer,” Father John said.

“Crazy Horse led the warriors that swarmed up Last Stand Hill where Custer died,” Vicky said, her tone quiet, matter-of-fact, as if she were relating a story she had known all her life. “Colin could have been tempted, not only by the money, but by doing what Crazy Horse had done.”

Father John stood up and walked a few paces, trying to organize his thoughts. He turned back. Vicky looked small and determined, holding her breath against whatever else he might say. “Colin may have looked up to Crazy Horse. Maybe he wanted to be like him, a leader others could depend upon. Crazy Horse was defending his village when Custer was killed. There was no village for Colin to defend. What Colin had wanted to do was make a statement, remind people that Indians had defeated the U.S. Army. He organized the dare run, but that's all there was to it. A dare run.”

Vicky dropped back onto the bench, and he sat down beside her. “Colin isn't guilty, Vicky. I know him. I've talked with him. There has to be some other explanation.”

“What if he needed the money?”

Father John was aware of the contrapuntal sounds of their breathing. She was stubborn. Fierce when she had made up her mind. They were alike, he was thinking. Is that why he couldn't accept that Colin might be guilty? Because of his own stubbornness? “Let's say Skip Burrows planned his own disappearance.” He tried to find the logical path. “It doesn't mean he paid Colin to kill Garrett.”

“He had to get rid of the man, John. He didn't have much time.” She shifted toward him. “Colin was the perfect man for the job. Funny thing about Colin and Angela: She had left Colin for Skip, but she hadn't completely broken away. She would get lonely for the rez and call Colin. She went to the rez to see him. Skip worked with a Realtor in Riverton, Deborah Boynton, his ex-girlfriend. She helped him locate apartment buildings and houses to invest in a couple of years ago. I suspect that's when Skip started the Granite Group. He and Boynton might have broken up, but they stayed in touch. Couples like that tell things to one another. Colin must have told Angela about the dare run. Angela told Skip. That could have given Skip the idea for a way to stop Garrett. Permanently.”

“So Skip took Angela to Jackson for the weekend to make sure he wouldn't be connected to Garrett's murder.” Logic had a force of its own, Father John was thinking. A series of facts that rushed to an inevitable conclusion. It didn't mean it was true.

Vicky went on: “He wanted to assure his investors in Jackson that everything was going well, the investments were secure. He didn't want them running to the police when he disappeared. Angela said he met with clients while they were in Jackson. He staged his disappearance so Angela would find the office trashed when she came in Monday morning.”

Father John stood up again and walked a couple of yards down the sidewalk. He turned back. “Skip must have staged the disappearance Sunday night after he and Angela returned from Jackson.”

A little smile played at the corners of Vicky's mouth, as if she believed she had won him over. “Madden would have put out an alert Monday morning to every police and sheriff's department in Wyoming, as well as to the state patrol. Skip wouldn't have gotten very far. I agree, he left sometime Sunday night. He was in Colorado by the time Angela found him missing. His car is probably parked in a lot at the Denver airport. He's in Mexico.”

Still . . . logic didn't square with the facts, Father John was thinking. “At some point Skip realized he hadn't taken all the records. There was Angela's flash drive.”

“He must have called Colin. Offered him more money to go to the office, search it, and get the flash drive.”

“But that was Monday night,” Father John said. Here it was, the break in the sequence of facts. “It wasn't Colin Angela confronted in the office. Angela had gone to the rez to see him Monday afternoon. Lou told me Colin was upset by her visit. He didn't think they could ever put their relationship back on track. He said Colin didn't leave the house Monday evening. He was home all night and most of Tuesday. He didn't leave until Lou suggested he go to Pine Ridge and lay low until Garrett's killer was found.”

He waited a moment, reading the expression on Vicky's face, the way the facts rearranged themselves behind her eyes. “Colin loved Angela,” he said finally. “He would never have hurt her.”

“I wish that were true. I wish I hadn't picked up too many newspapers and read about some woman murdered by the man who loved her.” Vicky slid her eyes from his, then looked back. “Think about it, John. Angela knew about the investments. She prepared the reports. She had the evidence against Skip.”

“It was Skip,” Father John said, and he could see in the way Vicky lifted her hand and rubbed at her forehead that she was coming to the same conclusion. The force of logic. “He didn't leave the area right away. It was Skip searching the office when Angela confronted him.”

“He wore a dark ski mask.” Vicky's voice was quiet. She stood up and began carving out another small, thoughtful circle. Around the sidewalk, across the edge of the grass. “He could have taken the flash drive,” she said. “Angela would have given it to him. Skip was her ticket off the rez. Across the border forever.” She stopped on the lawn, the wind moving the branches behind her. “Even if he wore the ski mask when he came to her house, she could have recognized him and . . .” Vicky left the rest of the words unspoken in the empty space between them, and he knew that, had she gone on, she would have started weeping.

She turned away, and he went over and placed an arm around her shoulders. “I'm sorry,” he said.

After a moment, she nodded and looked up at him. “I spoke with one of Skip's investors. He's convinced Skip invested his money in oil and gas investments that will continue to pay large interest rates despite Skip's disappearance. The other investors probably believe the same. Skip was a persuasive man. Everybody's best friend. People trusted him. Angela trusted him.” Her voice faltered a little. “When the quarterly checks stop arriving, the investors will get worried and go to the police. Skip will be settled in Mexico by then.”

“But he's not there now. He's probably hiding out someplace in the area. He could be anyplace with a garage to hide his car.” Father John led Vicky back to the bench. “We'd better call Madden.”

She pulled away. “And tell him we have a great theory that proves Colin didn't murder either Garrett or Angela when he's already marking the case closed. He has the perpetrator and his accomplice. Colin, who might be dying on the operating table.” Another falter. She looked away. “Mike Longshot locked up at the Fremont County Detention Center. Madden will charge them with Skip's abduction. He'll claim Angela told Colin about the money Skip had in his briefcase. He'll find phone records that show the calls Angela made to Colin. He'll say Angela and Colin planned the abduction and theft of the money together. They got into a disagreement. Angela started to panic. Madden had interviewed her twice. Colin couldn't trust her not to break down and confess. He went to her apartment and . . .” She stopped and hid her face in her hands a moment. After several seconds, she looked up. “I may know where Skip's hiding,” she said. “It's a long shot, but if I can spot the car and get a photo, we'll have the evidence to take to Madden.”

“I'll drive.” He was already guiding her toward the parking lot.