The Dream Stalker (8 page)

The Indian hesitated, his gaze traveling between the pickup and the sound of the siren. The scrunch of metal gears caught his attention as the pickup lurched forward.

“Wait.” He whirled about and grabbed the tailgate, running alongside, finally yanking open the passenger door. Then he fell inside and pulled the door shut. The rear wheels ground against the asphalt as the pickup spurted into the highway traffic.

Father John got back in the Toyota and drove past the demonstrators drawing into a circle at the side of the road. He turned north. In the side mirror he saw the BIA police car pull past the line of traffic and stop next to the demonstrators.

Then they were out of sight—the police, the demonstrators, Seventeen-Mile Road. Lost behind the squat, frame buildings that lined the west side of Highway 789—the lumberyard and hardware store, the Cozy-U Motel and self-serve gas station, the package liquor store with its red-lettered sign:
SIX-PACK SPECIAL. MALT LIQUOR. BEST PRICE IN TOWN
.

Milky rays of sunshine slanted across the buildings and the asphalt ahead. The sky was the lightest of blues, like faded silk; the air cool as it whipped around the cab. He turned up the volume on
Carmen
and thought
of what the Indian had said:
You wanna stay around here . . .

Of course he wanted to stay. Everything he cared about was here. Not at the Jesuit schools where he’d taught American history, not in Boston where he’d grown up. He hardly had any family left in Boston, just his brother, and he hadn’t seen Mike and Eileen and the kids in nine years. Not since Mike had made it clear—more by what he didn’t say than by what he did—that he didn’t want him around. They both knew that if Father John hadn’t decided to become a Jesuit, he was the brother who would be married to Eileen.

He felt a familiar stab of sadness: These were not memories he wanted. This was home now, the people here his family. And he seemed to have landed in the middle of a family squabble—the idea made him uncomfortable. It looked like most of the people wanted the facility. But last week at the senior citizens meeting, the old women had leaned their heads together and talked in hushed, tense voices as they beaded moccasins and key chains—arthritic fingers working in quick, jerky motions, not the smooth rhythms they usually flowed in. The grandmothers opposed the facility, he was sure, but it wasn’t their place to speak out in public. Vicky had become their spokeswoman. He smiled at the irony. They had ignored her when she came back to the reservation three years ago: a woman who had divorced her husband and become a lawyer. Like a white woman.

She hadn’t returned his call, and he made a mental note to try her office again when he got to Gianelli’s. He swallowed back the sense of longing at the thought of her. He didn’t want to think of her. He’d had years of experience at keeping his thoughts in an orderly, logical, appropriate sequence, at blocking out inappropriate emotions.

He had expected temptations as a priest; he’d been
prepared for temptations. He knew he’d be tempted against the vow of obedience—he came from a long line of stubborn Irish men and women who ground in their heels and took a perverse pleasure in refusing to obey orders. He’d almost broken the vow when the Provincial had ordered him to an Indian mission. Thank God he’d kept it. Now he felt as if his coming here had been part of some unfathomable plan for his life that only he knew nothing about.

He’d even expected to be tempted by alcohol, but that was one temptation he’d believed himself strong enough to overcome. He wasn’t his father, thwarted in his dreams and ambitions, a brilliant conductor reduced to coaxing symphonies out of the spoutings and hissings of the steam furnaces of Boston College. No, he’d had the chance to make his dreams come true, to become a Jesuit, to teach history—the subject he loved.

But he hadn’t been strong enough. He hadn’t taken close enough measure of the enemy, or realized how devious it was, how it would lie in wait to snag him at his lowest points, at his loneliest, just as it had his father.

But to be tempted by a woman—he had put the possibility out of his mind. There had been one woman for him, he’d convinced himself, and the day he had told Eileen of his decision to become a priest he had considered the matter closed forever. It was not a matter he wanted to reconsider.

He parked the Toyota next to the curb on Main Street across from the two-story, red-brick building that housed the local FBI offices. Ted Gianelli’s office took up part of the second floor. The shades were raised, and Father John could see globes of light beaming off the ceiling inside. The agent would be waiting.

7

T
he first floor of the FBI offices cried out with efficiency—brown tweed carpeting, cream-colored walls with framed prints of horses, rivers, and mountains. A receptionist with short, stylish blond hair and wide-open blue eyes sat behind a wooden desk in the small office to the right of the entry. “Upstairs, Father,” she said as he stepped through the oak-framed doorway.

He asked if he could make a telephone call, and she pushed the phone across the desk. He punched in Vicky’s number. The same tentative voice, the same message: Ms. Holden was still out on an emergency. He said he would call later and replaced the receiver with a sense of uneasiness, wondering what emergency had kept her out all morning.

He started up the narrow flight of stairs that hugged the wall across from the entry. The carved oak railing felt warm and satiny under his hand, a relic of another, more leisurely time. The mournful notes of a soprano floated from the hallway above. He recognized the aria at once: “Vissi d’arte” from
Tosca.
On the landing stood Ted Gianelli, thick black eyebrows lifted in mock surprise, dark hair barbered close to his scalp, one fleshy hand resting on the knob of the bannister. “Saw the Toyota drive up,” he said. “Heard it. Smelled it.”

Father John laughed. Nobody appreciated the Toyota,
it seemed. That, and the fact it got him where he wanted to go, made him extremely fond of it.

He followed the agent through the doorway on the right, directly above the receptionist’s office, toward the voice of Kiri Te Kanawa. The office was small and as neat as his was cluttered: an oak desk with a green-shaded lamp on the polished top, a single file folder positioned squarely in the center. Behind the desk, a swivel chair and a window that framed the peaked roofs of the buildings across the street. On the left wall, a bank of gray metal file cabinets. On the right, a couple of straight-backed chairs in front of an audio system sheathed in black glass. The music was so clear, the soprano and the orchestra might have stepped from behind the glass at any moment.

Father John stifled a groan of envy. Poverty was another vow he’d never thought he’d be tempted against. Material things never meant much to him. But every once in a while . . .

Gianelli dropped into his leather chair with the gracefulness of an athlete, despite his six-foot height and 220-pound bulk. “Last act of
Tosca,
set where?” It was an ongoing game between them—opera trivia.

Father John took one of the straight-backed chairs. He removed his hat and dangled it over one knee. “Castel Saint d’Angelo. That the best you can come up with?”

“Second act?” Gianelli spread thick fingers on the polished desk top, the glint of competition in his eyes.

“That would be the Palazzo Farnese.”

The agent let out a loud guffaw. “Should know better than to ask a priest about the landmarks of Rome.” He opened the middle drawer of his desk and retrieved a small, black object which he aimed at the audio system.
Tosca
faded into the background, like the blinds stacked against the top of the window. From outside came the sound of a horn bleating.

The agent’s expression turned serious. “Looks like last night’s victim caught a bullet from across the cabin. Banner’s had investigators there since dawn. Not happy about it. He’s got the whole BIA force on overtime keeping the roads clear and traffic moving, with all the nuclear protesters on the reservation.”

The agent flipped open the folder in front of him and began thumbing through a stack of papers. “Banner’s boys got several casts of footprints,” he continued. “Yours among them, most likely. Also lifted a couple of partial fingerprints that’ll probably turn out to be the victim’s, and vacuumed up some hairs and fibers. Slim evidence, except for this.” He extracted what he seemed to be looking for—a plastic evidence bag—and tossed it across the desk.

Father John picked it up and turned it slowly in his hand, examining the sole content: a silver button about the size of a quarter, large enough to button a jacket or coat. One side shiny and clear, except for the tiny sterling silver mark. The other side etched in feathers and circles, an Indian design.

“Recognize it?”

Father John shook his head and handed the bag back across the desk. “I don’t know many people who wear expensive jackets with silver buttons.”

“Just wanted to make sure before I sent it to the lab. Maybe we’ll get lucky and get a print off it.” Gianelli bit in his lower lip as he stuffed the plastic bag back into the folder. “We’ll know more soon’s we get the autopsy and lab reports. So far, all we’ve got is an ID. We ran the victim’s fingerprints this morning. Your murdered cowboy was Gabriel Many Horses, Arapaho, born sixty-two years ago in El Reno, Oklahoma.”

So the murdered man is mine,
Father John thought.
Fair enough.
He had found him, had prayed for him in his death, would see that he had a proper funeral, if no one else did. There was a bond between them now.

“Any family here?” Father John didn’t recognize the cowboy’s name, but he could have connections on the reservation. All the Arapahos were connected in one way or another, through blood, marriage, or some spiritual bond, not unlike this new bond between himself and the dead cowboy.

“Nobody by the name of Many Horses around here,” Gianelli said, shifting his bulk in the chair. “Couple of families by that name in Oklahoma. We’ll contact them. Looks like the victim was a drifter. String of DUIs in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado. Last week, he was working on a ranch outside Grand Junction. Collected a paycheck on Friday—$1,130.18. Cashed it at a Grand Junction bank in the afternoon and, by the looks of things, decided to head north. No sign of any vehicle. Either he hitchhiked or hopped the bus. I’m checking both possibilities. In any case, he ended up robbed and dead.”

Father John glanced out the window. Clouds scuttled through the blue sky and sunlight peeled off the metal trim on the roof across the street. Banner had also mentioned robbery, but robbery didn’t explain the fear in the cowboy’s voice—the sense of being in a race against time.
I’m dying.

“I don’t buy it,” Father John said, locking eyes with the agent. The music of
Tosca
drifted softly around them. “He saw somebody hit an old man in the head with a shovel. He’d been dreaming about it. It weighed on his conscience. Somebody killed him before he could talk about it.”

Gianelli shrugged. “Money’s missing. Pockets cleaned out. No old cowboy is about to give up his wad gracefully, even at the point of a gun. So . . .” Gianelli threw out both arms, as if the conclusion were obvious. Then he opened the center desk drawer and extracted a yellow pad. He set it next to the folder and brought a ballpoint pen from the drawer. “I’ve gone over the statement
you gave Banner last night. We don’t know who actually called you—the cowboy, or somebody who wanted you to find the body.”

“It was the cowboy.” Father John heard the stubbornness in his voice.

“Okay, okay. Let’s go over everything. Every detail. Anything you might remember. You never know what might be important.”

Father John glanced out the window again. In his mind he saw the darkness of last night, like a bad dream in all its jumbled, senseless details. He was flipping off the light in the study, starting up the dark stairs with the phone in hand, sinking onto the step as the phone rang.

He began with the call, then stopped. He’d forgotten something earlier. “There was the sound of traffic in the background,” he said, “a whooshing noise. The cowboy must have called from an outdoor phone.”