The Ghost Walker (17 page)

He had worked with her ever since, not for any grand notion of justice on an Indian reservation, but for the occasional fragment of justice for the man in the drunk tank, the kids lost in the bureaucratic maze of social services, the girl injured by a drunk driver. He had never expected such a gift, to have a woman like her at the edge of his life. Just to know she walked the earth at the
same time and in the same place as he did was enough for him, and he was grateful. In different circumstances— But he couldn’t imagine that. In different circumstances, he would not be the man he was.

He hadn’t expected the gift of his priesthood either. It was an unfolding that had begun when he was an altar boy serving the early morning Mass at St. Marys. As the bell jangled through the apse at the elevation of the host, the sense had come over him of God’s presence in the world, and of the priest, holding the host high, witnessing that presence.

A “calling,” the church called a vocation to the priesthood. He had tried to stop up his ears. When he looked into the future, he had seen himself with a wife and a bunch of kids. He’d had girlfriends from the age of twelve, most of whose names he’d forgotten. He’d never missed a prom or a frat party, and senior year at Boston College he’d met Eileen. The thought of her was still charged with pain, not because he’d loved her, but because he’d allowed her to love him when he knew he had been called elsewhere. The day he’d told her he was entering the Jesuit seminary, she’d become hysterical, had begun pulling off her clothes and screaming he was a fool. He’d been in the seminary three months when she and his brother Mike ran off to New York and got married. He never thought of Eileen without uttering a prayer for forgiveness.

Absorbed in his thoughts, Father John nearly missed the turn onto Plunkett Road. He hit the brake pedal, which sent the Toyota into a skid. Heading toward the ditch, he steered into the skid until the pickup straightened itself.

At the top of a rise, he spotted Ike Yellow Calf’s pickup backing out of the Depperts’ driveway, which
meant Marcus was still missing. It was time to bring the police in on this. Why was it every time he mentioned the police to an Arapaho lately, he met a wall of resistance? If the old people still resisted, he resolved to tell Banner himself and take the responsibility.

Father John parked in the snow-packed tracks vacated by Ike’s truck. Newly chopped logs had been stacked against the fence and, most likely, piled beside the old people’s stove. The kitchen cabinets were probably full. Ike was a good man, in the Arapaho Way. He was generous and thoughtful of others.

Inside, the house looked much the same, with Deborah hovering around and Joe propped in the recliner, the outsized casts pointing into the circle of heat. Color had seeped into the old man’s face, but worry still lodged in his eyes. In both old people Father John sensed an attitude of resignation. They’d heard about the body by now. They’d probably heard stories about the ghost walking around. They would have put two and two together.

When Father John told them it was time to notify the police, they nodded, as if they’d already come to that conclusion. As he stood to leave, Joe grabbed him by the sleeve. “It might be some time before the police get around to lookin’ for the boy. You keep tryin’ to find him, okay? His grandmother and me, we gotta know what happened to him.”

*    *    *

He had almost convinced himself he must be paranoid, thinking a green Dodge truck was following him, but now he wasn’t so sure. There it was in the rearview mirror, staying with him down Plunkett Road and through the turn onto Ethete Road. As far as he knew, the only man upset with him right now might be Gary,
the white man with the stubbly beard who didn’t want Susan Holden to leave the ranch. But he and Vicky had taken the girl only this morning, and the truck had been shadowing him for two days now. Besides, Gary drove a gray Chevy truck.

As he turned into the main street of Fort Washakie, the truck fell back, and by the time he nosed the Toyota into the parking lot of the Wind River Law Enforcement Center, it had disappeared. He got out and crossed the pavement, slick with melted snow that had re-formed into ice. The sky had turned pale blue, with traces of snow clouds floating past the early afternoon sun.

The lobby was almost empty: two Arapahos waiting on the metal chairs, thumbing through magazines. Father John caught the clerk’s eye behind the glass enclosure and mouthed “Chief Banner.” She nodded and disappeared. After a moment she opened the door, and he slipped past. The corridor felt damp and smelled of wet wool and floor polish. Banner’s voice floated toward him.

Father John stopped at the open door, waiting for the chief to finish his phone conversation. “. . . Couple of DUIs, disorderly, the usual. We’ll fax over what we got,” the chief said as he alternately picked up and dropped a file folder on top of a stack of others on his desk.

Banner replaced the receiver and waved Father John to a chair. “I’ve been leaving messages all over the rez for you,” he said.

The office felt warm and close as Father John sat down. “You found the body?”

Banner gave a little shake to his head. “Almost three million acres on the rez, all snowed under. The fed says he needs an airplane and infrared to search for the body,
but nobody’s got that kind of budget. That body’s not gonna turn up ’til spring.”

If not the body, then what was on the chief’s mind? Father John shifted in the chair as Banner pulled a yellow pad from under the pile of folders and clicked a ballpoint. “I understand you talked to a girl named Annie Chambeau yesterday.”

Father John felt a flicker of surprise. The moccasin telegraph often turned out to be more efficient than he imagined. Banner must have heard Marcus was missing and had started looking for him. He leaned back, feeling a little more confident. The bigger the team on the playing field, the better the chance of finding the young man—or his body.

“Homicide,” Banner said, tapping the ballpoint on the yellow pad.

“What?”

“Annie Chambeau caught a .32 slug in the chest last night.”

18

“
C
oroner says victim was shot sometime between nine and midnight.” Banner had flipped open the folder and was scanning the top page. It looked like a fax. “About eleven
P.M.
, victim left girlfriend’s house on Sweetwater Street and returned to the Grand Apartments, number three-F, to retrieve personal items. Victim did not make contact by midnight, and girlfriend notified Lander police. Call received at 12:06
A.M.
, by which time a unit had already been dispatched in response to a call at eleven fifty-five from Mrs. Herbert Skinner, resident of apartment one-A, reporting gunshots. Unit arrived at 12:10
A.M.
and located victim. Perpetrator had evacuated premises. Police contact made with victim Friday night last. Victim issued citation for disturbing the peace. Contact also made Saturday night. Victim reported intruder had broken into her apartment.”

“Dear God.” Father John thumped his fist against the worn arm of the chair, disbelief and anger careening through him like a heat-seeking missile. In his mind’s eye, he saw the girl across the table from him, hunched under a worn red coat, her hand trembling as she lifted the coffee mug, her life tangled and confused. No one had the right to deprive her of the future or the redemption
it might have held, to efface her humanity, to reduce her to one among many inanimate objects—victim, perpetrator, premises.

“Girlfriend says victim met with you yesterday,” Banner was saying. “Detective Loomis at the Lander PD asked me to find out what the meeting was about.”

Father John had come here to report Marcus Deppert missing. That was all. He hadn’t intended to tell Banner where to find the man who had driven the Chevy pickup near Rendezvous Road Sunday night, not yet. He had decided to give Vicky a little time. Now everything was changed. Now a girl was murdered. A girl connected to Marcus, whose body might have been in the ditch. And Gary might be responsible. It could have been Gary who ransacked Annie’s apartment.

It was tenuous, this theory, full of holes. He had no evidence, just hunches. He felt as if he’d walked onto the mound and suddenly found out the game wasn’t baseball. He wasn’t sure of the rules. He drew in a long breath, then started at the beginning, explaining how he’d talked to Annie Chambeau on the chance she might know the whereabouts of Marcus Deppert.

“Marcus Deppert missing?” The chief looked up from the yellow pad. “There’s no missing person’s report.”

That led to a side explanation on how the old people didn’t want the police involved, to which Banner nodded, as if he understood and would have done the same in their position. “That boy has a history of gettin’ himself into trouble. No tellin’ what he’s up to this time.” The chief’s ballpoint pen made little scratchy noises on the pad.

Father John continued. The white man who had broken
into Annie’s apartment Saturday night and ransacked the place had been looking for Marcus.

Banner stopped writing and resumed tapping the pen on the pad, as if it were a drum. “You sayin’ there’s a connection? Marcus missing. Victim murdered.”

Father John hesitated a moment. “Marcus could have been murdered, too. It could have been his body in the ditch.”

The chief shifted forward. “Couldn’t be Marcus. Ghost is always opposite of the true person, you know. This ghost is a hell raiser, just like Marcus. It’s already caused a lot of trouble. Six vehicular accidents never should’ve happened—hell, one guy rolled his truck in his own driveway. Plus, Grandmother Petey slipped in her bathtub and damn near drowned, and Herman Running Wolf walked into his barn and dropped through the floor five feet. Barn floor had been perfectly good. . . .” He stopped for a moment and shook his head. “Ghost that’s walkin’ around now was a pussycat in true person.”

Father John interrupted before the chief could recount any more ghost stories. “Let’s suppose the man who forced his way into Annie’s apartment finally found Marcus. Then who knows what happened? Marcus ends up dead, and the man dumps his body into the ditch. The man then murders Annie Chambeau before she can identify him.”

Banner pursed his lips and squinted in thought. “Makes sense.”

Father John continued, “Suppose further that, after the man dumped Marcus’s body, he had second thoughts and decided to retrieve it. Maybe he was afraid somebody might spot it, just as I actually did. So he was on his way back when I flagged him down.”

Banner had swiveled sideways and was staring out the grimy window next to the desk. “All this supposes Marcus being dead, which we don’t know for a fact since we don’t have a body. And none of my boys has spotted any white man driving a gray Chevy pickup on the rez. Chances are the guy blew out of here with the blizzard, which means it wasn’t him that murdered the girl.”

Father John swallowed hard. He had to thread his way carefully here. “I think he’s still here. His name is Gary. I don’t know the last name. He and a couple of other white men are staying at Lean Bear’s ranch.”

The chief swiveled back square with the desk. His bushy black eyebrows shot up. “That so? Ben Holden know about that?”

“He rented it to them.” Father John said nothing about Susan. He realized his instinct was to protect the girl as long as possible, just as it was Vicky’s. There would be time for Banner to question her later, after she felt better. In the meantime, he could check out the three men. Maybe he’d find enough evidence to arrest them without the girl’s help. He hoped so. He would sleep a lot easier if Gary were behind bars.

Banner laid the ballpoint pen across the yellow pad and leaned back, lacing his hands behind his head. “You got any evidence that the guy in the Chevy pickup is the same guy who menaced the victim?”

Father John shook his head. He had nothing. Now it was his turn to stare out the window. The afternoon sky glinted like steel, and the wind had started up, flicking a small branch against the window pane. It made a tick-tock sound, like an old clock. He could be way off base, in which case he had just implicated an innocent man in
murder. The realization did not sit well on his conscience.