The Ghost Walker (5 page)

He turned north on Highway 287, which skirted the foothills of the Wind River Mountains. Stands of cedars and lodgepole pines, their branches heavy with snow, flashed by to the west. In every other direction, the plains, sparkling like a field of diamonds, stretched into the blue sky. Sunlight glinted off the hood, danced over the highway ahead. He squinted against the brightness.

It was on drives like this through the open spaces that he missed the music of his favorite operas filling up the cab. The plaintive notes of “Si, mi chiamano Mimi” and “Vesti la giubba,” or the rousing rhythms
of “Torreadoer en garde” lifted him out of himself. And “Nessun dorma” he loved. Sung by one of the masters, it encompassed everything beautiful in the world. But the Toyota had never boasted a working radio, let alone a cassette player, and the portable player he used to keep on the seat had been broken. There was no telling when he could afford to buy another. He tried to content himself with humming the arias, sometimes launching into a chorus and surprising himself that he knew the words.

He had driven about forty miles when he slowed down along the main street of Fort Washakie, the little community that meandered into the foothills. He set the Toyota into a vacant space in the parking lot next to the Wind River Law Enforcement Center, a one-story building with red-brick walls and a sloping red metal roof edged with snow.

Inside, several Indians lined up in front of a glass-enclosed cubicle, while other Indians, mostly young, waited in the green plastic chairs along the walls. Father John greeted a couple of people he recognized as occasional members of his congregation. The young woman behind the glass looked up and motioned him to a side door. After disappearing a moment, she opened the door, glancing about as if to make sure no one else tried to enter.

“Chief Banner’s waitin’ for you, Father,” she said scoldingly.

Father John pulled off his gloves and unsnapped his parka as he walked down the corridor. The string of overhead fluorescent lights cast a white glare over the glass-paned doors and the beige walls. Little clouds of cigarette smoke hung in the air. Somewhere a phone was ringing, and the sound mingled with the clack of his boots on the tile. A voice with the unmistakable timbre
of the chief’s drifted through an open door. He rapped one knuckle against the jamb before stepping inside.

“Here you are,” Banner said, swiveling around in the chair behind a desk. It reminded Father John of his own desk, piled with papers and folders awaiting his attention.

“Meet Mike Osgood, new FBI agent in these parts.” The chief flung an arm toward the man in one of the wood chairs on the other side of the desk.

Osgood sprang to his feet and extended his hand. His grip was firm, despite his slight build. He looked to be about forty, with a light complexion, hair almost as black as Banner’s, and eyes almost as dark. The navy blue suit with the white shirt and yellow tie knotted at the collar gave him a serious look, but he seemed relaxed and confident. “I understand we have a dead body floating around the reservation,” he said.

Banner pressed a button and barked into the phone. “Sergeant Deerkill, on the double.” Then to Father John, “We’re gonna need a statement.”

Father John hung his parka over the back of the vacant chair and stuffed his gloves into the crown of his cowboy hat. Then he sat down, balancing the hat on one knee. Just then a young policeman in the same kind of BIA uniform—light-blue shirt and navy trousers—that Banner wore entered the office. A tape recorder was in his hand. “This here’s Sergeant Deerkill,” the chief said.

The young man had the high forehead, the sunken cheeks, and deep-set black eyes of the Lakota. “Amos Deerkill,” he said, setting the recorder on the desk and perching on the corner. He leaned forward to shake Father John’s hand, then the agent’s.

“We want you to tell us everything you saw last night,” the chief said. “How you found the body, what
it looked like, anything you can remember. Never know what might help.”

Father John leaned back against the chair and began explaining how he’d been driving down Rendezvous Road when his pickup popped a radiator hose and stalled.

“Ghost made it break down,” Banner interrupted. Rocking back in his chair, he peered across the desk, as if daring anyone to question it.

“Ghost?” This from the agent.

“Yeah,” said the chief. “You got a body, you got a ghost. The ghost is causin’ trouble already. That’s why we gotta find the body and get it buried before that ghost causes any more trouble.”

The agent turned toward Father John. The message in his eyes was so obvious Father John knew neither Banner nor the young sergeant would miss it:
We white men must strive to be rational.

Father John said, “Every soul deserves the blessings of a proper burial.”

The agent threw out both hands. “Okay, okay. Can we just continue?”

Again Father John started explaining, trying to recall all the details. The more he talked, the more the story began to sound preposterous. No wonder Father Peter thought he might be having visions. The FBI agent probably thought the same.

“You get the license on the Chevy that picked you up?” This time the agent interrupted.

Father John admitted he’d been so glad to get a ride, he hadn’t noticed the license. He described the driver: male, early twenties, light complexion, blond stubble on his chin. Not a local.

“What makes you think so?” the chief asked.

“He drove past me. He didn’t intend to stop, but something changed his mind.”

Banner and the young sergeant both nodded, as if that was all the proof necessary to determine the driver came from elsewhere.

“We’ll get this typed up for you to sign,” the chief said as the young policeman picked up the recorder and disappeared into the corridor.

“Lab boys got two casts of boot prints out at the site. And they found something else.” Banner opened a brown envelope, extracted a plastic ziplock bag, and tossed it across the desk.

The agent looked at it first, then handed it to Father John. He turned the bag slowly in his hands. Inside was a necklace strung with red, white, and black beads and yellow porcupine quills. The colors symbolized the four sacred movements at the center of life: the four winds, the four directions, the four seasons, the four periods of the day, the four quarters of the world. It might be worn by either a man or a woman. Returning the bag to the chief, he said, “Arapaho.”

“Yeah. Just like the star quilt. Looks like we got ourselves a dead Arapaho. Only nobody’s been reported missing on the rez lately.” Banner turned toward the agent. “People usually go missin’ in the summers. Mostly hikers, hunters, or fishermen who get lost in the back country and fall off a cliff somewheres.”

“Dead bodies don’t just appear,” Osgood said. “They’re always related to some event.”

The chief sighed. “Weekend was pretty quiet. Two other calls last night. Truck went off Seventeen-Mile Road. Driver’s at Riverton Memorial. Domestic disturbance out north. Man’s in jail; woman went to her mother’s. That’s it. Friday night, Lander police got one
call involving Arapahos. Loud party at the Grand Apartments. Citation issued to one Annie Chambeau. Saturday night, another call, same apartment. Claimed she’d had an intruder, but no sign of him.”

The agent slipped a small notebook and pen from the inside pocket of his jacket. “Annie Chambeau,” he said. The pen scratched the paper. “I’ll talk to her. Maybe something happened at the party that led to somebody getting killed. I’ll see you get a report.” He glanced up at the chief.

Father John had been here long enough to understand that various law enforcement agencies navigated a maze. The BIA’s territory was the reservation, but serious crimes, such as murder, brought in the feds. Something like this—a party in Lander, a possible murder, a corpse that may or may not still be on the reservation—jurisdictional lines began to blur. Something like this demanded a lot of cooperation.

“I’ve got other sources I intend to interview,” the agent said. Getting to his feet, he strolled over to the coatrack next to the doorway and pulled on a gray overcoat. “Nobody can keep a body hidden forever. Sooner or later it’s bound to turn up.” He touched two fingers to his forehead in a little salute before turning into the corridor.

Banner levered himself out of his chair and swept one hand over the multicolored map of Wind River Reservation tacked to the wall behind his desk. “Truth is, that body could be anywhere in thirty-five hundred square miles. Could be up here.” The chief pointed to the northwest where the Shoshones lived. “Or here.” His hand ran along the southern half: Arapaho land. “Chances of finding that body, if somebody doesn’t want it found, are about a zillion to one.”

“What about the Chevy pickup?”

The chief shrugged. “Some white guy lost on the reservation in a blizzard.” He traced one finger along the map. “He picked you up a little ways past Rendezvous Road and drove two miles down Highway 789 to Jake’s garage. Most likely, he kept goin’. Could be in Colorado by now.”

Father John stared at the map. He couldn’t shake off the uneasy feeling about the young man who had given him a ride. The cold determination, the ruthlessness. And he had lied about being from around here.

“Suppose he’d been on his way to Rendezvous Road to retrieve the body,” Father John began, sorting his thoughts out loud, searching for some logical path. “Suppose he saw me on the highway and decided not to chance turning onto Rendezvous Road. He stayed on the highway and deliberately passed me. Then he decided to pick me up in order to find out if I’d been on Rendezvous Road and had seen the body.” He didn’t say what was becoming obvious: Had he told the man about finding the body, his own life might have been in danger.

The chief flopped back into his chair. “The guy that dropped that body got the hell outta there. Why would he take a chance on goin’ back?”

“Maybe he started to worry it wasn’t hidden well enough.”

Banner slowly shook his head. “The fed’s off to talk to an Indian girl and other sources he says he has, as if Indians are gonna tell a white FBI agent something important. We’ve got a gray Chevy pickup and a driver who maybe knows about the body, but most likely never heard of it. And we got a missing body. Ghosts, John. We’re chasin’ ghosts.”

5

T
he Toyota rolled down Old Wind River Highway on automatic pilot. Father John rested one gloved finger on the steering wheel’s rim. His thoughts were on the body, which had probably been dead close to twenty-four hours now, but no one had missed him, no one had called the police and said, “He hasn’t come home. I’m worried.” Nothing. What kind of life had he led to end up so alone?

The road veered sharply to the right, and Father John jammed on the brake pedal, fishtailing around the curve. The wind sent a cloud of snow across the road ahead. He gripped the wheel with both hands, holding it steady through the whiteness and out the far side into the daylight. Another half mile, and he turned into the driveway at Joe Deppert’s place.

An uneasy feeling came over him as he slid out of the cab. Mounds of untrampled snow lay over the driveway and banked against the logs piled beside the wood fence. The open door of a tin shed creaked in the wind. The gray frame house looked empty, with the indoor shades pulled halfway down the front windows.

The door swung open just as he was about to knock. In the shadows stood Deborah Deppert, somewhere in her eighties, with hooded black eyes and gray hair
curled around her head like a helmet. He might have knocked at any house on the reservation and found an elderly women like her, in a printed housedress with an apron cinching her waist, socks rolled at her ankles, and swollen arthritic feet in pink bedroom slippers.

“Hello, Grandmother.” He used the Arapaho term of respect and remained in place outside. It was not polite to appear as if he even wished to enter the home until he had been invited to do so.

“Well, Father John.” There was a note of surprise in the old woman’s voice. “What you doin’ out in the cold? Come on in.”

He stepped into a small room with gray daylight filtering below the window shades. He waited as Deborah set the door closed behind him. The air smelled of wood smoke and some pungent medicinal odor, like camphor or analgesic. To the right was a double bed with a star quilt spread over the top. In the center of the room stood a round oak table and a couple of wood chairs, and beyond, an arched doorway that led to the kitchen.