The Story Teller (28 page)

A
few uniformed officers milled about, telephones jangled, and the monotonous hum of conversations drifted from the roped-off area where a couple huddled with a teenage boy: Sunday-morning noises at the Denver Police Department. Vicky stood at the gate, staring at the elevator beyond. Lights flashed overhead: “3,” “2,” “1.” There was a loud ping, and the doors parted. Steve Clark stepped out, hurried over, and snapped the gate open.

“You don’t know how glad I am to see you,” he said, ushering her toward the waiting elevator. A policewoman brushed past and entered ahead of them. Vicky stepped inside, and Steve planted himself beside her, one hand on her arm. She could sense his wanting to tell her something, but he was quiet. They were not alone.

The elevator bumped to a stop, and he guided her into the corridor. A familiar route now: left turn through the door marked
HOMICIDE.
There was no one here. The office had a vacant, musty smell, like a church that had just emptied out. They crossed to Steve’s desk, footsteps clattering into the quiet.

“What happened?” Vicky asked. She perched on the edge of the chair where she’d sat two days ago. Her handbag felt heavy on her lap.

Sinking into the swivel chair, Steve glanced out the window a moment. A cloud as jagged as the mountaintops
drifted through the clear blue sky. He looked back. “Night before last, somebody paid Tisha Runner a visit. Tore up her apartment.”

Vicky brought one hand to her mouth. Her breath felt hot in her palm. “Is she okay?”

“She’s dead, Vicky,” he said. “A friend dropped by yesterday morning and found her tied up on a kitchen chair.” He stopped. The sound of a telephone ringing somewhere floated into the quiet. “It didn’t take much,” he went on. “She probably died with the first blow.”

Vicky closed her eyes. The image formed in her mind, like a color photograph floating up from the chemicals of a darkroom—the girl with black hair falling over her face, the girl who didn’t want to be involved with murder. Snapping her eyes open, she jumped to her feet and walked to the window. Tisha Runner—racing out of the Indian Center. Why hadn’t she run after her? Who had been waiting for her?

Swinging around, she said, “The killers are after the Sand Creek ledger book. Todd wouldn’t tell them where it was, so they killed him and ransacked his apartment. Then they went after Julie Clearwater, who just happened to have stayed in Todd’s apartment. And then Tisha Runner.”

Steve placed both hands on the arms of his chair and leveled himself upright, leaning across the desk toward her. “And then you, Vicky. And if they’d found you . . .” He brought one fist down hard on the desktop. A ballpoint skittered to the floor, making a sharp clack against the tile. “They would have done the same thing to you they did to the others. Whoever these thugs are, they’re vicious and they’re getting more and more desperate.” He stopped, nodding toward her vacant chair. “Sit down and tell me everything you know.”

Vicky dropped back onto the chair. She reached inside her handbag and pulled out the Smedden record
book and the brown envelope with Todd’s diskette. She handed them across the desk. “Here’s the proof you wanted,” she said. She explained what was on the diskette, what he would find on the last page of the record book.

His eyes on her, he picked up the book and flipped to the last page. “‘Indian ledger book, colored pictures, taken from Arapaho warrior. Sweetwater Battle, 1866.’” He peered over the book. “This the proof you’re talking about?”

“A rancher named James J. Smedden gave the ledger book to the museum in 1903, along with other papers and documents,” Vicky said. “Before he started ranching, he was a soldier. He was at the Battle of the Sweetwater.”

Steve dropped the book on the desk. Questions and disbelief flashed in his eyes. “Who’s to say this ledger book is the so-called Sand Creek ledger book?”

Vicky went over it again, the same story she’d tried to tell him two days earlier when his mind had been on drug deals gone bad. While she talked he picked up the book again and turned to the last page. When she had finished, he said, “And the Indian ledger book with colored pictures that rancher Smedden found is worth a million dollars?”

“It’s worth one-point-three million,” she said, reminding him that the museum curator had known the exact value, all the while claiming the museum had never owned the book. “It’s the only Arapaho record of Sand Creek. It proves some of my people were massacred there, along with the Cheyennes.”

Still the questions in his eyes: “What does this matter today? A massacre more than a hundred years ago?”

She explained again how the Cheyennes were trying to obtain reparation lands in Colorado, how the ledger book would prove Arapahos also had a right to the lands.

Steve tossed the record book onto the desk and leaned back, staring at her. “So we’re talking about a ledger book worth a million dollars in its own right and probably worth a lot more as a historical record. And somebody decided to make it disappear—”

“Todd may have taken it,” Vicky cut in. “He must have known it was in danger.”

“Jesus, Vicky,” Steve said. “Danger from whom? I need names.” He picked up a ballpoint and pulled a pad across the desk.

Vicky was on her feet again, pacing: chair, window, chair. There was the scratching sound of pen on paper as she told him about Bernard Good Elk, the reputation he’d built for himself on a false claim. Then she mentioned Rachel Foster again. “I happen to know she could use the money.”

“You happen to know?” Steve looked up, pen poised over the pad.

“An investigator friend.” Vicky shrugged. “Look, Steve, there’s no telling who Todd told about the book after he found it. He probably showed it to the research librarian. It would make sense; he pulled it out of the papers in the Smedden Collection, realized what it was, and called the librarian over right away.”

“Librarian.” Another scratching noise, like that of a tiny mouse working its way over the desk.

“He might have called his adviser, Emil Coughlin,” Vicky went on, “although the man says he hadn’t talked to Todd in the last couple weeks. He claims he never heard of the ledger book.”

Steve nodded. “Yeah, well, looks like three people are dead because of a ledger book nobody heard of.”

Vicky stopped in front of the desk. “Whoever killed them will destroy the book,” she said.

“A million-dollar book?”

“There’s already a buzz among the dealers on Book Row. The killers have gotten out the word; they’re angling
for the best price.” Vicky heard the rising emotion in her tone. “And after the dealers get the book, how long—days, hours?—before the pages are cut out and shipped to collectors around the world? The collectors are waiting, Steve. That’s why the killers are desperate. They have to find the ledger book before we find it.”

“We?” Steve jumped to his feet. “There have been three homicides. I appreciate the groundwork you’ve done and”—he drew in a long breath—“obviously I should have listened to you sooner. But we’ll handle this from now on. I don’t want you involved. I don’t want any more nights like last night, wondering”—he stopped again, took another breath—“if yours was going to be the next body I fished out of the South Platte. I don’t want anything to happen to you, Vicky.”

That’s when she told him she knew where Todd had hidden the ledger book.

*   *   *   

A mixture of frustration and worry gripped Father John as he pointed the Toyota down the gray strip of asphalt receding ahead. The plains crept into the distances and melted into the rinsed-clean blue sky. Overhead, the sun hovered in a yellow-white blaze, clamping the earth in a vise of heat. The wild grasses swayed in the breeze. To the west, he could see the faint outline of the Wind River Mountains against the sky. He was almost home.

He had found the message on the table in the entry when he’d gotten back to the residence last night. Father Geoff had been called home to Chicago; his father was dying. It was still dark when Father John pulled out of the parking lot and headed north on I-25 as the sun rose out of the east, flooding the sky with purples, violets, and reds. He’d turned west at Cheyenne, going deeper into Wyoming, the sun blazing behind him, piercing the rearview window and glinting in the mirrors. The soaring notes of
La Traviata
rose around him, and when the opera had ended, he’d fished through the
glove compartment and extracted another tape—
Don Giovanni
—and turned north, plunging through the emptiness to the music of Mozart.

He wished he wasn’t going home empty-handed. He’d left Father Geoff to deal with everything at the mission while he’d gone off on a wild-goose chase. Eventually his assistant, would hear through the Jesuit grapevine how Father John himself had sealed the museum’s fate by walking out on the provincial.

Yet he would do it again. He did not regret yesterday. What he regretted was leaving Vicky in Denver, where she was likely to continue searching for the ledger book. He could only hope she would do the most sensible thing and take the Smedden record book and Todd’s diskette to Detective Clark first thing this morning. And then she could come home—he hoped she would come home. She would be safe at home; the killer was in Denver.

“Il mio tesoro” filled the cab as Father John slowed into the outskirts of Riverton. He switched his thoughts to what they had accomplished. The diskette. The record book. A book dealer waiting for the ledger book. The kind of evidence certain to get the attention of a homicide detective. What, then, was the unease, the sense of incompleteness that nagged at him? As if there were something he’d missed, some notion of an idea demanding his attention. He drew in a long breath and gave himself up to the music—opera always helped him to sort his thoughts—and went back over the last few days. Vicky’s search for the ledger book. The killers’ search . . . Suddenly the missing piece snapped into place.

They’d been wrong, he and Vicky. They’d completely missed the point, gone off on tangents. They’d assumed the killers went after Todd and Julie because they knew about the ledger book. Or maybe the killers had been after the backup diskette. But anybody could
challenge a thesis on a diskette. That’s not what the killers wanted. They wanted the ledger book itself! Father John gasped at the obvious conclusion: Todd was the one who took the ledger book from the museum.

He resisted the idea. Todd would never have done that. Unless . . . unless Todd had felt that the book was in danger, that he had to protect it. And he had protected it with his life.

The last pieces were tumbling together, like confetti floating down and forming a perfectly logical shape. He and Vicky had followed Todd to southeastern Colorado, where they had found the Smedden record book. And they had stopped, even though Todd’s footsteps were as clear before them as the first prints on a wave-washed beach.

He thought about pulling into a gas station to call Vicky, but a quick check of his watch told him she would have left Marcy’s by now. She had probably already met with Steve Clark. She could be anywhere in Denver. He’d have to wait until evening to call.

He turned onto Highway 789, racing toward the mission where Todd had gone after he’d found the ledger book. He’d been distraught, upset Father John wasn’t there. Wasn’t there because he’d gone to Boston to straighten out his own life, renew his own vows, set himself back on track. But if he’d been there—dear God, if he’d been there—maybe Todd would be alive. Together they would have gone to Ted Gianelli, the local FBI agent. He trusted Gianelli. He was a friend. Gianelli would have kept the ledger book safe, while whoever was after it, whoever wanted to destroy it, would have been stopped.

But he hadn’t been there. Todd had hung around, Father Geoff said. It had surprised him to step out into the corridor and find Todd still there. Still there, Father John thought. Outside the door to the small room that housed the mission archives, where Todd had left the
ledger book—on a shelf, tucked in a carton with other old books, unobtrusive, safe.

He was speeding down Seventeen-Mile Road, hoping there were no patrolmen lurking on a side road, waiting for drivers like him. He was always getting pulled over and warned—“Father, you gotta watch it.” But there was no other traffic, nothing but the long, empty road ahead and turned into the mission.

He strained against the speed limit all the way to the turn into the mission.

The mission grounds were filled with Sunday-afternoon quiet: a breeze rippled the branches of the cottonwoods and played over the grasses. There was no sign of the new Blazer Father Geoff’s father had bought him a couple of months ago. The residence had a vacant look about it. Elena, the housekeeper, had probably stayed home today—with no priests about, there was no reason to prepare the usual Sunday chicken dinner.

He was alone. He could look for the ledger book alone. He stopped the Toyota in front of the administration building, turned off the tape player, and let himself out. The door made a sharp
thwack
into the quiet. Sunshine streamed across the mission; the hot breeze pressed against his shirt. His legs felt cramped and stiff as he hurried up the familiar stairs.

Even as he opened the front door he sensed he was not alone after all. A small creak in the old wooden floor, a faint smell of something—aftershave?—the unmistakable signs of a human presence. Slowly he made his way across the entry to his office door. It was closed. He stood at one side, listening. Nothing. A forced stillness. Whoever was there had heard him drive up, would have confirmed his arrival by looking out the window.

He grabbed the knob and flung open the door. Inside, the killers were waiting for him.

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