Winter's Child (19 page)

Daisy paused, sipping at her coffee, the pale eyes cloudy with memories. “She told Amanda Mary she was content. Well, it must've broken that woman's heart. Mother said Amanda Mary was real quiet. Just got into the stagecoach and went bouncing off.”

Daisy set her mug down and smiled around the table. Back in the present now. “From then on, Grandmother called herself Lizzie.”

Vicky hadn't expected
Lucas to meet her. She had called him last night to let him know she would be in Denver for a short time, to tell him she regretted not being able to spend more time.

“I get it, Mom,” he'd said. “You're working on a case.” She could hear the rest of it in his voice: she was always working on a case. He hadn't said he'd be waiting when she got off the airport train and followed the crowd up the escalators into the bright lights of the terminal. People everywhere, and there he was, standing just outside the railing. So handsome, like his father, that it took her breath away. She ran over and hugged him, then hugged him again. “What are you doing here?”

“I took the day off.” He had already grabbed her bag and walked her across the terminal. “At least we can spend time together while I drive you around. Where to?”

By the time they were out of the airport and on the highway,
warm air was filling the black BMW. She had told him the name of the restaurant she was going to in North Denver, and he had nodded. It made perfect sense that a case she was working on should take her back to the neighborhood where she had once lived.

“You okay, Mom? You look a little tired.”

“I'm fine,” she said. “And you look wonderful. Everything okay with you?”

“Better than okay.” Lucas kept glancing between her and the highway. She could sense the turmoil inside him, the way he'd been when he was little, fidgeting to tell her something. And then he told her: Adrienne, the most wonderful girl in the world, had agreed to marry him. “You're going to love her, Mom. She's everything I ever hoped for, and what do you know? The crazy girl's in love with me.”

Vicky stared at the highway, the open, snow-swept fields on either side, the flat-roofed commercial buildings spread ahead. The memories came crashing in. The vast, open plains; the hot summers on the rez; the rodeos and the bucking broncos; the hamburgers sizzling in the food booths; the smells of dust and coffee. And the cowboys—Indians from reservations all over the West—and none could ride a bronco or a bull longer than Ben Holden. And she, crazy girl, had loved him.

Now, beside her, was his son, an IT expert at a software company in Denver who sat at a desk in front of a computer all day. His sister, a graphic designer in Los Angeles, engaged to a white man. Ben would be proud of their accomplishments. He was always proud of his kids.

She shifted sideways so she could take him in, the whole reality of him. “You're so like your father.”

“Mom! Come on.” He looked over at her, wide-eyed. “I'm like you. I'm not like him.”

He remembered too much, she thought. The drunken Ben, the shouting and the flying fists, and everything falling apart—their family, the way things should have been. “Wedding plans?” she said.

“We're thinking June, a year from now. You'll love her, I promise.”

“I promise I'll love her.”

He would bring Adrienne to the reservation in the summer, as soon as it was sunny and warm, so she could see it the way he remembered it, Lucas was saying. They would go to a powwow, ride horses across the plains. There should be a carry-in dinner at Blue Sky Hall—didn't she think?—with the elders and grandmothers and friends he'd gone to school with. Yes, Vicky said to all of it. It would be a trip into the past.

They had left the highway behind and were in North Denver. Stop-and-go traffic down Federal Boulevard, Victorians and bungalows set back behind pines dusted with snow, women pushing strollers down the sidewalks, all as she remembered.

Now they were on Thirty-Second Street, heading west, the mountains rising like ice floes into the sky ahead.

“Looks like the restaurant.” Lucas had slowed down, searching both sides of the street for an empty space at the curb. A long line of cars snaked past the restaurants and shops that occupied the string of Victorian houses. The BMW rocked to a stop. “Call me when you're finished,” Lucas said as she got out.

The restaurant was packed. Every table taken. Groups of people, impatient looks on their faces, jammed the desk inside the front door. Laughter punctuated the low hum of conversations as plates clattered together and waiters hurried about. Vicky managed to make her way to the desk and told the young woman with black hair wrapped about her head like a ribbon and crayon red lipstick and bored eyes that she had an appointment with Jason Becket. The
woman flinched backward. She started to say something about Jason being very busy when Vicky interrupted. “Tell him Vicky Holden is here.” She waited while the woman picked up a receiver and repeated her words.

A couple of minutes passed, then a good five minutes. Vicky had stepped back from the crowd waiting for tables. Across the restaurant were two doors. One to the kitchen that expelled waiters hoisting loaded trays, and one that never opened. She kept her eyes on that door and, finally, it swung inward.

She could have picked Jason Becket out of a crowd. Blond hair, light complexion, a long nose and prominent chin, and a familiar look about him. It hit her with a thud: the man was the large, masculine version of Mary Ann Little Shield. He worked his way around the tables, and she went to meet him, holding out her hand. “I'm Vicky Holden.”

His grip was hard, his expression businesslike. He ushered her through the door into a hallway paved with gray vinyl. Beyond the window at the far end, she could see a red delivery truck parked next to a Dumpster. Another door on the right opened into a small office, files and papers stacked everywhere, a pair of side chairs, shelves, a desk.

In a quick, efficient motion, Jason swept a chair clear and pulled it closer to the desk. He gestured for her to sit down, edged past the desk, and dropped into the seat he had probably just vacated. A pair of silver-framed photos stood at the corner of the desk. One, an infant wrapped in a pink blanket. The other, a pretty, dark-haired woman and Jason with a small boy on his lap.

“What do you know about Elizabeth?” His tone was flat, blunt, as if he didn't believe she knew anything. So many starts and stops, so many hopes dashed over the years.
I will never stop looking for her.

Vicky unbuttoned her coat and loosened her scarf. The ceiling vent made little rattling noises as it emitted waves of warm air. He had not offered to take her coat. Clearly, Jason Becket did not expect the meeting to last long.

She took a moment before she said: “I believe Clint Hopkins told you about a white child who came to the reservation around the time your daughter was abducted.”

“How shall I explain?” he began. “I told Clint I can't allow myself to get excited. There have been too many false reports, too many false sightings.” He picked up a pen and began jabbing it against the mouse pad next to the computer. “What happened to Hopkins?”

“He was run down in the street the night after he returned from Denver.”

“Accident?”

She took a moment before she said, “I don't think so. I saw it happen.”

“You think it has something to do with the child?” A faint note of hope sounded in his voice, difficult to conceal.

“I'm trying to piece together the information Clint had gathered. It would help if you could tell me what you told him.”

“He knew the facts; he'd read the newspaper accounts. He asked me to go over them.” Jason shrugged. “My wife was running errands in Cherry Creek. She'd taken Elizabeth with her. I've always suspected it was her last stop because she kept Elizabeth on a regular schedule, and in thirty minutes or so, she would have wanted to be home to nurse her. You must have read the newspapers.”

“Newspapers don't print the whole story.”

He shifted forward, looking out of the corners of his eyes, watching something unfold beside him. “The carjackers, a man and a woman, came up when she was leaning into the backseat to get
Elizabeth. They struck her on the head, knocked her down. The woman got behind the wheel and started driving. My wife managed to get up. She ran alongside the car and held on to the door. She was trying to save Elizabeth when she slipped beneath the wheels and was killed. The man drove off in a pickup. They kept going. They didn't even stop.”

They didn't even stop!
Vicky could hear Betty White Hawk's voice looping through her head. A rollover crash, her husband trapped beneath the steering wheel. Lou and Debbie Bearing had driven on.

“There were witnesses,” Jason was saying. “They gave the police descriptions. Nothing helped.”

“Did they say anything that wasn't reported?”

“The carjackers were Indians. Oh, they looked Indian in the police illustrations, but the police wanted to keep their options open. Hispanic. Middle Eastern. But one witness got a close look at them. Laura Clement. She came out of a store as they started driving away. She heard my wife screaming and saw her fall under the wheels. She ran over to her, but there was nothing anyone could do. She said she would never forget the carjackers' faces. She could identify them.”

“Did you tell Clint this? That a witness could identify the”—she drew in a breath—“killers?”

Jason nodded, his gaze still turned sideways. Then he faced her. “I told Clint I need a connection. I need to know how the child got to the reservation. I need proof she is Elizabeth. I've been through hell. The FBI is still on the case. Nothing,” He stopped, allowing the weight of the word to settle between them. “I have a new family now. Sarah and I were married three years ago. We have a little boy, Josh. I've found some peace. I can't put myself through the agony and uncertainty again, not without proof.”

Vicky sensed the conversation winding to an end, that Jason Becket was about to jump to his feet. He said, “Do you have that proof?”

“No.” Vicky had been about to say, “Not yet,” but she had swallowed back the impulse. She may never be able to find the proof. She may never be able to connect Elizabeth Becket to Mary Ann Little Shield.

She hurried on, not wanting the conversation to end. “What did Clint say?”

“Clint Hopkins was a man of few words. I didn't get the impression he liked to give anything away. He said he would talk to people on the reservation and get back to me.”

“With the connection?”

“I presume that's what he meant.”

“There's one more thing,” Vicky said. Jason Becket was on his feet, and she got to hers. “Did he say how he had found you?”

“It was the first question I asked him. I got a half answer, something about how he had heard some things on the reservation.”

Heard some things. Had Clint put it together? A baby crying at the Bearings'? A woman leaving a baby on a doorstep, a man repairing cars in his barn? A man who needed parts? All it had taken was an internet search. Starting close to home, branching across Wyoming, then to neighboring states. He'd spent a lot of time on the internet, his secretary had said. It's where he did most of his research.

Another possibility slid into her mind: Lou Bearing, a man struggling with a secret, longing to unburden himself. What had he told Clint?

Jason Becket walked around the desk and set his hand on the doorknob. He turned to her. “If you find a connection . . .” He
paused, searching for the words. “I will want tests, you understand? I will want definite proof. I want my child back.
My
child. I will do everything to get her back.”

Vicky left the restaurant feeling weak and slippery-footed. She had called Lucas from inside and waited until the BMW pulled up before she let herself out into the cold air. She held on to the door for support as she slid onto the seat. Elizabeth's mother had held on to the door. This was what Clint Hopkins had run into, the possibility—the likelihood—that Mary Anne Little Shield was Jason Becket's daughter. She did not belong with the people who had loved her for five years. Clint had wanted the adoption to be final. For Mary Anne's sake, so she could never be taken. Abducted again.

And yet there was a white man who could be her father. She understood why Clint had come to her. How would the tribe react? A child who had been part of them turned over to a white man, a stranger she didn't know? Tribal adoption laws were clear-cut. No Arapaho child could be adopted outside the tribe without tribal permission. What about a white child who had been living as an Arapaho? Would the tribe enter the case on the side of the Little Shields?

“I take it your meeting didn't go the way you hoped.”

Vicky could feel her son's eyes on her, and she tried to pull herself back. “It's complicated,” she said.

Traces of snow
clung to the kitchen window and shrouded the residence in silence, interrupted occasionally by the sounds of the bishop puttering about upstairs and Walks-On snoring in the corner. Father John poured coffee into a mug, stirred in a quarter cup of milk, and headed back to the study. The lights around Circle Drive glowed in the window behind his desk.

He dropped into the old leather chair that, over the years, had taken on the contours of his body and stared at the interview with Amanda Mary Fletcher on the laptop. Published in a review of American history more than a hundred years ago, a few months after she had met Lizzie. “Well, I can't say for sure the white woman I talked to was my sister. There is no proof. She calls herself Kellsto Time, which means Killing Horn, and says she is the wife of Brokenhorn. She says she is Arapaho, and denies any memory of our family. She doesn't speak English, so I was required to take the word of a
half-breed interpreter. I wouldn't be surprised if that Indian, Brokenhorn, hadn't bribed the interpreter to put words into Lizzie's mouth.”

“What do you plan to do next?” the interviewer asked.

“I will wait, and I will pray, as I have done for thirty-seven years. I will pray that, if she is Lizzie, she will get word to me. I trust my sister knows I am waiting for her. If she is my sister.”

*   *   *

Father John glanced
through the interview again. A sense of longing, disappointment, and even denial rang through Amanda Mary's words. And yet, she seemed certain that if the wife of John Brokenhorn were her sister, she would find a way to come to her. She would wait.

Her sister never came. And yet, Daisy Blue Water had said her grandmother took to calling herself Lizzie after the meeting. For the first time, she had acknowledged she was white. Still, she had stayed on the reservation, a white Arapaho woman.

“There's a lot about Amanda on the internet,” Shannon had told him on the drive back to the reservation. She had found whatever was there, all of it now on her laptop, all the research and interviews. She had been filling in the gaps on the reservation, pulling in the human story left out of the records. The fact that Lizzie had cried when she met her sister—no record had mentioned that.

He shut down the laptop and swiveled toward the window. The wind drove the snow against the glass like shotgun pellets. His thoughts circled back to Shannon. Perhaps she would be another white woman married to an Arapaho. He smiled at the idea. It was an old story.

He couldn't shake the image of James in the sacristy getting ready to serve Mass, before Shannon had arrived. Earnest and conflicted, pulled toward the priesthood and pulling away. The
priesthood wasn't what he had expected. Oh, Father John understood. It wasn't what he had expected, either.

Aware of another presence in the small room, he swiveled back and watched the bishop drop onto a chair that listed sideways under the old man's weight. He gripped a mug of coffee in both hands, lifted it to his lips for a moment, then set it on a small table. “Thought I might find you here,” he said. “Trouble sleeping?”

Father John supposed that was the case, although he hadn't yet gone upstairs. An unsettled feeling had taken hold of him, as if the day were still moving toward something. So much unfinished, hanging in the air. Vince White Hawk still missing. Lou Bearing dead, and Debbie in shock. An Arapaho couple trying to adopt a white child. All unconnected, and yet he couldn't shake the notion that, somehow, they were mixed up together.

“How is the widow?”

Father John snapped back to attention. The old man seated across from him had a way of reading his mind. He told the bishop that, by the time he had reached the hospital, Debbie Bearing had already been released. He had driven back to the house and parked outside. She didn't come out, even though he'd had the feeling she was there, which meant she did not want company. He tried to blink back the image unreeling in his head: the woman flailing about the yard, howling at the sky.

“Vicky thought you were the one who had been shot.” The bishop had narrowed his eyes on him. “She was quite upset.”

“Yes, I know.” Father John started to explain that Vicky had asked him to stop by the Bearings' place, then swallowed back the explanation. The circumstances didn't really matter. It was the fact that Vicky feared he had been killed. There had been times when he had felt the same terrible dread about her.

“You're very close.”

“We're friends.” Dear Lord, the bishop and Shannon both knew the truth. Was it that obvious? He thought of the way Vicky had thrown herself into his arms when she saw he was alive, and all the people standing about, watching. The moccasin telegraph had probably been jammed.

“You are a good priest,” the bishop said.

“I pray every day.”

“Not that the love you feel for each other will be taken away, I hope. The love of another always blesses our lives.”

“For the courage to honor my vows.”

“The day will come when you will have to leave the mission.” The bishop shook his head. “When we'll both have to leave. There are rumors . . .”

“I've heard them.” He had logged on to the province newsletter himself earlier this evening. The meeting had been held, a gathering of Jesuits and benefactors, to discuss the direction to take in the future, to test the air. It was clear where the discussions would likely lead. “The Jesuit province may have to close the mission,” he said. “Not enough priests. Not enough money. What else is new?” He tried to make light of it. “It's always been a possibility.”

“It will be hard for you to leave.”

“For you, too.”

“Oh, yes, but I've packed up and left before.” The bishop got to his feet and hooked the handle of his mug in one finger. “I feel sleep coming on,” he said, shuffling toward the door. Halfway across the study, he turned back. “We must always be ready to go.”

He was bent-shouldered, moving across the corridor, taking the stairs one heavy, purposeful step at a time. The bishop had fallen in love with St. Francis Mission, with its people and its history and its silent emptiness. They were alike, Father John thought.

He could hear Walks-On snoring in the kitchen, deep into
whatever dreams the night would bring. It was as though the day had finally collapsed. Father John was about to snap off the desk lamp and head upstairs when the phone rang. He glanced at the name on the small screen: Betty White Hawk. His muscles tensed as he lifted the receiver. “Father John.”

“Thank God you're there.” The voice lifted in hysteria. “You have to come right away.” She started sobbing, garbling the words. “They're going to kill him. You have to stop them.”

“Betty, listen to me. Take a deep breath and tell me what's happened.”

She was crying hard, gasping for breath. A couple of seconds passed before she gulped out her son's name and told him the police found the house where Vince was hiding. “Somebody snitched him out. They're going to kill him.”

“The police are not going to kill him, Betty. They're going to arrest him.”

“Don't you get it?” The hysteria reached a higher pitch. “Nobody's going to arrest Vince. I know my boy. He'll shoot his way out, and they'll kill him. You have to stop them.”

“Where is he?”

She gave a tangled set of directions. Seventeen-Mile Road, Yellow Calf Road, the first cutoff. A shack by the river. “I'm almost there. I can see the police lights, all red and blue. Oh, God. God. Don't let anything happen to my boy.”

“I'm on my way,” Father John told her.

*   *   *

The plane jumped
and rocked in the snow falling outside. It had been late leaving Denver. At one point, it had looked as if the flight would be canceled because of the weather in Wyoming. Vicky had
thought she might have to call Lucas and ask him to come back for her. Finally, the flight had been posted. Late, but still taking off.

Vicky clutched the armrests, as if the armrests might steady the bouncing plane. The man seated next to her was snoring. God bless him! A lucky man to sleep through this. She closed her eyes against the snow smearing the window and tried to ignore the creaking noises. The images came to her out of the darkness: A white girl growing up Arapaho. A dark figure with a briefcase flying over the hood of a truck. Lou Bearing longing to lay down a heavy burden. And now, a man grieving for his lost child.

Coincidences. Betty White Hawk said that Lou and Debbie Bearing stole cars for parts, but that didn't prove that they had carjacked a car in Denver. A witness claimed she could identify the carjackers. After five years? Any defense attorney could establish enough doubt to discount the identification.

She knew what she had to do. She had to inform the adoption court of the possibility that Mary Ann Little Shield could be Elizabeth Becket. Tests would be made. She felt an emptiness opening inside her. Either the Little Shields or Jason Becket could lose a child.

Vicky's eyes snapped open. The plane had begun lurching back and forth. The man beside her shifted in his seat. Vicky tried to ignore the rocking plane and focus on Clint Hopkins's actions after he came back from Denver. He'd called her, arranged a meeting, and gone back to see Lou and Debbie Bearing.

And that was what had been bothering her. What had he hoped for? That Lou and Debbie would admit to carjacking a car in Denver, killing a woman, and driving off with an infant?

They would never have admitted anything. Except that Lou . . . She could still see the image of the slim man with narrow shoulders
leaning against the truck as if he had been caught in a tornado. How long would Lou have resisted the pressure to tell the truth? Is that why Clint had gone back? Hoping Lou would break down, unburden himself?

Now Lou was dead.

But Clint had died first. Clint, who had put the pieces together, the coincidences, all except for the last connection between a crying baby and a baby left on the Little Shields' doorstep. He must have confronted Lou and Debbie about the carjacking, the abducted baby, the witness who could identify the carjackers. What he knew could have sent Lou and Debbie Bearing to prison for the rest of their lives.

Vicky sat up straight. Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place. She could imagine Lou Bearing and Vince White Hawk, hunched over beer at the Buffalo Bar, Vince listening to a proposition, just as his Dad had done ten years ago.
Easy money. You need money, don't you? Take care of a little job.

The pilot's voice boomed over the intercom. They would be on the ground shortly. Temperature twenty degrees, snow falling. A cold night out there, folks. The lights of Riverton flickered through the snow clouds, foggy and remote from the new image gripping her: Vince White Hawk with a stash of money, hiding out on the reservation, on the run from murder.

Vince would never surrender.