Winter's Child (21 page)

I am coming
with you.

John O'Malley did not have to say it out loud. Vicky knew he would go to the Little Shields' with her. They had confided in him, and he had counseled them. They had given her permission to bring him in on the case. And now he would go with her. What was it? Moral support, physical support, or just to let the couple know that she was not the only one who may have stumbled onto what could be a terrible truth.

She shrugged into her coat while he set his cowboy hat on his head and yanked his jacket off the coat tree behind the door, pulling it on as they headed down the corridor and into the afternoon, the pale sun stippling the grounds. “Let's take my car,” she said. The Ford had a heater that worked.

They crossed the empty, white spaces of the reservation in long periods of silence, thinking the same thoughts: the ramifications of
this latest theory, a possible deadly connection between the Bearings and the Little Shields. But where was the proof? She had to keep in mind there was no proof.

Two figures were in the yard, a man and a small child. Rolling balls of snow that grew in circumference and left narrow tracks of dirt that crisscrossed the yard. Yellow hair hung beneath the child's pink cap and fanned across her shoulders. The man's face looked flushed, reddish brown with the effort of pushing an enormous ball toward some kind of enclosure in front of the gray-sided house. A snow fort, Vicky thought. And in a corral on the side of the house, a small pony.

Eldon Little Shield looked up and waved as Vicky steered the Ford off the road and into the yard. The child did the same, a wide grin spreading over her face, as if they were friends, coming to help. A sinking feeling hit Vicky as she pulled in behind a gray pickup.

“Your secretary called to let us know you'd be stopping by.” Eldon stood outside the door as Vicky swung it open. “I left the shop early. Didn't want to miss you.”

Mary Ann huddled beside him—all pale skin and wide blue eyes—and Vicky wondered how much she knew. Children knew everything; they were spies, spying on adults, spying on their own lives. And yet the hesitancy, the worry frowns in Eldon's face were absent in hers. “Good to see you, Father.” Eldon waved them both toward the house. “Myra's waiting.”

The house had a tidy, lived-in feel, a newspaper tossed on a coffee table, a bronze framed photo of Mary Ann on a table, jackets hung on a rack behind the door, odors of hot chocolate radiating through the warmth. Myra emerged from the kitchen as Eldon took their coats, adding them to the pile on the rack, a large squishy outcropping that bumped against the door. “You bring us good news, I hope,” he said.

The child had sprinted to her mother, who was removing her hat and scarf, the mittens crusted with ice, the pink jacket soggy with snow. Whispering something about hot chocolate and cookies, she steered the child into the kitchen. Mary Ann was giggling.

Eldon nodded toward the sofa and a pair of chairs with oak armrests, an Indian blanket folded over the back of one. “Coffee? Hot chocolate?” The affable host, the smallest sense of uncertainty in his voice.

“No, thank you,” Vicky said. She exchanged a glance with John O'Malley, who also waved away the offer. She dropped into one of the chairs while he perched on the other. This was not a social call; the information she had gathered in Denver, the theories and conjectures, none of it good. Out in the kitchen the child gave a carefree burst of laughter; metal clanged against a hard surface.

“I have new information about your case,” Vicky began. “I know you've spoken to Father John . . .”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Eldon waved away the rest of it. “Any news you got, I want Father John to hear.”

Myra was back, and the couple settled together on the sofa, Myra leaning toward the kitchen, half turning toward the child. She gave Vicky a conspiratorial glance, mother to mother. “Put her in front of the iPad and she'll sit for hours.” She shot a glance at her husband. “She can't hear us. She's lost in a game.”

Eldon leaned forward and clasped his hands between his knees. “What did you find in Denver?”

How did he know? Vicky tried to scramble through the last couple of days. There was only one way Eldon could have known about the Denver trip. Annie had said that Debbie Bearing called yesterday, and she had told her Vicky was out of the office. Out of the office. Following Clint Hopkins' trail. Debbie must have concluded she had followed the trail to Denver, and she had told Eldon.

“I'm afraid it's not good news,” Vicky began, reaching for the words. “I've learned that an infant was abducted in a carjacking in Denver five years ago.”

“That can't have anything to do with us.” Myra worked her hands in her lap, kneading them together.

Eldon remained silent.

“It's possible that infant was your child, Myra,” John O'Malley said.

“Crazy talk.” Eldon jerked upright, a warrior on alert to an approaching enemy. “Denver's a long way from here.”

“The family's name is Becket.” Vicky pushed on. The whole story had to come out, light had to be thrown on the truth. “The father has never stopped looking for his child. He wants her back.”

“You mean, he thinks Mary Ann is his child? He wants to take her from us? From her home? From her people?” Myra's voice cracked, and for a moment Vicky thought she would burst into tears. Instead she drew in a long breath, drawing on some inner reservoir of strength. “Mary Ann doesn't have anything to do with his baby. Her mother lived on the rez. She brought her to us because she wanted us to raise her. That man in Denver can't have her. He can't take her away.”

A wild, high-pitched shriek broke across the room. Mary Ann stood in the kitchen doorway, arms flailing against the doorjambs. She shrieked again, mouth opened. “No! No! No! I won't go! Don't let anybody take me away!”

Myra jumped to her feet. “Oh my God,” she said, gathering up the child, lifting her into her arms, cradling her, the child screaming now, face twisted in pain, wet with tears. Myra carried her into the kitchen, kicking the door shut as she went. The door gave a loud thwack that sent invisible waves through the atmosphere.

Eldon was on his feet. “Do you know what you've done? Do you
have any idea!” He stepped forward, fists clenched, and John O'Malley got to his feet. Vicky stood up beside him.

“Take it easy,” John said. The muffled sounds of a sobbing child came from the kitchen. “We're trying to find the truth.”

“It's not her! Maybe some kid got abducted, but it's not her. There's no proof, no evidence.”

“There was a witness,” Vicky said. “The witness can identify the carjackers. They were Indian, a man and a woman.” She hesitated, then plunged ahead. “I think they were Lou and Debbie Bearing.”

Eldon didn't move, a statue frozen to the rug spread over the vinyl floor.

“You knew that, didn't you?” John O'Malley said, keeping his voice low and confidential, the confessor urging the penitent forward.

Then something happened: a crack in the man's composure and assurance.

Eldon drew in his lower lip and turned away. He stared across the room, past the window, out to the icy, white expanse that ran to the sky, the truth crashing around them.

“You don't know.” His voice was shaky. “You don't know how it was. Coming home from the hospital alone. Our baby girl dead in some steel freezer, never to be with us, grow up in her home, let us love her, be our family, be everything.” He started to cry, his words thick with tears. “Myra couldn't take it. She just couldn't take it. ‘Why us?' she kept asking. ‘What did we do that was so bad our little girl was taken away?' She got worse and worse, crying all day, staying in bed and crying. Then I found her in the kitchen, a big glass of yellowish liquid in her hand. I knocked it to the floor because I knew. I knew what it was. The bottle of bleach was on the counter.”

The man shifted himself around until he was facing them. “I could never leave her alone. I called the relatives. They came over and
stayed with her, so I could go back to work. Somebody here day and night. Never alone.”

“You contacted the Bearings.” John O'Malley pushed on, low, rational tone. “Was it Lou? A man who ran a body shop in his barn, repaired cars, the same kind of work you do. You must have known him. Did he come to your shop looking for extra work?”

The two men locked eyes for a long moment, then Eldon broke away. “Scavenger, that's what he was. Coming around begging for old parts we didn't want. The boss sent him out to the yard to get rid of him. Let him take the junk so we didn't have to haul it away. That's what he used on the cars he worked on. Mostly junk. The rest, he stole, I figured. How else did he get any new parts?”

“He stole cars, so you thought he could carjack an infant for you,” Vicky heard herself say.

Eldon took a step sideways, into another persona. He gave a large, raucous laugh. “You can't prove anything. It doesn't matter what Lou might've told you. He was a drunk and a liar. Nothing but a scavenger. You pay him a few dollars, he'd tell you anything.”

“Or do anything,” Vicky said.

“You got nothing. Debbie says I had anything to do with what they did in Denver, I'll deny it. Her word against mine.”

“Mary Ann's mother died trying to save her,” Father John said.

Eldon dropped his head and leaned forward, as if a hard gust of wind had caught him in the back. “I don't know anything about it,” he said. “You don't have proof. All I know is our baby was on our doorstep; somebody left her. That's all I know.”

“The adoption court will want proof that Mary Ann was abandoned. I will have to inform the court about Denver. The court will order tests . . .”

“No!” Eldon stood straight, shoulders back, chest thrust out. “I
will not allow tests on my child. Nobody's taking her from us, you hear me? No court. Nobody.”

“There's a chance the court could order a joint custody,” Vicky said. “The tribe could get involved since Mary Ann's being raised Arapaho and believes . . .”

Eldon lifted a fist, and Vicky flinched backward, half aware of John O'Malley moving between her and Eldon.

“You hear yourself?” Eldon was shouting now, barking out words. “Court. Joint custody. Like hell!” He checked himself, drawing in a long breath. The child was still sobbing in the kitchen, a muffled noise that wafted past the closed door. “This is my family we're talking about. They're all I've got, Myra and Mary Ann, my two girls.” He moved sideways and fixed his gaze on Vicky. “We wanted Mary Ann safe, so nobody could take her away, and you come here with joint custody? We don't need you. You're not our lawyer anymore, understand? Get out of my house, both of you.”

*   *   *

It happened in
an instant, like a flash forward, Vicky aware of the weight of John O'Malley's arm around her, sheltering her from the angry, fist-clenched man, guiding her to the door, grabbing their coats and shrugging into them as they crossed the yard, the door slamming hard behind them. She was shaking, and John took the keys from her hand and said he would drive. Then they swung around and were out on the road that stretched ahead into the blue-denim dusk coming on.

Neither one spoke. Thoughts on the same track, Vicky knew. Revisiting the same pieces of information, plugging in the vacant spaces. “Lou and Debbie took care of the baby until the time was right,” she said finally, blurting out another supposition. “They waited for instructions from Eldon. It had to be snowing, a blizzard,
with no chance Myra would recognize the vehicle or Debbie Bearing running away.”

“What about Clint Hopkins?” John kept his eyes straight ahead, steering the Ford down the narrow road.

“He must have figured out what took place in Denver and confronted Lou and Debbie. He was thinking about Mary Ann. I think he hoped I could convince the tribe to step forward on her behalf, so that she would remain Arapaho. At the very least, we might have worked out an arrangement where Mary Ann's biological father and the Little Shields shared custody. Of course, that assumes Clint never realized Eldon's part in the abduction.”

“There's no proof, Vicky.” She felt John's eyes on her. “Even if Debbie accused Eldon of hiring them, Eldon would deny it. It would be her word against his.”

Vicky didn't say anything, her own eyes trained on the road unfolding ahead, nothing but empty space and sky. “She would deny that Lou hired Vince to run Clint down in the street like a dog. When Vince took the money and ran, someone else had to do it. And . . .” She took a moment, allowing the logical conclusion to present itself. “Lou was already weighed down with guilt. Debbie was the strong one.”

Letting a few more seconds tick by, she watched the road, but she saw something else now: Lou Bearing leaning against the black truck. The hood lifted, the tool table nearby. He had been repairing the truck from whatever damage Clint Hopkins' body had inflicted. She said, “The truck is in the barn.”

John had been quiet for some time, and she glanced over. He kept shifting his gaze to the rearview mirror. She turned sideways and looked out the back window. “How long has that black truck been there?”

Father John didn't
reply. When
had
the black truck appeared out of nowhere? He'd noticed it a good five minutes ago, but when had it appeared? After he had pulled out of the Little Shields' yard and started toward Seventeen-Mile Road? Had it been parked down the road, waiting for them to leave?

“Did Debbie Bearing know you went to Denver?”

“I haven't talked to her,” Vicky said, her voice tight with uncertainty. She sat twisted about, her gaze on the rear window. Then, a rush of certainty: “She called yesterday, and Annie told her I was out of the office. She must have figured I went to Denver and she told Eldon.”

The truck was speeding up, gaining on them, the front bumper gray and solid-looking. The headlights had flashed on, yellow spotlights in the darkening dusk. He could barely make out the figure behind the steering wheel: jacket collar up, dark scarf bundling the
lower half of the face, cowboy hat pulled low. It could be a man or a woman. He pressed down on the accelerator.

The truck shot forward, and Father John pressed harder, trying to maintain space between the two vehicles. He wasn't used to the Ford, the way it responded. It felt steady in his hand, but the road was patched in snow, ice glistening like puddles of rain. The truck didn't want space: it loomed in the rearview mirror.

“Hold on.” He leaned onto the pedal, aware of the white needle shaking upward: seventy, seventy-five, eighty. The truck stayed close. Enormous, a black monster risen out of the empty white spaces. The Ford, small in comparison, a bumper car. Eighty-five. Ninety. Too fast for the road conditions. It was getting darker, harder to see beyond the headlights. The truck kept coming closer.

“She's trying to run us off the road.” Vicky's voice was high, close to panic. He could feel the wheels slipping, hydroplaning, almost airborne, and he knew she felt the same sensation. “We can't outrun it.”

The loud thud jerked the Ford sideways. The car started to spin out, and it took all his strength to turn the wheel into the spin until they were headed straight again, but down the wrong side of the road. The speedometer jumping at ninety-two now.

“Turn off ahead,” Vicky shouted. “We have to go cross-country.”

He couldn't speak, all his attention focused on the road and the truck coming in for another hit. He tried to spurt ahead, but the Ford was going all out, and this time the hit was square, encompassing the entire rear end.

The Ford jerked forward, shaking, wobbling. He gripped the wheel hard and let up on the gas a little. The truck stayed close behind. Then the Ford righted itself, and they flew ahead, steady and straight.

The truck had dropped a car length behind, but it was still there, relentless. Vicky was right. He was going to have to drive off the road onto the wide expanse of empty land. But a sharp move at this speed would turn them over. The truck was roaring in close again, and this time, the hit came on the right, a noise that shattered the air. He heard Vicky scream as they spun out, snow spattering the windshield. No time to turn into the spin. The Ford was on its own trajectory, like a bucking bronco, and they were soaring over the barrow ditch and plowing through the snow. Twenty, thirty yards before he managed to rein in the vehicle and bring it to a stop. His heart thumped in his ears. They were still upright.

He looked over at Vicky. She was blanched, driven back into her seat. “Are you okay?”

“I'm okay.” She had been holding her breath, he knew, and now she let out an explosion of air.

Later, when he tried to work it out, he wasn't sure when he had heard the crash, the squealing brakes, the thumping tires, the grating scrape of metal against metal. When had he gotten out, expecting the black truck to be coming for them over the snow? But it was then that he saw the two vehicles: the sedan clinging to the road, the black truck overturned in the snow. Black plumes of smoke rose over the truck.

Vicky pushed herself out and started running toward the road, high-stepping through the snow, arms outstretched for balance. He took off after her, then passed her, the whole scenario passing again in his mind: spinning out into the oncoming lane, headlights bouncing ahead. Dear Lord, he never saw the other vehicle. The driver had seen them, though, and swerved into the other lane.

The black truck, going ninety, ninety-five miles an hour, had been coming in the other lane.

He was breathing hard, sliding down the side of the ditch, forcing his way up the other side and out onto the road. Vicky stayed close behind; he could hear her shouting into her cell: Accident. Seventeen-Mile Road. Send ambulances.

He ran to the sedan first, the right front accordioned into a jumble of metal shards hissing and sweating in the heat that radiated off the vehicle. The left side, the driver's side, was mangled. He could see the man slumped over the steering wheel; no one else inside. The man was moving, head lolling. Somehow he had managed to turn the sedan just enough—inches—so that the back took the brunt of the crash.

“Hold on!” Father John yanked at the door. Stuck, jammed into the frame. He yanked again, one boot propped against the lower frame, and felt it give a little with a sharp, squeaking noise. He tried again, throwing all his weight into the effort until the door came loose. He managed to open it a foot, enough to wedge his shoulder behind it and push. He could feel the man's eyes on him and sense the panic.

He leaned inside. “Where are you hurt?” The man was Arapaho, a familiar-looking face, most likely from one of the get-togethers, not one of his parishioners. Blood was running down his forehead.

“I don't know.” His voice sounded stronger than Father John had expected. “Everywhere.”

Father John pulled his handkerchief out of his jeans pocket and pressed it against the man's forehead. It started to fill up with blood. He refolded it and pressed again, adding pressure until the bleeding slowed. “Can you hold this?”

The man nodded. He gripped the handkerchief and clapped it to his forehead.

“I'm not going to try to get you out,” Father John said. There
could be spinal injuries, head injuries. “An ambulance is on the way. The medics will tend to you.”

The man gave a little nod and seemed to settle back, bleeding and in shock but alive. Alive, thank God.

Father John slid down the ditch on the other side of the road, then clawed his way upslope to the truck. The wheels were spinning against the sky. Cab smashed, windows blown out, shards twinkling in the half light, and inside—Debbie Bearing, upside-down, dangling from her seatbelt, slumped sideways. Vicky was hunched close to the broken window.

“Help me,” Debbie kept saying over and over, a kind of litany.

“The ambulance is coming,” Vicky told her. She glanced up at him. “I've been telling her, but she doesn't understand. She's delirious.”

“Help me.”

The door had been jammed into the roof, the window space smashed to half its size. It would take a crowbar to open the door, and even then, it might not budge. For half a second he thought about reaching inside and releasing her seatbelt, but she would fall onto the crushed roof. The window was too small to pull her through.

“Try to hold on,” he said, but he could see she was letting go. Letting go of life. He thrust his arm inside, found the woman's hand—cold and limp—and squeezed it. “Breathe with me, Debbie. In. Out.” He exaggerated his own breathing, gulping in air, blowing it out. “In. Out.”

Her breathing sounded labored and faint. She was looking up at him out of the corner of her eye, past the scarf tangled around her head and caught somehow on the steering wheel, tethering her to the truck. He could see the spasms in her neck muscles.

“Breathe, Debbie. In. Out.” He glanced over at Vicky, and in her eyes, wide with shock and fright, he could see the truth: It was useless. The woman was dying.

“I'll pray with you.” He turned his attention back to the woman dangling upside down. The wind made a low moaning noise around them. “Dear Lord, merciful God, forgive me my sins.” He wasn't sure if her lips were moving silently or if it was part of the spasms in her neck. “I place my soul in your hands. I trust in you.”

She went still. Lips not moving, eyes straight ahead, focused on something else, another reality. Father John could feel the life going out of her, and yet her hand remained the same, limp and cool. “God have mercy on your soul,” he whispered.

He let go of her hand; she would have to go on alone. He retrieved his arm, aware of the glass shards catching and tearing at his jacket, and stood up. The sound of sirens came from the distance, but the wind could imitate that eerie, distant wail. They were in the middle of the reservation, miles from the nearest ambulance, the nearest patrol car. It would take a while before help arrived. He had to go back up to the road, see about the injured man and keep him company. He was a priest. Wasn't that what he did? Dig inside himself to find encouragement and hope for someone else?

He turned to Vicky, waiting beside him, eyes fixed on the lifeless body of the woman inside the truck, the woman who had wanted them dead. The woman who had killed and killed.

He put his arms around Vicky and drew her close, allowing the warmth of her to warm the coldness inside him. Thank God, they were both alive.