VICKY HOLDEN EASED the Jeep next to the curb in front of the brick bungalow that was now her office a few blocks off Main Street in Lander. A sheen of frost covered the blocklike sign in the front yard, so that all that was visible was her name and the meaningless words: ney at aw. She pulled the briefcase and black bag from the passenger seat, crossed the ice-tipped grass, and brushed at the sign until the words were clear: Attorney at Law. Cold specks of moisture prickled her wrists and sifted down into her gloves as she hurried up the steps to the porch and let herself inside.
Annie Bosey, the secretary she’d hired a month ago, sat at the desk across from the brick fireplace in what had once been a narrow living room. The phone was pressed between the woman’s ear and shoulder; her fingers shuffled a stack of papers.
Vicky gave the woman a nod and opened the French doors to her private office in the converted dining room with white paneling halfway up the walls and a wide window that framed the frost-lined juniper in the backyard. She dropped the briefcase and bag onto the desk and shrugged out of her coat, catching a glimpse of herself in the glass door as she did so: shoulder-length black hair, still tinged with moisture, falling to her shoulders; oval-shaped face with the high cheekbones; the little crook near the top of her nose; and the eyes of her people—so dark they were almost black. She’d turn forty-five this year, and the admiring looks she still got from men never ceased to take her by surprise.
Vicky combed her fingers through her hair, then tossed it back and walked over to the desk, aware of Annie’s voice hurrying to end the call. Twenty-five years old, divorced with two kids, a GED, and a résumé of low-paying jobs, Annie had shown up at her front door hours after the last secretary had given notice. Vicky hadn’t even put an ad in the Gazette. “Heard you need a secretary,” Annie had said. Of course, she’d heard. The moccasin telegraph flashed news across the rez faster than the Internet.
The outer office had gone quiet, and Vicky realized that Annie was standing between the French doors, bracing herself on the knobs, her mouth a round O, as if she were trying to catch her breath.
“What is it?” Vicky took the chair at her desk.
“It’s so terrible about Denise Painted Horse.”
Vicky felt a familiar hollow space opening inside her. She was the last to hear the gossip, it seemed. When she was married to Ben Holden and living on the rez, the gossip always raced to her house. That was a lifetime ago. She’d divorced Ben, left the kids—Lucas and Susan—with her mother and gone to Denver. When she came home ten years later, she was a lawyer—ho:x’iwu:ne’n—a woman who thought she could make herself a chief, the grandmothers said.
“You heard, didn’t you?”
“Why don’t you tell me.”
“Denise shot herself last night. She’s dead, Vicky.”
Vicky lifted herself to her feet. She’d known Denise and T.J. all her life. She and T.J. had been in the same class at St. Francis School. Denise was a few years behind, but after she and T.J. were married, they’d been like family. They knew why she’d had to leave Ben. They’d understood, even though she’d never put it into words. One summer, at a powwow, T.J. had pulled her aside and, the tip of his finger tracing the bruise on her cheek, said, “How long you going to put up with it, Vicky?” It had helped her find the strength to leave.
And it was T.J., she was certain, who had tried to get the business council to hire her to file a request with the BIA for a new environmental impact study on the proposed methane drilling. Afterward, when the Gazette had reported that a firm in Cheyenne would be advising the tribe, T.J. had called. “Damn it, Vicky.” He spat the words down the line. “You were best for the job. The council has gotta start trusting our own people. So what if you’re a woman?”
“Where’s T.J.?” Vicky was at the coat tree, pulling on her coat, barely aware of having walked across the office.
“Over at Vera’s. He’s been calling all morning.”
“Better reschedule today’s appointments,” Vicky said, scooping her bag off the desk and starting back across the office.
“Want me to call T.J. and tell him you’re on the way?”
“He knows I’ll come.” Vicky pulled the front door shut behind her.
FROST TRACED THE reservation, like white moss clinging to the brown prairie and outlining the stalks of wild grass and clumps of brush that flamed gold and vermillion in the October sun as far as Vicky could see. The wind had picked up, knocking at the sides of the Jeep and sending little clouds of dust swirling across Highway 287. She squinted against the glare of the sun on the windshield and tried to wrap her mind around the impossible.
Impossible that Denise Painted Horse was dead! When was it that she’d run into Denise at the grocery store? Last week? Vicky had been hurrying down the aisle, pulling items into her cart, when she’d heard a familiar voice calling her name. She glanced around and saw Denise coming at a run behind a half-filled cart.
“I’ve been meaning to call you, Vicky.” Denise had thrown a nervous glance behind her. There was no one else in the aisle. “I have to talk to you.”
“What is it?” Vicky had asked.
“Not here.” Another glance along the aisle. “I’ll call you.”
She’d never called.
Vicky felt herself squinting now against the moisture welling behind her eyes. She should have called Denise. Why hadn’t she called? Chances were that Denise had some legal question. Something about her job at Fort Washakie School, or about one of the field days she was always planning for her students—her kids, she called them. They’d wanted a family, she and T.J., but it hadn’t worked out, Denise had once confided. T.J. had thrown his energies into politics, and she’d thrown her energies into her students and her passion for teaching them about the Old Time, so that they’d know their own history, she said, and be proud.
Once—ah, Vicky could picture her at the powwow, watching the dancers coming into the arena—she said that she wished she’d lived in the Old Time, when Sharp Nose was chief, and the people lived free on the plains.
“Why?” Vicky remembered asking. “You’d like butchering buffalo? Traipsing across the plains looking for wild vegetables and berries? Cooking all the meals and looking after the children and putting up the tipis and taking them down when the village moved? The women did all the work and catered to the men.”
“So what’s different?” Denise had thrown her head back and laughed.
Vicky heard herself laugh out loud at the memory. The sound hung in the air like a cry above the thump of the tires over a patch of icy asphalt.
She took a right past Fort Washakie School where Denise had taught, and drove toward Ethete. Another fifteen minutes on a graveled road, and the Jeep was churning across the bare dirt yard that wrapped around a small, brown house, the sun glinting on the sloped roof and flashing off the metal bumpers of the pickups and sedans parked in front. T.J. was the only one in the yard, coatless, sunken into himself in the cold, his light-colored shirt flattened against his chest in the wind as he paced up and down, puffing on the cigarette cupped in one hand. He looked in her direction and flicked the cigarette onto the ground.
Vicky parked behind a sedan and threaded her way around the other vehicles toward the man. He stood about six feet tall, a wirey build beneath his shirt and dark trousers, black hair pushed back behind his ears, dark eyes rimmed with exhaustion. Still, he was handsome, she thought. Still the handsome man she’d known all her life.
“Thanks for coming, Vicky,” he said, pulling her into his arms. His shirt was damp with perspiration and cold. The odors of sweat, tobacco, and whiskey drifted over her.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, stepping back. His eyes were dark slits beneath the sharp ledge of his forehead, and a tuft of hair stood out, as if he’d been pulling at it. She took another step back from the sour, whiskey breath that made her stomach lurch with the memory of Ben. It was not a memory she wanted.
“You’re going to catch cold out here,” she said. “Why don’t we go inside?”
He shook his head. “It’s my fault, Vicky. All my fault. I killed her.”
“What are you saying?”
The man looked out across the yard and the plains, silent and cold, flowing into the sky. “She did it ’cause of me,” he said.
Vicky set one hand on the man’s arm. “You’re not making sense, T.J. You’ve had a horrible shock. You should get some rest. Let’s go inside.”
Vicky tried to steer the man toward the stoop, but T.J. yanked his arm free. “All the relatives showed up to help me grieve. Where the hell am I gonna rest? I need air, need to walk around, need to get . . .” His voice trailed off.
Sober, she thought.
“Fed’s on the way over. Maybe he’s got the coroner’s report. Wants to interview me again. Christ, he asked me enough questions last night.”
Vicky felt a jab of discomfort. Last night’s interview should have been sufficient for a suicide. If he had the coroner’s report, Gianelli should be able to close the investigation, unless . . .
Unless there was something unusual in the report. Even the shadow of a doubt about whether Denise had committed suicide, and the fed would be taking a very close look at Denise’s husband. Vicky studied the man in front of her a moment. He was in no condition for a formal interview, especially if Gianelli was investigating a suspicious death.
She dug her cell out of her bag. “I’m calling Gianelli,” she said, tapping the keys. “We’ll postpone the interview. You can come to my apartment, shower, get something to eat and a few hours’ sleep.”
There was an instant when she thought he wouldn’t go along. Then he nodded.
Two rings, and Gianelli was on the line. “It’s Vicky,” she said. She’d dealt with the FBI agent on numerous cases over the last five years. Homicides, kidnappings, fraud, embezzlement—all the crimes that the federal government considered “major” fell into the fed’s jurisdiction.
“I’m with T.J.,” she hurried on, turning away from the dark, smudged eyes of the man beside her. “He needs some rest before he talks to you again. I’ll bring him to your office this afternoon.”
“So, you’ll be with him?” There was something unsettling in the question, as if T.J. was going to need an attorney.
“He’s a friend, Ted.”
“See you at three,” Gianelli said.
Vicky pushed the END key and looked back at T.J. “Do you have any fresh clothes?”
The man nodded. “I keep some things here. Sometimes I stay with Vera.” He shrugged off any impulse he might have had to explain. “I want you for my lawyer, Vicky. I can pay . . .”
Vicky put up the palm of one hand. “Wait in the Jeep. I’ll get your things,” she said, starting across the hard-packed dirt for the front stoop.
From inside came the dull, staccato rip of voices. She rapped on the door, then stepped into a square living room filled with people. The faint odors of coffee and hot grease floated like a cloud over the room. Grandmothers clustered together around the sofa and upholstered chairs, elders on the straight-backed kitchen chairs pushed against one wall. Everywhere she looked—T.J.’s and Denise’s relatives. In the far corner was Max Oldman, Denise’s great-uncle, which made him her great-grandfather, in the Arapaho Way. Through the doorway to the kitchen, she could see Vera talking to a group of women.
Vicky pushed back the impulse to cut through the crowd and go directly to Vera. It was the white way. She started across the room, greeting the grandmothers, holding roughened, blue-veined hands in her own. Nodding. Nodding. Yes, Denise had been a good woman, a traditional. In the compliments paid to the dead woman, she could sense the lingering disapproval of herself, a woman who had stepped ahead of the men.
The elders were next, gray-haired, with furrowed faces and black, distracted eyes that might have been staring into another time, watching other scenes unfold. Max took hold of her hand, squeezing it hard, and she heard herself saying the empty words: so sorry, so terrible.
“Denise kept the Old Time alive for the kids.” Max shook his head. He had black hair, threaded with gray and caught in two braids that dropped down the front of his denim shirt. He was probably in his eighties, frail and bent with gnarled hands that extended past the wide silver bracelets at his thin wrists. Still there was a strength in the man that Vicky could feel with the certainty that she felt her own heartbeat. In the Old Time, Max Oldman would have been a chief.
“Denise was all the time coming around,” he said, “wanting to know about Sharp Nose and what he did for the people. Now who’s gonna help the kids learn how the ancestors worked hard so the future generations could be happy? Denise thought a lot about the past. T.J., all he thinks about is the here and now. You gonna help T.J.?” The elder looked up at her, searching her eyes. For the briefest instant, Vicky thought she’d detected a note of disapproval in the elder’s question. She pushed the idea away.
“I’ll do my best.” She smiled at the old man. It had been the elders who had seen that, when she became an attorney, she’d received power—magical gifts was how they looked at it—to help the people. She’d always had the feeling that, despite the grandmothers’ disapproval of the fact that she had left her husband and made herself into a lawyer, the elders were on her side.
It was another few moments before Vicky could excuse herself and head into the kitchen. Vera was waiting for her.
“T.J. said you’d come soon as you heard the news.” The woman had the same sleep-starved look that Vicky had seen in T.J. Exhaustion lay in the sloped shoulders and fluttering hands. “Some bastards brought a bottle over last night. They was drinking outside, T.J., too. Hasn’t had a drink in . . .” She glanced at the ceiling. “Fifteen years. I don’t blame him none. He’s going through hell. That woman, she had no right to put him through that kind of hell.”
Quiet descended over the kitchen, and Vicky could feel the eyes of the other women turning toward them. She took Vera’s hand. The woman was trembling. “I’m going to take T.J. to my place to rest,” she said, her voice low. “I’ll take him to Gianelli this afternoon. Will you get his things?”
Vera drew in a long breath. The trembling seemed to recede into whatever recess it had erupted from. “Wait here.” She withdrew her hand and headed into the living room.
“Want some coffee?” one of the women asked. The others had turned back to the counters, cutting casseroles and cakes, stacking paper plates and Styrofoam cups. Another woman was at the stove, turning chunks of fry bread in a pan. Drops of grease spattered the adjacent counter.
“No, thanks,” Vicky said. Vera stood in the doorway, holding out a canvas bag that bulged at the sides. A plaid wool jacket was folded on top.
“Try not to worry about T.J.,” Vicky said, taking the bag and jacket. The load was heavy in her arms. She slipped past the woman and made her way through the knots of people to the front door.
T.J. was asleep, she thought, opening the passenger door. Then she realized that he was awake, eyes closed, staring at some image on the back of his eyelids, clasping and unclasping his hands. The inside of the Jeep was like a freezer. She set the jacket on his lap, then shut the door.
He was pushing his arms into the sleeves as she got in behind the steering wheel and tossed the canvas bag over the front seat. The stale smell of whiskey hung in the space between them.
“What else does the fed want from me?” T.J. asked, a plaintive note in his voice that made her heart go out to the man.
The Jeep plowed over the barrow ditch and out onto the road before Vicky glanced over, struggling to ignore the uneasy feeling that clung to her like the odor of whiskey. “Maybe you’d better tell me what you told Gianelli last night.”
It was a moment before T.J. said anything. The rhythm of his breathing—in and out, in and out—was like a soft drumbeat punctuating the sound of tires crunching gravel. “Told him how I came home from the office and found her,” he said finally.
“What time was that?”
“Late, Vicky. I don’t walk around looking at the clock.”
Vicky glanced over again. Shades of wariness and distrust were working through the man’s expression. “No one is accusing you of anything,” she said.
“Around nine,” he said after a few seconds. “Maybe nine-fifteen. Council meeting ran late. Some of the councilmen are starting to think that maybe we shouldn’t go against Senator Evans on the methane drilling, since he might be the next president. Maybe we oughtta withdraw the request for more studies that we sent the BIA.”
Vicky stopped herself from commenting. This wasn’t her business. Surely the law firm in Cheyenne would discourage the council from backing away.
“Found her in the bedroom,” T.J. pushed on. “Blood all over the floor. God, I knew she was dead, but she still had her eyes open. I started screaming. I don’t even remember calling 911, but I must’ve, because pretty soon the police were pounding on the door. Then the fed showed up and started asking me all kinds of questions. Father John came over.”
John O’Malley. She’d been working at putting the man out of her mind. No more phone calls with some lame excuse about how somebody was doing, just to hear his voice. They’d worked together on a lot of cases since she’d come back to the area five years ago—DUIs, divorces, drunk and disorderlies, drug possessions, and homicides—more homicides than she wanted to remember. He would’ve been one of the first people called last night, and he would’ve gone. She wondered if her people realized the enormous space that John O’Malley filled on the rez, like the space he had filled in her life, and the enormous emptiness that he would leave behind should he ever go away.
“What kinds of questions?” She had to force her thoughts back. They were heading south now on 287 behind a truck that spit gravel off the bed. Brown dust flecked the windshield like mosquitoes. Vicky turned on the wipers and tried to focus on the road past the spray of water and the gradual appearance of a clear half-circle of glass.
T.J. sucked in a breath, then he said, “ ‘Who’d the gun belong to? Where’d Denise get it?’ How the hell do I know? Denise hated guns, never would touch them. ‘Was she depressed? On drugs? Drinking?’ Christ. Denise never took a drink in her life. She was the one put up with me when I was drinking. Last night . . .” He hesitated. Out of the corner of her eye, Vicky could see him jabbing his fingers into his hair. “I’m not proud . . .”
“I know, T.J.” The odor of whiskey was still there, encapsulated in the Jeep, permeating the seat and dashboard. She followed the truck around the curve into Lander, staying back a couple of car lengths from gravel still rolling like marbles over the asphalt. Down Main Street several blocks, then right, left. She pulled into the empty space in front of the blocklike apartment building. Usually she ran up the stairs to the second floor, but T.J. was shaking now, unsteady on his feet, lurching as they walked up the sidewalk. Inside the entry, she punched the elevator button and waited until the yellow light came on and the doors parted. She guided T.J. inside, where he slumped against the back railing. After the elevator rocked to a stop, she took the man’s arm and led him down the hall to her door at the far end.
“There’s lunchmeat and fruit in the fridge.” she said, showing him into the living room. “Bread in the drawer.” She waved at the small kitchen and led him down the hall. The bath on the left, the cabinet with clean towels. The bedroom on the right. A white terry cloth robe on the closet door, an array of cosmetics spread over the dresser top, books stacked on the bedside table. She found a wool blanket in the closet and set it on the bed. “You can put this over you,” she said.
His arms were around her, pulling her into him, his mouth moving over her face, the odor of whiskey like a blanket suffocating her. “Stay with me, Vicky,” he whispered. “I need you to stay with me. I never needed anything more in my whole life.”
“Stop it, T.J.” Vicky managed to get her fists between them and push at his chest. He leaned away, and she pushed again as hard as she could until he was staggering backward, arms flapping at his side. He crashed into the foot of the bed and flopped down on his back.
“I’ll be out front at a quarter to three,” she managed, her breath caught in her chest. “For Godsakes, T.J., pull yourself together.”