CHRISTINE NELSON LIVED on the north side of Riverton in a neighborhood of squat, flat-roofed duplexes with a FOR RENT, FURNISHED sign in one window and oily blue patches on the asphalt at the curb. Father John slowed past the occasional parked vehicle, looking for the address that he’d gotten from the curator’s file in his office—engine running outside, pickup bucking like a corralled stallion. The units all looked the same, with green-painted siding and small windows flanking the front doors recessed from small, concrete stoops.
He spotted the numbers next to the door at the end unit, where dried stalks lifted out of a red planter at the corner of the stoop. There was no sign of the woman’s Range Rover.
Father John pulled into the curb and started up a narrow sidewalk that divided a square of brown-spotted lawn. He stopped. The front door stood open a couple of inches.
He stepped onto the stoop and rapped on the hinged edge of the door. “Christine?” he called.
Silence, apart from the breeze knocking at the gutter.
He pushed at the door and stepped inside. Papers crackled under his boots. Papers everywhere—strewn across the green carpet, spilling over the sofa and chair. Foam poked out of long slashes in the cushions tossed about. A table lamp lay shattered in the center of the room, and, over in a corner, the carpet had been yanked away and dropped back on itself in a mute triangle. The atmosphere was suffused with a sense of spent desperation.
Father John stood still a moment, listening for the sound of life. There was nothing but the sounds of his own breathing—rapid, shallow intakes of air. He headed into the kitchen, picking his way through papers and shards of glass. Whoever had done this hadn’t stopped in the living room. Cabinet doors were flung open, broken dishes and glasses littered the countertops and vinyl floor. Boxes cut open, cereal tossed about. The refrigerator door hung into the room, drawers pulled out, shelves swept clean. A rectangle of white light shone over the carton of milk that had spilled across the floor, running into a broken jar that oozed red jam.
He swung around, his heart thudding in his ears, and crossed the living room to a short hallway. A pair of closed doors faced each other. He opened the door on the right into the same chaos: mattress pulled to the floor, dresser drawers upended with a few silky pieces of women’s underwear spilling out, closet doors ajar, a couple of blouses and pairs of slacks pulled off the hangers and trailing into the room.
Christine Nelson was nowhere.
He crossed the hall and reached for the knob on the other door, his hand numb with reluctance. He opened the door into the bathroom. Towel bars ripped from the walls, broken bottles scattered over the heap of towels on the black and white vinyl floor. Tiny pieces of glass winked in the pool of reddish liquid inside the door. Stooping down, he dipped a finger in the liquid and brought it to his nose. Lotion that smelled of roses.
He’d wiped his finger on a corner of a towel and made a half-turn into the hall when he heard the noise, like the noise of rustling leaves. Then, footsteps, tentative and carefully placed across the littered floor of the living room.
Father John moved along the plastered wall toward the noise, a single thought filling his mind, pushing out every other possibility. Whoever had ransacked the house had returned to take a harder look. What was next? Pull up the carpet, rip out the floors, take down the wallboard?
The footsteps had stopped moving, and Father John also stopped, his shoulder pressed against the rough plaster. He kept his breathing shallow and quiet, another thought crowding into his mind now. Whoever had ransacked the house could have gotten more information and knew where to find whatever he was looking for. Father John curled his hands into fists—whoever was in the living room could have gotten the information from Christine.
He started inching forward again, his breath tight in his chest. The footsteps had also started moving—receding, as if the person had sensed the presence of someone else in the house. The intruder would return, Father John was certain. The violent search—the torn and crushed pieces of Christine Nelson’s life—attested to the fact that he would return. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that the person about to vanish knew where Christine was.
“Hey!” Father John shouted as he burst around the corner into the living room.
A woman whirled about. Her mouth hung open a moment, gulping in air. Then she started to scream. She backed into the door, hands flailing behind her for the knob, the screaming moving toward hysteria.
Father John uncurled his fists and lifted his hands, palms outward. “I’m sorry.” He had to shout over the wail of her voice. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
The woman threw both hands over her mouth, as if to stifle the noise erupting of its own will. Then she reached around and yanked at the door, moving along the edge until she was in the opening, a step away from the outdoors and freedom.
“I’m Father O’Malley from St. Francis.” He tried to keep his voice calm. “I’m looking for Christine.”
The woman leaned against the door for support, and, for a instant, he thought she might slide to the floor. She had large eyes that shone with fear. He guessed that she was in her thirties. A slight build beneath the baggy red sweatshirt that dropped over the top of her blue jeans and reddish-blond hair pulled back into a knot with long ends that stuck out like feathers.
“Are you a friend?” he asked.
She stared at the littered floor, then lifted her eyes to his a moment. “Jana Harris,” she said, tossing her head toward the outdoors. “I live next door.”
“Christine didn’t come to work today.”
“I figured as much,” she said.
He waited, and finally the woman explained: She and Christine left for work at the same time every morning. It was always a tossup as to who drove away first, but this morning, Christine wasn’t there. Neither was her Range Rover. She figured Christine must’ve left early, but later she’d got to thinking about it. You could set your clock by when Christine walked out of the door every morning. Maybe something had happened. So she’d called the museum and someone else had answered, not Christine. The minute she’d gotten home, she’d come over to check.
Jana Harris threw another glance around the room. “Last night when I was watching TV,” she went on, “I heard a noise, like somebody sideswiping a car. I looked outside. There was an SUV parked across the street, but nobody was around. I didn’t think any more about it.”
“What time was that?” Father John asked.
She shrugged. “The news just ended. Must’ve been about ten-thirty.”
Father John kept his eyes on the woman propped against the door, the upended cushions and piles of debris blurring around him. Christine had driven out of the mission grounds about eight-thirty on her way to a meeting. She could have gotten home by ten-thirty and walked in on a burglary, except that this was no burglary and . . . What was it that gnawed at him? The sparseness of the place, the worn furniture and bare walls. Nothing but shredded newspapers, as if Christine had not intended to stay long. Whoever had ransacked the place had conducted a determined, angry search.
And when he’d left, he could have taken Christine with him.
“I’m going to call the police,” Father John said, starting for the door, his boots crunching the shards of glass. The woman backed outside, and he brushed past her and cut a diagonal across the yard to the pickup. He opened the passenger door and pulled the cell phone out of the glove compartment. Another couple of minutes, and he was talking to a female operator at the Riverton Police Department. He should remain at the house, the woman said. A patrol officer was on the way.
Father John tossed the phone onto the seat and walked back to the woman sitting on the front stoop, head pitched forward, arms clasped around her knees. He sat down beside her on the cold concrete.
“Just when everything was coming together for her.” Jana Harris turned sideways, studying him a moment. “Christine was excited about the Curtis exhibit. Said people were coming from all over to see the photographs. She’d already started working on another project . . .”
This was new. Christine hadn’t mentioned bringing in another exhibit. Usually the museum showed Arapaho artifacts—beaded clothing and moccasins, necklaces and belts, eagle-feathered headdresses, bows and arrows and quivers, a tipi once owned by Chief Sharp Nose. The collections kept growing. The Curtis exhibit was the first exhibit from outside.
“What kind of project?” he asked.
“You don’t know? You’re her boss.”
“The boss only thinks he knows everything.”
“I thought you were some kind of ogre, making her work every evening.”
“She was working on the project in the evenings?” That explained Christine’s Range Rover parked outside the museum after closing time.
“What else?” Jana was clasping and unclasping her hands between her knees. “Christine never told me what it was, but she was obsessed, I can tell you that. I said to her, Christine, you gotta get out more. I know a fun bar. We can go have a couple drinks, meet some cowboys. Nothing like a few laughs to take your mind off work, but she didn’t want any part of it. Work, work, work. That’s all she wanted.”
Father John watched the white police cruiser slide alongside the curb. Blue lettering on the doors read RIVERTON POLICE. The driver’s door swung open. Father John got to his feet as an officer in a dark-blue uniform, trousers, and jacket, crawled out, slammed the door shut, and started up the sidewalk. The brim of his hat shaded a round, boyish face.
“Father O’Malley?” he asked.
Father John nodded, and the officer turned his attention to Jana Harris. “And you are?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Father John saw the woman start to get up, swaying to one side. He reached down, took her arm, and guided her upward as she gave the officer her name and, nodding toward the next stoop, said that she lived next door. Father John realized that she was shivering beside him.
“What’s going on?” The officer locked eyes with Father John.
“We came to check on Christine Nelson, the woman who lives here,” he said, gesturing with his head toward the door. Then he explained that Christine had been the curator at the museum at St. Francis for the past month, that she’d left the mission last night to attend a meeting and hadn’t come to work today. The house had been ransacked.
“Wait here,” the officer said, sliding past the half-opened door. Several moments passed. From inside the house came the muffled noise of boots on carpet, the rattle of paper and the crackle of glass. Cold permeated the air, and fingers of blue shadows had started to spread over the yard. From down the block came the sound of a motor coughing into life, and somewhere nearby, a cat was meowing.
A quiet, normal neighborhood, he thought, trying to push away the images crowding into his mind. He didn’t want to think of Christine coming home last night in the dark, blundering in on someone ripping her house a part.
“Looks like somebody got mad as hell,” the officer said, shouldering his way past the door and onto the stoop. “Any idea who the lady was going to meet?”
Father John said that he had no idea.
The officer faced Jana. “Were you home last night?”
When she nodded, he pushed on. “Hear any noise? Any screams?”
“What?” The woman’s head bounced back. She blinked up at the boyish face. “Screams? No, no screaming.”
It was odd, Father John thought, the sense of relief that flowed over him. No screams, and he hadn’t seen any sign of blood in the house. That gave him hope. Christine could have gotten away. Dear Lord, let that be true.
“Nothing but a car revving up on the street,” Jana said.
“What kind of car?” The officer had extracted a notepad and pen from inside his jacket. He cupped the pad in his hand and began scribbling.
“I don’t know. Big car, SUV of some kind.” Jana hunched her shoulders and dipped her chin into the folds of her sweatshirt. “It wasn’t Christine’s.”
“What kind of vehicle does the woman drive?”
“Range Rover,” Father John said. “Light-tan color.”
“Car belong to her?”
“I assume so,” Father John said. It hadn’t occurred to him that Christine might be driving someone else’s car.
“License?”
Father John glanced away, trying to picture the license plate. He’d walked past the vehicle dozens of times. “The license was from Teton County. Number twenty-two on the plate,” he said.
“Recall any other numbers?
Jana Harris was shaking her head.
Father John closed his eyes. God, what were the numbers. “Seven,” he said, the first number coming into view. “Three. Four.” The rest was a blur.
“Range Rover,” the officer said, still scribbling. “Teton County, seven, three, four. It’s a start.” He looked up from the notepad. “Christine Nelson ever failed to show up for work before?”
Father John shook his head. “She is very dependable.”
“I’m freezing to death,” Jana said, hunching her shoulders and dipping her chin further into the folds of her sweatshirt. “Can we go to my house and talk?”
“Lead the way.” The officer reached back and pulled the door shut as Jana started across the lawn, her shoes snapping against the dried leaves scattered about.
Father John started after the woman, the officer behind him, so close he could feel the warmth of the man’s breath on his neck.
“I’m gonna call in the investigator on duty,” he said. “He’ll want to know everything that you know about Christine Nelson.”
Odd, Father John thought. The woman had worked for him for a month now, and he knew nothing at all about her.