The Thunder Keeper(43)
She was about to retrace her steps when Marie Champlain came through another door. A stocky woman, not more than five feet tall, with the black hair and pinkish skin of a breed. She wore a loose-fitting blue dress that flapped around her thick legs.
“Vicky? Was I expecting you?” She hurried forward, as if she were late for some forgotten appointment.
Vicky shook her head. “Do you have a minute?”
“For our own Indian lawyer, always.” The woman brushed past and opened the office door.
Vicky followed her into a small space with a desk and a two-seat black vinyl couch pushed against one wall. Papers and folders spilled over the desk and trailed across the couch in haphazard stacks. The director swooped up a handful of papers from the couch. “No sense standing when we can sit, I always say.” She settled into the chair at the desk and tossed the papers onto a sloping pile.
“How’ve you been?” Vicky began.
“Oh, holdin’ up okay.” The other woman entered into the familiar pattern. Gloomy days. Not much sunshine. “Our people been living in the sun so long we start feeling depressed when it goes away.” She glanced about, as if another idea had taken hold. “We got more and more Indian people here every day lookin’ for help. Sick, out of work, don’t have any place to leave the kids. Don’t have anything, some of ’em. No household stuff, no food. We try to get them fixed up with social services till they get on their feet.”
Vicky nodded. She’d heard the stories many times, and with them came the pain of unwanted memories. She, in a car with a hundred thousand miles on the odometer and a reverse gear that didn’t always work, driving to Denver to begin a new life, an old suitcase and a couple of boxes in the backseat holding everything she owned, the city sprawling ahead, stark and impersonal.
She drew in a long breath and shifted toward the edge of the couch, the preliminaries now over. “I’m looking for a Pueblo Indian named Eddie. He hung around with Duncan Grover.”
The director’s face froze. “That was one troublemaker, Grover,” she said. “Came around for a couple of powwows. You could smell the whiskey when he walked in the door. Beat up some Indian out in the parking lot about a month ago. Couple guys broke it up before I had to call the police.” She shrugged. “We’d just as soon not have the police coming out here too often. They get to think Indians are nothing but troublemakers. Anyway—” Another shrug. “Next thing I hear on the moccasin telegraph Grover’s jumped off a ledge at Bear Lake.”
The director let her eyes trail toward the corridor beyond the opened door. “Couldn’t believe my ears. Grover might’ve been a troublemaker, but I never heard of a warrior taking a flying leap off a ledge in a sacred place. Don’t make sense.”
Vicky nodded. It hadn’t made sense to her either, or to John O’Malley.
She said, “Father O’Malley thinks Eddie might know something about the death.”
“Never met the good priest.” The director broke into a smile. “Heard lots about him. People from the res say he’s a white man they can trust.”
True, Vicky thought. She had always trusted him, but now—the lawsuit . . . She went on: “If Grover was a troublemaker, somebody might have had a grudge against him.”
The director sat back and regarded her a moment. “Lots of people, you ask me.”
“What about the guy he got into a fight with?”
“Yeah, him for sure. He was a bloody mess, but soon’s the other guys pulled Grover off, he got himself into a brown pickup and tore outta here.”
“Who was he?” Vicky tried to keep the urgency out of her voice.
“Never saw him before that night.” The woman gave a halfhearted shrug. “Never seen him since. I can’t say I’m sorry about that.”
“Is there anyone else who knew Grover? Anyone who might know who Eddie is?”
“Sorry.” Marie shook her head, then stared straight ahead a moment, as if she were contemplating an image on the wall. “You say Eddie is Pueblo. I can ask around, get back to you.”
“Thanks, Marie.” Vicky stood up and started for the door. She had the same feeling that had come over her earlier, after talking with Jana Lewis: she was chasing phantoms. Rumors and shadows, like evil spirits, always ahead, around a corner, out of sight, laughing at her.
“Hold on a minute.” Marie was on her feet, shouldering past into the corridor. The clack of her footsteps mingled with the thump, thump of a basketball. After a moment she was back, a tall, well-built Indian behind her. He looked about thirty, with the dark, round face and intent look of the Cheyenne and black hair smoothed back into a ponytail. He bunched his fists in the pockets of his blue jeans jacket.