The Story Teller (30 page)

She kept the same pace—one foot in front of the other through the sunshine, into the coolness of the building, and back into the sunshine, the footsteps behind her all the way to the Bronco. Her hand trembled as she found the key in her bag, jammed it into the lock on the driver’s side, and pulled open the door. Emil Coughlin was on the other side. The instant she hit the unlock button, he had the door open and was lifting her carry-on into the back. Then he slid in beside her. “Very good,” he said. “You deserve an A-plus.”

Vicky turned the ignition and waited, muscles tense, as the engine spurted and belched into life. Then she slid the gear into reverse and backed out. In forward now, she careened through the lot, tires squealing into the heat, as she turned into Airport Road and then on to Main Street.

28

Y
ou will slow down,” Emil Coughlin ordered. Then, in a reasonable tone: “It would never do, my dear, for the police to pull us over. A waste of precious time, wouldn’t you agree?”

Vicky let up on the accelerator.
Keep calm,
she told herself. She had at least twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to navigate the empty, Sunday-afternoon streets of Riverton. Twenty minutes in which John O’Malley was still alive, and so was she. Twenty minutes to negotiate with a madman. But she had no illusions as to what would happen once she and Emil Coughlin reached the mission. Three people already dead . . .

She said, “Why would an intelligent man such as yourself believe he could get away with this? You must realize I’ve already met with Detective Clark. He knows everything. Even if you kill us—”

“Kill you!” The professor let out another loud guffaw. “Oh, my dear, how you disappoint me. I have no intention of killing either you or your priest friend. It is my sincere hope we can reach an understanding. There’s already been too much violence. If the others had only been as rational, as logical, as you and Father O’Malley, it might have been avoided. I do hope we won’t have any repetition.”

The professor was quiet a moment. Marshaling his argument, Vicky thought. She waited. The flat-roofed
buildings of Riverton’s main streets passed outside her window—garage, motels, supermarkets. A few other cars moved slowly ahead, stopping at lights, turning into side streets. Normal. Normal.

The professor’s voice again: “My associates and I are not unreasonable. Surely we can all come to some kind of equitable understanding. No doubt an Indian mission could use some extra cash, as I’m sure you could, my dear. After all, I’m well aware of how much trouble you’ve gone to, how concerned you are about the ledger book. Let me assure you, the book will not be destroyed. My associates and I have located a wealthy collector interested in the entire book. He is willing to pay a premium for that privilege, but we will all feel better, won’t we, knowing the book will not be destroyed? We’ll be meeting with him in Tokyo the day after tomorrow. Of course, that means we must have the book. You do understand, don’t you?”

“Look, Emil,” Vicky began.
Calm, calm,
she told herself. “Neither Father John nor I knows where Todd put the ledger book.” True, she was thinking. At least, she didn’t know the exact location. She was only sure Todd had left it somewhere at the mission. “The reservation is a large place,” she went on. “It could be anywhere. Hidden in a cave, an old building . . .”

He reached over and touched her arm. His palm was wet with perspiration. “Please save your breath. I believe you and the priest know exactly where the poor boy would have hidden a precious treasure. If you don’t tell us . . .” He took his hand away. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him patting back a strand of hair, a tentative gesture, as if he were trying to sort through several possibilities, all distasteful. “I’m afraid my associates will have to take St. Francis Mission apart, board by board. Believe me, they are capable of doing so. As for you and your priest friend, well . . .” He
raised both hands toward the windshield. “Let us hope such unpleasantness will not come to pass.”

Vicky turned right onto Seventeen-Mile Road. An oncoming pickup loped by. A couple of kids were playing stickball on the bare dirt yard in front of a small house. Another turn, and she was in the mission compound. Her heart raced as she came around the bend of Circle Drive. The red Toyota pickup was parked in front of the administration building.

She wheeled in next to it, switched off the ignition, and turned to the man in the passenger seat. “The police are on the way,” she said, struggling to hide the desperation of the lie. She was clutching for a lifeline, like a rock climber dangling over the precipice.

Her statement seemed to give him a moment of thought. He frowned, pulled his lips into a tight line. Then: “A nice try, my dear. But how could that be true? Why would the police be on their way here?”

“I called them.” Her voice was steady.

“You called them? When you were running through the airport to catch a plane? When you hadn’t even seen me?” He gave her a disparaging smile. “Get out,” he ordered.

Vicky lifted herself outside, her legs numb beneath her. He was already around the Bronco, gripping her arm, propelling her up the cement stairs and through the wide front door—the familiar door—and into the entry with slats of sunshine crisscrossing the wood floor. There was a quiet vacancy about the building.

Still pulling her along, Emil Coughlin moved toward the closed door with the sign in the middle:
FATHER O’MALLEY.
He gave a sharp, quick rap. The door flung open, and in the center stood a man Vicky had seen before—about six feet tall with sandy, shoulder-length hair swept back behind his ears and red-veined eyes behind the thick glasses from too many hours—too much of a lifetime—spent peering at the tiny print on the
pages of ancient, mouse-gnawed books. He was holding a small black pistol.

The book dealer Richard Loomis gave a little bow and stepped back, boots crinkling the papers strewn over the floor. Behind him, Vicky glimpsed the books toppled on shelves, piles of folders and papers strewn over the desk, drawers falling out of filing cabinets. She gripped the edge of the doorjamb.
They’ve already killed him.
Then she heard John O’Malley shouting: “Are you okay, Vicky? Did he hurt you?”

She pulled free of Emil’s grasp and darted into the office. Father John was about to get out of the barrel-shaped chair he kept for visitors. Standing over him was another man she’d met—the Lakota student at CU-Denver, the same student who had come to Richard Loomis’s bookstore.

“Get back in your chair.” The Lakota gave Father John a little shove.

Emil was at Vicky’s elbow. “You know my esteemed friend Richard Loomis,” he said, pointing toward the man with the gun. “A highly knowledgeable dealer. I depend upon him to fetch the highest prices for my best finds. Of course he understood the ledger book was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that would free him from the prison of that dreary bookstore. You can thank him, my dear. Richard made contact with the Japanese collector who has promised to preserve the book. The Japanese have such respect for tradition.”

“Shut up, Emil.” The book dealer waved the pistol.

“Now, now.” The professor shook his head. “There is no need for incivility. In any case, I hardly believe you are the one to caution me. Not when you allowed yourself to be taken in by these two.” He waved toward Father John and Vicky. “A mission priest and his attorney shopping for an Arapaho ledger book, and you believed their story! Give me your best bid, you told them, or something to that effect, making it perfectly clear the
ledger book was available. Until then, they had no proof it even existed.”

The professor exhaled a long breath, as if he had just flunked a student he had once hoped would graduate with honors. “We must put all that behind us,” he said. Then, a glance at the Lakota. “Have you met my student Skip Bearing? A very cooperative and farseeing young man, unlike, I’m sorry to say, Todd Harris.”

The Lakota waved the pistol between Vicky and another barrel chair across the office. “Over there.”

“Please, Skip,” Emil Coughlin was saying as she walked over and took the chair. “This entire matter can be settled amicably.”

“Skip and I will handle this,” Richard Loomis said. “So far your brilliant ideas have resulted in nada, zip. The kid didn’t have the book. And the girls turned out to be a lot of useless trouble. We’ve got a meeting in Tokyo day after tomorrow. I’m out of time and patience.”

Emil held out one hand, as if to object, but Richard Loomis had already walked over to Father John. “You, Father, are going to tell us where the book is. No more games. No more of your Irish stories about going off to Boston and not knowing anything about a ledger book. All stories, and now we’re going to have the truth.”

“May I interject?” Emil Coughlin stepped into the middle of the room. “Vicky claims she has notified the police. I doubt her story, but we may not have much time.”

“Relax,” Richard Loomis said. “This will not take long. Father O’Malley is about to give us a million-dollar ledger book. His other choice is to watch Skip”—a nod toward the Lakota—“destroy the face of this beautiful woman.”

Vicky started off the chair, every muscle in her body coiled for flight, but the Lakota was advancing toward her, a sickening pleasure in his eyes. Even when the fist
crashed against her face, she hadn’t expected it, hadn’t seen it coming. The blow sent her reeling back along the sharp knobs of the chair, spiraling down toward a blackness eclipsing everything except the pain that seared her jaw and coursed through her body.

She grabbed the edge of the chair, fighting to stay conscious, dimly aware of John O’Malley shouting, “No! No!”, of the Lakota staggering backward, whirling about as the room erupted in shouts and bellows. Fists thudded into flesh, and bodies crashed into the desk, against the bookcase, and back into the center of the office, rolling across the debris-strewn floor and staggering upward again.

She blinked, trying to focus beyond the pain, and realized that John O’Malley was ramming her assailant against the wall while Emil Coughlin—stumbling and screaming—was grabbing at his shirt, trying to pull him away. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Richard Loomis edging along the desk, pistol outstretched in both hands, taking careful aim. She swung around, grabbed the phone off the desk, and threw herself against the man, smashing the phone into the side of his head.

The pistol clattered to the floor as he staggered sideways, groaning and holding his head. Vicky dropped to her knees, scrambling for the small black pistol lost in the piles of paper. A sharp crashing noise of doors slamming and boots stomping reverberated through the floorboards beneath her hands. More of them coming, she thought, groping frantically for the pistol, feeling her fingers curl around the cold metal.

She struggled to get upright amid the black boots and dark pant legs swimming around her, the chorus of shouting voices. “Police.” Not until she was almost on her feet did she realize that Ted Gianelli, the local FBI agent, was pulling her upright, slipping the pistol out of
her hand, telling her that everything was okay, everything was under control.

John O’Malley pushed through the crowd of uniforms, and instinctively she moved toward him, feeling his arms encircle her, his heart pounding. He held her a moment, then stepped back and lifted her face. His fingers ran across her cheek. “You’re going to have a beautiful shiner,” he said.

There was a cut along his cheekbone, a knot bulging on his forehead. The front of his shirt was ripped, and when she took his hands in hers, she saw that the knuckles were raw and bleeding. “You don’t look so hot yourself,” she said.

Glancing past him, she saw Richard Loomis and Emil Coughlin facedown on the floor, arms stretched behind. Officers were leaning over them, snapping handcuffs around their wrists. Gianelli had stepped across the room, where Skip slouched against the wall, eyes closed. “This one’s gonna need an ambulance,” the agent called.

Then he was back beside them. “Jesus Christ, John. Where’d you learn to fight?” He held up one hand. “Don’t tell me. You were an Irish kid in Boston.” He shook his head. “I feel sorry for the other kids.”