Eye of the Wolf, page 26
“Frankie must’ve heard the racket, ’cause the deputy comes running
down the hallway and says, ‘He jumped out the window,’ and they all
went running outdoors. I went after ’em, and I see Frankie’s footprints
dug into the ground, like he was pounding hard, all the way to where he
parked the pickup. I seen what the gunshots was all about. There was a
cop out back, like they expected Frankie to run, and that cop went run-
ning after him. He was shooting off his gun, like he’s a real big man
gonna shoot Frankie in the back. It made me sick, Vicky. I thought I was
gonna throw up, thinking Frankie could’ve been dead, but he made it to
the pickup and he was out on the road. Those cops jumped into their
cars and went after him, but he was gone, Vicky. It was like that road
was bare.”
Except for the tire tracks, Vicky thought. The police had probably
already caught up with Frankie Montana. The man was probably in
custody, with more charges piled onto the homicide charges: resisting
arrest, eluding officers. Burton would come up with a whole list of
charges, enough to ensure that, even if Frankie beat the homicide
charges, he was looking at prison.
“Listen, Lucille,” Vicky said. “I’ll find out where Frankie is.”
“They didn’t get him.”
“How do you know?”
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“I called the sheriff. They said he didn’t get arrested. They called him
a suspect at large. They’re looking all over the rez for him right now.
They’re gonna shoot him, Vicky.”
“Don’t let yourself think like that.”
“I’m tellingyou. They blame him for all the trouble them murders have
stirred up, and they want to put an end to it, so they’ll just shoot him.”
“I’ll get back to you,” Vicky said, then punched the off button. The
receiver felt like a piece of lead in her hand. A crackling noise came
from somewhere in the building, barely registering on her conscious-
ness. Suppose Lucille was right? She could imagine the scenario. A cou-
ple of cops spot Frankie’s pickup out in the middle of the reservation
somewhere and force him off the road. Frankie takes off running again,
and the cops shoot. Shoot to kill the crazy Arapaho who wants to start a
war on the reservation. It would be over with, wouldn’t it? The best so-
lution for everyone, except Lucille. And Frankie . . .
Vicky closed her eyes a moment and pressed her thumb and forefin-
ger against her eyelids, unable to stop the idea working its way into her
mind: Frankie Montana could be guilty.
She tapped out the number for the sheriff’s department and listened
to the intermittent buzzing noise. “Fremont County Sheriff.” A
woman’s voice.
“This is Vicky Holden,” she said. “Put me through to Detective Burt-
ton. It’s an emergency.”
“He’s not in the office,” The woman said. “I’ll connect you to his
voice mail.”
“Hang up!”
Vicky swung around in the chair. The receiver slipped from her hand
and crashed against the edge of the desk before thudding onto the floor.
Frankie Montana was bracing himself in the doorway, a hand on one
side, as if he were holding up the frame. He was coatless, his blue shirt
plastered against his chest with perspiration. The Velcro tabs on his
boots hung at the sides. In his hand was a small, black gun.
“Now you’re gonna help me,” he said, holding out the gun.
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Vicky took a couple of seconds, trying to slow down the thoughts
tumbling through her head. She was alone in the office, probably in the
whole building, with a man running from the police, a desperate man
with a gun.
“Come in and sit down, Frankie,” she heard herself saying. It sur-
prised her, how calm her voice sounded. “We’ve got some options. Let’s
talk about them.”
“Yeah, we got an option, all right. You’re my option.”
“Sit down, Frankie,” she said again.
“You and me, we’re gettin’ outta here.”
“Frankie.” She drew out the man’s name, reaching for the next
words. “Don’t make things any worse than they are. I can talk to Bur-
ton, tell him you’re ready to turn yourself in, and maybe he’ll agree to
overlook what happened at the house . . .”
“You gone psycho or somethin’? Well, ain’t that just great. All I need’s
a psycho lawyer. You and me, Vicky, you’re drivin’ me out of here.”
“How far do you think we’ll get, Frankie? Every cop in the area is
looking for you right now. It won’t take them long to trace you here and
figure out that you took my Jeep.”
“Wrong on all the above. Them dumb cops are gonna find my
pickup in back of a motel up on the highway, and it’s gonna take ’em
awhile to figure out which piece of crap I hot-wired to get outta there.
Even if they get real smart and figure I got you with me, they’re not
gonna be shooting at no vehicle that you’re inside. Besides, by the time
they know what happened, you and me are gonna be in a real safe hid-
ing place. You’re my stay-out-of-prison pass. Get my drift?”
“You don’t want to do that, Frankie. You’d be making a huge mis-
take.”
“They’re not sendingme to prison, I tol’ you before.” The gun was
wavingback and forth, like a pendulum. Vicky tried to pull her eyes away.
“You didn’t listen to me,” Frankie went on. “You tol’ me to go find
another lawyer, when you should’ve been talking to the detective and
telling him how I’m innocent so he’d get off my back. I figure you’re to
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blame for everything that’s come down, so you’re gonna keep me out of
prison.”
“Let me call your mother.” A new tack. God, let it work. “She’s wor-
ried sick.”
The man dropped his hands and took a step inside the office. “You
ain’t so high and mighty now, are you? Not like you was in the bar a
couple days ago.” He let out a low guffaw. “She loves you, and God
knows why,” he said, switching into a falsetto voice. Then he threw his
head toward the outer office. “We’re gettin’ outta here now,” he said,
pointing the gun at her face. “Let’s go.”
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26
V I C K Y S T O O D U P slowly, not taking her eyes from the black pistol that
Frankie Montana was waving in her direction. The man was crazy. His
eyes burned like coals in his skull; sweat glistened on his face. He was
high on something. Alcohol? Drugs? Probably both. The slightest
twitch of nerves and the gun would go off.
Vicky kept her gaze on the black metal gun moving back and forth.
“Put the gun away, Frankie,” she said again, struggling to keep her
voice steady. The calm courtroom voice, the one she reserved for the
hostile witness who wouldn’t give up anything until, worn down by
calmness and persistence, he might reluctantly let go of whatever he had
been clinging to.
“I said we’re gettin’ outta here, you and me.”
Vicky didn’t move for a moment, and then she started to pull on her
coat still draped across her shoulders.
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“Hold it!” The gun protruded into the room, the muzzle gaping like
an endless black tunnel.
“I was just getting on my coat,” she said, her gaze still fixed on the
weapon.
“Real slow.” Now Frankie waved the gun up and down. “Don’t try
any funny stuff or I swear, I swear I’ll pull the fucking trigger.”
Vicky stuffed one arm into the sleeve. Slow motion, pulling up the
collar—how familiar it felt, the soft, comforting wool. “Can I get my
handbag? It’s on the floor.”
Frankie seemed to consider this, the brown brow wrinkling with ar-
guments playing out inside his head. He nodded finally, then motioned
her forward with the gun. “Get a move on.”
Vicky reached down and picked up the black leather bag. “I’m going
with you, Frankie,” she said, locking eyes with the man. A crazy,
drugged murderer. God, God, God. “So put the gun down. Those things
can go off. I don’t think you want that to happen.”
Frankie didn’t move for so long that she feared it was exactly what
he wanted to happen. Finally, he lowered the gun. His arm hung at his
side, the gun brushing his pant leg, pointing to the floor. “You try any-
thing. . .”
“I know, I know.” Vicky walked around the desk, across the office,
and through the doorway, moving past the man who took a half-step
back. She felt him lurch after her as she crossed the corridor and turned
toward the elevator, the raspy sound of his breathing close behind.
“Take the stairs.” A sharp object poked through her coat into the
small of her back, nudging her in the direction of the stairway. She went
weak-kneed with the realization that he was poking the gun into her.
She dragged one hand along the corridor wall to steady herself and
tried to hurry ahead. Frankie Montana stayed with her, the gun burn-
ing into her back. Their boots pounded on the stairs, an out-of-sync
rhythm, and rising from below was a metallic clinking noise. Through
the rails, Vicky caught the glimpse of dark hair above a tan overcoat
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leaning into one of the doors on the first floor. The dentist who’d been
in yesterday evening was letting himself into his office. She grabbed
hold of the top rail and hurled herself down the remaining stairs. Now
she could see that standing about two feet farther down the corridor
was a heavyset man bundled in a dark coat with a scarf hanging down
the front.
A moment. She needed only a moment.
“Working this morning?” she called.
The dentist turned the key in the lock, pushed the door open a couple
of inches, and glanced along the corridor toward where the stairs spilled
into the entry at the same time that the man standing next to him also
threw a pained, impatient look her way. In that moment, in the look she
tried to hurl back at them both, she hoped they would see . . .
God, let them see!
“Toothaches never respect weekends, I’m afraid,” the dentist said.
Vicky felt as if her legs had turned to air. She had to hold onto the ban-
nister knob to stop herself from crumblingto the floor. They didn’t see!
“Shut up and keep going,” Frankie hissed into her ear and gripped
her arm hard. The gun pushed so hard into her ribs that she gasped with
the force of it.
“What brought you in today?” The dentist was walking toward them
now, the other man moving like a shadow behind him, something new
flooding through their expressions—a mixture of interest, curiosity, and
wariness.
“Move,” Frankie hissed again, pushing her forward.
Vicky felt herself propelled toward the wood-paneled door that rose
before her like a barrier. The gun was still pushing into her ribs.
Frankie’s free hand reached around and slammed against the door, send-
ing it swinging on its hinges out into the gray morning. In an instant
they were through the door and scrambling along the sidewalk, Vicky’s
boots skipping and sliding on the wet pavement. Frankie’s fingers dug
into her arm, pushing and pulling her forward. A pickup drove past on
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Main, tires whining, the distinct sound of hip-hop bursting through the
unopened windows.
They swung around the corner of the building. Frankie pulled her off
the curb and down the dirty, uneven tracks of snow and mud carved out
by the vehicles parked around the lot. He steered her to the driver’s side
of a battered tan pickup, looking back over his shoulder toward the
front of the building as he did so. Vicky glanced back. Before he yanked
her around, she’d caught the slightest movement, like a disturbance in
the air, of someone pulling back from the corner. A wave of weakness
and disorientation came over her, as if she were in a nightmare where
everything should be familiar. Wasn’t that Main Street? The brick build-
ings across the street looming into the gray morning? The windows of
the shops facing the sidewalk? And yet, nothing was familiar. Nothing
was as it should be.
“Get in,” Frankie said, yanking open the door. “You’re gonna drive.”
It was then Vicky realized that the humming noise she’d only half
registered was the motor running. Warm air funneled from the cab.
She felt Frankie’s fist clamp hard around her arm. Pain shot through
her jaw as her face smashed against the steering wheel. She sprawled
onto the front seat, the lump of her handbag digging into her stomach,
and fought to right herself, finally managing to pull in her legs an instant
before the door slammed shut.
She had a sense of being underwater. She was drowning at the bot-
tom of a murky lake, unable to see anything, except for the dark smudge
moving in the rearview mirror that had to be Frankie running around
the pickup. She put the gear shift in forward and jammed down on the
accelerator. The vehicle jumped ahead and slammed into something
hard, pitching her forward. She threw up her hand to stop herself from
hitting the windshield. The steering wheel dug into her chest. From far
away, like noise traveling underwater, came the sound of crunching
metal and breaking glass.
The passenger door flew open. Frankie jumped onto the seat. “I
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oughtta break your neck,” he said, slamming the door behind him. Then
he stuffed the gun under his belt. “Get out of here,” he shouted. “Take
the alley.”
Vicky shifted into reverse and pushed on the gas pedal. Whatever
she’d hit gripped the front bumper a moment before the pickup rocked
free. She swung left, steered around her Jeep and headed down the alley
toward the side street, where there would be even less traffic than the
handful of vehicles on Main.
“I’m not gonna forget your little trick back there,” Frankie said
when she reached the end of the alley. She was aware of him settling
back into the seat, removing the gun from his belt, holding it in his lap,
pointed at her.
“Where are we going?” Vicky asked. A sharp pain pulsed through
her jaw. She strained forward, staring through the windshield.
“Just drive,” the man beside her said.
F AT H E R J O H N S T O O D at the door to Eagle Hall, shaking hands, patting
shoulders, trying for an encouraging word, as Joanne Thornton, Don
Menlo, Judy Pretty Horse, and the five other members of the education
committee filed outside into the cool, moist air that seemed to have set-
tled in. He waited until the last pickup had sputtered to life, backed
across the gravel, and pulled out into the driveway that led to Circle
Drive before he walked back to the front of the meeting hall and began
gathering up the copies of the agenda.
Agenda. He shook his head at the idea that the committee might
have actually gotten around to discussing the education programs for
the summer. Religious education, high school tutoring, Head Start—
everything would have to wait. The committee had huddled together in
a circle of folding chairs under puddles of white fluorescent light that
flooded down from the ceiling and talked about the murder of another
Shoshone at Bates, and Liam Harrison’s front-page article in this morn-
ing’s paper about the tribal war on the reservation. Worry, shock, fear—
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all of it was there in the brown faces turning toward him, black eyes
pleading for some explanation, some words of assurance. Four Shoshones
had already been murdered and more violence would end . . . where?
After sliding the papers inside a file folder and pulling on his jacket,
Father John was locking the door outside when a green pickup squealed
into the driveway and skidded to a stop a few feet away. Even before
Leonard Bizzel, the mission caretaker, jumped out, Father John had
