Eye of the Wolf, page 27
started toward him, all of his instincts switched to alert.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“You heard what happened?” Leonard gestured with his head to-
ward the opened door of the pickup and the sound of a radio voice trail-
ing from inside.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I was just heading home and turned on the radio. Hadn’t even got-
ten out of the mission when this announcer comes on with a news bul-
letin.” Leonard leaned closer. “Frankie Montana’s on the run from the
police. They tried to arrest him this morning for shooting them
Shoshones, and he took off.”
“Took off?” He could hear Ethan Red Bull’s voice in his head. It
wasn’t an Arapaho. But if the police went to Montana’s with an arrest
warrant, there must be some new evidence to tie him to the murders.
The rifle. Dear Lord, the rifle must be Montana’s.
“Jumped out of the window,” Leonard said. “Made it to his pickup
and drove off. Cops followed him to Lander before they lost him. Got an
alert out, roadblocks everywhere.” The Indian hunched his shoulders and
swept his eyes over the ground a moment before he said, “There’s some-
thing else.”
Father John waited. He could feel the knot tightening in his stomach.
Whatever it was, Leonard didn’t want to tell him.
Finally, the man locked eyes with him again. “The cops say a couple
of witnesses spotted Montana at Vicky’s office. They say he’s got her
with him.”
“No!” Father John heard someone shout. But it was his voice, he
26210_ch01.qxd 6/23/05 12:25 PM Page 218
218
M A R G A R E T C O E L
realized. He was the one shouting. Then he was running, boots pound-
ing down the alley, past the church, and across the grounds to the pickup
parked in front of the residence. He got inside and jammed the key into
the ignition. Stomping on the gas pedal, he shot around Circle Drive,
barely aware of the rear tires spinning in the slush and the mission build-
ings flashing past the pickup’s windows.
26210_ch01.qxd 6/23/05 12:25 PM Page 219
27
“ R O A D B L O C K S ! ” F R A N K I E M O N TA N A shifted around on the ripped
passenger seat of the Ford pickup he’d stolen and tossed his head back.
A loud guffaw erupted from his throat that sent a cloud of foul-smelling
air across the dashboard.
Vicky kept her fingers wrapped around the rim of the steering wheel
and tried not to breathe in the foulness. The stink of evil, she thought,
what you read about in science fiction books, some imaginary stink that
didn’t actually exist.
“Them cops are putting up roadblocks on every highway in the
county, and we ain’t on the highways. What d’ya say? Ain’t that a laugh?”
He was gloating now, congratulating himself that he’d directed her
through alleys and down the streets of sleepy bungalows with blinds still
drawn over the windows. The engine clanked and squealed, as if the metal
parts were rubbing together.
“What d’ya say?” he demanded.
26210_ch01.qxd 6/23/05 12:25 PM Page 220
220
M A R G A R E T C O E L
“You’re brilliant, Frankie.”
“Ha!” He let out another smelly guffaw. The sarcasm had rolled
right by him. “Damn right I’m brilliant. And they’re so fucking stupid,
all of ’em. Wasting time trying to put them murders on me, just so they
can brag how smart they are, and the killer’s out there laughing at ’em,
and all of ’em, the killer, too, thinking how I’m the one gonna be sitting
in prison. Well, they’re not dumping me in no prison.”
Vicky threw a sideways glance at the man. “If you didn’t kill the
Shoshones . . .”
“Bitch!” Frankie slammed a fist into the dashboard. The suddenness
and unexpectedness of it, the hard thud of bone and flesh on the inert
object made her give an involuntary jump. “I been telling you I didn’t do
it. You’re not listening. My own lawyer, and you think I’m guilty like the
rest of ’em. If you’d just listened to me, the cops wouldn’t’ve busted my
door this morning. Good thing I got my gun right by the bed. You
wanna know why you’re here? ’Cause you screwed up, and now you’re
gonna help me escape, whether you like it or not.”
“Help you escape? That’s no way to help you, Frankie.” Vicky was
trying again for the calm courtroom voice, but she couldn’t pull it off.
Instead, the voice she heard was shaky and scared. “You’re acting like
you’re guilty. Instead of looking for whoever killed the Shoshones, Bur-
ton’s going to spend every moment trying to find you. We should turn
around, go back, and . . .”
“Shut up!” He was leaning forward in the seat now, turned toward
her, the gun bobbing up and down between them. “You had any good
ideas, I never heard ’em. All I heard from you was, ‘Get another lawyer,’
and ‘I don’t care if you rot in prison.’ ”
All true, Vicky was thinking. A part of her had decided that Frankie
Montana was guilty. She should have found him another lawyer. Not
Samantha Lowe with the eager sheen in her eyes. An experienced lawyer
who would have believed in Frankie and argued with Burton over every
piece of circumstantial evidence that he came up with, thrown up
enough stumbling blocks and enough alternate scenarios about what
26210_ch01.qxd 6/23/05 12:25 PM Page 221
E Y E O F T H E W O L F
221
might have happened out at Bates to make it impossible to charge
Frankie, instead of sitting back and waiting for it to happen, as she had
done, content to defend the man after he was arrested. For his mother’s
sake, for Godsakes.
Neither one of them spoke. Frankie seemed spent. He leaned his
head back on the seat, and for an instant, she feared that he would see
the gas needle jumping around empty. She’d noticed that the gas was
low when they were still in town. She’d been silently praying that the
pickup would grind to a halt. Nothing to do but get out and walk
through a neighborhood where someone might see them, wonder who
they were—Indians. A man in shirt and jeans—in this cold weather—
pulling a woman along, someone might have called the cops. Even if no
one had, she could have watched for a chance to get away.
But the pickup had kept clanking and lurching forward, and now
they were climbing a narrow, winding road that switched back on itself,
the pickup balking at the trackless snow that spilled into the ditches.
She couldn’t tell where the road ended and the ditch on her side began.
The pines dipped under the wet snow, branches bending into the road
and scratching at the sides of the pickup. Every once in a while, she
caught sight of Lander below, the gray smudges of smoke rising above
the roofs. It was like catching a glimpse of another world. She felt as if
she’d been sucked into an alternate universe running parallel to the real-
ity of an ordinary Saturday morning.
In the combination of cold and silence and utter solitude that pressed
around the pickup as it took another turn upward, Vicky felt a wave of
hysteria coming over her, the scream rising inside her throat. For a mo-
ment, she feared she couldn’t hold it back. She forced herself to swallow
hard. Breathe, breathe, she told herself. Stay in control. If she became
hysterical, the crazy man beside her would also become hysterical. Hys-
teria was contagious. And if Frankie Montana became hysterical, the
gun could go off.
She was barely aware that the pickup had started bucking, little
jumps at first, the pines rising and falling outside her window. She
26210_ch01.qxd 6/23/05 12:25 PM Page 222
222
M A R G A R E T C O E L
gripped the wheel hard, her fingers glued to the plastic, and watched the
fuel needle bobbing below empty. The pickup shuddered and seemed to
buck into the snowy road.
Frankie sat up straight and turned to her. “What the hell did you do?”
“We’re out of gas,” she managed, automatically bracing herself for
the blow, the thud of flesh and bone into her face as she turned the key
in the ignition. The engine coughed and sputtered, gasping at the last
drops of gasoline, then stopped. They were left in a silence so profound
that it was like the silence at the end of the world.
“What the hell!” Frankie shouted. “Fucking out of gas! I don’t be-
lieve the fucking luck.”
The blow didn’t come. Vicky felt a mild sense of surprise. Her mus-
cles were still tense as she watched the man thrashing around beside her,
knocking his fist against the dashboard, flailing at unseen enemies.
After a couple of minutes, Frankie tucked the gun inside his belt.
“Get out,” he said. “We’re gonna hike.”
Vicky waited until he’d opened his door and stumbled onto the road
before she grabbed her handbag from behind the seat and got out. There
was no one around, no sound except for the soft hiss of snow falling off
the branches. She could see the blue puffs of breath in front of her, and
the breath of the man stomping around the pickup, swinging his arms to
keep up the circulation.
Vicky slungthe bagover her shoulder. Inside was her cell, which
probably wouldn’t work in the mountains, but you never knew. She
prayed that Frankie wouldn’t notice the bagand become curious about
what was inside. Pushingit back behind her arm, she weighed her op-
tions. She could start runningdown the tracks that the pickup had
plowed through the snow and take the chance that he wouldn’t shoot
her in the back.
He would shoot her. It wasn’t an option.
She had to stay with him and wait for a chance to try the cell.
“Come on,” he shouted, waving her forward. “It’s around here
somewhere.”
26210_ch01.qxd 6/23/05 12:25 PM Page 223
E Y E O F T H E W O L F
223
It? “What are you talking about? What’s around here?
“A real nice house.” He was smirking at her, arms doing a windmill.
“Let’s go.”
Vicky started after him. She understood now. He knew exactly
where they were going. He’d had it all planned from the minute he’d
forced her into the pickup. They were going to one of the mountain
houses that he’d broken into last fall, a charge that she’d gotten dropped
on a technicality. She was the one who’d kept him out of jail! And now
he was taking her to one of the houses.
It was funny when you thought about it. She felt the hysteria bub-
bling up again and clamped her teeth together against the laughter that
threatened to burst forth, laughter that she knew would leave her weep-
ing helplessly. She focused on planting her boots, one after the other, in
the footprints that he was making through the snow.
They must have gone a mile, she thought. Frankie was still ahead,
but he’d slowed his pace, walking stiff-legged now, arms hanging like
logs at his side. His shoulders were hunched up so far that his head and
body looked welded together. He hadn’t said anything for twenty min-
utes, for which she was grateful. Just breathing, keeping one foot in
front of the other—that was enough. It took all her energy. She didn’t
need the conversation of a crazy man. The sense of weariness tugged at
her legs, making them seem like stone pillars moving beneath her. She
was breathing hard, her heart doing double time in her ears. Beneath
the layers of her sweater and coat, her skin felt hot and clammy, and
yet—this was the surprise!—she felt as if she might be freezing to
death.
As they came around another switchback, the road took a steeper
pitch upward. Vicky stopped and tried to catch her breath, but each in-
halation felt like an icicle stabbing her chest. Frankie was barely mov-
ing, nearly bent double into the rising road and swaying side to side, one
foot shuffling in front of the other.
He must have spotted the house at the same instant that she saw it, be-
cause he veered off the road and started wadingthrough the snow piled
26210_ch01.qxd 6/23/05 12:25 PM Page 224
224
M A R G A R E T C O E L
around the trees, arms paddlinglike oars at his sides. And howlingout
some gibberish that she couldn’t make out, like the howling of a wolf.
Still trying to stay in his footprints, Vicky started after the man. The
drifts were deeper among the trees, bunched up in mounds of white
powder that looked as light as air but felt like wet cement pulling at her
boots as she struggled through. There was more snow here than in
town, the air felt colder, and the sun was lost in the leaden sky. Ahead,
nestled in a stand of pines, was a two-story house washed in shadows,
roof heavy with snow. There was a deadness about the place, an ab-
solute absence of life or activity, as if it had been standing empty for
eons, and yet, from what she could see, the house looked well main-
tained, flower boxes piled with snow at the windows, a fresh coat of
gray paint on the siding.
She realized that Frankie had made his way around to the side of the
house and was leaning against a door, rubbing and hugging his arms and
blowing out huge clouds of breath. She forced herself to keep walking,
across the front of the house and around the side. She set her shoulder
against the siding a few feet behind Frankie.
“Take off your coat,” he shouted.
Vicky stared at the man.
“You heard me. Get it off.”
She wasn’t sure she had the energy to comply. Her fingers were
clumsy sticks trying to push the buttons through the buttonholes.
“Hurry up!” he shouted again.
Finally the top button fell through the hole, then the next and the
next. She was still slipping the coat off her shoulders when he reached
around and grabbed it, tangling it with the strap of her bag. She stag-
gered back along the side of the house, gasping at the blast of cold air
that swept over her as he ripped the coat away. She stooped over and
reached for the bag that had fallen into the snow. Her fingers kept slid-
ing off the leather until, finally, she had hold of the strap and managed
to drag the bag upward. She was shivering. She struggled to focus on
what Frankie was doing. He’d wrapped his right arm and hand inside
26210_ch01.qxd 6/23/05 12:25 PM Page 225
E Y E O F T H E W O L F
225
the front of her coat, letting the sleeves and collar trail down into the
snow. Lifting his arm—a thick black club—he smashed it into the cor-
ner of the window set in the door. There was a muffled tinkling, like
wind chimes, as the pane shattered and collapsed inward, falling out of
the frame.
“All right!” Frankie let the coat fall into a pile at his feet, and Vicky
swooped forward, picked it up, and threw it over her shoulders, hugging
it close against the shaking that had taken over her body like some in-
visible force.
“They never learn their lessons, rich people.” Frankie slipped his
hand through the hole and, moving into the door until his face was
pressed against one of the upper panes, stretched his arm downward.
With a faint clicking noise, the doorknob started turning, and Frankie
was dancing inward with the door. He retrieved his hand, slammed the
door back, and plunged inside.
Vicky followed him into a large kitchen wrapped in dark wood cab-
inets and longexpanses of tiled counters. She closed the door behind
her. The house was almost as cold as the outside. She slipped her arms
into the sleeves of her coat and wrapped it around her, as if the soft
wool might absorb the cold that had settled inside her. She couldn’t stop
shivering.
Frankie was already across the room, punching the keys on a small
plate attached to the wall. “Get us some heat in a minute,” he an-
nounced, and almost as if he had ordered the snow to fall or the wind to
pick up, a motor kicked over somewhere in the house and the faintest
tremor rippled through the tile floor.
Frankie disappeared for a moment around a doorway that led into an
interior of shadows and silence. Then he was back, shrugging into a
heavy-looking plaid jacket, a wool cap pulled down over his ears. He
started rubbing his hands together, and she realized that he was also shiv-
ering, even though, with his arm stretched past the needles of glass still
