Eye of the Wolf, page 37
Dana Lambert. Except . . .
Except that it wasn’t Dana Lambert. Father John could see the
woman’s dark hair splayed in the snow. The person aiming the gun was
the professor.
Father John stopped. He reached around for Vicky and brought her
up close behind him, as if he could protect her. The thought made him
want to choke. “Don’t shoot, Professor,” he called out. “We want to
help you.”
The man started walking forward, holding out the gun, stabbing the
walking stick into the snow, closing the space between them until he
was no more than a dozen feet away. Snow fluttered between them.
Snow sat like new hair on top of the white mane.
“Not even God can help me, Father O’Malley.” His voice was
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calm, the professor making an obvious point. “I suppose I shouldn’t
be surprised that you were the one to follow us here, although I ex-
pected Burton would come to find us. You have made this unfortunate
affair your business, although I admit to being stymied as to your rea-
son. Who is that hiding behind you?”
Father John kept one arm behind him, his hand wrapped around
Vicky’s. He felt her pull free and move to his side. Then he saw the pis-
tol come up, both hands gripping the handle.
“Drop your gun, Professor,” she said. She was trembling, Father
John realized. He could see the slightest tremor in her hands.
“Well, what is this?” Professor Lambert said. “Shall we have a shoot-
out at the OK Corral? Would this be our High Noon?” He snorted with
laughter. “I suggest you drop your gun, or I shall be forced to shoot the
good father here. Shall we have a contest? Would you care to wager a bet
on whether you can shoot me before I shoot Father O’Malley?”
Vicky didn’t move for a moment. Then she dropped her arms at her
sides, and Father John heard the soft thud of the gun in the snow. “You
don’t have to kill anyone else,” she said.
Lambert’s face contorted into a smile, like ice cracking on a pond.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You’re the lawyer who ran off with Frankie
Montana. Am I correct? And you are determined to prove the man in-
nocent when he is nothing but a blight on the human community. It’s
unfortunate that you and Father O’Malley couldn’t have let justice take
its course. It’s of no consequence that Montana doesn’t happen to be
guilty of murdering the young men out here. He was guilty of other
crimes, was he not? Crimes, I might add, for which, I believe, you had a
hand in helping him evade responsibility. It would have been right if he
had finally been brought to justice.”
“You’re insane,” Vicky said.
“Hardly.” The man gave another snort of laughter. “I have never
been more rational or, may I add, more determined.”
“Your wife needs help, Charles,” Father John said. “We have to get
her to a hospital before we’re snowed in.”
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The man tilted his head toward the prone body a few feet behind
him. Snow lay in the folds of the woman’s coat. The toes of her boots
were covered in snow. “I assure you that no powers on this earth can
help my wife. She is quite dead, which, again, is only just.” Lambert
took a half-step closer, moving the gun until, Father John realized, it
was pointed at his heart. “She has deserved her fate.”
“You’re wrong, Professor,” Father John said. “No one deserves to be
murdered. The Arapahos who were murdered here long ago didn’t de-
serve their fates. Neither did the Shoshones. Your wife would have been
brought to justice.”
The man emitted a growl of laughter that bubbled up like phlegm
from somewhere deep inside the narrow chest. “Brought to justice? Spare
me your platitudes, Father O’Malley. With attorneys like your friend
here to assist her in avoiding her fate, I very much doubt she would have
even faced charges, never mind a trial and conviction. I was left with no
choice except to avenge my students and my own honor. You understand,
I’ve spent my entire career, the most important part of my life, in the ser-
vice of students who have relied on me as a guide into history. Surely
you, as a former teacher, can appreciate my devotion. It consumed me to
the extent I am afraid, that I did not give the proper consideration to the
character of the woman whom I had decided to make my second wife.”
The man paused and glanced back at the prone body. “I admit that
after the death of my first wife, I was felled by loneliness,” he said after
a moment. “And, yes, I also succumbed to the siren call of lust. Dana
was a beautiful woman. I was under the delusion that she would share in
my devotion. I could not have been more mistaken. She assumed a man
of my reputation must have a large bank account. I realize now how dis-
appointed she must have been to find that my assets consisted of a mod-
est retirement and meager royalty checks from my books. Naturally, she
saw that the only asset which might be increased was the income from
Tribal Wars. ”
Lambert stared at the gun in front of him and listed sideways toward
the walking stick. His jaw jutted forward, the muscles in his face seemed
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to tighten, and his eyes began to look bleary—an old man’s eyes blink-
ing into the snow. “She dishonored me,” he said finally, his voice crack-
ing with emotion. “Can either of you understand what it is like to be
dishonored?”
“Put down the gun, Professor,” Vicky said. “We’ll take you back to
town. You won’t face anything more than a temporary insanity charge.”
“Quiet!” Lambert shouted. His voice echoed from the bluffs. Then,
in a calmer tone he continued, “I am Professor Charles Lambert. I am
the foremost expert on the tribal wars of the Plains Indians. I will not be
locked up in a grimy jail, dressed in orange clothing, and paraded around
with my hands cuffed behind me. I will not cooperate with lawyers who
seek to paint a false picture of what I have done and absolve me of my
own responsibility. I will not prostrate myself in a public courtroom be-
fore an inferior man in a black robe. I will not dishonor myself.”
The professor started movingbackward, leaningon the walking
stick—a slow, jerky motion. He looked down for a longmoment, as if he
were studyingthe still body, attemptingto make out how it came to be
as it was. There was the faintest look of surprise in his expression. Then,
he bent his arm upward and placed the gun against his right temple.
“Don’t!” Father John started to lunge for the man. The sound of the
gunshot came like a blast of fireworks that filled the space between them
and rocketed through the canyon. The man’s head had exploded into the
falling snow.
Father John froze in place, scarcely able to believe what he was see-
ing. The old man folded downward, knees buckling, arms swinging at
his sides, blood pooling into the dark scarf pulled around the collar of
his topcoat. There was a loud thumping noise, and someone was
screaming—a sustained howl, like the howl of grief. It was a half-
second before he realized that it was Vicky who was screaming, and that
the thumping in his ears was the sound of his own heart.
He felt himself movingforward, his boots dragging like chains
through the snow. He went down on one knee beside the bodies of
Charles and Dana Lambert, so close together, they were almost touching.
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He dropped his face into his hands. Snow tipped off the brim of his
hat and pricked the skin between the top of his gloves and the edge of his
coat sleeves. He was aware of the snow fallingeverywhere, ridges of snow
tracingthe bodies, clumps of snow on the branches of the sagebrush all
around. “God have mercy on us,” he whispered. The other words would
come on their own. The usual prayers would form on his lips. He waited.
There was nothingexcept the white void closingaround them.
God. God. God. Where are You?
He lifted his head and stared through the snow at the steep slopes ris-
ing over them. The stillness was as deep as the canyon—the stillness of
eternity. Then, the faintest sound, a staccato sobbing. He glanced around.
Vicky was sitting in the snow, head buried in her arms, snow outlining the
contour of her back.
Father John got to his feet and went over to her. He knelt beside her
and gathered her to him. She shivered against him, small and light as if
there was nothing to her at all except the shock and grief. Her sobs
sounded muffled against his chest.
After a moment, he lifted her to her feet and kept his arms around
her to steady her. “We have to get out of here,” he said, guiding her
back along their footprints to the pickup.
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S O M U C H D E AT H, Father John was thinking. Too much death. They’d
driven back from Bates in numbed silence, he and Vicky. At some point,
the cell had clicked in and he’d told Burton what had happened—jarred
at the sound of his own voice in the silence. Ten miles later, a phalanx of
white pickups and an ambulance, sirens blaring, red and blue lights
flashing, had sped past. He had kept going, back toward the reservation,
back toward life, not saying anything. He and Vicky, eyes fixed on the
headlights flaring ahead, both of them seeing the same images of death,
he knew. He and Vicky, each locked in their own worlds, and yet he had
never felt so close to her.
Now he watched the dark shadow of her Jeep turningaround Circle
Drive and threading through the cottonwoods, taillights blinking in the
snow. Then it was gone. He lifted his face to the snow; he could taste
the snow, and for a moment, the sensation dulled the thirst that had
started over him at the battlefield. He tightened his fingers around the
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keys in his coat pocket, walked over to the church, and let himself into
the dark vestibule. He flipped on the light switch. Faint white lights stut-
tered into life over the altar and cast columns of light across the pews
and stucco walls. The church seemed set apart and self-contained, a
world unto itself.
Father John walked down the center aisle, slumped into the front
pew, and buried his face in his hands. He closed his eyes, staring at the
image in his head. Dear Lord, would it never go away? The prayers were
coming now, all the prayers engraved in his heart, and yet they seemed
new and insistent, as if he’d just discovered them. Have mercy on all
their souls, he prayed. All of those who died at Bates. Have mercy. Have
mercy.
He wasn’t sure how long he had stayed in the pew. Time had collapsed
into the flickering light, the quiet and the sense of the eternal that closed
about him. The thirst seemed to withdraw into that place where he man-
aged to keep it most of the time. He finally lifted himself off his knees.
It was when he turned around that he saw his assistant in the back,
half sitting, half kneeling, hands clasped over the next pew. Father John
made his way down the aisle. “I didn’t hear you come in,” he said, when
he was a few feet away.
Father Ian pushed himself upright and headed into the vestibule. “I
didn’t want to disturb you.” He threw the explanation over one shoul-
der as he pushed the door open and stepped outside.
“Heard you drive in,” the other priest went on, still holding the door,
half in shadow, half in light, until Father John flipped the switch and the
other priest was enveloped in the shadow. “The news has been all over
the radio and television about two more bodies found at Bates, and the
phone has been ringing all evening. I figured that’s where you and Vicky
went this afternoon. Right?”
“Right.” Father John moved past and went down the steps, con-
scious of the other priest’s boots scuffing the steps behind him.
“Thought you might like to talk,” Father Ian said, falling in beside
him as they started across Circle Drive.
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Father John jammed his hands into his coat pockets. The front of
his coat was open, and he left it that way. The cold air swept over his
face and neck and bit through his shirt, calling him back to life. After
a moment, he explained how Dana Lambert had murdered the four
men, hoping to start a tribal war that would promote her husband’s
book, how the professor had seen his world crumbling and had shot
his wife, then himself.
Ian stopped walking. “You thought you could prevent what hap-
pened, and now you blame yourself, don’t you? How did you plan to
stop it?”
Father John could still see the gun pointed at his heart. They might
have all been dead, and that was the thing, wasn’t it? That was the thing
that had propelled him into the church. It had made him open his coat
to the cold, all to assure himself that he was alive. He was alive.
“When you drove in here,” Father Ian said, “there wasn’t anything
you wanted more than a drink, right?”
Father John turned around and faced the light-colored eyes shining
out of a face striped with shadows. “Yes,” he said.
His assistant was shaking his head, everything about him looking sat-
isfied and vindicated. “Alcoholics love guilt, John,” he said. “We seek it
out, look everywhere for it, and if we can’t find it, we invent it, because
when we have the guilt, we have the excuse. I’ve found all the guilt I
needed here at the mission. It was you that people wanted at meetings,
you patients wanted in the hospital, so I told myself, I must be doing
something wrong. It must be my fault. If I’m at fault, I must be guilty.
And . . .” He shrugged. “There are a lot of bars. But I can’t change the
fact that people here love you, and you couldn’t prevent a man from
committing murder and suicide. Face it, John. We’re a couple of alkies
trying to stay sober and looking for the excuse to drink.”
“We?” Father John said. It was the first time that his assistant had ac-
tually admitted to being an alcoholic.
“Had a long talk with the Provincial today,” Ian said. “Don’t
worry,” he hurried on. “I didn’t mention you and Vicky Holden.”
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“It wouldn’t have mattered.”
“I understand that, John. I’ve been watching you. I’m starting to un-
derstand some things. You’d like to stop in at the bars, that’s what I
started thinking, but you don’t. Maybe you’d like to have an affair with
her . . .” He tossed his head back toward Seventeen-Mile Road. “I have
to believe what you say, that there’s never been anything between you.
You’ve made a life for yourself here and, well . . .” He hesitated, his gaze
roaming over the grounds and the buildings settled into the shadows and
the quiet. “I’d really like to do the same. It’s like you said, whiskey
won’t let it happen. So I’m going to a clinic in Casper.”
Father John clasped the man’s shoulder. “That’s good, Ian,” he said.
“I need you here. The people need you. You’ll see.”
“I hope nobody’s going to need me in the next three weeks.” Father
Ian started toward the residence again, then turned back. “There was
another call after you left,” he said. “A young woman named Edie Brad-
bury. Sounded scared. Said you’d told her she could come to the mis-
sion. I offered to go and get her, but she said that she’d drive over. She’s
at the guesthouse.”
“She’s here,” Father John said. Thank God, he thought.
He followed the other priest up the steps to the residence, waves of
gratitude flowing over him for this assistant, after the years of hoping
for another priest who would want to be here, and for Edie Bradbury
and life and all the possibilities that lay ahead. The minute he and Fa-
ther Ian stepped into the entry, Walks-On came scamperingdown the
