The Lost Bird Read online

  Praise for Margaret Coel’s

  national bestselling series . . .

  The Lost Bird

  “A truly touching story . . . the whole book is infused with the spirit of the Arapaho community.”

  —Sarah Smith, author of The Knowledge of Water

  “[Margaret Coel] writes vividly about western landscapes and Native American customs, and, best of all, she gives her characters plenty of room to play off one another as they stumble toward the truth. Holden, in particular, has developed into a . . . complex and satisfying individual, balancing Native American and white cultures with earnestness and dry humor.”

  —Booklist

  “Clever . . . [Coel’s] stories are carefully crafted, her characters likable and believable, and her book is a delight to read.”

  —The Colorado Springs Gazette

  The Story Teller

  “Vivid western landscapes, intriguing history, compelling characters, and quick, tight writing that is a joy to read . . . Holden is a unique mix of the modern and the traditional. [Holden and O’Malley] prove delightful and sympathetic, as they suffer an endearing confusion about whether they are friends or something more. One of the best of the year.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “All the strengths of this fine series are present here: Coel’s knowledge of and respect for western history, a solid mystery with a credible premise in Indian lore, and the struggles of Holden and O’Malley with their powerful, but so far unconsummated, attraction to each other.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Coel’s fourth Native American mystery may be her best work to date as she brilliantly ties together a who-done-it with Indian culture.”

  —Harriet Klausner

  “You finish [The Story Teller] not only well-entertained but all the better for it.”

  —Arizona Daily Star

  The Dream Stalker

  “Seamless storytelling by someone who’s obviously been there.”

  —J. A. Jance

  “Swift and compelling.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Coel weaves deeply human conflicts into her characters’ lives . . . Critics who have called Coel a ‘female Hillerman’ are right on the mark. Her breezy, fast-paced style and grasp of cultural details make The Dream Stalker a book that will keep you reading until late at night.”

  —Boulder Daily Camera

  “Murder, romance, a nuclear storage facility, and Indian lore blend appealingly in this third mystery . . . Another coup for Coel.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Ghost Walker

  “Margaret Coel guides us mystery lovers on another of her gripping tours of evil among the Wind River Arapahos.”

  —Tony Hillerman

  “Coel is a vivid voice for the West, its struggles to retain its past and at the same time enjoy the fruits of the future.”

  —The Dallas Morning News

  “A cooking good read . . . Excellent . . . An outstanding entry in a superior series.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “There is something so real, so good about the setting and the people in The Ghost Walker.”

  —Elaine Long,

  award-winning author of Jenny’s Mountain and Bittersweet Country

  “A tautly written, compelling mystery grounded in and sympathetic to the Arapaho Culture.”

  —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  “Engaging . . . Coel’s series in the Hillerman tradition finds a space where Jesuits and Native Americans can meet in a culture of common decency.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Margaret Coel

  Catherine McLeod Mysteries

  BLOOD MEMORY

  THE PERFECT SUSPECT

  Wind River Mysteries

  THE EAGLE CATCHER

  THE GHOST WALKER

  THE DREAM STALKER

  THE STORY TELLER

  THE LOST BIRD

  THE SPIRIT WOMAN

  THE THUNDER KEEPER

  THE SHADOW DANCER

  KILLING RAVEN

  WIFE OF MOON

  EYE OF THE WOLF

  THE DROWNING MAN

  THE GIRL WITH BRAIDED HAIR

  THE SILENT SPIRIT

  THE SPIDER’S WEB

  BUFFALO BILL’S DEAD NOW

  KILLING CUSTER

  NIGHT OF THE WHITE BUFFALO

  Anthologies

  WATCHING EAGLES SOAR

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  THE LOST BIRD

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 1999 by Margaret Coel.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME design are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For more information, visit penguin.com.

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-66374-5

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime hardcover edition / October 1999

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / August 2000

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author wishes to thank the following people: Richard Frisque, professor of molecular virology, Penn State University; Bill Rankin, adoption consultant, Department of Family Services, State of Wyoming; Gary Beach, administrator, Water Quality, State of Wyoming; Lonnie Cox, FBI agent, Riverton, Wyoming; Tom Pruett, MD, Lander, Wyoming; and Sid Vinall, MD, Joan Reid, adoption attorney, Judge Sheila Carrigan, and Phil Miller, assistant district attorney, all of Boulder, Colorado; Dr. Virginia Sutter, member of the Arapaho tribe; Anthony Short, S.J.; Beverly Carrigan; George and Kristin Coel; and authors Ann Ripley, Sybil Downing, and Karen Gilleland.

  Table of Contents

  Praise for Margaret Coel

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Margaret Coel

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Listen . . .

  All you creatures

  under the ground,

  All you creatures

  above the ground

  and in the waters.

  May our boys and girl
s,

  our children of all ages . . .

  May they increase

  and be strengthened.

  Arapaho prayer

  1

  He was late.

  Father John Aloysius O’Malley stopped the Toyota pickup behind the yellow school bus. The red lights flashed into the afternoon sun. A glance at his watch confirmed what he already knew. It was nearly half-past three, and twenty Arapaho kids would be in Eagle Hall waiting for confirmation class to begin. He should have gotten back to St. Francis Mission thirty minutes ago. The quiet melody of “Si, Mi chiamano Mimi” rose from the tape player on the seat beside him, punctuating his growing impatience as he watched the red lights. Blink. Blink. Blink.

  Ahead the road butted into Circle Drive, which curved around the mission grounds, past the red-brick residence, the old school, the white church with the steeple framed against the sky, the yellow administration building, and, almost out of view behind the building, Eagle Hall. Beyond the grounds the flat, open plains of the Wind River Reservation stretched like sheets of burnished copper under the clear-rinsed blue sky. It was the last Monday in September, the Moon of the Drying Grasses, in the Arapaho way of marking time.

  Shouts of laughter broke the quiet as kids jammed together to board the bus. Other kids were still straggling out of the red-brick Bureau of Indian Affairs school building with the white stucco entrance shaped like a tepee. A group of boys about thirteen years old started for the pickup. “You’re late, Father,” one called.

  “Where ya been, Father?” Another voice. Brown faces pressed through the open windows.

  Father John gave them a wave. He’d been at Riverton Memorial Hospital visiting Cyrus Elk. He’d anointed the old man last week, after doctors had informed the family that he was dying. But Cyrus was still hanging on. There was a day to die, Arapahos believed, and Cyrus’s day had not yet come. This afternoon, as Father John sat at Cyrus’s bedside and listened to the labored breaths and unintelligible sounds that burst forth, like forgotten, half-formed thoughts, he’d had the sense that the man was trying to tell him something, and that if he could only form the words, his spirit could depart.

  At one point Cyrus had looked at him out of milky-brown eyes and called him Father Joseph, the only distinct words he had spoken. Father John had made a mental note to ask his temporary assistant, Father Joseph Keenan, to stop by the hospital. The seventy-two-year-old priest had been at St. Francis only two weeks, but, for a short while in the 1960s, Father Joseph had been the pastor here. He and Cyrus could have known each other. Maybe seeing an old friend would help the Indian unlock the words binding his spirit to the earth.

  By the time Father John drove out of the hospital parking lot, he knew that even if he ran every red light on Riverton’s main street, he would be late for confirmation class. He’d been teaching the class since mid-August, scheduling it around the games and practices of the Eagles, the baseball team he had started for the Arapaho kids during his first summer at St. Francis seven years ago. In less than two weeks the bishop would arrive for confirmation. He would question every candidate. And no matter what fastballs he might throw—What are the sacraments? What is the Eucharist?—Father John was determined his kids were going to hit home runs.

  “You gonna cancel class today, Father?” the first boy asked. A wide smile exposed teeth too large for his face.

  “Tell you what,” Father John said, “if you guys beat me to Eagle Hall, I’m going to let the class out on time.” The red lights flashed off; the bus started to pull into the road.

  “All right!” the boy shouted. He and the others broke into a run through the cottonwoods that bordered the road, scooping up piles of leaves and tossing them into the air as they ran. The crackle of leaves mingled with the sounds of laughter.

  Father John inched the pickup alongside a group of girls walking ahead. He tapped on the horn. Heads swung around, hands shot out as the girls pulled one another to the side of the road. “Hurry up, girls,” he called. “You’re late.”

  “You’re the one that’s late, Father!” they shouted. Laughter rippled over the sound of tires scrunching gravel. As he turned onto Circle Drive, he spotted the blue Escort parked at the far side of the administration building. Father Joseph was back. He had left early that morning to visit parishioners, but nothing was close on the reservation. Homes of parishioners stood thirty, forty miles apart. Father John was glad the older priest had finished the visits before the warm, sunny day had drifted into the biting coolness of an autumn evening.

  He left the Toyota alongside the Escort and bounded up the concrete steps to the front entrance. The jangling sounds of a phone filtered from inside. By the time he’d flung open the heavy wood door and crossed the corridor to his office on the right, the ringing had stopped. He rifled hurriedly through the papers on his desk, half aware of Father Joseph’s low, cultured voice in the next office: “Yes, yes, of course.” A long pause, followed by a reassuring, “I’ll come right away.”

  Father John slipped his class notes into a folder and lifted his Bible from the bookshelves behind the desk. The kids were probably tearing through Eagle Hall by now. It would take fifteen minutes of class time to settle them down. He started across the office just as the older priest appeared in the doorway. A slight man, half a head shorter than Father John’s almost six feet, four inches, he had an angular, intelligent face and a forehead that rose into thin, sand-colored hair. He wore thick, steel-rimmed glasses that gave him the owlish look of a philosophy professor accustomed to peering at scholarly texts in university libraries, which is what he had been doing until a heart attack last spring had forced him into retirement.

  Three weeks ago, the Jesuit Provincial had called to say he’d found someone to help out temporarily at St. Francis. “You’ve heard of Joseph Keenan?” he’d asked, a tone that suggested he didn’t expect an answer.

  Father John had heard of the man: scholar and philosopher; on the faculty at various times at Marquette and Georgetown and Boston College, even at the Gregorian University in Rome. Author of a number of weighty philosophical treatises that Father John knew he would never get around to reading. But lately he hadn’t seen anything about Joseph Keenan in the Jesuit newspapers.

  “What’s he been doing?”

  “Some health problems.” The Provincial had hurried on. “Look, John, it’s Joe Keenan or nobody. Could be a while before I find a permanent man.”

  Could be never, Father John had thought. There weren’t a lot of priests clamoring for an assignment on an Indian reservation in the middle of Wyoming. It was the last place he had expected to find himself, back when he was teaching American history at a Jesuit prep school in Boston and dreaming of teaching at a university himself someday. But something had intervened, canceled his plans. He thought of that time in terms of a fall—his fall into alcoholism. After spending the best part of a year in treatment at Grace House, he’d been eager to return to work, but no Jesuit superior had returned his calls. A recovering alcoholic? Always a worry. You never knew when . . .

  And then the call had come from Father Peter, the pastor at St. Francis Mission. A mission to the Arapahos. Father John knew little about the tribe. A name in history books. One of the Plains Indian tribes? On a reservation where? And he’d never imagined himself doing mission work. But it was a job. A temporary job. Until he could prove himself, redeem himself in the eyes of his superiors. He had boarded a plane and flown to Wyoming, staring for the last hour of the trip at the endless expanse of plains below. Three years later Father Peter had retired, and he’d become the pastor.

  Now, with religious and adult education classes, Alcoholics Anonymous and counseling groups, and dozens of other programs under way for the fall, he was in the same position Father Peter had been in. He needed help.

  But when Joseph Keenan had stepped out of the blue Escort, Father John had wondered how much help the retired scholar would be. He seemed robust—firm handshake, purposeful stride—but a
deep tiredness shadowed his eyes, as if he had long labored under a crushing weight: the academic meetings attended and books written, the thousands of student projects evaluated. That first evening over dinner at the round oak table in the kitchen at the residence, he had mentioned his brush with death, his bypass surgery. “Guess the good Lord doesn’t need another windbag philosophy professor,” he said, throwing back his head and giving a brittle laugh, as if, by the choice of his profession, he’d played a clever joke on death.

  When he reminisced about St. Francis Mission, a faraway look had come into his eyes. So many changes in the last thirty-five years: new people, more traffic. Hardly the quiet backwater he remembered. He was eager to take on his share of the work now, he’d said. He was as good as new—“surgeons work miracles these days.”

  Father John worried about the man. He’d tried to give him the least tiring jobs—visiting with the elders at the senior center, saying the Saturday-evening Mass, the shortest Mass. Still, Joseph Keenan spent most days driving around the reservation. Renewing acquaintances, rekindling friendships, Father John had assumed. The tiredness had taken up permanent residence in the old man’s eyes.

  It was there now as Father Joseph stepped into the office. “I just received an emergency call.” A note of sympathy rang in his voice. “Annie Lewis is dying.”

  Father John stared at the other priest. “Who?”

  “Surely no one expects the pastor to know all of his parishioners.” Father Joseph waved a thin hand, as if to dismiss an impertinent question. “The poor woman’s son called. Says the cancer will most likely take her tonight, and she’s anxious to receive the last sacrament. They live on Thunder Lane. I’m going over there.” He turned into the corridor.

  Father John followed. Thunder Lane was a deserted stretch of road that snaked along the foothills of the Wind River mountains at the far western edge of the reservation. Only a few families lived out there; he knew them all. No one by the name of Lewis.

  “What’s the son’s name?” he asked.

  Father Joseph glanced over one shoulder. “I don’t believe he gave a name, poor man. His only concern is his mother.”