The Spirit Woman Read online

  April 7, 1805: the great adventure begins. The Corps of Discovery under the command of Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark sets forth from the Mandan villages. Thirty-one men, a woman, an infant. The woman digs roots and wild vegetables, gathers berries as they cross the mountains. She cares for her infant. Toussaint was very brutal with her.

  The woman maintains her presence of mind in a squall and saves the expedition’s important scientific instruments after they are washed into the Missouri.

  The woman is sick, and Captain Clark fears she will die. The thoughtlessness of the husband; he didn’t take care of her.

  She holds her infant close in a flash flood. She weeps with joy at the sight of her brother, Chief Cameahwait, when the expedition reaches the Shoshones. She adopts her deceased sister’s son, Bazil, whom she leaves in the village.

  On and on the expedition goes, through the Bitter-roots and down the Snake and the Columbia to the Pacific. A winter camp is established seventeen miles inland. The men go on to the ocean and see a whale that has washed onto the beach. The Indian woman was very importunate to be permitted to go, and was therefore indulged; she observed that she had traveled a long way with us to see the great waters, and that now that monstrous fish was also to be seen, she thought it very hard she could not be permitted to see either. Clark arranges for Sacajawea to go to the ocean.

  Spring, 1806: the expedition starts the return trip. The familiar hardships—heavy snows, scarcity of meat and timber, the ever-present mountains. I see the way. Clark follows two routes that Sacajawea points out. They return to the Mandans. Sacajawea has borne with a patience truly admirable the fatigues of so long a route encumbered with the charge of an infant, who is even now only nineteen months old. “My little dancing boy,” Clark calls him.

  August 20, 1806: letter from Clark to Toussaint: If you wish to live with the white people, and will come to me, I will give you a piece of land . . .

  1810-1811: the family is in St. Louis, but the old trader doesn’t take to civilization.

  And it is here, Father John realizes, that the stories diverge. He scanned the written records:

  March 1811: Toussaint and his Shoshone wife travel back up the Missouri to Indian country.

  December 1812: an entry in the ledger at Fort Manuel: Toussaint’s Shoshone wife died of putrid fever today . . . the best woman in the fort.

  The oral histories of the Shoshones were next; Father John lingered over them: It is Toussaint’s other Shoshone wife who dies at Fort Manuel. Sacajawea and Baptiste remain in St. Louis. The trader returns for them, and the family moves onto the plains, where he takes another wife, a beautiful, young Ute woman. Sacajawea no longer pleases him. He whipped her in front of his Ute wife.

  Sacajawea flees south to the Comanches, a new land, a new life. She remains until—Charlotte Allen is speculating now, Father John realizes—the news travels across the plains that the old trader is dead. Sacajawea goes north to her people and is reunited with her sons.

  Father John restacked the manuscript and leaned back in the chair, stretching his cramped legs, watching the prism of light—reds, blues, yellows—in the black windowpane. The old building was absolutely still, frozen in the past, in a time when everything was new—the reservation, St. Francis Mission, the roads the Arapahos and Shoshones would travel. Sacajawea had come home to her people then. She had told her stories; her spirit was in the stories.

  Stories that contradicted the written records. Without the memoirs, he knew, the biography was inconclusive, a rehash of material already published. He could sense the desperation permeating the manuscript. The same desperation he had sensed in Laura Simmons, and Laura had been searching for the memoirs when she disappeared. Just like Charlotte Allen.

  He placed the manuscript back in the folder and began thumbing through the journal. The writing was small and precise, the careful notes of an indefatigable scholar detailing each step of research. Records from the cultural center, interviews with the four oldest descendants, an entry for each day: Drove to the senior citizen center. Talked to the elders. There was no mention of Toussaint until two weeks before the final entry. Toussaint has been a great help to me.

  Father John read quickly through the other entries.

  A great secret! Toussaint told me that the memoirs escaped the fire! His own great-grandfather rushed into the burning building and grabbed everything he could. The memoirs have been with the family since. Toussaint has made me promise not to tell anyone. I am the only one outside the family who knows about the memoirs . . .

  Toussaint says the family is reluctant to speak of their famous ancestor. They are like Sacajawea herself. She was modest and unassuming. She lived quietly . . .

  Toussaint will plead my case with the family elders. He will swear that I am of good heart . . .

  Good news! This is the most wonderful day of my life. The elders have given me permission to use the memoirs. Toussaint will bring them tonight.

  Father John laid the journal in the folder next to the manuscript and rubbed at the headache tracing his temples, struggling to make sense of the notations. If Toussaint had been a great help, why hadn’t Charlotte Allen mentioned him earlier? Why did she call him Toussaint? Was that his name, or was she trying to conceal his identity? What had she been hiding? It didn’t make sense. She had trusted the man. She was planning to meet him the day she died.

  The day she died, he thought, the headache starting to pulse now. Suppose it was Toussaint who had beaten her to death, then buried her body by the river and taken her car out to Sacajawea Ridge? And suppose she had kept her promise? She’d told no one about the memoirs. But she was an historian and she’d made a written record. Toussaint probably had no idea it existed.

  Until Laura Simmons had appeared on the res with Charlotte Allen’s manuscript and journal, looking for the memoirs. But it wasn’t the manuscript that Toussaint cared about. Toussaint had to have the journal—the evidence that linked him to the murdered Charlotte Allen. That explained why he’d come after Laura and ransacked her room.

  The headache was pounding, a siren in his head. What had Toussaint done to Laura?

  He returned the folder to its hiding place. Retracing his steps through the empty corridor, he let himself out and locked the front door. As he walked back to the residence he heard the scratching sound of a wild animal in the darkness beyond the perimeter of lights. Before he talked to Gianelli, he wanted to test his theory on Vicky, search for the flaws in the clear brilliance of her mind. He’d call her first thing tomorrow.

  19

  The red-brick building that housed the Lander Police Department exuded a bleak, impersonal authority in a neighborhood of bungalows and fenced backyards with swing sets and red wagons abandoned for the winter. Vicky adjusted the strap of her black bag over one shoulder as she let herself into the heat-dried air of the entry. Bob Eberhart stood in the glass-enclosed cubicle on the right, waving a sheaf of papers at a uniformed officer, lips moving in a fury of noiseless words. He looked up and gestured toward the door next to the cubicle.

  A low buzz sounded, like that of a persistent hornet, as the door swung open. “Just called your office,” Eberhart said over the shoulder of his blue shirt as he started down the narrow hallway, papers gripped next to the black strap of his holster. Vicky walked beside him past a succession of closed doors with names printed in black letters on the pebbly glass. The pale green walls gave back faint odors of perspiration and stale smoke.

  The detective pushed open the door at the far end and waited as she stepped into the closet-sized office so tidy it might have been vacant. The last time she had been there, she could hardly push her way through the clutter. Now the top of the desk was perfectly clear, except for the folder lined up with the front edge.

  “Any word on Laura?” she said, dropping into the side chair. Her voice was hoarse with anxiety and fatigue.

  “Sorry.” The detective took the swivel chair behind the desk. “Checked w
ith the Boulder police last night, had them go to her apartment. No sign of her. Landlady said she hadn’t returned.”

  “And her SAAB?”

  “No enchilada.” Eberhart picked up a pencil and began tapping the edge of the desk. “State patrol did pick up her boyfriend outside Rawlins, turns out.”

  Vicky scooted forward; she felt her heart begin to accelerate. This was good news.

  The detective held up the pencil, a traffic cop raising his stick to stop the rush of traffic. “Don’t get your hopes up. Becker was hightailing it to Colorado, like we thought. Patrol brought him back. Just finished a little question-and-answer session with him and his lawyer over at the county jail.”

  “Where’s Laura?”

  “He was alone, Vicky. No sign of any struggle in his car. No blood.”

  A phone was ringing down the hall somewhere, a muffled distant jangle, like a memory. The scenario she’d worked out last night when she’d found herself awake, staring into the blackness, was wrong. Toby hadn’t forced Laura to go with him.

  “What did he do with her?”

  “He admits he went to her apartment last night.” The detective tilted his head back and peered at her down the long, sharpened angles of his face. “He claims that when he saw the mess, he took off.”

  “He didn’t report it? Something terrible could have happened to Laura, and he didn’t bother to pick up a phone and call the police?”

  Eberhart was shaking his head. “The man says he and Laura Simmons had a few misunderstandings in the past.”

  Vicky cut in: “He beat her up.”

  “Well, he called it misunderstandings, and he was afraid if he reported her missing, with the room ransacked and all, we might think he had something to do with it. So he says he got out of there.”

  “He’s lying.” Vicky gripped the armrests against the impulse to propel herself out of the chair and start pacing. She could think better, marshal her thoughts, when she was moving. She paced at home, in the office, in the courtroom. There was no room to pace here.

  “You know that for sure?”

  “He’s a batterer, Bob,” Vicky said. “Laura was trying to leave him. He was stalking her. He wouldn’t let her go. You know that’s the most dangerous time for a woman, when she tries to break away. He came here Tuesday night. He could have come back the next night.”

  “Okay, let’s say that’s what happened. Becker bludgeoned her and took her somewhere. Why did he return to the apartment last night?”

  The detective leaned back until the top of the swivel chair scraped against the wall. He laced thin fingers over the blue shirt. “The man says Laura rebuffed him, crushed his ego, as he put it, on Tuesday. So he drove back to Colorado. Says he was there two days before deciding to give it another try. He drove back yesterday. According to him, he’s been on the highway most of the time Laura’s been missing. A friend he poured out his troubles to will vouch for him, he says. Laura Simmons’s department chair, as it turns out. He’s one of her acquaintances we’ve got a call into right now.”

  “He’ll cover for Becker, Bob. He’s the one who must have told Becker where Laura was. The chairman knew where she was staying.” She locked eyes with the man on the other side of the desk. “You’re going to let Becker go, aren’t you?”

  “What choice do I have? This is a man with no priors. He’s gotten two speeding tickets in the last fifteen years.”

  Vicky got to her feet and moved to the window. One, two, three steps. She stopped and turned back. “Laura never reported the assaults. She must have been too ashamed.”

  The detective tossed the pencil down on the file folder. It made a soft thud. “Look, Vicky, I want to find your friend. I want to know what happened in that apartment. Gianelli’s in on the case. He’s got that twenty-year-old homicide of another Colorado professor who came here to research Sacajawea. Could be a big coincidence, one professor murdered, another missing, but we can’t ignore the similarities. Right now we don’t have any evidence that Toby Becker had anything to do with whatever happened to Laura Simmons.”

  Vicky stepped back and leaned over the desk, flattening both hands on the smooth surface. “He knows where Laura is. I want to talk to him.”

  “Highly irregular, Vicky. You know that.” He unfolded his lanky frame and stood up, gripping the edge of the desk. “Besides, he’s probably been released by now.”

  Vicky picked up her black bag and started for the door. “Maybe I can catch him before he leaves.”

  The detective’s footsteps made a slap-slap sound on the vinyl floor behind her as she hurried down the hall. She opened the door to the entry and glanced back. “Don’t worry, Bob,” she said. “I won’t compromise your investigation. I’m Laura’s friend, that’s all.”

  Vicky saw the two men emerge through the double-glassed entrance to the squat, red-bricked Fremont County Jail as she turned into the parking lot. They stood on the sidewalk, the taller man snapping up a bulky red jacket, eyes surveying the rows of vehicles. The tousled brown hair, the striking features, the insouciant air—Laura had described Toby Becker to a T. The man in the gray topcoat and pressed gray trousers raising a gloved finger in the air, was Mark Hensler, local attorney. She’d clashed with him in the courtroom a number of times.

  Suddenly the attorney stepped off the curb and headed toward a white 4x4. Becker turned in the opposite direction, walking in a relaxed, confident stride toward the black BMW at the end of the row. Vicky slid the Bronco into the vacant space next to the sports car and jumped out.

  “Toby,” she called as the man pointed an opener toward the BMW and smiled, satisfied at the clicking noise.

  “Do I know you?” He glanced up.

  “I’m a friend of Laura’s.”

  She moved around the hood as he snapped open the door, placing it between them, and started to drop inside. “Anything you want to say, you can say to my lawyer.”

  “I’m very worried about her. I’m sure you must be, too.”

  Slowly he lifted himself upright and rested both arms on the top of the door, allowing his eyes to take her in. She could sense the strength of the man, not unlike the strength that was in Ben. “Of course I’m worried,” he said.

  Not worried enough to have reported her missing, Vicky thought. She said, “I went to see Laura last night.” Her voice was firm. “I’m the one who called the police.”

  Toby Becker gave a low whistle as if he’d just assured himself that she could not be trusted. “Well, you can talk to my lawyer. I don’t know anything about what happened to Laura.” He started to get back inside, and Vicky took hold of the door. The metallic cold penetrated her glove. “Did you and Laura argue when you came to see her Tuesday night? Did she tell you she never wanted to see you again?”

  “None of your business,” he said. He stood up again and drew in a breath, his nostrils collapsing into thin, disapproving lines, his blue eyes darkening into black stones. “Laura and I have had our misunderstandings over the past year, and she’s told me it was all over, but she always came back. This breakup was no more permanent than the others. Laura’s very emotional. She gets upset about nothing.” He leaned over the door toward her. “I find high-spirited women very interesting, however. Just begging to be tamed.”

  “Did you hit her again, Becker? Did you tear up her notepad and throw the pages around, ransack the room?”

  “Now, why would I do that? I don’t give a robin’s shit for some biography of Pocahontas. Unlike Laura, I’m not willing to spend my life editing somebody else’s work. I create my own work. I’m a novelist.”

  “The Sacajawea biography is important to Laura.”

  “Brilliant deduction. Much more important than I am or the novel I took valuable time from to come running after her. That was my mistake. Let me explain what happened when I saw Laura Tuesday night. She was all aquiver about meeting some man who could get her some great historical document. Well, I figure she found him, and he roughed her up. Or maybe sh
e threw one of her tantrums and trashed the place herself and went off someplace to sulk. I don’t know, and frankly I don’t care.”

  He started to pull the door in, but Vicky grabbed the edge. “Wait a minute. Who was the man?”

  “I didn’t ask, sweetheart. I drove all day to grovel, which is what she likes. Oh, she gets her jollies watching me grovel. And all she can talk about is some guy who’s going to get her critical evidence. Critical evidence.” A falsetto voice now. “And I’m supposed to believe that’s all she wanted? I refer any further questions to my attorney.” He yanked the door free from her hand and slid in behind the wheel.

  Vicky stepped back as the BMW’s engine burst into life and the car shot backward, peppering her with miniscule specks of dust and ice before swinging onto the street. She walked to the Bronco, slid inside, and turned the ignition. The engine hummed and vibrated around her; cold air pushed through the vents. Eberhart was right. There was no evidence. Anyone could have come to the apartment and attacked Laura. Toby Becker could be telling the truth.

  She drew in a long breath, threw the transmission into reverse, and began backing out, her thoughts switching gears now. Maybe her instincts had been right to begin with. Maybe Laura’s research had put her in danger. She could have found the man who had the memoirs. She could have found Toussaint.

  Vicky wheeled out onto the street and headed north to the reservation.

  20

  It was mid-morning before Father John got to the work he wanted to finish before he left—bills to pay, letters to answer, phone calls to return. Boxes were accumulating in the office; he still had another couple of drawers to pack. The phone had started ringing the moment he’d come in—parishioners asking if the farewell feast was still on after Mass tomorrow, if he was still leaving. Yes, he’d said absentmindedly, his thoughts on Laura Simmons.