Free Killing Custer by Margaret Coel

toward the door where Annie, blanched and wide-eyed, stood in the opening. She gripped the door handle and leaned against the edge, as if she were leaning into the wind out on the plains.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œSkip Burrows.”
    â€œWhat about him?”
    â€œHe’s gone.”
    Vicky was quiet for a moment before she repeated the word: “Gone?”
    â€œI just got off the phone with my cousin, Andrew. He was having breakfast at the café across the street from Skip’s office when police cars pulled into the parking lot.”
    â€œI heard the sirens,” Vicky said. So it hadn’t been an accident on the highway.
    â€œLot of people showing up, and Andrew went to see what was going on. Somebody trashed Skip Burrows’s office, and he’s missing. The police are forming a search party. Roger is taking the morning off to help.”
    Vicky leaned back against her chair. Law office trashed, lawyer missing? And Skip Burrows: likeable, friendly, always time to stop and chat. Remembered everyone’s name and the names of their kids. He had opened the office about two years ago, and last year, he had hired Angela Running Bear as his secretary, which made the office a friendly place for Arapahos. For a while, Vicky’s own practice had slowed down, her own people finding their way to the office in the white-brick building at the far end of Main Street. Skip had taken to stopping in unannounced, assuring her he had no intention of taking her clients, suggesting that they might work together. He and Roger had become friendly, walking into town for coffee some mornings. Gradually things had returned to normal, as if the novelty of another Arapaho in a law office had worn off.
    â€œAngela called 911 when she got to work this morning.”
    Vicky took a moment, letting the news settle, find a place in reality. She was about to turn back to the computer when Annie gave a little cough, as if to clear the way for more news. “I checked the phone messages for the weekend,” she said. “You had a call on Friday at 6:03 in the evening. No message, but the ID said the call came from Skip Burrows.”

7
    FATHER JOHN HAD taken the early Mass. A dozen parishioners, missals propped open on the pews in front, rosary beads threaded through gnarled, brown fingers, lips moving silently. The sun slanted through the stained-glass windows and cast arrows of red, yellow, and blue light across the church—a small chapel, really—built by the Arapahos after the leaders had asked the Jesuits to come and teach their children. He offered the Mass for the soul of Edward Garrett, a stranger killed in their midst. And he prayed for the Arapahos who had ridden in the parade and for their families, all of whom would be waiting for the tornado about to touch down.
    After Mass, he stood in front and shook hands with the people filing past. The old faithfuls, he called them, who drove battered pickups across the reservation to the morning Mass at St. Francis Mission almost every day. Mason Walking Horse had held on to his hand for a long moment. He had black, watery eyes that shone like pebbles at the bottom of a creek. “Who else they gonna investigate except the warriors?” He hurried on without waiting for an answer. “Tell that white detective we’re watching him. Raps weren’t the only people at the parade.”
    Father John gave the old man what he hoped was a reassuring nod. He’d do his best, he said. It was true that hundreds of people had lined the curbs yesterday. But the fact remained that Garrett had died while the warriors raced around the cavalry. Logic could be implacable.
    Walks-On bounced down the hallway when Father John let himself into the residence. He tossed his cowboy hat on the bench, then stooped over and scratched behind the dog’s ears before following him into the kitchen. The bishop’s chair was vacant, his breakfast dishes