The Story Teller (14 page)

Vicky nodded and smiled, fighting the urge to prod the old woman toward the point: what had happened to Todd? Elders told their stories at their own pace, in their own time.

Mary Ellen Pearson rearranged herself in the chair and smoothed the pleated skirt over her knees. “I saw the white car—a four-wheel-drive of some type—speed into the lot. Well, I thought it would run over him, don’t you know. But then two men jumped out and started hitting him with something. It might have been a tire iron—the poor boy.”

The old woman seemed to slide to the edge of tears. She squared her shoulders and stared at some point beyond Vicky’s shoulders. “Terrible,” she said. “Terrible.”

The anger and sadness she’d felt at the morgue rushed over Vicky again. She took a deep breath. “What makes you think it was Todd?”

“Well, of course, I didn’t realize at the time. . . .” Mary Ellen Pearson allowed the thought to trail off, then cleared her throat. “The moment I read about Todd’s body being found in the South Platte, well, I realized the poor boy I saw must have been him.”

“Have you talked to the police?” Vicky inched forward on the chair.

“Oh, yes. I reported what I saw immediately. I was so distraught. It was terrible. . . .”

“I understand.” Vicky reached out and placed her hand lightly over the old woman’s.

“And I spoke to the police this morning. A detective . . .” She searched for the name.

“Clark.” Vicky withdrew her hand.

“Yes, Detective Clark. I told him everything I had told the officer Monday night, everything I’d witnessed. Two big, burly fellows. Horrible, just horrible men. And the car, a white four-by-four, although I’m uncertain of the type. I wish I had seen more.”

“You did as much as you could under the circumstances,” Vicky said. “What you saw will help the police.”

The other woman pursed her lips and smoothed her skirt again. “The police are wrong, you know.”

“Wrong?”

“I daresay I made it very clear to Detective Clark that Todd Harris did not use drugs. Those students are absent half the time, and when they do attend class, it’s as if they’re not even there. One can tell, you know. One develops a keen sense about these things.”

Still the drug angle, Vicky was thinking. She
doubted Mary Ellen Pearson’s comments would change Steve’s mind. Once he got hold of a notion, he was like a bloodhound pointed in one direction. There would be no turning aside, not without some kind of irrefutable proof that he was on the wrong trail. She said, “I was hoping to find Todd’s adviser.”

Mary Ellen Pearson scooted the chair into the well of the desk and rummaged through a stack of folders. She pulled out a small booklet and, touching her index finger to her tongue, pushed through the pages. “Aha. Here it is, Professor Emil Coughlin.”

It took a moment for Vicky to place the name: Emil Coughlin, the consultant the Denver Museum of the West had hired to verify the Plains Indian objects. What was it Rachel Foster had said? The museum always hired experts. It made sense, Vicky thought. Todd would have wanted an expert to advise him on his master’s thesis.

“Where can I reach Professor Coughlin?” Vicky asked, hoping her tone was respectful. The old woman was clearly as appalled by Todd’s murder as she was.

Mary Ellen Pearson tilted her head. “Why, his office is down the hall.”

“You’ve been very helpful,” Vicky said, getting to her feet.

“Oh, you won’t find Emil in his office,” the other woman said hurriedly. “He isn’t teaching this summer. I believe he leaves for Japan soon.”

“Where can I find him?”

The professor slowly lifted herself out of the chair and leaned across the desk, shuffling through another stack of papers, eventually extracting a thin, brown booklet. She flipped it open and, after a moment, read off a telephone number and an address Vicky knew was on Lookout Mountain.

Dropping the booklet onto the disarray on the desk, Mary Ellen Pearson said, “I’ve only seen Emil Coughlin
on campus once since summer session got under way. I don’t imagine he will be of any help.”

She was probably right, Vicky was thinking. And Steve Clark could have already talked to him. In which case, the professor wouldn’t tell her anything he might know about Julie or any other students Todd had associated with. Still it was worth a chance. She debated about calling the professor, then discarded the idea. It would be easy to turn her away on the phone. But Emil Coughlin might find it hard to slam the door in her face if she showed up at his home on Lookout Mountain.

13

T
he Taurus balked on the climb up Lookout Mountain, and Vicky pressed hard on the accelerator coming out of the curves. Denver sprawled below, creeping eastward onto the plains in a blue haze of heat. Rock-strewn hillsides swept past her window, opening occasionally onto views of canyons that led deeper into the mountains—canyons her people had once traveled to hunt buffalo in the mountain meadows. On top of the mountain, she knew, was the grave of Buffalo Bill, a buffalo killer. A hero to whites because he’d helped to destroy the animals that had sustained her people.

She slowed on a straightaway, squinting in the sunlight at the names on mailboxes at the edge of dirt driveways. She was almost past a driveway when she spotted
COUGHLIN.
Stomping on the brake pedal, she skidded toward the rim of the road and backed up, then slipped the gear into drive and crawled up the driveway. At the far end, in an expanse of wild grasses and aspen trees, stood a turreted, white stucco house, like a Moorish castle perched on the top of a ridge.

Vicky parked in the graveled circle looping in front. As she got out, a slightly built man stepped through the black-lacquered front door. He was dressed in a yellow polo shirt and white slacks, as if he might have been on his way to the golf course.

“Ah,” he said, extending his hand. “The Arapaho attorney from the Wind River Reservation. Good to meet you, my dear.”

“Professor Coughlin.” Vicky was surprised he knew who she was. The man’s grip was strong, the forearms muscled and suntanned. He was probably in his fifties, she decided, with thinning, sand-colored hair combed over his scalp and light gray eyes.

“Please call me Emil. May I call you Vicky?” He was smiling; tiny squint lines burrowed into the suntanned face. “I’m much too old to bother with meaningless formalities.”

“You can’t be that old,” Vicky said, retrieving her hand.

The man patted a strand of hair into place. “Perhaps not, my dear. Although one feels life is quickly passing by, and so much still to do.” He nodded toward the door. “May I offer you some refreshments on this stifling hot afternoon? We must refresh the weary travelers who appear at our tipi, must we not, my dear? That is the Indian way, I believe.”

He ushered her into an entry swept with white walls and a black-tiled floor. Urns filled with fresh flowers occupied the pedestals at the base of a wide staircase that led to balconies and open spaces overhead. “I hope you won’t worry about being alone with a not-so-old man whose wife, I’m afraid, has taken herself off to the boutiques. We leave for Japan in a few days, and she tells me she has nothing to wear. She’ll be terribly sorry she missed your visit, I’m sure.”

“Emil,” Vicky began. “I’ve come about—”

“I know.” The professor tilted the flat of one hand. “My colleague Professor Pearson called. Poor woman! Obsessed with a mugging she saw the other night. Convinced the victim was Todd Harris, when most likely there’s no connection.” He gave his shoulders a quick
shrug. “Muggings occur occasionally, I’m afraid. After all, the campus is part of a modern city.”

Another shrug, and the professor led her past the staircase into a sitting room that stretched across the rear of the house. A pair of blue leather sofas faced each other across a marble-topped coffee table. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked a patio that ran to the edge of the ridge. Beyond was the city, the glass skyscrapers of downtown winking in the sun.

“A refreshing glass of iced tea for the lady?” Emil Coughlin said, bowing slightly before retreating through a doorway in the side wall. Vicky strolled to the opposite wall, drawn by the Indian artifacts arranged on the glass shelves: parfleches covered with pictographs in muted reds and blues; medicine bags and moccasins covered in beads in geometric symbols.

“Do you like them?”

The professor’s voice startled her. She swung around as he set down a tray with tall glasses of iced tea, lemon slices wedged onto the rims. “Please sit down,” he said, indicating one of the sofas.

“The artifacts are very beautiful.” Vicky let herself down into the soft blue leather. Her hand trembled as she took the glass he handed her. It always gave her a start to come unexpectedly upon objects made by her people.

“Not museum quality, I’m afraid.” The professor sat on the sofa across from her and took a long drink from his glass. “I always place the best pieces I find in museums where they can enrich everyone. These pieces”—a little nod toward the glass shelves—“are leftovers, I’m afraid. Hardly representative of the fine craftsmanship of the Plains Indians.”

Leaning back into the cushions, his glass balanced on one white thigh, the professor went on: “Tell me, my dear, what is your interest in the murdered student?”

Vicky took a sip of tea: herbal, flavored with raspberries. “I knew him from the day he was born. He and my son were childhood friends.”

“My sincere condolences to you,” Emil Coughlin said. “And to his family. Please tell them what a fine young man I thought he was. I was shocked to read the article in this morning’s paper.”

“The police think it was a drug murder,” Vicky said, watching for his reaction.

The professor sighed. “Unfortunately ours is a drug culture, is it not? Nevertheless, as his adviser, I knew Todd fairly well. It would surprise me greatly if he had succumbed. Unless . . .” He frowned, furrows deepening in the tanned forehead, as if a new thought had occurred to him, one that required much effort. “Unless he chose drugs as a means of escape.”

“Escape?”

The professor stared at her a moment. “Most students figure out how hard they must work to graduate. That becomes the extent of their efforts. But Todd was intent and determined. Worked much harder than necessary, I daresay, which placed him under a great deal of stress. Yes, I would say he was highly stressed. I had been somewhat concerned about him, I must admit.”

Vicky took a long sip of the tea, thinking how neatly the professor’s theory meshed with Steve’s. “Did you know any of his friends on campus?” she asked.

“Oh, my dear, I make it a firm policy not to involve myself in the private lives of students, or allow them to involve themselves in mine.” He crossed one leg over the other and swung a brown Docksider along the side of the coffee table. “I believe Todd had a roommate. Someone named Julie. Perhaps if you locate her, she could give you the information you want.”

Vicky returned her glass to the tray. The ice made a little clinking noise. No one had mentioned a roommate.
Not even the old woman at Todd’s apartment building.

“A student?” Vicky asked.

The professor swirled his glass of tea, contemplating it, as if were a snifter of brandy he was about to sip. “I’m afraid I can be no further help,” he said finally.

Vicky glanced out the windows at the stalks of meadow grass along the edge of the patio, swayed back in the summer heat. If Julie lived in the apartment, where was she? And why had Todd been working harder than even his adviser thought necessary? What was he working on?

Turning her eyes back to the man across from her, she said, “Tell me about the thesis Todd was writing.”

Emil gave his glass another swirl, a nervous gesture, Vicky thought. “Most interesting topic,” he said. “Todd set out to identify the exact locations of Arapaho villages and battlefields in Colorado. He did exhaustive research.” Another sigh. “Visited every site he documented. About two weeks ago he made a swing through the southeastern part of the state. Quite a few sites there.”

“Sand Creek is there,” Vicky said.

The professor shook his head. “Ah, yes. The infamous Sand Creek. Todd was determined to document the fact that Arapahos were killed there. I had approved his outline and bibliography. I was looking forward with much anticipation to the finished thesis.” Suddenly he threw back his head and laughed—a quick, dry chortle. “It would have destroyed the career of my distinguished colleague, Bernard Good Elk.” He gave a little wave—a matter of no importance. “An arrogant man, Good Elk. He’s been proclaiming for months now that Sand Creek was a Cheyenne affair. Of course he’s wrong, but he’s so adamant, he might convince the government bureaucrats who are in charge of allotting land to the descendants of people who were attacked. In any
case, I don’t know how much luck Todd had. I tried to call him after he got back. Spoke with his roommate. Todd was never in.” He shook his head. “Such a hard worker. I did worry about him.”