Night of the White Buffalo: A Wind River Mystery by Margaret Coel Page A

visited Arnie at the Fremont County jail, gotten him out on bond, prepared a defense. Whether or not Arnie was innocent, he deserved a defense.
    Vicky swung around the wide curve, stopped for a red light, then turned into a parking lot and drove toward the redbrick building of the local FBI offices. She spotted Adam standing on the sidewalk, his hands in the pockets of his khakis, eyes trained on the highway on one side of the lot. Not until she had parked next to his BMW did he seem to realize she had arrived. He walked over and opened her door. She could still feel the coolness that had settled between them last night when she had insisted upon staying with the body of Dennis Carey. A white man she had never met. Adam, nervous beside her, glancing around as if he expected the killer to rise up out of the borrow ditch and point a gun at them. She had thought of Grandmother Nitti and Grandfather Joseph, her parents and aunties and uncles, the lady who’d served lunch in the cafeteria at St. Francis School when she was a kid, the grandmother who’d made fry bread at the rodeos, all the dead she had known. Someone had always stayed with the body until one of the holy old men could bless it, paint it with the sacred red paint that would identify the spirit to the ancestors.
    She lifted herself out of the Ford, conscious of the protective and—was it her imagination?—apologetic pressure of Adam’s hand on her arm as he guided her across the sidewalk and through the front door of the redbrick building.

7
    FEDERAL AGENT TED Gianelli, twenty years ago a linebacker for the Patriots, stood in the corridor, the pebbled glass door open behind him. “Saw you drive up. Come on in.” He had a booming voice that rolled around the walls and the vinyl flooring.
    Vicky felt the pressure of Adam’s hand on the middle of her back as they followed the fed into a warren of offices with fluorescent lights humming overhead. Right, down a short hallway past a cubicle with a dark-haired woman behind the desk, head bent into the phone at her ear. Left, down another hallway and into a small, tidy office with a bank of windows that overlooked the parking lot. Opera music played softly from the iPod jammed among the massive gray legal books that lined the side wall. A flood of memories washed over her. In John O’Malley’s old pickup, opera floating out of the CD player between them on the front seat; in his office at St. Francis, opera wafting from the CD player on the bookshelf. Opera was something they had in common, John O’Malley and the fed. She had grown accustomed to the music, even recognized a few arias. “Celeste Aida”
was playing now.
    Gianelli motioned them to the pair of chairs. Vicky sank down and Adam dropped beside her. The fed settled himself behind the desk and leaned back, tapping a ballpoint against the palm of his hand in rhythm with the aria. “I’ve read the Wind River police reports.” He nodded toward the computer on the table in front of the bookcase. “Sometimes it takes a while for the details to emerge. Let’s start at the beginning. What time did you come upon the victim?”
    Adam cleared his throat, as if he were the only lawyer in the courtroom and the judge were addressing him. “Must have been close to eleven. The meeting at the tribal college in Ethete adjourned at ten, and Vicky . . .” She was aware of the nod in her direction; she kept her eyes on the fed, ready to read his reactions. What was he looking for? Something new, something they had neglected to tell Banner? A detail they hadn’t realized could be crucial? “After she spoke, Vicky stayed to talk to students. We drove out of the parking lot about ten thirty and headed south.”
    Is that what they had told Banner? Left at ten thirty, reached the victim’s pickup about eleven? It was possible. Vicky felt a shiver run through her. Parts of last night