Read Online The Spirit Woman by Margaret Coel - Free Book Online

brought up the skeleton back at the museum.
    Vicky stopped and threw her head back. She gave a little shiver of cold. “The elders asked you?” Then, as if she would have liked to recall the words, she said, “See how they respect you, John? You’re the one they trust to find the truth.” She started walking again, and he stayed in step, not knowing what to say. The elders had turned to him, a white man. They should have asked her.
    Vicky linked her arm in his. “Of course they’d call you. They trust you, John, and you and Gianelli are friends.” She was quiet as they passed the church, the alley leading to Eagle Hall and the guest house. “I wish they’d called me,” she said finally.
    â€œI’m sorry, Vicky.” He could feel the light pressure of her hand through the sleeve of his wool jacket.
    â€œIt’s not your fault you’re the one they trust,” she said as they walked up the icy steps in front of the administration building. He held the heavy wooden door and waited for her to step inside, acutely aware of the place on his arm where her hand had rested.
    He followed her into his office on the right and flipped the switch, displacing the gray afternoon with a tungsten-bright light that flooded over the desk and the two chairs arranged along one wall. Vicky sank into one of the chairs. He could feel her eyes on him as he picked up the glass coffeepot from the little metal stand next to the door. He went in search of water from the sink down the hall.
    â€œI came back home to help my people,” she said when he returned. Her coat was arranged around the chair behind her. “How naive and stupid it sounds. Indian lawyer wants to help her people! I’m just a woman who had the temerity to put herself forward. Divorce her husband and become a lawyer, like a man. My people don’t know which category to put me in—wife, mother, lawyer. I don’t really belong anywhere.”
    Father John took off his jacket, hooked it on the coat tree, and sat at the edge of the desk, facing her. “It takes time, Vicky. Old traditions are slow to change.”
    She lifted one hand and brushed back a small strand of hair that had fallen over her forehead. “What does Gianelli say?” she asked, bringing the subject back to the skeleton. A kind of uncertainty showed in her eyes.
    He said, “A Caucasian woman, somewhere between the mid-twenties and mid-thirties. She was buried twenty to twenty-five years ago.”
    Vicky stared at him, eyes opened wide in astonishment. “Charlotte Allen disappeared on the reservation twenty years ago.”
    In the quiet, the sound of dripping coffee. “What happened to her?” Father John said after a moment.
    â€œShe was hiking in the mountains. Her body was never found. Maybe she wasn’t lost in the mountains after all. Maybe she’d gone walking along the river, fell down, knocked herself unconscious—”
    â€œThe woman was murdered, Vicky. Her skull was fractured. She had a broken jaw and cheekbone, broken ribs and arms, consistent with a—”
    â€œBeating.” Vicky finished the sentence. Some of the color had drained from her face.
    â€œWhat does Laura know about Charlotte Allen?”
    â€œNot much.” Vicky was shaking her head. “Charlotte’s mother gave her the unfinished manuscript, as well as the journal Charlotte kept while she was here.”
    Father John reached back and picked up the phone. “We’d better let Gianelli know,” he said, tapping out the number.
    An answering machine clicked on at the other end. “You have reached the Central Wyoming offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” He told the machine that he had some information on the identity of the skeleton, then replaced the receiver.
    Vicky had poured two mugs of coffee, set one beside him on the desk, and was cradling the other in both hands as she