“Inside, O’Connor,” No Voice said. After they’d entered, he pointed to the right. “End of the hall. I’m right behind you.”
As they approached, Cork realized they were headed to the office of Ellyn Grant.
“We’re expected?” Cork said.
“Oh, yeah. Go right in.”
Beyond the door, much of the large office was still occupied by the miniature rendering of the Gateway Grand Casino.
Ellyn Grant looked up from her desk. Her face was the color and hardness of desert sandstone. She’d been writing, but she put her pen down very deliberately.
“Thank you, Andy. You can wait outside.”
No Voice retreated and closed the door.
“Mr. O’Connor, we meet again. And you must be Hugh Parmer,” she said. “I’m Ellyn Grant.”
Parmer nodded and said, “Ah.”
“I understand you two gentlemen have concerns about our casino development.”
“Actually, Ellyn, my concerns go way beyond your casino.”
“I’d be interested in hearing them.” She flipped her hand in invitation toward two empty chairs, and the men sat. “Well?”
“I’ll tell you what,” Cork said. “You ask me a question, something you’d like to know, and I’ll give you an answer. In return, I’ll ask you a question and you give me an answer. Keeps us on equal footing.”
“I could simply have you thrown in jail.”
“Not here. No Voice has no jurisdiction over whites accused of breaking the law on the rez. But I suppose you might have the right influence with Sheriff Kosmo. Problem is that it doesn’t get either of us any of the answers we’re looking for.”
She weighed his proposition. “All right.”
“What would you like to know?” he said.
“That’s a question, Mr. O’Connor. I thought I got to go first.” She gave him a cool, satisfied smile. “It’s my understanding that you believe the plane that went missing with my husband and your wife aboard didn’t crash in the mountains. What do you think did happen to it?”
“I think it was flown somewhere and landed.”
“Flown where?”
Cork held up his hand to stop her. “My turn.” He leaned forward. “Is Lame Nightwind in love with you?”
His question clearly caught her off guard. “I’m sure I don’t know.”
Cork sat back. “Hell, if you’re not going to tell me the truth, I’ll just throw a few lies your way, too. We’ll get nowhere.”
For several seconds, she stared at him without blinking, and he thought of the Sphinx of Egypt.
“Yes,” she finally replied. “He’s in love with me.”
“He’s loved you since you were kids, isn’t that true?”
“My turn,” she said. “Where do you believe the plane landed?”
“My best guess at the moment is Nightwind’s airstrip. Forget about the question I just asked. I’m going to assume that he’s loved you forever. So my question is this: Do you love him?”
“No,” she said. “And yes.”
“Care to explain?”
“That’s another question.” She picked up the pen she’d been using and toyed with it. “If you think the plane landed at Lame’s airstrip, you must believe that he was involved. I’d be interested in knowing why you believe this.”
“We know that it wasn’t Clinton Bodine who flew the plane,” Cork told her. “I believe he was dead before the charter ever left the ground in Wisconsin. But everyone agrees that the pilot who flew out of Casper was Indian. Nightwind told me last year when I met him that he flew to a lot of powwows. So did Clinton Bodine. It’s not hard to imagine that at some point they bumped into each other. That was probably what gave Nightwind the idea for the pilot switch. We also know that your husband was opposed to the Gateway Grand Casino. He was a problem that needed taking care of.”
“What do you mean?”
“He needed to be removed from the picture. Killed. Which you helped with.”
“You think I would actually take part in something like that?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“Who you love more, your husband or the Arapaho. The way I see it, you were in trouble. Or more specifically, the Owl Creek Reservation was in trouble. You’d promised wealth you couldn’t deliver. You built your little casino thinking it would bring in good money to fund all your fine improvements. But it didn’t work out that way because Hot Springs is too far off the beaten path. All those millions of people headed to Yellowstone stay to the south or to the north, and neither the Blue Sky Casino nor the healing spring waters are enough to entice them to make a detour.
“So there you are, trapped. You’ve invested whatever resources the rez has in an enterprise that’s going south. Your husband’s answer is to open the reservation to gas and oil exploration, which you see as rape. Then maybe something like this happens: Some people come to you, offer you a sweet deal. They’ll carry your debt. Hell, maybe even provide cash for some of those improvements on the rez so that your credibility holds together. And in return you use the sovereign status of the Arapaho to help these people build a casino, the biggest between Atlantic City and Las Vegas, at the doorway to Yellowstone. It’s a partnership that promises the kind of income you’d always dreamed of for the Owl Creek Arapaho. Only one problem. Your partners aren’t nice people. They’re the kind of people who make people disappear. And when your husband doesn’t come around to your way of thinking, he needs to be one of the people who disappears.”
“I had nothing to do with anyone disappearing.”
“No? You were with your husband in Casper before the plane left that morning, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“And his glasses went missing?”
“I don’t really remember.”
“He would have been pretty blind without them?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
“Which would be necessary, because if he could see when he got on that plane, he’d have recognized Nightwind. Maybe Nightwind alters his voice some and your husband is none the wiser.”
“That’s absurd.”
“You want to hear something really absurd? You knew all along that the plane hadn’t gone down in Baby’s Cradle, but you and Nightwind kept pointing us there. Why? Because Will Pope’s vision was true and you had to misdirect us so that we wouldn’t be thinking about what his vision was really telling us. But we’re going to figure that out, Ellyn, and when we do, your whole card castle is going to tumble.”
“That’s enough,” she said. “We’re finished.”
“Let me tell you one more thing. If I were you, I’d be very careful and I wouldn’t travel alone. Because the closer we get to the evidence we need to prove these things, the greater a liability you become to the people behind all this.”
She laughed harshly. “I’ve dealt with tough people before, Mr. O’Connor. They don’t scare me. And if what you say is true, it seems to me that you and your friend are the ones who ought to be careful. It would be much easier for these people, if they exist, to simply make you disappear.”
“True enough. On the other hand, the more folks we talk to, and believe me we’ve talked to a lot, the more will come asking the same questions if we vanish. Easier, it seems to me, to cut the threads that tie these bad people to the missing plane. And those threads would be you and Lame Nightwind.”
The door opened, and Dewey Quinn walked in with No Voice behind him.
“Sorry to break in like this, Ms. Grant,” Quinn said, “but I need to take these men back to Hot Springs. The sheriff would like to see them.”
“That’s all right, Dewey.” She gave Cork one last look that seemed chipped from flint. “Our business is finished.”
“Think about it, Ellyn,” Cork said. “And if I were you, I’d talk to Nightwind, tell him to watch his back.”
“Good day, gentlemen.”
Quinn and No Voice escorted them out to the parking lot, where Quinn shook hands with his colleague.