“For what, exactly, are we searching?”
“I don’t know. That’s why we have to look for ourselves.”
His eyes turned to me. “You do not think the police have already done this?”
“I’m sure they asked some questions, but that’s probably all. It’s hard to deal with lawyers without a warrant.”
He looked back at the building. “Which is why we are breaking and entering?”
“Just entering; I’m not planning on breaking anything.” He nodded but didn’t look particularly convinced.
It was just then that the woman I assumed was Patti turned the corner and approached from the plaza on Broad. She was looking around as she crossed the street. “I’m sorry, I had trouble getting a babysitter…” She stopped talking and looked at Henry. The Indian had that kind of an effect on people east of the Mississippi River.
“Patti-with-an-i, I’m Walt and this is Henry Standing Bear.”
He inclined his head, extended a hand, and smiled while she melted into the cracks of the sidewalk. “Patti- with-an-i, I have heard a great deal about you.”
I rolled my eyes and converted it into a glance through the revolving doors of the lobby, where a couple of security guards sat at a centrally located desk between the banks of elevators. I wondered mildly if we might have been better off leaving the Cheyenne Nation out of the equation.
Once inside, Patti just waved at the men; I noticed one of them was reading the Philadelphia Inquirer, which had a more demure take on the Devon Conliffe saga. The other looked at us a little quizzically but made nothing more of it.
We watched as Patti punched the up button, and we got on the elevator as she slipped a security card into the panel and hit a red one marked thirty-two. We got off and followed her to a set of opaque glass doors where she inserted the card again. The doors buzzed. I pushed one only partly open. “This is as far as you go.”
She looked up at me. “I thought…”
I shook my head. “It’s bad enough that the guards have seen you with us. If we get caught, I don’t want you anywhere near.”
“You’re not going to know what to look for.”
I glanced over at Henry. “We’ll have to take that chance.”
She sighed. “Her office is straight down the hall past the library, then take a right and go to the corner; she’s the next to last door on the left.”
I saluted, and we waited till she was gone. I turned to look at Henry. “I like to ask myself, what would Gerry Spence do in a situation like this?”
“Gerry Spence would not be in a situation like this.”
The main hall was a straight shot to a conference room. The lights were all on, and I expected somebody to cross at any second and turn to look at us. I waited a moment, then stepped into the entryway and looked both left and right down the first intersecting hallway. There seemed to be three more before the end. We listened, but the only sound was the heating/cooling air handlers.
I watched as Henry took his rightful place at the front, always the scout. He advanced to the next intersection and motioned for me to follow, never taking his eyes off the area ahead. I moved out and up behind him as he crossed and continued.
We were at the doorway of the library when he stopped and angled his head in the direction of the opening. I expected to hear the shriek of lawyers, aware that they were being attacked by a war party, but it was silent. I waited as Henry held up a fist, then a single finger, and then the fist again.
Hold, one person, stay there.
I waited as he crossed and peered into the room from the opposite angle. I watched as the dark eyes flicked around. He froze for a second, then slowly turned away and placed himself flat against the far wall; I did the same. I listened more carefully as someone rustled some papers and walked through the room about twenty feet from the door.
After a moment and more than most white men would wait, the Bear inclined his head and looked into the library. He glanced back and gestured for me to come along. I crossed and followed him to the far corner, where he stopped, and once again looked both ways.
Every light in this part of the damn place was on as well, and I started wondering how much Schomberg, Calder, Dallin, and Rhind could shave off their billing by turning them out. Paintings on the walls in the corridor that led to Cady’s office were abstracts of what I took to be Indians. When I turned to look at Henry, he was studying the nearest one, looked at me, and shrugged.
To my relief, most of the doorways leading to the right were either dark or closed. Seeing the lights from the other tall buildings glide past as we worked our way down the hall was making me dizzy, so I was glad when we got to the door that read CADY LONGMIRE on a little brass plaque. The door that was three before Cady’s was open with the light on. The plaque on it read JOANNE FITZPATRICK; the name sounded familiar. Henry turned the knob to Cady’s office and closed the door behind us after I followed him in.
It was a small room, and we stood there for a moment to let our eyes adjust to the darkness. I could feel some of Cady’s clothes hanging on the back of her door and steadied their swinging with my hand. Henry stood slightly to the left, looking out the floor-to-ceiling glass wall ahead of us. William Penn and City Hall were to our right, and the yellow glow of the clock below Penn told us it was a time when all good lawyers should be home and in bed. The bluish light of the building across Market reflected the streetlights below and the image of the building we were now in.
Henry reached across the shadow of a desk and clicked on a green tortoiseshell lamp. The illumination was ample but not so much that it reached the space under the doorway. I breathed the first deep breath since entering the offices. “Somebody was in the library?”
The Bear nodded. “Yes. Pretty girl, about Cady’s age with long, dark hair.”
I thought about it as I looked around. “I don’t know anybody she works with by sight.” He nodded.
There wasn’t much room to move; there were file boxes lined up against the wall, so I crossed behind the desk where there were more piles of folders and a computer. There were even more boxes at the foot of the windows, with another wall of file cabinets to the right.
I sat in her chair and looked around. There was a large map of Wyoming from the turn of the century in a heavy gilded frame. There were four ledger drawings that Henry had acquired for her flanking both sides, and an etching Joel Ostlind had done of Cloud Peak. I looked at the elegant simplicity of the etching and could feel the air and the cold wind of the west ridge.
On the desk, there was an old photograph of Cady with Martha after the chemotherapy had begun taking its toll. I studied the beautiful bone structure of the two women, mother and daughter, the brightness of their eyes, and the languid relaxation of their hands as they lay draped over each other’s shoulders. There was another of Henry standing with Dena Many Camps in traditional dress at the Little Bighorn reenactment. There was even one of Dog.
I suppose my disappointment was evident. “What is wrong?”
I waited a moment and then responded. “I know it’s stupid…but there aren’t any pictures of me.” I cleared my throat, hoping that maybe I wouldn’t sound so stupid and pathetic when I continued. “There aren’t any photographs of me at her house or here.” He was silent as he watched, watched the guilt of my misplaced emotions blunder forward like those of a wounded animal. “I just thought I was important enough in her life to support one or two photographs.”
He quietly reached across the desk and hit the space bar on the computer.
I raised my eyes, and the wave that hit me was like a wall of sentiment: wet, deep, and ancient. I sat there as the swell subsided, but the saltwater stayed in my eyes and blurred my vision.
It was a full-screen wallpaper of me with my head crushed against Cady’s, and it was obvious from the angle that she had taken the photo at arms length. We were both smiling, and her nose was stuck in my ear.
7
