14
Detective Matt Slinger might have been a professional wrestler, Father John thought. The fleshy, pushed-in face, the nose that looked as if it had been broken once or twice, the thick mane of dark hair. He crossed the waiting room at the Fremont County Sheriff’s Department and extended his hand. “Father O’Malley,” he said. His smile was friendly and guarded. His grip hard. “Come on back.” He gestured toward the door he’d just come through.
Father John followed the man down a corridor with fluorescent light washing over the gray walls and pebbled-glass doors. They emerged into a room the size of a large conference room. Papers and folders had been spread over the surfaces of three desks pushed against one wall in no particular order that Father John could see. Bookcases stuffed with folders, boxes, and books ran along the opposite wall. Across the room, rain spattered the two windows that framed a blurred view of the cars and trucks in the parking lot.
“Have a seat.” The detective pushed a chair over to one of the desks, then took the barrel-shaped chair on the other side. Leaning back, he said, “So you’re the Indian priest I’ve heard about. Gotten yourself mixed up in a few homicides around here.”
“Not by choice, I assure you.” Father John sat down and laid his cowboy hat on the tiled floor next to his feet. It always surprised him: Indian priest. He was an Irishman, from Boston, assigned to St. Francis Mission. He happened to like it there.
The detective’s mouth turned up in amusement. “You think Duncan Grover’s death was another one of your homicides?” That was what Father John had told him when he’d called to make an appointment.
“It’s a possibility.” He was treading a fine line. All that he knew he’d heard in the confessional. The rest was theory, with no evidence to back it up.
“You a friend of the victim’s?” The detective rearranged his bulky frame and folded his hands over his stomach.
Father John admitted he’d never met the man.
“Friend of the family?”
“No.”
“Then what makes you think somebody killed him?”
“I’ve been talking to people on the res,” Father John began, lining up his argument in a logical order. “Ben Holden told me Grover went to the Arapaho Ranch looking for a job. He agreed to hire him in a couple of weeks. A man planning to kill himself doesn’t go job hunting.”
The detective shifted again. “Stranger things have happened.”
“Look, Detective,” Father John said, taking a different tack, “Holden believes Grover was in some kind of trouble in Denver. Somebody could have followed him here and killed him.”
“Oh, Grover was in trouble, all right.” A slow smile burned through the detective’s face. “Had a robbery warrant out on him in Colorado. He’d been working construction jobs for a temp agency. Had quite a scam stealing jackhammers and compressors and stuff that he could sell for decent cash. The foreman at the last job got onto him and filed a complaint. Grover already had two convictions. Third strike, and he was looking at prison for a very long time. So he took off and came to the res, the way Indians like to do. Minute they get into trouble in the big white world, they come running home.”
“Grover was from Oklahoma.” Father John didn’t try to conceal his irritation.
“Wind River is Indian country.” The man was warming to the subject now. “Looks up Ben Holden, plays the good Indian, goes to stay with a holy man and learn Indian ways, hoping nobody’ll notice him.”
“And kills himself? Come on, Detective. You’re describing a man who wanted to live.”
“Not in prison, he didn’t. You ask me, Grover had one strong motive to kill himself.” He hunched forward. “Another thing, Father O’Malley, there’s no evidence of anybody else on that ledge at the time of death.”
Father John glanced at the rain-smeared windows. The room was muggy and warm. He had to concede that what the detective said made sense. There was a certain logic to it. He might even have believed it if it hadn’t been for the man in the confessional.
He said, “Grover may have a girlfriend in the area.” It was a gamble. He had no proof that the woman who had called Gus Iron Bear was Grover’s girlfriend. “She might be able to tell you if Grover was running from somebody.”
“What girlfriend?”
Father John told him about his conversation with Gus.
The detective seemed to consider this. Finally he said, “Could’ve been anybody, Father. Some girl he met in a bar. If she was involved with the guy, why hasn’t she come forward, told us whatever she knows?”