“Maybe she’s scared. Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to the police.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know anything.” A flush of impatience came into the detective’s cheeks.
Father John pushed on: “Duncan Grover was trying to start over, put the past behind, follow a different road. No Indian’s going to kill himself on a vision quest in a sacred place like Bear Lake. It would be a sacrilege, an offense to the spirits.”
“I know all about Indian vision quests.” The detective plopped one hand onto a stack of papers. A couple of sheets slid across the desk. “Grover was up there on that high ledge for three days without food or water, smoking a pipe and breathing in that sage they like to burn. After a while he got up the courage to throw himself off the cliff.”
“It didn’t happen.” Father John’s tone had a harder edge than he’d intended.
Matt Slinger lifted his other hand and rubbed his fingers into his temple, as if to rub away a minor annoyance. “Okay, Father O’Malley. Have it your way. Maybe he was in some kind of altered state of consciousness and didn’t realize that he couldn’t fly like an eagle. Maybe that’s what happened. It comes down to the same thing. Duncan Grover was responsible for his own death, which makes it suicide.”
Father John felt as if he were running into brick walls. There had to be another way. He drew in a long breath and began again: “What kind of injuries did he have?”
“The lethal kind.” The detective’s gaze was steady. A half second passed before he reached for a file folder, flipped it open, and began shuffling through the official-looking forms.
Father John realized the detective had been expecting the question. He’d already retrieved Grover’s file from a filing cabinet.
“Multiple contusions, bruises.” Slinger spoke in a monotone of futility. “Broken ribs, femurs, arms. Spinal cord crushed.” He glanced up. “Shall I go on?”
“What about his skull?”
“Crushed left temporal.”
That was it, the opening he’d been looking for. He said: “Isn’t it possible that Grover was struck in the head, then thrown off the ledge?”
Slinger gave a sharp expulsion of breath that passed for a laugh. “Speculation’s cheap, Father O’Malley,” he said. “Fact is, Grover fell two hundred feet off a cliff, bounced through some sharp boulders, which accounts for his injuries. Take my word, he decided that dying on a vision quest was more honorable than rotting in prison.”
The detective set both palms against the desk and pushed himself to his feet. “I suggest you forget about trying to turn Grover’s suicide into something it wasn’t. The guy was a loser. He decided to end his life. It’s as simple as that. Why don’t you just remember him in your prayers.”
Father John picked up his hat and got to his feet. There was a loud clap of thunder, then the glow of lightning in the window. Outside the rain was beating on the asphalt parking lot. He said: “How do you know somebody else won’t be killed?”
“What’re you talking about?”
He kept his eyes on the other man’s. He was talking about what he’d heard in the confessional—the sealed confessional. “If you’re wrong,” he said, “there’s a killer in the area. He could kill again.”
Slinger glanced away. Rubbing at his temple again. Finally he looked back. “I need the girlfriend’s name, Father O’Malley. Give me a name. I’ll find her and have a talk with her.”
A surge of hope, like lightning. For the first time since the man had come into the confessional, Father John felt there was a chance that Duncan Grover’s killer would be found. That nobody else would have to die. A name, and Detective Slinger would continue the investigation.
Father John set his cowboy hat on his head and headed down the corridor. There was a girl somewhere in Lander who knew Duncan Grover. A girl who’d left a message for him to call her at the convenience store. Which could mean—he could almost taste the certainty of it—that she worked at one of the convenience stores.
He let himself out through the glass-door entrance and, hunching his shoulders in the rain, ran across the lot to the Toyota. He’d start with the convenience stores on Main Street.
15
Father John waited for a semi to pass on Main Street before he took a left into the parking lot between a motel and convenience store. It was his second stop. The rain banged on the Toyota’s roof, nearly drowning out the sounds of Faust. He turned off the tape player and ran across the pavement to the double glass doors with posters plastered on the inside: CARTON CIGARETTE—$22.99; TODAY’S SPECIAL—SIX-PACK COKE, $1.29.