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The Thunder Keeper(58)



Father John spun around and pushed through the door. Wentworth and Delaney were mopping up, just as Delaney had said in the confessional. Mopping up the last two people who might alert the sheriff and the tribes about a secret diamond deposit at Bear Lake.

He found a quarter in his jeans pocket and pushed it into the slot in the phone on the brick wall outside. Huddling out of the rain, he dialed the sheriff’s office and asked for Matt Slinger.

“Sorry. Detective Slinger’s not in.”

“Then put another detective on,” Father John said. He gave his name and told the operator it was an emergency.

The line went quiet. Behind him, the rain beat on the parking lot, and passing cars splashed through the puddles in the street. Finally a man’s voice: “Detective Kowalski. What can I do for you, Father O’Malley?”

He leaned closer to the phone and told the detective about Eddie Ortiz and Ali Burris, taken captive about thirty minutes ago by two men from Denver—Buck Wentworth and Jimmie Delaney. They were driving a white SUV.

“Hold on. I’m writing as fast as I can.” A hollow sound filled the line. Finally the detective said, “You say the two Denver guys took the man and woman by force?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. They were both afraid of them.” Father John drew in a long breath. There wasn’t time to explain. “Look,” he said, trying to separate what he’d heard in the confessional from everything else he knew. “Eddie told me that Wentworth and Delaney followed him and Duncan Grover from Denver.” Careful. “Eddie believes the Denver guys killed Grover.”

“We talkin’ about the Indian that committed suicide?”

“It wasn’t a suicide,” Father John said. He heard the exasperation in his tone. “Slinger’s been reinvestigating Grover’s death. He thinks Grover may have stumbled onto something at Bear Lake.”

“Somebody helping themselves to the petroglyphs.”

“The point is . . .” Dear God, there wasn’t enough time to get into the possibility of a diamond deposit. “Eddie says that the two men came up here planning to kill all of them, the girl, too. They’ve already killed Grover. You’ve got to stop them before they kill the others. Shouldn’t be too hard to spot a white SUV with green plates around here.”

“You know how many square miles we cover here, Father? More than nine thousand. That SUV’s had a half-hour start. They could be thirty miles in any direction. You got any idea where they might be heading?”

He knew. Suddenly he knew. It was logical. Logic was about patterns, and Delaney understood patterns. He’d gotten involved in murder, then come back to the sacrament that had been healing and comforting when he was younger. The priest would protect him, he knew, but the priest would also do whatever he could to prevent other murders. Delaney would send a message, like a neon sign flashing in the rain. Look at the pattern, Father O’Malley, and stop the murders.

Grover’s death looked like a suicide; Eddie and Ali would look like suicides, too. Grover had died at Bear Lake. The others would die there. Two more Indians imitating Grover, choosing to die in a sacred place. It would even seem logical to the outside world.

“They’re on their way to Bear Lake,” he said. “Wentworth and Delaney intend to throw Eddie and the girl off the cliffs, just as they did Grover.”

“How d’ya know all this?”

“Listen to me, Detective!” He was shouting now. “You’ve got to get some officers out there right away!” He slammed the phone down and made a dash through the rain to the Toyota. Thunder cracked in the distance, and lightning lit up the ridges of the mountains. The storm was centered to the north, over Bear Lake, he realized. The spirits were angry.

The engine burst into life, and he pressed down the accelerator and pulled out into the street. He glanced at his watch. Almost five-thirty. It would be dark soon. Within moments he was speeding north on Highway 287 toward Bear Lake.





26


Vicky watched the black sedan in the rearview mirror. It had been there on I-25, on the exit ramp to I-80. She had first noticed it about ten miles north of Denver. Always the same distance behind. Other vehicles moved in between, but when they pulled away, the sedan was still there.

She was getting paranoid, she told herself, imagining the sedan was following her. First Vince Lewis murdered, then Jana Lewis. She was nervous. A black sedan had killed Lewis.

Vicky pressed hard on the gas pedal, picking up speed—the needle hovering at eighty, the gray asphalt rolling toward her. She glanced into the rearview mirror. The sedan had dropped back until it was nothing more than a dark smudge on the horizon.