“You forget it’s been raining all week.” A look of exasperation came into the Indian’s dark eyes. “The searchers and sheriff’s boys were up there trampling around all morning. If there was any evidence, it’s gone.” He nodded toward the sound of the drums, the jangling of the dancers who spilled out of the hall. “Those kids in there, they’re gonna hear suicide and they’re gonna think, warrior offs himself, so it must be okay. Goin’ gets tough, and it’s the way out.”
The chief came closer still and took hold of his arm. Father John could feel the anger pulsing through the man’s fingers. “You know the truth, John. What’re you gonna do about it?”
Father John didn’t say anything. The penitent’s words—more murders, more murders—boomed silently in his head.
The chief whirled about and started around the car, and Father John felt as if a door had slammed between them, and something was drawing to a close, a friendship ending, the trust people here had in him fading away. He said, “I’ll have a talk with the detective.”
Banner stopped and stared at him over the roof of the car. “What’re you gonna say that’ll make any difference?”
He didn’t know. But he knew how white men thought. It didn’t surprise him that they’d ignored what the Indians had tried to tell them about spirits and vision quests. The detective and coroner would want concrete facts and logic, a straight, uncluttered path to the truth. He was like them. Somehow he was going to have to get the kind of facts that would convince them that Duncan Grover had not committed suicide.
“I’ll think of something,” he said. He started toward the parking lot, then walked back. The chief was behind the steering wheel, turning the ignition. The engine rumbled into life.
“What’s Ben Holden got to do with this?” Father John leaned toward the driver’s window rolled halfway down.
“Holden and Grover’s dad were army buddies,” Banner said over the top of the glass. “Soon’s the kid got to the res, he went out to the Arapaho Ranch to see Holden about a job.”
Father John thumped the rear door with his fist as the car started sliding by. He watched as the chief made a turn around the last row of parked vehicles and gunned the engine past the senior center and out onto Seventeen Mile Road.
Before he went to see a white man by the name of Detective Matt Slinger, he’d find out what Ben Holden knew about Duncan Grover.
4
It took Father John almost an hour to drive north to Thermopolis, another hour heading west into the Owl Creek Mountains. A rainy haze lay over the piñons and junipers passing outside the windows. The sounds of La Bohème rose above the hum of the tires on wet asphalt. He spotted the turn into the Arapaho Ranch ahead, eased on the brake pedal, and made a sharp right onto the gravel road that dead-ended at a two-story log building. The smell of wet sage and new grasses hit him as he walked up to the wide porch along the front of the building and knocked on the door. There were no sounds except for that of water washing out of a downspout and the aluminum chairs banging against the porch railing in the wind.
He knocked again, then tried the knob. It turned in his hand, and he stepped into a cavernous room with overstuffed sofas and chairs and Indian rugs scattered about the plank floor. On the right was the kitchen with U-shaped cabinets that wrapped around a long, narrow table with chairs pushed into the sides. Ahead, a stairway rose to a second-floor balcony that overlooked the living room. Beyond the railing were closed doors that Father John guessed led to the bunk rooms.
“Hello!” he called. “Anybody here?”
One of the doors opened. An Indian who looked about sixty, dressed in blue jeans and plaid shirt, sauntered over to the railing. “You lookin’ for somebody?”
“Ben Holden around?”
The Indian gestured with his head toward the window at the end of the balcony. “Out in the barn. Loadin’ up hay for the back pasture.”
“Thanks.” Father John tipped the brim of his cowboy hat and stepped back outside. Hunching his shoulders in the rain, he walked down the driveway past a series of outbuildings just as a group of cowboys emerged through the side door of a barn streaked yellow with age. He spotted Ben Holden at once: the tall frame slightly stooped inside the black slicker, the black cowboy hat tilted low over his forehead.
The Indian glanced around. Then he started toward him. “What can I do for you?” His tone was businesslike, the dark eyes that regarded him steady and unreadable.
Father John felt a pang of admiration at Ben Holden’s control, more certain than his own. There was a lot of history between them; they cared about the same woman, but not well enough, either of them. Ben—in and out of rehab, a violent drunk; and he, a priest.