The Thunder Keeper Part 8

"Funicello."

"Whatever." She punched open the cash register, scooped up the coins, and dropped them inside. Eyes still darting about the store. The cash register drawer slammed shut. The coolers hummed into the silence behind him, and a veil of rain covered the windows.

"I'd like to talk to you about Duncan." He picked up the apple and c.o.ke.

The woman swallowed twice, looking about frantically now, eyes bright with fear.

"There's no need to be afraid," he said.

"What do you want?"

"I believe your friend was murdered."

She drew in her lower lip and crossed her arms over her white T-shirt, hugging herself, fingers plucking at her sleeves. "Can't you see I'm working?"

"When do you get off?"

"You don't look like a priest." Her gaze traveled to the cowboy hat he'd pushed back on his head.

He removed the wallet from his back pocket, took out his driver's license, and slid it across the counter.

She peered down over crossed arms. "John O'Malley, SJ." She raised her eyes and stared at him with a mixture of curiosity and wariness. "SJ?"

"Society of Jesus. I'm a Jesuit priest."

He replaced the license and jammed his wallet back into his pocket. "I can wait until you get off."

An argument was playing out behind the black eyes. "I'm supposed to take a break in ten minutes when the manager gets back," she said finally. "There's a picnic table out back. I'll meet you outside."

It's raining outside, he thought. He said, "I'll be waiting."

He walked around the brick building, staying close to the wall. Water gushed off the overhang and splashed onto the sidewalk. The picnic table and two benches stood on a concrete slab in the rear, facing a solid wood fence that marked the backyards of adjoining houses. There was a scattering of pickups in the parking lot on the right, shallow rivers running around the tires. He straddled a bench, popped open the c.o.ke, and bit into the apple. The rain sounded like an army of small birds pecking the corrugated overhang. An engine backfired in the lot.

He'd finished both the c.o.ke and apple by the time she dodged around the corner. She was bundled in a puffy red jacket, which she hugged to herself, one front lapping the other. She sank onto the bench across from him and began tugging at a pocket in her jacket, finally extracting a package of cigarettes. She shook one out. Another tug for a lighter, which she flicked a couple of times, cupping the flame. The light danced in her dark eyes.

Throwing her head back, she blew out a strand of smoke and held the package toward him.

Father John shook his head. The smell of the smoke brought back a memory of whiskey and stuffy bars and the forced conviviality and mindless banter that, for a few hours, had once obscured the loneliness. He swallowed back the memory. It was not one he wanted.

"What's your name?" he said.

She hesitated, took a long drag on the cigarette. "Ali," she said finally, smoke curling from her nostrils. "Ali Burris. Why should I tell you about Duncan?"

"Because I'm trying to convince Detective Slinger to reopen the investigation."

She blew out a ring of smoke and watched it dissolve into the rain. "I don't get it. A white man that gives a s.h.i.t about some Indian? Slinger and the coroner already made up their minds that Duncan killed himself."

He leaned toward her. "I'm trying to change their minds."

"Yeah, you'd do that. You being a priest." She took another drag from the cigarette and looked away.

"Maybe," he said. He liked to believe that even if he weren't a priest, if he'd never come to St. Francis Mission, he would still care about justice. "A man doesn't look for a job, go on a vision quest, then kill himself."

Slowly she brought her eyes back to his, and he realized that she did have the answers. He only had to ask the right questions. "Tell me about Duncan," he said.

"Paranoid. Crazy." She threw her head back, her gaze following the smoke. "What else you want to know?"

"Why don't you start at the beginning?"

"The beginning? My break's only fifteen minutes."

"You met him in Denver?"

"Yeah." She flipped the ash at the end of the cigarette and gazed at the parking lot, summoning the memory. "Six months ago at a bar. We got together, you could say."

"Where did he work?"

"Construction jobs, different places." She looked back. "When he worked, that is. Duncan's real work was ripping off the construction sites. Helped himself to a lot of power tools. Always after the big score, that was Duncan." A half smile faded into a blank look of acceptance. "He'd make a couple hundred bucks, get drunk, go broke again. So he'd go back to the temp agency, and they'd find him another job. The thing was, Duncan was a d.a.m.n good worker when he wanted to work."

She stared at the cigarette. "A real con man, Duncan. Sure as h.e.l.l conned me. Lived at my apartment, took my money. G.o.d, what a fool I was."

"You said he was paranoid," Father John prodded.

"Yeah, well, I guess he had reason, didn't he? Somebody offed him."

"Who do you think killed him?" Father John felt the sense of antic.i.p.ation that often came over him during counseling sessions, in the confessional, in the archives, researching history-the sense that the truth was about to announce itself.

Ali Burris tossed the cigarette b.u.t.t into a puddle. It made a sizzling noise. "The guys he was stiffing got onto him," she said. "Bunch of lowlifes, stealing stuff and cheating each other."

"Wait a minute. You're saying somebody killed Duncan because he held out on them? What are we talking about? A few hundred dollars?"

"You don't know these guys, Father. They'd kill you for a pack of cigarettes. I said to Duncan, we gotta get outta Denver, but he didn't want to leave. So I said, I'm gone." She kept her eyes on his. "I was scared of those creeps."

"Did they threaten you?"

"Did they threaten me?" Her voice rose in astonishment. "They didn't have to threaten me. I knew they'd beat the h.e.l.l outta me if I ever opened my mouth about 'em." She threw a nervous glance at the parking lot. "I took off and came here. I got an aunt on the res. Figured I could lay low for a while."

"How'd Duncan find you?"

She looked away, smoothed back the black hair, reclasped the beaded barrette. After a moment she said, "I called him after a couple weeks. I mean, it wasn't exactly Duncan I was trying to get away from. It was the other guys. He said he was ready to get away, too, and start over. So he come up here."

"Did he come alone?"

She nodded, then let her gaze roam over the parking lot. "I thought things was gonna be different . . ." she began, her voice quiet. "They was as bad as before."

"Why, Ali? Did someone follow him?" He was close now. The truth was here.

She lifted her head. There was a smudge of mascara on her cheek. "Yeah, they came after him. I never should've let him stay with me. Crazy f.u.c.khead. All the time keeping the shutters closed, living in the dark like some kinda animal. Peering through the slats. 'There goes Eddie,' he'd say. 'There goes Jimmie.' I'd run over to the window, but n.o.body was there. Just the empty street."

The rain was coming harder, and the wind blew sprays of water that carried the odors of wet asphalt and garbage. The girl went on: she'd told Duncan to get himself straightened out. Get a job. Go on a vision quest. The tears welled in her eyes and ran down her cheeks in thin black lines. "One of them creeps got him up there at Bear Lake."

"Help me," he said. "Give me the name."

"I don't know."

"You do know, Ali." He reached out and laid a hand on the puffy jacket sleeve.

"He killed Grover. He's gonna kill me, too." The words came in a long wail. She yanked her arm away, jumped to her feet, and ran around the corner of the building.

He went after her, grabbed her arm, and swung her toward him. She was so light, it surprised him. A child trembling inside the puffy jacket. "Ali, I'm trying to help you. Who killed Grover?"

She tried to pull away, but he held on, and she stared up at him for several seconds, a mixture of fear and resignation behind her eyes. Finally the words came, like water breaking over a dam. His name was Eddie. She didn't know his last name. A Pueblo Indian from New Mexico. Duncan and him got together at the Denver Indian Center. He was crazier than Duncan, but Duncan was gonna make a big score off him. One last score. Then they were gonna come up here and start over, just her and Duncan.

"I want you to tell this to Detective Slinger." Father John kept his hand on her arm. He could sense the impulse to run, like an electric spark firing inside her.

"Tell the police? You're as whacked as Duncan. What d'ya think's gonna happen to me if I blow the whistle on Eddie? He's still hanging around. I know it! I seen his brown truck on Main Street last night. He could be waiting for the right time to get me, like he did Duncan. Oh, G.o.d. Why am I talking to you?" She tried to wrench herself free again.

He let her go, but this time she didn't take off running. "You shouldn't be alone, Ali," he said. "Go to the res and stay with your aunt. Take a few days off." He nodded toward the brick wall.

"A few days off?" Contempt and incredulity flowed into her expression. "And then I get fired and don't have a job. And my auntie's got enough problems without me showing up with no money and some Indian after me." She glanced past the parking lot to the traffic flowing along Main Street.

A chill ran through him. What had he done? Eddie could drive by, spot her talking to a white man in a cowboy hat-a cop, maybe. And she, the only one who could identify a murderer.

"Listen, Ali," he said. She had started walking, and he stayed with her. "Tell your boss you need time off for an emergency. There's a guest house at the mission. You can stay there until Detective Slinger picks up Eddie. You'll be safe."

"Leave me alone." She surged ahead and broke into a run, slipping on the wet pavement, weaving between the brick wall and the b.u.mpers of the parked cars.

By the time he reached the front, she was nowhere in sight, and he wondered if she'd ducked into the convenience store or kept running. Where? Where could she go that Eddie wouldn't find her?

He slid into the Toyota and turned the ignition. The engine choked into life. He drove onto Main Street and headed north. A few minutes later he was speeding down Highway 789, the wind driving the rain over the hood of the pickup, wipers swinging across the windshield.

He replayed the conversation in his mind again and again. A man named Eddie staying in the area to kill anyone who could link him to Duncan Grover. Another man, Jimmie. The witness. The penitent.

It didn't add up. Something was missing, but he couldn't figure out what it was. If Eddie intended to kill Ali Burris, why hadn't he done so by now? The girl was easy to find-he'd found her right away. What was Eddie waiting for? He could have killed Grover, then disappeared into New Mexico, into the Pueblos. Why was he still here?

Father John slowed past the flat storefronts and restaurants of Hudson, then sped up again on Rendezvous Road. There was no other traffic, only the rainswept plains stretching into the distances. A new idea began to form in his mind. What was it the man had said in the confessional? Something about the boss wanting to teach the Indian to mind his own business.

Maybe Eddie hadn't killed Grover for revenge after all. Maybe there was some other reason, something that Ali Burris didn't know about.

He turned east on Seventeen Mile Road, mentally ticking off his options. He could talk to Slinger again. He rejected the idea. What proof did he have? A confession that he couldn't talk about. The stammered words of a girl scared out of her mind. Ali Burris would never tell the detective what she'd told him, and without her he had nothing.

Except-the name of a murderer.

By the time he turned into the mission grounds, he knew what he had to do. He was going to have to find a man called Eddie who didn't want to be found.

He drove down the straightaway lined with cottonwoods that moved lazily in the rain. As he turned onto Circle Drive, he saw Father Don's blue sedan parked in front of the administration building.

16.

Father John parked next to the sedan and hurried inside. Down the corridor, past the door to his own office, a mixture of surprise and foreboding taking hold of him. Some part of him, he realized, hadn't expected Father Don to return.

He stopped at the opened door at the far end of the corridor. Papers stacked neatly on the desk; books upright in the bookcases, as if Father Don had just stepped away.

He retraced his steps to his own office and sank into the leather chair with creases and folds that matched the contours of his own body. He reached for the phone. The other priest was probably at the residence. He was about to dial the number when he noticed the flashing light on the answering machine. He set the receiver down and pushed the b.u.t.ton.

"Todd Hartley at the Gazette." The voice was unfamiliar. "Like to talk with you as soon as possible."

Father John jotted down the number the voice rattled off, wondering what the reporter wanted. He could have talked to Slinger, heard that the pastor at St. Francis wasn't buying the suicide verdict on Duncan Grover.

A whirring noise on the machine, then the voice of Father Bill Rutherford, the Provincial: "Call me, John. It's very important."

Father John swiveled around and stared out the window at the rain. So Elena was right. Don Ryan was leaving, and the Provincial was about to deliver the usual promise: no need to worry; another man on the way. As soon as he could find another Jesuit eager to spend time on an Indian reservation. In the meantime . . .

In the meantime, he'd be alone. People streaming through the office, telephone ringing, sick people to visit, meetings to attend. Even with an a.s.sistant, he was always behind.

He tried to shake off the foreboding. He was jumping to conclusions. Father Don had returned, a good sign the man might stay awhile. He was probably over at the residence, eating a sandwich, visiting with Elena.

Before he returned the calls, he wanted to check out Eddie. He picked up the phone, dialed information, and got the number for Howard and Fergus in Denver. A couple of seconds pa.s.sed, and he had Vicky's voice mail. "Please leave your name and number . . ."

She was five hundred miles away, and the reality brought a mixture of longing and reprieve. He was a priest; he wanted to keep his vows. Temptation was easier to overcome when it was five hundred miles away.

He told her voice mail that he was trying to find a Pueblo Indian named Eddie who could be involved in the recent death of a man named Duncan Grover. A so-called suicide. Someone at the Denver Indian Center might know Eddie. Anything she could find out would help. He ended by saying he hoped everything was well, then disconnected the call, not trusting himself to say more.

Next he dialed the Provincial's office, aware of the muscles across his shoulders clenching against the possible bad news.

"Father Rutherford." The voice interrupted the first ring.

"John, returning your call." At the seminary twenty years before-a lifetime ago-they'd been friends. "What's going on?"

"You haven't heard?" Disbelief edged the Provincial's tone.

Now the tension was like fists gripping his shoulders. "You'd better fill me in."

"A lawsuit's been filed against the Province, the Society, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, and St. Francis Mission."

"Lawsuit! What are you talking about?"

"I'm afraid Don Ryan's been unjustly accused-"

"Don Ryan?"