He heard a rustling sound behind him and turned, startled. “Father Bellamy.”
The priest looked down at Max.
“Where can we talk?” Antelope asked.
“In the vestry; come this way.”
The deputies arrived to secure the crime scene and communicate with the forensic crew and coroner’s office as Antelope followed Bellamy down the aisle to a side door. They stepped through it to a narrow passageway, and then through another door that led into the priest’s private quarters.
Father Bellamy poured two glasses of water from a crystal carafe and handed one to Antelope. “The first time in ten years Max Hart entered this church was for his sister’s funeral. I had hopes he’d come home and find his faith again in the wake of the tragedy. It wouldn’t be the first time it happened.” He wiped sweat from his face with a starched white handkerchief.
“When you’re ready, Father, I need you to tell me everything from the beginning.”
Antelope recognized the signs. The priest was in shock, an experience shared by those who discovered a dead body. The memory would never leave him.
“I called right away from phone over there.”
He gestured to the phone on the wall, an ancient rotary model that had to be one of the last working models of its kind. The movement caused him to spill water on himself; he dabbed at the wet spot on his chest with his handkerchief.
“I’m going to need something stronger than water. Care to join me in a whiskey?”
“I’ll pass. And you will too until we’re finished here, Father. I need you clear-headed.”
Bellamy nodded. “Right.” He sat down, and gestured for Antelope to do the same.
Antelope perched on the chair he indicated. “Tell me what happened.”
“I was doing some preparatory reading for Sunday’s sermon. Max called and asked if I would be willing to hear his confession. I said, of course, I could do it in the morning before the first Mass and he could receive communion. He said he couldn’t wait. He sounded absolutely tortured. He asked if he could come this evening and I told him he could.
“Hours went by and he didn’t come. I was getting ready to call it a night. I figured he’d had a change of heart. Then I heard the front door of the church slam shut. I took a minute to put on my vestments and prepared to hear his confession. When I entered the church he was kneeling in the last pew, his head in his hands. I put my hand on his shoulder and told him I was ready to hear his confession.
“Max looked at me with pure torment in his eyes, and I knew in that moment he was right: he couldn’t wait any longer. We entered the confessional booth. I heard his confession and gave him absolution. I waited for a while in the booth after he left and then I made my way back to the vestry. Just as I opened the door, I heard the shot. I ran back and found him dead on the floor.”
Antelope knew from growing up as a Catholic that Father Bellamy was prohibited from telling him what Max had confessed. Confession was a sacrament in which the priest served as the intermediary between the penitent and God. What was told in confession was told to God, and the priest could not reveal it to any living person without risking excommunication.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you were wondering if Max’s confession bears any relation to your investigation, Detective,” Bellamy volunteered.
“I would be very interested in anything you could share with me, Father.”
“Unfortunately, my hands are tied, as I must maintain absolute secrecy and uphold the trust of the Sacrament of Penance.”
“I understand, Father. How about you just tell me everything you know about Max Hart?”
“I knew Max as a boy. I don’t know much about Max Hart the man, except what I told you the other day about his relationship with his sister. She attributed his mood swings to his head injury. Frankly, the only time she spoke of him was when he caused her stress.”
“You said it’s been ten years since he stopped coming to church?”
“It has to be that long. It was after the accident; up until then he was an active member of the church. He was in a rehab down in Salt Lake for a long time. When he was able to come home, I went to see him, but he had amnesia from the head injury and didn’t remember me or his time as an altar boy in this church. I visited him a few times, but there was nothing to build on. It’s a sad case. He never came back to church. And I stopped going to see him when it became clear he had no interest in what I had to offer.”
“What was he like before the accident? I understand there were some personality changes.”
“When I knew Max, he was a serious boy with a somber nature, dutiful and reliable. Not the life of the party, by any means, but a brilliant kid, destined for great things academically. I got the feeling he wasn’t so popular at school—he was what we might call a nerd—so it was special to him, the place he found with Connor and Tim.”
“All right, Father, I don’t have any other questions for you right now.” Antelope made for the door.
After leaving the priest, he walked back through the church. The deputies were finishing up their work; one of them came over to him.
“Detective, we’re done out here. We’re about to transport. Do you need any more time at the scene before we load up? Forensic wants in here, too.”
“Hold it up for a minute,” Antelope said. “I need five minutes alone with him. I’ll be right out.”
When the church was empty, he lit a candle in front of the statue of the Blessed Virgin. He didn’t believe God had anything to do with this murder, but if he received help from beyond on this case, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Spirit sounds behind him—soft rustling of fabric, whisper of breath released into the stillness. In the moving, shadowy light of the altar, shapeshifters darted and played. Behind him he heard the vacuum sigh of rushing air, the crack of heavy wood slamming into place.
He sprinted down the carpeted aisle and into the fresh night air. From the stone steps of the church, he scanned the avenue in both directions. Not a soul in sight. All the onlookers had gone home, and he was alone with his thoughts.
Max Hart had left the world and taken his memories with him. His secrets and sins were sealed forever behind the veil of confession.
CHAPTER 49
Keyed up, her eyes strained and her fingers numb from hours of Grand Theft Auto, Kelly felt bored and overstimulated at the same time. Where was Max?
With the later hour, the empty house felt even creepier. Every slasher movie she’d ever watched came back to her in the quiet, lonely rooms. The rain had finally let up, but now the damp and chill had settled in and she couldn’t get warm. She turned on the gas fireplace and lay down in front of it.
When Max said her brother was murdered, a cold terror had unfolded inside her, like a thick snake unwinding and circling her spine.
In the shower, she alternated ice cold and steaming hot water, back and forth, switching fast between the extremes, blasts of contrasting pain. Better than dealing with the rotten swell of feeling in her gut that wasn’t going to go away until Max came and told her everything.
After the shower, she scrubbed her red skin and applied soothing lotion, took a long time with a manicure and pedicure; the slow process was like a reverse meditation.
She thought about Max and what the night might bring and chose her white jeans and a black lace tank top.
The first night she’d slept at his place, she’d seen a gun and known without asking that he slept with it all the time. Even before Stacey’s murder he’d been kind of crazy, and maybe dangerous. But his strangeness drew her to him.
What the hell? She hated waiting. where r u? she texted, then threw the phone down.
She felt herself getting ready to release her own kind of crazy, texting him over and over, but she didn’t want to show him that side of her, so she opted to distract herself. She went back to her video game but couldn’t get into it. She checked her phone. In the kitchen, she stared into the well-stoc
ked refrigerator; nothing appealed to her. She changed out of the jeans and tank into more comfortable clothes.
The stove clock read 11:30 p.m. In a half hour, Domino’s would close. She ordered a Meat Lovers Supreme, buffalo chicken wings, and cinnamon sticks. As soon as she hung up, she hit redial and added bread sticks.
She texted Max again—WAITING!—and got no answer.
She felt cold again. She went to lie down by the fireplace again while she waited.
The phone rang. Kelly’s heart jumped and fluttered in her chest, but it was just the food.
The pizza guy was a skinny teenager who looked her up and down in a lecherous, lingering way she recognized from the club. The look said he wanted to fuck her. Even in simple clothing, yoga pants and a white T-shirt, she turned men on.
She got those looks all the time and it reinforced her decision to get paid for being sexy. Every day men got free pleasure from women, but at the club they paid for the privilege.
She placed the stacked boxes in the oven and set the heat on low. Her stomach growled and she knew she could eat every bit of food she ordered. Better to wait for Max, though. If she ate anything the way she felt—hyped up and turned on—it wouldn’t be pretty. Max could show up in the middle of her throwing it all up.
One more text and she was done.
WTF?
She sat cross-legged on the window seat and watched for his truck. Outside, the wind howled like a beast, the ruthless weather not yet finished. Another storm was coming, she could tell from the sinking fatigue of low pressure and being stuck in thick air.
A white moon, bright as a floodlight, exposed the details of the neighborhood; the houses and vehicles glowed in the cold fluorescence.
Where was he?
She needed a cigarette; she found her pack stuffed in the couch.
Pacing now, about to lose it, she grabbed the remote and turned on the late news. “BREAKING NEWS” scrolled across the bottom of the screen. Down on her knees, close to the television, she held her breath.
ROCK SPRINGS MAN DIES OF GUNSHOT WOUND.
No no no goddamn you, Max.
She called his phone. It rang and rang and rang.
Her heart beat on every ring. Ashes fell on her white shirt.
Pick up, Max! The ringing stopped. She held her breath and waited. Thank God!
“This is Detective Antelope on Max Hart’s phone.”
“Where’s Max? Why are you answering his phone?”
“Are you at your house?”
“Yes! Watching the fucking breaking news! Is it Max? Is he dead?”
CHAPTER 50
Antelope called after midnight to tell me Max Hart had just died from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He asked me to go with him to Green River to take a statement from Kelly Ryan. Apparently, Max had made plans to see her that night.
I dressed quickly and waited outside for Antelope pull into the circle.
“Sorry to be the one to tell you,” he said. “It must be rough, losing a patient like this.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “What happened? I saw him today. He gave no indication he planned to take his life. If he’d said anything about hurting himself, I would have put him in the hospital.”
“Something changed his mind. He called Father Bellamy and said he had a confession to make, and immediately after confessing, he shot himself. Does that make any sense?”
“This is crazy. It sounds like you’re talking about a different person. I can’t believe it, any of it—that he went to church to ease his guilt. Max stopped going to church years ago. And with everything he’d been remembering about the abuse, he’d lost all respect for the Church. I don’t understand. And, of course, the priest can’t share anything that was spoken of in confession.”
“That’s a dead end.”
“So we’ll never know.”
“No disrespect, Doc, but he was pretty messed up, right?”
“Yes, but this complete turnaround in hours . . . that isn’t possible unless he had multiple personalities, which as his therapist I can say I never saw any signs of.”
“But it’s not impossible, right?” Antelope pressed. “Something could come out under pressure. There’s a first time for everything.”
“Of course, but I think there would have been some sign. If there was one, I didn’t catch it . . .” I put my hand over my mouth. “Was it there and I missed it?”
Antelope put his hand over mine. “Don’t try to sort it all out now. It’s too much of a shock.”
“Who’s the shrink here, Antelope?”
“Sometimes the shrink needs some support.”
“Thank you.”
“Besides, I brought you along because I need your professional help with Miss Kelly Ryan. Can’t have you falling apart now.”
I managed a tiny smile. “Can we stop for a coffee at the travel plaza before we go?”
“You read my mind.”
Kelly couldn’t stop crying. Antelope and I sat on either side of her for twenty minutes while Antelope practically spoon-fed her coffee. As soon as she got it all down, she ran to the bathroom and threw it up.
She came back white-faced and quiet, clutching a wad of Kleenex.
“He called me, asked if he could come over. I waited for him for hours and he kills himself without even saying good-bye? I hate him!”
“How did he sound on the phone, Kelly?” I said.
“Not fucking suicidal!” She flopped back down on the couch.
“Can you remember what he said?”
“He was meeting up with Connor.”
“That’s all he said?”
“He’d just remembered a bunch of stuff about the day Tim died. He wanted to talk to Connor about it.”
With every therapy session, Max had gotten closer to recalling the accident. But at our last session, just yesterday, the events of the day of the accident had remained out of reach. If he’d had a flashback after the session, it could have triggered a dissociative episode and possibly result in the unusual behavior of wanting to go to confession.
“Did he tell you what he remembered?” Antelope asked.
“It got me kind of upset. He said it wasn’t an accident that Tim died. Why would he say that?” She turned her wide, questioning eyes on me.
“This is great, Kelly, you’ve been a big help,” I said gently. “What can we do for you tonight? Are you going to be okay here by yourself?”
“What about Fern? Does she know yet?” Kelly blew her nose. “I’d like to be with her. We’re kind of in the same place. She’ll most likely be drunk, but I don’t mind. I could use a drink myself.”
“I sent two of our senior deputies to give her the news,” Antelope said. “I’ll swing by there and see what she thinks. Doc, how about you hang here with Kelly while I pay a visit to Mrs. Hart? One way or another, we’ll get you two ladies together for the night.”
“We’ll be fine. Why don’t you pack a bag, Kelly, so we can drive over as soon as Detective Antelope says it’s okay?”
An hour later, we left Kelly and Fern Hart crying together and headed back to Rock Springs to break the news to Connor, most likely the last person to see Max alive.
We no sooner got on the highway than the rain started coming down again, steady and hard. The windshield wipers couldn’t keep up with the flood of water streaming down the window.
Antelope stopped under the cover of an overpass. “It’s safer if we wait it out,” he said.
“We don’t have weather like this in the East. I’m always surprised by the violence of the storms out here.”
“We’ll see some flooding.” He peered out the windshield at the downpour. “I don’t like to drive blind, and there’s zero visibility when it comes down like this.”
My mind had already moved on from the weather. “What did you think of Kelly’s response?”
“Eerily similar to yours, and she knows this guy well.”
“It’s not uncommon
for people to react to the suicide of someone close with shock and disbelief. When a person is determined to end their life, they usually don’t let others know what their plans are because they don’t want to get talked out of it.”
“It’s not like he didn’t have a reason—or a lot of reasons.”
“I’m still not there yet, seeing Max as a suicide. I don’t know if I’ll ever make peace with that.”
“Maybe, if he killed his sister and the guilt was too great . . .” Antelope shrugged. “He could be violent. You think it couldn’t have happened with her?”
“The way he talked about her before and after she died convinced me he didn’t do it; his grief was so uncomplicated, so pure. And why would he kill her?”
“That’s a good question, and one I can’t answer.” He started the car. “The rain’s letting up. Let’s see what Connor can tell us about tonight.”
After years of doing therapy and treating hundreds of people, I’d come to believe that the way people acted under stress revealed a lot about their essential personality and character. I was curious to see how Connor would react to the news.
“Does he know I’m coming?” I asked as we turned into the parking lot.
“No. I didn’t tell him anything. This will be a surprise for the prosecutor.”
“When you call him ‘the prosecutor,’ I get the feeling you don’t like him much.”
“I don’t like him much when I call him Connor Collins, either.”
“Why?”
“I’ve seen him in court a few times. My impression is he’s arrogant and likes himself too much.”
“Not your kind of guy.”
“I’m trying to keep an open mind. It’s bad for the case to go in with prejudice. It’s how Scruggs lost his gig up in Lander. Snap decisions don’t work in law enforcement.” He pulled into an empty spot. “Here we are. Let’s do this thing.”
I stifled a laugh. “You’ve been watching cop shows, right?”
On a Quiet Street Page 19