“I shot him. He grabbed my pistol and tried to kill me with it. He pulled the trigger twice, but it didn’t fire. So I shot him.”
“You were acting in self-defense at that point?”
“Yes, you could say that.”
“Does that seem like a rational point of view?”
“Your face is a little red. Is it too hot in here for you?”
“You took the body of one woman to your church and posed and photographed her. You put the body back in your van and then dumped it on the roadside. No one has ever figured that out. Do you want to talk about that?”
“Why I took her and not somebody else to the church?”
“The question is why you would kill your victim in one place and transport her to the church where you’re a parishioner. Why would you take a risk like that? Why would you photograph her in your church?”
“Maybe that’s just part of my dark side. Everybody’s got one.”
“I can’t write a book about you unless you’re honest with me.”
“I think you ask questions you already know the answers to. I think you ask questions that are supposed to degrade me.”
“My opinions mean nothing. The publisher and the reader are interested in you, not me. A large number of people will read whatever you tell me here today.”
His head was tilted on one shoulder, as though he were drowsing off or imitating a hanged man. “You’re a manipulator, but that doesn’t mean you’re smart.”
“Could be,” she said.
He straightened in his chair and shouted at the door, “On the gate, boss man!”
“You took the woman to the church to mark your territory,” she said. “Every animal does it.”
His eyes narrowed, and she saw his nostrils whiten around the rims. When the correctional officer escorted him out of the room, his eyes were bright and hard and receded in his face and still fastened on hers.
IT WAS NINE P.M., and rain was falling heavily on the trees and the pastures and the hillsides and cascading down Albert’s roof when I got the call from the sheriff, Elvis Bisbee. “We found the missing Indian girl in a barn about two miles west of where you’re at,” he said. “She was tied up in the loft with a vinyl garbage bag taped around her head. The magpies probab
ly got to her five or six days ago.”
“You’re talking about Love Younger’s granddaughter?” I said.
“Her name was Angel Deer Heart. She would have turned eighteen next month. I just came back from her grandfather’s house. That’s the part of this job I never get used to.”
“You’ve got to excuse me, Sheriff, but I’m not sure why you’re calling me.”
“One of our detectives interviewed Wyatt Dixon at the Wigwam, the same place the girl was drinking the night she disappeared. Evidently, Dixon is a regular there. He didn’t deny being there the night she disappeared.”
“You think he might be your guy?”
“I got to thinking about that biblical message in the cave above Albert’s house and Dixon’s run-in with your daughter. The more I thought about it, the more I had to admit Dixon is a five-star nutcase who needs looking at real hard. Can you break down that quote for me?”
“The allusion to the bended knee refers to Christ’s statement that eventually all of mankind will accept his message of peace. The alpha and omega allusion refers to Yahweh’s statement in the Old Testament that He existed before the beginning of time.”
“So the guy who wrote this has a little problem with ego?”
“It’s called the messianic complex. It’s characteristic of all narcissists.”
“I want to get a forensic team up to that cave in the morning.”
Through the window, I could see water pooling in the north pasture and the green-black sheen of the fir trees when lightning leaped between the clouds.