I WAS STILL WIRED when I walked into an old brick Catholic church on the north side of Missoula early the next morning. The day was cool and misty, and the pillared interior of the church, whose ceilings were painted with celestial scenes, seemed to enclose an unnatural, smoky blue light. The few parishioners in the pews were elderly, traditional people from another era who said rosaries and probably attended Mass daily and confessed sins that were largely imaginary to a priest who fought to keep from nodding off. I felt like an intruder in their midst.
I knelt in the back of the church and prayed to be relieved of the anger that still throbbed in my wrists and left my mouth as dry as paper and my thoughts like shards of glass. A young priest in a cassock entered the center booth in the confessional and I followed him and knelt in the adjoining booth and waited for him to slide back the wood cover on the small screened window that separated us.
“I should confess early on I know another priest here in town but I chose not to go to him,” I said.
“Why is that?” the priest asked.
“I’m ashamed.”
“There’s no shame when you take your sins to God.”
“I tried to kill a man yesterday, Father. He was unarmed. I shot at his back four times.”
The priest started to turn, to look through the screen at my face, but instead lowered his eyes and remained motionless. I could hear the soft rise and fall of his breath.
“What you’re telling me is very serious,” he said.
“This man did something truly evil to a friend of mine,” I said.
“With respect, I have to stop you there. You don’t bargain in a sacramental situation.”
“He buried her alive.”
I saw him press his forehead with the heel of his hand.
“Listen, do you plan to make another attempt against this man’s life?” he said.
“I’ll do him no harm except in defense of myself or another.”
I could see a thin sheen of perspiration along his jawbone and a lump of cartilage working below his ear. He waited a long time before he spoke again.
“If you have not been honest with me, the absolution you receive here will be of little use to you. That said, you are forgiven of your sins,” he said. Then added, as I rose from the kneeler, “You must put away your violence, sir. You will never have peace until you do. Until that day comes, a minister such as I will be only a seashell echoing the wind.”
His words clung to me like a net when I walked out into the sunlight.
I WALKED from the church down to the river and sat on a shady bench and watched the sun burn the mist off the hills. The siltation caused by the snow melt had settled out of the river and the water was now a dark green again, undulating smoothly over the submerged boulders in the deepest part of the river, the trout rising on the edge of the shade for the first fly hatch of the day.
I had less than three weeks to prepare Doc’s defense. When all else failed, a hard-nosed criminal lawyer could always put the police on trial. But that was not only unwise in the case of Sheriff Cain, who was an intelligent and decent man and also well liked, a defense strategy deliberately based on destroying people’s faith in their legal system was a little bit like burning down all your neighbors’ houses in order to save your own.
Who had really killed Lamar Ellison? I had an idea, but my speculations were of no value. I believed Lamar Ellison and his two cohorts were sent by Carl Hinkel to Doc Voss’s house to rape his daughter. But all three rapists were dead now and I would probably never get Hinkel into a courtroom. Hinkel was like the drunk who runs a red light at ninety miles an hour and fills an intersection with mayhem and carnage and disappears back into anonymity. Regardless, as much as I disliked him and the xenophobic mentality that was characteristic of his kind, I did not think he was behind Ellison’s murder.
I tried to think through the tangled web Doc and I had wandered into the night he went up against the bikers in the bar at Lincoln: gold mine interests on the Blackfoot River, Cleo Lonnigan’s belief that Lamar Ellison’s biker gang had murdered her child, Nicki Molinari’s insistence that Cleo Lonnigan had stolen money from him, Xavier and Holly Girard’s involvement with Molinari, the kidnapping and murder of Sue Lynn Big Medicine’s little brother, the fanatical dedication of the ATF agents who wanted to avenge the deaths of their friends and colleagues in the Alfred P. Murrah Building.
I wondered what it would be like to line up childhood photos of all the above-mentioned people. Would it tell us something about the influence of the world on each of us? Probably. But the lesson was too depressing to even think about.
“I have a bone to pick with you,” a voice said behind me.
“Oh, hello, Ms. Girard,” I said, removing my hat and rising from the bench.
She wore shades and a white suit and high heels and white stockings and carried a shopping bag from a fashionable store by its paper straps. She sat down and crossed her legs and lit a cigarette with a silver lighter.
“Do you mind?” she asked.
“No,” I said, not quite sure if she was referring to her cigarette or her sitting down uninvited.
“God forbid, my prayers have been answered. My husband has stopped drinking. He has also gone crazy. I think he gets some of his ideas from you and Doc Voss,” she said.
“I doubt it.”
“He wants to stop production of my picture. He says more publicity about the Blackfoot will cause it to be overrun by tourists. He says he’s going to rat-fuck Nicki Molinari. Do you think that’s an advisable activity?”
“I wouldn’t know, Ms. Girard. To tell you the truth, I don’t care, either.”
She removed her sunglasses and let them rest in her lap. In the shade, or perhaps because of her makeup, her eyes had the color of lilacs. They roved over my face thoughtfully, then she smiled in that unrehearsed and vulnerable way that seemed totally foreign to everything else she did.
“I’ve made a bad impression on you twice now,” she said.
“How’s that?”
“When you caught me inhaling a substance I could do without. Then Xavier told you of a foolish moment I had with Nicki Molinari.”
“I don’t guess I remember any of that very well.”
“You’re quite a guy, Tex. I could cast you in a minute, if you’re not too ambitious. Don’t pay too much attention to Xavier while he’s sober. He thinks better when he’s drunk,” she said, and pinched me on top of the thigh when she got up to leave.
WHEN I GOT BACK to Doc’s house Maisey was waiting for me on the front porch.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
She handed me a folded piece of notebook paper. “This was pushed in under my screen,” she said. It read:
Dear Maysy,
I saw Mr. Holland shoot at Wyatt. Wyatt was running a chain saw and couldn’t hear the shots. So I told him what I saw. You need to get away from Mr. Holland. We could go to Idaho or to the rain forest in Washington. I know how to build a cabin and to hunt and fish. What do you think? Meet me outside our place on Front Street at 8 tonite.
Your friend,
Terry
“‘Our place’?” I said.
“He must mean the bar where I met him. What a loser.”
“Has your dad seen this?”
“Not yet. He went to the feed store. What does he mean you shot at Wyatt Dixon?”
“Witherspoon has probably been eating mushrooms,” I said.
But I didn’t fool her. She put her hands on her hips, her eyes boring in on me.
“Have you lost your mind, Billy Bob?”
“Don’t underestimate the value of mental illness. It makes life a lot easier,” I said.
“I thought my father was uncontrollable. You two guys are beyond belief,” she said. She shook her head despairingly, tapping her toe, her mouth screwed into a button.
BUT THINGS were just warming up. A half hour later I saw Nicki Molinari’s maroon convertible tearing through the field behind Doc’s house, the top down, with Molinari behind the wheel and his second baseman, the man called Frank, next to him. Frank looked like a seven-foot cadaver propped up in the seat.
Molinari got out of the car and left the door hanging open, the engine still running, and jabbed his finger at me.
“I’m about an inch from creating one less lawyer in Missoula, Montana,” he said.
“Oh?” I said.
“I’m eating breakfast in a café this morning and this rodeo psycho, what’s-his-name, Wyatt Dixon, comes in and stands there, leering down at me with this twisted smile on his mouth. I go, ‘You got a problem?’ He goes, ‘I’ve got it on high authority your friend Mr. Holland took some shots at me. Could it be you was involved with a cowardly action like that, sir?’
“I go, ‘What are you talking about? And stop calling me sir.’
“He says, ‘I seen one of your men bird-dogging me. Which made me wonder if you and Mr. Holland is working together. All these people is waiting for your response, sir.’
“I go, ‘No, I don’t know nothing about people shooting at you. So get away from my table, you crazy fuck.’
“He goes, ‘You are a war hero, sir. I have driven by your home many times. I have seen the batting cage in your barn and the beautiful women that swims in your pool. I would like to model my life on yours but I am only a humble cowboy. You, sir, are a credit to the Italian race.’”
I waited for Molinari to continue.
“Are you listening?” he said.
“Yeah. So why are you out here?”
His face blanched with anger.
“You’re playing with this guy’s head. I’m a businessman. I got this shitkicker meltdown ’fronting me in public. I don’t need that kind of publicity.”
“Why did he put you and me together?”
“He’s con-wise. He knows we’ve both been involved with the skank. Hey, bottom line, my man, he’s nuts.”
“Nice of you to come out,” I said.
I walked away from him, into the trees, into the cold air rising off the river in the shadows. Molinari followed me and scooped up a pine cone and threw it at my head.
“Don’t turn your back on me, Mr. Holland,” he said.
“Your problem is not with me, Nicki. It’s back in Laos, on that helicopter skid.”
His hands opened and closed at his sides. His hired man followed us into the trees, his silhouette gargantuan against the sunlight. Molinari turned and said, “Everything’s cool here, Frank. Take a smoke. I’ll be along in a minute.” I started to speak but Molinari shook his finger.
“You got no right to stick that information in my face,” he said.
“Hell is a place you carry with you. I hope you get out of it one day.”
“Save the shuck for people who are easily impressed,” he said.
But he didn’t leave. He stared at me, the veins in his forearms pumped with blood.
“Say something,” he said.
I shook my head and walked around him, out into the sunlight, into the glory of the day and the humped blue-green chain of mountains that lined each side of the Blackfoot Valley. Frank, the hired man, looked at Nicki, waiting for instructions.
“Leave him alone,” Nicki said.
I WAS BY MYSELF that evening. The sky was blue, the sun glowing like a red spark through a crack in the hills. The Blackfoot had dropped, and the rocks along the bank were white and dry and etched with the skeletal remains of underwater insects. When the wind gusted I could smell a meat fire in a neighbor’s yard and the cold odor the river gave off inside the shade.
It was an evening to put aside thoughts about Nicki Molinari and Carl Hinkel and their minions and all their nefarious enterprises. I called Temple Carrol at her motel.
“How about dinner and a movie?” I said.
“I guess that could be arranged,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Don’t be smart,” she replied.
Well, that’s a start, I thought, and went into the bathroom to shave.
A minute later the phone rang.
“Hello?” I said.
“We need to talk,” the voice said.
“Cleo?”
“At least you haven’t forgotten the sound of my voice.”
“I’m going to ring off now,” I said.
“Come on, stop pretending you’re a victim. I apologize for my behavior at the Joan Baez concert. Can’t you show a little humility?”
“Have a good life,” I said.
“I’m turning off the dirt road right now. It doesn’t look like Doc’s at home. That’s good. You and I have a lot to talk about,” she said.
I hurriedly put on a fresh shirt and my hat and headed out the door for my truck, just as she drove around the side of the house and parked by the porch. She wore a yellow sundress and a pink ribbon in her hair. But for some reason that had no exact physical correlation, she looked sharp-edged, aged, her eyes intent with an animus that would never allow her to acknowledge any perception of the world other than her own.
She walked toward me with a box wrapped in satin paper.
“A little present,” she said.
“This isn’t good for either of us, Cleo.”
“If you won’t open it, I’ll do it myself.”
She tore away the paper and the ribbon, her hands shaking slightly. The paper blew away in the wind when she folded back the top of the box.
“There’s every kind of bass lure here,” she said. “That’s what you fish for in Texas, isn’t it? Bass? Do you like the lures?”
“I appreciate your thoughtfulness. I’m headed out right now. I wish perhaps you had come out at another time.”
“Stop being cute, Billy Bob. Southern charm doesn’t work too well after you bed a woman and drop her.”
“You have a lot of qualities, Cleo. You’re devoted to your work. You obviously have compassion for the poor. Any guy would be lucky to have a lady like you.”
“I want you to come out to my place. It doesn’t have to be tonight. But this has to be worked out.”
“It’s not going to happen.”
“I’m sorry to hear you say that,” she said.
“Let me be straight up with you. Nicki Molinari told me your husband and son were murdered by gangsters, not by Lamar Ellison’s biker gang. The sheriff believes the same thing. Why don’t you give Molinari and his friends the money your husband owed them and be done with it?”
“You quote Nicki Molinari to me about my son? You worthless piece of Southern garbage,” she said.
“Adios,” I said, and got into my truck. While I ground the starter I could feel her eyes pulling the skin from my bones.
THAT SAME EVENING Sue Lynn Big Medicine drove her uncle’s pickup truck into the Jocko Valley and onto the Flathead Indian Reservation. She passed the rodeo and powwow grounds and followed a dirt road into the hills, climbing higher into trees and deep shadows and outcroppings of gray rock that were marbled with lichen.
She pulled off the road into a flat, thinly wooded area by a creek. The remains of an abandoned sweat lodge stood next to the creek, the concave network of shaved willow limbs hung with strips of rotting canvas. She cut the engine and walked down to the water and leaned against a rock and smoked a cigarette and waited. It was not long before she heard a four-wheel-drive vehicle grinding in low gear up the road.
The man who had told her where to wait for him got out of his vehicle and walked toward her. He wore slip-on, half-topped boots and khakis and a long-sleeve blue cotton shirt and a bill cap. His hair was neatly clipped, and even though it was evening he was freshly shaved and smelled of the lotion on his jaws.
“Did I keep you waiting long?” Amos Rackley asked.
“I wasn’t doing anything else,” she said, inhaling her cigarette, her chin raised, her gaze averted.
“Where’s your uncle’s race car, the one with numbers on it?”
“It doesn’t have lights.”
He seemed to look at her kindly but for just a second his eyes would focus on her mouth and drop to her throat and breasts.
“I have a folder here with some pictures of guns in it,” he said. “I want you to look at the pictures and tell me if you’ve seen any of these guns inside Carl Hinkel’s house.”
He opened the folder on top of the rock she was leaning against and shone a tiny flashlight on a series of glossy prints. She felt the hair on his forearm touch hers.
“I don’t know anything about guns,” she said.
“A gal from the Res? Who grew up around hunters? That’s hard to believe, Sue Lynn.”
“I don’t know what kind of guns Carl Hinkel has. They’re guns.”
“I see. We need you to go back into Hinkel’s house,” he said, closing the folder.
“They’re on to me.”
“I don’t think that’s true. They’re just a suspicious lot by nature. Call up Wyatt and tell him you had a fight with the Holland boy and you want to see him again.”
“I don’t want to ever be alone with Wyatt again. You don’t know what he—”
“We’ll be close by,” Rackley said, interrupting her. “You’ll be wearing a wire. Your job’s almost done.” He moved his hand slightly and let his fingers cover the tops of hers.
“I can’t do it,” she said.
“Do what? Can’t do what, Sue Lynn?”
She wanted to pull her hand away from his but couldn’t. She could feel her own heart beating, her chest rising and falling inside her shirt.
“I hate you. I hate all you people,” she said.
She felt his hand leave hers. The wind was cold on the back of her neck and she felt her hair feathering on her cheeks. She wanted to turn and stare him down but all she could do was fix her eyes on the desiccated remains of the sweat lodge and the discarded heat stones that had been blackened by long-dead fires.
“I’m disappointed to hear you say that, Sue Lynn. I’ll call you very soon. You’re going to be a big help to us. You’ll see.”
After Amos Rackley was gone, she sat on the creek bank with her knees drawn up in front of her, her hands clasped on her ankles. The light was gone from the sky now and she heard animals moving about in the woods, deer certainly, perhaps black bears and cougars, perhaps even a moose, and she hoped if she saw the latter she would not be afraid, even though the moose was considered a man-killer. She wanted to believe the animals represented the spirits of her ancestors, people who lived in harmony with the earth and sky and wind and the water in the streams and all the winged and four-footed creatures and the salmon who swam all the way back from the sea to lay their roe where they had been born, that maybe the animals she heard in the darkness came bearing an omen of power and resolution and courage that daily eluded her and translated her sleep into a prison filled with grotesque shapes she could not control.
She rose from the ground and waded into the stream and felt its coldness swell over her ankles. She walked up the opposite bank, across small stones that hurt her feet, and entered the tree line. Again she heard the noise in the brush and she walked farther into the woods until she entered an old clear-cut that was dotted with toadstools and tree stumps that had gone gray with rot. A bull elk reared its head out of the grass, its rack clattering with moonlight.
For a moment she thought she had found the totem that spoke of the power her people could pass on to her. But instead she stared at the elk’s rack, the ridged texture and hardness of the horn, the curved points, and all she could think of was Wyatt Dixon. And she knew she would not sleep that night.