Lone Creek

by Neil Mcmahon

  I’d underestimated Kirk, all right.

  There were more signs that for all his lack of talent at anything else, he’d staged this scene with real cunning. Whatever he’d hit me with was nowhere in sight. He’d probably hidden it or thrown it into the lake. It must have been flexible, a sap or old-fashioned sandbag—my head hurt, but there was no bleeding or damage. He hadn’t fastened my seat belt, so if the lumps had been noticed, they’d have been accounted for by the crash. He’d even used a pair of my own goddamn gloves that he’d gotten from my truck, probably so he wouldn’t risk losing or leaving traces from his own.

  There was no sign of my camera, either. It might have been in the Jeep or one of his pockets, but I was guessing it was also in the lake.

  In itself, the film wasn’t important, especially now. But the fact that he’d taken it suggested strongly that Balcomb was behind this—that he’d called Kirk after talking to me and sent him to get rid of both me and the photos I’d claimed to have—and Kirk had turned my own lie right around on me, by claiming to have them, too.

  The decision I’d put off was made for me now. I didn’t have any choice but to take Balcomb to the law.

  I didn’t want to disturb any evidence, including my truck, so I started walking toward Canyon Ferry village to find a phone.

  Then I stopped. A fresh tingle of adrenaline was starting through me, this time for a very different reason.

  It was coming to me how this was going to look.

  There were no witnesses to the fact that I’d acted in self-defense. On the contrary, the obvious take would be that I’d lured Kirk here to get even.

  Investigators would quickly establish that he’d torched my lumber. Plenty of people knew about the long-standing friction that was there between us anyway, and several today had watched his snitching cost me my job and send me to jail, with him holding a rifle on me in the process.

  Including, especially, Wesley Balcomb.

  By killing Kirk, I’d destroyed my only backup for my story about the horses. I had no idea where they were buried, and the photos I’d seen on that camcorder sure weren’t of them.

  I had nothing on Balcomb now. But he had plenty of reason—and plenty of means—to railroad me for homicide.

  My gaze was pulled to the pistol, lying where Kirk had dropped it, about eighteen inches from his hand—a Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum, with a slug powerful enough to penetrate a car engine. The slightest graze would have sent me reeling, giving him plenty of room to finish the job.

  But I had a different worry about it now. Both make and caliber were so common around here that they were generic—you could buy one for a couple hundred bucks in any pawnshop, and cheaper in a parking lot behind a bar. This one was fairly old and a little beat-up. It probably wasn’t registered to him—which meant that I could have been the one who’d brought it here—and if it was his, I could have held a gun of my own on him and forced him to give it to me. All the staging he’d done—even using my gloves—could be seen as clumsy attempts on my part to bolster my claim of self-defense.

  And without question, the knife that had killed him and the hand that had held it—both were mine.

  I’d gotten a real good look at the criminal justice system when I’d worked the crime beat in Sacramento, and as if the vision that Madbird had joked about finally came, I found myself staring into into a tumbling kaleidoscope of probabilities that froze just long enough for me to see to the end with chilling clarity.

  I’d be slammed back in jail as soon as the sheriffs arrived, and this time the bail would be astronomical. I’d sit in a cell for months or years while some overworked court-appointed attorney tried to wrangle with the smooth power of Balcomb’s wealth and behind-the-scenes influence, and the outrage of Kirk’s prominent family. If I was lucky, I might get off with manslaughter, but if suspicion was strong that I’d set this up in advance, then premeditation entered in. I’d trade the county lockup for Deer Lodge, with only the question of how old a man I’d be when—if—I got out.

  The invisible grip that had held me all day tightened like a junkyard’s car-crushing vise.

  Then, through the chaos in my mind, came a thought so clear it almost seemed spoken by a voice.

  Nobody knows about this yet.

  A weaker voice protested that no, I couldn’t, I just wasn’t like that. But my body started moving, and gathered speed under the power of a whole new kind of fear.

  I spent the next four hours working harder than I’d ever worked in my life.

  PART THREE

  TWENTY-TWO

  A distant sound jolted me awake, too dazed to grasp where I was.

  Then I remembered.

  When I’d gotten home, not long before dawn, I’d come in quietly and made sure nobody was around, then gone into the woods to a spot that was well hidden and gave a clear view of my cabin and the road. I’d wrapped myself in a sleeping bag and sat back upright against a little berm, with my old man’s pistol in my lap. I wouldn’t have believed I could have closed my eyes, let alone slept, but my adrenaline had evaporated and exhaustion slammed down like the lid of a coffin. Now the hazy light of an autumn morning was filtering down through the pine branches around me.

  The noise I’d heard was from a vehicle coming up my drive—a sheriff’s cruiser.

  It pulled up beside my truck. As the driver unfolded his lanky frame out of the car, I saw that it was Gary Varna.

  He’d abandoned his usual button-down shirt and jeans and was in full uniform—counting his Smokey Bear hat, six and a half feet of khaki and leather. Ordinarily, you never saw him with a gun—he probably carried a small one concealed, like most off-duty cops—but on formal occasions he strapped on a more traditional Montana sheriff’s weapon, a .44 Magnum that looked the size of a jackhammer. He was wearing it now.

  I got up fast, shoved my gear into the brush, and hurried to meet him, keeping the cabin between us so it wouldn’t look like I’d been so far away. My head, ribs, and wrist all reminded me of details from yesterday.

  When I got to Gary, he had my truck’s hood up and seemed to be admiring the engine.

  “Morning, Hugh,” he said. “I haven’t seen this much of you in years.”

  “Sheriff.”

  “Out for a stroll?”

  “Just to take a leak.”

  “Nice old rig,” he said, patting the fender. “What you got in here, a 327?”

  I nodded. “My dad had it bored and revalved for the changeover to unleaded, so it’s a little bigger now.”

  “Nice,” he said again. He closed the hood with a clang that made me wince.

  “Come on in,” I said.

  His blue-gray eyes took in the cabin’s interior without seeming to, in that practiced cop way. There wasn’t much to see—the nook I euphemistically called my kitchen, just big enough for an old Monarch wood cookstove and a sink; a bed made of three-quarter-inch plywood with a worn-out mattress on top; a table and some other pieces of furniture; and some bookshelves and prints and such that I’d mounted on the rough log walls.

  The clock read 7:39 AM. I hadn’t expected this visit so early, or that Gary himself would come. But I’d known that somebody would, and I’d done a little staging of my own, rumpling the bedding and leaving a bottle of Old Taylor and some empty beer cans around.

  “Sorry to interrupt you,” he said, hooking his thumbs in his gun belt. “You look like you could use some more sleep.”

  “I got pretty fucked up last night.” I didn’t have to pretend much about that. I was bleary-eyed, rumpled, and still wearing dirty work clothes—although not the same ones as yesterday.

  “The kind of day you had, I can’t blame you,” he said.

  “Thanks. I’ll make some coffee.”

  “Don’t worry about it on my account. I already drunk a gallon.” So. He’d been up and on this for a while.

  I started filling the kettle, mostly to give my hands something to do. “You’re looking very official,” I s
aid.

  “Not by choice—just in case something comes up. I got a call about five this morning from Reuben Pettyjohn. He’d just got a call from Kirk’s girlfriend. I guess she didn’t want to talk to our office directly—she’s got a couple little drug issues pending. Anyway, seems Kirk never came home last night.”

  I kept my hands moving and did my best to put on a wry face.

  “I don’t find that too hard to believe,” I said. Kirk had a well-known penchant for sliding around on his live-in squeeze, Josie. Even Helena had its meth whores, and he was popular with them.

  “That’s what me and Reuben would of figured, and so did Josie, at first,” Gary said. “She drove around town a while, checking the bars and other gals’ apartments and all that. She kept calling his cell phone and he wouldn’t answer, which ain’t hard to believe, either.

  “But then an hour or two after midnight, her calls started going straight to the phone’s answering machine. Now, it’s possible he turned it off or it ran out of juice, but she says he was crazy about that phone and he made damn sure to keep it working twenty-four seven, no matter what.”

  Son of a bitch, his cell phone. He must have had it stashed in the Jeep. I’d rummaged through there quickly, looking for my camera, but I hadn’t found that and I’d never even thought about the phone.

  “The only other way I know of that can happen,” Gary said, “is when they get damaged.”

  Sitting at the bottom of Canyon Ferry Lake would damage a cell phone, all right.

  I glanced at Gary, wrinkling my forehead in concern.

  “You think something happened to him?” I said.

  “I got two minds about it. I’m still mostly willing to bet he fell in love for the night. Maybe he did turn it off, or dropped it or stepped on it or run over it. But together with him not turning up—that’s unsettling. So we’re asking around.” Gary’s gaze stayed on me.

  I shrugged. “Last time I saw him was yesterday afternoon at the ranch, right before I came to visit you.”

  “He was holding a rifle on you, is that right?”

  I’d suspected that would get thrown at me sooner or later, too, but it was still the hardest jolt yet.

  “Well—yeah,” I said.

  Then I swung around to face him.

  “What are you getting at, Gary? Nothing happened between Kirk and me—we never even talked. He was just there in the background, doing his job.”

  “That’s all I’m doing, too—just my job. This is informal, but if you don’t want to talk to me, you don’t have to.”

  It didn’t look informal, with that uniform and hogleg.

  “Sure I’ll talk to you,” I said.

  He lifted his chin in approval. “Why don’t you give me a quick rundown of what you did last night?”

  I’d rehearsed this over and over during the drive back here and the hour or so before I’d fallen asleep, but it was still like walking through a minefield. I spoke hesitantly, as if I was trying to remember.

  “I got home from jail. I was pissed off and restless. I went down to O’Toole’s and had a couple. Then—can we keep this private?”

  “For now,” Gary said. “Not if it comes to bear legally. So think it over.”

  “It’s nothing that serious. I went out to the ranch and picked up my tools.”

  “Am I remembering right that Balcomb eighty-sixed you from there?”

  “Yeah, but the way he was fucking with me, I was nervous he’d impound them or some goddamn thing and I’d never see them again.”

  Gary pushed his hat brim back and scratched his forehead.

  “I can’t say that was a good idea, but I can see it,” he said. “Give me a time frame to hang this on.”

  “I probably left the bar around ten and got back to town around midnight.”

  “That’s a long trip out there and back.”

  “I took it slow, on the ranch. Kept stopping and listening, in case there was somebody else around.”

  “All right, you got to town about midnight,” he said.

  “I stopped by Sarah Lynn’s to pay her the money she’d lent me. Then I went home and took that slow, too. I had a lot to think about.”

  “Anybody see you during all this?”

  “Not that I know of. I mean, people might have seen me, but there was nobody I talked to.”

  “What time did you get here?”

  “I never looked. It must have been at least two o’clock, maybe three.” I hadn’t wanted to say that—it was in the time range when Kirk’s cell phone would have gone on the blink.

  “That puts a little kink in my brain,” Gary said. “Your truck engine seemed a touch warm. You’d think on a chilly night like we’re getting, it’d go stone cold between then and now.”

  Son of a bitch again. So that’s what he’d been doing with the hood open.

  The only answer I could come up with was bone lame.

  “I might have driven around longer than I thought.”

  Gary didn’t say anything to that—just took another look around the cabin, then stalked to the door. I followed him.

  “OK, Hugh,” he said. “That all seems reasonable, even if some of it ain’t exactly legal, and we can check it out if we have to. Let’s hope we don’t.”

  “Look, you know Kirk and I aren’t buddies.” I was careful not to use weren’t. “But we get along. I’d sure never wish him any harm.”

  “That’s good to know. Unfortunately, it don’t much matter. What does is if something bad happened to him. And with him being Reuben Pettyjohn’s son—” Gary paused, then added, “Make that, ‘last surviving son’—it kind of turns up the heat on me, know what I mean?”

  I knew, all right. He’d do his damnedest to put somebody away, and he wouldn’t bat an eye at bending the rules.

  “Anything I can do to help, Gary, just let me know.”

  “I appreciate your cooperation.”

  I couldn’t tell if he meant what he said any more than I did.

  Stepping outside, he raised his head and sniffed the air, then turned his gaze to the heap of charred wood and dirt a hundred feet away.

  “I thought I smelled something, coming in,” he said. “What you been burning?”

  I’d been nursing the faint hope that he’d assume it was slash or other debris and not say anything. Fat chance. I damned well couldn’t accuse Kirk—that would give me another motive for revenge, this time in neon lights.

  “Balcomb’s lumber,” I said, shifting my shoulders uncomfortably.

  For the first time, Gary showed surprise. “Well, now, how the hell did that happen?”

  I looked at the floor. “I pounded down some drinks after I got home from jail, and I just blew up. Next thing I knew, I was scrambling to put the fire out.”

  “You did it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Gary didn’t like the sound of this, it was clear.

  “How come you didn’t tell me?” he said, hard-voiced now.

  “I feel like an asshole about it.”

  “We’re not talking about your goddamn feelings, we’re talking about withholding information.”

  “I didn’t think it figured in.”

  “That been happening to you often?” he said. “Blowing up and doing something stupid without even realizing it?”

  “Come on, Gary, you know me better than that.”

  “I used to think so. This worries me, Hugh. Drunk driving, trespassing—hell, those are the kind of things that could happen to anybody. But when a guy goes flat crazy and shoots himself in the dick, that makes an old cop nervous. Anything else you forgot to mention?”

  I shook my head, squeezing my closed eyes between my thumb and forefinger.

  “It was like you said—I had a world-class bad day. I handled it piss poor, and I’m sorry. Real sorry, because now I owe Balcomb another thirty-five hundred bucks on top of everything else.”

  “I’m afraid you’re going to be more sorry yet,” Gary said. “I was just
about to tell you your luck was changing. I went out to see Wesley Balcomb first thing after I talked to Reuben, in case Kirk might be around the ranch. He let me know he was dropping all charges against you, including the demand for restitution. Said he only took it so far because you seemed to have an attitude, and he wanted to, quote, ‘impress upon you the seriousness of the matter.’ Unquote.”

  I sat down heavily in the doorway. “I think I’m going to cry.”

  “I don’t blame you. I’ll leave you to it in peace.”

  The tires on Gary’s cruiser glistened where the black tom had sprayed them, sending a telegram to cats at the next stops along the line. I watched him pull away, with my pulse hammering so hard I could feel it in my head.

  All charges dropped. Now I was going to have to wrestle again with whether I’d been wrong about Balcomb, or this was another of his ploys.

  But first I had some urgent problems to deal with—starting with hiding a body so it would never be found.

  “Had a feeling I better find out how you were doing,” a gravelly voice said.

  I lurched to my feet, swiveling toward it so fast my neck burned.

  Madbird was standing beside the cabin’s rear corner, looking like he’d just materialized there.

  TWENTY-THREE

  “I got another feeling that ain’t just coincidence,” Madbird said, jerking his head toward the fading dust cloud from Gary’s car. He must have hiked in around the back of my property like I’d done last night. In the woods, Madbird was a ghost.

  “I didn’t tell him anything about you,” I said. “But somebody might have seen us leave the bar together.”

  “I can handle that. Kirk?”

  I hesitated. I’d never in my life been so glad to see anybody as Madbird right now. But from this point on, anybody who helped me or even knew about Kirk was on felony turf.

  “I’ve gotten you in too much trouble already,” I said.