Lone Creek

by Neil Mcmahon

  After she was done we got into the smorgasbord. We’d eaten sandwiches from a convenience store earlier in the day, but we were plenty hungry again, the food was delicious, and we pretty well demolished it. Then I took a shower and shaved, savoring yet another pleasure of hot water and feeling clean.

  When I came out, she was sitting up in bed, looking solemn.

  “She loved horses, too,” Laurie said.

  Her eerie revelation about Celia last night had been swirling around in my head with all the other craziness. The only explanation I could come up with was that my overheated brain had given Laurie’s words a meaning that wasn’t really there.

  But goddammit, she was starting again.

  “A lot of people do,” I said.

  “I mean in a special way. She could feel them—their pain.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean. No horse she was around ever got mistreated.”

  “Maybe not outright. But we geld the males, force the females to breed with strangers, take away their children.”

  I’d never thought of it like that.

  “They loved her back,” Laurie said. “They wouldn’t have hurt her.”

  I blinked. This was getting less imaginary.

  “How do you know she got hurt?” I said.

  “I just do.”

  “Do you know how?”

  Hesitantly, she said, “There was a stallion.”

  That flat startled me. It was a stallion that supposedly had thrown and killed Celia.

  “You said a horse wouldn’t have hurt her.”

  Laurie shook her head, confused now. “It’s gone from my mind. It was there for just a second, and it seemed right. No to a horse, yes to a stallion.”

  I sat on the bed beside her. I still couldn’t believe this was anything but crazy, but I couldn’t stop a tickle of wondering if I’d been maligning Pete Pettyjohn all these years.

  Her face softened and she relaxed against the pillows, turning on her side toward me.

  “Do you want her again?” she said.

  “I want you,” I said, but in truth, I was talking to her and Celia both.

  FIFTY

  I was falling into the sleep that my whole being craved, soothed by the good bed and the comfort of the woman beside me. Her fingernails stroked my chest, sending me into near rapture. But then they started digging in, harder and harder until I opened my eyes.

  “We can’t rest yet,” she said. She was propped up on an elbow, watching me.

  “We can’t?” I said groggily.

  “I’ve been hopeless for so long, Hugh. But I feel like you’ve given me a new chance.”

  That was sweet to hear, but I couldn’t see that I’d done much to earn it. When she’d yelled at me about jerking off, she was right. My scenario might have enough meat by now to get the cops interested, but the danger from Balcomb hadn’t changed. He was probably already working on a replacement for John Doe. I’d been clinging to this dream time with her, holding off the snarling black dog of reality. But she was right about that, too—we couldn’t just hide out and wish it away.

  But all I could see was the same wearying labyrinth of dead ends.

  “I was hoping I’d have something smart by now, but I don’t,” I admitted.

  Her fingers returned to their light delicious teasing.

  “You know there’s only one real answer,” she murmured.

  I did—killing Wesley Balcomb.

  The thought came instantly and naturally, without any element of shock. I realized that Laurie was only voicing aloud what had been growing in my mind all along.

  But while I’d turned over many plans during the day’s driving, I hadn’t come up with any that weren’t risky as hell. Right off came the problem of getting physically close without alerting him. Then there was the near certainty of getting caught. Rationally, I knew that spending my life in prison was preferable to both her and me being dead, but I still couldn’t bring myself to accept it.

  “I’d do it,” I said. “I just can’t see a good way.”

  “Maybe I can help.”

  I waited, not expecting much. Suggestions were cheap.

  “That rifle is Kirk’s, right?” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “But nobody knows you have it. I mean, the police would never find out.”

  I ticked off the chain of ownership in my head. Balcomb had given the rifle secretly to John Doe, to plant the suspicion that Kirk had murdered me. For either of them to admit that would incriminate them. Laurie, Madbird, and I were the only others who knew what had happened to it.

  “Probably not,” I said.

  “Wesley’s a night owl. He’s in and out of his office all the time, checking business on his computer. There are windows around the desk.”

  That got my full attention. I sat up.

  “You drop the rifle like you panicked, and you hurry back here,” she said. “The drive’s not long, is it?”

  “An hour and change.”

  “So it’ll still be night. Nobody will see you. And I’ll swear you were with me the whole time.” Her fingers kept moving, making slow circles on my chest. “They’ll find Kirk’s rifle and think it was him. You’ll have an airtight alibi. I’ll have money again, so if there’s any trouble, we’ll hire the best lawyers in the country.”

  I had no trouble understanding her wanting Balcomb dead. Still, I was impressed at how much thought she’d given it.

  “You think he’ll be checking his computer, with everything else that’s going on?” I said.

  “He’s compulsive about it. He’d do it if there was a mushroom cloud on the horizon.”

  “How would I get inside that fence?”

  “I don’t think you’d have to. It’s not that far from the house.”

  I’d never been inside the compound, so I didn’t know the layout.

  “Show me,” I said. I got up, walked to the window, and pulled aside the curtain. The vehicles in the parking lot glinted with unnatural colors under the sodium vapor lights. She came to stand beside me, scanned the area for a few seconds, then pointed at the logo above the entrance to the motel.

  “That sign.”

  The distance was about sixty yards. The Mini-14 was very accurate at that range, and would fire thirty rounds as fast as you could touch them off. A backlit, stationary man framed in a window would be a prime target—a variation on what cops called a vertical coffin.

  I closed the curtain and we got back into bed. She settled in snugly beside me, her breasts teasing my skin.

  “You know it’s not just us,” Laurie whispered. “It’s her, too. She’s afraid she’ll be hurt again. And this time, gone forever.”

  I gazed at this woman who I barely knew, and realized that she’d again touched something hidden in my thoughts. It didn’t make any more sense than the rest of this. But it didn’t have to.

  She had already given me the gift of fulfilling a dream in a way that few people ever did. Now fate was offering me a second gift: redemption. As a boy, I had appointed myself Celia’s protector, and I’d failed her.

  If I could keep Laurie safe, I’d allow myself to believe I was also saving the mysterious presence of Celia that seemed to be touching her.

  I found the bag of crosstops, swallowed four, and pulled on my clothes.

  FIFTY-ONE

  I left Great Falls in a state of cold euphoria, with my path lit by the dark inner lamp that Laurie had kindled. It was about one-thirty in the morning. The roads were almost deserted. I stayed just under the speed limits and casually shielded my face when another vehicle did come close.

  Laurie had sketched a rough map of the compound while I dressed. Knowing that Balcomb would be in that room was the key. The rest fell readily into place. I’d leave the truck at the dead end of the same dirt road where Balcomb had tossed Kirk’s rifle for John Doe to pick up. From there it was a few hundred yards on foot, skirting the fence, to the stakeout point. There was no one else staying there no
w, and the closest residences were the ranch hands’ trailers, a good mile away. If anybody heard the shots, I’d be gone before they could get there. Most likely he wouldn’t be discovered until somebody missed him and went looking for him.

  The logistics of covering my tracks were trickier. The mistakes I’d made with Kirk still scared the shit out of me. The upside was that I’d given a lot of thought to what I would have done differently, and that kicked in. The downside was that my margin was a lot narrower this time. For openers, the sheriffs weren’t going to have any trouble finding the crime scene. I could only try to minimize the risks.

  First came the rifle. I had barely touched it—just picked it up by the stock to put it in the truck, back at the campsite—and I’d carefully wiped it clean since then. But I couldn’t count on doing that again effectively, in haste and in the dark. I didn’t have gloves, and I didn’t want to chance buying anything that a clerk might remember. Wrapping it would be easiest, but that might leave fabric traces, even microscopic, that were identifiable—any clothing or gear that belonged to Laurie or Madbird or me could link it to us. I didn’t want to use anything from around Great Falls, either—the fact that I’d been staying there would be known, and material from there turning up at the scene would be a highly suspicious coincidence.

  The safest course I could see was to go scavenging when I got to Helena. I could filch a garbage bag out of a dumpster for wrapping the rifle. The thin plastic wouldn’t impair my shooting, it would keep my clothes and skin free of residue, and I could shove it inside my shirt when I dropped the weapon and burn it on the way home. I’d obscure my boot prints by lashing a couple of small green pine branches to the soles like miniature snowshoes. There were plenty of haystacks along the way where I could cut baling twine.

  The best thing about this, giving me a grim and maybe ugly satisfaction, was that it would point strongly to Kirk’s settling a score with Balcomb—exactly the setup that Balcomb had intended for me. Besides obvious evidence like the rifle itself, there were some extra factors that stood to work for me more subtly, such as that Kirk had almost certainly loaded the clip. I hadn’t touched it and I didn’t see any reason why Balcomb or John Doe would have, so Kirk’s prints would be on the shell casings. Wiping down the rest of the rifle but forgetting the bullets was just the kind of fuckup that everybody knew he was airhead enough to pull.

  The aftermath was likely to be the most treacherous part, but that was falling into place, too. Laurie would maintain that she’d sensed her husband’s long-standing menace toward her jumping to an almost psychotic level over the past days. When he’d left the house Sunday afternoon, she’d discovered that he’d taken her purse, including the keys to her SUV—leading her to think that he intended her harm. There were a few ranch vehicles around, and she knew that the keys were usually left in them. That was how she’d gotten this pickup truck.

  She’d fled in panic, coming to me because I was also on Balcomb’s wrong side, I knew my way around this area, and she felt an affinity for me. She’d insisted that we not call the sheriffs, fearing that they’d inform Balcomb and he’d find her. We’d driven around until we were too worn out to go any farther, then checked into the motel. The following day—the day that stretched ahead now—we’d learned the shocking news about her husband.

  What would happen next with her and me, we hadn’t talked about. But we both knew what had started.

  The future hinged on getting clear. There’d be suspicious investigators—Gary Varna, for damned sure—and it was all too possible that I’d get tripped up by my own bungling or some forensic detail I’d never imagined. But I’d have a powerful ace in the hole—precisely the kind of slick lawyers that I’d feared, but on my side. All I had to do was stay within the limits of reasonable doubt.

  That, and kill Wesley Balcomb.

  FIFTY-TWO

  But by the time I got to the red rock canyons of Wolf Creek, I’d become aware of a disturbing undercurrent that I couldn’t get hold of. It wasn’t any hesitation about whether I could pull the trigger. It wasn’t fear, either. I’d been getting more scared as the reality neared, true, but also more exhilarated. It was something like getting into the ring, although with infinitely higher stakes.

  I turned off the freeway at the exit to Lincoln, the shortest route to the Pettyjohn Ranch. But then I pulled over and waited by the roadside a minute.

  I hadn’t planned on seeing Madbird—I figured I’d bring him up-to-date as soon as I got the chance. But now I decided it would be best to warn him—even Madbird might slip up if he got blindsided. I’d made good time getting here and it wouldn’t take much longer.

  At least that’s what I started off telling myself. But really, it was about that different world that I’d blundered into, where nothing would ever be the same again. Madbird had opened his great fierce heart to me, been my guide and protector, taken huge risks, for no reasons that logic could touch—just his odd liking for me and the joy of being a guerrilla Indian.

  I was a child there. I needed him again, this time not for tangible help, but for some form of blessing. Maybe that would quell the uneasiness that was crawling around under my skin.

  I got to his place, pulled the pickup into his drive, and waited beside it. He’d hear it and come out, although he wasn’t going to be real happy to see me in the middle of the night.

  The door opened a minute later. He walked out wearing jeans and a sweatshirt that looked hastily pulled on.

  “What’s the problem, you run out of beer?” he said.

  “Sorry to wake you.”

  He grunted, his gaze checking out the truck.

  “Where’s your pal?” he said.

  “Great Falls.”

  “Lucky girl. So what’s going on?”

  I had a hard time speaking the words. They felt like bluster.

  “I’m going to take out Balcomb,” I said. “I thought I’d better tell you.”

  Madbird folded his arms and cocked his head to the side.

  “Well, I ain’t saying that’s a bad idea,” he said. “I hope you got it figured real careful. You know the cops are going to come down hard on you.”

  “The best I could. Whatever happens, I’ll keep you out of the loop.”

  “Laurie OK with this?”

  “She told me how to set it up.”

  “No shit?”

  “He’ll be in his office,” I said. “Lit windows, easy shot.”

  “What about after?”

  “She’ll back me up with money and lawyers.”

  “No shit,” Madbird said again.

  Then he stepped forward, a movement so swift and abrupt it was almost a lunge, and clenched my shirtfront in his fist.

  “Let me tell you something, white boy.” His voice was harsh and his eyes were hard. I stared into them with disbelief. Madbird had never treated me like that.

  “You remember when she said she lost her watch? That was bullshit. I seen her pull it out of her pocket. She wanted a excuse to ride with me. Soon as she got in, she was all over me—tongue in my ear and her hand like this.” He slapped his inner thigh.

  My jaw sagged open. I couldn’t speak. I felt like I was floating, with no power of control.

  “She wanted me to ditch you,” he said. “Said she knew I was the warrior that got sent to save her. I told her, go home with the one that brung you.”

  He shoved me ungently against the truck and stalked back to lean in the doorway.

  “You got to kill that motherfucker, go kill him,” Madbird said. “But don’t do it for her.”

  With the blinders ripped off my eyes, I saw with sudden vicious clarity the imp that had been tormenting my subconscious, hidden under the intensity of the long day past.

  When Laurie had come racing to my cabin to warn me about John Doe, how the hell had she known how to get there? Finding a place like mine took work. Even with directions, maps, a GPS system, somebody who didn’t know the area wasn’t about to home straight in o
n it, let alone when she was driving in panicked flight from a hired killer.

  She had been there before. She had pointedly avoided telling me so. She had to have a reason for both those things.

  The jolts kept rocking me hard and fast.

  I know how to deal with fire.

  There were people who thought it was me.

  I finally got my voice back.

  “My lumber,” I said. “She’s the one who torched it. That was her.”

  When I got back to Great Falls, she was gone.

  PART FIVE

  FIFTY-THREE

  I kept on driving after that, like a ghost haunting this land where I’d once lived—like I’d felt on the night of my last ring fight up at Rocky Boy all those years ago, sensing that I was unreal to the Indians. Except now it seemed turned around, with Madbird my only point of contact.

  Little memory bytes kept coming all along the way, combining into an ongoing ache. When the first hints of dawn thinned the darkness, I was getting toward Lewistown, where my carpenter buddy Emil had grown up. Several summers ago, he’d gotten us a job framing a house in the nearby hills, a nice little gig except that you had to shit out in the brush and there were a lot of rattlesnakes living in that. It was funny, sort of.

  I cut south through Judith Gap to Harlowton, then west again, following the Musselshell and the abandoned Milwaukee Road tracks. Twodot was the next town along the way, a place that lived up to its name. There wasn’t much there but the Twodot Bar, where my boxing partner Charlie and I had stopped for a beer one time on our way home from Billings. He and a rancher’s daughter fell in love, and I’d ended up hanging around drinking and playing pool for two days before they fell out again.

  A few miles ahead, the other side of Deep Creek Canyon, I could see the peaks of Mounts Edith and Baldy. I’d taken Sarah Lynn camping up there early on in our courtship, a long hike to a pristine, deserted little lake. There we had shyly and clumsily lost our virginity to each other.