‘I told you. Let the goddamn place burn. Burn the whole town for all I care. It should burn, until there’s nothing.’
Hal Gustafson had been a man with dreams. He’d grown up in Park County but had gotten out as fast as he could.
Like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, Hal Gustafson dreamed of traveling the world. As a boy he wanted to be a doctor, a missionary doctor who would help people in hard places. He made it to university and was on his way when, in an instant, a phone call took everything away.
Hal’s mother called and told him that his father, John ‘Butch’ Gustafson, had had a stroke and couldn’t manage his insurance business. So began Hal Gustafson’s life of frustration and regret.
Because he was a decent man he attended to his parents and the business without complaint. A few months after coming back, he joined the Park County Volunteer Fire Department. Friendships were made and the camaraderie between the men, and one woman, was a welcome diversion and an outlet for Hal’s need to help others.
He had always hoped never to return, but he never knew why. The place always seemed wrong, somehow. Everything seemed shrouded in secrets but he never knew if what he was feeling was real or imagined. He remembered how after George Lesser shot himself, his own home had grown darker with something unsaid always lingering in the air.
He waded through his father’s papers, hoping, when Butch got better, that he would sort all this out. Then he could leave and try again. It was wishful thinking. He knew his father wasn’t coming back.
Nine months after Hal’s return, Clara Gustafson, his mother, died of a heart attack, and soon after, Butch’s condition worsened.
Coming home after work on a late afternoon, Hal was surprised to find his father sitting up in bed and alert.
He motioned Hal closer and in a clear voice said, ‘Son, I gotta say something bad . . . I need to say, I mean confess. I gotta say it before I go.’
‘Going on a trip, Pop?’ Hal asked, smiling.
Agitated, the old man began slurring his words.
‘Knock it off. I’m going. I gotta, I just have t . . .’
‘What’s this talk, Dad? You’re looking better than I’ve seen you in a while.’
‘No time. No goddamn time. Listen, please.’
‘Okay, Pop. I’m listening.’
Butch was coughing and motioning Hal to come closer, afraid someone might hear, even though they were alone. When his lips touched his son’s ear, he whispered, ‘Lesser. George and Catherine Lesser.’
Hal met his father’s eyes. ‘What about the Lessers?’
‘They’re dead. They’re all dead.’
Thinking his father was having a moment, Hal smiled sympathetically. ‘I know, Dad. The Lessers have been gone for a while now. You know, I think their boy—you remember Walter? I think he’s still alive.’
Butch became more agitated and started to yell. ‘No. Don’t you see?’
‘See what, Dad?’
‘They’re all dead. I did it. Ringer, me, the others. I killed them. We killed them. Are ya listening?’
Startled, Hal stared at Butch and thought he was delusional, but something felt dangerous, like secrets coming apart.
‘Pop, what is this?’ But Butch, weakened by his efforts, had drifted off.
Hal let his father sleep and then went upstairs to his parents’ bedroom. As a boy he had never given much thought to the small file cabinet next to the dresser. But now, after what Butch had said, it seemed oddly out of place. He tried opening it but it was locked. He went through the dresser drawers looking for the keys, but came up empty.
The sound of breaking glass had him rush back downstairs. In the small room next to the kitchen he found Butch dead, with open eyes that followed him around the room. He touched Butch’s cheek, closed the old man’s eyes, and felt guilty by the flush of relief and freedom that overwhelmed him. Pulling the sheet over the body, he noticed a thin gold chain around his father’s neck, and at the end of the chain, a small key.
Hal lifted his father’s head and removed the chain. He knew somehow that it would open the cabinet but was suddenly overtaken by fear. He was torn between wanting to know and terrified by what he might find.
Hal made his way upstairs and stood in the bedroom doorway, looking at the small cabinet. Kneeling down he turned the key and then sat on the floor going through Butch’s ledgers and documents. They told a horrible story and revealed what he had always felt, except, now, it was real.
There were documents showing how his father had altered insurance policies so that they would not cover the Lessers’ barns and stalls after Byers and his friends burned them down. He learned that Ringer’s plan to steal the Lesser property was in fact his father’s plan. Butch had been the architect of the entire scheme.
Hal’s anger and sorrow jumbled together until he felt dizzy and lost, and just when he thought he had seen the worst, he came upon a petition for divorce by Mary Hollins against James Ringer. He recognized his father’s handwriting on top of the document and on the added pages at the back. He read it all and then Hal Gustafson threw up and struggled for air, as if punched in the chest.
Mary Hollins had gone to Butch, whom she considered a friend, asking for help. She already had a lawyer in Billings, Montana, who Butch didn’t know or have any leverage on. He realized that if Mary was granted an okay by the court to proceed with the divorce, lawyers would comb through Ringer’s assets to determine what Mary was due. The whole scheme would come apart and he, along with the others, would be broke and in jail. Butch told Mary he would help, and then he told Ringer. He asked him to talk to Mary and convince her to hold off. ‘Tell her she’ll get a share,’ Butch said. Ringer agreed. Four days later Mary Hollins was dead.
At the top of the petition, Butch Gustafson wrote down a date and: ‘James Ringer murdered Mary Hollins.’
On the other pages he explained.
James Ringer told me he strangled his wife after she went to bed. It had to look like suicide, he said. He called me to help with the body because he was going to hang her on the old cottonwood tree next to the Lesser cemetery. I said no and he threatened my family. He said I started all this and was an accessory to murder whether I did the actual killing or not. I had no choice. I drove to Ringer’s place at 1 a.m. and we put Mary in the back of my truck, along with a chair and some rope. Ringer had gotten some fresh flowers to put on Catherine Lesser’s grave to suggest that Mary was depressed. He typed a brief note of apology on Mary’s typewriter and left it in his son’s nursery. He thought of everything. We took Mary to the place and struggled to get her up. Ringer put the rope around her neck trying to match the rope to the bruises from the strangling. Then we pulled her up to the chair, tightened the rope and kicked the chair away. We left her like that.
Hal got off the floor and tore apart his parents’ bedroom. He threw their wedding photograph against the wall and then ran downstairs. He pulled back the sheet and punched his father’s corpse again and again. He yanked the body off the bed and kicked it until his energy was spent. He drank everything in the house before jumping in his truck looking to look for more.
The man sitting in the Wilsall bar was someone else now. He was that dangerous man from the past, a dark, brooding stranger ready to explode.
Arnie Wilkinson, an old rancher who had been George Lesser’s best friend, limped up to Hal.
‘Hal, I know something is real wrong, and knowing you as I do, I guess that something is pretty bad. But Hal, the thing is, you know my ranch is close to George’s, I mean Ringer’s, and I’m too old to build anything up again. If that fire takes hold it will move fast in these winds and my place may not make it. I need your help, Hal? Hell, we all do.’
Hal looked at the old man’s grizzly face and stared into his milky eyes. His decent self was fighting off the drink and rage, but barely.
‘Goddamn it. Okay,’ he said. ‘Has anyone called the firehouse?’
‘I did,’ said Bill from be
hind the bar. ‘Jack Popova was there and said he would call everyone. I suspect they’re on their way by now.’
‘Might as well call the sheriff. Unsure what we’ll find,’ Hal answered.
‘You bet. I’m on it.’
‘You men take your trucks or jump in mine. We’re about five miles from the Lesser place and we need to step on it,’ said Hal.
‘I know I’m not much use on the front line any more, but George was my friend and I’d like to help somehow, if it’s okay,’ said Arnie Wilkinson.
The old rancher’s decency made it impossible for Hal to say no.
‘Arnie, you ride with me. Can you handle the radio to keep everyone informed after we get there?’
‘I can do that.’
When they got there it was too late to save the house. The fire was so intense that there would be little left. Instead, everyone concentrated on not having the fire spread. After four hours they had managed to clear much of the vegetation around the house and contain the fire. The sheriff, Patrick Maskey, asked Hal what it looked like.
‘Well, given the empty gas cans we found behind the house, and the way the fire was burning and the smoke, I’d say the fire was set on purpose.’
‘Goddamn. Who the hell would do that?’ asked the sheriff.
‘I can think of a few people,’ answered Hal. ‘Pat, I need you to stick around. There’s something worse than the fire. You’ll need to make an arrest.’
‘For the fire you mean?’
‘No, for the murder of Mary Hollins.’
Pat Maskey stood there, thinking he’d misheard.
‘What are you talking about, Hal? What murder? Everybody knows Mary Hollins hung herself, poor thing.’
‘No, she didn’t. I have proof.’
‘Proof?’
‘Yeah, proof. My father was in on it. He left a record. For his own protection, I guess.’
The two men approached Ringer and his son, who were sitting on a truck’s tailgate. Ringer, in spite of losing his home, still had the look of someone who couldn’t lose.
‘Mr Ringer, we need to talk to you about the fire,’ said the sheriff. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’
‘What happened?’ asked Ringer. ‘Well, I’ll tell you what happened. Walt Lesser came into my house and murdered Russell Byers and then tried to murder me. That’s what happened.’
The sheriff was visibly shaken. ‘You mean George and Catherine’s Walter?’
Before Ringer could answer, his son said, ‘But he let us go, he—’
His father cut in. ‘Now look sheriff, you have a murderer who came into my house, I mean what’s left of my house, because of something he thought I’d done to his family. Well, sheriff, what the hell are you going to do about it?’
As Ringer went on, his son looked at him and tried to remember when he had believed his father was a good man.
‘I know,’ interrupted Hal.
‘Know what?’ asked Ringer.
‘Butch left a record of what you did.’
‘What the hell are you talking about, Hal?’
‘You murdered your wife and my father helped you cover it up. It’s over.’
The boy looked at his father but Ringer didn’t look back. With all illusions gone, the son saw his father for the man he was. The boy struck him with such intensity that Ringer fell to the ground. The boy looked down at his father one last time, then turned and walked away.
The last light of day rested on the horizon and in silhouette Hal could see the outline of the tall old cottonwood and the other cemetery trees. There were no more secrets worth knowing. He was free.
EPILOGUE
The coroner of Park County, Montana, was informed that a charred body had been discovered in the remnants of the fire at the Ringer residence. It was later determined that the body was one Russell Byers and that he had been killed by a single gunshot to the chest. His death was ruled a homicide.
Following the official report, and eyewitness testimony, the Montana State Police contacted the FBI and put out an APB for the arrest of one Walter Lesser in connection with a series of murders across three states. He was never found.
It is rumored that somewhere in the foothills outside a small Nevada town, there’s an unmarked grave of a man who reminded people of Gary Cooper.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my publisher, Ian Chapman, for his kindness and faith, and my editor, Chris White, whose work has made this book better.
Also by Michael Katakis
Ernest Hemingway: Artifacts From a Life
A Thousand Shards of Glass: There is Another America
Despatches (special limited edition)
Traveller: Observations From an American in Exile
Photographs and Words (with Kris L. Hardin)
Excavating Voices: Listening to Photographs of Native Americans
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial (with Kris L. Hardin)
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First published in Great Britain by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2020
Copyright © Michael Katakis, 2020
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places
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