Dark Paradise

by Tami Hoag

  There was a part of her that wanted nothing more than to walk away. But it was a small part, a remnant of the old Marilee. She pushed it away like a dry husk and felt a little stronger. She didn't want to leave Montana. She wanted to belong here—not just live here, belong here. She wanted to be as much a part of the place as Rafferty and the mountains and the big, big sky. And if she was to be worthy of the place, then she would have to adopt its codes—to do the right thing, to prize integrity and courage and accountability. And her first mission on this quest would be to find out the truth about Lucy's death.

  No small task with no easy answers. And no one to help her.

  Tipping her head back, she looked up at the millions of stars that were scattered across the night sky and found the North Star shining bright above the peaks. Star light, star bright. She stared up at the blue-white diamond points and wished for just one thing, knowing in her heart of hearts it wouldn't be coming tonight.

  Will lay in the bed of Tucker's old H truck, staring up at the stars through a sheen that might have been tears or the blur of too much booze. He was beyond knowing. Too bad he wasn't beyond remembering. Images rolled across the back of his mind like a silent movie: sleeping out in the pickup bed when he was a kid, J.D. slipping into the cab and taking the truck out of gear to roll down through the yard, scaring the piss out of him. The two of them staying out all night then down in the high grass beyond the pens, where you couldn't make out the yard light because of the barn, and you could pretend you were anywhere.

  Then suddenly he was fifteen, sleeping off a bender in the back of Tucker's H, staring up at the spinning sky and cursing God for giving him a stubborn son of a bitch for a father and a brother who made Tom Rafferty look soft by comparison. Wishing he could be free and at the same time wishing he could be more like J.D. He wanted to be everything to everybody. Instead, he was nothing. Not good enough to be a Rafferty. Not tough enough to run the Stars and Bars. His mother's son—a crime that made him suspect in the eyes of every rancher in the valley, a title that made him a prince among the crowd his mother ran with. Prince of the do-nothings.

  Then a few more years spun past and he was lying in the back of his own truck with Sam tucked in beside him. A silly grin on his face. A big warm feeling in the middle of his chest. Feeling edgy and wild. On the brink of something new, something he couldn't name.

  And then he was alone, parked on Third Avenue in front of the house the Jerry Masons had vacated in the dead of night six months before on account of a little discrepancy with Jerry's creditors. Alone and drunk, listening to the airy purr of a Mercedes engine as it idled in front of the house he used to share with his ex-wife, ex-wife, ex-wife . . .

  You're gonna be free now, Willie-boy.

  Free of the ranch. Free of J.D. Free of Sam.

  Free to be me.

  The fear of that started in his belly and swallowed him whole. And the stars blurred together as tears ran down his face.

  Sharon turned her face up to a heaven as black as pitch and studded with pinpoints of light. She tried to imagine the heat of all the stars flowing into her and feeding her, recharging her, but their light was cold and white, and she felt nothing but emptiness.

  She lay on a chaise on the balcony outside the bedroom, naked and alone, her long, angular body stretched out, silicone-enlarged breasts thrusting toward the sky like pyramids. She knew she was fully visible to the ranch hands who lived in an apartment above the horses in the stable. She knew one was watching her now, but she didn't care. On another night she might have performed for him. On another night she might have invited him to join her as she had on other occasions because he shared her taste for the rough stuff and because the idea of that kind of sex with a man who was dirty and ugly seemed only fitting to her. But tonight she had other things on her mind.

  Bryce had yet to come up to bed. He had sequestered himself in the inner sanctum of his study to think.

  Not an uncommon occurrence. Bryce's mind was like a Swiss watch—precision cogs and wheels running perfectly, ideas spinning through the workings. His mind and an absence of conscience had made him a wealthy man. She respected that. But Sharon suspected tonight he wasn't thinking of business, he was thinking of Samantha Rafferty, and the idea pierced her like a skewer.

  The obsession was deepening, as it had with Lucy MacAdam. With Lucy the attraction had been her style and cunning and her self-professed power over men. Theirs had been a clash of wills, a mating of cobras. Samantha Rafferty's appeal was opposite in every way—guileless, clueless, unsure.

  Sharon closed her eyes, blocking out the sky, filling her head with the vision of Bryce and the girl together. Tormenting herself with the vision. Fear slithered through her, twining around her heart, squeezing like a python. Arousal curled through it like a barbed vine. The images tilted and shifted. The partners changed. Other faces came into view, other bodies—her own among the tangle of arms and legs, light skin and dark. Memories of degradations past, the things she would do for Bryce, to Bryce, to herself. All of it for him.

  The girl would never be a strong enough partner for Bryce. Her innocence would bore him eventually. His tastes would repulse her. Sharon tried to soothe herself with that promise. She closed her eyes and thought of Bryce, and satisfied herself with her own touch as she visualized him. She loved him. He was the only person in the world she loved—herself included. When the end came and she was thinking of him, there were stars behind her eyelids and heat rushing from within.

  But when she opened her eyes she was alone. The stars were a million miles away.

  J.D. sat on the porch with his legs hanging over the edge and his narrowed gaze on the night sky. Clear sky. Good weather. They would have a good day to move the cattle tomorrow—only they wouldn't be moving the cattle tomorrow. They were short a hand.

  He should have been glad Will was gone. No more screwups. No more questions of loyalty or duty. No more wondering when he would pick up and leave to go rodeo, or when he would gamble away two months' worth of bank payments. No more reminder of the long, sad history of the Rafferty boys. He should have been glad. Instead, there was a yawning emptiness inside him.

  He could have attributed it to a lot of things—the supper he had missed while tramping along the banks of the Little Snake with Dan Quinn and his deputies, the specter of an uncertain future that loomed over the ranch, the dead ends he'd run down in his attempts to stop Bryce from buying out the Flying K. But those answers were untrue and he'd never been a liar. He prided himself on that and other things that no one seemed to care about in the world beyond his own. Integrity. Accountability. Courage to do the right things, the hard things.

  What did it matter if it mattered only to him?

  What was any of it worth if he was the last of his kind?

  I feel sorry for you, Rafferty. You'll end up with this land and nothing else.

  Christ, he hated irony, and he hated being wrong. He had never wanted Will to be a part of him or a part of this place. Now Will was gone. The relationship they had bent and twisted and abused was finally broken. And he cared. A lot.

  He had never wanted a woman to matter to him. Then along came Mary Lee from a world he distrusted and despised, as wrong for him as she could be. And she mattered. Finding Miller Daggrepont's body had sent a jolt of fear through him. Fear for Mary Lee.

  Can't be afraid for somebody you don't care anything about, can you, J.D?

  Never been a liar. What a lie that was.

  He tried to tell himself he hadn't been affected by her tears or her words outside the lounge at the Mystic Moose. That it didn't matter that he'd hurt her or that he'd been the biggest son of a bitch this side of Evan Bryce. They weren't suited. He didn't need the kind of woman she was. And what would she need with a man like him? She was a bright, modern woman on the brink of a rich new life. He was an antique. His life was obsolete. He was tied to a tradition that was dragging him under like an anchor in high water. Skilled in ways that didn'
t matter. A self-trained isolationist who had honed loneliness to perfection and called it inner peace.

  Never been a liar.

  The hell you say, J.D.

  “A fine night.”

  Chaske appeared from nowhere and lowered his lean old body to sit down the porch from J.D. By starlight he looked like a Native American version of Willie Nelson—the long braids, the headband, faded jeans, and a Waylon Jennings T-shirt. J.D. glanced at him sideways.

  “You gonna tell me I'm a jackass too?” he challenged. “Tucker beat you to it.”

  Chaske shrugged as if to say, You win some, you lose some, and dug the makings of a cigarette out of his hip pocket. The thin paper glowed blue-white against the dark.

  “I don't need to hear it,” J.D. said.

  “Mmmm.”

  “Will is who he is. I am who I am. This day was bound to come.”

  “Mmmm.” The old man opened a cotton pouch and stretched a line of tobacco down the crease in the paper. He tightened the pouch string, using his teeth, then rolled the paper and licked the edge in a movement that had been perfected over a great many years.

  “Will's gone,” J.D. said, essentially talking to himself. “We'll just have to deal with that. I'll get on the phone tomorrow and find us a hand. We can still have the cattle up the mountain by Wednesday.”

  Chaske struck a match against the porch boards and cupped his hands around his smoke, creating a glowing ball of warm light. He took his time, concentrating on the moment, savoring that first lungful of smoke. When he finally exhaled he said, “The cattle can wait. The grass will be better in a week or two. Now that we got rain.”

  J.D. studied the weathered old face, an impassive face that gave nothing away and at the same time hinted at many deeper truths than those on the surface of his words.

  “He won't be coming back, Chaske. Not this time.”

  Chaske grunted a little, still staring out at the night. Pinching his little cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, he took another long drag and held it deep. When he exhaled, the smell of burning hemp sweetened the air.

  “The cattle can wait. You got a lotta cattle. You got one brother.” He took another toke, inhaling until it looked as if he were pinching nothing more than a red-hot spark. He ground the butt out on the porch floor and dropped it over the edge into the dirt. Slowly and gracefully, he rose, stretching like a cat. “Gotta go. Got a date.”

  J.D. raised his brows. “It's after one in the morning.”

  “She's a night owl. A man has to appreciate each woman for her own qualities. This one's got some pretty good qualities,” he said nodding. Willie Nelson as Chief Dan George. Wisdom in a Waylon Jennings T-shirt. “That little blonde—bet she's got some good qualities too. She's got a look about her. Maybe you oughta find out.”

  J.D. worked his jaw a little, chewing back the desire to tell Chaske to mind his own business. The usual rules had never applied to Chaske. He claimed his ties to the ancient mystics let him live on a different plane. That or what he put in those little cigarettes.

  “She's just passing through, Chaske. Anyway, I got no time. Someone's gotta keep this place hanging together. Near as I can figure out, that's the only reason I was born,” he said, wincing a little at the bitterness that crept in around the edges of his voice. “To keep the Rafferty name on the deed.”

  “Kinda hard to do if there's no Raffertys after you,” he pointed out. He turned his profile to J.D. once again and stared off across the ranch yard and beyond, his gaze seeming to encompass the whole of Montana.

  “Man can't own the land, you know,” Chaske announced. “Man comes and goes; the land will always be here. White men never figure that out. All we own are our lives.”

  Everything he left unsaid pressed down on J.D.'s shoulders, forcing a sigh out of him. He was too tired to argue philosophy, too exhausted to defend the principles of tradition or try to impress Chaske with a white man's code of honor and responsibility. There was no impressing Chaske; he was above it all on his plane with the mystics.

  “Damn pretty night,” the old man said, pointing at the sky with a thrust of his chin. “Look at all those stars.” He glanced at J.D., his small, dark eyes glowing with amusement. “Good night for night owls.”

  Then he was gone and J.D. was left with the night and the stars all to himself. Alone. The way he was meant to be, he told himself. Tough guy. Didn't need anyone. Never had.

  You lying dog.

  Townsend sat at his desk, oblivious of the swath of galaxy that stretched across his windows like a sequined band of black velvet. He was shaking. He was sick. His tongue felt like a bloated eel in his mouth. He could barely breathe around it without gagging and choking. His nose ran in a continuous stream of thin, salty mucus. Tears leaked from his eyes, burning the lids raw. A drift of cocaine glowed against the dark wood of the desk. He had lost track of how much he had used and how much he had wasted, sweeping it into the leather wastebasket as he sobbed. Amid the fine white powder lay a revolver.

  It was a Colt Python .357. A six-shooter with a huge barrel. Pathetically phallic, but then he was a pathetic man. Fifty-two years old, a straight arrow trying to swing with the hip crowd, falling in lust with a woman young enough to be his daughter. He had bought the gun to impress Lucy. Lucy, his obsession, his demon. Everything had happened because of her. She had led him down the yellow brick road to Oz and on to hell.

  Just that morning he had thought he might climb out of the pit. He thought he might be able to salvage something of his life. Get free of the slime, cleanse himself, start fresh. But no. Another of the leeches had tried to hook on to him. He could never be free of it. Not now. Especially not now.

  The fat lawyer—Daggrepont—was dead. He hadn't meant to kill him. They had stood on the riverbank, talking, birds singing above the rushing sound of the water. The sun shone down. The mountains thrust up around them as they stood in the emerald velvet valley. All that beauty . . . and Daggrepont, ugliness personified, a fat, grotesque pouch of greed, avarice shining in his magnified eyes . . .

  . . . Knew a little something about Lucy and him . . . ought to be worth a dollar or two . . . not greedy, just wants his due for holding his tongue . . .

  One minute he was just standing there, listening to the music of Montana while that toad spewed poison and called it a “business arrangement,” “an understanding between gentlemen.” The next minute he'd had his hands buried in the wattle of fat around Daggrepont's throat. He had watched as if from outside his body, as if the hands choking the man belonged to some anonymous third party.

  Choking, choking, choking. Daggrepont's eyes rolling behind the thick lenses of his glasses, his tongue thrusting out of his mouth as his grotesque face flushed purple. Townsend heard shouting, a long, loud roar that might have come tearing from his own throat or been inside his own mind. He didn't know, couldn't tell.

  Some small shard of sanity pierced his brain, and his hands let go. He thrust himself away from the lawyer, hurtled backward as if he were being jet-propelled down a tunnel. But Daggrepont went on choking, eyes rolling, tongue lolling. His face was the color of an eggplant. Foam frothed out of his mouth and he fell onto the bank, his arms and legs jerking wildly. Townsend stood watching, hallucinating that his arms had stretched to nine feet long and his thumbs were still pressing against the fat man's windpipe.

  Daggrepont tried to stand. Couldn't control his body. Fell into the water among a stand of cattails and rushes.

  Run. His first thought had been to run. But as he sped in his Cherokee toward his cabin, other thoughts shot across his mind in bright, hot arcs. Evidence. There would be evidence. Tire tracks. There would be tire tracks. And footprints. Marks on the dead man's throat. Evidence hidden somewhere tying Lucy to Townsend to Daggrepont. There would be no simple explanation to hide the truth this time. Even in this wilderness a coroner would know the marks of strangulation.

  It was over. There would be no redemption. No rebirth. The grime
of this life he had fallen into would never come off. It was like ink, like grease, and every move he made, every thought he had, smeared it over more of his soul. He was ruined, thanks to Evan Bryce and Lucy—the devil and his familiar.

  There was no turning back. The truth enveloped him like a cold black shroud, like the big black night sky of Montana. A sky with no heaven above it. As black as death.

  With one trembling hand he lifted the receiver off the phone and punched the button to speed dial Bryce's number. With the other he reached for the Python.

  The stars were like promises in the sky. Bright and distant. Well out of his reach. Too far off to chase away the darkness. Around him the night was matte black, electrically charged. The hair on the back of his neck and on his arms rose up like metal filings dancing beneath the magnetism of the moon.

  . . . Dancing beneath the moon. As the blonde danced down the slope. She swayed from side to side, hair spilling in her wake. A wave of silk. Moonlight silvering her skin, glowing in her eyes, glowing through her wounds. Del rolled back behind the tree and squeezed his eyes shut so hard that color burst behind his lids, red and gold like the flash of rockets over the rice paddies. He could feel the concussion of the blasts against his skin. The smell of napalm and the putrid-sweet stench of burning, rotting flesh seared his nostrils.

  Then he opened his eyes and the 'Nam was gone. The breeze cooled the sweat on his skin, filled his head with the scents of pine and damp earth. The war was gone. He held his rifle against him like a lover and brushed his lips against the oiled barrel. An absent kiss, a superstitious reflex, as if the gun had chased away his ghosts.

  A high, keening wail skated across his eardrums, like fingernails on a chalkboard. The old ghosts were gone. New ones took their place. The blonde danced through his nights like a siren beckoning him to crash on the jagged rocks of madness. Panic rose up in his throat and numbed the side of his face like a wash of novocaine. She was there to steal his mind, to steal his land, to steal his family. She ran with the tigers. She died and rose again. A mythic creature.