by Neil Mcmahon
Except for one piece that didn't look right. It was bowed out at the top, with a few nails missing along its length and a couple more clumsily bent over.
Madbird crouched again, got hold of its bottom, and wrenched. It started coming loose. I got my hands in between it and the pieces to the sides, and we worked it upward, popping it free. The flashlight showed what had bowed it out up top-a nail head sticking out an inch. That was common when old wood was pried loose, especially with soft stuff like pine. The nail would stay lodged in the cross-timber and the board would split or splinter or just disintegrate around it. If you replaced the board, you usually had to get rid of the nail to keep it from pooching out like this one. Whoever had done this either hadn't noticed it or was in too big a hurry to care.
The gap we'd made was about a foot wide. I stayed back and let Madbird peer in, with the flashlight beside his ear. He spent a good long minute there. Then he motioned me over. As the light beam shifted, I caught a glimpse of his eyes. They brought to my mind the old saying, A good friend and a bad enemy.
"He probably figured a shotgun was his best bet for knocking them down quick, and the sound don't carry so far," Madbird said. "Muffled it some more, piling up them hay bales and shoving the barrel through. That's what blew this shit loose, him swinging it back and forth." He shone the light on some bits of fresh hay strewn on the floor just inside the wall. "But he couldn't of aimed much-just stood here and kept pulling the trigger."
I was jolted by an electric image of the terrified animals rearing, screaming, crashing against their wood prison in a frenzied attempt to escape the unseen thing that was ripping them apart. Coming across the carcasses had been bad, but this was a whole new level of awfulness. We were looking at an ambush-cold-blooded, premeditated murder, without even the mercy of clean shooting.
I shook my head hard and started walking, not to anywhere, just away.
16
I ended up using all the two dozen frames in the cheap throwaway camera I'd bought, figuring I might as well. But it wasn't much use. The crime scene had been covered carefully-the shed's inside cleaned, the shell casings picked up, even the stack of hay bales knocked down. What was left amounted to zilch and could be explained in other ways. Like a TV cop, I needed a body for real proof.
And I was more confused than ever. I'd assumed that Balcomb could run the D-8 Cat well enough to hide the horses in the dump-that wouldn't have taken much. But whoever had maneuvered it inside the shed was a skilled operator. Either he was better than I'd suspected, or I was guessing wrong about a lot of things.
Madbird and I tacked the piece of siding back into place the same way it had been. Then we started home, driving with headlights out, the van bouncing slowly along the rough road.
When we passed the spur to the old mansion, he turned onto it. I glanced at him, surprised.
"Let's pick up our tools," he said. "You might as well do it while you got the chance, and I ain't working for that motherfucker no more, either."
I felt bad enough already. I hadn't figured on costing him this job, too. It wasn't that either of us was going to end up unemployed. The contractor we worked for, Jack Graves, kept several projects going at any given time. He'd switch us to another and pull men from there to cover here. But we'd both liked this one.
"I'm sorry about all this," I said.
"Hey, I'd rather know about this bullshit than not. I could use a few days off, anyway."
"I'll call Jack tomorrow and tell him Balcomb ran me off. You want me to say anything about you?"
"Jack already knows I got a lot of grandfathers up on the rez, and sometimes one of them dies."
The site of the mansion was the choicest on the property, overlooking Lone Creek and the thick forest rising up into those seemingly endless mountains. Nathan Pettyjohn and his wife once had hosted grand dinners and hunting parties for dignitaries here-governors and senators, European nobility, famous musicians and artists. There was a story that Teddy Roosevelt had stopped by long enough to bag himself a bull moose.
Tonight, the creek's clear rippling water seemed alive with moonlight. It made me think again about Celia. In a roundabout way, she'd been responsible for my starting construction work, like she'd been for so many other things.
After her death, my family's closeness with the Pettyjohns was over, and I didn't go back to do ranch work for them anymore. The next summer, my father got me on as a construction gopher instead. My name was "Hey, kid!" and my job was to run all day, carrying materials, fetching tools for the journeymen, and cleaning up the site. I didn't like it at first, and there were plenty of assholes doing their best to make it tougher. But there were a lot more good men, and as I learned the work, I got caught up in it. It was great training for boxing-every summer I gained more coordination and lean weight. And there was the practical bonus that by the time I finished college, I could build a house from the ground through the roof.
The mansion was coming back to life nicely. One thing I had to give the Balcombs-they wanted top-quality work and weren't pinching pennies to get it. Madbird and I gathered our gear fast, our boot steps echoing in the darkened old building-a dozen kinds of saws and drills, homemade wooden boxes of hand tools, extension cords, leather belts hung with heavy pouches that we wore like pack animals, all beaten into comfortable familiarity and marked with different colors of spray paint to identify the owners.
I'd never been sentimental about walking off a job and I wasn't now, but I felt a tug of loss, mostly because of the crew. Like Laurie Balcomb had pointed out, they weren't a pretty bunch. We had an ex-junkie Mexican plasterer with a full back tattoo of his naked girlfriend, a redneck new age plumber with the insane eyes that came from inhaling too much pipe dope, a finish carpenter who'd once broken his neck getting thrown from a rodeo bucking horse, a laborer who hand-dug like a backhoe and occasionally had to head down to the penitentiary in Deer Lodge for a stint making license plates, and a cast of others like them who came and went with the need. We'd gravitated together over the years because we all carried our weight and stayed off each other's nerves, and we'd all been on many other jobs where that wasn't true. I was the nominal lead man, not because of any enhanced ability, but because as the main structural carpenter, I was in the best position to line out what was coming. They didn't require pushing and wouldn't have tolerated it. Jack Graves took care of the business end of things, paid us well, and left us alone-another rare setup. They were also a hell of a lot of fun. I was going to miss that.
We loaded our tools in the van and started up again. For the next tense mile we stayed quiet, past the ranch hands' trailers and the darkened headquarters. If we were going to get stopped, this was the place. But everything was still quiet, and we made it out as easily as we'd come in.
"So what you gonna do, Huey?" Madbird said.
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. "What would the Blackfeet do?"
He spat out the window. "Hang Balcomb's bloody fucking hair on the lodge."
"I'd love to. But I might as well put a gun to my own head."
"Yeah, you got to be smart about it."
"I'm not feeling too smart right now. It looks like I'm going to lose any way I go. I'm just trying to weigh how much and where."
"That's a real lesson in what it's like being a Indian." His teeth showed in that grin, although this time it looked humorless. "Have another beer. Maybe you'll get a vision."
The beer tasted fine, but I couldn't see much except a few scattered lights in the distance, making this country seem even lonelier than it was.
"I keep thinking about how careful he was, setting that up," I said. "Somehow, that's the worst part of it."
"I been thinking that, too. I don't guess you got a look at a brand."
I shook my head. "They were so torn up and buried in junk, I probably wouldn't have been able to see one anyway. But why would somebody else's horses be in there?"
"I just got this creepy notion. A story I heard
about smugglers using dogs as mules. Sewed up dope inside them and run them across the border, then cut them open."
That gave this nightmare a new twist I hadn't imagined.
"Kirk?" I said, thinking of his meth habit. He could sure run that Cat-he'd grown up with it. He could have spotted me at the dump, gotten alarmed, and blown the whistle about the lumber. But I was still convinced that Balcomb was at least in on it-that that was what he'd been driving at when he grilled me-and that Kirk wouldn't kill animals like that.
Madbird had his own reasons for doubting Kirk.
"He ain't got the brains," he said. "Besides, he wouldn't have to pull something like that to run meth. Half the fucking double-wides in this state got labs in them. Heroin or coke would be more likely."
I tried to envision Wesley Balcomb, with his glossy lifestyle and elegant business operations and aristocratic wife, involved in the violent and dangerous world of dealing dope-especially at this level of viciousness. If he was at a complete remove, just putting up money, then maybe-but not hands-on dirty like that.
"Goddammit, it's just too much grunt work," I said. "You know what I mean? Up to your elbows in blood and guts and shit, having to lug stuff around and clean up-that's not how guys like him make money."
Madbird grunted assent. "Yeah, I don't buy it either."
We didn't talk much for the rest of the drive. When we got to my truck, Madbird pulled up next to it and we transferred my tools.
When we finished, he said, "I'm nervous about giving advice, 'cause it could backfire. But I guess if it was me, I'd try a bluff. See which way he jumps."
"Bluff how?"
"Tell him you got the pictures of them carcasses. Say you always keep a camera handy from being a news dog, so you had it when you found them. Then you went back later and figured out where they were killed. Show him those pictures if he wants proof. With all that together, he might figure it ain't worth fucking with you any more."
I was still standing there as Madbird fired up his van and pulled away. Then he slowed and leaned out the window.
"Hey, Hugh," he called. "You better be ready to jump, too."
17
Indian ways, Irish blood, and alcohol don't necessarily make for a very smart mix. But it can be a potent one.
Back when the job had first started, Jack, my boss, had given me a printout of phone numbers for the architects and managers and ranch offices and everybody's cells. I'd had to contact one or another pretty often, usually to hassle something out, so I kept it in the truck's glove box. It included the Balcombs' home number. I'd never called that one and never dreamed I would.
It was getting toward midnight when I found a quiet phone booth outside an Albertson's grocery store.
A woman answered after four rings.
"Yes?"
I could tell from that one syllable that she was Laurie.
"This is Hugh Davoren, Mrs. Balcomb. I need to talk to your husband."
There was a slight hesitation.
"Do I know you?" she said.
"We spoke, earlier today. You were out riding and I was in a pickup truck."
"Oh, yes, with the faux dueling scar."
"Yeah."
"It's rather late to be calling."
"This is important."
She paused again, as if she was trying to imagine what, in my life, it possibly could be.
But she said, "I'm remembering you more clearly now. Somebody told me something about you."
"Huh. They must have been pretty hard up for gossip."
"You weren't quite honest with me this afternoon. Stanford, is that right?"
I blinked in surprise. I hadn't known what to expect, but it wasn't this.
"I don't recall lying about it," I said.
"Oh, I think the 'aw, shucks, ma'am' routine was a kind of lie."
"I've learned I get along better if I don't answer questions until they're asked."
"All right, I'll ask one," she said. "Why are you making your living out here hauling trash?"
Out of nowhere, I remembered her riding toward me across the meadow, looking for all the world like Celia, by some miracle grown up into her full womanly beauty.
"The guy hauling trash is me, Mrs. Balcomb. The other guy was a suit I tried on that never fit. He's long gone and we're both glad of it. Is your husband around?"
For a few more seconds, again, nothing happened. I was getting the feeling that her hesitations had a meaning beyond anything I could grasp.
It seemed strange that she'd have heard that about me, and stranger still that she'd bring it up.
"I'll get him," she said.
Balcomb took his time coming to the phone-back in his dick-swinging mode of making people wait.
"Mr. Davoren," he said, in his cool, smooth tone. "How interesting to hear from you. This number's supposed to be unlisted. I can see I'll have to change it."
"This is getting out of control, Balcomb. Let's stop it right now."
His sarcasm edged up a notch. "Out of control?"
"Somebody came onto my land and burned that lumber."
"Oh, for God's sake," he said, now with weary patience.
"You don't believe me, come up and take a look."
"I don't believe you about anything, Davoren, and I'm most certainly not going to waste any more time on you. Even if what you claim is true, my first suspicion would be that you burned it yourself."
"Me? Why the hell would I do that?"
"Because you thought it might make me feel sorry for you. I advise you to forget about any more such naive little ploys. You committed crimes and you took my property. You're going to pay for that."
"Then it's going to cost you, too," I said.
Balcomb actually sounded amused. "Yes, I thought that would be coming next. When lying and whining don't work, your kind shift to threats."
I was starting to think real hard about driving right through his fucking high-security fence and dragging him out of his house.
"Remember when you asked me if I saw anything unusual?" I said. "I probably should have mentioned-the most unusual thing I didn't see was two shotgunned and gutted horses in the ranch dump."
There came a pause, like with Laurie, but the feel was a whole different order of business. Everything seemed to stop dead.
"I haven't told anybody yet," I said. "But I'm ready to head straight to the Independent Record and give them the story. They'll have it all over the wires by morning."
He wasn't shaken for long. He knew the carcasses were safely hidden now. His tone changed to the steely one of a man who had tried to be tolerant but had run out of patience.
"Really, Davoren. This has gone from distasteful to sick. I won't dignify that with a response. But if it was anything but another outrageous lie, you'd have said something earlier."
"I kept my mouth shut so I could find out more without tipping anybody off," I said. "I went back a little while ago and followed the Cat's tracks to the shed where those horses were killed. Oh, sorry-weren't killed. Never even existed, right?"
This time he was silent as stone.
"There's a kicker, Balcomb," I said. "Sure, I'm a liar trying to get off the hook, but I'm a liar who happened to be a journalist for seven years. The Sacramento Guardian-you can check it out if you want to waste the time. I always keep a camera with my other gear, out of old habit. So I've got a bunch of photos I didn't take. The whole shittarree-the carcasses, the tipped-over hay bales, the loose piece of siding."
I watched a middle-aged couple come out of the store and make their way toward a dusty sedan, pushing a cart filled with plastic sacks-out grocery shopping late on a Saturday night. There was something odd and yet sweetly sensible about it.
"I'm starting to realize that I was wrong about you," Balcomb finally said, with the weariness in his voice again. "Your real problem is not that you're a petty criminal. You're completely unhinged. But I have far too much on my plate to be mired down in something like this. What is it
you want?"
See which way he jumps.
"You drop all charges first thing Monday and pay my bail," I said. "We'll call the lumber a wash. Maybe it wasn't mine, but you'd have just thrown it away."
"What guarantee do I have that you won't stir up more trouble?"
"I never stirred up any trouble to start with. And I don't ever want any fucking thing to do with you again. You can believe that."
Another blast of that frozen stillness came across the phone, as clear as if it had turned my ear blue.
"Consider it done," he said.
The connection ended.
18
I got into my truck, shaking like I had after mixing it up with Doug Wills. As I drove, I tried to balance off the plays in this nasty little game. I'd shown my hole card, but so had Balcomb. The fact that he'd given in was as good as an admission. I didn't have the photos I'd claimed, but he hadn't asked to see them-another sign that his denial was a bullshit show. It was going to cost him a couple of thousand dollars, but that was nothing to him. I'd lost the lumber, but it wasn't coming out of my pocket.
I wasn't naive enough to trust Balcomb, like I would have when I was younger. I'd grown up with the dinosaur ethic of somebody's word being everything. It was the way you lived, how you were judged by other people-who you were. Eventually, I'd wised up enough to realize how differently a lot of the world saw it. Promises were empty, lures with sucker punches behind them, to be chuckled about later in a boardroom or four-star restaurant. He was powerful, rich, cunning in a way I could never touch. I hadn't forgotten his threat about my being out of my league. And whatever the reasons might have been for that butchery, the chill factor was off the charts.
