In the Moon of Red Ponies bbh-4

by James Lee Burke

  “I appreciate your concern. But we’re not real worried about this,” Romulus said.

  The two men and the woman who had arrived in the Mercury were on the patio now, watching Darrel as though he were part of a skit. Where had he seen the woman? Somewhere down in the Bitterroot Valley? She wore a suit and was auburn-haired and attractive in a masculine way. Her eyes seemed to look directly into his.

  “I guess I’ll go. I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” Darrel said.

  “It’s no problem,” Romulus said.

  Darrel recrossed the stream and climbed the incline back into the woods, wondering if his story had been plausible at all or if he had looked as ridiculous as he felt.

  But at least Wyatt Dixon was gone. From the shadows Darrel looked back down into the yard of Amber Finley. The auburn-haired woman dressed in the suit was standing on the deck, steam rising from the hot tub behind her. He thought she was gazing up at the treeline where he stood, perhaps wondering where she had met or seen him. Then he realized she was watching a child launch a kite into the sunset, and his presence in the Finleys’ backyard had been of no more consequence to those gathered there than his absence.

  A white-tailed doe bolted out of the trees and thumped across the sod and down a gully. The woods felt dark and cold, the air heavy with gas, more like autumn than spring. Darrel struck the trunk of a larch with the heel of his hand, hard, shaking needles out of the branches, cursing the quiet desperation of his life.

  Amber called me at the office early the next morning and told me of Darrel McComb’s bizarre behavior at her house. “He was lying. He’s a voyeur,” she said.

  “He told you he was following a man named Dixon?”

  “Right. Who’s this guy Dixon, anyway?”

  “A guy who left his pancakes on the stove too long.” I glanced out the window.

  “What’s he want with us?” she asked.

  “I’ll let you know. He’s looking through my window right now.”

  After I hung up, I opened my door and went into the reception area just as Wyatt came through the front door. He wore a purple-striped western shirt with scarlet garters on the sleeves. The bottoms of his jeans were streaked with water, as though he had walked through wet weeds. He grinned stupidly at the receptionist, his gaze raking her face and breasts.

  “What were you doing at the Finley place?” I said.

  “Taking a drain,” he said, his eyes still fastened on the receptionist. He started to speak to her.

  “Hildy, go down to Kinko’s and pick up our Xerox work, will you?” I said.

  “Gladly,” she said, picking up her purse.

  I walked inside my office and closed the door after Wyatt was inside.

  “Nice little heifer you got out there,” he said.

  “You have thirty seconds.”

  “Got the goods on Darrel McComb. Seems like he’s been doing some window-peeking up the Rattlesnake. My official statement on the matter might do a whole lot to hep that Indian boy. I might also have some information about that senator always got his nose in the air.”

  “What do you want for this?”

  “You got to sign on as my lawyer.”

  “Why me?”

  “I need investors in my rough stock company. Folks don’t necessarily trust their money to a man who’s been jailing since he was fifteen.”

  “Forget it.”

  “We’re more alike than you think, Brother Holland.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said.

  “Tell me the feel of a gun in your hand don’t excite you, just like the touch of a woman.”

  “We’re done here.”

  “Violence lives in the man. It don’t find him of its own accord. My daddy taught me that. Every time he held my head down in a rain barrel to improve my inner concentration.”

  “Get out.”

  “Walked the rim of your pasture this morning. I’d irrigate if I was you. A grass fire coming up that canyon would turn the whole place into an ash heap.”

  But my morning involvement with Wyatt was not over yet. Two hours later Seth Masterson came into the office, sat down in front of my desk, and removed a Xeroxed sheet from a sheaf of documents inside a folder. “Read this,” he said.

  The letter had probably been typed on an old mechanical typewriter; the letters were ink-filled and blunted on the edges. The date was only one week ago, the return address General Delivery, Missoula, Montana. It read:

  Dear President George W. Bush,

  I am a fellow Texan and long supporter of the personal goals you have set for yourself and our great country. I particularly like the way you have stood up to the towel heads who has attacked New York City and the Pentagon. With this letter I am offering my expertise in taking care of these sonsofbitches so they will not be around any longer to get in your hair. Let me know when you want me to come to Washington to discuss the matter.

  My character references are William Robert Holland, a lawyer friend in Missoula, and Rev. Elton T. Sneed of the Antioch Pentecostal Church in Arlee, Montana.

  Your fellow patriot,

  Wyatt Dixon

  “Is this guy for real?” Seth said. His legs wouldn’t fit between his chair and my desk and he kept shoving the chair back to give himself more space.

  “You must have pulled everything available on him. What do you think?”

  “He’s a nutcase. The question is whether he should be picked up.”

  “Wyatt does things that give the impression he’s crazy. At the same time he seems to stay a step ahead of everyone else, at least he does with me. Is he dangerous? When he needs to be.”

  “You seem pretty objective about a guy who kidnapped and buried your wife.”

  I paused a moment. “Two years ago I tried to kill him. I got behind him and shot at him four times with a forty-five revolver and missed.”

  Seth looked at me for a beat, then lowered his eyes. “Got a little head cold and can’t hear too well this morning. Keep me posted on this guy, will you?” he said.

  “You bet. He was just in here.”

  “This is quite a town,” he said.

  “Why you bird-dogging Johnny American Horse, Seth?”

  “I’ve got to get something for this dadburn cold. My head feels like somebody poured cement in it,” he replied.

  Some people have no trouble with jail. In fact, they use jails like hotels, checking in and out of them when the weather is severe or if they’re down on their luck or they need to get their drug tolerance reduced so they can re-addict less expensively. But Johnny didn’t do well inside the slams.

  Fay Harback called me on Thursday. “Been over to see American Horse?” she asked.

  “Not since Tuesday,” I replied.

  “Go do it. I don’t need any soap operas in my life.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m not unaware of Johnny’s war record. Maybe I’ve always liked him. I don’t choose the individuals I prosecute.”

  “Yeah, you do.”

  “I’ll say good-bye now. But you have a serious problem, Billy Bob.”

  “What might that be?”

  “An absence of charity,” she replied before hanging up.

  I put on my hat and coat and walked over to the jail in a sunshower. The trees and sidewalks were steaming in the rain and the grass on the courthouse lawn was a bright green. Upstairs a deputy walked me down to an isolation cell, where Johnny sat on the cement floor in his boxer undershorts. His knees were pulled up in front of him, his vertebrae and ribs etched against his skin.

  “It’s his business if he don’t want to eat. But he stuffed his jumpsuit in a commode. We probably mopped up fifty gallons of water,” the deputy said.

  “It’s pretty cold in here. How about a blanket?” I said.

  “I’ll bring it up with his melba toast,” the deputy said, and walked off.

  “Why provoke them, Johnny?” I said.

  “I wouldn’t wear the jumpsuit. But it was an
other guy who plugged up the toilet with it.”

  “Why not just tell that to somebody?”

  “Because they know I’m going down for the big bounce and they couldn’t care less what I say.”

  He combed his hair back with his fingers. His hair was black and had brown streaks in it and in places was white on the ends. He looked up at me and grinned. “Dreamed about red ponies last night. Thousands of them, covering the plains, all the way to the horizon,” he said.

  “You’re going to be arraigned in the morning. You have to wear jailhouse issue,” I said.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “They’re going to ask for the needle?” he said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Ain’t no maybe to it, partner,” he said. His eyes seemed to glaze over with his inner thoughts.

  At 9 A.M. Friday, Johnny stood in handcuffs before the bench and was charged with capital murder. His bond was set at two hundred thousand dollars. That afternoon I called Temple at her P.I. office.

  “Johnny doesn’t have the bondsman’s fee and his place has two mortgages on it,” I said.

  “And?” she said.

  “I’d like to put up a property bond.”

  “You’re going to risk Heartwood on Johnny American Horse?”

  “They’re taking the guy apart with a chain saw, Temple.”

  The line was so quiet I thought the connection had been broken. “Temple?” I said.

  “Do it,” she said.

  “You’re not upset?”

  “If you weren’t the man you are, I wouldn’t have married you.”

  How do you beat that?

  Chapter 7

  Saturday morning I went fishing by myself on the Bitterroot River. It was a grand day, cool and full of sunshine and blue skies. The rain had turned the slopes on the mountains a velvet green and fresh snow blazed on the peaks, and the river had risen along the banks into cottonwoods that were just coming into leaf. I was on a sandspit that jutted into a long riffle eddying around a beaver dam when I saw a man in hip waders working his way across the channel toward me.

  He had the cherry-cheeked face of the professional optimist, his upper half like an upended hogshead, his hand lifted in greeting, although I had no idea who he was or why he was wading into the riffle and ruining any chance of my catching a trout there.

  “Your wife told me where you was at, Mr. Holland. Name is Reverend Elton T. Sneed. I think we got us a mutual friend,” he said, laboring out of the water onto the sandspit.

  Where had I heard or seen the name?

  In the letter written to the President of the United States by Wyatt Dixon.

  “I hope you’re not talking about who I think you are,” I said.

  “Wyatt’s a member of my congregation, but I’m troubled about him. The boy needs direction.”

  “The man you call ‘boy’ is the residue people clean out of colostomy bags. Except that’s offensive to colostomy bags,” I replied.

  Suddenly his eyes became like BBs and the corners of his mouth hooked back as though wires were attached to his skin, turning his smile into a grimace. He studied the trees on the far bank, searching for a response. “I guess my job is saving souls, not judging folks,” he said.

  “The FBI came to see you?”

  “Yep. But since that visit, Wyatt has told me about somebody he seen with Senator Finley. I get the feeling it’s some kind of past association Wyatt don’t need to pick up again. Thought you might be able to hep me out.”

  “My advice is you get a lot of space between you and Wyatt Dixon, Reverend.”

  “Man seems all right when he takes his chemical cocktails. Thought I was doing the right thing coming here.”

  When I didn’t reply he looked wanly down the stream, his vocabulary and frame of reference used up. “I mess up your fishing?” he said.

  “No, it’s fine,” I said.

  He nodded. “Been catching some?”

  “Let’s wade on up past the beaver dam and give it a try,” I said.

  When I handed him my fly rod his face once more broke into an ear-to-ear smile.

  Monday morning I started the paperwork to put up our property as bond for Johnny’s release. Then I looked up Amber Finley’s number in the directory and called her at home. “Is your dad there?” I said.

  “He flew back to Washington,” she said.

  “Too bad. Look, those guests you had at your house Tuesday evening? Is there any reason Darrel McComb would be interested in them?”

  “Darrel is interested in watching women through their bedroom windows.”

  “Would this guy Wyatt Dixon be interested in your father’s friends?”

  “How would I know?” she replied.

  “Could you give me their names?”

  “Greta Lundstrum and a couple of campaign contributors. I don’t remember their names. What’s this about?”

  “It’s probably nothing. Who’s Greta Lundstrum?”

  “The Beast of Buchenwald. Go ask her. She runs a security service in the Bitterroot Valley. Are you getting Johnny out of jail or not?”

  What’s the lesson? Don’t call boozers before noon.

  That afternoon, Temple walked into the office of a company named Blue Mountain Security and Alarm Service down in Stevensville, twenty-five miles south of Missoula. The office was located inside a refurbished two-story brick building that had once been a feed and tack store. An ancient bell tinkled above the door when she closed it. Through the window she could see the huge blue shapes of the Bitterroot Mountains against the sky.

  “Ms. Greta Lundstrum, please,” she said to a man working at the reception desk.

  “She’s in a meeting right now. Can you tell me what this is in reference to?” he said.

  Through a glass partition in back, Temple could see a thick-bodied woman in a gray business suit, talking from behind her desk to a man who stood in her cubicle doorway. “It involves a criminal investigation. Would you ask her to come out here?” Temple said.

  The man at the reception desk looked over his shoulder. “Oh, I see she’s out of the meeting. Just a moment, please,” he said.

  “Right,” Temple said.

  The receptionist went to the cubicle in back, and the woman in the gray suit gave Temple a look, then nodded to the receptionist. But she didn’t get up from her chair. Instead, she seemed to make a point of looking at some documents on her desktop. Temple walked back toward the cubicle.

  “Just a minute, ma’am,” the receptionist said.

  Temple brushed past him and entered the cubicle without knocking. “You’re Greta Lundstrum?” she asked.

  “Yes, what do-”

  “I’m a private investigator. You know a sheriff’s detective by the name of Darrel McComb?” Temple said, opening her badge and ID holder.

  “No, I don’t think so. Who did you say you work for?”

  “Billy Bob Holland. You were at Senator Romulus Finley’s home Tuesday evening?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “You were being surveilled by a sheriff’s detective. Who were the two men with you?”

  “That’s none of your concern, madam. What do you mean ‘surveilled’?”

  Greta Lundstrum had thick hair, wide-set green eyes, and a broad face. Temple removed a small notebook form her shirt pocket and wrote in it. “Nice place you have here. You know a man named Wyatt Dixon?”

  “I never heard of him. Answer my question, please.”

  “A sheriff’s detective and an ex-convict by the name of Wyatt Dixon were watching you while you stood in Romulus Finley’s backyard. You never heard of Wyatt Dixon?”

  “I told you.”

  Temple made another entry in her notebook. “That’s strange. He used to live at that white supremacist compound not far from here. He went to prison for murder. There was a great deal of publicity about the case and also about the white supremacist compound. But you never heard of him?”

  “If I can assist you in some meaning
ful way, I will. But you’re being both rude and intrusive. I think our conversation here is concluded.”

  “Ms. Lundstrum, Wyatt Dixon buries people alive. I know because I was one of his victims. You want to be cute, that’s fine. But if I were you, I’d give some thought to who my real friends are.”

  Greta Lundstrum looked momentarily into space, then picked up the telephone receiver and punched in three numbers on the key pad. “This is Blue Mountain Security. We have a trespasser here,” she said.

  The next morning, Temple used a friend at San Antonio P.D. to run Greta Lundstrum through the NCIC computer. Then she went to work on the Internet.

  “Lundstrum was a security consultant in Maryland and Virginia. Divorced twice, no children, no police record of any kind. Her second husband ran a martial arts school. Greta came out to Montana seven years ago and settled in the Bitterroots,” Temple said.

  “A dead end?” I said.

  “I think she lied about not knowing Wyatt Dixon. The question is why.”

  “Sometimes people don’t want to tell strangers they know bad guys. As soon as they make that admission, they’re asked what the bad guy is like, or how it is they came to have a relationship with him.”

  “When they lie, it’s to cover their butts,” she replied.

  Lucas’s band played three nights a week at a busthead nightclub just off the Flathead Indian Reservation. That afternoon he arrived early at the club to set up the band’s equipment. While he wound new strings on his acoustical Martin, tuning them simultaneously with a plectrum, ping-ping-ping, at the back of the club, a young Indian woman and her boyfriend stood at the bar, knocking back shots with beer chasers. Both of the Indians were drunk, kissing each other wetly on the face, hardly aware of their surroundings.

  Outside, the sun was hot and white, the glare through the open front door so bright Lucas could not make out the face of the cowboy who entered the club and sat at the end of the bar and ordered not just coffee but the whole pot. His posture on the stool was rounded, his boots hooked in the rungs, his face shadowed by his hat. He smoked a thin cigar and dipped the unlit end into his coffee before he puffed on it.