In the Moon of Red Ponies bbh-4

by James Lee Burke

  I was standing in the kitchen and had to sit down in a chair as she told me the details of Elton Sneed’s death. There was a weak feeling in my chest, as though weevil worms had worked their way into my heart.

  “You there?” she said.

  “You have any suspects?” I asked.

  “No, nobody saw anything. But that’s life on the res. Nobody sees anything, nobody knows anything, but that doesn’t stop them from complaining constantly about Whitey dumping on them and not enforcing the law. Look, Wyatt Dixon showed up while I was there and went apeshit. No, that doesn’t quite describe it.”

  “I need to confess something to you-”

  “Let me finish. Dixon cried. I didn’t believe he was capable of feeling anything about anyone. But tears actually ran down his face. It took four cops to get him back outside. The coroner wanted to tranquilize him.”

  “Why didn’t he?”

  “We didn’t want another homicide. What were you going to say?”

  “Karsten Mabus knows Wyatt has the goods from the Global Research robbery. His people probably went after Reverend Sneed when they couldn’t get to Wyatt.”

  “That billionaire or whatever out on Highway Twelve again?”

  “Right.”

  “He’s behind the attacks on Dixon?”

  “Right. He owns Global Research. He plans to run for office here in Montana. Global Research is the outfit that sold Saddam Hussein part of his chemical and biological weapons program in the eighties. I told you all this.”

  “Were you a fan of Marvel comics as a kid?”

  “Don’t make light of this, Fay. He’s an evil man,” I said.

  “You said you were going to confess something to me? How does Karsten Mabus know Dixon has the stuff from the Global job?”

  “I told him,” I said.

  “To get the heat off yourself?”

  “Read it any way you want.”

  “I knew somehow you were involved in this. I just didn’t know how. I have some crime scene photos. Maybe you should look at them.”

  “By assigning indirect responsibility to me, you’re conceding that Mabus sent his men after the preacher.”

  “What I’m saying is-” But she had trapped herself and couldn’t finish.

  “Where’s Wyatt now?” I asked.

  “On the loose. You stop pulling strings on all these people. You stay out of a police investigation, too,” she said, and hung up.

  The kitchen lights were off, and I could hear the easy sweep of wind in the trees and the clatter of a pinecone on the roof. But the tranquillity of the night would not ease the pang in my heart. My call to Mabus had brought about the death of Elton Sneed, a gentle, decent man who had honestly served his vision of this world and the next. Also, for the first time, I had begun to seriously wonder about my assessment of Fay Harback.

  The shooter who came onto Karsten Mabus’s property that night would prove a mystery in many ways for both Mabus’s security personnel and the investigators from the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department. It was safe to say he did not enter the property from Highway 12, as the front gate was electronically locked at 9 P.M. and a sophisticated alarm system, including sensor lights, that ran the length of the fence line automatically activated at the same hour. Two boys who had been camping up on a mountainside behind the ranch said they had seen a lone horseman come off a ridge and follow a creekbed to the back of the property, then enter the woods and disappear. They said the rider wore a hat and had binoculars strung around his neck and perhaps was carrying a rifle in a saddle scabbard.

  Whoever the shooter was, he wore western boots, because sheriff’s deputies found their pointed, deep-heeled indentations in the soft bed of pine needles behind a flat-surfaced boulder that he used as his sniper’s nest.

  Just before midnight Karsten Mabus, dressed in an Oriental robe, fixed himself a sandwich and opened a bottle of carbonated grape juice, then relaxed on an elephant-hide couch and read The New York Times. Through the rear living room window, which rose all the way to the cathedral ceiling, he could see steam rising from his swimming pool, the underwater lights tunneling below the lime-green surface, the arc lamps above his horse barns glowing with humidity, canvas windscreens flapping gently against the red-clay background of his tennis courts.

  It was a beautiful night, the stars cold and white in a black sky that occasionally flickered with heat lightning.

  Karsten Mabus put away the newspaper, sat up on the couch, and bit into his sandwich. The shooter had worked his way into place now, on a hillside that provided him cover and also a panoramic overview of the grounds, perhaps one hundred yards out and one hundred feet higher in elevation than Karsten Mabus. The first round pocked a neat hole in the window glass and missed Mabus’s head by inches, burrowing deeply into the cushions of a large chair against the far wall with hardly a sound.

  Mabus removed the sandwich from his mouth and set it down on the plate, focusing his eyes on the hole in the glass, seemingly unsure of the event that had just occurred.

  The second round caught part of the window framing, blowing wood and large shards of glass onto the carpet, the bullet ticking Mabus’s cheek just above the jawbone, flicking a thread of blood across his skin.

  He rose from the couch, touching his cheek, looking at the balls of his fingers, then began punching buttons on a keypad by the fireplace. In less than thirty seconds at least five armed men emerged from either the shadowy edges of the ranch or the servants’ quarters over the garage. One security man, who had seen a muzzle flash, pointed toward the flat-surfaced boulder a hundred feet up on the hillside.

  Two of the security personnel mounted an all-terrain vehicle and, with the other three security men behind them, roared up the hill toward the sniper’s nest.

  The shooter stood erect, firing from a lever-action rifle, and shot the driver of the ATV off the seat. The next shot caught one of the running men below the knee, knocking his leg out from under him as though the bone had been clipped in half with a cold chisel. The ATV caromed off a tree trunk and spun crazily down the side of a gulch.

  The two wounded men and their three friends took cover behind rocks and trees, flattening themselves into the bed of pine needles, while the shooter fired four more rounds through the woods, the brass casings tinkling on top of the boulder he stood behind. Moments later the security men could hear the sound of a horse’s shoes clopping on stone, then thudding on hard-packed earth through the timber.

  Karsten Mabus watched it all from the terrace by his swimming pool, in full view of the hillside, his plate in one hand, his sandwich in the other. After he finished eating, he wiped his hands, combed his hair, and used his cell phone to request an ambulance for his two employees who had been shot.

  But before he went back inside, he saw a horseman silhouetted on a ridgeline. The horseman seemed to stop, framed against the sky, the constellations bursting overhead, and look back at Karsten Mabus, perhaps through binoculars.

  Mabus formed a pistol with his thumb and index finger, pointed it at the horseman, and winked.

  At 1:15 P.M. Wednesday, I looked out the window of my office and saw two detectives from the sheriff’s department escorting Wyatt Dixon in handcuffs through the rear door of the courthouse. But rather than accept the role of chained culprit and miscreant, Wyatt was the bucolic king in captivity. He was dressed in gray razor-creased western pants, a long-sleeved maroon cotton shirt, a wide silver necktie, and a soft-crowned hat tilted low on his forehead. His upper arms looked like hams inside his shirt, his sideburns etched against his jaws with a fresh haircut. He limped along without his canes, grinning at everyone he saw, his eyes manic, the manacles on his wrists like scrap metal he could snap in half if he chose. Jailhouse riffraff smoking cigarettes on the lawn cheered him as he walked by.

  I crossed the street and entered the courthouse just as the elevator closed on Wyatt and the two plainclothes. I walked down the corridor to Fay Harback’s office. She was talk
ing to her receptionist, wearing a black suit, her small hands knotted in fists on her hips.

  “What’s the deal on Dixon?” I said.

  “He’s being interviewed.”

  “Not unless I’m present, he’s not.”

  “You’re Wyatt Dixon’s attorney now?”

  “Ask Wyatt.”

  “I don’t have to. Now go fiddle with a divorce case,” she said, turning her back to me.

  “Why’d you bring him in?”

  “We have two guys in Community Hospital with bullet holes in them. Our chief persons of interest are Dixon and Johnny American Horse.”

  “The gig out at Karsten Mabus’s place last night?”

  “Nobody’s catching any flies on you,” she said.

  I rode the elevator upstairs. Wyatt was in an interview room with the two detectives, the door partly open, his wrists uncuffed. The interview was not going as planned by the detectives, both of whom were standing while Wyatt sat. Their names were Boyle and Regan. Both of them had been investigators with Internal Affairs and were not well liked by their colleagues.

  “It’s real good of you fellows to bring me in and talk this thing out,” Wyatt was saying. “I have invited Vice President Cheney to go duck hunting with me this fall, and I’ll be telling him of the good work you boys are doing. I know he’d appreciate y’all’s hep in chasing down them A-rabs what’s been throwing camel shit through window fans all over the Mideast.” Wyatt pushed a paper napkin across the table toward the detectives. “Write your names down so I can alert the Vice President to the kind of high-quality smarts that’s on the job here in Missoula, Montana.”

  The larger of the detectives, Jimmie Boyle, slapped Wyatt’s hat off his head. “You simple fuck, we’re the last thing between you and a twenty-five-year jolt,” he said. “Cop to it now, claim temporary insanity over the death of the preacher, and you might even skate. In the meantime, you pick the hair out of your teeth and show some respect for the only friends you got.”

  Wyatt reached down for his hat and set it crown down on the table. Once again, I witnessed one of those mercurial transformations that seemed to take place in Wyatt, as though someone had clicked a switch in the back of his head. Between the time he stooped over for his hat and the time he looked back at the detectives, the clown’s grin had gone from his face, replaced by the lifeless mask and glasslike eyes that made one think of the quiet that comes before a storm.

  “I’m done here. Don’t y’all be trying to use Reverend Sneed’s death to jerk my chain, either,” he said.

  “You believe this asshole?” Boyle said.

  “You heard him. You’re done,” I said, stepping into the room. “Charge him or cut him loose.”

  “How’d you get up here?” Boyle said. He had a large nose, the rim of one nostril threaded by a scar that looked like a piece of string.

  I started to answer but didn’t get the chance. Fay Harback came up behind us, her face tight with anger. “I want a word with you,” she said, walking toward a coffee room.

  When we were inside, she turned on me. “You don’t listen, Billy Bob. You think you have the franchise on morality and can do and say whatever you want because you represent clients who have some kind of social handicap,” she said. “The sniper at Karsten Mabus’s ranch crippled one man and put a hole through the rib cage of the other. That said, my intuitions tell me Wyatt Dixon isn’t the shooter. But he’s told a number of people, including Darrel McComb, that Karsten Mabus may be the Antichrist. That means we have to clear him as a suspect, even though personally I think he’s of diminished capacity and belongs in a mental institution.

  “Regardless, I can’t go forward in the investigation until he’s excluded as a viable suspect. So while you’re obstructing our investigation, you’re also hurting your client…I seem to be losing your attention. Is this too complex for you to follow?”

  “Darrel McComb told me you dimed him with I.A. I didn’t believe him. But I’ve downgraded my opinion.”

  “Well, I’m not really interested in your-”

  “You’ve been working against me from the jump, Fay. In one way or another, you’ve tried to thwart every initiative I’ve taken on Johnny American Horse’s behalf. I think Johnny would be dead or in the joint if it wasn’t for Darrel McComb. Some joke, huh? A right-wing redneck became the loose cannon in the script and screwed up the frame that somebody was trying to hang around Johnny’s neck.”

  Her cheeks were glowing, her mouth a tight seam, her diminutive figure shrunken somehow inside her clothes, the skin below her mouth puckering. She clenched the top of her left arm, and for a second I seriously thought she might be having the beginnings of a heart attack.

  She slapped me in the mouth, hard, her fingernails cutting my skin.

  Then she walked to the door of the interview room, where the two detectives stared at us open-mouthed. “Kick him,” she said.

  I walked out the front door of the courthouse with Wyatt Dixon. The sun was out, the sky freckled with white clouds, the mountains green from the rain. Even though it was a business day, the streets were festive, filled with bicyclists and joggers, and a string band was playing under the trees on the courthouse lawn.

  “Buy you a hot dog?” Wyatt said.

  “Another time,” I replied.

  I could feel his eyes on the side of my face. “You just gonna let that woman pop you in the mouth like that?” he said.

  “I’m used to it.”

  “No, something’s crawling around in the woodpile. How you know it wasn’t me dropped them men at Mabus’s ranch?” he said.

  “You would have used that fifty-caliber Sharps of yours. You probably wouldn’t have missed Mabus, either.”

  “Maybe you give me too much credit.”

  I waited for the traffic light to change, then started across the street, hoping Wyatt would stay behind. He didn’t. “You figure American Horse for it?” he asked.

  “No,” I replied, my eyes straight ahead.

  “A man who’ll use a knife on another man will do anything,” he said.

  “You have any more trouble with the D.A.’s office, you tell me about it. In the meantime, you make no statement to anybody from the D.A.’s office or the sheriff’s department about anything,” I said.

  But Wyatt was not easily distracted from the subject at hand. “If it ain’t me or American Horse, who’s that leave, Brother Holland?”

  “You got me. Have a good one,” I replied.

  He stopped at a hot dog cart where a man in an apron was selling dogs and ice cream under a striped umbrella. I walked on down the street toward my office, believing I was rid of Wyatt Dixon for a while.

  Wrong.

  “Your knowledge about all this don’t add up to me,” he said.

  “The morning paper said the shooter fired several shots in quick succession,” I replied. “That means he didn’t use a Sharps. I also have the feeling the shooter picked up his brass or he wiped it clean before he loaded it into the magazine. Otherwise, the D.A.’s office would have latents that would have either implicated or cleared you. So what’s that tell us? You’re an innocent man.”

  But I could see his interest fading and a wan expression taking hold in his eyes. He took a bite of his hot dog, started to chew, then choked as though cardboard had caught in his throat. He spit his half-chewed food into a trash can and threw the rest of the dog in on top of it. His mouth was close to my face when he spoke again, his breath rife with the smell of meat and mustard. “Know why it wasn’t me up on that hill? It’s ’cause I wouldn’t even try. Mabus cain’t be killed with a gun. Cain’t be killed by no normal means,” he said.

  “He’s just a man, Wyatt.”

  “They held Elton Sneed underwater till his heart give out. His death’s on me. I ain’t never gonna get over this. I ain’t never had no feelings like this before,” he said.

  He crossed against the light, swaying like a drunk man through cars that braked to a halt or swerve
d around him, their horns blowing.

  A half hour later I drove to Community Hospital, located in the middle of the old federal reservation that was once Fort Missoula. In the 1870s Negro bicycle troops had been stationed there, ostensibly to help remove the Flathead Indians from the Bitterroot Valley and to control the Nez Perce, who, under Chief Joseph, almost defeated the United States Army. But today the old two-story, whitewashed stucco barracks, with their red-tile roofs, were administrative offices for the U.S. Forest Service, the parade grounds a golf course, and the Negro troopers who had ridden bikes with iron wheels rested under the maples inside a piked fence.

  The names of the two shooting victims had been published in the morning paper. A receptionist gave me their room numbers.

  “Can I talk with them?” I said.

  “You have to ask the nurse,” she replied.

  Their rooms were next to each other on the second floor. I walked past the nurse’s station as though I already knew where I was going and had permission to be there. The man who had taken a round in the rib cage was out of intensive care, sleeping in a flat position, an IV taped to his left arm. His hair was dark and curly, his jaws unshaved, his arms unmarked by tattoos. I didn’t recognize him.

  The second man, whose name was Jared Green, was another matter. He was sitting up in bed, watching the television set on the wall, a glass of fruit juice in his hand. His hair was blond, neatly combed, his head large, his facial skin like pig hide.

  “You doing all right?” I said through the open door.

  He clicked off the television set with a remote control. “Who are you?” he said.

  I stepped inside the room. “You stopped my truck out on Rock Creek. You asked me to walk over to Karsten Mabus’s limo. How you feeling?” I said.

  “When the dope wears off, I’ll tell you.”

  “You took a round through the leg?”

  He flipped back the sheet to show me the knot of bandages around his knee. “Mr. Mabus send you?” he said.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Nobody’s been out to see me except the foreman. I got surgery scheduled for three o’clock this afternoon. The food here blows. Tell the nurse this catheter is like a snake hanging on my joint.”