The only life preserver available was time. Make him keep talking, Clete thought. Keep him occupied with his own sick head. The sicker they are, the more they want to talk. Inside every sadist is a self-pitying titty baby. “But I know you, right? Somehow I got in your space, jammed you up, maybe, not even knowing I was doing it?” Clete said.
No answer.
“I remind you of somebody,” Clete said. “Maybe somebody who knocked you around when you were a kid. Ever do any reformatory time? It’s a bitch in those places. You know what the Midnight Express is, right? A skinhead with Gothic-letter tats all over him holds a knife at your throat while he drives a locomotive up your ass. Is that what we’re talking about here? The whole country is turning into The Jerry Springer Show, and the jails are worse. Someone make you pull a train when you were a kid?”
He heard the man chuckle and get to his feet. For a moment there was no sound at all, then the man kicked Clete in the ribs, waited a second, and kicked him again, harder.
“I was in ’Nam,” Clete said, eating his pain. “I saw psychopaths do stuff that made me ashamed I was a human being. I always wanted to believe some of them got help when they came back. But the truth is, they probably didn’t. Know why? Because nobody cares what they did. They did it to Zips, and we were in the business of killing Zips. ‘How do you shoot women and children? Easy, you just don’t lead them as much.’ Ever hear that one? What I’m saying is, you’re not as different as you think you are. You ever see a ville full of straw hooches naped? Nobody gave a shit then, they don’t give a shit now. Somebody screwed you over when you were a kid. You got a legitimate beef. When I say ‘screwed over,’ you dig exactly what I’m talking about, right? I smoked a federal informant. That was in Louisiana. I could have ridden the bolt on that one. Instead, I’ve got a PI license and a permit to carry a piece.”
“No cigar, fat man,” the voice whispered.
The man standing above Clete was breathing deep in his chest, as though oxygenating his blood. Then he poured the rest of the gasoline on Clete’s body and on the dried wood and leaves and pine needles, saving out a little to trail off of Clete’s shoes so he could use it as a liquid fuse without exposing himself to the whoosh of flame that was about to burst from the base of the tree.
GRIBBLE WATCHED THE man in the mask set down his gas can and take his cigarette lighter out of his pocket again. Gribble’s pulse was pounding in his ears. The man in the mask removed a piece of paper from his coat pocket, twisted it into a tight wrap, then flipped open the top of his cigarette lighter. He lit the tip of the paper and watched the flame curl along the edges toward his fingers.
Gribble grasped the stock of his Remington pump and pulled the lever on the door of the camper. He rolled onto the ground, momentarily losing sight of the man in the mask. Then he was on his feet, erect, throwing the stock to his shoulder, jacking a round into the chamber.
“Back away and put out the fire!” he shouted. “I’m holding a rifle. I’ll pop you between the eyes.”
The man in the mask stood stock-still. Then he seemed to make a decision, extending his arm away from his body, the twist of burning paper lighting the surfaces of his mask. He released the paper, letting it float to the ground, igniting the trail of gasoline he had poured on the leaves and pine needles.
CHAPTER 14
THE CRIME-SCENE TAPE enclosed an area not unlike a trapezoid on the hillside, the emergency vehicles from the Ravalli County Sheriff’s Office lighting the trees with their flashers, firemen spraying the area outside the tape where sparks had blown into the underbrush.
J. D. Gribble sat in the back of a silver Stratus with a government tag on it while an Amerasian government agent stood outside the door, in jeans and a gunbelt and a windbreaker with the yellow letters FBI on the back, asking him one question after another.
“You didn’t see where the guy in the mask went?” she said.
“No, I told you, he bagged ass while I was stomping out the fire,” Gribble said.
“But you heard a vehicle of some kind?” she said.
“Yeah, but later, like it was way off down the road. It didn’t have no lights. I just heard the engine, then maybe a door slamming.”
“Like somebody was already in the car?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see anything, I done told you. I had to put the fire out before it got to Mr. Purcel. Then I had to get them ties off his wrists and drag him out of there before sparks set off the gasoline again. You could smell it everywhere. It was soaked into his clothes and on everything around him.”
“Then you walked down the log road to the farmhouse?”
“An old man was up watching television with his grandson. He called 911. Then I come back up here to help Mr. Purcel.”
“And you never saw a vehicle headed for the highway?”
“Maybe. I ain’t sure. Long as that guy wasn’t coming back up here, I didn’t care what he did.”
She put her hand on his shoulder. Because she was bent forward, her long hair hung on her cheeks and made her face look narrower, more intense. “You did a good job, Mr. Gribble. But we want to catch this guy. Every detail we learn from you can put us one step closer to this guy. Did you hear him say anything at all?”
“If he did, I didn’t hear it. He had that mask on, and the wind was blowing in the trees. I pointed my rifle at him, and he dropped a piece of burning paper on the gasoline and took off. He looked back once over his shoulder. The moonlight on that mask was maybe the scariest thing I ever seen. Is that the guy killing people around here? Is that why the FBI is here? I read about the murders in the paper, those kids and that couple in the rest stop.”
“Tell me again what you actually saw the man do. Don’t leave anything out. Small things can turn out to be real important to us.”
“I saw him throw an armload of sticks and leaves on Mr. Purcel. I saw him pour gas from that can yonder on Mr. Purcel. I saw him searching around on the ground. He picked up a cigarette butt and put it in his pocket. Then he kind of kicked at the ground with his foot.”
She scratched at a place on her cheek and seemed to think about his last statement. It was cold in the trees, and a mist had started to settle on the hillside. “This next question doesn’t imply any reflection upon you. But why didn’t you shoot?” she said.
“I’m a ranch hand. Shooting people ain’t in my job description.”
“We can find you at Albert Hollister’s?”
“I got no reason to go anywhere else.”
“You’re sure about that?” she said.
“What’s that mean?” he asked.
But she walked away without replying, and J. D. Gribble wondered if he had wandered into an outdoor mental asylum.
Two Ravalli County sheriff’s deputies were interviewing Clete Purcel. He was sitting on the floor of the ambulance, the back doors open, his legs hanging over the bumper. He had taken off his shoes and socks and gasoline-soaked clothes and had put on a big smock given to him by the paramedics. His bare feet looked strangely white and clean in contrast to his face and hair, both of which were streaked with soot and the cleansing cream the paramedics had used on him.
“Give us a minute?” the FBI agent said to the deputies.
After they had walked off, she stepped into the box of light created by the interior of the ambulance. “What did the guy in the mask have to say to you?” she asked.
“Not much. He said he was having fun.”
“Just like that, ‘having fun’?”
“I asked him why he was doing it. He said, ‘It’s fun.’”
“What else did he say?”
“I tried to keep him talking and turn his thoughts on himself. I thought maybe I could buy a little time. He thought that was funny. He said, ‘No cigar.’”
“That’s all of it?”
“He said, ‘No cigar, fat man.’”
“You told the deputies he blew smoke in your face?”
“From a cigarette. I
could tell by the smoke. You find a butt?”
“No. Gribble said he picked it up from the ground. The guy was evidently sanitizing the crime scene before he set you on fire.”
The image her words created made Clete glance up at her face. “The FBI was still following me?”
“No, we got a call from the Ravalli County Sheriff’s Office.”
“What have you found so far?”
“The tie cuffs and the tape he used on your eyes. We’ve got his gas can, too. Maybe we can trace it back to the vendor.”
“I heard machinery up the hill, steel treads and a clanking sound.”
“It’s a front-end loader with a claw bucket on it. He hot-wired it.”
“Why was he digging on the side of the hill?”
“I think he was going to cook you and put you in a grave.”
“We finished here?”
“You ought to go to the hospital.”
“I need a drink. Thanks for your time.”
“Thanks for my time? Your vehicle is evidence. It’s going to be towed into Missoula. You’re not driving anywhere.”
“Then I’ll walk.”
She looked at the flashlights and emergency flashers burning in the mist, one hip cocked, a holstered Glock on her gunbelt. Her dark hair looked clean and full of tiny lights. “Go sit in my car with Mr. Gribble. I’ll take you home in a few minutes.”
“I didn’t ask for a ride home. I told you I need a drink. How do I get that across?”
“We can stop at a store on the highway,” she said. “I’d like to tell you something on a personal level, Mr. Purcel.”
He waited for her to go on.
“You deserve better treatment than you’ve gotten. I think Sally Dee and his men died because of an engine failure. If the airplane crash wasn’t an accident, I still say good riddance,” she said. “We’re going to find the guy who did this to you. But you’re going to have to help us, and that means you need to take care of yourself.”
“The guy knows heavy equipment. He had the burial site set up. He also knows a cigarette butt is a source for DNA. I think he’s done this lots of times.”
Alicia Rosecrans made no comment. Clete looked at her left hand and the absence of a ring on it.
“I’m gay,” she said.
REVEREND SONNY CLICK didn’t think anybody’s luck could be this bad. First those two plainclothes roaches had come to his house asking questions about a double homicide, then they’d indicated he was a molester they were going to throw into his own airplane propeller. His stomach was flip-flopping for an hour. He smoked a joint down on the river to calm his nerves and rebuild his mental fortifications, then threw his suitcase in his twin-engine and fired it up. He blew out his breath, resolving to put the two plainclothes snerds out of his mind, and eased the throttle forward, gaining speed down the pale green runway that had been mowed out of a hayfield. In seconds he would be climbing above the Clark Fork River on his way to East Oregon, where that evening he would address a rural audience that treated him like a rock star. Enough with the polyester jerk-offs and their threats.
Except his port engine began leaking oil across the wing, and the propeller locked in place and the plane spun sideways on the strip.
Now it was Monday morning, and he was still stuck in Missoula, having canceled out in East Oregon and Winnemucca, wondering if those cops would be back again, asking questions about a pair of dead kids he wished he had never seen.
An SUV came down the service road and turned onto his property, two people in it, a woman in the passenger seat and a tall man behind the steering wheel. No, “tall” wasn’t the word. “Huge” was more like it.
They parked on the edge of his lawn and got out of the vehicle, glancing at the dry grass and the dead flowers in his window boxes. The woman wore a black cowboy shirt that was unsnapped to expose her cleavage and the tattoos on the tops of her breasts. Just what he needed showing up at his house when cops were sniffing around him for a possible molestation beef. But it was not the woman who bothered the Reverend Sonny Click, it was the man. He wore a short-brim Stetson slanted on his head and mirror shades and spit-polished needle-nosed boots. His posture and the fluidity of his walk and the grin at the corner of his mouth reminded Click of John Wayne.
“My name is Troyce Nix, Reverend. Candace and me caught your revival on the res. Hope you don’t mind us dropping by,” he said. “You got you a fine place here.”
“It’s all right,” Sonny Click said, his voice hollow, the way it got when he felt the presence of danger. “Just passing by, are you?”
“Not really,” Troyce said.
Sonny waited for the tall man to explain the contradiction in what he had just said. But he didn’t. “What do you mean?” Click asked.
“Wonder if you can do us a favor.”
“I’m waiting on a mechanic. My plane engine froze up.” Click wondered why he was offering excuses to a person he didn’t know, a man who kept his eyes hidden behind mirrors. This was his property. Who was this guy, and who was the woman hanging her tattooed melons in his face? “So I’d better get back to my obligations.”
“The favor I need is an introduction,” Nix said. “I’m sure you don’t mind giving folks an introduction.”
Sonny Click cut his head, a gesture he had learned from watching both Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell, one that indicated humility and tolerance but benevolent contention at the same time. “I’d like to help out a fellow southerner, but I’m supposed to be on a mercy mission this afternoon.”
“You’re from Ohio, Reverend. You went to Bible college in Indiana. I like your accent, though. You want to drive with us up to Swan Lake? I think you should.”
Sonny tried to hold his eyes on Nix’s face, but his mouth was becoming dry, his throat constricted. He folded his arms on his chest, clearing his throat, pretending he had an allergy, knowing that his dignity was being pulled from him like a handkerchief from his pocket. Get the subject off me, he thought. “This got something to do with her?” he said, nodding toward the woman with the flowery jugs.
“Miss Candace is my lady. We both want to meet Jamie Sue Wellstone. I also want to introduce Wellstone Ministries to a couple of religious foundations I’m associated with in West Texas and New Mexico.”
“Then why don’t you call them up?” Click replied.
Troyce Nix reached out and rested his big hand on the top of Sonny Click’s left shoulder. He tightened his grip, the grin never leaving the corner of his mouth. “’Cause we like having a man of the cloth along,” he said.
When Click looked at the distorted reflection in Troyce Nix’s mirrored glasses, he saw the face of a frightened little man he hardly recognized.
CANDACE SWEENEY HAD never been inside a grand home, particularly one that looked out upon red barns with white trim and emerald-green pastures full of bison and longhorn cattle. The deep carpets and recessed floors in some of the rooms and the French doors with gold handles and the chandeliers hanging over the entrance area and in the dining room gave her a strange sense of discomfort and awkwardness, like she was someone else, not Candace Sweeney, somehow less than what she had been before she had entered the house. The feeling reminded her of a dream she used to have in adolescence. In the dream, she would see herself walking nude into a cathedral, her body lit by the sunlight that filtered through stained-glass windows, and she would be filled with shame. Now, in this grand house that cost millions to build, she unconsciously fastened the top button on her cowboy shirt, wondering why she and Troyce were there, why Troyce had turned the screws on Sonny Click to get an introduction to people who wouldn’t spit in Candace’s or Troyce’s mouth if they were dying of thirst.
The two brothers had come into the living room first, one horribly mutilated by fire, the other on aluminum braces, followed by Jamie Sue Wellstone. They sat and listened politely while Troyce talked about the religious foundations he was connected with, the number of churches the foundations subsidized in
the Southwest, the number of congregants who wanted to support patriotic, family-oriented political candidates.
Why was he saying all this crap?
Sonny Click sat by the French doors on a straight-back antique chair, one that had a little velvet cushion tied on the seat, and didn’t say a word. Even weirder was the fact that the guy who had given Candace a bad time at the filling station was driving a lawn mower across the side yard, his face bruised up as if a horse had kicked it.
When Troyce finished his spiel, a Hispanic woman in a maid’s uniform served mint juleps off a silver tray. The man who walked on aluminum braces – Ridley was his name – said, “So you want to put us in touch with your friends? That’s why you got Click to bring y’all out here?”
“The Reverend Click was all for it,” Troyce said.
“And you did this out of the goodness of your heart?” the man with the burned face said. His name was Leslie, and his eyes had a way of lingering on Candace that made her skin crawl.
“I’m also a longtime fan of Miss Jamie Sue,” Troyce said.
“We’re flattered, Mr. Nix, but our friend Reverend Click over there looks seasick,” Leslie said. “You didn’t upset him in some way, did you? We’d be lost without his sonorous voice floating out to the multitudes.”
Troyce was standing by the mantel, a relaxed grin on his face, inured to mockery and to amateurs who might try to take him over the hurdles. Above him was a signed painting by Andy Warhol. “I used to know a carnival man turned preacher who said the key to his success was understanding the people of what he called Snake’s Navel, Arkansas. He said in Snake’s Navel, the biggest thing going on Saturday night was the Dairy Queen. He said you could get the people there to do damn near anything – pollute their own water, work at five-dollar-an-hour jobs, drive fifty miles to a health clinic – as long as you packaged it right. That meant you gave them a light show and faith healings and blow-down-the-walls gospel music with a whole row of American flags across the stage. He said what they liked best, though – what really got them to pissing all over themselves – was to be told it was other people going to hell and not them. He said people in Snake’s Navel wasn’t real fond of homosexuals and Arabs and Hollywood Jews, although he didn’t use them kinds of terms in his sermons.”
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