Bitterroot

by James Lee Burke

  "You were the man at my window," she said.

  "I'm taking you home now. That's all you should care about. Then I'm going back for Wyatt. You don't realize what you've made me do."

  "Made you do what?" she asked.

  "Things just don't work out for me," Terry said, and hit his fist on the steering wheel. "I just don't know why. They just never work out. I'd like to tear somebody apart right now."

  He squeezed the floor shift knob tightly in his hand and passed a camper on the double stripe, whipping back into the proper lane an instant before an oncoming log truck crested the hill in front of them. He shot the finger at the truck's headlights.

  Chapter 17

  After Terry Witherspoon had dropped Maisey off and she had told Doc of the events of the evening, I thought he was going to go after either Witherspoon or Wyatt Dixon or the three football players at the nightclub.

  Or at least lecture Maisey on her recklessness.

  "Wyatt Dixon went into the rest room with a handful of change? That's when this kid Witherspoon decided to bag it down the road?" Doc said.

  "Yes. Was the older man going to buy-" Maisey began.

  "Come on into the kitchen," Doc said.

  "What is it?" she said.

  "You didn't eat supper," he said, and removed two steaks from the freezer and unwrapped them from butcher paper at the sink and began thawing them with hot water. "Why don't you help me slice a few potatoes and we'll cook some hash browns?"

  Maisey looked at him curiously.

  "You're not mad?" she asked.

  "Not at you, Maisey. Never at you," he replied.

  She placed a chopping board on the counter top near the sink and began peeling an Idaho potato, pausing to glance at her father's profile, as though seeing him for the first time.

  Nicki Molinari didn't give up easily. I saw him in downtown Missoula the next morning, coming out of a sporting goods store. He carried a tennis shoe box under his arm.

  "You saved me a trip out to your place. Come out to the ball field with me. It's right down by the river," he said.

  "No, thanks," I replied.

  "You want this guy Wyatt Dixon out of your hair? Or maybe you'd like him climbing your investigator, what's the lady's name, Temple something? Give it some thought, Mr. Holland."

  He got into his convertible and drove away.

  I tried to ignore what he had said, but he had planted the hook. I drove my truck down to the ball diamond by the Clark Fork and parked behind the stands and walked toward the third-base line. Nicki Molinari was hitting grounders to three other men out on the diamond, splintering the ball low and hard across the grass.

  Two people were sitting on the top row of the otherwise empty stands. The man lifted his hand in recognition, but the woman with him kept her gaze fixed on the field, her face as hard-planed as refrigerated wax.

  Nicki Molinari tossed his bat to another player and walked toward me.

  "What are Xavier and Holly Girard doing here?" I asked, nodding toward the top of the stands.

  "He's writing a book about me. I got stock in her new movie. It's being shot on the Blackfoot. Why, that bother you?" Nicki said.

  "You said something about my investigator, Temple Carrol."

  "Yeah, I want my seven hundred large back from the skank. That's Cleo Lonnigan to you. You're not interested in a finder's fee, I can shake and bake Wyatt Dixon for you or anybody else who might be giving you a hard time."

  "Why'd you mention Temple?"

  "Dixon almost tore out your son's package. What do you think he'd do to a woman?"

  "How do you know all this stuff, Nicki?"

  "Ah, my first name again. It's my business to know."

  "Good. Stay out of mine," I said, and turned to leave.

  He caught up with me and placed two fingers on my arm. They were moist with perspiration. He looked at my face and took his hand away.

  "It's not my purpose to be enemies with you," he said. "We got a, what do you call it, a symbiotic relationship. You see that big guy out by second base? He works for me. He's incontinent and blows gas in crowded elevators and thinks Nostradamus is a college football team. But he's got a talent. Know what it is?"

  "He kills people?"

  "He's a great second baseman. We were on the same team at TI. In a playoff game nobody could figure out how I was wetting down the ball. I didn't touch my face or hat or belt, but my curve was jumping out of the catcher's mitt. Know how I did it?"

  "No."

  "We'd whip the ball around the infield. Frank out there had a hole cut in the pocket of his glove and a sponge inside it. He'd be the last infielder to handle the ball. When it came back to me it looked like it'd been through a car wash." Nicki smiled, his dark eyes dancing on my face.

  "What's the point?"

  "Everybody has a function. You put the right people and the right functions together, everybody wins. Help me out, man. I don't want to sell Cleo's debt."

  "Sell it?"

  He gave me a look. "You're sure you were with the G? Yeah, sell it. Discount it, twenty cents on the dollar. But the guys who buy the debt are not like me. They recover all the principal and all the back vig, plus interest on the vig. You want me to draw you a picture? Think about guys who carry tin snips in their glove compartments."

  I left him standing there and got back into my truck. The baseball field was green, the base paths blown with dust, the outfield bordered by the cotton-woods and aspens that fringed the river. High above it all sat Xavier and Holly Girard, artists whose interests were wedded to those of an ex-convict war veteran who played baseball in the middle of a Norman Rockwell setting and probably helped Hmong tribesmen grow opium in Laos.

  What had the sheriff said, something to the effect that most people's public roles were pure bullshit? I wondered if he should not be given an endowed chair at the local university.

  I BOUGHT French bread and cheese and sliced meat at a delicatessen and picked up Temple Carrol at the health club in Hellgate Canyon where she had started working out on a daily basis. We drove to a picnic ground in a grove of cedar trees by the river, and I fixed lunch for us at a plank table in the shade while she leafed through her notebooks and file folders and went over the edited transcriptions of her interviews with anyone she thought to be connected to the death of Lamar Ellison.

  "I interviewed Sue Lynn Big Medicine," she said.

  "Yes?"

  "She was in the saloon up the Blackfoot with Lamar Ellison just before he was killed. She's hiding something." Temple had not changed from her workout. She wore pink shorts rolled up high on her legs and a gray workout halter and she kept lifting her hair off the back of her neck and pushing it on top of her head with one hand while she flipped through her notes.

  "Hiding what?" I said.

  "This is what she told me: 'Lamar would have blackouts when he mixed alcohol and reefer. Don't ask me what he talked about. He didn't make sense when he was stoned.'

  "So then I asked her why she even bothered to mention the fact that Lamar'd had a blackout. She goes, 'Because you wanted to know what he was talking about the last time I saw him. I'm trying to tell you I don't know what he was talking about. What do you expect from a guy who had shit for brains even when he was sober?'"

  "Could I see the folder you have on her?" I said. As an investigator and researcher, Temple had no peer. If at all possible, her interviews got on tape. Then she would transcribe the tape onto the printed page and go through the person's rambling statements and attempts at obfuscation and highlight sentences and phrases that were part of patterns.

  She never asked a question that required only a yes or no response, which forced the subject, if he was dishonest, to search in his mind for ideational associations that would mislead the interviewer. Usually in that moment the subject's eyes went askance. However, if the subject was a pathological liar, his eyelids stayed stitched to his forehead and he leaned forward aggressively, an angry tone of self-righteousness thre
aded through his answer.

  Temple maintained that the first response out of the subject's mouth was always the most revealing, even if the person was lying. She said nouns went to the heart of the matter and adverbs showed manipulation. Honest people erred on the side of self-accusation and took responsibility for the evil deeds others had visited upon them. Sociopaths, when they had nothing at risk, told stories about themselves that made the mind reel and the stomach constrict, then a moment later tried to conceal the fact they had been raised in an alley by a single mother. One way or another, Temple's highlighter found it all.

  The transcription of her interview with Sue Lynn Big Medicine was two pages long.

  "She uses the words 'blackout' and 'stoned' six separate times," Temple said. "The impression I get is that Ellison went outside the bar, smoked a lot of reefer with some other bikers, then came back in and told her something that made her skin crawl. You got any idea what it might be?"

  "No," I replied.

  "Why would she want to hide it from us?"

  "She's working for the G. She wants to be careful about what she says. What else do you have on her?" I asked.

  "She was arrested on the edge of the Crow Reservation for armed robbery of the mails."

  "What?"

  "She went into a general store with three or four other Indians. One of them pulled out a gun and robbed the owner of fifty dollars and a quart of whiskey. But the general store was also a post office. The Indians were charged with robbery of the mails, which is a federal offense. Sue Lynn's case is still pending."

  "So that's the hold the Treasury agents have on her."

  "Here's the rest of it. One of the guys she was arrested with was Lamar Ellison's cell mate in Deer Lodge."

  "They had the perfect person to plant inside the militia."

  "There's one other detail, but I don't know if it has any bearing on the fact she's a government informant. Two years ago her little brother disappeared from a Little League ball game in Hardin, Montana. A month later his body was found in a garbage dump outside Baltimore."

  "How old was he?"

  "Ten," Temple said. "This is a pissed-off young woman."

  "She's seems to be a mixed bag, all right," I said, spinning my hat on my finger. "Her little brother was found dead in Baltimore?"

  "He'd been strangled. No clues, no leads." When I didn't speak, Temple said, "Your boy's in the sack with her?"

  "Celibacy isn't a high priority with most kids today."

  "I wonder who their role models were," she said.

  She got up from the table and gazed through the cedar trees at the river. Downstream, college kids were riding bicycles back and forth across an old railroad bridge that had been converted for pedestrian use.

  "Why do you act like that, Temple?" I said.

  "Because sometimes I feel like it. Because maybe I just get depressed digging up grief and misery in people's lives."

  "Then warn me in advance." Her lips started to shape a word, but no sound came out of her throat. Her eyes were fixed on mine now, an expression in them that was somewhere between anger and pain and the love that teenage girls sometimes carry inside them as brightly as a flame. I put my hands on her shoulders and when she raised her face, unsure of what was happening, I kissed her on the mouth. I felt the surprise go through her body as tangibly as an electric shock.

  She stepped back from me, her eyes wide, her cheeks coloring.

  "Go ahead and hit me," I said. Instead, she averted her eyes so I could not read whatever emotion was in them and packed all her notebooks and file folders in her nylon backpack and walked toward my truck, the backs of her thighs wrinkled from the picnic bench.

  And once again I was left alone with the beating of my own heart and my confused thoughts about Temple Carrol and the certainty that I had succeeded once more in making a fool of myself.

  Later, I had the oil changed in my truck, then called the sheriff at his office.

  "Do you know a hood named Nicki Molinari?" I asked.

  "He and a bunch of other greasers own a dude ranch down by Stevens vine," he replied.

  "It doesn't bother you to have these guys on your turf?"

  "We've had gangsters here for years. They'd like to get casino gambling legalized and turn Flathead Lake into Tahoe," he said.

  "I saw Molinari with Xavier and Holly Girard this morning," I said.

  "That's supposed to be skin off my ass?"

  "You pointed me at the Girards when I first met you. It was for a reason."

  "So go figure it out and stop bothering me," he said, and hung up.

  I drove out to the Girards' home on the Clark Fork. My visit was to become another reminder that it's presumptuous to assume a common moral belief governs us all.

  I SMELLED alcohol on Xavier Girard when he answered the door. But he wasn't drunk, at least not so that I could tell. In fact, his thick hair had just been barbered, his eyebrows trimmed. His shoulders were straight, his demeanor casual and nonexpressive. If his mood could be characterized at all, it was a bit melancholy and perhaps resigned.

  "Am I disturbing you?" I asked.

  "I was writing."

  "Can you give me ten minutes?"

  "Come in," he replied.

  I followed him into a spacious office with cedar bookshelves that ran from the floor to the ceiling. The windows were arched and looked out on wooded hills and a red barn down below and a pasture that was full of Appaloosa and quarter horses.

  The wall was covered with framed book reviews, all of them sneering indictments of his work. The centerpiece was a legal form initiated by the censor at the Texas State Prison in Huntsville, stating Girard's last novel had been banned from the Texas penal system because the dialogue made use of racial and profane language and encouraged a disrespect for authority.

  The convict whose copy of Girard's novel had been confiscated was in the Ellis unit, awaiting execution.

  On the shelves above Girard's desk were his two Edgar Awards, in the form of ceramic busts of Edgar Allen Poe, and a display of arrowheads and pottery shards and a collection of.58-caliber oxidized lead minié balls and rusted case shot.

  "This is Civil War ordnance. You dug this up in Louisiana?" I said.

  But he wasn't listening. I thought I heard voices through the wall or perhaps the ceiling.

  "What could I help you with?" he asked.

  "Nobody's looking at you for the murder of Lamar Ellison," I replied.

  "Are you?"

  "He vandalized your vehicle and punched you out just before somebody boiled his cabbage."

  "You want a drink?"

  "No."

  "You don't really think I killed Ellison, do you?" he asked.

  "Probably not."

  "Then why are you here, Mr. Holland?"

  "The sheriff's got you and Ms. Girard on his mind. I just don't know why."

  "If that's all, I'd better get some pages ready for my editor," he said.

  I could hear a knocking sound, like a headboard slamming into a wall, and a woman's voice mounting to a barely suppressed shriek. I felt the skin draw tight on my face. Xavier's eyes lifted toward the ceiling.

  "You wanted to say something?" Girard asked.

  "No, not really."

  "People have different kinds of relationships, Mr. Holland. It doesn't mean one is better than another."

  I nodded, my eyes averted.

  "I'll let myself out. Thanks for your time," I said.

  "Sorry. It looks like the landscaper has you blocked in. I'll find him. He's out back somewhere."

  So I had to wait ten minutes for the landscaper to move his vehicle. But at least the sounds from upstairs had stopped. As I turned around in front of the garage, Nicki Molinari came out the front door of the house barefoot and headed for my truck, gesturing at me to stop. His hair was wet on his shirt collar. "Say it," I said.

  "Don't drive out of here with your nose in the air. You got the wrong idea about what's going on here."<
br />
  "You were bopping the guy's wife while he was downstairs," I said.

  "He's a marshmallow and a drunk. Besides, we didn't know he had come home."

  "Take your hands off my truck, please."

  "I checked you out, Mr. Holland. You killed your best friend. I knew your kind in 'Nam. A ROTC commission and a cause stuffed up your butt, except it's always other guys who get turned into chipped beef."

  "You should have put your shoes on, Nicki," I said.

  "What?"

  "You stepped in dog poop."

  He stared down at the brown smear his toes had left on the cement.

  I drove away from the house and up on a rise above the river and got out of my truck and looked down at the cottonwoods below, the words of Nicki Molinari ringing in my ears. I wanted to go back to the Girards' house and kill Nicki Molinari, literally blow him all over the grass. In the old days I could have done it and sipped a cup of coffee while I reloaded. I wondered if L.Q.'s ghost would ever let me rest.

  Chapter 18

  The next morning I received a phone call from the sheriff.

  "That kid, Terry Witherspoon, the one you think was watching Maisey Voss in her bathroom? He's in St. Pat's Hospital. Somebody tossed him out of a car," the sheriff said.

  "Why are you telling me?"

  "Maybe the girl would like to know. A crime victim's day don't always come in court," he replied.

  "Who did it to him?"

  "Maybe he'll tell you. He was wearing lipstick and rouge when the paramedics brought him in. Why would queer bait want to be looking at a young girl through a bathroom window?"

  "I think Wyatt Dixon is AC/DC. Witherspoon is his boy."

  "Our worst problem around here used to be pollution from tepee burners. We even had a whorehouse over in Wallace, Idaho. It's sure nice to have you new folks around, Mr. Holland," he said.

  "How should I interpret that? You're really a cryptic man, Sheriff."

  "Thank you," he said, and hung up.

  When I entered Terry Witherspoon's room he was standing by his bed, putting on his shirt. His elbows and forehead were barked and one eye was clotted with blood.