Plain Heathen Mischief

by Martin Clark

  “Or maybe she’s headed to Montana to rendezvous with an old boyfriend. There’s another possibility for you.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Joel answered. “I can’t believe this.”

  “We got you for violating your probation, for seeing her. Clear as day, you’re guilty there. No denying it.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever.”

  “I’m turning over my info to your probation officer, and setting up a joint effort with the Missoula police. They’ll be watching you, and if she doesn’t surface soon, I’ll be on a plane myself to see what I can find in your neck of the woods. And I’m guessing our commonwealth’s attorney will bring you back to court here, no matter what happens. They’ll revoke your sentence and send you back to jail for disobeying your probation terms.”

  “You don’t truly believe I had a hand in something so sinister, do you? Seriously? Believe I hurt or kidnapped Christy?”

  “I know you’re a liar and a sex offender—how big a leap is it to the other?”

  “This is craziness. Unbelievable. Insane.”

  The remainder of the day passed with no word from Sa’ad, nothing at all, and Joel was so distracted at work that he called one of the waitresses “Christy” instead of her correct name and scalded his hand with hot water, forgot which spigot he’d opened and then reached for a pot, shrieked and recoiled and startled Frankie and the chef. They put some balm on the hurt, and he continued working, assured everyone he was fine, not to worry.

  For three consecutive nights, Joel dreamed he was being attacked by a wild-eyed, mustachioed cavalry officer with a Gatling gun, the madman cranking the weapon’s handle and turning it in a slow sweep, dust and bullets everywhere. He lost his appetite, his stomach burned with waves of tension, his mind collapsed, sunk. There was no contact from Sa’ad or Edmund, and Joel didn’t call them again after his first, desperate message from the pay phone, began to believe they’d set him adrift.

  He was limping into work on a Thursday when a well-dressed stranger confronted him at the entrance to the Station, asking if he was Joel King and extending his hand.

  “Why?” Joel asked, looking past the man into the restaurant. It was cold, but Missoula was clear of snow except for a few spots the sun had avoided and a couple of parking-lot piles that weren’t completely melted.

  “I’m Christopher Hudgins, a lawyer here in town. I’d be grateful for a moment of your time. Won’t take long.”

  “Don’t have long,” Joel answered.

  “Could I come in?”

  “It’s a public place,” Joel said, but his tone wasn’t harsh or impolite.

  “Buy you a cup of coffee or a snack?”

  Joel briefly smiled. “I work here. The coffee’s free so long as I don’t abuse the privilege.”

  They went into the building, but Joel didn’t sit down, didn’t want the lawyer hemming him in, spending too much time with him and peppering him with questions about rings or missing girls or insurance or probation violations or whatever else might be the tribulation du jour. “What’s on your mind, Mr. Hudgins? Seems I’ve recently been a concern for lots of coat-and-tie legal types. What brings you around?” He flashed on the tat-tat-tat of old-timey bullets from his dream.

  “Well, I don’t know who else you might’ve run across, but I can assume one of the individuals was Lynette Allen, from the county attorney’s office.”

  “Yes, I know her. My friend Dixon Kreager says she’s a fine lady.”

  “She is. We have a good personal and professional relationship.”

  The two of them had wound up at the corner of the bar, and Joel picked up a discarded red-and-white plastic stir stick, began bending it into a square. A group of older men were drinking draft beer and sharing appetizers, and a young couple was kissing and cooing, both of the kids with a mixed drink, sitting on their winter coats, their high wooden stools pulled close together.

  “You work with her?” Joel asked. “With Ms. Allen?”

  “No, I’m a defense lawyer. Usually we’re opposing each other.”

  “Oh.”

  “Which brings me to the reason for my trip here. I represent Lisa Dillen, the lady who was fishing with you not so long ago. She and her husband, Karl. I’m assuming you recall them?”

  “Yes, I do.” Joel steeled himself and tossed the stir stick onto the bar. For the first time in days he didn’t slouch or mumble or imagine things both crazy and wistful, didn’t simply go through the motions while waiting for calamity to overtake him. “He slapped the tar out of her for no reason,” Joel said bluntly. “Darn hard to forget.”

  “I understand that’s your take on things.”

  “It’s the truth. Period.” It felt good to be honest, righteous. It was a tonic that put spine in Joel’s words, resurrecting him.

  “Let’s assume that’s true. I’m not saying it is, but let’s assume for a moment you’re correct. I can promise you Mrs. Dillen does not want to pursue this case. She does not, under any circumstances, want to see her husband prosecuted.”

  “This is her talking, not you and the wife-beating dentist?” Joel asked.

  “Exactly. She’s called and written Lynette Allen, as well as the head prosecutor, but they refuse to dismiss the case. That’s their prerogative, but we view this as a family dispute, and the only ‘victim’ is satisfied and doesn’t want to proceed. It should be her choice, not the state’s.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Joel asked defiantly. He was taller than the attorney, peered down on him.

  “I merely want you to know the whole picture. These good folks have two kids, one who’s handicapped and requires a wheelchair. Every single person in their neighborhood will attest to the fact that Karl Dillen takes care of those children, loves ’em and shares the burden. If he goes to jail, Lisa’s got twice as much responsibility and twice as much pressure. But that’s not the worst of it. Say Karl catches a conviction. And Lynette’s charged this as a felony because of the cut and the tiny scar it left. He gets a felony, he most likely loses his dental license and his livelihood. So we end up with him in jail for thirty days, her load doubled with the kids, one crippled, and the family with no money and probably no health insurance, which needless to say is critical to their situation. And you want to tell me this prosecution is for her benefit? It will absolutely destroy her and her kids if Karl gets in trouble.”

  “He should’ve thought of that before he hit her,” Joel said.

  “Well, maybe so, but that’s way too pat an answer. So we punish his wife and kids because he made a mistake—a mistake she’s begging everyone to forgive? If Karl Dillen receives a felony conviction, Lisa and their children will suffer far more than he does.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Joel asked.

  “Nothing, really. It might be helpful if you spoke with Lynette and persuaded her to see reason. Also, depending how the case breaks, Lisa may refuse to testify against her husband, so it comes down to you. What you saw, what you heard, what you remember. For instance, did you witness everything that led to the disagreement?”

  Sarah walked through the bar with a salad bowl perched atop a column of dirty dishes, a water glass in the bowl. She said hello to Joel and studied Christopher Hudgins as she whisked by, paused and asked if he was being helped. Hudgins told her he was, thanks, and was about to leave.

  “I saw what I saw,” Joel said.

  “Did you see what happened immediately before you claim Karl threw a punch?”

  “Well, uh, I heard them arguing, and when I looked up he hammered her.”

  Hudgins rubbed his hands together and bobbed his head up and down. “So you didn’t see what happened the whole time? What Lisa might have done?”

  “I was doing my job and preparing lunch.”

  Hudgins continued to bounce his head. “Right. So you couldn’t see her go after Karl and throw the first punch?”

  “What?” Joel was incredulous. His voice rose, his features compressed and he dre
w back, viewed Hudgins’s full length. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Karl is prepared to testify she came at him swinging. He acted in self-defense. She’s not going to contradict him, and from what you’re telling me, you can’t say one way or the other.”

  “What a load of bunk. I know what happened, and he’s the one who’s wrong, absolutely wrong.”

  “But you didn’t see the moments leading up to his punch, now did you? Can’t say what Lisa might’ve done to him?”

  “I know what I saw,” Joel snapped, “and so does your client.”

  “Not to put too fine a point on this, but we’ve been speaking in the abstract here. Hypothetically. You’re aware, I’m certain, that Dr. Dillen has said from day one this was entirely your fault, that you were reckless with the boat and your negligence caused his wife’s injury.”

  “A giant lie,” Joel replied.

  “Maybe. But Mrs. Dillen has instructed me to file suit against you and Royal Coachman Outfitters for civil damages. It will come down to your word against theirs.”

  “Theirs?”

  “Theirs,” Hudgins assured him. “Mrs. Dillen wants this over and done.”

  “So I play along and sit on my hands and soften my testimony or you’re going to sue me and Dixon? You’re here to threaten me?”

  “Those are your words, not mine. I’m simply reciting possibilities. I’m certainly not threatening you. No sir.”

  Joel stuck Hudgins with the belligerent, devil-may-care stare he’d seen Edmund use on Will Cassady when the inexperienced jailer boy had threatened an arrest for obstructing justice. “You’re bluffing.” Joel crowded him. “You can’t have it both ways. How stupid do you think I am? Karl can’t say he hit her in self-defense and then claim the next day, for another suit, that I wrecked the boat and cut her. It’s one or the other.”

  Hudgins commenced again with his hands, rubbing and rolling and churning. “Good point. I’m glad you understand that. Glad indeed. You see, Mr. King, you go first at the criminal trial. We listen. I’m sure our trial strategy, what Karl and Lisa say or don’t say, will be very much linked to what you state, how you present things. If the door’s left open for Karl to claim self-defense, I predict he will, and then he’ll retract his statement about your handling of the boat, tell the court he didn’t want to embarrass or implicate his wife and attempted to protect her by describing the episode as an accident. You and the Coachman walk away unscathed under that scenario. If there’s no chance of self-defense, I see the Dillens—both of them—pointing the finger at you and suing the bejesus out of you.”

  “No way. She wouldn’t lie and turn on me like that,” Joel’s expression lost some of its verve. “I helped her. I kept him from kicking her and doing more damage.”

  “It’s you or her kids, you or her house, you or her health insurance. I don’t think you want to put her to the test, Mr. King. And, hey, all we want is the truth, right? The truth without any editorials and slant, the truth that she was arguing and upset and she could’ve rushed him when you were distracted. The truth that she hit him first.”

  “She slapped his finger away from her face,” Joel said. “Hardly justification for his beating her.”

  “After she’s already swung at him when you weren’t watching,” Hudgins added, smiling. “And she was advancing on him. He was trying to keep her at arm’s length, and she ploughed ahead, knocking his peacemaker’s defense out of her path.”

  “You know that’s plain poppycock,” Joel said.

  Sarah was in the bar again, this time with her hands free. She asked Joel when he was planning on clocking in and starting work, and he told her he was as good as there. He stared at Hudgins before leaving, asked the lawyer if he followed professional wrestling, informed him lawyers were akin to crooked managers trying to sabotage the good guys and were nothing but charlatans. Hudgins departed, and Joel plodded through the doors to the kitchen, nowhere else to go, completely trussed by frauds and worldly machinations, some of his own doing, some just sent his way and delivered to him—evidently—as an object lesson, a little extra from his Maker so he could discover how it felt to be shaken and buffeted in the slipstream of other people’s treachery.

  seventeen

  There they were, big as life, sawing through thick red steaks, buttering rolls and drinking highballs, sitting at a table next to the rear bar. It was Friday evening, five days after Joel had called Las Vegas and left his urgent, frantic message, and the Station was jammed and chaotic, loaded with skiers, loggers, locals, college kids, the office staff of a huge chiropractic firm and a rowdy bachelorette party ordering purple hooter-shooters by the dozen, the bride-to-be soused and sloppy even though it wasn’t yet eight o’clock. Sa’ad and Edmund were seated in Laura Hinton’s section, and she was pouring ice water into their glasses from a sideways pitcher, smiling at Edmund, inquiring about their need for more bread or alcohol. Strangely, though, it had taken a while for the two men to sink in, to register on Joel; they were expert at turning bland, chameleons, absolutely unremarkable despite the fact Sa’ad was the dining area’s only dark-skinned customer, and Joel hadn’t seen them arrive and didn’t know how long they’d been at the table.

  Edmund was wearing a twill hat that advertised an overrated Missoula fly-fishing service, and he’d grown a full beard, dense, barbered and the same length all over his face, gray at his chin and temples. Sa’ad was dressed in ski clothes with a knit cap pulled to the middle of his forehead and was hiding behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles that were completely pedestrian, cheap, functional glasses he would never have purchased except as a disguise. Joel had looked in their direction once before, when he’d stepped from the kitchen to retrieve a tub of dirty dishes— stared right at them and not recognized what he was seeing.

  After riding out a surge of anxiety and lickety-split pulse, Joel walked by their seats and locked eyes for an instant, but he didn’t linger or interrupt his task, kept moving. He delivered a rack of clean glasses to the bar and retraced his route. When he passed their table this time, Sa’ad said, “Bathroom—five minutes” while waving his fork in a little conversational circle and pretending to talk to Edmund, never so much as glancing at Joel.

  Joel checked the kitchen clock and started scraping food scraps from plates. Someone had left most of a chicken entrée untouched, and the meal hit the trash can’s bottom squarely, the chicken and fancy sauce first, then a potato skin, then a sprinkle of al dente string beans. A thud followed by pitty-pats. Frankie was singing and gyrating his hips, picking up snatches of a radio song through the din of simmering skillets, knives beating chopping boards, mixers, oven buzzers and the steel double doors banging against the shoulders and knees of waiters passing through with precariously balanced trays. Joel filled a coffee cup with cold water, drank it without pausing, removed his apron and left for the toilet.

  Edmund was already there, pressed against a urinal. Another man was at the sink, combing his hair and admiring his mirror reflection. Sa’ad came in, and the stranger finished arranging his head, wet his hands, yanked two brown paper towels from a wall dispenser, dabbed his palms and fingers with the towels and disappeared. Sa’ad bolted the door and motioned for Joel to join him at the front of the sink. Sa’ad opened both spigots, and two separate streams splashed in the basin and quickly got ahead of the drain, began to flood the bowl. Edmund joined them, clapping Joel on the shoulder and hooking him into a one-armed hug.

  “We have major trouble,” Joel announced.

  “Indeed we do,” Sa’ad said quietly, speaking toward the water.

  “The authorities are all over me,” Joel complained. “I’m sure they’re watching me, eavesdropping, tailing me, the whole package.”

  “Correct,” Edmund said.

  “What took you so long?” He glared at Sa’ad. “I called you days ago.”

  “I was on vacation, okay? Out of the office. I don’t stay there twenty-four seven, awaiting your commands. We came as soon as
we could.”

  “Arrived yesterday,” Edmund added. “Did a little reconnaissance work and took the lay of the land.”

  “You’ve been here since yesterday?” Joel asked, peering at Sa’ad and Edmund in the mirror. “Why didn’t you contact me right away?” The sink was over halfway full, rising.

  “You think we’re complete fools, Joel?” Sa’ad said. “Think we would roll into Missoula with our guns blazing not knowing jack about the situation here? Maybe you’ve switched sides, maybe it’s a trap, maybe it’s one of a million things. At a minimum, you’d told us there was surveillance.”

  “It’s a trap all right,” Joel hissed, “and I’m the one with steel jaws around my ankles, thanks to you.”

  “Well, you are being followed. A guy in a green Explorer tailed you home last night. He’s outside now, waiting for you to finish work. I’m sure your phones are bugged as well. They might’ve even wired this place.” Sa’ad suddenly turned, grabbed Joel along the ribs and frisked him, stuck his hands inside his shirt and then checked his trousers, patting down his buttocks, thighs and calves. Joel stood passively, a sullen slouch convexing his torso. “Or they may have wired you,” Sa’ad said when he finished his search, unrepentant about his lack of trust.

  “Satisfied?” Joel asked.

  “So far,” Sa’ad said. He stopped the water and allowed the level to decline.

  “Nothing personal,” Edmund offered. “We gotta cover every base, though. You understand, right?”

  “Sure,” Joel said.

  “And, hey, fair for the goose, fair for the gander. You want to check us, go to it.” Edmund raised his hands and stepped away from the sink.