Light of the World

by James Lee Burke

  “Get up,” the driver said. “That’s it, you can do it. Let’s walk behind my truck and get rigged up, then we’ll be toggling on down the road.”

  Why are you doing this? Kyle wanted to say. But the words wouldn’t come. The driver had done something to his throat or his voice box, and the words dissolved into paste and ran over his lip and down his chin. His wrists were fastened behind him with ligatures of some kind, and a looped steel cable had been dropped over his head and fitted around his neck. He heard the driver stripping cable off the spool, putting more slack in it. Don’t do this, Kyle wanted to say.

  “I know all your thoughts,” the driver said. “They won’t help you. Nothing will. When you die, you won’t know why. You’ve lived your life for no purpose, and you’ll be mourned by no one. Those will be your last thoughts. Then all breath and light will leave your body, and you’ll descend into a black hole with no memory of ever having lived.”

  The driver kicked Kyle’s feet out from under him. Kyle struck the road’s surface with his face. He could taste the blood in his mouth and smell the tar and oil and even the day’s heat in the asphalt. His concerns about the cold wind had disappeared. He wanted to remain where he was for the rest of his life.

  The driver got in the wrecker and drove away, accelerating gradually until he was doing sixty, gliding into the curves as his cargo swung from side to side on the asphalt, caroming off tree trunks and road signs like a surfboard out of control.

  SHERIFF ELVIS BISBEE called me at three-thirty P.M. Tuesday. “We’ve got Wyatt Dixon in custody,” he said. “He’s not under arrest, so he hasn’t been Mirandized. He says he’ll talk to us but only if you’re here.”

  “Why me?”

  “Ask him.”

  “Why’d you bring him in?”

  “Call it littering.”

  “Is that some kind of insider joke?”

  “Not if your name is Kyle Schumacher. His body parts were scattered for two miles along the Eastside Highway next to Flathead Lake. Come on down and I’ll show you a few photos. We’re at the jail.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “Me and Detective Boyd.”

  “Can I bring Clete Purcel?”

  “Are you serious?”

  Forty-five minutes later, I parked in front of the old courthouse in downtown Missoula. Wyatt Dixon was being held in a holding cell on the second floor. Elvis Bisbee and Jack Boyd walked with me to the cell. Dixon was sitting on a wood bench against the wall, asleep, his chin on his chest. He was wearing a T-shirt that showed Geronimo and three other Apaches, each holding a rifle. The inscription read: HOMELAND SECURITY—FIGHTING TERRORISM SINCE 1492.

  The detective unlocked the cell and kicked the toe of Dixon’s boot. “Wake up,” he said.

  Dixon lifted his head. “You caught me on my sore foot, Detective,” he said. “Is it dinnertime yet?”

  “Mr. Robicheaux is here,” the sheriff said.

  “Howdy-doody,” Dixon said.

  “Why’d you want me here, Wyatt?” I said.

  “Because you’re a believer, and they ain’t.”

  “A believer in what?” I said.

  “What’s out there,” he said. “You might be a college man, but me and you see the world the same way. You know what’s behind all this trouble, and it ain’t a bunch of lamebrains that work for Love Younger.”

  “You’ve got a couple of strikes against you, Wyatt,” I said. “You had a grievance against Kyle Schumacher. Second, he was dragged to death.”

  “It ain’t no skin off my ass.”

  Boyd looked at me. “See, he’s a comedian. He’s always thinking. Isn’t that right, comedian?”

  “You told me your cell partner in Texas chain-drug a man down a road,” I said.

  “Yeah, I did tell you that, didn’t I? That probably wasn’t too smart.”

  “Detective Boyd also showed you a mug shot of Schumacher in a photo lineup,” I said. “The next thing we know, Schumacher is dead.”

  “Detective Boyd not only showed me a photo, he gave me Schumacher’s name. Up until that time, I’d never heard of him.”

  “You’re lying,” Boyd said.

  “What reason would I have to lie?”

  “Because you were out to get the guys who jumped you and your girlfriend, and you have no alibi,” Boyd said.

  “I slept on Miss Bertha’s couch last night. I wasn’t nowhere near Flathead Lake.”

  “Why didn’t you say that?” the sheriff asked.

  “Because Detective Boyd wants me back in the pen or wants me to go after the Youngers. It’s one or the other. I ain’t sure which.”

  “Is Detective Boyd part of a conspiracy?” the sheriff asked.

  “He thinks I had something to do with cutting up Bill Pepper. How come y’all don’t have no leads on that waitress that was abducted up by Lookout Pass? The man who drug Schumacher down the Eastside Highway is the same man who grabbed the waitress. Ask Mr. Robicheaux.”

  The sheriff and the detective looked at me. “In my opinion, it’s Asa Surrette,” I said.

  “You know that?” Boyd said.

  “No,” I replied. “The pattern is his. The agenda is his. But I cannot say with certainty that the perpetrator is Asa Surrette. I was expressing an opinion.”

  “Why don’t you call up the sheriff in Mineral County?” Boyd said.

  “I don’t have any authority here. My concern is my daughter. Her name seems to get lost in the mix.”

  “We’re sorry about that,” Boyd said. “Two men who worked for Love Younger are dead, but we’ll drop everything and get back on your daughter’s case. Let’s see. She thinks somebody shot an arrow at her? That’s some earthshaking shit, Robicheaux.”

  “Are we done here?” I said to the sheriff.

  “No. Walk outside with me,” he replied.

  “What do you want me to do, Sheriff?” Boyd said.

  “Go to my office and stay there.”

  “Sir?” Boyd said.

  The sheriff and I went through the side door of the building onto the courthouse lawn. The flowers were blooming in the gardens along the walkways, the maples darkening with shadow against the western sun. “What is Surrette going to do next?” he asked.

  “Cause as much injury and suffering as possible.”

  “You think the waitress is alive?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Surrette doesn’t take chances. And he’s afraid of his victims.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “All serial killers are cowards. They want their victims to remain terrified. They don’t want their victims to see the frightened child living inside them.”

  “Where’s the Horowitz woman?” he said.

  “At Albert Hollister’s place.”

  “No matter how this shakes out, I think she should move on.”

  “Somebody tried to bait her into a spring-loaded bear trap.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “That’s why she didn’t report it,” I said.

  “Dixon called you a believer,” the sheriff said. “What did he mean?”

  “Who knows what goes on in the mind of a guy like that?”

  “I think you do. I think you and he are of one mind. That’s what bothers me about you,” he said.

  I drove back to Lolo. The sky was blue and ribbed with strips of pink cloud above the mountain peaks in the west, but I couldn’t get my mind off the abducted waitress. If she was dead, Asa Surrette would be seeking a new victim soon. He had tried and failed with Gretchen. Would Alafair be next? I couldn’t bear thinking about it.

  THE MORNING AFTER Gretchen’s life had been saved by the snowshoe rabbit, she climbed to the top of the ridge and tried to track the man who had mocked and almost killed her. She found broken branches in the undergrowth, skid marks where he probably slid down a trail, and the muddy print of a hiking shoe on a flat rock. Down below, she could see the fenced pasture that Wyatt Dix
on rented for his horses. To the south, toward the two-lane that led over Lolo Pass, she could find no sign that anyone had passed through the foliage or rock slides or the damp areas where springs leaked out of the hillside. To the north, there was an escarpment that only a desperate person would try to scale. Where had the man on the ridge gone?

  There was another possibility: What if he hadn’t gone anywhere? Maybe he had doubled back on his trail and was hiding in the woods in another cave. There were only two or three houses north of Albert’s ranch, all of them located in a natural cul-de-sac formed by cliffs and steep-sided hills that no one would try to climb in the dark.

  She decided to retrace her own tracks and start her search all over again. She began by returning to the place where she had almost been caught in the saw-toothed jaws of the bear trap. The trap and the chain and the steel pin that had anchored it were gone.

  She turned in a circle and stared at the dust floating in the shafts of sunlight that shone through the canopy. “You out there, bubba?” she called out. “You had plenty to say last night! Let’s have a chat!”

  She heard her voice echo off the hillside.

  “You’re not going to let a woman run you off, are you?”

  Nothing.

  Now it was Tuesday, and she had no evidence to prove that anyone had tried to maim or kill her on the hillside behind Albert’s house. That afternoon, she packed her gym bag and drove to the health club on the highway between Lolo and Missoula, unaware that she was about to face her oldest nemesis, namely, her fear that disobeying her instincts and placing her trust in others would lead invariably to betrayal and manipulation.

  SHE DRESSED IN a pair of sweatpants and a sports bra and running shoes and a Marine Corps utility cap and did three miles on the indoor track, up on the second floor. Then she went into an alcove on the edge of the track and slipped on a pair of gloves with dowels inside them and started in on the heavy bag, hitting it so hard, it bounced on the suspension chain and swung into the wall. After every fourth blow, she twisted her body and delivered a kick to the bag that made such a loud whap that people running on the track turned and stared, almost in alarm.

  She pulled off her gloves and wiped her face and neck with a sweat towel, then loaded an audiobook into her iPod and went to work on the speed bag. She started out hitting doubles, two blows with one fist, two blows with the other. After fifteen minutes, she switched to singles, creating a bicycle-like motion, allowing one fist to follow the other without interruption, the bag thundering off the rebound board. All the while, she counted her strokes under her breath, making bare-knuckle contact with the leather sixty times in forty seconds. The bag looked like a black blur thudding off the board.

  She went to the water fountain and took a long drink and walked back to the alcove just as a runner came around the bend in the track. The runner was a short woman with very pale skin and black moles on her shoulders. Her hair was thick and sweaty and held a dark luster and streaks of brown. Her face was heated from running, her breath coming short in her chest. She slowed to a stop when she recognized Gretchen. “How do you do?” she said.

  Gretchen removed her earbuds and paused her iPod. “I’m fine, Ms. Louviere,” she said.

  “I could hear you hitting that bag all the way on the other side of the track. I didn’t know it was you.”

  “I come here a couple of days a week,” Gretchen said. To occupy her hands, she rubbed her knuckles and the skinned places along her palms. Down below, she could see a heavyset man named Tim who had been crippled and whose speech had been permanently impaired in a motorcycle accident. He was known for his personal courage and his determination to be self-reliant. He was wheeling himself slowly across the basketball court.

  “Would you like to go downstairs and have a glass of iced tea with me?” Felicity asked.

  “I have to be somewhere.”

  “I don’t blame you for not liking me, Ms. Horowitz. I do blame you for not giving me a chance.”

  “Chance to do what?”

  “Perhaps to explain some things. To apologize.”

  “People are what they do, not what they say.”

  “I see.”

  “You’re married, Ms. Louviere. That fact won’t go away. My father wakes up every morning with his head in a vise.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Gretchen tapped the speed bag with the flat of her fist and watched it swing back and forth on the swivel. “I’d better get back to my workout.”

  “What are you listening to?”

  “The Big Sky, by A. B. Guthrie.”

  “That’s a grand book.”

  Gretchen tapped again on the bag, hitting it in a slow rhythm on the second rebound. “Did you see Shane?”

  “With Alan Ladd and Jean Arthur and Van Heflin.”

  “Guthrie wrote the screenplay. It’s supposed to be the best western ever made. Except it’s not a western, it’s a Judeo-Greek tragedy. Shane doesn’t have a last or first name. He’s just Shane. He comes out of nowhere and never explains his origins. In the last scene, he disappears into a chain of mountains you can hardly see. Brandon deWilde played the little boy who runs after him and keeps shouting Shane’s name because he knows the Messiah has gone away. Nobody ever forgets that scene. I wake up thinking about it in the middle of the night.”

  “Where did you learn all this?”

  “At the movie theater. You know why the cattle barons in the film hate Shane? It’s because he doesn’t want or need what they have.”

  Felicity’s eyes went away from Gretchen’s. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  “No, not at all. How did you know Jean Arthur and Van Heflin costarred with Alan Ladd?”

  “I was a ticket taker at an art theater.”

  “I’m doing my second documentary. My first one made Sundance. I think I might get enough financing from France to do a period film, an adaptation of a novel about Shiloh.”

  “Why go to France for financing?”

  “American producers are afraid to risk their money on historical pieces. Did you see Cold Mountain? It was one of the best films ever made about the Civil War, but it bombed. The rest of the world is fascinated with American history. We’re not.” Gretchen tapped the bag. “I’ve got to get back to my workout.”

  “You’re an interesting woman, Ms. Horowitz.”

  “Who played the role of Jack Wilson, the hired gun?” Gretchen asked.

  “Jack Palance,” Felicity said.

  “How about Stonewall Torrey, the guy he kills?”

  “Elisha Cook, Jr.”

  “Did you know that in the scene when Stonewall gets shot, he was harnessed to a cable and jerked backward by an automobile?”

  “No, I didn’t know that. I suspect most people don’t.”

  “Let go of my old man, Ms. Louviere. He’s a good guy. His problem is, he’s not as tough as he thinks, and he gets hurt real easy.”

  “Ask him what he wants to do and then tell me,” Felicity said. “That way, all three of us will know.”

  Five minutes later, Gretchen glanced through the window at the health club’s parking lot. The crippled man named Tim had been working his chair down the sloped concrete walkway to the spot where he was picked up each day by a specially equipped vehicle. His hand had slipped on the wheel of his chair, and the chair had spun out of control on the incline and tipped sideways, throwing him on the concrete. No one else was in the parking lot. Felicity Louviere stopped her Audi and left it with the engine running and the driver’s door open while she tried to lift Tim by herself and get him back in the chair. When he fell again, she cradled his head in her lap, both of her knees bleeding, while she waved frantically at the entrance to the building.

  Gretchen was no longer thinking about Felicity Louviere. She had figured out a way to put Asa Surrette in a vise. She drove downtown and placed notices in the personal columns of the city newspaper and two independent publications.

  I WOKE AT FIVE Wednesda
y morning. A heavy fog had settled in the trees and on the north and south pastures, and I could hear Albert’s horses blowing inside it. I fell back asleep and dreamed I was in our home on Bayou Teche in New Iberia. It was late fall, and I could see the fog puffing in thick clouds out of the cypress and live oaks and pecan trees and flooded bamboo and elephant ears that grew along the banks. Then I saw myself walking in the mist to the drawbridge at Burke Street and gazing at the long band of amber light that ran down the center of the bayou, all the way to the next drawbridge, the live oaks forming a tunnel that made me think somehow of a birth canal. However, there was nothing celebratory about my perception. The back lawns of the houses along the bayou were blooming with chrysanthemums, not with the flowers of spring, and I could smell gas on the wind and the odor of ponded water and pecan husks and leaves that had yellowed and turned black with mold.

  The scene changed, and I saw an image that woke me as though someone had struck me on the cheek. I sat on the side of the mattress, my hands on my knees, my throat dry. I had seen myself enter an old tin boat shed on Bayou Teche, its outside purple with rust, strung with wisps of Spanish moss that had blown off the trees. The wind was rattling the roof and walls of the shed, stressing the metal against the joists. When I stepped inside, the door slammed behind me, and I was surrounded by darkness, left to feel blindly along the walls, the coldness of the water rising into my face. There was no exit anywhere.

  Molly put her hand on my back. “Did you have a bad dream?”

  “It’s nothing. I’m all right.”

  “You called out your mother’s name.”

  “I did? She wasn’t in the dream.”

  “You said, ‘Alafair Mae Guillory.’ ”

  “That was her maiden name. She’d use it when she got mad at my father. She’d say, ‘I’m Alafair Mae Guillory, me.’ ”

  “I wish I had known her. She must have been a fine woman.”

  “An evil man corrupted her. The things that happened to her later weren’t her fault.”

  I went into the bathroom and got dressed. I didn’t want to talk anymore about the dream. I knew what it meant, and I knew why and in what circumstances men cried out for their mothers. “Let’s have breakfast and take Clete fishing,” I said.