James Burke - Light of the World

“It’s kind of like being in a slow-motion film, isn’t it?” he said. “I got you, girlie.”

Rohypnol, she thought.

He picked up her tote bag from the floor and pulled it open against the drawstring and lifted out the can of Mace and the expandable baton known as an ASP. “I checked you out today. Miami-Dade PD says you may have been a female badass for the Mob. This is Montana, girl. You don’t do a beatdown on a Missoula County sheriff’s detective. You seriously fucked yourself tonight.” He got up from the couch and turned off the light in the kitchen and the table lamps in the living room. “My van is in back. But just so you know there’re no hard feelings—”

He leaned down, the heat and the smell in his clothes almost suffocating her. She could taste the tobacco on his tongue when he put it in her mouth.

The accident on the state highway happened a short distance before the turnoff onto the dirt road that led to Albert Hollister’s ranch. A tractor-trailer rig carrying a three-story-high piece of oil field equipment bound for Canada had blown two tires and skidded off the shoulder, toppling the load into a stand of cottonwoods by the creek. The few cars coming off the crest of Lolo Pass had come to a stop, as well as the traffic from the town. Clete and I got out of my pickup truck and started walking toward the accident. There was a trace of purple at the bottom of the sky, the evening star twinkling just above the mountains. A helicopter was hovering directly overhead. I thought it carried a news team from a local television station. I was wrong. The chopper landed on the highway, not in a field but on the highway, and one of the wealthiest men in the United States stepped out of it.

I had seen him once before, in Lafayette, right after an offshore blowout had killed eleven men on the derrick and strung miles of fecal-colored oil all over the Gulf Coast. If I ever saw a Jacksonian man, it was Love Younger. He was as rough-hewn as carved oak, with the broad forehead and wide-set eyes we associate with the Anglo-Scotch minutemen who fired the first shots at Lexington and Concord. He had grown up in a place in eastern Kentucky I visited once, a wretched community of shacks, some with dirt floors, where the residents drew their water from the same creek their privies were on. Paradoxically, he had not come to Lafayette to talk about the oil well blowout but to establish a scholarship fund based on merit and need at the University of Louisiana.

I saw Alafair standing by the side of her Honda, looking down at the massive load of machinery that had toppled off the trailer into the edge of the creek, snapping all the boomer chains like string. The stand of cottonwoods it had fallen on had been crushed into the mud. “Was he speeding?” I said, looking up toward Lolo Pass.

“I heard the driver say his tires blew,” she replied.

Evidently, that explanation did not work for Love Younger. He was arguing with a highway patrolman, jabbing his finger in the air, motioning at a hilltop on the far side of the highway. The patrolman kept nodding, his mouth a tight seam, raising his eyes only to nod again.

“That guy’s name is Love?” Clete said.

“He claims to be a descendant of Cole Younger.”

Clete wasn’t impressed. “He also smeared a guy with the Silver Star and a Purple Heart.”

“Have y’all heard from Gretchen?” Alafair said.

“What about her?” Clete said.

“We were going to have a drink in Missoula. She doesn’t answer her cell phone.”

“When’s the last time you talked with her?” Clete said.

“Six.”

He checked his cell phone for missed calls. “Did she say where she was going?”

“She said she had to take care of some personal business.”

Clete looked at her. “What kind of personal business?”

“The personal kind,” she said. “She wouldn’t tell me what it was.”

“Did it have anything to do with those cops who were up on the ridge this morning?” I asked.

“Maybe. I didn’t think about it at the time. I gave the arrow to a plainclothes detective named Pepper. He made me kind of queasy.”

“How?” I said.

“His eyes. They look at you, but there’s no light behind them.”

Clete began punching a number into his cell phone with his thumb. “Direct to voice mail,” he said. “What’s the name of that plainclothes again?”

“Bill Pepper,” I said. “Let me see how long this is going to take.” I walked up to within four feet of the highway patrolman and Love Younger and two of his aides who were standing close by. None of them took any notice of me.

“My driver says he’s almost sure he heard the crack of a rifle,” Younger said to the patrolman.

“That’s not what I heard him say, sir,” the officer said.

“You calling me a liar?”

“No, sir. Your driver said he heard two popping sounds. That could have been his tires.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Younger said. “We’re two miles from the ranch of Albert Hollister. He’s well known as an environmental fanatic and rabble-rouser. He and the Sierra Club have done everything in their power to stop the transportation of my equipment.”

I opened my badge holder. “Would you mind if we pull out on the shoulder and work our way on up to the next turnoff?”

“Yes, sir, go right ahead,” the patrolman said.

“Mr. Younger, could I have a word with you?” I said.

“Concerning what?”

“Your granddaughter.”

In the illumination of emergency flares and headlights, I saw Love Younger’s eyes sharpen and fix on mine. There were tiny blue and red veins in his cheeks, a bit of stubble on his throat above his collar, and a look of heated intensity in the face that usually hides either great tragedy or great anger.

“Up on that ridge just west of us, somebody shot a hunter’s arrow at my daughter. It cut her ear,” I said. “A half inch closer, she probably would have been killed. We think the guy who did it could be connected to the death of your granddaughter.”

“What’s your name?”

“Dave Robicheaux. I’m a sheriff’s detective in New Iberia, Louisiana.”

“Get his information,” Younger said to one of his aides.

“No, sir, I’ll talk to you, or we’ll not talk at all.”

He turned toward me, his expression neutral, and seemed to take my measure a second time. He pulled a notepad from his shirt pocket and handed it to me. “Write down your contact number. I’ll call you as soon as I clean up this mess. What’s your name again?”

I told him.

“You were involved in a shooting in Louisiana. I was there when it happened. You killed a man named Alexis Dupree,” he said. “I knew him.”

“I didn’t do it, but a friend of mine did. I was there and watched it and thought my friend did the right thing. I think the world is a better place for it. I’ll look forward to your call, Mr. Younger. My condolences for your loss.” I walked back down the line of cars and rejoined Alafair and Clete.

“What’s the haps?” Clete said.

“Jacksonian democracy is highly overrated,” I replied. “Did you hear from Gretchen?”

“No, something’s wrong. She always lets me know where she is, even out in California. Does a day come when you don’t have to worry about your kid?”

“Never,” I said.

As she lay helpless in the back of the van, her wrists fastened behind her with plastic ligatures, she could see the black shapes of the mountains through the rear windows and the rain slapping against the roof and sweeping in sheets across the highway. Her muscles felt like butter, her neck so weak it could barely support the weight of her head. She estimated that the van had been on the four-lane only about ten minutes before it made a turn, and she guessed they were now on the two-lane state road that led through the old company mill town of Bonner and on up the Blackfoot River. Pepper had been silent the whole time, filling the inside of the van with the smoke from his unfiltered cigarettes.