James Burke - Light of the World

Someplace down the road I know I will see you again — Until then I will always think of you in a fond way—

As ever—

“Why’d you dig out the letter now?” I said.

“You know why.”

“The line about being here before the primal dust of the world?”

“I looked it up. He lifted two or three lines from the Book of Psalms. It sounds like the stuff written on the wall in the cave.”

“I’m going to make some calls to Kansas.”

“You don’t think I’ve already done that? The paramedics removed the carbonized remains of four individuals from the gas truck and the prison van. I called the Eagle in Wichita and talked to a reporter who told me an interesting story: An autistic boy may have witnessed the collision. The boy told his mother that a man walking along the edge of the highway stepped in front of the gas truck and caused the accident. If that’s true, there should have been five bodies in the wreckage rather than four.”

I continued to stare at Surrette’s letter and wondered how I had allowed a man like this to come into our lives. “What did the cops say?”

“Forget the cops,” she said. “The reporter interviewed the little boy, who said the truck didn’t explode until after the collision. He said he could hear pieces of the van and truck rolling down the highway. Then he saw a great light in the sky.”

“Surrette climbed out of the van and lit the spilled fuel?”

“It’s the kind of thing he would do. Have you seen Gretchen?”

“What about her?”

“She’s acting strange. Maybe she’s still angry about those remarks the cops made up on the hillside.”

“Maybe it’s time we have a talk with Pepper. He told the grandfather of the murdered Indian girl that he’d found the store where a guy wearing the girl’s bracelet bought a hunter’s bow. Except Pepper didn’t tell us that.”

“You said ‘we,’ ” she replied.

I got Bill Pepper’s address from the phone book and at four-thirty P.M., we headed down the dirt road toward the two-lane. Half a mile south of Albert’s ranch, we saw a bright orange pickup coming toward us, a man in a white straw cowboy hat behind the wheel. He stopped and rolled down the window. A bouquet of cut flowers wrapped in green tissue paper rested on the dashboard. “Howdy-doody. I come to see Miss Gretchen,” he said.

“To my knowledge, she’s not home, Mr. Dixon,” I said.

“Then I’ll have to talk to y’all.” He shut off his engine and stepped out on the road. The sun was shining in his eyes, but he seemed to take no heed. “I heard those cops talking about the message on that cave wall.”

“What about it?”

“I know what it means. I don’t want to get drug into it. Not unless that’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“Drug into what? You’re not making a lot of sense, partner,” I said.

“The Indians on the rez have been talking about it a long time. The Bible says he’ll come from the sea, and you’ll know him by the numbers in his name. All this countryside was under the ocean at one time. I think he’s here. That was him or one of his acolytes up there in that cave.”

Alafair leaned across the seat. “ Who’s here?” she said.

“Him,” Dixon said. “ Him, the one the world’s been waiting on.”

The rivers were blown out by the spring runoff and the constant rains, but Clete knew a creek high up on a logging road in the Bitterroots where there was a long stretch of white water that boiled over into the trees, then above it a chain of beaver dams and deep pools and undulating riffles sliding so clear over the gravel bed that you could count each pebble five feet below the surface. He had loaded his ice chest with beer and canned fruit juice and ham-and-onion sandwiches and had put it on the backseat and his waders and fly rod and fly vest and net and creel in the trunk. He had put on his canvas coat and porkpie hat and was ready to go. There was only one problem. He couldn’t get his mind off his daughter.

He went back into the cabin. “Come with me,” he said.

“I have things to take care of,” she said. She was sitting at the breakfast table, her food cold on her plate, her laptop open.

“What’s bothering you, kid?”

“Nothing.”

“I saw the Airweight under your pillow.”

“I have nightmares sometimes. It’s the way I am.”

“Did you meet a guy last night?”

“No.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“I just did.”

“Then what is it?”

“I have to work some things out.”

He took off his hat and sat down at the table. She closed the laptop. “I’m not leaving until you tell me what it is,” he said.

“I used some bad judgment.”

“With a guy?”

“Not the kind you’re thinking about.”

“Who or what are we talking about?” he said.

“I’ll handle it, Clete.”

He put a hand on her arm and saw her flinch. “I’m getting a bad feeling here,” he said.

“So butt out.”

“Is it those cops who wised off to you?”

“Stay out of it.”

“You went after them, didn’t you?”

“I acted like a fool. Everything that happened to me is my own fault.”

“What did they do to you?”

“I went to Bill Pepper’s house. I was going to tear him up. Then I saw a swing set in his yard and a basketball hoop over the porte cochere. When he opened the door, I saw pictures of him with his grandchildren on the wall. He pretended not to recognize me. He asked if I was a church lady.”

“A what?”

“He said this lady was going to enroll his granddaughter at Bible camp. He said he thought I was her. He’s a very convincing guy.”

Clete felt a shortness in his breath, a watery sensation in his heart. “Tell me what happened.”

“I think he put Rohypnol or maybe some sleeping pills in a glass of Pepsi he gave me.”

“Go on.”

“I don’t remember all of it. He put his hands on me first. Then he did some other things.”

Clete saw the blood go out of her cheeks, the blank stare in her eyes. “Get it all out at once,” he said. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’re going to deal with this together.”

“He rubbed his penis on me. All over my skin. He kept saying things with his mouth close to my ear. I couldn’t keep his breath off my face.”

Clete felt his scalp tightening, his hands forming into fists on his knees under the table.

“He drove me to a place on the Blackfoot,” she said. “For a long time he let me think he was going to kill me. Then he cut my clothes off with a knife and poured whiskey and weed on me and rubbed it all over my body and left me to walk naked back to town. Two kids gave me a raincoat and took me to my truck.”

The whites of her eyes had turned pink, although she had not shed any tears. Clete had to cough into his hand before he spoke. “You’re not going to report him?”

“He scrubbed me with bleach. There’s no DNA on me. My clothes are gone. I have nothing to prove my story.”

“What were you doing on the Internet?”

“He told me he had terminal cancer. Some people I know in Miami hacked into his medical records. He was lying. I know what you’re thinking. I want you to stay out of it.”

“He’s going down.”

“I don’t let other people carry my water, especially you.”

“Because I wasn’t there to defend you when you were a kid?”

“It’s the other way around. You’ve been there for me in every way you could, and I’m not going to let you take my weight now.”

“You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, kid. You’ve made a documentary on music, and now you’re going to make one on the damage these shale-oil companies are doing. You can’t throw that away because of a bum like Pepper. Leave him to me.”