James Burke - Light of the World

“Some Sierra Club guys got ahold of a core sample from an exploratory well drilled on the Canadian side of the frontier. I sent it to a geological lab in Austin. This stuff has the same kind of sulfurous content that’s coming out of the shale-oil operation up in Alberta. Supposedly, it heats up the planet a lot faster than ordinary crude.”

“Pepper left a note. Evidently, some guys scared the hell out of him. They thought maybe you were his girlfriend and you had some information that was harmful to their interests.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“I thought the sheriff had his ass on upside down. You think this has something to do with the documentary you’re making?”

“I just got out of film school. Why should anyone be afraid of me?”

“I can’t imagine,” he replied.

That afternoon she took her nine-millimeter Beretta and her Airweight .38 up to the gun range behind Albert’s house. The sun had already gone behind the ridge, and the trees were full of shadows and clattering with robins. Up the arroyo by the abandoned log road, she saw a flock of wild turkeys that had been down to the creek to drink before going to bed. She set up a row of coffee cans on a wood plank suspended between two rocks and clamped on her ear protectors and, from twenty yards away, aimed the Beretta with both arms extended and let off all fourteen rounds in the magazine, blowing the cans into the air and hitting them again as they rolled down the hillside, birds rising from the trees all around her.

She saw the man on horseback out of the corner of her eye but showed no recognition of his presence. She set down the Beretta on Albert’s shooting table and removed the ear protectors and shook out her hair. She picked up the five-shot Airweight and flipped out the cylinder from the frame and picked the rounds one at a time from the ammunition box and plopped them into the chambers, then closed the cylinder, never glancing at the man on horseback. “What do you think you’re doing here?” she said, as though speaking to herself.

“I rent pasture on the other side of the ridge. You shot the doo-doo out of them cans.”

She began picking up the cans and replacing them on the plank. “What can I do for you?”

“Nothing. You already done it,” he said. He stood up in the stirrups and grabbed the limb of a ponderosa and lifted himself free of the horse, his biceps swelling to the size of softballs. He was wearing a maniacal grin when he dropped to the ground, his shoulders hunched like an ape’s. He caught the reins of the Appaloosa and flipped them around the lower branch of a fir tree. “You’ve got a fourteen-round pre-assault-weapons-ban magazine in that Beretta. That’s right impressive.”

“I think you’re probably a pretty good guy, cowboy. But you’re off your turf,” she said.

“You got a mouth on you. Ain’t many that speaks their mind like that.”

“Does Mr. Hollister mind you riding up here?”

“He never mentioned it.”

“You know who he is?”

He seemed to think about the question. “A famous writer.”

“Have you tried any of his books?”

He looked into space. “I don’t recall. My brain ain’t always in the best of shape,” he said. He was wearing a candy-striped shirt with a rolled white collar. His shirt was pressed and his needle-nosed boots spit-shined, as bright as mirrors even in the shade. “You like rodeos?”

“Sometimes.”

“I furnish rough stock to a mess of them. You like bluegrass music?”

“ ‘Sex, drugs, Flatt and Scruggs.’ ”

“There’s a concert tonight at Three Mile.”

“Maybe another time.”

He sat on a boulder and removed his straw hat. There was a pale band of skin at the top of his forehead. When he looked at her, all she could see were his pupils. The rest of his eyes seemed made of glass. “I ain’t here to bother you. You stood up for me, missy. I owe you,” he said.

“You don’t owe me anything. Let’s be clear on that.”

“If you hadn’t been there, Bill Pepper would have put out my light with that Taser. I thought he was gonna dump in his britches when you called him ‘bacon.’ ”

“You want to shoot my Airweight?”

“I’m an ex-felon. Ex-felons ain’t supposed to mess with handguns.”

“It’s Wyatt, isn’t it?”

“That’s me. From Calgary to Cheyenne to Prescott to the Big Dance in Vegas and every state fair in between. I’m a rodeo man.”

“I’m glad you came by, Wyatt. But I’m tied up today.”

“They’re gonna hang Pepper’s killing on you,” he said.

“Repeat that?”

“They wanted to stick me with it, but I got an alibi. They know Pepper insulted you up by that cave. Maybe they know he done even worse.”

“You need to be a little more explicit.”

“Bill Pepper was meaner than a radiator full of goat piss. He was mean to females in particular. You’re from Florida, right?”

“What about it?”

“In my former life, I heard about you. Or at least about somebody down in Miami who sure fits your description.”

“You heard what?”

“You worked for the Cubans and them New York Italians. You’re flat heck on wheels, woman. If I can put it together, them sheriff’s deputies can, too.”

“I’ll keep all this in mind.”

He took a penknife from his watch pocket and pared one of his fingernails. “You don’t hang out with rodeo people?” She winked at him and didn’t reply. He gazed at the sunlight breaking on the tops of the trees. “Whatever you do, stay away from that cave up yonder.”

“It’s just a cave,” she said.

“Something is loose here’bouts, something that ain’t supposed to be here. I can smell it. That Indian girl that got killed?”

“I heard about it.”

“Her death was over something the cops ain’t figured out yet. She was from the Blackfeet rez, up somewhere east of Marias Pass. I called her Little Britches, ’cause she was such a little-bitty slip of a thing.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“You know the Younger family?”

“Not personally.”

“It’s got to do with them. And with that thing in the cave. I just ain’t ciphered it out yet. I’m working on it.”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause of what got done to that little girl.”

Gretchen flipped open the cylinder of her pistol and dumped the cartridges in her palm and put the cartridges and both guns and the ear protectors back in her canvas shooting bag. “Take care of yourself,” she said.

“If you ever want to mess around with an older man, I’m available,” he said.

“I’m not worth it. Keep your powder dry for the right girl,” she replied.

He laughed under his breath. She walked down the hillside to the cabin, her gun bag looped over one shoulder, the wind scattering her chestnut hair on her cheeks and forehead. Wyatt Dixon stared after her, bareheaded, his features as chiseled as a Roman soldier’s. Then he stared up at the cave, his good humor gone, his eyes containing thoughts that no rational person would ever be able to read or understand.

On Sunday morning Molly and I went to Mass at a small church by the university. When we got back, Clete was standing on the porch of the guest cabin, waiting for me. “I found a bug,” he said.

“Where?”

“Above the door to Gretchen’s room.”

“Have you told Albert?”

“Yeah, he said, ‘What else is new?’ I’m going to get a guy out here to sweep the place.”

“How long do you think it’s been there?”

“There’s no way to tell. I’d say it’s state-of-the-art. We need to stop pretending, Dave.”

“About what?”

“Somebody has us in their sights. It started with somebody shooting an arrow at Alafair. Now both Gretchen and I are part of a homicide investigation. It’s time we take it to these cocksuckers.”