James Burke - Light of the World

Then she heard a sound that was like dry thunder, a rumbling that had no source, a reverberation that seemed to bounce off rock walls and the trunks of trees, as though magnifying itself, refusing to be gathered into the sky.

She stared at the hills, dark with shadow on the slopes and lit from behind by clouds that were as orange as Halloween pumpkins. Don’t think those thoughts, she told herself. Do not look in his direction. Do not become the jinx you called yourself.

Others in the parking lot were pointing toward the west. At what? How can you point at a sound? Before she could think about the denial in her question, she saw a fire burning inside the trees on a distant hill and a dark mushroom cloud rising from it.

She thought of the twin-engine parked unguarded on the airstrip, the elderly Indian man in the general store, perhaps asleep behind the counter; a red Cessna circling above, radioing to someone else the location of Percy’s plane.

She had to sit down on the bumper of a truck, her eyes tightly shut, to keep from losing her balance.

Thursday morning, Clete and I kept our word to the sheriff and drove Gretchen to identify the body his deputies had pulled out of the Clark Fork, west of town. It was obvious she couldn’t have cared less about the name of the dead man in the drawer at the mortuary. Her eyes roved over the bluish-white sheen on his refrigerated skin and the wounds in his head and throat and chest and side without seeming to register any of it.

“You’ve never seen him before?” the sheriff said.

“He’s the man I shot, if that’s what you’re asking,” she replied.

“You never saw him before that?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Why would I say no if I meant something else?”

“He worked out of Fort Lauderdale and Atlantic City. You spent most of your life in Miami. His name was Emile Schmitt. He was a PI and bail-skip chaser. He also worked for an armored car service. You’re not familiar with that name?”

“No,” she said.

“But you recognize him as the man you shot and killed?”

“It was dark, but yes, I believe this is the man who tried to kill me and who I shot and killed, after giving him every chance to surrender. Is there something about the words that you don’t understand?”

“You seem to have a built-in defense mechanism that kicks into gear whenever you’re asked a question,” the sheriff said.

“I told you what occurred. You can characterize it in any fashion you like.”

“The pickup truck driven by the other man trying to kill you was stolen from a farmer in Kansas. The farmer may have been murdered. Or maybe you already know that.”

“Clete and Dave told me.”

“Do you believe the driver could be Asa Surrette?”

“How would I know who he is? Maybe I saw him last night in the airport.”

“Would you repeat that?”

“At the airport, I might have seen a guy who tried to hit on me at the Depot. Maybe he was the guy in the stolen truck. Maybe he was following me yesterday. My friend Percy Wolcott died in his plane last night, right after dropping me at the airport. Have you been to the site yet?”

“That’s the jurisdiction of the National Transportation Safety Board. Let’s not change the subject. From what we could learn, Emile Schmitt’s clients as a PI included several attorneys who represent the Mafia in South Florida and New Jersey. I think you knew the same people. Except you claim to have no knowledge of this man, that your life and his intersected by coincidence in a small city in western Montana.”

“I’m not making a claim about anything,” she said. “I’m telling you what happened. Percy’s plane was parked several hours on an airstrip east of Marias Pass. The airstrip was next to a general store owned by the great-uncle of Angel Deer Heart. Think that’s coincidence, Sheriff? I think somebody put a bomb on that plane and the timer went off late.”

“I’m not making the connection.”

“All of this has something to do with Angel Deer Heart. But your investigation never gets beyond an ex-convict rodeo clown.”

The sheriff started to speak, but Gretchen cut him off. “Bill Pepper abducted me after he violated every inch of my body he could rub his dick on. If I could have gotten to him before someone else did, I would have clicked off his switch. So would my father. We didn’t have the chance. If that doesn’t sit too good with you, go fuck yourself.”

“You’re an angry woman, Ms. Horowitz, and sometimes angry women do irrational things.”

I could hear Clete breathing through his nose, almost feel the heat radiating from his body. “Sheriff, this isn’t getting us anywhere,” I said.

“Stay out of this, Mr. Robicheaux.”

“No, sir, you’re out of line,” I said. “That crack was about as dumb a remark I ever heard an officer of the law make.”

I could see pale spots in his face, his hand tightening on the edge of the drawer that contained the earthly remains of a man who, in death, had the significance of a doorstop. The sheriff’s discomfort was obvious. He knew he was wrong, and it was not a time to crowd the batter any more than I had.

“Sheriff, you found the perpetrator’s semen on the body of Angel Deer Heart,” I said. “You went to the data bank for a match, right? What did you find out? Are we dealing with Asa Surrette or not?”

“The specimen got lost,” he said, his face reddening.

The only sound in the room was the hum of the refrigeration.

“Bill Pepper?” I said.

“I think he was drunk. Whatever he did with the specimen, we can’t find it.”

“I have to ask you a question,” I said. “Why did you let a man like that stay on in your department?”

“At one time he was a good cop. When his marriage went south, he started drinking. Maybe you’ve never had problems like that. I have. So I gave him a chance. I wish I hadn’t. I apologize to Ms. Horowitz for the remark I made. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to have gunfights in the streets of my city. And nobody is going to show disrespect for my office, either.”

Fair enough, I thought. He’s not a bad guy. Time to boogie and leave others to their own destiny. Err on the side of charity and let disengagement become a virtue .

“I heard Percy Wolcott’s plane explode. Not crash. Explode,” Gretchen said. “Forget the apology, Sheriff. Then pull your head out of your ass and do your job for a change.”

If you are a parent, you know the following to be true: Even though your child has grown into adulthood, you never see the man or the woman; you see only the little boy or the little girl.

Whenever I looked at Alafair, I saw the little El Salvadoran girl I pulled from a submerged plane that went down in the salt by Southwest Pass. I saw a little girl I called Alf who wore a Donald Duck cap with a quacking bill and a T-shirt with a smiling whale named Baby Orca and tennis shoes embossed with the words LEFT and RIGHT on the respective toes. The image of that little El Salvadoran girl will always hover before me like a hologram.

Why get into that now? Because all of the events I have narrated started with an attack upon Alafair’s person while she was jogging on the hill below Albert Hollister’s ranch. Somehow the fact that her attacker may have been Asa Surrette had fallen through the cracks.

Did Asa Surrette survive the crash of the prison van into the gas truck, then hook up with a fellow predator and come to Montana in pursuit of Alafair? It was possible. But Emile Schmitt did not have that kind of history and had been on retainer by law firms that represented members of the Mafia. The Mob is many things, but it doesn’t hire serial predators to look out for its interests.