Neil McMahon - Lone Creek

The building's outside entrance was unlocked. It gave into a little hallway with a mailbox and a shadowy staircase leading up to the door of the apartment. I hadn't been able to tell if Josie was home-her windows, like most of the others around, were covered and barely lit. But she must have either been watching outside or heard me on the stairs, because the door opened against its chain before I raised my fist to knock.

Her face appeared in the gap. She looked wary, like she didn't remember me, which was entirely possible. Then again, maybe it was because she did-or because she'd learned that I was under suspicion in Kirk's disappearance.

I said, "Hi, Josie."

"Kirk's gone."

"I know. That's why I came by."

"Did you hear something?" she said sharply.

"Nothing besides that. I need to talk to you. It won't take long."

Her eyes narrowed. "What about?"

"I had a run-in with Wesley Balcomb. I need help figuring some things out."

"So this isn't because you're worried about Kirk, right?" she said, with chilling precision and speed.

"Hell, yes, of course I'm worried about him. If I do any good, it could-you know-" I floundered, and finished up, "Help him, too."

Her face relaxed into a calculated look. It was oddly more natural.

"Come on in," she said.

She didn't look so pretty tonight. She was wearing a University of Montana Grizzlies football sweatshirt so big and baggy that she seemed lost inside it like a little kid, and skinnier than ever. The sleeves came down to her fingertips-she kept fidgeting, pushing them up to her wrists, but they'd flop loose again immediately. I suspected they were hiding track marks. Her face was tense and twitchy, and her nostrils had a raw peeled look.

The apartment was a train wreck, but not a comfortable kind of organic mess like at Doug's trailer. The pastel blue paint on the walls had peeled in patches to reveal a mosaic of previous colors, and the carpet, a green-orange shag that screamed remnant sale, was stained and cigarette-burned and trodden down to a dismal mat. The room reeked of smoke, with an undercurrent of decay from the kitchen or the plumbing or God knew what else.

But that all went with the turf. The jarring element lay in the newer things. For openers, Josie was sporting a diamond engagement ring like you'd see on rich widows in Miami, with one stone the size of a chickpea surrounded by several smaller ones. I was no judge of that kind of thing, but they gave off the kind of sparkle that I didn't think came from paste.

There was a full-blown home entertainment center with a TV even bigger than Doug's, plus a DVD and a VCR and a stereo and all the other bells and whistles, encased in a slick cabinet set. A new leather couch that they must have had a hell of a time getting up those stairs took up most of one wall. A couple of large western-theme paintings were hung above and around it, the kind of imitation Charlie Russells that were one step this side of black velvet, but that sold for ungodly prices in rustic art galleries.

And clothes. The front closet was so packed with coats and boots that the door wouldn't close. Jeans and tops trailed off the furniture onto the floor and formed a path to the bedroom. Pretty much everything, to be blunt, looked slutty. But most of it was new, too-some of the items still had tags.

The strong implication was that she'd been living low to the ground, then suddenly had come into a chunk of cash and tried to buy some class. But she didn't know how, so she'd retreated to filling up the place with the familiar security of clothes.

The psychology involved didn't particularly interest me. What did was the more tangible matter of where that money had come from-not just for all this, but for Kirk's new Jeep and guns and other pseudo-military toys. I was sure that Josie didn't have a job, and there was no way Kirk's salary went that far. Maybe it had come from his family, although he'd done plenty of barroom pissing and moaning about his father's stinginess. Maybe they'd bought it all on credit.

Maybe.

Josie turned to me with her arms folded and a no-bullshit stare. Her mouth was a tight line turned down at the corners.

"Look, I don't know where Kirk is or what's going on," she said. "I'll talk to you, but you got to do something for me, too. He didn't leave me any money, man. There's no food here, I'm starving."

It looked like coyness wasn't going to figure into this, which was good. I opened my wallet, thinking I'd give her a twenty. But I'd had only a few bucks of my own to start with, and out of the hundred-dollar bill I'd put down at the Red Meadow, only some singles, a couple of fives, and a fifty were left. Elmer and I hadn't drunk much, but I'd been careful to take care of the bartender-who in return had topped our glasses to the brim and bought us a round, the way it ought to be-and a shot of good bourbon wasn't cheap these days even at a place like that.

I wanted Josie in a cooperative mood, and it was Balcomb's cash anyway, so I set the fifty on top of a clothes pile, making sure she saw the denomination. Instead of being impressed, she looked at it like a waitress in a classy restaurant would look at a two-bit tip. I shouldn't have been surprised. I'd seen it often enough, people who'd never had to earn money thinking that people who did should throw bushels of it at them.

"What do you want to know?" she said. Now she seemed impatient.

"What did Kirk-" I caught myself, and coughed into my hand to cover. "What does Kirk have to say about Wesley Balcomb?" I breathed a silent thanks that I'd screwed up with her and not someone who might have noticed. I was going to have to watch it.

"Not much," Josie said. "Back when he first started that job, I asked him about it a couple of times, and he told me to shut up. So I stopped."

"Why won't he talk about his job? Most guys do."

"Maybe he just doesn't want to, OK? Maybe Mr. Balcomb told him not to."

"Did Kirk tell you that?"

"I said maybe." Her impatience was getting clearer.

"Did you ever get the feeling that Kirk and Balcomb were into something together?" I said.

"Like what?"

"Like dope, big-time?"

Her eyes widened in disbelief. Then she snorted with what seemed to be genuine amusement.

"You gotta be kidding." But it wasn't so much a denial as, You think I'd tell you?

"Everybody knows he's into crank, Josie," I said. "And all this expensive stuff here-a guy's got to wonder. If I was a cop, I sure would."

A trace of alarm softened her tough look.

"What the fuck's it to you?" she said.

"Let me worry about that. We made a deal."

"I didn't make any deal to get set up, man."

"I've got nothing to gain by setting you up, for Christ's sake. I'm trying to help myself."

"Kirk never sells dope," she said emphatically.

"Yeah? But he must buy it. Enough for two people, huh."

She shrugged, her face hardening again. Read the mail, asshole.

"So where's all that money coming from?" I said.

"Hey, I don't have time for this bullshit," she said, and stepped forward, reaching for the fifty.

I grabbed it first. "All right, you can tell the sheriffs instead," I said. "If Kirk doesn't show up quick, you better believe they're going to have your little tits in the wringer."

She caught my arm before I got to the door, with a pleading expression that I translated as God, I'm sorry, I'm so fucked up I can't think.

"I'm really scared," she whispered. "I think he's gone for good."

I put one arm around her and let her sob a few times against my shoulder. I didn't doubt that she genuinely cared for Kirk, or that she was scared for all kinds of reasons, including her future. Going back home probably wasn't an option. Kirk's family wasn't going to help her out, and her friends were all like her.