Neil McMahon - Lone Creek

When I'd run the idea by Madbird, he'd spent some time thinking about it.

"I don't know Reuben much," he finally said. "I used to go drink at the VFW once in a while, and I'd run into him. He was always friendly. But you and him got that other thing going, right? That girl getting killed, way back when?"

"Yeah."

"I can't call this one, Hugh. But if anybody got the juice, it's him. And let's face it, you ain't got much to lose."

Reuben's apartment door was open, but this time when I stepped inside, he wasn't there. A minute later he walked in from a back room, wearing boots and jeans and buttoning up a faded old plaid flannel shirt. He probably hadn't wanted me to catch him in his robe and slippers again. He waved his hand toward the bottle of fine scotch on the bar. It looked like the same one as last time, but I suspected it wasn't. I poured myself a short drink. Why the hell not?

"Let's not run around the bush, Hugh," he said. "What's on your mind?"

I handed him the book and paper.

He settled into his chair, this time staying sitting up instead of tipping it back, and examined them, turning them in his thick hands and flipping through the pages. Then he looked at me inquiringly.

"I took them from Kirk's shack," I said.

"You went there, huh?"

"Last night. We were right, the gold panning was bullshit." I pointed at the numbers on the paper. "I think he was trying to figure out the value of those diamonds in Josie's ring."

Reuben frowned. "Come again?"

"The weights are probably rounded off, but the big one's about two carats and the others are a half carat each," I said. "These columns are prices he got from the book, with markups for better quality. He didn't know how to judge that-he was just ballparking high and low end."

"If he bought them for her, how could he not know what they cost?" Reuben's gaze sharpened. "You telling me he stole them?"

"No. I think he got them from Balcomb."

The grooves in Reuben's forehead deepened.

"I knew Kirk was coming up with money some way I couldn't explain," he said. "But why the hell would Balcomb give him diamonds?"

"Payment, Reuben. Kirk was muling them across the border. That's why he wanted that place."

Reuben settled back then, dropping the book on the floor and reaching for his glass.

"Say Balcomb gave him the jewels and told him they were worth twenty grand or whatever," I said. "Kirk wanted to make sure he wasn't getting screwed, but he couldn't get them appraised right away. He'd bought this book for his gold panning act, and he gave it a shot himself."

He gazed past me out the windows, his lower teeth gnawing at his mustache. I knew I'd just made things a lot more complicated for him. If Kirk was still alive, he was facing serious prison time, and even if he was dead, it was a stain on the family. Bringing Reuben down like that didn't make me feel any better, but I had no choice.

"Any way to prove this?" he said.

"I've got a place to start. If I'm right, the diamonds will have phony laser stamps. We'd have to get the ring from Josie and take it to a lab. Maybe they could do it at Montana Tech."

He nodded, looking bemused now.

"You know where he is, Hugh?" he said.

His tone was so casual, the question so out of the blue, that the dread I'd awaited this moment with took a second to hit me.

Everything, everything, hung on what would happen if I told this man not only that his son was dead, but by my hand. I gave one last thought to hedging. But there was an insistence in my head that I owed him the truth.

"I do, Reuben." I swallowed, trying to ease the dryness in my mouth. "Balcomb sent him to kill me, late Saturday night. He damned near did. Knocked me silly and started to dump me in the lake."

I waited. Reuben only took a slow sip of scotch, gazing straight ahead.

"I know how this sounds, but honest to Christ, I was just trying to protect myself," I said. "He had a.357. His glove jammed in the trigger guard. I slashed at his hands with my pocketknife to try to get him to drop it. He jerked away and the knife caught his throat. If it helps any, it happened so fast, he barely knew it."

Reuben's head moved slightly. It might have been a nod of acknowledgment or a tremor.

"Then I got scared," I said. "I'd had that run-in with Balcomb earlier. Kirk was in on it-he'd held a gun on me, a lot of people saw that, and we weren't exactly pals anyway. All I could think was, it was going to look like I'd lured him out there to get even, and I was going to be up against Balcomb and you and your lawyers. So I hid him."

I shut up then and stood there with the sound of my pulse throbbing in my ears. Reuben deliberated for another long minute.

"When you say 'hid him,'" he said. "You think he's-comfortable-where he is?"

"Well-I guess I would be," I said.

"He's not, you know, just shoved under something?"

"No, no, it's real decent. Dignified, even. I'll show you, if you want."

"Maybe someday." He finished the scotch in his glass and handed it to me to refill. His sharp eyes looked softened, almost glazed.

"I've been carrying a weight of my own a long time, a right heavy one," Reuben said. "Never unloaded it because it might have got used against me. But if there's anybody who ought to know, it's you."

My hands, opening the scotch bottle, stopped.

"I've got a feeling I already do know," I said.

"I figured you'd think that. Go on, tell me."

This was almost harder than confessing about Kirk. I poured a fresh couple of inches into Reuben's glass and gave it back to him.

"Pete got Celia pregnant," I said. "Beatrice wouldn't let him marry her. He got in a rage, maybe from Celia taunting him, and got too rough with her. You covered it up."

Reuben nodded heavily. "That's pretty close to the money, except for one thing. It wasn't just her picking at him that set him off. She told him who that baby's real father was."

An image clicked like a slide in my mind, giving me a glimpse back to that day when I'd seen Pete and Celia walk past Reuben without even noticing him, but he had stopped what he was doing and watched them attentively. Then Beatrice's sudden harsh words: Don't you sit there oogling that little slut, too.

I sat down hard on a bar stool. Then I groped for the scotch to pour myself another drink, not because I wanted it, but because I couldn't think of anything else to do.

"I decided to show her who was boss, was how it started," Reuben said. "Saw how she had Pete so poleaxed. Arrogant bastard I was, I didn't think there was any woman I couldn't handle, let alone a girl. But pretty quick, she had me damn near as bad as him. She'd laugh in my face, then whisper in my ear, and next thing you knew, we'd be-" He exhaled. "I knew there was bound to be trouble, and I should have got her out of there. But I couldn't get enough of her."

It hit me with painful keenness-a powerful man in his prime with a cold wife, suddenly beset by beautiful, sultry, sassy Celia. And I had no doubt that she'd done more than her share to kindle the flame.

"I can see how she'd have been hard to resist," I said.

"There's a couple things I want you to understand. Pete never meant to hurt her, any more than you did Kirk. He blew up like you said. They were out in the shop. He gave her a shove, she tripped and fell against a workbench and hit her head on a vise-that knob where the handle attaches. It cracked her temple like somebody swung a hammer."

Reuben wiped his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

"He came and got me," he said. "Lord, the look on his face. Going in and finding her laying there. Then two months later, finding him dead. And it was all my doing. That's the other thing I want you to know, Hugh. Nobody to blame but me."

Emotions, memories, connections that suddenly snapped into place were rushing through me.