James Burke - Bitterroot

"Step out of my way, please."

"Two thousand dollars and that boy will be in a wood chipper. There won't be no trace of him except a Polaroid picture for your doctor friend to burn in front of his daughter. Me and you has got regional commonalities, sir. For that reason I'm offering you a once-in-a-lifetime bargain." He snapped his fingers at the air, the vacuity of his eyes filling with energy, his lips parted with expectation.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and looked out into the grayness of the mountains and the fir and pine trees bending in the wind.

"Let me see if I can phrase myself adequately, Wyatt," I said. "Every so often a real piece of shit floats to the top of the bowl. I'm not talking about just ordinary white trash like your sister but somebody who should have been strapped down in Ole Sparky and had his grits scorched the first time he got a parking ticket. You following me?"

"I'm fascinated, sir. Your elocution is like none I have ever heard, and I have stood at tent revivals throughout this great nation and have listened to the very best."

"You stay away from me, partner," I said.

After I had pulled the gas nozzle out of my tank and gotten back into the truck, he tapped on my glass, leaning close in to it, his face distorting in the raindrops that slid down it as he stared at Cleo. I wanted to simply drive away, but now I was blocked in by a car both in front and behind me. I rolled down the window.

"What do you want?" I said.

"On Sugarland Farm I learned to read lips from a deaf man. You said 'On the job' to Sue Lynn. You was telling her she's a cop?"

"No."

"I hope you're not lying, sir. It would seriously subtract from my faith in human beings." Then he said to Cleo, lifting his hat, "Good afternoon to you, ma'am. One look at the sweetness of your form and I got to go lift a car bumper."

What had I done?

I took Cleo back home and drove to the sheriff's office and caught him in the corridor of the courthouse annex.

"You did what?" he said, loud enough for passersby to stare.

"Can we go in your office?" I said.

"I'm not sure I want you around here that long."

I felt my face coloring and I looked away from the glare in his eyes and started over.

"I messed up. The question is can we fix it?" I said.

"This ain't about We. You and trouble seem to go together like shit and stink."

"I'm having a hard time with your remarks, Sheriff."

He looked up and down the corridor.

"You blow the cover on an undercover cop, then you drag your sorry ass in here to piss on my rug? You're lucky I don't have you in jail," he said.

"Is she one of yours or not?"

"No. I never heard of her."

"Wyatt Dixon offered to snuff Lamar Ellison for two thousand dollars. That's solicitation of murder."

"Number one, that don't make any sense. Number two… There ain't no number two. Just get a lot of gone between you and here, okay?" the sheriff said.

I WENT BACK to Doc's log house on the Black-foot. Doc and Maisey were out on the riverbank, collecting colored stones to make a rock garden. Maisey lifted up a boxful and smiled at me and carried the stones up the incline. Her jeans were damp on the knees, her skin bright with tan in the sunlight.

But toward evening, when the sun died below the ridgeline, I knew her attempts at cheer would go out of her face and she would sit in front of the television set, her expression disjointed with memories she refused to describe.

"We got another call while you were gone. No voice, just heavy-metal music playing into the receiver," Doc said.

"Maybe it was a crank," I said.

"Sure. Anyway, I had the number changed."

"Doc, I don't want to overstay my welcome. Maybe I'm not much help to you here."

He picked at a callus on his hand, then looked away at the river where it was in shadow between the trees. "Everything I do with Maisey is all thumbs. She sees pity in my face and hides her head under a pillow. How bad can one guy screw up?"

I helped him and Maisey gather rocks, and we laid them out on the sunny side of a spruce tree and spread bagged topsoil between them and planted moss roses and petunias and pansies in the soil.

That evening, at sunset, I walked deep into the woods and squatted by the river's edge and tossed pine cones into a long ribbon of green water flowing between two large round boulders. I glanced up at the ponderosa above me and saw L.Q. Navarro sitting on a thick limb, his face in shadow, a gold toothpick catching the sun's last light.

"You wanted Doc to tell you to go home?" he asked.

"Maybe," I said.

"You scared you're falling for that Lonnigan woman? "

"Did I say that? Did I even think that?" I said.

"She's an angry person."

"Her child was murdered."

"If you ask me, she's working on more than one thorn."

"I'd just like a little peace, L.Q."

"Interesting word choice. What do them big round boulders out there in the river remind you of?"

"I'm going into town. You're not coming, either."

"Tell her hello for me," he said.

Early the next morning Doc and Maisey drove into Bonner to get the mail, and I washed the breakfast dishes and watered the rock garden with a sprinkler can. The phone rang inside.

When I answered it, a voice said, "Oh, it's the Lone Ranger again."

"Who gave you this number?" I said.

"What do you care? Put the pill roller on."

"He's not here."

He paused, then said, "I made her come."

"If this is Ellison…"

"That little twist is lying to you, bubba. She knows it was consensual. That's why she didn't identify nobody from the mug shots. Ask her what she whispered in my ear when I…"

I hung up on him and punched in "Star 69" on the phone, then I called the sheriff.

"Ellison or one of the other rapists is harassing the victim," I said.

"How do you know it's them?"

"I'm not even going to answer that question."

"You can ID the call by-"

"I already tried. The number's blocked."

"Tell Dr. Voss to change his number."

"He did that yesterday."

I heard him take a deep breath. "Tell Dr. Voss to come in and sign a complaint," he said.

"Where's this militia leader live? What's his name, Hinkel?" I said.

"You're jumping me over the hurdles, right?"

"I'm not sympathetic with the problems of your office. You're telling a raped girl and her father, 'Eat shit, you're on your own.'"

"You got a gift, son. Just talking to you gives me the red scours. You should contact the Pentagon, see about a career in biological warfare."

Carl Hinkel's ranch was outside Hamilton, down in the Bitterroot Valley. Beyond the stone house in which he lived were green pastures dotted with prize Angus, and beyond his pastures were mountains that rose up blue and as jagged as tin against the sky, their saddles and peaks blazing with new snow.

Carl Hinkel's drive was planted with poplar trees, his white gravel walks bordered with rosebeds. An American flag flew upside down in the front yard, the cloth popping in the wind, the chain tinkling against the silver pole.

There was no gate across the cattle guard, but I must have triggered an electronic signal when I entered Hinkel's property, because two men immediately came from behind the house and stood in the driveway, their feet slightly spread, their hands opening and closing at their sides, their bodies contoured with the anatomical distortions of steroid addicts. They wore military boots and undershirts and carried pistols in their belts, and in each of their unshaved faces was a pinched, dark light that seemed to have no relationship to anything in their environment. I nodded at them, but they continued to stare at me with the fixated intensity of people for whom daily life was part of a cosmic conspiracy.