James Burke - Swan Peak

“Did she know a guy named Lyle Hobbs?” Clete asked.

“I never heard of him. Who is he?” she said.

“A geek and a child molester. He showed up on the surveillance tape at the health club where Cindy worked,” Clete said. “You know a guy by the name of Ridley Wellstone?”

“No, I never heard of him, either.”

“Did Cindy wear a small wood cross, one attached to a leather thong?” I asked.

“No.” Heather glanced sideways. “I saw Seymour with one. Maybe a week ago. His shirt was unbuttoned, and it fell out. Seymour was a Pentecostal. Or at least he used to be. What about it?”

“You know someone who might want to tear it off his throat?” I asked.

“What are you talking about? Cindy was raped and beaten. I heard Seymour was shot through the face,” she said. I saw her eyes go out of focus; she looked like someone who has lost her footing and is not sure she will find it again. “I don’t understand why you’re here. Cindy and Seymour were taking a walk. They climbed up the mountain and never came back. Some sick fuck killed them. Why don’t you assholes go out and do something about it? Why do you keep asking me these sick fucking questions? I identified Cindy at the morgue. Did you see her face? God, I hate you people.”

She started to cry, then beat her fists on her knees.

WE DROVE UPthe Clark Fork River to Bonner to interview the two roommates of Seymour Bell. They lived in a small rented house on a slope close to where the Clark Fork and the Blackfoot rivers formed a bay below a steel-girdered train bridge. The main residential street of the town was lined with willow and birch trees, shading the rows of neat sawmill houses on either side of the street. The yards of the houses were blue-green inside the shade, the flower beds bursting with tulips, the small porches dotted with cans of geraniums and begonias.

It was a fine day, cool and scented with flowers and sawdust from the mill, but Clete had remained morose and had spoken little since we had left the sheriff’s office. At first I thought his mood was due to the nature of our errand. But Clete’s involvement with Sally Dio and the Mob still held a strong claim on his life, and I suspected the furrow in his brow meant he had taken another journey to a bad place in his head and he was sorting through it with a garbage rake.

“I don’t think the sheriff took the FBI too seriously, Clete,” I said.

“No, somebody spit in the soup. They’re going to try and hang a murder beef on me.”

“You think Wellstone stirred up the feds?”

“Of course I do. That’s how his kind operate. They call up Fart, Barf, and Itch or somebody in the attorney general’s office or another bunch of bureaucratic asswipes just like them. They never hit you head-on.”

“I’d shitcan this stuff. Sally Dee was a pus head. He got what he deserved.”

“I got news for you. People who get in the way of Ridley Wellstone and his friends are going to be speed bumps.”

“Yeah?” I said, glancing at Clete.

“Lose the Little Orphan Annie routine, will you?” he replied, his big head hanging down, his expression empty, like that of a stuffed animal.

We sat on the back porch in sun-spangled shade with a tall, lean, bare-chested kid by the name of Ben Hauser. He told us his dead friend Seymour Bell had grown up on a cattle ranch outside Alberton, west of Missoula. He also said Seymour was nothing like his girlfriend, Cindy, that Seymour had one foot in the next world, and no matter what Cindy said or did, Seymour would find a church where the congregants glowed with blue fire or neurosis, depending on how you wanted to define it.

“Seymour was a little eccentric about religion?” I said.

“No, he believed in it, full-tilt. The crazier, the better,” Ben Hauser said. “He joined a Pentecostal group here, but he quit because they didn’t give witness in tongues. Then he started going to revivals hereabouts. That’s when him and Cindy got into it.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Cindy went to church on occasion, but she thought these revival people were hucksters. Sometimes Seymour trusted folks when he shouldn’t. Cindy would get mad as hell at him.”

“Did he wear a small wood cross?” I asked.

Ben Hauser looked into space. “Yeah, come to think of it, he did. Or at least I think I saw him wearing one. Why?”

“Would someone want to tear it off him for any reason?” I said.

“No, people respected Seymour. He was a good guy. I don’t understand how something like this happened.”

Ben Hauser’s hair was buzz-cut and already receding above the temples, giving him a look beyond his years. Down below us was the Blackfoot River, and a group of kids were diving off the railroad bridge into the water, shouting each time one went off the side. Ben Hauser seemed to stare at them, his face wan, his eyes unfocused.

“You okay?” I said.

“Sure,” he replied.

“You don’t know anybody who had it in for Seymour?” Clete asked.

“No,” Ben answered. “I tell you one thing, though. Seymour was smart in school. He had a three-point-eight GPA. He was tough, too. The bastard who did him in had a fight on his hands.”

“How’s that?” I said.

“Seymour might have been churchgoing, but he rode bulls in 4-H. I told the cops the fuckhead who kidnapped him must have used handcuffs. You get Seymour mad, he’d take on three or four guys with fists and feet and anything else they wanted. He did it one night in front of the Oxford when some guys made a remark about Cindy. I bet there were handcuff burns on his wrists, weren’t there?”

He stared up at me, waiting for my answer.

I LET CLETEdrive and used my cell phone to call Joe Bim Higgins. “We just interviewed Ben Hauser,” I said. “He told us Seymour Bell wouldn’t have gone down without a fight. He says if Bell was kidnapped, the perp probably used handcuffs.”

“That’s a possibility,” Joe Bim said.

“Say again?”

“There were abrasions on Bell’s wrists. They didn’t look like they came from rope or wire. I thought I mentioned that.”

He had not, but what do you say under the circumstances? “I was just double-checking, Sheriff,” I said.

“Anytime,” he said.

I closed my cell and looked at the highway rushing at us.

“Where to?” Clete asked.

“Let’s see what we can find out about the California couple who got killed at the rest stop. Let’s start at the saloon where they were drinking with Jamie Sue Wellstone.”

“You got it, big mon,” Clete said, putting an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

We drove up through the Blackfoot Valley, through meadowland and across streams and sky-blue lakes that eventually feed into the Swan Drainage. The weather had just started to blow when we pulled into the saloon, and the lake was chained with rain rings, the mountains gray-green and misty on the far side, like images in an Oriental painting. Some fishermen were drinking in a booth, but otherwise, the saloon was empty. A heavyset bartender in black trousers and a white shirt was looking out the back window at the rain falling on the lake. He turned around when he heard us sit down at the bar. “What are you having, fellows?” he said.

I opened my badge holder. “I’m Detective Dave Robicheaux. My friend here is Clete Purcel. We’re helping out in the investigation of the double homicide that happened in a rest stop west of Missoula Monday night. It’s our understanding that the two victims were drinking here earlier the same day.”

The bartender leaned on his arms. His cuffs were rolled, and his forearms looked thick and sun-browned in the gloom, wrapped with soft black hair. “You want to show me that shield again?”