James Burke - Swan Peak

“I was fixing to make Greenwood a full trusty. I greased the way for his parole. Why would he attack me?”

“Maybe he was chewing on peyote buttons. I’ve seen Indians stick their hand in a fire when they were souped up on mescal. He might have been down on grand auto, but he also put a knife in a guy.”

“Jimmy Dale Greenwood stole my truck and took off on me when I was near bleeding to death. But it wasn’t him who cut me up. It was a white man, not a breed.”

“Trouble is, that shank your attacker busted off inside you was made from automotive window glass, the same kind that was in the shop where Greenwood worked. What would a tramp be doing with a prison-made shank?”

Troyce turned his head on the pillow and looked at Rawlings. The slash wound on his cheek had gone to the bone, and the connective tissue on one side of his face didn’t work properly. “You wouldn’t call me a liar, would you?”

Rawlings stared into space as though considering the question. He propped the heels of his hands on his thighs and returned Troyce’s stare. “I understand you’re checking out in the morning.”

“That’s right.”

“Going to be doing some traveling, seeing the country, that sort of thing?”

“I got me a little woman in Las Cruces.”

Rawlings nodded thoughtfully. He seemed to watch a fly crawling up the wall. Then he rose from his chair. He touched Troyce Nix on the thigh with his clipboard, through the sheet. “Take care of yourself, bub. Just one reminder, though.”

Troyce waited.

“The worst fate can befall a lawman is to end up stacking time with the same sonsofbitches we been riding herd on,” Rawlings said. “The thought of it makes something inside me shrivel up and die.”

THREE HOURS AFTERSpecial Agent Alicia Rosecrans’s visit to our cabin, Clete’s Caddy pulled into our yard. The top was up, the maroon finish gleaming with a fresh wax job. Clete got out and shut the door firmly and stared back down the road. The sun was above the mountain crests now, and Albert’s horses had moved into the shade of the cottonwoods along the creek. When the wind gusted through the trees on the hillsides, it made a sound exactly like rushing water. The sound made Clete look around him, as though he wasn’t sure where he was standing. I wondered if he had been drinking.

I told him about my conversation with Alicia Rosecrans. I also told him she believed he had been with Jamie Sue Wellstone that morning. But he seemed distracted, his eyes closing and opening as he sorted through my words.

“Run all that by me again,” he said.

“The feds probably have her under surveillance. They saw you with her at Flathead Lake. They probably saw you at the motel with her, too,” I said.

He rubbed the back of his neck, staring down the road in the direction he had just come from, his consternation growing.

“Where have you been, Clete?” I said.

“To the Express Lube in Missoula.”

“For three hours?”

“No, I picked up a tail. I think it was Lyle Hobbs. I tried to get him to follow me into the mall parking lot. He didn’t take the bait, but I saw the same car again in Lolo. Why would Hobbs be tailing me? Why have I got a pervert like that bird-dogging me?”

“Because Jamie Sue Wellstone’s husband is onto you. Because this is probably a way of life with them. Because she probably pumps everything in sight.”

“Is Molly inside?”

“So what? Molly is your friend, too. You think she likes seeing you swallow a razor blade?”

“Who died and made you God? Lay off me, Streak. Maybe Jamie Sue played me, but maybe not.”

“Don’t even go near thoughts like that. You know what an old fool is? A guy who starts acting like an old fool.”

I saw the injury in his face. My ears were ringing with my own words. I put my hand on his shoulder. It felt like boilerplate. “Take a walk with me,” I said.

“What for?”

“Humor me.”

“Humor you ?”

“It’s about the kid who was murdered up on the hill.”

Clete was resistant and irritable, for which I couldn’t blame him. But finally he took a deep breath, and the heat went out of his face, and we walked along the road together like the old friends we were, the wind blowing cool up the valley, the snow atop Lolo Peak wet and bright against a flawless blue porcelain sky.

“I got to thinking about something Seymour Bell’s roommate told us. He said Seymour was both smart and tough. What if the little wood cross and the leather cord you found at the crime scene weren’t torn off the shooter by Seymour or vice versa?”

“Go on.”

“Joe Bim Higgins said there was only one print on the cross – Seymour’s. Higgins assumed the killer had gloves on and tore the cross from Seymour’s neck and flung it down the slope, probably in a rage. But what if Seymour broke the cord on the cross and threw it in the brush for us to find?”

“No, Higgins said there were cuff burns on Seymour’s wrists. If he was forced to ride in a car, his wrists would have been cuffed behind him. He couldn’t have gotten his hands on the cross.”

“Let’s go back up the mountain,” I said.

We walked up the switchback trail through dense stands of fir trees until we reached the crime scene. It was windy and bright when we came out of the shade into sunlight, and both of us were sweating heavily. Far below, we could see the state two-lane that led over Lolo Pass into Idaho, and a long silvery creek meandering through cottonwood trees, the same creek Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and the Indian woman Sacagawea had followed on their way to Oregon.

“What are we looking for?” Clete said.

“Think of it this way: Maybe the killer brought Seymour up here in order to send Albert a message. But what if the motivation was more complicated? What if the killer was after information of some kind?”

“Too much of this is speculative, Dave.”

“No, predators are always cowards. They don’t take chances with guys like Seymour Bell. They kill them outright.”

Clete bit on a hangnail and made a face. “You got a point.”

The crime scene’s forensic integrity had deteriorated dramatically since our first visit there. Deer and elk scat was everywhere. Tree branches were broken, and the soft layer of humus and pine needles was pocked with the hoofprints of large animals. A rotted larch trunk had snapped at ground level and crashed across the anvil-shaped rock that was stippled with Seymour Bell’s blood.

“Figure it this way,” I said. “The boy died within a few feet of that rock. The car tracks are about fifteen feet south of the rock. So everything that happened here probably took place within a circle that had a diameter of not more than twenty-five feet.”

“Yeah?” Clete said.

I walked to the edge of the slope where Clete had found the small wood cross and broken leather cord. What were you trying to tell us, kid ? I thought.

“Take a look,” I said.

The rotted larch, shaggy with moss and decay, had cracked cleanly across its base and fallen in one piece, allowing sunlight to flood onto a fir tree next to it. At the bottom of the fir tree’s trunk were gashes in the bark. They were lateral and thin and overlapping, as though a dull metal surface had been jerked repeatedly against the smoothness of the bark. I knelt on one knee and touched them with my fingers. “The killer locked that kid’s wrists around the tree. Look at how the ground is churned up,” I said. “I think maybe he was tortured here.”

“But why would Bell throw away his cross?”

“Because he didn’t want his executioner to take it with him,” I said.

“Yeah, but why would a degenerate motherfucker like that want the kid’s cross? Unless the guy is into fetishism.”