James Burke - Swan Peak

“You guys followed me and Jamie Sue Wellstone to a motel?” Clete said. He tried to sound incensed, but he felt a knot of shame in his throat.

“No, we followed her . You inserted yourself into the situation on your own.”

Inserted?

“Why are y’all interested in my medical history?” he said.

“Because we think you probably suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Because maybe there are people in the Bureau who don’t want to believe you murdered Sally Dio and his men. Maybe some people believe there were complexities involved that others don’t understand.”

She kept her eyes straight ahead as she drove, her hands in the ten-two position on the steering wheel. Her face was free of blemishes, her profile both enigmatic and lovely to look at. Clete continued to stare at her, his frustration growing.

“I never had post-traumatic stress disorder,” he said. “I drank too much sometimes and smoked a little weed. But any trouble I got into wasn’t because of Vietnam. I dug it over there.”

“Look at the photo taken at the homicide scene on I-90. There’s a man walking toward a compact car. If you look closely, you can make out a rectangular shape in his left hand. We think he’s the killer,” she said.

“Where’d you get this?”

“There was a surveillance camera in the rest stop on the opposite side of the highway. Evidently it had been knocked off-center, and it caught the man in the white shirt in two or three frames. Unfortunately, it didn’t catch the license number on the compact. Does this man look familiar?”

“No, it’s too grainy. He’s just a guy in a white shirt. Why are y’all investigating a local homicide?”

“Because during the last five years, there have been killings on several interstates that bear similarities to the one outside Missoula. The victims were made to kneel or lie on their faces. They were executed at point-blank range. They were sexually abused and sometimes burned or mutilated. Look at the next photo. Do you know that man?”

The eight-by-ten color blowup had been shot with a zoom lens in front of the saloon on Swan Lake. A tall ramrod-straight man wearing a short-brim Stetson hat and western-cut trousers and yellow-tinted aviator shades was looking directly at the lens. He had reddish-blond hair, and the sun on the lake seemed to create a nimbus around his body.

“I’ve never seen him. Who is he?” Clete said.

“We’re not sure. That’s why I asked you,” she said.

“Why does the FBI have Jamie Sue under surveillance?” Clete said.

Alicia Rosecrans turned a corner carefully, her turn indicator on; she glanced in the rearview mirror. “Look at the last photo in the folder,” she said. “Do you recognize that man?”

Clete lifted up the eight-by-ten and studied it. “He’s a nice-looking guy. But I’ve never seen him before.”

“Yes, you have, Mr. Purcel. That’s Leslie Wellstone, Jamie Sue’s husband, before he was burned in the Sudan.”

Alicia Rosecrans didn’t speak the rest of the way to the university.

CLETE HAD NOTcalled me from the jail, either out of shame or because he had thought he could elude a pending assault-and-battery beef by claiming he had feared for his life and acted in self-defense. Montana was still Montana, a culture where vegetarianism, gun control, and gay marriage would never flush. Nor would the belief ever die that a fight between two men was just that, a fight between two men.

That afternoon I went down to Albert’s house to talk to Clete. He was already half in the bag, but not because of Lyle Hobbs.

“Why’d that agent show me the photo of Jamie Sue’s husband before he was burned up?” he asked. “She wants to cluster-fuck my head?”

All of his windows were open. The weather had taken a dramatic turn, and the valley was covered with shadow, the air cold and dry-smelling, snow flurries already blowing off the top of the ridge.

“They’re not interested in Jamie Sue Wellstone,” I said. “They’re after her husband or brother-in-law. But I don’t know what for.”

“These murders?”

“Whatever it is, they’re not going to tell us. I don’t think they’re sharing information with Joe Bim Higgins, either.” I told Clete I’d been deputized by Higgins.

“What about me?”

“You weren’t here when he called,” I said.

“Cut it out, Streak.” He was spooning vanilla ice cream into a glass and pouring whiskey on top of it. “And stop giving me that look. Get yourself a Dr Pepper out of the refrigerator and don’t give me that look.”

“I don’t want a Dr Pepper.”

“Of course you don’t. You want a-”

“Say it.”

“Go to a meeting. I’ve got my own problems. I feel like I’ve got broken glass in my head. I porked the wife of a guy who had his face burned off. What kind of bastard would do something like that?”

“You’re the best guy I ever knew, Cletus.”

“Save the douche water for somebody else.”

He drank the mixture of Beam and ice cream down to the bottom of the glass, his brow furrowed, his green eyes as hard as marbles.

TROYCE NIX HADno trouble finding the location of Jamie Sue Wellstone’s home in the Swan River country. The problem was access to it. An even greater problem was access to Jamie Sue.

He sat in the café that adjoined the saloon on Swan Lake and ate a steak and a load of french fries and drank a cup of coffee while he looked at the snow drifting over the trees and descending like ash on the lake.

“It always snows here in June?” he said to the waitress.

“Sometimes in July,” she replied. “You the fellow who was asking about Ms. Wellstone?”

“I used to be a fan of her music. I heard she lived here’bouts. That’s the only reason I was asking.”

The waitress was a big, red-headed, pink-complected woman who wore oceanic amounts of perfume. “People around here like her. She’s rich, but she don’t act it. Harold said if you wanted information about her to ask him.”

“Who’s Harold?”

“The daytime bartender. He was gone when you were here before.”

Troyce’s eyes seemed to lose interest in the subject. He dropped coins in the jukebox, had another cup of coffee, and used the restroom. When he sat back down on the stool, he felt the bandages on his chest bind against his wounds. He removed a black-and-white booking-room photo from his shirt pocket and laid it on the counter. He pushed it toward her with one finger. “You ever see this guy around here?”

She leaned over and looked at the photo without picking it up, idly touching the hair on the back of her head. “Not really.”

“What’s ‘not really’ mean?” Troyce asked.

The waitress took a barrette out of her pocket and worked it into the back of her hair. “You a Texas Ranger?”

“Why you think I’m from Texas?”

“You know, the accent and all. Besides, it’s printed on the bottom of this guy’s picture.”

“You’re pretty smart,” Troyce said.

“I’d remember him if he’d been in here.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because he’s almost as good-looking as you.”

Troyce slipped the photo back in his shirt pocket and buttoned the flap. “What time you get off?”

“Late,” she said. “I got night blindness, too. That’s how come Harold drives me home. And if he don’t, my husband does.”

Troyce left her a three-dollar tip and took his coffee cup and saucer into the saloon and sat at the bar. Through the back windows, he could see the surface of the lake wrinkling in the wind and the steel-gray enormity of Swan Peak disappearing inside the snow. “Ms. Wellstone been in?” he said.