James Burke - Swan Peak

“Maybe Seymour Bell’s purchase of the cross didn’t have anything to do with the Wellstones and their religious crusade,” I said.

“It did,” Molly said.

“Why?”

“People don’t buy a wood cross on a leather cord for ornamental reasons. The cross is important to the person who wears it because it was earned. It’s not a piece of jewelry. It’s a badge of merit.”

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and stared at her. “Wait here a minute,” I said.

The bell above the door rang again when I reentered the religious store. “Who paid for the cross, ma’am?” I asked.

She thought about it. “The man,” she said. “His wallet was on a chain, the kind that loops around into the back pocket, even though he was wearing a suit. He counted out three one-dollar bills and made me give him a receipt.”

“Do you keep copies of your receipts?”

“Not for walk-in purchases like that. I tore it off the cash register and handed it to him.”

“You’ll call me if he comes back, won’t you?”

“I’m not sure I will. When something like this happens, I think the devil is involved in it. I think it’s a mistake to believe otherwise. I think it’s a mistake to put your hand in it.”

This was the best source of information I had found so far regarding the origins of Seymour Bell’s wood cross.

When Molly and I got back to the courthouse, the sheriff told me the SUV I had asked him to run was registered in the name of Troyce Nix, a supervisory employee at a contract penitentiary in West Texas. Joe Bim said I could call a deputy sheriff by the name of Jeff Rawlings if I wanted more information. “You think this fellow is worth all this trouble?” he asked.

“Probably not,” I said.

He gave me the use of a spare office, and I called an extension at a sheriff’s department in a rural county east of the Van Horn Mountains. Jeff Rawlings explained that he had been one of four investigative sheriff’s deputies who had interviewed Troyce Nix at his bedside in an El Paso hospital. At first Rawlings was taciturn and noncommittal, and I had the feeling he did not want to revisit his experience with Nix. “Has he got hisself in some kind of trouble up there?” he asked.

“I met him at a revival while I was investigating a double homicide. He seemed to be looking for somebody. I’d like to find out who.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“I had the sense he doesn’t easily share information.”

“Nix is on paid medical leave from a contract prison. He’s also a major stockholder in the prison. So he might be on leave a long time. He has a hunting camp not far from the prison. He had a convict under his supervision at the camp when he said a tramp come out of the bedroom closet with a shank and cut him up. According to Nix, the convict was digging postholes when it happened. Nix says the tramp must have come in from the highway and was robbing the house when Nix and the convict drove up. The tramp hid in the closet, and when Nix opened the door, the tramp sliced him up. The convict took off with the truck, and Nix called 911 on his cell. That’s the story.”

“You’re not convinced that’s the way it went down?”

“There was blood all over the bedroom. He was lying in a ball on the floor when the paramedics got there. But there was also blood behind the house. He says he went outside and tried to get the convict to help him, but the convict had took off.”

“What’s Nix’s background?”

“I was afraid you’d get to that.”

I waited, but he didn’t speak. “He’s an ex-felon?” I said.

“Nix worked as an MP at Abu Ghraib. It got him kicked out of the army. So he got into jailing on a privatized basis. I hope he’s up there enjoying y’all’s alpine vistas. I hope he ain’t up there for other purposes.”

“Like what?”

“No comment.”

“Was the convict under his supervision ever caught?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“You think he’s the guy who cut up Nix?”

“There’s no motivation. The boy was half-trusty and probably gonna make parole at his next hearing. Every write-up Nix put in his jacket was positive. For me, the convict as suspect don’t add up. But nothing about Nix does. If you figure it out, give me another call.”

“What’s the background on the convict?”

“He was down for grand auto, but the way I understand it, his real crime was stopping a pimp from beating up a chippie in a parking lot. The pimp happened to be the nephew of the meanest bucket of goat piss to ever sit on the Texas bench. I wrote up my report on all this and shut the drawer on it. I don’t think Nix belongs in law enforcement. I don’t think the kid belonged in a contract jail. But I don’t get to make the rules. Anything else?”

“What’s the escaped convict’s name?”

“Jimmy Dale Greenwood. Some of the other cons called him Jimmy Git-It-and-Go ’cause he was a guitar-picking man.”

JAMIE SUE WELLSTONEand her husband kept separate bedrooms, not at her request but at his. Leslie Wellstone was an insomniac and wandered the corridors and downstairs rooms of his enormous house in slippers and robe for hours on end, sometimes reading under a lamp, sometimes fixing warm milk that he didn’t drink. Perhaps his life of sleeplessness was due to his war injuries. Perhaps it had other causes. Whatever the cause, he never discussed it. Leslie Wellstone never complained and never discussed personal matters of any kind.

He was undemanding in his attitude toward Jamie Sue. She could buy anything she wanted and go anywhere she wanted. The best care possible was available for her child. Her driver, Quince, would probably lay down his life for her. A wave of her hand, the tinkle of a bell, a touch of her finger on the house speaker system could summon any type of domestic or security personnel she wanted. There were implicit understandings about her and her husband’s sexual congress and the number of times a month they entered into it, but it was never he who initiated it. She left her bed and came to his of her own accord, usually in the dark, just before sunrise, when she woke hot and disturbed and filled with longing from a dream she would never tell him about. She didn’t hold back when she made love with Leslie, but she did it with her eyes closed, thinking of the man in the dream, thinking perhaps just momentarily of the terrible trade-off that had made her despise herself and wonder if her soul was forfeit.

Then she would lie beside him, her naked body damp under the sheets, his hand in hers, and try to convince herself there was redemption in charity and that maybe even in committing sin, she had brought a degree of happiness into a blighted man’s life.

It was in moments like these that she saw into another corner of Leslie’s soul. She wondered if, inside his veneer of gentlemanly manners and self-deprecating humor, he had found ways to mock and injure her. Worse, she wondered if his cynical statements were made with forethought and in contempt of her poor education and background. In the predawn hours of the morning after the revival on the res, she had gone into Leslie’s bedroom and undressed and gotten in bed beside him. After they had completed their particular form of lovemaking, he had disentangled himself from her and lay quietly in the gloom, staring at the ceiling, his breath as audible as wind whistling in a dry pipe.

“Is everything all right, Leslie?” she asked.

“I was curious about your rotund friend.”

“Who?”

“Purcel is the name, isn’t it? I bet he’s a ton of fun to bounce around with.”

She started to speak, but he turned on his side and touched his finger to her lips. “I have a question about the way you keep your eyes shut even though the room is dark.”