James Burke - Swan Peak

Clete followed my line of vision to the sedan. “Feel like voyeurs are looking through your bathroom window?”

“Order me a glass of milk,” I said.

“Where you going?” he said.

I went out the door and down the street. I tapped on the passenger window of the sedan. The man rolled down the window. Neither he nor the driver spoke.

“Mind if I get in and have a word with you?” I said.

The driver hit the lock release on the back doors. Both men remained silent. I sat down inside and closed the door behind me. The car’s interior smelled new and clean. I pulled out the badge holder Joe Bim Higgins had given me and opened it. “We’re on the same side, right?” I said.

The driver peeled off the foil on a yogurt cup and began eating it with a tiny plastic spoon. The scalps of both men were shiny inside their crew cuts, the backs of their necks and heads somehow reminiscent of shoe spoons. “Why don’t you guys share information, maybe cooperate a little bit with the locals?” I said.

No response.

“It sends a bad signal,” I said. “We always get the sense we’re the dildos and you guys are the serious dicks. Not cool, right?”

“Know what he’s talking about?” the passenger asked the driver.

“Search me,” the driver said.

“That’s clever, coming from two guys who got made five minutes into their surveillance,” I said.

“I’m a rep for a feminine hygiene spray. He’s with Orkin Pest Control,” the driver said, spooning yogurt into his mouth, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “Who’d you say you worked for?”

“Here’s what it is,” I said. “The death of those two college kids is somehow hooked in to the Wellstones. Your guys are firing into the well when you spend time chasing Purcel around. The Wellstones are the target, not Purcel and not me. The murder of the two kids and perhaps the tourists on the interstate is the issue. Those aren’t hard concepts to work with. If you want to follow us around, be our guests. Just try not to be so obvious. It’s embarrassing to watch.”

I got out of the car and closed the door behind me. The passenger rolled down his window again. “Your friend has a dirty jacket, and so do you, Mr. Robicheaux. Neither one of you has the right to lecture anybody. Your fat friend may have deliberately caused a plane crash that resulted in a mass murder. You think the two of you can come up here and fish and simply say ‘fuck you’ to the United States government?”

I leaned down to the window, right in his face. “Clete and I were fighting for this country about the same time your mother’s diaphragm slipped. Stay away from us, you arrogant pissant.”

I went back into Stockman’s and started eating, my face hot and bright in the bar mirror, my food now as tasteless as cardboard.

“You lose your Kool-Aid out there?” Clete said.

“I wouldn’t necessarily call it that.”

He clasped his big hand on the back of my neck, his face suffused with a grin. “You’re an awful liar, Streak.”

“We need to do something about this crap.”

“We take it to them with tongs, big mon.”

“You’re my kind of situational philosopher, Cletus,” I replied.

“Give us fresh coffee and another plate of spuds and a bowl of gravy on the side, will you?” Clete said to the bartender.

REVEREND SONNY CLICKwasn’t hard to find. He was listed in the Missoula phone directory in the Yellow Pages under the heading “Church” and the subheading “Charismatic Churches.” His particular church was called the Wings of the Dove. Where was its location? Nowhere. He operated out of a farmhouse east of Rock Creek, and his church consisted of a sleek red twin-engine plane that he kept in a tin shed in a meadow bordered by the Clark Fork River on one side and a rock-sheer mountain on the other.

“You’re sure this is the same guy who was at the revival on the res?” Clete said, getting out of the Caddy.

“Wait till you see him.”

“What’s different about this guy?”

“It’s not what’s different, it’s what’s the same. Every one of these guys looks like an actor playing a charlatan. I’ve never understood how anyone can look at their faces on a television screen and send them money.”

“Check out the audience on the wrestling channel,” Clete said, not really listening. “Is that the guy?”

A man had emerged from the front door of the farmhouse, his features dark with shadow under the porch roof. As soon as he reached the sunlight, he was wearing a smile that had not been there seconds earlier. His stylized beard made me think of lines of black ants running from under his earlobes, down his lower jawbone, and up to the corners of his mouth. He wore no coat but had on a white dress shirt and a silver tie tucked inside a sequined vest. There were rings on his fingers and two fine chains, one gold and one silver, looped around his neck.

When we introduced ourselves, his handshake was square and firm, his eyes direct and respectful, as though he was eager to help out with a criminal investigation. Everything about him reeked of disingenuousness and manipulation.

“You’ve been with Wellstone Ministries for quite a while, have you?” I said.

“Actually, I don’t work for them. I work with them on occasion. There are several ministries I help out with. This afternoon I’ll be in East Oregon and tomorrow up in the high country in Nevada. Tuesday I’m back here, and Wednesday I’ll be in Winnemucca again. That little plane has carried the Word to many a remote community.” He pulled back his shirt cuff to check the time on his watch. “I need to be in the air pretty soon. What’s this case you’re working on again?”

Reverend Sonny Click wasn’t very good at dealing with cops. Like all people who are afraid or who have something to hide, he continued to provide extraneous information we didn’t ask of him, filling the air with words, controlling the conversation so others couldn’t talk. In the meantime, Clete said nothing, his eyes roving over the farmhouse and the yard and the unwatered plants in the window boxes and flower beds.

“Can you take a look at the pictures of these two kids?” I said.

Click cupped the photographs of Cindy Kershaw and Seymour Bell in his palm and studied them. Studied, not glanced at or simply looked at. He studied them long enough to give himself time to think about his next statement and time enough to make me believe he was doing everything in his power to help us.

“No sir, I can’t say that I’ve seen them,” he replied. “They could have sat in my congregation at one time or another, but I don’t remember them.”

He tried to return the photos to me, but I didn’t take them. Instead, I continued to look into his face without speaking.

“Wish I had more information for you, but it doesn’t look like I do,” he said.

“You’re sure about that?” I said.

“Nobody can be absolutely sure about anything, except faith in the Lord. But in this case, I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen these people.”

I removed the photos from his hand and placed them in my shirt pocket. The wind was blowing through the canyon, stiffening an air sock at the end of the mowed runway. Clete had not spoken. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth but did not light it. His gaze was fixed on the front doorway of the farmhouse. “That your daughter?” he said.

“No, she’s an assistant. In our campus ministry program,” Click said.

“We’d like to talk with her,” I said.

“She’s a mite shy. She’s had an unfortunate life. Her father was a drug addict and died in prison, and her mother became a street person in San Francisco. I created a little job for her helping out with my paperwork and such. She takes care of the yard and the plants while I’m gone, too. She’s a good kid, and I hate to see her drug into something like this.”