James Burke - Swan Peak

I touched my hand to my head. My skin seemed to be on fire. Heat lightning flared in the sky, and I heard horses’ hooves thudding across the pasture, muffled inside the grass. I wished the sounds were human, not those of animals. I wished my enemies were out there so I could lock down on them with iron sights and blow them all over the serviceberry trees. I wished Death himself would confront me and release me from his taunts and allow me to deal on equal terms with him. Like the fool in a medieval morality play, I wanted the rules of mortality rewritten for me.

At sunup Molly and I went for breakfast in town. When we came back to the cabin, I had a message waiting on the machine from Helen Soileau. “Give me a call, Dave. I’m at home. I’m a little confused about what I’ve found on your bartender friend,” she said.

I punched in her number. “You found out something about Waxman?” I said.

“Dave?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“You sound funny. You all right up there?”

“Always.”

“A guy by that name shows up in lots of places. If they’re all the same guy, he’s been a long-haul truck driver for the last ten years or so. He’s also worked as a heavy-equipment mechanic and a bartender and restaurant manager. The Waxman with that Social Security number doesn’t have a criminal or military history. An H. T. Waxman was a cop thirty years ago in Conroe, Texas. But I don’t know if that’s the same Waxman, because I couldn’t confirm the cop’s Social Security number.”

“Your message said you’d found something you weren’t clear about.”

“Waxman has long periods without an earnings history. That’s not completely unusual, but your guy seems to have licenses and skills that would give him more computer-generated visibility.”

“Where was he a truck driver?”

“He worked out of Sacramento, Seattle, and Denver. Wait a minute.” I heard her rustling pages, as though turning them on a legal pad. “He also drove for a grain company of some kind in Dumas, Texas. Where’s Dumas?”

“In the Panhandle,” I said.

“Your guy doesn’t fit a profile. The defectives always leave shit prints. But your guy has no jacket of any kind. What are you looking at him for?”

“Conroe is forty-five minutes north of Houston. Funny he was around there at about the same time the Wellstones were.”

“God forgive me, I have to ask you a question,” she said.

“What?”

“I love you, Pops, so don’t hold it against me.”

“Say it.”

“Did you have a slip? Are you back on the dirty boogie? Tell me the truth.”

LYLE HOBBS WASN’Tthe brightest bulb in the box. He was a southern street rat and mean-spirited peckerwood descended from the kind of white people who, in an earlier time, had worked as paddy rollers and assistant overseers. But unlike his friend Quince, he had the ability to think and looked upon passion and anger and delusions about human fidelity as forms of self-indulgence that only the rich could afford.

As a consequence, he had never stacked serious time. In short, he was a survivor. He was also what investigative cops call “a weak sister.” The latter is the frail link in the chain, the conscript looking over his shoulder at the fort, the sycophant trying to guess which way the political wind is about to blow. If there is only one life raft on board a ship, and if seawater is flooding up through the ruptured hull and waves are washing over the gunwales, you can bet that someone of Lyle Hobbs’s ilk will already have the life raft strapped on his back.

He was driving an old Japanese car when he came up the dirt road, the windows down, the dust funneling back inside. He drove past the archway in front of Albert’s house and turned in to the lane that led to our cabin, his eyes switching from the rearview mirror to the side window, checking to see if his nemesis Clete Purcel was anywhere in sight.

His shirt was open, and I could see the iridescent shine of sweat on his chest. His skin and eyebrows and hair were gray with dust, his eyes bright, as though he’d had a couple of hits of crystal. When he cut the engine, the sun was baking on his car, a cloud of grasshoppers swarming past his window. There were two suitcases in the backseat, one piled on top of the other, the two of them roped together.

“What’s the haps, Lyle?” I said.

He looked up at me, his mouth slightly open, his recessed eye somehow lower than the other. “I didn’t sign on to take somebody else’s bounce. I do security. I chauffeur people’s automobiles. That’s all I do. Where’s Purcel?” he said.

“Not here,” I lied.

“I thought I saw his Caddy behind Albert Hollister’s house.”

I glanced at my watch. “I’m kind of busy right now. What’s on your mind?”

“Sorry to get in your space.”

“I didn’t invite you here, bud. Take your bullshit someplace else.” I started to walk away.

“I tried to get aholt of that Vietnamese woman.”

“Alicia Rosecrans?”

“Nobody would return my calls.”

I kept walking toward the cabin. I heard him get out of the car and slam the door. When I turned around, I thought he was going to hit me.

“I was there the morning that college boy gave it to Ridley Wellstone,” he said. “The kid was bent out of shape. He came there by himself. He didn’t use his head. Maybe it was pride, like before he went to the cops, he had to confront Mr. Wellstone and shame him for what he tried to do to the girl. It’s the kind of dumb thing a kid would do. That’s kids, right? But it was dumb. The kid’s parents ought to have taught him better. You don’t let your pride push you into situations you got to bluff your way out of.”

“You want a drink of water? You look a little hot.”

Lyle Hobbs glanced back at Albert’s house. Clete’s Caddy was parked in the shade. A large raven was standing on the convertible top, cawing at the trees. Hobbs touched at his mouth and widened his eyes, as though trying to see more clearly into the shade.

“I could hear him talking loud in Mr. Wellstone’s office, all wired up, like he could deal with somebody like Mr. Wellstone on equal terms.”

“Seymour Bell went to the Wellstones’ compound? That’s what you’re telling me?” I said.

“Mr. Wellstone has an office upstairs. Bell went straight upstairs and told Mr. Wellstone he’d propositioned his girlfriend, what’s-her-name.”

“Cindy Kershaw,” I said.

“She worked as a janitor at the health club where he was getting therapy for his sciatica. Sonny Click tried to get it on with her. She came up to Swan Lake to tell Mr. Wellstone. Except he tried to put moves on her himself. When she didn’t go for it, he must have got a little rough, maybe feeling her up or something. Or at least that was what Bell was saying to him. Mr. Wellstone told him to file a report with the Sheriff’s Department, because he knew the kid didn’t have diddly-squat to support his story. That’s when Bell tried to one-up him.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“He told Mr. Wellstone the girl had a digital recorder in her purse, that she had turned it on and caught the whole thing, everything about the ministry and Click seducing young girls and Mr. Wellstone trying to get into Cindy’s pants. I heard a chair scraping. I think Mr. Wellstone must have gotten up and tried to push the kid out of his office. Except it didn’t work out that way. Bell said he was gonna dime Sonny Click and Mr. Wellstone and show them up for the frauds they were. Then he shoved Mr. Wellstone down the stairs. He looked like a pile of broken sticks at the bottom of the steps.”

“When did this happen?” I asked.

“The same day those kids got killed.”