Bitterroot Blues

by Paul Moomaw

  He shook his head in exasperation. “Cross that bridge when I get to it,” he muttered to himself, and stepped up to the front door of the Crisp house. The door opened part way before he could knock. Elizabeth Crisp stood there, hanging on to the door even tighter than she had the first time he called on her, and looking frightened. The light was dim, but the bruise around her left eye leaped out. Bryce stood just behind her, staring at Arceneaux from around her waist.

  “Please go away,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “I’ve heard some things I need to check out with you,” Arceneaux said. “I only need a few minutes.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t help you. I’m sorry,” she said, and then shut the door, quietly but firmly.

  As Arceneneaux drove back toward Missoula, he experienced a sense of disquiet whose source he could not identify. It grew stronger with every mile, and by the time he had reached town, parked, and climbed the stairs to his office, it had turned from disquiet to foreboding, and finally to outright fear.

  “Shit,” he said. “This is ridiculous.” He picked up the phone and quickly punched in a number. “He’s just a little kid, for Chrissakes,” he muttered as the telephone rang at the other end and then was answered.

  “Hi, Teresa,” Arceneaux said. “You think Josh would like to come down next Friday for the weekend?”

  Chapter 16

  Lorena Zimmerman, who had been Lorena Glazeburke, lived in a small, tidy rental on Charis Street, as close to Rattlesnake Creek as her ex-husband’s townhouse, and a mile away geographically, but a world away economically.

  “Fact is,” she said, as she led Arceneaux into the combination dining room kitchen area, because it was either sit on wooden chairs there, or on the rug in the living room, “I really believe, sometimes, that I married Otis for his name. It seemed pretty grand for a little ranch girl from Big Timber, and God knows his family’s got money to burn. But when the glow went out of the marriage, the shine went off the name, too, so I took my daddy’s name back.” She poured coffee for both of them, without asking if Arceneaux wanted any. “I expect I’ll keep it, too, even if I get married again.”

  Arceneaux took a swallow of coffee. It wasn’t great, had the cereal flavor of something like Folgers, but it was hot, the day had been long, and caffeine was caffeine.

  “I appreciate your taking the time to see me,” he said.

  “Time’s one thing I have to spare,” Lorena said. “But don’t ask for money. My attorney keeps telling me I’ll do just fine when things are settled, but in the meantime, Otis wouldn’t toss me a dime bag of chicken farts unless a judge told him he had to. Oh well,” she said, “none of that is your concern, is it? You want to know about that fellow they say killed his wife.” She laughed. “That’s one good thing about Otis, anyway. He hates my guts, but he’s too big a sissy to try to kill me, plus he knows I’m a better shot.” She leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms behind her head. Arceneaux tried at first not to notice the way her plaid shirt tightened against her breasts, but then decided he was supposed to.

  “Your ex told me that Arden, if he was the person driving that green Power Wagon, deliberately tried to run his dog down and kill it,” Arceneaux said.

  “Oh, bullshit,” Lorena said. “Not that it would be any loss if somebody did kill that nasty mutt. But what happened was that Harold ran right out at the truck. I guess he thought he could bite it or something. If the truck did any swerving, it was to get away from the dog.” She paused, looked at the ceiling for a moment. “It was going awfully fast, though, I have to admit. And quiet. Whoever owns that truck takes damn good care of it. You’d expect an older truck like that to make at least a little noise, and this one was old and beat up. Had big rust holes in its rocker plates. But it just whispered past.” She shook her head again. “Otis is wrong about what kind of truck it was, too. It wasn’t that rusted out old Power Wagon we saw parked down the road. It was an International Harvester, a big, old four-door job. They didn’t look anything alike, except they were both green. But then, Otis is from New York. He doesn’t know shit from Shinola about trucks. In fact, he doesn’t know shit from Shinola about much of anything at all, now I think of it.”

  “There’s no doubt it was a Harvester?” he said.

  Lorena shook her head. “My brother’s got one just like it, except you can hear his coming a mile down the road.” She paused. “I just remembered something else. It didn’t have regular plates. It was all letters, like one of those cutesy things everybody’s got these days. I couldn’t read it, though. Not enough light for that.”

  Arceneaux filed the information away and made a mental note to tell Larry French, not that it would do much good. Larry seemed to have made his mind up about the murders, and wasn’t a whole lot interested in facts that contradicted him.

  But I’m a lawyer, too, Arceneaux told himself. Or used to be. And if he could build a case in Arden’s favor that at least wasn’t any more circumstantial that the one against him, maybe somebody could be persuaded to take a second look. He drained his coffee and stood up.

  “Thanks for your time,” he said.

  “Sure,” she said. She led the way to the front door, then leaned against the jamb and gave him an appraising look. “I suppose you’re married,” she said.

  Arceneaux shook his head. “Used to be, but I learned my lesson.”

  Lorena tilted her head and smiled. “Feel free to drop by when you’re in the neighborhood.”

  “You never know,” Arceneaux said.

  “That’s for sure,” Lorena said, and sighed.

  Chapter 17

  “Back again, Sam?” Barbara Drake said. She sat behind her desk, and had been hanging up from a telephone call when Arceneaux stuck his head into her office. Tyler Rentz stood over the desk, stacking a pile of legal paper.

  “Like the bad penny,” Arceneaux said. “I’ve got some information.”

  “I’ll get out of your way,” Rentz said, and started toward the door.

  “Stay,” Arceneaux said. “Maybe you’ll be interested, even if Lady Drake here isn’t.” He settled into a chair without being asked. “You told me to find you a better suspect than Arden, remember?”

  Barbara nodded and waited for him to go on.

  “Try David Crisp.”

  Barbara laughed and leaned back in her chair. “Give me a break, Sam. The victim’s father?”

  “Who was an abusive son of a bitch who gave Samantha hell from the time she was a little kid.”

  “Says who?”

  “Anna Mae Preston, the Crisps’ next door neighbor.”

  “The Crisps’ nosy next door neighbor who has had a thing about David Crisp for years. We’ve got a whole file of complaints she has made against him. Not a single one was ever substantiated. You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “Let me finish,” Arceneaux said. He held up an index finger. “First, as I’ve pointed out before, whoever killed Corey Wallace had to be a skilled martial artist.”

  “Says Ed Munsey, maybe.”

  Arceneaux waved the comment away. “David Crisp is a martial artist. I don’t know how skilled he is, and I won’t test that out, thanks; but he has years of experience, and he has killed at least once.”

  That appeared to get Barbara’s attention. She leaned forward, her eyes a little wider open. “You know that for a fact?”

  “He told me. Said he did it with his bare hands. Said it took him about fifteen seconds.” Arceneaux paused to let the words sink in. “Crisp was also at the Double Pine more than once in the days before the murders.”

  “Why not? He probably was visiting his daughter.”

  “Not according to a housekeeper I talked to. Helen Lousen, who found the bodies. She and Samantha were buddies, and she says Samantha didn’t seem to like her dad. Said the one time they ran into each other, she brushed him off.”

  “Not a reason for murder,” Barbara said.

 
“The housekeeper also said that she saw Crisp and Wallace together more than once. And Crisp was practically bankrupt not long ago; then all of a sudden he had the money to buy a pricey truck with all the bells and whistles on it. So I go back to my original premise. Crisp was in business with Wallace, which is how he paid for the truck. Something went sour, and Crisp killed Wallace. Maybe Samantha was just in the way. Or maybe he was afraid she would tell.

  He sat back and watched Barbara, who at least was looking thoughtful, gazing at the ceiling and tapping her nails on the desk in a rapid tattoo.

  “It’s not a bad theory, Sam,” she said at length. “But nothing places Crisp at the scene of the murders. On the other hand, we know Arden Marks was there.”

  “His truck was there.”

  “Truck, man, what’s the difference?” Barbara pushed her chair away from the desk and stood up. “I’ve got a hearing,” she said. She paused at Arceneaux’s side and patted him lightly on the shoulder. “I’m not brushing you off, Sam. Who knows? Maybe Arden killed Samantha and Crisp killed Wallace.” She laughed and shook her head at her own words. “How’s that for a stretch?”

  She walked out the door, and Arceneaux and Rentz sat looking at each other for a moment.

  “What you said about Crisp being abusive,” Rentz said. “I can buy that. I don’t think Anna Mae Preston is just a nosy neighbor with a grudge. I responded to some of those complaints myself, and I saw bruises more than once, sometimes on Samantha, and sometimes on her mom. But the mother would never follow through, and that was before the days when the law required us to arrest abusers on the spot and ask questions later.” He stood up with a groan. “Too much car time. I need to start walking more.”

  Arceneaux followed Rentz out of the office, waved and headed for his Subaru. Something was gnawing at him, but he couldn’t pin it down. It was something else he had found out, something that might have nudged Barbara a little more in his direction, but he could not remember what it was.

  Chapter 18

  The rainbow, a big one if the dimple of its rise could be believed, was holding directly under an overhanging snag on the opposite bank of the Bitterroot River’s West Fork. The stream’s diminished autumn flow would make wading easy, but Anne shook her head.

  “Water’s too low and clear,” she muttered half to herself. “I’d just spook the fish.”

  “It’s a tricky cast from here, though,” Arceneaux said, nodding toward the seam separating the swifter center current from the slow edgewater where the fish lay. “That fast water will grab your line before the fly can get where you need it to be. You’ll just about have to drop it right on that pup’s nose.”

  “No biggie,” Anne said. She stepped to the edge of the bank, stripped several feet of line off her reel, and shot a cast downstream, then shook her head. “Not quite enough,” she said. She stripped another ten feet, letting it shoot as she cast downstream again, then picked the line up and, with a quick change of direction, roll cast it across the river, raising the tip slightly as she stopped the cast, then laying the rod down gently to allow the line to fall in large S curves across the water. The fly landed five feet upstream from the fish, then floated lazily in the slower current along the bank as the swift water in the middle grabbed at the slack in the line, leaving the fly undisturbed. Before the line straightened out completely, the fly had reached its destination. The rainbow rose and sipped it in with the delicacy of an experienced, if jaded, gourmand. Anne nodded emphatically, then lifted the rod tip just enough to set the hook. The fish exploded from the water, splashed back, and then headed with a silvery flash toward a sweeper snag several yards farther downstream.

  “Oh no you don’t,” Anne shouted. She leaped from the bank, nearly fell, then caught herself and hauled her tip high as she stopped the line from running. The trout fought for another half a minute, leaping twice more from the water, then gave up and allowed itself to be reeled in.

  “He’s done this before,” Arceneaux said.

  “Expect so,” Anne said. She cradled the rainbow in one hand and released the barbless hook with the other. The trout hovered near her ankle briefly, then tossed its tail and shot away, headed for the safety of the snag.

  Arceneaux watched admiringly as Anne climbed back onto the bank.

  “You cast like a man,” he said. “Did your daddy teach you that?”

  She offered him a quick salute with her middle finger. “I cast like a woman, bub,” she said. “And I learned from a woman. My Aunt Megan, who could outfish any man I ever met. And she learned from Joan Wulff. You may have heard of her.”

  “She wrote that book,” Arceneaux said. “The one on fly casting.”

  “That’s the one, Mister male chauvinist pig.”

  Arceneaux patted her on the butt. “Oink,” he said. “I figured you already knew that. You’ve always had the hots for my little curly tail.” He ducked as she swung at his head with her fly rod.

  “Break time,” Anne said. “I’m hungry.”

  “Me too,” Arceneaux said. “Want to drive on up to the lake? There’s a big, flat rock at the upper end that makes a great lunch counter.”

  “Sounds good, and afterwards we can check out the action upstream.”

  As they were slipping their rods into the cartop mounted holders that Arceneaux insisted were a necessity, not a luxury, when you might be pulling onto the shoulder every couple of miles to fish a favorite hole or riffle, the sound of a diesel engine announced that someone was moving up the road toward them. A truck appeared around the curve, a big, bright yellow Ford sporting a license plate that said GODOJO.

  Arceneaux watched the truck pass. “Son of a bitch,” he murmured.

  “You know him?” Anne said.

  Arceneaux nodded. “That’s David Crisp, Samantha’s father, and I want to see where he’s going.” He tugged at the Subaru’s door, which opened with a loud squeal of protest, dropped into the driver’s seat, and got the engine started as Anne settled into the passenger seat.

  “Only if it doesn’t interfere with lunch,” she said.

  “I promise,” Arceneaux said, and headed onto the road. He pulled to within a couple of hundred yards of the Ford, and then slowed to maintain the distance. They had driven less than a quarter of an hour when the other driver slowed almost to a halt, and then turned left onto a forest road.

  “That’s Piquette Creek Road,” Arceneaux said. “I bet he’s got some kind of hideaway back there.”

  “I thought it was all national forest through here.”

  Arceneaux nodded. “It mostly is,” he said. “But there’s some checkerboard, and there’s also a few cabins scattered around that sit on forest land, but get leased to private citizens.”

  “My daddy had a place like that,” Anne said. “Up by Loon Lake. When I was a kid, we used to go there all the time. Summer, winter, didn’t matter. The road ended a mile and a half from the cabin, so we had to carry all our food and dishes on our backs, but the water was good. In the winter, we would ski in. It was beautiful in the winter, and in the spring there really were loons.” She paused and sighed. “I miss it a lot.”

  “Your family doesn’t lease it anymore?”

  She shook her head. “After my father died, my mom gave it up. Said it was too full of old ghosts and memories. I haven’t been there since I was twelve. I keep thinking I’ll hike back in there again some time, just to see what kinds of memories are still there for me.”

  Arceneaux had not known that Anne’s father was gone, and wondered how he had died. He opened his mouth to ask, then glanced over and saw the pain in Anne’s face, and decided to wait for another time. He reached out and held her hand. She smiled, lifted his hand up, and brushed the knuckles with her lips.

  They drove in silence for a while, then Anne asked, “You still have your dad?”

  “Just in my heart,” Arceneaux said. “He died ten years ago. He wasn’t perfect. In fact I was realizing the other day that I don’t really know how t
o play with Josh because my dad never really played with me. He was all business. But still, if I can do half as good a job as the old man did, I’ll be happy.” He sighed. “He was good at just about everything. He worked for the tribal water authority. That’s a hard job, you know? Everybody’s ready to fight when it comes to water. And all those white farmers up there are especially touchy. They figure since the government helped them steal the land from the Indians, the Indians shouldn’t be able to tell them what to do with it, even if it is inside the reservation. But my dad, he got along with everybody, even the white farmers. He used to say that it was the Salish way, always had been, even before white people showed up. He was big on getting along, and respecting everybody’s way of thinking and believing. He always said the Indian way and the white way both had good and bad points. ‘There are many paths to the mountain top,’ is what he would say. I don’t know how many times I must have heard that from him, growing up. Or not growing up, really.”

  Anne snuggled closer. “How did he die?” she asked.

  “He was working, checking an irrigation gate on a ditch alongside the road. Two kids in a pickup, drunker than skunks, came roaring down that road. Two girls. They lost control, and the truck flipped, flew into the air, and landed right on top of my father. The girls died, too. They both got tossed out, and nobody ever figured out which of them was driving. They had stolen the truck.” Arceneaux sighed and smiled sadly. “One of the girls was Indian, the other white. I guess Dad died the way he lived.”

  Anne grabbed his hand and squeezed it hard. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Me too.” He returned the squeeze.

  “I bet I would have liked him.”

  “He would have liked you, too, even if . . .” Arceneaux cut the words off.

  “Even if what?” Anne asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “No, not nothing. You look like you’ve got a turd caught in your teeth.”

  “Just that it wouldn’t bother him, your being white. He married one himself, after all.”