As she was thanking him for his help and giving him a card, Mark looked at the booking counter, where a deputy was leaning back in a chair working through a can of Pringles and a bottle of Dr Pepper. Mark knew better than to ask, but damned if he could stop himself.
“You ever heard of anyone named Novak?” he asked the gray-haired deputy when Lynn was finished.
When he’d introduced himself earlier, he’d just said Markus, no last name, and let Lynn take the lead. Now the deputy studied him with fresh interest.
“Which one?”
Mark shrugged. “Any.”
“Haven’t seen them in a year, maybe two, but they’ll be around, and you’d be wise to start with the jails if you want to find them. Some of them are in our—what did you call it? Frequent-flier program. The ones who aren’t dead or disappeared, they’ll mooch a few meals off the county in due time, I’m sure.”
He’d said nothing wrong, nothing that Mark wouldn’t have said himself, and so he shouldn’t have felt his blood begin to boil and the skin around his eyes and mouth go tight.
“What do they have to do with it?” the deputy asked.
Mark shook his head. Lynn was watching closely.
“I knew a couple of them,” Mark said. “That’s all.”
“Sorry to hear it. Which ones?”
Mark felt like there was something ticking in his chest. He looked to the side of the old cop’s face when he said, “Larry, Ronny, and Violet, mostly.”
“Shit, you knew the brew crew!” The deputy was jovial and smiling. Mark’s body felt very still, and he could feel the ridges of his teeth on the sides of his tongue. The deputy kept going, oblivious. “There aren’t many jails around here those three didn’t drink themselves into. Last I knew of Larry, he was in trouble for running a hunting-guide service without an outfitter’s license.”
Mark nodded numbly. He was aware that he’d made a mistake in asking and now he just wanted out, but the deputy spoke again.
“You’re likely too young to remember Violet the way she used to be, but back in her day, we didn’t mind bringing her in at all,” he said, and he winked at Mark. Conspiratorial, man-to-man. “She had an ass like a…a…” He glanced at Lynn and stuttered to a stop. “Sorry. She was a bit of a looker, but what a train wreck of a human being.”
The ticking in Mark’s chest had moved into his brain and he knew from experience that it would not pause there long before it found his hands, and so he turned and walked away from them without a word. He passed through the doors and out onto the street, where a chill wind blew down out of the mountains. The sun was high and bright but with that wind blowing, it was hard to feel much warmth. It could stay that way right into the summer here. You could shiver your way through a sunburn in this country.
Mark felt a hand on his arm and looked back to see Lynn Deschaine staring at him with concern. “What was that about? Why were you asking about your family?”
“That was a mistake. I don’t know why I did it. Just curious, I guess. Time passes and you wonder if anybody remembers you. I guess they do.”
He walked back to the Tahoe with Lynn trailing behind, and he kept his hands in his pockets and the fingers of his right hand wrapped around the plastic disk from the Saba National Marine Park. He’d been there with Lauren on an endless blue sea where the sun shone warm on his skin. There was a wind over the Saba, too, but that wind didn’t chill the sun. He remembered that day regularly, called the visual up often. Sometimes it felt harder, though. Sometimes it felt very far away.
They drove northwest out of Powell and chased the Clark Fork of the Yellowstone out of Wyoming and into Montana. The water was running high and fast. Any place that had white water would be a screamer right now. It was too early in the season for the rafting guides to be out, but they would be soon enough.
Mark was driving in silence, feeling the fatigue from no sleep accumulating with the miles. Lynn must have been thinking the same thing, because she said, “I feel like we should have knocked on a lot more doors than this by now.”
“That’s the problem out here. You’ve got to commit to several hours on the road just to get from one door to the next.”
“You think the lineman is going to be able to tell us anything?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Your client will want to hear what he has to say, though.” Mark’s voice sounded curt, and he didn’t mean for it to. His mind was back on the deputy in Powell, the sly smile that had creased his good-ol’-boy face. Once upon a time, somebody would have knocked that smile into a bloody line. Once upon a time, that somebody might have been Mark.
No more, though. No more. Mark had killed that man in a place not far from here, up in the Beartooth Mountains, and later he’d buried him in a warm southern sea. That man was gone for good.
“Did you know Violet?” Lynn asked. Her voice was quiet. Gentle. She was looking at Mark, but he didn’t take his eyes off the road.
“She was my mother.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I got that response a lot growing up.”
“No, I mean I’m sorry that you had to listen to that guy—”
“He was fine,” Mark said. “He remembers things just right, I’m sure. A little different perspective from mine, but that doesn’t make him wrong. I shouldn’t have asked.” He paused and a few miles fell behind them in silence and then he said, “It’s just a bit of a brain-bender, being back here, you know? I still know all the roads, all the mountains, all the towns. It’s just as it should be. But I don’t want it to be. I want it to be so damned different that I don’t even have to think about the way it was.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
Mark nodded and drove on toward Red Lodge. Through one corner of the windshield, he saw the Beartooths taking shape, jagged granite towers that looked like they intended to take a bite out of the clouds. They were very much like the lonesome peaks he’d seen in his dreams.
29
They were out of the flatlands and into countryside that had begun to fill with rolling hills, the mountains still many hours ahead, when the police flashers went on behind the truck.
Janell had driven for most of the day, the cruise control locked exactly four miles per hour above the speed limit, fast enough to blend in but not fast enough to invite police attention so she would know immediately that any police interest concerned the identity of the truck, not its speed. They’d switched positions just an hour earlier, though, so she said, “How fast were you going?”
“Maybe ten over, max.”
Just enough to leave the situation in doubt. She watched the mirror and saw the driver’s door of the cruiser open and an officer get out. Older and overweight, with a mustache. He hadn’t spent any time on his radio or with his computer, and that was encouraging. He also kept his head down as he approached, and that was even better, because if he knew anything about the people inside this truck, he would have had his eyes up and his hand close to his gun.
“Speeding,” she said. “You idiot. You risked us for an extra five miles an hour.”
“I’ll talk him down.”
“You’re a probation violator. When he runs your license, he’ll see that.”
“He won’t run the license.”
“If he runs the plate we’re in trouble. And everybody runs the plate.”
They’d stolen a plate off a similar make and model truck in Georgia, but the VIN wouldn’t match if checked. The longer the stop went, the worse things would become. The cop was at the door, rapping on the window with his knuckles. Doug put the window down and said, “Taillights out again? They’ve been giving me hell.”
“There’s no trouble with your taillights, pal, and you know it. What’s with the fast-and-furious routine here? Speeding, driving all over the damn roadway.”
All over the roadway was a lie; Doug’s driving had been fine, just fast. But they were on a lonely stretch of highway in a shitkicker town in the middle of nowhere and th
ey had a vehicle with a Florida license. They were good for a stop, and good for the county’s coffers.
“He’s only driving fast because I told him to,” she said.
The deputy lowered his head so he could see past Doug and over to the passenger seat.
“Why would you tell him to drive reckless, miss?”
“Because I’m about to be sick. I’ve been sick three times in the past eighty miles. Food poisoning.”
“Is that so?” He studied her. His mustache was unevenly trimmed and his breathing was heavy, as if the walk from the car had winded him. Only one vehicle had passed since he’d turned the lights on. It was a lonely stretch of road.
“I’m about to be sick again,” she said.
“I’m sorry to hear it. But I’m still going to need the gentleman’s driver’s license and registration.”
“No warning?” Doug said. “It would sure be nice if we could—”
“License and registration,” the officer repeated firmly. His name tag glittered: M. Terrell.
“Just give it to him,” she said. “I’m going to throw up.”
When she opened the door, Terrell barked at her to stay in the vehicle, but she ignored him and lurched out of the seat and hurried several feet away, off the shoulder of the road and down the steep slope, and then she kept going, past the tree line, where she made a show of falling to her knees and retching. She could hear him instructing Doug to stay where he was, and then grass and leaves crunched beneath his boots as he made his way toward her. He wore heavy work boots, the kind her stepfather had worn. The first man she’d killed.
“Y’all been doing some drinking, maybe?”
She shook her head. She was on her hands and knees with a string of spit hanging from her mouth. She sucked air in noisy gasps, making sure her back rose and fell with the effort. He stopped just behind her, nothing visible of him but the work boots. She thought he probably liked the view just fine. She lowered her forehead to the ground, touched the cool earth with it, and closed her eyes.
“What’s your name, miss?”
She said, “Abenaki.” An old joke, one shared only with Eli, who was dealing with Violet, a woman who believed deeply in the spiritual power of American Indians. Eli would have laughed, hearing it under these circumstances. The deputy did not laugh.
“Ab-a-what?”
“Abenaki.”
“That’s some name.”
“It’s Indian.”
“You don’t look the part.”
“Who are you to say whether I look like my own name?”
“Fair enough. I’m going to need you to stand up and come back to the road. You have to puke, you can do it over by the side of the truck where I can see you. We’re not staying down here in the woods.”
She nodded absently, her head brushing the dirt, her hair falling around her face. She moved a hand to her belly and groaned.
“You sure y’all haven’t had a few too many?”
“None.”
“Okay. We’ll see about that. But let’s get over to the truck, like I asked. You can sit outside of it, but you’re going to sit where I can see you.”
She lifted her head, wobbled, and then fell again. “Can you help me up? Please?”
He hesitated, then stepped forward. “Let’s go.” He reached down and took her left arm, the one that wasn’t pressed to her stomach. She leaned her weight into him as he lifted so that he had to choose whether to use both hands or move back and let her fall. He chose to use both hands, one on her left arm and one around her waist. That was when she pivoted toward him, drew the knife from her belt, and opened his throat with a single, smooth slice.
His eyes went wide and he tried to step away from her, reach for his gun, and reach for his throat all at the same time. She held on to his right hand, held tight, feeling his pulse in his palm as he gave up on the gun and settled for reaching for his throat with his left hand, as if he could seal the wound with pressure, stem the inevitable tide. He fell over as blood seeped between his fingers and his mouth worked but no words came. She moved closer to his side, still clutching his hand, and watched. Life left his hand first, and then his eyes. The shortest of delays, but still there. Life seeped from the limbs first, and lingered longest in the eyes.
She knew this well.
She wanted to stay with him but there was no time. She released his hand and studied the front of her shirt, which was splattered with blood. Then she looked up the slope at his cruiser. It was a new-model Dodge, and it would have an in-dash video system that started recording as soon as he activated the emergency lights. That was why she’d come so far into the trees. She doubted the video would show what had happened, but it would show the truck.
She didn’t need long, though. She just needed to stay in motion. She got in the passenger seat and slammed the door, wiping the blade of the knife on her jeans.
“Drive.”
Doug stared at her, wide-eyed.
“What did you do! He wasn’t going to stop us, he was just going to give us a ticket, and now we’re—”
“In a hurry,” she said. “We were in a hurry before, and we are in a hurry now. Nothing has changed. It’s all about forward momentum. We just need to keep it going forward. Either start driving or get out of the seat so I can.”
He put the truck back in gear and then looked in the rearview mirror. It was still filled with the dancing colored lights of the police car.
“Forward momentum,” she said again, and he lowered his eyes and pressed on the accelerator and pulled them off the shoulder and back onto the road. Ahead, the mountains loomed in shadow.
“I’d change roads fast,” she said. “And I think we’re going to need a new truck.”
That was a shame, because she’d always loved the bloodred truck with the big tires and the throaty motor. All the same, it had to be done.
“Get off the highway. All of these hillbillies will have four-wheel drive. Look for a driveway that goes back into the trees. Someplace isolated.”
He didn’t answer. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. The smell of blood was heavy in the cab of the truck, and if she concentrated, she could still feel the officer’s pulse against her thumb.
30
BMV records told them that Jay Baldwin lived on Twenty-Second Street West in Red Lodge, the last street off Highway 212 before it began to climb into the Beartooths. The home was a nice A-frame with a garage below the decks and wide banks of windows facing the mountains.
Mark parked on the curb, and they had just gotten out of the Tahoe when the garage door went up. A man’s boots and jeans became visible, and then the whole of him—Jay Baldwin, standing at the top of a short staircase, locking the interior door to the house. He had his back to them, and when he turned and saw them he jerked and moved a hand toward his heart like they’d given him a coronary.
“Mr. Baldwin?” Lynn said.
“Yes. What?” He hurried down the steps and out of the garage. “Who are you?”
“Private investigators,” Lynn said.
He stopped walking. Stopped breathing, it seemed. He looked like they’d fired off a flash grenade in his face.
“There’s nothing wrong,” Lynn said. “Nothing about you, I mean.” She offered him a card.
“Your name came up in an article about some vandalism on the high-voltage lines around here,” Mark said. “We were hoping you could tell us a little about that.”
“The lines?” He had frantic eyes. They bounced from Mark to Lynn and then out beyond, to the street. Most of the time, in fact, they were on the street.
“Yeah. In the paper, you were quoted as—”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
Mark raised his eyebrows. “Pardon? You don’t know anything about the words you provided to the newspaper?”
“I know what I said. I just mean…look, we’ve got public relations people for this. I can’t just…” He finally brought his eyes back to Mark. “D
o you think you know who did it?”
“We might have some ideas. First, though, we need to know the situation. You said somebody had been cutting trees onto the lines. You called it, I believe, intentionally malicious.”
“Right. So who do you think it was? What’s his name?”
He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. A subtle movement, not as jittery as his eyes, but still restless. Something about him didn’t feel right, and Mark realized what it was: Jay Baldwin in person did not convey the same impression as Jay Baldwin in the photo, the man who looked a little worn but plenty steady. The guy you’d want responding to your emergencies.
“Everything okay, Mr. Baldwin?” Mark said.
“Fine, yeah, but I can’t deal with this. I just…it’s not for me.” Mark saw that he had something in his hand, something that for an instant looked like a twin of the dive permit Mark carried. A small plastic chip. He put it in his pocket before Mark could see it clearly. “Listen,” he said, “I’d really like to know the specifics of your case.”
“We can discuss all of that,” Lynn said. “You mind if we come in for a couple minutes? We can tell you—”
“No!” He barked it at her, and she tilted her head back, startled.
“Okay. We can stay out here. But—”
“No,” he repeated. “I’m not the guy who can discuss things like this. It’s, you know, it’s a, um…a policy. It’s a corporate policy. You’ll have to call the company.”
He backed away from them but kept his head up, his eyes darting. The street was empty but you’d have thought there was a pack of feral dogs out there. He reached his truck, tried to put his key in the door lock, fumbled, and dropped the keys. When he moved to recover them, the white chip fell free and hit the garage floor and he swore at himself in a harsh whisper. He went for the chip before the keys, picked it up from the floor and inspected it as if he’d dropped a Rolex facedown onto gravel. He put it back in his pocket, but it was a different pocket this time. His breast pocket. He had to unzip his jacket to secure it.
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