The night was clear, and the stars seemed more multitudinous than usual. Although the temperature was a couple degrees over ninety, the unfathomable depth of the sky and the spectacular glinting of the stars offered a grand respite from Julie’s little workplace.
She found it easy to imagine that she was alone on the earth—the only human on the entire planet. The only sounds that reached her were the occasional high-pitched squeak of a bat and the whir of insects that her boots stirred out of the desiccated pasture grass.
Julie meandered toward the few trees that Drifter favored during the heat of the day. The adrenaline rush of completing the story seemed to drain from her like air from a punctured balloon as she walked across the pasture. Her mind began the inevitable second-guessing that seemed to be an unwelcome part of every writer’s toolbox.
Did I twist the story too hard? Did I misuse what Mr. Huller was actually saying in order to focus the story more positively? Was what Otis said to me as important as I indicated it was? Could what Mr. Huller said be seen as a statement that leaving Coldwater is the only way to beat the drought?
Julie sat on the ground and leaned her back against one of the trees. She wiped perspiration from her forehead and realized what a habitual gesture this was. She scratched up some dry dirt with a fingernail and then let the dirt fall from her palm back to the ground. The soil held no more moisture than desert sand. She scraped more soil, this time digging deeper, using all of her fingers, and dug out a handful of what felt like salt in her palm. She tossed the dirt into the air and watched it sift down in the moonlight.
Out on the road adjacent to her pasture a car powered through a gentle curve, its exhaust rapping powerfully as it accelerated. Suddenly, Ken Townsend was in her mind, and she found herself smiling.
Sleep was ragged that night, filled with images of Danny and Ken and her story. Julie threw the sheet aside twenty minutes before her alarm was set to go off at 5:45, swung her feet out of bed and to the floor, and sat up. Her nightgown was sticking to her, and she sat with her palms against her temples as if trying to squeeze away the dull throb of a headache. She pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, stopped to drink directly from the carton of orange juice in her refrigerator, and put on a pot of coffee to brew. She glanced at the thermometer outside her kitchen window and groaned aloud: eighty-four degrees.
Her barn chores went quickly. She applied the salve to Drifter’s scratches and fed him his morning ration of grain and fresh hay. She moved mechanically, forking soiled straw into her wheelbarrow, humming a little tune, talking to Drifter. When her work was finished and she’d turned the horse out to pasture, she put her pitchfork and wheelbarrow away and stood at the fence to watch Drifter as he meandered toward the stand of trees. As if he knew he was being observed, he picked up his pace to a smart jog, his tail flowing behind him, his body working effortlessly as it covered ground. Julie was smiling as she returned to her home.
When she came out of her house an hour later, fresh from a quick shower and invigorated by a couple cups of coffee and a bowl of cereal, she stopped a few feet from her truck and looked at it with a critical eye. It was a mess, as dusty and dirty as it would have been if it had sat in a barn for a generation. A blotch of white on the windshield established that a sizable bird had flown over, and the entire vehicle, under the layer of dirt, offered no more shine than a cinder block. Julie looked toward where her garden hose was coiled neatly under the faucet on the side of the barn. The Happy Car do-it-yourself car wash in Coldwater had closed down months ago due to the strict water restrictions.
She put the folder containing her story and her purse in the truck, ducking away from the thick heat that poured from the cab when she opened the door. She closed the door and began walking toward her hose and faucet.
How much water would it take just to hose off the dirt? What difference would it make? She thought of Ken Townsend’s always-gleaming cruiser. He must wash his car daily. Why can’t a civilian have the same right? The shiny police car was replaced in her mind with a headline:
Selfish Woman Uses Last of Montana’s Water
“My Truck Was Dirty,” She Tells Rest of State
Julie stopped halfway to the hose, sighed audibly, and turned back to her vehicle. The engine cranked a little longer than usual as she started it, but it quickly settled down to a smooth idle.
Tumbleweeds still dotted the road, and other junk—pieces of newspaper, broken sections of boards, and the occasional twisted lawn chair—made slow driving mandatory. The Coldwater radio station told Julie nothing she didn’t already know, and the lilting perkiness of the announcer’s voice grated on her nerves. She imagined the woman giving the news that the world was ending and making it sound as if she were speaking at a five-year-old’s birthday party. The thought brought a smile to Julie’s face.
The Bulldogger, she noticed, was open for business at twenty minutes after 7:00, and a few trucks and cars rested in the shabby parking lot outside the structure. Her skid marks were still visible on the road, although traffic and the storm had scuffed away the stark blackness of the tracks.
Nancy Lewis’s car was in its assigned spot at the office, as Julie knew it would be. The Celica was as dirty as her truck, which gave Julie’s mood a perverse boost. She parked, gathered up her story and purse, and walked to the back door of the News-Express. Julie felt good in the building, just as she always did. Journalism was much more than a job and a paycheck to her, and her work at the paper seemed to become more fulfilling on a daily basis.
Most of the offices and cubicles were still dark, but the corridor lights were always on, and the air-conditioning made the sweltering temperature outside seem far away. Julie stopped and sniffed the air. Shortly after being hired, she swore that she could smell fresh newsprint and printer’s ink each time she entered the building. Another reporter told her that with all the federal air filtration equipment in place, that was impossible.
“You’re still a little wet behind the ears, Julie,” he’d said. “One day when you’re buried in memos and stories and directives and meetings, this will only be a place to work, nothing magical about it.” That day hadn’t yet arrived for Julie Downs, and she was quite sure that it never would.
Nancy’s door was open, and she motioned Julie in.
“I have my first installment here,” Julie said. “I hoped you could take a peek at it.”
Nancy smiled. “You’re under no obligation to hand deliver your pieces, Julie. They’ll eventually reach my desk anyway. But sure—I’ll be happy to give it a look. And I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to talk with you about a call—”
The phone on Nancy’s desk rang, cutting off her sentence. She picked up the receiver. “Nancy Lewis,” she said. She listened for a moment and then covered the mouthpiece. “Give me a few minutes, OK?”
Julie put her folder on Nancy’s desk and left her boss’s office, shutting the door behind her. There would be coffee—and perhaps donuts and bagels—in the break room, she knew, and she headed there.
Elisha hid something under the edge of the long table she was sitting at as Julie approached her. “Hey,” she said, quickly looking away.
“Let’s see it,” Julie said.
“See what?”
Julie smiled. “You owe me a lunch, Leesh. A bet’s a bet. Now, let me see it.”
Elisha sighed dramatically. “OK, I’ve been cleaning dirt out of my house for the last twenty hours, and it’s still like a sandbox. Mike’s been driving me nuts about going riding with you. My dog rolled in something dead, and he smells like a toxic garbage pit. If you’re going to hold me to a silly bet because I decided to pick up a tiny bit of comfort food today . . .” She brought her hand out from under the table; she was holding a pastry that looked to be the size of a catcher’s glove. The sugar glaze twinkled in the bright light of the room, and a thumb-sized blob of fluffy white hanging from one end indicated that the treat was cream filled.
“Wow, I’ve already gained fo
ur pounds just looking at that thing.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Elisha said. “If we split this, no one’s really won or lost the bet, right? The deal was whoever has a morning pastry first buys lunch—but if we share this wonderful thing, well, what’s the harm?”
Julie laughed, turning to the coffeepot. “Seems fair to me.”
Fifteen minutes later Julie was walking down the hall to her managing editor’s office, sated with coffee and a slab of pastry she’d already begun to regret. Julie tapped on the door frame, and Nancy smiled, picking up the folder holding the story.
“Very good writing, Julie,” she said. “I like the action of the language—the way you took what could have been a mere interview and balanced the whole thing with Otis’s comments at the end.”
“That’s good to hear,” Julie said. “I want the piece to work.”
“Well, I hardly put a mark on it. I thought you were gushing a bit at the end of page two and on to page three, but I left most of it intact. The pictures are good too. That shot of the cornfield is frightening.”
Nancy leaned back in her chair. “So, I’ll run it a week from Wednesday, and we’ll begin the advertising for it in tomorrow’s edition.” She paused for a moment. “What’s next, Julie? Anything you want to talk about?”
“I have a couple of ideas, but nothing solid yet. I’m hoping for a piece focusing on cattle and horses next—some of the economics and realities of those businesses. I don’t want a strictly money-oriented story, but the livestock people make up a good percentage of our population, and they’re hurting as badly as the farmers.”
“Maggie Lane will be a good one to talk to about the horses,” Nancy said.
“Right. There’s Andy Buckler who raises Appaloosas, and several others too.”
“I imagine Dr. Pulver could help you out with information about how the drought and the heat affect horses and cattle.”
“Right. I’ll be talking to him.” She smiled. “In fact, he’s coming to dinner at my place on Wednesday night.”
Nancy’s eyebrows rose quizzically. “Mmm?”
“No further comment at this time,” Julie said.
“Fair enough, then—for now.” Nancy’s face became more serious. “I said earlier I needed to talk with you this morning. I got a call Friday night—at home—that bothered me a bit.”
“Oh?” Julie asked.
“It was from Ross Craig.”
“The chief of police? What did he want?”
“Well, it was a little strange. He said he’d received a complaint from what he referred to as ‘an honest businessman in the community’ that you’d been to this person’s business, harassing him, trying to dig up dirt for a story.”
Julie groaned. “It had to be Rick Castle from the Bulldogger. I haven’t interviewed any other businesspeople, and I certainly haven’t harassed anyone.”
“I know that,” Nancy said. “What concerns me is that there may be more of a relationship between Castle and Craig than we realize. We know that Castle is bending the rules, and I can’t help but wonder what else is going on with Craig as his advocate.”
“I see what you mean,” Julie said. “Should I look into it?”
“No,” Nancy said emphatically. “You shouldn’t. I want you to leave it completely alone for now, at least.” She toyed with her pen for a moment. “I made some calls to contacts yesterday,” she continued. “I don’t much like what I found out. Ross Craig has been quietly running a little fiefdom in Coldwater. He doesn’t like being prodded by the press or anyone else, I learned. It seems to me that a man with the kind of power a police chief has could turn out to be a rather dangerous enemy, if it came to that.”
“I wasn’t aware of any of this,” Julie said.
“Not many people are, I don’t think. Or, if they are, they keep quiet about it.”
“So, is there corruption here?” Julie asked. “That’s a little frightening. Other than the intro piece I did on Ken Townsend, the News-Express hasn’t given much press to the police department. They do their job, we see them around on the roads, and that’s pretty much it.”
“I don’t know if there’s corruption,” Nancy said. “I heard an allegation of abuse of power from a source, but that’s all it is—an allegation. For that matter, I’m not sure how good the source is.”
Julie thought for a moment. “You pulled me off the Bulldogger story in no uncertain terms. I haven’t been poking around at it behind your back, if that’s what Craig was implying.”
“I know that, Julie. I just want you to be careful, OK? Something touched a nerve in the chief, and I didn’t like his telephone call.”
Julie felt a quick shiver. “I’m not sure what you’re saying.”
Nancy’s smile looked a bit artificial. “Just this—I’m going to be looking into all this very carefully through contacts in the capital and in the state police. I just wanted you to know that there may be a problem, and to be . . . well, careful, is all.”
“Careful of what?”
Nancy held up her hands. “Careful of the people involved with the Coldwater PD, including the chief. I know that’s cryptic, but take my word for it.” Again, her smile appeared forced to Julie. “I’ve said too much already. Let’s drop the subject for the time being, OK?”
Julie nodded at the same time her stomach rumbled loudly. She winced in pain.
Nancy stood behind her desk. “Are you all right? You look kind of pale.”
Julie put both hands over her stomach. “It’s all Leesha’s fault,” she said weakly.
Nancy laughed. “Did she stop at the bakery again? I swear, the two of you are built like broom handles, and yet you eat those hideous buns and things and never gain a pound.”
“Never again,” Julie said. “I feel like I’ve eaten an anvil.”
“Can I get you some water or anything?”
“No—no thanks. I’ll be fine. But I mean it—no pastries again, ever. When I even think of that monster donut we ate . . .”
“Get yourself an Alka-Seltzer. You look like you could use it. And again—fine work on the first of the series. I’ll see you later.”
Elisha was at her desk as Julie walked out. She was stripping the paper off a roll of Tums. As their eyes met, Elisha dropped her Tums onto her desk and made the old Valley Girl gesture—an index finger pointed directly into her wide-open mouth. Julie grimaced and nodded in agreement.
Some Coca-Cola syrup will do it, Julie thought as she started her truck. I’ll just sip at some of that soothing, cool syrup and I’ll be fine. Or maybe an Alka-Seltzer like Nancy recommended.
She pulled out of the News-Express parking lot and turned onto Main Street. Another reporter in his Mazda Miata honked his horn at Julie as he went into the lot, and she waved. She noted that his little sports car was as much a mess as her truck. She headed down Main Street toward her home. Averil Hildebrand was just unlocking the door to his drugstore, and Julie swung to the curb. In a matter of a few minutes she was on her way home with a package of Alka-Seltzer and two rolls of Tums.
As it almost always was, the two-lane road leading to her home was void of traffic. She eased her truck around the few curves at a cautious speed, still concerned about storm trash in the road. She was attempting to open a roll of Tums with her right hand while steering with her left when she heard the aggressive roar of a powerful engine and the bleep of a siren. She flicked her eyes to her rearview mirror and watched as the snout of a Chevrolet Blazer with a light bar flashing on its top raced up behind her.
“What in the world does he want?” she mumbled aloud. Her eyes flicked to the speedometer; she was well within the legal limit.
Julie pulled to the shoulder, shifted to neutral, and applied her parking brake. She unfastened her safety belt and began to open her door when a tinny, overly loud amplified voice warned her, “Driver, do not exit your vehicle. Turn off your engine and place both hands at the top of your steering wheel and wait until I approach you.”
>
Still confused, Julie complied. She watched in her rearview as Ross Craig, in full uniform including hat, stopped twenty or so feet behind her on the shoulder with the light bar atop his cruiser still operating. He exited his car and began walking toward her.
The chief was six feet or slightly taller, with a barrel-like, stocky body. He was in his early fifties, and a good deal of gray was visible in his buzz-cut brownish hair.
“Driver—keep both your hands at the top of the steering wheel,” Ross Craig said as he approached Julie’s truck.
For a moment Julie felt the urge to snap the clutch and leave this man behind. That, she realized, would be foolish. She turned her key to the off position. She lost Craig’s reflection in her mirror as he bent down at the rear of her truck.
Julie felt her truck shift the very slightest bit on its frame, and then she heard a tapping sound. It came again—the tapping sound, but this time a bit harder—and was followed by the tinkling of smashed glass. The officer was again in her mirror, and then he was at her door.
“Ma’am, you’re driving with a non-operative taillight,” Craig said as he peered in her window. “That’s in violation of the State of Montana Road and Vehicle Statutes, and I could write you a summons. Please hand me your driver’s license, insurance information, and the registration to this vehicle.”
Julie focused on her dashboard for a moment, swallowed, and said, “There was nothing wrong with my taillight until you broke it. I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here . . .”
Craig leaned down to look into the window, his face a few inches from Julie’s.
“Driver,” he said, “I’ll need your operator’s license, registration, and proof of insurance. Please hand it to me.”
Julie grabbed her purse from the floor in front of the passenger’s seat. The purse was full of scraps of paper with scrawled notes and telephone numbers of story sources, some loose and lint-encrusted Life Savers, a lipstick case, her cell phone, a lump of Kleenex, and her wallet, which contained her license and insurance card. She located the wallet with fingers that trembled a bit, and removed the documents. The truck registration was in her glove compartment; she opened it and took out the form and handed all three to Craig.
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