“Some people say it’s Syriac. Some says Aramaic and Syriac is the same thing. I couldn’t comment, ’cause when it’s over, I don’t have no memory of it.”
“I really dug it,” Clete said. “It put me in mind of one of those Cecil B. DeMille films. You know, Charlton Heston up on the mountain shouting at the people down below in the middle of an electrical storm.”
Dixon was standing six inches from my face, his head tilted to one side; he seemed to take no heed of Clete. “You been bird-dogging me, Mr. Robicheaux? You still think I’m out to hurt your daughter?”
“That’s one reason I came out here. I think you got a bad rap on that.”
“I declare. I’m overwhelmed.”
“We have the same objective. We want to find the man who killed the Indian girl,” I said.
“Who says I’m trying to find anyone?”
“Gretchen Horowitz.”
“She was talking about me?”
“She said she thought you were a decent guy. Does that bother you?” I said, my control starting to slip.
“Nothing bothers me. Not when I’m in the spirit.”
“That brings up an interesting question,” Clete said. “If you’re giving witness in a language no one can understand, and you have no memory of what you said, what’s the point of giving witness?”
“Who says nobody understands it?” Dixon said.
“I got it. These guys are international linguists,” Clete replied.
This time Dixon looked directly at him. “Is that your Cadillac out yonder?”
“It was when I drove it here.”
“Nice ride. I hope the people driving the junkers next to it don’t skin it up. Maybe that’s the price of slumming.”
I saw the crow’s-feet at the corner of Clete’s eyes flatten, the color in his face change. “Maybe you and I should walk over in those trees and talk about it,” he said.
“Mr. Dixon?” I said, edging into his line of vision.
“What?” he replied, his eyes locked on Clete’s.
“Why is Felicity Louviere here?”
“Who?”
“Angel Deer Heart’s mother.”
“How the fuck should I know?” He turned his gaze on me. “Y’all don’t have no business here. This is our place. When we’re here, we do things our way. I don’t like people looking down their noses at my friends.”
“Clete grew up in the Irish Channel, Wyatt,” I said. “I got this white patch in my hair from malnutrition. When I started first grade, I couldn’t speak English. I respect you and your friends, and I think Clete does, too.”
“What you don’t seem to understand, Mr. Robicheaux, is I ain’t bothered y’all or put my nose in your business. I didn’t bother your daughter, and I didn’t bother them cops that drug me out to Albert Hollister’s place. But every time I turn around, one of y’all is in my face. It’s Sunday, and we’re fixing to have a community meal. All we want is to be left alone.”
Clete lit his cigarette and snapped the cap closed on his Zippo. “Why don’t you peddle your douche rinse somewhere else and let these poor bastards alone?” he said.
How’s that for diplomacy? I gave up and walked away. “Dave, where you going?” I heard Clete say.
I was so irritated with Clete that I kept walking toward the Caddy and didn’t turn around. I heard somebody walking fast behind me.
“Mr. Robicheaux,” said a woman’s voice.
She was a tank in her late forties, dressed in a frilly blouse and a suit with big buttons, her hair piled on her head, her face flushed and as round as a muskmelon. She had a notebook in one hand and a ballpoint in the other. For whatever reason, she seemed to be wearing amounts of perfume that could knock down a rhino. “Talk to me, please,” she said.
I tried to smile. “What can I help you with?”
“I’m doing an article on the Indians and the spread of fundamentalist religion. Also on the death of that young girl,” she said.
She told me her name was Bertha Phelps. She seemed agitated and breathless and out of her element. She started to write something on her notepad, then realized her pen was out of ink. “I hate these. Do you mind?” she said, looking at the Uni-ball in my shirt pocket.
“No, not at all,” I replied, handing it to her.
“Was that the mother of Angel Deer Heart I saw sitting in the back row?”
“That’s correct. How did you know my name?”
“I saw you in the grocery with Albert Hollister and asked someone who you were.”
Though that didn’t quite come together for me, I didn’t pursue it. “I’m in a bit of a hurry, Ms. Phelps. What’s up?”
“It’s terrible what happened to that young girl. I don’t understand why her mother is here listening to that man.”
“Wyatt Dixon?”
“A sheriff’s detective told me Dixon was the last person to see her alive.”
“I’d say he’s not a viable suspect.”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
“I’m not qualified to comment, Ms. Phelps. It was nice meeting you.” I turned to go.
“It was just a question,” she said at my back.
The Caddy was locked. I looked back at the pavilion and saw Clete talking to Felicity Louviere. I also saw Wyatt Dixon carrying a paper plate stacked with fried chicken to a picnic table. One more try, I told myself.
I made my way through the crowd and, without being invited, sat down next to him. He never looked up from his food. “You weren’t truthful about your testimony,” I said.
“I’m done talking with you,” he said.
“You indicated you had no memory of it. That was a lie, wasn’t it?”
His forearms rested on the edge of the table, his hands empty and poised above his plate. He kept his eyes straight ahead, the late sun catching in them like reflected firelight. “I’d be careful what I said to the wrong man.”
“You’re an honest-to-God believer, Wyatt. You see things out there in the world that other people don’t. Does the name Asa Surrette mean anything to you?”
“Never heard of him.”
“You’re sure?”
“You got a hearing disorder?” he asked.
“The man who left that message in the cave was no ordinary man, was he?”
“You got it wrong.”
“Got what wrong?”
“It wasn’t no man that was up in that cave,” he said.
“Want to spell that out?”
“He’s goat-footed and has a stink on him that could make a skunk hide. Think I’m taking you on a snipe hunt? Ask Albert Hollister if he ain’t seen presences in that arroyo behind his place. Indians and such.”
“A goat-footed creature was in that cave?”
“There’s a hearing specialist in Missoula I can recommend,” he replied.
I decided it was time to get a lot of distance between me and Wyatt Dixon.
I TRIED TO STAY mad at Clete for provoking a situation with Dixon, but I couldn’t. Clete was Clete. He didn’t like religious fanatics and believed most of them were self-deceived or mean-spirited and did great harm in the world. I didn’t believe Wyatt Dixon fell into either of those categories. He may have been psychotic, or he may have been an uneducated man who’d found a form of redemption among the only friends he’d ever had, blue-collar people to whom the struggle of Christ was their own story. Regardless, Dixon had said something I couldn’t get out of my mind. He had mentioned Indian presences behind Albert Hollister’s house.
The arroyo that led from Albert’s gun range up the hillside to the logging road had been the route used by Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce after they outflanked the United States Army up on Lolo Pass and tried to escape relocation to Oklahoma Territory. Hundreds of them had filed down the arroyo in the dark, carrying their children and everything they owned on their backs. They followed Lolo Creek down to the Bitterroot River and then went south to the Big Hole, where they thought they would be safe. When the
army attacked their village, the soldiers killed man, woman, and child, just as they had on the Washita and on the Marias and at Wounded Knee. It was genocide, no matter what others wanted to call it.
I asked Albert if he had ever seen anything unusual up the arroyo.
“What do you mean by ‘unusual’?” he said.
“Apparitions.”
“You saw something?”
“Not me. Wyatt Dixon may have,” I said.
“One time at sunset, I thought I saw dark-skinned people coming over the ridge and walking down the trail through the trees. I went outside, and nobody was there. Another time, when there was heavy fog, I could hear people talking up there. I walked about fifty yards up the hillside and heard a child crying. I also found the stone head of a tomahawk. I had been over that same spot many times, but I’d never seen any artifacts there.”
“What happened to Chief Joseph and his people?”
“The army put them all on cattle cars and shipped them to a mosquito-infested sinkhole in Oklahoma. What are you getting at?”
“I don’t want to believe that people like Wyatt Dixon have an accurate vision of either this world or the next.”
“Did you know the word ‘Kentucky’ comes from a Shawnee word for ‘bloody land’?”
“What’s the point?”
“When you kill large numbers of people in order to steal their land, they get pissed off, and their spirits have a way of hanging around,” he replied.
I wasn’t up to a barrage of Albert’s morbid polemics, so I went to find Clete. But he had gone off on his own and had not told anyone of his destination. I should have known a bad moon was on the rise.
THE SALOON WHERE they had arranged to meet was down by the railroad tracks, in a part of town where the brick shell of a three-story nineteenth-century brothel was still standing and cowboys and Indians and bindle stiffs and rounders and bounders and midnight ramblers still knocked back doubles and chased them with pitcher beer. Clete was drinking at the far end of the bar when she entered. The front door was open to allow in the cool of the evening, and the redness of the late sun backlit her hair and the creamy texture of her shoulders and the beige skirt that swirled around her knees. He raised his hand awkwardly to indicate where he was, then tipped his shot glass to his mouth as she approached him.
“Is this place okay?” he said.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“It gets a little rough sometimes.”
“I like it here. They have a western band on Saturday nights,” she replied, sitting on a stool.
“What are you drinking?”
She looked at the shot glass and the small pitcher of draft beer in front of him. She touched the condensation on the pitcher with the ball of her index finger. “A glass of this will be fine,” she said.
“You like Indian culture?”
“Excuse me?”
“The way you dress and all.”
“I wanted to get out of New Orleans as soon as I could. When I had the chance, I took it. Now I live out in the West. It’s clean out here.”
He looked out the door, then back at her. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. “Some people think Missoula is turning into Santa Fe.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been there. It’s the model for something?”
“I’ve never been there, either,” he replied, feeling more and more inept and wondering why he had agreed to meet her.
“There’s always time,” she said. She held his eyes. “Isn’t that the way you look at it?”
Time for what? He ordered a draft beer for the woman and another shot for himself. He waited until the bartender had filled and set down their glasses and walked away. “You said maybe I could help you with something.”
“You and your friend were talking to Dixon. He sold my daughter a bracelet before she died. Do you think he could have killed her?”
“I don’t doubt he’s a dangerous man.”
“Dangerous to women?”
Clete was standing at the bar, one foot resting on the brass rail. In the mirror, he could see her looking at his profile, her face tilted upward. “Who am I to be judging others?” he replied.
“You looked angry when you were talking to him. I don’t think you hide your feelings well. I think we’re a lot alike.”
“In what way?”
“You’re not ashamed of your emotions.”
“I don’t know if I’d put it that way. I don’t like criminals. Sometimes you meet a guy who’s been inside and is on the square, but not too often. Anyone who’s been down at least twice is probably a recidivist and will be in and out of the can the rest of his life.”
“Why won’t you answer my question?”
“A man who strikes a woman is a physical and moral coward. There’s no exception to that rule. We call them misogynists. The simple truth is, they’re cowards. Dixon is a head case and probably a lot of other things, but a coward isn’t one of them. I hate admitting that.”
“What is it you don’t like about him?”
“I don’t like reborn morons who say they understand the mind of God.”
“Could he have been working with someone else?”
“He’s a loner. Most rodeo people are. I got to ask you something, Miss Felicity. The Wigwam, the bar Angel was drinking in the night she died? It was full of outlaw bikers. A lot of those guys are sexual fascists and get off on smacking their women around. Dixon went to the joint for shooting a guy who murdered a prostitute. Why is everybody zeroing in on him?”
“Why were you all talking to him if he’s of no importance?”
“My friend Dave thinks Dixon knows something about a guy who left a message on a cave wall behind Albert Hollister’s place. Sometimes Dave reads more into something than is there.” He motioned to the bartender for a refill. “Look, I’m sorry about your daughter. If I could help you, I would.”
“You can’t?”
“Maybe I could, but not officially.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m licensed as a PI in Louisiana. A private investigator’s license has the legal value of a dog’s tag. Because I chase down bail skips for a couple of bondsmen, I have extrajudicial powers that cops don’t have. I can cross state lines and break down doors without warrants. I can hook up people and hold them in custody indefinitely. See, when a guy is bailed out of the can by a bondsman, he becomes property. The law lets you go after your property. You can hang the guy up like a smoked ham if you want. I’m not proud of what I do, but it’s what I do.”
“I want the person who killed my daughter.”
“The locals will nail him sooner or later.”
“Do you really believe that?”
He scratched at his cheek with three fingers. The jukebox was playing a country song, but it wasn’t Hank or Lefty; it came from a new era in Nashville, one that Clete didn’t understand. “The locals are like cops anywhere. They give it their best shot. The bad guys go down, but usually because they do something really stupid.”
“My father was a policeman in New Orleans.”
“Yeah, I knew him. He was a good guy.”
He saw the recognition in her eyes. “You researched my background.”
“Like I said, it’s what I do.” He had put on a summer suit and a blue dress shirt and his Panama hat and had shined his loafers before meeting the woman. Now he felt foolish and old and duplicitous. “I blew my career in law enforcement with booze and weed and pills and the wrong kind of women. I had a daughter out of wedlock, too. She grew up without a dad, and some bad guys did a lot of hurtful things to her. That’s why I admire somebody like you who’d adopt a kid from the rez. This is great country around here, but the Indians get a bad shake.”
“How well did you know him?”
“Your old man? I’d see him at roll call. That was when Dave and I walked a beat on Canal and in the Quarter, in the old days when cops signaled each other by hitting their baton
s on the pavement. We’d bounce the stick on the curb, and you could hear it a block away.” He knew she wasn’t listening and that he was making a fool out of himself.
“My father was such a good person that he took care of everybody except his family,” she said.
“Beg your pardon?”
“He wasn’t happy unless he was wearing sackcloth and ashes for other people’s sins. He named me for Saint Felicity.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“She was the slave of a Roman aristocrat named Perpetua. Perpetua kept a record of the events leading up to her and Felicity’s deaths in the arena. It’s the only account that we have by a victim of the persecutions.”
“I don’t know much about that stuff. From what I remember, your dad was pretty religious.”
“If that’s what you call it.” She pushed back his sleeve from his watch and glanced at the time. “I wonder if each one of us is allotted a certain number of days. We’re here, then we’re not. We look back and wonder what we’ve done with our lives and think about all the opportunities we let slip by. Do you ever feel like you lived your life for somebody else?”
“I was always getting in trouble. I didn’t have time to think about things like that. I’m not too profound a guy.”
“I think you’re a much more complex man than you pretend.” She rubbed her finger on the dial of his watch.
He could feel the heat in the back of his neck, a tingling sensation in his palms. He poured the remainder of his whiskey into his beer and drank it. It slid down inside him like an old friend, lighting the corners of his mind, stilling his heart, allowing him to smile as though he were not beset with a problem of conscience that, in the morning, could fasten him wrist and ankle on a medieval rack.
“I just barely made a plane to El Sal before I went down on a murder beef,” he said. “My liver probably looks like a block of Swiss cheese with a skin disease. Dave is the only cop from the old days who’ll hang out with me. I’m not being humble. I worked for the Mob in Vegas and Reno. I’ve done stuff I wouldn’t tell a corpse.”
“If you’re thinking about my marital status, my husband is the most corrupt, selfish man I’ve ever known.”
“Maybe he had a good teacher.” He saw the look on her face. “I’m talking about his father, Mr. Younger. He doesn’t just vote against politicians he disagrees with, he smears their names.”
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