Light of the World

by James Lee Burke

  “Thanks for pointing that out.”

  She looked through the window. “That’s Caspian Younger. I’ve seen his picture. He got in your face about his wife?”

  “More or less. He wanted to convince me he’s a good loser. You know what it takes to be a good loser? Practice.”

  “What’d you say to him?” she asked.

  “I told him nothing happened. I don’t think he believed me.” He sat down at the breakfast table and rubbed his forehead. “Let’s go over a couple of things from last night. You tried to make the guy in the water give it up before you dropped him?”

  “Were you in the sack with her?”

  “No. And my private life is not the issue, Gretchen.”

  “Maybe the guy got off one round. I’m not sure. I waited till the last second before I shot him. Then I couldn’t stop.”

  “How do you feel about it?”

  She was sitting in the chair across from him. She stared at the floor, her face still lined with sleep. She was wearing pink tennis shoes without socks, and somehow they made Clete feel guilty about the childhood she’d deserved but been denied. “I’m alive, he’s dead. What should I feel? I don’t feel anything,” she said.

  “Don’t lie.”

  “I fired on the truck in hot blood. I could have let the guy on the riverbank go. He had two holes in him. He probably would have bled out and died on the riverbank and wouldn’t have floated away. We’d know who he was. I blew it.”

  “He was out to kill you, kid. He got what he deserved. I’m proud of you.”

  “I heard a voice inside my head. The voice said, ‘Welcome back, baby doll,’ or something like that.”

  Clete’s eyes went away from her and looked at nothing. “Like the voice that was telling you you’re back on that old-time rock and roll?” he said.

  “I don’t like to think in those terms anymore.”

  “You stood directly in front of a speeding truck and took everything they could throw at you. How many people have that kind of courage? Don’t you dare blame yourself for being the noble woman you are.”

  “I don’t need the Valium, Dad.”

  “Don’t be smart. You belong to a special club. You paid a lot of dues to join it. Stop beating up on yourself, and don’t ever mock our relationship.”

  Her face showed no expression and he wondered if he had said too much.

  “Who were those guys? Who sent them?” she said.

  “Think of it this way: At least one of them won’t be back.”

  “I want to be a film director. I’m supposed to go over on the east side of the Divide in two days. How’d we end up in this mess?”

  He didn’t answer. He got an ice tray and a bottle of grape juice and a bottle of Canada Dry out of the refrigerator and filled two glasses. He dropped a lime slice in each. “This is the best drink in the world, did you know that?” he said. “You’re my kid. In spite of the fact that your old man was a deadbeat and a drunk, you turned out to be the best kid on the planet. None of this other stuff means diddly-squat on a rock. You roger that?”

  “You’re the worst actor I’ve ever known,” she replied. “But you’re a good guy just the same. Now change your shirt, for Christ’s sake.”

  THAT AFTERNOON I was watering Albert’s flowers for him when I saw Sheriff Elvis Bisbee come up the driveway in a cruiser. He walked into the yard and stood in the shade of the house, a manila envelope in his hand, a relaxed expression on his face. Clete was grilling hamburgers up on the deck, glancing over his shoulder at us, pressing a spatula down on the meat.

  “I want to talk with you and your pal at the same time, Mr. Robicheaux,” the sheriff said.

  Clete closed the top on the barbecue and came down the steps into the shade. The wind was up, the air cool and smelling of cut grass and the water sprinklers in the yard; Albert’s horses were galloping in the pasture, hooves drumming, tails flagging. It was a fine afternoon. I didn’t want to be at odds with the sheriff, who seemed an admirable man.

  “Last night there was a shoot-out not far from the Higgins Street Bridge,” he said. “The person who called in the 911 claims a woman driving a vintage Cadillac convertible was involved. Who might that be?”

  Clete’s eyes showed no expression.

  “Can you venture a guess, Mr. Purcel?”

  Clete watched a robin light on the branch of an ornamental crab apple. “Shit happens,” he replied.

  “There’s another interesting development. We found Gretchen Horowitz’s fingerprints inside Bill Pepper’s home,” the sheriff said.

  Clete nodded gravely. “If I had a man like that in my department, I’d pay a reward to the person who put him on the bus. If I knew where his grave was, I’d piss on it.”

  “We also found an abandoned pickup with a tire blown off the rim. Somebody had wiped the inside and the door handles with motor oil, so we couldn’t lift any prints.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got some pretty sharp criminals around here,” Clete said.

  “We have our share of visiting comedians, too,” the sheriff said. “Let me line this out a little more clearly so there’s no misunderstanding between us. This isn’t the O.K. Corral. We’re not a collection of hicks. You gentlemen don’t make the rules.”

  “We can’t argue with you on that,” I said.

  “You don’t know anything about a shooting by the bridge, Mr. Robicheaux?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, sir,” I replied.

  “Here’s how it went down, Sheriff,” Clete said. “Two guys tried to smoke my daughter. One guy got away in a pickup, Kansas tags. The other guy’s whereabouts are unknown. I told my daughter not to call it in because I didn’t want to see her hung out to dry. Bill Pepper was a dirty cop. You know it and so do I. First time, shame on them, know what I mean?”

  “You don’t trust us?”

  “We didn’t deal the play,” Clete said.

  “I’ve got a surprise for both of you,” the sheriff said. “My biggest concern isn’t the shooting by the bridge. Two witnesses said your daughter acted in self-defense, Mr. Purcel. Evidently, one man was badly wounded, so I expect he’ll show up one way or another. I want you to look at some photos.”

  He untied the manila envelope and took out at least a dozen crime scene photographs. “The former sheriff was an obsessed man when it came to crimes against children and women. Beginning in 1995, there were a number of murders in the Northwest that seemed to bear similarities. The first one was right here in the Bitterroot Valley, followed by one in Billings, then Seeley Lake, Pocatello, and Spokane.” He began placing the photos in a line on top of the stone wall by the front entrance. “There were never any forensics that would tie one homicide to another, except they were all obviously committed by a sexual deviant. I’d like both of you to study these and tell me what you see.”

  Crime scene photography, especially homicide, is never pleasant to look at. Defense attorneys try to suppress it as inflammatory, more so as the trial nears the sentencing phase. It’s invasive in nature and seems to degrade the victims in death. Their eyes are fixed and stare at nothing; their mouths often hang open, as though they realized in their last seconds the irreparable nature of the fate imposed upon them. As you gaze at their photos, you identify with them, and for just a moment you understand the terrible nature of the crime that, in retrospect, you are being made witness to: These people, made out of the same clay as you, were not simply killed; they were robbed of their dignity, their hope, their identity, their belief in humanity, and sometimes their religious faith. As you gaze at these photographs, you are tempted to revisit your objections to capital punishment.

  Clete picked up the photos and looked at each and passed them to me. “What do you want us to say?” he asked the sheriff.

  “You think these people were killed by the same guy?”

  “The killer was into bondage and torture. He was big on suffocation and using plastic bags.”

  “What else?” th
e sheriff asked.

  “The women’s dresses have been pulled up. You or somebody else have drawn felt-tip circles on the women’s legs.”

  “That’s where the killer or killers ejaculated on them.”

  “Most of these bastards mark their territory,” Clete said.

  “In the same way at every homicide scene?” the sheriff said.

  “What difference does our opinion make?” I said.

  “The guy who killed Angel Deer Heart ejaculated on her.”

  “Where?” I said.

  “On her legs.”

  “There was no penetration?” I said.

  “None.”

  “Did you get a hit on the DNA?”

  “We’re working on it,” he said.

  That one didn’t sound right. “You ever hear of a guy named Asa Surrette?” I asked.

  “I talked to your daughter about him,” the sheriff said.

  “I didn’t know she called you.”

  “I got the sense you don’t agree with your daughter’s perceptions about him. You think he’s dead?”

  “The state of Kansas says he’s dead.”

  “What do you say?” the sheriff asked.

  “Maybe he’s out there. Maybe he was the guy who left the message in the cave. Or maybe somebody is using his MO.”

  “Why did you mention the cave?”

  “I don’t know,” I lied.

  “It’s the biblical reference, isn’t it?”

  “No, evil is evil. There’s enough of it in the human breast without having to ascribe it to the devil.”

  “I hope you’re right,” the sheriff said, gathering up the photos and replacing them in the envelope. “Where’s your daughter, Mr. Purcel?”

  “In town.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  “If she has time, maybe she can give you a ring,” Clete said.

  “Repeat that, please?”

  “Gretchen isn’t the problem,” Clete replied. “It’s not our job to follow you guys around with a dustpan and a broom.”

  “Come back here, Mr. Purcel,” the sheriff said. “Did you hear me? Sir, don’t walk away from me.”

  That was exactly what Clete did, gazing up at the strips of pink cloud in the sky and at the trees bending in the wind on the hillside. I knew we were in for it.

  AT FIRST LIGHT Tuesday morning, Wyatt Dixon woke from a nightmare, one that left his armpits damp and turned his heart into gelatin. For Wyatt, the dream was not about the past or the present; nor did it have a beginning or an end. Instead, the dream was omnipresent in Wyatt’s life, and it waited for him whenever he closed his eyes, whether day or night. In the dream, the man he grew up calling “Pap” was walking toward him bare-chested in his strap overalls, his skin as shriveled and bloodless as a mummy’s, his bony hand knotted into a fist. “You touch your sister again, boy? Your mother seen you,” Pap was saying. “Don’t lie. It’ll go twice as hard if you lie. You worthless little pisspot. The best part of you run down your mother’s leg.”

  Wyatt got up and put on his jeans and went outside barefoot and shirtless into the cold morning and the mist that was a ghostly blue in the cottonwoods and as bright as silver dollars on the steel swing bridge over the river. The current was dark green and swirling in giant eddies around the boulders and beaver dams on the edges of the main channel, and wild roses were blooming along the banks. The dawn was so soft and cool and tangible, Wyatt believed he could taste it in the back of his mouth and breathe it into his lungs. He pulled a tarp off a woodpile and threw it on the grass and lay on his back with his arm over his eyes, his chest rising and falling slowly, the world once again a place of leafy trees and a breeze blowing down a canyon and German brown trout undulating in the riffle. Just that fast, Pap had gone away and become the bag of bones that someone finally dropped in a hole in a potter’s field.

  When Wyatt awoke, the sun had just broken above the canyon, and he could hear footsteps clanging on the steel grid of the swing bridge and the cables creaking with the tension created by weight. He sat up and saw a heavyset woman in a suit and heels trying to work her way down the slope without falling, a notebook in her hand.

  Where had he seen her? At the revival on the rez?

  “Could I have a word with you, Mr. Dixon?” she asked.

  The breeze was at her back. He closed and opened his eyes. “What the hell is that smell?” he said, looking around.

  “I guess that’s my perfume.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Bertha Phelps. I’m doing an article on charismatic religions among Native Americans.”

  “I was about to fix breakfast.”

  “I don’t mind,” she replied.

  You don’t mind what? he thought. He took her inventory. “I’ve seen you before.”

  “Could I ask you some questions?”

  He broke off a blade of grass and put it in his mouth. “Whatever blows your skirt up,” he replied.

  She followed him into the house. He put on a long-sleeved shirt without buttoning it and started a fire in the woodstove. There was so much clutter in his kitchen that there was hardly a spot to sit down. He went into the living room and returned with a straight-back chair and set it beside her. “Take a load off,” he said.

  “I heard you speaking in tongues Sunday afternoon,” she said.

  “You were the woman talking to Mr. Robicheaux.”

  “That’s right. Were you raised Pentecostal?”

  “I didn’t have no raising, unless that’s what you call breaking corn and picking cotton from cain’t-see to cain’t-see.”

  “Would you say you found your religion through the Indians?”

  “I never give it much thought.”

  “You had a hard life, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Other people say you did.”

  He cracked four eggs and plopped the yolks in a skillet and set the skillet on one of the stove lids. “Maybe other people ought to mind their own goddamn business.”

  She leaned over her notebook to write in it. She rubbed her pen back and forth on the paper, trying to make ink come out of it. “Drat,” she said.

  “That’s them kind Walmart sells. They’re about as good for writing as tent pegs.”

  “I have another one in my purse,” she said.

  He looked at her with increasing curiosity. “You’re not here to ask me about the revival, are you?”

  “I’m also doing an article on the local Indians.”

  “You know where I saw that kind of ballpoint before?”

  “You just told me. At Walmart.”

  “There was a cop here’bouts named Bill Pepper. He carried ballpoints just like that one in your hand. He was the kind of man who did things on the cheap. Did you happen to know Detective Pepper?”

  “The name is familiar.”

  “While I was in his custody, I heard him talking on his phone to Love Younger. I think the good detective was on a pad for Mr. Younger.”

  “A what?”

  “Detective Pepper was taking money on the side. That’s what cops call being on a pad.”

  “You’re saying this police officer was corrupt?”

  He looked through the back window at a doe and a fawn crossing through the shadows, their hooves stenciling the damp grass. They looked back at him, flipping their tails, theirs noses twitching. “I’m saying you got something on your mind, lady, and it ain’t religion.”

  “I wondered if you knew the murdered Indian girl.”

  “The Youngers sent you here?”

  “No, sir, I’m here on my own.”

  “You from down south?” he said.

  “I’ve lived there.”

  Wyatt opened the window and picked up a magazine from the drainboard and fanned his face with it.

  “Does my perfume bother you?”

  “I guess I’ve smelled worse.”

  She seemed to concentrate on a reply but couldn’t think of one.

 
“If you see the Youngers, I want you to tell them something for me.”

  “I’ve already told you I don’t work for them. I’m a freelance journalist.”

  “Right. Tell Mr. Younger I know what he can do to me if he takes a mind. But I’ll leave my mark on him before we get done. He’ll know when it’s my ring, too.”

  “If you want to make threats, Mr. Dixon, you’ll have to do that on your own.”

  “It ain’t no threat.”

  “I think maybe I should leave.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  She stood up, then looked out the window at the deer. “There’s corn on the grass,” she said.

  “The doe’s got a hurt leg. I put it out at night for her and the fawn.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?”

  “I didn’t check.”

  “Maybe you are a kinder man than you pretend to be, Mr. Dixon,” she said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “You’re a right handsome woman, if a little on the heavy side,” he said.

  “That’s supposed to be a compliment?”

  “I’d call it a statement of fact. You’re a nice-looking lady. I get out of sorts sometime. You already ate breakfast?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Stick around.”

  “I’m not sure for what purpose.”

  “My huevos rancheros ain’t half bad. I got coffee and biscuits, too. There’s a bowl of pineapple in the icebox I chopped up. I learned cooking in the army before they kicked me out.”

  “You do have manners,” she said.

  “You’re working for Love Younger, though, ain’t you?”

  “I most certainly am not. I do not care for Mr. Younger. I do not care for his ilk, his progeny, or the industries he owns.”

  “What was that second one?”

  “His offspring. They’re like their father. They’re notorious for their lack of morality.”

  He snapped the buttons into place on his cowboy shirt, the tails splaying across his narrow hips. He pulled on his boots and filled the coffeepot under the spigot, his mouth a slit, his eyes as empty as glass.

  “Is there some reason you’re not speaking to me now?” she asked.