Dead Silver

16

I drove straight to the Gold Baron Inn, but the funeral reception had broken up and no one on the staff knew where Renee had gone. I swung by her house; she wasn't there, either. Probably she was with her relatives. I knew she had a cell phone, but I hadn't thought to get the number.

I'd cooled down by then, anyway. Gary was talking about a commonsense precaution, not an emergency.

Although it was still unsettling.

I realized that Renee might not be back for some time, and I didn't feel like just hanging around. I decided to follow up on what my lawyer pal Tom Dierdorff had mentioned at the funeral.

Tom wasn't in his office, but his secretary patched me through to his cell phone and he picked up right away.

"I wondered if you might have a minute to chat anytime soon," I said.

"I think maybe this is in the stars, Hugh. Talking to you this morning got my ass in gear to do something I've been putting off. A guy's proposing a development up around Gates of the Mountains. There's opposition; it's going to court. I need to look the site over, and I'd be glad for a pro to bounce my thoughts off."

"You better get a real pro if you want an opinion that's worth anything. But sure, I'd be interested to see it."

He gave me directions, and I headed north on Interstate 15. The terrain rose in a series of long, deceptively steep hills, through rolling open ranch land that gave way to forested mountains. The Missouri lay a few miles to the east, then converged with the highway near Wolf Creek and they ran together toward Great Falls. It was a fine stretch of country, and so far, it was largely unchanged.

I found the gravel road that Tom had described, and after a couple more miles, I spotted his parked pickup truck. There was nothing shiny about this one; it was caked with mud, dinged up and scraped, the bed strewn with fencing tools, rolled barbed wire, and feed. I caught the sweet musty perfume of hay as I walked past.

He was standing on top of a rise fifty yards away, wearing the kind of quilted jacket that a lot of stockmen preferred. This time of year, the wind off the snowfields still carried a pretty good bite. You'd never dream that he was a big-shot attorney; he looked like he was scanning for lost cattle. I hiked on up there to join him.

The hilltop overlooked a meadow that was surrounded by forest and skirted to the north by a creek just starting to shed its skin of ice. A couple of big dozers and a backhoe were parked on the site, with their ridged tracks leading to spur roads they'd cut into the trees. But nothing was moving except the neon orange plastic ribbons on engineers' stakes, fluttering in the afternoon wind.

"Did somebody shut them down?" I said. This weather wasn't anywhere near bad enough to do that.

"An environmental coalition. For openers, the developer started work without all the right permits. When he got that straightened out, they claimed the septic system's inadequate, it'll pollute the water table and filter down to the river."

Which, adjacent to this spot, happened to be one of the finest, most popular trout fishing stretches in the world.

"He's fighting back, of course, and his money's talking loud," Tom said.

"What's the setup?"

"Eighty houses to start with. Medium-high end, average around three hundred K-couple-acre parcels, set apart in the trees. But there's already a bigger operation on the table, a mile back toward the freeway. Apparently our man started feeling guilty about outpricing the average working stiff, so he wants to put in a couple hundred cheaper units, complete with a bar-casino. And plenty of room to expand."

That hit another raw nerve-the prospect of sprawl like I'd seen during my dozen years in California. I'd drive a stretch of highway flanked by fields, and when I drove it again a few months later, shopping centers and housing tracts had appeared. Cities that had been miles apart became one long strip. But the hard-line stance of trying to keep out development altogether was untenable. The population kept growing and people needed homes and jobs.

"I can't tell you anything about the building quality without seeing some foundations or framing," I said. "But the things you mentioned aren't good signs."

The odds were slim that the developer had made an honest mistake in starting work without permits. More often that was an aggressive tactic that worked on a "possession is nine tenths" mentality. He knew that once ground was broken, that created a momentum which was hard to turn around. Regulatory agencies tended to bluster but then back off, at worst imposing slap-on-the-wrist fines which might or might not ever get paid.

But beyond the legalities, it raised a red flag with more tangible consequences. Those kinds of outfits were prone to cutting other corners, such as by using substandard materials and practices. The inadequate septic system was a prime example.

"That's what I figured," Tom said. "Glad to hear you agree."

"I suppose it's going to go through anyway?"

"I don't think there's any question. Just whether sooner or later."

"What's your stake in it?"

He smiled wryly. "That's what I'm mulling over-I've had offers from both sides. Part of me wants to dig in and make it tough for him. Another part says that's pissing in the wind, and smart money is to join his team and try to see that at least it gets done right. Then again, I'm sorely tempted just to stay the hell out of it. A cop-out, I know, but it's going to be loaded with the kind of heartache us old homeboys already got plenty of."

I didn't have any advice, and I knew he wasn't really looking for any. Maybe it helped him to have a sounding board.

"Well, that's my own little tempest in a teapot," he said. "I guess we could go sit in my truck and get the heater on. No point in standing here freezing."

We turned our backs to the chilly wind and walked down the rise.

"I heard a while ago that the sheriffs were real interested in you," he said.

"I came within an ace of calling you. Turned out I didn't have to."

"So this is a different situation?"

"I'm afraid it is, Tom," I said. "And it's starting to take on weight."