Heat

Chapter 14

Jesse washed his dishes, dried them and put them away. The food had revived his exhausted body and made him able to think again, but he didn’t want to think. He was experiencing some sort of strange emotion, and he didn’t like it.

He slipped on his coat and walked out the back door toward the garage; there his pickup truck rested beside Jenny’s sedan. He wriggled under the truck, worked the combination on the safe and took out the cellular telephone, stuffing the pistol and the money back inside the steel box. He got into the truck and, resisting the temptation to start the engine for warmth, switched on the phone and waited for signal strength. He glanced at his watch; it would be nearly ten o’clock in Washington, so there was no point in calling the 800 number. He dredged up Kip Fuller’s home number from his memory and dialed it.

There was the expected ringing, then a click and a squawk from the handset, followed by a series of beeps, then Kip’s voice.

“This is Fuller.”

“It’s Jesse. How openly can I talk on this thing?”

“It’s an encrypted unit; my phones, both at the office and at home can read it, so we’re very secure. How’s it going, Jess?”

“Better than I could possibly have hoped,” Jesse said. He gave a detailed account of the past two days.

“Doesn’t it bother you a little that it’s going so well?”

“I don’t know,” Jesse said. “I mean, they could hardly be expecting me.”

“They’re expecting somebody,” Kip said. “After all, they’ve already had two agents up there and dealt with them both. They can’t think the government is going to just give up.”

“Well, sure, I’ve got to be careful for a while, but I get the impression they need people, that they’re recruiting. I think I’m just their kind of guy.”

“I hope so. I didn’t expect you to see Casey and Ruger the first day. Any sign of Jack Gene Coldwater?”

“No, and no word of him, either.”

“For Christ’s sake, don’t ever mention his name to anybody; wait for them to mention it to you.”

“Don’t worry.”

“How are you feeling, Jesse, I mean, really feeling?” Kip sounded concerned.

“A hell of a lot better than I was a couple of weeks ago,” Jesse replied. “I’m still a little numb in some ways, but I’m getting used to the idea of being a free man.”

“Don’t get too used to it,” Kip said. “Remember, there’s somebody who’d love to see you back inside, if he could get what he wants from you first.”

“I’ll remember.”

“I’ve had word from the lady at the adoption agency. She says that the adoptive parents have your letter, and they’ll think about what to do. It’ll be a long time, of course.”

“I understand. I just want her to know that her mother and I didn’t deliberately abandon her.”

Kip was quiet for a moment. “That phone uses more juice than an ordinary cellular phone; you’ve only got about four minutes talk time between charges.”

“I’d better sign off, then.”

“Keep me posted; if I don’t hear from you at least twice a week, I’ll get worried.”

“Okay, take care.”

“You too.” Kip hung up.

Jesse returned the phone to the safe under the truck, plugged it into the charger and locked up. Back outside, he discovered he didn’t want to go back into the empty house. He wandered in the direction of Main Street, only a couple of blocks away.

The shops were closed now, their windows mostly dark. Only one lighted sign remained on the street: Harry’s. Jesse ambled into the place and stopped inside the front door.

The smell of stale beer and tobacco smoke reached his nostrils, and the sound of pool balls clicking together came from the rear of the long room. Country music was playing on the jukebox. He’d never liked country music. Fifteen or twenty customers, all men, were scattered about the place, some of them watching a sports program on a silent television set above the bar. It was the sort of place he’d avoided all his life.

Jesse walked to the bar and took a stool a little away from anybody else. A man wearing an apron approached.

“Get you something?” he asked.

“A draft,” Jesse said.

The man pulled the beer and set it in front of Jesse. “Passing through?”

“I guess not. I went to work out at Wood Products this morning.”

The man stuck out his hand. “I’m Harry Donner; this is my place.”

Jesse took the hand. “Jesse Barron.” Harry seemed friendly enough.

“Where you bunking?”

“I’m boarding over at Mrs. Weatherby’s.”

“Nice lady.”

“Seems to be.” Jesse sipped his beer. “How long you been in business, Harry?”

“Nineteen years,” Harry replied. “Before that I tended bar in Boise. I come up here and took a job doing the same thing, and a couple years later the boss died, and I bought the joint from his widow. Yours isn’t a local accent; where you from?”

“North Georgia, up in the mountains. I was wandering West, headed more or less toward Seattle, when I happened on St. Clair.”

“You coulda done worse. How’d you end up at Wood Products?”

“I ran into Pat Casey, and he recommended it.”

“Herman Muller’s a good man; he’ll treat you right.”

Jesse laughed. “Well, he just about killed me today.”

Harry smiled. “They put you on the hopper?”

“That’s right.”

“They do that to everybody; stick it out, and Herman’ll find you something better.”

“I’ll do it, if I live.”

Another customer sat down at the bar, and Harry moved to serve him, leaving Jesse alone.

This is what he had never wanted, he thought, sitting in a saloon somewhere crying into his beer. It was just the sort of place his father would have figured him to end up in, he knew, and the thought made the evening even more painful.

Suddenly, he identified the emotion he had been dodging all evening: it was jealousy.

Jesse had known Beth all his life, and since high school he’d never had anything to do with any other woman. She’d been his from the ninth grade on, and he’d never given a moment’s thought to her running off with somebody else. Now Beth was gone, another woman had crawled into his bed and made him happy, and she was out this evening with another man.

What the hell, he thought, he had only just entered her life; she might have had that date for a long time. Why should she break it just for him? Still, that was what he would have wanted her to do.

This jealousy was powerful stuff, he realized, made up of equal parts of anger, pain and depression. He finished his beer and trudged back toward Jenny’s house.

She wasn’t home when he got there, and he turned in quickly. Exhausted, he didn’t hear her when she came home.