Lone Creek

17

Indian ways, Irish blood, and alcohol don't necessarily make for a very smart mix. But it can be a potent one.

Back when the job had first started, Jack, my boss, had given me a printout of phone numbers for the architects and managers and ranch offices and everybody's cells. I'd had to contact one or another pretty often, usually to hassle something out, so I kept it in the truck's glove box. It included the Balcombs' home number. I'd never called that one and never dreamed I would.

It was getting toward midnight when I found a quiet phone booth outside an Albertson's grocery store.

A woman answered after four rings.

"Yes?"

I could tell from that one syllable that she was Laurie.

"This is Hugh Davoren, Mrs. Balcomb. I need to talk to your husband."

There was a slight hesitation.

"Do I know you?" she said.

"We spoke, earlier today. You were out riding and I was in a pickup truck."

"Oh, yes, with the faux dueling scar."

"Yeah."

"It's rather late to be calling."

"This is important."

She paused again, as if she was trying to imagine what, in my life, it possibly could be.

But she said, "I'm remembering you more clearly now. Somebody told me something about you."

"Huh. They must have been pretty hard up for gossip."

"You weren't quite honest with me this afternoon. Stanford, is that right?"

I blinked in surprise. I hadn't known what to expect, but it wasn't this.

"I don't recall lying about it," I said.

"Oh, I think the 'aw, shucks, ma'am' routine was a kind of lie."

"I've learned I get along better if I don't answer questions until they're asked."

"All right, I'll ask one," she said. "Why are you making your living out here hauling trash?"

Out of nowhere, I remembered her riding toward me across the meadow, looking for all the world like Celia, by some miracle grown up into her full womanly beauty.

"The guy hauling trash is me, Mrs. Balcomb. The other guy was a suit I tried on that never fit. He's long gone and we're both glad of it. Is your husband around?"

For a few more seconds, again, nothing happened. I was getting the feeling that her hesitations had a meaning beyond anything I could grasp.

It seemed strange that she'd have heard that about me, and stranger still that she'd bring it up.

"I'll get him," she said.

Balcomb took his time coming to the phone-back in his dick-swinging mode of making people wait.

"Mr. Davoren," he said, in his cool, smooth tone. "How interesting to hear from you. This number's supposed to be unlisted. I can see I'll have to change it."

"This is getting out of control, Balcomb. Let's stop it right now."

His sarcasm edged up a notch. "Out of control?"

"Somebody came onto my land and burned that lumber."

"Oh, for God's sake," he said, now with weary patience.

"You don't believe me, come up and take a look."

"I don't believe you about anything, Davoren, and I'm most certainly not going to waste any more time on you. Even if what you claim is true, my first suspicion would be that you burned it yourself."

"Me? Why the hell would I do that?"

"Because you thought it might make me feel sorry for you. I advise you to forget about any more such naive little ploys. You committed crimes and you took my property. You're going to pay for that."

"Then it's going to cost you, too," I said.

Balcomb actually sounded amused. "Yes, I thought that would be coming next. When lying and whining don't work, your kind shift to threats."

I was starting to think real hard about driving right through his fucking high-security fence and dragging him out of his house.

"Remember when you asked me if I saw anything unusual?" I said. "I probably should have mentioned-the most unusual thing I didn't see was two shotgunned and gutted horses in the ranch dump."

There came a pause, like with Laurie, but the feel was a whole different order of business. Everything seemed to stop dead.

"I haven't told anybody yet," I said. "But I'm ready to head straight to the Independent Record and give them the story. They'll have it all over the wires by morning."

He wasn't shaken for long. He knew the carcasses were safely hidden now. His tone changed to the steely one of a man who had tried to be tolerant but had run out of patience.

"Really, Davoren. This has gone from distasteful to sick. I won't dignify that with a response. But if it was anything but another outrageous lie, you'd have said something earlier."

"I kept my mouth shut so I could find out more without tipping anybody off," I said. "I went back a little while ago and followed the Cat's tracks to the shed where those horses were killed. Oh, sorry-weren't killed. Never even existed, right?"

This time he was silent as stone.

"There's a kicker, Balcomb," I said. "Sure, I'm a liar trying to get off the hook, but I'm a liar who happened to be a journalist for seven years. The Sacramento Guardian-you can check it out if you want to waste the time. I always keep a camera with my other gear, out of old habit. So I've got a bunch of photos I didn't take. The whole shittarree-the carcasses, the tipped-over hay bales, the loose piece of siding."

I watched a middle-aged couple come out of the store and make their way toward a dusty sedan, pushing a cart filled with plastic sacks-out grocery shopping late on a Saturday night. There was something odd and yet sweetly sensible about it.

"I'm starting to realize that I was wrong about you," Balcomb finally said, with the weariness in his voice again. "Your real problem is not that you're a petty criminal. You're completely unhinged. But I have far too much on my plate to be mired down in something like this. What is it you want?"

See which way he jumps.

"You drop all charges first thing Monday and pay my bail," I said. "We'll call the lumber a wash. Maybe it wasn't mine, but you'd have just thrown it away."

"What guarantee do I have that you won't stir up more trouble?"

"I never stirred up any trouble to start with. And I don't ever want any fucking thing to do with you again. You can believe that."

Another blast of that frozen stillness came across the phone, as clear as if it had turned my ear blue.

"Consider it done," he said.

The connection ended.