Lone Creek

32

As I rode to Helena I started getting into a drizzle that turned the pavement slick and the visibility poor. With just the flashlight duct-taped to the handlebars, I stayed on back roads and streets, making my way toward the area around the county courthouse. It seemed I'd been spending a lot of time there lately. The neighborhood was old and largely working class, although some younger professionals involved in the Montana version of gentrification were moving in. There was also a substantial element of small-time criminals, conveniently residing close to the jail. It couldn't have been much more different from the pristine country where Kirk had grown up, but it was where his girlfriend Josie lived, and he'd moved in with her when the ranch was sold.

I hardly knew her, mainly just to nod and say hi when I'd seen her out with Kirk. She hadn't grown up around here-I had it in my head that she was from the coast, Seattle or Portland. She was about twenty-five, with shoulder-length brown hair and a small slim build, quite pretty in an anorexic way-the kind of girl you'd see sitting at a bar on a summer afternoon, wearing cutoff jeans and a tank top with a little bow, and she'd seem fresh and appealing and amusingly smart-mouthed. But in time you'd notice the dark circles under her eyes as her makeup wore thin, and how she started seeming a lot older than her years, and that the tantalizing patter was never going to go anywhere except toward what was in this for her. When I was younger, I'd been quite good at not catching on to that sort of thing. It had taken me on some rides, but I couldn't recall one that hadn't turned out sour or outright troublesome.

The only time I'd exchanged more than a casual hello with Josie had been on a night several months back, when she'd come up to me in O'Toole's and asked if I'd seen Kirk. He must have been off on one of his runners. When I told her no, she said he was supposed to pick her up hours ago, and she was tired and wanted to crash, and would I drive her home? As soon as we'd gotten into my truck, she'd started asking me to make other stops-first at a convenience store for cigarettes, then at somebody's house where she probably scored some dope, and then she'd wanted to go to another bar. Instead, I'd driven straight to her and Kirk's place and stayed behind the wheel while she pouted her way inside. Back at O'Toole's, it wasn't long before I saw her come in again. But that time, she looked right through me as she walked past. I hadn't run into her since.

There was no reason to expect that she'd be happy to see me. I was starting to realize that a lot of people weren't. But she was bound to know some things about Kirk's drug dealings, and I'd been thinking more and more about Madbird's guess that that might have been how the horses were used. If the shred of nylon I'd found at the shed had come from the tarp wadded up with their carcasses, it suggested that the Cat had picked it up and carried it to the dump along with them. I was wondering if Balcomb had put the tarp down to keep from losing any cargo in the swamp that their blood and entrails would have made on the shed's dirt floor.

Josie's apartment was on the second story of a run-down frame house on Ewing Street. I pulled the Victor up to the curb, shut it down, and sat for a minute, absorbing the neighborhood's own peculiar kind of desolation. It was closed in by steep hills, with the buildings packed tightly together, giving it the secretive feel of an older time and place. The lights of the tree-lined streets were dim and the windows heavily curtained, with no signs of activity and no sounds but the faint patter of rain and the rumble of a car with a shot muffler passing a few blocks away. I knew there were plenty of people and plenty going on around me, but everything was hidden inside the walls, working by its own rules, apart from the rest of the world and wanting to keep it like that. The sense was similar in a way to what I'd felt approaching the ranch-that I was an intruder being watched, but not by anybody. The difference was that out in that wild country, it had been exhilarating. This was a lot less pleasant.

The building's outside entrance was unlocked. It gave into a little hallway with a mailbox and a shadowy staircase leading up to the door of the apartment. I hadn't been able to tell if Josie was home-her windows, like most of the others around, were covered and barely lit. But she must have either been watching outside or heard me on the stairs, because the door opened against its chain before I raised my fist to knock.

Her face appeared in the gap. She looked wary, like she didn't remember me, which was entirely possible. Then again, maybe it was because she did-or because she'd learned that I was under suspicion in Kirk's disappearance.

I said, "Hi, Josie."

"Kirk's gone."

"I know. That's why I came by."

"Did you hear something?" she said sharply.

"Nothing besides that. I need to talk to you. It won't take long."

Her eyes narrowed. "What about?"

"I had a run-in with Wesley Balcomb. I need help figuring some things out."

"So this isn't because you're worried about Kirk, right?" she said, with chilling precision and speed.

"Hell, yes, of course I'm worried about him. If I do any good, it could-you know-" I floundered, and finished up, "Help him, too."

Her face relaxed into a calculated look. It was oddly more natural.

"Come on in," she said.

She didn't look so pretty tonight. She was wearing a University of Montana Grizzlies football sweatshirt so big and baggy that she seemed lost inside it like a little kid, and skinnier than ever. The sleeves came down to her fingertips-she kept fidgeting, pushing them up to her wrists, but they'd flop loose again immediately. I suspected they were hiding track marks. Her face was tense and twitchy, and her nostrils had a raw peeled look.

The apartment was a train wreck, but not a comfortable kind of organic mess like at Doug's trailer. The pastel blue paint on the walls had peeled in patches to reveal a mosaic of previous colors, and the carpet, a green-orange shag that screamed remnant sale, was stained and cigarette-burned and trodden down to a dismal mat. The room reeked of smoke, with an undercurrent of decay from the kitchen or the plumbing or God knew what else.

But that all went with the turf. The jarring element lay in the newer things. For openers, Josie was sporting a diamond engagement ring like you'd see on rich widows in Miami, with one stone the size of a chickpea surrounded by several smaller ones. I was no judge of that kind of thing, but they gave off the kind of sparkle that I didn't think came from paste.

There was a full-blown home entertainment center with a TV even bigger than Doug's, plus a DVD and a VCR and a stereo and all the other bells and whistles, encased in a slick cabinet set. A new leather couch that they must have had a hell of a time getting up those stairs took up most of one wall. A couple of large western-theme paintings were hung above and around it, the kind of imitation Charlie Russells that were one step this side of black velvet, but that sold for ungodly prices in rustic art galleries.

And clothes. The front closet was so packed with coats and boots that the door wouldn't close. Jeans and tops trailed off the furniture onto the floor and formed a path to the bedroom. Pretty much everything, to be blunt, looked slutty. But most of it was new, too-some of the items still had tags.

The strong implication was that she'd been living low to the ground, then suddenly had come into a chunk of cash and tried to buy some class. But she didn't know how, so she'd retreated to filling up the place with the familiar security of clothes.

The psychology involved didn't particularly interest me. What did was the more tangible matter of where that money had come from-not just for all this, but for Kirk's new Jeep and guns and other pseudo-military toys. I was sure that Josie didn't have a job, and there was no way Kirk's salary went that far. Maybe it had come from his family, although he'd done plenty of barroom pissing and moaning about his father's stinginess. Maybe they'd bought it all on credit.

Maybe.

Josie turned to me with her arms folded and a no-bullshit stare. Her mouth was a tight line turned down at the corners.

"Look, I don't know where Kirk is or what's going on," she said. "I'll talk to you, but you got to do something for me, too. He didn't leave me any money, man. There's no food here, I'm starving."

It looked like coyness wasn't going to figure into this, which was good. I opened my wallet, thinking I'd give her a twenty. But I'd had only a few bucks of my own to start with, and out of the hundred-dollar bill I'd put down at the Red Meadow, only some singles, a couple of fives, and a fifty were left. Elmer and I hadn't drunk much, but I'd been careful to take care of the bartender-who in return had topped our glasses to the brim and bought us a round, the way it ought to be-and a shot of good bourbon wasn't cheap these days even at a place like that.

I wanted Josie in a cooperative mood, and it was Balcomb's cash anyway, so I set the fifty on top of a clothes pile, making sure she saw the denomination. Instead of being impressed, she looked at it like a waitress in a classy restaurant would look at a two-bit tip. I shouldn't have been surprised. I'd seen it often enough, people who'd never had to earn money thinking that people who did should throw bushels of it at them.

"What do you want to know?" she said. Now she seemed impatient.

"What did Kirk-" I caught myself, and coughed into my hand to cover. "What does Kirk have to say about Wesley Balcomb?" I breathed a silent thanks that I'd screwed up with her and not someone who might have noticed. I was going to have to watch it.

"Not much," Josie said. "Back when he first started that job, I asked him about it a couple of times, and he told me to shut up. So I stopped."

"Why won't he talk about his job? Most guys do."

"Maybe he just doesn't want to, OK? Maybe Mr. Balcomb told him not to."

"Did Kirk tell you that?"

"I said maybe." Her impatience was getting clearer.

"Did you ever get the feeling that Kirk and Balcomb were into something together?" I said.

"Like what?"

"Like dope, big-time?"

Her eyes widened in disbelief. Then she snorted with what seemed to be genuine amusement.

"You gotta be kidding." But it wasn't so much a denial as, You think I'd tell you?

"Everybody knows he's into crank, Josie," I said. "And all this expensive stuff here-a guy's got to wonder. If I was a cop, I sure would."

A trace of alarm softened her tough look.

"What the fuck's it to you?" she said.

"Let me worry about that. We made a deal."

"I didn't make any deal to get set up, man."

"I've got nothing to gain by setting you up, for Christ's sake. I'm trying to help myself."

"Kirk never sells dope," she said emphatically.

"Yeah? But he must buy it. Enough for two people, huh."

She shrugged, her face hardening again. Read the mail, asshole.

"So where's all that money coming from?" I said.

"Hey, I don't have time for this bullshit," she said, and stepped forward, reaching for the fifty.

I grabbed it first. "All right, you can tell the sheriffs instead," I said. "If Kirk doesn't show up quick, you better believe they're going to have your little tits in the wringer."

She caught my arm before I got to the door, with a pleading expression that I translated as God, I'm sorry, I'm so fucked up I can't think.

"I'm really scared," she whispered. "I think he's gone for good."

I put one arm around her and let her sob a few times against my shoulder. I didn't doubt that she genuinely cared for Kirk, or that she was scared for all kinds of reasons, including her future. Going back home probably wasn't an option. Kirk's family wasn't going to help her out, and her friends were all like her.

But right this minute, I was pretty sure that she was mostly scared I was going to walk out the door with that fifty-dollar bill.

"Let me tell you again, Josie, I'm not out to take anybody down," I said. "Just to stay above water myself."

She nodded and pulled away, wiping her eyes with her sleeves.

"Will you still leave me that money?" she sniffled.

"Yeah. Now let's go back to where Kirk's been getting his."

The way she hesitated seemed a touch dramatic.

"Panning gold," she said.

"What?" The thought of Kirk Pettyjohn panning gold was arguably the most preposterous thing I'd ever heard. There was nothing he'd hated more than physical work.

Her mouth took a sulky twist, like she knew how it sounded, but her eyes were stubborn.

"It's a major secret, OK?" she said. "That's why I didn't want to tell you. If it gets out, people will move in on him."

"I'll keep it quiet. Just give me a general idea of what he does."

"He goes someplace for a couple of days and gets the gold, then sells it and comes home with money."

Sure. Nothing to it. That was why there were so many small-time miners all over the state driving around in Rolls-Royces. There was also the fact that liquidating mineral ore tended to be a lot more complicated than walking in someplace with a sackful of it and walking back out with cash.

"Who's he sell it to?" I said.

"He never told me."

"How often does he go?"

"Every couple of months. Except, you know, like January and February."

"When did he start this?"

"I don't know exactly. After he moved in here."

"Do you ever go with him?"

She shook her head, managing to toss her hair at the same time.

"I don't even know where it is, man."

I might have been able to push her farther, but she was getting that fuck-you edge again. It was like one of those old inflatable Joe Palooka dolls that kids used to pound on-it would keep springing back up many more times than I could knock it down. And it added to the distaste that I felt anyway.

Then, abruptly, I glimpsed the subconscious reason that I'd judged her harshly. I didn't so much dislike her-I resented her, and I had since the first time I'd seen her with Kirk.

Reuben Pettyjohn was in his seventies now. Kirk had been the only surviving heir. When Reuben died, the purse strings that he kept such a tight hold on would finally come open. And if Kirk had married Josie, or if they'd had a child, a big piece of that fortune would have fallen to her.

But deep in my mind, absurd but unshakable, lay the conviction that it rightfully should have gone to Celia. Every time I'd ever looked at Josie and known that she was likely to get it instead, I'd felt a little stab in my guts. Seeing her in action tonight sure hadn't added any new respect.

I decided I'd process her information and come back if it seemed worth pushing farther.

"One more question," I said. "When was the last time Kirk made one of those runs?"

"Three, maybe four weeks."

"OK," I said, and held the fifty toward her. "You keep quiet about this, too, huh?"

She pulled it from my hand with a roll of her eyes that said, finally.

I'd gotten about halfway down the stairs when I heard her call, "Hey."

I paused and looked back up. She was standing in the apartment doorway with her hands on her hips.

"My tits aren't that little," she snapped. "They look that way when I'm dressed, 'cause I have a very slender rib cage. My doctor says it's 'exquisite.'"

She disappeared behind the door and slammed it, returning the stairwell to shadows.