Lone Creek

9

After maybe forty-five minutes, I heard somebody come walking down the hall and stop outside my cell. I stood up, expecting one of the jailers.

But a glimpse through the mesh window showed me that the man unlocking the door was the sheriff of Lewis and Clark County, Gary Varna.

Gary was imposing-at least six-four, broad-shouldered, lanky, about fifty years old, but with no trace of a paunch. His forebears had immigrated from around the Black Sea a couple of generations ago and intermarried with the local Nordic stock. That might have explained his height and his pale blue eyes. But those slanted in a way that harked back to the tribesmen of the steppes, and had a way of fixing on you without ever seeming to blink.

He was also cordial, and as soon as the door swung open, he offered me a handshake.

"Come on out of there and stretch your legs," he said.

I shuffled into the hall in my laceless boots, surprised that he'd even be at the jail on a Saturday evening. I wondered if he'd just happened to stop by for some other reason, or found out I was here and had come on that account. I hadn't seen him for quite a while, but there'd been a time when we'd crossed paths pretty often.

He leaned back against the wall and folded his arms. He wore his uniform only when he had to, and he was dressed now in his signature outfit of sharply creased jeans and a button-down oxford cloth shirt-a sort of spiffed-up cowboy look that helped put people at ease. It was one of the many shrewd facets that made him what he was. He'd been in the sheriff's department close to thirty years, and probably knew more than anybody else about what people in this area were up to. He also excelled at working the political side of the street. He was known for being fair, but in the same way as a hometown referee-if there was a judgment call, you didn't have to wonder which side he'd come down on.

"I hear you hit a rough spot, Hugh," he said.

"I just took home some scrap lumber, Gary. Otherwise it would have gone to waste. I never tried to hide anything-I've been doing it for weeks, broad daylight, right in front of God and everybody."

"That don't sound like much of a start on a criminal career."

"I guess I'm too old to retrain."

He nodded, maybe amused.

"I'll get it back there Monday at the latest," I said. "Honest to Christ, I never dreamed anybody'd give a damn."

Those unblinking eyes stayed on me.

"Something about an assault?" he said.

"Doug Wills, the foreman, came at me out of the blue like he'd gone psycho. Just about head-on'd me with that asshole big rig of his, started yelling orders, then grabbed my shirt like he was going to punch me." I touched the scar on my face. "You know I've got this fucked-up eye. I get hit there hard again, I might lose it."

"Ever have any trouble with him before?"

"We hardly ever even talked to each other. There was sure nothing to set him off like that."

"So this wasn't personal, him trying to settle a score? He was following his employer's orders?"

"Goddammit, Gary, I was just sitting in my truck."

"That's not the point, Hugh. It sounds like he had good reason to make a citizen's arrest. And you resisted."

My eyes widened in disbelief as what he was saying came home to me.

"You're telling me that's how the court's going to see it?"

His shoulders rose in a shrug that meant yes.

"Fuck a wild man," I said, and turned away to stare at the hallway's dead end.

"I'm afraid I don't have any better news. Judge Harris set your bail at twenty-five thousand dollars."

I spun back around. "Twenty-five thousand?" The last time I'd been in this place, my pal and I had each paid a two-hundred-dollar fine, plus fixing the drywall.

"It does seem tall, I got to agree," Gary said. "The judge likes his Saturday poker game and Wild Turkey, and he tends to get pissy about being bothered. You can see him Monday, tell him what you just told me, and I'd guess he'll reduce it. With this sort of thing, you're usually talking more like a couple grand."

But that meant staying in here until Monday.

"Everything I own put together isn't worth twenty-five thousand dollars, Gary."

"That's why God invented bail bondsmen."

"I've never done business with one."

"I'm glad to hear that. You know how it works?"

I did. You fronted them ten percent, which they kept as their fee, and they posted your bond to the court. If you skipped out, they had to find you and haul you back in or forfeit the entire amount. They got very serious about looking.

"Yeah," I said sourly. "It costs me twenty-five hundred bucks right off the top."

"Ordinarily. But you might be able to knock that down to a couple hundred."

I perked up. "How so?"

"Well, I'm not supposed to go recommending anybody in particular, but just between you and me, Bill LaTray's been known to cut a deal in a situation like this. You get him the twenty-five hundred, and if the judge does reduce your bail on Monday, Bill will cut his rate to ten percent of the lowered amount and refund you the rest."

Bill LaTray, proprietor of Bill's Bail Bonds, was an extremely tough, heavily pockmarked, mixed-blood Indian who could quiet a rowdy bar with a look. He was built like a bull pine stump, and he favored a fringed, belted, three-quarter-length coat of smooth caramel-colored leather, a cross between native buckskin and something a Jersey mobster might wear. Besides his rep as a bar fighter, it was rumored that he'd done some time for armed robbery and assault when he was younger-sort of an apprenticeship for his later career.

"But I've still got to come up with the twenty-five bills now?" I said.

"That's about the size of it. But you don't stand to gain anything by waiting till Monday. If the judge drops the bail, you'll get the difference back. If he doesn't, you got to come up with the twenty-five hundred anyway. Either that or stay here till your trial, and the way the docket's looking, that ain't going to be for a couple months. So if I was you, I'd pony up and get the hell out of here."

That made perfect sense, except I could no more come up with twenty-five hundred bucks than I could with twenty-five thousand. I didn't have a credit card. My crew got paid every other Friday, and yesterday had been the off one. That left me with about seven hundred in my checking account. I had some folding money stashed at home, that I'd been rat-holing whenever I had a twenty or two that wasn't immediately spoken for. It didn't amount to much over fifteen hundred, if that. My next, and final, paycheck wouldn't come until next Friday.

Then I remembered that Bill LaTray had a sideline as a pawnbroker-his shop was conveniently located close to the jail. I had a couple of guns that I could hock to him to make up the extra few hundred. He probably picked up a lot of business that way.

"I can do it, but I need to get to my place," I said. "If you guys will drive me-"

Gary shook his head. "Sorry, we can't let you out until the bail's posted. I don't make the rules, Hugh. That's just the way it is."

I ran my hand over my hair, trying to see a way through this. My forehead was still caked with dried sweat and grime.

I could have called Madbird to get my guns and the bank money from an ATM, but the cash at my place was hidden, and it would have been damned near impossible to explain where. The only other choice I could see was to borrow it. I hated the thought, but I started going through a list of names in my head.

My parents were passed on, my sisters had long since moved away, and no other family was left around here except a couple of shirttail relatives I hardly knew. Elmer would have helped me and so would some other older family friends and men I'd worked with, but I couldn't bear the thought of asking them. Most of my own friends weren't any better off than me. There were only two people I could think of who probably had that kind of cash available.

Tom Dierdorff was one. But while I didn't mind asking him to talk to Balcomb-that was the kind of favor where it was understood that I'd insist on paying Tom, he'd tell me he'd send me a bill but never do it, and somewhere down the line he'd get me to come to his place and make some minor repair and he'd slip a check into my coat pocket that I'd tear up when I found it-tapping him for a twenty-five-hundred-dollar loan to boot would be pushing the envelope. I might have done it anyway, except he spent most weekends helping out on his family's ranch up near Augusta, about eighty miles away, and I sure wasn't going to ask him to make that drive.

That left one more.

"I guess I'll need a phone call," I said.

"We'll have to make it for you. Those damn rules, you know." Gary waited inquiringly while I ran it through my head once more.

"Sarah Lynn Olsen," I said.

His eyebrows rose just a twitch. Sarah Lynn and I had a lot of history together, and he knew it.

He pushed off the wall and unhooked his keys from his belt.

"I've got to lock you in again," he said. "Sorry, but-"

"Let me guess. Just the rules."

He smiled slightly. "I'll try to get hold of her."

Then he paused and fixed me with that pale steady gaze.

"You sure there's nothing more to this, Hugh?"

It was a perfect opening to blow the whistle about those horses and try to turn this around on Balcomb. I thought highly of Gary and I trusted him a long way. But my unease had kept on deepening. I wouldn't have believed that old Judge Roy Harris would set a twenty-five-thousand-dollar bail even for an ax murderer just because he was annoyed about his poker game being interrupted. It smelled of Balcomb's influence, and there was no telling how far that went.

I decided to wait until I saw the judge on Monday. If it cost me a couple of hundred bucks to get this bullshit over with, I'd take it lying down. If he stood pat, I was going to have to think real hard about whether I was twenty-five hundred dollars worth of scared.

"If there is, Gary, I can't think what," I said.

He nodded and closed the door.

It wasn't the first time I hadn't told Gary Varna everything I knew.