Every Cloak Rolled in Blood

Chapter Eleven

All the way home, Fannie Mae will not let me alone.

Have you lost your mind, Pops? That woman belongs in a cage.

“People are always better than we think,” I say. “That’s from George Orwell.”

That was just before he got shot through the throat in Spain and almost executed by the people he was fighting for.

“Will you give it a rest?”

Those people are evil, Pops. If they had their way, we’d go up the chimney.

“What about the Wetzel boys? You think they’re Nazis?”

No, they’re meth heads. They’ll be used by others, then thrown away. They’re not your responsibility.

The sun is yellow and low on the horizon, dust rising in strings from the fields. Up ahead is a ghost ranch, with a house and barns and loading chutes that now consist of boards as wind-hewn and weightless as air, tumbleweeds bouncing through them, the original red paint barely visible.

You’re turning sad on me, Pops.

“You were always my little pal.”

Don’t go down that road, Popsie. It really sucks.

“I’m angry at you for dying.”

The inside of the car becomes silent. A semi goes flying by, air horns blowing, the trailer swaying. I’m on the yellow stripe. I overcorrect and swing onto the shoulder.

“I probably dozed off,” I say. “But we’re okay.”

Tell that to the guy in the Mack shaking his fist out the window.

When I return home, Ruby Spotted Horse is parked in front of my veranda, seemingly preoccupied with paperwork, her windows sealed, the engine running. I park below her and walk up and tap on the window. Her face jerks, then she rolls down the glass. “You gave me a heart attack,” she says. There’s nothing funny about her manner.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

She unlocks the doors. “Get in,” she says.

“I told you, I don’t like sitting in cop cars. Tell me what you’re doing here.”

“Know a kid named Clayton Wetzel?”

My stomach turns to water.

“That’s what I thought,” she says. “Are you going to get in or not?”

I walk around to the passenger side. The inside of the cruiser is warm and comfortable, but my heart is tripping, and a pressure band is tightening around the side of my head. She’s wearing her campaign hat and a Kevlar vest; she has a clipboard propped against the steering wheel and a large envelope full of eight-by-ten photos on the dashboard. “Am I right?” she asks. Her voice is neutral, perhaps too friendly, perhaps deceptive. “You know a kid named Wetzel?”

“What about him?”

“This,” she replies. She pulls one of the photos from the envelope and hands it to me. “That’s what’s left of his head.”

A half-cup of bile rises from my stomach. I can hardly hold it down.

“Take a look at the other photos,” she says. “He was torn apart, literally, his arms and legs ripped off. He was also disemboweled.”

I force myself to look at each photo and have to keep clearing my throat to get through them. I hand them back to her and unconsciously wipe one hand on my trouser leg. “Where did this happen?”

“By the railway track on the res.”

Be careful, Pops, Fannie Mae says.

“How is Wetzel’s death being treated?” I ask.

Spotted Horse hesitates. “There’s been no decision on that.”

She begins telling me details about the body’s proximity to a nightclub, the blood scatter in the weeds, the trouble she had obtaining crime-scene photos from someone at the Flathead police station. But she keeps avoiding the most probable explanation for the boy’s death and the violence done to his body.

“You don’t think he fell under the train?” I say.

“No, I don’t. Did you know this kid or not, Mr. Broussard?”

“I had a confrontation with him.”

“ ‘Confrontation’ won’t cut it. You’re going to have cops at your door either tonight or tomorrow morning. Since this is Sunday and the DA is out of town, they’ll probably be here in the morning.”

“Why me?”

“Wednesday night, some guns and a hammer and tape were dropped in the parcel chute at the main post office in Missoula. One of the guns was an Uzi, like the one used in the Lolo robberies. The guy with the Uzi in the security-camera videos was wearing a jacket just like the one Wetzel was wearing when he got torn apart.”

I make no reply. I can’t think straight. I wish I had turned in Wetzel and his brother. The heater in the cruiser is hot against my leg. My armpits are sweating and I can smell my own odor. I think she’s determined to turn an accident into a homicide. I also wonder if she’s really a friend. Then she drops it on me. “Guess who was seen leaving the post office Wednesday night?” she says.

“If you’re talking about me, I go there about three or four evenings a week. Let’s get back to Wetzel and the possibility that he tried to jump on the train and fell under it. Were the body parts on the track or by the track?”

“They were scattered.”

“Coyotes or wolves could have gotten to him.”

“This is the same crap I’ve gotten from several of my colleagues. Some of Wetzel’s entrails were shoved down his throat. I don’t think animals do that to each other.”

“I’d better not say any more, Miss Ruby.”

She presses her wrist to her forehead as though she has a migraine. The sun begins its descent behind the mountains, and in a blink, shadows fall across the valley and the river and through my yard and trees and into the house, as though the elements are colluding against me. I wonder what happened to the younger boy.

“I’m not here to get on your case, Mr. Broussard,” she says. “I want to help you. I already know who killed the Wetzel kid.”

“Who?” I say, although I know what’s coming.

“Somebody who lives under my cellar.”

“Nope,” I say. “I’m not going down this highway again.”

“You insisted on learning about my cellar. You’re going to listen whether you like it or not. The death of that boy also involves Jeremiah McNally.”

“What does he have to do with this?”

“Probably more than you want to know. He came to my house because he was concerned about you. Or at least that’s what he said. I think he wanted to put moves on me. He said he’d been at the casino. He wanted to take me back there.”

“That’s not his style,” I reply.

“Believe what you want, Mr. Broussard. We were in the living room and something began crashing against the cellar door. McNally demanded to know what was down there, just as you did. Then we heard a voice come from the staircase. A little girl’s voice. All my animals started going crazy.”

I put my hand on the door handle. “Miss Ruby, that’s enough. I’m done. It’s obvious I’ve gotten myself in a mess. But that doesn’t mean I want to get myself deeper in it.”

“The horses trampled my English sheepdog. Mr. Droopy. I could hear him whimpering in the lot. I ran outside and shielded his body and tried to calm the horses before they broke his neck.” Her eyes were wet, her voice wired. “Then I saw McNally, that son of a bitch, coming out the back door and heading for his car. I didn’t know what he was doing. I thought maybe he was going home. Mr. Droopy was in such pain that I couldn’t move him, and I couldn’t leave him alone. The horses were breaking down the rails. What was I supposed to do?”

“Why did McNally go to his car?”

“He got a jack handle and went down to the cellar. I started running for the house. I was too late. He broke the lock on the door. The girl got out.”

“What girl?”

“That one I call ‘the girl.’ She doesn’t have a name. She lives with the Old People. Or they make use of her. I don’t know. I left her my niece’s rocking horse to play on.”

“What did McNally do after she got away?”

“Nothing. He’s an idiot. He said there was no girl in the cellar. Or anybody, for that matter. He said some neckers or dopers were playing their boom boxes out in the woods, and that’s what we heard. I took him into the back of the cellar and showed him the entranceway.”

“Entranceway?”

“It’s the conduit to the prison where the Old People are confined. They’ve been there for thousands of years. There’re petroglyphs on the wall that tell you how to roll back the stone that covers the corridor tunnel.”

“You’ve opened the door?”

“No, there’s others who do that. The Guardians catch the Old People and bring them here.”

I wonder if she’s insane. Or am I insane for listening to her? “You showed McNally the petroglyphs?”

“He said the petroglyphs were nothing more than the scales of hellgrammites.”

“Who’s the girl, Miss Ruby?”

“Who do I think she is?” she says. “I think she’s my niece. But her body has been taken over by an evil spirit. Do you know which evil spirit I’m talking about?”

“No, I don’t, and I’d rather you not tell me.”

“Major Eugene Baker.”

“The soldier who slaughtered the Blackfeet on the Marias in 1870?”

“Yes.”

I take a breath. “Okay, will you show me the petroglyphs?”

The cruiser’s overhead light is on. The sun has descended behind a black mountain, as though the light is sliding down the shingles of the world. Is this the lot of mankind? I ask myself. Are we indeed trapped in the Doomsday Book, dressed in sackcloth with ashes on our brow? Oh, dear God, deliver me up from my own thoughts, may I abide in the joyous fields of your Son.

I feel as if I have manufactured a cocoon inside the cruiser and am trying to borrow security that doesn’t exist on the other side of the window glass. I think this is what people mean when they talk about primal fear and the poor embryo waiting for the flash of light that will release him or her into a world of anacondas and tigers and hyenas and, most destructive of all, the forked creature who reaches for the infant with hands that, not long ago, were fins on a fish.

I ask again to see the petroglyphs.

“No, I don’t think I should show them to you,” she replies. “I think I’ve made a mistake. You pretend to be a believer, Mr. Broussard. But you’re not.”

“You’re talking about theological belief?”

She taps on the photos. “This was done by a monster. You heard the sounds in my cellar. Quit lying to yourself.”

“Who made you the jailer of all these evil spirits?”

“One of the Guardians.”

“Why you?”

“Because my ancestors died on the Marias and at the Big Hole. I think the job is about to go to someone else, though.” She tilts her head up so I can see her face. “Get my drift?”

“If you’re talking about me, forget it.” I open the door and get out.

“What did you and Virginia Stokes talk about today?” she asks.

“Say that again?”

“You know the lesson every long-term cop eventually learns?” she says.

“No.”

“Most of the time, the system only punishes the people who are available, the kind who stick their neckties in the garbage grinder. That’s why we have recidivists. They’re the only people we can catch.”

“I don’t wear neckties,” I reply.

“Funny man.”

I walk up the steps onto the veranda and go inside. Fannie Mae is lying on the couch watching television, except there’s only white noise on the screen.

Learn anything from Short Stuff?

“More than I wanted.”

Anything outstanding?

“She made a slip. They’ve got a wire inside Ginny Stokes’s church group.”