Lone Creek

42

Laurie and I split off from Madbird, with him and me agreeing that I'd contact him in a day or two. He drove his van home with the Victor in the rear. We took the vehicle that John Doe had used. He'd switched from his rental car to one of the Pettyjohn Ranch pickup trucks, a four-wheel-drive king cab Ford that Balcomb must have given him to navigate the Scapegoat's rough terrain. It was good cover-those kinds of rigs were as common as rocks around here, and I was sure that Balcomb wouldn't get the cops looking for it for fear that might somehow connect him with John Doe.

The drive to the Hi-Line took several hours, and dusk was settling in as we got there. We kept on going toward the Canadian border, following the directions that Reuben had given me to Kirk's patch of land. The highway was narrow and deserted, and the last of the pavement gave out not long after we left the town of Sunburst, which consisted largely of a cafe and a feed store with a few gas pumps. From there, the roads were all dirt for more than a hundred square miles.

Laurie had been silent for a long time. This country would do that to you. We'd already been in the middle of nowhere, but this was a different kind of nowhere-prairie that stretched almost unbroken for a hundred miles south and west, several hundred miles east, and north to the Arctic Circle. A friend of mine who'd been stationed at Air Force missile silos around here claimed that if you stared long enough into the vista, you could literally see the curvature of the earth.

The wind was ceaseless, rippling across the fields and whipping the yellow thistles that lined the road. Flocks of little swallows skimmed along in front of the truck, and everywhere, we heard the liquid warble of meadowlarks closing down the day. Oil derricks in the fields bobbed patiently up and down like giant insects from a sci-fi movie drinking the earth's blood. We saw some cattle, a couple of pronghorns, and one hawk. But there were no people or vehicles and hardly any signs of human presence except for an occasional ranch mailbox or a distant building. The deepening twilight underscored it all, bringing the uneasy sense of choking off the last connection to the world we'd always known.

That left just her and me alone together, with everything that had happened and everything that might. It filled the cab like the engine's drone.

"I tried to find out more about you," she said suddenly. "But I didn't want anybody to know I was interested, so I didn't get far."

Her voice came as a pleasant little shock. Staying quiet had suited me-I had plenty to think about. But having her back was nice.

"Find out more what?" I said.

"The usual things women want to know. Like how many ex-wives."

I glanced over at her. She looked alert and inquisitive, out of her withdrawal. The West Butte of the Sweet Grass Hills was coming into sight, a craggy upthrust of almost seven thousand feet that relieved the somber bleakness. And maybe it had occurred to her that the farther we went, the farther we left behind John Doe and Balcomb and all the rest of that. Still, it was another measure of her sand that she could start up a conversation like we were on a first date.

"Just one," I said.

"Kids?"

"Nope."

"Previous work experience?"

I smiled. "I spent some time as a journalist."

"Really? Was that the 'other guy' you talked about? Or should I say, didn't talk about?"

"That was what he did for a living."

"What else did he do?"

"Failed, mostly," I said. "I'd just as soon keep not talking about him."

"Painful to remember?"

Both more and less than that, I thought.

"It's kind of like what you told me about another ghost," I said. "I want you all to myself."

Her eyes changed slightly, enough to show that she was pleased.

I'd been driving slowly, partly because of the rough road and partly waiting for full night. Most likely we'd go unnoticed. But particularly when we got to Kirk's, I wanted to be extra careful. His place was surrounded by private ranch land that I was going to have to cross. I was sure the rancher had been contacted about his disappearance by now, and would probably be keeping an eye out in case he showed up.

"How we doing for time?" I asked Laurie.

I rarely wore a watch. Hers, a slender gold Bulgari that was probably worth more than the truck we were driving, had caused a minor panic earlier today-as we'd been leaving the campsite, she thought she'd lost it. We'd hunted around a couple of minutes with no luck and left without it, but then she'd realized it had probably slipped off while she and I were thrashing around last night. We were still on the dirt road in the Scapegoat with Madbird right behind us in the van, so she'd jumped out of the pickup and gotten in with him to look for it. When we stopped at the highway a few minutes later and she came hurrying back to the truck, I'd seen with relief that she was wearing it.

She told me it was a quarter to seven. We were within a few miles of Kirk's now and darkness was settling fast. I started refocusing on why we'd come here.

"Now let me ask you some things," I said. "What made you and your husband decide to buy the Pettyjohn Ranch?"

"Wesley wanted it."

"You didn't?"

"I thought it was insane from the first. But I went along, like always."

"So tell me why a city businessman who doesn't know anything about horses or even like them decides to move to Montana and start raising them? I mean, I can buy it up to a point that he's trying to compensate for his feelings of inadequacy or whatever. But that's a hell of a lot of compensation."

"There was also a much more practical reason. He needed money. Like always."

"I don't get that, either. From what I've heard, he's not making any or really even trying to."

"That's not what I mean. It was a way of getting his hands on more of mine."

I shook my head, confused still further. My sense of finances didn't extend much beyond going to work and bringing home a paycheck, and the more macro the economics got, the more micro my grasp was. The concept of trickle-down threw me completely.

"My inheritance is controlled by trustees," she explained patiently. "They let Wesley invest out of it at first, but he went through several million and ended up with nothing but debt. My family got furious and had us cut off. We got an allowance, but no capital."

Life's hard lessons, I thought. The "allowance" probably would have financed a third world nation.

"Then Wes came up with the ranch scheme, and he made me go to the trustees and convince them it was for me," she said. "I'd fallen in love with the west, it would be my lifelong dream, all that. They finally agreed to give him the down payment, but that was the end."

"But he didn't gain any cash, right?" I said. "Just the opposite-he took on a huge mortgage to pay off." I had only a rough idea of what a place like that was worth, but for sure it was more than twenty million and maybe closer to twice that. "He must have known there wouldn't be any short-term profit. How'd he figure to make money? How is he making it?"

"Is this why you wanted me all to yourself?" she said, with sudden sharpness. "To interrogate me about my husband's business?" She swung away to gaze out her window, crossing her arms.

I exhaled. "Laurie, I've hardly been able to think about anything but you and last night. But I need to make sense of all this. It's the only chance I can see for us getting out of it." I reached over and touched her knee. "I intend to give you my full attention real soon, believe me."

She squeezed my hand forgivingly but didn't turn to look at me.

"Wesley found a new investor," she said. "A man named DeBruyne. The kind you never hear about, but very rich and powerful. I think he's Belgian originally, but he has homes all over the world."

I blinked. That was news.

"How did Balcomb 'find' this guy?"

She shrugged. "Business contacts, I suppose. I really don't know."

"And he just started writing checks? Let's face it, Laurie, your husband doesn't have the kind of track record that would draw most smart investors."

"Monsieur DeBruyne literally has more money than he knows what to do with. What matters to him is the huge cachet-a ranch in Montana and fine thoroughbred horses."

"Has he ever been here?"

"No. Wesley wants their partnership kept secret. I'm not even supposed to mention his name."

"I'd say all those kinds of bets are off now."

For a couple of seconds, I thought she hadn't heard me. Then she turned and gave me a smile, warm and steady.

"Of course they are," she said. "It just hasn't sunk in yet."