Lone Creek

47

I left Great Falls in a state of cold euphoria, with my path lit by the dark inner lamp that Laurie had kindled. It was about one-thirty in the morning. The roads were almost deserted. I stayed just under the speed limits and casually shielded my face when another vehicle did come close.

Laurie had sketched a rough map of the compound while I dressed. Knowing that Balcomb would be in that room was the key. The rest fell readily into place. I'd leave the truck at the dead end of the same dirt road where Balcomb had tossed Kirk's rifle for John Doe to pick up. From there it was a few hundred yards on foot, skirting the fence, to the stakeout point. There was no one else staying there now, and the closest residences were the ranch hands' trailers, a good mile away. If anybody heard the shots, I'd be gone before they could get there. Most likely he wouldn't be discovered until somebody missed him and went looking for him.

The logistics of covering my tracks were trickier. The mistakes I'd made with Kirk still scared the shit out of me. The upside was that I'd given a lot of thought to what I would have done differently, and that kicked in. The downside was that my margin was a lot narrower this time. For openers, the sheriffs weren't going to have any trouble finding the crime scene. I could only try to minimize the risks.

First came the rifle. I had barely touched it-just picked it up by the stock to put it in the truck, back at the campsite-and I'd carefully wiped it clean since then. But I couldn't count on doing that again effectively, in haste and in the dark. I didn't have gloves, and I didn't want to chance buying anything that a clerk might remember. Wrapping it would be easiest, but that might leave fabric traces, even microscopic, that were identifiable-any clothing or gear that belonged to Laurie or Madbird or me could link it to us. I didn't want to use anything from around Great Falls, either-the fact that I'd been staying there would be known, and material from there turning up at the scene would be a highly suspicious coincidence.

The safest course I could see was to go scavenging when I got to Helena. I could filch a garbage bag out of a dumpster for wrapping the rifle. The thin plastic wouldn't impair my shooting, it would keep my clothes and skin free of residue, and I could shove it inside my shirt when I dropped the weapon and burn it on the way home. I'd obscure my boot prints by lashing a couple of small green pine branches to the soles like miniature snowshoes. There were plenty of haystacks along the way where I could cut baling twine.

The best thing about this, giving me a grim and maybe ugly satisfaction, was that it would point strongly to Kirk's settling a score with Balcomb-exactly the setup that Balcomb had intended for me. Besides obvious evidence like the rifle itself, there were some extra factors that stood to work for me more subtly, such as that Kirk had almost certainly loaded the clip. I hadn't touched it and I didn't see any reason why Balcomb or John Doe would have, so Kirk's prints would be on the shell casings. Wiping down the rest of the rifle but forgetting the bullets was just the kind of fuckup that everybody knew he was airhead enough to pull.

The aftermath was likely to be the most treacherous part, but that was falling into place, too. Laurie would maintain that she'd sensed her husband's long-standing menace toward her jumping to an almost psychotic level over the past days. When he'd left the house Sunday afternoon, she'd discovered that he'd taken her purse, including the keys to her SUV-leading her to think that he intended her harm. There were a few ranch vehicles around, and she knew that the keys were usually left in them. That was how she'd gotten this pickup truck.

She'd fled in panic, coming to me because I was also on Balcomb's wrong side, I knew my way around this area, and she felt an affinity for me. She'd insisted that we not call the sheriffs, fearing that they'd inform Balcomb and he'd find her. We'd driven around until we were too worn out to go any farther, then checked into the motel. The following day-the day that stretched ahead now-we'd learned the shocking news about her husband.

What would happen next with her and me, we hadn't talked about. But we both knew what had started.

The future hinged on getting clear. There'd be suspicious investigators-Gary Varna, for damned sure-and it was all too possible that I'd get tripped up by my own bungling or some forensic detail I'd never imagined. But I'd have a powerful ace in the hole-precisely the kind of slick lawyers that I'd feared, but on my side. All I had to do was stay within the limits of reasonable doubt.

That, and kill Wesley Balcomb.