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“What do you base that on?”
“He had a coed at his house. She’s poor and uneducated, and I don’t think she’s there to water his plants.”
“Did she indicate she was being molested?”
“How many people willingly admit they’re being sexually exploited, Sheriff?”
“Sounds like you didn’t have the best morning.”
“Click’s dirty, Sheriff. He’s hunting on the game reserve. In Louisiana we’d take him off at the neck,” Clete said.
“I thought Click was from down south. Wonder why nobody got around to punching his ticket,” Joe Bim said.
I tried to speak, but Clete had gone off cruise control, and I couldn’t shut him up. “Somebody creeped Seymour Bell’s house. I think it was somebody working for the Wellstones,” he said. “I think Bell had something in his possession that the Wellstones don’t want anyone to see. Why not get a warrant on their ranch?”
“What you say might be true, Mr. Purcel, but there’s no evidence the Wellstones are connected to a crime of any kind.”
Clete stuck an unlit cigarette in his mouth. He wore a long-sleeve tropical-print shirt and cream-colored slacks, and he had not removed his porkpie hat when he entered the building. With his driving-range tan and sun-bleached hair and behemoth proportions, he looked like a misplaced Miami Beach tourist inside the spartan confines of Joe Bim’s office. “Dave and I are just trying to help out,” Clete said. “I think the person who killed those kids should be chain-dragged down the highway. But it’s your backyard, not ours.”
I wanted to punch him. I could see a thought growing behind Joe Bim’s eyes, as though he were on the brink of making a decision he had postponed too long. Then he blinked and touched at the side of his mouth, and the moment passed. “I got a call from the Highway Patrol this morning,” he said. “A man who works for the Wellstones got beat up in a convenience-store restroom near Swan Lake. His name is Quince Whitley. He claims he doesn’t know who beat him up or why, but the witnesses say he was talking to the assailant out by the pumps before they got into it. The witnesses say the assailant was about six-four and had a Texas accent. Sound like anybody you know?”
“He sounds like Troyce Nix, the guy who was showing a photo around at Jamie Sue Wellstone’s revival meeting on the res,” I replied. “I saw Nix and this guy Quince get into an argument outside the tent.”
Joe Bim was sitting behind his desk. He looked at a spot on the far wall. “I don’t see how any of this has any bearing on those kids getting killed,” he said. “To be honest, I think there’s too much information in this case. Furthermore, I think people’s personalities are getting too involved in some of the issues. There’s times when less is more and more is less, get my meaning?” He let his gaze drift back to Clete. “You can’t smoke in here.”
“Sheriff, there are only one or two probable conclusions we can come to regarding the deaths of Bell and Kershaw,” I said. “They were either killed at random by a psychopath who’s operating in the area, or the Wellstones are involved. All the information we develop somehow leads back to the Wellstones. I don’t think that’s coincidental.”
“You seem like a reasonable man, Mr. Robicheaux. How in God’s name could a couple of kids from rural Montana be a threat to Ridley and Leslie Wellstone?”
“A heavy-hitter greaseball by the name of Didoni Giacano used to run all the vice in New Orleans,” Clete said. “Frank Costello gave him the whole state as a personal gift. On his deathbed, a priest asked Didi Gee if he had forgiven all his enemies. Didi told the priest, ‘I don’t have any enemies, Father. I killed them all.’”
“This isn’t Louisiana,” Joe Bim said, the expression going out of his eyes. “I’d like to talk with Mr. Robicheaux a minute.”
“Yes sir,” Clete said. He had already put away his unlit cigarette and had nothing to do with his hands. So he took off his porkpie hat and fiddled with it, as though wondering how he could revise all the mistakes he had just made. He started to speak, then gave it up and left the room.
“The bad judgment is on me, not on you or Mr. Purcel,” Joe Bim said. “I deputized you because I thought that was the best way to keep my old friend Albert Hollister from getting hurt. To be straight out, it hasn’t worked worth a damn. I’ll need your shield back. Some paperwork will be coming your way, and you’ll receive some reimbursement for your expenses. It’s been good knowing you.”
He rose from his desk to shake hands. The scarred side of his face looked lined and creased, like old paper that had faded in the sun.
“It’s the Wellstones, Sheriff. They’re up to their bottom lips in pig shit, or they wouldn’t have killed those kids. Don’t let them blind-side you,” I said.
“Have a good one,” he replied.
CLETE DID NOT try to apologize, nor did I want him to. Clete was Clete. You don’t invite bulls into clock shops and act surprised at the results. Besides, crimes committed in the state of Montana were not our business. Perhaps it was time to accept that fact and leave other people to their own destiny.
/> At least that was what I told myself.
The next afternoon Clete borrowed Albert’s pickup truck, in case the two FBI agents he called Heckle and Jeckle were still surveilling him. He showered and put on his sports clothes and told me he was going to listen to some music at a club down in the Bitterroots. I’m sure that was his intention. I’m sure that, like me, he was willing to go with the season and to let others do whatever it was they wished to do. But that was not the way it would work out.
IN THE NEXT drainage, J. D. Gribble was walking along the dirt road in the dusk, his twenty-two Remington pump gripped in one hand. He shielded his eyes from the late sun as Albert Hollister’s truck approached him, stepping to the side of the road, pointing the rifle away from the vehicle. Then he realized Albert was not behind the wheel.
“Sorry to blow dust all over you,” Clete said. “Are you the new fellow who works for Albert?”
“Yes sir.”
“Have you seen him around? His wallet fell out on the seat.”
“Not since this morning,” Gribble said. He saw Clete taking note of the rifle in his hand. “A fox was in Mr. Hollister’s brooder house. I think I hit him, but he went on up the hill.”
