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“Light you up?” the woman said.
“A man in a mask sapped me with a blackjack and tied me to a tree and poured gasoline on me and tried to burn me alive. I don’t know who this dude is, but one way or another, I think he’s involved with the Wellstones. You have any opinion on that, Mr. Nix?”
“Not really. Jimmy Dale Greenwood is a fugitive from the law. He escaped while in the custody of a contract prison which I’m a founding officer of. He was also the boyfriend of Jamie Sue Wellstone, formerly Jamie Sue Stapleton. Does that clear things up for you, Mr. Purcel?”
“There’re people who think you kicked the shit out of a guy by the name of Quince Whitley. Why would you do a thing like that, Mr. Nix?”
“Troyce hasn’t done anything wrong,” the woman said. “I think you need to spend more time at Weight Watchers and quit bothering people who haven’t bothered you.”
Clete saw Nix suppress a laugh. The woman was three feet from Clete, her thumbs hooked in her back pockets, her chin and her boobs pointed at him. She wore a Mexican blouse and black jeans and had a small Irish mouth and bangs like a little girl’s.
“I had a friend run Quince Whitley’s sheet,” Clete said to Nix. “Guess what. He doesn’t have one. Does it seem reasonable to you that a dude like that wouldn’t have a sheet?”
“I’m not interested in this fellow you’re talking about,” Nix replied.
“You should be. I made a couple of calls to the county in Mississippi where he grew up. Quince put out a girl’s eye with a BB gun when he was ten. A retired sheriff told me he thought Quince and two of his friends dropped a log from a railroad overpass through the windshield of an automobile. They almost killed the driver, a black man from Memphis. But the log and any prints on it disappeared the same night. Quince’s uncle was in charge of the investigation. The uncle was also an officer in the Ku Klux Klan. That’s why Quince doesn’t have a sheet. Are you going to bother my friend Mr. Hollister again?”
“I couldn’t care less about your friend, Mr. Purcel. Second of all, I don’t think that’s why you’re here. You’ve got a bug up your ass about either the Wellstone family or Jimmy Dale Greenwood. Which is it, or is it both?”
“Two college kids were abducted from the hillside behind the university and murdered. One of them wore a wood cross. It was of a kind that kids in the Wellstone ministry program are given. Then a California couple who had been drinking in a saloon on Swan Lake with Jamie Sue Wellstone were murdered in a rest stop on the interstate west of Missoula. The woman was set on fire in the toilet stall. I think the guy who committed these murders is the same guy who tried to turn me into a candle. If I find out you’re holding back on me, Mr. Nix, you and I will be shooting the breeze again.”
“Listen, lard ass, nobody invited you here,” the woman said. “Go to a blubber farm or get your stomach stapled. Just go somewhere else. Think about changing your brand of deodorant while you’re at it.”
Clete gave Nix and his girlfriend a long look. Nix was laughing under his breath while the girlfriend stared up into Clete’s face with what seemed to be barely restrained outrage. Except Clete was convinced her emotions were manufactured.
“Thanks for your time. Welcome to Montana. It’s a real tolerant place,” Clete said.
He went outside into the twilight and got into his Caddy. He let out his breath and started the engine, revving it up senselessly. What had he accomplished? he asked himself. Nothing, except perhaps to indicate to Troyce Nix that Nix had gotten close to finding Jimmy Dale Greenwood, also known as J. D. Gribble. Clete shifted the transmission into reverse. The convertible top was down and the air was cool, the hills along the winding two-lane road already purple with shadow. Just as he began to back onto the asphalt, he heard footsteps on the gravel.
Troyce Nix’s girlfriend cupped both of her hands on top of the passenger door. Her eyes were glistening. “Were you saying this guy Quince Whitley might be the one who killed all those people
?” she asked.
“Ask your bozo boyfriend,” Clete said, and gunned the Caddy onto the highway.
As he sped away, the young woman grew smaller in his rearview mirror, his dust drifting back into her face. Way to go, Purcel, he thought. Next time out, beat up on a cerebral palsy victim.
THE SUNSET HAD died on the far side of the mountain when Candace Sweeney and Troyce Nix pulled into the club up the road from their motel. The bottom of the valley was dark with shadow, but the sky overhead was still blue, tinged with the pink afterglow of the sun, the moon as thin as a wafer over the mountains that jutted straight up from the south banks of the Clark Fork River. The day was cooling rapidly, the eastern sky starting to grow dark, like the color of a bruise. Candace could smell smoke blowing from a fire up in the Swans. The smell seemed to hang in the air, to wrap itself around her skin and seep into her lungs. She wondered if it was an omen.
“It’s too early in the season for fires,” she said. “June is always wet. There’re no serious fires here till August.”
“Well, they’re not burning here,” Troyce said, walking beside her toward the club’s entrance.
“You ever been to Portland or Vancouver?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“You’d like it out there, the fishing and outdoors and all. It’s green all year round, like down south. Like Miami, except with rain and cool weather.”
He was still wearing his shades, even though the sun had set. He pulled them off and slipped them in a leather case. He pinched the bridge of his nose and blinked. “We can check it out,” he said. “In the meantime, ain’t nobody running us off. That ain’t our way.”
She didn’t pursue it.
The inside of the club was crowded, the country band located on the far side of the dance floor, the tables filled with people who were drinking pitcher beer and eating fried chicken and pork-chop sandwiches and steaks ordered from the truck-stop café that adjoined the main building. Candace and Troyce had to take a table by the entrance, one that gave them a poor view of the bandstand and dance floor. Troyce kept trying to get the waiter’s eye.
“This is gonna take all night. I’ll get a pitcher from the bar and order direct from next door,” he said, getting up from his chair. “Don’t run off with no movie stars.”
“What movie stars?” she said, looking up at him.
