Crazy Mountain Kiss (28 page)

I
s that you, Jasper?”

Sean felt his heart rate jacking up.

“Is that you, Jasper?” A mocking tone. “Well now, I found someone trespassing on Bar-4 property. What do you think we should do with him, Poupette?”

Sean heard the scurry of the feet behind him. It was the dog he'd seen in the mudroom, the one Etta referred to as Jasper's ten-gallon-hat dog.

“She smelt you when we passed by in the tractor, but I didn't think too much of it till she took off looking. Not a good idea to let a dog roam at night, this many coyotes on the premises. I called her in and danged if she didn't go right back. ‘Jasper,' I says to myself, ‘I'm beginning to wonder if we're alone up here.' I had what in the business we call a micro-expression, when the character suddenly knows. Overdo it, you look like you're opening wide for the dentist. That Sam Meslik talking about a body, you put him up to that. Made me feel I'd got your coffee thrown on my face all over again.”

Keep him talking,
Stranahan thought. “Why did you kill Landon Anker? Or was it Charlie and you just helped him dig?”

“No sir. Hunch-uh. The way it works is, I ask the questions. Here's one. Do you know what happens to a head when a bullet going three thousand six hundred feet per second hits it? I'm talking any caliber bullet now, any number you pull out of a hat.”

“I guess not.”

“Well that head detonates, that's the best way to describe it.”

“Is that how Landon was killed?”

“No. That's how you could die. I'm telling you because I read you as a man who has too much sense to do something stupid, like run. I put this Leopold scope on you, it gathers a hell of a lot of light. Kill you at a hundred yards just as surely as I kill you at twenty. You understand what I'm saying?”

“Don't get itchy feet.”

“Yeah. That's one way of putting it. Now listen up. Rule number two, do not turn around. I catch you peeking, I shoot. You got that?”

Sean got it.

“Three, you're going to walk slow toward the pit, hands over your head. You lower them, I don't have to tell you what happens.”

Sean understood.

“You have something on your hip. What is it?”

“It's a bear spray.”

“That's right. You're the detective who doesn't carry a gun. Drop it on the ground.”

Sean did, managing to fumble open another button of his jacket before unbuckling his belt. He felt the hay hook dig into the back of his shoulder, but it was small comfort. He was a dead man walking and knew it. There was no other way this could end, not unless he could give Fey a reason to let him live. He had two cards, and he played one of them.

“You're going to see headlights any minute now. That will be Sheriff Ettinger. She knows where I am. But if you let me live, there's still a way you can walk away from this.”

Fey snorted his derision.

“Listen to me. All you have to say is that you gave a copy of the DVD to Charlie Watt. Charlie killed Landon and used your idea to bury his body.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Yes you do. The director talks about hiding a body in a livestock burial pit. He gives you credit. It's in the DVD.”

“You're talking about the director's commentary?”

“Yes, you haven't seen it? Nobody told you you were mentioned?”

“No, nobody told me. And like I said, I don't watch shows I'm hired onto. Anyway, it's a little after the fact, isn't it? That body was cold in the ground before any DVD came out.”

“In that case, you told Charlie that you'd suggested the idea for the show. The director will back you up. Watt doesn't have to have seen the DVD because he got it from the horse's mouth.”

Fey didn't respond.
He's thinking it over,
Sean thought. He felt a glimmer of hope.

“Then what am I doing here?”

“You discovered that Charles Watt raped your daughter. It made you think he'd killed Landon, that Landon had tried to rescue her. You remembered telling him about the burial pit. So you came up here to check it out. The worst you'll get is a slap on the wrist for not telling somebody first.”

All the time they talked, Sean walked, the growl of the tractor growing louder. He crested the rise of land. There was the tractor, its backhoe imprinted against the stars. The pit was illuminated by the gauzy glow of the headlights, moons of earth risen from shadows. Parts of animals were strewn, staring with eye sockets. It was a scene from a horror movie.

“Walk under the bucket. Get into the hole.”

Sean found himself standing on the edge of a deep trench.

“Don't do this, Jasper. If you kill me, then nothing can save you. They'll be here any minute.”

“Bullshit.”

Sean played his last card. “I have a personal locator beacon. I sent the SOS. Here, I'll show you.”

Sean felt the eye of Fey's flashlight on his back. He reached the SPOT from his jacket pocket.

“Toss it backwards. Okay. I see it. So that's what they look like.”

“Remember, all you're guilty of is planting the idea.”

Silence. When Fey spoke it was the voice of someone who had come to the edge of something and stepped past it. “I really wish that was true. I truly do.”

“Listen to me.”

“No, I'm done listening. Get in the hole.”

The tone said the finger on the trigger was looking for an excuse. Sean stepped down into the hole, or rather he dropped. The hook jabbed him sharply as he hit bottom and felt the squishing of tissue under his boots. The remains of the horse, he guessed, maybe the rumen, not that it was a major concern. He stood, the sides of the hole coming up to his armpits.

“Face away from the tractor.”

One last try. “They're coming, Jasper. You can explain everything else, you can't explain killing me. If you kill me—”

The words froze in Sean's throat as he heard the waterfall engagement of the backhoe. Instinctively, he jerked his head to see Jasper in the tractor seat. Pressing his palms on the ground, he tried to scramble out of the pit, but was pounded back into it as a bucket of earth and debris thudded onto his head and shoulders. As the tractor backed away and the Mantis curled its head to dig another load, he grappled the hay hook free from under his jacket. Something—a piece of horse hide?—had fallen onto his right arm and he jerked the hook back underneath it, out of sight, his hand gripping the handle. As the headlights swept past him he saw a rack of ribs joined by rotting fascia. It was a horse all right, the ribs were as thick as baseball bats. The bucket bulked against the sky and there came another crushing weight. Sean squeezed his eyes shut against the grit. He heard the beast move, gather itself, the bucket climbing. This time the thunder of the impact was muted by the dirt already covering him. He strained for breath, managing to draw a thin reed of air. He tried to move, felt his right hand flex, the hand that held the hook. It seemed to be the only part of his body not entombed in the earth.

Footsteps approached. They were on top of him, muffled impacts. As a boy he'd had nightmares of being buried alive, listening to people talk and trying to scream, and no sound coming out. He knew there would be no awakening from this dream. Desperate for breath, he jerked his head back and forth to create air space. Already his chest
was squeezing in. Another attempt at breath. Another, feeling an oddly exquisite agony. Then the pain abated, replaced by a dreamy, flowing feeling. Images began to flicker behind his eyes. There were the faces of his father and mother, his sister. The image of a girl jumping rope, somebody he'd once known. Becky somebody. Martinique flickered into focus, so did Vareda Beaudreux, the loves of a more recent past. He saw Martha Ettinger, hands akimbo, talking without sound.

Something was moving. It was scratching at his face, like claws. Sean swam out of his reverie. The dog? He felt air on his face and heaved. Swallowing grit, he breathed again, feeling his ribs expand against the constriction of the earth.

“You going to live on me?”

Sean spit and hacked. Gradually, he felt his breathing steady. But he was still buried; only his head and right hand were above the level of the ground. His right hand tightened on the hay hook. But Fey had backed away from the trench and was squatting on his heels, out of striking range. The butt of his rifle rested on the ground, his hand on the barrel. Behind him, Sean could see the darting shadow of the dog.

“Did you see God?” Jasper's backlit face was cratered with shadows.

“I saw . . . people.” Sean tried to move his legs. It was like kicking through sludge.

“The earth's disturbed now,” he heard Jasper saying. “It will harden up like snowpack. You'll be here until the worms crawl in your ears.”

“The locator beacon, they're—”

“I don't believe you. Oh, you were thinking about it. But you hadn't sent a message, and even if you did, I don't care. I asked a serious question. You saw people. What people?”

“From the past. I saw . . . my family, other people.”

“But not God.”

“No, no God. Do you have water? It's hard to talk with this dirt in my mouth.” Sean squeezed the handle of the hay hook, exercising his fingers.

“You're talking just fine. Tell me, Sean, are you in love with my wife?”

“Etta?”

“Don't take me wrong. I wouldn't blame you. Her heat. You get within the radius, I've seen it time after time. And I've been around attractive women, professionally attractive women. But even actresses, they can turn down the heat. With Etta, there's no switch. That's why she doesn't have women friends. Women know they can't trust their men around her.”

“I'm not in love with your wife.”

“Are you sure?”

“I'm not in love with her.”

“Because I was wondering. When I saw her this evening, before I left for town, she had an expression on her face, it was like she possessed a secret knowledge. Like maybe she knew what I was going to do before I knew what I was going to do. Like maybe she even knew you'd be here. I could have sworn she said your name under her breath, but I guess I was being paranoid. You see, paranoia, it's not a feeling, it's a creature, an animal. It has a scent. You go from one room into another, the scent follows you. Sometimes you get busy so you don't notice it as much, and sometimes it goes away, never far, just for a while. But at night, that's different. It hops up on your chest. It has a face, it has sharp teeth, like a wolf. You smell its breath.”

“Why are you paranoid?”

Sean heard a low laugh.

“You want to keep me talking. So maybe you did send a signal. But okay, I'll talk. It's hard, keeping it in. Living with the uncertainty. You want to tell someone but you can't, so you talk to God. That's why I asked if you saw God, because I want to believe. Now Etta, she's lost three children. She's turned to Indian mysticism, liquor, anything to try to make sense of a world that would let something like that happen. I used to tell her to be a man, get a grip. That was a compliment. Etta's more man than almost any man I know.”

He paused. Sean could hear a sound like masticating. In Montana, men chewed on nothing all the time, it helped pick their words.

“Why I had the truck window down that night, I do not know. It was November, not cold, but still, November.” He opened his hand. “Why do we do anything? But then, if I'd had it up, I wouldn't have heard the screaming. I'd have driven past the stables and on up to the house, gone to bed like any other night. But I had the window down and I heard her. It was godawful, just on and on.

“By the time I got to the door the screaming's stopped. Now it's a whimpering, like a hurt puppy. It's coming from a stall. There's my girl, not a stitch on. That Anker kid's got her all wrapped up in his arms. I just lost it. I got my hands on his throat, he doesn't say a word. He
can't
say a word. Cindy's trying to peel me off. I never gave a thought that it could be anything but what it looked like. Not then, not till way later. Then I'm holding on the way you got your hand wrapped holding on to the bull rope. Digging down like you're going to press your hand right into the hide. It must have stopped the blood going up to his brain. And Cindy, she's screaming and now I can hear, she's saying, ‘He didn't do it,' and I'm thinking the hell he didn't. All that adrenaline behind my hands, I couldn't release the grip if I wanted to. I can feel his chest heaving under me, and then it just stops. ‘Cindy,' I say, but she's gone. I didn't even see her go out. Time passes, I don't know. I got this kid on my lap, all bug-eyed. It's like somebody put him there.

“I yell out for Cindy and hear Charlie hollering, like an echo. I didn't even know he was at the ranch. I was in such a hurry driving up that I didn't see his truck. He finds me and says, ‘Where's that goddamned kid, I'm going to kill him.' He's got buttons ripped off his shirt. He takes one look in the stall, me and Landon, he says, ‘You killed him.' Had this strange, taken-aback expression. Then it's like you see the gears turning, like something dawns on him. And I'm thinking he's just trying to comprehend what's happened, not that he's thinking up a story, because now I know that's what he was doing. He says he caught the kid raping Cindy down in another stall, and when he tried to stop him, they wrestled, and the kid got free and
cold-cocked him. That he'd just come to and started looking for him. He says ‘J.P.'—he's the only one in the world calls me by my initials—he says, ‘We got to get rid of the body, J.P.'

“But I'm just thinking about Cindy. I look in Snapdragon's stall, door wide open, she's gone. I told Charlie the hell with the body, we got to find my girl. I don't know what I was thinking, that maybe if I talked sense to her she'd forgive me. That it wasn't broken so it couldn't be fixed, that maybe the kid wasn't even dead. Just lunacy. So we mount up. There's snow to follow the horse's tracks a little ways, but it's a goddamned pasture, so a bunch of horses have it tracked up, and we finally get up into the timber and we lose the track, but by then it might have been the wrong horse we were following.