Swan Peak (Dave Robicheaux 17)

Troyce turned his head on the pillow and looked at Rawlings. The slash wound on his cheek had gone to the bone, and the connective tissue on one side of his face didn’t work properly. “You wouldn’t call me a liar, would you?”

Rawlings stared into space as though considering the question. He propped the heels of his hands on his thighs and returned Troyce’s stare. “I understand you’re checking out in the morning.”

“That’s right.”

“Going to be doing some traveling, seeing the country, that sort of thing?”

“I got me a little woman in Las Cruces.”

Rawlings nodded thoughtfully. He seemed to watch a fly crawling up the wall. Then he rose from his chair. He touched Troyce Nix on the thigh with his clipboard, through the sheet. “Take care of yourself, bub. Just one reminder, though.”

Troyce waited.

“The worst fate can befall a lawman is to end up stacking time with the same sonsofbitches we been riding herd on,” Rawlings said. “The thought of it makes something inside me shrivel up and die.”

THREE HOURS AFTER Special Agent Alicia Rosecrans’s visit to our cabin, Clete’s Caddy pulled into our yard. The top was up, the maroon finish gleaming with a fresh wax job. Clete got out and shut the door firmly and stared back down the road. The sun was above the mountain crests now, and Albert’s horses had moved into the shade of the cottonwoods along the creek. When the wind gusted through the trees on the hillsides, it made a sound exactly like rushing water. The sound made Clete look around him, as though he wasn’t sure where he was standing. I wondered if he had been drinking.

I told him about my conversation with Alicia Rosecrans. I also told him she believed he had been with Jamie Sue Wellstone that morning. But he seemed distracted, his eyes closing and opening as he sorted through my words.

“Run all that by me again,” he said.

“The feds probably h

ave her under surveillance. They saw you with her at Flathead Lake. They probably saw you at the motel with her, too,” I said.

He rubbed the back of his neck, staring down the road in the direction he had just come from, his consternation growing.

“Where have you been, Clete?” I said.

“To the Express Lube in Missoula.”

“For three hours?”

“No, I picked up a tail. I think it was Lyle Hobbs. I tried to get him to follow me into the mall parking lot. He didn’t take the bait, but I saw the same car again in Lolo. Why would Hobbs be tailing me? Why have I got a pervert like that bird-dogging me?”

“Because Jamie Sue Wellstone’s husband is onto you. Because this is probably a way of life with them. Because she probably pumps everything in sight.”

“Is Molly inside?”

“So what? Molly is your friend, too. You think she likes seeing you swallow a razor blade?”

“Who died and made you God? Lay off me, Streak. Maybe Jamie Sue played me, but maybe not.”

“Don’t even go near thoughts like that. You know what an old fool is? A guy who starts acting like an old fool.”

I saw the injury in his face. My ears were ringing with my own words. I put my hand on his shoulder. It felt like boilerplate. “Take a walk with me,” I said.

“What for?”

“Humor me.”

“Humor you?”

“It’s about the kid who was murdered up on the hill.”

Clete was resistant and irritable, for which I couldn’t blame him. But finally he took a deep breath, and the heat went out of his face, and we walked along the road together like the old friends we were, the wind blowing cool up the valley, the snow atop Lolo Peak wet and bright against a flawless blue porcelain sky.

“I got to thinking about something Seymour Bell’s roommate told us. He said Seymour was both smart and tough. What if the little wood cross and the leather cord you found at the crime scene weren’t torn off the shooter by Seymour or vice versa?”