Light of the World (Dave Robicheaux 20)

I resolved that one day I would ask Albert why his colleagues at the university had not shot him long ago.

Gretchen turned off the dirt road and drove under the arch above Albert’s driveway and parked in front of the house. She walked across the front lawn, past the flower baskets hanging from the deck, and stopped at the pedestrian gate to the pasture where we were cleaning and refilling the horse tank. She had reddish-blond hair and Clete’s clear complexion and eyes that were the color of violets and the same erect posture that made both her and Clete look taller than they were. Also like her father, she was bold and irreverent but could not be called bitter or unduly aggressive. There’s a serious caveat to that. Like most individuals who have been abandoned and left to suffer at the hands of predators, Gretchen viewed the world with suspicion, analyzed every word in a conversation, considered all promises suspect, and sent storm warnings to anyone who tried to impose his way on her.

Her skin was deeply tanned, her gold neck chain and Star of David exposed on her chest, the sun shining on her hair. “I wasn’t sure if I should drive down to the cabin or turn in to the drive,” she said.

“Hello, Gretchen,” I said, feeling both awkward and hypocritical. “This is Albert Hollister. He’s our host.”

“Welcome to Lolo, Montana, Ms. Horowitz,” he said. “We like to say we’re very humble in Lolo.”

“What a wonderful place you have,” she replied. “Do you own the whole valley?”

“Plum Creek owns the crown of the hill behind the house, but the rest is mine.”

She gazed at the arroyo that ran from Albert’s improvised gun range up to an unused logging road that traversed the top of the hill and disappeared inside stands of Douglas fir that were as fat as Christmas trees. “I saw a man up there. He must be a logger,” she said.

“No, Plum Creek doesn’t log up there anymore. They’re selling everything off,” Albert said.

“I saw a guy on that log road. He looked right at me,” she said. “He was wearing a slicker with a hood. It must be wet up there.”

“Did you see his face?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Having trouble with the neighbors?”

“Alafair thinks a guy farther down the ridge shot an arrow at her,” I said.

“Why would someone do that?”

“We don’t know,” I said. I put my hands in my back pockets and gazed at the ground. I felt deceitful and totally lacking in charity toward someone who’d had a horrible childhood imposed upon her. I wished I had said nothing to Albert about Gretchen’s background. “I’m glad you’re here.”

She stared at the blue-green roll of the mountains to the south. When her eyes came back to mine, she was smiling, her cheeks full of color. The sun was bright on her face and hair and her gold chain and the tops of her breasts. She looked as though she had been caught in a camera’s lens during a moment when she could only be described as absolutely stunning. “I appreciate that, Dave, more than you can know. Thanks for inviting me, Mr. Hollister,” she said.

I couldn’t remember when I had felt so small.

I WENT INTO THE kitchen, where my wife, Molly, was slicing tomatoes on a breadboard. “Gretchen Horowitz is here,” I said.

The knife slowed and stopped. “Oh,” she said.

“I told Albert of her background. I told him maybe it would be better if Gretchen moved on. I actually told him to say that to her.”

“Don’t give yourself too much credit, Streak. Albert has two ways of doing things. There’s Albert’s way. Then there’s Albert’s way.”

Molly had the shoulders and hands of a countrywoman, and an Irish mouth and heavy arms and white skin dusted with sun freckles. Her hair was a dull red and silver on the roots; though she kept it cut short, it had a way of falling in her eyes when she worked. She was my moral compass, my navigator, my partner in everything, braver than I, more compassionate, more steadfast when the storm clouds started rolling. She had been a nun who never took vows; she worked with the Maryknolls in El Salvador and Guatemala during a time when Maryknoll women were raped and killed and the administration in Washington looked the other way. Former Sister Molly Boyle should have been running the Vatican, at least in my view.

She looked through the window at the horses grazing down the slope in the shade, their tails slashing at the insects that were starting to rise from the grass as the day warmed. I knew she was thinking about Gretchen and the violence we thought we had left behind in Louisiana.

“Gretchen saw a man looking at her from the hillside,” I said. “Albert says there’s no reason for anybody to be up there.”

“You think it’s the rodeo guy Alafair had trouble with?”

“I’m going to take a walk up there now.”

“I’ll come along.”

“There’s no need for you to. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She wiped her hands on a dish towel. “My foot,” she said.

We climbed up the trail behind the