“I got my wish. It didn’t give me any rest,” I said.
“How long ago did this happen?”
“Twenty-four years ago.”
“And even now you have no rest?”
“There’re some things you don’t get over.”
The foster parents of the girl were standing behind me. Caspian, the father, stepped between me and Love Younger. His unshaved and unwashed look made me think of a man who had gone into another country, one where a person can be dissolute without penalty, only to return home and find everything he owned in ruins. “I heard you say something to Felicity about a psychopath in Kansas, a man who might be living in this area,” Caspian said.
“My daughter is a writer. She had planned to write a book about a serial killer and sadist named Asa Surrette. She interviewed him two or three times but was so disgusted by the experience that she decided not to write the book. Instead, she wrote a series of articles that she hoped would expose him to the death penalty.”
“Where is he?” Love Younger asked.
“The authorities in Kansas say he died in a collision involving a gasoline truck and a prison van.”
His eyes searched my face. “You don’t believe that?” he asked.
“Earlier this week my daughter was followed by a man in a skinned-up Ford pickup. She thinks it was Asa Surrette.”
“I asked if you believe he’s dead,” Younger said.
“Somebody scratched a message on a cave wall on the hillside above Albert Hollister’s house. It contained biblical allusions that indicate the message writer is megalomaniacal. Could Surrette have written a message of that kind? It’s possible.”
“Why would Angel go off with a guy like that?” Caspian said. His chin was tilted upward, his throat coated with whiskers that looked like steel filings, a hazy smile in his eyes.
“I don’t know, sir,” I replied.
“Be quiet, Caspian,” Love Younger said.
“There’s something we skipped over here, Mr. Younger,” Clete said. “You mentioned this guy Pepper. Evidently, he’s been reporting to you, but he didn’t report the same information to Dave, whose daughter is at risk. He also told you Dixon might have a partner. For me that doesn’t flush. From what I understand, Dixon’s a loner, a rodeo man bikers don’t mess with. A guy like that doesn’t have to rely on backup. Plus, his jacket has been clean since he got out of Deer Lodge.”
“His what?” Younger said.
“His record. The guy probably has Kryptonite for a brain, but count on it, he’s not our guy,” Clete said.
“You’re saying that Pepper is trying to earn his way into my good graces by manufacturing information?” Younger said.
“It crossed my mind,” Clete said.
Younger gazed out the window at the long floodplain of the Clark Fork and the great geological gorge the river flowed into. “How do we find out if Surrette is dead or alive?”
“You don’t,” I said.
“I don’t understand.”
“When is the last time any state of its own volition admitted it was wrong about anything?” I said.
Younger picked up the 1851 Colt and rubbed an oily rag across its blue-black surfaces, cocking back the hammer, locking the cylinder into place. “I made this like new,” he said. “It took me six weeks, but I did it. It’s like traveling back in time and somehow defying mortality. Supposedly, Wild Bill Hickok was carrying this when he got pushed into a corner by John Wesley Hardin.”
I waited for him to go on, not understanding his point.
“It didn’t help Hickok,” he said. “Wes Hardin backed him down. It was the only time Wild Bill ever cut bait. Past or present, our best-laid plans seem to go astray, don’t they?”
He set the revolver down heavily on an oilcloth, his face wan and older somehow, his hands as small as a child’s.
CLETE AND I were both silent as we drove down the hill to catch the interstate back to Missoula. The sun was bright through the fir and pine and spruce trees lining the road, the light almost blinding when it splintered on the wet needles. The Younger enclave, with its grand vistas, seemed to validate all the basic tenets of the American Dream. Love Younger had risen from the most humble of origins and created a fortune out of virtually nothing. He had also beaten the descendants of the robber barons at their own game. I thought I understood why people were fascinated with him. If such good fortune could happen to him, it could happen to any of us, right? There were those who probably wished to touch the hem of his cloak so they could be made over in his image. But as Clete’s Caddy coasted down the hillside through shadows that looked like saber points falling across the road, I felt only pity for Love Younger and his family.