Kyle coughed, deep down in his throat. “What’s that smell?”
“I ran over a hog north of Big Fork.”
“It must have been rolling in shit before you hit it. You wear a suit when you work?”
“I went from vespers straight to the job and didn’t have time to change. I’m a minister, too.”
Was this the mystery man? “You didn’t happen to visit Rosa Segovia earlier, did you?”
“Don’t know the lady. Please sign.”
Kyle scribbled his name on the form and handed back the clipboard.
“Thanks,” the driver said. “Take your keys out of the ignition. Company rules again. People leave the ignition on and sometimes start electrical fires.”
Kyle began walking back to his truck. In the headlights of the wrecker, he noticed a bib of white granules at the bottom of the flap that covered the cap on his gas tank. As he rubbed his fingers on the granules, he heard a brief rattling sound behind him, like a hard wooden object scraping against a steel surface. He turned around just as the driver swung a sawed-off pool cue into the side of his head, knocking him to one knee in the middle of the road. The driver hit him again, this time across the back of the head. He was on all fours like a dog, unable to speak, blood leaking down the side of his face.
“Get up,” the driver said. “That’s it, you can do it. Let’s walk behind my truck and get rigged up, then we’ll be toggling on down the road.”
Why are you doing this? Kyle wanted to say. But the words wouldn’t come. The driver had done something to his throat or his voice box, and the words dissolved into paste and ran over his lip and down his chin. His wrists were fastened behind him with ligatures of some kind, and a looped steel cable had been dropped over his head and fitted around his neck. He heard the driver stripping cable off the spool, putting more slack in it. Don’t do this, Kyle wanted to say.
“I know all your thoughts,” the driver said. “They won’t help you. Nothing will. When you die, you won’t know why. You’ve lived your life for no purpose, and you’ll be mourned by no one. Those will be your last thoughts. Then all breath and light will leave your body, and you’ll descend into a black hole with no memory of ever having lived.”
The driver kicked Kyle’s feet out from under him. Kyle struck the road’s surface with his face. He could taste the blood in his mouth and smell the tar and oil and even the day’s heat in the asphalt. His concerns about the cold wind had disappeared. He wanted to remain where he was for the rest of his life.
The driver got in the wrecker and drove away, accelerating gradually until he was doing sixty, gliding into the curves as his cargo swung from side to side on the asphalt, caroming off tree trunks and road signs like a surfboard out of control.
SHERIFF ELVIS BISBEE called me at three-thirty P.M. Tuesday. “We’ve got Wyatt Dixon in custody,” he said. “He’s not under arrest, so he hasn’t been Mirandized. He says he’ll talk to us but only if you’re here.”
“Why me?”
“Ask him.”
“Why’d you bring him in?”
“Call it littering.”
“Is that some kind of insider joke?”
“Not if your name is Kyle Schumacher. His body parts were scattered for two miles along the Eastside Highway next to Flathead Lake. Come on down and I’ll show you a few photos. We’re at the jail.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Me and Detective Boyd.”
“Can I bring Clete Purcel?”
“Are you serious?”
Forty-five minutes later, I parked in front of the old courthouse in downtown Missoula. Wyatt Dixon was being held in a holding cell on the second floor. Elvis Bisbee and Jack Boyd walked with me to the cell. Dixon was sitting on a wood bench against the wall, asleep, his chin on his chest. He was wearing a T-shirt that showed Geronimo and three other Apaches, each holding a rifle. The inscription read: HOMELAND SECURITY—FIGHTING TERRORISM SINCE 1492.
The detective unlocked the cell and kicked the toe of Dixon’s boot. “Wake up,” he said.
Dixon lifted his head. “You caught me on my sore foot, Detective,” he said. “Is it dinnertime yet?”
“Mr. Robicheaux is here,” the sheriff said.
“Howdy-doody,” Dixon said.