Bitterroot (Billy Bob Holland 3)

She shook her head. "Where's a good place to eat?"

"There's a truck stop in Bonner. I'll go with you. Then we'll come back here and you can stay the night."

She thought about it and yawned, then said, "You involved with somebody here?"

"Why do you think that?" I said, my eyes slipping off her face.

"Just a wild guess."

Early the next morning I smelled wood smoke and bacon frying outside, and I looked through the window and saw Lucas squatting by a fire ring he had made of stones next to the river's edge. He dipped a coffeepot into a creek that flowed into the river and sprinkled coffee grinds into the water and set the pot to boil on the edge of his fire. I walked down to the bank and squatted next to him.

"That creek water's got deer scat in it," I said.

"The animals drink it. It don't bother them," he said. He grinned and wedged the blade of his pock-etknife into a can of condensed milk.

He was as tall as I, with the same hair and wide, narrow shoulders. But he had his mother's hands, those of a musician, and her gentle looks.

"It's good to have you here, bud," I said.

"How could anybody figure Doc for a murderer? What kind of law they got up here, anyway?"

"Doc's a complicated man."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"He killed a lot of people in the war, Lucas."

I could feel his eyes on the side of my face.

"You saying maybe he done it?" he asked.

"I try not to study on it. The way I figure it, the guy who died had it coming."

I heard him clear his throat, as though a moth had flown into it. He lifted the bacon in his skillet with a fork and turned it over in the grease, his eyes watering in the smoke.

"Sometimes things come out of you that scare me, Billy Bob," he said.

I PICKED UP Temple at her motel in Missoula and we drove to the courthouse and walked down the corridor to the sheriff's office.

"Let me talk to him alone," she said.

"Why?"

"Woman's touch, that sort of thing."

"You think I already tracked pig flop on the rug?"

"You? Not a chance."

She left his door partly open, and I could see inside and hear them talking. I soon had the feeling the sheriff wished he had gone to lunch early.

"How does anybody lose a bag full of bloody and semen-stained sheets and clothing? You drop it off at the Goodwill by mistake?" she said.

"We think the night janitor picked up the bag and threw it in the incinerator," the sheriff said.

"So then you conclude there's no physical evidence to prove Ellison stole Doc's knife. Which allows you to arrest Doc for Ellison's murder. What kind of brain-twisted logic is that?"

"Now listen-"