Bitterroot (Billy Bob Holland 3)

"This isn't quite what I had in mind, Cleo."

"What?" she said, her attention refocusing itself on my words.

"No, I'm not hungry. I thought you might be. Maybe I should go."

"Will you just come in, Billy Bob?" she said, and pulled me by the arm, either out of irritation or conciliation, I didn't know which.

A chrome-plated.44 Magnum revolver rested on a table in the hallway.

"Just a minute," she said, and picked up the revolver and entered the den and opened a felt-backed glass gun cabinet where at least two dozen antique and modern pistols were hung. She flipped open the cylinder on the Magnum and dumped the cartridges into her palm, then fitted the Magnum on its hooks and closed the glass doors.

"What a collection," I said.

"They were my father's. He was career Army. He wanted a son."

"He taught you to shoot?"

"I taught myself. You want a roast beef sandwich?"

"Sure," I said.

On the way out of the den I saw on top of a bookcase a framed photograph of a little boy. He wore a cowboy hat and sat atop a Shetland pony. The pony was eating out of a bucket, and the little boy's legs were too short to reach the stirrups. The boy was holding on to the pommel as though he were frightened by the distance to the ground.

I followed Cleo into the kitchen.

"Why so quiet?" she asked.

Greaseballs in her front yard, her suppressed rage and grief over a murdered child, compassion for a rape victim and destitute Indians, a personality that blew hot and cold with the moment. I couldn't begin to express my thoughts.

"My son's staying out at Doc's. I'd like for you to meet him," I said.

But she made no reply.

I stood next to her at the drainboard. Through the window the Douglas fir trees on the hill crest looked hard and perpendicular against the sky. I placed my hand on her back. "You have to be at the clinic this afternoon?" I said.

"Not really."

"You have any other commitments?" I said, touching her hair.

"I have a lot of chores to do," she said.

I nodded and took my hand away.

"You interrogated me, Billy Bob. I don't care for it," she said.

"Nicki Molinari is a dope dealer and a degenerate. He not only kills people, he has them taken apart."

"You don't have to tell me that. My husband brought him to our house. He used our phone to have a chippy delivered to his motel."

It was not a time to say anything else. In fact, I was tired of playing the fool's role. I picked up my hat and left. When I was driving back out the front gate, I saw her in the rearview mirror, standing in the doorway, her dress blowing across her thighs.

I WENT BACK to Doc's and found Lucas sitting on the front steps, playing his guitar. It was a Martin HD-28, one I had given him for his birthday. The lightest touch of the plectrum on the strings resonated out of the box with the deep, mellow quality of sound that might have been aged in oak.

"Here's one I bet you don't know," he said. Then he began to sing,

"I'm an old log hauler,

I drove a big truck.