Bitterroot (Billy Bob Holland 3)

I stepped out on the porch. The day was bright, the wind cold on my face in the shade.

"My son has nothing to do with your investigation. His interest in Sue Lynn Big Medicine is romantic. You were that age once. Why don't you show a little empathy?" I said.

"That's a great word coming from a disgraced Ranger who killed his own partner. I changed my mind about you, Mr. Holland. I wouldn't dirty my hands fighting a man like you. You turn my stomach."

When he drove away I could feel my eyes filming, the ridgeline and ponderosa and cliffs distorting into green and yellow shapes. I wanted to turn and see L.Q. standing by the barn or down in the shade of the cottonwoods by the river or perched atop a rail by the horse lot.

"L.Q.?" I said.

But there was no reply except the wind in the trees.

Toward evening Maisey and I saddled the Appaloosa and thoroughbred that Doc boarded for his neighbors and rode them up a switchback logging road in the hills behind the house. In the distance we could see old clear-cuts and burned stumps along the sides of the Rattlesnake Mountains.

"I overheard what that Treasury agent said to you this morning, Billy Bob. Why'd you let him get away with that?" she said.

"He lost his friends in Oklahoma City. He can't do anything about it, so he takes his grief out on others. That's the way it is sometimes."

"My father says under it all you're a violent man."

"I have been. That doesn't mean I am today."

"The sheriff called this morning. He wants to talk to my father again."

"What for?"

"The third man who raped me is dead. I'm glad. I hope he suffered when he died," she said. Her face was narrow with anger, her mouth pinched with an unrelieved bitterness.

"Maisey, I can't argue with your feelings, but-"

"Don't say anything, Billy Bob. Just please don't say anything."

She turned her horse away from me and rode into the shade, then dismounted and began picking huckleberries and putting them into her hat, even though they were green and much too sour to eat.

Down below I saw the sheriff's cruiser pull into the yard.

I rode the th

oroughbred down the hill and took off my hat and looked at the greenness of the country and grinned at the sheriff and waited for him to explain the cloud in his face.

"I don't care to look up at a man on horseback," he said.

I got down from the saddle and hung my hat on the pommel and tied the reins to the porch railing. I let my hand trail off the thoroughbred's rump, my eyes fixed on the sheriff's.

"Where was the good doctor yesterday afternoon?" he said.

"I don't know. Ask him," I replied.

"I would. If I could find him." The sheriff stood by the open door of his vehicle, his face cut by light and shadow, the wind flapping his coat. "The third suspect in Miss Voss's rape was pulled out of a river two days ago in Idaho. He had chest waders on and was submerged standing up in the bottom of a pool like a man with concrete boots on."

"Sounds like an accident to me," I said.

"Except he wasn't carrying no fishing gear, never owned a fishing license, and was never known to fish. Also, most sane people don't wear chest waders in July."

"Well, we'll all try to feel as bad as possible about his passing, Sheriff."

"I love to hear you talk, Mr. Holland. Every time you open your mouth I'm convinced this is indeed a great country, that absolutely any little dimwit can become an attorney. Tell Dr. Voss to call me before I come out here and put him in handcuffs."

I watched his cruiser drive across the field behind the house, then disappear down the dirt road. A half hour later my head was still pounding with his remarks. I called him at his office.