Bitterroot (Billy Bob Holland 3)

"No," I replied.

"Why would she want to hide it from us?"

"She's working for the G. She wants to be careful about what she says. What else do you have on her?" I asked.

"She was arrested on the edge of the Crow Reservation for armed robbery of the mails."

"What?"

"She went into a general store with three or four other Indians. One of them pulled out a gun and robbed the owner of fifty dollars and a quart of whiskey. But the general store was also a post office. The Indians were charged with robbery of the mails, which is a federal offense. Sue Lynn's case is still pending."

"So that's the hold the Treasury agents have on her."

"Here's the rest of it. One of the guys she was arrested with was Lamar Ellison's cell mate in Deer Lodge."

"They had the perfect person to plant inside the militia."

"There's one other detail, but I don't know if it has any bearing on the fact she's a government informant. Two years ago her little brother disappeared from a Little League ball game in Hardin, Montana. A month later his body was found in a garbage dump outside Baltimore."

"How old was he?"

"Ten," Temple said. "This is a pissed-off young woman."

"She's seems to be a mixed bag, all right," I said, spinning my hat on my finger. "Her little brother was found dead in Baltimore?"

"He'd been strangled. No clues, no leads." When I didn't speak, Temple said, "Your boy's in the sack with her?"

"Celibacy isn't a high priority with most kids today."

"I wonder who their role models were," she said.

She got up from the table and gazed through the cedar trees at the river. Downstream, college kids were riding bicycles back and forth across an old railroad bridge that had been converted for pedestrian use.

"Why do you act like that, Temple?" I said.

"Because sometimes I feel like it. Because maybe I just get depressed digging up grief and misery in people's lives."

"Then warn me in advance." Her lips started to shape a word, but no sound came out of her throat. Her eyes were fixed on mine now, an expression in them that was somewhere between anger and pain and the love that teenage girls sometimes carry inside them as brightly as a flame. I put my hands on her shoulders and when she raised her face, unsure of what was happening, I kissed her on the mouth. I felt the surprise go through her body as tangibly as an electric shock.

She stepped back from me, her eyes wide, her cheeks coloring.

"Go ahead and hit me," I said. Instead, she averted her eyes so I could not read whatever emotion was in them and packed all her notebooks and file folders in her nylon backpack and walked toward my truck, the backs of her thighs wrinkled from the picnic bench.

And once again I was left alone with the beating of my own heart and my confused thoughts about Temple Carrol and the certainty that I had succeeded once more in making a fool of myself.

Later, I had the oil changed in my truck, then called the sheriff at his office.

"Do you know a hood named Nicki Molinari?" I asked.

"He and a bunch of other greasers own a dude ranch down by Stevens vine," he replied.

"It doesn't bother you to have these guys on your turf?"

"We've had gangsters here for years. They'd like to get casino gambling legalized and turn Flathead Lake into Tahoe," he said.

"I saw Molinari with Xavier and Holly Girard this morning," I said.

"That's supposed to be skin off my ass?"