My heart was thundering now. I fired a second and third time, the butt of the.45 raking finely against rock dust, the pleasant cordite smell of burned powder in my face. But Wyatt Dixon moved about unawares in the roar of the chain saw, the rounds missing him by inches. My hands were sweating on the ivory grips now, the air damp and tannic inside my lungs. When I fired again I thought I heard the round knock into wood.
This time Wyatt Dixon paused, as though a foreign object might have invaded his environment. He looked away at the river, the cottonwoods and aspens bending in the breeze, the mountains on the western side of the valley and the clouds that were now filled with a purple and gold sheen. Then he bent to his work again, his saw ripping a spray of white pulp out of the log.
I was sweating inside my clothes. Bile rose out of my stomach and I could smell the sourness of my own breath when I breathed into my palm. I pulled back the hammer with my thumb a fifth time.
Walk away, the voice said.
Yes, I thought. This time, yes.
I stepped back from the boulder, my temples pounding, my ears almost deaf from the four rounds I had discharged. I eased the hammer back down with both thumbs and shoved the pistol into my belt and walked back through the trees, stepping across a creek drainage, mounting a small hill that should have brought me out above my truck and the campground on the river.
Instead, I walked right into two of Amos Rackley's Treasury agents.
They were set up behind a rock, like picnickers, a lunch box opened in front of them, with sandwiches placed on paper napkins next to their thermos and cell phone and binoculars.
"What do you think you're doing, asshole?" the blond, crewcut man named Jim said, chewing a small bite of sandwich. He wore khakis and a checkered shirt and a tan cap with a green fish on it. There was a blood-filled bump on the bridge of his nose. He and his partner wore identical sunglasses.
"Me?" I said.
"Dixon did a mind-fuck on you, huh?" Jim said.
"Is Wyatt around here? That's why you guys are here?" I said.
"You haven't had the pleasure," Jim said to his partner. "This guy's a real wit."
I took a breath and widened my eyes. My face felt sweaty and dilated in the breeze. "Tell me if my reasoning is messed up. You don't care if somebody pops Ole Wyatt or not. You know you can't turn him, so he's of no use to you."
"You ought to ask Amos for a job. He's always looking for new talent," Jim said.
I dumped my spent brass in my palm.
"Give him this for me, will you?" I said, and bounced the casings off the rock in front of them. "It's great seeing you. Keep up the good work."
Jim bit into his sandwich and turned to his friend. "This guy was an Assistant U.S. Attorney," he said. The friend grinned and looked at his nails.
Chapter 23
I was still wired when I walked into an old brick Catholic church on the north side of Missoula early the next morning. The day was cool and misty, and the pillared interior of the church, whose ceilings were painted with celestial scenes, seemed to enclose an unnatural, smoky blue light. The few parishioners in the pews were elderly, traditional people from another era who said rosaries and probably attended Mass daily and confessed sins that were largely imaginary to a priest who fought to keep from nodding off. I fe
lt like an intruder in their midst.
I knelt in the back of the church and prayed to be relieved of the anger that still throbbed in my wrists and left my mouth as dry as paper and my thoughts like shards of glass. A young priest in a cassock entered the center booth in the confessional and I followed him and knelt in the adjoining booth and waited for him to slide back the wood cover on the small screened window that separated us.
"I should confess early on I know another priest here in town but I chose not to go to him," I said.
"Why is that?" the priest asked.
"I'm ashamed."
"There's no shame when you take your sins to God."
"I tried to kill a man yesterday, Father. He was unarmed. I shot at his back four times."
The priest started to turn, to look through the screen at my face, but instead lowered his eyes and remained motionless. I could hear the soft rise and fall of his breath.
"What you're telling me is very serious," he said.
"This man did something truly evil to a friend of mine," I said.