Bitterroot (Billy Bob Holland 3)

"We'll be close by," Rackley said, interrupting her.

"You'll be wearing a wire. Your job's almost done." He moved his hand slightly and let his fingers cover the tops of hers.

"I can't do it," she said.

"Do what? Can't do what, Sue Lynn?"

She wanted to pull her hand away from his but couldn't. She could feel her own heart beating, her chest rising and falling inside her shirt.

"I hate you. I hate all you people," she said.

She felt his hand leave hers. The wind was cold on the back of her neck and she felt her hair feathering on her cheeks. She wanted to turn and stare him down but all she could do was fix her eyes on the desiccated remains of the sweat lodge and the discarded heat stones that had been blackened by long-dead fires.

"I'm disappointed to hear you say that, Sue Lynn. I'll call you very soon. You're going to be a big help to us. You'll see."

After Amos Rackley was gone, she sat on the creek bank with her knees drawn up in front of her, her hands clasped on her ankles. The light was gone from the sky now and she heard animals moving about in the woods, deer certainly, perhaps black bears and cougars, perhaps even a moose, and she hoped if she saw the latter she would not be afraid, even though the moose was considered a man-killer. She wanted to believe the animals represented the spirits of her ancestors, people who lived in harmony with the earth and sky and wind and the water in the streams and all the winged and four-footed creatures and the salmon who swam all the way back from the sea to lay their roe where they had been born, that maybe the animals she heard in the darkness came bearing an omen of power and resolution and courage that daily eluded her and translated her sleep into a prison filled with grotesque shapes she could not control.

She rose from the ground and waded into the stream and felt its coldness swell over her ankles. She walked up the opposite bank, ac

ross small stones that hurt her feet, and entered the tree line. Again she heard the noise in the brush and she walked farther into the woods until she entered an old clear-cut that was dotted with toadstools and tree stumps that had gone gray with rot. A bull elk reared its head out of the grass, its rack clattering with moonlight.

For a moment she thought she had found the totem that spoke of the power her people could pass on to her. But instead she stared at the elk's rack, the ridged texture and hardness of the horn, the curved points, and all she could think of was Wyatt Dixon. And she knew she would not sleep that night.

Chapter 24

In the grayness of the following dawn I sat by Lucas's fire on the riverbank and listened to Sue Lynn tell her story. The wind blew ashes out of the fire ring and they settled on her shoulders and in her hair like snowflakes. While she spoke she squeezed one hand on top of the other and her eyes seemed to look into a place that neither Lucas nor I occupied.

"Are you going to wear a wire?" I asked.

"No, not around Carl. He scares me. Even more than Wyatt does. He's a lot smarter than Wyatt," she answered.

"I think it's time you got out from under these guys, Sue Lynn," I said.

"Why did Mr. Rackley want to know about the guns?" she said.

"If you saw automatic weapons in Hinkel's house, Rackley could get a warrant and hit the place. You didn't see any heavy stuff in there?"

"There's a rack of guns in the basement. Bikers call them 'pogo sticks,'" she said.

"Those are either M-16s or AR-15s. The AR-15s are legal. The others aren't. You're not sure which they are?" I said.

"I think that gun stuff is for dipshits," she said. She stood up from the rock she was sitting on and looked into the mist that shrouded the trees and at the river that flowed like satin over the boulders in the deepest part of the current.

"Lucas, I could never drink coffee without a little milk in it. Do you mind?" I said.

"Since you put it as subtle as a slap in the face with a dead cat, no, Billy Bob, I don't mind," he replied, and rose to his feet and walked up the bank and across the porch into Doc's house.

"Your little brother was abducted and murdered, wasn't he?" I said.

She stood above me, one foot resting on a rock, her thumbs in her pockets. I could see the pulse beating in her throat.

"Who told you that?" she said. "The night Lamar Ellison died, he was marinated on beer and weed in a tavern up the Blackfoot. He had a blackout of some kind and said something that made you very angry."

"I don't remember that," she said. "Doc goes on trial in a couple of weeks. Do you think he should be on trial, Sue Lynn?"

"I came here because Lucas asked me to. Stop questioning me. You're not a policeman."

"Doc's inside. Come on in and talk with him." Her eyes were watering now. She stepped away from the fire and pretended that smoke had gotten in them. She wiped her nose on her wrist.