Bitterroot (Billy Bob Holland 3)

"I should have let Wyatt bust you. You're just a little whore. That's why you were hanging out in that bar. You wanted more of what Lamar and the others gave you. Lamar said you gave good head."

She ground the transmission and tried to swing out on the street, but the guards were up at the train crossing and traffic had backed up across the entrance to the parking lot.

Witherspoon got behind her and began blowing his horn and smashing his bumper against hers, much harder than she thought a low-centered car would be able to do. Then she realized pieces of pipe were overwelded, like gridwork or a battering ram, on the front of his car. Witherspoon snugged the bumper against the rear of the truck and slowly accelerated and starting pushing her into the street. His back tires burned black strips on the asphalt and spun circles of smoke under the fenders, but the truck was wobbling on the frame now, the back wheels losing purchase, Maisey's foot slipping on the brake. All the while Witherspoon kept his palm clamped down on his horn button.

Even if she made it out into the traffic without being hit she knew he would follow her all the way home, tailgating and cutting her off, trying to force her into the path of oncoming traffic.

Go inside and get the butcher, she thought.

Like hell.

She pulled into the street, glancing once in her rearview mirror. Witherspoon was looking right and left, waiting for an opportunity to floor the accelerator after her. He never realized the seriousness of his presumption until it was too late.

Maisey hit the brakes, shifted into reverse, and mashed on the gas pedal. The trailer hitch on the truck speared through the pipework on Wither-spoon's grille, gashing the radiator open, tearing the fan so metal screamed against metal. She straightened the truck, then floorboarded into him again, this time crumpling a fender down on a tire, shattering the headlights, knocking his forehead into the windshield.

When she shifted back into first gear, the low-slung red car that belonged to Wyatt Dixon was bleeding green pools of antifreeze onto the asphalt, spokes of steam whistling from under the hood. An elderly woman with Coke-bottle glasses pulled in behind Witherspoon and began blowing her horn for him to get out of the way.

The next morning the sheriff called and asked me to drop by his office.

"The two ATF agents were killed by.223 rounds, all fired from the same rifle, probably an M-16. The spent casings were all clean," he said.

The sheriff was sitting behind his desk, his Stetson pushed up on the back of his head, his suit coat on, fiddling with his hands as he talked, as though he were concentrating more on his own thoughts than on his listener.

"Amos Rackley told you this?" I asked.

"The Flathead Reservation has patches of privately owned land on it. The ridge where the shooter was? It's owned by a white man. The government can't keep me out of this one," the sheriff said.

"I don't understand why you called me."

"The shooter dropped one of his ear plugs. He left a thumbprint on it. You know a guy named Clayton Stark?"

"No," I said.

"He don't have a record here, but three years ago he was picked up for questioning in a child abduction case in Pocatello. Does that ring any bells for you?"

"A pedophile was arrested in Carl Hinkel's yard five years ago," I replied.

"That's right. Your son's girlfriend, this gal Sue Lynn Big Medicine? Her little brother was abducted and killed, wasn't he?"

"How'd you know that?"

"I get paid to do my damn homework, son. You see a pattern here on this pedophilia stuff?"

"Yeah, but I don't know what it is."

"Neither do I," the sheriff said. He got up from his desk and began fumbling around in a closet.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"There's a bull trout under the Higgins Street Bridge that daily gives me a lesson in humility," he said, lifting a rod and reel from behind a raincoat. "Take a walk with me. I want to tell you a story."

The PREVIOUS day the sheriff had been visiting a cemetery on the north side, a lovely, tree-shaded area on a knoll where the town's oldest families were buried. He saw Cleo Lonnigan sitting on a bench by her son's grave, leaning over, setting stem roses in a row by the headstone. She was talking to herself and did not hear the sheriff when he walked up behind her.

"You want company?" he asked.

"It's his birthday," she said.

"Oh," he said, nodding.