He watched Frank walk into the barn with the horse following behind him.
"You want a job in personnel management?" he asked.
"I hear you got over your objections to Cleo Lonnigan."
"What, you think she's working my joint or something?"
"It occurred to me," I said.
"Well, you thought right. It would be the smart move. Cleo gives me my money, I remodel your bone structure. Except the truth is I like you. Don't ask me why."
"What's the angle with Cleo?"
"Horizontal. It's the nature of the world, Counselor."
I looked away at his neighbor's property. There was a small white church by the road, and the neighbor was up on the roof, hammering down shingles. I looked back at Molinari. For some reason his face seemed different, the eyes sunken, the skeletal outline of his skull just below the skin.
"What are you staring at?" he asked.
"I think you're going to come to a bad end."
"You're a fortune-teller or something?" he said, and tried to grin. "Hey, Counselor, you need to get that look off your face."
"It's the way you use people. I think it's about to come back on you."
"I'm in a good mood here. But you're using up my patience."
"You're a victim, Nicki. You just don't know it."
"I'm a victim?"
"She's a physician. You're a graduate of Terminal Island. Who do you think is going to win all the marbles?"
"Frank, get out here!" he yelled at the barn.
I DROVE BACK to Missoula and parked at Temple's motel, and we took a walk down by the river and she put her hand in mine. The current in the river looked fast and green and coppery in the late-afternoon sunlight, and rafters were floating under the walk bridge that led to the university, splashing foam into the air with their oars. I told Temple about my visit with Nicki Molinari and felt her release my hand.
"Cleo Lonnigan again. What's this guy got that she wants?" she said.
"I'm not sure."
"Why'd you call Molinari a victim?"
I looked out at the rafters rolling and spinning through the riffle and wished I had not gotten into the subject.
"I smelled an odor I'd almost forgotten. At first I thought it was on the wind. Soldiers talk about it," I said.
"I don't know if I want to hear this," Temple said.
"I stuck playing cards in the mouths of dead people, Temple. I couldn't wash their smell off my hand. Like they'd breathed something on my skin. I smelled it on Molinari. I didn't imagine it."
"I'm not going to listen to this. No, no, not today. See you in the ice cream store," she said, walking ahead of me, shaking her hands in the air, smiling giddily at people passing in the opposite direction.
The next morning the p
hone rang in Doc's living room. Maisey answered it, then handed the receiver to me.
"That little puke Terry Witherspoon just left the department. He's filing a hit-and-run charge against Maisey Voss," the sheriff said.