Bitterroot (Billy Bob Holland 3)

"What happened to the old man next door?"

"I put a knot on his head."

"You did what?"

"He was firing a nail gun into his church till six this morning. Bam, bam, bam, all night long. I was in a bad mood. He picked the wrong time to wise off."

"I made a mistake coming here," I said.

When I turned to go he grabbed my forearm again. I felt his nails scrape on the skin.

"Come here," he said.

"Your kind are always the same, Molinari. On the surface you seem to have a certain degree of elan, but under it all you're a real bum. Go back to your whores."

His mouth twitched slightly and the skin under one eye puckered as though my words had cut across a nerve ending in his face.

I drove back to Missoula and parked downtown and walked under the shade of the maple trees into the courthouse. I met the sheriff on his way out.

"I need to talk," I said.

"Why don't you rent an office down the hall from me? Cut down on your gas costs," he said.

"At what time did Xavier Girard call 911 the night Lamar Ellison was killed?"

"I don't remember."

"Let's find out," I said.

He sucked his teeth.

"Come inside," he said.

A minute later, he tossed his hat onto a rack in his office and sat down heavily in his swivel chair and fixed his eyes on me. They were as blue and intense as the flame on a butane burner.

"Get to it, Mr. Holland," he said.

"Lamar Ellison vandalized Xavier Girard's vehicle just before he died. Girard and Ellison fought on the side of the road and Holly Girard pointed a gun at Ellison to keep him from stomping her husband into jelly. Then Holly and Xavier went inside a friend's house and dialed 911. The question is when did they make the call."

"What are you driving at?" the sheriff said.

"Sue Lynn Big Medicine claims she saw somebody outside Ellison's place when she fled, someone who could have saved his life."

"Wait here," the sheriff said.

He went out into the hall and returned five minutes later and sat down in his chair and studied two computer printouts in his hands. He laid them down on his desk blotter and balled and unballed his fist on top of them.

"Holly Girard made the call. At ten-o-nine P.M.," he said.

"What time was the fire at Ellison's reported?" I asked…

"Nine forty-one."

"So they waited at least a half hour to report their vehicle being vandalized?" I said.

"That's what it looks like. You're saying the guy Sue Lynn saw was Xavier?"

"Ellison had smashed out the windows in Xavier's Cherokee and sliced the seats and cut his tires and humiliated him in front of his wife and friends. Maybe he took his wife's gun and decided to square things with Ellison, but Sue Lynn beat him to it."