Bitterroot (Billy Bob Holland 3)

"And you set it up?"

"Not exactly."

"No, you set it up."

"Okay."

"I'll pass on your information to the sheriff in Ravalli County."

"When?"

"When I get hold of him. In the meantime I'd better not hear from you again till Monday morning," he said.

I clicked off the cell phone and started the truck.

"I have a feeling the sheriff isn't sweating the fate of Carl Hinkel," I said.

"What do you want to do?" Temple asked.

"I have to go out there. I'll drop you off at your motel."

"Forget it," she said.

We drove into the Bitterroot Valley, into its mead-owland and meandering river lined with cotton-woods and canyons that were like dark purple gashes inside the green immensity of the mountains in the west. Up ahead I saw four or five cars and a wrecker on the side of the road and a highway patrolman interviewing two people and writing on a clipboard.

One of the interviewees was Cleo Lonnigan. She seemed to recognize my truck as we sped past her. In my rearview mirror I saw her hand raised momentarily in the air, like someone trying to flag down a bus.

"You think she'd shoot Carl Hinkel?" Temple said.

"Maybe. It's not easy to do when you have to look the victim in the eye."

"Hinkel and Wyatt Dixon aren't victims. I wish I'd been there when Terry Witherspoon was taken down from the tree. I had something I would have liked to say."

"What?"

"He would have remembered it."

We turned off the highway at Stevensville and drove through town toward the Sapphires. I pulled into the entrance of Molinari's but stopped when I saw the preacher from next door standing on top of his church, an electric saw in his hand, staring at Molinari's stucco house.

I got out of the truck and walked to the fence that separated the preacher's and Molinari's property.

"Anything wrong?" I said.

The preacher draped his saw across the crest of the roof and climbed down a ladder and walked toward me.

"There was a drunk man around here last night and again this morning. I think he was looking for that greaser. But he couldn't raise nobody," he said.

"What was he driving?" I asked.

"A Jeep Cherokee. He knocked down the mailbox."

"Where'd he go?" I said.

"He come back a little while ago. That's why I was trying to see what went on."

"I don't understand," I said.

"I heard about fifteen pops. They sounded like they all come from the same gun."