She started to speak, to fling a rejoinder at me. Then she gave it up and shook her head. I put my arms around her and pulled her close against me, my face buried in her hair, and could take no pleasure in either her verbal defeat or my having just stepped into the moral basement that constituted the world of Wyatt Dixon.
IT WAS THE WEEKEND and Darrel McComb was off the clock, but he could not get Amber Finley off his mind, nor the whole business involving the Indians and what he had come to believe was some form of intelligence operation. What had Rocky Harrigan always told him about being a player? Kick ass, take names, and don’t look back. But kick ass.
Saturday afternoon he showered, shined his shoes, put on a Hawaiian shirt, what Rocky used to call a “goon” shirt, and knocked on the Finleys’ door. When she opened it she looked absolutely stunning, in a purple dress printed with green flowers, with big red beads around her throat and straw sandals on her feet. In the rush of cool air out into the sunlight he could smell her perfume and the odor of her shampoo. It was obvious she had been on her way out. “This is an official visit,” he said.
“Then I’d be more comfortable if somebody was accompanying you,” she replied.
“We don’t have a lot of budget for weekend overtime,” he said, half smiling.
She stepped aside to let him in. “Get it over with, whatever it is,” she said.
The living room was furnished with green velvet drapes and massive, dark furniture, but the morose effect was attenuated by the flow of light through the French doors that opened onto the backyard and creek. As his eyes adjusted, he realized the glass tabletops, the pale marble in the mantelpiece, and the big mirror above it gave contrasts to the room that were a mark of taste and planning inconceivable in the homes of most people he knew. He waited for her to ask him to sit down. But she didn’t. He removed a notebook from his shirt pocket and sat on the couch, anyway, folding back pages and clicking his ballpoint to give the impression he was all business and at the same time controlling the situation, not letting her use social protocol to achieve the upper hand.
“You knew Lester Antelope?” he said.
“He worked for Johnny sometimes. I knew him around. Why?”
“He was murdered.”
“I know that. Why don’t you find the people who did it?”
She was standing by the mantel, one forearm propped on the corner. Darrel smiled at her. “Believe it or not, that’s the purpose of my visit. I think Antelope was mixed up with the burglary of that research lab down in Stevensville. I suspect it had something to do with ecoterrorism. But we’re pretty sure four Indians did the job.” He paused a moment to give emphasis to the rest of his statement. “A white woman was with them. Maybe somebody who just got caught up in things.”
She didn’t blink. Her eyes stayed riveted on his, the most radiant blue eyes he had ever seen. “You said, ‘We’re pretty sure.’ The Missoula Sheriff’s Department is investigating crimes in Ravalli County?”
He’d slipped and she’d caught it. “I’m getting a crick in my neck looking up at you. Could you sit down?” he said.
“There’s no ‘we,’ is there?” she said.
He tried to look bored. “It’s a cooperative effort. In this instance, a burglary and a homicide are linked together in two jurisdictions. Who do you think that woman was?”
“Snow White, with four of the dwarfs. Get a life, Darrel.”
He grinned at her humor and wrote in his notebook. He was on top of it now—generous, confident enough to be indulgent. When they cracked wise, they had unknowingly admitted they were amateurs and probably guilty as well. In the old days, mainline hard cases took the beating. Today, the pros asked for an attorney and became deaf-mutes.
“About five years ago, I knew a gal from your background who went inside. Educated, smart, nice-looking, used to ski in Aspen and hang out in Malibu. Her daddy was a state senator, a big rancher, a wheeler and a dealer, with juice all the way to D.C. But the girl fell in love with a junkie who maxed out all her credit cards and made her drive the car whenever he turned over a liquor or convenience store.
“One night the junkie had a fierce jones going and decided to hold up a store in a strip mall. He killed three people, including a twelve-year-old kid. Our girlfriend got raped by a male guard her first week inside and the next week by a couple of dykes. She never came out. She hung herself. Think I’m kidding? I’ll give you her name. You can check it out.”
He had driven the barb in deep. Amber’s eyes were shimmering, her throat spotted with color. He felt paternal and wanted to stand up and touch her cheek and hair, to reassure her things were not out of control yet, that he would be there as her friend. His thoughts, although not deliberately erotic, caused a thickening in his throat.
But he saw the flicker of weakness and humiliation leave her eyes and her jawbone flex, her posture straighten as she removed her hand from the mantelpiece.
“Do anything you goddamn feel like, but in the meantime take yourself, your horny attitudes, and your hair tonic or cologne or whatever that stink is out of my house. If you come back again without a warrant, my attorney will pull the nails out of your shoes.”
He rose from the couch, clicked his ballpoint pen, and stuck it in his pocket. His face burned, then his embarrassment turned to anger and he had to bite down on his lip so he would not say the words he was thinking. He walked to the door and opened it, the sunlight blinding his eyes. When he looked back at her, her arms were folded on her breasts, one knuckle poised on her lips while she watched him. She had not only bested him again but insulted him physically. A bilious fluid rose in his throat.
His desire for vindication, even revenge, should have made him willing to pull out all the stops. But as he looked at the composure in her face, the paleness on the tops of her breasts, her cocked hip, her refusal to be bested by him, only one thought coursed through his mind: What an incredible woman.
Why couldn’t she accept his feelings for what they were?
DARREL AND GRETA Lundstrum had made a date that evening. Before he left his apartment on the river, he made an entry in the computer file he was now keeping on the case of Johnny American Horse and the individuals who threaded their way in and out of it. The entry read:
Greta Lundstrum—smart, confrontational, I suspect territorial as hell, maybe a sexual adventurer. Would she get in the sack with a guy like Wyatt Dixon just for fun? Or is she a player? Why was she at the house of a U.S. senator? An easterner out here among the cowboys just for kicks? No way.
As he drove down to Stevensville to pick her up, he tried to convince himself that his motivations were professional in nature. But his unrequited obsession over Amber Finley was taking its toll. Night and day he felt a vague sense of sexual need that left him not only uncomfortable but irritable and discontent, almost hostile, as though he were less in the eyes of others, an inept, clumsy man who smelled of locker rooms and had to wear his military history like an invisible uniform to know who he was.
Greta Lundstrum lived in a white bungalow with blue shutters, a solitary spruce tree planted on each side of the small porch. In the late afternoon light the yard, the spruce trees, and the house looked like a demonstration home removed from a 1940s subdivision development. She opened the door and came outside without inviting him in, dressed in a black skirt and a white blouse, a gold chain around her throat. A shiny black purse hung on her arm.