“How’s Johnny?”
“His arm’s better, thanks to Darrel.”
“To Darrel McComb?”
“That’s why I called. We’re going to split for Canada. I wanted to thank Darrel for what he did. I’ve treated him unfairly.”
“I’m just not reading you.”
“You don’t have to. You see my father?”
“No,” I replied.
“If you do, tell him I said good-bye.”
“Don’t hang up.”
“This is a great country, Billy Bob. But the bad guys are going to grind you up.”
“I’m still your attorney, remember? How did McComb help Johnny?”
But she had broken the connection.
IT WAS UNWINDING fast now, but I didn’t know it, either because I was too close to my own problems or perhaps because I still did not appreciate the level of fear that Karsten Mabus could instill in others.
Just before noon, Romulus Finley came into the office. He looked stricken, as though he had just been informed an incurable disease had spread through all his organs. He stood in my doorway, his lips moving soundlessly, dried mucus at the corners.
“You want a glass of water, Senator?” I asked.
He stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him. He sat down in front of my desk, looking about uncertainly. “Have you heard from my daughter?” he said.
“Yes, I did. This morning,” I replied.
“She called here?” he asked, his face lifting expectantly.
I didn’t answer. At that moment I was convinced that not only did I have a tap on my line but Finley knew about it.
“Where did she call you? I’ve got to get word to her,” he said.
“About what?”
“Everything. I think she’s in harm’s way,” he said, gesturing vaguely. “She’s mixed up. Her mother was an alcoholic. That’s why all these problems started.”
“I don’t know where Amber is, sir.”
I waited for him to speak, to make the admissions that would perhaps change his life and perhaps even save his daughter’s. He looked hard at me, but his vision was focused inward on thoughts that only he was privy to. The moment passed.
“Well, I’ll just find her, then,” he said, rising from his chair. He glanced around the room like a man who was lost in the middle of a train station. “Her mother wouldn’t stop drinking. I tried everything.”
“Senator, is there someone I should call?”
“No,” he said. “There’s no one. No one at all.”
Chapter 25
DARREL SAT in the backseat of the Chrysler and gazed through the tinted windows as the city of Missoula slipped behind him. The man with silver hair sat on one side of him, a second security man on the other side, Greta up front in the passenger seat. The man with silver hair was named Sidney. He had taken off his coat and folded it neatly across his legs. There were bright stripes in his dress shirt, like thin bands of smoothed tinfoil, and a silver pin in his lavender tie.
“I know you from somewhere,” Darrel said.