"A little bit. Doc garroted Wyatt Dixon with Lucas's guitar strings and taped him to a chair and came within an inch of blowing up him and his house with butane gas."
"You're making this up?"
"I wish Doc had finished what he started."
"Say again?"
"Dixon said he might take Lucas's bones out. Those are the words he used," I said, and felt myself swallow.
Temple put her suitcase into the bed of my truck and got into the cab. I started the engine and drove out on the highway. The hills across the river looked low and humped in the sunset and the sky was dull gold and flecked with dark birds. I felt her watching the side of my face.
"Don't be too hard on Doc," she said.
"He wants it both ways. He whips a rope on these guys, but he's not willing to go to the tree with them."
"You better hope he doesn't."
We didn't speak for several moments. Then I said, "Do you want to have supper?"
"I ate on the plane. Another time, okay?" she said, and smiled wanly.
"Sure," I said, and pulled into the parking lot of her motel on East Broadway, not far from Hellgate Canyon, which had been named by Jesuit missionaries after they saw the litter of human bones left from the Blackfoot ambushes of the Flatheads.
She hefted her suitcase out of the truck bed and yawned. The wind was cool and the light had gone pink on the trees that grew along the crest of the canyon and I could see white-water rafters bouncing through the rapids on the river.
"Can you come in a minute?" she said.
"Sure," I said, and walked behind her into her room.
She set her suitcase down and shut the blinds and closed the door and turned on the lights. She sat on the edge of her bed and looked into space for a moment, and I could see the fatigue of the trip seep into her face.
"Maybe I should come back tomorrow," I said.
"No, stay," she said, and pulled off her loafers and unscrewed her earrings and set them on the night-stand. Then she took a breath and smiled and let her eyes rest on mine. "It's been a long day."
"I guess it has," I said, and saw an ice bucket and two drinking glasses on the desk. "I'll get a couple of sodas if you like."
"No, that's all right," she said, and lifted her large shoulder bag onto her lap. "A friend of mine got ahold of Carl Hinkel's sheet. I thought we should go over it."
"Hinkel's sheet?"
"Yeah. This guy recruits ex-cons like Lamar Ellison and Wyatt Dixon over the Internet. He was a college professor once, can you believe that?"
"You wanted to go over Hinkel's sheet?"
"You'd rather not do it now?"
"Hinkel's a bucket of shit, Temple. Who cares what his history is?"
"I just don't believe I've come back to this," she said.
The next morning was Saturday and I went into town by myself and ate steak and eggs in a cafe by the rail yards, then took a walk across the Higgins Street Bridge and along the river by an old train depot that was now used for offices by an environmental group. The walkway by the river was still deep in shadow, the runoff loud through the cottonwoods and willows. I didn't hear the car that pulled off the bridge an
d drove down a ramp and stopped behind me.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a car door open and a crew-cut blond man in a suit suddenly running at me, his arm outstretched. I turned and ripped my elbow into his face and felt the bone break in his nose.
He cupped his hands to his face and an unintelligible sound came out of his mouth. His white shirt was splattered with blood and his eyes were filled with pain and rage. His hand went inside his suit coat and closed on the butt of an automatic pistol.