Bad Company (21 page)

“You think you’ve failed Mary because her sister died, and now Monette’s been killed. And you think you’re letting Delice down because you have to question JJ. But you’re not a failure, sweetie. We all love you. You’ll find the killer.”

He sighed heavily, his big bulky body shifting in her arms, leaning his chin on her head. “Yeah, one way or the other, between Scotty and me, we’ll run this fucker down. But it feels bad right now.”

“Sure it does,” Hawk nodded, his version of hugging.

“The worst part,” Dickie said, as the band, back on stage, began tuning up for the next set, “is that Jerry Jeff’s one of the ones who’s lying to me.”

Chapter 19
Swinging into Action

“All teenagers lie,” said Delice the next morning, setting a poached egg on an English muffin in front of Sally, pulling a bottle of Tabasco out of her pocket, plopping down into a chair, and planting her elbows on the table with a clattering of silver bracelets. “They have to. It’s in their code of conduct. If they’re caught telling the truth to an adult, their friends break their skateboards and exile them to the geek table in the lunchroom. Jesus probably lied to Mary.”

Sally shook Tabasco all over the rubbery white and hard, graying yolk, wishing that she’d just forsaken the path of righteousness and ordered a couple over easy with a side of hash browns. When it came to nutrition, the Wrangler was built for cholesterol, not for need.

“You’re his mother. Can’t you threaten him?” she asked Delice.

“With what? A whipping? He’s got six inches and fifty pounds on me. Should I ground him? He’d just sneak out while I was at work.” She took a sip from Sally’s coffee mug, grimacing involuntarily. Sally wondered if, after all, Delice had gotten used to the superior brew at the Yippie I O.

Sally searched for a device. “You could take away his allowance, I guess.”

Delice snorted. “JJ’s been mowing lawns and walking dogs and washing windows since he was eight. He’s earned all his own spending money, and for the past three years he’s been working his ass off trying to save up for a roping horse. Allowance-schmowance.”

Sally gave up on her egg and opened a plastic packet of grape jelly to spread on the other half of the muffin. She’d asked for it dry, but the cook had scorned the request. Whatever they’d squirted on it, Sally could easily believe it wasn’t butter. “Isn’t it supposed to be one of the warning signals of the end of the American family when parents can’t control their children anymore?”

“Only according to people who’ve never had children. You can’t control teenagers. You can only hope to keep them alive until their hormones settle down and their brains kick back in,” Delice explained, finishing the coffee.

Sally looked at her empty cup. “Do you think I could get some OJ?”

“Not today. We had a product recall,” Delice said.

“A product recall on orange juice?” Sally asked.

“Trust me,” said Delice, “you don’t want it.”

Sally wasn’t inclined to give that too much thought. “But you’ve got to get him to tell the truth. This is about murder, Delice.”

Delice was the Vince Lombardi of Laramie—all offense. “Don’t lecture me, Mustang. I do crack down on him now and then, and I can reduce him to tears when the situation calls for it. If I thought his lying about the piggin’ string meant he killed Monette, I promise you, he wouldn’t have a chance. I’d take him down to the courthouse myself and show old Scotty Atkins exactly how to work him over until he confessed.”

Now Delice sat back in her chair and put her hands in the pockets of her jeans: jingle jangle. “But Jerry Jeff didn’t kill Monette Bandy. He just plain couldn’t do it. I know mothers are always the last to admit that their kids are psycho, but I’m telling you, mine isn’t.”

“They’ve got some of the evidence back from the state crime lab,” Sally told her. “Scotty’s going to make JJ go down to the courthouse today and look at the piggin’ string.”

“I know that. Dickie told me yesterday. I can’t stop them from taking him in. In fact, I’m glad they’re doing it. It’s barely possible he’ll have something useful to say. But my guess is that, short of torture, JJ won’t tell even that pigheaded Atkins anything he doesn’t want to tell him. He’s not ready. Dickie already tried the good-old-uncle-sheriff approach; I doubt Scotty’s tough talk will be more effective if he doesn’t have anything more to hold over my kid than a stupid piece of rope.

“Look, I don’t doubt that Jerry Jeff’s done brainless things—fooled around with girls, maybe done some dope—things I’ve probably threatened to kill him for. Whatever he’s hiding, he figures it’s serious enough that it’s easier for him to keep quiet than deal with the consequences of spilling it, but not so bad that if he doesn’t tell, somebody might get hurt. That balance could change any time. For now I think we’re going to have to keep reminding him that whatever he’s covering up isn’t going to get him thrown in jail, but it might help Dickie find out something important.”

“Maybe I could talk to him,” said Sally. “I mean, it’s not like I’m his mother or a cop. I’m not really an authority figure in his life. We get along great.”

Delice considered it. “Hmm. And of course, he does realize that you haven’t exactly been a perfect little angel all your life.”

Sally narrowed her eyes. “What have you been telling him about me?”

Delice laughed. “Let’s put it this way. As his mother, I am forced to admit that I myself might have done one or two things that I would prefer he not feel compelled to try out. We’ve had those conversations about sex and drugs and borrowing the neighbors’ car to enter in the demolition derby. But it would undermine me with him to own up to everything, so some of the time, when I’m giving him an example of the kind of stuff he’s not supposed to do, I generally borrow a little from your life story.”

“Borrow!” Sally exploded. “You didn’t tell him it was me who drove up on Dickie and Mary’s lawn that time we smoked all that hash and decided to deliver that pizza right to their door!”

Delice hung her head.

“You didn’t tell him about the time I busted that jug of Almaden at the midnight movie at the Nixon Theater?”

“It could have happened to anybody,” Delice said, charitably.

“You didn’t suggest that I was the one who got kicked out of that hippie restaurant on Ivinson for spitting out my dinner and accusing the cook of making phlegm burritos?”

“No!” Delice exclaimed. “I told him that was Hawk.”

They looked at each other. “It
was
Hawk, come to think of it,” Sally admitted.

“Maybe you could talk to JJ at that,” Delice agreed. “It’s bound to make me look good, anyway.”

Then, abruptly, Delice changed the subject and began bullying Sally about the events of Tuesday night. Sally reflected that it was probably true that if Delice hadn’t been able to get anything out of Jerry Jeff, Scotty Atkins wouldn’t do much better. Delice could have had a great career in the Spanish Inquisition. Reluctantly Sally gave up the whole story, down to the shredded teddy and the message on the mirror. She went on and told her about the unpleasantness out at the rodeo, and figuring that Delice would eventually find out about her tussle with Bone, she threw that in too.

Delice’s dark eyes flashed. “Shit!” she exclaimed. “There go another pair of salt and pepper shakers!”

Sally turned to follow her gaze, and saw a very nice-looking family getting up to leave, the mother pausing to add a sugar dispenser to her bag.

“Excuse me, ma’am!” Delice yelled. “Could I have a minute?” The family froze. And then, in a much softer voice, Delice told Sally, “If she just hands them back and tells me they crawled into her purse, I’ll let her off. If she doesn’t, I’m going to spoil their vacation.” She leaned over and clasped Sally’s hand. “You’ve got problems, girlfriend,” she said. “I’d be your bodyguard if I could find somebody who’d keep the customers and the help from walking off with everything in the place. Hawk’ll have to handle it. Do you want to borrow a gun?”

“Sure,” said Sally. “I want to shoot everybody in town. NO, I don’t want to borrow a gun. I don’t need a gun.” And if she did, of course, Hawk had several on hand. But she didn’t, because Sally would not, under any circumstances, use one.

“Talk to JJ,” Delice told her as she hurried off. “He’s working this morning, and supposed to go to the cop shop after that, but he’ll be home later in the afternoon.”

In truth, Sally was mortally sick of talk. Ever since Monette’s murder, it seemed as if she’d done nothing but react to other people and yak about the latest crazy events. At the moment all she could do about Monette was to show up later in the afternoon to help paint signs for the parade. It was one more form of talking and reacting.

Enough. The time had come to swing into action. For a historian like her, that could mean only one thing: going to the library. She couldn’t raise Monette from the dead, but she could do Molly Wood a favor (and help Hawk out, and distract herself from the matter of murder) by finding out what she could about the land upstream of Molly’s potential new home in the Laramie Range.

For Professor Sally Alder, a good research library was church, stadium, theater, and battlefield all rolled into one. She particularly loved libraries in the summer, when the only people around were unlucky students, dedicated diggers, and a staff much less hassled than usual. She planned to put in a couple of hours in Coe, the university’s main library, do a little background reading and then head up to the archives to root among the railroad documents. She figured she could find out a hell of a lot with maybe five hours’ work. That would be five hours she wasn’t thinking about honky-tonk angels.

She began with the catalogues, online and card (aesthetically she preferred the latter), looking up books on the Laramie Mountains and on the railroad in southern Wyoming. Finding what she wanted, she took the stairs. Up on the third floor the stacks stood dark and full, waiting for her. There were a few students studying at tables in open areas, but other than that, the place appeared to be hers. Seeking solitude, she headed for a desk in the shadowy far corner of the stacks, and then went to gather books. Soon she returned, piled the books on the desk, and went silently to work.

Hunched over her books and papers in the silver-gray fluorescent gloom, so lost in the past was Sally that when she looked up an hour later, she didn’t at first comprehend the sensation that gripped her. Clenched muscles in the middle of her body, tight jaw, chills running shoulder to fingertips. Three seconds later the feeling had a name: terror. She was absolutely certain that somebody had followed her, was watching, lying in wait.

Once again room tone tipped her off. The breathy aspirations of library quiet had shifted, just a bit, just the fraction of one more soul, inhaling, exhaling.

Slowly she raised her eyes from a memoir by a woman who’d found a job with the Union Pacific during World War II, a book titled
I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad.
She’d just gotten to a chapter where the woman joined an all-female crew that was working in a newly constructed railroad tie plant in the Laramie Mountains. Sally knew she was on to something, but the awareness of somebody else, prowling close by, held her fast. Trying to make as little noise as possible, she marked her place, closed the book, took off her reading glasses, and rose half out of her chair to peer over the high back of the library desk. And then she heard it, the faint sound of a book being slipped back into place on a stack shelf, sliding with a soft
ssh
between other books and then hitting the back of the shelf with a muffled thump.

She shot up and ran around the corner of the stack row. And plowed right into Sheldon Stover. “You flaming idiot!” she screamed, heedless of library etiquette. “You scared the bejesus out of me! What in the holy hell are you doing skulking around here?”

Sheldon, as was his wont, sighed. “I’d hoped not to introduce this disturbance into my methodology, but I suppose, as a subject, you have the right to know,” he said. “I’m doing a brief experimental ethnography for Marsh’s project, and I’ve been observing you. See, by taking this book off the shelf”—he selected a thick red-bound volume—“I had a clear view of you sitting there, working.”

Sally leaned over and peered through the opening to see the desk where she’d been sitting. “You’ve been lying on the floor here spying on me? For your experimental ethnography? I don’t get this, Sheldon. Why me?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked.

She had to think about that. “I sincerely hope not,” she told him. “Let’s assume there’s a reason besides the fact that you’re a potentially homicidal Peeping Tom.”

Sheldon chuckled. “Not at all. I guess I’ll have to explain. You see, my job is to theorize the endless signature of human presence on that apparently wild tract of land that Marsh Carhart is evaluating, up there in the mountains. Now, I’m no historian . . .” he admitted.

“That much I’ve figured out,” Sally said.

“So I don’t pretend to concern myself with the kinds of matters that must be well detailed in written documents,” he continued without acknowledging her interruption. “What I contribute to Marsh’s project is a kind of provisional cut at representing the perpetuity of human engagement with this so-called wild place.”

Sally grabbed the red book and shoved it back onto the shelf. “I still don’t get this. I haven’t even been there. Why are you frigging stalking me?”

“I’m not! Pay attention here, Sally. I’m merely following a thread. Yesterday your boyfriend, with whom you appear to have something of an intellectual as well as a sexual partnership—”

“Sheldon!” she screamed again.

“It’s just sex then? I doubt that. In any case, Marsh and I encountered this boyfriend at the site yesterday, obviously engaged in his own brand of scientistic observation.”

“Scientistic?” asked Sally.

“As in, ‘the kind of thing scientists do.’ ”

“Don’t you mean scientific?”

“No. That has too much of the ring of empiricism,” he said.

“Oh.” How in hell could you take this guy seriously?

“As I was saying, we walked the property with your friend. His interest in the place put him in the category of a subject for my study. Being a scientist, he is presumably following up his observations from yesterday with more research of the sort that people in his field regard as useful. In other words, he’s carrying the consequences of his presence yesterday in the mountains into other times and places, performing activities related to and impinging upon the Happy Jack location. It’s called time-space distanciation.”

“Oh yeah? Gosh, Hawk calls it ‘going around looking stuff up.’ ”

But Sheldon, on a roll, missed the mockery in her tone. “I had planned, today, to discreetly follow him and see where his work led. But when I went to your house this morning, his truck was already gone. I decided I’d head back home, but then I happened to see you through the window of the Wrangler café. I believe in pursuing spontaneous contingencies, and it seemed to me at that moment that by following you, I was merely tracking the chaotic web of human relations that spins out of any place. And I was right. Why else would you be sitting here reading books about the history of the very area in question?”