When Jim Hearne was riding saddle broncs on the college rodeo team, and later on his own when he was sponsored by Rawlins Ranch, his closest friend and traveling companion had been Ty Taylor, Monica’s father. Ty was handsome and enigmatic, a star performer, a man who attracted women like a magnet, despite the fact that he was married with a young daughter at home. One of the reasons Hearne partnered with Ty early on was for exactly that reason-where Ty went, women appeared. When Hearne injured his knee and laid off the circuit for a year and returned home, his on-again off-again courtship of Laura got serious, and they married. Ty was the best man, flying home between rodeos in Salinas and Cheyenne to be there.
Hearne finished up his degree in finance while he recovered, but the rodeo was in his blood. Laura didn’t like it when he went back to rodeoing and liked it even less when he hooked up again with Ty. Although Hearne was faithful to Laura and tried his best to rein Ty in, he wasn’t successful. Ty loved women-as a gender, if not individually-and women loved Ty. When the two cowboys came home together, Hearne watched little Monica look up to her father with unabashed hero worship that broke Hearne’s heart, even though it didn’t appear to faze Ty. Apparently he was used to that kind of look, Hearne thought at the time.
Ty was severely injured at the Calgary Stampede when his boot caught in his stirrup and he fell, breaking his neck. Hearne stood by his bed in the hospital while they waited for Monica and her mother to get there, and Ty grabbed Hearne’s hand and asked him to take care of Monica. Ty didn’t care much for his wife, but he said he’d cheated on his daughter, and she didn’t deserve a dad like that. He planned to die before they arrived.
But he didn’t. Over the next few years, Ty stayed home, recovered, but wasn’t able to get medical clearance to rodeo again. So he went back to chasing women throughout North Idaho and eastern Washington. On a warm day in May, he left his family without a word and never came back. Hearne had lost track of him completely over the years, although Ty once called him at the bank to see about a loan “for old times’ sake.” Hearne hung up on him.
Hearne was no psychologist, but it was easy for him to see how Ty’s abandonment affected both Monica and Monica’s mother. Her mother became an alcoholic and moved to Spokane, supposedly looking for a permanent job before sending for her daughter. Monica stayed in the area, bouncing around from place to place, growing wilder and more beautiful by the year. Boys were as attracted to Monica as women had been to her father. Monica didn’t discourage the attention at all. The most important man in her life had walked away. Others were lining up to step right in. The way Hearne saw it, Monica’s mission was to prove to herself she was likable and desirable after all, that her father had made a huge mistake. She looked for men who were dazzling, dangerous, and charismatic like her father had been. That she didn’t seem to recognize what she was doing, despite her intelligence, was one of life’s mysteries to Hearne.
So he had done what he could do, from a distance. He approved a home loan for her after the loan committee turned her down due to insufficient assets. He quietly dismissed overdraft charges on her checking account. When she was seriously overdrawn, he would call her and tell her to move some money into the account and, on occasion, lend her a few hundred when she was strapped. She’d always thanked him for his help very sincerely and never acted as if she was entitled to it.
He liked her, in spite of her reputation and the poor choices she had made. She had come to him the first time she was in trouble, and he’d tried to help her, but helping Monica back in those days was like trying to stop a freight train by standing on the tracks with his palm upraised. Hearne hadn’t been surprised when Monica’s husband was sent to prison. But even now, he couldn’t see her on the street without seeing the face of her in childhood, looking up to her father, unabashed worship on her face. Was he attracted to her? Sure. Every man was. But it wasn’t that. She was a casualty, and he had been there when the damage was done. Even though he thought he couldn’t do anything about it at the time, he had been there when it happened. Looking back, he felt responsibility for the way things turned out with the Taylors. He should’ve knocked Ty down, sat on him, and told him to straighten the hell up. Maybe that would have penetrated Ty’s thick skull. And even if it hadn’t, Hearne would have at least showed Ty he disapproved of the life he was living. Instead, he had stood by, observing, shaking his head, watching Ty wreck his own family. Then going off with Ty to the next rodeo. Laura thought he was nuts for thinking he could have done anything to stop the situation, and said so.
“They’ll find those kids,” Laura said, breaking into his reverie. “I’m sure they’ll turn up at somebody’s house or something.”
“I hope so,” Hearne said. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have children missing. The Hearnes had a son and a daughter, both married and moved away. Their lives had revolved around their children while they grew up. Imagining them missing when they were young was incomprehensible.
But, of course, it wasn’t only that. He thought of Jess Rawlins, how he could see no way to save him, either. Jess was, in Hearne’s mind, the conscience of the valley as he was growing up. Jess had taken Hearne under his wing and treated him as if he were his own son. Jess had never asked for anything for his sponsorship other than “to do us proud.” Us, meaning the valley. Jess was stubborn, independent, but intrinsically fair. That his own family had failed the way it did was a tragedy, Hearne thought, and he blamed Karen, Jess’s ex-wife. Hearne knew things about Karen, about her personal bank account and growing balance while the ranch accounts went dry, about her many dinners with men other than Jess, about her secret life. Karen had drained off the cash flow of the ranch, and Jess never knew it. Hearne had been duty-bound to keep quiet about it for years. A banker had no right to reveal that kind of information without the permission of the account holder. After Karen finally left Jess, and Jess was devastated, Hearne felt immensely guilty for not softening the blow. He could have taken Jess out for a cup of coffee, or taken Karen, and talked to them about what he knew. It would have been an ethical breach, but it would have been the right thing to do, he saw in retrospect. Jess had not recovered from the financial or emotional loss, and now his ranch was literally on the block.
And it wasn’t that Jim Hearne was immune to ethical breaches, and that’s what troubled him most. The meeting with Mr. Villatoro had laid bare Hearne’s own deception, even though Villatoro didn’t yet know it. Hearne knew his own actions-or lack of them-had brought Eduardo Villatoro to North Idaho.
He recalled his first meeting with Eric Singer, who had flown up from Los Angeles to meet with him and make an offer. The timing of the visit was opportune, just days after the board of directors meeting where the chairman decided the only way to keep the bank viable and growing was to change their strategy from low-return and high-maintenance agricultural loans to commercial finance. The bank needed to grow up and out, increase its cash deposits exponentially, and aggressively get ahead of the development boom that was starting to occur at the time. Since Hearne was in charge of ag loans, he saw the writing on the wall. So when Eric Singer walked into his office, it was as if fate had sent a messenger.
Hearne’s first impression of Singer was not good. He didn’t like the man’s superior demeanor and thought his attitude toward the community was condescending. He told Hearne he sought isolation, cheap land, and a live-and-let-live attitude. Rather than being put off by the reputation Kootenai Bay had of harboring white supremacists, Singer seemed drawn to it, saying he’d had his fill of “political fucking correctness.” Hearne remembered biting his tongue as Singer talked, weighing a defense of his home against the prospect of lucrative new accounts. Singer was not the first retired LAPD officer to find his way to North Idaho, nor the last. But unlike the others Hearne had met, Singer promised to bring up a small but well-heeled group of colleagues with him if Hearne was willing to make the conditions right.