The whites of her eyes had turned pink, although she had not shed any tears. Clete had to cough into his hand before he spoke. “You’re not going to report him?”
“He scrubbed me with bleach. There’s no DNA on me. My clothes are gone. I have nothing to prove my story.”
“What were you doing on the Internet?”
“He told me he had terminal cancer. Some people I know in Miami hacked into his medical records. He was lying. I know what you’re thinking. I want you to stay out of it.”
“He’s going down.”
“I don’t let other people carry my water, especially you.”
“Because I wasn’t there to defend you when you were a kid?”
“It’s the other way around. You’ve been there for me in every way you could, and I’m not going to let you take my weight now.”
“You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, kid. You’ve made a documentary on music, and now you’re going to make one on the damage these shale-oil companies are doing. You can’t throw that away because of a bum like Pepper. Leave him to me.”
“That’s what you don’t understand, Clete. When a man molests a woman, he steals her identity. You don’t know who you are anymore. You feel like you don’t have an address or a mailbox or a name. You’re nothing.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“See what I mean? You don’t want to hear it. No man wants to know how painful it is. It’s like a stain you can’t wash out of your soul. I want to kill him, and I want to do it in pieces. I want him to suffer as much as possible.”
He picked up her hand. “I don’t blame you for not dime-ing him. He’s probably done it before and gotten away with it. The system chews up sexual assault victims. But I’m going to get him, and when I do, it will be for both of us.”
“I knew this was a mistake.”
“What is?”
“Telling you. You’re going to end up in prison.”
He started to speak, then gave it up and stroked her hair. His head had filled with images from her account that he knew would pursue him night and day, no matter where he went or how he tried to occupy himself. As he realized the magnitude of the theft that had been perpetrated on his daughter, he felt a sensation in his stomach that was like a flame punching a hole in a sheet of paper and spreading outward until it blackened everything it touched.
A squall had just blown through Hellgate Canyon into downtown Missoula when we reached the tree-shaded neighborhood by the river where Bill Pepper lived. The limbs of the maple trees were in full leaf and shaking in great wet clusters in the wind, raindrops spotting the sidewalks, the flower baskets on Pepper’s porch whipping back and forth. It was only five-thirty, but he had turned on the lights inside. I had to knock twice before I saw him appear from the kitchen, wearing a fedora, a leather jacket on his arm. He looked through the glass straight into my face, then unlocked the bolt and opened the door. “What is it?” he asked.
Fear comes in many forms, most often as a sense of apprehension that soon disappears. What I saw in the face of Bill Pepper bordered on the kind of fear I’ve seen only in the faces of the condemned, men who had to sit in a cell and listen to the beating of their heart while awaiting the sound of a steel door swinging open and footsteps walking down a poorly lighted corridor. I’m talking about a level of fear that turns the skin gray and leaves a man’s hair soggy with sweat and his palms so stiff and dry he can’t close them.
“I met with Love Younger this morning,” I said. “I need to confirm a couple of things he told me.”
“You’re meddling in an investigation where you have no jurisdiction,” Pepper said.
“That’s not the case. My daughter was almost killed by an unknown assailant who’s still out there. Younger says you found a sporting goods salesman who sold a hunter’s bow to a guy who may have murdered Angel Deer Heart. This is information we have a right to know. Why didn’t you share it with us?”
“I’m on my way out of town for the weekend. You can come to my office Monday if you want to talk.”
“You nervous about something?” Alafair said.
“I’m in a rush. What right do you have to come to my house? To talk to me like that?” As though emboldened by his own rhetoric, he stepped out on the porch. Even in the wind, I could smell the alcohol on his breath.
“Our request for information is a reasonable one, Detective Pepper,” I said. “I don’t understand why you’re upset.”
“I’m fine. I don’t know what you want or why you’re here. We’re still looking at Wyatt Dixon. To our knowledge, he’s the last person to see the girl alive.”
“We just ran into Dixon on the dirt road below Albert Hollister’s house,” I said. “He was on his way to see Gretchen Horowitz. He seemed perfectly relaxed talking to us. Does that sound like a guilty man to you?”
Pepper’s eyes looked from me to Alafair and back to me. “Are they cooking up something? Maybe claiming I abused Dixon?”
This time I didn’t respond. There was a tic below his left eye, a twitch by his mouth.
“Just tell us what you found out from the sporting goods salesman,” Alafair said. “What did the purchaser of the hunting bow look like?”
“Middle-aged. He paid with cash. It could be anybody,” he said. “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”
“That’s not what you told Love Younger,” Alafair said. “You told him the purchaser was wearing the kind of bracelet Dixon sold the Indian girl.”
“I’m leaving now. I don’t have time for this,” Pepper said.
“I think your boat left the dock a little early today,” I said.
“Say again?”
“You’re ninety proof, partner. I used to start at lunchtime, too, particularly when I was warming up for the weekend. By Saturday morning I’d glow in the dark.”
I saw a strange light come into his eyes, as though he had shifted gears inside his head and was no longer thinking about any of the things he had just said. “You’re from down there. You know how they do business,” he said.
“From down where? Who is they? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“It’s got to do with Albert Hollister and the girl. They think I’m involved. I’m out. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Sir, you’re not making any sense,” I said.
“Mr. Robicheaux?”
“What is it?”
He seemed to collect himself, like a man wanting a friend. “I’m sorry for what I did. They’ve got me figured out wrong. I think I’m gonna go back to Mobile. I always liked it there, living by the salt water and pole-fishing with the nigras at sunset. It’s a peaceful life there on the bay.”
Alafair and I stared at him. It was like watching a man disappear before our eyes. “Sorry you did what?” I asked.
“For my actions. I’d undo them if I could.”
“I think you need some help,” I said.
He closed the door just as the clouds broke and started to pour down, the raindrops hitting the rooftop and sidewalks as hard as hail. If there is a charnel house for souls, I believed Bill Pepper had just found it.
Albert was gone when we returned to the house. The rain had quit and the sky had turned into an ink wash, and Molly and I grilled steaks on the deck and took them inside and ate at the dining room table with Alafair and watched the moon rise above the Bitterroots. Albert came in later, holding a FedEx delivery, his face ruddy from the wind. “This is for Gretchen. It was by the garage,” he said. “Where is she?”
“At the cabin, I think,” I replied. “Alafair and I had a talk with one of the cops who was up at the cave. Bill Pepper. Do you know him?”