“You’re a cop, aren’t you?” she said.

“What makes you say that?”

“I can always tell. Cops think behind their eyes. The ones on the make do, anyway.”

“I look like I’m on the make?”

“No, you just think a lot. You see the ambulance take that guy out of the motel this morning?”

“No.”

“Somebody knocked his teeth out with a blackjack. He wasn’t saying who. He works the saloon sometimes, mostly married men who haven’t figured out they’re fudge packers.”

“Too bad.”

“Occupational hazard when you’re selling your ass in a rawhide bar. He usually works hotels in Spokane or in Portland and Seattle. If you knew some of those sagebrush schmucks back there, you wouldn’t mess with them. They’ve got no idea what goes on in their own heads. If they did, they’d stick a gun in their mouths.”

“Never heard it put that way.”

The sun had gone below the mountains, and the lakes on either side of the road were dark and glazed with the lights from boathouses and sailboats, the water sliding up onto rocky shoals.

“I used to have a little junk problem – tar, mostly. I got busted on a possession charge in Portland. The court sent me to a twelve-step program. I thought most of it sucked, then one night I heard these women start talking about certain sexual problems they developed with their own kids, like, they wanted to molest them. Puke-o, right?

“I didn’t want to hear this shit, because I’d had a little boy myself that I gave up to Catholic Charities. Except the story these women told was a little bit too familiar, know what I mean, like yuck, they’re talking about me. They all said they were molested themselves when they were little, and they knew if they did it to their own kids, their kids would have the same kind of miserable lives they’d had. This one woman said the only way she could spare her little boy was to drown him in the bathtub.

“Don’t look at me like that. She didn’t do it. But here’s where it gets even worse. These women said that killing their kids was a way of looking out for them. Then they figured out that wasn’t the reason at all. They wanted to kill their kids because they thought the little girl inside them was a whore and had to pay the price for what she did, I mean causing all the trouble for the grown-up. How sick does it get? Like gag me out, double puke-o again.”

Troyce studied the side of Candace Sweeney’s face for a long time. “Why are you telling me this?”

She glanced at him, disconcerted. They were headed up the Fourth of July Pass now, the forests on either side of them carving out of the darkness in the headlights. “I wasn’t telling you anything. I was saying, you know, that-” Her words seized up in her throat. The muscles in one side of his face had been impaired by an incision of some kind, perhaps by a knife wound, and his expression looked disjointed, split in half, as though two different people shared his skin.

“You were saying what?” he asked.

“That whoever smacked around the bone-smoker back there probably hasn’t figured out why he does stuff like that. Like he’s a sick fuck. Like maybe I was, too. That’s just the way the world is. People don’t necessarily get to choose what or who they are.” She turned her eyes boldly on Troyce’s face.

“You’re pretty smart,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s why I’m a cook for CEO titty babies who get their dorks mixed up with their deer guns.”

Up ahead, the road was empty. Troyce twisted in the seat and looked through the back window. A car’s taillights were disappearing in the opposite direction. “Pull in to that rest stop,” he said.

“That’s not a very good place.”

“Why not?”

“They don’t clean it. It smells like a bear took a dump in it six months ago and forgot to flush the toilet.”

“That’s all right. Pull in.”

She parked the SUV by the public restroom, where an apron of electric light fell on the gravel and the roof of the vehicle and the giant log that separated the parking area from the sidewalk, all the things that should have looked normal and comforting but were now removed from the asphalt highway connecting Troyce Nix and Candace Sweeney to the rest of the world.

“You didn’t cut the engine,” he said.

“I was gonna listen to the radio,” she said.

He turned off the ignition for her, then rolled down his window on the electric motor. The air was sweet with the smell of the woods, and water was ticking out of the trees. “Say that last part again. That part about the woman hating the little girl still living inside her,” he said.

“I’m not into Jerry Springer. If you want to fuck me, I’ll give it some thought. But I was talking about myself, nobody else.”

“I want you to change my bandages. I’m leaking.”

“What happened to you?”

“Who cares? Tell me about that woman again, the one who was going to drown her kid.”

When she went into the back to retrieve the medical kit from under the seat, she saw a holstered, strapped-down nine-millimeter and a stitched leather-covered blackjack, the kind shaped like a large squash, the leaded end mounted on a spring and wood handle, one that could break bone and teeth and crush a person’s face into pulp. The points of fir trees extended into the sky all around her. Directly overhead, the constellations were colder and brighter than she had ever seen them. She opened the passenger door and looked blankly into Troyce Nix’s face.

“Do I end here?” she said.

“Little darlin’, the Lord broke the mold when He made you. Ain’t nothing gonna happen to you, at least not while I’m around.”

“Take off your shirt,” she said.

CHAPTER 8

ON MONDAY MORNING Joe Bim Higgins asked me to come to his office at the Missoula County Courthouse. When I tapped on his partially opened door, he was standing at the window, gazing out on the lawn and the maple trees that shaded the benches by the sidewalk.

“Thanks for coming by, Mr. Robicheaux,” he said, extending his hand. “Early yesterday morning somebody broke into the house in Bonner where Seymour Bell was living. Bell’s roommates were gone for the weekend. Whoever broke in tore the place up pretty bad.”

“You don’t think it was just vandalism?”

“No, the drawers were all pulled out, mattresses peeled back, closets emptied. Somebody was looking for something.”

“Was anything missing?”

“Bell’s roommate says a cheap camera is gone, one of those little throwaway jobs. He said he was sure it was on top of Bell’s bookcase when he left the house on Friday afternoon.” Higgins paused, watching my expression. “What’s your take on it?”

“If the camera was the object of interest and in full view, the intruder wouldn’t have torn up the whole house. He was after something else as well, something more important.”

“I talked with your boss in New Iberia this morning. She said you were a good cop.”

I knew what was coming. “No,” I said. “I came out here to fish. I got involved in your investigation because the homicide took place behind Albert’s house. Clete thought the killer might have been sending Albert a message.”

“That’s one reason I want you working for me. Albert is just like me. He’s old and wants his own way. When he doesn’t get it, he starts throwing horse turds in the punch bowl.”

“Albert is going to have to take care of himself.”

“You don’t get it, Mr. Robicheaux. The West isn’t the same place or culture I grew up in. People like Albert Hollister used to be the rule, not the exception. Albert believes in his country and his fellow man, and he’ll let people kill him before he’ll accept the fact that most of his fellow citizens care more about the price of gasoline than a volunteer soldier getting killed in Afghanistan. I want to deputize you right here, with a gentleman’s understanding that this is a temporary situation confined to the investigation of these recent homicides. I’ve got good people working for me, there’s just not enough of them. What do you say, partner?”