"What?"

"You stepped in dog poop."

He stared down at the brown smear his toes had left on the cement.

I drove away from the house and up on a rise above the river and got out of my truck and looked down at the cottonwoods below, the words of Nicki Molinari ringing in my ears. I wanted to go back to the Girards' house and kill Nicki Molinari, literally blow him all over the grass. In the old days I could have done it and sipped a cup of coffee while I reloaded. I wondered if L.Q.'s ghost would ever let me rest.

Chapter 18

The next morning I received a phone call from the sheriff.

"That kid, Terry Witherspoon, the one you think was watching Maisey Voss in her bathroom? He's in St. Pat's Hospital. Somebody tossed him out of a car," the sheriff said.

"Why are you telling me?"

"Maybe the girl would like to know. A crime victim's day don't always come in court," he replied.

"Who did it to him?"

"Maybe he'll tell you. He was wearing lipstick and rouge when the paramedics brought him in. Why would queer bait want to be looking at a young girl through a bathroom window?"

"I think Wyatt Dixon is AC/DC. Witherspoon is his boy."

"Our worst problem around here used to be pollution from tepee burners. We even had a whorehouse over in Wallace, Idaho. It's sure nice to have you new folks around, Mr. Holland," he said.

"How should I interpret that? You're really a cryptic man, Sheriff."

"Thank you," he said, and hung up.

When I entered Terry Witherspoon's room he was standing by his bed, putting on his shirt. His elbows and forehead were barked and one eye was clotted with blood.

His face jerked when he saw me, as though he feared I might be someone else.

"Wyatt was going to rape Maisey the other night, wasn't he?" I said.

He put on his glasses and crinkled his nose. A sun shower had burst on the hills rimming the valley and the hills were green and shining with light, but it was not a good day for Terry Witherspoon. His face was pinched with resentment and shame, like a child who had been unjustly punished.

"You did an honorable deed, Terry. It takes a standup guy to 'front a dude like Wyatt Dixon," I said.

"He's picking me up. You'd better not be here when he does," he said.

"Free country," I said.

"It used to be. Before the likes of y'all took over," he replied.

"Who's this 'y'all' we're talking about?"

"Liberals, muff divers, tree huggers, the people who are ruining everything."

"You want to be a hump for Wyatt the rest of your life?"

"Don't call me a hump. I'm not a hump."

"You only listen to people who denigrate you, Terry."

"Do what?"

"You grew up being dumped on. So in your mind the only people who really know you are the ones who run you down. A guy like me tells you you're standup and you blow me off."

He looked out the window, down onto the sidewalk.

"He's coming. Get out of here," he said.

"You like Maisey?" I asked.

He looked at me silently, as though there were a trick in the question.

"Ellison and his friends already put their mark on her soul. Give her a break. Stay away from her," I said.

"I'm not good enough?" he said, his glasses full of light.

"Back in North Carolina you broke into a house and tied two people to chairs and shot the man and cut the woman's throat. They'll stand by your deathbed one day, kid. Count on it."

His jaw dropped and his breath went out of his mouth as though I'd punched him in the stomach. Then I saw his attention shift to the doorway. I turned and looked into the face of Wyatt Dixon.

"Why, I be go-to-hell if it ain't the counselor again, right in the midst of it all. Counselor, every time I see you I'm put in mind of a shithog ear-deep in a slop bucket. Search me for the explanation. By the way, did you know that boy of yours pulled a skinning knife on me this morning?"

He let his grin hang, his eyes dancing with delight at the expression on my face.

I DROVE BACK to Doc Voss's place on the Black-foot but Lucas wasn't there.

"You know where Sue Lynn Big Medicine lives?" I asked Maisey.

"Lucas said by a junkyard in East Missoula," she replied. "You saw Terry this morning?"

"'Terry? You're on a first-name basis with this ass-wipe?" I said. She was sitting on the porch step with a book splayed open on her knee. Her calico cat was flipping in the dust by her feet. She squinted her eyes at me in the sunlight.

"That's his name, isn't it?" she said.

"Don't let that guy get near you, Maisey."

"I wish you wouldn't tell me what to do."

"Don't any of you kids have any judgment about the people you associate with?" I asked.

"Your problem is with Lucas, Billy Bob, not me. Please change your tone of voice."

There's no feeling quite like being corrected by a sixteen-year-old girl.

I drove back down the Blackfoot and into East Missoula, a community of trailers and truckstops and low-rent casinos, where the poor and unskilled watched the world they had taken for granted disappear around them. It Wasn't hard to find the junkyard where Sue Lynn lived. Cars that had been crushed and flattened by a compactor were stacked in layers on a knoll above the highway, and the windowless gray-primed stock car she drove, with orange numerals on the doors, was parked by an old brick cottage with a sign over the porch that read Salvage.

Sue Lynn and Lucas were on their hands and knees in the backyard, working on what I thought was a rock garden. Then I realized the design was far more intricate. They had laid out a circle of stones, with two intersecting lines inside it. One line of stones was painted red, the other black. In the middle of the cross was a willow tree.

Now Lucas and Sue Lynn were working each of the quadrants with trowels and sprinkling them down with a water can and planting purple and white and pink pansies into the mixture of mulch and black soil. The mongrel dog Lucas had saved from drowning in the Blackfoot River was nosing his snout into the dirt, his tail wagging, his hair matted down with the medicine Lucas had smeared on his mange.

I squatted on my haunches outside the circle of stones and took off my hat and put a peppermint stick in the corner of my mouth. "It looks real good," I said.

"It's an Indian prayer garden. The willow is the Tree of Life. One part of the cross is the red road. That's the good way in this world. The other one, the black road, that one's not so cool," Lucas said.

"Wyatt Dixon said you pulled a knife on him."

"He's full of shit. I took out a pocketknife to peel an apple and he made some kind of wise-ass remark about it," Lucas replied. "Why's he want to think I'd pull a knife?"

"So he can kill you, son." I felt my gaze break at the content of my own words. I also realized I'd never called Lucas son before.

"Maybe he'll get a surprise," Lucas said.

"Don't talk that way," I said.

"Should I leave?" Sue Lynn said.

"How are you, Sue Lynn?" I said.

She pressed the roots of a petunia into the damp soil and didn't answer. She wore cutoff jeans and a halter, and the tips of her hair were wet with perspiration and there were sun freckles on the tops of her breasts.

"Who owns this place?" I asked.

"My uncle. He did time in Marion," she replied.

"As joints go, that's real mainline."

"I told you once before I don't get to choose where I live."

"You ever read Black Elk Speaks by John Neihardt?" I asked.

"I never heard of it," she replied.

"You should. This prayer garden is in his book."

"My grandfather was a Crow holy man and you're an asshole, Mr. Holland," she said.