That's when he heard a revolver cock behind him. A split second later a lawman named John Selman blew Hardin's brain matter on the mirror.

"You make me think of an ice cube sweating in a skillet. You worried about something?" Doc said.

"You rolled the dice for all of us, Doc," I replied.

"I'd change it if I could."

I paced up and down. "Did I get any phone calls?"

"Yeah, you did." He started slicing bread, the knife going snick, snick, snick into the plank table while I waited.

"From whom?"

"Cleo Lonnigan. She says you and Temple Carrol caused a scene at the concert."

"Is she crazy?"

"Yeah, probably."

"I appreciate your telling me that now."

"This bread is special. You want to try it with some jam?" he said.

An hour later, however, Doc's spirits died with the appearance of the sheriff's cruiser in the front yard, its emergency lights flashing.

"Step out here, Mr. Holland," the sheriff said.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Are you hard of hearing?"

I walked out on the porch. Under the shadow of his hat the sheriff's face looked as hard and bloodless as a turnip.

"Where were you two hours ago?" he asked.

"In East Missoula. Talking with my son."

"Cleo Lonnigan says you were on her property, up the Jocko."

"She's delusional."

"You're under arrest for assault and battery. Put your hands on the banister. No, don't open your mouth, don't think about it, just do what I tell you," he said.

I leaned on the porch railing and felt his hands travel over my person.

"Who is he supposed to have assaulted?" Doc said behind me.

"Go back inside, Dr. Voss. If there was ever a double-header giant-size pain in the ass, it's you two. You better hope that man don't die," the sheriff said, and hooked up my wrists and turned me toward his cruiser.

"Which man? Who are you talking about?" I said.

"That homosexual carpenter you beat the shit out of with a piece of pipe, one with an iron bonnet on it. Why didn't you just run his head over with a tractor wheel while you was at it?"

"This is insane," I said.

"Tell that to Cleo Lonnigan. She wants your head on a post, Mr. Holland. You'd better be thankful I got to you first," he replied.

I TRIED to reason with him from the backseat of the cruiser as we headed toward the county jail. When we passed through East Missoula I craned my head to catch a glimpse of the salvage yard where I had left Lucas with Sue Lynn.

"Listen to me, Sheriff. I can't be in jail. Wyatt Dixon threatened both my son and Doc's daughter. That woman's lying. I couldn't have been up the Jocko. Stop and talk with Lucas."

"Shut up, Mr. Holland," the sheriff replied.

I kicked the wire-mesh screen. "You're a thickheaded old fool, sir. I'm an attorney. I don't beat up innocent people with metal objects. Use your judgment, for God's sake," I said.

"You hurt my vehicle, I'm gonna pull on a side road and take your bark off," he said.

In the holding cell I yelled down the corridor, demanded to use the phone, and shook the barred door against the lock. Finally a sleepy, overweight turnkey walked down the corridor and looked into my face.

"You want something?" he asked.

"To use the phone."

"It's out of order. We'll let you know when it's fixed," he said, and walked away.

At three in the morning the sheriff came down the corridor with a wood chair gripped in his hand. He set the chair in front of my cell and sat in it. He removed an apple wrapped in a paper bag from his coat pocket and began paring the skin away with a pocketknife.

"I checked with your son. He confirms your story," the sheriff said.

"Then kick me loose."

"Not till I tell Cleo she made a mistake. What'd you do to her, anyway?"

"You're keeping me here for my own protection?" I said incredulously.

A long curlicue of apple skin dangled from the sheriff's knife blade. "Let's see if I can remember her words. Something like 'I'd better not see that sorry sack of shit before you do.' You think she meant anything by that?"

"Where's my son?"

"Safe and snug in his tent. The Voss girl is with her daddy. You don't need to worry about them."

"Let me out of here, sir."

"I hear Carl Hinkel told you he was sixty years old outside that town meeting at the Holiday Inn. Made everybody think you was picking on an old man."

"I've had better moments."

"He's fifty-three. He isn't no military hero, either. He was kicked out of the Army for running some kind of PX scam in Vietnam. You know how you can tell when Carl Hinkel is lying? His lips are moving."

The sheriff split the apple longways and hollowed the seeds out of the pulp and stuck one piece into his mouth and speared the other half on his knife blade and extended it through the bars. "You got a good heart, Mr. Holland. But I suspect you was off playing pocket pool when the Lord passed out the brains."

Later, I lay down on a bench at the back of the cell and rested my arm across my eyes and tried to sleep. But I found no rest. L.Q. Navarro stood in the gloom, his arms folded, one foot propped backward on the wall, his eyes lost in thought.

"Want to share what's on your mind?" I asked.

"Wyatt Dixon's gonna pay you back by hurting somebody close to you he don't have no connection with hisself."

"Who?" I asked.

"He's a cruel man. He's got womanhood on the brain. You figure it out."

"He's seen me with Cleo. Maybe it was Dixon who busted up her carpenter."

"Good try, bud," L.Q. replied, and looked toward the window as a clap of dry thunder rolled through the mountains.

The light was turning gray outside and the storm clouds of last night now looked as if they were filled with snow. A trusty walked by my cell door with a mop and bucket in one hand.

"Get the turnkey down here," I said to him.

Chapter 20

Temple went to the health club for her workout at six that morning. She couldn't believe the change in the weather. The temperature had dropped perhaps forty degrees and the fir trees at the top of the canyon were powdered with snow. She went up to the Nautilus room on the second floor of the club and did stomach crunches on a recliner board and watched through the window as a gray curtain of rain and mist and snow moved through the canyon, obscuring the cliff walls, smudging the trees, leaving only the emerald green ribbon of the river inside the mist.

The parking lot was white now and she could see the curlicues of car tracks on the cement and her Ford Explorer parked by the river. A low-slung red automobile pulled up on the far side of it, as though the driver could not decide whether to park. Then the mist and snow swirled over the lot and her vehicle faded and disappeared inside it.

She finished her workout and showered and dressed in her khaki jeans and a warm flannel shirt and her scuffed boots and put on a cotton jacket with a hood and began to tie it with a drawstring, then accidently pulled the plastic tippet off the string. She dropped the tippet into her shirt pocket and hung her workout bag on her shoulder and walked to her vehicle.

She shut the Explorer's door and started the engine. The windows had frosted and she turned on the heater and felt the coldness of the air surge into her face. While she waited for the engine to warm and the air vents to dry the moisture on the windows she pushed in the cigarette lighter so she could soften the plastic tippet and mold it back on the drawstring of her hood.

For just a second she saw a man's face under a hat brim in the rearview mirror, then the face slipped out of the glass and a pair of arms and gloved hands seized her neck and upper torso. Her attacker's strength was incredible. He lifted her over the seat and into the back as though she were stuffed with straw. Then he fitted his forearms on her neck and began to squeeze.