Then I realized how much I'd been letting fear push me around more in these past several hours. I was sick of it and disgusted with myself, and I was goddamned if I was going to back down from Kirk Pettyjohn.
I drove toward him slowly, watching for nervous glances toward a hidden weapon or accomplice. But his gaze stayed fixed on me, and he raised his hands palms forward in appeasement.
'I come to apologize, Hugh,' he called.
That was a possibility I hadn't considered, although 'apologizing' no doubt meant trying to lie his way off my shit list.
Visibility was better in the open space of the lakeshore, and for once he wasn't wearing his sunglasses. His eyes were twitching and darting around, and his face was as pale as his hair, and even in the night's chill, beaded with sweat. On top of the meth, he was scared. My anger eased off a little. I hadn't intended to really thump him, anyway-maybe bitch-slap him once or twice. Now I decided just to rattle his cage some more. But as I walked toward him, I didn't have to pretend I was pumped up.
'Now, hang on a minute,' he said. His hands rose higher and made pushing motions, like he was trying to keep me away. 'I know you're feeling kind of sore.'
I kept walking. 'You can start your apologizing with that lumber you burned, Kirk. Did Balcomb pay you extra? Or does that kind of thing go with your job?'
'Lumber I burned?' He edged around the Jeep to keep it between us. It was another one of his macho props, called a Rubicon, for Christ's sake.
'If you lie to me, that's just going to piss me off more,' I said.
'I'm not lying-I don't know what the hell you're talking about.'
'Those old fir planks I took from the ranch. That you ratted me off about and got me sent to jail for this afternoon. Remember?'
His mouth opened in an O. 'Somebody burned them? Whoa there, goddamn it.' He scuttled farther around the Jeep, his words spilling out in a rush.
'Hugh, I swear, this is the first I heard of it. I snitched on you, yeah. That whole deal today, I feel so bad I could walk under a dime with a tall hat on. But I didn't burn nothing. Hell, I wouldn't go near your place-I knew you wouldn't like it. I tried calling you, and figured you were in the bars and I'd wait here until you came back.'
I stopped. In the quiet, the elephant that was always in the room with Kirk and me-what had happened with Celia and Pete-became an almost tangible presence.
When they'd died, I'd been old enough to understand it at least in an adolescent way, but Kirk was only seven or eight. From the little I'd learned about psychology, I'd gleaned that younger kids in particular were prone to take on irrational guilt for traumas like that-that it was common with divorces, and it certainly seemed likely with the tragic death of an only brother, especially a golden boy like Pete. I'd often wondered if Kirk had subconsciously become a fuckup to punish himself. I knew those sorts of things weren't nearly that simple, that he was probably a fuckup by nature, and that there was the flip side of using the trauma as an excuse. Still, I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. My anger dropped another notch.
Kirk was quick to sense things like that, and he immediately shifted gears into wheedling.
'Look, I want you on my side,' he said earnestly. 'I got a way to straighten everything out between us. At least listen to me, will you? I been waiting here a good hour.'
I didn't care about his apology even if it was genuine, but I'd started to see that I might be able to use this to my advantage-play on his nerves and pump him for information, in case my troubles with Balcomb weren't over after all.
'I've got a real hard time believing you're going to straighten anything up, Kirk,' I said. 'But go ahead, give it a try.'
'This stays just between us, right? Balcomb's got me by the nuts.' Kirk shoved his hands into his pockets and stared down at the ground. 'I got this little problem. I've been getting into some meth. He found out about it, and now he's holding it over me.'
I almost smiled. Madbird was going to love hearing that the shitweasel had been bitten by his own fangs.
'Your secret's safe with me, Kirk,' I said. His meth use was about as secret as Clark Kent's other identity.
'I saw you talking to Laurie this afternoon,' he said. 'Balcomb likes to keep tabs on her, so I follow her around sometimes without her knowing.'
I'd already guessed that he was the one who'd spotted me at the dump. But I couldn't see how Laurie figured into this.
'We just passed on the road for a minute or two,' I said. 'I never met her before and I'm sure I never will again.'
His lips peeled back in a grin that, along with his greasy sweat and twitching eyes, was almost a leer.
'She reminds you of somebody, don't she?' he said. 'My ma, first time she saw Laurie, thought she was Celia.'
So-I wasn't the only one, although the validation was undercut somewhat by Beatrice Pettyjohn's dementia.
'Well, what about her?' I said.
'This ain't about her. That's how come I saw you going to the dump.'
Anticipation prickled my skin.
'Yeah?' I said, trying to sound impatient. 'I've been there a hundred times.'
'There was something in it nobody was supposed to see.'
'You're going to have to tell me what, Kirk. The place looked the same as ever to me. Come on, quit fucking around. It's cold out here.'
He glanced around and lowered his voice conspiratorially, like he was acting in that movie that played in his head.
'Balcomb-night before last, he made me bury a couple horses in there,' he said.
Bingo.
'Horses?' I said, shocked. 'Two of them?'
Kirk nodded emphatically. 'He called me up after midnight and told me to get my ass over to the ranch. He never done that before, and when I got there, he was like I never seen him. He can be a scary son of a bitch anyway. Most of the time it's covered over, but when his temper goes off, it's like a hand grenade.'
I realized that my gaze was wandering uneasily around the brushy ridges and gullies. Everything was dark and still except for the lake's faintly glimmering surface, rippling in a slow hypnotic rhythm.
'How do two horses die at the same time?' I said.
'He said they were being shipped someplace and he was doing somebody a favor, keeping them overnight- they were supposed to get picked up in the morning. He didn't want them mixing in with the ranch stock, so he put them out in that old shed at the north fence. But a bear or cat must have got in and killed them.'
I laid on the skepticism heavily. 'Broke into that shed and killed them both?'
'I thought it sounded pretty weird, but I wasn't about to argue, especially the way he was acting. He didn't want anybody knowing-it'd give the place a bad name. I had to hide them, right now, before daylight. And he didn't come right out and say it, but I got the real strong feeling he'd kill me if I breathed a word about it.'
Never mind that Kirk was breathing those words right now. And this wasn't part of any apology-he was working his way around to something else.
'I fired up that old D-8 to go get them,' he said. 'Then when I saw them, I just about shit. It wasn't any critter that got in there. Somebody'd took a shotgun to them.'
I stared at him. 'That's crazy, Kirk. Are you sure?'
'I know what gunshots look like,' he said haughtily.
'You think it was Balcomb?'
'I sure can't believe he went out there at midnight to check on them and just found them that way.'
'What in hell would make a man do something like that?'
I imagined that his eyes turned more slippery, if that was possible.
'I don't know and I don't want to,' he said.
'Come on, you must have some notion. You know that ranch like your backyard, and you spend all your time
