We'd been on the road for a half-hour when I asked him, 'Whose blood is on your shirt?'
'You'll find out,' he said. 'I told you you'd know everything by tonight.'
I put my foot on the brake and brought the car to an abrupt halt on the grassy shoulder of the highway. Turning the ignition back, the car died.
'I don't trust you,' I said, glaring to the passenger seat. I could barely see Orson in the predawn darkness. 'I don't have to drive you to Choteau. What'd you do last night? Drug me?'
'No.'
'I think you're lying,' I said. 'I think you're lying about everything. I could be driving myself straight to prison. Even if you do confess, you could finger me, and I know you got the evidence to do it, with all your little fuckin' pictures and videos. You're such a pussy, you know that? I hope they fry your fuckin' ass.'
'You done?' he asked.
'Yeah, I think I'm done driving you across the country. I'm done being your chauffeur.'
'Then I'll get out,' he said, reaching for the door. 'But it's gonna look bad when you get arrested alone at the roadblock.'
'What roadblock?'
He smiled. 'The one the police are gonna set up on every highway in Montana when someone figures out what happened at the Blue Sky Motel.'
'What happened?'
He turned and stared calmly into my eyes. 'For two hours this morning, a police officer knocked on the doors of the eleven occupied rooms at the Blue Sky Motel. When a guest opened the door, this cop flashed a badge, said he was looking into a reported robbery, and was let into each room with virtually no hesitation. Once inside, he told the guest or guests to have a seat on the bed while he asked them a few questions. When they sat down, this police officer pulled out a silenced 9mm and shot them in the head. Most never made more than a dying groan.
'So tell me, Andy. How long do you think it'll take for someone to find out that motel's a morgue? In actuality, it may be a day or two, cause Billy Joe Bob motel manager is sharing a bed with one of his guests. But if someone stumbles into one of those rooms and calls the police, they'll set up roadblocks in a millisecond, and we'd never get through one with our cargo. You see, I'm planning on surprising the Choteau police department with Officer Barry in case they don't take my confession to heart. Hell, I might even wear the uniform again.'
My fist landed square against his jaw. It popped, and Orson grunted, 'Fuck.' He leaned over on the dashboard, holding his jaw in his hands. My knuckles throbbed pleasantly.
'I'll take you to Choteau, you motherfucker,' I said, starting the car. 'I'd kill you.'
We were doing a hundred before I realized it, and I slowed down. Orson sat up now, still holding his jaw, and I hoped it hurt him. The sky lighter now, it still snowed a little, the clouds a purplish-blue. A crushing sadness pressed down on me. I couldn't even think about what he'd done, so I told myself it wasn't true. It all felt like a dream. I was a dream.
I wondered if I'd pissed Orson off so much he'd want to drag me down. It was a terrifying thought, and I almost apologized for hitting him, but I convinced myself that he wouldn't want to share the blame for his killings. He'd want all the attention for himself, including his biography. He thought I was the only one who understood him, and he knew while I was free, he had me by the balls. I'd do whatever he said. I'd write his fuckin' book.
As the sky brightened into morning we sped through the prairie, and in the distance, a range of snowy mountains rose up out of the horizon. The clouds had dissipated, and now the early rays of sunlight made the snowpack glitter. I tried to focus on the remote, isolated beauty of the land rather than the fear, growing minute by minute inside of me. Orson didn't speak. He just sat there, holding his jaw, watching dawn break across the sky.
# # #
At seven-thirty in the morning, we sat in a Waffle House in Choteau. We occupied a booth, and a large, glass window at the end of our table looked out towards a chain of mountains called the Lewis Range. For the first time in hundreds of miles, I could see trees. At the foot of the mountains, still five miles west of town, a forest of tall, elegant pines spread across the yellow prairie. They stretched halfway up the slopes until the timberline began, a brown, lifeless zone of rock and scraggly undergrowth, coated with snow the higher it climbed. A thousand feet below the summits, the snowpack was so deep most of the boulders were hidden, and the contrast between blinding white and vivid blue where the peaks met the sky was ethereal.
I stared down into my cup of steaming black coffee. Lifting the cup to my nose, I inhaled the scent of charred, smoky beans, and took a small sip.
'Will you talk to me?' I asked, looking up at Orson. 'About Vermont.'
He sighed.
'Who was David Parker?' I asked.
'A friend of mine,' he said.
'A friend?'
'We were colleagues in the history department at Middlebury.'
'You never told me you were a professor.'
'I never told you a lot of things.'
'Why'd you quit teaching?'
'I didn't quit. I was removed. They found out my credentials were fake. Dave did actually, and he had my position taken away.'
'Do you know how I found him?' I asked.
'Of course I know,' he said, 'and I took care of that rancher and his bingo-loving wife.' Orson smiled. 'Don't look so surprised, Andy. It's not like you aren't used to it now.'
I sipped my coffee. 'Did David know about you?' I asked. 'About your hobby?'
'No one did.'
'He looked just like you, Orson. He sounded like you. Even walked like you. Part of me still thinks you're buried up there. I don't know what the fuck happened.'
'Yes, that is strange,' he said.
The waitress was standing by the table, staring down at me, dumbfounded.
'Pull up a chair, Marge,' I said, reading her nametag. 'Join our private conversation.'
She looked at Orson and then strangely at me. 'Would you like more coffee?' she asked.
'No,' I said, and she walked away, her face reddened with embarrassment.
As I lifted my coffee, I glanced at the left side of his jaw, swollen so much it looked like he had a golf ball in the corner of his mouth. But it didn't seem to bother him much.
'You ready to go do it?' I asked, finishing the last sip, but he shook his head. 'We're here, in Choteau. What do you wanna fuck around this town all day? Aren't you in a hurry to be infamous and all that other bullshit you told me yesterday?'
'Yes. But it's at the price of my freedom. That's a difficult thing to just hand away.'
'I know,' I said.
'You know…' Orson laughed spitefully. 'You know shit.'
My eyes narrowed. 'Wasn't I held against my will in a fuckin' cabin all summer? You know what you made me do,' I whispered. 'That's worse than losing your freedom.'
'I helped you,' Orson said. 'I did you the favor of your life, and you will thank me.'
I pushed my cup towards the center of the table and looked again out the window. A car drove by on what I presumed to be the main drag through town. Further down, buildings threaded the street. I saw a homely feed store and a cinema showing movies two months after they'd premiered in real cities. The sidewalks were narrow and empty. My eyes moved again to the Lewis Range. Were it not for those towering, icy pinnacles, this dead town would be unbearable.
# # #
At a quarter to noon, I pulled into a visitor’s parking space at the Choteau Police Department. Orson opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement, a manila envelope under his left arm.
We walked quickly along the sidewalk, strewn with dead leaves from two aspens on the building’s front lawn. Across the street, a dirt road climbed into a thicket of pines, blanketing a modest hill. We were as close to those snowy mountains now as we'd been all day, but the surrounding foothills blocked them from view. I couldn’t even
