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“When was the last time you saw Wyatt Dixon?” Darrel asked.

Chapter 10

SUNDAY MORNING, Amber Finley woke in Johnny’s bed and touched the place where he should have been but felt only the warm, empty space he had occupied. The Jocko Valley was still in shadow, the crest of the hills black-green against the light growing in the sky, the sound of the river loud on the rocks at the foot of the property. She and Johnny had slept with the windows open and the room was cold, and she wished he would come back to bed. In the kitchen she heard pans clanking on the stove and smelled coffee boiling and bacon frying in a skillet.

She raised herself up on her hands and yawned. “Johnny?” she said.

But there was no reply. She glanced down at his pillow, and in the indentation where his head had rested was a small blue-felt box. She picked it up and pried the top back on its spring. Inserted in a satin cushion was a gold ring with a tiny diamond mounted on it.

“I was going to surprise you with some apple flapjacks,” he said from the doorway, an apron tied around his hips, a spatula in his hand.

“Oh, it’s beautiful, Johnny,” she said.

“There’s a Methodist minister up at St. Ignatius who says he’ll marry us any day we want to set it up.”

“Let’s do it this week. Let’s do it tomorrow.”

He sat on the edge of the bed and slipped the ring on her left hand, his eyes lowered so she could not read them. “A couple of things we need to agree on,” he said.

“What?” she said, her face clouding.

“Your father has to know about it up front. I need to be there when that happens, too.”

“He doesn’t control my life. He doesn’t have anything to say about it.”

“He’s still your old man. He believes in what he does. He deserves to be treated with respect, don’t you think?”

She found his hand again and pressed it hard, then looked admiringly at her ring. “How’d you pay for it?”

“It’s called ‘credit.’ One other thing. If I go inside, we agree you can divorce me. In fact, I’d insist on it. I don’t want to create a jailhouse widow out of my best friend.” Johnny had small eyes, and they crinkled at the corners when he grinned.

“Don’t talk like that. Billy Bob is a good lawyer. We have a lot of friends who will stand up for you,” she said.

He stroked her hair and kissed her brow, then her mouth.

“I haven’t brushed my teeth,” she said.

He pressed her down on the pillow and kissed her mouth again, then the tops of her breasts and the long taper of her stomach and two red moles just below her navel. She curled her knees into him and held him across the back and put her face in his hair and bit his neck. She could feel her breath quicken and a flush spread through her thighs.

He sat up and took both her wrists in his hands. “I have to tell you something else,” he said.

The register in his voice had dropped, and she studied his eyes now because they, like his words, never lied to her. What she saw there made her ball her fists. “Say it, say it, say it,” she said.

“My dreams started again. Some of the stuff in them doesn’t make good sense. My uncle said my dreams would always be distorted, not clear like Crazy Horse’s were, because my mother was Salish and I’m only half Lakota.”

“You tear me apart when you talk like this.”

His eyes were still looking at her, yet she knew they were not seeing her but instead a vision inside his head. He swallowed and there was a dry click inside his throat. “Someone else is going to be killed, here, at my house. It’s a man. I think it could be me. Maybe making you my wife would be a selfish thing on my part.”

She put her arms around his neck and pulled him down close to her face. She started to speak, then simply held him as tightly as she could, gripping the hardness of his back, pulling at his apron and his belt buckle, aching to have him inside her before he spoke again and her heart burst.

MONDAY MORNING, Seth Masterson sauntered into my office and sat down in front of my desk, his long legs, as always, a problem, a tan rain hat perched on his knee. “How you doin’, bud?” he asked.

“I’m just fine, Seth. But Lester Antelope isn’t. He’s dead. My client Johnny American Horse isn’t doing too well, either. Unless I get some help, the D.A. is going to bury him alive.”

Seth twisted his head and glanced out the window at the maples puffing in the wind on the courthouse lawn, his expression neutral. “We’ve got a high-tech snitch in this area, a hacker we could have sent up but who we decided to leave on a short leash to help us out once in a while,” he said. “The problem with our snitch is he’s a wiseass and thinks he’s smarter than we are, so he’s not always truthful or forthcoming. You with me?”

“No.”


Tags: James Lee Burke Billy Bob Holland Mystery