“Show me those places on this map.”
The map she had didn’t show any highways or roads. For a moment, Mark thought that the interconnecting lines across it were railroad routes, but then he realized it was a map of the national electric grid. It was too large in scale for him to locate such a small town easily, but there was one point that was close.
“That’s too far west,” he said. “But not by so many miles.”
“That’s the Chill River generation station,” she said. “I’d like to talk to their security people, see if they’ve had any issues, threats. Maybe show some photos.”
“What else do you know about this guy?” Mark said. “You’ve taken the time to familiarize yourself with power stations, but you don’t know anything about Pate?”
“He’s just a name tied up with Janell Cole. He’s not my focus. She is.”
Mark said, “I wrote the high-voltage lineman’s name down and found an address in Red Lodge. The quote in the newspaper was short, but he was pretty emphatic that it was vandalism. We might want to check on him, see what he saw.”
A guarded silence, then, “Yes. We might. Sheriff’s office first, though.”
“You’re the boss. It’s not a bad place to start. They’ll know we’re in town fast enough, anyway, so we might as well lead the contact.”
Lynn looked down the street. “Where is the sheriff?”
“In Powell.”
“Another town?”
Mark nodded. “You’ve got to wait for the law around here, Lynn. The small towns, you’re kind of counted on to police yourselves, for better or worse.”
“There are a lot of empty miles out here,” she said. “Do you know how to get to the sheriff’s office or should I use the GPS?”
“I’m familiar with the route,” Mark said. Numerous family members had spent time there. Unless they’d moved the jail, Mark could get there without a map.
28
The sheriff’s deputy who spoke to them in Powell said he’d never heard of Eli Pate, Janell Cole, or Doug Oriel. Mark and Lynn showed him the photos and got slow shakes of the head.
“None of my local lovelies,” he said. He was a small man and his gun belt looked oversize on him, but he was gray-haired and weathered and had probably seen everything Powell had to offer several times over by now. “That doesn’t mean you won’t find him somewhere between here and Sheridan, of course.”
“He’s not in your frequent-flier program, though,” Mark said.
The deputy grinned. “Definitely not, and we got plenty in platinum class.”
“You heard anything about the vandalism of the electrical lines around here?” Mark asked. “Chain saws and trees, is my understanding.”
He nodded. “Mine too. But this department isn’t involved. Montana grabbed that one.” He pointed at the picture of Eli Pate. “He’s part of that mess?”
“Can’t say for sure,” Lynn answered, “but we’re curious, at least.”
As she was thanking him for his help and giving him a card, Mark looked at the booking counter, where a deputy was leaning back in a chair working through a can of Pringles and a bottle of Dr Pepper. Mark knew better than to ask, but damned if he could stop himself.
“You ever heard of anyone named Novak?” he asked the gray-haired deputy when Lynn was finished.
When he’d introduced himself earlier, he’d just said Markus, no last name, and let Lynn take the lead. Now the deputy studied him with fresh interest.
“Which one?”
Mark shrugged. “Any.”
“Haven’t seen them in a year, maybe two, but they’ll be around, and you’d be wise to start with the jails if you want to find them. Some of them are in our-what did you call it? Frequent-flier program. The ones who aren’t dead or disappeared, they’ll mooch a few meals off the county in due time, I’m sure.”
He’d said nothing wrong, nothing that Mark wouldn’t have said himself, and so he shouldn’t have felt his blood begin to boil and the skin around his eyes and mouth go tight.
“What do they have to do with it?” the deputy asked.
Mark shook his head. Lynn was watching closely.
“I knew a couple of them,” Mark said. “That’s all.”
“Sorry to hear it. Which ones?”
Mark felt like there was something ticking in his chest. He looked to the side of the old cop’s face when he said, “Larry, Ronny, and Violet, mostly.”
“Shit, you knew the brew crew!” The deputy was jovial and smiling. Mark’s body felt very still, and he could feel the ridges of his teeth on the sides of his tongue. The deputy kept going, oblivious. “There aren’t many jails around here those three didn’t drink themselves into. Last I knew of Larry, he was in trouble for running a hunting-guide service without an outfitter’s license.”
Mark nodded numbly. He was aware that he’d made a mistake in asking and now he just wanted out, but the deputy spoke again.
“You’re likely too young to remember Violet the way she used to be, but back in her day, we didn’t mind bringing her in at all,” he said, and he winked at Mark. Conspiratorial, man-to-man. “She had an ass like a…a…” He glanced at Lynn and stuttered to a stop. “Sorry. She was a bit of a looker, but what a train wreck of a human being.”
The ticking in Mark’s chest had moved into his brain and he knew from experience that it would not pause there long before it found his hands, and so he turned and walked away from them without a word. He passed through the doors and out onto the street, where a chill wind blew down out of the mountains. The sun was high and bright but with that wind blowing, it was hard to feel much warmth. It could stay that way right into the summer here. You could shiver your way through a sunburn in this country.
Mark felt a hand on his arm and looked back to see Lynn Deschaine staring at him with concern. “What was that about? Why were you asking about your family?”
“That was a mistake. I don’t know why I did it. Just curious, I guess. Time passes and you wonder if anybody remembers you. I guess they do.”
He walked back to the Tahoe with Lynn trailing behind, and he kept his hands in his pockets and the fingers of his right hand wrapped around the plastic disk from the Saba National Marine Park. He’d been there with Lauren on an endless blue sea where the sun shone warm on his skin. There was a wind over the Saba, too, but that wind didn’t chill the sun. He remembered that day regularly, called the visual up often. Sometimes it felt harder, though. Sometimes it felt very far away.
They drove northwest out of Powell and chased the Clark Fork of the Yellowstone out of Wyoming and into Montana. The water was running high and fast. Any place that had white water would be a screamer right now. It was too early in the season for the rafting guides to be out, but they would be soon enough.
Mark was driving in silence, feeling the fatigue from no sleep accumulating with the miles. Lynn must have been thinking the same thing, because she said, “I feel like we should have knocked on a lot more doors than this by now.”
“That’s the problem out here. You’ve got to commit to several hours on the road just to get from one door to the next.”
“You think the lineman is going to be able to tell us anything?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Your client will want to hear what he has to say, though.” Mark’s voice sounded curt, and he didn’t mean for it to. His mind was back on the deputy in Powell, the sly smile that had creased his good-ol’-boy face. Once upon a time, somebody would have knocked that smile into a bloody line. Once upon a time, that somebody might have been Mark.
No more, though. No more. Mark had killed that man in a place not far from here, up in the Beartooth Mountains, and later he’d buried him in a warm southern sea. That man was gone for good.