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 see the downtown, only the narrow country road running beneath the blue sky and this police station, isolated from the minimal bustle of Choteau. It seemed out of place here among the foothills of the Lewis Range.
The police department was a meager, brick building. It was small, resembling a miniature version of a decrepit public school, only in place of yellow buses, there were police cars. We ascended the concrete steps, and Orson stopped me in front of the glass double doors.
"I’m the only one who talks in there," he said. Then he grabbed me suddenly and pulled me into him, crushing my chest in an awkward embrace. He opened the door and I followed him inside, walking straight through the lobby, littered with cheap furniture on brown carpet. The walls inside were a darker brick, and they gave the interior the musty feel of a wine cellar.
There was a desk at the end of the room and behind it, a hallway, perpendicular to the lobby. On the brick between the two corridors, Choteau Police Department, was spelled out in bold, brass letters. A secretary was talking on the phone when Orson walked up to the desk. He snatched the phone from her hands and hung it up.
"I need to speak to a detective," he said as she stared incredulously into his eyes.
Clearing her throat, she glanced warily behind her at the corridor. She was pretty, I thought, plain but pretty in her long, plaid dress. "What is it regarding?" she asked.
"Are you a detective?"
"No, I’m a…"
"Then quit asking me fucking questions. Get me a detective right now."
"Just a moment," she said. She picked up the phone and dialed an extension. "Roger, are you busy?… Okay… There’s a man here who wants to speak with you… I don’t know… He’s being rude… I don’t know… I’m fine." She hung up the phone. "He’ll be right with you," she said. "You can wait over there." She spun around quickly in her swivel chair and began typing at a computer. Orson stood by the desk, tapping impatiently on the wood.
Less than a minute had passed when a tall, thin man in a dark blue suit emerged from the corridor. He stopped behind the desk and nodded to Orson and me.
"You asked for a detective?" he said, and Orson nodded. "Come with me," he said, and we walked past the desk down the hallway on the right. The brick walls were drab and undecorated. I followed behind Orson, watching his feet pound softly against the thin, hard carpet.
"I’m Detective Hartness," the man said without turning around. "Why were you rude to Jennifer?" He glanced at Orson, fire in his bleak, white face. His brown hair hung just above his eyebrows, and his ears were large and grotesque, like an old man’s.
"It doesn’t really matter," Orson said. "You’re about to become famous."