Montana (19 page)

“Oh shit, oh dear.” More of a sob this time.

“Stop staying that.” Then Lola saw why. “Oh, no,” she said. “Is that . . . ?”

“Judith. Joshua’s sister.”

Lola studied her. Slash of green shadow across each eyelid, garish against the purpling flesh. Dirty hand curled against her face, bits of green polish flaking from bitten fingernails. A star the size of a spiky thumbprint, tattooed on the tender brown skin of her neck, just below her earlobe.

Gurgle.

“Take it easy,” Lola murmured. She stroked Judith’s forehead. Tiny pimples like Braille beneath her fingertips. It was very quiet in the trailer. Lola looked at the dead boy. Wished somebody had pulled down his eyelids. Impossible not to think about Mary Alice.

Gurgle.

“Fucking heroin,” Lola said.

“What are you talking about?”

She’d seen addicts in the narrow streets of Kabul, the by-product of the brisk opium trade; even a dead man once, needle still in his arm, probing the bruised flesh there like an outsize mosquito. Face the color of the eggplants piled like prizes in the market stalls. “The only overdose I ever saw was heroin. In Afghanistan.”

“You’re in Montana. They’re tweakers.”

“Tweakers?”

“Meth.”

Gurgle.

“Shhh,” Lola said. “Shhhh. Let’s just listen to her breathe.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

B
y the time the ambulance drove away, the circus was in full swing, people three deep outside the trailer.

Charlie retrieved a roll of yellow tape from the glove box and handed it to Lola. “Make yourself useful,” he said. “Mark off a perimeter.”

“I’m a reporter. I can’t be part of a story.”

“You’re not writing a story,” he reminded her. “You’re just along for the ride.”

Lola stalked away. She wound an end of the tape around a propane tank at the front of the trailer and began spooling a wide outline, the tape dancing behind her in the wind. She turned and considered, then laid the tape on the ground and anchored it with rocks. “Step back, please,” she said to the clusters of feet in front of her. “Please step back.”

She heard the accelerated clicks of a camera shutter and glanced up to see the woman from the newspaper, the same one who’d been at the funeral, taking aim at the trailer. Lola turned her face away and stooped to pick up another rock. A viscous, coffee-colored splatter landed next to her hand. A woman whose wide hips contrasted oddly with her narrow, hunched shoulders looked down at her. “It was only a matter of time,” she said. Her lower lip pooched out. A droplet of brown liquid wobbled upon it before gravity grabbed it away. “They’re in there every week, partying. Boys and girls both. Half the babies born in town this year were made in that trailer.”

Lola looked at the woman’s face and put her in her parents’ generation, then factored in wind and dry air and a lifelong lack of access to expensive moisturizers and thought she was probably closer to her own. “What happened?”

“Just what everybody thought would happen.” Pause. Spit. “They were in there like always, blasting that damn rap music, and then one of ’em comes out screeching, ‘They’re dead, they’re dead.’ So I called 9-1-1. Finally drank themselves to death.” Spit.

“Hey. Hey, there.” Charlie crossed to where they stood. “Don’t talk to the witnesses,” he said to Lola. “That’s my job. Trudy, I’ll need to get your statement.” He raised his voice. “Anybody else who saw anything—who was here, who left, what these kids took—I’m going to need to talk to you.”

A man began to back away from the crowd. “Hey!” Charlie called. He started after the man and three other people moved swiftly away in the other direction, disappearing among the trailers. Engines turned over. Exhaust fouled the air. A fast-approaching car wove its way among the general retreat.

Backup, Lola thought. About time.

A brown Chevy pulled up beside Charlie’s cruiser. A round-faced woman in an apron shiny with grease flung open the door. “Billy?” she called. “Billy?”

The sheriff stepped forward and caught her wrist when she tried to dodge around him. “You can’t go in there, April.”

She ducked to one side, then the other. “My son. They said he went to a party here. They said . . . Billy!” Her voice floated above a crowd gone silent, attentive. She looked from one face to the next. “Did anyone see him? Billy Worden? Do you know him?”

Charlie wrapped her other wrist in his free hand and swung her to face him. “I don’t know your boy, April. He hasn’t gotten into the kind of trouble that would bring him to my attention. That’s a good sign. The kids all went home. You should, too. He’s probably there. Or maybe at a friend’s house, hiding out, hoping not to make my acquaintance.”

April had the sort of face that people meant when they said apple-cheeked, and Lola imagined that on a normal day it was open and pleasant, its expression inviting a chat if you found yourself waiting behind her in a checkout line. But now its curves were drawn tight with the fear that narrowed her eyes and sharpened her voice.

“What do you mean, went home? I just passed the ambulance. Was it coming from here? He’s not answering his phone. And he’s not with his so-called friends. I already called them, the ones I could find, anyway. I’m not stupid. Billy? Billy?”

Wind kicked through the park, lifting a corner of the trailer’s roof, letting it down with a slap. Lola realized why the tires were up there. She caught Charlie’s eye, held her hand to her ear, miming a phone, and tilted her head toward the trailer. He could call the hospital from inside without anyone hearing him, get the name of the boy lying so still in the ambulance next to Joshua’s gurgling sister. Charlie dipped his chin in understanding. He pulled the woman closer.

“Pay attention,” he said. “I’m going to go in there, check to see if . . . if anybody left anything. Maybe your son was in a hurry to get out, dropped his cell phone or an ID or something. Lola here, she’s going to wait with you. Okay?”

“Okay,” the woman whispered. “Thank you.” Beneath her apron, she wore jeans and a “Go Scavengers” T-shirt with an absurdly fierce magpie pecking at the words. Lola pegged her as a school cafeteria worker. The door shut behind Charlie. Lola heard him latch it against the wind.

The young woman with the camera eased toward Lola. She wore the same denim jacket from the funeral, this time with jeans and scuffed cowboy boots. She pulled her little tape recorder from her jacket pocket. “I’m Jan Carpenter. We met at the funeral. What happened in there?”

Billy Worden’s mother tensed.

“How the hell should I know?” said Lola.

Jan persisted. “Tough scene, huh?” She lifted the recorder. “What’s it like?”

“No.”

“But you just said . . .”

“I didn’t say anything. You said, ‘Tough scene.’ Nice move. You didn’t ask me a direct question. You just said something sympathetic. The idea is that I’m supposed to start talking, and then you’ll have a story.”

Jan dropped her hands to her sides. “Worth a try.”

At least she didn’t fluster, Lola thought. That was something. Lola lowered her voice. “I’d like to come by the paper, talk to people about Mary Alice. When’s a good time?”

Jan put the recorder away and reached into the jacket’s top pocket and retrieved a pack of cigarettes. She shook one out, lit up, and took a drag, spitting smoke in Lola’s face. “How the hell should I know?”

Billy Worden’s mother flinched. Lola stepped away. Jan followed. “I just want to talk to someone about what Mary Alice had been working on,” Lola said beneath her breath.

Jan nodded. “Sure you do. And I just want to talk to you about what’s going on here.”

“Fair enough,” Lola said. “But quid pro quo. I want everything you’ve got on Mary Alice.”

“Watch this,” said Jan. “I can blow smoke rings.” Wispy ovals slid from her lips and writhed away on the wind. “That’s all you’ve got. Smoke. If you don’t tell me what’s going on here, I’ll find out anyway. I live here. Sooner or later, people will talk to me. But without our stuff, you’re up the creek. You want to find out what happened to Mary Alice? Read it in the
Express.”

Lola wondered what was keeping Charlie. She checked to make sure April hadn’t moved from her designated spot. “The
Express,”
she said. “How many people are going to read that? Five thousand, maybe?”

“You forget about the Web,” Jan said. She straightened and Lola heard the same sort of pride in Jan’s voice that she’d detected in Verle’s when he talked about his ranch. “We might be a little local paper, but people from all over read us. We double our circulation online.”

“My paper hits a half-million people every day. And that’s the dead-tree version.” She tried to remember what her editor had said about the most popular stories. “When it comes to the Web, we’re in the double-digit millions.”

Jan rounded her mouth. A few more smoke rings floated away. “So?”

“So, all those millions are going to read my story about Mary Alice,” said Lola. No reason, no reason at all for Jan to know that story was nonexistent. “Help me out with it, and I’ll cut you in. I’ll double-byline it.” No reason, either, for Jan to know that even if she could talk her editor into a story about Mary Alice, he’d never go for a freelancer’s name atop a story. At best, Jan would get a notation in tiny italic type at the end of a story that she’d contributed some information. “Think about it,” Lola urged. “Your name on the lead story on one of the leading news sites in the country. And everybody will want to read it, whether they knew Mary Alice or not. City girl chases her dream West and ends up dead. Something like that can jump-start a career. I know the paper is looking for younger reporters.” A statement that had only a distant relationship to the truth. Lola was pretty sure that despite the paper’s fervor for jettisoning its older, overpaid, non-blogging-tweeting-Skyping staffers, not a one of them was being replaced.

Jan choked on a smoke ring. She dropped the cigarette and stepped on it and licked her lips. Lola watched the idea take hold. “You being from here,” Lola nudged, “you could help me see angles I might miss. Give it authenticity. Keep me from making any stupid mistakes.”

“I heard down at the cafe you asked Verle how much land he’s got. Bad form. Very bad form.”

Lola knew then that she had her.

“What do you need to get started?” Jan asked.

“Access to your archives. I want to read every single story Mary Alice wrote for the
Express.
And I don’t want to pay.”

“I’ll give you my password. Your turn.” She and Lola moved in unison still farther from April Worden.

“One dead, a boy. A girl—Joshua’s sister—still alive, but barely. The rest of them ran.”

“Shit,” said Jan through unmoving lips. “I heard Judith had been dating a town boy. That’s always trouble. We’re going to have to remake the paper.” She pulled a cell phone from her pocket.

“Wait,” said Lola. “There’s more. Frank, that guy with no teeth? He’s dead, too—Hey. Be cool.”

Jan bent her head and let the wind comb her hair across her face, hiding her expression. “What was Frank doing here with those kids?” she said to the ground.

“He wasn’t. He’s up the road a ways. It’s near a house. I can’t remember whose. Some guy with a crazy dog.”

Jan blew a strand of hair from her mouth. “Old Man Frazier.”

“That’s it. Anyhow, Frank’s all smashed up. Looks like he got hit by a semi. Your sheriff doesn’t think that’s what happened. He thinks some kids beat him up. That maybe they were—tweaking? Is that how you say it? Don’t tell him I told you. Just be sure to ask over at the hospital how many bodies they’ve got and whether they’re all from the trailer. That’ll get you started.”

Jan nodded. “Thanks.” Voice small and stunned.

“You really need to work on your poker face,” Lola said.

“I hadn’t much needed one until this week.”

“We’d better get back.” The conversation had already gone on too long. They returned to April Worden’s side, standing with everyone else, waiting. The wind sliced past with a steely edge. Clouds the color of soot clumped above. People moved restlessly, talking to break the tension.

“Weather coming.”

“About time. We need the moisture.”

“Maybe it’ll knock down that fire over on the Two Medicine.”

“More likely not. When was the last time anything wrung moisture out of one of these clouds? Wind’ll stir the fire up worse, more like.”

Something stung Lola’s face. Then again. She touched her hand to it, wiped away a bit of cold. The air blurred. “Is it . . . ?” She turned and looked at Jan. “Is that
snow?”

Jan turned up her collar. “Just a squall.”

“But it’s June.”

“Wait ’til July,” Jan said. “And August. It snows then, too.”

The trailer door opened. The crowd inhaled. Charlie stopped on the step and Lola knew. But April Worden didn’t, not yet; she searched Charlie’s face, then his hands, looking for her son’s cell phone, a wallet, a piece of paper.

Something. Anything.

Pinpoints of snow struck Charlie’s uniform, melting in small, spreading starbursts. He brushed at them. “What did you say your son’s name was?”

“Worden. William Owen Worden. WOW. His friends call him Wow. Because his name is William Owen Worden—”

Babbling, that final forestalling. Keep talking and people will be polite, Lola thought. They won’t talk over you, won’t tell you what you can’t bear to hear. A thing isn’t true until it’s said.

Charlie talked over her anyway. “Ma’am. You’re going to have to come on down to the office with me.”

The woman shook her head. “No.”

“You can ride with me. I’ll send someone to get your car.”

The woman’s hands covered her ears.

A thing isn’t true until it’s said.

Until you hear it.

“No,” she said again, and Lola caught her as she started to go down, limbs jackknifing, lips parting to draw breath for the mighty rising scream; and Lola wished, as she wrapped the woman tight in her arms, someone had been there to catch her when she’d found Mary Alice.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T
he ground outside Mary Alice’s cabin was white.