The Divide (49 page)

“That’s not fair to the females. The younger bucks are a whole lot cuter than that big ugly old thing.”

“Yeah, and someday one of them’ll beat him up and take over.”

“And the females don’t get any say at all?”

“Nope.”

“That’s sexist.”

“I guess it is. Probably makes life a whole lot easier though. Come on, I’m getting hungry.”

They eased the horses forward along the ridge and wound their way slowly down into the twilight of the trees where the air was cooler and smelled of fall. It was around this time last year that they’d had the big freeze and that heavy dump of snow. And though he had nothing to prove it, Charlie figured that might well have been when Abbie got herself killed. Throughout the winter there had been a number of thaws and refreezings. But from what he could gather, from Ned and Val Drummond and a few others, hunters and rangers and folks who liked to ride their snowmobiles up here, that first heavy snowfall and the ice that came with it had never fully cleared from the creek.

And that was pretty much all he knew. For six long months of work, it wasn’t exactly going to win him a Detective of the Year award. All early leads had come to nothing. With the idea fixed in his head that she might have died at the time of that first heavy snowfall at the end of September, he’d trudged around town asking if anyone had seen any strangers at that time. The only sighting that seemed remotely promising was a young guy who’d filled up at the gas station on the very night of the storm. He’d paid cash and dropped all his coins on the floor. He had apparently told the girl at the register that he’d come down from Canada to see his dad and she’d noticed that the top part of his right first finger was missing.

Charlie had gotten all excited because they had security cameras there, both inside and on the forecourt. But it turned out they only kept the pictures for a month and these had long ago been wiped. She couldn’t remember what kind of vehicle he’d been driving but added helpfully that he seemed nice and not at all like a murderer.

For a while Charlie thought he was on to something with Ty Hawkins, the boy from Sheridan whom the FBI had at first mistakenly assumed to be Abbie’s accomplice. Charlie discovered that Ty was a friend of Jesse Wheeler, who looked after the Ponderosa. It was at the top of the next drainage and a fair few miles north of Goat Creek, but Charlie had nevertheless gone up there to see him.

He was glad he made the effort. Jesse seemed a little wary and fidgety when Charlie talked with him. It turned out he’d met Abbie once himself, about six or seven years earlier, at some dude ranch where he used to work summers. He swore he hadn’t seen her since and swore he hadn’t seen Ty in a long while either and that never in the three years he’d been working there had Ty once visited with him. But Charlie wasn’t completely convinced.

He drove over to Sheridan and talked with Ty himself and couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. As a horseman himself, Charlie knew of Ray Hawkins and had many years ago seen him in action at one of his famous clinics. Not only had the poor kid lost a fine father, not only had their ranch been drilled and trashed for coalbed methane, not only had he been wrongly jailed for several weeks and his name blackened as a terrorist, he had, quite clearly, also just lost the love of his life.

In his eyes and in his voice when he talked about Abbie, you could see that her death had plain broken his heart. He said he hadn’t seen her in years. And Charlie believed him. All his instincts cried out that the boy could no sooner have killed her than have murdered his own mother. There wasn’t a bad bone in him. Even so, Charlie had to do his job. He asked Ty if he could take a DNA sample and had it sent off to the crime lab in Missoula to be tested against the paternal DNA of Abbie’s fetus. And, thank God, there was no match.

They’d reached the trailer and the truck now. And Charlie watched while Lucy expertly led her pony up the ramp and then he did the same with his own horse. As they drove back through the fading light into town, he felt the sadness fall upon him the way it always did at the end of a day with his daughter, when he had to take her home to her mother. As his grandma used to say, what a muddle life was. What a mess and a muddle.

 

 

 

Every few weeks, even if there wasn’t anything new to tell them (and there rarely was), Charlie would call the Coopers. Just to keep in touch and let them know the case was still open and active. He had grown to like them and admired the dignified way they seemed to be handling the loss of their daughter. He once, tentatively, almost said as much to Ben and would never forget the little pause and the exact words of his reply.

“The real loss happened four years ago. At least we know now where she is.”

Charlie was careful to call both of them, but Sarah was the one he especially liked to call. Though he hardly admitted it to himself, she was the reason he was reluctant to hand the case over. Though he had only met her that one time in Missoula, when she came to collect the body, the image of her had stayed in his head. He enjoyed the sound of her voice on the phone, kind of regal and creamy, a little husky, the kind of voice a man could fall in love with. Sometimes they talked for half an hour or more, much longer than he could spin out any news of the so-called investigation.

In one of their conversations, about a month ago, she had somehow discovered he was a big reader and, what was more, that they had a few favorite authors in common. He imagined her taste was probably a lot classier than his own, but when he told her loved Elmore Leonard and Pat Conroy and Cormac McCarthy, she got excited and said
The Prince of Tides
and
All the Pretty Horses
were two of her all-time favorite books. She said it was such a pity that she had just sold the bookstore, because she could have sent him proofs and new books she had come across.

The next time they talked, the day after Charlie and Lucy had ridden up Goat Creek and seen the elk, Sarah told him she was trying to write something herself. About Abbie. And that she was planning a little research trip to Missoula. She asked him if he ever had cause to be there and he lied and said he often did. Maybe they could meet up, Sarah said. Charlie said he’d like that very much and then got worried that this didn’t sound sufficiently professional so added that he hoped there might be some
developments
by then that he could tell her about.

She called a few days later to tell him the date and said she’d booked herself into the Doubletree, just across the river from the university, and would he like to have lunch or dinner on the Tuesday? He lied again and said he had a lot to do that day and couldn’t make lunch but dinner would be fine. The food at the Doubletree was by all accounts terrific, he said. He spent the following ten days trying to stop thinking about it.

He got there three-quarters of an hour early and strolled along the river by the cottonwoods whose leaves glowed yellow in the dusk and then over the little wooden footbridge to the campus, where he stood watching some boys practicing football under the floodlights.

He’d had a haircut and put on his best jacket, the beige corduroy, with a pale blue snap-button shirt. He’d wondered awhile about coming in uniform but decided it might make him look too stiff. Instead, for a touch of businesslike authority, he took his briefcase with him into the restaurant and arrived a few minutes late, as if he might have been held up at some important meeting.

She stood up and smiled and held out her hand.

“Hello, Charlie. It’s so good to see you.”

Her hand felt cool. He said it was good to see her too. She was wearing black jeans and a white shirt under an open navy cardigan, a single string of pearls around her neck. She had a slight tan and had done something different to her hair, but maybe he only thought that because the last time it had been bedraggled by rain. She looked stunning. He had never dined with a woman so classy and beautiful in his entire life.

 

 

 

It was so sweet how diligently he had kept in touch, Sarah thought. Maybe it was standard procedure when they were dealing with the parents of a victim as opposed to those of a criminal. By her death, Abbie had, of course, neatly switched categories.

He was telling her about the ride he’d had with his daughter a couple of weeks back, and how, looking down that slope, he had become even more convinced that Abbie must have fallen. It was obvious he hadn’t anything new or important to tell her, but Sarah hadn’t expected it, nor did she mind. He was such a nice guy and she was enjoying his company. It was some time since she’d had dinner on her own with a man and she could tell by the way he looked at her with those kind blue eyes that he was a little smitten.

He had asked her already how her research had been going. She had been here two days and had met up with some of Abbie’s teachers and friends, all of whom had been warm and generous and helpful, especially Mel and Scott, who had stayed on at UM to do postgraduate work. The only thing that had been a little hard to take was hearing that Mel was five months pregnant. They were going to get married at Thanksgiving.

Sarah didn’t tell Charlie much about what she was planning to write, partly because she was shy about it and partly because she wasn’t altogether sure herself. Iris had called it an
exercise in closure
and she was probably right.

“So is Lucy your only child?”

“Yeah. But she’s got enough spirit for twenty. Ran the household from the age of about six months. Kind of full-on, you know?”

“I do. Abbie was like that.”

“I’m sorry. I—”

“Charlie, please. It’s okay, really.”

He looked so embarrassed that she put a hand, briefly, on his.

“Tell me more about her.”

He did and with a little prompting got to talking about his marriage and how it hadn’t worked out and that it was probably more his fault than Sheryl’s. He said that if he had the chance over again he’d do things differently, pay more attention, be there more. Then, almost out of nowhere, he asked her how Benjamin was and she had to say she didn’t really know, but that she thought he was okay.

The truth was, they had only spoken a couple of times since the funeral and on each occasion it had been oddly formal, a little stilted. Sarah had a pretty good idea why. It was what she had said to him on the plane, about Abbie’s death being his fault. She couldn’t believe she had said such a terrible thing. Being here again in Missoula these past couple of days and talking about Abbie with Mel and Scott and the others, she’d had time to reflect and something inside her had shifted. She had even been thinking that she should probably write to him and apologize.

“He has a new life, a whole new support system, you know?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Charlie Riggs, if you don’t stop apologizing, I’m going to start getting cross with you.”

He smiled. She finished her wine and he poured her some more.

“We’re both divorced, single adults,” she went on. “We should be able to talk about these things.”

“Absolutely.”

“So Sheryl got married again. Why not you?”

“Well. Partly work, I guess. You know, I’ve got a patch of almost two and a half thousand square miles to cover. Makes you kind of tired just looking at the map. And the other thing, I guess, is that there’s not too much choice. There’s plenty of cattle and critters, trees, and empty space out there on the Front Range, but not a whole lot of people.”

Sarah smiled and for a moment they just looked at each other.

“How about you?” he said.

She laughed.

“How old are you, Charlie?”

“I’m forty-four. No, forty-five.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“I was brought up not to speculate on such matters.”

“Go on, guess.”

“Hell, thirty-nine maybe?”

“You’re so full of . . .”

He smiled at her and took a sip of his wine.

“I’ll be fifty next fall.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“It’s true. Sometimes I feel a lot, lot older. And sometimes I feel about eighteen.”

“How old do you feel tonight?”

“About thirty-nine.”

He laughed.

“The thing is,” she went on, “available men of my age, I mean, suitable men—and believe me they’re not too thick on the ground—all want to date women twenty years younger.”

“Well, I’d say, if they’re that dumb, they don’t qualify as suitable.”

She’d been wondering what she’d say if he asked her to go to bed with him. Not that he was likely to. He was too polite. Which was a pity, because the idea appealed to her strongly. If anybody was going to make the move, it would have to be her. But she’d never done such a thing in her life. And she’d probably end up regretting it anyway.

“On the other hand,” he said. “To be honest, living on your own has a few things going for it. You can leave the dishes without anyone getting mad at you, slop around, you know. Read all day if you want to.”

She took the cue (though she doubted it was so intended) and steered out of the danger zone by asking him what he was reading at the moment. And for the rest of the meal all they talked about was books. She promised to send him a novel that she had just read. It was by a young Mexican writer and the best book she’d read all year.

“There’s something else you can do for me too,” he said, after she had let him win the fight over who should pay the check.

“And what might that be?”

“I’d like some better pictures of Abbie. You know how people can look so different sometimes? How you can show someone two pictures of the same person and they’ll recognize one and not the other? Well, if I had a couple more to show around, maybe it’d help trigger folks’ memories a little better.”

Sarah reached to the floor for her purse.