Bitterroot by James Lee Burke

the window.
    “What do you want?” I said.
    “On Sugarland Farm I learned to read lips from a deaf man. You said ‘On the job’ to Sue Lynn. You was telling her she’s a cop?”
    “No.”
    “I hope you’re not lying, sir. It would seriously subtract from my faith in human beings.” Then he said to Cleo, lifting his hat, “Good afternoon to you, ma’am. One look at the sweetness of your form and I got to go lift a car bumper.”
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter
    8
     
     
    WHAT had I done?
    I took Cleo back home and drove to the sheriff’s office and caught him in the corridor of the courthouse annex.
    “You did what?” he said, loud enough for passersby to stare.
    “Can we go in your office?” I said.
    “I’m not sure I want you around here that long.”
    I felt my face coloring and I looked away from the glare in his eyes and started over.
    “I messed up. The question is can we fix it?” I said.
    “This ain’t about We. You and trouble seem to go together like shit and stink.”
    “I’m having a hard time with your remarks, Sheriff.”
    He looked up and down the corridor.
    “You blow the cover on an undercover cop, then you drag your sorry ass in here to piss on my rug? You’re lucky I don’t have you in jail,” he said.
    “Is she one of yours or not?”
    “No. I never heard of her.”
    “Wyatt Dixon offered to snuff Lamar Ellison for two thousand dollars. That’s solicitation of murder.”
    “Number one, that don’t make any sense. Number two … There ain’t no number two. Just get a lot of gone between you and here, okay?” the sheriff said.
     
     
    I WENT BACK to Doc’s log house on the Black-foot. Doc and Maisey were out on the riverbank, collecting colored stones to make a rock garden. Maisey lifted up a boxful and smiled at me and carried the stones up the incline. Her jeans were damp on the knees, her skin bright with tan in the sunlight.
    But toward evening, when the sun died below the ridgeline, I knew her attempts at cheer would go out of her face and she would sit in front of the television set, her expression disjointed with memories she refused to describe.
    “We got another call while you were gone. No voice, just heavy-metal music playing into the receiver,” Doc said.
    “Maybe it was a crank,” I said.
    “Sure. Anyway, I had the number changed.”
    “Doc, I don’t want to overstay my welcome. Maybe I’m not much help to you here.”
    He picked at a callus on his hand, then looked away at the river where it was in shadow between the trees. “Everything I do with Maisey is all thumbs. She  sees pity in my face and hides her head under a pillow. How bad can one guy screw up?”
    I helped him and Maisey gather rocks, and we laid them out on the sunny side of a spruce tree and spread bagged topsoil between them and planted moss roses and petunias and pansies in the soil.
    That evening, at sunset, I walked deep into the woods and squatted by the river’s edge and tossed pine cones into a long ribbon of green water flowing between two large round boulders. I glanced up at the ponderosa above me and saw L.Q. Navarro sitting on a thick limb, his face in shadow, a gold toothpick catching the sun’s last light.
    “You wanted Doc to tell you to go home?” he asked.
    “Maybe,” I said.
    “You scared you’re falling for that Lonnigan woman? “
    “Did I say that? Did I even think that?” I said.
    “She’s an angry person.”
    “Her child was murdered.”
    “If you ask me, she’s working on more than one thorn.”
    “I’d just like a little peace, L.Q.”
    “Interesting word choice. What do them big round boulders out there in the river remind you of?”
    “I’m going into town. You’re not coming, either.”
    “Tell her hello for me,” he said.
     
     
    EARLY THE NEXT MORNING Doc and Maisey drove into Bonner to get the mail, and I washed the breakfast dishes and watered the rock garden with a sprinkler can. The phone rang inside.
    When I answered it, a