Deadly Reckoning

  “We were able to lift a good set of prints from the plane’s steering controls. If they are in fact the pilot’s, he’s not in our system, which means he doesn’t have a criminal or military record. We’re working on identifying the other prints that have been lifted,” Perryman said in a tone that suggested he had said these words a thousand times before. “We think the murder weapon was some sort of small but sharp object, and the attack came from the rear seat of the plane, but we haven’t found anything but smudged prints there.” Perryman leaned on the doorjamb of the sheriff’s office and crossed his arms. “That give you any ideas?”

  Chance thought for a moment. “So, whoever took the plane wasn’t a known criminal?” he said.

  “Not known to us. He could be Canadian or Mexican, if you buy the drug-running scenario, which I don’t, since we found nothing in the plane to corroborate it. Still, we’re checking. All we found in the plane were the usual items you’d expect—maps, the pilot’s log, the registration, and an owner’s manual. Other than some junk-food wrappers and soda bottles, that’s it.” He paused again. “Having any insight yet?” Perryman’s tone was not so much sarcastic as bored, as if this whole case meant less to him than somebody’s dog getting run over.

  Chance inhaled deeply, and then shook his head.

  “You don’t seem to know as much as you thought you did,” Perryman said with a sigh.

  “What about the two guys Mrs. Penmarron saw and the Bronco?” Chance asked.

  Perryman nodded. “We’re following up, but don’t get in our way. If you should actually think of anything that might help, you call me. Got it?” Perryman peeled himself off the doorjamb and rolled out the doorway.

  Chance muttered under his breath, “Prick.”

  Rollie smiled and then opened a folder on his desk and took out a couple of glossy eight-by-ten photos, which he tossed on the table. Chance looked at the photos of the plane’s interior. A couple of candy wrappers and empty plastic soda bottles lay in various corners of the plane. He shook his head as if to say there was nothing he could add. He looked at Solheim and said, “Still no word from the guy who owns the plane?”

  Solheim shook his head and then said, “But we heard from his insurance company. Their investigator is in Moab today and here tomorrow.”

  The sheriff leaned back in his desk chair, his arms behind his head, and said, “Look, Chance, do me a favor. Don’t rub these Fibbies the wrong way. They don’t like it in Butte now any more than they did when Hoover used to banish them here fifty years ago. I don’t want them around any longer than necessary. Let them do their jobs and you stick to yours, okay?” This last request was a gentle, Dutch uncle, plea.

  Chance walked down the cool, stone stairway of the police station. He was vaguely aware that it was lunchtime. However, he was not hungry. What with Mesa and now the surly FBI agent, his appetite had not returned.

  The FBI agent had worked one case too many. But Mesa, the defender of every oppressed group in America, if not the world, had no excuse. Had she really given him crap about Adrienne’s age?

  “Boy toy” was the term she had used. If only Mesa knew, not that he ever planned to tell her.

  Adrienne had been reluctant about their sleeping together, at least at first. And even if he chose to be somebody’s sex object, it was none of Mesa’s business. He was deep in thought about Adrienne when he almost ran into a man pacing back and forth in the lobby.

  Chance excused himself and then realized he knew the man. “Mr. Swoboda,” Chance said and smiled. The “preacher,” as the kids at Butte High always called him behind his back, had taught biology until his recent retirement. He’d gotten into some flap about not teaching evolution. A kind, soft-spoken man in a school filled with too many drill sergeants and dragon ladies, Chance had thought of him as a good teacher whose comments about how the world was created had largely been ignored by his students. At this moment though, Mr. Swoboda looked agitated. “How’s it going?” Chance said. “You’re the last person I would expect to see at the police station.”

  Swoboda held a copy of Tuesday’s Standard and tapped the photo of Lowell Austin with his knuckle. “This man, I know him. He was staying at my house.”

  Chapter 13

  Daniel Swoboda recalled with vivid detail his journey to Butte with Lowell Austin on the previous Thursday evening. They had met at the bus station in Drummond, fifty miles west, and driven back along the interstate, probably the only vehicle doing the speed limit.

  When they reached the outskirts of Butte, Lowell had asked about Our Lady of the Rockies. The ridgeline was indistinguishable from the night sky, and the statue on the horizon seemed to hover like an angel.

  “What is that up there in the sky?” he had asked.

  Daniel smiled broadly. “That’s Our Lady of the Rockies, patron saint of Butte, Montana. Looks like she’s floating, doesn’t it?”

  Lowell’s interest in the statue had surprised Daniel. According to the Interfaith Prison Ministry staff at Orofino, during Lowell’s years in prison, he had developed a reputation as a hard case. He boxed a bit and learned horsehair hitching—mastering intricate, colorful, geometric designs good for hatbands and bracelets. Mostly he just kept to himself. All of which Daniel thought made him a good match for Butte.

  Prisoners about to be released always talked to the associate warden about the transition into a new life after their decades in prison. Daniel knew that from his own training as an interfaith lay minister. He wondered if the warden could possibly have done justice to the experience.

  Daniel had tried to use the story of how the ninety-foot statue built in honor of women, especially mothers, had been welded of sheet metal by unemployed miners as a metaphor for overcoming difficult obstacles, a lesson he thought Lowell might appreciate. The description of how a helicopter had hauled the statue in sections to the top of the East Ridge on a windy day in the dead of winter usually impressed even the most cynical. Lowell seemed to listen with one ear.

  When Daniel asked Lowell about what prompted his decision to come to Butte, the convict had been straightforward. “No other particular place to go. My mother is in a nursing home back east. My brother doesn’t want much to do with me. I can respect that. Most of my friends, aside from my attorney, stopped writing a long time ago. Can’t blame them. I don’t have much in common with any of them anymore.”

  Then he had patted his shirt pocket and said, “I got one invitation though.” He talked about the many women who had written to him while he was in prison. At first, the country song about him had inspired fan mail, and then the television movie spawned even more. He had heard or seen neither and had no desire to. “I didn’t answer most of the letters.”

  But two years before his release, Lowell had added his name to a list of prisoners who wanted someone to write to them. It would be a good way for him to begin the reentry into society, the interfaith staff had said.

  He matter-of-factly described the kinds of letters he had received. The women had their own miseries and wrote a lot about the power of faith and redemption. Most didn’t seem too smart. “I wasn’t rude about it,” Lowell said. “I just didn’t write back.”

  When he started talking about the woman who had invited him to Butte, his tone became more animated. “Kate started writing last year. Her letters were different. She wrote about places where she traveled, and what was going on in the world. She didn’t try to convert me, or even ask about why I was in prison to start with,” he said.

  He showed Daniel a photograph she had sent him and the bracelet he had spent the last three weeks hitching for her. Dressed in a turquoise blouse and blue jeans and leaning on a jackleg fence, she was a handsome woman all right. She wore her dark hair long and pulled over one shoulder. “I designed the bracelet to match that outfit,” Lowell said proudly.

  Once they pulled off the highway, they made their way to Daniel’s house. He showed Lowell to a bedroom that had once belonged to one of his sons who
was now married. “There’s a bathroom across the hall,” Daniel said with a gesture in that direction. “Let me know if you need something you can’t find. Want coffee in the morning?”

  Lowell nodded.

  Daniel stopped at the door on his way out and said, “I put a Bible there on the chest of drawers. Thought it might be a comfort.”

  “Look, Mr. Swoboda,” Lowell said. “I appreciate all you’ve done, but I’m not one for religion. Truth is, last Bible somebody gave me, I used most of the pages for cigarette papers.”

  Daniel nodded slowly and then said, “You still smoke?”

  “No, no,” Lowell said, waving Daniel off as if his host might be about to hunt down an ashtray.

  “See? That Bible did you more good than you realized,” Daniel said with a smile and closed the door.

  Moments later, laying his head on the pillow of his bed, Daniel parted the curtains to look through the window at Our Lady on the mountain. He took great comfort in being able to see her each night as he fell asleep. He wondered if Lowell would take any notice of it.

  Daniel thought about his houseguest, unable to imagine being imprisoned for even a short time. What must it feel like finally to sleep in a room that had no lock on its door, to be able to go outside whenever he wanted for the first time in more than twenty years? More than anything, he wanted Lowell Austin to have faith that his life could take a different path now.

  * * *

  The next morning Daniel awoke to the sound of the children next door laughing. Once downstairs, he found Lowell already sitting on the back porch, drinking coffee and watching the kids play. “Did they wake you?”

  Austin shook his head with a slight grin. “It’s hard sleeping in when you’re used to waking up at 6 a.m. every morning for as long as I have.”

  Daniel had heard about the boredom and mindless routine from other inmates he had counseled. The fact that Lowell wanted to free himself from some part of that routine proved the first sign that the hardness in him might soften.

  They sat together on the porch steps, the distant smell of smoke from the latest forest fire mixed with the fresh scent of cut lumber. Lowell took in an exaggerated breath. “Big difference from the smell of nicotine and disinfectant. That’s how every prison smells.”

  Lowell asked if he could have a piece of the kindling that lay in a pile in the bushel basket. He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a stainless steel Leatherman tool. “I bought it yesterday at one of the truck stops on the bus route.”

  Everybody had them these days, Daniel said. They talked about its amazing number of tools all combined into one—knife, pliers, screwdriver, and scissors.

  “It’s a con’s dream come true,” Lowell said with a chuckle, “which is why I guess I never saw one in the joint.” He opened the knife blade, thin and razor sharp, and began to carve the wood.

  “Think I’ll have some breakfast,” said Daniel. “My wife usually does the cooking, but she’s in Kalispell with our new granddaughter until next week. I could probably dig up some cereal.”

  “I never been a big eater, even before prison,” Lowell said. “I’ll come inside and have some more coffee though if that’s okay.”

  Lowell sat at the kitchen table, trying to read the sports section upside down. Daniel pushed the paper across the table. “Go ahead and look at it.”

  Lowell thanked him. “In prison, guys hoard newspapers. Nobody shares anything without some sort of trade—dog-eat-dog kind of thing.”

  Daniel had not replied then, though he often thought the world outside wasn’t much different.

  * * *

  Chance tried not to tailgate as he followed Mr. Swoboda’s pickup toward his house on Princeton Street behind the Mountain Man Pawnshop. They had stood talking in the lobby of the police station. Mr. Swoboda, who was clearly upset, did most of the talking. After fifteen minutes, Chance had convinced Mr. Swoboda to let him see Lowell Austin’s effects, which they could bring back to the police station, and save the police time. Chance was sure that Agent Perryman would not have preferred this, but then that was what Agent Perryman got for keeping distraught taxpayers waiting.

  They stopped at the traffic light near the Great Harvest Bread Store, a favorite of Adrienne’s. Chance thought about Mesa’s “boy toy” remark, which still rankled. It so limited the relationship he had with Adrienne, but how to explain that to Mesa?

  He thought about the first night that he and Adrienne had spent together, Friday evening of the Irish Festival three weeks before. Floating along with the festival music, Irish airs playing from the huge stage on Park Street, they had walked from her gallery to Chance’s house. When they stopped to cross at Montana Street, he took her by the elbow, and, once they reached the far curb, he dared to slip her arm through his. They walked slowly in the warm night air without expectation, and for a moment, he felt like he was strolling along in some other time, in a place far away.

  By the time they walked the last block, he was holding her hand. Silver Street was quiet. He was thankful the stoops of his neighbors sat vacant. He didn’t want to risk that the presence of an audience might embarrass her. He unlocked the door of his duplex and ushered her in.

  “Smells like a cedar chest,” she said and smiled at him when he had closed the front door.

  “A warm cedar chest,” he said and opened the side living room window. “I’m sticky with drywall dust.” He pulled at the front of his tee shirt and hoped he didn’t sound as shy as he suddenly felt. “I think I’ll take a shower. Why don’t you look around? Won’t be a tick, as me old Nan would say.”

  She grinned at his imitation English accent. Relaxed by her smile, he returned it and said, “Promise you won’t leave some poetic note on the kitchen table and then run away?”

  She shook her head, and he believed her. Whatever guard she had kept up before was gone. Must have been that Irish music.

  “Glasses in the usual place?” she asked and held up the remaining cans of Guinness.

  He gestured to the kitchen with his thumb toward the back of the house and then turned toward the hallway and the bathroom. Ten frantic minutes later, he was out of the shower, having thrown on a pair of khaki shorts. He was slipping a white tee shirt over his head when he found her in the kitchen, relieved that she hadn’t changed her mind about leaving.

  She had been completely candid with him. “I thought I might feel awkward being here, just the two of us.” Here she had stuttered, “I haven’t been with anyone for a while. I’m not sure ….”

  He hadn’t let her finish. When he had asked her to come home with him, she had responded with a nod, no questions, no defining, still the uncertainty in her eyes touched him. Taking that risk had meant more than anything else. “Don’t think about anything but enjoying the Guinness. A drink’s a drink, nothing more.”

  Eventually he had given her a tour of the apartment and, true, she had decided it should end in the bedroom. They did sleep together, but just that. He had held her, kissed the top of her head. Of course, she came back Saturday night, when indeed everything she might have forgotten or repressed about sex in the previous five years appeared to have come to life again. But boy toy? No way.

  The light turned green, and Chance followed Mr. Swoboda down Harrison Avenue. Two turns later, they pulled into his driveway. The two-story brick house looked like a hundred others in Butte. The waning garden still contained a few red geraniums. The lawn had been recently mowed, the porch swept. Austin’s death seemed a harsh end to all Mr. Swoboda’s kindnesses.

  Mr. Swoboda silently led Chance upstairs to the bedroom at the back of the house. School photographs of smiling teenagers, brothers in various stages of growth, lined the wall going up the stairs.

  The bedroom contained a single bed, which had been slept in, though the green chenille bedspread had not been turned down. Next to the bed stood an oak chest of drawers, dark with the patina of age.

  “Did Austin tell you what his plans were
?” Chance asked Mr. Swoboda when they entered the room.

  “He wasn’t a big talker,” Daniel said. “The first morning he was here, I asked him what he planned to do. He wanted to get his driver’s license, which we did that Friday afternoon. Passed the written test with no problem. The road test too.

  “He told me he had worked in a print shop at Orofino, so I told him I knew a guy at Brownstone Printers. He wanted to see about it, first thing. Seemed like he was thinking about a future here in Butte, but maybe that was all malarkey.”

  Mr. Swoboda pointed to a black vinyl gym bag at the end of the bed. “That’s all he had with him when I met him at the bus station.”

  Mr. Swoboda sat on the edge of the bed. He picked up a small wooden carving from the windowsill and showed it to Chance. It was a miniature bust of the Virgin Mary. Her features were delicately rendered, the folds of the cloth over her head, her eyes closed in prayer. Running his finger over the marks of the knife on the wood gave Chance an odd feeling, as if the tiny sculpture were an extension of the man. He had shaped this wood, made it his own.

  “He carved that from a piece of wood in my backyard that first morning,” Daniel said.

  Chance could hear the disappointment in Mr. Swoboda’s words and tried to comfort him. “I’m sure you did the best you could, Mr. Swoboda.”

  “I just don’t know what I’m going to tell Brother Kressge over at Orofino.”

  Chance unzipped the bag and used his Bic ballpoint to poke around at its meager contents—extra clothes and a magazine about horsehair hitching, a delicately woven turquoise and black bracelet, a prison ID card, discharge papers—precious little for a man who had been in prison for twenty-five years.

  A half-folded letter, its envelope gone, lay on top of the oak chest. Mr. Swoboda and Chance seemed to spot it at the same time. For a minute, Chance thought his old teacher was going to stop him from reading it.

  “It might give us some idea about who Austin knew in town. Could lead to information about who killed him.”

  “Shouldn’t we leave this for the police?” Mr. Swoboda said, rubbing his hand over his mouth.