I also think of the articleRolling StoneDude asked me to read and all the inroads he’s made with the Blackfeet. People on the reservation seemed to trust him enough to give him detailed information on how they saw the tribe’s missing and murdered Indigenous women situation. More details than I’ve ever been able to gather. Maybe he’s come across something on Clarissa’s case. And at the very least, maybe he could get Palmer Edmonds, the Blackfeet elder, to talk to me. I can’t let it go that there’s something I’m missing about the Ridgeways. About Clarissa’s murder. And how the sketch might simply originate from Ridgewayand his goons so that if something happens to me, it gets pinned onto the real Confession Artist.
The idea that the real CA might never even have had me in their sights at all makes me feel lighter, but I still don’t trust Jeremy. And I’m not sure I really believe that the CA isn’t targeting me. I can’t escape the bruised cloud that’s settled over me, that might never leave me until lightning from it strikes.
I decide to call Jeremy and try to nudge in on his connections on the reservations. Calling him makes butterflies swirl in my stomach. I can’t decide how much is because of my attraction to him, or how much is due to the crazy coincidence that he was in both Dallas and now the Flathead Valley.
But I do it anyway.
“This is Jeremy.”
“Hey,” I say. “It’s Crosbie.”
“Crosbie.” I can hear the smile on his face.
“Where are you?”
“In the park.”
“Which part?”
“West Glacier.”
“Perfect. I’m heading to West Glacier myself. Can we meet?”
He says he’s tied up with some other folks for a bit, but that he can meet in an hour and a half.
“That’s fine. I have some things to do beforehand as well.”
After he agrees, I call Paxton and ask him to meet me in West Glacier, too. Both in a public place, to be on the safe side.
Chapter 40
Forty-five minutes later, I’m sitting with a cup of coffee in a café on the outskirts of Glacier National Park. This is a bonus because up around Glacier, cell service isn’t great, so people who’ve been in the park for days aren’t paying a ton of attention to the news. I profile everyone who looks at me a second too long, which is hardly anyone. Maybe Jess’s pink-and-blue ice cream hat is really a Harry Potter Invisibility Cloak.
But before Paxton arrives, I suddenly find I’m wrong. As in, dead wrong. Which is a funny phrase if you think about it. Because if you literally were dead every time you were wrong, it might be a whole different world. I’m not laughing.
A set of three women have come in and taken a table across the room, but after one of them motions with her head to me, the rest all rubberneck it to get a look. When one of them turns to the table behind her and whispers something to a man and he cranks his neck around to look, too, I’ve had enough. They’re all too close. I feel claustrophobic. I throw a five on the table and walk past them with all eyes gunning for me. As I exit, I hear one of the guys saying, “Wait, aren’t you ...?”
When I pull out and drive into the village of West Glacier, I check that there are still a lot of tourists milling about and that I won’t be isolated if I conduct my meetings here or inside the park. I figure I’ll have just as high a chance of being recognized in the village as I did in the café, so I go through the entrance gates off the park. I want to thread the needle of diluting thecrowds enough to decrease the chances I’ll be recognized while still keeping enough tourists around to feel safe.
I find a brief patch of service and call Paxton. “Change in plans,” I tell him. I call Jeremy and repeat the info.
I drive to the quaint village of Apgar, perched at the southwest end of Lake McDonald. I find a parking lot past the docks among about ten other cars.
At least here the café walls and the whispers of people aren’t closing in on me.
Still, I check to make sure I’ve got my gun securely fastened in its holster under my light jacket. Then, I wait, trying to relax enough to draw in a deep breath of the fresh pine and the smell of breeze off the cold lake.
Paxton arrives, driving a flashy black Lincoln MKZ that looks out of place among all the SUVs, Jeeps, and generic rental cars in the lot. He parks beside me and hops in my car.
I show him the picture I’ve taken of the pack. “That’s hers,” he says, excited. He wants all the details. I make up a fib. It doesn’t matter.
“What’s in it?” he asks.
“Test tubes, notes. Paxton, did your sister draw?”
“Not that I know of, but maybe she drew pictures of the plants she studied. Why?”
I tell him about the sketch pad with the Ridgeway logo. In the back of my mind, I’m wondering if the pad belonged to Ridgeway or one of his guys who might have drawn a picture of me and simply shoved it in Clarissa’s pack to get rid of the evidence along with her things. “Would she have had a sketch pad of theirs?”
