He planned to be more cautious about his phone in general. Mary was getting a little more suspicious when he was on the road. The other day when he’d come in after going to the mailbox outside and had left his cell in the kitchen, she’d hastily dropped it when he’d entered.
He slowed his jog and stopped to do a quick stretch before returning. His trainer back home said his hip flexors were too tight.Too much driving for your job, she’d suggested.And when you run, she reminded him,make sure you stretch.He crossed one leg in front of the other and reached for the sky to open one of his hips.
He wondered if Mary could have something to do with this sketch thing. Would his own wife dothisto him? Could she be Machiavellian enough to hop on the bandwagon of this insane national phenomenon to taunt him somehow, to get back at him?
No.He shook his head and looked around at the dense forest. He was just being paranoid. He was certain she didn’t know about the others he sometimes slept with while on the road.
The trees surrounded and towered above. It felt as if the silent pines were all looking down at Tim, judging him. And that frightened him, too. He wasn’t the type to noticetrees. It meant, despite his hangover, that his senses were triggered. Again, he thought, paranoia. Stupid thoughts.
He peered up and away from the coarse bark to the late-morning summer sky. It was bursting with color, so full of promise. Life was chock-full of opportunity. You had to be willing to seize it. That’s all. That’s all he’d been doing for Carssen, the drug company he worked for. Hawking the stuff wasn’t wrong. It was just his job.
Just because the sketch resembled him didn’t mean itwashim. And judging by how many people were already confessing their sins to the world, alotof people out there thought they were the ones in the drawing. What were the chances it was actually him?
You have six days to confess or die.What kind of bullshit was that anyway?
He was about to start running again, to head back the way he’d come, when he heard the shuffle of leaves behind him. He whipped around but saw nothing. A deer maybe? Or perhaps someone else out jogging or walking?
He stood dead still, scanning the trees beside the path. Then he heard it again, a shuffle. A snap of a twig. Behind one of the tree trunks, he saw a flash of dark, like a navy sweatshirt or jacket, and something metal, like the barrel of a gun.
What the hell?His heart banged against his ribs. He was too frightened to call out to whoever it was. Electricity coursed through him, propelling him into a full-throttle run, his legs pumping faster than they ever had before.
With his running shoes slapping the gravel path, his own breath sharp in his ears, he made up his mind. His one-liner was not sufficient. As soon as he got back to his hotel room, before checkout, he’d confess more thoroughly, more sincerely.
It was still the sixth day. It wasn’t too late.
A Confession
X: @Logan_Reed #SketchConfession—I didn’t know he had stopped breathing when we left him there drunk in the game room at our house on Euclid Ave. in Syracuse in 2015. We thought he’d sleep it off. I was an immature SU college kid. I’ve thought so much about the past 9 years and have come so close to killing myself. Please, please let me know if this isn’t enough. I know I have work to do to repair all the damage I caused to his family, but I didn’t really want to kill myself then, and I certainly don’t want to die now!
Chapter 2
Before
At the forty-eighth latitude, I drive through the Continental Divide skirting the outside of Glacier National Park. Paxton Rhoads, the guy who hired me, calls it the “Backbone of the World,” and it’s hard to argue with that image.
Saw blades of mountains rear up on each side of me. The Middle Fork of the Flathead River snakes its way through small valleys tucked in between the river and the foothills. Old homesteads and roadside cafés cling to the old ways in the middle of nowhere, far from the transformation taking place where I live in the Flathead Valley, where wealthy out-of-staters buy up every inch of available real estate.
This countryside—brimming with all its beauty—always perks me up. Even quells the simmering rage inside me. But this isn’t the time to think about my sister—and the upcoming anniversary of her hooking up with the wrong guy—or to wonder if the curtains will close around her and stay weighted in place. And whatever internet craziness is going on with the sketch-to-murder trend that is gripping the nation, the nuttiness with that crap seems even less likely to be a “thing” out here. My investigative work involves a lot less hype and a lot more stuff closer to reality.
When I reach Browning, past the Great Divide, vast, tawny prairies open before me. A strong wind hits my car and almost pushes it intothe oncoming lane. I grip the wheel and stubbornly force the vehicle back between the lines. I’m on a mission for Paxton.
And for Clarissa.
And definitely for myself. New career. New opportunity—the first big one I’ve gotten since I switched to PI work nine months ago. And new chance to leave the past behind, like a snake shedding its skin.
Paxton’s from the Blackfeet Nation, and he’s hired me to investigate the death of his half sister, Clarissa. She was a journalist looking into the shady practices of a local oil and natural gas company owned by a wealthy businessman named Robbie Ridgeway. Her body was located downstream from rapids in the Teton River not far from his ranch.
My sister, Jess, is the one who referred Paxton to me. She works for a company called Rotical NanoLabs, a genetic research firm I use myself. Years earlier, Paxton and Clarissa had hired Rotical to find out if they were blood relatives, as their foster parents claimed. They had different surnames, but their foster parents said they came from the same mother.
Jess told Paxton I was getting established and likely to give him a deal. That was true. But I think he liked the idea that I used to be a cop. Key phrase:used to be. Dealing with a non-tribal PI meant he wasn’t breaking social norms by hiring someone in the system.
Clarissa was a natural athlete, a star basketball player in high school who made it on scholarship to the University of Montana, graduated with a degree in environmental science, and was later drawn to journalism. Growing up on the reservation on the edge of the Divide, she was an experienced outdoorswoman. She would never have “slipped off some rocks” as the initial investigation suggested.
Paxton says Clarissa was undermining Robbie Ridgeway’s plans to sell his oil and natural gas company to a bigger firm. Ridgeway’s firm is the not-so-cleverly-named Ridgefield. The buyer was Volanex, based in Louisiana. Clarissa was in the process of exposing how Ridgefield’s extractions were polluting a spring-fed peatland or fen that was nutrient and species rich and contained diverse flora that needed protection. Paxton maintained thatClarissa was close to making the pollution public and that the resulting stain would’ve scuttled the deal.
And then Clarissa drowned. The police concludedaccident. But I agree with Paxton. It all sounds too convenient.
After the reservation, I turn south toward Ridgeway’s ranch north of Choteau. My plan is to drive around the town, ask some questions, get the community flavor for the guy.
