“But you can’t be sure.”
“This is my decision,mychoice.”
“And what have you got against playing it safe?”
“Have you forgotten I used to work there? I know what they’re going to do. Not much. Not anything. There’s no protection they’re going to offer me that I can’t provide for myself. No one there wants to get within talking distance of me. They’d throw me to the wolves if they could find a pack.”
“I realize that, but still. It’s good to get it on record, right?”
I don’t answer.
“Look, Cros, Kerry finally called me back.”
“And?”
“He said he supplied those same earrings to several gift shops around Montana.”
“And did Walmart carry them?”
“No, youknowthey didn’t.”
I did know. It was wishful thinking. “How many did he make?”
“He said he sells about one hundred seventy-five to two hundred pairs a year, and he’s been supplying them to the gift shops since they got popular about five years ago. He says they’ve become trendy because of the Montana sapphire. Everyone loves ’em.”
“A thousand or so. That’s something,” I say. “And since so many visitors come through Montana in the summer, that really opens up the playing field.”
Possibly, but not entirely. We both know it.
“You were a cop, Cros. So you know it’s got to be good to get it on the record, just in case.”
I think ofRolling StoneJeremy What’s His Face and how he quickly shifted from claiming to write about climate change to writing about my goofs and screwups. My misjudgments. My blooper reel.Bloopersounds too light, too inconsequential. It should befuck-up reel.
And I still can’t get over the coincidence of seeing him in the hotel bar and being on the same flight to Montana.
“If not for your sake, then do it for Jess,” says Wallace.
He lets it hang. I feel the full weight of it. The implication is clear.
You didn’t do enough then, so do something now.
“Am I right?” he adds.
I think of Jess, with her insomnia and her nightmares when she sleeps. Of how, ever since the rape, she flinches if someone surprises her in the least. She’s like a soldier returning from war.
I think of what happened to me at the Kalispell PD, how it doesn’t begin to compare with the assaults on Sophie and Jess, but how it nonetheless made me feel powerless and inept. There’s something inside me like a steady, slow bleed. Time has not done its thing. For as much as I carry it around, it could have happened earlier that day.
“Okay,” I say. “I won’t say you’re right, but ...”
“But?”
“Let’s go to the station. I’ll get it on the record.”
Chapter 12
“Crosbie,” Allison Higgins, the assistant behind the glass, says. “How the heck are you? Or should I call youPrivateDetective Mitchell?”
Every inch of the place is etched in my memory.
