Two of the security personnel mounted an all-terrain vehicle and, with the other three security men behind them, roared up the hill toward the sniper’s nest.
The shooter stood erect, firing from a lever-action rifle, and shot the driver of the ATV off the seat. The next shot caught one of the running men below the knee, knocking his leg out from under him as though the bone had been clipped in half with a cold chisel. The ATV caromed off a tree trunk and spun crazily down the side of a gulch.
The two wounded men and their three friends took cover behind rocks and trees, flattening themselves into the bed of pine needles, while the shooter fired four more rounds through the woods, the brass casings tinkling on top of the boulder he stood behind. Moments later the security men could hear the sound of a horse’s shoes clopping on stone, then thudding on hard-packed earth through the timber.
Karsten Mabus watched it all from the terrace by his swimming pool, in full view of the hillside, his plate in one hand, his sandwich in the other. After he finished eating, he wiped his hands, combed his hair, and used his cell phone to request an ambulance for his two employees who had been shot.
But before he went back inside, he saw a horseman silhouetted on a ridgeline. The horseman seemed to stop, framed against the sky, the constellations bursting overhead, and look back at Karsten Mabus, perhaps through binoculars.
Mabus formed a pistol with his thumb and index finger, pointed it at the horseman, and winked.
AT 1:15 P.M. WEDNESDAY, I looked out the window of my office and saw two detectives from the sheriff’s department escorting Wyatt Dixon in handcuffs through the rear door of the courthouse. But rather than accept the role of chained culprit and miscreant, Wyatt was the bucolic king in captivity. He was dressed in gray razor-creased western pants, a long-sleeved maroon cotton shirt, a wide silver necktie, and a soft-crowned hat tilted low on his forehead. His upper arms looked like hams inside his shirt, his sideburns etched against his jaws with a fresh haircut. He limped along without his canes, grinning at everyone he saw, his eyes manic, the manacles on his wrists like scrap metal he could snap in half if he chose. Jailhouse riffraff smoking cigarettes on the lawn cheered him as he walked by.
I crossed the street and entered the courthouse just as the elevator closed on Wyatt and the two plainclothes. I walked down the corridor to Fay Harback’s office. She was talking to her receptionist, wearing a black suit, her small hands knotted in fists on her hips.
“What’s the deal on Dixon?” I said.
“He’s being interviewed.”
“Not unless I’m present, he’s not.”
“You’re Wyatt Dixon’s attorney now?”
“Ask Wyatt.”
“I don’t have to. Now go fiddle with a divorce case,” she said, turning her back to me.
“Why’d you bring him in?”
“We have two guys in Community Hospital with bullet holes in them. Our chief persons of interest are Dixon and Johnny American Horse.”
“The gig out at Karsten Mabus’s place last night?”
“Nobody’s catching any flies on you,” she said.
I rode the elevator upstairs. Wyatt was in an interview room with the two detectives, the door partly open, his wrists uncuffed. The interview was not going as planned by the detectives, both of whom were standing while Wyatt sat. Their names were Boyle and Regan. Both of them had been investigators with Internal Affairs and were not well liked by their colleagues.
“It’s real good of you fellows to bring me in and talk this thing out,” Wyatt was saying. “I have invited Vice President Cheney to go duck hunting with me this fall, and I’ll be telling him of the good work you boys are doing. I know he’d appreciate y’all’s hep in chasing down them A-rabs what’s been throwing camel shit through window fans all over the Mideast.” Wyatt pushed a paper napkin across the table toward the detectives. “Write your names down so I can alert the Vice President to the kind of high-quality smarts that’s on the job here in Missoula, Montana.”
The larger of the detectives, Jimmie Boyle, slapped Wyatt’s hat off his head. “You simple fuck, we’re the last thing between you and a twenty-five-year jolt,” he said. “Cop to it now, claim temporary insanity over the death of the preacher, and you might even skate. In the meantime, you pick the hair out of your teeth and show some respect for the only friends you got.”
Wyatt reached down for his hat and set it crown down on the table. Once again, I witnessed one of those mercurial transformations that seemed to take place in Wyatt, as though someone had clicked a switch in the back of his head. Between the time he stooped over for his hat and the time he looked back at the detectives, the clown’s grin had gone from his face, replaced by the lifeless mask and glasslike eyes that made one think of the quiet that comes before a storm.
“I’m done here. Don’t y’all be trying to use Reverend Sneed’s death to jerk my chain, either,” he said.
“You believe this asshole?” Boyle said.
“You heard him. You’re done,” I said, stepping into the room. “Charge him or cut him loose.”
“How’d you get up here?” Boyle said. He had a large nose, the rim of one nostril threaded by a scar that looked like a piece of string.
I started to answer but didn’t get the chance. Fay Harback came up behind us, her face tight with anger. “I want a word with you,” she said, walking toward a coffee room.
When we were inside, she turned on me. “You don’t listen, Billy Bob. You think you have the franchise on morality and can do and say whatever you want because you represent clients who have some kind of social handicap,” she said. “The sniper at Karsten Mabus’s ranch crippled one man and put a hole through the rib cage of the other. That said, my intuitions tell me Wyatt Dixon isn’t the shooter. But he’s told a number of people, including Darrel McComb, that Karsten Mabus may be the Antichrist. That means we have to clear him as a suspect, even though personally I think he’s of diminished capacity and belongs in a mental institution.
“Regardless, I can’t go forward in the investigation until he’s excluded as a viable suspect. So while you’re obstructing our investigation, you’re also hurting your client…I seem to be losing your attention. Is this too complex for you to follow?”
“Darrel McComb told me you dimed him