“Okay.”
The kid’s name was Phillip Weeks, a sixteen-year-old who lived with his father in a mobile home a half mile up the dead-end road that passed the WJ Ranch.
“The place is owned by a rich guy named Drake from Butte, and Phil and his dad are caretakers,” she said. “I don’t go up there because his father creeps me out. Kinda scares me, ya know? I think he beats up Phil, too. Last year, Phil had these big black eyes and he wouldn’t say where he got in a fight, and nobody in school knew of any fight. I think it was his father.”
“The old man’s name?”
“Bart Weeks.” She gave a little shudder.
He hoped she wasn’t right, but her instincts were probably dead-on. “Let’s go talk to your dad and tell him what we figured out. See what he wants to do.”
“Don’t mention that Phil was inside. Liz doesn’t even know. No one does. No one can. If Mom and Dad found out, they’d freak. So just say that we figured it out.”
“I got it.”
Inside the house, the older boy was wrapped up with Legos in his bedroom, the baby asleep, and Virgil caught a glimpse of Liz, one of Katy’s younger sisters hovering near the doorway, pretending to read a book, but probably eavesdropping. Ann braced herself against a counter that separated the kitchen from the dining area and Jim sat in a recliner angled to an oversized but bubble-faced TV tuned into a muted baseball game. Virgil and Katy explained what they thought happened. Without admitting that Phillip had ever been in Katy’s room. The parents bought the story without too many questions, so Virgil didn’t have to lie.
“Never liked that guy,” Jim Waller said, flipping down the footrest of the recliner and getting to his feet. He eyed his oldest daughter and shook a finger at her, “If I ever see that kid around here . . .” He let the sentence trail off, but by the looks of it, Katy got the message just about the time Johnson showed up.
What Jim and Ann Waller wanted Virgil and Johnson to do was to go up the road and confront Bart Weeks, the father of Phillip.
Virgil said, “I’m not a cop here in Montana, I’m just a guy. A guy who’s up here to fish.”
“But you’re a police officer,” Ann Waller said, glancing nervously at her husband. “Wouldn’t someone with authority scare him? Make him tell the truth?”
“It’s not like it looks like on TV. People just don’t open up to cops because they flash a badge.”
“Jim and I, we’re not good at confrontation.”
“We aren’t?” her husband asked, perplexed. Scratching at his beard stubble, he glared at his wife, and Virgil noticed their younger daughter, Liz, shrink farther into the shadows.
Hiding?
“We have a business to run,” Ann reminded him. “Neighbors to get along with.”
“Hell, we’re great at confrontation,” Johnson said with a wide grin. “We’ll be glad to do it.”
“We will?” Virgil asked.
“Absolutely. C’mon, it’s raining, we got nothing to do. Don’t be a pussy.” Johnson glanced at Ann and Katy and said, “Sorry about the language there.”
• • •
VIRGIL DIDN’T WANT TO DO it. “That’s why I go fishing, so I don’t have to do this shit,” he told Johnson as they trudged back to the cabin to get their rain suits. The drizzle had increased, puddles widening in the sparse gravel yard, the big Montana sky opening up. “I don’t appreciate you signing me up for this shit.”
“But we’re helping out a hardworking girl,” Johnson said. “I don’t understand how you could even think of saying no.”
“Fine.” But Virgil was still burned.
When they got out to Johnson’s Escalade, Katy, now in a rain jacket herself, was leaning against the rear passenger-side door.
“I’m going,” she said.
There was some talk about that, but she went, because she said if they didn’t take her, she’d walk, and making her walk in the rain would be mean.
• • •
The Drake place consisted of a two-story log cabin that sat on a high rocky bank over the trout stream. A hundred-yard-long pool backed up into a natural stone dam. There were two outbuildings. A machine shed, in which they could see the back of a BMW truck and an older Jeep, and another square log building that might be a guesthouse. A huge silvery RV was parked on a gravel spur off the house and a wrist-thick black electric cable snaked from the house to the RV.