LITMIR.BIZ

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same skin color as me.” He flicked an angry hand. “You saw how he treated me. He’s got my arrest warrant all ready to go.”

      “He’s just getting started on his investigation.”

      “Easy for you to say. It’s not your knife they found.”

      “No one knows if a crime’s even been committed yet.”

      “Doesn’t matter. Whatever happened, he figures I did it.” Clarence gave his Latino accent free rein. “El Chicano. El spic.” His voice grew bitter. “I never should’ve come here this summer.”

      “What are you talking about?”

      Clarence gave Chuck a level look. “Jan knows. Even the girls have felt it.”

      Chuck studied the north slope of Mount Landen. Narrow, stone-walled couloirs cut into the bare, alpine slope every couple hundred yards. Where the pitch of the slope lessened, the couloirs came together to form a funnel-like drainage that twisted and turned before disappearing into the forest on its way to the river below.

      He pressed his fingers into his thighs. For a year now, Janelle and the girls had shared their lives with him—a middle-aged white guy making his way through the world with his brown-toned stepdaughters and mocha-hued wife. He’d seen the heads turn; he’d read the appraising looks in people’s eyes.

      “They don’t mean anything by it,” he told Clarence.

      “So what. We’re still plenty different from the upstanding, white-bread folks of Estes Park, and different is all that matters.”

      “You’re overreacting. We’ll head back to town, find a lawyer, get this thing sorted out.”

      “No. No lawyers. I’m not guilty of anything. Somebody took my knife. I had nothing to do with it. I don’t need a lawyer.”

      “We’ve got to make sure—”

      “I said no,” Clarence repeated. “What we have to do is figure out what happened. And we have to do it on our own, before the cops stick it to me.”

      “They’ve got nothing to charge you with.”

      “They’ll come up with something. Just you watch.”

      “I was watching. I saw a cop doing his job.”

      “We need to think beyond him—to the students, the workers next door. Somebody saw something. They had to. You can get Kirina to talk to the students. I’ll talk to the Falcon House people. They won’t say anything to the cops, but they’ll talk to me.”

      Chuck lifted an eyebrow. At the beginning of the summer, he’d made it clear that the field school’s female students were off limits to Clarence, full stop, no exceptions. Chuck had seen the looks every one of the Fort Lewis girls, even Kirina, had aimed at Clarence when he was at his most alive and magnetically electric. To his credit, however, Clarence had taken Chuck at his word and had focused his charms on the flock of female, college-age resort workers from Eastern Europe boarding for the summer in Falcon House.

      “You really think,” Chuck asked, “that whoever sliced somebody with your knife is going to turn around and confess what they did to you?”

      “Somebody’s sure to know something. And there’s plenty who will let me know what they know.”

      Chuck eyed Clarence. “How many are we talking about?”

      Clarence avoided Chuck’s look. “It’s been a whole summer.”

      “It’s been a month and a half.”

      “I don’t put notches in my belt.”

      “How many?”

      Clarence addressed the line of peaks marching away into the distance. “Three or four. Five, maybe.”

      Chuck shook his head. “Unbelievable. And how many guys over in Falcon House do you suppose you’ve managed to piss off in the process?”

      Clarence twisted to face Chuck. “All the guys living in Falcon House are a bunch of campesinos from México—cooks, janitors, dishwashers—sending their money home and counting the days till they can get back to their families.”

      “And the young women?”

      “They’re on their big summer adventure from Romania, Bulgaria, places like that. Ready to par-tay. They’re way out of those Méxicanos’ league.”

      “But not yours.”

      “Nobody’s out of my league.”

      “I bet you made one of the Mexicans jealous.”

      “So he did what, took my knife and stabbed somebody with it? What sense would there be in that?”

      “I’m still thinking it through,” Chuck admitted.

      “While you’re doing your thinking, let me tell you what I already know. Nobody’s going to come forward and tell the cops, ‘Hey, guess what. I stole Clarence’s knife and slashed somebody with it and they stood there and bled for a while and then they ran off into the woods and now they’re gone.’ Which means the focus is going to stay right on me.”

      “All the more reason to get a lawyer.”

      “Wrong. The cop said they’re going to call me in for more questioning, right? Later today, probably, or maybe tomorrow. When they do, I want them to see I got nothin’ to hide. If I come in all lawyered up, they’ll figure it’s me for sure. They’ll focus everything they’ve got on nailing me to the wall.” Clarence took a deep breath. “I have to show them I’m a victim of circumstance, that whatever crime was committed—if a crime was committed—was somebody else’s doing.”

      “Who do you suppose did get their hands on your knife?”

      “Could’ve been anybody. It’s not like I was hiding it.”

      “Somebody must’ve grabbed it to do some whittling, like you,” Chuck reasoned. “They cut themselves by accident. They can’t bring themselves to say anything. Not yet, anyway.”

      “You saw how much blood there was. They’d’ve had to cut themselves pretty deep.”

      “Maybe they were drunk.”

      Clarence rolled his eyes.

      “Really drunk,” Chuck insisted.

      Clarence grunted. “Wasted,” he said flatly.

      “Blotto,” Chuck offered.

      Clarence’s mouth lifted in the start of a smile. “Blasted.”

      Chuck nodded. “Blitzed.”

      Clarence grinned. “Pulverized, dude. Totally, absolutely obliterated.”

      Chuck chuckled and bent over his pack, digging out his lunch. The faint rattle of tumbling rocks reached him from where Mount Landen’s rugged northwest ridge etched the skyline half a mile away.

      He looked up in time to see a Rocky Mountain sheep clamber into sight over the top the ridge. The sheep, a ewe, was followed by another ewe, then another. Gradually, three dozen more sheep ambled over the ridge, their hooves sending small stones clattering into a steep couloir below them. The animals fanned out, nipping at the dry, brown bunch grass on the slope as they made their way across the north side of the mountain toward Chuck and Clarence.

      Chuck scanned the grazing sheep, looking for trophy rams. His eyes fell on animal after animal. Each was a ewe, a first-year lamb, or a juvenile male with nascent, half-curl horns—yet a herd this big should not be without two or more adult rams with broad chests and fully curled horns.

      Chuck slid his sandwich from its baggie and bit into it, waiting to spot the heavy-horned rams sure to trot over the ridge to unite with the herd at any moment.

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