He stood and looked at the back door of the bar. He shook his head. “Shit,” he said, and walked away. Then he stopped and went back. He made a diving mask of his hands and peered inside again. One of the grocery bags was less than full and no way to tell what it held. In the other the tops of two boxes were visible, one box top rectangular and anonymously white, the other a square of light blue with the word Tampax in bright yellow.

He straightened and looked about him with his hands in his jacket pockets. His right hand playing the weight of the lighter around and around. He could feel the liquor swimming in his brain.

“Shit,” he said again. And turned and walked to his car.

He sat with the engine off and watched the first volley of sleet break across the glass. After a while he started the car and drove across the road to the 7-Eleven, backed into a space, and killed the engine again. He took his phone from his pocket and checked the time. Two thirty in the afternoon.

He drew on his cigarette and held the smoke, staring at the phone. Then he exhaled and dialed. The call was forwarded and a deputy answered and Billy asked to speak to the sheriff.

“He’s fairly jammed up right now, Billy. I’ll have him call you back.”

“I need to talk to him now, Denny. It’s critical.”

“Critical?”

“It’s important, Denny.”

“Donny. I’ll tell him to call you, Billy.”

Billy blew smoke from his nostrils and grinned. “I’d be very grateful, Donny.”

The sheriff called back an hour later. By then, Billy was climbing the interstate through a heavy sleet going to snow.

“Thanks for returning my call, Sheriff.”

“What is it, Billy?”

“I got a question for you.”

The sheriff, in his office, was going over some of his father’s—their father’s—old papers. Some so old the ink had begun to fade. “Ask it,” he said.

“Those Courtland kids, up on that mountain, when the girl went missing.”

The line was silent as the sheriff got his bearings. “What about them?”

“There’s something you never told anybody. Isn’t there.”

“Not following you, Billy.”

“There’s always something you don’t tell. That only the cops know about. That’s how it’s done, right? Procedurally speaking.”

“Billy, are you drunk?”

“I ain’t had a drop.”

“Sounds like you’re driving too.”

“Listen, God damn it. I just want to know what you didn’t tell nobody, that’s all. It’s a simple question.”

The sheriff was silent. Billy watched the fat wet flakes coming down. The dark grooves of tiretrack in the gray slurry of the road. The Bronco’s taillights simmering far ahead, hot and beady.

“If I didn’t tell nobody,” said his brother finally, “I didn’t tell nobody for a reason, so why would I tell you now?”

“Because I’m asking. Because who gives a damn now?”

The sheriff said nothing. Then: “You better get off the road, Billy. We got a storm up here and it’s headed down there.”

The line hissed and crackled. He was climbing higher now and losing his signal. He thought he’d lost it, was about to hang up when the sheriff said, “Go home, Billy. I mean it. Those folks ain’t none of your business now.”

“Now?” he laughed. “Hell, Sheriff, they never were.”

51

The Bronco held a good pace on the interstate, a legal but bold pace for the conditions, which had gone from sleet to a heavy snowfall in a matter of miles as they drove upward and westward, leaving the new foothill greens behind and traveling back into the high old winter of the mountains. The El Camino was not a mountain car nor a snow car but in the winter Billy kept two hundred pounds of sand in tubular bags heaped over the rear wheels, and on this day in early April the snow was not too deep, and he had the tracks of the cars before him, the tracks of the Bronco, to keep his treads close to the pavement, and he climbed the mountain interstate with ease.

The light was flat and gray and there were two good hours of it left and he drove without headlights, keeping well back from the Bronco. He’d passed the exit for home eight miles back and now he was approaching the exit for the pass that would take him up to the divide and down again into the resort town where the Courtland girl had gone missing, in the county where his brother was sheriff, and he slowed, anticipating the exit—but the Bronco’s taillights went on, and the tracks went on, and he shook his head and smiled. Old Steve was a smart one: You did not go hunting in your own backyard. Or shop or drink. You got your goods from some other man’s backyard far away, and up here you did not have to go very far to be far away.

“But how far, Steve?” He checked his fuel gauge and saw that the tank was half full. And half empty.

“Where we going, Steve?”

Fourteen miles beyond the exit, just short of the great tunnel that delivered travelers all at once to the far side of the Rockies—to entirely new weather systems, to the long, slow descent to the western deserts and the coast and the ocean—the Bronco’s signal light began to blink, its brake lights flared and it took the exit for US Highway 6 and the Loveland Pass. It crossed under the interstate and picked up speed again on the winding two-laner and Billy let himself fall farther behind, as there would now be no place for the Bronco to go but up to the top of the pass and down again on the other side.

He took a switchback turn at its posted speed, the car slewing mildly, and when the road straightened again he checked his phone for a signal and found that he had one—a very scant one—and he entered a short text message and sent it.

The road wound high into the mountains, into heavier snowfall and finally into a gusting chaos of snow like the white rioting heart of the storm itself, before cresting and beginning its steep descent into the valley on the other side. Down and down and the snowfall growing lighter again at the lower altitude and the mountain switchbacks cutting once, twice, and

a third time across the Snake River before settling into an easier alliance with the river at the floor of the valley, both road and river turning according to the same geography, the same logic.

He kept the radio off, wanting to hear nothing but the engine and the regular sweep of the wipers. The liquor had left him all at once, leaving him edgy and wishing for a cup of coffee. He asked himself if he knew what he was doing, and answered that he knew exactly what he was doing, he was taking a drive, that was all.

There were no exits or even turnoffs for many miles. Then the posted speed limit fell, and another sign announced their arrival at a resort village, and the speed limit fell again and his heart lifted at other signs of organized humanity: the high shedroofs of the lodges, the Christmassy lights in the restaurants and shops, the cheering reds and greens of traffic lights. But there was little traffic so late in the season and when the Bronco caught the village’s outermost red light Billy knew he would have to pull up behind it or else draw more attention to himself. He was fifty, perhaps forty, feet away—the shape of the driver’s head visible through the rear window—when red turned to green, and signaling, the Bronco turned left.

“Go on through and double back,” he told himself; but he was afraid of losing him in the grid of streets, and at the last moment he signaled and turned through the yellow and followed.

The Bronco immediately turned left again, heading east along the rim of a large and nearly empty parking lot. Then it turned right onto a county road, which took them all at once out of the village and into the long mountainous valley to the east, and as there was no other traffic coming or going Billy let the gap between the cars grow once more. With his free hand he collected his phone and punched up and sent another text.