The edge of the crazies, p.1
The Edge of the Crazies, page 1
Praise for
The Edge of the Crazies
“A sparkling, caustic first novel . . . In this madly original debut, Ms. Harrison speaks up in a fresh, animated voice to say something worth saying about the festering animosities of small minds cooped up in small towns.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“An intricate, lively, and intelligent murder mystery by a sharp-tongued new writer who—no matter what her genre—gives every promise of literary future.”
—Peter Matthiessen, author of Shadow Country
“Jamie Harrison is a strong new voice writing intelligently from and about the American West.”
—Dan O’Brien, author of Wild Idea
“How precisely this book chronicles the nastiness, the incestuousness and plain rottenness, that can set in and harm a small town in America . . . This is a good book.”
—Rick Bass, author of With Every Great Breath
“This is a wonderfully imaginative, ordered plot . . . The Edge of the Crazies is an auspicious debut, by any standard a polished and eminently readable mystery novel.”
—Los Angeles Times
“[A] remarkable debut . . . The characters are quirky yet believable, and the plotting, while intricate, is fast-paced and sexy.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Harrison keeps us laughing and guessing whodunit.”
—Playboy
“Here you have it: sex, death, and drollery, sure-handedly rendered by Jamie Harrison in her savvy debut.”
—Barry Gifford, author of Wild at Heart
“Jamie Harrison’s witty, accomplished mystery blends an off-kilter sheriff with a delightful, comic dissection of small-town life in a newly trendy Montana . . . The Edge of the Crazies captures every wacky nuance.”
—William Hjortsberg, author of Falling Angel and Nevermore
“The Edge of the Crazies is written with a wonderfully mature sense of humor, full of wise and perceptive character studies, and capped by a dazzling plot. I absolutely loved it. Hell, I wouldn’t mind living in Blue Deer, Montana.”
—James Crumley, author of The Last Good Kiss
“[A] fine and textured mystery that brings us a new star in detective fiction . . . Jamie Harrison has made southwestern Montana her own, and Jules Clement is its conscience, in what is by any measure a compelling debut.”
—Richard Currey, author of Crossing Over and The Wars of Heaven
“The Edge of the Crazies is an extremely readable, flowing narrative with lively, interesting characters . . . They have the ring of authenticity and genuineness.”
—Jon A. Jackson, author of the Detective Sergeant Mullheisen Mysteries
“This is a murderously funny mystery. It is stylishly written, tightly plotted, and manages to be at the same time a very shrewd look at contemporary life in the Rockies.”
—Frederick Turner, author of Beyond Geography and A Border of Blue
ALSO BY JAMIE HARRISON
The River View
The Center of Everything
The Widow Nash
Blue Deer Thaw
An Unfortunate Prairie Occurrence
Going Local
For Steve
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
There had been a wind during the night, and all the loneliness of the world had swept up out of the southwest.
—WALLACE STEGNER,
The Big Rock Candy Mountain
The urge to mate takes its toll on every species.
—GUY DE LA VALDENE,
Making Game
1
GEORGE BLACKWATER MADE SLIGHT PUFFING SOUNDS as he wandered down Fiske Avenue. No one paid attention to him; no one else was visible. It was 8:00 a.m. on the first Sunday in May, and Blue Deer had too many bars for anyone to be up at this hour. George had returned from his mother’s funeral in Portland a month earlier, but he’d saved the wake—a solo celebration—for the previous night.
There’s nothing lonelier than a shabby, empty sidewalk on the Sunday morning after a Saturday night drunk. It could have been a sidewalk anywhere—New York, Peoria, Seattle—if you didn’t notice the black-and-white magpies looking for garbage on the curb, or hear the whistle and chug of the train a block away, or raise your head to see the mountains that ringed the town and shrunk it to proper size. Almost everyone who actually lived in Blue Deer had forgotten to look up.
George veered around some vomit on the sidewalk and methodically checked the pockets of his overalls, then his shirt and jacket, for his office keys. At the doorway of number 58 he checked again, now a little frantic, and finally located them in the bib. He continued to puff as he unlocked the door and pulled his body up two dozen warehouse steps. He stopped at the top and let the darkness and quiet soothe him, then made his way down the long hall to the largest room.
George’s office was airy and serene, with massive windows of old, wavy glass framed in fir. With a deep sigh, he lowered himself onto an ancient couch and briefly contemplated the neatly packaged bowling ball he carried at his waist. He was otherwise lanky, but today his center felt heavier than usual, and his bright yellow shirt made him slightly dizzy. The light was strange, and in the mirror facing the couch George’s relatively handsome face looked blue-white and beaky, like an elongated seagull’s, his dark brown hair metallic. Everything in the silent office looked foreign to him this morning, though it would have looked strange to anyone else at the best of times: Dust dimmed the spots and the glass eyes of the two-headed calf hanging over the door, and added varnish to an ancient girlie calendar, several photos and movie posters, an immense assortment of suspended bird feathers, and row upon row of books and screenplays on warped, off-kilter shelves. The only clean objects in the room were the telephone, the flashing answering machine, the computer, the stack of papers he’d left for Edie, his assistant, and a half-dozen oil paintings of various sizes, all showing fields of grass or the sea, all blue and green and gray.
George sighed again at the sight of the answering machine, and shambled back down the hall to make coffee. When he returned he still ignored the flashing light, and sat down at the computer. His balance was off, and he brought the coffee down a little too hard; he hissed with annoyance at the effort as he wiped it up with a dirty paper towel. He flicked the switch and waited patiently as the machine booted up, then squinted at the screen, which read MESSAGE PENDING. He ignored this and opened a new file, GREAT. At the top of the screen he typed, somewhat laboriously, Ideas for next script. He hit return twice, paused, and bore down on the keyboard:
Crazy writer, victim of tragic error of youth, is dispossessed by soulless brother and bitch mother, embittered by fat wife.
Suffers as situation worsens. Finally realizes redemption can only come with a clean slate.
Redeems life and ability to love through fiendishly clever & violent revenge.
George paused again, and the moment dragged on. He had no further thoughts. He moaned in annoyance and took a swig of coffee. The message light in the corner of the screen was boring a hole through his pupils. He punched two buttons and sat back, wondering what could possibly have happened in L.A. in the last few hours to warrant such an intrusion. The image blurred and shivered and finally came into focus, and George gave a little shriek as he shot backward in his rolling chair and came to his feet. The screen showed an etching of the tip of a shotgun firing a blast toward a goggle-eyed dandy, with these words centered beneath it:
George, you stupid shit.
I told you this would happen someday.
Sometimes sorry’s not enough.
The screen vanished, and it took George a moment to understand that it had truly vanished, that he was looking into the smoking interior of his monitor. A roar filled the room, and George straightened and turned to watch as the old glass of the windows descended to the floor in a wave. He looked back at the machine, reached out to touch it, and a hole bloomed on the back of his hand. As the second report reached his ears, his shoulder went numb, blood spattered the shell of the monitor, and the hole in his hand turned red and liquid. Pain kicked in, and fear, and George fell to his knees and crawled with remarkable speed toward the hallway, screaming again and again for Edie. He’d forgotten that it was Sunday. There was no one else in the building.
FIVE MINUTES EARLIER and four blocks down Fiske, Peter Johansen and Alice Wahlgren walked silently, hunkered down against the wind. Peter was tall, with dark gold hair and a loping walk; Alice was much shorter, with straight brown hair and a habit of pushing her glasses up her nose. She had to scurry from time to time to keep up with him. They both looked a little surly, self-absorbed, and pale. They’d been out the night before, too, and were now retrieving the vehicle that hadn’t made it home from the Blue Bat. Peter wanted to go fishing, but all his gear was locked in the back of the abandoned truck with the dead battery. Alice had wanted to sleep in and had pointed out that half the sky was blue-black with storm clouds, but it took two to push-start an ancien
They moved along, each nurturing a solid sense of injustice, dodging the same vomit George Blackwater had dodged earlier. Alice blew little clouds of steam into the cold morning air, and this was slowly driving Peter insane. As they approached an alley he turned to ask her to stop, and walked right into Mona Blackwater, George’s wife. Mona had been running, not a characteristic pace—her hair shot out in strange directions, and her shoulders heaved—and she bounced back a step, looked them over coldly, flung a cigarette butt at Alice’s feet, and ran past them down the sidewalk.
Alice and Peter looked at each other, and at Mona’s bulky form as it receded. The truck was in sight now, two blocks down Fiske.
“Maybe I’ll just go with you,” Alice said. “I think I’d like to get out of town.”
When they reached the yellow Mazda it came to life with a feeble putput and a growl. Alice was behind the wheel, wrestling with the manual choke; Peter trotted behind, still pushing, his face deep pink and covered with sweat. Halfway to B Street they hit a slight slope, and Alice picked up speed. Peter ran alongside and jumped in the passenger door. Alice ran the stop sign at B and Main, and they smiled at each other in glee before they heard three huge blasts, one after another, and glass smashed to the ground on their left. Alice gunned the engine to thirty, almost the Mazda’s top speed, and ran the next stop sign while Peter craned his neck, trying to make sense of the noise, wondering if they’d somehow lost the last three years and were back on the Lower East Side of New York. They made it to their house on Fifth Street before they realized the glass had come from George’s office.
2
JULES CLEMENT LAY IN HIS BED, DREAMING THAT he was a small boy in a large boat on the ocean, watching birds wheel overhead as the boat swayed in large charcoal waves. He looked into the water and made out shapes, then leaned over the side and waited. One shape surfaced, a bright blue fish, flat and oval and inspecting him with one tiny yellow eye. When he saw a face reflected, not his, the gulls overhead began to shriek, and the fish sank away into the gray.
The phone rang three more times as he stared up at his ceiling, wondering if, perhaps, this day would be different from the others. It seemed unlikely that deliverance, romantic or otherwise, would strike at 8:30 on a Sunday morning, but Jules had faith in the strange. So he cleared his throat, sat up, and picked up the phone.
“Jules.”
“Peter.” His friend’s voice was quavery; the night before it had been a bullhorn.
“What’s up?”
“Something’s happening downtown. I think someone just shot out George Blackwater’s windows.”
Jules wiggled his toes and eyed the clean laundry in the corner of the room, past the dog bed. “You just had a hunch, huh?”
“Screw you. We were down there getting the truck. We heard some shots and saw a whole lot of glass.”
“Okay. I’ll go check it out.” Jules hung up, stood up, and slid on a pile of magazines and newspapers on his way across the room. The phone rang again and he backtracked carefully.
“Yo,” said Jules.
It was Harvey Moyers, one of his deputies. “I’ve got a report of a shooting downtown and I’m heading there. I thought you’d like to know.”
“I heard already. I’m on my way. Blackwater’s offices, right?”
Harvey was quiet for a second. “Right.”
JULES PULLED UP to the Fiske Avenue offices with his eyes trained on the blown-out windows, and stopped just short of Bean and Al, the paramedics, as they wrestled a gurney from Absaroka County’s only ambulance. Jules had assumed that the windows were the sole victims of some early a.m. crazies, and regarded the ambulance leerily. He didn’t like blood, and didn’t have to see much of it in Blue Deer. It made his skin crawl when it wasn’t in the classic context of a bar fight or part of the inevitable sadness of countless alcohol-soaked car wrecks. He followed the paramedics slowly up the stairs, combing his hair with his fingers, glad he hadn’t paused for a shower but wishing he’d put on his uniform. George Blackwater was flat on his back on the landing, insisting in a high, shaky tone that Al and Bean take care of the hole in his hand, apparently ignorant of the fact that they’d needed to work first on the larger hole near his collarbone. The red hand waved in the air, and Jules edged past it down the hall, hugging the left-hand wall to avoid the bloody trail on the carpeting. Harvey’s wiry frame was silhouetted in the doorway of George’s office, and Jules walked past him and over to the empty windows, crunching glass, to gulp in the cold spring air.
“Shit,” said Harvey. “Someone really doesn’t like this guy. I thought I kept him out of trouble by driving him home last night.”
Jules stared at him. “He fell down in the Blue Bat near closing time,” Harvey explained. “Delly said he was talking about his mom and drinking straight vodka. They called me when he started his car and rammed the alley wall.”
“Maybe you should have just brought him in, Harvey.”
“I was trying to give him a break. I know the guy.”
“You know everyone. Do me a favor and stop giving the town a break, okay?”
Harvey rolled his eyes and smiled at the ceiling.
Jules’s circulation was working again. He looked at the computer and the tipped-over chair, the spray of blood, and the large pock in the plaster midway up the wall. He stuck his head out the window and eyed the ancient brick building across the avenue, two-storied like the one he stood in. All of the facing windows were open and he could see ladders and paint cans inside. “Have you checked it out over there yet?”
“It’s just you and me here. I was holding down the fort.”
Harvey weighed about one-fifty at the heaviest of times, and Jules pictured him on the roof, keeping a cap on things, the pale skin beneath his thin blond hair burning in the sunlight, light blue eyes flicking over the pavement below like a hungry sparrow hawk’s.
“Keep holding it down. I’ll be right back.”
This time Jules went around the glass and made himself take in the quantity of blood on his way down the hall. George had quieted down, not necessarily a good sign; Bean and Al had him on the gurney and were strapping him down. Jules knelt beside George and wiped a smear of blood off his forehead, fighting down the urge to retch.
“Got any ideas, Mr. Blackwater?”
“Crazy fucks,” muttered George. “No one loves me.”
Al gave Jules an amused look and fastened the last strap. “He’s in shock. It’s a flesh wound. He’ll be fine.”
The door across Fiske was unlocked, and this time Jules ran up the stairs. He headed left at the top and peered into a suite of rooms covered with dropcloths. There was primer on the walls, and the floors not covered by canvas were polished wood. A taped sign on the open door said BIDDLE & RAKE, ATTORNEYS AT LAW. Blue Deer’s most prominent lawyers apparently planned to replace their old offices, across from the courthouse, with spacious new quarters. A wooden ladder lay open on its side in front of the far right window, and Jules crossed carefully over to it, eyeing the shine of metal. The three cartridges on the floor were .30-30s, and the paint on the sill, still rubbery and fresh, was scratched. The office across the street was empty now, with the door shut, and Jules could make out the two-headed calf and the empty computer monitor. He found some newspaper and a roll of duct tape in the corner, carefully wrapped the shells, and stowed them in his jacket. He taped the office door shut, pulled out a red pen, and wrote ROOM SEALED, ORDER OF ABSAROKA COUNTY POLICE over BIDDLE & RAKE. He wondered if the lawyers’ children had ever thought of changing their names. Maybe it was all a question of context.
IT’S HARD TO be a small-town sheriff if you’re not a natural gossip, if you have no memory for the vagaries of your neighbors, their love affairs and petty scams and filthy or virtuous habits. It was Jules’s major disadvantage as Absaroka County’s head law-enforcement officer. He was a local boy, what passed for a born and bred Montanan in a state only one hundred years old, but he’d been away from Blue Deer for almost half his life, and knowledge of a larger world got you nowhere if you felt an essential distaste for the seedier points of a small town’s history. He had a fabulous memory for some details—he always won Jeopardy! when he made it to the bar by 4:30 to watch; he could give rainfall and river depth statistics for the last forty years, and tell you exactly which birds were sitting in your yard and why they were there. He could even tell you part of why New York was New York, and Montana Montana, or what you might see out the window if you flew across the Russian steppes. But no one thought to ask him these questions, and he was often incapable of retaining information on the grimy past of Blue Deer’s inhabitants, even though he’d lived his last two years and his first seventeen with them. He chose to forget most bad details, unless they struck him as humorous or unless they encompassed an actual crime. It was to his credit that he usually thought the best of people, and was otherwise philosophical about their failings, though it made the Absaroka County attorney, Axel Scotti, grit his teeth on a weekly basis.
