The Scourge($14.95Value)

Description

Jake Battle is minding his own business, just fishing, when he follows the squawking of ravens and magpies to find the body of a beautiful woman, wife of a local ranch owner who is also one of the richest men in the country. When the fatal slug is dug out of her, everyone in Clark City, Montana, knows there’s only one gun around that could have fired it, the rifle of Jake’s friend, Carlton Heavy-Eagle.“Don’t get mixed up in this mess,” Jake’s girlfriend, Gwen, tells him. “You can’t tell what’s going on.” But Jake is too mixed up in it already. The path he follows to clear his friend leads to tales of gang violence, wanton sex, cocaine smuggling, and the mysterious Scourge—a man monstrous in size and ugliness.In his premier novel, author Keen Butterworth has painted a vivid portrait of both man and nature as Jake—haunted by his past in Vietnam, soothed by the love he shares with Gwen—pursues a dangerous manhunt amid the rugged beauty of the northern Rockies. Keen Butterworth was born and raised in Tidewater Virginia, south of the James. He graduated from Randolph-Macon College, served three and a half years on board ship as a Navy officer, taught high school in Petersburg, Virginia, for three years, and then attended graduate school at the University of South Carolina. He taught in the English department at South Carolina from 1970 until 2009. He now divides his year between Columbia, South Carolina, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he and his wife, Nancy, bought a house in 2011. I'm happy to be out in the 4Runner by myself. Zipping along these Montana roads with almost no traffic gives me a chance to clear my head. I survey the brown and gray hills slumbering in the wan winter sunlight, conserving their energies, preparing for their springtime effusions in four or five months. I slip in a tape of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante and head down U.S. 287 until it intersects the interstate. Along the way I let Mozart's logical clarity reorganize my brain and try to answer my growing list of questions: Q) Where did Lila meet the ugly guy -- this Goon? A) With no facts, I have to guess: To satisfy her coke habit, she needed a contact, a source. Probably in Great Falls. When the dealer finds out Lila has access to a private airstrip, he negotiates an arrangement involving Lila and Goon. Q) How did Goon get Carlton's rifle? A) Buck Wallace had been around Clark City long enough to hear all the hunting stories. Why would he want to steal the rifle? He's jealous when he finds out Carlton is screwing Lila. Buck wants revenge on Carlton. One day he goes to the Bunkhouse when Carlton is out working at the ranch, then he slips into Carlton's room and takes the gun. He has the gun in his quarters out at the Circle 9, so when he learns that Goon is going out to Golden Meadows with Lila and wants a gun, Buck lends him the .25-35 Winchester? Q) Who fired the two rounds from a .32 out at Golden Meadows? And why? A) Lila? Was she protecting herself from Goon? Was she trying to kill Goon because he was making big trouble for her? Did she shoot first and incite Goon to kill her? Q) Finally, why am I so deeply involved in this fucking case? A) One: I'm fascinated by Lila? Two: Fate: I found her body? Three: I'm too bloody stupid to kiss the case goodbye and let Ralston do his job?