Another Man's Moccasins

11

Henry rode with me as we headed south to Powder Junction in an attempt to overtake Tuyen’s Land Rover, but we hadn’t seen it so far. He looked at a nondescript section of the frontage road, just off I-25. “Who died there?”

Most people didn’t like riding with me, and most of my friends and family had learned to not ask when my eyes unfocused on some lonely stretch of prairie or on a desolate part of the road. “Those three kids that turned over that Camaro on the way back up from the Powder Junction Rodeo back in ’98.”

“Have I ever told you how depressing it is to ride in this county with you?”

I switched on the emergency lights and coaxed the Bullet up past eighty-five. “Well, you never look at the place the same way.”

He nodded. “Where is Vic? ”

I made a face. “What’s that got to do with anything? ” He didn’t answer, and I glanced at the clock on the radio of my truck. “With Cady and Michael, eating lunch.”

He adjusted his signature Fort Smith Big Lip Carp Tournament ball cap and carefully placed his thick ponytail through the adjustable strap. “At the risk of getting my head bitten off, I will ask again. How is that going? ”

I watched the road, then readjusted in my seat and propped an elbow on the armrest. “I don’t know.” I was the picture of annoyance and uncertainty.

The Bear laughed. “You do not know? ”

I sighed. “We . . . When we . . . When we were back in Philadelphia? ”

“Yes.”

“We got really close.”

“Yes.”

“But that was a different context and now we’re back home and it’s different.”

“Yes.”

I started to speak, then stopped, waited another moment, and then continued. “What happened back there between the two of us—I’m not so sure it should’ve happened. Not so much me, but her.” I turned up the air-conditioning as it seemed to be growing even hotter in the cab. Pretty soon, I was going to run out of knobs to play with; maybe it was a family trait. “I just think that she might’ve done it because she felt sorry for me.”

He stared at the side of my face. “There are a multitude of reasons why she might have instigated the ... intimacy between the two of you. A sense of mortality connected with Cady’s accident, strangers in a strange land . . .”

“She was born there.”

He stuck out a hand to silence me. “Let me finish? ”

“Sorry.”

“Perhaps even a competitive response to her mother, but the one I would be willing to believe the most readily is that she deeply cares for you. Not about you, but for you, and there is a difference.” He turned back toward the windshield. “That, or it was a mercy fuck.” I turned and looked at him, and he shrugged. “To use her terminology.” The Bear drummed his long fingers on the dash and changed the subject. “So, you think Tuyen knows something?”

I stared at the road. “I’m not talking to you anymore.”

“I was joking.”

“It wasn’t funny.”

He gazed at the rolling prairie. “It was a little funny.”

We both escaped into our separate silences and watched the golden-brown grass sweep patterns in the heated wind. We needed rain, soon, or all of Absaroka County would be a tinderbox.

I knew full well that I’d never outlast him, so I started talking again, anxious to pick up another conversational thread. “I’m thinking Tuyen might know if Ho Thi had any friends, or if anyone else is missing.” We passed a wide load, carrying two halves of a modular home, and navigated back into the righthand lane. “I’ve got calls into the Los Angeles and Orange County Sheriff ’s Departments to see if they can get me anything, but Tuyen is here and he might be useful.”

Henry watched the road. “Did the manager at the Flying J say that the girl was Asian? ”

“Jim said the manager was unsure, but that they were both female and had long dark hair.”

He shrugged. “Possibly Native...”

“Wouldn’t be the first time an Indian girl was hitchhiking up I-25, but I’m not betting on it.”

“Why do you want this young woman, if she exists, to be Vietnamese? ”

I glanced at him. “It would mean that somebody’s alive who knows what’s going on.” My eyes returned to the road. “Why do you ask that question? ”

He continued studying me. “I sometimes wonder if you are trying to come to terms with two mysteries almost four decades apart.”

I drove and stared at another patch of the highway where more lives had come to an abrupt halt. I remembered who they were, their names, their family, their friends; these dead weren’t the ones I worried about—there were people who would remember them. It was the ones who had died truly alone who concerned me most. If no one remembered them, were they ever really here? I took a deep breath and forced my eyes back to the road. “Ruby says I care about dead people more than the living.”

Henry said nothing.

Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam: 1968

I wasn’t letting him go, and there wasn’t anybody else in the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge to save him.

They had all run away.

My hand fit well around his throat, and I was surprised at how little effort it took to hold Le Khang against the wall, a good foot and a half off the floor. “I don’t like those answers....”

He squeaked, which I took as an answer of sorts, so I lowered his feet to the plywood. He tried to yank away, but I still had him pinned pretty well. “She no say!”

I started lifting him again, but he shook his head so I put him back down. “She go with customer!”

“Who?”

“No say...” I tightened my hold, but he slapped at my arm and I eased off. “Air force personnel, fly-boy.”

“Gimme a name.”

“No name.” I shrugged and started to pick him up again. “Thunderchief, F-105! He fly F-105 name Jumpin’ Jolene!”

I let go of his throat and then threw an index finger in his face. “This better be the straight dope, because if it’s not—I’m gonna be back, and brother you do not want that.” Mendoza and Baranski stepped aside as I passed between them, and they followed behind me as I headed for Gate 055.

I could hear Baranski’s voice over my shoulder. “Look, it’s just a question of time before you get shipped off to the Long Bin stockade if you keep...” He caught up and pushed me a little to the side with a shove to my shoulder, and I stopped and squared up to him. “Whoa, whoa . . . We’re not going to do that again.” He held his hands up at me. “Just stop for a second, all right?” I waited. “It’s one thing if you wanna brace the Slopes or the wing wipers, but you go over to the flight line and start leaning on air force personnel, they will send you back to Chu Lai if they have to do it in a rickshaw.”

I stood there in the dirt street and felt the heat waves in my lungs. I was tired, hungover, and pissed, but even with my limited experience in law enforcement, I knew he was right.

Baranski smiled a white and wicked grin, and Mendoza came around to stand next to him, but I noticed they both stayed a good arm’s reach away. “You follow us, but you don’t do anything and you don’t say anything. Got it?”

I followed them back to security headquarters, where we commandeered one of the jeeps. We set out with the two of them in the front and me in the back.

We drove along the flight line on the tarmac where the Imperata grass scrapped the undercarriage and the mud puddles splashed khaki on the jeep’s flanks—past the debris and broken fuselages of damaged aircraft. We went by large Quonset hangars, which reminded me of surplus ones that were used by ranchers back in Wyoming. The sight made me homesick and started me thinking about blondes, but I could feel other things overtaking my passions and my hands stilled.

At the flight barracks, I got a clearer view of how the other half lived. On an air force base, pilots are royalty, and fighter pilots are kings.

“He leaves the base all the time.” The duty sergeant didn’t know where Brian Teaberry was and didn’t even look up when we came in. “He’s not scheduled for duty until 0800 tomorrow morning.”

Baranski leaned on the counter and looked at the top of the sergeant’s head. He was an embattled Korean War veteran and was not likely to be overly impressed with our homicide investigation. “This concerns a homicide investigation.”

The overworked man finally looked up from the forms he was stapling. “So?” I came around and rested an arm on the corner of the counter as he put the stapler down. “Look, big man, I don’t know where he is.”

I stapled his right earlobe to his neck.

“Damn it!”

I stapled his left earlobe to his neck.

“Damn it, God...Wait a minute! Christ, get him off me!”

The duty sergeant said that Teaberry was over at passenger service awaiting the arrival of his new fiancée, who was an administrative assistant coming up from Saigon for a visit, and that he was probably playing cards.

There were dark blue buses lined up out front, waiting for passengers from flights in, along with a great number of air force personnel, who were sitting on the ground waiting for both flights in and flights out. I read the two-language sign at the entrance, CLEAR WEAPONS BEFORE ENTERING.

“Stay in the jeep, man.”

I looked up and Mendoza motioned to me, like you would a dog. Stay.

They were inside for only a few minutes, then returned, fired up the utility vehicle, and pulled us around back to where there was an officers’ waiting area on the other side of a wire and lath fence. They got out of the jeep, and the Texican motioned to me again to stay put.

I sat there and watched as they went through a gate to our left and crossed the yard to where three captains and a first lieutenant were playing cards under a makeshift awning. A few C-123s were warming up on the tarmac only a couple of hundred feet away, the racket from their engines literally shaking the ground.

Baranski and Mendoza ambled up to the card players, and I watched above the noise as they introduced themselves and made some small talk to the seated men. A sizable fellow with sandy hair and a vulpine-looking mustache said something to Mendoza.

Teaberry.

Mendoza said something back. Teaberry said something to both Mendoza and Baranski. Baranski said something to Teaberry who said something again, at which the other men at the table laughed. Mendoza nodded, said something, and then gestured toward me. Come.

I stood up.

Teaberry glanced at me and then said something else to the other card players, who laughed. Mendoza smiled and gestured again. Sic ’em.

I got out of the jeep.

Teaberry started to stand, but Mendoza pushed him back in his metal folding chair.

I tore the gate off the fence as I entered.

The other two captains and the first lieutenant threw their cards down and disappeared into the passenger service building. Teaberry yanked away from Mendoza and ran to the far side of the yard.

I caught Teaberry at the fence.

He said he didn’t know anything about Mai Kim. Mendoza and Baranski grabbed me, but I held on to Teaberry and told him he was a liar and that if he didn’t tell me everything I wanted to know, I was going to strangle him with his own intestines. Teaberry said something, but it wasn’t particularly what I wanted to hear, so I threw him into the fence.

Mendoza wrapped his arms around my head and Baranski grabbed my knees, but I was still able to get Teaberry as he tried to scramble away. I fell on him, and the fence collapsed.

Teaberry said that Hollywood Hoang was the one who had set him up, and that for a nominal fee of ten bucks Mai Kim had taken the captain to a sandbag bunker between Gate 055 and Hotel California, where they had had sex, which had been invigorating without being overly lengthy. Then he walked her back to Gate 055, where they parted company. Teaberry said she went toward the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge at about 1:00 A.M. and that that was the last time he’d seen her. The security detail at the gate could vouch for his story.

I let go of him, and Mendoza and Baranski let go of me.

“What’s the story on Eli?”

He sighed and pulled the seat belt out from his chest with a thumb. “Blooding the medicine . . .” He released the belt and turned his head but continued watching the road.

I vaguely knew about most of the Cheyenne talismans. “The medicine arrows?”

He took a deep breath. “There are three.”

“Arrows? ”

“Talismans; the Medicine Arrows, the Sacred Cap, and the Autumn Count are all Cheyenne. I am not sure about the Crow.”

“Autumn Count. Is that the one you mentioned in Philadelphia? ”

“Yes. The Tonoeva Wowapi is the only one I have never seen. It is a sacred hide with many symbols that reveals the history of the people and, if read correctly, can tell the future. It is said that this is the smallest of the medicines it possesses.”

These were things that Henry Standing Bear did not take lightly, so I drove silently, waiting for the rest of the explanation. The jaw muscles in his face tightened, but he said nothing, the dark of his eyes reflecting the glare from the windshield. “My half-brother, Lee, has seen it....”

I was curious, not only about the artifact but also about Lee, whom he rarely mentioned. I knew he had just seen him on his way back from Philadelphia, but I hesitated on the personal front, familiar with the frontier between red and white, where there was no pink. “What about the Sacred Cap?”

He seemed pleased to leave the subject of the Autumn Count and Lee. “Matriarchal in nature, the Issiwun typifies the buffalo and harvest.”

“And the arrows? ”

His eyes lowered and stared at the space in the floorboards between us. “Four stone-headed arrows wrapped in a coyote skin. I was a small child and brought by my father to a lodge where they were revealed to me; I remember that my mother waited outside and was not allowed to look upon them. Periodically they are renewed with fresh sinew and feathers. They are kept, like the other items, by an individual who holds the office for life or until it is voluntarily relinquished.”

“So, let me guess, the White Buffalo were keepers of the arrows? ”

“No, the keeper of the arrows must be full-blood, and to my knowledge the arrows are with the Southern Cheyenne in Oklahoma.”

“What about the Sacred Cap?”

He breathed a short laugh. “The cap is adorned with a Crow scalp; it is unlikely that it would be entrusted to a Crow warrior.” His face stiffened, and I knew he was thinking of his brother Lee. “The Autumn Count’s location is unknown, so the medicine that Eli spoke of must be the medicine bundle that was found with Virgil.”

“The one he had around his neck?”

“Yes.” He stood. “It would appear that Eli feels his father’s actions have tainted his stewardship of a holy item.”

“Hence blooding the medicine?”

His face was still. “Eli has no doubt that his father has committed these acts.”

I sighed. “That’s unfortunate.”

“Yes.”

I thought about the photograph of the boy. “So, Eli is Virgil’s son.”

“Yes.”

I thought about the pink plastic wallet. “What about the rest of the family, the woman and the girl?”

“Sandra and Mara, both dead.”

“How?”

The trials of his people wore heavily on the broad shoulders, but he spoke without emotion. “Head-on with a drunk driver. They died in January of ’71.”

“And Eli survived?”

“I understand there were behavioral problems even then, and he was shuttled off to foster homes. He now has his own gallery over in Hot Springs, South Dakota; Native abstracts, but things are difficult.” I nodded and, after a moment, he turned to watch me. “What?”

I took a deep breath and set the cruise control at ninety. “So blooding the medicine is like a curse?”

The Cheyenne Nation frowned. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

I felt my face tighten. “Well, it appears to be holding.”

I noticed that one of the highway patrolmen had pulled a green vehicle over at the top of a far hill and hit the brakes. I slowed my truck and slid in behind the Dodge as the shapely blonde in mirrored glasses placed a hand on her hip, near the Glock, and looked back at us from the driver’s side door of Tran Van Tuyen’s Land Rover.

Rosey wore short black search gloves, with undone pearl snaps that revealed pale skin at the wrists of her tanned arms. She straightened her campaign hat as she walked toward us with Tuyen’s license, registration, and insurance card in her hand.

I liked how she walked and smiled. “How you doin’, Troop?”

She tipped her sunglasses down and looked at me. “Have we got some kind of Vietnamese migration going on?”

“He’s the grandfather.”

Her demeanor changed immediately. “Oh.”

I glanced up at Tuyen, who was still calmly seated in his vehicle, but who was adjusting his rearview mirror to look at us. “How fast?”

She leaned an elbow on my truck and glanced back at him. “Borderline, eighty-three.”

“Let him go? He’s had a rough couple of days.” Her eyes came back to mine, and the delicate parchment of the skin at her high cheekbones reminded me of someone else who had been beautiful.

She nodded, and the eyes went down only to come up slow. “You owe me one.” She handed me the paperwork and smiled crookedly. I was feeling a little warm, and I don’t think it had anything to do with the temperature.

As she strutted back to the black Dodge and climbed in with one last glance, I turned to Henry. “It’s you, right? I mean . . . it’s not me.”

He frowned. “No, it is you. Some women have very peculiar tastes.”

I climbed out and walked up to Tuyen’s vehicle as Rosey slipped back onto the highway like a glossy panther looking for prey and disappeared over the hill. Tuyen turned to look at me as I leaned on his door. I noticed that the hard case I’d seen at the ghost town had now gravitated to the passenger floor. I handed him his identification and then looked up and down the empty highway. “Headed back to your motel?”

He stuffed the license back into his wallet and flipped the other papers into the center console. “Yes.”

“Mr. Tuyen, would you have any idea if Ho Thi was traveling alone?”

He looked at me, his face unchanged. “What?”

“I got some information that your granddaughter may not have been traveling alone and was wondering if you would have any idea who might’ve been with her in the car.”

I watched as he stared at the steering wheel. “I . . . I have no idea.”

I crouched down and placed both arms on the sill. “Do you think you could contact your organization back in California and see if there’s anyone else missing? ”

“Certainly.” He began reaching for his cell phone, which was plugged into his dash.

“That’s okay, you’re not going to get service till you get down into Powder Junction.”

He tried to smile, but his face remained grim. “Outside the veterinary office? ”

“Yep.”

He took a breath. “You think that Ho Thi might have been traveling with someone?”

“It’s possible.” I nudged the brim of my hat back.

He nodded. “I will contact Children of the Dust and see if anyone else is missing.” He glanced at me and then to the rolling hills that seemed to recede in the distance, a terrain so broad it hurt your eyes. “This is most distressing.”

“Yes, it is.” I stood and gestured back toward Henry. “My friend and I are going down to Powder Junction and ask a few more questions. Are you going to be in your room?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll have lunch at around one?” He looked up at me with a questioning expression, and I called back over my shoulder. “There’s only one restaurant in Powder Junction. It’s the one connected to the bar.”

Henry studied the side of my face as I pulled around Tuyen’s vehicle and jetted back up to ninety. I glanced at my best friend in the world as I thought it all through, watching as Tran Van Tuyen pulled out after us and followed at a slower speed. “Do you think I’m prejudiced? Really?”

“Yes.” I glanced at him, and his smile was sad. “We all are, to a certain point—unfortunate, is it not? ”

As he watched me, I watched the green Land Rover recede in my rearview mirror. We were both silent the rest of the way to Powder Junction.

The Dunnigan brothers were easy to find—they were now haying the opposite side of the highway, the giant swathers working like prehistoric insects along the gentle slopes of the barrow ditch. I turned on my light bar emergencies, slowed my truck, and pulled in ahead of the big machines.

Den slowed his swather and stopped only inches from my rear quarter-panel. I got out and looked up at him, but he didn’t move from the glass-enclosed cab of the still-running machine. James was already out of his, had climbed down, and was hustling to get to me. He raised a hand, his thin arm hanging in the frayed cuff of his shirt like a clapper in a bell. I glanced up at Den, who pushed his ball cap back on his head and didn’t look at us. James smiled nervously. “Hey, Walt.”

Figuring it would unsettle him, I leaned on the front blades of Den’s machine. “Hello, James. I’ve got a few more questions for you and your brother, if that’s okay.” I watched as he took off his sweat-soaked straw hat, the red clay trapped in the perspiration on his forehead looking dark as bloodstain. James gestured to Den, who reluctantly shut the swather off, threw open the glass door, and walked toward us on the front frame of the machine. I allowed the Dunnigans to assemble before asking my questions.

Den looked down at us; he had pulled out a small cooler from the cab, sat, and started to eat his lunch. “We haven’t found any more bodies, if that’s why you’re here.”

I ignored him. “James, when you met Ho Thi Paquet, the young woman in the . . .”

“Was that her name?”

I studied him for a moment. “I’m sorry, James. Yes, it was.” He nodded and looked at his scuffed-up ropers, which were wrapped twice with duct tape. “When you met Ho Thi at the bar, was she alone?” They both looked at me, but the only emotion I could read was confusion.

Den unwrapped a sandwich and opened a bottle of Busch, squeezing the cap between his fingers and pitching it into the high grass, before he finally spoke. “In the bar?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Well, yep. I mean the bartender was there.”

“Anybody else?”

They looked at each other, and then James answered in a soft voice. “No.”

“When you came outside, was there anyone else in her car?”

Den squinted into the sun and chewed a bite from his sandwich. “No.”

I nodded. “Guys, the next question is going to be a little personal. Where did you have sex with her?”

James looked worried and glanced at Henry, who had gotten out of the Bullet and had become more interested in farming equipment than I’d ever seen him. “In the truck.”

“Your truck.”

“Yep.”

I nodded. “Parked where?”

“Out near Bailey.”

“She rode with you?”

“Yep.”

“Then what?”

James’s neck was turning red as he glanced back at the Bear. “Well, I went first . . .”

“No, I mean after.” He looked up at me. “After you and Den had sex with her, did you drive her back to her car?”

They replied in unison. “Yes.”

“And you didn’t see anyone in the car with her?”

They replied in unison again. “No.”

“What time was it when you let her off?”

The two brothers looked at each other, and James started to speak before being cut off by Den, who threw the remainder of his sandwich into the open cooler and snapped it shut. “How in the hell should we know what time...”

James silenced him with a hand, the other clutching the brim of his hat as he thought. “We stopped cutting at about three, spent a couple of hours with her in the bar; then a little over an hour with her out at Bailey, and then brought her back to town.”

“So, six, six-thirty?”

“Yeah.”

I nodded. “All right, if you fellas see or hear anything . . .”

James shifted his weight toward me, and I stopped speaking. His eyes welled up. “Walt, there’s somethin’ else.”

Den’s voice exploded as he crouched down between us, still on the front rail of the swather, with the beer bottle dangling from his fingers. “James, God damn it, he don’t want to hear that shit!”

I looked back at James as he cleared his throat. “I been havin’ some strange things happen, seein’ things, I mean.”

Den climbed down. “James.”

The older rancher worried the corner of his mouth with an index finger. “After we found her on the side of the highway . . .”

Den yanked off his ball cap. “God damn it! ”

James leaned in a little, and I got the first whiff of blackberry brandy. “After you talked to us the first time? ”

I nodded. “Yes?”

“And we all knew she was dead?” I waited but said nothing. A few cars passed by on the highway, but James’s eyes stayed steady with mine. “Walt . . . do you believe in ghosts?”

Of all the things I was thinking James Dunnigan might reveal, a steadfast belief in the paranormal might’ve been close to last. I ignored Henry, who redirected his gaze from James to me. “I’m not sure I understand.”

James interrupted, and his voice carried an edge. “It’s a pretty simple question—do you think dead people come back?”

I thought about recent circumstances and felt an unease growing in the tightness of my chest. I thought about seeing Indians on the Bighorn Mountains during a blizzard, whose advice was that it was sometimes better to sleep than to wake. I thought about a battered cabin on the breaks of the Powder River, with floating scarves and brittle paint that flaked away from the whorls of cupped wood like sheet music. I thought about Eagle helmets and ceremonies and cloud ponies. “James . . .” My voice caught in my throat like a vapor lock and sounded strange, even to me. “To be honest, no, I don’t think the dead come back.” My voice caught and his head dropped, just a little. “Because I’m not so sure they ever leave.”

He looked back up. “I seen her.”

“Who?”

“I swear I seen her.”

Den erupted again. “God damn it, James! They’re gonna put you in a home! ”

“Ho Thi, I seen her.”

I placed my hand on the old rancher’s bony shoulder. “Where, James?”

“Bailey.” He looked to the left and a little north, as if somebody might be listening. “In the ghost town.”