Cold Dish

4

“You are not dying.”

“How do you know, you’ve never died.” I pushed my spine into the depression in the mile-marker post and eased my weight against its scaly green-painted surface.

“I have died many times.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Get up.”

I picked a piece of cheat grass from the red shale roadbed, and it came out in one whole stalk, roots and all. It was cold, too. The frost clung to every surface, encasing the poor little fellow like those dragonflies you see trapped in thousand-year-old amber. If I was going to keep doing this every other morning, I had to get a pair of gloves. I raised my head and looked at him as he positioned himself in front of the rising sun like some fighter pilot moving in for the kill. He nudged me with his foot. “Get up.”

I took a large swipe at his legs, but he nimbly jumped back out of the way, gravitating to the balls of his feet and rolling up on another set of wheels. The tendons and veins popped out of his naked ankles like those of some skinned cat, and I looked away, colder than when I hadn’t noticed he wasn’t wearing any socks. He came back and nudged me with the same foot as I resettled against my post. “If you don’t stop kicking me, you really are going to find out about dying.”

“This is something I did not know about you, grumpy in the mornings.” He looked into the little breaths of wind, which clattered the dried leaves that had refused to release their grip on the black cottonwoods along the Piney. Under Tiepolo skies, shrouded with banks of gray, rolled back at the lavender and cream edges like waves receding from a high shore, the sun was just starting to hit the tops of the hills in the Wolf Valley. I wouldn’t die, so I was feeling better.

“What are you smiling at?”

“Leave me alone, I’m having a moment of grace.”

He stared at me. “Well, we would not want to interrupt that.”

I tossed a piece of shale at him, missing by a good two feet. “If you can have multiple lives, I can have moments of grace.”

He grunted. “How was your moment of grace last night?”

“Not bad, as moments of grace go.” I thought for a while. “More like a moment of truth.”

He nodded. “That is good, they are harder to come by.” He winced as he stretched the tendons in his right knee; maybe he wasn’t indestructible. “So, she left the Jeep?”

“Yep.”

“You drive her home?”

“Yep.”

He stretched for a minute more, leaned against the mile-marker post I was sitting against, and sighed. “Okay…”

“Okay, what?”

“We do not have to talk about it.”

“We are talking about it.”

“No, I am talking about it, and all you are doing is saying ‘yep.’ ”

I put on my best faraway smile and looked at the glowing hills down the valley. “Yep…”

He kicked me again.

A battered black and maroon three-quarter-ton diesel with a roll feeder, signature MCKAY RANCH, was coming down the road; it slowed as it got to the bridge and rolled to a stop beside us. Clel Phillips was the head ramrod for Bill McKay and was probably wondering what the Indian was doing beside the road with the sheriff laying alongside the barrow ditch. He rolled the window down on the feed truck and rested his shoulder against the door. “Hey.”

Clel poured himself coffee from an aged Stanley Thermos and offered Henry a sip, which was gratefully declined, so he motioned toward me, and I left grace behind for a steaming cup full of drip-dry Folgers. My legs were about to kill me. “Hey.”

The coffee tasted good, and I used my other hand to pull the sopping sweatpants from between my legs. Clel filled the cup up again. “What’re you fellas up to?”

“Running.”

He looked up and back down the road. “From what?” He took the insulated cap back and took a sip. “Hey, Sheriff…” Business call. I never ceased to be charmed by the cowboy way of priming the pump. They were like cattle, constantly looking into your eyes to see if there was danger or if there needed to be. It was the best part of the cowboys’ character, the animal husbandry part. They stayed up through many nights in frozen calving sheds, running their hands over and into expectant mothers, comforting them, soliciting them. The cows’ lives depended on them, and their lives depended on the cows. It wasn’t an easy way to live, but it had its rewards. “I’m havin’ a little trouble with Jeff Tory.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“You know that stretch of bottom land between his place and McKay’s? Well, he’s been lettin’ bird hunters on his place, and they seem to be havin’ a little trouble figurin’ out where Tory’s place ends and ours begins.”

Escaped pheasant, Hungarian partridges, and chuckers were prevalent up and down the valley as they fled from the two local bird farms and from the eastern Remington Wingmasters that pursued them. We had the best bird hunting in the state, and every once in a while somebody else found out about it. I hadn’t hunted since Vietnam; somehow, it had lost its appeal. Clel was finishing up his saga by the time I got interested in his problem, “… and Bill says he’s gonna give ’em a load of rock salt for their trouble.”

“Well…” Henry was bobbing up and down, but I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts. In sheriffing, shooting people with anything was bad business, and Bill McKay was just the kind of ornery cuss that would go after double-ought buck hunters with rock salt just to call it even. “Does Bill have signs up along that stretch of fence?”

This is not what Clel wanted to hear, another chore to add to his ever-growing list. “No, we ain’t got no signs. You’d think the fence would be enough.”

“Well, I guess it’s not.” The state law was fence to keep out, which meant that if you didn’t want anything on your land, you were responsible for the fences, but evidently it took stronger measures for the two-legged variety. “Why don’t you run into Shipton’s and get some of those yellow metal no hunting signs and just wire ’em to the fence?”

“Then what?”

“Then you call me.”

He mulled that one over. “Sheriff Connally woulda let us shoot ’em.”

I reached over and took his coffee away from him. “Yep, Lucian probably would have done the job himself, but we’re living in more enlightened times.” I drained his cup and handed it back with a smile. “Ain’t it grand?”

I pushed off the truck and casually thundered the entirety of my 255 pounds, shoulder first, into Henry’s chest, emptying his lungs and sending him sliding backwards into the frosty grass below. I turned to smile and wave at Clel as I cut behind his truck and ran for my life. Past the county line, another hundred yards to my driveway, and another hundred to the cabin. I would never make it. I started listening to the rhythm of my breathing as I pushed with every muscle I didn’t have. Maybe this was all I needed every morning, somebody angry to chase after me. I figured it could be easily arranged. This was not the first time a white man in this part of the country had found himself in this particular situation. I must have pushed him farther than I had thought, because I could just make out the scratching of his shoes as they fought the shale bed at the side of the road.

Tell them Standing Bear is coming.

My head started feeling gorged with blood, whereas my legs began feeling as if they’d been left out overnight. To make things worse, my clammy sweatpants were now riding up the crack of my ass. I wondered if the Seventh Cavalry had had this problem as I ran for all I was worth, listening to the growing pat of his cushioned running shoes. I thought about turning to meet him, but the sound seemed to be coming from a distance yet, and I figured I’d play it out till the end.

The sun was shining on the driveway when I got there, and I was careful not to slip on the thawing frost as I cut the corner and headed into the final furlough. The receding wind was enough to flip the dried leaves up in salute as I passed, and I started thinking about making it: mistake. It didn’t take much, just a little nudge that forced my left foot in front of my right just before we got to the Big Bonanza irrigation channel. The results were cataclysmic as my already top-heavy momentum carried me into the only partly empty ditch.

By the time I got to the cabin, Henry was standing with two young men at the southeastern corner about ten feet from the front log wall. One of them was the young man with the strong features I had seen at the bar the other night. I walked past the ’69 half ton sitting in my drive and glanced at the hand-lettered writing on the door. Hopefully, Red Road Contracting’s carpentry skills were better than their sign painting ones.

“Well, if you do the porch at ten feet, then you can use dimensional twelves for the roof overhang.” He turned to look at me. “Run the porch all the way across the front.”

“Porch?” They were looking me over, but I guess they figured I was covered with mud every day.

“Yes, most people have areas outside their houses so that they can keep the majority of the outdoors outside.” Henry folded his arms and looked at me. “Charlie Small Horse, Danny Pretty on Top, this is Sheriff Walter Longmire.”

Pretty on Top was Crow, so it was a two-tribe deal. “How much is this going to cost?” I had to do this quickly; my pants were already starting to harden.

“I am glad you asked that question, because I like to be real up front with people on the cost of things. That way there isn’t any problem later on.” He looked down the front of the house and imagined the porch that would be the first step forward in home improvement I had taken in years. “About fifteen hundred in materials if you use rough-cut, not including the tin. Then labor.” Charlie Small Horse and I were going to get along.

After my shower, using soap as shampoo, I passed them on the way to the Bullet. They had already placed stakes and run string lines to give the general dimensions of the structure, and Charlie Small Horse was using a digging bar to break away the frozen topsoil. He paused to look up and smile as I carefully stepped over the bright green twine.

His head tilted a little as he looked at me. “You really a sheriff?”

I looked down at my uniform shirt and opened my coat to show him the badge. “Duly, at least until the next election.” I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “Mind if I ask you a question?”

He smiled. “Hey, you’re the sheriff.”

“I understand you had a little argument with Cody Pritchard the other day?”

He looked at the digging bar. “Who?”

I waited a second. “Cody Pritchard, the fella we found over near the Hudson Bridge Friday night?”

“Oh, him…”

“Yep, him. You had a little argument with him at the bar?”

“Yeah.”

“What was that about?”

He shifted his wide hands on the digging bar. “He didn’t like Indians.”

“How could you tell?”

He poked at the hole. “The usual. He sat there and gave me hard looks till he worked up his nerve.”

“He said something?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“The usual shit.”

“You say something?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

He grinned with bad teeth. “The usual shit.”

It felt strange to have somebody working on my house. It felt strange just to have anybody there. I looked over at the little red Jeep and figured I’d give her a call later.

It was one of those beautiful, high-plains days, where the sky just blinks blue at the earth and you have to remind yourself to take it in. The second cuttings were all up and tarped, and the perfectly round shadows of the bales looked surreal stretching across the disc-turned fields toward Clear Creek like stubble fields at harvest home. I didn’t pass a single car on the way into Durant. It was a little before eight when I got to the office, and Ruby already had five Post-its plastered on the doorjamb of my office. I spotted them when I came through the front door. “It’s a five Post-it day already?”

“Vic’s been here.”

I sat on the corner of her desk. “I thought she wasn’t coming in today.”

“She’s not, but she dropped some stuff off for you.” She looked up, and her hand went to her mouth. “What happened to your face?”

I didn’t think the scratches were that bad, but there were a lot of tumbleweeds in the ditch. “It’s a long story. Turk head back for Powder Junction?”

“After he decided how he was going to arrange the furniture when he got to be sheriff next year.”

I rolled my eyes as I got off her desk, headed for my office, and snatched all the little yellow Post-its as I went in. This was the system she had devised to get me to do all the things I was supposed to do during the course of my workday. On the top of my desk was a Tyvek envelope from the Federal Bureau of Investigation via FedEx. It still gave me a cheap thrill to get stuff from the Bureau, kind of reassuring me that I was on epistolary terms with the big guys: my pen pal, Elliot Ness. Vic must’ve brought it in. She wasn’t as impressed by the federales; considered them a case of dumb-asses-with-degrees. I broke open the nylon-reinforced filament tape and pulled out the mummy-wrapped container as an envelope fell to my desk. It was from the General Chemical Analysis Division, file number 95 A-HQ 7 777 777. Hell, with all those sevens we were bound to get lucky. And we were. The FBI laboratory said the foreign chemical compound on the ballistics samples had been identified as Lubricant SPG or Lyman’s Black Powder Gold.

Son of a bitch, that narrowed the field. That meant that whoever shot Cody Pritchard had done it with a black-powder shotgun. That didn’t make sense, though. I wasn’t even sure if you could shoot solid slugs out of antique shotguns without having them blow up in your face. And why use an antique shotgun? As the ultimate in nostalgia, at least thirteen American firms produced black-powder muskets, rifles, pistols, and shotguns, including flintlock and percussion designs. Traditional muzzleloaders are occasionally used for hunting, but black-powder arms turn up more frequently at pioneer celebrations, traditional turkey shoots, and in the hands of Civil War reenactment groups. They come with the original drawbacks of slow reloading, inconvenient ammunition, and lots of smoke. On the other hand, as certified antiques, their sale and ownership is generally not regulated under current firearm legislation. Two sides of the coin and neither one any help. Who had antique shotguns in this part of the country? The answer to that came roaring back: everybody. Even I had an old double-barrel Parker that had belonged to my grandfather and an old Ithaca 10 gauge coach gun. Okay, so it didn’t narrow the field. I looked up and found Ruby leaning against the doorjamb. “Yep?”

“I just wanted to see your response.”

I held up the letter. “To this?”

She smiled. “Underneath that.”

I slid the envelopes aside and picked up a pair of what looked like sweatpants. In blue screen printing it said CHUGWATER ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT XXXXL. “Very funny.” Chugwater was a little town about two-thirds of the way down to Cheyenne and is known for its chili mix and Hoover’s Hut, a gas station/gift shop. I held the pants up for inspection. “You could fit three of me in here.”

“Maybe she thinks you’ll grow into them.”

“Everybody’s a wise guy.” I tossed them over my chair. “Do you think you can track down Omar?”

“It’s hunting season.”

“I know.”

Her shoulders slumped a little. “If we had infrared satellite capabilities, I would say yes.”

I eased my sore legs into a sitting position. “I guess what I’m asking is if you could make a few phone calls and see if he’s around and not in Rwanda?”

“Sure, but I’m not making any promises.” She started to leave but not without a parting shot. “Read your Post-its, you have a busy day ahead of you.”

I tossed the letter from the FBI onto my desk and picked up the little pile of notes. The first was a vehicle inspection that needed to be done down on Swayback Road, south of town. No one had done it yet because it was a twenty-mile loop, and there was nothing else down there. How was I supposed to keep Gotham safe when I was out in the hinterlands reading VIN numbers? The next was from Kyle Straub, the prosecuting attorney for the county; he probably wanted to know why it was that I had released a crime scene without consulting with him. Another one was from Vern Selby, the circuit court judge, about my trial date on Wednesday, and Ernie Brown, Man About Town, had called and wanted a statement for the Durant Courant. The final one simply said WE HAVE AN OCCUPANT. Hell. I yelled after her, “Who is it?”

“Jules Belden.”

Shit. “PI or D and D?”

“Both; and assaulting an officer. I’ve got the report in here.”

I got up, walked out, and sat on her desk again. Before I could get settled, the file was under my nose. I flipped through quickly enough to let Turk’s childlike scrawl piss me off and stuck it under my arm. “Anybody feed Jules?”

“Not that I am aware of.”

“Do you want to go down to the Bee and get him something?”

“Do you want to finish these reports?”

I stood up. “I’ll be back.”

“I’ll alert the press.”

As I made my way out the back door, I mused on the little bed and breakfast that we had behind our offices, two holding cells upstairs and the regular jail downstairs. Not too many people understand the differences between jails and prisons. Jails are county or municipal facilities; prisons are state facilities. Jails usually hold two types of lodgers: those awaiting trial for both felonies and misdemeanors and those who have been convicted of misdemeanors punishable by a sentence of one year or less. Prisons, on the other hand, only hold those convicted of felonies punishable by sentences of one year or more. Hence, in my opinion, the major difference between a felony and a misdemeanor was that you either got to stay out back and eat Dorothy’s cooking or share an eight-by-eight room with Bubba the Sheep Squeezer in Rawlins.

The downside of sheriffing a jail was we had to provide three squares a day. The upside was that the Busy Bee Cafe was only three hundred yards away, past the Owen Wister Hotel and the Uptown Barber Shop, down a pair of crumbling, old steps behind the courthouse. The only time things got lean was on Sundays when Dorothy was closed and we fell back on the varied selection of potpies in the minifreezer in the back.

As I slipped behind the building, I looked up into the windows of the courthouse and hoped that neither Kyle Straub nor Vern Selby would see me. I spotted their cars in the parking lot and made a mental note to deal with the powers that be later in the day, possibly with the charm of a personal visit. By the time I got past the barbershop, the thought of biscuits and sausage gravy quickened my aching step considerably. The Bee was perched next to the bridge alongside Clear Creek and, with its definite slant toward the water, was vintage Alistair MacLean. The little bell on the door announced my entrance, and a couple of hunters looked up; nobody I knew. I sat at one of the end stools by the cash register and picked up the paper. There was a picture of Ferg and the Search and Rescue team standing around eating donuts and drinking coffee near the Hudson Bridge. I was glad to see the Courant had captured the spirit of the thing. Above the picture, in medium print, was the headline LOCAL YOUTH DIES IN SHOOTING INCIDENT. Incident, that was good; at least everybody in town wasn’t referring to it as a gangland-style slaying. I guess I owed Ernie Brown a cup of tea and an interview. I folded the paper back and laid it on the counter for a quick read, as a steaming cup of coffee slid in front of me. “Somebody took the funnies.”

“I usually find the whole paper funny.”

Seemed like this country was loaded with good-looking older females, even if the pioneers deemed it hard on horses and women. Dorothy Caldwell was about sixty-five as near as I could figure and had run the Bee as far back as I could remember. The place had gotten its name from Dorothy’s claimed spiritual attachment to Napoleon and from the impressive bee collection that resulted from this fondness and that rested on the shelves above the cutting board. There were wooden bees, ceramic bees, stuffed bees, glass bees, every kind of bee imaginable. It was a small town crusade to provide Dorothy with bees from every corner of the globe, and I noted with satisfaction the little porcelain one on the end that had come all the way from Tokyo via Vietnam. The name was also due to the fact that Dorothy knew every piece of gossip circulating about the entire county. If I really wanted to know what the hell was going on around here, I would talk to her. Hell, she probably knew who killed Cody Pritchard. So I tossed it out. “Who killed Cody Pritchard?”

Her face was immobile. “As opposed to Cock Robin?”

“He’s missing too?”

She rested her knuckles on the counter and leaned into me. “This is the second time this week you guys have been in here questioning me about this. Should I consider myself a suspect?”

I bit my lip and thought about it. “As much as everybody else.”

“Good. Things were getting boring around here, and I rather like having an air of mystery and danger.” She looked at my armpit; it was not the first file I had brought to the Bee. “Who’s that?”

“Jules Belden.”

She sighed. “Oh, God.” She looked up. “Do you want the usual?”

“I didn’t even know I had a usual.”

“Everybody’s got a usual.”

“I’ll have the usual.”

I took a sip of my coffee, sat the folder on the counter, and began reading the newspaper. “In the cold, gray dawn of September the twenty-eighth…” Dickens. “… The slippery bank where the life of Cody Pritchard came to an ignominious end…” Faulkner. “Questioning society with the simple query, why?” Steinbeck. “Dead.” Hemingway.

Ernie had been an English Literature major at University of Wyoming before landing the job of lone employee and chief editor for the Durant Courant in 1951. I had two favorite parts of the paper: the Man About Town on the editorial page, which was Ernie; and the Roundup, which was Ruby’s contribution to the fourth estate. The dispatcher’s log was transcribed and documented under police reports in a rather surrealistic style. This resulted in profound statements, such as “A pig was reported on Crow Street, officer dispatched. No pig was found.” I considered them my moment of Zen on a daily basis.

A heaping mound of biscuits and spicy gravy slid over top of the paper, quickly followed by a napkin-rolled set of flatware. The usual. She reached over and grabbed the pot of coffee from the burner and poured me a fresh cup. “So, I’m assuming Jules Belden did it.”

“Only if it had been alcohol poisoning.” I cleaved off a section of biscuit dripping with gravy the consistency of wallpaper paste. It was the only place in the state where you could get spicy sausage gravy, and it tasted wonderful.

A lacquered fingernail tapped on the folder. “Do you mind?”

“Go right ahead.” She flipped the file open and began reading Turk’s report.

After a moment, “What does the little pissant mean by…?”

“Please… I haven’t read it yet. Don’t ruin the ending.” She propped her elbows on the pebbled Formica and rested her chin on her fists, cool, hazel eyes directly over me. “What… I’m chewing too loud? What?”

“I just like watching you eat.”

“Why?”

“You enjoy it so much. You’re very appreciative.”

I rubbed my stomach. “Yeah, a little too appreciative.”

“Oh, Walt. All the women in town chase around after you now. Can you imagine what it would be like if you were good-looking to boot?”

I chewed for a moment. “All right, I’m not sure which part of that statement I’m going to take umbrage with first.”

A modicum of silence passed. “I hear Vonnie Hayes is sparkin’ around after you now.”

I looked up into the twinkling mischief in her eyes. “I’m supposed to be eating my breakfast.”

“Oh, excuse me.” She went off in mock indignation to recoffee the hunters, and I shook my head in amazement at the speed in which information could be transmitted in this damn place. I spun the folder around and started decoding Turk’s scrawl.

The Jules Belden Incident, as it shall hereafter be known, began at the Euskadi Bar in downtown Durant at approximately nine-twenty last night. At least that’s where the altercation took place, in the alley out back. Finding the men’s room occupied, Jules had decided to avail himself of the great outdoors and relieve himself in the fashion most convenient. It must have been a grand relieving, because it lasted long enough for Turk to pull up, get out of the Thunder Chicken, walk around, have a short discussion with Jules, and be irrigated. Damn, I’d have paid money to see Turk assaulted with urine.

I put down the folder and started thinking about the other boys involved with the Little Bird rape case: Bryan Keller and George and Jacob Esper. I would have to give them a call; see if they’d had any contact with Cody Pritchard. Did I think there was some kind of connection? Did I want there to be? I just had to keep a lid on the situation long enough to find some pieces. I did my best work when I wasn’t thinking, sometimes considering my mind to be a body of water that worked best once things had settled to the bottom. The trick was not getting mired in the mud.

I carried the to-go container of biscuits and gravy back to the holding cells. Jules was getting the usual, too. I walked past the partition wall between the male and female accommodations, a remnant of the unecumenical fifties, and pulled up for a second. Careful not to spill the paper cup of coffee and the usual, I leaned in and gave a hard look to the identification Polaroid that was posted on the bulletin board. It was a standard way of keeping track of people in the cells. Jules stood there smiling, holding up a number with his name scrawled by Turk on the paper below. None of this was what caught my eye.

I took the keys, turned the corner, and flipped the light on in the small hallway. The mound under the blanket on the cot moved. I used the softest voice I could muster, “Hey, Jules. Breakfast time.” The mound moved again and rolled over as I unlocked the door and swung it wide. I went in and sat on the bunk opposite, placing the food on the floor between us. He was lying facing me but still covered over with the blanket. “C’mon, Bud. It’s biscuits and gravy, and it don’t age well.” With an exaggerated groan, he listed to one side, the thin arm barely supporting him. I reached over and set him up straight, as the Property of Absaroka County Jail blanket slid away from his face.

I winced. Dried blood had scabbed over the right eye, and his prominent cheekbone and nose were skinned back, revealing a sickly yellow underneath. His nose had been bleeding, and he had applied some rolled toilet tissue into the left nostril. It had soaked through, hardened, and gave his voice an even higher whine than usual. “Mornin’, Walt.”

“Jules…”-about fourteen dozen things were bursting out as I picked up the usual and handed it to him-“eat your breakfast.” I opened his coffee as he cannonballed into the biscuits and gravy. I watched the steam roll off of the fresh cup Dorothy had made for him and handed it over when he looked like he was having trouble swallowing.

“Thank ye…” After a few sips and a little wincing on his own part, he cleared his throat. “I guess I look kinda shitty, huh?”

His gums were bleeding as he smiled, but it was difficult to tell if that was from the beating or from alcoholism, which was his chosen profession. Jules Belden had been a hardworking cowboy and a carpenter of considerable repute. I remembered him being around town ever since I was a kid; he used to give me a quarter and candy every time I saw him. The only crime he was guilty of was having too big a heart. He was a small man, wiry, with skin that looked like it had been applied and set on fire. The eye that I could see was a ferocious blue.

“Who did this to you?”

He took another sip of the coffee. “I don’t wanna cause no trouble.”

“You want to press charges?” It rumbled out of my chest like an avalanche, and the force of it pushed Jules back just a little before he shrugged it off and looked at his food.

“Good gravy.” I waited as he handed me the coffee cup and took another bite. “I just don’t want to cause no trouble.”

“We’re talkin’ legal trouble, and that ain’t nothin’ compared to the trouble that piece of shit’s gonna have when I lay hands on him next.”

His eyes stayed steady, and his voice took on a patriarchal tone. “Now, Walt… don’t you hurt that boy.” I straightened up in indignation. Here was a battered man lying in my jail who hadn’t even been allowed to clean himself up after having been beaten. I was about as angry as I could remember being. “Hell, I peed all over him…” His smile broadened at the thought of it. “Then I peed all over the back of his fancy car.”

I tried to keep a straight face, but the thought of anybody peeing all over the back of the Thunder Chicken brought joy to my heart. I thought of all the decals with little characters pissing on each other in Turk’s back window. It seemed like he should have a better sense of humor about such things. I chuckled along with Jules, in spite of myself.

“I think I got’m again before he put me in here.”

“The floor did seem a little sticky on the way in, Jules.” We laughed some more. “But I think you ought to press charges.” Between bites, he reached for his coffee and replied.

“Stop it, yer ruinin’ my breakfast.”

By the time I got down the hallway from the jail, my anger had subsided into a calculated ember. As I attempted to storm into my office, Ruby called out, “Vern Selby on line one.”

I was at her desk before we both knew it. “What?”

She stiffened a little, and her eyes widened. “Vern Selby…”

Before she could say anything else, I slapped the receiver from her phone as she fumbled and punched line one, and I yelled at the circuit court judge on the other end, “What?”

After a pause, “Walt, it’s Vern.”

“Yep?”

“I just called to remind you about the court appearance you’ve got Wednesday and see if you wanted to have lunch?”

“Yep.”

Another pause. “Yep yep or yep no?”

“Yep. I’ll have lunch, goddamn it.”

Yet another pause. “Well, I know Kyle Straub is looking for you. He was wondering if you had come up with anything on that Cody Pritchard thing?”

I vented out a low burst of steam. “No, I haven’t interviewed all the butlers.”

The longest pause yet. “Well, I know Kyle wanted to catch up with you, but I think I’ll tell him to go find something else to do today.”

“That’d be wise.” Ruby was not looking at me as I slammed the phone down on her desk. “Omar?”

“The airport at four o’clock; he’s picking up hunters.” The thank-you was all I could get out. “At the risk of having my head bit off, is there anything I can do?” She was one in a million.

“Get the big first-aid kit and give it to Jules so he can get himself cleaned up. If he wants to sleep, let him. The door’s open back there. If he wants lunch, get it for him. I’ll be back later to give him a ride home… Do me a favor?” She smiled, and I was starting to feel better. “Call up the Espers…” The smile soured a little.

“As in Jacob and George?”

“Yes, and the Kellers at the 3K.”

“Something I should know about?”

“I hope not. I’m just checking to see if they had any contact with Cody before he bought the proverbial farm.” This thank-you was easier.

I took the drive down to Swayback Road to cool off. Along with my better judgment, I took the exit and drove up toward Crazy Woman Canyon past the two fishing reservoirs, Muddy Guard One and Muddy Guard Two. Ah, the colorful contrasts of the Wild West. I spent twenty minutes crawling all over a patched-together ’48 Studebaker pickup trying to find a vehicle identification number that matched any of the ones on paper. After the third number, Mr. Fletcher and I were losing interest, and we settled on the first one, as it was the most legible.

When I got back to town, Ruby informed me that Jules had wandered off. She had spoken with Jim Keller and asked him to bring in Bryan. She had left a message on the answering machine at the Espers and, as of yet, had received no reply. “What time do you want them in here?”

I thought about Omar and the airport, Ernie Brown and the newspaper, and Vern Selby and the courthouse. “Oh, how about five? And call the Espers again; I’d just as soon get this all over with in one shot.”

“Bad choice of words.” She reached for the phone and hit redial.

I walked over to the courthouse and in the back door by the public library. Our courthouse was one of the first built in the territory, which gave the exterior a look of steadfast permanence. The inside, on the other hand, was steadfastly seedy after suffering the indignities of numerous remodelings. Cheap interior paneling, acoustic-tile ceilings, and threadbare green carpeting stretched as far as the fluorescent-lit eye could see. I called it the outhouse of sighs. Vern’s office was on the second floor and, as I swung around the missing newel post and trudged up the steps, I waved at the blue-haired ladies in the assessor’s office down the hall.

I sat on one of Vern’s chairs and waited for him to get off the phone. He was a precise older man, about seventy, who had wispy locks of silver hair that looked like Cecil B. DeMille had stirred them. He was just the kind of person you wanted to look up in the courtroom and see: patrician, calm, and even noble. The fact that he made life and death decisions on peoples’ lives was only slightly diminished by the fact that he never knew what day of the week it was. “Isn’t it Tuesday?”

“Monday, Vern.”

“I guess I lost a day in there somewhere.”

I wondered where, between Sunday and Monday, he had lost it.

He rested his elbows on the desk and carefully placed his chin on his clasped fists. “This Pritchard boy…”

I leaned back in the chair. “Haven’t you heard? That’s not a problem anymore.”

The Norwegian eyes blinked. “I’m thinking that the problems are just beginning.”

I spread my hands. “You know something I don’t?”

No blink. “I’m simply thinking that this unfortunate occurrence may exacerbate some of the hard feelings that resulted from the Little Bird rape case.”

“Exacerbate. Is that a double-word score?” I yawned and relaxed farther into the chair. “And what would you like me to do about this exacerbation?”

Still steady. “Is there any chance of a quick resolution to this situation?”

“I could plead guilty and arrest myself.”

He leaned back in his own chair, and I listened to the soft hiss as the air escaped from the leather padding. My chair didn’t have any padding. I was exacerbated. “Walter, I am sure I do not have to warn you that this case has all the earmarks of blowing up in our faces.” He rested his fingertips on the edge of the desk and sighed. “It was a high-profile case, and there are still a lot of tender feelings both on and off the reservation.” He paused a moment. “Why are you making this difficult for me?”

I slumped a little farther in my chair. “I’m having a bad day.”

“I gathered as much. Does it have to do with the case?”

I shook my head. “Not really.”

“Well, perhaps we should tackle one problem at a time. You’ve talked to the girl’s family?”

I leveled a good look at him. “You aren’t telling me how to do my job, are you Vern?” He raised his hands in surrender. We looked at each other for a while. “Lonnie Little Bird is a diabetic and had both legs amputated. I figure that moves him pretty far down the list of suspects.” We looked at each other some more. “He was the one that sat in the aisle in the wheelchair during the rape trial.”

He shook his head slightly and dismissed me with a wave. “We’ll talk on Wednesday.”

As I left, I cleared the air. “That’d be the Wednesday after tomorrow, Vern?”

It was getting close to four, so I drove up to the airport. I figured Omar would be early; he always was. The local airport was famous for the Jet Festival, which celebrated an event that had taken place back in the early eighties when a Western Airlines 737 had mistaken our airport for Sheridan’s and had slid that big son of a gun to a record-breaking stop in only forty-five hundred feet. The town celebrated the avionic miracle by throwing a big party. They invited the pilot, Edger Lowell, every year. Every year, he declined. We never were made a hub, but we still got our share of polo players, dudes, wealthy executives, and big game hunters. The polo players come because of the Equestrian Center; the dudes come to play cowboy for a couple of thousand a week; the executives, to escape a world they had helped create; and the big game hunters, they come for Omar. So far, none of them had gotten him, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying.

Omar was a local enigma, the big dog of outfitters along the Bighorns. You could run the entire length of the range along the mountains and ownership would concede seven names, one of which was Omar Rhoades. His ranch followed the north fork of Rock Creek at the top of the county, stretched from I-90 to the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area, and was about half the size of Rhode Island. He was originally from Indiana and had inherited the place from a rich uncle who had despised the rest of the family. Omar knew everything there was to know about hunting and firearms. His personal collection was known worldwide, and the number of international hunters he wooed as a clientele was legion. He had his own airport on the ranch, but after the FAA had curtailed the size of his landing strip, the hunters that arrived in larger aircraft landed here.

I pulled through the chain-link fence and parked alongside the control tower. Old concrete pads patched with asphalt stretched across the flat surface of the bluff, and a frayed windsock popped in the strong breeze. I walked past the white cinder block building, which proclaimed DURANT, WYOMING, ELEVATION 4954; I guess they felt compelled to put the state on there just in case somebody really got lost. I had a great affinity for the few old Lockheed PV-2s parked along the end of the runway that dwarfed the three Cessna 150s chained to the tarmac in front of the building. There were no contracts for the naked aluminum birds, and they sat there with their cowlings and nose cones becoming a flatter and flatter red. The Pratt and Whitney engines slowly seeped aviation grade oil on the concrete, and the Bureau of Forestry decals had begun to peel away. At the end of the building, I looked down the flight way and saw what I was looking for: George Armstrong Custer leaning against a custom crew cab.

To say that he looked like the General was partly slighting to Omar; Omar was better looking and, I’m sure, a head taller than Ol’ Goldilocks. A carefully battered silver-belly Stetson sloped off his head, and his arms were folded into a full-length Hudson blanket coat with a silver-coyote collar. The locals considered him to be quite the dandy, but I figured he just had style. We had gotten to know each other through a lengthy series of domestic disturbances. Omar and his wife Myra had attempted to kill each other in an escalating process of more than eight years that had started out with kitchen utensils and ended, as far as I was concerned, with a matching set of. 308s that had been a wedding gift from the uncle. They were both crack shots and incredibly lucky that they had missed; they could live neither with nor without each other. At the moment, they were living without, and things had become considerably quieter on Rock Creek. He always looked like he was asleep, and he never was.

“So, if a man wanted to kill an innocent animal around here, what would he do?”

“Move. There isn’t any such thing as an innocent animal, especially around here.”

I leaned against the shiny surface of the Chevrolet and wondered how he kept all his vehicles so clean. He probably had about twelve guys on the job. “Didn’t you watch the Walt Disney Hour on television?”

“I was more partial to Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. ” He yawned and tipped his hat back. His cobalt eyes squeezed the distance to the mountains, and you could almost hear the clicking of his internal scopes as they measured the yards and calculated the trajectory. “Anyway, the animal you’re looking for is about as far from innocent as you can get.”

I pulled the plastic bag from my coat and held it up in front of him. It looked like a Rorschach test in lead. “Which brings me to the point at hand.” His eyes shifted to the Ziploc, and he looked more like a lion than anything else.

He yawned again. “Somebody meant business.”

He held out a hand, and I dropped into it the most important piece of evidence in our case. He palmed it for a moment, bouncing it between the band of his gold-trimmed Rolex and the three turquoise rings on his right hand. Omar was ambidextrous. Style. “Soft?”

“30 to 1, lead to tin.”

“Anything else?”

“Some sort of foreign substance, SPG or Lyman’s Black Powder Gold.”

“Lubricant made specifically for black-powder cartridge shooting.”

“Black-powder cartridge?”

It was the first time he looked at me. “How many people have seen this?”

“Vic, T. J. Sherwin at DCI, Chemical Analysis at Justice, and Henry.”

He blinked and continued to look at me. “The Bear didn’t know what this was?”

I paused. “We figured it was an antique shotgun slug, black powder?”

“Hmm…” He could noncommittal hmm almost as good as me.

“Something?”

He handed me back the baggie and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I could tell you, but I’d rather show you.”

“You’re that sure?”

He looked at the pointed toes of his handmade, belly-cut, alligator-skin Paul Bond boots. “I’m that sure.”

I ran through the rest of my day. “After 5:30?”

He looked again to the sky above Cloud Peak. “Tomorrow morning would be better, Sheriff. I’ve got a business to run.”

“What time?”

“Doesn’t matter, I’m always up.”

By the time I got back to the office, a green Dodge with a flat bed and fifth wheel was pulled up to the building, and the woman in the front seat made a point of not seeing me as I went in. Barbara Keller did not believe her child was guilty and never would. I went in the office and motioned for the two men to follow me. “Get you fellas some coffee?” Jim Keller shook his head, and Bryan studied his hands. “You sure? It’s been brewing since about eight this morning. Should be about right.”

“How can we help you, Walt?” Of all the young men in the group, I had found it the hardest to believe that Bryan had been involved with the rape. I wasn’t sure if he had always looked so sad or if the look had just intensified since the trial. “Jim, you own that land out next to the BLM where Bob Barnes runs Mike Chatham’s sheep?”

“Yes.”

“That’s where we found Cody Pritchard.” I glanced at Bryan. “You didn’t have any contact with him in the last couple of weeks, did you?”

“He has not.” I turned to look at Jim. Jim in turn looked at Bryan, who in turn looked at his hands. “Have you?”

Bryan found his hands even more interesting. “No, sir.”

“Jim, your wife is looking a little upset out there in your outfit, maybe you ought to go check on her?”

He gave Bryan another look. “You tell this man anything he wants to know, and you better damn well tell him the truth.”

I let the directive settle till the front door quietly shut. Bryan Keller was a handsome kid with wide cheekbones, a strong chin, and a small, hooked scar at the jawline. He had taken life on, and life had kicked his ass. I looked at the young wreck and felt sad too. “Bryan?” The jolt was two staged, and his eyes briefly met with mine. “Did you have any contact with Cody?”

“No, sir.”

“None at all?”

“No, sir.”

I believed him. Shells don’t lie, mostly. I stretched and laced my fingers behind my head. “Have you had anything to do with him since the trial?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you aware of any threats that might have been made toward him? Any enemies he might have had?” This got a brief exhale. “Other than the obvious?”

“I’d liked to have killed the son of a bitch.”

I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrows. “Really?”

His eyes darted back to his hands. “Is sayin’ that gonna get me into trouble?”

“No more than the rest of us.” I went out into the reception area and poured myself a cup of coffee. “You sure you won’t have some? It really isn’t that bad.” He said okay, probably because I asked him twice and he had been taught that if somebody asks you something twice you say yes, no matter what it is. It looked like a heated conversation going on in the truck out front, and I thought about my child. I don’t know how you get them to make right choices, how you keep them from ending up like the two-parent pileup that was sitting in my office.

I brought Bryan his coffee and sat down in the chair beside him, taking off my hat and tossing it onto the desk. My gun belt was digging into my side, but I was ignoring it. We were both ignoring it. I sipped my coffee. “Bryan… Just for the record, I don’t think you killed Cody Pritchard… As I recall, your statements and testimony indicated that you didn’t participate in the rape.”

“I didn’t.” His eyes welled up, and I wished I washed cars for a living.

“You were only convicted as an accessory, with suspended sentence.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, that’s a good thing.”

He took a sip of his coffee and made a face. “There are days when I just can’t stand it.” He was crying openly, and I watched the tears stripe his face and drip onto his shirt.

“Stand what?”

He wiped his face with the sleeve of his Carhartt. “People… the way they look at me… like I’m not worth shit.”

“Well, at the risk of sounding trite, I guess it’s up to you to prove them wrong.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stop yes-sirring me.”

“Yes, sir.”

I bought shampoo on the way home. When I got there, the substructure of a porch ran the entire distance of the cabin. Six six-by-sixes stood unflinching in the growing wind, and the little red Jeep was gone.