Heaven's keep

THIRTY-FIVE

Nightwind.” Kosmo squinted as if he was trying to picture something in his mind’s eye. “And you figure he’s the Indian pilot who took Bodine’s place.”

Cork and Parmer sat in the sheriff’s office, in the same orange plastic chairs they’d occupied that morning. Kosmo seemed restrained. If he was angry, he was keeping it well in check.

“It fits,” Cork said.

Kosmo sat at his desk. The big man’s head was framed by a hint of blue lingering in the twilight sky visible through the window at his back. It struck Cork like a faded halo. The overhead light was off, and the room was lit by the lamp on his desk. It created a small, illuminated circle that enclosed the three men.

“What do you know about Nightwind?” Kosmo asked.

“He’s in love with Ellyn Grant. So maybe he’d do anything she asked, including murder.”

Kosmo sat back and studied the two men, companions in the light, then he said, “When I was a kid, there was a family lived down the street from us. The Halbersons. Had this German shepherd they called Pooch. Most days they kept him tied to a leash on the front porch. That dog was real unusual. I never once heard him bark. He’d just sit there all day long, watching everything and everybody. Mailman would slide mail into the box at the gate, dog just watched. Paperboy came by, tossed the evening paper in the yard, dog just watched. Us kids, we’d holler at him, make faces, sometimes throw things just to try to get a rise out of Pooch. No dice. Just looked at us like we were, I don’t know, bushes or something. One kid, Harvey Groat, he swore the dog was blind or deaf or retarded. We all dared him to go into the yard and see if he could get Pooch to bark. So Groat, never the swiftest boat in the fleet, opens the gate, creeps into the yard, gets one foot on the front steps, and Pooch is up. Lunges so hard and fast he snaps the leash and he’s all over Groat, chewing the hell out of him. Groat’s screaming and we’re screaming and finally the front door jerks open and Mr. Halberson comes flying out. Kicks the shit out of Pooch before the dog finally retreats and leaves Groat be. Groat, he ends up getting a few dozen stitches. Carries the scars to this day. Pooch, he got put down for the attack, which was a shame because he was only doing what he’d been trained to do, which was protect that family and its property. You know, during the whole incident with Groat, that dog never uttered a sound. I bet he went to his death without a whimper.”

“And the point is?” Cork said.

“Nightwind, he’s just like that dog, O’Connor. You never hear him. He never makes trouble. But you always have the feeling that, if he wanted to, he could give you a whole lot of hurt real fast. I was you, I’d stay clear of him.

“He called me before you got here. Said he didn’t want any charges brought. Said it was all a kind of misunderstanding. Me, I’d just as soon toss you in a cell for a while. Probably couldn’t make anything stick. And I’ve been checking on Mr. Parmer here and I know that he’s richer than Rockefeller and would most likely haul in a whole cadre of lawyers to make my life miserable. So I’m just going to let you go. Mark my words, though. You make any trouble for me, for those folks on the reservation, hell, you spit on the sidewalk, I’ll come down on you like old Pooch on Groat, don’t think I won’t.”

All the light had faded from the sky, and what framed Kosmo now was black night. Cork was quiet for a moment, then asked, “It doesn’t matter to you what I’m trying to accomplish here?”

Kosmo brought his hand up to his face and used his thumb to rub his eyebrow. “I have sympathy for your situation, O’Connor. I just don’t buy your read of the circumstances.”

“Why? Because it craps all over this dream you and everyone here have for Owl Creek County?”

“No. Because if you really listened to yourself, you’d realize how crazy it sounds. And because you haven’t been able to offer one solid piece of evidence in support.”

“Why do I get the feeling I could dump a garbage truck full of evidence on your desk and it wouldn’t make any difference?”

“See, O’Connor? You’re reading me all wrong. And because I know that, I know that your own reading of this whole situation is way off target.”

“Fine, Sheriff. You just sit there. I’m going to gather myself a garbage truck full of evidence and I’m going to dump it in your lap. Then let’s see what kind of lawman you are.”

“You’ve got me all figured out, have you?”

“Right down to the lint in your boot socks.”

Kosmo scooted back from his desk, taking himself out of the light. “I guess at the moment there’s nothing else to discuss.”

“I guess you’re right. We’re free to leave?”

“Oh, yeah. But if I were a betting man, and I just happen to be, I’d lay odds that we’ll be talking again real soon.”

Cork and Parmer left. As they passed Dewey Quinn in the common area, Quinn gave them a surreptitious thumbs-up.

In the parking lot outside, Parmer said, “That could have been worse. I thought he’d tear us both new assholes.”

Cork looked back up at the window of the sheriff’s office. He could see the light from the desk lamp inside. “I think Sheriff Kosmo would prefer to deal with us in a more private way. I had a long talk with Quinn on our way here. Very enlightening. Let’s grab ourselves a couple of steaks and some beers and I’ll tell you all about it.”

They ate at the Bronco Saloon on Main Street, a place where the nostalgia for the Old West was clearly evident in the Remington prints and the photos of roundups and brandings and bronco bustings that hung on the walls. Cork had first arrived in Wyoming with certain preconceived ideas that came from Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour, and from John Wayne and Randolph Scott. Everyone wore Stetsons and spurs and walked a little bowlegged from a lifetime mounted on the heaving flanks of cow ponies. But judging from the people he’d seen on the streets of Hot Springs, folks in Wyoming bought their clothes from JCPenney and Lands’ End, same as people in Minnesota. The kids were partial to baggy jeans and printed T-shirts and baseball caps worn askew, and they rode skateboards instead of steeds. The culture of the Old West, if it ever really did exist, had been tamed and replaced by the uniformity of the Walmart-strip mall-McDonald’s homogenizing of America. It was happening in Minnesota, too. Hell, it was happening everywhere in the world.

Over a juicy rib eye and a couple of draws of Fat Tire beer, Cork related to Parmer the conversation he’d had with Quinn.

“You did a good job back there not tipping your hand to Kosmo,” Parmer said. “Are you going to let Liz and Becca know?”

Cork took a final bite of steak, laid his fork down, slid his plate away, and shook his head. “I don’t want to get their hopes up if it turns out to be nothing.”

“It won’t be nothing. There’s something to this.”

Cork shook his head. “Until we find it, I don’t want to risk letting the other side know what we know. I’m not sure there’s a safe way to talk to Liz and Becca.”

Parmer laid his own fork down and folded his hands above his plate. “Cork,” he began tentatively, “if it’s there…” He hesitated, then tried again. “Have you thought about…” Once more, he seemed at a loss to know how to proceed.

“Yeah? Go on.”

“What I’m trying to get at is this. If we find the plane, what’s inside won’t be pretty. Have you considered that?”

“Whatever’s inside, Hugh, it can’t be worse than not knowing. I don’t care how bleak the truth is, it’s better than living with the question. Do you understand?”

“I think so.”

“Good. Then let’s get out of here. We need a good night’s sleep.”

But a good night’s sleep didn’t come to him. Cork lay awake a long time considering Parmer’s question. He assumed that if the plane had been buried, the bodies had been left inside. Six months. Six months in an airless tomb. What would remain of the woman he loved? He tried not to think of that. He tried to think of Jo as she’d been, smart and loving and dedicated and beautiful.

The plane had become a crypt, and what was inside wasn’t Jo, he told himself. It would be like the dirt and rock that surrounded it. It would be what had once been earth becoming earth again. And Jo? Jo was somewhere else. Beyond pain. Beyond fear. Beyond anger. Beyond caring. These were the burdens of the living.

Long after he lay down, he finally fell asleep, oppressed by the weight of being alive.