Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 57, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2012

Burning Daylight by David Edgerley Gates

The two boys had been fishing the upper reaches of Kettle Creek, where glacial runoff from up in the Absarokas fed a loop of shallow pools, like spoons, the water very fast and cold. Kettle ponds, they were called, which gave the creek its name. The trout weren’t that big, but they were quick to hit the lure.

It was high summer, the air thick with insects, mosquitoes the size of a man’s thumb, bees heavy with pollen, butterflies near the end of their breeding cycle, and they drew birds, swifts, and vireos. The day was hot and still, but crowded with life.

Jesse Greyeyes was ten. His first cousin and best friend, Toby Pete, known as Rabbit, was nine, or nine and a half, he would have said. They were Northern Cheyenne, but they weren’t reservation Indians. They lived on the economy, outside of Limestone, on the edge of the Gallatin National Forest. They’d fished and hunted these mountains since they were six, when they were old enough to carry a ten-pound pack, and understood their own responsibility. Both of them were excellent shots with a .22 bolt-action, although neither one of them was allowed to carry a weapon at their age without adult supervision, but it might be pointed out that they were probably more grown up about guns than a few grown-ups they knew.

They were fishing catch-and-release, but if they got a fat one, they kept it. On a camping trip with one of their uncles they would have cleaned the fish right there, and fried it over an open fire. This time around, they gutted the keepers to take home to Jesse’s mom.

Halfway down, there was a double-wide at the far end of a shallow valley. They’d passed it on the way up, and the trailer had seemed abandoned. But now there were signs of life.

Boys being boys, they snuck in to take a closer look. They had a good scouting position, from up on the ridgeline.

There was a pickup parked next to the trailer, a GMC or a Chevy, an old beater, light blue, with primer on the fenders. They could see a smudge of smoke from the roof vent, which was weird. Even at this altitude, the temperature was in the low eighties. And there were a couple of propane tanks at the rear of the trailer. If you were cooking something with gas, the exhaust was colorless, and the smoke from the vent was a sort of dirty yellow.

The wind shifted, and gusted the smell upslope.

“Yuck,” Jesse said. It was like cat piss, but ten times as strong. It made him gag.

“Gross,” Toby said. “Like he’s boiling bones.”

“This is creepy,” Jesse said.

“Maybe he’s a serial killer,” Toby said. “You know, like Hannibal the Cannibal? He’s cooking up the victims, and then he eats them.”

“Don’t be a spaz,” Jesse said.

Toby drew a bead on the trailer with an imaginary rifle and pinched the trigger. “Ka-pow,” he said.

And the trailer blew up like a bomb had gone off inside it, an enormous burst of flame that sucked all the air out of the day, and punched the double-wide apart. The walls burst out in a metallic squeal and the roof collapsed. The noise rolled up the valley, and a cloud of raw, putrid smoke thickened above the wreckage of the trailer, hovering in the clear afternoon.

“Holy crap,” Toby said, awestruck.

Hector and Katie were in a booth at the Hitching Post, sharing a pizza. She was drinking Gallo red. Hector was having a beer. They were both off the clock. It was nice to simply enjoy each other’s company. Although they were an item, these days, they seemed to find less time together. Katie still ran the local clinic, but she was up at Montana State in Billings three days a week now, and Hector was on call twenty-four seven. Their relationship was relaxed, a little too relaxed, Hector sometimes felt. They were still getting used to it.

“You hear from Lame Deer?” she asked him.

“He’s teaching school, down in Wind River,” he said.

Andy Lame Deer had been the FBI field agent they’d worked a case with, the year before. Now he was retired. Hector didn’t know the new guy. All he’d heard was that Agent Child wasn’t an Indian, not necessarily a handicap.

“Not easy to have a conversation,” she said, smiling.

“Hard to know what to talk about,” he said, smiling back.

She slid her hand across the table and squeezed his hand in hers.

“Deputy Moody?”

Hector looked up.

“I’m sorry to bother you.”

A woman in her late forties. Hector didn’t place her name.

“Sylvia Greyeyes,” she told him.

Hector slid out of the booth and stood. “Ma’am,” he said.

She had two boys with her, both about ten years old.

“Please,” Hector said.

Katie made room, and the boys slid in next to her, looking both excited and nervous. Hector offered Sylvia the seat on his side. “Buy you a beer?” he asked her.

“No, thank you,” she said. “I’m a dry drunk.”

Lot of that going around, Hector thought, as they sat down.

“This is my son Jesse, and my nephew Toby,” she said.

“What’s up, guys?” Hector asked them.

So they told him the story, stepping on each other’s toes a little, but they were by and large good witnesses.

Hector asked a couple of questions. Had they ever seen the blue truck before? Did they know who lived in the trailer?

They shook their heads.

“Okay. I’ll go up there.”

“We can show you,” Toby said, eagerly.

“No,” Hector said. “I want you to stay off of Kettle Creek for the next week or so.”

Sylvia Greyeyes nodded a thank you.

“What?” Katie asked him.

“Meth lab,” he said. “Guy got careless with an open flame, blew himself into the back end of beyond.”

Ice, they called it. Glass, or crank. Crystal meth, cooked down from pseudoephedrine. One of the byproducts was phosphine, another was acetone, both as easily ignited as a matchhead.

Stillwater County was fifty miles across, and a good sixty miles deep. Hector Moody shared the responsibility with two other deputy sheriffs, and worked the Limestone substation. State police sent a HAZMAT squad. He met them halfway up Kettle Creek and took them in.

The smell carried for miles, like carrion, or worse.

“Far enough,” the sergeant in charge of the team said. Hector was fine with it. He didn’t have to get any closer. The team suited up and went in. Hector stayed on the ridge.

A big Ford SUV pulled up behind him, and the driver climbed out. No coat and tie. Dressed for brush country.

“Hector Moody?”

Hector nodded.

“Frank Child, FBI.”

They shook hands.

“What’ve you got?”

“Meth cooker, my guess.”

“Anything else?”

“With all due respect, this isn’t the rez,” Hector said.

He meant the FBI had no jurisdiction. On the reservations, FBI handled felonies.

“No argument,” Child said. “I’m offering you my help.”

“Thanks,” Hector said. “I could use it.”

“I’m new here,” Child said. “I wouldn’t want to get off on the wrong foot.”

“I appreciate that,” Hector said.

“They give the assignment to rookies, or guys on their last legs,” the FBI agent said.

“Your career could end in the Absarokas,” Hector said.

“I’d prefer it otherwise,” Child said.

“What’s he like?” Katie Faraday asked.

“Young guy, a newbie,” he said.

“You’re not exactly an old crock.”

Hector grinned. “Everything’s relative,” he said. “It’s his first field assignment, is all. He did a couple of years at NCIC, he told me, right out of Quantico.”

“So you’re thinking he’s a computer geek or a lab rat.”

“I’m thinking he knows how to research a database. Does he know how to work a criminal case?”

“In other words, he’s got something to prove.”

“If only to himself,” Hector said, “but he didn’t strike me as a know-it-all cowboy with a chip on his shoulder.”

“First impressions are important,” Katie said.

“And my first impression is positive.”

“He told you the FBI was ready to help the investigation.”

“Proof is in the pudding,” Hector said.

“Why don’t you call him?” she asked.

“Frank Child?”

She shook her head. “Andy Lame Deer.”

“We wouldn’t have much to say to each other.”

“No, you just have to figure out how to say it.”

“Not my strong suit,” he said, smiling.

“You said the right thing to me.”

“You were willing to listen.”

“But it took you long enough,” Katie reminded him.

Of course it was awkward, as he knew it would be. Lame Deer had gone out on a sour note, and Hector felt partly responsible.

Once they got past the initial stiffness, though, and started talking cop to cop, falling into a more familiar ritual, they were on safer ground, and began to relax with each other.

“Big problem, here in Wind River,” Lame Deer said. “It’s a serious problem in Indian Country, all over.”

“Some enterprising Mexican dope runners figured it was easy pickings,” Lame Deer went on. “You got a history of alcohol dependency, it’s a ready market for crank. They began shuffling it wholesale, now it’s homegrown.”

“How many cookers have the local cops shut down?”

“We’ve got shake-and-bake,” Lame Deer said. “A cooker you can target, it’s a physical location, but we have guys making it in their cars, in an empty plastic soda bottle. You find the residue by the side of the road. It used to be bikers, or some other lowlifes, but this has turned into mom-and-pop. You have the demand, the supply follows.”

“What else?”

“There’s a gang presence,” Lame Deer said.

“Skinheads?”

“Indian kids. Wind River, Pine Ridge. Down in the Navajo Nation, the Big Rez, you know how many gangs they have on Indian land? Tribal police can’t handle the numbers.”

“You’re not giving me much room for optimism.”

“I said it was intractable, not hopeless.”

“There’s a difference?”

“When the going gets tough, the tough get going,” Lame Deer said.

The preliminary report from state forensics indicated traces elements of phosphine, acetone, chloroform, ammonia, hydrogen iodide, and other dilute solvent gases, all consistent with methamphetamine manufacture, and with a high risk of spontaneous ignition.

The blue pickup had been incinerated in the fireball, but they still managed to pull a VIN, and working through Motor Vehicle, a name. Lloyd Threadgill, last reported address a post office box in Livingston, just this side of Bozeman.

Livingston had been founded on the west bank of the Yellowstone in the 1880s, when the Northern Pacific came through. It was a cow town, then as now.

Hector liaised with a Park County deputy. Her ID tag read pacheco. She introduced herself as Ruby.

“What have you got?” she asked.

Hector handed her the fax from MVD, with the driver’s license photograph. White male, age thirty-nine, blue eyes, red hair. Five eleven, one fifty-five.

“Not a lot of meat on him,” she remarked.

Hector nodded. “Long and narrow,” he said.

“Hillbilly genes,” she said, smiling. She herself was tall for a woman, and big boned. “What’s the approach?”

“Go door-to-door. Show people his picture. See if anybody can give us a line on him.”

“You figure him for a Crispy Critter.”

“If he was in the trailer,” Hector said. “State lab hasn’t made a positive identification on his remains.”

“Dental records?”

“Guy with meth mouth might not have any teeth.”

They took both their vehicles, in case Ruby got a call from her dispatcher and had to respond.

Lloyd Threadgill had let his P.O. box expire, and left no forwarding. All his first-class mail had been returned to sender, and even if it hadn’t, Hector had no claim to it without a warrant. The postmaster let him have a couple of stacks of old second-class they were ready to throw away, outdated supermarket coupons, catalogs from Victoria’s Secret, back issues of Shotgun News. Gun classifieds and underwear. Nothing that gave them a handle on him personally.

MVD, on the other hand, required a physical address to issue a license and registration, as well as proof of insurance, so they had another starting point.

The trailer park was on an island, in the shadow of I-90. The river broke into a series of narrow loops, channels with sandbars, before it went down into canyon country, and picked up rapids and whitewater boils. Here it was placid, slow moving, and almost still.

“You part Indian?” Ruby asked.

“My grandmother’s Crow,” Hector said. He thought it was an unnecessary question, maybe even an insulting one.

“The reason I ask,” Ruby Pacheco said, “is that we’ve got a mixed bag here, so it depends what you bring to the party. Let’s say we figure Lloyd for a cracker. Then there are Native Americans, washed up in shoal water, and illegals, muled up from Mexico. Not the happiest melting pot.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Deputy?”

“We’re not going to get any sympathy. I talk to some gal, she doesn’t see me, she sees the uniform. These are people who don’t trust the Migra. You being Indian might be helpful.”

“It’s your turf,” Hector said.

“Let’s walk the walk,” Ruby said.

She was right, of course. They got nowhere. If not at first outright hostility, then a sullen, sulky mulishness, or grudging cooperation. It was like pulling fingernails. Hector didn’t let it discourage him. A lot of cop work involved shoe leather, and a lot of people weren’t eager to invite police contact, generally because their past experience with the police had brought unhappy results.

Three hours later, Hector’s stomach was growling and he was ready for lunch. They’d started at the north end, by the main entrance, and quartered their way south down the west side. Now they were working their way back up the east side.

The trailers were in general well maintained, some with flower boxes, more than a few with kitchen gardens. There was an occasional junker up on blocks. Most of the people here seemed to be barely scraping by, but they had a certain pride of place, and hadn’t let their homes go to hell.

Hector and Ruby had talked to a couple of dozen residents, with nothing to show for it. They’d circled halfway back to the front gate when they knocked on Violet Halfpenny’s door.

She was a widow, Gros Ventre, a fair piece off her historic graze, Fort Belknap, up by the Canadian border.

They learned this in the course of the interview, over coffee and homemade peanut butter brownies. Violet wasn’t shy with information, and she had no embarrassment at all in talking to them.

“You come about those punks?” she asked.

“Which punks, Mother?” Hector asked.

“The cretins who drove through my garden.”

“Do you want to make a report, ma’am?” Ruby asked her.

“I made a report, two days ago,” Violet said.

“Who were they?” Hector asked.

“Georgie Ramirez and his little brother, Teo. They run with that pony herd of Assiniboine, gang-banger tattoos, listen to that god-awful hip-hop, like they’re coloreds. Indian kids, I swear, no more than fifteen or sixteen years old.”

Violet herself was probably in her early sixties, Hector thought. Not one to suffer fools gladly. “Are they into dope?” he asked.

“They’re huffers, some of them,” she said. “They like to do goofballs, beer and oxycodone. They steal prescription drugs from the mailboxes.”

Hector nodded, almost smiling. For a gal her age, she knew the talk. Came with the territory, he guessed.

“The dealers use them for runners,” she said.

Hector nodded again. “Because they’re juveniles,” he said.

“You have dealers living in the trailer village?”

She shook her head. “Users. The boys bring the stuff in.”

Hector gave her Lloyd Threadgill’s picture.

Violet sighed. “Poor, dumb bastard,” she murmured.

Hector and Ruby exchanged a glance.

“They ran him off,” Violet said.

“Who did?” Ruby asked her.

“The boys. Lloyd was strung out on speed. He sold product to support his habit.”

“So they eliminated the competition,” Hector said.

“I suppose,” Violet said, “but I think it was more to keep the police away. They were afraid Lloyd selling would bring the cops down on them.”

“Which is why you say you’ve got no dealers here.”

“With all due respect, cops don’t much care about junkies,” she said.

“When did this happen, the pony herd running Lloyd off?”

“His trailer’s been empty for a month.”

“Which trailer is that?” Hector asked her.

The place had been trashed. The utilities had been shut off, no electric or gas or running water, but the smell of cigarettes and dope smoke was strong. There was an ice chest in one corner filled with lukewarm water and cans of stale Tecate.

“The gang’s using it for a squat,” Ruby said.

Hector shrugged. “Let’s see what we can turn up,” he said.

“We don’t have a warrant.”

“Abandoned dwelling, evidence of criminal activity,” Hector said. “We’re just poking around.”

They rummaged through it, but the trailer had been tossed before they got there. The only thing of possible interest they found was a stack of letters from the VA, hidden in the fridge.

“Lloyd was a vet,” Ruby said.

“DD-214, his separation, and applications for benefits.”

“Why the icebox?”

The inside of the refrigerator was moldy, since the power had been turned off a month before. Chinese takeout, covered in green slime, clotted milk, rancid butter.

“If somebody torched the place, the documents would survive a fire,” Hector said.

“Any significance?”

“They must have meant something to Lloyd.”

“You’re working blind,” she said.

“No argument,” Hector told her. “Let’s see if we can shake anything out of those two stoners.”

Ida Ramirez worked two jobs. She wasn’t home. The kid who came to the screen door was surly. They heard the soundtrack from The Flintstones coming from the TV. “What are you here for?” he asked them.

“Would you be Georgie or Teo?” Hector asked him.

“Who’s asking?”

Hector took a deep breath. “You run over a woman’s garden a couple of days ago?”

“That old bag? She needs a life.”

Hector didn’t like pulling cop shit on people, he figured you got more flies with honey, but the kid was seriously pissing him off. “You’re not making any friends, here,” he said.

“Get lost,” the kid said.

“You smell ganja?” Ruby asked Hector.

“Sure do,” he said. “Open up,” he told the kid.

“You can’t bust in here like this,” the kid said.

Hector pushed past him into the kitchen. There were empty beer cans on the kitchen counter, and the air was heavy with the sweet, dense fragrance of marijuana.

“The fuh?” the kid on the couch in front of the TV said.

Ruby stepped inside, her hand on her holstered weapon. “Minors in possession of alcohol, use of a Class D substance,” she said to Hector. “Adds up to a felony fall. How many priors you figure they’ve got between them?”

“We been in juvie before,” the kid in the kitchen said.

“But this time you’ll stay in juvie,” Hector told him. “They won’t release you to your mom. You’ll be in state custody until you’re eighteen. Then you can be tried as an adult.”

“This is a jive beef.”

Ruby shook her head in exasperation.

“What do you need, anyway?” the kid on the couch asked. He hadn’t moved a muscle since they came in.

“The guy you ran off,” Hector said. “What was that about?”

“Which guy?”

“You’re using his trailer to party in.”

“That dieselhead? He was a loser.”

Hector looked around the trailer. “You, of course, being a winner,” he said.

Irony wasn’t the kid’s strong suit, or he was too wasted to care.

“You don’t quit the juice, you’re going to be fifteen going on fifty,” Hector told him.

They left the two brothers and went outside.

Hector took a deep breath. “Jesus,” he said, “what kind of world are we living in?”

“One where you get the first taste for free,” Ruby said.

The burned-out double-wide was registered to a C. H. Esterhazy in Sheridan, Wyoming, but the registration had lapsed three years previous. Hector’s contact at MVD got what records were available, including a title to the vehicle, and the last known address of the owner. Clare Hopkins Esterhazy, deceased, age eighty-four, at a nursing home in Casper. There was no bill of sale reassigning ownership. The obvious question was how the trailer had wound up in the meadow below Kettle Creek. Lloyd’s old pickup wouldn’t have done the trick. You’d need at least a three-quarter ton truck to move it, with four-wheel drive.

Hector caught a break when a hunter named Jerry McGill told him the trailer had been up there at least two years because Jerry and his hunting buddies had been hiking past it that long. They’d assumed it was seasonal occupancy.

“You never knocked on the door?”

Jerry smiled. “It’s the mountains, Hector,” he said. “If we’d seen somebody living there, we would have stopped out of courtesy, to tell them we were hunting the National Forest land. Otherwise, let well enough alone.”

He meant you didn’t walk up to someplace on the ragged edge of nowhere without an invitation. Hector understood.

Lloyd, assuming it was Lloyd, could have bought propane tanks anywhere inside a hundred-mile radius, and humped them up to the abandoned trailer. The other mystery was how he knew the trailer was there.

Hector telephoned the FBI agent, Frank Child. “I’d like to call in that favor,” he said.

“What do you need, Deputy?”

“I’ve got paperwork on a guy named Lloyd Threadgill.”

“The meth lab that blew up.”

“Nothing probative,” Hector said. “He’s got a history with speed, is all I have. It was his truck burned at the scene.”

“Close enough for government work,” Child said.

“I’ve got his DD-214,” Hector said.

“That’s a start,” Child said.

“He was in the Gulf War, the first one,” Hector said. “You’ve got leverage I don’t,” Hector said. “You can get on to St. Louis, look at his records. I want to know the units, the men he served with.”

“Names.”

“I’m down to stems and seeds,” Hector said.

“Let’s see if we can find something we can smoke.”

Hector was surprised the FBI guy had a sense of humor.

“Back at you in twenty-four,” Child said.

They hung up.

Hector didn’t know exactly what he was asking for. He had too many pieces, and no pattern. If he had a pattern, maybe the pieces would fit.

But he couldn’t shrug off the two boys in the trailer park.

Katie had morning classes to teach, so she was staying over in Billings tonight at a girlfriend’s. Nothing wrong with that, but it meant Hector had nobody to take his troubles to. He opened a beer and watched the news while he made himself dinner.

It was a Tuesday, so NCIS was on at seven. Hector wasn’t that crazy about cop shows, but he got a kick out of Mark Harmon, even if the character was unlike any Marine gunny of Hector’s acquaintance. The episode resolved in a flurry of gunfire and wisecracks, and Hector found himself wondering what he might do if he had the forensics and computer capability of Mark Harmon’s crew, or their sudden, intuitive leap of faith after the third commercial break. Hector could have used a sudden intuition, or a leap of faith.

Restless, he called Lame Deer. He wanted to bring the retired FBI agent up to speed, but more than that, Hector wanted somebody who’d listen. Lame Deer might help put his thoughts in order.

“What’s your interest in Lloyd’s military record?” was Lame Deer’s first question.

“I don’t know,” Hector said. “It’s a dropped stitch.”

“The gang chases him off, but he’s got a place to hide.”

“The woman’s dead. How did the trailer get there? How did he know where to find it?”

“Cart before the horse,” Lame Deer said.

“Okay, walk me through it.”

“Guy blows himself up. You trace his truck. You go to the trailer park, you find a couple of teenage dopers.”

“I can’t shake that.”

“You’re not seeing the forest for the trees. You can’t let it get personal.”

“Deputy Pacheco got on to the Livingston PD. They know the local dealers are using kids to mule speed.”

“So you’ve got an intervention, maybe some arrests.”

“It doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“You’re bailing out a bathtub with a teaspoon.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Focus.”

Hector smiled. “Both of us?” he asked.

“Who’s trafficking in the Gallatin?” Lame Deer asked him.

Hector thought about it. “You figure Lloyd is answering an unanswered need,” he said.

“Filling a vacuum.”

“Identify a customer base, and provide the product.”

“You’re burning daylight, Hector,” Lame Deer told him.

It was a fair question Lame Deer had asked. There was a law of supply and demand. How much demand was there for drugs in Stillwater County, and who were the suppliers? Drugs, of course, were everywhere, and Hector understood his little patch of ground was no exception, but it wasn’t Bozeman or Billings. He knew he was being naive. Livingston, for example, only had a population of about six thousand people, and look what he’d run across there. Just because Stillwater was primarily ranch country, the towns small and spread out, feed and hardware stores, mostly, didn’t mean the drug presence was negligible. Coke and heroin, downers, reds. You could probably buy quaaludes or Vicodin from a high-school kid. He was just resistant to the idea.

Okay, he told himself. That’s fatal. It was like thinking those same high school kids don’t have unprotected sex. Katie offered birth control counseling at the clinic, not that it made a dent in the rate of STDs and unanticipated pregnancies. Turn it back to front, Hector thought. Demand, then supply.

Why had Lloyd come to the Absarokas? To get the hell out of Dodge, for openers, the gangbangers more than he could handle on his own. But maybe somebody had offered to set him up in business. A vacant trailer, raw materials, a market share.

So, who had the market?

He called Joe Pony. Joe was Hector’s counterpart up by Big Lake. He was one of the two other Stillwater deputies.

“I can give you a couple of names,” Joe said. “Local guys. Nobody in your neck of the woods, far as I know.”

Hector thanked him, and tried Absalom Enterprise, the third deputy.

“I put a guy away a few years ago,” Ab told him. “Lakota, name of Cloudfoot. The fall was three to five. He might be out by now.”

Hector felt like he was spinning his wheels. He phoned the States.

The answer to his first question took him neither forward nor back. The lab had a positive on Lloyd Threadgill, DOA at the crime scene, so Hector could stop thinking about the guy theoretically. The drug task force wasn’t as comforting. Ike Cloudfoot had been released from state correctional up in Helena four months previous. He hadn’t contacted his parole officer.

“Meaning he’s in violation?” Hector asked.

“Open arrest warrant,” the state police officer said.

“Last known?”

She gave him the address. Somewhere near Hailstone.

Hector hung up. Oh for three. Or maybe a base on balls.

It seemed to Hector there were two interrelated issues, Lloyd’s possible associates, and the timeline. Lloyd had a couple of minor pops for possession, but he’d never been in prison. Ike Cloudfoot was a hard case who’d been in the heavy his entire adult life, so if there were any connection between them, it had to be on the outside. The problem was lack of opportunity. Cloudfoot had gone down on the distribution beef two-and-a-half years before. Lloyd had shown up in Livingston a year ago, at least according to the local police blotter, which showed two arrests in the last twelve months. It was remotely possible they’d hooked up after Cloudfoot got out of the joint, but there was no proof either way.

Then there was the trailer. No way Cloudfoot had towed it up Kettle Creek two years back. He was in stir. So maybe the Lakota was a red herring. Hector was grabbing at straws, but he decided this was a square peg in a round hole. And in any case, Cloudfoot had vanished off the radar.

He went back to Lloyd. Agent Child had forwarded his e-mail exchanges with the VA.

Threadgill, Lloyd. Dates of active service, MOS, training certifications, unit deployments, awards and commendations, rank at separation. The usual boilerplate.

No, wait a minute. Hector went back. Lloyd had been promoted to E-6, not specialist grade, staff sergeant. But he’d separated as an E-4, which suggested disciplinary action and reduction in rank. There was no indication of a court-martial proceeding, so it had to be an Article 15, non-judicial punishment, captain’s mast, which wouldn’t show up in his permanent record. Hector wondered what was serious enough to cost Lloyd two stripes, but not serious enough to get him discharged under less than honorable conditions. It was a fine line. The military operated under very strict rules, but an Article 15 was the next best thing to a plea bargain. Lloyd had been offered a deal.

His operational specialty, his MOS, was Electronic Warfare, which covered a multitude of sins. Spook stuff, possibly. A security-classified job in a combat zone. Where had he trained, again? Biloxi, Mississippi. And then he’d gone through jump school at Stead AFB, in Nevada. So he had parachute wings, too. He’d been assigned flight status in the Gulf, and there was an entry on his pay log for hazardous duty. All of which added up to absolutely nothing, from Hector’s point of view. It told him zip about an exploding trailer, filled with meth vapors.

Or perhaps not.

Lloyd’s last documentation was determination of disability. Possible exposure to toxic elements. Everybody who’d been in the Gulf had possible exposure to toxic elements. The VA was on the fence, trying to slide away from it.

Lloyd was another unacknowledged casualty.

“All due respect, that’s a lot of road apples,” Hieronymo said. He nodded toward Katie. “I’m thinking the doc agrees with me on this.”

“People choose their poison,” she said.

“They choose to be victims too,” he said. Hieronymo was a substance abuse counselor, working out of Katie’s clinic. “I know that’s not the received wisdom, these days, but it’s how it looks from where I sit.”

“Lloyd brought it on himself,” Hector said.

“Yes and no,” Hieronymo said. “Guy was in combat. He comes back from the Gulf with a Jones, he wouldn’t be the first. You have to be willing to take the responsibility, is all.”

“Surrender to a higher power?” Hector suggested.

“If you’re hitting the sauce or you’re strung out on drugs, you’ve already surrendered to a higher power, Hector.”

“I didn’t mean to sound like a wiseass.”

“VA has outreach. Post-traumatic stress, addiction issues. But they don’t come to you, you need to go to them.”

“Understood.”

“And even if Lloyd had been getting help, he didn’t stay on message. It’s hard to live a clean life.”

Moment to moment. Sylvia Greyeyes had described herself as a dry drunk, Hector remembered.

“You need some kind of support mechanism. Friends, family. It’s pretty obvious Lloyd didn’t have one.”

“So he falls back on the one he knows.”

“Booze was a good friend to me,” Hieronymo said. “Always there when I needed it, never let me down. I’ve been sober the past five years, and I’ve wanted a drink each and every damn day of those five years. It doesn’t go away.”

“What’s the difference between you and a guy like Lloyd?”

Hieronymo smiled, and rubbed his thumb and his index finger together. “About that much,” he said.

“Except that you’re straight,” Hector said.

“So far,” Hieronymo said. “Today’s not over yet.”

Child was on the phone. “Anything?” the FBI agent asked.

“I think Lloyd had help,” Hector said. “The wrong kind.”

“Cloudfeather?”

“Cloudfoot,” Hector corrected him. “No.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Nothing. Cloudfoot might be background noise, but I can’t put them together.”

“What’s your thinking?” Child asked.

“I think Lloyd was a target of opportunity,” Hector said.

“I’m listening.”

“Lloyd went to the VA. He wanted treatment, or he wanted to sign up for disability. Six of one. Either way, he’s in the system.”

“I gave you what I got,” Child said.

“There’s more,” Hector said.

“Confidentiality,” Child said. “I won’t get his medical.”

“He’s a dead guy. Dead people don’t have secrets.”

Child blew out his breath. “You’re a hard man, Hector,” he said.

“No more than I have to be,” Hector said. “Find out where Lloyd applied for benefits. What’s his last known, before he came to Montana, and how did he wind up here? Somebody suckered him into that double-wide.”

“I don’t know where you’re going with this.”

“Where it takes me,” Hector told him. They rang off.

He talked to Ab Enterprise again.

“You think Cloudfoot’s involved?” Ab asked.

“I don’t see it, but he’s a loose end,” Hector said.

“Loose is right, if he hasn’t reported to his P.O. Too bad they didn’t notify me of his release.”

“Slipped through the cracks.” He gave Ab the last known he had from the state police. “You know it?”

“It’s a campground up on Big Lake. Seasonal. The way I remember, Ike Cloudfoot’s mom parked herself there, early May to late October. Had what you’d call an unlicensed snack bar.”

Meaning she sold beer to the fishermen. “Give you leverage with her?” Hector asked.

Ab snorted. “Naomi’s a piece of work,” he said. “Ike’s no prize, but the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“You get the chance, will you check it out?”

“I can make a run out there, next couple of days. You want in?”

“I’m not going to see anything you wouldn’t,” Hector said.

“Ike’s old lady doesn’t deal dope, far as I know,” Ab said. “Bootleg liquor is all, and Frito pies I wouldn’t feed a dog.”

There was an unasked question. “Something’s bothering you,” Hector said.

“It bothers me the States didn’t tell me Ike had gotten out of the slam. It bothers me that he’s gone missing. It bothers me that nobody gives a rat’s ass. And it bothers me to go up to Big Lake without somebody watching my back.”

“Okay,” Hector said. “I’ll be there in the morning.”

Katie was drinking Gallo red again. Hector was drinking Coors. He seemed absent, she thought, and she remarked on it.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m wool gathering.”

“No,” she said. “You’re thinking. There’s a difference.”

“Those two kids at the trailer park in Livingston,” he said. “Fifteen, sixteen years old. Gangbangers, shuffling drugs. Sylvia Greyeyes and her two boys, they’re what now, ten? Looking forward to a dead-end future.”

Katie sat back. “Get over yourself,” she said.

Hector was startled. “What?” he asked, looking up.

“You heard me,” she said. “Meth is everywhere. It’s like the weather. You take one guy down, four more pop up. Dragon’s teeth.”

“Bailing out a bathtub with a teaspoon.”

She leaned forward again, and took his hand. “Sailing into the wind,” she said.

“One day at a time.”

“Best you can do,” Katie said.

Frank Child came into the Hitch, and looked around. Hector waved him over.

Child seemed a little awkward. “Dr. Faraday?” he asked.

They shook hands.

“Beer?” Hector asked him.

The FBI agent slipped into the booth next to Hector. “When in Rome,” he said.

Their pizzas came.

“Can we speak frankly?” Child asked Hector.

Hector glanced at Katie, putting a couple of napkins in his lap. “She’ll hear it all, anyway,” he said.

Child nodded, concealing his smile.

“Or not,” Katie said.

“Might as well hear it from me, then,” Child said.

Hector folded his slice of pepperoni pizza the long way, so he wouldn’t drip cheese on his pants.

“Okay, first of all, your guy moved around a lot, the last couple of years,” Child said. “Denver, Seattle, Albuquerque. Before that, though, his life seems to have been pretty stable.”

“Where was he?”

“Norfolk, Virginia.”

“Job?”

Child nodded. “Department of Defense subcontractor.”

“Lloyd was Army,” Hector said. “Norfolk is Navy.”

Child nodded again. “They worked on naval avionics. Don’t ask. I did. Classified project.”

“Lloyd had a security clearance.”

“Dating back to his time of service.”

“What did he do, exactly, when he was in the military?”

“Communications intelligence.”

“Could you explain what you’re talking about?” Katie asked.

Child smiled. “Closely held,” he said. “What they call compartmentalized, in the jargon. My security clearance doesn’t give me access.”

“But you can make an educated guess,” she said.

“Intercept and analysis of electronic signals, like radar signatures and missile telemetry. These days, there’s a virtual battlefield. It’s on computers, not on the ground.”

“They still take casualties on the ground,” Katie said.

“There’s that,” Child said.

“What did he get busted for?” Hector asked.

“There’s no record,” Child said. “A court martial would have a transcript, but an Article 15 is at the discretion of the unit C.O. Commanding officer,” he added, for Katie’s benefit.

“He lost his rank, but he kept his clearance,” Hector said.

“And took an honorable separation,” Child said.

“But eighteen years later, something happens,” Hector said. “The guy goes on the bum.”

Child shrugged. “That’s how I’d read it,” he said.

“What pushed him over the edge?”

“He was in VA outreach. Post-traumatic stress, maybe. But he applied to get his rank reinstated. They turned him down.”

“Piss me off, if I were him,” Hector said.

“Which is about as far as I can take it,” Child said. “The only other thing I came up with was his Facebook account.”

“A place where vets can bitch about mistreatment.”

“And share resources.”

“If we got screwed, how do we screw them back?”

“Couple of linked Web sites. Lloyd was active on them.”

“How angry are the Web sites?”

“Pretty angry.”

“Turns out, FBI is monitoring them for domestic terrorism?”

“No comment,” Child said.

“I’m sorry,” Katie said, “but you seem to be trying awfully hard not to tell Hector something.”

“Here it is,” Child said. “You can be a homeless guy, but you can go into any public library and sign onto the Internet. Lloyd kept his accounts up and running. It doesn’t matter where he was. Seattle or Albuquerque. He might as well have been in Warsaw or Moscow.”

“But he wound up on the backside of nowhere,” Hector said. “In a double-wide he didn’t own. Cooking meth. How does he get from Point A to Point B? Or more specifically, how do we?”

“What have you got on Cloudtooth?”

“Cloudfoot,” Hector said.

“Whatever,” Child said.

“I’m going after him tomorrow,” Hector said.

“Could you use company?” Child asked.

“Wouldn’t hurt.”

“Don’t let your pizza get cold,” Katie said to them.

There were two national wildlife refuges at the north end of Stillwater, Hailstone and Halfbreed. It was an empty end of the map.

Ab Enterprise obviously felt Big Lake was outlaw country, and he suited up accordingly. He had a Ruger .223 ranch gun on his rifle rack and a 12-gauge Remington pump clipped to the dash. He himself was carrying a Glock.40 in a hip holster, and a 9MM Springfield compact as a boot pistol.

“No joke, hey?” Child asked him.

Ab shrugged. “Better to have what you don’t need than need what you don’t have,” he said.

They followed Ab in Hector’s truck. Going in, they saw a Forest Service vehicle on the way out. Ab waved the guy down and pulled over. The ranger parked on the opposite shoulder and Ab crossed the road to have a word with him.

“Good that he doesn’t want to make a blind approach,” Child said.

“Ab’s been at this game awhile,” Hector said. “He believes in leaving a light footprint.”

“And carrying heavy,” the FBI agent commented.

“There’s no call to court trouble,” Hector said. “Not when it has a habit of finding you.”

“Is that one of those stoic Western aphorisms?”

“He’s been in five gunfights, that I know of,” Hector said. “Other man always drew first. Ab’s no cowboy.”

“You, either,” Child said.

“No,” Hector said, smiling. “I’m an Indian.”

Child laughed, a little uneasily, Hector thought.

The ranger drove off, and Ab came over to Hector’s side of the truck. “Place is crawling with bass fishermen, man tells me,” he said. “Naomi Cloudfoot is doing a land-office business in ice, beer, cigarettes, and live bait. You sure you’re up for this?”

Both of them said yes.

“Okay,” Ab said. He walked back to his SUV and got in, and they drove behind him on the unpaved road up to the lake.

The terrain rose slightly, and then dropped, and the trees fell away. The lake spread out in front of them, the water bright, as smooth as porcelain, one of those accidents of nature the Rockies serve up, a shallow basin carved by ice, stretching toward the horizon line, pristine and uncluttered, as if God had only just left.

Child whistled. “I should get out of the office more,” the FBI agent said.

“Take every opportunity you get,” Hector said.

“Indians have a name for this place?”

“Tanka Ble is what the Lakota call it,” Hector said.

“Which means what?”

“It means Big Lake,” Hector said, with a straight face.

Child glanced over at him. “Half the time, I don’t know if you’re putting me on or not, Deputy.”

There was a fork, the road branching, and Ab took the right-hand turn, heading north along the shoreline. The nearest boat ramp and campground was on the east side of the lake.

The bass boats had been out at first light, when insects peppered the water. Now it was mid morning, the sun heating the surface of the lake, and the fish had gone deeper, or moved in close to the shoreline, where deadfall created pockets of shade. The fishermen had come in to change their lures.

Naomi Cloudfoot sold shiners and crawfish. A lot of bass guys used plastic worms and spinners, but some of them swore by live bait. The proof was in the pudding.

The three lawmen parked behind Naomi’s trailer and got out.

“What’s the drill?” FBI special agent Child asked.

“I’ll see what I can get out of Naomi,” Ab said. “You want to chat up her customers?”

They nodded, and Ab got in line behind a couple of big guys in plaid shirts and waders.

“I don’t know dick about bass fishing,” Child said.

Hector shrugged. “Me, either,” he said.

It wasn’t much of a crowd to work, a few dozen men on shore, another dozen still out on the lake. The two deputies were in uniform, Child in khakis and a windbreaker, although you wouldn’t mistake him for a civilian. The fishermen weren’t a hostile bunch, in any case, just disinterested. They could have cared less about Naomi Cloudfoot’s jailbird son.

“Haven’t seen him,” one guy told Hector. “Last I heard, he was in the jug.”

“He’s been out a couple of months,” Hector said.

“Ike’s nothing but trouble,” the bass fisherman said. “His old lady stands by him because he’s family, that’s all.”

“He hasn’t reported to his P.O.,” Hector said, “but I’m not looking to violate him.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Answers to some questions. Known associates.”

The fisherman snorted. “Ike’s known associates are junkies and gang-bangers. He’s pretty low on the food chain.”

“That’s what I hear,” Hector said.

“Then you’ve heard all there is to hear,” the guy said, and walked off.

Child came over. “Any joy?” he asked.

“None of them admits to seeing Ike,” Hector told him.

“They covering for him?”

“I don’t read it that way,” Hector said. “They might be protecting Naomi, but nobody seems to have any love lost for Ike and his line of business.”

“Why don’t you kiss my ass?” they heard Naomi Cloudfoot say loudly. “You already put my boy away once.”

Ab Enterprise said something to her, quietly.

“That doesn’t cut any ice with me,” she snapped.

Ab raised a hand, no harm, no foul, and moved away from the take-out window.

“Not getting any further,” he said to Hector.

“Might raise a wind,” Hector said.

Child’s cell buzzed on his hip, and he stepped a little out of earshot to take the call.

“She’s a shade too adamant,” Ab said.

“Nice word for it,” Hector said, smiling.

Ab smiled too. “Dollars to donuts, she’s seen him,” he said. “Ike’s only half smart. He knows better than to shack up with her, but he’s dumb enough to hit on her for beer money.”

“You figure he’s gone to ground close by?”

“That’s the easy call,” Ab said. “But wishing doesn’t make it so. He could be anywhere between here and Canada.”

Child snapped his cell phone shut. “His mom might not know where he is, but we do,” he said to them.

They both looked at him.

“Nearest town is Molt,” he said.

“Not much hat size to it,” Ab said.

“Big enough for a public library, and Internet access.”

“What have you got?” Hector asked.

“Ike Cloudfoot just signed onto his Facebook account, as we speak,” the FBI agent said.

“Eight miles of bad road,” Ab said to Hector. They were both thinking the same thing. Naomi could alert Ike before they even got close.

“Let’s hit it,” Hector said.

They pulled out without urgency. They were a mile from the lake before Ab Enterprise put the pedal to the metal.

Andrew Carnegie, the nineteenth-century Pittsburgh robber baron, put up seed money for public libraries all over the country. The library in Molt was the only brick building in town, a modest two-story affair, vaguely neo-Classical. At eleven that morning, the parking lot was already half full.

“I see a problem, here,” Hector said.

Ab nodded. “Background,” he agreed.

Frank Child looked at the two uniformed deputies.

“Civilians,” Hector said to him. “Library staff, old ladies with blue hair, kids out of school for the summer. From the number of cars, I’d say there were forty, maybe fifty people inside. Targets of opportunity, Ike decides to pick a fight.”

“We don’t know if he’s armed.”

Hector glanced at Ab. “Odds are, not,” he said.

“I wouldn’t take it to the bank,” Ab said.

“How do you want to do this, then?” Child asked them.

“Ab and I go around the side, use the back door.”

“How do you know there is one?”

Hector smiled. “Handicapped access,” he said. “Wheelchair ramp. It’s a Federal mandate, to qualify for matching funds.”

“Where am I?”

“You go in the front,” Hector said.

“I don’t even know what Ike Cloudfoot looks like.”

“Tall, early thirties, skinny as a rail, hair tied back in a ponytail,” Ab said. “I forget to mention he’s an Indian? You can’t miss him.”

“Non-issue,” Hector said. “If his mom warned him, he’ll be long gone. If she didn’t, he doesn’t know we’re coming.”

“Here’s the deal,” Ab said. “These places are all laid out the same. You walk in, there’s a central check-out desk, open stacks. Ask to get on the waiting list for computer time. Ike won’t be in the stacks. He’ll be on a computer station, because he’s only allowed an hour of use. He won’t waste it.”

“That’s a lot of variables,” Child said.

“There always are,” Hector said.

In the event, however, they took him down without incident.

Hector and Ab came in the back and navigated their way through the stacks. Child was sitting at an open computer position, two seats down from Ike, who was oblivious to what was going on around him, until Ab pinned his arms, to keep him from deleting his recent Web searches. Hector scooted Ike’s chair back and cuffed him. Child slid into Ike’s seat and began scrolling through the screens he’d opened. It happened too fast for anybody else to react.

Then they drew reaction in very short order.

The first was a library patron, a woman in her mid forties who’d been at one of the other computer workstations. “What are you doing?” she asked. “There are children here.”

“With all due respect, ma’am,” Ab Enterprise said, “we were well aware of that.”

A second woman, an assistant librarian, put her hand on the first woman’s arm. “Deputy,” she said.

Ab apparently knew her. “Miz Nicholson,” he said.

“I think Sally’s scared,” the librarian told him. “We don’t usually have armed, uniformed officers making an arrest on library grounds.”

“I appreciate that,” Ab said. “My apologies,” he said to the first woman, Sally. “We wanted to minimize the risk, and we needed the element of surprise.”

Sally blinked back tears, more shaken than she’d let on.

Hector got Ike Cloudfoot to his feet. He handed Ike’s cell to Ab.

Ab flipped it open. The screen showed Naomi had called her son twice but the cell phone had been turned off. Ab shook his head. “Ike doesn’t play by the rules much,” he said, “but they ask you to silence your phone in the library.”

Hector looked over Child’s shoulder. Child had saved Ike’s searches to a document, and he was printing it out.

“I’m sorry for the disturbance,” Ab said to the two women.

“Are you keeping a record of the Web sites this man accessed on the Internet?” the librarian asked him.

“We’re taking him into custody on an open felony warrant,” Ab said. “He’s in violation of his parole, and he’s a person of interest in an active investigation.”

“He has an expectation of privacy.”

Ab nodded. “Unlawful search and seizure,” he said.

“What’s it about?” she asked him.

Ab hesitated. “Methamphetamine trafficking,” he said.

“Oh, hell,” the librarian said, sadly, and let it go.

“What have we got?” Hector asked. They were outside, sitting in his truck.

“Online pharmacies, Canadian,” Child said.

“Pseudoephedrine,” Hector said.

Child nodded. You couldn’t go into a drugstore in the States and buy enough cold medicine to make it worth your while, but on the Internet it was an open market.

“Is this legal?” Hector asked the FBI agent. He meant, was it usable evidence.

“International traffic falls under Homeland Security. It’s subject to the anti-terrorism act.”

“So we can nail Ike as the supplier of raw materials to his cookers, but how do we connect him with Lloyd?”

Child handed him the printout.

“Walk me through it,” Hector said.

Child opened his laptop.

Hector wasn’t that Internet savvy, so it took the FBI agent some explaining.

“Social networking, Facebook, MySpace.”

“You told me that’s how Ike hooked up with Lloyd.”

“Little more roundabout than that,” Child said. “Lloyd was among the damaged and the disaffected.”

“Veterans’ blog sites. A place to bitch about mistreatment and ignored needs. The Va’s a mess.”

“It’s a recruitment pool.”

“I don’t like where this is going,” Hector said.

“I don’t like it, either,” Child said.

“A lot of guys came back from Vietnam or the Gulf wars with post-traumatic stress, battle fatigue,” Hector said. “They didn’t turn to cooking meth.”

“Hundreds of thousands. All you need is a couple of dozen, here and there.”

“And you set it up through the Internet.”

“Six or eight guys in Michigan, up in the You Pee. Six or eight in the Southwest, Albuquerque, El Paso. Another six or eight in Montana. You keep the distribution small. You keep it separate, compartmentalized, like a spy cell.”

“We bust Ike, we’re only scratching the surface.”

“Doesn’t make a dent in the traffic.”

“Ike’s small-time. He’s a druggie. Meth has burned his brains out and probably cost him his teeth. He doesn’t have the chops to put this together.”

“Agreed,” Child said.

“What’s the common denominator?”

“Tribal lands, Indian country.”

“Is it going to do us any good to talk to Ike?”

“Can’t do us any harm,” Child said.

They sat him down in Ab’s substation, just off the interstate at the Reedpoint exit. Hector took first licks.

“Guy blew himself up in a trailer in the Absarokas. He was an ex-G.I., name of Lloyd Threadgill.”

Ike stared at his hands, unresponsive.

“I’m curious to know how you made his acquaintance,” Hector said. “Doesn’t seem like he would have run with your crowd.”

“I don’t have no posse,” Ike said.

“What about Gulf War vets?” Child asked. “Guys who were in the sandbox?”

Ike fidgeted. He was coming down with the shakes.

“You miss your wake-up shot today, Ike?” Ab asked him.

“I got worms under my skin,” Ike said.

“It’ll get worse before it gets better,” Ab said.

“I want a lawyer,” Ike said to them.

Ab grinned. “I want a nine-inch dick,” he said.

“You’ve been Mirandized,” Child said.

“I don’t have to give you nothing,” Ike said.

“You go in the slam, you’ll get nothing to ease your pain,” Ab said. “I got something for you, might take the edge off.”

Child cut him a sharp look.

“This ain’t Quantico,” Ab said.

The FBI agent obviously didn’t like the direction they were taking.

“Make you a deal, Ike,” Ab said.

“You can’t,” Child said.

“Ike’s choice, not yours,” Ab said.

“I’m crawling inside,” Ike said.

“Who put you together with Lloyd Threadgill?” Hector asked.

“Just a guy.”

“How’d you hook up with him?”

“Cut me some slack, hey.”

Hector glanced at Ab. Child looked away.

“Buy you a cup of coffee?” Hector asked the FBI agent.

They left Ab alone with Ike.

“I’m not going along with this,” Child said.

“Nobody asked,” Hector said.

“Your pal, there, gets Ike jacked up? Nothing the guy says is going to be admissible. We’ll never secure a conviction.”

“I’ve got no interest in putting Ike away,” Hector said.

“Why, because he’s walking wounded?”

“No, because he’s a means to an end.”

“A judge might call it subornation of perjury.”

“With all due respect, don’t preach the law to me.”

“The law’s all we’ve got between us and the Stone Age.”

“Frank, for Christ’s sake, this is the Stone Age.”

Child had never heard Hector use profanity before, and in fact it was uncharacteristic. Hector was usually courteous, but it was obvious he was pissed off about something.

“Sorry,” Hector said. “No reason to take it out on you.”

Child had cooled off, seeing Hector get hot. “What is it?” he asked.

Hector rubbed the bridge of his nose. “History, maybe,” he said. “Benign neglect.”

Child waited him out.

“Ira Hayes drowned in three inches of water,” Hector said. “Fell facedown in a puddle. He’d won the Medal of Honor in the Pacific, but when he died, he was just another drunken Indian.”

“You’re not a loser, Hector,” Child said.

“Ike is,” Hector said.

“Ike’s past saving.”

“Pretty much,” Hector said. “That’s my point.”

“You can’t change his history, or yours.”

“They say the victors write the history,” Hector said, “but tell me, Frank, who exactly are the winners here?”

“Okay, you’re right,” Child said. “I shouldn’t preach the law. You save just one kid, it’s a minor victory. But you want to lose your self-respect in the bargain?”

“I’ll take the trade,” Hector said.

“Your call,” the FBI agent said.

Ab came out from the back room. “Got a name,” he said.

The one name led to others. Dropping a pebble in the pool, ripples spread outward. Federal warrants executed in eighteen states targeted network user databases, although the service providers dug in their heels and fought back against giving up individual account information. Many of the warrants were later ruled invalid because they cast too wide a net.

Still, there were results. They popped cookers and distribution as far east as Illinois and upper New York state, even if most of it was out west, Arapahoe, Apache, Flathead, Ute, Navajo. Closer to home, for Hector and Lame Deer, were the Rosebud and Wind River.

“Bad medicine,” Lame Deer said.

Hector nodded.

Burgers and beers at the Hitching Post. Lame Deer had come up from Wyoming. They’d invited Frank Child.

“It’s a good bust, Hector,” Child said.

“Small fish in a big pond,” Hector said.

“Just like us,” Lame Deer said.

“You guys,” Katie remarked, smiling.

“All due respect, Doc,” Lame Deer said, raising his glass.

“Okay, it’s a good bust,” Hector admitted. “We shut down a half dozen cookers. There’s an end to it?”

“You take what you get,” Lame Deer said.

“Evil sufficient to the day thereof,” Child said.

“You a Bible-thumper, Agent?” Lame Deer asked him.

“The devil quotes Scripture when it suits him,” Child said.

“So do I,” Lame Deer said.

“We’ll never find the guy who set it up,” Hector said.

“Don’t be so sure,” Child said.

“He’s a predator. He lurks around the waterhole. The prey comes to drink.”

“You’re giving him too much credit,” Child said.

“He’s not an abstraction.”

“We’ll nail him, in the end.”

Hector’s cell phone burred in his pocket. “Excuse me,” he said to the others, and picked up, turning away slightly from the table. He listened. “Roger that,” he said, and thumbed his phone closed. “Gotta go,” he said to Katie, standing up.

“What?” she asked, knowing it could only be bad.

“Ab Enterprise just got gunned down in a trailer park, far side of the interstate,” Hector said. “Twelve-gauge full in the chest, but he took the shooter with him. Fifteen-year-old meth head, both of them DOA.” He looked at the FBI agent. “You were saying?” he asked.

Copyright © 2012 David Edgerley Gates