Another Man's Moccasins

5

The car had been stolen from a not so small community in Southern California called Westminster, which was, according to the dispatcher at the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, better known as Little Saigon. Ruby said she’d spoken with a charming young man who’d confirmed the not so grand theft auto. He said that the vehicle had been stolen from a recycler’s lot and that the former owner, Lee Nguyen, had stated that he’d donated the Buick to charity but that the organization must have decided the car wasn’t worth the trouble.

We’d done as much physical investigation of the automobile as our limited abilities would allow, so we loaded the rusty sedan onto a flatbed and shipped it off to Cheyenne. The fingerprints we’d lifted from the vehicle were probably female, judging from their size, or possibly from a child, and the tread deposits were from the immediate vicinity. There was nothing in the trunk, and the only thing in the glove compartment was a receipt for a new water pump that had been replaced in Nephi, Utah, only three days earlier.

I sent Henry and Cady back to Durant in my truck since Cady was looking a little tired and hitched a ride with Saizarbitoria over to the sheriff’s substation. We drove with the windows down, since the Suburban didn’t have air-conditioning.

Santiago spoke over the heated wind and the monster motor that got about eight miles to the gallon. “The bartender didn’t seem genuinely surprised about the Buick.”

We’d gone back in and questioned the guy again; he said he’d noticed the car there, but that he didn’t think it was a big deal. He said that even in the short time he’d been here, he’d noticed a lot of people got ripped and left their cars and trucks on the street rather than be harassed by us. I had asked him if a lot of them came from California, to which he’d responded that he hadn’t noticed the license plates. “Did he seem more nervous the first time we questioned him?”

The Basquo thought about it. “Yes, he did.”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

“The guy in the corner, Tuyen?”

“I think so, too.” We parked in front of the WYDOT annex where we had a small office. “I’ll call Ruby and see if she’s got anything on this Tuyen guy or heard anything from DCI. You check on the repair bill in Nephi.” I handed him the plastic bag which had the receipt in it.

He looked at me, a little worried. “I think they only have one phone down here.”

Powder Junction was going to take a little getting used to.

“Then I’ll call her on the radio.” I plucked the mic from the dash and stopped him as he started to close the door of the unit. “Hey? Call Maynard in about an hour and tell him that we need him to come and talk to us tomorrow morning here at the office.”

Santiago smiled. “What time?”

“Make it early.”

He continued to smile and adjusted his sunglasses like a movie star, and it wasn’t hard to imagine the gascon with a beret, feather, and sword. “Does this mean I’m being promoted to chief undersheriff of the Powder Junction Detachment of the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department?”

“Acting CUSPJD of the ACSD. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? I’ll look into getting you a second phone line.” As Saizarbitoria went into the office, I keyed the mic and sang, “Oooooh Ruuuuuubeeee, don’t take your love to town. . . .”

Static. “Stop that. Over.”

“So, you have any news?”

Static. “I’ve got information on the guy from California.” “I’m all tin ears.”

Static. “Tran Van Tuyen became an American citizen in 1982, which is when he obtained an operator’s license. He doesn’t have so much as a parking ticket to his name.”

“Well, it was worth a try.”

Static. “You’re not going to start singing again, are you?”

I keyed the mic and ignored her. “Keep digging. He said he was here looking at some property, the Red Fork Ranch. Get a hold of Bee Bee and see if she’s ever heard of the guy, then call Ned Tanen at the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and see if he can come up with anything.”

Static. “Roger that.”

“Anything from DCI?”

Static. “They just faxed up the report.” There was a pause, and I listened to the silence of the radio. “They got an ID on the young woman.”

“Who was she?”

Static. “Her name was Ho Thi Paquet. Turns out she was a Vietnamese illegal who was picked up on prostitution charges in L.A. six weeks ago. She was scheduled for deportation, but I haven’t gotten any straight answers about what she might have been doing in Wyoming.”

“Ask Ned to talk to his friends in the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and to throw that name around along with Lee Nguyen and Tran Van Tuyen; see if they can come up with something down in Little Saigon. Anything else?”

Static. “I’ll just let you read the report. When are you coming back up? ”

“I’m going to run out and talk to the Dunnigan brothers, and then I’ll have Saizarbitoria give me a ride back. I figure I can let him have one more night with his wife before banishing him to Powder Junction. How’s Dog?”

Static. “He’s fine.”

“Thanks, Ruby.” I paused. “Cady and Henry make it back?”

Static. “Yes, and they’re planning on having dinner later.”

“They say where?”

Static. “I’m not allowed to say.”

Cahoots.

Static. “I have a Methodist women’s meeting at seven o’clock, so can you make it by six-thirty?”

I pulled my pocket watch from my jeans and flipped it around. “Easily.”

Static. “I’m holding you to that.”

After talking to Santiago, I commandeered our only vehicle and drove out toward the Rocking D and the ghost town of Bailey. The two kids who had been standing in the fenced-in yard were still there. It took me a minute to find the appropriate switches on the unfamiliar Chevrolet, but I tapped the siren and lights and watched as they jumped up and down, this time in counterpoint, both of them continuing to wave as I made the turn and headed west.

Small joys.

There had once been a coal mine near the town, but with the caprice of geology and with the disaster that had claimed the lives of seventeen miners just after the turn of the century, the last one, Bailey had bailed. All that was left of the settlement were a few buildings clinging to the trailing end of the Bighorn Mountain range and a cemetery.

I slowed to look at the abandoned buildings in the late afternoon sun, vertical structures attempting to join the horizontal landscape. There were only six—a few were wood frame and a few were stone, a couple had storefronts, and only one was worthy of a second story. The old grayed walkway was twisted, and the wood was pulled from its substructure, but the rough-cut two-by-eights were still there, waiting for the ringing sound of silent boots.

There was a union hall and a tipple at the end of the street, with an assortment of roofless shacks that had been built along the stone cliffs that rose at the end of the abandoned town; the weedy graveyard was on the far side. Seventeen markers had been placed where there were no bodies. The disaster had happened when the unfortunate miners had hit a gas pocket, and the resulting explosion had shaken the ground all the way back to Powder Junction almost twenty miles distant.

None of the bodies were recovered, and I always felt strange driving by the lonely little spot of abandoned civilization.

There weren’t many ghost towns left in the state; most had been packed away and carted off to amusement parks and tourist destinations along I-80. I guess it would be for the good of the county if we got rid of the fire hazard, but it would be sad to see the place go. One of the buildings had already partially burned when some kids had come up from Casper, had drunk too much beer chased with too many shots, and had decided to see how quickly hundred-year-old buildings would burn. We were lucky in that it was winter, and the snow had isolated the damage to one collapsed wall, one DUI, and three minors in possession.

I doubted many tourists came up 190 to the gravel Bailey Mountain Road, and those that did probably mistook what they saw for the real Hole in the Wall of Butch-Cassidy-and-the-Sundance-Kid fame. Through a side canyon, the road leaves the river and the formation of stunning red sandstone with a passage just large enough to allow the entry of a single wagon. A handful of men at this location could hold off an army of sheriffs, but they’d never had to, the Wild Bunch’s reputation doing their fighting for them.

Fiction writers would have you believe that this spectacular location was the Hole in the Wall of western fame; it was in reality a cinematic fabrication at best and an uninformed lie at worst. The actual Hole in the Wall was a good thirty miles south and barely noticeable as a slight break in the cliffs, allowing just enough slope for a man on horseback to pass. It had been described by my father to me as the least memorable historic spot in Wyoming.

It was now private land on the Willow Creek Ranch, and the Ferg had been pestering me for years about getting him on the place to do a little fishing at the rustler’s settlement, where Buffalo Creek tumbled out of the canyon and into a perfect triangular pasture. The dozen or so log cabins that Butch, Sundance, and the Wild Bunch had used were all gone, the last having been hauled over to Cody and the Buffalo Bill Museum.

I continued on my way and drove past the Bailey public school, which was a one-room schoolhouse, a last bastion of public education with, at last count, two students. It troubled me to think about the school closing, the cabins disassembled, and the ghost towns being flattened; it reminded me that the majority of my life had passed. I had started my education in a school very much like the one here and had spent my childhood in a town a lot like Bailey would have been if there had not been the mining disaster.

I thought about Cady as I drove; about Michael, who was due to arrive imminently; about Vic; then about the upcoming election in November and the debate on Friday.

I tried to stop thinking and propped my hat over the big eyelet hook that was anchored on the dash. We had a lot of DUIs in Powder Junction, and I guess Double Tough had improvised this way to secure drunken drivers to the vehicle.

The road was rough—it obviously hadn’t been graded since early spring—and the ruts and bumps kept me from getting the twenty-five-year-old unit above thirty. The clouds of dust obscured my view to the rear as I took a right and continued up through the lodgepole pines and scattered cottonwoods that grew along the draws. It was as if life had chosen to run away and hide in the ragged crevices of the harsh country and forgotten to come back out.

I trailed along a small ravine where swallows cartwheeled in the thermals of the russet cliffs, and glanced over the edge to where the creek still carried the snowmelt of the Bighorn Mountains. It looked like pretty good fishing on the Dunnigan place, but I’d also noted the NO HUNTING signs, and figured that the fish, like everything else, were something the brothers didn’t give away.

They were both handsome old bachelors; I figured that they hadn’t married because they were too tightfisted to consider a wife. To hear Lucian tell it, their father, Sean Dunnigan, had been like that as well, except that back in the dirty thirties he had had no choice but to marry Eileen if he wanted to eat—he was that broke. Hence Den and James.

Eileen had been known to play her violin from the porch of the ranch house, a lone and plying sound that had echoed from the canyon. She’d never grown used to the isolation of the place, had grown senile on the ranch, and had died in the late seventies, rapidly followed by Sean, who had evidently grown used to the music of the only woman he’d known.

The brothers were good hands and tough old boys, tough enough to outlast all their neighbors, and they had slowly bought up the surrounding land and the water and mineral rights until the Dunnigans pretty much owned the Beaver Creek Draw.

James was the eldest and had inherited the ranch, even though he’d been kicked in the head by a cantankerous mare when he was a teenager and wasn’t “quite right,” as the locals had put it.

Den had known that James would inherit, had been pissed off at this rule of succession, but had accepted his lot and consequently taken a job in corrections up in Deer Lodge, Montana. He had even been engaged to a woman, but when the engagement entered its second decade she took exception. Den had returned at his father’s request when it became clear that James could not run the ranch by himself and that Sean had gotten too old to be much of a help.

My professional interaction with the Dunnigans was mostly with Den. There had been an incident where he had almost killed another rancher with a shovel in an altercation over water rights and another where he’d broken a bottle off on the bar in town and threatened to perform an amateur tracheotomy on a rodeo cowboy, but other than that, we’d been limited to the instances when Den would call in a lost James. He did this on a periodic basis. A couple of years earlier, during hunting season and an early snow, we’d responded, along with the highway patrol and the county search and rescue, only to find James seated at the Hole in the Wall Bar, adamant that he had phoned his mother and explained that he was safe and spending the night in town.

The problem was that his mother had been dead for a quarter of a century.

I rolled across the cattle guard and parked beside a turquoise and white ’76 Ford Highboy; the motor was running, but nobody was in it. The ranch house was simple, sided horizontally with a low-slung roof, and there was a metal shop nearby that was four times the size of the house.

By the time I got to the sidewalk, Den was coming out the front door. His eyes widened beyond his usual squint and then settled into a general dissatisfaction at seeing me. He had on a clean, white straw hat, hard like plastic, with a black, braided horsehair band, and was dressed in a freshly pressed shirt and creased jeans that cut the air as he walked. There was a red and white cotton bandana at his neck, and he’d even polished his boots. “I guess I need to turn off my goddamned truck.”

I stopped at the single step leading into the house. “Sorry, Den, but I need to speak with you and James.”

He stood there for another moment looking at me and then hobbled past on bowlegs, which approached a full circle, to the parking area where he reached into the side window of the old Ford and shut off the motor. A rifle rack cradling a beaten .30-30 Winchester showed through the rear window.

Den came back down the poured concrete walk, and I could smell the beer on his breath as he scuffled past. I followed him into the house without a word or invitation.

The tawny light of early evening was spreading across the Powder River landscape, and it settled a comfortable glow inside the kitchen. James was seated at a Formica table with a shot glass and a bottle of Bryer’s Blackberry Brandy, which I assumed was dinner. There was an empty bottle of Busch with more than a few bottle caps pinched together and scattered across the table where I assumed Den must have been sitting before my arrival. The walls were paneled in knotty pine, and all the appliances were what they had called golden harvest in the fifties. I was sure that nothing in the kitchen had been changed since their mother had died.

The heat was oppressive, even with the industrial-type box fan that was propped in one of the windows. The older of the two brothers stood when I entered, wiping his palms on his jeans and sticking out his hand. He seemed embarrassed that I’d found him drinking in his own home. “Hello, Walt. Would you like some coffee? Mother makes it in the morning for us.”

I withheld comment. "No, thanks. Mind if I sit down, James?” He pulled out a chair for me and glanced at his brother, who stood by the door with his arms folded and his hat still on. “I suppose you know why I’m here?”

James sat back down and laid an arm along the table. “It’s about that girl we found?”

“Yep.”

He nodded and then trapped his lips between his teeth. “About the bar?”

“Yep.”

“We did see her there.”

I took my hat off and set it on the orange vinyl seat of the chair beside me. “That’s what I understand.”

James looked at the surface of the table. “Well, we...”

“We don’t have to tell you a God-damned thing. We didn’t do nothin’ to that girl.”

I turned toward Den, but his eyes were fixed on the linoleum. “I’m not aware of anyone having said you did.”

He folded his arms a little tighter and continued to look at the floor. “But that’s why you’re here, ain’t it?”

“There are some questions I wanted to ask you and your brother.” I waited a moment. “Why don’t you have a seat, and we’ll talk.” He sat on a fold-out stool by the refrigerator. I turned back to James. “You want to tell me about the bar?”

It took him a while to speak, and he didn’t answer my question but instead gestured toward the bottle on the table. “Would you like a little, Walt? I’ll git you a clean glass.”

“No, thank you.” I waited and started getting the feeling that there might be something more to this than I had at first anticipated.

James licked his lips and poured himself another shot of the sugary liquor. “It was hot on Friday, so we took a little break about one or two in the afternoon. You know, duck in for a cool one.” I noticed his hands were shaking as he put the bottle back down. “She was in there, sittin’ at the end of the bar. So, Den and I sat a couple’a stools away.” He looked up and smiled sadly. “She was a good-lookin’ young woman, and she kept glancin’ over at us.” His eyes turned to the full shot glass. “We’re just a couple of old hands, Walt. We’re not used to a good-lookin’ young woman payin’ us much attention.”

“You talk to her?”

Den interrupted. “Hell, we thought she was a Jap. She didn’t speak no English.”

I waited, and James started again. “We tried to buy her a couple of drinks, but she wouldn’t take ’em. After a while she got up and waved a little wave at us and left.”

“Bartender can tell you that.”

I looked at Den. “Then what?” He clammed up, sullen again, but James cleared his throat, and I turned back to watch him down his shot. It seemed to me his face was redder than it ought to have been.

“We went out and started to get in the truck, and she was standin’ by her car like she was waitin’ for us.”

Den interrupted again. “She was damn well waitin’ for us.”

I tried to keep the conversation moving. “Then what?”

James cleared his throat again and looked as if all the blood in his body was rising in his face. “She needed gas money....” His face continued to grow redder, and if I hadn’t known any better, I’d have said that both of the Dunnigan brothers were about to implode of embarrassment. “And she . . . she wanted to couple with us.”

I sat there for a moment to make sure I’d heard what I heard. “I thought you said she didn’t speak any English?”

James seemed to be on the edge of a cardiac arrest. “She didn’t. She didn’t, but...”

“Then how could you tell that?”

Den yanked off his straw hat and threw it against the kitchen cabinets. “She grabbed James’s crank and pointed toward the gas cap. That good enough for you, God-damnit!?”

I stopped at the top of the office stairs and stood there glancing around the reception area and listened to the continuing ring of the phone. It was late, but the lights were all on and Ruby’s purse sat in her chair along with her sweater.

I stumbled forward and ran to get the phone, but as I reached for it, it stopped. I stared at the red light that had stopped blinking but stayed steady; someone had gotten it, someone in the building.

Dog was gone, too. I walked down the hallway and past my darkened office where I looked for any Post-its on the door jamb—Post-its were our prose form of communication—but there was only one and it was from Cady. I held the yellow square up to the light and read, “Daddy, we’re at the Winchester—come join us.” Ruby had marked the time at 6:17 P.M. Four hours ago.

There was a noise from the back of the building, so I continued to the end of the hall where I could see the lights on in the holding cells and the kitchenette.

I stopped in the doorway and watched as Ruby stepped away from the phone on the adjacent wall and sat down on one of our metal folding chairs to pet Dog and resume what looked like knitting.

I leaned against the wall and spoke. “Ruby?” She didn’t hear me, even though Dog looked up and wagged. “Ruby! ”

She glanced up and looked stern. “I missed my Methodist women’s meeting.” Her eyes shifted to the holding cell, and I leaned around the corner for a peek at our only inmate.

He was eating with his fingers, and there was a carefully stacked pile of potpie containers near the door of the cell. He didn’t look up when I stepped around the wall to get a better look at him. His hair hung down around his face and to his knees, but he had on the sweatpants I’d provided, and the moccasins. “I guess he woke up.”

“And he was hungry.”

I glanced at the assembled cartons at the big Indian’s feet. “How many has he eaten?”

“Eight, at last count. That, and three Diet Cokes.”

“I guess his throat wasn’t hurt that bad.” He continued chewing as I crossed to stand by Ruby’s chair. “He say anything?”

“No.”

“How did you know he was hungry?”

She looked up at me. “I made the assumption that since he had been living in a culvert under Lone Bear Road...”

The giant deftly placed the empty tubs on the top of the others but didn’t move from the bunk. “Does that mean he wants another?”

“It has eight times now.”

I dug into the minifreezer and pulled out the last of our pot-pies, removing it from the box and tossing it into the microwave. I punched the requisite buttons I’d memorized from my own gracious dining and turned to stand by my dispatcher. “Why are you still here?” I folded my arms. “You knew I was coming back.”

She picked up her knitting and ignored my question.

I looked into the holding cell—the big Indian still hadn’t moved. “Where’s Lucian?”

“He decided to go home.” The microwave dinged, and I pulled out the freeze-du-jour, quickly resting it on the counter and out of my burning fingers.

“Let it cool or he eats it still cooking.”

I nodded, pulled a plastic spork from the drawer, and rested it on the rim of the potpie. “DCI’s report?”

“On your desk.” She continued knitting.

I turned and started back to my office to retrieve the report. I held my daughter’s Post-it so that Ruby could see it. “She go home?”

“That was her on the phone just as you came in, and in answer to your question, she’s in bed, where all sane people should be.”

I stopped. “Well, since you’re answering questions, do you mind answering why it is you’re still here?”

She stopped knitting and looked back at me. “Would you like to see why?” She stood and stuffed the needles and yarn into her oversized canvas bag. “Would you like me to show you why I’m still here?”

I recognized a loaded question when I heard one but just nodded my head and gave her the strange look I gave crazy people that asked the sheriff those kinds of questions. She calmly walked past me and down the hall out of view. Dog had started after her but stopped when he reached the doorway. I stooped down and ruffled the fur behind his ears. “What?”

Ruby had turned to look back at me. “Come here.”

I shrugged and walked over to her, the three of us standing there as Ruby listened for something. After a moment, I asked again. “What?”

She held up an index finger. “Just a minute.”

We all listened, but the only thing I could hear was the air-conditioning of the building and the hum of Ruby’s computer on the reception desk. “What?”

There was a sudden thunder of sound and impact, and I would’ve sworn a truck had hit the building. I actually stuck a hand out to the wall to steady myself. Not much time went by before the noise and vibration were repeated, and I would’ve sworn that the truck had backed up and taken another run at the building. “What the...!”

The roar and impact seemed to come from the holding cell, and I stumbled over a barking Dog as I rushed back into the room and watched as the big Indian launched himself into the bars with all his considerable force and with a sound I’d never heard come from anything human.

A private contractor had set the bars back in the fifties, when Lucian had inherited the old Carnegie building from the Absaroka County Library after they’d moved a block away. I hadn’t thought about the quality of the job in more than a quarter of a century, but it was foremost on my mind as I watched the monster back up to the opposite wall of the cell and prepare for another charge.

"Hey!”

I subconsciously backed against the counter, knocking the potpie into the sink, and watched as about 350 pounds of bull muscle slammed against the bars.

I could’ve sworn they moved.

"Hey!” I stepped forward, placed my hand on my sidearm, and thought about how bad it was going to hurt if he and the bars landed on me. “Hey!”

The giant had just started backing up for another run when he heard me and noticed that I was standing there only six feet away. His head rose, and I have to admit that it was a strange feeling, having someone look down on me. His hair had parted a little, and I could see one eye beneath the scar tissue as his hands came forward and rested lightly on the bars. He wore a silver ring with what looked like alternating coral and turquoise wolves running around it, and I was pretty sure I could’ve gotten it over my big toe.

I put my own hands up to show I didn’t mean any harm, even if I had been capable, and stood there looking into that one eye. “It’s okay. It’s okay... I’m not going anywhere.”

He stood there for a moment and then slowly lowered himself back to a sitting position on the bunk. He was breathing heavily from the exertion of trying to tear the jail down, and I stood there listening to the wheezing of his breath from behind the bandages at his throat.

After a moment, Dog stopped barking, and I noticed that he and Ruby were peering around the doorway. Some backup. I pulled the palm of my hand across my face and looked at her, still a little breathless myself. “You couldn’t have just told me?”

Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam: 1968

He shook his head. “No, it is classified.”

Babysan Quang Sang had never seen a hamburger before and poked with a finger to lift the bun as if it were booby-trapped; it was water boo, or water buffalo, and the local viande du jour. He turned and looked at Henry, who picked up his own hamburger and took a bite. A few seconds later the Montagnard picked up his own sandwich and took a bite, chewing quietly and watching Henry for more pointers. “Il ne gout pas comme le jambon.”

Henry laughed. “He says that it does not taste like ham.”

We watched Babysan try to figure out the fries, and I studied the tall Indian who would have been more at home scalping white men on a sunny afternoon along the Little Big Horn River. “I’m going to say something I never thought I would.”

He picked a fry up from Babysan’s plate, dipped it in the ketchup, and stuck it in his mouth as an object lesson. He turned back and leaned in close. “What?”

Babysan ate part of a fry and then dropped the remainder back on his plate. It was possible that the Vietnamese had had enough of all things French. “I envy you.” The exhale of his laugh was as if I’d punched him, and he sat there only inches away with a look a shade past indescribable. “I envy the clarity of what you’re doing.”

He laughed again and thought about it. The pause was so long you could’ve said the pledge of allegiance in it, but for the Northern Cheyenne, it was nothing. “What, exactly, are you doing here?”

I took a long pause of my own. “Not a lot. I got sent up from BHQ to investigate a drug overdose, but nobody’s talking.” I looked into a set of eyes that saw the world the way it really was and felt the shame of my duty. I thought about what I was doing and whether it was making any difference. “This place is such a mess....”

Henry took another fry from Babysan. “That may be the understatement of the century.”

My next words were out before the thought was fully formed. “Take me with you to Khe Sanh.”

He looked back at me and laughed, but he realized that I was serious and so became very serious in turn. “Are you insane? Everybody, including every Marine in Vietnam, the general staff, and LBJ are trying to get out of there, and you want to go in?”

“Yep.”

He looked around as if the guys in the white jackets with butterfly nets might be hovering nearby. He was silent and then lowered his head as if I hadn’t said what I’d said, his eyes just visible below his boonie hat. “Walt, you can get killed up there.”

“Better there than dying of boredom here.”

"Walter...”

“Look, I’ve got a three-day at China Beach, and that is not where I intend to be.”

I read the report with my hand on my chin.

She had been unconscious within seconds, although her heart had probably continued to beat for another fifteen to twenty minutes. As was assumed, the manual strangulation applied by the forearm indicated an assailant much stronger than the victim.

There were small linear abrasions on the neck, but these had been caused by the decedent’s fingernails as she had attempted to dislodge the arm around her throat. The flesh under her nails had been tested and, as I’d surmised, it had turned out to be her own.

Fracture of the hyoid bone and other cartilage was evident, as was hemorrhaging of the thyroid gland in front of the larynx. I read the thing again, from the beginning, and looked up at the man lying in the cell.

It didn’t make sense. Why would a man this size, and with this much strength, use his forearm in a chokehold strangulation when he could’ve practically snapped the tiny woman’s neck with a thumb and forefinger?

The giant had finished the last potpie hours earlier, had carefully replaced the unused spork, and put the empty plastic tray in the others, slipping it forward, halfway through the bars. He was dead asleep now, and his whispery snores provided a steady beat to the conversation Sancho and I were having.

Saizarbitoria had spent a night at home with his wife while I stayed on duty for both Durant and Powder Junction. He’d called the Hole in the Wall Motel and had ascertained that Tran Van Tuyen was actually staying there through Wednesday. He sipped his coffee and then added more sugar from the container on the counter, just like Vic. I sipped my own coffee and pulled the sleeping bag a little closer to the wall where I’d eased my aching back. I yawned and looked at my well-rested deputy. “What about the Veterans Administration?”

He retested his coffee and found it to his liking; he came over and sat on the chair that Ruby had occupied last night. “The administrative staffs don’t work much on Sunday nights, so we might want to call around again.” I nodded and continued to sip my coffee. “But I can tell you one thing...”

"What?”

He gestured with his mug toward the stacked pie pans at the bars with the lone utensil handle pointed out. “He’s been inside.”

“How so?”

“We used to have them get rid of their dinnerware in just that fashion in the extreme-risk unit of the high security ward.”

The Basquo had done two years in Rawlins and knew more about corrections than I ever wanted to. “He look familiar?”

“No, and it’s not as if he’s somebody you’re likely to forget.” The young man tipped his hat back and stroked his musketeer goatee. “If I was guessing, I’d say federal.”

“The hospital was going to send his prints down to DCI. Check it.”

“I will.”

I sipped my coffee and watched the big Indian sleep. “You ever have anybody respond the way I described he did when we left him alone?”

He nodded. “Once or twice.”

“What’d you do with them?”

“Straight to Evanston.”

The state psychiatric hospital. “Check that, too.”

“Okay.”

“We’re going to have to keep somebody in here at all times.” I turned and looked at him. “Otherwise, I don’t think our jail will be able to take it.” He got up and started out. “Vic or Ruby make it in yet?”

He called back from the hall. “Nope.”

I yelled after him as I glanced in the cell. “Call and tell them to pick up more potpies.”