Another Man's Moccasins

6

“That is one Fucking Big Indian.”

She reaffirmed what FBI really stood for.

Vic was back from her sabbatical in Douglas, but it hadn’t broadened her vocabulary. She sipped her coffee and looked at me; I was trying to decide what all I needed to take with me to Powder Junction, since that appeared to be where I was going to be spending my day. Her feet were propped up on my desk where she had put the shooting trophy she’d won over the weekend.

“You out-quick-drew the entire Wyoming Sheriff’s Association? ”

“Yeah, including that ten-gallon ass-hat Sandy Sandberg and that butt-cheek Joe Ganns.”

Sandy was the sheriff over in neighboring Campbell County, and Joe Ganns was the controversial brand inspector who was reputed to be the fastest gun in the West. “Oh, I bet that made you popular.”

My diminutive deputy from Philadelphia shrugged, and I tried not to notice the muscles of her bare arms in her sleeveless uniform. “Kinda frosted his flakes, but shit, Walt, what is he, a hundred and three?”

It was quiet in the room as I tossed the shooting bag on my seat and piled a couple of hand radios in along with two large bottles of water, the reports from Illinois, and my thermos, a mottled green monstrosity made by Aladdin with a copper pipe handle and worn sticker that read DRINKING FUEL. She finally spoke again. “So, you get to go play in Powder Junction, and I get to talk to all the VAs on the high plains?”

“You wanna trade jobs?”

She thought about it. “No.”

“Call Sheridan first; they’ve got a psychiatric unit in ward five. See if they ever had this guy.”

She made a face, and then the eyes balanced on me like a knife. “How do you know where the psychiatric unit is in Sheridan? ”

I looked at the collection in the duffel. “I visited with a fellow over there back in ’72; Quincy Morton, the PTSD coordinator.”

“Post-traumatic stress disorder?”

“Yep.”

She studied me. “What were you doing, having flashbacks? ”

I sighed and zipped up the shooting bag. “It was different back then; nobody wanted to discuss that stuff, so I’d go over to the VA once a month and drink a beer and talk with Quincy at closing time on Friday afternoons. It helped.”

“Nineteen seventy-two?”

“Yep.”

She continued to study me. “That’s when you came back, got married, and started with the Sheriff’s Department?”

“Yep.”

“I got a question.” It was pretty obvious where she was headed. “You got out in ’70, but you didn’t show back up here until ’72.” I waited. “What’d you do for the two years in between?”

I threw the strap of the duffel over my shoulder, walked to the doorway, and looked down at her. “Who can speak broader than that has no house to put his head in?”

The eyebrow arched in its trademark position. “What the hell is that from?”

“Timon of Athens, Varro’s Second Servant.”

She nodded. “Oh, how could I forget.” She reached over and slipped a forefinger in the pocket of my jeans. “You really are a dark horse.” She pulled, and I shifted my weight toward her. She looked up at me, the tarnished gold pupils softly feathered by the long dark lashes. “So, you gonna have any free time when my brother gets here and reinstitutes the courting ritual with your daughter?”

“I’m hoping.”

The carnivore smile returned. “Maybe we could double date.”

I took a moment to take in all that she was giving me, thinking about that night in Philadelphia, thinking about the parts of her I hadn’t seen since then. There were about a half-million things I wanted to say, starting with the part about when I looked at her or thought about her, about that night; that I felt like something inside of me took flight and I wasn’t sure if I’d come back to earth yet. Then I thought about the years between us, how they would never go away. How the distance would only grow greater, and how even if everything went right, there were so many ways it could still go wrong.

Her gaze flicked across my face, and it was like my thoughts were leaking out of me and into those iridescent Mediterranean eyes. “What?”

I tried to breathe and then looked at the worn marble floor; it was easier. “Look...”

“No.” She sat there for a moment and then stood, both of us aware that her finger was still in my pocket. She was close now and was standing next to my arm and slightly behind me where I could feel her breath on my shoulder. “I’m not looking for hearth and home.”

“Yep.”

It was silent in the room, but I could still hear Ruby typing at the receptionist’s desk in the front. “You are so fucked up, and you’re carrying so much shit around...” I felt her chin on my tricep. “But I just like being around you, okay?”

“Yep.”

Her breathing continued on my arm, and even that felt good. “That’s all I need.” I nodded and didn’t say yep again, because I knew she’d hit me. After another moment, she pulled away, and I felt the finger leave my pocket with one last tug. “What about Henry? Does he have any leads in the big case?”

I nodded and tried to get my mouth to work in complete sentences. “There might be a family connection with Brandon White Buffalo.”

Her voice continued to come from behind me. “Another FBI.”

“Henry’s working out with Cady this morning, and then he said he’d run up to the Rez and try to track Brandon down.” I adjusted the bag, leaned against the doorway, and played with the hole in my door where I’d yet to replace the knob—still not meeting her eyes. “You’ve got Frymire back there Indian-sitting, but I don’t think you’re going to get anything else out of him or Double Tough, so call the Ferg again and tell him to get his butt in here.”

“Aye-aye, Captain.” She saluted. “What about the guy in the Land Rover, Tran Van Tuyen?”

I looked at her and tried to think about it; about anything else. “I might go by the Hole in the Wall and check him out.”

“You want me to come down to PJ later?”

I thought about that, too. “Somebody’s got to work the rest of the county.”

She nodded. “I can take your daughter to lunch.” She smiled, her eyes igniting again, and I thought about Philadelphia. “We can talk about your wartime indiscretions.”

“Uh huh.” I walked ahead of her, but she followed close behind me into the hallway.

“Ol’ love-’em-and-leave-’em Longmire...” She was still talking as we got to Ruby’s desk. “Suckee-fuckee, fi-dollah . . .”

Fortunately, Ruby was fussing with the computer and not paying any attention to us. She was going through the gray-mail, trashing unwanted messages, of which we’d had a rash last night. I decided to quickly take the conversation in another direction. “Are we still getting all that gobbledygook?”

“Yes.” She continued to hold the delete button down, and I watched as the words marched up the screen and disappeared. “Seventy-two since yesterday.”

“Any idea where they’re coming from?” She moved the mouse, and I watched as she clicked it a few times and gestured for me to have a look. The setting read Absaroka County School District: BPS. “I guess the school board is out to get me before the debate.”

She ignored me and looked at one of the messages. “It’s just a random mess; they started late last night and stopped early this morning.”

Vic leaned in, and I could smell her shampoo. “So it’s not automated.”

“No.”

I looked up at the wall clock and figured I’d better get going if I was going to make it to Powder Junction for our meet with the bartender. “Any word from Bee Bee over at Durant Realty or Ned in L.A.?”

Ruby’s big blues looked up at me in irritation. “It’s a quarter till eight.”

I glanced at the two of them and nodded. “Right.”

“Which means it’s a quarter till seven on the coast.”

I was about halfway down the stairs when Vic called after me in a singsong voice. “You come back soon soldier-boy, me so horneeeeeeee...!”

Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam: 1968

“Fifty dollars?!”

Hollywood Hoang stood there on the tarmac in the late afternoon under a pan-fried, tropical sun as the big Kingbee warmed up. He was waiting for his money with his arms folded over his powder-blue flight suit. We were shouting at the top, bottom, and middle of our lungs even though our faces were only about six inches apart. “He with her all night. I like you, Lieutenant, and that why you get half discount rate!”

I looked past Hoang to where Henry was carrying Babysan Quang Sang into the cargo hold. “Fifty dollars is the discount?!”

He smiled. “It extra for girls to sleep with Montagnard tribesmen, so that remove discount! I happy to take greenbacks or MPC; no dong.”

I pulled out my wallet and gave him the five tens. “She sure didn’t seem to mind last night....”

“She world-class entertainer!” He slapped me on the shoulder and drew me toward the slow-moving rotors as he turned to where Baranski stood on the flight line. The inspector from CID and Mendoza had told me that this particular idea was a bad one but had relented when I’d remained obstinate. Baranski motioned for Hoang and gave him a messenger satchel. He waved one last time as the pilot followed me and we climbed in the cargo hold of the helicopter, the slight Vietnamese man carefully slipping the satchel behind the copilot seat.

It was dark in the Kingbee even with the cargo doors open. I pushed my steel pot further down on my head and waited for my eyes to adjust. There wasn’t much room with all the supplies that were going into Khe Sanh, so the flight personnel consisted of the Bear, Babysan Quang Sang, two navy corpsmen, and me. I pulled at my flak vest, stiff from nonuse, and felt it constricting my chest as the big machine began to rise; at least I hoped it was the flak jacket.

By chance, it was the same helicopter I’d flown in on, the one with the dead. I wasn’t sure if Hollywood Hoang had been the pilot, but we’d had a conversation about hauling them. He said that once the ma, or spirits of the dead, had ridden with you, they were always there, riding along. Flamboyant and dramatic, the flight crews were a superstitious lot who had tapped into that resonance, and they knew death, like suicide, was catching.

Babysan was propped up asleep against the bulkhead, with a cargo net partially wrapped around him and secured with some nylon webbing, just in case we were to make any unexpected turns. Henry was checking the magazines on his assortment of weaponry and looked over to see how I was doing. It was going to be a long flight, and he knew about my stomach’s stance on helicopters.

“How are you feeling?”

I nodded but kept my head straight, where I wouldn’t see the passing countryside as we sped north at a hundred and twenty miles an hour, willing it to grow darker so that I wouldn’t be able to see anything.

“Do not puke in here.”

“I won’t.”

“The one thing you must do...”

“Yep?”

“When this thing lands, you run like hell.”

I glanced at him but quickly averted my eyes so that I wouldn’t see any of the smoke from the lower hells we were flying over—the whispering gray smoke from the burned rice paddies of strike-free zones, the alabaster of the phosphorus smoke, and the smudged black smoke and gasoline smell of the napalm. I hoped I would see the purple landing zone smoke that would mean the ride was over.

The medics always offered you Dexies when you went out at night. I never took them, because I was so wired I was afraid that with the extra stimulant I’d fry my wiring and go stiff. I tried to hand the pills to the Bear, but he just shook his head and smiled, his teeth glowing like river stones in the gloom of the cargo hold. “I do not need them; you?”

I leaned over and felt his shoulder against mine. “Right now, you couldn’t pull a needle out of my ass with a tractor.”

He laughed, and as we flew, the light died.

No grunt ever called Khe Sanh the western anchor of our defense, but a lot of other people did. The heroic image of besieged Marines holding out against unimaginable odds had captured the imagination of the public, enough so that Lyndon Johnson called in the boys of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to sign a statement to “encourage public reassurance” that Khe Sanh would be held at all costs.

Khe Sanh was a group grope for the high command.

Within the rolling hills, astride an old French-built road that ran from the Vietnamese coast to the Mekong Delta’s Laotian market towns, Khe Sanh began as a Special Forces encampment built to recruit and train local tribesmen. Now, it was an uneasy fort with U.S. intelligence reports stating that four North Vietnamese infantry divisions, two artillery regiments, and assorted armored units were converging on that wide spot on Route 9.

It was Westmoreland’s capstone.

It was déjà vu and Dien Bien Phu all over again.

It was Masada.

I wasn’t sure what I thought I was going to do once I got there, but I figured something would turn up. More than eight thousand personnel were there, more than three times the size of my hometown, and I guess they had caught my attention, too. They were Marines in trouble, and I didn’t want to have had the chance to go and then have to say that I didn’t. I couldn’t say that my head was the clearest it’d ever been, but sitting at Tan Son Nhut and enjoying the sunsets was driving me crazy, and I knew I had to get out.

I studied the canvas webbing of the jump seat and then the black plastic surface of the M16A1 that seemed to absorb what light there was. In basic, they’d given us honest-to-God comic books to tell us how to operate and maintain the rifle—it made the M16 seem even more like a toy. There was even a shapely cartoon blonde who told you important things like you should never close the upper and lower receivers with the selector lever in the auto position, or how to apply LSA, which stood for Lube oil, Semifluid, Automatic weapons. I thought of another blonde, a night at the Absaroka County Fair and Rodeo, about a slow dance that had ended with a soft kiss. That was the thought I settled on for the remainder of the flight, until the buffet of air currents reminded me what I was doing and where I was going.

I glanced over at the navy corpsman and read his name patch, MORTON. When I glanced at his face, he was looking at me. “Quincy Morton, Detroit, Michigan.”

I took the hand. “Walt Longmire, Durant, Wyoming.”

He smiled. “The crazy Indian a friend of yours?”

“Yep.”

He nodded his head. “He’s got that shit right; when this thing touches Mother Earth, it’s di di mau, di di mother-fuckin’ mau.”

I nodded as we flew over the tortured ground and thought about a raw recruit that had asked about foxholes and remembered a sunny sergeant in basic telling us that Marines didn’t dig.

But they had at Khe Sanh.

As we approached in zero-zero, you could see that the fortifications were slapped together in a haphazard manner, with sandbags and tanglefoot wire stretching to the dusty, smoky hillsides and the mist of the night. The landing zone, only a short distance ahead, had circuitous roads and makeshift buildings; it looked like we were landing in a Southeast Asian junkyard.

The ground was shaking, the hills were shaking, and the air was shaking, which meant the chopper was shaking. I could see Henry leaning over the piles of cargo, holding on to a handset and screaming into it as Babysan Quang Sang’s lips puckered and his eyes focused into the darkness from under his pith helmet. The Bear fell back against the quilted bulkhead, turned his face to me, and smiled a stiff smile.

I shifted in the seat. “What?”

He took a breath and then expulsed the words as if he were eager to rid them from his body. “We are backed up. They are bringing in reinforcements, so we have been shuttled off to the garrison.”

“Where’s that?”

“Khesanville.” His eyes widened. “Outside the wire.” I nodded my head, or I thought I did. He leaned in again, and his voice was the most intense I’d ever heard. “Listen to me, when this thing hits the ground, you run. You run and you do not stop for anything, do you hear me?” This time I was sure I nodded. “They are going to be targeting this chopper like a tin bear in a shooting gallery, so you run like you have never run before. Run for the slit trenches, run for the sandbags, but make sure you run till you get to something far from this helicopter.”

“Di di mau?”

The Bear smiled, and Corpsman Morton gave me the thumbs-up.

After a moment, Henry leaned back and pulled the CAR-16 closer to his chest, along with the claymore with the detonating device. He pulled out the horse-head amulet and ran his thumb across the smooth surface of the bone.

I dropped the clip on my own Colt rifle and checked the safety. “What about the supplies?”

It took him a moment to respond and when he did, he wasn’t smiling. “We are not in the supplies business anymore.”

I poured him a cup from my thermos and looked around. There might’ve been more depressing places than the sheriff’s substation in Powder Junction, but I couldn’t think of any.

I’d been here back in the dark ages, when I’d first made the grade with Lucian. The standard used to be a trial period of duty in PJ before being transferred to Durant and the Sheriff’s Department proper. Santiago Saizarbitoria had sidestepped the process, and it appeared that he now realized how lucky he’d been. There was a metal desk, three chairs, a filing cabinet, a plastic clock, one phone, a collection of quad sheets encompassing the entirety of the county, an NOAA radio, and that was about it.

I poured myself a cup and sat in the chair in front of the desk, which allowed Sancho to sit in the command chair. He sipped his coffee but seemed dissatisfied. “Got any sugar?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Any objections if I go over to the mercantile and get some more supplies for the duration?”

“Nope.” I felt like I should be making some effort, so I tried to continue the conversation. “Did I tell you about James Dunnigan? ”

“What about him?”

“He thinks his mother makes coffee for him in the mornings. ”

Sancho nodded, a little puzzled. “That’s nice.”

“She’s been dead for almost thirty years.” I sipped from my chrome cap-cup. “Den told me that he bought one of those coffeemakers with a timer and that he explains it to James every day, but every morning James thinks his dead mother makes the coffee.”

A moment passed. “You think he’s dangerous?”

I smiled at the Basquo; he was so serious. “No, I was just making conversation.”

“Oh.” He set his mug on the desk and leaned in. “After Maynard, we go over to the Hole in the Wall Motel and check out Tran Van Tuyen?”

“Yep.”

“I just got the skinny on the Utah receipt. I think you’re going to find this interesting.” I glanced up at the clock and figured we had an easy five minutes for more conversation before the bartender arrived, if he got here on time. “There’s no telephone number on the receipt, so I called up the Juab County Sheriff’s Department, faxed a copy, and got a deputy to run over there and see what she can find out. She called me back and reported that it’s not actually a repair shop, but more of a private junkyard alongside the highway. She said when she got there and found the mobile home in this maze of junk, after being chased around the place by assorted dogs, goats, and a mule ...”

“Okay.”

“... there’s a guy standing outside the trailer, and a woman throwing what appears to be all his stuff at him. The deputy asked him what was going on, and he said that he doesn’t know, that she’s just crazy. The deputy showed him the fax of the receipt, and he said he’d never seen it before. Now, along with most of this guy’s worldly possessions that have come flying out the door was a checkbook, which the deputy picked up and casually compared with the handwriting on the receipt. Dead match. She showed it to the guy as they’re dodging the next salvo, and he admitted that he might just remember the girl. He described our victim and said she rolled up to his gate with a busted water pump and that he fixed it and sent her on her way.

“Sounds plausible.”

“Now, I’d told the deputy about the quarters and that the girl probably didn’t have much money, so she asked him how the Vietnamese woman paid for the repair...”

“She had sex with him.”

The Basquo stopped and looked at me. “How did you know?”

“She used the same morally casual bartering system with the Dunnigan brothers.”

He studied me for a second more. “Well, that certainly establishes a pattern.”

There was the sound of a motorcycle and a knock at the glass pane, and Santiago got up to get it. He opened the door, Phillip Maynard came in, and Saizarbitoria gestured toward the empty seat to my left. The bartender sat, and he looked like he needed it. He looked like he had been up all night.

“How are you, Phillip?”

He sniffed and readjusted in his seat. “I’m good, a little tired. . . . What is all this about?”

“Phillip, I made some phone calls back to Chicago and got some information relating to some incidents that involved you on Maxwell Street, where you’re originally from?”

He looked at the manila folder lying on the edge of the desk. “Uh huh.”

I nodded toward the envelope. “I don’t have to tell you what’s in this, but we both know how seriously some of the charges could be interpreted—two cases of unlawful entry, larceny, one domestic charge, and a restraining order that’s still being enforced.”

“Look, that was a bullshit deal and...”

I held up a hand. “Phillip, hold on a second.” I allowed my hand to rest on the file. “To be honest, I don’t care about any of this. It tells me that you’re no Eagle Scout, but as long as you keep your nose clean in my county, we’ll get along fine. But we do have a problem.” I let that one sit there for a moment. “I think you might’ve lied to me yesterday, or at least you didn’t tell me everything you know. Now, is that the case?”

He shifted in his chair. “Yeah.”

“So, why would you do that?”

He shrugged and sat there, silent for a while. “He paid me.” “Who did?”

“The guy.”

I could feel Saizarbitoria watching me as I questioned Maynard. “Tran Van Tuyen?”

“Yeah, him; the Oriental guy at the bar.”

“Asian, Vietnamese to be exact. What did he say?”

“He asked about the girl the day before yesterday, then came back in and gave me a hundred bucks to not mention his name.”

I glanced up at Sancho, who snagged his keys from the desk and quickly went out the door. “What kinds of questions did he ask?”

“Just if I’d seen this girl or heard anything about her. He had a photograph of her.”

“Did he call her by name?”

“Yeah, it was something like Packet.”

“Did he say anything else?”

Maynard thought and then shook his head. “Just that he knew the car was hers and that she’d run away and he was looking for her.”

“Nothing else?”

He shook his head again. “Nothing, and that’s the truth, Sheriff.”

I walked him out, stood there by my truck, and warned him that if he ever lied again that I’d find a place for him under the jail. He nodded and threw a leg over the Harley and rode off toward the rows of shanty housing at the south end of town.

I was still standing there when the Suburban came reeling around the corner; Saizarbitoria stood on the brakes and ground to a stop in front of me. He started to reach across and roll down the window, but I saved him the grief by opening the door. “Tuyen’s gone.”

I nodded. “What’d they say?”

“They said that he came into the office, paid his bill, hopped in the Land Rover, and took off.”

“How long?”

“About twenty minutes ago. I already called it in to the HPs.”

I thought about it. “You take 192 out to the Powder River, do the loop up toward Durant, and then circle back on 196. I’ll take 191 and 190 toward the mountains.”

He disappeared east, and I headed west.

I was about to make the turn at the underpass of I-25 when I saw the same two kids who had waved at me the day before and noticed that one was wearing a Shelby Cobra T-shirt. They were leaning on the same fence like regular eight-year-old town criers—well, one eight, the other maybe six. I had a thought and pulled onto the gravel. I pushed the button to roll my window down, but before I could say anything, the taller one with the glasses spoke. “Are you the sheriff?”

“Yep. I don’t suppose...”

He grinned and grabbed the younger boy by the shoulder. “I’m Ethan, this is my brother Devin.”

“Good to meet you. I don’t...”

The smaller one piped up. "Are you looking for bad guys?”

I nodded. “Yes. You didn’t happen to see a green Land Rover go by here about fifteen minutes ago, did you?”

They both nodded. "Yes, sir. DEFENDER 90...”

The older boy continued. “Coniston green with the convertible top, the ARB brush/grill guard, and front wing diamond plating.”

I sat there for a second looking at him, wondering what to say after that description, and then fell back on an old western favorite. “Which way did he go?” They both pointed toward I-25. “Did he get on the highway?”

The blond one answered. “No, he went under it.”

“Get on the highway on the other side?”

The one with darker hair responded this time. “Nope. Hey, can we have a ride?”

“Not right now, maybe later.” I saluted them and hit the lights and siren, but this time I left them on, thanking the powers that be for the American male’s preoccupation with all things vehicular. I thought of the Red Fork Ranch and called Saizarbitoria to tell him to turn around and take the 191 leg of the west side of the highway, and that I’d take 190.

The next call I made was to Ruby, who still sounded irritated, and that was without me singing. “What’s the matter?”

Static. “It’s another flood of these e-mails, and I’m getting tired of deleting them.”

I keyed the mic. “Any word from L.A. or Bee Bee?”

Static. "Nothing from L.A., but Bee Bee called and said that this Tuyen fellow inquired about the Red Fork Saturday, so if he was interested in the property, it was a sudden interest.”

“Well, I’m not sure how, but this guy is involved.”

Static. “Have you got him?”

“No, but I’m working on it.”

I hung the mic back on the dash and made the gradual ascent through the red wall country and broke onto the gravel road leading past the ghost town. I had just topped the hill when I noticed the flash of something reflective and slowed. I shut off the lights and siren, threw the truck into reverse, and backed down to where I could get a look into the canyon at Bailey’s ramshackle and only street. The Coniston green Land Rover sat parked along the boardwalk at the far end. I turned the big three-quarter-ton around and pulled off and into the ghost town.

In Bailey’s heyday, it had had a peak population of close to six hundred. The town had had a bank, hotel, hospital, post office, and something you rarely saw in high plains ghost towns: a large union hall, which stood at the top of the rise beside the road leading to the mine.

I drove slowly down the short street, looked back and forth among the buildings, and pulled my truck in front of Tuyen’s vehicle. I got out and walked over to the Land Rover; it was locked and unoccupied. Tuyen’s bags were in the back, along with a solid case that looked like the kind that might hold a computer.

I looked around the street again and unsnapped the strap on my Colt.

Nothing.

I stepped up onto the warped boardwalk and started down one side of the street. I tried to be quiet, but my boots resonated off the planks like I was starring in some B-movie western.

Most of the windows in the buildings were broken and boarded up, but between the cracks I could see the gloom of the interiors; the floors in most of them had held up. The buildings were dusty and dirty, but they were solid, and only Zarling’s Dry Goods, which was at the end of the street and had been the one with the fire damage, looked as if it might fall over.

There was a stone wall at Bailey’s far end; it was partially collapsed and provided a large, picture-framed view of the hillside that led to the mine, the weed-filled graveyard and, above the overhang, the union hall.

There was a wrought-iron fence around the old graveyard, a token of condolence from a company that hadn’t bothered to try to retrieve the bodies of the seventeen dead miners. Tran Van Tuyen sat on one of the thick iron rails beside the gate, with his back to me.

I walked the rest of the length of the boardwalk and down the stairs to the dry, cracked earth of the roadway and began walking up the hillside to the cemetery. The trail was overgrown with purple thistle and burdock, and the only thing you could smell was the heat. As I approached, Tuyen didn’t move even though I was sure that he’d heard my truck and me in the street below.

I stopped at the gate and looked over at him. He was sitting with his hands laced in his lap, his head drooping a little in the flat morning sun. He had the same light, black leather jacket he’d had on in the bar draped over his knee, and the sunglasses. It was hot and getting hotter with every second, but he wasn’t sweating.

After a minute, I saw his back rise and fall. “All of them died on the same day.”

I continued to watch him as the cicadas buzzed in the high grass, and I thought about rattlesnakes. “It was a mining accident, back in 1903.”

“A terrible thing.”

“Yep.”

He paused again. “Do you believe in an afterlife, Sheriff?”

It wasn’t the line I thought the conversation would take. “I’m not sure.”

"What do you believe in?”

“My work.”

He nodded. “It is good to have work, something you can devote your life to.”

Something wasn’t right. “Mr. Tuyen, I need to speak with you.”

“Yes? ”

“It’s about the young woman.”

He nodded. “I assumed as much.”

“We questioned the bartender at the Wild Bunch Bar, and he said you were asking questions about this Ho Thi Paquet, and that you paid him some money.”

His hand moved, and I found mine on the .45 at my hip. He had been holding something in his hands, and he extended it toward me. It was a photograph of the same young woman wearing a dance outfit, perhaps younger, a snapshot of her in a crowd; she had turned her head and was smiling.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “This was taken when she graduated from a dance school in Thailand when her mother came to see her perform.” I thought he was done speaking, but the next words barely escaped him. “She was our only grandchild.”