Any Other Name

We stood there for a moment more, and it was as if he didn’t want us to go, his hand dropping to the Colt Walker at his side. “You sure you don’t want to try it?”

I stared at him for a second and then raised both hands. “I’m not going to be responsible if that thing blows up.”

He turned toward Vic. “You?”

She shrugged and looked at me and then back to him. “Fuck it, why not?”

Shooting a black-powder pistol is a process that can’t be rushed, which is why a lot of the old hands in the day carried five or six cap-and-ball revolvers so that as soon as they emptied one they could grab another or another in the face of a couple thousand Indians.

We watched as Bret dumped three nozzles’ worth of powder into the cylinders and then stuffed each with a .457 round ball, before adjusting each cylinder to use the loading ram and pressing each round home. He thumbed off the tiny ring of lead from each chamber, indicating an airtight seal, and then applied some lubricant to each round to grease it up but also, he said, to guard against a chain fire.

“What’s a chain fire?”

I continued to watch the young man work. “A loose spark that causes all six rounds to go off at once.”

“I bet that’s exciting.” She watched as he picked up some of the smaller pieces of antler. “What the hell is that for?”

“Using it to press the percussion caps onto the nipples.”

“I am all about nipples.”

“If you don’t get them seated tight, you get that chain fire.”

“I am all about getting the nipples seated right.” She pivoted toward me. “These chain fires, they happen a lot?”

I shrugged. “Not only will you have crippled your shooting hand, but you’ll also have blown up an eleven-thousand-dollar piece of frontier history.”

She spoke out of the corner of her mouth. “Bill me, chicken shit.”

Bret held out the Walker to her again, handle first. “You ready?”

About fifty yards away was a standard 7-8-9-X silhouette target hanging from a guide wire and anchored at the bottom with clip-on fishing weights. Holding the revolver with the barrel in the air, she sidled into the stall, raised it, and held it up close to her face. “Born ready.”

I mumbled to myself. “Boy howdy.”

Bret and I, keeping a watchful distance, looked on as she reached down and moved the ear protection headset on the counter away. The mountain man called out to her. “You sure you don’t want to use those?”

I had to smile, being familiar with my undersheriff’s shooting tendencies.

She shook her head and called out over her shoulder. “I always like to hear the first one.”

It was like thunder—very long, loud thunder. Black-powder guns don’t tend to snap or jerk like modern weapons, but rather they give a strong and sustained push that resonates from your shoulders down through your spine and into your solid organs like a mortar.

I leaned forward enough to spot a rupture in the black silhouette of the paper target at the center of the forehead, and it didn’t take much imagination for me to know that her target was Tomás Bidarte.

My undersheriff turned in the halo of white smoke with an undimmed and dazzling smile, almost as if she’d just arrived as a Faustian apparition—the kind you’d gladly trade your soul to. “Shoots about two inches high; I was going for the mouth.”

—

I carried the Colt back into the gun shop proper, the cross-draw holster hanging from my shoulder. Jim was seated behind the main counter at the leatherworking bench and held out a beautifully crafted badge wallet when he saw me coming.

Vic stood at my side as I examined the workmanship, opening it up to see my star mounted in the basketweave setting. “It’s beautiful.”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

I slipped the holster from my shoulder and handed it out to him. “Bret said to bring this in and give it to you.”

“Where’s he?”

“He’s out there sitting on one of the benches. He said he wanted a little time to himself.”

Bussell didn’t take the holstered weapon, so I laid it on the counter. He removed his glasses and rubbed the spots where the pads rested on his nose with a thumb and forefinger. “I was afraid of that.” He replaced the glasses and reached out to move the weapon. “You shoot it?”

I glanced down at Vic. “She did.”

He smiled at her. “How’d you like it?”

“A lot.” She looked behind us out the swinging doors that led to the range. “He gonna be okay?”

The leathersmith thumbed the loop off from the hammer and slipped the elegant-looking revolver from the holster. “You don’t clean these things after you shoot ’em, they start corroding and pretty soon they’re useless—I’ve told him that a thousand times.” He disassembled the Walker and began cleaning the weapon very carefully, as befit the museum piece. “Loaned him the money for this thing, and you’d think it was his kid or something . . .”

“It’s quite a weapon.”

“Bret fell in love with it at first sight—kind of like he did with Robby.”

I looked down at Vic as she leaned against the counter and reached out to put a hand on his shoulder.

“He’s never been the same since she’s been gone.” He looked up at us, and it was one of those moments where you wished you did anything else but this for a living, like wash cars maybe. Bussell gestured toward the swinging doors as he cleaned out the barrel of the Colt. “I found him out there about a month ago with this gun in his hands; he’d been drinking . . . He said that he just couldn’t put up with it anymore and that the pain was about to kill him and he’d rather do it himself.” The gunsmith quietly reassembled the revolver, the barely audible clicks of the metal justifying the workmanship of its original manufacture. “He said that if he was going to do it, he might as well do it with the best gun he had . . .”

Neither Vic nor I said anything.

Bussell finished fitting the Walker together, loaded it, and then set after it with a polishing cloth so as to remove every fingerprint from the metal surfaces—almost as if he wanted to remove any traces of a human hand ever touching it. “Gave it back to him this week, and then you two walk in the door; I swear to God the thing is cursed.” He slid it back into the holster, relooped the rawhide hammer retainer, and looked up at me. “Would you do me a favor, Sheriff?”

“Anything.”

He glanced at the big pistol. “Take it.”

I stood there staring at him but thinking about another vintage weapon, another suicide, and another lost and confused soul. Finally, with nothing to say, I laughed, but it was hollow and I desperately strung two words together. “I can’t—”

“A loan; I just want to get it out of the shop and out of his life for a few weeks.”

I glanced at Vic and then back to him. “Look, Mr. Bussell, I can understand your reasoning—”

His head jogged toward the shooting range. “He knows every hiding place, every combination to every safe, and has since he was eleven years old—do me a favor and just take it with you for a few weeks.”

I sighed. “What if I lose it?”

“It’s insured; anyway, you won’t. I didn’t say you had to use it—just lock it away for a while so that he can’t.”

Vic, her hand having slipped from his shoulder, slid the holstered weapon toward me. “That won’t stop him.” She glanced around. “There’s always another way.”

The gunsmith nodded. “Maybe, but it’ll save him from using this one.”

I raised my hand slowly and placed it over the weapon, careful not to touch the spotless metal. “What was the man’s name?”

He looked up at me through the reflection in the tops of the lenses that covered his eyes. “What man is that?”

“The one who sold you this antique?”

He smiled for the first time in the conversation. “I figured you’d put two and two together faster than Noah—his name was Vanskike, Sheriff Longmire. Hershel Vanskike.”

—

Outside High Mountain Shooters under the shadow of Jeremiah, Vic pulled at my arm. “So, Hershel Vanskike?”

I glanced up at the twenty-five-foot statue. “You remember Mary Barsad?”

“The woman from out in Absalom that ended up not killing her husband; the one who had the horse that Cady rode at the wedding?”

“Wahoo Sue. Yep, that’s her. Hershel was this old cowboy who worked for her, the one that Wade Barsad, her husband, killed.”

“Oh yeah, the one who gave you the old rifle.”

“The Henry in the office safe, yep.”

“Next to the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead.” She reached up and fingered the holster on my shoulder. “You’re putting together quite a collection of antique weapons.”

“Yep.”

As we climbed into my truck, Vic pulled the duty notebook out of her coat and looked at the address that we had gotten for Sadie Payne. “So, I’m assuming we’re headed over to the she-devil’s house?”

I carefully wrapped the leather straps around the four-point holster and opened my center console, gently placing the Colt Walker on the foam padding. “We are—after we meet with Schaffer at Jack’s Tavern.”

“Payne’s daughter has been missing for only three months and she’s trying to get her declared dead? I don’t think we’re going to be well received.”

I tried to close the console, but the bulk of the Colt, powder flask, ammo box, and surrounding leather was more than modern truck designers possibly had had in mind. “Probably not.” I suddenly felt very weary and slid my gloved hands onto my lap.

Vic attached her seat belt and then reached back and petted Dog before looking over at me. “You all right?”

“Hmm? Yep, I’m fine. Just thinking about that Bret Bussell.”

She looked through the frost that had accumulated again on the inside of my truck windshield from Dog’s breathing. “A little young for that shit, isn’t he?”

“Maybe—sixty-five and older have a 14.3 rate per 100,000, but young adults from twenty to twenty-four are pretty close behind at 12.7.”

She stared at me. “Why do you memorize that shit?”

“My father had a photographic memory, and I got some of it.” I started my truck and pushed down on the lid with my elbow and it somehow clicked shut. “It’s just that it sometimes takes a while for it to fully develop.”

7

As per Mr. Schaffer’s request, we were to meet him at Jack’s Tavern, a sprawling watering hole on the south side of town that housed a massive dance floor, pool tables, and dartboards. There was a spot for motorcycle parking that was under cover, which probably hadn’t gotten much use since October, so I parked the Bullet and Dog there just to keep from having to push off the six inches of snow that were likely to be covering it when we got back.

“Don’t you ever worry about him getting cold?”

“Who?”

“Dog.”

I was confused by the question. “No . . . No. He’s got a coat on him like a Kodiak; the only time I worry for his comfort is in the summer.” I pulled open the door to Jack’s Tavern and ushered her in. “He’s tough, like me.”

“You’re not so tough.”

I held a finger to my lips. “Ssh . . . Don’t tell anybody.”

Vic and I picked a corner booth on the unused dance-floor side of the place and quietly sat, unnoticed by the bartender. “I guess he didn’t want the thin blue line showing up and queering the deal with the buyers.”

“I guess.”

She leaned in, even though we were the only ones in the bar, which was as big as a warehouse. “A biker bar?”

“Maybe he’s a biker.”

He was.

Ten minutes later, the man who slid in the booth with us was a young forty with a cleft chin, a little Dizzy Gillespie cookie-duster under his lower lip, and lots of ink. Mr. Schaffer wore a do-rag, sunglasses, a black leather jacket, and biker boots, and wasn’t what I was expecting any more than the bar he had chosen.

“Hi.” He immediately stuck a fingerless gloved hand out to Vic. “Mike Schaffer, how are you, Ma’am?”

She smiled, and I could see why he’d focused his attention on her first. “I’m good—you ride your bike over?”

The corner of his mouth kicked up, having taken no offense. “Too cold, even for me.” He took off his sunglasses as his eyes shifted to me and he extended his hand. “Mike Schaffer. You the sheriff?”

I shook the hand as somewhere in the bowels of the massive building the Marshall Tucker Band began trying to get us to see what their women had done to them. “That’s me.”

“Corbin said you guys wanted to talk to me?”

“You’ve gotten to know Patrolman Dougherty pretty well?”

Schaffer nodded. “Oh yeah, he’s a great guy. My son, Michael Junior, thinks he’s like T. J. Hooker or something.”

I glanced at my undersheriff, who waved me off. “Cop show on TV in the eighties where they specialized in sliding over the hoods of cars and shooting without the benefit of aiming.”

Mike nodded. “He has a lot of contact with Michael on e-mail, but I didn’t want to take him out of school to come over here, so I left him with my sister; that, and I just didn’t want him reminded about what happened to his mother.”

Vic tapped the file that rested on the table between us with a fingernail. “Linda?”

“Yeah.” He looked a little unsure for a moment. “Corbin said there were some developments but that you hadn’t really found anything more?”

“No, we haven’t specifically, but there have been a couple of other women who’ve gone missing and we’re wondering if there might be a connection.”

He leaned back in the booth and caught the waitress’s attention, her smile brightening as she approached.

“Mickey, how you doin’?”

“Tracy, are you playing the Marshall Tucker Band for me?”

“I am.” She placed a hand on her hip. “It’s slow enough that I’m waitin’ tables myself, so I thought I’d cater to the clientele.”

He gestured toward Vic and me. “Chief cook and bottle washer Tracy Jacobs, this is Sheriff Longmire and his fine partner Vic; they’re looking into Linda’s disappearance.”

She looked at us. “You find her?”

“Um, no . . . We’re just continuing with the investigation.”

She pulled a pad from her apron. “Something to drink?”

Schaffer made a grand gesture. “Beer and a bump all around—I sold my house today.”

I started to interrupt, but Tracy pursed her lips, looking a little downcast. “Damn, I thought you were maybe moving back.”

“Nope, the check-cashing place bought it. I guess they’re going to tear it down and add on to their parking lot.”

I nodded toward Vic. “Just a couple of coffees for us, thanks.”

She walked away, and I turned back to Schaffer. “No offense, but we’re still on the clock.”

“That’s cool.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter with an Airborne insignia on it from the inside pocket of his leather jacket. “You guys mind? It’s one of the only bars in Wyoming that still let you smoke, and I’m a little edgy from all this talk about Linda.”

I changed the subject, just to give him a chance to settle himself. “Airborne?”

He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke skyward. “Fifth—Special Forces; you?”

“Marines, Military Police.”

“Figures.”

Vic asked. “Why is that?”

He smiled. “General enormity.” He studied me. “Vietnam?”

“Yep.”

“Iraq for me; you ever been?”

“Nope.”

“Don’t.” He took another drag on the cigarette. “Got married, did two tours, then I quit, went back to school, and got a real job where I didn’t have to get shot at.”

I smiled back. “Sounds familiar.”

He slid down his side of the booth and put his legs along the bench. “Maybe, but I bet you didn’t lose your wife.”

“In fact, I did.”

“Sorry.” He looked out at the empty dance floor, and I watched the sadness overtake him like a pack of hounds; I knew those hounds and had felt their gnawing. “Sometimes I get to where I feel like I’m the only one getting it in the shorts in this life, you know?”

Vic waited a few seconds and then asked, “You mind telling us about Linda?”

“What do you want to know?”

My undersheriff thumbed the files. “We’ve got reports, but we think that really knowing these women might give us more opportunities to catch whoever it is that’s doing this.”

He took another drag on the cigarette. “Met her here, right out on that floor; she was an incredible dancer.” He grinned. “She had the shittiest laugh; really high and funny sounding . . .” He took a deep breath and then stuck the cigarette in his mouth again. “I’d give just about everything I’ve got to hear that laugh just one more time.”

“Hobbies?”

“Jujitsu.”

Vic snorted. “You’re kidding.”

“Kata and mixed-style, even Randori.”

She made a face. “What the hell is that?”

“Random attack competitions; she was really good at it. She could kick some serious ass if you came at her; she whaled on me a couple of times.”

My undersheriff and I looked at each other before I turned and asked Schaffer, “Did you tell Patrolman Dougherty that?”

“I don’t know, maybe.” Thinking, he stretched his jaw. “I don’t know, man; it was months ago.”

Vic opened the folder and searched the file. “Not in here.”

“What’s the big deal—is it important?”

Tracy brought the drinks over, sliding Mike his Coors and a shot of amber happiness and then setting the two coffees in front of us, along with a bowl of cream containers and sugar before addressing the biker. “You want a tab?”

“Please.” He waited until she was gone and then asked again, “Why is jujitsu a big deal?”

“If it was an abduction . . .” I leaned forward and took a sip. “It tells us something about the abductor—that either he was incredibly powerful, capable, or . . .”

“Or what?”

Vic dumped her requisite three creams and five sugars into her coffee and stirred it with her pencil. “Or she knew him.”

Schaffer nodded his head for a few moments, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t even aware that he was doing it, and then downed the contents of the shot glass in a swallow, followed by a deep draught from the can of beer.

“Tell me about the night she went missing.”

His eyes came back to mine. “She was supposed to meet me here for a drink, but she never showed.” His eyes diverted to the table again, and he sounded like he was reading from a script. “It was a Thursday night, and I waited till an hour after she was supposed to be here and then drove over to Kmart where she was working, but by that time they were closed. I got one of the cleaning guys to let me in, but they said that all the regular employees had already left.”

Vic leaned closer. “What about her car?”

He shook his head. “Wasn’t driving one; walked everywhere, when she wasn’t running.” He drank some more of his beer. “I figured she’d just forgot we were supposed to meet and went home. I found the babysitter and Michael watching a movie, and I asked them if they’d seen her, but they hadn’t so I drove back over here.”

I turned my cup in the ring it had made on the table. “Then what?”

His voice rose, and he called out to the waitress/bartender/owner/operator. “Hey, Tracy, can I get another one over here?” His eyes came back to mine. “I ran into some buddies who were playing pool, and we had a few drinks . . . Later on, I just headed home and went to bed.”

“What about the babysitter?”

“She had a car, drove herself.”

“Remember her name?”

He thought as Vic worked her way through the files. “Shit, no.”

Her face came up. “Would Michael?”

Schaffer laughed. “Yeah, he probably would.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “Just a sec.” He punched in the numbers and waited, and when he spoke his voice changed instantly. “Hey buddy, how you doin’?” He waited. “Yeah? Hey, I’ve got a question for you; you remember the babysitter you had here in Gillette?” Another pause. “Yeah, her.” He listened. “Yeah . . . you remember her last name?” He stubbed out the cigarette. “No, I’ll be back when I said, I promise. Love you too, buddy.” He punched a button on the cell. “Ashley Reich.” He spelled the name for Vic, and she wrote it on the outside of the folder.

“Sounds like you have a pretty good relationship with that son of yours.”

He looked back at me. “Why do you say that?”

“He said he loved you—in my experience you have to get that out of your kids with a crowbar.”

He sat the phone down on the surface of the table, turned it, and slid it over to me. On the screen was a handsome boy with an enormous smile, holding up a pretty good-sized rainbow trout. “That, right there, is my life. He’s all I’ve got left . . .” He swallowed and straightened up in time for the waitress to bring him another round. After she left, he spoke to the surface of the table, but it was meant for us. “Do me a favor?”

“What’s that?”

“If you find him, whoever he is . . .” He glanced at Vic and then back to me. “Don’t kill him right off; make sure that he suffers—a lot.” He slammed back the second shot, and his head started bobbing again as he picked up the phone. “He looks like her.” He sipped the beer and put the cell away, along with some of his thoughts. “And if you need any help with that, you just let me know and I’ll be happy to get some guys to assist.”

Some of the thoughts were put away but not all of them.

—

Mount Pisgah really isn’t much of an ascent and ranks as the 1,336th highest mountain in Wyoming, but the real puzzle is that although the cemetery that has its name is in Gillette, the mountain itself is actually near Newcastle and is not even in Campbell County.

Mount Pisgah Cemetery is the crown jewel of the County Cemetery District and is located in the heart of the city. Atop one of the highest points in the town, the sprawling, fifty-seven-acre resting place is a beautiful spot in a not-so-lovely city with enough majestic old cottonwoods towering over the place that when they release their seeds in May and June, you would swear it was snowing. With rolls containing 5,600 burials, it has monuments dating back to 1879 and graves older than anyone can remember.

As I parked the truck in front of the large, Victorian-style house next to the cemetery, Vic turned and looked around the place. “Mount Pisgah in a pig’s ass—this is a hill at best.”

“It and the slope near Newcastle are named for a mountain in the Bible that’s in a region directly east of the Jordan River and just northeast of the Dead Sea, usually referred to as Mount Nebo, the highest of the Pisgah range, a cluster of hills to the west of the Trans-Jordanian Plateau.” I dredged up the chapter and verse. “‘And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho.’ Deuteronomy, chapter thirty-four, verse one.”

She pulled the door handle and slipped out, holding the suicide door open for Dog. “Jesus.”

“No.” I did my best Yul Brynner imitation. “Moooooses.”

“Was your mother some kind of religious fanatic?”

“No, but my grandfather spent most of his dotage reading and memorizing passages from the Bible, and since I spent most of my summers on his place it rubbed off.” We looked up at the gate of the cemetery, and, as Dog did his business, at a strong snow beginning to curtain the landscape. “Pisgah is actually Hebrew for ‘high place,’ but lost its meaning over time and became the name of the range.”

She thumbed through the files, holding them close to her chest and moving Roberta Payne to the top. “More developments from the photographic mind?”

“No, I had a Jewish girlfriend in college; you’d be amazed at what you can learn when motivated and with the right teacher.”

“I bet.” She glanced up; it was silting snow, which usually meant a foot or two before you knew it. “Have you checked the weather lately?”

I glanced around and noticed, indeed, that the landscape was sporting a contiguous white cloak. Never one to ignore the obvious, I nodded. “It’s snowing.”

She trudged toward the gate of the cemetery. “It’s snowing a lot, and this looks like one of the ones that’s going to last for a few days, bury everything, and shut down every airport on the high plains.”

It looked as though the snow was smothering the land, almost as if the flakes were holding their breath in a snow globe. “It’s a strange snow.”

She glanced back at me from the gate, the tarnished gold embers dampening as if she were a centurion looking across Hadrian’s Wall. “Yeah . . .”

A voice called out from behind us. “You people are supposed to have that dog on a leash, and he’s not allowed on cemetery property!”

We turned in tandem and could see a tall woman wrapped in what looked to be an afghan who was standing on the extended porch of the Victorian.

“I’ll get him, ma’am, but do you mind if we have a word with you?”

She stood there for a few seconds more, stooped to pick something up, and dusted the snow away by slapping whatever it was on her leg; then she eyed my truck with the stars and bars, about-faced, and went back in her house.

Vic looked at Dog, still irrigating the fence. “I’ll give you a biscuit if you go shit on her lawn.”

He came when I called him, and I popped open the door, allowing him ingress into his home away from home, and led the way toward the mansion with Vic trailing behind. “How ’bout I shit on her lawn?”

Stepping up onto the porch, I glanced back at her as I removed my hat and slapped the accumulated snow off. “I don’t suppose you’d like to wait in the truck with Dog?”

“And not play with the radio? No thanks. I don’t want to miss any of the fun, and anyway, I do get cold.”

I reached up, knocked the heavy knocker, and noticed that the grand old lady of Eighth Avenue West was in need of a coat of paint, along with a puttying and sanding. After a moment, I could hear someone moving inside the house, then the sound of the chain being put on the door, then it opening about four inches. “Hello, Mrs. Payne, I’m Sheriff Walt Longmire and this is my undersheriff, Victoria Moretti . . .”

She wedged her face into the opening to get a better look at me through the thick lenses of her bifocals, and I figured her vintage to be somewhere in her eighties, a little old to have a daughter Roberta’s age. “I don’t know where she is.”

I waited a moment before responding. “That would be your daughter?”

There was a noise from back in the house, and she glanced in that direction. “She’s dead.”

I gestured toward the papers in Vic’s hands, as if they had something to do with what we were talking about. “I understand you’re petitioning the courts for a declaration of death in absentia, so we were wondering if you’d come across some information as of late that might’ve led you to believe that she was deceased?”

“No.” She looked past me, trying to read the words on my truck as the noise from within grew louder. “What county did you say you were with?”

“I didn’t, ma’am, but we’re with the Absaroka County department.”

“And what are you doing here?”

“There have been some other women who’ve gone missing, and we’re thinking there might be a connection between them and your daughter.”

The noise had reached a pitch to where I could now tell that it was a teakettle. “My daughter is dead.”

“So you were saying, but if you’d allow us inside—”

“I don’t have to allow you people in my home.”

I listened to the screeching and figured I had an opening, so to speak. “No, you don’t, but I was hoping we could ask you a few more questions, and it’s kind of cold out here.” I looked past her. “Is that a teakettle on?”

She paused for a moment and then, in a disgusted manner, disconnected the chain and pulled the door open, allowing us in. It was a large entryway with a sweeping staircase that led to the second floor. It had been a beautiful house in its day, but peeling paint, worn carpets, and distressed furniture indicated that the place had gone to financial seed.

Looking down just a little at Sadie Payne, still with the afghan wrapped around her shoulders, I got more of an idea of just how tall she was. “Beautiful home.” I paused as I noticed the condensation from my breath was almost the same inside the house as it had been outside. “You can get that kettle, if you’d like.”

She nodded her silver head and then started down a short hallway. “You people stay there, and I’ll be right back.” She exited through a heavy, swinging door with a window in it.

Vic took a step and pushed one of the partially open doors that led to the parlor a little further. “It’s fucking freezing in here.”

“Welcome to Miss Havisham’s.” I glanced up the steps but couldn’t see anything. “I don’t think she’s got any heat on.”

Vic glanced back at me and then rolled her head to indicate that I should have a look through the doorway where she stood.

With a quick take to the kitchen, I stepped back and peered over my undersheriff’s head into an empty room. There were a few sheets lying on the floor, but other than that, there was nothing. We heard some noise and both stepped toward the chair and sideboard, the only pieces of furniture in the entryway. The noises continued, but she didn’t reappear.

My attention was drawn to the mail that was lying on the table—it was a little wet and obviously what she had picked up from the porch. One piece was opened, and I noticed that it was from First Interstate Bank notifying Roberta Payne of her withdrawals from a trust account and dating back to the beginning of last month.

At that moment, Sadie reentered from the kitchen with a mug of tea, but I turned and leaned against the sideboard so that she wouldn’t notice my snooping. “Mrs. Payne, you say you haven’t had any contact with your daughter since her disappearance?”

She sipped her tea from a coffee mug, the tag from the bag fluttering in the drafty house. “No, none whatsoever.”

Wishing that I’d had time to look at the statement a little more closely, I quickly made up a story. “Well, I was talking to Chip King over at First Interstate, and he said there had been some activity in Roberta’s trust account as of late.”

She dropped the mug, and we all watched it bounce off the floor with a loud thunk, the contents spilling on the hardwood floor, teabag and all.

I stooped and picked up the pottery, which somehow had not broken, and scooped the teabag as well. “Here you go.”

Sadie Payne stared at me for a few seconds and then snatched the cup from my hand. “I want you people out of my house.”

“Okay, but I’m going to be back pretty quick with a representative of the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office and—”

Her voice became shrill. “Out! I want you people out of my house.”

“And somebody from over at First Interstate Bank.” She held the mug as if she might throw it at me, but I’d had things thrown at me before and wasn’t that intimidated. “Maybe if you tell me what’s going on with your daughter . . .”

Her head dropped, and she placed a hand on the table for support. “I’ve asked you people to leave my house, and if you don’t leave I’m going to call the Sheriff’s Department of this county and have you removed.”

“All right.”

She stared at me. “I mean it, mister.”

“Sheriff, Sheriff Walt Longmire.” I waited a moment before adding. “That’s fine—I’d just as soon get some more people over here to get to the bottom of this.”

She took a deep breath and sat the mug down, pulling the afghan around her a little closer. She gripped the blanket in a distracted manner, her fingers poking into the holes of the thing as she pulled it tighter.

Vic had given a name to the technique that we both used when questioning suspicious persons; I called it waiting, whereas she called it running the Zamboni, a term she’d brought from Broad Street, Philadelphia, where her beloved Flyers played—ask your question and then let the machine polish the ice.

“It’s me.”

Her voice had been so small I had to ask. “Excuse me?”

“I’m the one that’s been making the withdrawals.”

I glanced at Vic and then back to her. “You.”

“Yes, me. I thought that if I kept the amounts under two hundred dollars that no one would notice.”

I thought about the statement that showed that most of the withdrawals were well above two hundred dollars and let my eyes scan the decrepit house. “The money is Roberta’s?”

She kept her head down. “A trust that her father left for her, but I’ve been using it to live on.”

“For how long?”

“For a month now. There isn’t any other money than what’s in that trust.”

“And that’s why you’ve been trying to obtain a certificate of death in absentia for the last few weeks?”

She nodded and took off her glasses, wiping what I assumed were tears. “Yes.”

I could feel Vic’s eyes on me. “Mrs. Payne, it’s clear that you’ve gone through a lot of difficulties lately, and we’re not really here to add to your burdens but we need answers. We’re just interested in your daughter, her disappearance, and the connection it might have with these other women.” I pulled out one of my cards and placed it beside the stacked mail and then shoved my hands in my pockets. “We’ll leave your home now, but if you do think of anything that might help us in the investigation, I’d appreciate it if you would give us a call.”

Vic stepped in front of me and picked up the card, writing her cell number on the back and then handing it to the old woman. “Mrs. Payne, call this number and you’ll get a faster response.”

We walked out of the house and down the steps as my undersheriff punched my arm. “Okay, that’s two visits that make me want to cut my wrists . . . Is Campbell County always this uplifting?”

“You should’ve seen what it was like before you got here.”

“I improved your spirits?”

“Yep.”

“I have that effect on people.” She pulled out her phone and looked at it. “Uh oh . . .”

I pulled up, and we looked at each other from across the hood of my truck. “What?”

“Missed call.”

“Patrolman Dougherty?”

“No, your daughter.”

I froze, both figuratively and literally. “Cady?”

She thumbed the device. “Wait, there’s a text.” She read it and looked at me. “You’re in trouble.”

“How bad?”

“Bad.”

“Bad bad, or just bad?”

She began reading from her phone.

“Dad, where the hell are you?! I’ve been calling the office! The doctors are talking about inducing and wanted to know if I had a magic number as a birth date for the baby, but I told them I was waiting till my father got here! The doctor I want for the delivery is only available one day this weekend and I want to make sure you’re here! Would you please call me right now? Signed, your very pregnant daughter!”

Vic looked up at me.

I climbed in my side as she opened the door on the other. “That’s not so bad.”

Closing the passenger-side door behind her, she continued reading. “PS: Now, or I’m going to kill you!” She glanced at me. “The now and the kill are underlined.”

I nodded.

“PPS: I mean it!” She lowered the phone and studied me. “PPPS: I really mean it!” She smiled. “Speaking from a personal standpoint, whenever a woman uses more than a half dozen exclamation points, four underlines, and three postscripts—you are in deep fucking shit.”

“Gimme the phone.”

She dialed the number and handed the device to me.

I put the thing to my ear and held it there as I fired up the truck and hit the wipers, barely able to move enough of the snow to clear the windshield. “Did I see an Office Depot back near the Douglas Highway in our travels?”

“Why, you want to go buy a chair to hit Sadie Payne with?” She thrust her chin toward the house we’d just left. “Little hard on the old broad, weren’t you?”

I listened to the phone ring as I pulled a folded piece of paper from the pocket of my coat and studied it. “It was quite a performance.”

“You’re not buying it?”

The phone continued to ring. “Not particularly.”

She studied me for a moment and then shrugged. “So why do we need an Office Depot?”

The phone rang some more. “So I can make a copy of this bank statement that says most of these ATM withdrawals in the last month were made at the Buffalo Gold Rush Casino in Deadwood, South Dakota. Some very large withdrawals . . .”

I turned to look at her just as somebody, a very angry somebody in Philadelphia, answered the phone in a tone of molten righteousness and wounded indignity.

“Hello?!!”

I could almost hear the exclamation points as I put on my best nonchalant voice. “Hi punk—you looking for me?”

8

“So, bad bad.”

I nodded. “Pretty bad, yep.”

“Have you called her since the one-legged bandit waylaid you?”

“Once, twice with just now.”

Vic cradled her face in her hands. “Oh, Walt.”

“I kept thinking I’d get out of here.” I looked past Dog, now sitting between us. “Which is why I have to get this wrapped up by the end of the week when the two of us are going to have to get to Philadelphia.”

She raised her head, brushing a wide swoop of black hair from her face, and looked at me. “Do you have a ticket?”

“An airline ticket?”

She glanced at the clock on my dash and tapped it. “If you take the bus, you’re going to have to leave now.”

I nodded and took a right on 85 onto the snowpack that was Main Street and then headed down the hill into Deadwood. “She says I have one for noon.”

Vic shook her head and looked out the window at the snow that was continuously falling along with some freezing fog. “We’ll need to get me one.” She looked up at the curtains of flakes falling gold in the illumination of the streetlights. “That is, if anybody’s flying.”

Deadwood, South Dakota, is a tourist town and, like most tourist towns, doesn’t look its best off-season, but the architecture has been preserved here, and when snow covers the globed streetlights, I can almost see Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and Seth Bullock sauntering down the avenues of my imagination. “You’ve never been here?”

“No, but I saw the TV series.”

“There was a TV series set in Deadwood?”

“Yeah. I liked it—they said ‘fuck’ a lot.”

It had been a hard-fought battle getting here, and a South Dakota highway patrolman had pulled me over near Spearfish only long enough to tell me I was nuts. I crept up Deadwood’s snow-covered brick streets and pulled my truck in front of the Franklin Hotel as a valet came out to meet us; he looked at the stars and bars. “You’re in the wrong state.”

Vic and Dog were already at the door of the hotel when I handed him the keys. “I think of myself as having a wide-reaching jurisdiction.”

Inside, I caught up with the dynamic duo at the registration desk where Vic was arguing with the young woman on duty, wearing a name tag that read Brittany, as to whether Dog would be allowed to lodge with us.

“He’s house-trained.” Vic glanced back at me. “Which is more than I can say for this one.”

I put my billfold and my new badge wallet on the wooden surface of the antique counter and had to admit that my badge looked a lot better in the hand-tooled leather holder that Bussell the Elder had made for me, and I liked the fact that it wasn’t flopping around on the Turkish carpet like a dying trout. I thought about the big Colt Walker in the center console but then remembered that I’d locked it and flipped it back so as not to draw attention. “Brittany, I’m Walt Longmire, and I’m working a case and need a room—for the three of us.”

Vic smiled and pulled out her own wallet, multi-badging the young woman. “With a tub, please, and don’t make me get Dog’s badge out, too.”

Brittany blinked once and then took two keys from a drawer and handed them to us as I gave her a credit card. She stood on tiptoe, looking at the beast. “He doesn’t bark, does he?”

“Not unless I sing, and I promise not to sing.” I reached down to ruffle Dog’s ears, letting him know I was abandoning him to Vic. “I’m going to head over to the Buffalo Gold Rush and spot the ATM—can I have one of the photos of Roberta Payne?”

She fished into the folder under her arm and brought out the most recent picture—the one from her employee-of-the-month plaque at the Flying J. “I’m going up and taking a bath. I’d be willing to take a shower if you’d join me, but I know you won’t, so I’m going to sink into nice, warm bubbles and await your return.”

“I won’t be long.”

She pulled at Dog’s ear. “C’mon, Rin Tin Tin, let’s see what we can find in the minibar.”

I watched her lay a hand on the brass railing and flounce up the stairs with Dog in tow and wondered what the heck I was doing staking out ATMs at close to midnight in a blizzard.

Turning and tugging my hat down, I flipped up the collar of my sheepskin coat—the valet opened the door and watched me walk out into the fogged-over blizzard. Fortunately, the casino was only across the street about a block up, but I still had a quarter inch of snow on my shoulders and hat by the time I got there.

I shook off in the entryway and looked at the hello-officer red Corvette that somebody could win if he or she wrestled the one-armed bandits to the ground. Continuing into the din of electronic gambling, I made my way toward the cage that read HOUSE and asked the man sitting on a stool where the nearest cash machines might be.

“Whole bank of ’em behind this wall and around the corner. I can run a debit card from here though, if you need money.”

I shook my head. “That’s okay.”

Walking as he’d directed me, I studied the half-dozen cash machines, then spotted a blackjack table within eyesight and decided to set up camp as long as the eighty-seven dollars and forty-three cents in my pockets held out.

Having returned Roberta’s original bank statement onto the threshold between the storm and regular doors of the Payne home in hopes that Sadie would think she’d dropped it, I pulled the copy and noted the days of the week and the times of the withdrawals. There were a number of transactions in Gillette, but they were within the amounts that Sadie had mentioned, whereas the withdrawals that had been made here in Deadwood were much more substantial and growing more so. I pulled out my pocket watch. The days of the activity were random, but the times were not—all of them pretty much this time of night and within twenty minutes of each other.

Making a quick trip back to the cashier, I watched my real money transform itself into colorful plastic chips, and I strolled across the thick carpet back toward the vantage point I’d assigned myself at the blackjack table.

There was a chubby croupier with a beard, a bowtie, sleeve guards, a brocade vest, and a name tag that read Willie dealing cards to an east-of-the-Missouri-River farmer type, a brassy-looking blonde, and a broad-backed Indian. There were two guys sitting over at the bar, but other than that the place was deserted.

Covertly slipping my holstered sidearm off my belt, I stuffed it into the sleeve of my coat and draped the sheepskin over the back of a stool next to the Indian, took off my hat, tapping it against my leg just to make sure that I didn’t drip onto the elaborate red felt, and took a seat. “Mind if I join you?”

Willie smiled a baby-face smile, probably wishing that we would all go home so that he could follow suit, and announced, “New player.”

I piled my chips in separate stacks and nodded toward the farmer and the blonde, who, I assumed, was his wife, and turned to look at the big Indian, who had the most chips; he in turn looked at the dealer and nodded toward me. “I do not like his looks; he seems like the kind of man who cheats at cards.”

I anted up. “Willie, has this Indian been drinking?”

The chubby man looked a little worried. “Um . . . No, sir.”

“Well, let’s get him started—give him a red wine, he looks like a red wine kind of guy.”

Willie raised his hand, motioning toward a middle-aged woman—her name tag said Star. “What’ll it be, gentlemen?” She was dressed in a kind of French maid outfit and uncomfortable spike heels and didn’t look any happier than Willie at our reluctance to leave the table.

The big Indian spoke to her first. “Cabernet Sauvignon, s’il vous plaît.”

She glanced at me, and I stared back at her. “Um, beer.”

“What kind?”

I took a moment to respond, then straightened my chips and took a calculated guess. “You got Rainier, Star?”

“No.”

I smiled. “Iced tea then.”

The croupier announced the game and began dealing cards. “Blackjack, ladies and gentlemen—five-dollar minimum bet.” He tossed the farmer’s wife a king, the farmer a seven, me a three, a nine for the Indian, and finally a nine for himself, adding to his 25-to-2-percent advantage. “Lady has a king.”

She grinned, her dentures shining. “Hit me.”

He threw her a seven, and she sat pat. The next was an eight for the farmer. He brushed his fingers on the felt and was obliged with another eight, which carried him over the hill.

I stabbed the three, and the dealer laid a jack on it. I tapped again and was rewarded with a six. I looked at his ace, and decided what the hay. I tapped, and he sent me along with the farmer with a seven. “Ah, well . . .”

The dealer pitched an eight to the big Indian, who stared at his cards and then pointed at the dealer with his lips. The croupier paused for a moment and then flipped him another that skimmed along on a carpet of stale air—a deuce.

He looked up at the dealer with a smile as thin as a paper cut.

Willie gave himself a seven. The next card was a ten, and he followed the farmer and me down the road.

I watched as he deposited the chips in front of the Indian’s pile; the farmer and his wife rose, and the older man laid a hand on my shoulder. “You high rollers are too much for us, we’re headed for bed.”

I smiled back at him. “Good night. Be careful out there.”

“Oh, we’re just down the street in a hotel—we’re walking.”

“Still, be careful. You could cut sheep out of the air with a pair of shears.”

“We will.”

I watched the older couple pull on their coats as the waitress arrived with our drinks, and I gave her a chip as a tip. “Keep us topped off, would you?”

“Sure.”

The dealer was getting anxious as he looked at the Indian and then at me. “Another hand, gentlemen?”

I nodded and turned to Henry Standing Bear as we both anted up. “What the hell are you doing in Deadwood?”

The Cheyenne Nation nodded his head at Willie. “I am feeling lucky.” As the croupier dealt cards to the three of us, the Bear smiled at me. “And besides, both Vic and Cady left me messages this afternoon. They worry about you.”

—

We played a few more hands, and he explained. “Since I was already in Pine Ridge . . .” He gestured around him. “I decided to stop by.”

Willie interrupted, ready to unload a few more cards. “Five for the cowboy, king for the Ind— Native American, and a three for the house.”

Henry sipped his wine. “Why, if you do not mind my asking, are you here?”

I tapped the five and got another one. “Looking for a missing woman.” I tapped again and landed an eight. “Hold.” I pulled the photograph from my coat pocket and unfolded it on the table between us. “Roberta Payne—ring any bells?”

He studied it and then nodded his head toward the other room. “I would say she bears an uncanny resemblance to the woman with the man at the ATM machine over there.” The Bear pursed his lips at the dealer again and got a three. He lip-pointed once more and got an eight, smiled the razor smile, and passed his hand over the cards as a blessing. I turned to see a tall, bald man, muscular in build, holding on to said woman’s arm as she made a withdrawal.

I flipped my cards over. “That would be she.”

Willie threw himself a jack and then a six. He looked at Henry, who paid him no attention, and then turned over a ten. He sighed and scooped up the cards, once again depositing the Bear’s winnings in front of him. “You’re lucky tonight.”

The Cheyenne Nation stacked his chips. “Yes, I am.”

Willie stepped back and dusted his hands together. “Would either of you gentlemen mind if I ran to the bathroom? It’s right over there, and it’s been a long shift.”

We said nothing, just watched him go. Henry, speaking under his breath, turned back to me. “You do realize that he is going to warn this Roberta Payne and friend?”

I stood and reached for my coat, careful to reattach my holstered weapon, as he joined me in putting on his black leather duster. “I’m counting on it.” We watched as Willie slipped behind the cashier booth through a door beside the cash machines. With one quick look back at us, he spoke through the cage to the couple at the ATM, opened another door, and allowed them inside.

We hustled across the floor, only to find that the heavy security door was fashioned with a large metal keyboard. I leaned back and motioned toward the man in the cashier booth. “Hey, would you mind—”

There was a thunderous crash, and I looked back and saw that the Cheyenne Nation had decided not to wait for approval and had let himself in with a size-twelve Caterpillar chukka boot; he extended his hand. “After you?”

We two-at-a-timed it down the steps and were immediately confronted with a hall. “You go that way, and I’ll go this—first one to find something, sing out.”

He nodded and disappeared to the left—I moved quickly to the right, finding another door, which read WOMEN’S DRESSING ROOM. I turned the knob, but it was locked. I was about to do a Bear when a young woman in one of the waitress outfits opened it and then stepped back, her hand to her chest. “Oh, my God.”

“Excuse me.”

I started to go around her, but she held up her arm. “This is the women’s dressing room.”

“I know, and I’m looking for a woman. Roberta Payne?”

“Never heard of her.” The arm stayed on the door. “And you can’t come in here.”

I pulled out my badge wallet. “Yep, I can.” I pushed past her, and across the room, I could see another door hanging open and moving. I threw what my father had called my field voice over my shoulder. “Henry!”

Hoisting myself up the steps, I threw the door open into the snow-covered alley behind the casino which, with the proximity of the surrounding buildings and the thickness of the fog, felt claustrophobic. I cranked my hat down tight and looked at the ground, where three sets of tracks went to the left toward the middle of town.

I felt the breath of someone next to me. “They are together.”

“Yep.” I stepped back and let the expert take over the tracking duties, watching as his left shoulder humped up and his right hand hovered over the ground like it always did when he was bird-dogging, and he loped off down the alley. I tried to keep up but was at a disadvantage running with the leather soles of my cowboy boots in comparison with the Vibram ones of his boots—at least that’s what I told myself.

We tracked them two blocks, but then the Bear pulled up and stood at Lee Street, the snow already covering his raven-black hair like the mantle of silver on a grizzly. “They split up.”

“Why in the heck would they do that?”

The streetlight flared off the surfaces of his face. “Two cars. There are two major parking areas in town, one over by Deadwood Creek and the public parking garage on Wall Street. The croupier went toward the creek, and the couple went toward the garage.”

“She’s the one we want; we’ll find out about the dealer later.”

The Bear turned and was off again, trying to catch a glimpse of Roberta Payne in the freezing fog. “They are fast.” He shook his head as we hurried across the empty street, the snow now approaching lower midcalf. “Try and keep pace.”

Henry broke into a run, and I struggled to keep up as he took to the sidewalk—I just ran down the middle of the street. It was strange to see the usually busy little town like this, almost as if we were ghosts, haunting the place with our muffled, silent run. I saw Henry pause and then take a left on Wall toward the parking garage.

Sliding a good six feet on the smooth soles of my boots, I made the turn too, and lumbered after the Cheyenne Nation, almost running into him at the empty glass booth at the entrance. He stood, looking up, staring at the concrete ceiling and the floors above. “What?”

“Someone was trying to start a car.”

I looked at the two passageways on either end of the massive building that stretched most of the length of the town. “You take in and I’ll take out; working our way to the roof?”

He nodded and was off to the right as I moved left, looking at all the cars as I went, hoping to spot exhaust, movement, or the condensation that would tell me somebody was inside. There were more than a lot of vehicles—evidently guests from the surrounding hotels and employees who had given up the ghost had decided to just leave their vehicles in the safety of the garage for the night.

There was a Toyota pickup at the far end, sitting by itself with the motor running. Just to be on the safe side, I pulled my badge wallet from my rear pocket and held it open, placing my other hand on the .45 at my side as I approached the driver of the small truck and noticed that it was, ever so slightly, rocking.

I drew my coat back over my sidearm and walked a little forward where I could see a woman sitting on a man’s lap. I had just started to move back when the guy saw me and screamed, honestly, screamed. Then the woman started screaming, and I held up my hands.

She slid to the side, and the middle-aged man rolled down the window and started yelling at me. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

I put a finger to my lips. “Shhhhhhh . . .” I then held up my badge and whispered loudly, “Get a room.” The window went back up, and I was able to get past before he threw it in reverse.

I turned up the ramp leading to the second floor. At the top, I looked down the length of the building and sighed through chattering teeth.

I was cold, it was late, and I was really tired.

I started working both sides of the street, so to speak, and was halfway done when I saw Henry, skimming along like a black panther, stooped and crisscrossing the lane just as I was. I shook my head and thought about the best buddy I had in the world, a man ready to drop everything in his life and rush out into a blizzard to help me try and catch a missing woman.

We met halfway, well, maybe a little more on my side. “Anything?”

“No, you?”

“A couple lap dancing in a Toyota.”

“I heard somebody pull out and assumed you had it.” He blew into his bare hands in an attempt to warm them. “Did you do your civil duty and tell them to get a room?”

“I did.”

He glanced around in the darkness of the garage. “We could just wait at the exits, but she might freeze to death.”

“I’m ready to just go back to the casino and see if they’ve got an address for Willie or either of them.”

He looked at the ceiling. “In my experience, employees are usually relegated to the most inconvenient parking areas, so if they are friends of his . . .”

“Up?” I joined him in looking at the ceiling, and he nodded. “I’ll double back.”

On the third floor, there were fewer cars, and I was able to make better time but didn’t see Henry as I got toward the middle. I kept going, finally approaching the ramp that he should’ve come up when I heard somebody running on the floor below. “Henry?”

His voice echoed up to me. “They’re in the elevator!”

I ran for the steps at the southeast end of the building. Fortunately, there was no snow in the stairwell, but I could already hear Henry and the couple on the street below. Throwing myself against the walls, I bounced my way down, turned the corner at the ticket booth, and tripped off the curb just enough to send myself slinging onto the snow-covered street outside.

Picking myself up on one elbow, I could see the Bear climbing up the fire escape at the back of a three-story redbrick building to my left, and above him, barely visible in the cascading flakes, two people going onto the roof.

“Damn it.” I grabbed my hat and pushed off, running the length of Wall back down to Main, keeping my eyes on the rooftops, and sliding another ten feet into the main thoroughfare.

Holding my hat in front of my eyes to give me a clearer view, I could see that there was a large turret on the corner building, and I could barely make out the shadow of somebody looking down from the front cornice. I shouted up at her, “Roberta Payne, sheriff’s department—you need to stop!” She looked both ways and then behind her as the man yanked her away. “Whatever your name is, you need to let her go!”

He ignored me, and they both disappeared.

I moved sideways down the street, keeping an eye on the roof and trying to see, even though the falling snow was blinding.

After a moment, Henry appeared at the cornice. “Where did they go?”

“Not this way, they—” It was then that I saw something move on the roof of the next building, a full flight lower than the corner one that Henry was on. I pointed and yelled at the Bear, “They’re down there; they must’ve jumped!”

The Cheyenne Nation flung himself from the taller building, but I couldn’t see if he’d landed well or not.

Running sideways and hoping to spot a taller building that might impede their rooftop progress, I tried to keep up but watched as the couple made an easy traverse onto the next three buildings, with me, sliding along in my boots, desperately trying to keep pace on the ground.

Suddenly, I noticed that a half-ton pickup with its bright lights blasting up Main Street had stopped about fifty yards away. Bringing my hand up to shield my eyes, I peered through the fog freezing in the snow-filled air and finally figured it must be Willie.

I stood there for a few seconds, unsure of his intentions, when he revved the engine, lurched forward, and headed straight for me.

For all Willie knew, he was protecting the couple from a wild cowboy-and-Indian duo who might mean them harm. I would’ve liked to have shown my badge, but there wasn’t time. Carefully, I pulled the Colt from my holster and leveled it at the rapidly approaching vehicle.

The truck stopped when I guess Willie figured out what he was up against.

I took a step forward and raised my sidearm, just to show him I wasn’t intent on putting a bullet into him, and yelled, “Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department.” Unsure if he’d heard me, I yelled it again.

That’s when he hit the gas and started straight toward me.

Unwilling to be run over, if by mistaken identity or not, but not wanting to hurt the driver, I fired low, figuring I would hit the front of the truck and something that would disable it.

The brakes locked up, and the truck slid at an angle to my right.

Tugging at my hat, I leaned my head to one side and tried to see in the cab to make sure the bullet had not deflected, but the snow and the reflection on the glass made it impossible.

Suddenly, the wheels started spinning and I raised my sidearm again, only then noticing that the truck was retreating, once more at a high rate of speed. He backed the vehicle into a parking lot at the end of the row, and as I ran after him, I saw Roberta and the unknown man leap onto a one-story building, swing around a billboard advertising the newest, biggest, and best of something, and lightly jump to the ground next to the vehicle in waiting.

I was getting closer but watched helplessly as they vaulted into the attacking pickup, which fishtailed out of the parking lot and headed off in the other direction, the billowing tunnel of snow in their wake closing off the air behind them.

Their taillights disappeared as the Bear dropped to the ground, both of us leaning over with our hands on our knees in an attempt to catch our collective breath.

He caught his before I caught mine, of course. “Who. Knew. We. Were. Chasing. Spider-Man . . . And. Spider-Woman.”

I nodded and stooped to see a little antifreeze in the snow—I must’ve dinged the radiator—as another set of lights suddenly appeared from the other direction, along with a spotlight that blinded us. A voice rang through a loudspeaker mounted in the grille of a black-and-white Dodge Charger. Static. “Deadwood Police—don’t move!”

Standing and holding my .45 high and wide so we wouldn’t get shot, I shouted, “Sheriff Walt Longmire, Absaroka County, Wyoming!” I gestured toward Henry with a smile. “C’mon, we’ve got a ride.”

—

“Follow what car?”

I’d gotten to say follow that car only one other time in my life, and the young patrolman was ruining the expectations I had with my second request. “It was a half-ton pickup, blue in color, headed east on Main . . .”

Tavis Bradley, who had turned out to be a part-time patrolman with the Deadwood Police, had cost us more than part time trying to figure out who we were and what we were doing, but had finally fallen in line and started the warm, if not hot, pursuit in his completely useless-in-the-snow Charger. “I called them in, even though you didn’t have a plate number . . .” The car slid sideways as we joined routes 14/85 south, and I wished, once again, that I had been driving. “There can’t be that many vehicles out here tonight.”

“Turn your headlights on low, please?” The Bear, seated in the front seat with Tavis, peered over the hood at the surface of the road. “It is fast disappearing, but there is one, clearly defined set of tracks.”

The young man did as he was told. “He’s headed onto Sherman toward Cliff, but my jurisdiction ends where 385 branches off and goes south to Custer and the state park.”

I leaned over the seat. “We’re going to broaden your horizons tonight.”

“Shouldn’t we call the Highway Patrol? They’ve got a detachment in Custer and in Rapid City and can cut him off.”

“Get ’em on the wire.”

As the kid snatched the mic from his dash and talked to the HPs, Henry and I watched the road and tried to figure out what had happened in Deadwood. “I don’t get it, why split up?”

The Bear pointed, urging the patrolman to go left.

I thought about it. “I can understand if you decided to change your life and hide out . . . Well, in all honesty I can’t, but was she acting as if we were going to kill her or he was?”

He turned, giving me his usual horse eye. “I’m voting that she fears him much more than she does us.”

The patrolman hung up the mic and glanced back at me through the rearview. “They’re setting up cars on 44, 16, and 385, so he can’t go south and he can’t get over to Rapid, so can I slow down?”

“No. There are other roads he can take, right?”

“Small ones.”

“Well, we’re going to keep after him while we can still see his trail or else we might lose him to those small ones.”

Tavis looked glum. “If I wreck this new cruiser, the chief is going to lose me.”

“Who’s your chief?”

“Emil Fredriksen.”

I laughed. “Fightin’ Freddie?”

“You know him?”

“Yep, I worked with him a couple of times back in the day, when I used to moonlight the Sturgis Bike Rally.”

The Bear spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Dare I ask how he got the name?”

I shook my head, thinking back to a time when I was a struggling deputy with a wife, a child, a mortgage, and a car that needed a transmission. “Oh, every time some tough guy would say that Emil was just a tub of guts and that if he took off his badge and gun they’d kick his ass, he’d take off his badge and gun and kick their ass. I think his badge and gun got more wear from being thrown onto his dash.”

In any other circumstance, it would have been a wonderful drive through one of the most beautiful and, according to the Indians, spiritual places in the world, but with the snow and fog, it was like driving underwater.

I had the kid shut off the lights on the light bar except for the warning ones at his rear, just so that if the SDHPs were out here moving around they wouldn’t back-end us.

“Why no lights?”

“Henry can’t see.” I watched the road for a few seconds then tried to make out the signs, but they were enameled with snow. “Any idea where we are?”

I was talking to Henry, but Tavis answered. “Just south of Hill City, I think.” He turned in the seat and looked at the Bear. “You Sioux?”

“Lakota. Some, but mostly Cheyenne.”

“I never met a Cheyenne before.”

The silence of the vehicle got to the kid, and before long he spoke again. “How ’bout telling us a story, I mean the sheriff and me have been talking the whole way . . .”

Henry nodded. “I know.”

“Well, tell us a story, an Indian story to help pass the time.”

The Cheyenne Nation glanced at him, then back at me, and then at the road. “You may not like my stories.”

The kid wouldn’t give it up. “What, do all the white people die in the end?”

“No, only white-people stories end with everybody dying . . .” He sighed and then smiled to himself. “There was an Indian and a Ve’ho’e traveling together—”

“What’s a Ve’ho’e?”

I joined the conversation. “White person.”

The Bear continued as if we hadn’t spoken. “These two were on a hunting trip, but they were not doing very well, when suddenly a duck flew out of some rushes and the Indian shot it with an arrow at the exact same time as the Ve’ho’e shot it with a gun.” Henry’s hands came up, gesturing as he warmed to the story. “They plucked the bird and made a fire, burying the duck in the ashes so that they could eat it the next morning. As they were going to sleep the Ve’ho’e made a wager, telling the Indian that they should sleep well tonight and dream, and whoever had the best dream in the morning would be the one to eat the duck.”

I had heard this story numerous times.

“The next morning the Ve’ho’e awoke very early, but when he looked at the Indian, he could see his eyes watching him and so the Ve’ho’e said, ‘I have had a marvelous dream!’

“The Indian, seeing his enthusiasm, allowed him to tell of his vision first.

“‘In my dream, there were winged white women who came down from the sky who promised me everything forever if I would only join them in Heaven, but I explained to them that I did not have wings. So they lowered a ladder down for me and I began climbing up.’

“The Indian jumped to his feet and pointed at the Ve’ho’e and agreed—‘I have had this same vision, a dream so powerful, so vivid that it must be shared by more than one person.’

“The Ve’ho’e nodded. ‘It was as if it actually happened!’

“‘Yes, I saw you climb up the ladder and disappear.’

“The Ve’ho’e, sensing he had won the bet, exclaimed, ‘Yes!’

“The Indian continued to nod. ‘So I ate the duck.’”

It was quiet in the cruiser as the Bear returned his hands to the dash and his attention back to the road.

The kid finally spoke up. “That’s the end?”

The Cheyenne Nation’s voice echoed off the windshield. “Yes.”

“Well, that sucked.”

“For the Ve’ho’e, yes.” Henry smiled. “I told you you would not like the story.”

For the sake of peace between the races, I tapped the kid’s shoulder and asked, “You from around here, troop?”

“Sioux Falls, but they weren’t hiring this time of year.”

“How long have you been on the job?”

“Four weeks—got my criminal justice degree from Black Hills State.”

“What made you want to be a police officer?”

“I just want to help people, right?”

The Bear looked at him again, and I slapped Henry’s shoulder to get him to knock it off, the back of my fist making a loud smacking noise against the black leather. “Right.”

Henry’s voice rose with his finger. “Left.”

The kid turned to look at him. “What?”

“Left, turn left.”

“Right.” He did as he was told, but after a moment, he spoke again. “What is it that this woman’s done?”

I rested my chin on my arm. “Disappear, but the problem is that a couple of other women have had the same thing happen to them, and I’m hoping that she might be able to connect some of the dots for me. That, and I’ve got a dead sheriff’s investigator to throw in the mix.”

“How did he die?”

“Suicide.”

The Bear raised a fist like a mace. “To serve and protect, right?”

I hit him in the shoulder again.

The kid looked at me. “How long have you been a sheriff?”

I shrugged. “About as long as you’ve been alive.”

Some quiet time went by, and then there was a little edge to the young man’s voice. “So, what about you?”

Henry shook his head. “What about me what?”

“Are you a cop?”

The Bear smiled. “No, I am freelance.”

The tone was still there when he asked the next question. “So, what do you think we are?”

The Cheyenne Nation didn’t look at either of us when he responded with a philosophy the young patrolman would develop sooner or later, if he lived that long. “Consequence.” You could hear all of us breathing in the cruiser as we tracked along in the deep snow. “Consequence is what we all are.”

9

“Stop.”

Tavis hit the brakes, and we began a slow and agonizing slide on the cushion of snow, finally coming to rest at a diagonal, blocking both lanes. We’d been driving for what seemed like an hour, following the only set of tracks on the road, and all I could think was how embarrassing it was going to be if we were trailing a garbage truck. The young patrolman and I sat still as Henry leaned forward, looking past the kid through the driver’s side window farther down the road.

“What?”

He gestured. “No more tracks.”

I leaned back, wiping the fog from the inside of the window, and even though I was unable to do much about the outside, I could see that the Bear was right and that the road ahead was pristine and undriven. “The road less traveled?”

“They must have turned off.”

I patted Tavis on the shoulder. “Can you get her turned around and go back?”

He nodded. “I think so.”

As he tried, I scoped the outside to try and get my bearings. “Shouldn’t we have met up with one of the Highway Patrol roadblocks by now?”

“Seems like, but maybe they’re just a little farther.” He pulled the cruiser ahead in an arc, and we slowly started back up the invisible road.

“How could you see that there were no more tracks?”

The Cheyenne Nation shrugged. “Did not see it—I felt it. And heard it; the snow feels and sounds different when it has not been driven on.” He raised a hand again. “Stop.” We slid and then rocked back and forth like a moored boat as the Bear unclicked his seat belt. “They went off the road here.”

I looked out my window. “That’s a road?”

Henry shook his head. “I cannot tell, but that is where they went.”

I tapped Tavis’s shoulder. “How ’bout it, troop?”

“What if it’s not a road?”

“Then we’re probably going to sink this Charger like a U-boat.”

“I’d rather not do that.”

I raised the collar on my coat and tugged down my hat. “Then we leave it where it’s more likely to be damaged and walk.”

He shook his head. “I’m not leaving this unit.”

Henry gestured toward the supposed road. “That, too, is a choice.”

Without warning, and I guess to show us that he was also ten feet tall and bulletproof, the kid spun the wheel and hit the gas. The big motor on the Dodge leapt at the opportunity and literally pounced into the tracks of the pickup, only to sink with a muffled thump like the plumping of four very large pillows.

I leaned forward between them and looked at the Bear. “What’d that sound like to you?”

He pursed his lips. “That we are, beyond even the slightest shadow of a doubt, stuck.”

Tavis threw the cruiser in reverse and stomped on the accelerator before either of us could advise him against it. The Charger spun its wheels and, if possible, dug itself in deeper. “Shit.” He turned to look at us.

“Looks like we walk after all.”

“Shit.”

Henry pushed open his door and climbed out. “My sentiments exactly.”

“You want to open the door for me? There aren’t any inside handles back here.”

Tavis got out on the other side and trudged back up to the road. “Shit.” He stood there and looked both ways. “I have no idea where we are.”

Henry looked around with me and then pointed toward something hanging in the fog. “Is that a sign?”

The patrolman walked toward it and slapped the pole with his hand, whereupon the majority of the snow slid off on top of him. “Shit.” He shook most of it off and then looked up and read the sign. “Oh, more than shit.”

I stooped and shone my flashlight on the tracks, which illuminated a few drips of coolant in the snow. “What?”

“It’s 16.”

“Meaning?”

Zipping up his duty parka, he walked back toward us. “We’re between the main roads leading to either Rapid City or Custer.” He looked around at the twenty feet that were visible. “Probably somewhere in Custer State Park.”

“I guess we’re lucky he didn’t go to Mount Rushmore.” I joined the young man. “Are there any structures around? Lodges they may be trying to get to?”

“There are a few—Blue Bell and Legion Lake Lodges maybe, but I’m not sure where they are in this soup.” He quickly added, “I’ve only been here once when I was a teenager, and we stayed at the State Game Lodge. I remember it because there was a photograph of Grace Coolidge holding a raccoon and she was a looker.”

“A raccoon?”

“Yeah, it was the summer White House and she had this pet raccoon. I thought that was kind of weird, right?”

I glanced at Henry, who shook his head and then nodded toward the two depressions leading into the whiteout. “We better get moving before the tracks fill in.” Henry and I took a few steps in that direction, but I noticed the kid wasn’t following, so I stopped and turned to look at him. “You coming?”

He shook his head. “I told you, I’m not leaving this vehicle.”

The Bear’s voice sounded from out of the wall of white, muffled by the frozen condensation. “I do not think anyone is going to be able to take it without a tandem of tow trucks.”

I stood there for a moment longer and then turned and followed the Bear. “Call the HPs and tell them where we are, would you?”

“Right.” I could hear him crunch toward the cruiser but then stop. “Hold on; let me get them on the radio and then get the keys.”

—

It was slow going; I was monkey in the middle with the Cheyenne Nation ahead and the puffing patrolman behind me.

“How far can they get?”

It was as if our voices were being struck by the tiny particles of snow and then steadfastly driven to the ground. Personally, I didn’t feel like talking, but the kid was nervous so I tried to make an effort. “Hard to say, but he’s got four-wheel drive. If there’s a road around here he’s got a better chance, but I’m betting that he’s going to get stuck just like we did, or his radiator will drain out and he’ll burn up the engine.”

We huffed along for a while in silence, but then he spoke again. “Do you think the other guy is dangerous?”

“I don’t know—either dangerous or stupid or both.”

“Why’s that?”

I pulled up, and he almost ran into me. “Would you be out here doing this without the right gear, if you had any choice?”

“No.”

“Smart boy.” I started off again but couldn’t see the Bear, and I was getting worried that he was outpacing us to the point of leaving us behind, so I doubled up on my efforts. Out of the corner of my eye, I could almost make out something moving alongside, but it disappeared.

I squeezed my eyes together and then quickly opened them but couldn’t see anything this time. I stared into the frozen fog, but the more I looked the more unsure I became. Off to my right, there was something dark outlined in the curtains of white gloom. Whatever it was, it must’ve moved fast to get ahead of us again. I didn’t have any worries that it was Willie, the mystery man, or Roberta because human beings couldn’t be that quick in snow that deep.

The kid’s voice came up from immediately behind me. “Something wrong?”

“No, nothing.”

I kept moving and scanned the area to my right but, responding to some kind of movement, I pivoted to the left and suddenly it materialized again. “What the hell . . .”

As soon as I spoke, the apparition disappeared.

Tavis was behind me and seemed spooked. “Hey, did you hear something?”

I stopped, and he caught up; now we were both looking outward in circles, like prey. “No, but I thought I saw something. Why, what did you hear?”

“Um . . . breathing.”

“Breathing?”

“Right.”

I stared at the path ahead. “We better catch up with Henry; I don’t want him coming up on those three alone.”

There was a thought that wavered in and out of my mind like the shadows in the snow, a déjà vu that reminded me of my time in the Bighorn Mountains a few years past and again when I’d been stalking some convicts in that same region only six months ago—it was not a welcome thought.

I was watching carefully as we moved on with more conviction, but there were no more shades in the claustrophobic storm. The kid had dropped directly behind me, and I listened to him breathe and sigh. “I bet you wish you’d never stumbled onto us back in Deadwood.”

His voice sounded remarkably cheery. “Are you kidding? Other than the odd biker fight, this is the biggest adventure I’ve had since I’ve been on the force.” Then he sighed again.

There was a little edge in my voice. “Why do you keep making that sound?”

“I’m not.” He glanced around, but his eyes came back to mine. “I thought that was you.”

There was a noise directly behind us.

Tavis stepped in closer to me. “Do you think it’s your buddy?”

“No, not from that direction.”

The patrolman edged in even closer, looking behind us. “Maybe he got lost.”

“He doesn’t get lost.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

It was quiet all of a sudden, and the only sound was our breathing and the snow crunching as Tavis adjusted his weight. “Maybe he—”

“Sssh.” Something exhaled to my left. “Well, whatever or whoever it is, it’s moving around out there in this storm at a pretty amazing speed.”

“A horse, maybe? Or a mountain lion?”

“No, whatever this is, it knows what it’s doing in deep snow and mountain lions don’t make that kind of noise.” I turned and started off. “C’mon, let’s get going before we—” There was another sigh, this one directly in front of me that came with what looked like the exhaust from a steam train. I pulled up and stopped and took a step back, almost standing on Tavis’s feet.

“Hey—”

“Be still—whatever it is it’s in the trail right in front of us.”

“Maybe it’s a tree.”

“That would mean the truck drove over it; besides, trees don’t breathe.” I leaned forward, but it looked like a rock, white with fissures and cracks running through it, darker than the snow, but not by much. It breathed out, twin billows that drove the flakes floating in the air like a double blast of a breathing shotgun. “It’s a buffalo, and I think there are more than one.”

As I whispered, a low plaintive noise emanated from my right that was answered by a snort from the animal in front of me. I slowly turned my head and could now see two more massive things to my left that swung their heads and regarded us—four, no counting the rest.

Having once roamed the grasslands of America in herds estimated at sixty to seventy-five million, the American bison became nearly extinct in the nineteenth century after being hunted and slaughtered relentlessly. Approaching twelve feet in length, six feet at the shoulder, and weighing well over two thousand pounds, the buffalo is the largest mammal on the North American continent. With the ability to fight grizzly bears, mountain lions, and entire packs of wolves to a standstill, they fear nothing. And because they’re capable of reaching speeds of forty miles an hour, your percentages of being attacked by a buffalo in the national parks are three times greater than any other animal.

Tavis whispered, “There’s a herd here in Custer State Park, a big one with more than a thousand of them, but they round them up and auction a bunch off in October.”

“Including the bulls?”

“I don’t know.”

I sighed myself. “The bulls are bigger and meaner . . . I think we’ve stumbled into a herd of buffalo bulls, so don’t put on your roller skates.”

“What?”

“That was a joke.”

“Oh. Right.”

The one on the trail in front of us shook its head and came a step closer. I could see that it was the packed and melted snow on him that had made him appear to be made of rock, the snow and ice cracked revealing the dark coat underneath. He was close enough that I could see the horns and the broad, black nose that blew contrails into the snow around his barrel-sized hooves.

There was nothing we could do, and nowhere we could go. If we tried to back away or change direction it was likely that we’d just run into another of the shaggy behemoths—maybe a thousand of them.

The big bull took another step closer, bringing him within seven yards of us, but his eyesight, which wasn’t so great in the best of conditions, was failing him in the still fast-falling snow and the fog.

“Should we draw our guns?”

I whispered out of the corner of my mouth. “No, the damn things have very thick skulls—all you’ll do is piss them off or start a stampede and get us gored or trampled to death.”

“So what do we do?”

“The hardest thing in the world—nothing.” The bull took another step closer, stretching its neck out for that much more of a view and even going so far as to stamp a hoof. It was only a question of time, given the animal’s natural curiosity, before he would eventually get close enough to realize that we were not part of the herd, and then all bets would be off.

I ignored my own advice and, humping my sheepskin coat onto my shoulders, I placed a boot forward and stamped it in the snow in order to convince him that we were buffalo, too.

The bull didn’t move.

“What the heck are you doing?”

“It’s what he did. Now, will you shut up, because I’m pretty sure he knows that buffalo don’t talk.”

I wondered where Henry was and then thought about Vic, safely ensconced at the Franklin Hotel in a bubble bath, but mostly I was just glad that neither of them were here to see me imitate a buffalo.

The real buffalo still didn’t move and didn’t seem to know what to make of my performance—hell, for all I knew I was asking him out to the buffalo prom, but as a rancher’s son with a long history of dealing with large animals, I did know that when they get confused, they become dangerous.

I stopped moving, too.

Suddenly his head dropped, and I saw his tail lift and stick straight up.

There still wasn’t anything to do; if I jumped out of the way the kid would get killed and I couldn’t allow for that—the only other thing to do was to charge the buffalo myself.

All I wanted was to bluff him and not send all the others into a stampede that would leave us as bloody puddles in the snow, and I was just getting ready to make a bold and most likely foolish move when I heard a song lifted like the wind in a melody that was familiar.

“Oooh-Wahy-yo heeeey-yay-yoway, Wahy-ya-yo-ha, Wahy-yo-ho-way-ahway-ahway . . .”

The buffalo bull immediately pivoted to the right and then in a full circle to look at us again, shook its head, and turned its wide horns to the right and left—like us, unable to determine from where the song came.

It was silent for a beat, while the singer took a breath, but then he continued.

“Aho, hotoa’e! Netonesevehe? Netone’xovomohtahe? Eneseo’o . . . They are the foolish Ve’ho’e, the trickster people, and do not watch where they go.”

The bull turned again, this time to the left, and waited.

“I am Nehoveoo Nahkohe, Hotametaneo’o of the Tsetsehestehese. Do you know me, big brother?”

The buffalo turned a bit more.

“We mean you no harm, and only wish to pass through this sacred place.”

I watched as the buffalo bull’s tail descended, and the muscles relaxed in the beast as he finally lowered his head and pawed at the ground again, this time in a disinterested manner, as if surprised to find snow on his buffet. Another moment passed, and he started off, up the slight grade to our right.

I sighed. “You still out there?”

“I am.”

I still could not tell exactly where he was.

“Did I just see you attempting to imitate a buffalo?”

“You did.”

“Do not quit your day job.”

I buttoned my coat, flipped the collar back up, and started forward carefully with Tavis in tow. After a few steps I could see Henry in the pale gloom, a tall figure with a leather cloak moving in an imaginary breeze. “We lost you; where the heck did you go?”

He glanced at the buffalo—there were still a lot of them milling around—and whispered. “I was ahead of you when we walked into them; when I tried to double back they blocked my path. I was simply going to wait until they moved on, but then you started challenging the biggest one and I thought I should intercede.”

I began whispering, too. “Challenging, is that what I was doing?”

“Yes.”

I smiled. “I think I could’ve taken him.”

The Cheyenne Nation did not look particularly impressed.

I kept my voice low. “Find the truck?”

“No, but the tracks continue toward the tree line.”

Tavis broke in from behind me in a loud voice. “There’s a tree line?”

The Bear looked at the patrolman and shushed him. “The buffalo are looking for shelter but must have gotten spooked when the truck drove through the herd.” He glanced around at the hulking shapes. “They are just now settling down and getting their bearings, so be quiet.”

I gestured with my chin. “Let’s get going; I don’t want to lose them.”

Henry turned, and we started off, a little more carefully this time.

After a hundred yards or so, we started to climb, and I could make out a few small trees leading toward larger copses and eventually the tree line that Henry had found.

The Bear stopped, looked at the tracks, and then at what countryside was visible, all twenty feet of it. “This slope leads down into a canyon and I would suppose a creek, whereas the embankment to the right leads up to a ridge. If they are stupid, they went into the canyon, and if they are wise, they stayed with the ridge.”

“If they took the canyon they aren’t going far, so let’s check the ridge.”

He nodded and then frowned. “Unfortunate.”

“Why is that?”

“It appears to be the same choice that the buffalo have made.”

“Misery loves company.” I could see at least a dozen of them in the immediate vicinity as I started after our Indian scout. “How many of these things do you suppose there are out here?”

“From the movement of the herd, I would say a couple hundred at least.” He slowed as one of the bulls, tossing its head and huffing, tracked in front of us. “They are still very uneasy, and I am afraid that any movement or sound could set them off.”

I nodded. “Just that much more of a reason to get to the tree line; if these monsters start charging around, I’d just as soon have a tree or two to put between us.”

The Bear suddenly stopped and whispered, even quieter this time. “I can see the truck.”

Bunching in close to Henry, I slipped my hand under my coat, pulled my .45 from the holster, and trailed it along my leg, watching as Tavis did the same with his Glock.

The Bear looked back at the two of us and shook his head. “Do not fire those weapons, unless it becomes absolutely necessary.” He took a few more steps forward and then stopped again. “As near as I can tell, there is someone standing in the bed of the truck.”

Of course, I couldn’t see anything, but I was used to that in my dealings with the Cheyenne Nation’s uncanny sensory abilities. “Do you think they’ve seen us?”

He watched the invisible landscape for a moment. “No.”

“If I keep moving in this direction, I’ll run into them?”

“Yes. This may take a while with the buffalo, so when you get to the truck, keep him talking.” Without another word, Henry moved off to our left and gradually disappeared like a cipher.

“Where is he?”

I gestured for Tavis to follow. “Stick with me, troop, and don’t fire that weapon until I tell you.”

Another forty feet and even I could see the outline of the blue truck, and indeed, someone standing in the bed. “Look, we don’t know that any of these individuals are dangerous, so let’s just play it slow. Chances are, this guy just thinks a couple of crazies are after his friend and his friend’s girl, and he’s just trying to do the right thing.”

He swallowed. “Is that what your twenty-five years of sheriffing are telling you?”

“Not really, but there’s gotta be a first time, right?” I looked at the kid and thought that I really didn’t want to be shot in the back by the Glock .40 he was carrying. “Don’t shoot anybody, okay? Especially me.”

I turned, took another step, and lifted my voice just loud enough to be heard but hopefully not loud enough to spook the buffalo that surrounded us. “Hey Willie, how are you doing?”

A little distance away, one of the bulls turned to regard us.

The croupier moved toward the tailgate and yelled back at me, “I’ve got a gun!”

“Okay.” I waited a few seconds, just to let the nearest buffalo know that we bore no ill intent. “Do you mind keeping your voice down a little? We’re concerned that these buffalo might spook, and I’m sure that none of us want that.” He didn’t say anything, so I continued. “My name is Walt Longmire, and I’m the sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming. I’m working on a missing persons case—”

“Whatta ya want?”

I watched as one of the bulls crossed between us, and I carefully took a few more steps to get a clearer view of the man. I could see that he was holding a rifle. “Well, this doesn’t have much to do with you, but it has a lot to do with the other man and the woman who are with you.”

There was a long pause before he spoke. “I don’t got no woman with me.”

I took a few more steps toward him. “Well then, the woman who was in your truck.”

He gestured with the weapon. “That’s close enough.” He leaned a little forward. “Who’s that with you?”

“Patrolman Tavis Bradley of the Deadwood Police Department.” I held my free hand up. “The woman in the casino who was getting money from the ATM? We believe that she might be Roberta Payne, who went missing from Gillette, Wyoming, three months ago.”

“I don’t know no Roberta Payne.” There was a long pause. “I don’t know if I even believe you’re a sheriff.”

“If you let me get close enough I’ll show you my badge, and Tavis here can show you a whole uniform, if you’d like.”

His head turned as he glanced around. “Where’s that big Indian guy?”

“He’s not with us anymore—maybe he’s with your friends?” An out-and-out lie, but it was all I could think of to say. I took another step and could see that there were two more people sitting in the truck. “Look, we just want to talk to you about the woman—”

“He says that somebody’s after her.”

I took a breath, just to let him know that he’d slipped up. “So, they are with you?”

He gestured with the rifle again. “I’m just telling you what he said before. Now, turn around and head back out of here before I make you sorry you followed me.”

“What’s your friend’s name?”

“Go away.”

I figured I’d put my cards on the table, so to speak. “Willie, you know I can’t do that. I’m trying to find this woman for her mother, who doesn’t know where she is or what happened to her. Now, if she doesn’t want to go back there that’s her business, but I need to speak with her and make sure she’s all right and that there’s nothing illegal going on.”

He didn’t move, not a muscle as near as I could see, and it was as if he were some kind of black cardboard cutout in a cheap community play, until the man in the cab raised the barrel of a pistol and aimed it at Willie and I heard a woman scream, “No!”

10

Willie fell forward, and another round passed through the collar of my sheepskin coat, grazed off my neck like a vengeful hornet, and yanked me sideways. I immediately raised my Colt.

I’m pretty sure that one of the buffalo rammed smack into the truck. Huge, wooly animals were shooting off in every direction as I turned to yell at Tavis to stay with me, but the young patrolman, clutching his side, with the Glock next to him and a lot of blood sprayed across the white hillside, was lying in the snow.

I grabbed him. “C’mon, we’ve got to get out of here.”

“He shot me!” He tried to pull away. “I swear to God, he shot me!”

Pulling the kid up onto my left shoulder, keeping the .45 aimed on the truck, I staggered forward with buffalo galloping around us like cue balls looking for a good strike. One brushed extremely close, and I fell with the kid but scrambled up, dragging him by his arm as he screamed.

Another bull was hurtling at us, and I could see that we weren’t going to make it, so I threw myself on top of Tavis in an attempt to shield him. He screamed again as my weight hit him, and I felt one of the hooves graze across the back of my head, the heavy, warm breath of the animal blowing down on us.

I lay there for a second more and then holstered my Colt, figuring it was about as useful as a peashooter in a shooting gallery, and pushed off again, this time grabbing Tavis by the front of his jacket. It was about then that I heard the truck start up and the billowing exhaust blew back at us from the twin tailpipes.

Lurching after it, my hand glanced off the tailgate, and I could see the card dealer lying in the bed, and the woman in the cab screamed, “Deke, don’t!”

There were two people in the truck—the man whom I assumed was named Deke spinning the steering wheel, and the woman whom I believed to be Roberta Payne staring back at us with a look of horror on her face.

I slipped to the ground, the reverse lights flickered on for a second, but then the thing peeled out in the same direction it had been heading, spinning snow in my face and ice on all the rest of me.

Spotting a copse of evergreens to my left, I dragged the kid and pushed some of the branches away so that we could get close to the trunks and shelter ourselves from the charging herd that surrounded us.

I settled him on the ground but felt the branches cave in as one of the animals must’ve come a little too close to the tree. “Get the hell out of here, there’s only room for two!” I fell backward onto Tavis, turned, and kicked at the thing to keep it away. The buffalo yanked its head around, stripping the branches in a cloud of needles that peppered the two of us, and I thought for some reason that maybe he might respond to a cattle call, so I started yelling, “Yaaaaaaah, yaaaaaaah—get out of here! Yaaaaaaah, yaaaaaaah!”

The bull, obviously having been herded in the State Park Roundup, recognized the call and immediately turned his big head and bounded away.

I sat there, stunned that my ploy had worked, and then rolled over, taking the flashlight from Tavis’s duty belt to study him. He looked pale. “How are you doing, troop?”

He didn’t say anything, but he wheezed and his chin trembled.

I rolled him to the right and could see the wound in his side, the blood saturating the bottom of his jacket. “This is going to hurt, but I’m only going to have to do it once.” I unzipped his coat and then trussed him up using my bandana as a bandage to quell the blood loss. “You all right?”

He nodded.

“I’ve got to go out there and look for Henry, okay?” He nodded again. “I won’t leave you, but I’ve got to make sure he’s all right and bring him back here if he isn’t.” I glanced down at the kid with blood all over him. “We’ll take you to the hospital over in Custer and get you squared away. You’ll be okay.”

He nodded again but still didn’t say anything.

I stood and became aware of something warm and slick on the side of my head. I reached up and felt the spot where the buffalo must have kicked me and noticed blood on my glove that must have been dripping from the wound on my neck. I reset my hat, wiped my glove on my pants, and pushed through the evergreen canopy out into the open.

It was the middle of the night, and I was surrounded by buffalo in a blizzard with a stuck cruiser and as far as I knew no available cover for miles around—good going, Sheriff.

I trudged in the direction where the truck had been, pretty sure that the Bear must’ve been close to the thing when everything had all gone to hell.

The buffalo appeared to have calmed down as I found the spot where the truck had been sitting. I bent and picked up the kid’s Glock and then glanced around but could see no sign of my friend. A sense of dread began overtaking me—what if he was out here, unconscious or hurt and unable to call out, what if he’d been killed?

“Walt.”

I turned with the flashlight and the .40 and could see the outline of what looked like a giant crow, the long black wings attempting to wrap close to his body, but ruffled and twisting ever so slightly in the wind. “You all right?”

He grew closer, and I could see that he was moving with a little trouble. “As well as can be expected—who was the idiot that fired first?”

“I assume it was the man named Deke—the woman in the truck yelled his name when they took off.”

He nodded as he drew up next to me, and I noticed he held his side with one hand.

“You’re hurt?”

“My back. I was attempting to negotiate my way around a particularly cantankerous bull when the shot went off. I got out of the way, but his horn caught my coat and we went for a ride.”

“You should’ve done my imitation.”

“There was not much time for interpretive dance.” He grunted a laugh but then regretted it. He poked a finger at my neck, where a little blood had saturated the sheepskin. “You are hit?”

“Not bad, but it grazed me and got the kid.”

He pursed his lips. “Where is he?”

“Under a tree over here—shot through a few ribs it looks like, but he’s breathing okay, so it didn’t get his lungs.” We both stood there, looking at our boots. “His legs work, and you can get him back to the cruiser. I would imagine that the South Dakota Highway Patrol will already be there and they might have information on this Willie character, but also make sure they check out Roberta Payne and the mystery man, Deke.”

“And what are you going to do?” I was still looking at my boots as he studied me. “You have no supplies, no gear, not even the proper footwear.”

“I’ll take the duty belt off Tavis, and you can take this.” I handed him the Glock. “I’m just going to follow them. They’ll probably come out on a road, and I’ll be waiting for a ride, but if they get stuck or wreck that thing . . .” I reached out with my left and gently laid a hand on his shoulder. “That kid is hurt, and somebody’s going to have to get him out of here.”

He made a face. “I can track better than you with my eyes closed.”

“I think I can follow a pickup truck; besides, you’re hurt.”

He cocked his head, studying first my neck and then the blood on the side of my face. “So are you.”

My arm was aching, which must have been some sort of reaction to the bullet that had grazed my neck, and so was my head, but I decided to withhold those thoughts. “Not as bad as you, and anyway, it’s my job.”

He looked at the tracks leading toward the ridge and handed me his cell phone. “You need to be careful, this is an unpredictable situation—the worst kind.”

I gestured weakly toward the tree where Tavis was hidden. “Get him some help, and I’ll call you when I find anything.”

He shook his head. “Where, exactly, is Vic?”

I converted my grimace into a clearing of my throat. “Room two thirteen at the Franklin Hotel, right across from the casino. I’m betting she’s asleep,” I added. “You can have my bed.”

“What if she is in it?”

“Then you get the sofa and Dog.” I started toward the trees and was already weary at the thought of traipsing through the snowbanks all night. “C’mon, I’ll help you with him.” I paused and looked at him. “When you get back to the cruiser, radio Emil Fredriksen—as soon as he finds out one of his own caught a bullet, he’s going to want this Deke fellow’s head, and other portions of his anatomy, I’m thinking.”

—

My head was giving my neck a run for its money as I adjusted Tavis’s duty belt to the first hole, took a deep breath, and studied the tire tracks, the only thing visible in the whiteout. As I’d suspected, they had followed the ridge and skirted the tree line before heading down a slight incline that flattened and opened up into an expanse of white.

Slipping in my boots, I continued down the grade until I could hear the muffled sound of rushing water, most likely under ice. Keeping the water to my left, I continued following the tracks and suddenly felt firmer ground underneath, almost as if it were paved. Pretty soon I could hear the heels of my boots clicking on the surface, and I was sure I was walking on a road, although I still couldn’t see more than fifteen feet ahead.

I could feel a lump rising where I had been kicked by the buffalo. It didn’t seem as though it was bleeding, but it ached like mad and wasn’t feeling any better with me probing at it. I adjusted my hat a little forward so that the band didn’t rest on the wound, and, since my neck was cold, I pulled up the collar of my coat and buttoned it tight, standing there for a moment feeling light-headed and weak.

The truck tracks were the only ones on the road, and I hoped they’d stay that way. I also figured that by now Deke would have become Black Hills Public Enemy Number One, and there were probably a dozen or so HPs out here prowling about like the buffalo, looking for somebody to hook. I just hoped it wasn’t accidentally me.

The snow was getting deep again, and I couldn’t feel the surface of the road any more, the drifts filling the area in with swales that started making the going a little rougher and forcing me into a few of the reflector poles.

It hadn’t been high plains cold until now. I squinted my eyes to clear them, but it was as though my mind was trying to go on down the road without me. My teeth were beginning to chatter and my hands and feet were becoming numb as I clomped along, the mantle of snow I had acquired probably making me appear more and more like one of the buffalo.

I trudged across a bridge and as I yawned, trying to stretch my jaw in an attempt to get rid of the ache in my head and the one in my neck, I thought about what had happened back on the ridge. What had Willie been doing with Roberta Payne and why was she living in Deadwood, siphoning money from her own account? Where did the Deke character come in? Why did he shoot Willie? None of it made any sense, but until I got back to civilization and the backstory, my job was to find the woman.

I rounded a corner, looked up, and saw a large structure on a hillside near a giant cottonwood with bark like stripped bone, and I stopped to place a hand on it for a brief rest, but discovered my right arm was numb.

Using my left, I pulled my arm up and looked at the glove and the inside of the cuff where blood had coagulated and frozen. I would have thought the wound would have stopped bleeding by now, but as I half turned and looked back at the trail of red I’d left on the roadway slowly being erased by the snow, I suddenly felt a little woozy.

There was a sound to my left, and I could see another buffalo standing near the creek. He ambled up the rise into the falling snow, but when he got even with the tree, he stopped, turned his great head, and stared at me—he was completely white. At first I thought it was just the snow covering him, but from only a couple of yards away, I could see that under the frost his fur was indeed white.

We stood there looking at each other, but when I blinked he had completely disappeared. I blinked again and took a few more breaths, but he was gone. Thinking he had climbed the hill, I turned back toward the lodge and allowed my eyes to adjust—there was no white buffalo, but there was the back end of a dark-colored pickup truck.

Standing there huffing my breath through my mouth like the great beast, I tried to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing, but the image, though swimming, remained the same. Pulling off my left glove with a leather fingertip between my teeth, I unsnapped my Colt from the holster.

I moved forward and leveled the sights on the vehicle, which was parked in front of a rock retainer wall. There, lying in the truck with the majority of his blood having drained into its snowy bed, was Willie.

Reaching out, I placed a few fingers alongside his throat, but there was no pulse—and the rifle was gone.

I slipped up to the side of the vehicle and blinked to keep the ice from my eyes. Resting the Colt on the top of the truck, I got the Maglite from Tavis’s duty belt and switched it on with my good hand to study the interior of the pickup. Most of the window was frosted over, but there was nobody inside—the keys were gone, but the hood was warm, so they must’ve not been here for that long.

Remembering Henry’s cell phone, I holstered the flashlight and pulled the device from the inside pocket of my coat and looked at the bars, having become something of a master in searching for a signal in the Bighorn Mountains last spring. There weren’t any bars, but I tried it anyway and dialed 911, holding the device to my ear but hearing nothing.

Tucking the phone back in my pocket and picking up my sidearm again, I glanced left and right while rubbing my arm to see if I could get some feeling back and finally saw a set of stairs composed of the same rock as the wall. Keeping my left-handed aim on the dark areas of overhang above, I negotiated the steps and noted a red sign to the left that read STATE GAME LODGE, ESTABLISHED 1920.

I took a breath and sighed; I suppose if you were going to hole up, you might as well do it in the swankiest place in the 71,000-acre park. If South Dakota was like Wyoming, however, the historic heritage lodges were closed in the depths of winter, while it was the newer, more insulated buildings that remained open.

The spacious porch was filled to the railings with snow, but there were footprints where two people had passed up the steps, and it looked as if someone had kicked open the door. Stepping to the left, I pressed the barrel of my Colt against the wooden surface and slowly pushed it wide, the hinges creaking like a crypt.

There were no lights on, but I could see wet prints on the dark, hardwood floors where the two people had crossed to the left, past the registration desk to the stairs that led to the second floor. I stared longingly at the phone deck with its multiple lines and buttons and wondered if it was working, figuring that was my next move; I just had to work up the energy to get there.

There was a fireplace to my right and a doorway to a hall that turned left and disappeared into the bowels of the massive lodge. Every surface gleamed, even in the dark, and the sheets over the furniture looked like ghosts taking a leisurely rest before a haunting.

I staggered a little entering the place, stumbled into a large wingback chair, and just stood there looking at my blood dripping onto the floor and remembering what Lucian had said about moving to New Mexico and how it was a bad idea because you could bleed to death. I felt cold, and it seemed like the entire right side of my body was numb—that, and there was a ringing in my ears that I couldn’t seem to shake.

A voice called out to me from a distance, almost as if the person speaking might’ve been outside. “Oh my goodness; you scared me to death!”

Wheeling from the back of the chair, I crashed into the partially closed door, causing it to slam, and I raised my sidearm toward a brunette woman with deep-set eyes who was standing on the stair landing—she was holding a fully lit candelabra in one hand and a raccoon in the other.

I held the .45 on her and the raccoon until she raised her eyebrows in an imperial fashion and spoke in an authoritarian voice. “Do you need help, young man?” I slumped there staring at her, and I assume she thought I was deaf because she sat the candelabra on the newel post and began signing to me with her free hand.

Entranced by those movements, I simply stood there looking at her but finally lowered my sidearm. “I’m sorry, I’m . . .” I tried to stand up straight, but my head ached and my neck hurt, so I just stayed there, leaning against the chair. “I’m chasing someone.”

She dropped her hand to pet the raccoon and glanced past me to look through the Venetian shades that were partially open. “In this weather, and with a gun?”

“Evidently, I am.”

“Then I can see why they are attempting to evade you.”

I swallowed, fighting the swells of confusion that kept lapping against my consciousness. “I’m a sheriff.”

She proceeded the rest of the way down the steps onto the Persian carpet. She was tall and wearing a cloche hat, with lips compressed in consternation. “You don’t look very well—are you ill?”

“No, I—”

“Perhaps you should come in and have a seat by the fire?”

“There isn’t any . . . ” I looked around and noticed something orange flickering off the heavy beveled glass of the French doors to my right, and I turned to see a robust stack of logs burning merrily away in the hearth.

“. . . Fire.”

She walked past me. “It gets cold in the winters after all the help has gone, so I’ve become quite proficient at making and tending the hearth.” She jostled the raccoon that had nuzzled her armpit and grasped her wrist with its tiny paws. “Rebecca here gets cold, but I can’t imagine why, with the wonderful collegiate coat she’s got.”

I smiled, trying to be gregarious. “Spoiled.”

She laughed a wonderful laugh, like music from a bygone era. “Not spoiled—pampered.”

I wiped the cold sweat from my forehead with the back of my working hand. “You . . . you’re in charge of the place?”

“For quite some time now.” She gestured to me. “Come, sit.”

I shook my head and immediately felt even worse. “I really should be finding these people.” I took a deep breath. “Would you mind if I use your phone?”

“You’re welcome to it, if you can figure it out. I’ve never had any luck with the contraption.”

I nodded, smiled at her again, and turned toward the registration desk. “I’m not too good with . . .” The phone that had been there when I’d entered wasn’t there any longer; instead there was a patch panel attached to the wall and an old Roman-pillar-style phone with an earpiece hanging from it.

“. . . Phones.”

She extended a fingernail and aimed it toward the wall. “It has to do with the apparatus of plugs, but I didn’t ever have to do that type of thing myself, so I haven’t learned.” She grinned a vivacious smile. “Spoiled, I suppose you would say.”

“I need to find these people.”

“So you said.” She picked up the candelabra. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like something to eat first, especially since there’s someone in the dining room who is waiting to see you.”

“No, I . . . What?” Summoning my energies, I looked around and noticed that the sheets were no longer covering the furniture.

She breezed by me to the left, where wet boot prints led around the stairwell through a doorway. She turned, the light from the candles illuminating only one side of her lean and handsome face. “Shall we follow?”

I straightened, ignoring my arm, and raised the .45 up past my face. “Maybe you should let me go first?”

“As you wish.” I stumbled forward, catching myself on the doorjamb as she watched me, and I was entranced by the reflection of her eyes. “Young man?”

“Yep?”

“Have you been drinking?”

“No, ma’am, but I sure wish I had.”

She put the candelabra on the newel post again and crossed back to the desk, where she reached up and opened a recessed cabinet above her head.

“What are you doing?”

“Rebecca is very handy.” She looked at the critter, who had climbed into the cabinet near the ceiling. “The bottle, Rebecca, if you will.” A moment later the masked bandit reappeared with a small pint. “Thank you, dear.” She extended a hand and the raccoon climbed out and jumped into the safety of her arms.

She turned and walked back over, holding the bottle out to me.

“What’s this?”

“Medicine.” She gestured for me to take it. “At least that’s what the night watchman calls it.”

I stuffed my Colt under my arm and took it, the label aged yellow with a discolored ribbon and stamped seal wrapped near the cork. I read the label aloud. “OLD TAYLOR, OVER 16 SUMMERS OLD.” I tried to hand it back to her. “I don’t think I should have this.”

She fluttered a hand at me. “Nonsense, just a taste. I’ve been doing it for years.”

Sighing, I opened the bottle and took a swig—it was like a little spark at the back of my throat, flavorful and delicate with no aftertaste of the alcohol. “It’s good.” I took another.

She reached up and spirited it away; corking it as she crossed, she handed it back to the raccoon. “All the way in the back, Rebecca. We mustn’t let the night watchman know what we’ve been up to.”

I had to admit that the whiskey had helped. I nodded my thanks and started through the doorway, but the raccoon reached up and touched the saturated sleeve of my coat, first looking at it and then up at me with her little bandit face, the only sound the drip of something on the gleaming floor.

—

The Pheasant Room, at least that’s what the plaque above the door proudly proclaimed, was darkly paneled and appropriately full of pheasants, with a taxidermied bird forever captured in midflight adorning each panel above the mission-style windows that seemed to allow light in from the outside.

Maybe it was clearing up.

I stepped onto the wide-planked pine floor and glanced around the room at the dozen or so perfectly set tables—pristine, white tablecloths, sparkling silver, china adorned with those same pheasants, shining goblets, and fresh flowers in cut crystal vases finishing the arrangements.

Seemed a little over the top for a lodge that was closed up for the winter, but it surely was not my place to complain.

There was music playing from an old baby grand piano tucked in the corner—I was a fan of boogie-woogie and knew it was Sophie Tucker, the last of the red-hot mamas—but there was no one seated on the bench. The keys depressed and the song was unmistakable; I just wondered who was really playing and singing. I wandered over to the instrument and touched the keys with the barrel of my Colt, but the second the metal touched the ivory, the music stopped.

I stood there for a few seconds but then felt as though someone was seated at one of the dining room tables, so I turned very slowly and raised my .45, but lowered it to my side as I became aware that there was nothing there.

Taking a deep breath, I noticed that the tracks I had been following led past the sideboard behind me.

I stepped to my left but stumbled into one of the chairs and was suddenly overcome with a sense of fatigue and cold again. Standing there for a few minutes more, I decided I’d better get a move on and started to the left out of the dining room where I found myself once again in the front lobby which was now empty. I started up the steps—the creaking of the treads was obnoxiously loud, even with the carpet covering them, but I finally reached a small landing one flight up that overlooked the dining room where I’d just been.

There were two stairwells that led to the second floor, but with my head really swimming now, I took the nearest one. The hallway was tastefully appointed with period wallpaper and antique fixtures that glowed and flickered. Gaslights. Odd.

I slowly checked each door, starting with the nearest one, but they were all locked except the one on the far end. There were two letters on that door that read KC, and I carefully pushed it open to reveal a very nice room with a highboy, a four-poster bed, and a small writing desk. I glanced down at the desk and could see a brass plaque that read CALVIN COOLIDGE’S WRITING DESK, 1927, WHEN THE GAME LODGE WAS USED AS THE SUMMER WHITE HOUSE.

I wiped the sweat from my forehead and backed out of the room, checking the knobs on all the doors in the hallway again, but none of them moved. I decided, as tired as I was, to go downstairs and wait until I heard something.

They went up, they would eventually have to come down.

Using the banister the entire way, I stopped at the mezzanine to look into the dining room and this time I could see that there was a hulking figure seated at one of the tables; he turned his huge double head and looked up at me.

I was glad to see him.

—

I seated myself opposite him—well, more like I had my legs collapse beneath me, making me park my butt on the chair and rest the Colt in my lap, which I covered with a napkin to honor the formality evident in the dining room. Leaning back in the chair, I rested my numb arm on my lap—the thing felt like it weighed a ton—and could hear the dripping noise that sounded like Chinese water torture but more delicate.

“Virgil White Buffalo.”

He continued to smile, cocking his and the great bear’s head sideways to look at me, the familiar smell of campfire, sage, and cedar wafting off him as it usually did. “How are you, lawman?”

“Tired.”

His head and the one on the headdress straightened, and he leaned in, his face above mine with an expression of concern. “And hurt again, I see.”

I looked at him. “Seems like I always am when I see you.”

He placed an elbow on the table and tucked a fist under his chin, the all-black eyes searing into me with a ferociously flashing intelligence. “Maybe that is when you need me.”

I searched the opening leading toward the reception area but couldn’t see the woman with the raccoon. “You bring friends with you from the Camp of the Dead?”

He grinned. “She is married to one of the great white fathers and talks a great deal, but her power is strong here.” He folded his arms on the table, and I was entranced by the intricate beadwork on his shirtsleeves. “There are many who wish to see you, but I bring only those who are necessary.”

“People say you don’t exist.”

He brushed my words away with a wave of one of his huge, scarred hands, the silver ring with the circling turquoise and coral wolves pacing around the wedding finger. “We are finite beings; how can we understand the infinite? It is enough for me that I have these opportunities to visit with you and perhaps assist you in the trials of this life.”

I tried to bring my hand up to check to see if that same ring that I’d taken from his hand in the Bighorns was still on the chain around my neck, but it wouldn’t work. “How did you get your ring back?”

He turned it on his finger in an absentminded manner, once again brushing away my words with a batting of his hand. “What are you going to do?”

“About what?”

“The ones you are hunting.”

I took a deep breath and tried to keep my head level. “Wait. Sometimes it’s the best thing you can do.”

“Who taught you that?”

I laughed. “My father; he was a very good hunter.”

His chin came forward in an attempt to catch my wandering attention. “He taught you lots of things?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Remember those things.” His eyes narrowed, and the blackness in them was boundless. “Above all else, you must remember the things your father taught you in the next few moments.” He reached across and straightened me on my chair. “But right now, tell me, in this life, lawman—at what places have you stood and seen the good?”

I smiled a sickly grin. “Too many to count.” I slouched toward the table again. “But you were right about the bad things, too . . .”

He studied me. “I am here to tell you they are not over.”

I suddenly felt the scouring wing tips all along the insides of my lungs. “What do you mean?”

“Prepare yourself.” He sighed deeply. “You will stand and see the bad. The dead will rise and the blind will see.”

There was a noise from the landing.

I looked up slowly and saw that Roberta Payne and the man, Deke, who was holding a hunting rifle loosely aimed at me and a handgun on her, were standing at the top of the stairs.

I coughed. “Roberta? Nice to meet you, ma’am. And Deke—Deke, that’s your name, right? Howdy.”

“You know, I’ve made a study of you.”

I did my best to adjust my eyes. “Is that so?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty careful about who I go up against—I like having an edge.” He gestured toward my arm. “For example, I know that you’re right-handed and that hand looks pretty useless.”

“Something tells me you don’t really make a living as a gambler.”

“Oh, I do back in Vegas . . . But I also do a little work on the side.”

“Why are you here?”

“To do what I do best.” He smiled and leaned on the railing. “Killing two birds with one stone. I figured it’d be tougher than this—killing you.” He let that one settle in before speaking again, and the only other sound was the delicate Chinese water torture. “I didn’t suspect I could just waltz down those steps and find you in here all alone, talking to yourself like a loony.”

I shifted my eyes across the table, but the legendary Crow Indian, as I’d suspected, was missing. I turned my head a little, just to make sure, but there was no one there—no woman, no raccoon, no pheasants, no table settings, and even the piano was gone.

“Did you know there was a contract out on you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, somebody pretty important wants you dead.” He smiled and gestured toward Roberta. “She was Willie’s, but I took her when I found out about the trust and because I could. Besides, I figured if I kept pumping the money, it would be you that came after her.” He paused and added, “Well, the guy that hired me did.”

“Who was that?”

“Yeah, I heard you talking to someone and figured there must be more than one of you down here; I figured maybe the Indian.”

I continued to stare around at the now unfamiliar room. “I . . . I guess I got distracted.”

“I guess you did, and it’s going to cost you, but first I’ve got some business to attend to.” And with that, he raised the small-caliber pistol and fired it into the back of Roberta Payne’s head. The woman bounced off the paneled divider between the stairs and then her head and a shoulder went through the railing, and she hung there with an arm hanging straight out.

I lurched from behind the table, and it tipped and fell over as I brought my .45 from under the missing napkin and leveled it at him just as he fired the rifle at me.

The shot tore through the hem of my coat and grazed my leg as seven of my 230-grain rounds blew eleven inches into his chest at 835 feet per second, bouncing him off the back wall hard enough to push him through the railing to land on top of me.

We fell backward onto another table, collapsing it with a tremendous crash of splintering wood and dead weight.

He lay there on my chest, his face turned to mine. “You didn’t study me well enough.” His eyes flickered, and I knew he could still hear me. “My father was left-handed; all his guns were left-handed stocks and grips, so he taught me how to shoot with both hands.” His eyes dimmed and clouded and I looked past him to where Roberta stared at me, a rivulet of blood trailing down her alabaster arm through her upturned hand where it pooled and dripped through her fingers onto the polished hardwood floor like Chinese water torture.

“It’s my one saving . . .” My head lolled to the side, and I stared at a framed black-and-white photograph on the wall, a large portrait of the woman from the lobby, in the same clothes, hat, and pensive, handsome expression. She was holding a raccoon. Just below it, on the frame, was a small brass plaque that read FIRST LADY, MRS. COOLIDGE—1927.

“. . . Grace.”

11

They were sustained visions and with having dreamed them so recently, it was easy to summon them and try to make sense of the message they carried. I’d lain there on the dining room floor of the State Game Lodge, the images growing more and more real as the cold crept into me in tiny waves.

In the dream it was night and I was standing just below a frozen ridge surrounded by herds of white buffalo that had circled and watched me, their breath filling the air and warming it. The snow was deep, and from the tracks I’d left, I could see that I had come a long way; my legs were tired, and the cuffs of snow piled up against my thighs had stopped me in my tracks.

At the top of the ridge, at a place I couldn’t seem to reach, a man was standing with his back to me, a tall man, broad, with silver hair to his waist. Independent of the conditions, he was in his shirtsleeves and stood there singing—a Cheyenne song.

I pushed off, but my boots slipped in the deep snow and I fell, finally satisfied, along with the buffalo, to just hear his song.

It was a clear night, the kind that freezes the air in your lungs with the advantage of nothing standing between your upturned face and the glittering cold of those pinpricks in the endless darkness, the wash of stars constructing the hanging road as it arced toward the Camp of the Dead.

The man had stopped singing and now half turned toward me, speaking from the side of his mouth. “You will stand and see the bad; the dead shall rise, and the blind will see.”

It was a voice I’d heard before, even though I couldn’t exactly place it. “Virgil?”

He half-turned toward me, his profile sharp, and I could see that it was not Virgil White Buffalo as he studied me from the corner of one eye. “You are bleeding?”

I looked down at the blood saturating the snow around me and the neck and chest of my sheepskin coat. “Um, yep . . . I think I am.”

He turned toward me fully and walked easily over the deep snow, kneeling and taking my face in his hands, and I could see that he had no eyes. The empty sockets looked almost as if they shot through his head like twin telescopes magnifying the black, infinite space with only a few aberrant sparks of warmth from dying stars. “Good, we can use the humidity.”

—

“I tracked the blood, and there you were, under the pile of bodies.”

I started and looked at the both of them staring holes into me—as if I didn’t already have enough extras. I watched my IVs drip and took a sip of my orange juice to gather myself until the quiet in the room became unbearable. “The two of you let me sleep away an entire day?”

My undersheriff’s voice keened with an edge. “You were shot near the external jugular alongside the sternocleidomastoid muscle in your neck—the doctor said it was a slow-bleed, but without the pressure from your coat you might’ve bled to death.”

Uncomfortably ensconced at the Custer Regional Hospital’s ICU, I picked at my robe and lifted the neckline to try and examine my bandages. I’d had a look at the results of the wound when they’d cut the sheepskin coat off me as though it were a monstrous scab. My wife and daughter had bought the jacket almost twenty-five years ago; it was one of the most treasured items in my life, and now it was lying in the bottom of some hospital dumpster. “Why did my arm stop working?”

“Blast effect to the brachial plexus that’s the nerve takeoff for your right arm, kind of like a karate chop.” Vic slapped my hand near the IVs.

“Ouch . . .”

“I hope it hurts, I hope it hurts bad enough that you never do crazy shit like this again, but you and I both know that the only kind of hurt that will do that is a good dose of death.” She stared at me, and I guess she felt a little sorry for the last statement because she added, “Speaking of which, how come you left a round in your gun?”

I glanced at Henry and shrugged, quickly developing the ability to do it with one shoulder. “We’re in Indian Country—always save the last one for yourself.”

The Cheyenne Nation nodded. “Prudent.”

I thought about telling them about Virgil and Grace Coolidge, but they thought I was crazy enough, so I let it slide. “To be honest, I think I was just worn out from pulling the trigger.” I looked back at Vic. “For the sake of the alliterative—Deke’s dead?”

“Definitively.”

“Too bad—I was really enjoying our conversation and was looking forward to talking with him some more.”

She gestured toward my arm. “And letting him shoot at you again for the privilege?”

“When we spoke, he said he was from Las Vegas.”

“Was this a long and wide-reaching conversation?”

“Long enough of one for him to shoot Roberta Payne and for me to shoot him seven times.”

She shook her head. “Well, he was from Las Vegas most recently.”

“You got a file on him?”

She glanced down at the folder in her lap. “A large one.”

“And Roberta Payne?”

She looked up at me. “Dead, and it was textbook—the twenty-two enters the skull but doesn’t have the power to escape and bounces around in there like a Mixmaster.”

I looked back at the Bear. “How’s Tavis?”

“He is fine, no damage to any internal organs.” Henry straightened his coat and grimaced. “And Emil Fredriksen wants to drag Deke out from the morgue, prop him up on the nearest snowbank, and use him for target practice.”

“And your back?”

He grunted and then squinted his eyes. “Spasms. They gave me muscle relaxers and a brace. They said to take the medication before it starts really hurting.”

“Then you should have started taking it around 1967.” I turned back to my undersheriff. “Did you talk to the casino people?”

“I did. The cocktail waitress, name tag Star, said that Willie was secretive about his personal life, but that there was a woman and maybe some other stuff; then the casino manager said that this Deke character showed up and the dynamic changed and the three of them were in there pretty much every night.”

“Roberta was never alone?”

“Never as far as they knew.”

I thought about it. “Deke said that he had taken Roberta from Willie—they all had to stay somewhere.”

The Bear leaned back in his chair and glanced at Vic. “I am assuming you obtained an address for the now-deceased croupier, Willie?”

“Yeah, he’s got, or should I say had, a crummy little house with an attic apartment.”

“You have an address?”

“I do.”

I started to pull the covers away. “Then what are we waiting for?”

The Cheyenne Nation placed a hand on my good arm. “There are four, very large, armed South Dakota highway patrolmen outside the door, who are charged with the responsibility of keeping you here until you have spoken with Special Agent Pivic of the Division of Criminal Investigation.”

Bruce Pivic held a wide and long reputation in western law enforcement from his days as a fraud investigator with the South Dakota attorney general’s office; meticulous and unrelenting, Bruce could boast of having taken down a lieutenant governor, a prosecuting attorney, and a mob boss who had attempted to launder money through an illegal cattle processing plant. I had sat in on one of Pivic’s intense debriefings and swore that before I ever had to sit through another, I would gladly pound eight-penny nails into my head.

I glanced toward the door and scratched where the IV went into my arm. “How big are the troopers?”

“Not as big as you, but they outnumber us, and I think they can call for more, if need be.”

Vic smiled. “Your hospital reputation precedes you.”

“Hell.” I sat back against my pillows and studied the two of them. “All right then, read me the Deke report.”

Vic flipped open the folder and then held her hand out, palm up, in expectation of the two bits.

“I’ll get you later.” I looked around. “Where are my pants anyway?”

She raised an eyebrow, and the tarnished gold glistened. “That’s three dollars and fifty cents you owe me.” She looked down and began reading. “Deke ‘Big Daddy’ Delgatos is originally from San Diego, California, with a long list of run-ins, run-outs, and rundowns with the law. He did a seven spot in High Desert State Prison for kicking a guy’s head in in a bar fight in Inglewood. While inside, it seems he got all giddy with the AWSFB.” She glanced at Henry. “That would be Aryan White Supremacy Founding Brotherhood, or as my fed buddies over in Gangs and Bikers like to call them, Assholes With Shit For Brains.”

He nodded. “Catchy.”

“Delgatos continued perfecting his craft in Susanville, where he supposedly killed another inmate and had a hand in shanking a guard. Through overcrowding, they let him out, and Big Daddy got himself a brand-new bag in Vegas, where he falsified just about everything about himself down to his DNA and got a license with the Gaming Commission to push cards.” She looked up. “Now, here’s the funny part—Deke had a condo, a brand-new Corvette, a powerboat, a winter home in Puerto Vallarta . . .” She shook her head. “Either this scumbag’s stackin’ the deck, or he’s got a little something on the side, right?”

I sat my empty juice cup on the tray. “He intimated to me he was a hit man—not exactly somebody you find on Craigslist.”

Vic put a finger in to hold her place and closed the folder. “She goes missing for three months and suddenly turns up two hours away?” She shook her head. “You think he was stupid enough to just keep siphoning money out of Roberta’s account until you showed up?”

“He said he figured that I would be the one—I think he was counting on it.”

Henry poured more juice into my plastic cup and drank it. “And why shoot her in front of you?”

“Just happened that way. I think she had become a liability; she certainly didn’t know what was coming.”

Henry nodded again. “She went to extraordinary lengths to stay with him.”

“He was a hit man, and if I was making a guess, and this is a guess, mind you, I’m betting he told her he’d kill everybody she knew if she tried to escape.”

The door to my room opened slowly and a smiling man with a gray mustache peered around it; seeing he wasn’t disturbing anything, he entered, carrying a large stack of file folders. “Walter, I thought we had an agreement—you can kill as many people as you like in Wyoming but not here in South Dakota.”

“Hi, Bruce.” I watched as he pulled up a chair and sat by my bed. “Anyway, he tried to kill me first.”

He tapped the stack of papers with a forefinger. “Is that how I should start the formal report?”

“You bet.”

He glanced at Henry. “Mr. Bear.”

“Mr. Pivic.”

He smiled at Vic. “Have we met?”

My undersheriff turned on her most ingratiating Mediterranean smile. “Moretti, Victoria Moretti.”

He carefully took her hand and actually kissed it. “Ah, you’re Italian?”

“Udine, the Friuli–Venezia Giulia region.”

He smiled and then smoothed his mustache and stared at the stack of papers in his lap. “Walter, this is going to take a while—”

“Bruce, I’d love to help you, but my neck hurts and my head hurts and I can feel a high-octane nap coming on.”

He watched me, his mustache twitching under his nose. “I just spoke with the head nurse, and she said now would be an opportune time to speak with you.”

I sighed and faked a yawn.

He stood. “I’ll go speak with her again and arrange a more convenient time.”

As he went out, I gave him a little wave and looked at a door to my right. “Where does that one go?”

Vic made a face and then covered it with her hand.

The Bear, figuring our odds, looked toward it. “An adjacent room, which connects to a short hallway leading to the fire escape.”

I nodded. “Now the big question.”

Vic spoke through her fingers. “Who hired him?”

I smiled at her. “Where are my pants?”

—

Lead, South Dakota, is pronounced as is the verb, not as the malleable heavy metal. Once home to one of the most productive gold mines in the Western Hemisphere, Lead now leads the area in twisting, straight-up-and-down, kiss-your-own-butt roads, currently covered with a foot or so of snow.

The address we had for Willie was half a duplex jammed into a hillside leading up to the city proper. There were side streets and a frontage road that ran parallel with Main, but even though it had stopped snowing for a bit, they were so choked with the stuff that there wasn’t anywhere to park.

Vic slipped the Bullet in behind a covered Cadillac with Nevada plates and turned off the ignition, as I reached back with my good arm and ruffled Dog’s ears. “Must be the place.” I slipped off my seat belt shoulder harness, which was killing me anyway, pulled an emergency blanket from under the seat, and draped it over my shoulders.

Vic glanced at my outfit.

“What?”

“We’re really going to do a forced entry into a place with you looking like that?”

“Like what?”

“A fluorescent homeless person.”

I adjusted the optic-orange blanket. “It’s all I’ve got until I can go shopping, all right?”

“You also don’t have a weapon.”

“Hop out, and I’ll get my standby.” I flipped down the center console with my good arm, opened it, and pulled out the holstered Colt Walker.

“You’re kidding.”

I palmed it in my hand. “Well, until the SDDCI gives me mine back, this one will have to do.” I slung the vintage holster over my left shoulder, and we started slogging around the house, tramping a path toward the steps in the foot-deep snow.

Henry took the lead with me following and Vic bringing up the rear. “You know, we could go by the National Guard and get an antitank gun that we could tow around on the back of your truck; that way we could just set up out there in the street and lob shells in on people.”

I ignored her and followed the Bear up the steps to the first landing, where we changed direction and found ourselves standing at a peeling, glass-panel door with tinfoil taped over the window.

The Cheyenne Nation drew the frightening knife that he always carried from the small of his back, the one with the stag handle and turquoise bear paw inset in the bone, and pointed at the foil with the blade. “In my experience, this is rarely a good sign.”

“I agree.” I reached out to check the door and was unsurprised that it was locked. “Kick it?”

Henry, always the thinking-man’s felon, slid the blade of the knife between the door and the jamb, popping the bolt and gently swinging the door wide.

“I could have done that if I had had a knife.”

He and Vic ignored me as they looked inside.

There was a large room with an efficiency kitchen which looked as if it had been assembled from appliances cannibalized from an RV, with a hallway where there were a couple of closed doors—I figured a bedroom and a bath. The Bear was about to enter when a tan and white pit bull appeared at the other side of the kitchen.

“You first.”

He turned to look at me, and probably would have responded, except for being interrupted by the low, guttural growl emitting from the dog just before it launched itself toward us.

The Cheyenne Nation quickly slammed the door as we listened to the pit bull clawing and barking. He finally turned and looked at me. “Any other bright ideas?”

“You still have those muscle relaxers?”

—

We sat in my truck and waited about twenty minutes. I’d bought a container of hamburger at the convenience store at the bottom of the hill and had inserted one pill in each of two meatballs that I had made; Henry had climbed the stairs and had quickly tossed one of the balls onto the kitchen floor of the apartment. Not wanting to overdose the dog, I’d kept the other in reserve. The rest of the burger Dog consumed in a second or less.

“You think that did it?”

The Bear nodded. “Considering it is approximately a quarter of my weight, I would say yes.”

Making sure I had the extra meatball safely ensconced in a paper cup in my shirt pocket, I pushed open the door of the truck, which was covered in a blanket of snow that was handy in keeping us out of sight of the myriad South Dakota law enforcement that was likely out prowling the Black Hills in search of us.

Quietly, we made our way up the stairwell again and paused at the door, where Vic pulled her Glock.

She ignored the look I gave her. “Fuck you, I’m not getting bit by Michael Vick in there.”

Henry looked back at the two of us and then turned the knob, pushing the door open about four inches.

We listened, but there was no sound.

Carefully, he pushed it open a little farther and then stuck his head in, an act of bravery of which I was not so sure I was capable. He continued inside, and we followed.

The kitchen was as we’d left it, but the meatball was gone. “He ate it.”

We all entered, and I shut the door behind us.

“C’mon.” I could see a room in the front where an old table lamp without a shade, sitting on a cardboard box, had been left on. There was a plastic chair—one of those mass-produced ones that everyone bought from Kmart—beside the box, and a small flat-screen TV and DVD player, which were on the floor, along with a stack of homemade discs with dates written on them. Nothing else.

Vic opened a door to our right, Glock first, and closed it behind her. Henry and I looked at each other, but after a moment, there was a flush. Seconds later the door opened, and she shrugged. “Bathroom. Sorry, had to go.”

Henry peeled off to the only other room in the place—what I assumed was the bedroom—as Vic kneeled, picked up one of the discs, and inserted it into the player. “Let’s see what’s on . . .”

“Walter?”

I turned and walked over to the doorway where the Bear lingered.

The pit bull, thankfully still breathing, was lying next to the bed. I stooped beside what was a she and ran my hand over her side and her eyes flickered, but nothing more. Other than the dog, there was a broken-down mattress and bedspring, yellowed sheets, a thin blanket, and lumpy pillows.

I straightened up and noticed that there were ankle manacles lying with their ends open, secured to eyelet bolts in the floor at all four corners of the bed, along with another plastic chair pulled up to a card table with a Canon video camera sitting on a short tripod. “Oh, boy.”

The Bear took a few more steps in and kicked at a box on the floor.

“What’s that?”

He pulled back a flap and peered in. “You do not want to know.”

Vic appeared in the doorway with all of the DVDs in her hand, a strange cell phone, and a disgusted look on her face.

“Bad?”

“Worse than bad.” She shuffled through them. “The ones dated within the last week especially—they are all Roberta Payne. Willie was an amateur in comparison to Delgatos.” Her face came up. “Can we go kill them again, please?”

“We can petition Emil—I’m betting he’d be up for that. At the moment, however, they stay in the morgue.”

“Maybe so, but Delgatos is still getting texts.” The Bear and I joined her at the door. “Five minutes ago, somebody asked him if the job was done.”

“Text them back.” I watched as she pushed a button and waited. “‘Need to meet.’”

She typed in the message with her thumbs, and it buzzed in her hands immediately. She looked at it. “It’s mystery guest number one and he’s asking if she’s dead.”

“Tell him yes, need to talk.”

She typed it in. “Looks like the area code is 702.”

The Cheyenne Nation was the first to come up with it. “Las Vegas. Of course, that does not mean he is physically in Las Vegas.”

The phone buzzed again, and Vic read the message. “‘Is the sheriff dead?’” She looked at me. “Who the fuck in Las Vegas wants you dead besides the dead guy?”

“I don’t know.” I felt the stubble on my face. “Tell him yes.”

She typed it, we waited, and after a few seconds it buzzed. “‘You’re sure?’”

“I’m sure.”

She typed, and we waited. “He says you’re lying.” Almost immediately, it buzzed again, and Vic read, “‘Like your Indian friend, Deke never used contractions when messaging.’”

“Well, hell.”

The phone buzzed, and she read, “‘Sheriff?’” The phone buzzed again. “‘You are a very durable individual.’”

“We need to meet.”

Vic typed, and the response came back. “‘That would not be to my advantage.’”

“Are the other women safe?”

Vic read the response. “‘I’m not concerned with the women.’”

“This has to stop.”

Vic typed and then read. “‘Not necessarily. Ever heard of Asociación Punto Muerto?’”

We all looked at each other. “Nope.”

Vic looked up from the phone, a sickly smile on her face, and read the final text. “He says, ‘You will.’”

12

“We got you a computer and a girlfriend.”

Henry laid the pit bull next to Dougherty’s desk on the dog bed we had purchased. “What’s wrong with her?”

Vic put the computer, the cell phone, and the collection of discs on a stack of cardboard boxes. “She’s got a substance abuse problem.” She glanced around at the subterranean confines of the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department. “Where’s the Dick?”

Dougherty was still looking at the dog as he spoke. “He hasn’t gotten back from Evanston yet. The sheriff came down and told me that he expected him around noon.”

I nodded. “Good to know.”

He studied the bandage on my neck. “What happened to you?”

“Got too close to a buffalo.” I gestured toward Henry. “Him, too.”

“Remind me to never go to South Dakota with you guys.”

I moved a Gagliano’s pizza box and put it with about twenty others on top of a nearby shelf and sat in the chair opposite him. “You guys must be single-handedly keeping the pizza joints in Gillette in business.” I pointed at the computer and discs. “That stuff is from the dead guy . . .”

He adjusted a folder under his arm. “What dead guy?”

“The one who had Roberta Payne.”

“The woman from the Flying J? You found her?”

“We did.” I glanced at Henry and Vic, finally dropping my eyes to my lap. “She’s dead.”

His shoulders slumped, and he seemed to fall back into the chair even though he didn’t physically move. “My God.”

“I’m afraid so. Deke ‘Big Daddy’ Delgatos killed her.”

“Who is Deke ‘Big Daddy’ Delgatos?”

Henry grunted. “One of the dead guys. It is complicated.”

“Nothing on Linda Schaffer?”

“Not yet.” I took a deep breath and explained, telling him about Deadwood, Custer State Park, and most of what had taken place at the State Game Lodge. “Evidently he was a hired killer, among other things.” I leaned forward. “First, I need you to find out who with the Las Vegas number the last text on that cell phone came from, then crack the computer open and get as much information out of it as you can.”

Dougherty nodded. “Will do.”

I gestured toward the file under his arm. “Got anything for us, troop?”

He sat forward and petted the dog, even going so far as to put his face down near to hers. He straightened her ear, and she sighed—match made in heaven. “Almost nothing.”

Vic leaned against the chain-link divider that kept the Campbell County files from making a break for it. “Almost?”

He sat back and handed the file to her. “I found the last reports that Gerald Holman didn’t file.”

I interrupted. “Where did you find those?”

He tapped a handle on one of the drawers in the desk. “Locked up in here.”

My undersheriff opened the folder. “Holman did another series of interviews in Arrosa; so what’s the big deal?”

The patrolman returned to petting the dog. “Look at the date.”

She glanced at the report. “Yeah, so?”

“It’s the day he killed himself.”

Her eyes returned to the file. “Oh . . .”

Dougherty stopped petting the dog but left his hand on her head. “How do you do an entire afternoon of interviews and then check into the Wrangler Motel and blow your brains out?”

Vic handed me the folder. “More important, what do you find out in those interviews that leads you to do it?” Inconclusive, the file simply read that Holman had made stops at Dirty Shirley’s, the Sixteen Tons Bar, and another location identified as undisclosed in or near Arrosa. I looked up at the group. “What other location is there, undisclosed or otherwise, in or near the town of Arrosa?”

Vic posited, “Private home?”

I thought about it. “There’s an elementary school and a post office . . .”

Henry studied me. “Nothing else in the immediate vicinity?”

“No.”

He smiled. “This should make things easier.”

Vic’s cell phone rang, and she pulled it out, looking at it and then to me.

“What?”

“It’s your daughter.” I didn’t say anything. “The pregnant one.”

They all looked at me. “You answer it.”

“Chickenshit.” She held the phone up to her ear. “Hello?” She nodded her head. “Yeah, well he’s around here somewhere . . .” She listened again. “Right.” She listened some more, and I could hear the edges of my daughter’s voice traveling through the airwaves from the City of Brotherly Love. “Yeah, yeah, he told me that . . .” She was silent for a moment. “It is a case.”

I glanced at the Cheyenne Nation and then cleared my throat and held a hand out for the phone.

Vic shot eye-torpedoes at me and continued to speak, glancing at the Bear. “Yeah, he’s around, too—helping your dad.” There was another, longer pause. “I’ll tell him.” She pulled the phone from her ear and looked at it. “And a see you later alligator to you, too.”

“What?” I slumped in my chair. “Please tell me she hasn’t had the baby.”

She deposited the phone into her other hand and pointed at me with it. “No, but they are inducing her tomorrow, and there are three tickets for the noon flight to Philadelphia at the Gillette Airport for you, yon Standing Bear, and me, and I was informed, and I quote, that if we were not on that flight then we could all kiss good-bye any thoughts of ever seeing the grandchild within our collective lifetimes.”

“Gimme the phone.” She did, but I handed it back to her. “Could you dial it for me, please?” She did, without comment, and gave it back to me.

It barely rang once, and my very angry daughter was on the line. “Chickenshit.”

“Boy howdy.”

“Daddy, I want you on that plane at noon.”

“Cady—”

“I’m not kidding.”

I took a deep breath, like I always did when facing total annihilation. “I know, it’s just that there are some details that I’m going to have to take care of—”

“For who? A guy you never met who killed himself? Some women who’ve been missing for months now?”

“Well, there have been some developments—”

“I. Don’t. Care. I, your only child, am about to have a baby, who is likely to be your only grandchild. My mother is dead, and it is your solemn and imperative duty to be here with me.”

Feeling that a little privacy might be a nice addition to the conversation, I took the phone and started up the steps. “Cady, I promise I’m coming—”

“When? A week from now, a month?”

I turned the corner, walked down the hallway, pushed the outside door open, and stood on the elevated stoop behind the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department. I leaned on the metal railing and watched the interminable snow continue to fall. “I just need a little more time to—”

“No, don’t go on autopilot here.”

“Honey—”

“Don’t honey me.” She took a moment to calm herself, and I could see her threading her long fingers through her auburn hair, and I was glad there were more than two thousand miles between us. “I knew this was what you were going to do to me . . .”

I stopped myself from saying honey. “I’m not doing this to you; it’s just that I have responsibilities.”

“Your responsibilities are to me and the baby.”

“I know that.” I looked out into the parking lot and could see Dog looking at me through the windshield, fogging the glass with his breath. “Lucian is over here, along with Dog.”

“Dog is also on the noon flight—I paid them more so he could go on the small plane—but you need to get a crate.”

I pushed my hat back on my head and clutched my forehead. Of course, the Greatest Legal Mind of Our Time had gotten Dog a ticket. I smiled in spite of myself. “What about Lucian?”

“Uncle Lucian can drive the Bullet back to Durant so you don’t have to pay for parking.”

“We have free parking at all the airports in Wyoming, or did you forget?”

She shrieked, finally having had enough of me. “I don’t care!” She was fighting valiantly, but I could hear the breaks in her voice as she spoke, and then there was a small sob. “Daddy, I’m afraid. Okay? They say there are complications and . . . I need you here for this.”

I nodded into the phone, Virgil’s words of disaster on the horizons of my life echoing in my head. “Right.”

“Please.”

“How much time do I have?”

It was silent on the line for a moment. “I knew you were going to do this—”

“When is the last moment I can leave?”

She literally growled into the phone. “You are not really booked on the noon flight.”

That stalled me out, and I was unsure of what to say next, finally deciding on something original. “I’m not?”

“No, I just switched you to the eleven-forty-two P.M. one to Denver and then the red-eye to Philadelphia where you will get in a paid car and come to the maternity unit of Pennsylvania Hospital on Eighth Street by eight tomorrow morning—thus sayeth the Greatest Legal Mind of Our Time.” There was a pause. “I know you.”

I breathed a laugh and shook my head at my wet boots. “Yep, you do.”

“Eleven forty-two tonight, got it?”

“Yep.”

“That leaves you fourteen hours and forty-two minutes to break the big case.”

“No pressure.”

She pressed her advantage. “Now take Henry, Vic, and Dog to the airport so that they can catch their flight. Don’t forget the crate.”

“You said.”

“Move.”

“Yep.” I quickly added. “Hey . . . ?”

“Yes?”

I tucked that tiny phone in tight, hoping she could feel me. “I love you, and everything’s going to be all right.”

She sniffed. “You promise?”

I took a deep breath and whispered the truest words I’d ever uttered. “That, I do.”

Walking down the steps, I found Vic and Henry standing by the stairwell, and I was surprised to find the pit bull sitting next to Dougherty, with her head on his knee.

“Does she have a name?”

“Probably, but the guy that knew it is dead so make one up and let her get used to it.” Vic shrugged. “She’ll get fully awake here in a few hours but be careful because she might be a little wonky and she doesn’t care for strangers.”

I reached into my pocket and handed him a cellophane-wrapped orb. “If she gets really anxious, give her another magic meatball.”

As we trooped out the door and up the stairs, Vic added, “Personally, I’d let her wake up and then post her at the door here for when the Dick gets back.”

Dougherty called out after her. “Wait, she’s aggressive?”

My undersheriff yelled back down the stairwell, “She’s a bitch, after all; between her and the Dick—my money’s on her.”

As we trudged to the Bullet, I explained our newfound travel plans.

Vic buckled herself in the center seat as Henry closed the door and turned to look at me. “You should get on the plane with us; we can deal with this shit when we get back.”

I started my truck and headed for the Kmart again. “I’ll follow orders and grab the red-eye. I don’t suspect I’ll have much luck, but I’ll follow up on what we’ve got so far.”

The Bear leaned forward, making forceful eye contact with me. “You had better not miss that flight at eleven forty-two tonight.”

I nodded. “Did Corbin get anything off of the computer or the phone?”

Vic shrugged. “Nothing on the computer yet, but he did get the information from the server on the phones; both of them are registered to Deke Delgatos, paid for by Deke Delgatos—”

“How about a listing of most recent calls?”

She slapped a Post-it onto my dash with the number engraved in the paper and a period that looked like it might’ve been made with an ice pick. “One number; the pay phone at the Sixteen Tons Bar.”

After getting the crate for Dog, some toiletries and essentials along with a couple of carry-ons for Vic and Henry, and a cheap work jacket and pair of gloves for me, I pulled the Bullet to a stop as we found ourselves on the wrong side of another of those mile-long coal trains. “It’s somebody in Arrosa.”

“Yes.”

Listening to the claxon warning and the thundering momentum of steel wheels, I glanced at him. “Any ideas?”

Both he and Vic shot me a look and then continued watching the passing train. “We have not met any of them to have any ideas.”

“Oh, right.” We watched the train together. Fingering the vents, I turned up the heat. “So Roberta Payne was sold to Willie and then taken by Deke.”

Vic fingered the Post-it fluttering in the hot air. “I really called the folks over at First Interstate and guess what?”

Henry’s voice rumbled. “The money from the trust ran out.”

Vic nodded. “Yeah.” She turned and looked straight at me. “You said he said he’d been studying you.”

“Yep, but maybe that had to do with something else.” I thought about it some more. “Maybe Roberta Payne was thrown in as a bonus, but after the money ran out—”

Henry asked, “Which would mean that the other women are alive?”

“Possibly.”

“For what reason?”

“The answer to that might be on those DVDs.”

Vic added, “You don’t suppose you’re pinning your hopes on that because it might mean that the victims are still alive?”

Both of them were looking at me now. “Maybe.”

—

“Just remember that the cock crows at eleven forty-two post meridian, which does not mean that you arrive at the airport at eleven forty-one.”

“Yep.”

He glanced up at the sky. “Not to worry.”

Henry had called the airport to check to make sure the airplanes were still flying, but although the snow had been steady, it hadn’t been windy, so the plows were able to keep up, and flights were leaving relatively on time—but it was more than that. He breathed in through his mouth, and I watched him taste the frigid air. “It will stop snowing before midnight.”

I watched as the Cheyenne Nation lifted the large crate onto his shoulder like it was a shoebox and led Dog into the airport on the leather leash, his back apparently feeling better.

My undersheriff stepped into my view as I sat there in the driver’s seat. “Hey . . .” She glanced back and watched as Henry and Dog negotiated with the skycap at the outside desk, something I’d never seen at a Wyoming airport. “What are you going to do?”

I glanced at the Post-it, still stuck to my dash. “Just go over there again and poke around. That pay phone is outside the door of the bar, so I’m sure nobody’s going to know who was using it or admit to it, but you never know.”

She turned back to look at me and handed me her cell phone. “Take this. I gave the number to Dougherty so that if he found anything, he could get in touch with you.”

I knew better than to fight. “Okay.”

She studied me until I started to squirm. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Define stupid.”

“Getting shot.”

I popped the phone in my coat pocket and reached over and adjusted my arm sling. “Done that.”

“Getting stabbed, getting punched, getting run over—or anything that might physically impair you any further.”

“Right.”

“Where the hell is Lucian?”

“Last I heard he was playing chess at the Wrangler Motel, but that was hours ago.”

“You might want to find him and have him give you a ride back here to the airport.”

“Right.”

She reached over and pulled my face toward hers, the tarnished gold enveloping the world. “Walt, let’s be clear about this. You are on somebody’s hit list.”

“We don’t know—”

Her grip drew tighter. “A professional killer’s list; just remember that.”

“I will.”

“And be on that plane at eleven forty-two or you won’t have to worry about who’s got a contract out on you.”

“I promise.”

“And make sure you don’t stick your dick in a hornet’s nest.”

I nodded. “Something, I can assure you, I will endeavor to never do.”

“Good, because I have plans for it.” Her fingers dug into the back of my neck as she kissed me, her lips against mine as I gasped, breathing in her scent for the road. “By the way, happy New Year’s.”

I watched her walk into the airport with the two bags after Henry and Dog, and sat there, feeling like the loneliest man in the world. I thought about just parking my damn truck and running after them, but instead, I did what my daughter accused me of doing and put it on autopilot—I tugged the truck down into gear and pulled out.

—

The quickest way back to Arrosa was the interstate highway, but when I got to the on-ramp, the gate was down and an HP was sitting crossways, blocking the road. I peeled to the side and lowered my window, squinting into the stinging flakes. “What’s up?”

The older trooper smiled at me. “Closed for business. How you doin’, Walt?”

“Hey, Don. What’s the weather report?”

“Shitty, with scattered shitty and more shittiness till sometime tonight.”

“I’ve got to get a plane at midnight but first have to get over to Arrosa; any way you’d let me up on the big road?”

He shook his head. “Can’t do it. They’re plowing in tandem up there and they might push you into the guardrails.”

I started rolling up my window. “Thanks anyway.”

“Be careful with your radio, those old transponders down near there gave out; they’re working on getting them going again, but I wouldn’t count on my radio or cell phone if I was you.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, I heard your daughter was having a baby?”

“That’s it; rub it in.” He gave me a quizzical look as I backed up and spun around one-handed, taking the surface roads to Boxelder and heading east, hoping that he and Henry were right that the weather would break before midnight—like eighteen minutes before midnight, to be exact.

There weren’t very many cars on the road, and I made a little more time by cheating and jumping on the highway for the last few miles. As I slipped off the interstate, I thought about how I wouldn’t make it to Philadelphia by tomorrow morning if I kept driving east and about all the players in this case and about how hard it was to keep a secret in a small town.

My shortcut turned out not to be such a great idea as I sat there watching another coal train pass by.

It can take three to four minutes for the average train, which weighs more than three thousand tons, to pass through a crossing. It takes a full mile or more for a train to stop; that’s sixteen football fields; that’s even after it’s struck something. According to the Department of Transportation, the drivers of automobiles cause 94 percent of all grade-crossing accidents, and approximately every two hours in this country, a collision occurs between a train and either a pedestrian or a vehicle—that’s twelve incidents a day. More people die in highway-rail crossings in the United States each year than in all commercial and general aviation crashes combined.

There was a honk from a horn behind me, and I glanced back to find a blue Volvo in my rearview—when I looked ahead, the train was long gone.

I pulled across the road into the parking lot of the Sixteen Tons with the Volvo staying close and was surprised to find a Campbell County Sheriff’s undercover car sitting near the door.

Parking the Bullet, I watched as Connie Holman got out of the Volvo and jumped in the passenger side of my truck. “Sheriff.”

“Ms. Holman.”

“What are you doing?”

I glanced around. “I’m not sure I understand the question.”

“I asked you to stop this investigation.”

I cleared my throat and turned in the seat, the belt scraping my neck, the charge of pain making me wince. “Well, it’s gotten a little more complicated.”

She clutched her hands together, and I don’t think it was the cold that caused her to do it. “You’ve got to stop this; you’re destroying my family.”

“In what way?”

She stared at me, her mouth opening to speak, but then she shut it and climbed out of my truck, slamming the door behind her and climbing back in her car and driving away.

I cranked my hat down, started to zip up my faux Carhartt coat, but then stopped and draped it over my sling. I’m not quite sure why, maybe it was in light of the recent activities, but I thought about the big Colt Walker I had put back in the center console, hefted it from the holster, and slid it conveniently into the sling.

I sat there for a moment, looking at the brief shelter of the pay phone and the receiver hanging against the side of the steel building. There really wasn’t anything tangible to tell me who it was that might’ve been involved, but I had some hunches—the kinds of things you couldn’t really define but could most certainly feel.

I was about to get out of the truck when I felt something vibrating in my pocket along with some blaring rap tune that Vic had told me the name of along with the artist, but nothing I had committed to memory. I fished it out and answered it as quickly as I could, thankful I was alone. “Hello?”

“Sheriff, it’s me, Corbin?”

“Hey, troop.”

“I’m still working on the computer, but while I was doing it I did some research on that group you mentioned, Asociación Punto Muerto?”

“Yep?”

“Well, the information I got is sketchy, but it translates pretty much word for word and stands for the Dead Center Association; it’s kind of an unofficial union for assassins and was started in South American prisons as a way for drug consortiums to get their contracts fulfilled, even if the hit man assigned to the job was killed or imprisoned. Once they assign a hitter for a job, there’s a pecking order of associates that are responsible for fulfilling the hit if that individual should fail.”

I sighed, thinking about the series of texts I’d received from the unknown person. “Oh, brother.”

“It allows these hit men to charge more for their services, because the contracts are guaranteed.” He was quiet for a few seconds. “Do you think this guy that you killed was one of them? Because if he was, that means there’s probably somebody else coming for you, Sheriff.”

I was tired, and this news didn’t exactly pick me up. “Who knows? A lot of these types of associations from the prison systems tend to break down once the guys get back out into the real world. Anyway, it’s not something that’s going to keep me up nights.”

“One of the signifying factors is a skull tattoo with roses in its eye sockets on a member’s body, so you might want to get the authorities over in South Dakota to look for that on the decedent.” I could hear him nodding on the other end of the phone. “I just thought it was something you should know.” He paused. “And there’s something else. When I was comparing the files between Holman and Harvey, there seem to be some discrepancies.”

“Like what?”

“There’s a Connie Holman—”

“The investigator’s daughter?”

“Yeah, well, she’s mentioned in one of the interviews, but Harvey appears to have omitted it.”

I thought about that for a long time. “Thanks, troop.” And then changed the subject. “How’s your dog?”

His tone brightened. “She’s better but tried to eat one of the corrections officers who came down here looking for payroll files.”

“She’s a little protective of her turf.” I cracked open the door. “Call me if anything else pops up.” I punched a button on the phone screen and looked at the image of my undersheriff in a bikini on a beach in what I assumed was Belize; I figured she’d left the selfie just for me.

I slid out of the truck and walked over to the phone, scooping up the handset and putting it to my ear where the operator advised me that if I’d like to make a call, I should hang up and try again. “The story of my life.” I started to hang the thing up, but despite the cold or maybe because of it, there was a lingering scent in the plastic.

I headed for the door.

When I opened it I could sense a tension in the dim, smoky air and could see Lucian and Richard Harvey, of all people, seated at a table near the center of the room. I stood at the door, after having closed it behind me, and noticed the postman and the bartender having lunch—the gang being all here.

I cleared the cold from my voice and spoke. “Lucian?”

He turned his head a little but didn’t take his eyes off the inspector. “Good thing you’re here—I’m about to shoot this New Mexican.”

My shoulders lost a little of the tension that had accumulated there. “Inspector?”

He stood. “I am truly pleased that you are here and that I don’t have to babysit this cantankerous son of a bitch anymore.”

“Who asked you to?” Lucian pointedly looked at me. “I got tired of playing chess with Haji and Sandy Sandburg sent this asshole over to give me a ride and we ended up here.”

I pulled out a chair and sat, taking off my hat and motioning to the bartender for a cup of coffee, the wear and tear of the last couple of days finally settling on me.

Lucian stared at my sling, and I wondered if he noticed the Colt Walker snuggled away in there. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Got shot by a fellow over in South Dakota.”

“You shoot him back?”

“I did.”

“You do a better job of it?”

The bartender, Pilano, arrived with my coffee, and I thought about sticking my face in it but settled for a sip. “Yep.”

The old sheriff glanced at Harvey, just to let him know that some real Wyoming lawmen were on the case. “Have to do with Gerald Holman?”

“Maybe.” I cut to the chase. “We discovered one of the missing women in Deadwood, but she was with this hit man, Deke Delgatos.”

“Hit man?”

I nodded.

“Was?”

“He’s dead, she’s dead—he shot her and I, in turn, shot him.”

“Lotta shootin’ goin’ on.”

“Yep.”

He studied my arm, my neck, and the lump at the side of my head. “You look like hell.”

I sipped some more coffee. “I feel worse.”

“What happened?”

“Buffalo and a few other assorted adventures.”

Lucian raised an eyebrow, but Harvey interrupted the interrogation. “You think this Delgatos had something to do with why Gerald Holman killed himself?”

“Possibly. It appears he had control of the Payne woman.”

Inspector Harvey’s mouth hung open under his prodigious mustache. “How did you find that out?”

“Tracked the bank records in Roberta’s name that had money being withdrawn from an ATM in Deadwood. Went over there and discovered a ménage à trois and a cell phone.”

“What was the connection?”

I sipped my coffee. “You ever heard of the Dead Center Association?”

He stared at me, in a way I thought a little strange. “No.”

I finished my coffee and noticed the bartender was quick to come over with the pot but that the postman stayed near the bar. “Me neither, but I’ll tell you something I do know.” I threw a thumb toward the door. “The only other recently dialed number on this killer’s cell is the pay phone outside.” I watched the bartender’s hand shake as he refilled my mug, and then I raised my eyes to Lucian. “Hey old man, I was wondering if you could do me a favor and drop me off at the airport tonight around eleven?”

He nodded, studying me. “Are you planning on breaking this case before the New Year?”

I sipped my coffee and looked at the other three men in the room as I sat the mug on top of the ring it had made on the stained worn surface of the table, thereby freeing my hand. “Yep, I am.”

13

Harvey’s hand slowly dropped to his side as I skimmed my words across the surface of the table like the card that had floated on the cushion of air at the casino. “Hey, Richard . . . You don’t have any tattoos, do you?”

He smiled a grin that was high and tight as he yanked the big .357 from his shoulder holster and pointed it at me precisely at the same time I leveled the long barrel of the Colt Walker across the table at him, both of us cocked and ready to shoot. We were both tall men with wide arm spreads, so the two revolvers stretched past each other. He looked down the barrel of the .44 and whistled. “Damn, did you find the grave of Wild Bill Hickok over there in Deadwood and dig up his gun?”

“South Dakota DCI’s got my regular accompaniment.”

He continued to smile. “Because of the dead guy?”

“Because of the dead guy.”

Lucian leaned forward and looked back and forth between the two of us, finally resting his eyes on me. “What the hell are you two idiots doing?”

Harvey breathed a short laugh but kept his eyes on mine. “Seems to me you’re kinda on a rampage, Sheriff.”

I gestured, ever so slightly, with the Colt. “Gee, you think I’m done?”

His eyes stayed even with mine. “Not by a long shot.”

“If you were actually a corrections officer in New Mexico, I find it hard to believe you never heard of Asociación Punto Muerto.”

His eyebrows slowly crouched over the bridge of his substantial nose. “APM, the killers’ union?”

“Yep.”

“Well hell, I never heard of it in English.”

Lucian swiveled his head, finally resting his attention on Harvey, and smoothly pulled his .38 out, shoving the barrel into the detective’s ribs. “Buster, you better start coming forward with some of the correct answers, and that right soon.”

I was mildly surprised and relieved at the New Mexican’s response, mostly because it was what I would’ve said in like situation. “Why the hell is everyone in this room pointing a gun at me?”

“I think you know more about this subject than you’ve been letting on.”

His eyes flicked to Lucian and then back to me. “You got any evidence along those lines?”

I nodded toward the big handgun he was still pointing at me. “Three hundred and fifty-seven thousandths of them.”

He glanced at the pistol in his hand, slowly directed it away from me toward the ceiling, and then thumbed the hammer down, carefully resting it on the table. “Look, why don’t we all calm down here?”

“Talk.”

He aligned his mustache with a forefinger. “I might’ve got personally involved with the case.”

I kept the Colt on him. “Do tell.”

He made a pointed glance at my weapon and then Lucian’s. “You fellows mind puttin’ those damn things away?” He gestured toward the Walker in my hand. “Especially that one, since they have a tendency to go off kind of unexpected like.”

I rolled the long barrel of the Walker up beside my face and lowered the hammer, setting it on the table in front of me. “There.”

The detective glanced at Lucian’s .38 still in his ribs, but the old sheriff’s hand didn’t waver. “The hell with you, mine goes off when I tell it to and you haven’t said anything yet to convince me that it shouldn’t.” Lucian nudged him with the muzzle. “Gerald Holman was a friend of mine.”

Harvey sighed in exasperation. “He was a friend of mine, too.”

“Prove it.”

Harvey laced his fingers and rested them in his lap. “The person I’m trying to protect is not involved with this.”

“Okay.”

“I did some things I maybe shouldn’t have done—covered up some evidence and cleaned up a few files . . .”

Lucian nudged him again. “Hurry it up, you son of a bitch.”

Harvey’s head snapped around to the old sheriff. “Your buddy, your friend Gerald Holman, was dirty, you crotchety old bastard.”

Lucian’s face hardly moved when he replied. “The hell you say.”

“He was cleaning up his messes, and things were starting to pile up against him so that he finally didn’t have anywhere else to go but blow his brains out.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s the truth. He was suppressing evidence and rerouting the investigation so as to not draw attention to himself. I’ve got the files hidden away, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to take the fall on this just because I’m trying to protect his name.”

I interrupted. “Where are the files?”

“Back at the office.”

I thumbed Vic’s cell phone from my pocket. “Where in the office?”

Richard Harvey stared at me.

“Where in the office.”

“In the bottom pizza box on the shelves as you come in from the stairwell.”

—

Dougherty picked up on the first ring, and I told him where to look; he did and reported back. “It’s the interviews all right—looks like much longer than the ones transcribed into the computer files.”

“Read ’em and call me back.” I tucked the phone in my pocket, gesturing for Lucian to lower his weapon. “It’s all right, Dougherty’s got the files.”

The old sheriff didn’t move. “Who’s Dougherty?”

“The patrolman I borrowed from the Gillette PD.” I glanced at the detective, his eyes widening just a touch. “You know him?”

“Yeah, isn’t he the one that was fixated on Linda Schaffer?”

“Maybe.” I took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I’ve got just one question.”

“There’s a woman involved.”

I sighed. “There usually is.”

“But she doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“If that’s the case then why are you sitting here with my old boss’s revolver in your side?”

He leaned back in his chair. “She—”

The sound of the weapon going off within the confines of the Sixteen Tons Bar was enough to turn your head and make you duck, which I did, and then immediately grabbed Lucian’s gun hand and pulled it into the air along with him. “What the—”

“It wasn’t me, damn it!”

We both looked at the detective as he clutched the lower part of his face, blood, tissue, and teeth scattering across the front of his shirt onto the table. He fell off his chair as another shot whizzed between us. I released my grip on Lucian, and he turned his .38 toward the bar.

I grabbed the Walker just as another round struck the table, sending splinters into the air, and I whirled in time to see the bartender attempting to take better aim. Lucian fired and hit the man in the upper right-hand quarter of his chest, spinning him around and throwing him into the bar-back with a crescendo of shattered glass before he slid to the floor.

Figuring I could count on the old sheriff to check his shot, I shoved the big Colt in my belt at my back and kneeled down by the wounded detective—the round had shattered his jaw but had exited through the other side. He was still clutching at the ghastly wound as I yanked a bandana from my back pocket and attempted to slide it beneath his fingers, the blood going everywhere.

He tried to speak as his eyes glazed over, and with the amount of blood in his mouth, I was afraid he might choke. “Don’t try and talk; it didn’t get your throat, so you’re not going to bleed to death.” I held the material against the side of his face. “Hold on to this; he got your jaw. Keep your mouth shut and just lay there and try to not go into shock.”

He blinked once, and then his eyes sharpened, followed by a curt nod.

I yanked my head up to look at Lucian, who had crossed to check on the man behind the bar. “Dead?”

The old sheriff nodded. “Or doin’ a damned fine impersonation of it. How’s the New Mexican?”

“Alive, but he’s going to need some dental work. Take some of these bar towels and go over there and sit with him and keep him from going into shock. I’ll get on the radio in his car and call in the troops.”

I could’ve used the cell phone or the phone in the bar, but I figured by the time they got me patched through a 911 operator, I might as well have gone out and gotten on the detective’s two-way. The snow which had covered the vehicles had just about stopped, but now there was a ground fog that obscured the landscape.

Whiteout. Like South Dakota. “Well, hell.”

I stood there for a moment, feeling something out there in the blank, white parking lot—almost as if something was watching me. Ignoring the feeling, I walked over to the detective’s cruiser and yanked the door open—it sounded like a glacier cleaving. I threw myself inside and turned the key, thanking the heavens that Harvey, like most Wyoming residents, had left it in the ignition.

I punched the mic and reported shots fired and an officer down at the Sixteen Tons Bar, whereupon the dispatcher asked me the location. “It’s in Arrosa, about fifteen miles east of Gillette . . .” So much for speeding the process.

Static. “There are a number of communication towers down in that area and with the weather conditions and the amount of responses we’ve got out it might be a while before they get there.”

I keyed the mic again. “The officer is stabilized, but in pretty rough condition, so get us an EMT van and a couple of units as quickly as you can.”

Static. “And who is this again?”

“Sheriff Walt Longmire of Absaroka County.”

Static. “So you’re not Campbell County personnel?”

“No, but Detective Richard Harvey is, and he’s lying on the floor bleeding, hopefully not to death.” I threw the mic against the dash and clumsily cut the ignition, figuring if I was hauling the detective into town I was going to do it in my truck, which had four-wheel drive.

Climbing out of the cruiser, I pushed at the bandage on my neck where I’d irritated it and stood there in the fog with the feeling of being watched overtaking me again. There was a breath of a breeze, and I looked across the parking lot where the fog had parted like a curtain and at the concrete-block building and the American flag that flapped feebly against its own pole, attempting to get my attention. I stood there for a moment longer and then charged into the bar.

Lucian was with the detective and was holding the side of his face with the towels. “Bartender’s still dead, in case you were wondering.”

“Lucian, wasn’t the guy from the post office sitting on one of these stools before the shooting started?”

The old sheriff glanced around. “The horse’s ass with the ponytail?”

“Yep.”

He gave it a quick thought. “He was there earlier, but I don’t remember him being in the place when the bartender shot Harvey here.” He sighed. “You think he ran out before or when the shooting started?”

I stopped to pick up the detective’s .357, undeterred by the bloody molar and chunk of jawbone lying beside it, and then moved toward the back door. “I’m not sure, but I intend to find out.”

“What the hell do you want from me then?”

I gestured toward the wounded man. “How’s he doing?”

Lucian looked down at the steady eyes peering up from the gory mess of a face. “He was trying to talk, but I told him to shut the hell up and wrapped those towels around his face along with a couple of sponges from the counter over there.” He looked up at me. “You gotta hand it to these New Mexicans; they can bleed with the best of ’em.”

I placed a hand on the door. “Help’s on the way, but it may take a while with the ground fog out there. So collect as many teeth as you can and just try and keep him from bleeding to death.”

“You goin’ out there into the rain, sleet, and snow and gloom of night?”

“Late afternoon.” I nodded. “The postman’s the only one who can still talk, and he’s not here and that speaks volumes.”

“What do you want me to do when the troops arrive?”

I pushed the door open and stood there, waves of cold and bad feelings enveloping my exposed flesh. “Find me.” I stepped out into the monochromatic landscape.

—

The postman’s tracks traced to the left around his doomed office, the divots partially filled in but still visible. You couldn’t even see the road for the frozen fog and the snow had started softly falling again—it was like walking into cotton batting, the flakes swallowing all sound.

I went around the building, almost tripping when I stubbed my boots on one of the covered parking curbs, and looked down at the area where the postman had evidently paused to watch me as I’d called in backup. That must’ve been the feeling I’d had.

It was possible that Rowan had just wanted to make himself scarce in a room full of flying bullets, but then why hadn’t he returned? And why had he stood out here and studied me as I’d called in? I pulled the big Colt from the back of my pants and stuck it in my sling again, one gun possibly proving to not be enough.

The footprints led to the rear of the post office, where the back door hung open about eight inches.

I glanced at the only vehicle parked behind the building—a battered CJ 7 Jeep without a straight piece of sheet metal on it sat with a good eight inches of snow on the hood. I thought about checking for the keys or pulling the coil wire but figured the thing was derelict. I sidled up beside the back door of the building and gently swung it open with the barrel of the detective’s .357—the storage room was empty.

Stepping inside, I made a quick sweep of the area, and then, dipping the Colt into the narrow aisleways and following the prints, worked my way down a couple of rows of eight-foot metal shelves.

There was a basket half overturned on the floor not unlike the one that the postman had given to me containing the collective mail of Jone Urrecha, so I nudged it over the rest of the way. It was empty, except for a sticker that had rolled up and was half stuck to its side. I stooped down and plucked it from the basket and read the typed address, a label redirecting mail for Linda Schaffer, the clerk from Kmart, to a box at this post office.

I stood and looked around at the mountains of paper ready to avalanche on me should I decide to start digging and wished I had Dougherty with me. It was just as I’d had that thought that the cell phone in my pocket started buzzing and I pulled the thing out and looked at it; Dougherty. I punched the button. “Hey, troop. I was just thinking about you . . .” There was no reply. “Dougherty?” There was still nothing. Evidently the reception was good enough to allow a call to go through, but not enough to retain it. I glanced around the post office, finally spotting a phone on a nearby desk. I picked up the receiver, satisfied with the dial tone, and punched in Corbin’s cell number.