Cold Dish

9

“Welcome to Hooverville.” It was creeping up on midnight, and she was trying not to look like a turtle with her head ducked down in the artificial brown fur of her duty jacket.

“Where is he?” She turned into the steady wind, with her hands buried in the depths of her coat pockets, and led me over to where all the headlights were shining. The pulse of the blue and red lights reflected off the frozen gravel of the impromptu parking lot that had been set up along the barbed-wire fence.

Hooverville referred to the assortment of little shacks that surrounded Dull Knife Lake at the southern part of the Bighorn Mountains and was known by the locals as the South End. Outside the jurisdiction of the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area and the federal government, numerous lots had been bought and sold and built upon until the surrounding shoreline resembled a collection of chicken coops. Some of the little cabins weren’t bad, but the majority were hunting trailers with little annexes attached that had been towed in a long time ago. The fishing was good all around the lake, but the view was better at the northern part where the shore got steeper and the water disappeared into the thick forest. I thought about the original Hooverville in Washington, D.C., where WWI veterans had been chased out of town and figured it would take a young Patton and MacArthur to clean this one out, too.

I shined the beam of my flashlight in the path and saw that the single set of tracks leading to the body were slowly filling in. I gave Vic my keys and asked her to repark my truck so that it would form a snow fence that would knock down the wayward flakes that were impeding the crime scene investigation.

It was Jacob Esper all right, sitting with one foot folded underneath him and the other sticking straight out. He was leaning against the rear wheel of his truck and had a quizzical look on his face. There was a small torn spot at the center of his Carhartt jacket, and he was surrounded by a frozen liquid with brown shading. Dried blood, discounting the temperature, thirty minutes to two hours. I didn’t have to worry about his back, since most of it was a frozen smear on the side of the dirty truck. It started with the explosion behind the door and trailed to where he now sat. His eyes were open, but tache noire had already set in. Three hours. I reached out and tugged at his boot; the body was stiff with fully developed rigor. Six to twenty-four hours. We needed a body core temperature, and we weren’t going to get it for another seven hours.

One of the footprints behind Vic’s yellow nylon barrier was close to me, so I blew into it and examined the impression: about a size nine, medium width. At the arch was a registered trademark, SKYWALK, with a medallion print of some kind with words around the edges and a diminutive mountain range. The headlights subsided in shadow for a moment. “Where are they?”

“Over there in the Hummer. They’re about to run out of gas from operating the heater, so they’re in a hurry.”

“Oh, really?”

“I told them you’d be real concerned.” She stamped her feet, trying to get some feeling back in them. “I wasn’t sure about how to secure the sight, but Ferg and I thought we could zip-tie the tarp to the top of the truck and then tie it off to another vehicle. It’s probably going to flap like a Windjammer cruise, but…”

“Yep.” I looked around me, trying to absorb it all because in another hour it might look like Stalingrad. There were trailing wisps of snow dunes arching away from the higher points of Jacob’s body already. “Tire tracks?”

She kneeled down beside me. “Only those guys, pulling in once, circling back out, and then pulling in again.”

“How did they call?”

“Cell phone.”

“Why did they pull out?”

“Bad reception.”

“You look at the boot prints?”

“Yeah, Vasques. So’s the dearly departed and one of the execs.”

“Popular boot.”

“Popular size.”

We both shrugged and looked at Jacob. “No sheep?”

She pursed her lips and shook her head. “No sheep. Preliminary triangulation indicates an area across the lake, maybe even over where those really shitty-looking cabins are.”

I turned in the opposite direction from the truck and peered through the darkness and the snow. The headlights of Vic’s unit weren’t helping. We stood up to escape them and strained our eyes into the darkness. “Where would you shoot from?”

“Top of that ridge, along the tree line.”

I turned to look at her. “Any local activity?”

“They say they heard somebody shouting over on the other side about the time they pulled in, around nine.”

“What’re they doing pulling in here at nine o’clock at night?”

“Supposed to borrow a cabin from Dave McClure; drove up from Casper after work. Now they’re not sure if they have the right day.”

“It’s Tuesday.”

She nodded. “That fact’s been established and corroborated. Ferg is checking with Dave about their plans.”

I thought about the next move. “Get the tarp tied down as soon as Ferg gets off the radio.”

She stomped her feet again. “DCI in Wheatland by now?”

“Weather permitting.”

She was looking at the side of my face as I looked at Jacob. “We’re not going to be able to keep them out.” I continued to look at Jacob. “Walt?”

“Get Ferg to help you get the tarp done. Then tell him to get that metal detector he has at home and check that hillside over there when he gets back…”

“Gets back?”

“Then get in your truck, put on your winter gear, and warm up.” She stopped stomping, looked at me for a while longer, and then went off to check on Ferg.

She was right. We had gone from a sleepy little death by misadventure to a multiple homicide, and the Division of Criminal Investigation was going to want their pound of postmortem flesh. The nagging voice of reason kept reminding me that their experience and technical capabilities gave them a much better chance of breaking the case, but then a stronger voice came in and stated flatly that this was my case and my county. Along the way, it had gotten personal. The first thing I had to do was get the two remaining boys out of county, out of state, out of the country if I had to. Lucian would say there was a fox in the henhouse, and I would say it was time to get the chickens on down the road. I turned back to Jacob. He hadn’t changed much. Dead men don’t tell tales, but I always expect them to pop up and tell me it had all been a big joke. In thirty years of law enforcement, I had been deeply disappointed.

The interior light of Jacob’s truck was on, but very dimly. The door was ajar, key chain hanging from the ignition. I looked under the truck at the exhaust where a few drips of condensate were frozen at the bottom of the tailpipe. There was a shallower impression in the snow where the exhaust would have blown out and a large slick of ice under the engine. I glanced down the fender for insignia and, sure enough, it said diesel. Jacob had started his truck to let it warm up, and whatever had happened had happened when he was exiting or reentering the vehicle. With the orientation of the body, I would think that he was getting out. I’m pretty sure he had been sitting here, like this, and the truck had run out of fuel.

There were no fishing rods lying about, and he wasn’t wearing a vest, waders, or any of the other accoutrement that fisherman usually wore. I stood up and walked around the truck to get a look inside. The passenger-side door was locked; hardly anybody ever does that in Wyoming. There was frost on the inside of the windows, but I could still make out a couple of aluminum fly-rod cases lying along the seat, two vests, and a small cooler. The cooler was a battered old thing with a bumper sticker on it that read CHARLTON HESTON IS MY PRESIDENT.

Working with the preliminary observations, without checking for discoloration of the right and left sides of the abdomen, the victim had been dead approximately, and I was guessing, fourteen to sixteen hours, which placed the TOD at the earliest at five o’clock this morning. If there were trout in the cooler, I could reasonably assume that Jacob had been fishing early. Before dawn? I looked around the rest of the truck for a tent, sleeping bag, or any other evidence that he might have spent more than one day. There were the cabins, but we were going to have to do a sweep of them anyway.

I walked back around the truck and looked at the spot where the gore of his heart and part of a lung had sprayed against the edge of the bed. That meant there was lead in the hillside adjacent to the gravel lot, or in the truck, or in Jacob. Maybe. Something moved under the truck, and I lowered my perspective to see what it was. Jacob’s black cowboy hat had blown under the transfer case and had lodged against one of the front wheels. There was a small collection of feathers stuck in the side of the headband. I looked back at the boy’s dull eyes, shining my flashlight along his body, and got to wondering. I stood, leaning over the body, and extended the flashlight to the open section of his jacket and pushed it back, just enough to reveal the pristine tip of a bleached, straightened, Minwaxed turkey feather.

“What the hell is going on over here!”

I’m pretty sure I stood up and turned around faster than I ever had before. He was a little older than me, well below medium height but nowhere near medium build. He had a face like an old prizefighter, bulbed and knobby wherever it protruded. It was like life was bound to come out even if circumstance was bound to pound it in, and circumstance was standing over him at the moment. Circumstance also noted the broken blood vessels and the flaccidness of the rest of his face; this was not an amateur drinker but a full-blown alcoholic. As my eyes traveled down the open, olive drab parka, past the polyester fur around the hood and the red-and-white-striped tank shirt to the bulging stomach, I noticed the floral print swimming trunks and the thin, birdlike legs that extended into a pair of unlaced arctic boots. I also noticed the drink in his hand, in a martini glass, complete with a sour apple slice and a little green paper parasol. “Who are you?”

He wasn’t paying any attention to me but had leaned to one side to get a better look at the crime scene. “Holy shit!”

I moved over a little, blocking his view. “Excuse me?”

He looked back at me and actually saluted. “Sorry, General. What’s up?” I sighed and repeated the question. “Al Monroe, I got one of them cabins over by the lake.” He listed farther to the side. “Jesus, he’s deader than hell.”

“Mr. Monroe, have you been up here long?”

“Last three days, had a hell of a drunk goin’ till I saw all these damn lights over here; thought somebody’d died.” He took a sip of his martini and looked at me thoughtfully. “Looks like somebody fuckin’ did.”

As I stared at the spectacle of Al Monroe, a thought occurred to me. “Al, can you make coffee over at your cabin?”

“Oh, hell yeah. Best coffee on the mountain.”

“Would you mind going over and making us a big pot? It looks like we’re going to be here for a while.”

“You damn well bet!” He saluted again and traipsed off toward the lake.

“Al”-he turned as Vic came up beside me-“which one of the cabins is yours?” He pointed in the vague direction of one of the dilapidated shacks across the water. He saluted again before he climbed onto an enormous mule with only a rope lead and disappeared into the darkness without spilling a drop of his martini.

Vic looked after the departing vision. “Who the fuck was that?”

I looked sidelong at her. “You two are going to get along.”

The two execs in the Hummer calmed down when I explained that they wouldn’t have to worry about a place to stay and that the Sheriff of Absaroka County always had a few extra beds he could share with the primary witnesses to a homicide. I told them that I would be happy to put them up for three to six weeks, meals included. They said no thanks. Maybe they’d heard about the potpies on weekends but, either way, they got a lot more cooperative and that was all I was really after.

They had arrived from Casper after dark and had seen the truck when they drove by the first time. They were supposed to meet Dave McClure but weren’t sure which cabin was his; they had seen the truck and circled around to ask directions. By the time they had, the truck had stopped running. They pulled into the parking lot, and one of them got out to check on the guy who looked like he was resting on the ground. They hadn’t touched anything and said the only reason they had driven halfway back to Muddy Guard Ranger Station was so that they could get reasonable reception on their cell phone. 911 had routed them through to us, Vic had responded, and here we were standing in the wind and snow.

I asked them about the yelling, and they said that someone had hollered at them from across the lake when they first pulled up to the scene. From the direction and colorful and varied usage of language, it could only have been the now infamous Al Monroe. He had wanted to know if he could interest them in a sour apple martini or twelve.

Ferg had gotten through to a sleepy Dave McClure, who not only backed up the men’s story but also told us the location of his place and about the key that was hidden on the top shelf of his grill. I released them to go warm up in Dave’s cabin and joined Vic and Ferg as they set up work lights and began taking photographs of the scene. Vic lowered the camera and set her shoulders. “Is that what I think it is, sticking out of the deceased’s jacket?”

“Yep.” I folded my arms and started in. “Ferg?” He joined me after adjusting the work lights, and the warmth of the halogen felt good along my shoulders. “You’re going to have to make the run.” He said he didn’t mind. Ferg was my mule, and I wouldn’t trade him for all the thoroughbreds in the world. “Get Ruby to throw us together some supplies, sandwiches, and coffee. Tell her to arrange with Lucian to pull an early watch on dispatch and to bring Turk up from Powder.”

“Lucian?”

I nodded. “Yes, Lucian. Also, bring Bryan Keller and George Esper in under protective custody.”

“To the jail?”

Vic half snarled, “No, the fucking Motel 6.”

We were all under a lot of pressure and, having maximized our manpower to burgeoning, I ushered Ferg to his truck. “Call the Espers and then go by there if you have to. If they’re still not there, Reggie Esper’s sister lives in Longmont, Colorado. Call the Longmont city police and tell them that we’re looking for whatever it is that the Espers have registered with the DMV other than this maroon diesel.”

“Then what?”

“Get back up here.” I watched as he jumped in his little navy Toyota. I knocked on the window. “Ferg?” He rolled it down and leaned out. “Do you have one of those little digital Breathalyzers?” He handed it to me with a questioning look. “Don’t forget that metal detector. And, thanks.” I stuffed the device in my pocket and walked back to where Vic was still taking photographs. “When you get through, get in your truck and warm up some more. It’s going to be a long night. I’m going to walk over and get a statement from Al Monroe.”

She nodded, lining up for the next shot. “Good luck.”

It turned out to be a half mile around the east bank of the lake. No wonder Al had ridden his mule. Al’s cabin was homemade; it didn’t have the singularity of purpose of those that had started out as campers. The original structure was a sixteen-by-sixteen shack, complete with T-111 siding and a multicolored tin roof. The rest of the cabin was made of lean-tos, which leaned to with such ambition that the outer perimeter of the cabin lay on the ground. I wasn’t sure what Al did for a living, but it was a safe bet it wasn’t carpentry. The mule was in one of the upright lean-tos directly beside the cabin, and I had to take care not to step into her leavings. There were a good three cords of wood stacked alongside the door. The harsh glow of propane lighting illuminated the windows and the two-inch crack under the door on which I had just knocked. After a moment, I knocked again.

“Hold yer goddamned horses!” I listened to more stumbling, crashing, and profanity. He yanked open the door and waves of heat rolled from the interior of the cabin, along with the smell. “C’mon in, General. Coffee’s ready.”

The interior of Al’s cabin was far worse than the outside, kind of like Fibber McGee’s closet gone bad. There was a dilapidated sofa of indiscriminate color and shape along the wall, a La-Z-Boy of approximately the same vintage, and a gray Formica kitchen table surrounded by three folding chairs-two brown, one off-brown. At the center of the room was one of those homemade stoves that you put together with two 55-gallon drums; the underside of the bottom drum glowed orange, and I was sure it was close to a hundred and ten degrees in there. There was a halfhearted attempt at a Tiki theme, with native paintings of naked women and carved wooden sculptures as decoration. The most amazing stacks of magazines and catalogs towered against the walls; National Geographic and American Rifleman made up the visible majority. It was like being in the dead letter office on Fiji.

I followed him in and reluctantly closed the door behind me as he threaded his way back to the kitchen area. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his entire upper body was covered in tattoos. When he returned with a steaming cup of coffee, I expected to see an albatross hanging from his neck. He seated himself on the La-Z-Boy and gestured for me to sit on the sofa. I pushed back my hat and looked at him. “Merchant marine?”

He scooped up his martini from a convenient stack. “Goddamned Eleventh Engineers, you?”

“First Division.”

“I’ll be damned.” He leaned forward and extended his hand, and we shook like old friends. “Semper Fi. I bet you seen some shit.”

“Al, I need you to do something for me.”

He did his best to look serious. “Name it.”

I pulled the digital Breathalyzer out of my jacket pocket and handed it to him as I took off my coat and laid it beside me. “Need you to blow into this.”

His eyes looked at the device and then back at me; then he shrugged. “No law against driving a mule drunk.”

“Only way you’d catch me on one.”

He blew into the device and handed it back to me. “How’d I do, General?”

I tapped the Breathalyzer, but it remained at 4.2. “Rapidly approaching alcoholic coma.” He toasted with his martini glass and added to the percentage of complex sugars already racing through his bloodstream. “Al, how come I don’t know you?”

He shrugged again; it seemed to be his favorite form of communication. “I don’t know. Hell, how come I don’t know you?”

I looked down at my civilian clothes, my sheepskin coat, and the brim of my unadorned silver-belly hat. “Al, I’m the sheriff of Absaroka County.”

“Really?” He processed the information for a moment. “Where’s that?”

“You’re in it.”

He looked around as if there might be a sign. “I thought we were in Big Horn County.”

I studied him for a moment. “You a bartender, Al?”

“Thirty-two fuckin’ years.”

“How’d you get here?”

“Buddy’n me partnered up and bought it off some asshole in Kemmerer.”

“That where you live the rest of the year?”

“Lander.” He took another sip of his martini, and I took the first sip of my coffee; it wasn’t bad, and it was hot. “I need to ask you some questions.” I tried not to concentrate on the fact that my primary witness had been drunk for the last three days. “Hear any loud noises early this morning?”

“Like that goddamned howitzer that went off just before dawn?”

Our eyes met. “Hear that, did you?”

“Well, hell, it’s hunting season, so it’s been soundin’ like a small arms war ever since I got here. Had to tie ribbons all over Sally, so the simple-minded bastards wouldn’t shoot her.” He paused for a second, remembering. “But this was different, closer; and it was early, real early.”

“I don’t suppose you noticed what time it was?”

He sniffed. “Oh-five-twelve.”

My eyes widened after making the translation. “You’re sure of that?”

“Oh, hell yeah.” He gestured to the large windup alarm clock that sat on the table. “Looked at my clock.”

“Then what?”

He gestured. “Went over here to the door and shouted for ’em to knock that shit off.”

“Why did you go to this door?”

“S’where the shot came from.”

“East or west?”

He shook his head. “Directly up the hill.” I nodded as he sipped his martini. “That what killed that boy?”

“Maybe.” I leaned forward and rested the coffee cup on my knee; it was still very hot. “When you went over to the door, did you open it and look out?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you see anything?”

“Saw somebody walkin’ back up through the tree line with their back to me.” My expression was probably easy to misinterpret. “This any help?”

“I never had it so good. What’d they look like?”

“Pretty big, near as I could tell. It was early, and there wasn’t much light.”

“Any distinguishing features? Hair?”

He shook his head no. “Wait.” I could feel my heart beating. “It was long.”

I’m pretty sure I skipped a beat. “Long hair…”

“Yeah, now that I think about it. Yeah.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Yeah, long hair.”

“How long?”

“To the shoulders, at least.”

“Color?”

“Dark?” But then he shook his head. “Not enough light to tell, but dark, I think.”

“Hat?”

“Nope.”

“Could you tell what kind of clothing?”

He nodded slowly. “Overalls, one of those insulated jobs.” He waited for a minute. “You okay?”

It took me a moment to think of a word and get some moisture in my mouth. “Yep. This individual was carrying a weapon?”

“Yeah, a big one.”

“Type?”

“Couldn’t tell you. I mean, I could see ’im carryin’ something, and from the way he carried it…”

“Both hands?”

“Nope, one. Hanging down to the side.”

“Why do you say big?”

He sat his martini glass down and spread his hands apart by more than four feet. “Long.”

“Anything else? Wooden stock?” He shook his head and shrugged. “Anything hanging off the rifle?”

He continued to shake his head. “Sorry.”

“Anything else? Anything at all?” He stared at the arm of his chair and shook his head. “You want to revise or amplify anything in these statements?”

He looked confused. “Wha’? I’m under arrest or somethin’?”

I shook my head and smiled. “No, you just made a very important statement in a homicide investigation. I want to make sure there isn’t anything you might have left out.”

He looked around for the invisible signs that were supposed to tell him where he was, what he was doing, and when he should do it. I was starting to understand Al’s relationship with the clock. “Something might come to me?”

“That’s fine. When did you notice the truck over there that was running?”

“Didn’t.”

“You didn’t. All day?”

“Nope, went back over to the sofa there and went back to sleep.” He stopped and then looked around at the painted concrete floor for the thought he had lost. “Did notice it around lunchtime. Got up and heated some stew.” He started to get up now. “You want some?”

I stopped him with a hand. “Maybe later. What time was that?” “Twelve hundred forty-seven.”

I glanced over at the kitchen table at the two-handed face that told me it was now one. “You look at the clock a lot, Al.”

“Thirty-two fuckin’ years of waitin’ for closin’ time.”

He confirmed the fact that he had yelled at the two guys in the Hummer at exactly twenty-one hundred twelve. As I went off to check the ridge, I asked Al if he would hitch up the one-mule team and take my ardent deputy a cup of coffee and some stew. He said he would be fucking happy to.

The hill was steep, and the fact that I was wearing cowboy boots didn’t help. The snow had tapered off, but the wind remained persistent, and by the time I got to the top I had worked up a decent sweat. I stood there, catching my breath and looking down at the lights of Al’s cabin and at the red-and-blue emergency lights revolving from our vehicles in the parking lot. The only consistent sounds were the wind, Sally munching, and the revolving click of our lights. It was a beautiful place, peaceful, terminally peaceful for Jacob Esper.

It was a four-hundred-yard shot if it was an inch. It was colder this morning, probably with a slight to negligible headwind and an approximate scale of elevation would be eighty at four hundred yards. I sighed a full breath and watched the steam blow back in my face. It was quite a shot, even with a scope.

I started at the first few trees at the ridge’s edge, shining my flashlight down along the partially covered ground. Al had said that the shooter was big, but Al is short, so I was beginning to wonder how big big meant. There were no telltale signs in the stiffening grass, so I began using this trail as my pathway as I searched the surrounding area on both sides. If I were shooting someone, would I use the trail? Probably not. I kneeled by the end of the opening that faced the lake and went over each blade of grass. If I were shooting someone from four hundred yards, would I lie down? Probably. There was something funny about the slight depression in the grass to my right, so I walked out of my safe area and looked back where the grass seemed to lay in an odd pattern. I kneeled down and looked back into the hypotenuse of a thin triangle: All the blades bowed in my direction.

Blowdown. This is where it had all started, all. 45 caliber seventy grains of it. There was a weak swipe where someone had scuffed a foot across the area in an attempt to hide the marks, but Al Monroe’s appearance must have curtailed such activity. I extended my view and looked straight back through the trees. I suppose somebody my size could make it through, but their ability to limbo would have to be considerably better than mine. I went back to my path and began working my way deeper into the woods, searching the narrow area for footprints but finding none. If they were big, they were light on their feet. I transferred my search to above ground, looking for any disturbance in the thick foliage of the pines. Nothing.

I thought about Henry and took my first full breath since Al had made his partial identification. I stood there with my hands in my pockets and tried to convince myself that a man with 4.2 blood alcohol content would be lucky if he could properly identify his own mule. It wouldn’t wash; he had been too precise about all the other points. Al might be a professional alcoholic, but he was an observant one.

Why would Henry do it? There was the immediate connection with the family; the oldest of motivations, revenge. If somebody had done this to my niece, how would I react? I kept thinking about Omar’s remarks about Henry; was it productive to look at those who had killed when looking for a killer? It wasn’t easy to do, take a life. Henry had killed men, but so had I. Try as I might, I couldn’t develop Omar’s line of thought and went back to the one I liked best, the rationalization of why it didn’t have to be Henry.

With Al’s partial physical description, we were looking for a largish person, probably male and possibly Indian. Sticking with motivation, it had to be someone connected to the victims’ victim, Melissa Little Bird. And that meant Artie Small Song or Henry Standing Bear. I was going to have to have a conversation with Artie Small Song.

Did long hair necessarily mean Indian? Omar had long hair and half my staff had longish hair. Vic and Turk both had hair at least to their shoulders. Vic had been growing hers for the last two years, and Turk’s hockey hair was perennial. I always tried to keep an open mind when lining up the suspects. Law enforcement personnel were people, too, which meant they could commit murder just like the rest of us. If I was going to play the game, everybody got a piece.

Why would Vic do it? She was a pretty militant female, a master in ballistics, and she was also the first on both crime scenes. I had talked her into joining up about two years ago, when these boys had been handed down their suspended sentences. I looked down at the revolving lights, at the flickering shadows cast on the sides of the vehicles, and at Jacob’s shadow-smear that didn’t move. Her sense of justice just didn’t seem to fit. She didn’t have any reason to do it, and she wasn’t big, even if she had the hair.

Why would Turk do it? Just being a prick wasn’t enough, and the fact that I was looking forward to our next meeting like Grant did Gettysburg shouldn’t interfere with my abilities to investigate. Did he want my job bad enough to try and make me look this bad? None of it seemed likely, but he was big, his name was on Dave’s list, and he had the hair.

Why would Omar do it? Omar could make this shot, but what could his motivations be? I started thinking about which grade B actor would play Omar in the television movie of the week and quickly dropped it. But he was big enough, had the hair, had a Sharps, and knew how to shoot.

Why would Artie Small Song do it? And why wouldn’t he have used a rocket launcher or a bazooka? This spoke to the violent-death side of the case, and his family connections loomed large. Basic investigative technique was jumping up and down and screaming it was Artie. He was large, might have the weapon, and he had the hair.

Why would Henry do it? I didn’t believe he did, and that was all there was to it. But… he had been late running yesterday morning; he hadn’t gotten to my house until after eight. I thought back and tried to think of what time it had been when he arrived, but I didn’t have Al’s gift for chronographic pinpointing. If the Cheyenne Death Rifle was the one he used, how did he get it back to Lonnie in time? Two men could keep a secret if one of them is dead, or so the old saying goes, but I didn’t think it was possible to get from here to the Rez and back to my place in three hours.

I took one last look around, satisfied that I had done as much as I could, and started down the hill. By the time I got to the path, Al was making the return journey to his cabin. “Al, how long are you going to be here?” He truly was a vision atop his mule with his floral print trunks in full display.

“I was thinkin’ about getting the hell outta here tomorrow, but with all this stuff happenin’ I might just stick around.”

“Well, if you do decide to head back, would you mind checking in at my office? It’s down in Durant, behind the courthouse, or you can just give me a call.” I handed him a card. “This’s got my home phone on it, along with all the office numbers. If you think of anything else, anything at all, be sure to call me. There’ll probably be somebody over later to ask you the same questions and get your personal information. Do you want me to tell them to wait till the morning?”

“What time is it?”

I started to laugh, then pulled out my pocket watch. “Oh-two-hundred.”

“Aw, hell, it’s the shank of the evenin’. Send ’em on over.”

I got out of the mule’s way and started the long slog around the lake. When I got to the scene, Vic was warming up in her unit. I walked over and kneeled beside Jacob Esper. Something was bothering me, something had been niggling at me for the last few hours. I looked at the body and back over my shoulder. It was a clear shot and had planted the young man squarely against the side of the truck. How did the perpetrator get the feather onto the body? Granted, there seemed to have been long periods of Al’s drunkenness where somebody could’ve planted an entire aviary on Jacob, but it did add to the time that it would’ve taken Henry to complete the journey to my place. It was another reason my buddy couldn’t have done it, and I was feeling a little better. Even if I was feeling better, the niggling thought remained like an itch at the middle of my back. There was something here, something I’d seen that was out of my reach. I stared at Jacob Esper, just like I’d stared at Cody Pritchard, and I hoped like hell that I came up with better answers.

“Unlock the door.” She reached across with a yawn and flipped the small knob up. I must have woken her. It was like a nest, with little pieces of paper and equipment scattered and stuffed into every available spot. I pulled a collection of duty notebooks from under my ass, sat them on the floor beside my wet boots, and thought how much her truck reminded me of Al’s oasis across the lake. Two Thermoses rested against the four-wheel-drive shifter; evidently she hadn’t saved me any coffee. I got settled and looked over at my deputy, whose face was resting against her door. She appeared to have fallen back to sleep.

Vic didn’t look like a killer. Her fine Italian skin contrasted with the dark luster of her hair and, even in sleep, an eyebrow was arched in disbelief. At this angle, you could just make out the little upturned point at the end of her nose that always made me want to pick her up and squeeze her. I hadn’t ever done it, figuring she’d likely kick me in crucial areas. Not for the first time did I notice my deputy was a very good-looking woman. “So, you get to home plate or what?”

Just as I’d suspected, everything else could stop moving, but not the mouth. “Sorry?”

“Oh, you’re one of those kiss-but-don’t-tell guys. Fine, I’ll just go back to sleep.” I looked at the clouds of vapor on the window beside where she had spoken.

“Home plate?”

“Yeah, I was trying to cater to your delicate sensibilities. Did you fuck her?”

“I don’t think this was the conversation I had in mind when I climbed in here.”

“Too bad… put out or get out.” She repositioned herself and smiled, satisfied with her wit.

“The truth would be pretty boring.”

“I was afraid of that.” I watched as the condensation on the side window grew and subsided with her breath. “I suspect that nobody’s having sex in this county.”

I waited a moment for her to continue, but she didn’t. “That the problem with you and Glen?”

“What, the fact that we haven’t had sex for three months? What would make you think that?” She still hadn’t moved, and I was considering getting out and going for a walk. “Do you find me unattractive?”

“You?” That got an eye. It wouldn’t hurt anything to level with her, and she was being vulnerable, which only happened on leap years. “I was just sitting here, a moment ago, thinking what a handsome woman you are.”

“Handsome?”

I caught my breath. “Wrong word choice?”

“Sounds masculine.” The eye again. “You think I’m too butch?”

“No, I don’t, and I really was thinking what a good-looking woman you are.”

The eye closed, but the smile returned. “Good.”

“Then you opened your mouth…”

She tried to kick me but only glanced off the accelerator and gunned the motor. She glared at the dash. “Shut up.” Her eyes shifted to me. “How often did you have sex when you were married?”

“In the beginning or the end?”

“Forget I asked that question.” She settled back against the door and fluffed the rolled-up blanket she was using as a pillow. “How come you have never made a play for me?”

I couldn’t help but laugh; life in general was just so much more interesting with women around. “I um… considered it a dereliction of the sheriff-deputy relationship.”

“No, dereliction would be what Glen is doing to me.”

“Well, that’s another issue. You’re married, and I’m not into hypotheticals at three in the morning.”

“In six weeks it’s not going to be a hypothetical.” I sat there, letting that one settle in. “He got some bullshit job up in Alaska, and I’m not going. I did this drill once, and I’m not doing it again.” She lay there, not moving. “You still going to want me around as a deputy if I’m single?”

“I’m not sure the county can take it.” I reached over and squeezed her shoulder. “Hey, you don’t know you’re my heir-apparent?”

She snuggled a little more, and the smile broadened. “Yeah, I just like to hear you say it.” The smile held, but her eyes remained shut. “So, you wanna fuck, or do I owe you an apology?”

I laughed what seemed like the first good laugh I’d had in a very long time and leaned against my own door, covered my face with my hat, and quickly fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Ferg showed back up at six-thirty with his metal detector. He liked gadgets, which was good, because I didn’t. The wind had died down some, and what snow had fallen last night was piled up against the east side of everything, trailing away in long tails of white with edges as crisp as the blade on a knife. It was still relatively cold, but the promise of warmth had started and, if you weren’t careful, you always found your face directed east.

As Ferg unloaded the equipment and supplies, I took the opportunity to get out of my dating clothes and put on the winter gear I always kept behind the seat of my truck. Mine were the same as Al had described as having been on the shooter last night: arctic weight coveralls and a hooded jacket that matched. The medium brown had faded to a light khaki and the seams were starting to look a little threadbare, but the little star was still holding fast, and it had my name on it. Everybody else in the department had these clothes, too; theirs just looked better. I was sitting on the tailgate of my unit, changing into my Sorels, when he came over with the metal detector. “Espers?”

He had the metal detector taken apart and was checking the charger pack on the thing. “I called DMV and got the registration numbers and descriptions of all their vehicles and put out an APB with the Longmont police, letting them know this was somethin’ to do with a homicide case.”

“That get their attention?”

“Oh, yeah.”

I propped a boot against the side of the truck and started lacing; my foot felt immediately warmer. I should have done this last night, but I suppose I had been caught up in the moment. I dropped my foot off the tailgate and turned to face him. “Nothing at the house?”

“No.”

“The 3K?”

“I got Bryan and brought him in.” His face looked like he didn’t want to talk about it.

“Rest of the family?”

“Mrs. Keller was there, but not Jim.”

“I bet that was a warm welcome.” I searched for my gloves in the pockets of my jacket and pulled the stiff leather onto my fingers, flexing them. “Where is he at four o’clock in the morning?”

“Hunting.”

Jim Keller hunting, that was interesting. “Where?”

“She didn’t say.”

I let it go. “You bring supplies?”

“In the cooler. I also made arrangements with South Pass Lodge to bring in warm food.”

“What about Turk?”

“Didn’t talk to him, but I left a message.”

“And where is he at five o’clock in the morning?”

“Some buckle bunny’s bed, I suppose.” He closed the little plastic door, turned the device over, and flipped a switch. The little LED display lit up.

I smiled, which was hard when it came to Turk. “Jealous?”

His eyes came up and met mine. “Yeah, a little.”

“Me, too.” I slid off the back of the Bullet and stood, stretching the stiff muscles that had bunched at my shoulders and neck. It felt good, and my feet were warm for the first time in twelve hours. I indicated the metal detector. “That thing going to work, or am I going to be forced to make a highly dramatic and emotional display by throwing it in the lake?”

“I think it’ll work.”

Vic joined us as I peered over the edge of Jacob’s truck bed and turned to look at the snow-covered hillside behind us. “Well, it’s not in the truck and from the looks of Jacob, I’d say it’s not in him.” I extended a finger in the direction a straight trajectory would have taken. “Detect.”

I wandered over toward the lake to get out of the way and didn’t see any lights on in Al’s cabin; I figured he was still asleep. I was wrong. After a moment, I could hear the door open, and the familiar figure stepped around one of the lean-tos and hollered across the lake, “Hey, you want any goddamned coffee?!”

I laughed. “Love some!” The echo of my response sounded around the little bowl of the lake, and my voice sounded good, like I was capable. The niggling thought hadn’t gone away though, and a little less than four hours of sleep hadn’t been enough to make it surface. I comforted myself with the thought that I was doing what it took to solve cases like these: knocking on one more door, looking at the crime scene photographs one more time, making one more phone call, making one last try. I went back over to Jacob’s body and ducked under the tarp for another look-see. Obviously, something had been bothering Vic, too. A small Tupperware stepstool was there, so I pulled it over and sat down facing Jacob again. I sat on the top, pulled a foot up on the first step, and rested my elbow on my knee, placing my chin in the palm of my hand. I was finally comfortable, which was more than could be said for Jacob. Here we were, Jacob and I, staring at each other, only one of us seeing. Something wasn’t right, and I’d be damned if I could figure out what it was.

I listened as Vic and Ferg conferred on the other side of the truck. “I think we’ve got something.”

He didn’t sound sure. “In the trajectory of the reference points?”

“We’re getting a strong reading off to the right.”

“Dig there.”

A moment passed. “Don’t you want to wait for DCI?”

“They might be in a motel in Casper, for all we know.” I sounded angrier than I was, taking the frustration of the unknown out on my deputies. I made a conscious effort to be nicer. “We’ll go ahead and dig it out.”

Jim Keller hunting, why was that bothering me? Because, as near as I could remember, he didn’t hunt. I started thinking back to that day he had brought in Bryan, how he seemed so hard on the boy. I remembered thinking what a mess this was for the young man and how it was strange that they hadn’t just moved away. As far as I knew, they had no family here in the county, with no reason to stay other than to torture that boy. It was a pretty horrible thing to do to your child, and a pretty horrible thing to do to Cody and Jacob. Somebody ruins your life, your child’s life, and his future… These were pretty powerful motives.

“I think we’ve got something here.” Her voice was flat and emotionless.

I looked at Jacob for another moment, then got up and walked around the truck. Ferg stood to the far side, leaning against the truck bed and balancing the metal detector on his foot. I took up a position just in front of the passenger window and watched Vic work. I looked over at Ferg. “We get about four or five of those DCI guys to stand around here with us, and we’ll have a real state job underway.” He smiled, and my eyes fell back across the seat of Jacob’s truck. I looked at the jumbled mess; was I the only one that actually put things away in my vehicle? I looked past Ferg at his little Toyota and the number of PVC containers he had strapped to the underside of his topper. “Ferg, how many rods do you take with you when you’re fishing?”

He thought for a moment. “Seven, maybe eight.”

“How many vests?”

“Just one.”

I looked into Jacob’s truck at the two vests that lay there, and that niggling feeling stopped.