Cold Dish

8

On the afternoon of June 25, 1876, as the heat waves rolled from the buffalo grass, giving the impression of a breeze that did not exist, Colonel George Armstrong Custer and five companies of the Seventh Cavalry rode into the valley of the Little Big Horn. Also that afternoon, Davey Force, a pitcher for the Philadelphia Athletics, went six for six against Chicago, who scored four runs in the ninth to pull out a 14 to 13 victory. Custer was not so lucky.

The report of the Secretary of War states that the five companies had 405 Springfield carbines caliber. 45, along with their single action 396 Colt revolvers caliber. 45. What the Seventh Cavalry contingency did not carry were any Sharps. When the fight began, only about half the Indians had guns, and they were a varied sort: muzzleloaders, Spencer carbines, old-fashioned Henry rifles, and an unspecified number of Sharps. The army didn’t stand much of a chance, trapped on that beautiful hillside, with no reinforcements coming. I thought about how those gentle slopes smelled and sounded on a glorious summer day, about how they might have smelled and sounded that June day in 1876. I also thought about the pumpkin that had exploded from a very long distance in Omar’s back pasture.

When Little Wolf led a straggling band of thirty-three Northern Cheyenne warriors into surrender two and a half years later on March 25, 1879, they handed in twenty assorted rifles and carbines, of which the majority were Sharps, numbering nine. I held in my hands the tenth. “So, your great-great-grandfather didn’t surrender his?”

He continued to look out the windshield as he drove. “I guess he did not completely trust the white man. Go figure.”

I looked down at the rifle, the butt resting on the toe of my boot; I didn’t want the truck to touch it. “Do these ten little notches along the ridge here mean what I think they mean?”

“Another potato digger bites the dust.” He slowed as a mule deer darted across the road a couple of hundred yards ahead and, sure as anything, another followed. “No, it stands for the tenth rifle. It was so they could tell them apart.” He saw me looking at all the beads, feathers, and silver tacks. “All that was put on later.”

The Cheyenne got their weapons by trading or capture; I didn’t ask how they got this lot of ten. “Okay, so your great great grandfather surrenders in 1879 but hides this ol’ boy out on the range?”

“Wrapped up in two inches of bear grease.”

“When did they get out?”

“As near as I can tell, we never have.”

I raised an eyebrow. “When did the soldiers let him go?”

“About six months later; winter was coming on, and they did not want to have to feed them.”

“He went back and got it six months later?”

“Yes.” He smiled to himself. “We were tough, in the day.”

I looked at the gun again. “Any idea when it was last shot?”

The smile played out thinly on his lips. “Friday of last week?”

“Very funny. How come your cousin has it?”

“It is in the family; that is all that matters. No one in the family has personal ownership, but I doubt anybody would argue if I claimed it.”

I thought of the T-bird. “Like Lola?”

“Like Lola.” He smiled to himself some more. “Anyway, it is haunted.”

As it grew darker, the soft Wyoming sky drifted into night. I pulled out my watch to see what time it was: 5:30. I still had time to go home and take a shower and get the truck off of me. I was looking forward to being with Vonnie, with somebody who didn’t have any connection with the case.

When we picked up the wine at the Pony, he left the truck running. Dena Many Camps came out to talk with me while Henry rummaged through the wine coolers. She tended bar for Henry when he wasn’t there, was one of Henry’s proteges in billiards, and was a good friend of Cady’s, although she was about four years older. You would be hard pressed to find a better-looking woman. She walked with a wicked grace, like a panther with a pool cue. “What’re you doing, Trouble?” She always called me Trouble, even though I’m sure she had caused more than I ever would.

“Well, if it isn’t what makes the Badlands look good.” She wrote poetry and had been offered a scholarship to Dartmouth but had decided to pursue billiards instead. She probably made more money at pool, but I wondered if she ever regretted not going to college. “What’re you up to other than luring men to their financial doom a quarter at a time?”

She rested her arms on the scaly sill of the truck, fingers drumming lightly on her exposed elbows. “I like torturing them slowly. Anyway, a girl’s gotta make a living, and I can’t do it on what this guy pays me.” She pulled her lips back into a broad smile, just to show me there was no malice. “There’s a pool tournament down in Vegas, and I’m leaving next week.”

I looked at the white fringe on the silk yoke of the western shirt-dress she wore. She always had on flamboyant western clothes when she competed in the tournaments. Somehow, it didn’t seem fair. She looked back toward the bar. “What’s he doing in there?”

“Getting some wine for me.”

“Wine… for you?”

“What, I don’t look like a wine guy to you?”

She reached in and felt the feathers on the rifle with her fingertips. “Owl.” She looked closer and her hand froze. “Ohohyaa.. ”

“That mean owl?”

“No.” She shook her head. “No, it means… terrible. Sehan.. ” Her eyes narrowed, and her hand came away from the gun as though the rifle might bite. “This is a weapon from the Camp of the Dead.”

“Actually, it’s from Lonnie Little Bird.” Her hands went to her hair, and I could tell she was unbraiding it for a reason. “It’s for a ballistics test.”

Her eyes met mine, and she continued to undo her long braid. “This is a ghost weapon, a weapon sent from the dead to retrieve.”

“Retrieve what?”

“Not what… who.”

“What, they need a fourth for bridge?”

Her eyes sharpened to slits of flint. “This is not funny. It’s big medicine.”

“Big medicine.” I started to make another smart-aleck remark but thought better of it. “I was just…”

“Lonnie Little Bird gave this to you?”

“For ballistics, we’ve got to check it against the one that killed Cody Pritchard.”

She finished unbraiding and shook her head, the dark hair falling loose over her shoulders. “Give it back to him.”

“I will, after we shoot it.” I reached out to touch her arm, but she shifted away. “What’s the story with the hair?”

“It is a sign of respect and protection. There are spirits that linger near that weapon, and they can easily take away the soul of someone still living for the enjoyment of their society.”

The hand that held the rifle suddenly felt cold, so I shifted to the other one. “I’ll get it right back to him, just as soon as we get a test fire.” Henry had exited the bar with the two bottles of wine and opened the door of the truck, his eyes meeting Dena’s.

“What is up, Toots?” He climbed in, but her eyes stayed on him as he concerned himself with the shifter and with shutting the door. Finally, he cocked his head and looked at her again. “What?”

“You let Lonnie give him this?”

His voice growled, low and steady. “It is his job.” A full fifteen seconds passed before she exhaled, turned, and walked into the Red Pony without looking back; the fringe on her dress matched the sway of her hair. I turned to look at him. “Women.” He put the truck in gear and backed away from the bar, hitting the tired brakes, shifting into first, and pulling out toward my place. I continued to look at him. “What?”

“What? I’ve got ‘the’ Cheyenne death rifle here?”

He shook his head. “So to speak.” He glanced over. “Bother you?”

“Only if ghosts are going to fly out of the barrel and carry me off to the Camp of the Dead.” He laughed a hearty, honest laugh. “What?”

He laughed some more. “Your company is not that good.”

The rifle, Henry, the ghosts, and me drove up the road and deposited me at my cabin. The rifle and I went in, Henry went back down the road, and where the ghosts went was anybody’s guess. I carefully sat the rifle on the arms of my easy chair and looked at it.

Retriever of the Dead. The thing was worth a million dollars-was priceless probably-and leaving it lying around my little house that had no locks didn’t seem like a good idea. I was going to have to take it with me over to Vonnie’s, but I could always leave it in the Bullet. I wrestled a shower out of the bathroom and put on clean clothes. The phone machine in my bedroom was blinking, but I ignored it. The rifle was still there when I got back to the living room, so I looked around the place for any apparitions and was a little disappointed when none appeared. Maybe Henry was right; maybe I was lousy company, even at a dead man’s party. I walked back into my bedroom and stared at the answering machine. I hoped that Cady had called, but the little blinking red light was looking angry. Maybe the ghosts had left a message, so I pushed the button.

“Okay, we had three mailboxes at Rock Creek reportedly hit, got a call on some kid chasing horses with his snow machine, turns out the kid owned the horses and there’s no law saying you can’t herd livestock with a snow machine… that from the eleven-year-old perpetrator. Earl Walters slid off the road at Klondike and Upper Clear Creek and took out a yield sign; I always knew the ancient fucker couldn’t read. And our crime of the day, Old Lady Grossman reported somebody stealing the snowman out of her yard and driving off with it. Ferg stopped the suspect, who turned out to be her nephew who had taken it as a joke.”

We weren’t likely to make America’s Most Wanted with a selection of crimes such as these, but it was premium Roundup material.

“So, out of our list, the only ones that have reloading equipment are Mike Rubin and Stanley Fogel.”

The dentist.

“The dentist.” There was a pause, as the machine recorded her thinking. “Wouldn’t it be a pisser if it turned out to be the dentist? I know it doesn’t have the ring that the butler does, but wouldn’t people be surprised?”

I nodded my head in agreement.

“Anyway, I went over and checked on him. He’s cute. I think I’m going to change dentists.”

Jesus. There was a rustling of papers, and she continued.

“I also went out to Mike Rubin’s shop while you were out joyriding on the Rez. Is that fucker goofy or what?”

I nodded.

“I don’t know if he was more rattled by having a sheriff’s deputy there or a woman. He doesn’t get out much, does he?”

I shook my head this time.

“I got samples from both, and neither match up with what we think we’ve got. The Ferg finally got around to checking on the Esper place, and he says that there weren’t any tracks in the snow leading up to the house. I called the post office and, sure enough, they put a hold on their mail that goes off tomorrow. I called the mine and asked them. They said he was down in Colorado, visiting his sister, no number left. The sister is married, and nobody here seems to know the name or where in Colorado they live, so here we are at the beginning. I’ll swing around there tonight and see if they’ve gotten back from the other square state.”

There was a pause, then the machine beeped, and she spoke again, “Okay, so I swung by the Espers and left a note behind the storm door telling them to contact us as soon as they get in. Ferg’s right, there hasn’t been anybody there for days. If they call, I’ll call you. I’ll be here tonight, if you need me. All night. Glen and I are fighting, so I’m sleeping here.”

I stared at the machine.

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing big, just the usual shit. Don’t call to check on me and don’t come in here. I’m fine. Oh, and by the way, Phil La Vante died about three months ago, so should I take him off our short list?”

I nodded, and the machine clicked off. I hated marital discord; I hated it when I was married. I often wondered about Vic’s marriage. There were times when she and Glen appeared to get along, but most of the time it seemed like they led separate but unequal lives. This wasn’t the first night she’d spent at the jail. She wasn’t the frequent lodger I was but, only a month ago, I’d been in my office one night catching up on paperwork when I heard somebody open the front door. As she walked into her office opposite mine, all she said was “Don’t ask” and slammed her door behind her. After a few moments though, she reappeared with her Philadelphia Police mug and a bottle of tequila, had sat down in the chair by my door, threw her feet up on my desk, poured herself a drink and hissed, “All men are assholes, right?” I nodded vigorously, quietly finished my reports as she drank, and then crept out, my back to the wall.

I fought the urge to call her and went back to the front of the house to collect the two bottles of wine and the rifle; it weighed enough to be haunted. The emotional toll of the day was having an effect on me, and I wondered if I wasn’t already in the Camp of the Dead. I wondered if I hadn’t been for the last four years. I sat the bottles down and pulled the old girl from the scabbard, looking at the rubbed spots. The barrel was round, the heavy military model rather than the expected octagonal like Omar’s. I looked at the beads attached to the hide covering on the foregrip.

Dead Man’s Body was an intricate design of triangles, points, and geometric figures showing not only the body itself, but the wounds and the spears that had done the deed. Henry had explained that it was more of a Sioux pattern, but that that might have been the reason for using it, to warn the Lakota that they should not take their alliance with the Cheyenne lightly. They were the small Venetian seed beads that had become more predominant around 1840 and had a richer color than the earlier pony style. The stitching was overlay, not the usual lazy stitch you saw nowadays, and when you held the rifle up to the light there was no space between the rows. I thought about all those little strings of beads sailing across the Atlantic from Italy. Maybe Vic’s ancestors had supplied the ornamentation for Henry’s in six degrees of beaded separation.

I smiled and made a conscious effort to be better company for the Old Cheyenne and, to prove it, I raised the rifle high over my head and gave out with the most blood-curdling war cry I could manage. I’m pretty sure I could do it better when I was seven, but the shout rattled around my little house and made me feel better, so I did it four or five more times. The last one hurt but was the best. I felt like an extra in a fifties B movie, so I put the rifle back in its scabbard, picked up my wine, and headed for the truck.

The temperature was dropping, and it was starting to look like we might get more snow. I hit the NOAA band on my radio and listened to the little computer-generated Norwegian tell me that two to four inches was expected on the mountain but only an inch down here. So far, not a flake had fallen, but I figured I could always call Henry; he could tell me exactly when it was going to begin.

I started digesting Vic’s oral report; the Espers worried me. If Reggie Esper and his wife had taken off for Colorado, and I believe his sister lived in Longmont, had the two boys gone with them? It didn’t seem likely that two college-aged boys would go with their parents to visit an aunt for a week. I had honestly believed that Cody’s death had been an accident, at least mostly, until the feather. I was getting that fretful, nagging feeling that this case might end with all the loose strands that I had picked free. The old police adage says, when you’re done and there’s nothing there, go back to the beginning and start over. So, here I was, staring at the beginning and trying to figure out what it was I’d missed the first time.

I turned into Vonnie’s drive, pulled through the opening gate, and parked in front of the house. All the motion-detecting lights came on again, and I gathered up the stuff and started for the house. By the time I got to the porch, she had the door open. “You still look tired.”

“That bad, huh?” The light from the entryway was warm and tawny, reflecting the reddish highlights of her hair as she stood in the doorway.

“Your voice is hoarse. Are you all right?”

“Yep, I just had to do some shouting today. Sorry.”

She took my arm as I got there. “No, I like it. It’s sexy.”

I was feeling better and gave her the two bottles of wine after she shut the door. “Here, I brought wine. I picked it out myself.”

She looked at me for a moment, then her eyes dropped to the scabbard. “What’s that?”

I raised the rifle and shrugged. “This is a very long story…”

“Is it a gun?”

“Yep…”

“Not in my house.”

I looked at her face for the contention I expected to find, but there wasn’t any. It was a simple statement of fact, and her eyes still held the warmth that had invited me in. I felt the need to explain. “It’s an expensive piece, it doesn’t belong to me, and I thought it would be safer in here.” She looked down at the rifle again but didn’t say anything. “I’ll put it back in the truck.” I started to turn, but she caught my arm.

“No.”

There was a moment as she tried to weigh the options open to both of us. “It’s okay, I’ll just lock it up in the truck.”

“No. I’m sorry.” Her face came up, and the smile was a little sad, but generous. “Is it okay here, by the door?”

I smiled too. “Yep, that’ll be fine.” I propped the rifle in the corner and for the first time noticed my sheepskin coat draped across the chair that was also there. I turned and looked at her. “You gonna send me packing?”

She cocked her head and was instantly delicious. “No, I like the way it smells, and if you don’t take it with you tonight you’re not likely to get it back.” With this, she turned and started down the hallway and through the living room where I had left her the last time I was here. She was wearing low-heeled ropers, buckskin leather-laced pants, and an off-white silk blouse with western accents. The effect from the rear was breathtaking. I left the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead to commune with the smell of my coat and pursued some preferred company myself.

The elevated area between the arches was a dining room and on the other side of it was the kitchen. The smell of something wonderful was drifting through the doorway, a delicate smell, tangy, but with an underlying sea scent that spoke softly to the base of my stomach. The olive loaf sandwiches had worn thin.

The kitchen was a study in contrasts. The floors were Mexican tile, and the walls were the same reworked plaster as in the other parts of the house, only these were differing shades of red. Massive hand-hewn beams straddled the room overhead, and the cabinets looked like they had been salvaged from somebody’s line shack. The actual appliances were huge stainless-steel brutes that reminded me of the DCI coroner’s lab in Cheyenne. A number of things seemed to be simmering on the eight-burner stove, but my attention was drawn to the center island where a small glass vase of tulips sat between festively painted plates and silverware that looked stately enough to have been used at the Queen’s coronation. There were linen napkins in brass-and-silver rings, and I was getting that diminishing feeling that I was there to read the meter.

“I hope you don’t mind if we eat in the kitchen?” She went to the stove, lifted the lid on something, and stirred it with a long wooden spoon that came from a crock full of implements that was tucked into the corner of the counter. The steam rose and separated as it drifted past the shining adzed surface of the beams. I was willing to bet she didn’t have to worry about mouse poop. She had turned and was looking at me. “It just seemed cozier. If we eat in the dining room with just the two of us, it will be like that scene from Citizen Kane.” I nodded, trying to think of the scene from Citizen Kane, only able to come up with the one with the screaming cockatoo. “In anticipation of the snow, I’ve made hot buttered rum, or would you rather we start with some of this wonderful wine you’ve brought?”

“I think it’s only supposed to snow an inch.” Henry had his magic; I had the little computerized Norwegian. “But the hot buttered rum sounds great.”

She sprinkled sugar, cloves, and nutmeg into two thick-faceted glass tumblers, poured rum on top, added a couple of sticks of cinnamon and hot water, and finished it off with a large dollop of what read on the wrapper as IRISH COUNTRY BUTTER.

“We’ll save the wine for later. This’ll do your throat some good.” She leaned on the counter and raised her own glass. “Here’s to our first official date.” We touched glasses, and I felt the warmth in my chest before I even took a sip.

“So, he was clinically depressed?”

“Undiagnosed.”

Dinner was everything my stomach had hoped it would be: pasta with a cioppino of spinach, tomato, clams and mussels, and homemade country bread with which we both sopped up the leftover sauce. She followed this up with a homemade apple pie, topped with vanilla bean ice cream, and continued with the hot buttered rum, in spite of the wine. My mood was so warm and tranquil that I was beginning to fear that I might fall right off the little Italian stools and onto the floor. “I remember coming out here with Dad when I was a kid. He shod your father’s horses, and I tagged along.”

“Yes. I was trying to remember if I was here.”

“Yep, you were.”

She looked into her glass. “Was I a little snot?”

“Yep, you were.”

She laughed a soft laugh. “One chance and I blew it, huh?”

“It was summer, and you were gone all the other times. Didn’t you used to go somewhere?”

“Maine.”

“Maine. Doesn’t seem fair; summer is the payoff in Wyoming.” She stirred her drink with one of the thin sticks of cinnamon.

“I didn’t get much of a choice at the time.”

I tried to steer the conversation without appearing boorish. “Richest man in three counties, what’d he have to be depressed about?” She smiled, allowing the tiny bit of boorishness to pass.

“I don’t think he cared for himself too much.”

“How about you?”

“Did I care for him?” She paused, genuinely considering the question. “I suppose not, but the further down the road I go, the more I see my relationship with him having had an effect on every single choice in my life… in a negative or positive way.” She stared at the candles that had melted into the holders and blew them out. “That would have made him happy.” She stretched a hand across the table, and I stuck a paw out to meet her. She took my hand and turned it over, examining the creases on the sides of my fingers. I could feel an electric charge racing up my forearms as she traced the folds with a fingernail. “I like your hands, big and powerful, but they move very carefully, like an artist.”

“Piano lessons.”

“Really?”

“Very early on, I developed a love for boogie-woogie.”

“Oh my. I guess that’s what they call full-octave hands.” A moment went by. “That explains the piano at your house. You’ll have to play for me.”

“I’m kinda out of practice, which is kind of the theme for my life as of late.”

There was a long pause. “One of the cowboys found him in the tack shed. I guess he didn’t want to make a mess in the house.” She continued looking at my hand, and for a moment I thought she was going to cry, but instead she laughed a short laugh and smiled as she looked up at me. “Daddy’s little girl; not exactly the most compelling of psychological profiles, huh?”

“How could he leave something like you?” It was out before I could analyze how corny it was going to sound, but she didn’t laugh. Instead, it was a short, broken sob that forced her to wipe her nose and run the side of her thumb past the corner of her eye in an attempt to keep her mascara from running. I handed her my napkin but held on to the other hand. She laughed this time and straightened slightly. “Where’s your dog?”

She sniffed and then laughed again. “He’s in the mudroom out back, sulking.”

“Maybe I should meet him?”

She straightened an imagined run at the corner of her eye with the napkin. “I didn’t think you liked dogs.”

“I like dogs fine. Does he like people?”

She wiped her nose. “He hasn’t met that many.”

“Great, let me go get the rifle.” This time the laugh was wholehearted. “Your father is why you don’t allow guns in the house?”

“I just don’t like them. It seems to me that no matter what they always lead to bad things. My opinion is that produced for their specific purpose, they are inherently bad.” We stared at each other for a moment, then she continued, “I know that they are a necessary evil in your line of work, but I don’t allow necessary evils in my home.”

I cleared my throat and nodded. “How about your life?” Her eyes stayed with mine.

“I’ll have to think about that.”

“Okay.” I released her hand. “Speaking of necessary evils, where’s the mudroom?”

She stood and patted the table the same way Brandon White Buffalo had earlier in the day. “Maybe I better introduce the two of you.”

I waited with my hot buttered rum and killed off the last bit of crust. For pies like this, a man could hang up the old star and gun and slowly become as large as a minivan in stretch jeans. I sat the fork down and listened to the clatter as very large claws attempted to gain purchase on the Mexican tiles. I heard mild protests and a few thumps, and I would have been alarmed but for the continued giggling that accompanied the general commotion.

He was bigger than I remembered, and I remembered him being very big. He was caught by surprise at seeing somebody besides her in the house, and the disconcerted quality was evident in the head that was as big as a five-gallon gas can and quizzically turned to the side. She still had a hold on the leather collar; if she hadn’t, I’m sure he would have gone straight for me. I heard the throaty warning start deep in his chest as I desperately tried to remember the word for stew and hoped he understood Lakota.

She slapped him on the head and growled herself. “Stop that. Now!” The change was instantaneous; the eyebrows shifted, and his head dropped. He looked like a scolded Kodiak. He began panting and looked at me with his head rising to a comfortable interest, ears forward, and with the inquisitive slant once again visible. She shook his head a little with the collar but didn’t release it. “There, you can come over and say hi.”

I stood, and his eyes traveled up with me, but he still seemed calm. I thought about what Henry had said about dogs and hoped this one wasn’t Cheyenne. As I came around the center island his tail began to wag. I knew the drill and approached, standing with my hand out, palm down and fingers in. His big head stretched forward, sniffing, then a tongue as wide as my hand lapped my knuckles. I stroked the big, furry head and scratched behind his ears as a hind paw as big as my foot thumped on the ceramic surface. “He’s a big baby.”

We took our drinks into the living room, and she brought the phone from the kitchen; she said she was expecting a call from Scottsdale. She waited on the sofa as I began making a fire in the moss-rock fireplace. The dog dutifully groaned and stretched out on the Navajo rug in front of the hearth. Periodically, his eyes would glance toward the rifle tucked into the corner by the door. He did it more than once, and I was sure he was seeing something over there that I couldn’t.

I was thinking about the Espers and Artie Small Song when I noticed her looking at me. “How’s it going?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The case. I’m betting that’s what you’re thinking about.” She took a sip of her drink and continued as I tried to think up a harmless subject to distract her with. “It’s okay. If I were you, it’s all I would think about.”

I smiled, nodded, and looked at my lap. “On the way over here, I was looking forward to spending the evening with someone who had no connection with it.”

She looked over the rim of her glass. “Great expectations.”

I took a sip of my own drink and reassessed. “I spent the day out on the reservation with Henry.”

The phone rang, and she picked it up and talked to some real estate broker in Arizona about some property she wanted to buy in the White Mountains. I listened to the one-sided conversation as they discussed an investment property that was going to cost more than our county’s yearly fiscal budget. When she hung up, I asked, “Get it?”

“She’s going to call me back. They’re being cranky about the mineral rights.” She paused for a moment. “I’m sorry, it’s incredibly rude, but if I don’t act on this now, I’m not likely to get it.”

“It’s okay.” I smiled. “You’re quite the wheeler dealer?”

“I keep my hand in. I’m acquiring a lot of property on the southern portion of the Powder River right now. I even bought some land from the family of one of those boys.”

“The Espers?”

“There’s talk of a power plant out there…” I smiled some more. “What?”

“You’re just not what I picture as a robber baron.”

“Robber baroness.” She looked at the fire.

“Something wrong?”

She took a moment to answer. “No, I was just thinking about that girl.”

“Melissa?”

“Yes.” She turned back to me. “She cleaned out here for a summer with her aunt, but it just didn’t work out.” She looked sad and changed the subject. “Walter, how in the world did you ever end up in law enforcement?”

“In the marines, during Vietnam.” I looked at her for a good while, taking in all the details. Her hair was down, and I noticed how thick and luxurious it was, held back from her face on one side by a single etched silver barrette that draped the reddish curtain behind one ear. It was like a box seat to a command performance. The earring that showed was a roweled spur studded with little turquoise and coral stones and dangling jingle bobs. She had great ears, even better than mine. Up close, I could see the wrinkles around her eyes, and it was nice. They softened the lupine slant, and the soft brown in her eyes looked inviting, like the mud on the banks of streams that beg you to take off your shoes and wade through them.

I squirmed a little and started in. “I graduated in ’66, lost my deferment and got drafted by the marines. I got the letter, and it scared the shit out of me. Hell, I didn’t even know the marines could draft you. I got through Paris Island, officer’s training, and because I was big got shuffled into the marine military police, which meant that I got to do exciting things like man checkpoints at traffic control areas, provide convoy security, investigate motor vehicle accidents, and patrol off-limit areas. And then there was the traditional task of maintaining good order and discipline within the battalion.” I turned to look at her, stiffening my back for effect.

“I guess you don’t forget that stuff.”

I laughed and looked over at the fire. “No, you don’t. Now, granted, I was just some dumb kid from Wyoming, but it was all pretty confusing.”

“The war?”

“The war, the military, a foreign country; hell, I was just getting used to California. So, I decided to devote myself to the police side of my job. It was the only part that seemed to make sense. It wasn’t easy, because the marine police were not a formalized occupational specialty. We were only cops on a rotational basis, operating under a skeleton force of navy officers. I was lucky, and after a while I gained some experience and credibility as an investigator.”

“How did you do that?”

“A couple of cases.”

“You don’t want to talk about it?”

I went back to looking at the fire. “They’re not good stories.”

“Good?”

“Happy.”

“Oh.” She shifted and warmed up both of our drinks with straight rum. “Do I seem like the kind of person who only wants to hear happy stories?”

“Maybe not, but I’m not sure I want to be the one to tell you the sad ones.” She held on to my glass and wouldn’t let me have it. I laughed. “All right, you’ve broken me.” I took a sip of the almost straight rum and thought back, remembering the heat. “In January of ’68, I was assigned as a liaison to the 379th Air Police Squadron, 379th Combat Support Group, NCOIC Air Police Investigations. A number of Corps personnel were shuttled in and out of Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base, and a lot of them were turning up self-medicated.”

“So the air force called in the marines?”

“Oh, no, not at all. They didn’t want me there, but the Marine Corps Provost Marshall’s office did. They saw it as a wonderful opportunity for me to get some on-the-job training from the investigative operations officer there who was career air force and who consequently hated my guts because I was a marine.”

“Nobody told him we were fighting the North Vietnamese?”

“Only as a secondary front.” I laughed a little at the absurdity of the situation long passed. “I was assigned to him, but I wasn’t particularly one of his. I broke up a lot of fights, patrolled a lot of outlying areas, like Laos and Cambodia…”

“You’re joking?”

“Yep, but I did get to meet Martha Raye.” This time she laughed, hard. “Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the air police I worked with were the best, but they were overworked, and sometimes it helps to have a new set of eyes come in from outside. The Vietnamese were selling it right on the base in exchange for black market items from the PX. There were an awful lot of Vietnamese military police involved as ring leaders. I tracked the problem back to air force personnel.”

“They must have really loved you for that.”

“Semper Fi.”

“What else? You said there were a couple of cases?”

“Yep, I did.” I took another hit from my drink and rested it on my knee; the plain rum with the sugar remnants and cinnamon sticks was surprisingly good. “There was this prostitute that was killed off base. We really didn’t have any jurisdiction, but I made a personal campaign out of it.”

She put her hand out and rested it along the back of the sofa near my shoulder. “How have you survived, doing this for so long? I mean, you still care.” Her eyes closed a little like they did. “Do most guys still care after thirty years in this line of work?”

I thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think they can afford it. Nobody makes an emotional bulletproof vest, so you just have to carry the shrapnel around with you.”

It took her a long time to respond. “You must be tough.”

I turned and looked at her. “No, I’m not. It’s one of my secret weapons.” She smiled. “There was this prostitute in the village up near Hotel California, this old French fort where they housed an RVAN company at the northernmost tip of Tan Son Nhut Air Base. It looked like something out of Beau Geste. It had twenty-foot walls that were three-feet thick, whitewashed concrete that formed a perfect rectangle. It had solid iron gates that shut the arched doorways into this huge courtyard with all these smaller cubicles. There was a small village out past the fence line, a civilian mortuary, and a cemetery with thousands of little white headstones…”

I thought back as I told the story, and it was amazing how all the details were still there, like some carefully packed footlocker that had withstood the consistent inspection of time. “Her name was Mai-Kim, and I met her over Tiger beers in the village at the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge. They told us not to drink the water, so I didn’t… habitually.”

“Were you a customer?”

“No, they told us not to do that either, and I was a young marine and did what I was told.” She laughed some more. “She was cute, though. Had good teeth, a rarity in that place. She was tiny, and she loved to talk about America. She took a great deal of pride in the fact that she had lots of American friends.”

“As many as money could buy?”

“Yep, but she was better than that.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“No, I know that.” I rushed ahead, so she would know that no feelings were hurt. “They had an old upright piano in the bar, and I know I single-handedly overdosed all of Vietnam with Fats Waller and Pete Johnson.” I thought for a moment. “She would read Stars and Stripes at the bar between clients, and I would help her with the pronunciations and meanings of words she didn’t understand. After the drug thing, none of the air force guys would talk to me and neither would the Vietnamese police, so I talked to her.” I paused a moment, remembering. “She had a great voice, husky like yours. Like she had just gotten out of bed.” I nodded. “In retrospect, she probably had.” Another laugh.

“She died?”

“Yes. Badly.”

I looked back at the fire and listened to the dog breathe. “Her body was found in one of our abandoned forward bunkers. She’d been raped and strangled. I still remember the crime scene. The killer had pulled down a number of the sandbags to make a bed, and it all looked so normal, until you saw her eyes or the marks on her neck.” I started to take another sip of my rum but stopped a little ways away from my mouth to just smell it. “Nobody was talking, nobody. So there I was, at the last outpost of the last war, investigating a murder that nobody cared about.” I exhaled a short breath, laughing at myself. “It was my way of introducing a little order into the chaos.”

She waited a moment, but she had to ask, “Did you get him?”

The dog yawned loudly and rolled over on his back. I watched as his huge fan of a tail slowly dropped. “War stories; I’m even boring the dog to death.”

“Who did it?”

I took another sip of my rum and got cagey. “Can’t tell you all my stories, then you wouldn’t have a second date with me.” She punched my shoulder, and I continued to lighten my tone. “She wanted to live in Tennessee. One of her customers must have sold her on it, telling her how it was the greatest place in the world. The Volunteer State, where Elvis was from; she knew everything there was to know about Tennessee.” I looked at the pineapple upside-down dog and waited, but she didn’t say anything. “Okay, let’s talk about you.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yep, fair’s fair; it’s your turn.”

“I don’t have interesting stories like you.”

I gave her my most disbelieving look. “Tell me about New York. Isn’t that where you were for all those years?”

She laughed. “I had a gallery on the Upper East Side, near Eighty-sixth Street.”

“What’d you sell?”

“Really shitty expensive art.”

“You seem defensive.”

“I’m an artist.” She swirled the sugar from the bottom of her glass. “We’re always defensive about shitty art; afraid we might be producing it.”

“Are you still sculpting?”

She was talking into her glass, her eyes avoiding mine, so I placed my arm across the back of the sofa and gently touched her hair when the phone rang again. She looked at me with a sad smile and brushed her cheek against my hand before leaning over and answering it.

I listened for a while, then got up and went over to the fire. The dog’s eye opened, and his head looked even bigger with the ears trailing up, but he didn’t move. I reached down, patted his stomach, and the eye closed. I guess he liked me, or at least he trusted me. I sat on the elevated hearth, pulled the poker from the stand at the right, and jostled the logs into a more active position. The glowing red embers made a checkerboard across the burning wood, and small sparks disappeared up into the darkness of the chimney.

The wind continued to howl in the flume, and I thought about getting home. Tomorrow was the back-to-zero day. I figured I’d start with the Cody scene; if it was a murder, that was where the killer had started. I would reexamine all the evidence: the feather, the guns, and the ballistics sample. Then I would start reinterviewing. I was going to have to circle the wagons and bring Turk back. I looked at the dog, and he was looking at the rifle beside the door again.

A little over two years, two years since the suspended sentences for all four boys. Why now? It just didn’t make sense. Why single out Cody Pritchard? He had been the most repugnant during the trial, but why kill him now? The feather was a real twist, and somehow I had to get some answers from it.

I looked back at the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead. Was it speaking in tongues? Could the dog hear it? I was dealing in a subject matter in which it was expert. I wished I had a war party of Old Cheyenne to follow me around and whisper things in my ear about life and death. Would old Little Bird or Standing Bear help me find the killer of the boy that had raped their great-great-great-granddaughter? I don’t know precisely why, but I believed they would. Lucian had told me stories about them, about their honor, their grace, and their pursuit of the Cheyenne virtues.

There was this incident back in ’49 where Lucian did this routine pullover of an older Indian couple who were driving just outside of Durant and were headed for the reservation. He said it was one of those wonderful winter nights when the wind had died down and the snow looked like scalloped icing on a vanilla cake. The moon was full and bright, bright enough for him to spot this old Dodge slide through a stop sign, make a right, and head for the Rez with no taillights. Lucian wheeled the old Nash around and pulled in behind their car to just give them a warning about the lack of illumination aft. He said it took two miles for them to pull over, and they were only doing about twenty miles an hour.

I could just see that little bandy rooster straightening his belt and buttoning up his old Eisenhower jacket as he got out and walked on two then solid legs up to the ancient, black-primer Dodge. I could see him pushing his old campaign hat back with a thumb, like he used to do, and leaning on the back of the Dodge’s windowsill as the window rolled down. “Hey, Chief.” He wasn’t joking; Frank Red Shield was a chief of the Northern Cheyenne. “I pulled you over ’cause you’ve got a couple ’a taillights out back here.”

He said the old chief ’s eyes twinkled, and he patted Lucian’s arm that rested on the car. “Oh, that’s okay. I thought you were pulling me over ’cause I didn’t have no license.”

Lucian said he nearly bit his lip to bleeding trying to not laugh until Mrs. Red Shield slapped her husband across the chest and said, “Don’t pay no attention to him, Sheriff. He don’t know what he’s sayin’ when he’s been drinkin’.”

I smiled and laughed to myself. Maybe the old guys in the rifle were already helping me. I was aware of some movement from the sofa and looked up to find Vonnie holding the phone out to me. I had been so wrapped up in my musings that I hadn’t even heard it ring again. Her face was immobile, and her shoulders shook like she was cold. “It’s for you.”

I looked at the phone, back to her, and then reached over and took it from her. She looked scared, and I suddenly felt very tired. I heard my voice say, “Sheriff.”

I listened to the static of the mobile phone and the pitched battle the wind was having with her, wherever she was. Her voice was tight, and she was straining to be heard over the howl that seemed to match its brother in the fireplace perfectly. “Well… we found one of the Espers.”