End Game

CHAPTER 8

Robie and Reel rode government wings to Denver, landed, and retrieved a large, hard-sided case that was waiting for them at the airport. They had reserved a big Yukon, and they loaded in their stuff and set off heading northeast.

They had not spoken on the three-hour flight and had passed the town of Fort Morgan on Interstate 76 before Robie broke the silence.

“Eastern Plains. Westernmost section of the Great Plains where it notches into Nebraska. Not much out here. Pawnee Buttes, Comanche National Grassland. Rolling hills, flat farmland, one-room schoolhouses, forests, canyons, rivers, and lakes. Not much rain. Small towns. Yuma and Sterling are big cities out here. Dwindling populations. People heading to somewhere else. Never really recovered from the Dust Bowl in the thirties.”

Reel glanced at him. “Thanks for the guided tour,” she said drily.

“Just making small talk.”

“Since when?”

“Since now, apparently. You know, to fill in the gaps that appeared out of nowhere.”

She made no reply to this, but stared back out the window at the stark, rugged landscape as they got off the interstate and kept going more east than north. As they drove on, the conditions of the roads deteriorated from paved to gravel, and Reel saw some roads that were only dirt.

They’d passed one farmhouse in the last four miles. The rest of the land was just empty.

“I guess Blue Man liked his privacy,” she said.

“Didn’t know he was from here. Or that he was a fly fisherman.”

“It wasn’t that sort of a relationship,” replied Reel. “It was just work.”

“Maybe for you.”

She shot him a glance. “I want to find him too, Robie.”

“Never doubted it.”

The “town” of Grand seemed a misnomer, as there were only about sixty structures total on the macadam street that constituted the main downtown area. A few streets bled off the main one on either side. The buildings there were a mixture of businesses and private residences. It seemed that most people did not live in town, preferring the wide-open spaces that surrounded Grand.

Robie pulled the Yukon to a stop in front of one of the buildings with a sign proclaiming it to be the Town of Grand’s sheriff’s office. A dusty cop cruiser, a Ford Mustang, was parked out front.

Robie and Reel got out of the Yukon and stood in front of the station.

“What were their names again?” asked Reel.

“Valerie Malloy and Derrick Bender. Sheriffs and detectives all rolled into one.”

“Which one is the boss?”

“She is. He’s the deputy sheriff.”

“Well at least they got that right,” noted Reel.

She stepped forward and opened the door, while Robie shot her a glance.

The front room was small and warm, and the glare of sunlight coming through the single window made it hard on the eyes.

The door of an interior room opened, and a woman in her midthirties appeared there. She was in uniform, which rode well on her lanky, athletic frame. Her hair was dark and hung straight to her shoulders. Her face held sharp angles, and the overall effect was quite pretty. However, these features were flexed into a scowl, which was not attractive at all. The dark hair was paired with icy blue eyes. Her gun belt encircled her narrow waist. She placed one hand on top of her service pistol as she looked across the width of the room at them.

“Sheriff Malloy?” said Reel.

“Yes?”

“We’re here about Roger Walton? I assume you got a call?”

Malloy stepped forward after giving first Reel and then Robie a long, scrutinizing look.

“I did. They said someone would be coming. You have ID? I like to know who I’m dealing with.”

Reel and Robie pulled their IDs and held them up. They weren’t their real creds, but these would pass any check that Malloy could run.

“Who exactly is this Walton guy that two Feds show up here?”

“He exactly is someone we want to find,” said Robie crisply.

“So he’s important to the Feds or something?”

“Or something.”

“He’s not a criminal you’re looking for?”

“What makes you say that?” asked Reel.

“I like to cover my bases. Is he?”

“No. He’s one of the good guys.”

“Were those your real creds?” she asked.

“Why wouldn’t they be?” asked Reel.

“I haven’t always worked out here. I used to be a cop back in New York. We dealt a lot with the Feds back there. They weren’t always straight with us. I doubt things have changed.”

“I doubt they have, too” was all Robie would volunteer.

“What made you trade New York for… this?” asked Reel.

“Life.” She turned and motioned for them to follow her into her office.

She closed the door behind them and indicated two straight-backed wooden chairs fronting a gunmetal-gray desk with two large dents and what looked to be a bullet hole in the right side.

Perched on a wooden file cabinet was a fan that looked about sixty years old. It halfheartedly moved warm air from one side of the room to the other.

There was a wall air conditioner unit, but its unplugged power cord dangled against the wall like a limp snake.

On another wall was a large duty roster with only two names on it, hers and Bender’s. His status was shown as “on patrol.”

Her chair squeaking, Malloy sat down and looked at them over the neatly arranged items on her desk.

“Roger Walton.”

“That’s the man,” said Reel.

“I Googled him. Didn’t find anything other than some distant Walmart heirs that had nothing to do with your guy.”

“Our guy’s not in retail.”

“State cops were here for a bit. Then they left. I wonder if they were called off?”

“I wonder,” said Reel curtly.

“And then you guys show up. I thought it would be more than two. I thought maybe some private jet would wing it in here and a whole team of people dressed in black with MP5s might ride a motorcade into our humble town.”

“Nope, just us,” said Robie.

Reel said, “You have a file on this? We’d like to see it.”

“I have a file and I’ve been told to share it.”

“Okay,” said Reel expectantly.

“But I’m not looking to get pushed off an investigation on my turf. We work this, we work it together.”

Robie glanced at Reel. She kept her eyes on Malloy.

“Where in New York?”

“NYPD, first the Bronx, then Queens. Then I moved out to Westchester.”

“Tired of getting shot at?”

“No, my boyfriend at the time thought it would improve my mood at home. It didn’t.”

“You ever work any cases beyond uniform?”

“I had my papers in for detective before I left. I’ve got my forensics certifications. I notice stuff. I sweat the details. And this is my town,” she added. “I know everybody here. And I mean everybody, because there aren’t that many of us.”

“I can see that,” said Reel. “What do you say, Robie? In or out?”

“If she can help us, I don’t have a problem.”

Reel turned back to Malloy. “The file?”

The door opened.

Standing there was a tall, uniformed man in his thirties with wide shoulders and hips so narrow his pants seemed in danger of sliding off him. His blond hair was short on top and longish in back, as though the hair was sliding off his head. He held a sweat-stained Stetson in his hand. His face looked like it had been out in the sun and wind since his birth. His facial features were long and slender, like narrow gullies cut through hard rock by water.

“Thought you were on patrol,” said Malloy, frowning slightly.

The man took a long step forward. “I was. Finished. And heard they were in town.”

“And how’d you hear that?” asked Reel.

The man glanced at her. “Folks saw your Yukon.”

“Is that so unusual?”

“It is if we don’t know who’s driving it. Know every Yukon round here. Hell, there’s only five. And none of ’em are black. Or new, like yours. With Florida plates. Rental, most likely,” he added knowledgably.

He pulled up a chair, sat down next to Robie, and put out a big, weathered hand.

“Deputy Sheriff Derrick Bender. Pleased to meet you. We don’t get many Feds out here.”

Robie shook his hand. “Will Robie. My partner here is Jessica Reel.”

Bender offered his hand to her. After they shook he glanced at Malloy.

“We were just going to go over the file on Mr. Walton,” said Malloy.

Bender grunted and sat up a little straighter, his holstered gun smacking lightly against the wood of the chair. “Damnedest thing. Man comes into town and then disappears.”

“He came out here every year,” said Reel. “So I suppose you’ve run into him before?”

“I haven’t,” said Malloy. “Because I’ve only been here about a year. In my official capacity. Before that I would come and visit my sister, Holly, who lives here. But I never ran into your Mr. Walton.”

Bender rubbed his face and then tossed his Stetson across the room, where it neatly settled on a hook on the wall.

“I met him before. Lots of times. Like you said, he came out here most every year. Fishing up in the rivers, lakes, and streams. Watched him a few times. Man knew what he was doing. People think fly-fishing is easy. Well, it ain’t. Takes skill. And patience.”

“Did you ever speak to him?” asked Robie.

“Oh yeah. Nothing in particular. Just chitchat.”

“He was from this area,” said Reel.

Bender nodded. “My momma knew Mr. Walton pretty well. They went to high school here together. Long before I was born, he’d gone. Headed east. Guess he wanted to get the hell out of here.”

“He ever do anything besides fish?” asked Reel. “Did he mingle? Catch up with old friends?”

“Sometimes. There’s the Walleye Bar. He’d go there. Most visits he’d have dinner with my momma at her house. I was there for a few of them. Once he brought some fancy French wine.” Bender shook his head. “Just give me a good old American beer.”

“Did he visit your mother this time?” asked Reel.

“Not that I know of.”

“We’ll have to confirm that,” said Reel.

“Did you see him this trip?” asked Robie.

Bender nodded. “He was staying at the same place he usually did. Little cabin up on the north face of Kiowa Butte. One road up and down. About a half mile from the cabin is the river he’d fish in. A trib runs off the North Platte. It’s tailwater fishing.”

When they looked at him quizzically he said, “Meaning downriver from a dam. In this case the Jedediah Smith Dam. Water releases from the bottom of the dam so it keeps the temperature stable. Good for fishing. You can catch brown and rainbow trout, some perch, walleye, smallmouth. Now, the South Platte over near Denver is better fishing. Lots of tourists go there to fish. But we get some here, too.” He paused. “The Platte’s where we get most of our water. We don’t get too much rain here. Only way we can farm is to irrigate the crops. The North and South Platte Rivers hook up to form the Platte River in Nebraska. Then it connects with the Missouri and the Missouri to the Mississippi, and that sucker flows all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Quite something when you think about it.”

Reel and Robie exchanged a puzzled glance at this long tangent, then Reel said, “Did you talk to Walton this time?”

Bender waggled his head. “No, I sure didn’t.”

“When was the last time anyone actually saw him?” asked Robie.

Malloy opened her file. “Three days ago. He came into town to get some more fishing line. He ate at the restaurant across the street. I’ve spoken to the waitress and she said he seemed perfectly normal. Same for the fishing gear shop. Then he drove back up to his cabin and that’s the last anyone saw of him.”

Robie said, “Any signs of something unusual at the cabin? Our notes say his rental car was still there.”

“No signs of a break-in or a struggle, if that’s what you mean,” replied Malloy. She closed the file. “Now maybe we should head up there and look around. Might find something that strikes you. After all, I assume you knew the man.”

Did we? thought Robie as they headed out.