Heaven's keep

THIRTY-TWO

The next morning at seven sharp, Cork and Parmer stood at the public contact window of the Owl Creek County Sheriff’s Office. Dewey Quinn was on the desk and buzzed them through the security door. He left his chair and greeted Cork with an enthusiastic handshake.

“The sheriff told me you were in town. Good to see you.”

“Dewey, this is a friend of mine, Hugh Parmer. Hugh, Dewey Quinn.”

“A pleasure,” the deputy said. He looked at Cork questioningly. “Here for…?”

“Just here, Dewey. It’s been a while.”

“And the snow’s starting to melt in the high country,” Quinn said. “I don’t want to discourage you, Cork, but it’ll be a while before enough of it’s gone to expose the plane.”

“Thanks, Dewey. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“The sheriff’s expecting you. He told me to send you right in.”

Sheriff Kosmo stood at a window, his back to the door, which was open. Cork stepped inside, Parmer behind him. Kosmo had his hands clasped against the small of his back. He seemed intent on what lay beyond the window glass.

“Sheriff?” Cork said.

Kosmo didn’t turn. He said, “Have a seat, gentlemen.”

Two chairs with shiny metal frames and orange plastic seats and backs had been set before the desk. Cork took one and Parmer the other.

“Tell me why you’re here,” Kosmo said.

“Because you asked me,” Cork replied.

Kosmo turned to them. He looked like a man who hadn’t slept in a month. Bags of flesh hung under his eyes. His face was waxen and his lids heavy. A tall man, he looked down at them. “No, tell me why you and Mr. Parmer are here in my county.”

“I’m searching for answers to a few questions that have come up lately.”

“What questions?”

“About the plane that went missing with my wife aboard.”

“Until we locate it, we all have questions.”

“When do you expect that will be?”

The sheriff gave a moment’s thought. “When the snow in the high country has melted sufficiently.”

“I don’t think you’ll find it,” Cork said.

“Any particular reason?”

“I don’t think it’s in the high country.”

That seemed to catch Kosmo by surprise. His brows lifted, and a little energy came into his eyes. “Oh? Where do you think it is?”

“That’s one of the questions I’m here to answer.”

The sheriff walked to his own chair and sat down. He folded his hands on his desk. “What makes you think it’s not in the mountains?”

“A PI name of Stilwell came here a couple of weeks ago. Probably checked in with you. A courtesy call.”

“What of it?”

“He’s gone missing.”

“Well, I can pretty much say for certain he left this county in one piece.”

“What about Felicia Gray?”

“What about her?”

“She was asking questions about the plane crash, too. And she ended up dead in a gulch.”

“That was an accident.”

“Funny, as soon as I started asking questions about the missing plane, I had the same kind of accident. Only I was luckier than Ms. Gray.”

Kosmo sat back and gave him a long, dark, weary look. “Tell me straight what’s going on here.”

Cork laid it out for him: the mob connection, the money laundering, the possibility that Ellyn Grant was complicit in it all, including the missing charter. He didn’t tell Kosmo everything. Not wanting to show every card he held, he said nothing about his suspicion that Nightwind was the pilot or about what he suspected was the relationship between Nightwind and Grant.

Kosmo listened without interrupting. At the end, he took a breath that sounded like a bull’s snort and said, “You believe this?”

“Give me another read,” Cork countered.

Kosmo slid his rolling chair back, stood up, and returned to the window. Through the glass panes, Cork could see the main street of Hot Springs, its storefronts and businesses, mostly old buildings that had started as one enterprise and now housed another. It was clearly a town looking for a way to survive.

“Let me explain something, O’Connor. For a long time, Hot Springs had a lot of life in it. Folks used to come for the waters, stay awhile, spend money. It was a destination. Now? Hell, everybody in the United States has got a hot tub in their backyard full of water that doesn’t stink. No reason to come to Hot Springs anymore. Last couple of decades, things have been hard for folks around here. White and Arapaho.”

“My guess is that they’ve always been harder for the Arapaho.”

“Maybe so. But that casino gets built up near Yellowstone, it’s going to bring a lot of traffic through Hot Springs wouldn’t otherwise come this way. People’ll stop here for the waters and for the Blue Sky Casino.” He looked over his shoulder at Cork. “You got any idea the revenue that could bring into this county?”

“Some. We’ve got a casino in my county back home.”

“Tell me something. What if your casino shut down?”

“Who says we’re here to shut down the Arapaho casino?”

“I’m looking at the larger picture, O’Connor, the total fallout.”

“You make it sound like we intend to detonate a nuclear device.”

“Economically, the effect could be the same.”

“You’re a lawman, Sheriff. Shouldn’t you be concerned about the law?”

“My concern is the well-being of Owl Creek County. Let me tell you something else. We had us a drug problem here a while back. Significant problem, centered out on the reservation. Bunch of Mexican drug dealers married Arapaho women, began using the reservation as a base for their operation. Us, state drug task force, DEA, none of us could break it up because none of the Arapaho would talk. Family business, you know. And, hell, lot of those folks out there are dirt poor, out of work. The drug money was pretty good. Know who took ’em on and beat ’em? Ellyn Grant. Did it by offering hope mostly, a different kind of hope than the drug money and all the evil goes along with that. Stood up at great personal risk. That woman can be a pain in the ass, sure, and we don’t always see eye to eye, but there’s much about her to admire.

“Now, I’m not saying I don’t understand your motive in coming here. It’s a crazy story you tell, but you obviously believe there may be some truth to it, so I get how you must feel. What I’d like is for you and me to reach an agreement. While you’re in my county, I expect an open exchange of information. Whatever you need from me or my people, you’ve got it. In return, I want to know where you’re going, where you’ve been, and what you’ve found. Fair enough?”

“All right.”

“What’s your itinerary for today?”

“Sightseeing in general.”

“Sightseeing? You’ve got to do better than that, O’Connor.”

“Best I can do right now. Is that all, Sheriff?”

Kosmo looked at him a long time, dark and disappointed. “I’ll be watching you, O’Connor.”

“I’m sure you will, Sheriff.”

Cork stood, turned with Parmer, and they left. He stopped to talk with Quinn at the contact desk.

“You remember that TV journalist who died in a car wreck a few weeks ago, Dewey? Felicia Gray?”

“Of course. A real tragedy, that.”

“She was out here just before the accident, is that right?”

“Yeah. But she was out here a lot. Did a number of stories about the Arapaho and the casino. Always digging. I heard she wanted a job in an important television market. Denver, place like that. Maybe she thought if she came up with something big, it would be her ticket out. Believe me, I understand.”

“Who investigated the accident?”

“We did. It happened just inside our county line.”

“You find anything unusual?”

“No. Pretty clear her front tire blew. Just bad luck it happened on a curve.”

“Yeah. Bad luck. Thanks, Dewey.”

“Sure. Going to stick around and wait for the snow to melt?”

“We’re going to stick around,” Cork said.

Outside, Parmer asked, “Do you really intend to keep your promise to the sheriff?”

“About as much as he intends to keep his promise to me.”

They drove north out of Hot Springs on the highway toward Cody. Ten miles out of town, they turned west onto Horseshoe Creek Trail, a dirt road that followed a thread of water toward the distant Absarokas. The route that Rude had carefully laid out for them would take them through the north part of the Owl Creek Reservation, then southwest to their destination, a total distance of seventy miles over dirt tracks that could hardly be called roads and that, Rude had warned them, were often barely navigable.

Cork had been born and raised in Tamarack County. To him, the place he lived was alive with energy-the dance of sun off water, the song of trees in wind, the electricity of a forest just before a storm-and everywhere he looked there was only beauty. What he’d seen of the Owl Creek Reservation felt to him blasted and barren, and he wondered at the deep love the Arapaho held for the land they called home. There was a certain desolate splendor he could understand. The long ridges and buttes sculpted of red rock, the yellow sand, the pale green sage and spiked cactus, the bruised mountains looming against the iridescent sky. To be alone in such a place could, he understood, help you to an awareness that you were in the heart of a great spirit. It could also, if you were ill-prepared, scare you to death and probably kill you. It seemed a land impossible to love.

Two miles off the highway, they crossed an old wood bridge over the creek, and after that the road was rough and the going slow. Cork often kept the Wrangler to a crawl as he maneuvered up and down tiers of bare stone or around boulders strewn along the bed of a dry wash.

“You’re from the West,” he said to Parmer. “What’s the difference between a gulch, a wash, and a draw?”

Parmer said, “A wash has water in it more often than a gulch or a draw. A draw can be a temporary situation and not so pronounced. A gulch has been around and will be around for a while. It’s deeper than the other two. That help?”

“Is that true or just Texas bullshit?”

“Made it up on the spur of the moment, but damned if it doesn’t feel right to me. Rattlesnake.” Parmer pointed toward a coil on a flat sun-blasted rock to the right ahead.

“How do you know it’s a rattler?”

“Check out the pattern of its skin. Diamondback.”

As they approached, the snake uncoiled and vanished on the far side of the rock.

“Hard country,” Cork said.

“My kind of country,” Parmer said. “Reminds me of West Texas. The beauty of empty places.”

They found the connection that Rude had marked on the map, another road as desolate as the one they’d just traveled, heading toward Red Hawk, which was thirty miles to the south. Rude had given them this circuitous route at Cork’s request. Cork didn’t want anyone following where they were headed that morning. The new road was a little easier and led across low, barren hills. Small trees sometimes greened the banks of creeks where the snowmelt from the Absarokas ran. After twenty miles, they turned west onto another dirt track, rumbled over a cattle guard, and shot through a gap in an endless line of barbed-wire fencing. A sign affixed to a fence post at the side of the road read: NIGHT FLYING RANCH. NO TRESPASSING. They were now on land owned by Lame Nightwind.

They drove another half hour toward the mountains, passing cattle grazing on the low, distant hills. They climbed a rise among the foothills of the Absarokas, which were spotted with lodgepole pines. At the top of the rise, they looked down on the house and outbuildings of Nightwind’s ranch.

Cork killed the engine and reached to the backseat for a knapsack he’d packed that morning. He pulled out a pair of field glasses and got out of the Jeep. Parmer joined him. For the next couple of minutes, Cork scanned the ranch compound. There were four large structures: the ranch house; a long, low building near it that, from the wide doors, he took to be a garage; the barn with its corral; and another building so close to the barn that, without binoculars, Cork might have been fooled into thinking they were both part of a single construction. The area around the ranch house wasn’t landscaped. It had been left in its natural state. The architecture of the house, which was built of wood and rock, made the structure seem formed from the ground on which it stood. The garage was of the same design. The barn and the other outbuilding were the same red as the desert cliffs. Hay, rolled into round bales big as hippos, lay stacked against the north wall of the barn. Enclosed by a rail fence was a large pasture where several horses grazed. The pasture grass was being irrigated by a large impact sprinkler that flung out powerful bursts of water.

Cork swung the binoculars to the east. Through a trough between two hills the gray tarmac of Nightwind’s airstrip was visible. He handed the glasses to Parmer, who did his own scan of the scene.

“I don’t see anybody,” Parmer said.

“Inside maybe.” Cork spotted something to his right. “Give me the glasses.” Cork took a look at a thread of smoke rising from behind a long arm of exposed rock nestled against the side of the hill a quarter mile west of the ranch compound.

“What is it?” Parmer said.

“A small cabin. Smoke’s coming from a chimney. I can’t see much.”

“Nightwind?”

“I don’t know.”

“What now?” Parmer asked.

“We announce our presence, or we have a look at the airstrip and hangar first.”

“If we let Nightwind know we’re here, we might never get a look at what’s in that hangar.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

Cork turned the Jeep around and headed back down the rise. When they were well out of sight of the ranch compound, he struck east toward the hills that hid the airstrip. After ten minutes of careful maneuvering over rugged open ground, he parked in front of the hangar that had been built beside the strip. A steady breeze swept along the face of the foothills. The wind sock attached to the top of a pole planted at the tarmac’s edge pointed south.

They left the Wrangler and walked to the hangar door. Their shadows slid up the siding like the rattlesnake that had slithered off the rock that morning. Cork tried the door. It was locked. There were windows, but they were covered with dust, and when he wiped the glass he couldn’t see any better what was hidden inside. Parmer had separated from him and disappeared around the far end of the hangar.

“Over here,” Cork heard him shout.

He found Parmer holding a windowpane that was tilted open.

“You find it like that?” Cork asked.

“No, but it was unlocked. Mind if I go first?”

Cork held the window while Parmer climbed inside, then Parmer did the same for Cork. The hangar sheltered two planes. One was the yellow Piper Super Cub that Nightwind had flown during the search for Jo. The other wasn’t Sandy Bodine’s missing Beechcraft King Air, but it was a single engine.

“If that’s a Cessna Four Hundred, we’re in business,” Parmer said.

Cork felt every muscle draw taut as they skirted the Piper Cub and approached the other plane. Cork wasn’t familiar with aircraft, and it wasn’t until he saw the word Beechcraft on the tail that he realized it was a dead end.

“Damn,” Parmer said. “I suppose it was too much to hope for.”

They did a brief search of the hangar and found maintenance records and a flight log, which showed a lot of activity, but none of it to Wisconsin.

“What now?” Parmer asked.

“Now we go up to the house and announce ourselves to Nightwind.”

“And what? Ask him what he did with the plane and the people on it?”

“Maybe. Maybe we bluff him a little and see if we can get a feel for the cards he’s holding.”

“One gambler to another, that’s a risky strategy unless you know your opponent.”

“Got a better suggestion?”

Parmer said, “Your game. You deal the cards.”

They exited the way they’d entered. As they rounded the corner of the hangar to return to their Jeep, they were confronted by a lanky man with a rifle. He was Indian, Arapaho, Cork guessed. Maybe sixty. He wore scuffed cowboy boots, jeans, a denim work shirt, and a beat-up brown cowboy hat. His face was deep in the shadow of the hat brim, but his dark eyes were clearly visible and clearly hostile.

“You take another step, I’ll have to shoot,” he said. “Put those hands on top of your heads.”

When they’d obeyed, he pulled a walkie-talkie from a holder on his belt and spoke into it.

“Nick, you there?”

“Yes.”

“Bring the pickup down. I’ve bagged the coyotes. I think we ought to kill ’em and skin ’em.”

Those hard eyes stared from beneath the brim of the hat, and Cork understood that the man wasn’t kidding.