Hell Is Empty

3

The temperature had shifted to slightly above forty degrees, and the booming in the distant, dark clouds promised a freezing rain if we weren’t lucky. We continued to watch as the younger agents and Saizarbitoria, under the attentive eye of Special Agent Pfaff, excavated the snow from around the boulder.

McGroder and I were too old for that kind of foolishness and were sharing a thermos of really good coffee in the cab of one of the Suburbans. “And those’re the two other convicts who were in the Ameri-Trans van?”

“Yes.” He blew into his stainless travel mug-even it was black. “I’m sorry about all the cloak-and-dagger stuff, but we’re on a need-to-know basis and, until I could verify which county we were dealing with, I had to keep my cards close to the vest.”

I nodded.

He drank from his mug. “I was just as happy to not have it be Sheriff Iron Cloud’s jurisdiction.”

“Because?”

“The victim is Native American.” I looked at him as he continued to sip his coffee. “Crow, to be exact; taken from a vehicle parked at a bar/bait shop near Hardin, Montana. Shade ID’d the victim, even though the child was never reported missing.”

There was a long pause, and while I thought that one over, I heard a few frigid drops of sleet, sounding like pebbles, hit the top of the Chevrolet. I gestured toward the other Suburban.

“And those two?”

“Just your garden variety psychotic scumbags; Calvin ‘Fingers’ Moser is the one with the stringy hair, and Freddie ‘Junk-food Junkie’ Borland is the one who can’t keep still. A couple of fun-loving drug abusers from Arizona who liked to get high, kill people, and then sell the body parts.”

“Charming.”

“Isn’t it though? Through Shade they had a medical connection in Mexico to which they gave a running supply of kidneys, livers, lungs, hearts, and eyes. Years back, on some PCP-induced binge, they killed an elderly couple near Sedona and buried their bodies out in the desert. Borland was working at a livestock dismemberment plant when Shade turned them on to the guys in Central America. They pretty much drove around killing people and selling the parts.” He sipped his coffee some more and then waxed financial. “You can get forty to fifty thousand dollars for a healthy kidney on the open market. Some guy had one for sale on eBay.”

I interrupted, mostly so that I wouldn’t have to hear more. “Is that your specialty, organ trafficking?”

“No.” We continued to watch as the working class finished shoveling around the boulder, and we were faced with the eventuality of getting out of the SUV. “Pfaff’s the specialist-psychotic schizophrenia-and Ray ‘No’ Shade is the textbook for psy-schiz. No-Shade’s first American homicide was this Native American child abduction across state lines; then there’s the supposed missing 1.4 million dollars…” He grew silent but finally spoke again. “You pull up the file?”

“Only part of it. What I did read sounds like a horror movie.”

He finished off his coffee and placed the travel mug back in the holder. “That it does.”

I swallowed the rest from my thermos top and did the same, closing the doors behind us and tromping across the trampled snow to where the crew was working. They had produced a pry bar, were laboring around the edges of the rock to unfreeze it from its surroundings, and had connected a tow strap to the back of one of the Suburbans as well. There was a nudging sound, and with one more spot of leverage the boulder broke free and shifted a few inches.

“That’s enough.” McGroder produced a Maglite from his breast pocket and, shining the beam behind the rock, slipped between the other men. “Difficult to see; we’re going to have to move it further.”

A large man in one of the tactical uniforms moved to one side of the rock while another went to the opposite side. They braced themselves and heaved mightily as the tires of the Suburban spun and the distant thunder echoed off the surrounding peaks.

Nothing happened.

With a quick estimation, I figured the boulder weighed close to five thousand pounds.

They tried again but with the same results.

I glanced at McGroder. “Shade supposedly moved this by himself?” I spoke to the nearest agent. “Climb up on top and push with your legs, and I’ll try this side.” I stepped past the Fed on the left, planted a foot against the embankment, and worked my hands behind the cold surface of the rock as the agent braced his boots against it. “On three. One. Two. Three.”

Same result.

I looked up at McGroder’s arched eyebrow. “Well, even Atlas shrugged.”

I worked my hands in deeper than before, and on the count of three the rock shifted and revealed its egglike shape, with the more narrow portion being the part we’d been pushing on. We hadn’t so much moved the boulder as repositioned it, and if we were planning on doing any more, we were going to have to break out a hydraulic jack and pray we got it done before the sleet began in earnest.

McGroder leaned over the boulder with the flashlight. “That’s all we need for now.”

“They mailed him part of the jawbone in prison to get him to tell them where the money was?”

McGroder looked out at what would have been the panoramic view from Meadowlark Lodge as the sleet pounded the plateglass windows. “Shade had given the boy’s bone to them-who knows why? Maybe as a gift, maybe as a warning, but Moser and Borland still wanted their part of the 1.4 million the three of them had supposedly extorted from the organ-donor business. The bone arrived in a brown paper wrapper at the Draper, Utah, prison where Shade was being housed, with a post office box return address in Bisbee, Arizona. That’s where we apprehended the two. These guys are not exactly destined for Mensa.”

The agent mentioned Shade’s residence in Draper like the killer was renting an apartment rather than being housed in the maximum security prison for only the most violent and escape-prone prisoners in the country. “What was his name?”

“Who?”

“The boy.”

“He said it was Owen White Buffalo.”

There are moments in your life when you hear that first click of the dominoes, and you know that whatever happens from that point, it’s all going to be bad. I sat there in that moment listening to the noises inside me-my heart, the blood surging through my veins, the unwanted adrenaline that was now causing my hands to grow still and my face to become cool.

“Jesus, Sheriff. I haven’t seen a response like that in quite a while. You knew this kid?”

My mouth was dry, and I suddenly wanted more coffee. “No, but I know the family, and up until now I thought I was conversant with all their miseries.” I fought the weight in my chest by asking more questions, unsure if I was going to like the answers. “From what you’ve told me, it doesn’t fit Moser and Borland’s MO. Can you even take organs from a child that young for transplant purposes?”

“The boy was before they partnered. That’s why the other two are so quick to give Shade up-they had nothing to do with this one. Personally, I don’t think there is any money, but it got the other two to surface and that’s good enough for me. We were just going to use Shade to find the body, but I needed confirmation and that’s where the other two come in.”

The conversation we were having was only made worse by the immediate surroundings. The lodge at Meadowlark Lake had been closed for a couple of years and Holli and Wayne had not planned on renovating it until they finished with South Fork and Deer Haven, which was a couple of miles west. We sat in the empty cafe and listened to the coolers cooling nothing and the sleet hissing on the tin roof, an accompanying wind skiff kicking up snow devils across the icy surface of the lake. By all rights it was spring, but every year somebody forgot to tell the mountains.

Most of the FBI agents except McGroder were still at Baby Wagon Creek; the agent and I had elected to retreat to Meadowlark in the wake of the prisoners.

“Raynaud’s something of an opportunist. You noticed his eye?”

I tried to focus on something other than the name White Buffalo and watched the lightning strike in chains across the big lake. “I did.”

“Plucked it out himself.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that and was saved by a melodramatic clap of thunder.

“During the stint in Draper. There was an altercation between Shade and another prisoner over a female correspondent.”

I still wished we had more of the good coffee, but supplies were slow coming from South Fork Lodge, where we’d had lunch. My stomach gnawed on itself, reminding me that it was coming up on six o’clock at night. It was a Friday, which also reminded me that I hadn’t called to cancel dinner with Vic and Henry. “Shade killed him?”

“Yeah, Raynaud had a postal affair going on with the woman, and this other guy made some remarks which cost him his life. Carved him up with a homemade knife, but at the time it appeared as if he’d lost an eye in the fight, which got him sent to the medical unit, where he escaped. They consequently discovered that he’d plucked the eye out himself and cut it loose with the same shank. Shows a specific type of determination, doesn’t it?”

I looked out the window to see Saizarbitoria rushing by the parked but still running vehicles with a couple of sacks containing what I assumed was the first round of supplies from South Fork Lodge.

I wasn’t sure if I was still hungry.

My eyes stalled on the fogged windshield of our borrowed WYDOC van, where Raynaud Shade sat chained in the center with Marshal Benton sitting behind him and another marshal seated in the driver’s seat. The other prisoners, all four of them, were awaiting departure in the Ameri-Trans van under the careful eye of yet another marshal and the three Ameri-Trans employees.

The Basquo booted open the front door of the lodge with his foot. He glanced back to where Beatrice was pulling more bags from the passenger seat of her Blazer, which she had parked under the overhang of the building. “We’ve got more, but I’m not sure how you want to feed the prisoners.”

McGroder, a little daunted by the deluge outside, stood and picked up his satellite phone from the table. “In the vans and locked down. I’ll go get things coordinated with my guys.” He paused as Sancho pulled out a waxed-paper-wrapped club sandwich. “Save one of those for me, will you?”

The Basquo smiled and pulled out two more. “You bet.”

Beatrice entered with more sacks and rested them on the table. “Boy, the roads are bad from the lodge to here. This is the last of it.” She glanced at me. “Are you paying again, Sheriff?”

I gestured toward McGroder. “The federal government will be picking up the tab this time.”

The Fed took the receipt from the woman. “Don’t we always.”

He proceeded out the door with her to implement “Operation Dinner” as Saizarbitoria, still dripping from the thawed sleet, handed me a sandwich and a Styrofoam cup of coffee. “I called in and Marie said she could put Antonio down on her own. She also said that NOAA reports we’ve got a heller of an ice storm coming in-going to last the entire weekend. Any time now, it’s supposed to turn from sleet to frozen rain and then snow by morning.” He folded the wrapper down and placed his paperback on the table. There was a red, cellophane-flagged toothpick in his sandwich that he extracted and pointed toward me. “By the way, you’re in trouble.”

I broke my reverie of White Buffalos and thought about my more personal problems. “Henry or Vic?”

“Both.”

“I am in trouble.” I considered. “Can I borrow your cell phone?”

He handed the device over, and I watched as he began devouring his food-he spoke through the bacon, lettuce, and tomatoes: “Just hit SEND; they’re at her house.”

I punched the green button, held the phone to my ear, and waited.

There was an immediate answer. “Fucker.”

I sighed. “It’s not my fault.” She remained silent. “Did Saizarbitoria explain?” I glanced up, and the Basquo nodded.

“I made my Uncle Al’s lasagna rustica; do you know how long that takes?”

“I’m sorry.”

“The Cheyenne Nation, your dog, and I are all drinking wine and talking about what a shit you are.”

“Dog is drinking wine?”

She exhaled audibly. “Well, I poured him some; so far he’s just looking at it.” There was a long pause on the line. “Sancho said it was something to do with the Feds-a body?”

“Yep, and we caught the jurisdiction.” I sighed again. “Seven-year-old boy, almost a decade deceased, but there’s a very big twist. The victim’s name is Owen White Buffalo.”

I glanced up and could see the Basquo’s dark eyes grow enormous, and he stopped chewing. I nodded to him briefly and then listened to the phone. It was, by far, the longest pause yet, and her voice sounded strained. “You’re shitting me.”

“I wish I was.”

Her pitch softened a little with the wonder of our predicament. “What does this have to do with the prisoner transport?”

“One of them may have been involved with the murder in a primary way.”

I listened as she readjusted the phone. “The Shade guy?”

“Yep.”

“Figures. The voices in that fucker’s head are singing barbershop.” It was quiet, and I listened to her breathe. “Here’s Henry-you better talk to him.”

I could hear her hand him the phone, and my lifelong buddy came on the line, a man with whom I’d endured the Wyoming public school system and Vietnam. “You are in trouble.”

“More than you’ll ever know.” I explained the situation. “Do you have any idea if any of the White Buffalos had any children who might’ve disappeared about nine years ago?” I waited as he absorbed it all. I tried not to mention the four-hundred-pound Indian in the room. “Can you make some phone calls?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still have Eli’s number over in Hot Springs?”

“I do.”

“Could you check with him and then call me back here on Sancho’s cell?”

There was talk in the background, and Henry spoke again. “She wants to know if you have eaten.”

I stared at the sandwich that was still wrapped on the table in front of me. “Not yet, so tell her to save me some lasagna.” There was more talk, but I interrupted. “Hey, Henry?”

“Yes.”

“Have you had any contact with Virgil since last summer?”

“I will ask Vic to save you some lasagna.”

“Virgil White Buffalo was briefly a suspect in a homicide case we had last August.”

McGroder, trying to get a read on why I was telling him all this, studied me as he ate his turkey sandwich. “Uh huh.”

“He wasn’t guilty, but he did display a number of antisocial characteristics and is… at large.”

The Basquo stated flatly, “In more ways than one.”

McGroder glanced at Sancho and then back at me. “What the hell does that mean?”

“He’s a very big man.”

The Utah agent studied me. “Bigger than you?”

“Much.” I took my hat off and balanced it on my knee. “In our part of the world, he’s what some people refer to as an FBI.”

Sancho provided the translation: “Fucking Big Indian.”

McGroder stopped chewing. “Dangerous?”

“He has had his moments.”

The agency man set his sandwich down. “Let me get this straight. You’ve got a giant Indian sociopath running around in these mountains who may be related to our victim?”

I noticed he’d lost the politically correct sobriquet. “I’m checking on that, and besides, he may not be anywhere near here. All we have are rumors. The Cloud Peak Wilderness Area alone is 189,039 acres and it’s completely surrounded by the Bighorn National Forest, so the chances of running into him or of him knowing anything about your investigation are slim.” I drank some of my coffee and listened to my stomach complain about waiting for the lasagna. “We didn’t know about the investigation until a few hours ago.”

McGroder sat there looking at his half-eaten sandwich, his appetite having just taken a hit. “I don’t like coincidences.”

“I’m not too fond of them myself, but I thought it was information you should have.”

“Thank you.” His hand came up and covered most of his face.

“There’s another concern.”

He looked at me through his fingers. “There is?”

“Have you guys checked the weather recently?”

The agent glanced out the window with a glum expression. “It’s shitty. Why?”

We both watched as the waitress pulled her aged SUV from the lot and turned left, driving carefully onto Route 16. I assumed she was done for the night and heading home the twenty miles to Ten Sleep where she probably lived.

“It may get worse. The temperature is dropping and in an hour or so this whole mountain range is going to be encased in a couple of inches of ice.”

McGroder sighed, and I continued. “There aren’t any working facilities open in any of the lodges around here, so you’re going to have to haul your people back to South Fork Lodge. I think you should secure the scene and get the rest of these prisoners off the mountain.”

He plucked the Motorola from his hip and clicked the mic. “AT, when can you be ready to go?”

After a moment, a strong signal came back from the van in the parking lot.

Static. “Can we eat first?”

He glanced at me, and I spread my hands.

McGroder clicked the mic again. “As soon as you’re done, get out of here.” He rested the radio on the table and looked at me. “Six hundred and some miles back to Salt Lake?”

“Six hundred fifty miles from Durant, about eight hours in good weather.” We both looked out the windows again. “Which you are not going to have until you descend a couple thousand feet.” My eyes stayed on the DOC van holding Raynaud Shade. One of the marshals was proffering bags of food to Benton, who divided it and handed some to the prisoner. “What about him?”

“He stays.” McGroder sipped his coffee. “But there’s no reason that you have to. If I had a warm bed and hot lasagna an hour away, I’d be leaving skid marks.”

I glanced at my deputy, who was making a pretense of reading and probably anxious to get home to his wife and young son. “You’re sure you don’t need us?”

“In about twenty minutes, I’m going to have a mobile task force of two field agents and four marshals to guard only one man.” He stood and extended his hand. “I think we can handle it. Would you mind borrowing one of our vehicles so that we can keep him in yours?”

I placed my hat back on my head and reared up into a standing position. I could see the relief on Sancho’s face as McGroder handed me a set of keys. It was nice that I hadn’t had to remind him that even though it was his investigation, it was still my county. “When do you want us back at the scene?”

“Weather permitting, probably early in the morning-say 0800.”

We shook hands, and I stared at his crew cut again. “Semper Fi?”

He grinned. “Yeah, you?”

I picked up my coffee and put the lid back on. “First Division.”

Wearing a pasted-on smile, he slapped me on the shoulder. “Get some sleep, Sheriff. I’ll see you at South Fork in the morning.” He stretched a hand toward Saizarbitoria but looked at the both of us. “Thanks for your help, Deputy. If I don’t see you again and you’re ever over Salt Lake way, look me up. I’ll get you over to The Pie for a good pizza.” As we got ready to go, he picked up my wrapped sandwich and tossed it to me. “Something for the road?”

“Class act.”

“Yep.” I was contemplating the sandwich in my lap and wondering if I could eat it now and the lasagna later. The Basquo momentarily slid the borrowed Suburban into a turn, then carefully corrected and straightened. “Slick?”

He nodded but kept his concentration on the road. “Like greased goose shit.”

“Better slow down.”

He heeded my unneeded advice, and we rolled/slid along the road at forty-five. “You think the Shade guy did it?”

“Well, he all but admitted to it when I took him to the bathroom.” I thought about the adopted Crow Indian we’d passed on our way to the borrowed federal vehicle. He had been eating while Benton, still holding the shotgun, watched. The marshal had nodded to us as we’d walked by in the freezing sleet, but it was Raynaud Shade’s eye, the glass one, that seemed to track along with us as we passed. The thing was wayward at best and it was probably just another reflection, but it was as if the dead eye was watching me.

“What?”

I turned to look at the Basquo. “Hmm?”

He continued to study me. “You were thinking of something?”

I fiddled with the waxed paper. “Did you read the file on Shade?”

“No.”

“He was one of the last of the Tukkuthkutchin tribe up in Canada-Northwest Territories.” I refolded the sandwich and stared out the window. “Transferred from one of the residential boarding schools to a private orphanage when he was eight. They tested him, and his IQ was off the chart. Raynaud ran away to live with his non-Indian father, who took responsibility for him. Two years later a social worker stopped in to check on the boy and discovered that the father had died eight months earlier.”

Sancho stared ahead. “What’d you do, commit the file to memory?”

I thought about it, about the parts I wasn’t telling. “That ten-year-old boy had been living in a cabin with his dead father in the bedroom for eight months. He got kicked around to a number of foster homes before being adopted by a couple in Lodge Grass. The woman was Cree; her husband, Crow. She was related to Shade’s mother, but there were problems, behavioral and otherwise; he ended up dropping out of school. That must’ve been the period when he killed Owen White Buffalo, and who knows who else. He returned to Canada and joined the army up there-Dwyer Hill Training Center outside Ontario.”

Sancho reached down and turned the defrosters to full, and I watched the already-ice-encased tree line as we passed, the conifers looking like some gigantic army standing at attention along both sides of the road.

“He was married, and his wife disappeared during a camping trip. There was a provincial hunt in Ontario, but she never turned up-must’ve killed her, too. A year later one of Shade’s buddies went missing, and the Ottawa Police Department started asking some questions. The military stonewalled it, but Shade was drummed out. He turned up as a suspect again in Factory Island Reservation, Ontario, in a search for an outfitting business partner a couple of years later. He was arrested, and when they searched his apartment they discovered blood trace from the guy he killed.”

“Jesus.”

I pulled my cup from the holder and sipped my coffee. “They stuck him in Kingston Penitentiary, but he got transported to a psychiatric prison for observation and, after three months there, he escaped into the U.S., hid out up in Lodge Grass, and killed the old couple that had taken him in when he was a child.”

Saizarbitoria shook his head as we slid around another sweeping corner.

“He’s supposedly a very interesting case, a specific form of psychotic schizophrenic where the subject is overcome by a culture-bound syndrome and hears voices-sees…” I couldn’t help but pause. “Sees apparitions. He refers to them as the ‘Seldom Seen’ and believes that he’s actually possessed by evil spirits that force him to sacrifice others.”

“Sounds like the old Basque priest at the Catholic Church who believes in fairies.”

I nodded. “The versions vary from tribe to tribe, but these spirits are purported to be malicious, supernatural beings. The people they inhabit supposedly have malevolent spiritual powers but are shunned by their own people.”

There was some chatter on the Feds’ radio about the mobile unit coming down from Baby Wagon, and I was glad to hear it. The Basquo slowed for another curve, and I could feel the Chevrolet fishtail. He glanced at me. “You believe that stuff?”

I was just as glad that he hadn’t been privy to my experiences in this very area of the mountains more than a year ago, when I had seen and heard my share of strange things. “I believe there were spiritual signposts that these tribes put into place so that no matter how dire the situation, the members would never be tempted to do things the tribe considered absolutely taboo.” I felt tired and slouched into the seat. “Imagine beginning to see people, things that no one else can see, and in punishment the real people around you begin drawing away-leaving you to these… spirits.”

“Isn’t that kind of like pitting the monsters of your imagination against the monsters of human nature?”

I smiled. “You have been reading your Dante.” I stared out the side window and wasn’t smiling when I made the next statement. “Wonder who would win.”

At the next bend, I could see a few dusk-to-dawn lights over the cabins that comprised South Fork. “I want you to drop me off at the main lodge; I’ll just stay up here tonight.”

He hunched his shoulders. “You’re going to be in even more trouble.”

“I know.” I looked down at my lap. “Could you call and tell them I won’t be coming to dinner after all?”

He glanced at me again as we gently slowed, listening to the sleet being thrown by the tires. “Why do you want to stay?”

“I just don’t feel good about leaving those guys up here by themselves in this weather.”

He nodded and turned in the drive. “I’ll stay, too.”

I looked at the headstrong Basquo, at the same time thinking about the promise I’d made his wife a couple of months back about keeping him out of harm’s way-even if harm was just keeping him up on the mountain for a night. “No, you won’t. Go home.”

He pulled the Suburban up to the porch at the front of the lodge, and we both peered through the windshield into the darkened windows-there were only a few lights on. “Looks like you might have to go down, too.”

After a moment, though, Holli emerged from the kitchen, passed the counter to the glass doors, and squinted in our headlights. She pulled on a coat, pushed open the door with an arm over her eyes, and shouted. “Can I help you?”

I rolled down the window of the SUV and hung my head through. “Holli, it’s me, Walt Longmire.”

She approached, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Hey, Sheriff.”

I shifted my hat back; the sleet smacked the ground around us like shrapnel. “The Feds call you?”

“About the food?”

“No, they’re going to need beds up here for the night.”

“Nope.”

That was odd.

She stuffed her hands in her pockets only to bring them out a moment later. “How many?”

“About a half dozen, and one for a prisoner.”

She zipped her fleece over her stained apron and pulled up the collar. “Unfortunately, I have rooms. A lot of my guests couldn’t make it in.”

“You have seven plus one?”

“Who else?”

“Me.”

She looked past the hood of the Suburban to the cabin nearest the lodge. “I can stick you in the hired hand’s bunk. It’s small, but it’s got a single in it.”

“That’ll do. Thanks.” I pushed open the door and stepped out with the sandwich in my hands. “Kitchen closed?”

She looked sheepish. “I’m afraid so. Good thing you brought your own.”

I began unwrapping it. “I’ll wait up for the Feds.”

“That’s okay, Walt. You get some sleep. I’ll get Beatrice to do that, wherever she’s gone off to.”

Holli flipped a few fingers at Saizarbitoria as I closed the door, and the Basquo waved back but he still sat there, parked.

I thought about how I’d seen the waitress turning left as she got back on the main route. “Last time we saw her, she was headed toward Ten Sleep.” I took a bite of my moveable feast.

“Well, damn it, I guess she decided to go home.”

The club sandwich was good, and I was starved. I swallowed a bite and reached in the open window to retrieve my cup of lukewarm coffee from the holder on the dash. “Maybe she misunderstood or got scared of the roads.”

The lodge owner nodded, not very happy with the situation.

Sancho called out from the driver’s seat, “You sure you don’t want me to stay?”

“I’m sure.” I took another bite of my sandwich and backed away from the truck to allow the Basquo to escape. I had taken a step back when I felt something in my mouth other than bread, turkey, bacon, lettuce, and tomato. I handed Holli my cup of coffee.

“Something wrong, Sheriff?”

I reached into my mouth and pulled out what I thought might’ve been one of the little, flagged toothpicks that held the sandwich together but instead found a bobby pin with one of the small, cellophane flags attached.

I held it up for both of us to see.

“Jeez, Walt, I’m sorry.” Holli ran a hand through her thick hair. “Not mine.”

We both laughed, but the laughter died as I held the thin piece of metal up and could see that the protective tip had been removed from one end and that it had been bent into two opposite-facing right angles near the head-so that it looked like a key.