Junkyard Dogs

13

Saizarbitoria had the misfortune of the first watch and had walked in with a fancy cup of coffee from the kiosk out by the new Wishy-Washy Laundromat at a little before seven. I couldn’t see much, and my face still felt like it might fall off, so he drove my truck up the mountain.

“So, do you think Felix Polk kidnaps Carla Lorme because she sees him answering the phone at the bar?”

“Yep.”

“Which means that Felix Polk is the one who received Ozzie Dobbs’s phone call just before somebody shot him, which places Mr. Polk at the top of our to-do list?”

“Yep.”

“Because he’s the only guy we know of who is missing a thumb?”

“Yep.”

He slowed as we made the steep grade alongside North Ridge and toward Grouse Mountain—the snow piled on the side of the road was almost at the top of the twelve-foot reflector poles. It was early, and there was no one else on the road. “So, how long have you known who the thumb belonged to?”

I fessed up. “Since day one. Felix Polk came in and asked for his thumb back.”

“So why did you have me running all over the place trying to find out whose it was when you already knew?”

I opened my eyes and sort of looked at him. “I was trying to give you something to do until something else came along.” He didn’t look back at me but continued to stare out the windshield.

I could see his mouth moving as he thought, but he didn’t say anything out loud. I looked through the side window. I was tired and my eyes hurt, but my mind was like a dynamo and refused to curl up and lie down. I took another breath and glanced at Saizarbitoria. You can’t see things like what I’d seen and not have it change you, any more than the Basquo could have what happened to him and think it wouldn’t change him.

When my eyes refocused, he was looking at me as if I’d said something.

“What?” His face remained immobile, and he turned back to the fog-blanketed road. “You said something. What’d you say?”

“Stay alive.”

His eyes drifted halfway between the windshield and me. “What?”

“I said ‘stay alive,’ and I don’t just mean physically. Don’t let this one instance rob you of who you are and of everything you’ve got.”

He leaned forward, peering through the gloom as if concentration would block my words. Neither of us said anything more, until I pointed out the barricaded roadway that led into the canyon where Felix Polk’s cabin sat.

“The gate’s locked.” The air was cold but felt good on the scoured skin of my face.

“Looks like we walk in.” I gestured back to Dog still seated in the backseat but poised to jump in the front if I opened the door. “Stay.”

We tromped around the pipe blockade the Forest Service made the private property owners erect and started down the lane. The snow was piled high on either side where he must’ve used the front blade on the Jeep to keep the roadway passable. There were two tracks from Polk’s Wagoneer running down the center, and the Basquo and I took a tread apiece to keep the slogging to a minimum.

The humidity in the air had frozen on all the surfaces of the trees, and it was like some forest prism. “The tracks look relatively fresh, if the snow’s been steady.”

Sancho nodded. “Yeah.”

At least he was trying.

There was a larger opening farther down the road and a spot where you could turn around if you had to, then the darkened archway that led along Caribou Creek.

“How far to the place?”

“About a hundred yards, up on the right against the canyon wall.”

He looked around. “Lots of trees.”

“Yep.”

“You want to split off and come up from the back, and I’ll head straight in?”

I stopped for a moment and flipped the collar up on my jacket—the snow was filtering through the ground fog. The two of us stood there with our breath hovering in our faces. “Nope.”

“How come?”

“Because my foot hurts, I’m tired, and my face still feels like I’ve been bobbing for French fries.”

He shrugged. “You want me to hike in and go in the back?”

“Nope.” I gave the Basquo what I thought was a gentle smile, but with the amount of feeling I had in my features, who knew what I looked like. “He’s just a fellow who broke into a garage to steal his own truck thirty years ago and had the misfortune of pinching his thumb off in a log splitter. He might be the guy we’re looking for and, then again, he might not.”

Sancho nodded and pulled at the black hair on his chin. “Your call.”

We both listened to the wind as it clawed its way over the top of the canyon. “We’ll go straight in.”

The trail led slightly uphill and turned a little so that we couldn’t see the cabin. There were some logs along the road where Polk must’ve cut up some of the dead standing trees but had yet to haul them to the splitter.

Saizarbitoria was working with younger legs, but I had the inside curve, and we approached the Wagoneer at about the same time. The vehicle was parked in the center of the road with the bladed front pointed toward the cabin.

There was eight inches of snow on the hood, and I felt the surface where the heat had melted the snow to a skin of ice under the accumulation of powder. I looked up and took a reading on the flakes hanging in the air between us—ten, twelve hours at the least since the vehicle had been moved. That would’ve put it in the abduction ballpark.

“What are you thinking?”

I looked at the Basquo and glanced up at the shadow of the cabin, where you could see the overhang of the porch. “Could be he plowed this road last night so that he’d be able to get out this morning.”

“Could also be that he was out kidnapping bartenders.”

“Could be.” I wiped the snow from a side window but couldn’t see a ski mask lying there or Carla Lorme. “Could be not.”

The wind was grazing the tops of the trees, causing them to undulate like hula dancers. The snow was sifting through the low-flying clouds, and it hung in the air like glitter.

“What the hell are you people doin’ out there?!”

So much for sneaking up on the man.

“Mr. Polk, it’s Walt Longmire.”

“The sheriff ?”

“Yes, sir. You mind if we come up?”

He laughed. “Well, you better, before you get so covered up with snow that you can’t move.”

I didn’t look at Sancho but continued past the Wagoneer and toward the cabin. He trailed behind me and soon we were standing on the porch, which was covered with piles of snow curving over the gutters like hanging avalanches.

Felix Polk was dressed in what appeared to be his daily uniform—Carhartt overalls, thermals, and a flannel shirt/ jacket. I noticed he was in his stocking feet. “You here to sell tickets to the sheriff’s ball?”

I smiled at the old joke and gave the standard reply. “We don’t have balls.”

“That’s too bad for you. Come on in.”

We stepped into the living room of the cabin and the immediate warmth of the fireplace to our left. There were three doors adjacent to the main room, two bedrooms to the left, and a bathroom in the back and to our right; all the doors were open. “Mr. Polk, this is my deputy, Santiago Saizarbitoria.”

The man did not, I noticed, stick his hand out to Sancho. “That’s a mouthful. You Mexican?”

Sancho studied the Nazi flag over the fireplace, looked at me, and then pointedly at Felix Polk. “Basque.”

The machinist looked unsure. “What’s that?”

I answered. “High-altitude Mexican.”

He still looked puzzled and gestured to the kitchen. “Coffee?”

“Oh, just more than life itself.”

We followed him, and I thought I might have seen something stuffed at the small of his back. Polk poured us a few mugs and sat at his kitchen table as he had previously when I’d enlisted his help in my intrigues. “What’s wrong with your face?”

I tipped my hat back and unbuttoned my coat. “I had a little adventure with some pepper spray.”

He nodded but didn’t look particularly concerned. “So, what brings you fellers up this high?”

“Mr. Polk, I’ve got a—”

Santiago interrupted. “You mind if I use your bathroom, Mr. Polk?”

He sipped his coffee, and I noticed that the bandage on his thumb was smaller but still evident. “Felix. I told your boss here, just Felix.” He gestured toward the doorway. “Powder room’s back there.”

Sancho disappeared, and I figured he was casing the other rooms to see if Carla Lorme might be stashed in plain sight. I stretched my face and looked at Polk in the silence of the kitchen. “Lots of snow last night.”

“That’s for sure.” He seemed uninterested in the conversation and smirked into his mug. “I was about to throw together a little breakfast; you fellers want anything?”

“No, thanks. I think we’re fine.”

He looked up and smiled in a personable way. “You’re sure? I got eggs I picked up from a woman over in Tensleep, fresh as the day is old.”

“That’s okay.” The Basquo reappeared, and I turned back to Polk. “Felix, we had a situation where a woman was kidnapped last night.”

Once again, he didn’t look overly concerned. “Really?”

Sancho stood, leaning against the refrigerator, and ignored the mug of coffee meant for him. “Yes, sir, and the only remarkable distinction that we have is that the man who participated in the abduction had a bandaged thumb.”

Polk’s eyes drifted to mine and then back to Saizarbitoria. “Uh-huh.”

The Basquo unzipped his jacket and hitched his thumbs in his gun belt. “Well, you have a bandaged thumb, Mr. Polk.”

The machinist made a comical face but kept his eyes on my deputy. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

Saizarbitoria was on a roll, so I let him continue talking to Polk. “Were you here last night?”

His eyes switched to me but had lingered on Santiago long enough to telegraph his displeasure at Sancho’s line of questioning. “Where the hell else would I be in a blizzard?”

“Is there anybody who can corroborate that statement?” The Basquo’s voice sounded a little strident, and I judged that some of it was general annoyance and some of it was aimed at Polk.

“Statement, huh?” He put his coffee down. “What? You here to arrest me?” I studied the man’s face, and it was like there was something wild playing behind it, attempting to break through the skin.

I scooted my chair back and cleared my throat to get his attention. “Felix, we’re not accusing you. We’re just trying to get an accurate understanding of your whereabouts last night, say around nine o’clock?”

He looked me directly in the eye. “You go to hell.”

We all sat there in the statement’s afterlife. There are few enough things I do really well, but one of them is the ability to outwait someone in conversation. Polk looked sideways at his arm and then spoke. “I plowed my road out last night just before dark, and that’s the only time I’ve stirred from this cabin.” He looked back at Sancho. “And no, there aren’t any goddamned witnesses.”

Santiago shifted his weight against the refrigerator, and I thought for a moment he was going to try and slap his cuffs on the man. “You seem agitated, Mr. Polk.”

“Damn right I’m agitated. I lose my thumb and suddenly become public enemy number one.” He stood, carried his mug to the counter and refilled it, momentarily out of the Basquo’s line of sight—and then he winked.

I sat there for a few seconds, making sure I’d seen what I thought I’d seen.

He moved back toward the table but stood there with his mug and stared at Saizarbitoria in defiance.

“Felix, did you just wink at me?”

He looked surprised and worried at the same time. “What?”

It was quiet in the kitchen.

“Did you just wink at me?”

“No.”

It was a blatant lie, and I could see from the expression on his face that he knew I knew it. “Felix, you did. Just now, when you were pouring your coffee.”

“What? No I didn’t.” He stood there glancing back and forth between my deputy and me. “What?” Suddenly, his shoulders sagged, and I became aware that he’d been tense enough to hold them in that fashion since we’d arrived. “God damn it . . .” His head dropped, and he stared at the floor.

“Mr. Polk?”

His voice bounced off the linoleum floor. “Well, how much of an outlaw do you want me to be?”

It was my turn to be a little dumbfounded. “Excuse me?”

He threw out his hands, and I saw Sancho reach for his sidearm. “For the kid, here? I’m supposed to be playin’ like I’m some kind of criminal, right?”

It suddenly dawned on me that Felix Polk had been performing a role I’d partially assigned him in my last visit. I couldn’t help myself and started laughing. Both he and Saizarbitoria looked at me as if I’d lost my marbles. “Felix . . .” I cleared my throat and carefully wiped my sore eyes. “Um, my deputy knows that the thumb we found was yours.”

He looked at the Basquo. “He does?”

“Yep.”

Polk shook his head in a dismissive manner and reached for something at his back and under his heavy shirt. “Well, damn it to hell.” A snub-nosed .38 clattered onto the kitchen table.

Saizarbitoria had his semiautomatic out faster than a quick-draw artist could paint a line and had pinned the large man against the counter with a vicious reverse wrist-lock. “Don’t move!”

I was up as quick as my high-mileage body would allow and rested a hand on Sancho’s shoulder. “It’s okay, he’s—”

Polk pushed away from the counter, but Saizarbitoria planted him firmly, kicked his legs out, and held the Beretta at the man’s head. “I said, don’t move!”

“The damn thing’s not loaded!”

I kept my hand on my deputy’s shoulder. “Let him go.”

He didn’t look at me but eased the pressure. Polk turned, and the look on his face made it clear that he saw little humor in the situation. The Basquo released him completely, then stepped back, still holding his sidearm beside his leg. “Somebody want to tell me what’s going on here?”

I put a hand out to keep Felix Polk where he stood, still leaning against the kitchen sink. “It’s my fault. I think there’s been a mistake, and Felix here thought that I wanted him to do more than I really did.”

Sancho still held his Beretta at the ready. “What are you talking about?”

“I told you about how we found out whose thumb it was pretty quick, but I asked Mr. Polk to keep it quiet so that we could give you something to do.” I sighed and glanced at Felix, whose face was almost as red as mine. “Understandably, he decided I was still plying that ruse and he needed to play along.” I turned to Polk. “But I didn’t mean that you should be playing with guns.”

Polk folded his arms and looked at Saizarbitoria. “I thought I was going to get my damned head blown off.”

The Basquo’s eyes came up slowly as he holstered the sidearm. “I’m sorry, Mr. Polk. I had no idea.” The dark pupils darted to me as he reached past me, picked up the Smith & Wesson revolver, and flipped open the cylinder. He checked to see if it was empty, then slapped it shut and rested it back on the kitchen table. “Can I speak to you for a moment?”

“Sure.”

I followed him into the main room, and he fiddled with the doorknob. “I’m going to head back out to the truck.”

“Look, Sancho . . .”

“I don’t want to hear it.” He turned the knob, stepped out into the cold, and closed the door behind him.

I stood there for a moment, feeling like a complete idiot, then turned and walked back into the kitchen. Polk was at the sink and was watching Saizarbitoria as he rounded the corner of the cabin and disappeared into the fog and snow. “Tough kid.”

“Yep, he is.”

One of his hands came up from the sink and covered his face as he turned toward me. His shoulders shook, and it took a few seconds before I realized that he was laughing. “You know, I haven’t been handled like that in a long time, and I gotta tell ya, I thought I was gonna piss myself.”

He continued to laugh, and I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m really sorry about that.”

“Ah, don’t be silly. Nothing to it.” He let out a deep sigh along with, I’m sure, the remainder of the tension his body held. “Looks like he might’ve taken it a little worse than me.”

I looked out the kitchen windows but couldn’t see much. “Yep. He’s been having a rough time as of late.”

Polk nodded. “I’ll go out there and apologize to him if you think it’ll do any good. I don’t want him thinking that you had this all set up—I just thought this was what you wanted me to do.”

“It’s not your fault. I should’ve said something when we came in. I apologize again.”

“My own damn fault. Hell, I’m the one that did it. I figured I was overplaying my hand with the revolver, but I didn’t know how far you wanted to go.”

I sighed. “Not that far.”

“Yeah.” We both stood there, and it was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator. “They still looking for me down in Travis County?”

“No.” I sat at the table. “The sheriff down there said that the statute of limitations had run out.”

“That’s pretty reasonable of ’em.”

“I thought so, too.” I took a deep breath and looked up at him. “So, you were here last night?”

He took a second to respond. “Oh. That part was real?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Well, yeah. I was.” He sniffed. “I haven’t gotten to the point in the winter where I have to go down and kidnap women yet.”

“Yet, huh?”

He smiled and cocked his head. “Winter’s long this high.”

“This winter is long everywhere.” I smiled back at him, but the sadness in my chest was dragging me down. “I better get out there and see what I can do to repair the damage I’ve done.”

He stepped across the room and kicked the leg of the chair I’d occupied. “Have a seat and drink the rest of that cup of coffee. I don’t think it’ll do any of us any harm to take a little time and cool down.”

We both sat, and he refilled our mugs.

Polk nodded into his. “Amazing what your mind can do to you, isn’t it? When I got diagnosed with the cancer, I was living in a trailer about forty miles out of town and kept thinking that all my ol’ buddies would come out and see me. You know, nothin’ special, just show up with a six-pack and shoot the shit.” He sipped his coffee. “I sat out there in a lawn chair, smoking cigarettes and starin’ at my empty driveway for a couple of months. I’d go into town for my chemo and think I oughta call up so-and-so and see if they’d like to go bowl a couple frames, but I never did.” He nudged the revolver on the table. “Went out and bought this thing and got to the point where I convinced myself that if any of the sons-a-bitches showed up out there, I was gonna shoot ’em myself.” He studied the Model 36 on the table. “After a few more days, I figured there was really only one person that needed shooting.”

He set the mug down and looked up at me. “Sold the place a week later, pulled up stakes, and got the hell out.”

“Sounds like you made the right decision.”

He thumped the table with the hand that was missing a thumb. “I’ve gotta go take a leak and rather than do it down my pant leg, I’m gonna use the head.” He patted my shoulder. “I’ll walk back out there with you and apologize to the young feller; it seemed like a dirty trick, and I’ll make sure he knows it wasn’t your fault.”

I watched as he walked past me and took a right at the bookcases; after a few moments I could hear him relieving himself—he hadn’t closed the door.

He was right—it was amazing the things you got used to, living alone.

I looked around the tiny kitchen and wondered if this was how I would end up, a rogue male pushed off from the rest of the herd, walking around in the same clothes for weeks, eating food out of cans, and forgetting to close the door when I went to the bathroom.

It wasn’t an attractive thought.

I listened as the water in the sink came on. Maybe things weren’t as bad as they appeared; at least Felix Polk still washed his hands.

It was more than possible that I was going to lose the Basquo, and that made me sad. I thought about what Vic had said about my harebrained schemes, acknowledging that this one had backfired and was probably going to cost me a damn fine deputy. All I could do was give him a good recommendation and, if he stayed within my realm of influence, keep an eye out to his future.

I thought I might’ve heard a noise on the porch, but before I could look up there was the startling impact of a firearm at close range.

I threw myself to the left and bounced off the refrigerator. I sat there looking at the shattered pane in the window and scrambled to get my .45 from my holster. When I drew my sidearm, I could see something move just to my right and aimed the Colt in that direction.

I brought my head around and could see the stocking feet of Felix Polk shudder, lie still, and then twitch.

When I looked up, Sancho was standing at the open door with his semiautomatic pointed at the large man who now lay on the floor. Santiago also shook, and he looked as white as I’d ever seen him. “He had a gun.”

I stared at my deputy, then lurched up and crouched over Polk with a pair of fingers at his throat. There was no pulse, but his lips trembled and blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. His eyes stared at the ceiling. Center shot; the man had been dead before he hit the ground.

I looked at his hands and at the floor around him but could see nothing there. I looked back up at Saizarbitoria. “Sancho, there’s no . . .”

He was on the verge of hysteria. “There was a gun!”

I stood and turned to make sure the .38 was still on the kitchen table. The Basquo watched me. “Not that one. Another one.” His voice came from behind me. “It was lying on top of the hot water heater in a cabinet in the bathroom. That’s why I circled back.”

I searched the floor where Polk’s blood was lining the tongue-and-groove planking like pinstripes. A postmortem gasp gurgled in the back of his throat as the pressure of his lungs sought to equalize with the air in the room.

I looked away and saw that just under the corner of the refrigerator was the wooden knob of the butt-end of the magazine—9mm Luger.