The Dark Horse

9

October 28, 8:45 P.M.

“How am I supposed to know you’re undercover; you’re never undercover!”

Cady emphasized the word like I was playing spy.

Ruby, unaware that my activities in Absalom were of a covert nature, had given my daughter the number of the motel office, which was also the one for The AR. Luckily, Juana had been the one who had answered. “It’s okay. I trust the person who got the phone.”

“The man or the young woman?”

I took a breath. “Who answered the phone when you called?”

“Some guy, sounded like a real piece of work. Funny name, like something you’d hear in a bad television show.”

“Cliff Cly?”

“That’s it.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“Nothing. I just told him I was looking for my father and then asked if he worked there. Then he handed me over to the woman.”

“Juana.”

“Who is she?”

“You’re sure that’s all you said to him?”

Long sigh. “Yes, Man From U.N.C.L.E., that’s all I said. Now, who is she?”

I looked down the bar at the young bandita who’d allowed me to use the wall phone in the hallway of the empty establishment. “She works here.”

“She sounds foreign.”

I cupped the receiver against my face. “She’s Guatemalan. She’s an illegal-”

“She said her name is Juana.”

“It is.”

“She said she worked for you.”

“She doesn’t work for me.”

“She said she did.”

I sighed. “She has an overly active imagination and a potential two-year degree in criminology from Sheridan College. You know what they say about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing?”

“Speaking of-you’re a sheriff. What are you doing working undercover?” She continued to say it as though I were in the school play.

“Sandy Sandberg called and needed a little help.”

“Oh, God.”

“What?”

“Daddy, you know he is such a character.” She and Sandy went way back. When she was a toddler, he had taken the time to play with her at the law enforcement academy in Douglas, and they had become fast friends. Even through her protests, I could hear the admiration she had for the man. “He could get you killed.”

“It’s not that dangerous a case.” I leaned a shoulder against the wall and tucked the big Bakelite receiver against the side of my head. “What is this about you getting married?”

There was a pause, the first in the conversation. “Michael asked me to marry him.”

The second pause. “When?”

The third pause. “Yesterday.”

The fourth pause. “What’d you say?”

“I told him I needed to think about it.”

I nodded at the wall and rested my forehead there. “I think that’s smart.” I waited for the critique of my response.

“Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”

I cleared my throat. “For thinking about it?”

“For being asked.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

I listened to her breathing and could tell she was holding the phone close to her mouth. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m not sure.”

“It’s awfully soon.”

“I knew you were going to say that.”

I paused again; if only I could find a way to parent undercover. “You’ve had a lot of things in your life lately.”

“I know.”

I thought about the Philadelphia patrolman, Vic’s younger brother. It wasn’t that I had reservations about him, but it had only been five months since they’d met and a tumultuous five months at that. And even though it wasn’t fair, I thought about her previous relationship and how that had left her unconscious on the steps of the Franklin Institute. “Why do you think he asked?”

“Well, I think it has something to do with him loving me.”

“I mean now.”

Silence. “I don’t know.”

I nodded at the wall. “Have you guys discussed this?”

“A little, just talking about what we could do… Just pie-in-the-sky stuff.”

“I guess he’s decided he wants his dessert now.”

“Daddy.”

I stared at the army-green wall. People had written and scratched things so deeply that re-paintings had only heightened the sentiment. I wondered if Custer really wore Arrow shirts, if DD still loved NT, if the eleven kids that got left at the parking lot were still beating the Broncos twenty-four to three, or if 758-4331 was still a good time. I thought about the love, heartbreaks, and desperate passions that had been played out through the phone in my hand and wondered if emotion held like the scent of honeysuckle in late August-sad and sweet, hopeful and tragic. “I think he loves you. I think he’s crazy about you.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not hard to do, you know.” I could hear the smile.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I ran my fingertips over the wall. “I think you need to follow your heart, kiddo.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, allowing my emotions to join all the others that had sighed through the pattern of black holes in the mouthpiece. My heart, which was two thousand miles distant, pulled away a little bit farther. “Is he okay with you taking your time?”

There was a sniff. “He says he’ll wait forever.”

I nodded at the wall again, aware that something had changed in me a few months ago and that now I seemed to be battling a sort of grief aversion-the emotional backwash of Cady’s narrow escape. During her crisis, I had been in a kind of present-tense, protective mode that got me through the danger without wasting energy or emotional resources, but now it was past tense and I was uneasy.

We do everything we can to protect those we love, whatever it takes, and it’s not enough. Unlike bone, once that illusionary magic circle of safety is broken, it can never be completely repaired and it is not stronger at the break. When Cady had left to go back to Philadelphia, I had hours and days to think and feel. I was supposed to be happy, but I wasn’t, and I hadn’t been sleeping well-having Mary Barsad in my jail hadn’t helped. Like an addict, I was taking it one day at a time.

Dog was still seated at the end of the bar, and Juana was feeding him the remainder of my cheeseburger now. “I figured you didn’t want the rest?”

“No.”

She studied me. “Are you okay?”

I took a deep breath, cleared my throat, and swallowed. “Yep.” I extended my hand. “Walt Longmire, sheriff, Absaroka County.”

She wiped her hand on her jeans, took mine, and smiled. “I know. I looked you up on the Internet at the library in Gillette. There was a big article about you in the Billings Gazette and the Denver Post-something about you breaking up a human trafficking syndicate in California?”

“I had a very small part in an investigation.”

“There was a photograph of you on the steps of some big building, but your hat covered up a lot of your face.”

“That’s my best side.” I reached down to pet Dog. “Was Cliff Cly the first to answer when Cady called?”

She nodded. “Yeah, but I grabbed it away from him pretty quick. He was in here drinking his lunch and got to it faster than I could.” She thought about it. “It was like he was waiting for a call.”

She seemed pretty sure of the situation, so I decided to let it drop. The undercover thing was wearing me out. “Is there anything else I can do to help you?”

“Nah, I’m just going to arrange some of the food in the freezer out back to make it easier for tonight, but I think we’re ready.”

I reached over and took one last sip of the melted ice in my tea. “Then I think Dog and I are going to go to our room and take a nap.”

She let Dog lick the plate. “Is that Indian friend of yours really going to fight?”

I shook my head at the absurdity of it all. “Yep, I suppose he is.”

“He looks like he can take care of himself.”

“He can.”

She nodded. “Watch out for Cliff Cly. He hasn’t been around here very long, but I bet he cheats.”

I patted my leg for Dog to follow. “I bet he does, too.”

I get asked sometimes about what it is that makes a good cop. Of course, typing is handy, but really it’s as simple as noticing things. Ask a good cop into your house once, and a year later he’ll be able to tell you the layout of the furniture, what pictures are on which walls, and whether the toaster is white or stainless steel.

Somebody had gone through my room.

Juana had cleaned and straightened it, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t the one who had gone through my things; it was a professional job and, if you hadn’t thought to notice, you wouldn’t have. Everything had been put back exactly the same way, except that my sidearm was now unlocked. I couldn’t detect any smudges without high-powered assistance and whoever had searched had probably worn gloves, but I know the Colt’s slide-action had been pulled when I’d put it away.

I made a quick search and found that the paint had been pulled apart where the bathroom window had been pried open. There was an open lot behind the motel with a couple of ramshackle houses facing the other way and a weedy, overgrown hillside that would have provided easy ingress to my room without exposing the intruder to a great deal of public scrutiny.

Who would have been interested and professional enough to leave almost everything as though it had not been touched? Couldn’t have been Benjamin, and I didn’t think that Pat had the dexterity to slip through the high window, especially after last night’s altercation. There was that mystery man who had been driving Bill Nolan’s truck or one that was remarkably similar.

Cliff Cly didn’t match the stranger’s profile-maybe Mike Niall and possibly Bill Nolan himself, despite his assurance that he had been asleep. If Bill was involved, you would have thought that he would want to keep away from me, not take me to my father’s house. Besides, all his motivations seemed pure and what would he have had to gain in Wade Barsad’s death? Mary? Possibly, but he would have to have figured that she would be facing a life sentence. Was that something they hadn’t taken into account-that somebody would have to take the fall? And what about her confession to Hershel, Bill, the Campbell County investigators, and just about anybody who would listen?

I tried to see Mary as a Campbell County jury would see her; it didn’t bode well. She lacked the one quality the populace expected in an accused killer, guilty or not-repentance. I had the feeling that if it came to it, Mary Barsad would be a woman who was tried for a crime but judged for her persona.

I took my hat off, placed it brim up on the wobbly table, and sat in the only chair. I glanced back at the Bible on the nightstand; I figured I’d had enough religion for one day. Dog leapt onto the bed, curled up, and looked at me. I always wondered if he knew more about what was going on than I did; some sort of innate canine ability to read people and situations.

“So, who dunnit?”

October 23: five days earlier, afternoon.

Mary Barsad had been at her best about the middle of the afternoon and, in an attempt to get her to eat, I’d moved the schedule back about two hours.

She still wouldn’t eat breakfast, but at least I could get her to nibble on lunch and a nominal amount of dinner as we sparred. She sipped her soup and watched me as though I were the one in jail and not her. I’d uncrossed my legs and put my empty bowl of chicken tomatillo soup on the counter; Dorothy Caldwell’s chicken tomatillo soup took all prisoners. “There’s a difference?”

“Of course there is.” She shook her head, and she dismissed me with a wave of her hand as she looked out the window and into the opaque sunshine of fall. “How long have you been a sheriff?”

I ignored the question. “I guess I see justice as the framework, and right and wrong as the philosophy behind it.”

Mary turned, and I had the feeling I’d just stepped into a theoretical quagmire. She smiled a thin, hard smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Can’t you do justice by doing wrong?”

“No, because then it becomes an injustice in itself.”

She looked doubtful. “And who judges that?”

“We all do.”

“Easy for you to say from that side of the bars.” It was a bitter laugh. “Some judgments, it would appear, carry more weight than others.”

I wanted to work the conversation around to her particular situation again. Previously, whenever I’d tried she’d clammed up; here was another opportunity, and I was going to have to go at it gently. “It’s a collective framework, and I’m not saying that it’s perfect by any means-but considering the alternative-”

“And what’s that?”

I shrugged. “Chaos.”

She looked at me intently. “And you’ve seen chaos?”

“I have.”

“Where?”

“Vietnam… and a few other places.” She took another spoonful of soup, but it paused at her mouth. “Mary, I need you to tell me what happened that night. I need you to tell me everything you remember or else I’m not going to be able to help you.”

She had looked at me, quietly put the rest of her soup at the opening at the base of the bars, and placed the can of diet pop beside the bowl. She had slipped off her sandals, curled her knees up, and rolled over to lie on the bunk to face the concrete block wall.

October 28, 9:00 P.M.

When the gladiators died in the Coliseum, men in costumes came out and sprinkled sand to soak up the blood between bouts. The word for sand in Latin is harena-hence, arena. It’s thoughts like this that occupy my mind when I probably should be thinking about more pressing matters. It was a five-hundred-dollar buy-in for each contender, and I was surprised at the number of individuals who had the financial resources to sign up. I was not surprised at the number who had the lack of judgment to fight, including the Bear.

Henry Standing Bear was resplendent in a white T-shirt with the logo FIGHTIN’ WHITIES on it and below, in smaller script, EVERY THANG’S GONNA BE ALL WHITE. Somewhere, he’d scrounged a pair of actual boxing shorts, red silk with gold piping. The bar owner I’d coldcocked last night had acquired a few new mouthpieces and had boiled the ones left over from the previous bout. It was a free-for-all grabfest, but Henry was one of the quickest, so he’d gotten a new one.

I tried to think of the last time I’d seen gloves on the Bear, let alone seen him in a ring, and was coming up with eras when cars first started having seat belts. It was during a Rosebud County fair in Forsyth, when a traveling show had brought in the largest black bear we’d ever seen, and for five bucks you could climb over the ropes and “box” with Buster. Buster was muzzled, had had his claws removed, and was attached to a harness that could be pulled by two very large men so that he could be separated from the human contestant after he’d won, which Buster did every time that velvety Montana night.

Buster the Bear’s technique had been pretty simple-he’d lumber out and straightforwardly envelop his opponent in his giant arms and smother him to the canvas. He was only about six feet tall on his hind legs but held the weight advantage in that he tipped the scales at close to seven hundred pounds. Henry and I had consumed several Grain Belt Premium beers and had rapidly risen to the sporting life, as only drunken teenagers can.

We watched about a dozen denizens of the high plains get crushed before it was Henry’s turn. He had a strategy, which utilized the little-known fact that bears had notoriously crappy eyesight, and that, with the added weight, this one was a tad slow. He figured the thing to do was come out quick, give Buster everything he had in one punch, and then tackle him before he had a chance to see and recover.

It didn’t work.

Buster the Bear’s head snapped with a roundhouse punch to the muzzle that would’ve killed any man, but by the time Henry Standing Bear tried to grab Buster by the middle, the black bear had already lifted him from the canvas and flung him aside, at which point he pounced on him with a verve yet unseen that night. It took four men, one of whom was me, to pull the chains to get the bear loose from the Bear, and by the time I got to Henry, he was the whitest I’d ever seen him. He said another little known fact about black bears was that they had forty-two teeth-he said he counted them as the muzzle pressed against his face.

I’d done a little Golden-Gloves work in my youth and had risen to the top of interplatoon competition in the Corps by virtue of size, youth, and skill-one of which I still had, one of which I didn’t, and one on which the jury was still out. I’d competed well enough at Camp Pendleton to continue boxing at Camp Lejeune and then at the Armed Forces Boxing Championships at Lackland Air Force Base, where “Jacksonville Jake,” a bundle of bailing wire from Florida with skin the color and toughness of tanned saddle leather, had bounced me like a Super Ball. Those three minutes had taught me a special and lasting respect for chief petty officers with middle names from the cities where they’d been born.

I was older now and looked back at those episodes as if they had been a part of some other man’s life. I’d engaged in earnest only a few times, sinking to that primordial depth of instinct to destroy and then call it a game. I’d seen and sworn to never look upon that kind of savagery in myself ever again.

In the history of bad ideas, however, this had to be the thesis statement. The first indication that you’re in the midst of a bad idea is that people stop making eye contact with you and you with them. When I saw him entering the standing-room-only bar, Henry Standing Bear didn’t make eye contact with me. Juana served him a canned iced tea and also avoided his eye.

They were lined up four deep at the bar, and Pat’s entrepreneurial skills had been tested when the bleachers borrowed from the Gillette American Legion baseball team had collapsed under the weight of the faithful. No one had been hurt; after all, God looked out for children, animals, and drunks. They’d brought in all the folding chairs from the community hall and had even torn the particleboard from the broken window so that more patrons could be seated on the porch.

I scanned the place for somebody who might blow my feeble cover but didn’t see anybody I knew except Bill Nolan and Henry, who had continued to ignore me until I volunteered to corner for him, seeing as how no one else seemed to be willing.

The bag gloves didn’t provide too much protection for Henry’s hands, but he could get them in where regular boxing gloves wouldn’t go, and the Bear advanced through his first match. In his second, he landed a return punch in Gary Hasbrouk ’s left side, which continued his theory that he could systematically left-hand his opponents to death. He then caught the man with an uppercut from out of Lame Deer that lifted him a solid eight inches from the plywood platform. In a model of sportsmanship yet unseen in the Powder-River-Pound-Down, the Cheyenne Nation stepped back to allow Hasbrouk to stretch his jaw and to try to remember what planet he was on, after which Henry sighed and reapproached his opponent.

Hasbrouk swung and missed the Bear by two feet and then squared off with one of the towel men. Henry stepped back again and looked at the referees. Mike Niall, Pat, and some thin man I didn’t know decided to call it a technical knockout as the crowd roared with disapproval.

Their behavior would have disgraced the Circus Maximus.

I ushered the Cheyenne Nation to the narrow hallway where I’d earlier talked with Cady on the pay phone and watched as the redoubtable Bear hid his swollen paw by keeping a shoulder between his hand and me. He’d made it to the final round as had Cliff Cly, who was standing in the ring and was exhorting the crowd.

In his first match, the rodeo cowboy cum ranch hand had knocked D. J. Sorenson out with one punch. In his second, a quick feint to the right kidney, and Ken Colbo let his guard down. Cly hammered him with a sweeping roundhouse that caught the wide-faced man in the side of the head. Colbo’s jaw grew slack for a blink, and then he crumpled forward on his knees. Cly unceremoniously pushed him back with a knee of his own, and the sound of the back of the man’s head hitting the plywood platform carried across the crowded and noisy room.

I led the Bear farther into the hallway and spun him back by grabbing his shoulder. “All right, if you’re bound and determined to do this, he drops his right when he pulls back from a jab-” He wasn’t paying attention and continued to keep his left hand where I couldn’t see it. “Let me have a look.”

He held the afflicted hand under his armpit. “No.”

In the entire evening so far, it was the first moment our eyes had met. “Henry, enough.”

He made a face. “What?”

I leaned in close. “Stop this before you get hurt.”

He turned his shoulder so that I couldn’t see and smiled at my glare. “We may be too late.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“What?” He continued to smile at my discomfort and his. “I am helping.”

“You’re not.”

“I am, whether you are aware of it or not.”

You could always depend on Henry to be the straw that stirred the collective drink. I shook my head. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to take you out back and beat the crap out of you myself. Let me see your hand.”

“No.”

For the second time in the conversation, our eyes met. “Let me see it.”

The smile faded, and his face became cigar-store-Indian immobile. We stood there like that, unmoving, and then I turned back toward the makeshift ring with the white bar towel in my hand.

I caught the eye of the three unofficial officials as I sidled against the crowd. Niall leaned over and spit in the nearest spittoon and then looked up at me with a questioning look on his face.

“His hand is broken.”

He shook his head. “What?”

I leaned in a little closer, watching as Cliff Cly approached, sipping a beer from his gloved hand. He gargled a little and then swallowed. I continued to speak to the rancher in a low voice. “The Indian’s hand is broken. He can’t fight.”

“You’re shittin’ me.” He gave a worried glance around the room. “That’s not good.”

Cly trailed his elbows on the top rope and looked down at us. “What’s the holdup?”

Niall looked at the soon-to-be champion by default and nodded toward me. “He says the Indian’s hand is busted, and he can’t fight.”

He swallowed the beer in his mouth, the sneer spreading across his lips. “That’s bullshit.”

I kept my eyes on the rancher. “His left is useless; there’s no way he’ll be able to continue.”

Niall shrugged. “Well then, he forfeits his five hundred dollars, and Cliff here becomes champion.”

I felt something nudging me in the side and turned to see the toe of Cliff Cly’s boot poking me in the ribs. “He’s a chickenshit-just like you.” He took another gulp of his beer and looked down at me.

I thought about what good a quality, grade-A ass whipping would do the man. “Another time.” I turned back to the ring judges.

“That’s what I told your daughter.” I ignored him and started to speak to Niall, but Cly interrupted again. “On the phone, she was coming on to me pretty hard, so I told her the next time she was in state I’d give her the high hard one.”

That’s when he spit the beer on me.

I stood there for a second, hoping that he hadn’t done what he did, but the persistent tickling of used beer and spittle dripped off my hair and onto my shirt.

I can’t be sure, but I guess it was about then that I looked back up at him and thought about Henry, the election, Mary Barsad, the investigation, my father’s homestead, but mostly about Cady, all of it ganging up on me-and something just broke.

My hand was on the ropes before I could think about what I was doing, and it was like my muscles were intent on a little trip and my mind was just along for the ride. Cly backed away as I ducked under the top rope, and he watched with a cocky interest as I wrapped the corner towel around my right hand.

As I wrapped my other hand, he kicked his head sideways, stretched the muscles in his neck, shuffled a few steps, and moved to my left. “C’mon, old man.”

The crowd was going nuts, but I could barely hear them. I felt the familiar coolness in my face and the steadiness of my hands as the rational qualities of my nature and the extended panic attack of the unimaginable deserted me.

I stepped in close to keep him from getting the maximum leverage of his swing and then watched as he bobbed and weaved into a Dempsey roll. He slipped to his right with my jab and then delivered a powerful undercut to my unprotected side.

I grunted and then reset my footing, lowering my elbow to block the punch that immediately followed. Cly ignored my footing and applied both hands into my ribs, and that was a mistake.

The clacking of Cliff Cly’s jaw sounded like the snap-shuffle of a deck of cards, and he staggered back. I stood there in the center of the ring, and he moved toward me with a great deal more caution this time.

The temptation to pound the living daylights out of the younger man was great, but I was betting I’d drawn enough attention to myself by just being in the competition.

Cliff came barreling in, maybe thinking that if he got in tight I wouldn’t be able to use my greater reach. He crouched, and I figured he was going to put it all on the line with one good, solid strike. I was right except that he did so with his head and not his hands, swiftly flinging the back of his skull up and into my face in a debilitating head butt.

I had seen it coming in that last second and turned, but the majority of the force deflected from my nose and into my left cheekbone and brow. The effect was a blinding amount of blood that flowed from the cut at my cheek.

I backed away, swiping at my eye with one of my toweled hands. It hurt and felt like half my face had ballooned to the size of a softball. I smeared the blood back with the shoulder of my shirt, and I was relieved to make out shadows moving in the rapidly closing eye, but for now I was effectively blind to my left.

He had come out better in the impact, but not by much. He shook his head-evidently he had come close to knocking himself out with the illegal move. When he looked up and could finally get a read on me, he smiled at the damage to my face.

Cly stepped forward and feinted with his left but brought a jab back up with his right; when he withdrew from the punch, he dropped his guard just as I’d told Henry he would.

I responded with a quick jab from my left. He was off balance and started to fall away. I could have just let him go, but I was tired and angry and wanted it really over. I stepped after him and watched with my one eye as he raised his right to block the anticipated left that had stung him twice. It was another mistake, and his last for the evening, as I’d anticipated his move and had already brought a roundhouse haymaker down into the side of his head.

You can hit a man in a lot of different ways, ways I’d learned in the rough-and-tumble high-plains bars as a boy, ways I’d learned in the inner trenches of Big Six football, in the Marine Corps, and in more than a quarter-century in law enforcement. You can hit a man to embarrass him, hit him to blood him, hit him to knock him down, or you can hit a man to lay him out.

To my absolute dishonor, I hit Cliff Cly with the intention of the last.

His jaw bounced off his chest, and I could see that his neck muscles didn’t work just before he pitched over backward, taking the metal pole at the corner, three lengths of rope, and at least two other people with him.

There is a sound that bodies make when they hit the ground, and there is no way to describe it. I’ve heard that sound in motels, bars, football, and battlefields, and it is this sound that brought me back.

There was a great deal of screaming, yelling, and confusion as I approached to see if he was still breathing; he was, but he lay still, with only his chest moving. I guess he had been the crowd favorite and there must have been a lot of money placed on his potential victory, because as I stood there a folding chair clattered against the back of my head and a few more flew onto the platform. I stumbled out of the ring and started pushing my way toward the back hallway, but even with my limited view from one eye, I could see that the entire crowd was now involved in nothing short of a melee. I tripped over another folding chair and went down as the mob swallowed me.

I started to get up, but a familiar hand planted itself against my chest, and the Bear ducked as more chairs sailed into the ring. There was a crash of glass near the bar, along with more screaming and yelling, and I could hear fighting that didn’t sound like the kind sanctioned by the Powder-River-Pound-Down. Henry crouched guard over me and pushed someone away while dodging an airborne bottle that smashed on the floor and showered us with shards.

I was staring at his hand as he continued to smile like the Cheyenne always do in battle. I tried to blink my left eye but couldn’t tell if I had, and then allowed my head to fall back to the floor as he asked in a perfectly conversational tone, “Did you know your daughter is getting married?”