“So you don’t think Maynard hit him or murdered the girl?”
I slipped the truck into reverse and waited a full fi ve seconds for it to engage. “At this point in the investigation, I’m not ruling out anyone.”
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“Daddy.”
It was possible that Tuyen had been attacked, but had he been hit twice or was it a setup?
“Daddy?”
I had pushed him, but had I pushed him enough? Was I pushing the wrong guy?
“Daddy!”
I focused on my daughter, who was giving me hard looks as Henry chuckled and the collective Morettis smiled and continued eating the hors d’oeuvres. “Sorry.”
I picked up a stuffed mushroom from the appetizer tray and glanced at Michael for a little backup as he helped himself to another Rocky Mountain oyster. The Philadelphia beat cop came in like a champ with a little mind reading. “So you don’
think this Tuyen is on the level?”
I chewed the mushroom, not tasting much of anything, and looked around at the interior of the Winchester Restaurant and the replica antique firearms over the fireplace. “I’m not sure how, or how deep he’s involved, but something just doesn’t ring true with the guy.” I looked at Henry, who I’m sure was reading my mind; for him it had been a lifetime avo-cation. “What do you think?”
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The Cheyenne Nation sighed. “He is spooky; once a spook, always a spook.”
I thought about the old term for spies, nodded, and looked at Vic; I was still trying to get used to her in a white, ribbed tank top and a tight, short skirt. “What do you think?” She munched on a fried cheese stick and extended a hand, holding the palm down flat, shaking the turquoise bracelets at her wrist as her manicured hand wavered. Then I watched as she took another breaded steer testicle from the center platter and placed it onto Michael’s plate.
I still wasn’t sure if he knew what he was eating.
“One of the things that keeps snagging me is the precise-ness of the hanging.” I caught the eye of an elderly woman at the next table, and Cady glared at me, causing me to lower my voice and lean in. “The hanging was textbook—the drop according to height and weight, and there’s only a limited number of people in the common populace who would know how to pull something like that off.”
Vic played with the silver dancestick earrings I had gotten her up on the Crow reservation for her birthday. “Would Tuyen?”
“It’s possible. Some of the organizations he was cozy with were known to perform these types of executions.”
“Who else would know?”
I turned my glass of Rainier in the water ring. “I am loath to say it, but Den Dunnigan did a stint as a corrections offi cer up in Deer Lodge, Montana, back in the old days when they used to hang people. That and we just saw the Dunnigans’
truck pull into the turnoff to Bailey but then continue on.”
Michael dipped the high-plains delicacy in cocktail sauce.
“He got any kind of record?”
“He has a temper, and once came close to beating a guy to death with a shovel.”
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Despite her reservations, Cady joined the conversation. “Is that the crazy rancher?”
“He’s not crazy.”
Henry chimed in. “I am not sure that confusing your mother with the timer on the electric coffeemaker denotes a great deal of mental stability.”
I turned back to Cady. “Not James, his brother Den.”
My daughter leaned in even more. “He thinks his mother is a coffeepot?”
I looked at all of them. “It’s complicated. . . .”
The waitress interrupted. “Are you folks all right?”
Michael looked up at her, still munching on the Rocky Mountain oysters. “These are great; can we get another round?”
I thought about the girl, the missing one. Who was she?
More important, where was she? The only thing I could think we might do is knock on doors from ranch to ranch and see if anybody had seen her. It was a long shot but all I could come up with in the rough and expansive country of the Hole in the Wall.
“What about the second girl?” The Bear was mind reading again, and I wasn’t sure if I was happy that he had just made my internal monologue the topic of conversation for the group.
“What second girl?” I hadn’t had a chance to fill Vic in.
“The manager of the Flying J down in Casper said there were two girls in the car and that both had long dark hair, but I asked Maynard and the Dunnigans, and they all said Ho Thi was traveling alone.” I nodded at Henry. “James said that he was having . . . I don’t know. What would you call them?”
He smiled. “Visions.”
“Anyway, we went out to the ghost town and took a look around but couldn’t find anything.”
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Michael took the last Rocky Mountain oyster. He hadn’t noticed that he was the only one eating them. “Ghost town?”
“There’s an old settlement to the west of Powder Junction, a mining town that dried up.”
Michael stopped chewing and looked at Vic. “You have to take me there.”
I looked at them. “There are snakes.”
Vic blew a breath between her lipsticked lips. “Fuck that.”
Cady smiled and reached a hand out for Michael, who took it. They both turned back to look at me. Cady seemed concerned. “What kind of visions?”
The elderly couple at the next table were leaning in, too, so I lowered my voice. “He said he saw the girl who had been murdered out there in Bailey.”
“You mean when they found the body?” Cady’s voice was a little too loud, so I gave her a look back.
“After that. James said he was driving home one night—
this was after finding Ho Thi’s body—and there she was standing on the side of the road.”
Cady’s voice was just as loud as before. “What’d he do?”
I shrugged. “He said he stopped his truck, but by the time he got out, she was gone.”
Henry leaned back and sipped his wine and stared at the elderly couple who suddenly took less interest in our conversation. The Cheyenne Nation returned the glass of red to the surface of the table and, after a moment, spoke. “Den was a prison guard?”
“Yep.”
“He seemed defensive.”
Cady looked uncertain. “This is the crazy one?”
“His brother, but obviously a certain amount of eccentric-ity runs in the family.” I looked at my neglected beer on the 24 6 CR A I G J O H N S O N
table and continued to lose my taste for it. “However, Den is very protective of James.”
Henry nodded. “Yes, but why would Den, or for that matter James, kill Ho Thi, kill Maynard, and attempt to kill Tuyen?”
They were all silent, and this was when my job sucked.
Cady sipped her wine and smiled; always the optimist, she was trying to find the upside to my predicament. “So that means that Virgil White Buffalo is innocent.”
“Yep.” I watched the tiny bubbles rising in my glass, avoided all their eyes, but especially Henry’s.
“So, you’re sleeping at the jail again? ”
I pulled the Suburban up to Vic’s single-wide and slipped the decrepit thing into park. “It’s my turn.”
“You relieving Frymire?”
“Yep. Then Frymire is supposed to relieve Saizarbitoria at the hospital, because Double Tough didn’t look good.” Henry had disappeared in the Thunderbird, giving Cady and Michael a lift out to my place, so I had given Vic a ride home. I watched as she pulled a leg onto the bench seat, exposing a little thigh well above her boots.
“What are you going to do about Virgil, Walt?”
“I don’t know, maybe call Human Services or try an
d get hold of somebody in charge of the social programs up on the Rez.” She unsnapped her seat belt, turned, and carefully placed the black leather boots that were embroidered with blue roses in my lap. I thumbed the stitching. “Pleurosis. . . .”
“What?”
“Blue roses; it’s what Tennessee Williams used to call his sister’s pleurosis.”
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so fucking weird.” She crossed her ankles and made herself comfortable. “You have to let him go.”
I thought about the big Indian and placed a hand above the boots on her well-shaped calf, marveling at the smoothness of her skin. “Yep.”
She stretched and pushed her heels further into my lap.
She curled an arm and propped up her head. The slight breeze from the open window stirred her hair. “What are you going to do about Tuyen?”
I stroked her calf, my hand pausing at the back of her knee as she drew it up, parting the short skirt further. “I fi gure I’ll keep him under house arrest until I get some validation from California.”
“The Dunnigans?”
“Well, considering the circumstances, I really don’t have any choice but to bring them in for a formal questioning.”
She smiled one of her more carnivoristic smiles, the one that displayed the oversize canine tooth to its best advantage.
“And what are you going to do about me?”
I tipped my hat back, sighed, and looked at the ana-log clock—it was practically the only thing on the dash that worked. “I have to be at the jail in ten minutes.”
Her golden eyes were enormous, and I tried to focus on them as her skirt slipped even higher. “Your loss.”
Boy howdy.
“I’d ask for a rain check, but it doesn’t seem to want to rain around here lately.”
My handsome deputy shook her head and shifted her body.
Like a dervish, she swung her boots down and kneeled on the seat, enjoying her height advantage as she turned, tilted my head back with both hands, and captured my mouth with her 24 8 CR A I G J O H N S O N
own. It was a bandit kiss, hard and fast—designed to leave the victim with a lingering feeling of what could have just been.
She straightened her lipstick with her third finger, slid out, closed the truck door, and turned, strutting away without bothering to pull her skirt down. She called over her shoulder.
“You’re telling me.”
I felt like I’d been hit and run.
Virgil White Buffalo was the only one awake by the time I got to the jail. After snatching a few Post-its off my door facing, I discovered Frymire with Tuyen’s computer still in his lap, and snoring again. It was possibly the reason the big Indian wasn’t sleeping. He still didn’t talk much, but I’d begun making a habit of speaking to him whenever possible, hoping that I could get him in practice. “Hey, Virgil.”
He didn’t say anything but nodded toward my deputy.
I carefully lifted the computer from Chuck’s lap and nudged the young man, and he looked up at me. I put the computer back in the case that was open on the counter and read Ruby’s latest missives.
“I guess I dozed off again, huh?”
“Yep, but if Virgil here won’t hold up his end of the conversation and you don’t play chess, it’s to be expected. Anything new?”
“I was playing around with the computer, but the security systems are tough.”
“You know about those things?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a degree in computer science.”
“You do?” I thought about it. “I don’t remember seeing that on your application.”
“I didn’t think it mattered—we don’t have any computers in Powder Junction.” He had a point.
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I held one of the Post-its in my hand and read the designa-tion. “ACSS- BPS.” I looked up at him. “What the hell is BPS?”
“I have no idea.”
I read the yellow square in my hand. “WiFi?”
“Wireless connections for computers; most people use it for laptops. Haven’t you seen the signs on the motels out by the highway?”
The next note was about some stolen drilling equipment east of town. “Yep.”
He yawned. “It means you can run your computer without hooking to a landline; just open it up and it acquires a signal.”
I thought about it. “But what does WiFi actually stand for?”
“Wi is for wireless, and . . .” He paused. “I’m not sure what the Fi stands for.”
I stuffed the Post-its in my shirt pocket. “Semper . . .” I wasn’t so sure he got it and watched him yawn again.
He caught me glancing at him, and he gestured toward Tuyen’s computer. “You want me to take that thing and see what I can come up with?”
It was personal property, but if everything checked out with the Vietnamese man’s story, I’d just be hauling it over to the hospital for him anyway. “Sure; maybe it’ll help you to stay awake.”
I sent him off with his homework and sat in the chair opposite Virgil. I slid the upside-down trash can with the chessboard between us. Virgil White Buffalo, Bad War Honors, Crazy Dog Clan, studied me.
“I’m afraid I’m not going to be much of a challenge in comparison to Lucian.”
His voice was still rough but carried like a bass viola, 2 5 0 CR A I
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vibrating the air between us. He turned the board, and I ignored the symbolism as he gave me white and the first move.
“Maybe you’re better than you think.”
I froze my finger on a pawn. “I doubt it.”
“You must be worthy. Short-pants told me the Old Ones speak with you.” I looked up, and his eyes stayed on mine as we listened to the old Seth Thomas on the wall tick. He gestured through the bars and toward the game. I brought the pawn out to G4 and he countered with another to B5. There was a pause, and I listened to him breathe along with the ticking of the clock. “The Old Ones have never spoken to me.”
Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam: 1968
“He’s dead.” I looked at Hoang’s eyes and watched as they stared indifferently, his mouth slack in silence and the bubbles no longer struggling through the blood that saturated his chest. I held his head up and supported it against me.
Baranski laid an arm over Mendoza’s seat and threw a look back.
“What?”
The sunrise oranged the sky, and I desperately tried to contain my anger. “You can slow down now, he’s dead.”
The CID man peered back at the road and returned his eyes to me through the rearview. “What’d you just say?”
“I said that he’s dead, and you can slow down. You accomplished what it was you set out to do.”
He looked at Mendoza, who was in the passenger seat and was still staring ahead. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have sworn that there were two dead men in the jeep. “Are you accusing me . . .?”
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the helicopter when we were on our way to Khe Sanh.” Even in the gloom of early morning, I could see his eyes as they flicked to the side. “He told me, and I saw you do it. Pretty slick, getting rid of all your bad eggs in one basket.”
“Hey, fucking new guy, do you have any idea the shit that you’re getting yourself into?”
I ignored him and continued. “It didn’t make any sense when the chopper blew to the northeast with Charlie attacking from the same direction. Anything they would have shot at us would’ve blown the othe
r way.” I gestured with the body in my arms. “I guess Hoang didn’t know you intended to kill him, too. And then, since that didn’t work, you tried to get him to kill me. If I’ve got it right, Hoang was supposed to get me good and drunk and then take me out to the bunker where you’d already killed Mai Kim and finish me off.” I swallowed, my spit catching in my throat. “But I saved Hoang’s life in Khe Sanh, and he couldn’t shoot me himself or pick me up and drag me over to the murder site where you could finish the job. He didn’t even tell you where I was.” I looked down at Hoang’s dead face. “Turns out, he was a pretty good guy, huh?”
He kept the jeep at close to sixty. “Fuck you, you fucking asshole.”
My hand slipped below Hoang’s legs, where the safety strap from my .45 was still unsnapped and the safety was not on. “The acceleration in drug trafficking roughly coincided with your arrival here at Tan Son Nhut, and the only thing I’m wondering is whether you knew about the investigation beforehand and were trying to protect your interests, or if you just stumbled onto this mess and made it your own little cottage industry.”
He looked at the road through the windshield as if there were something up there. “You don’t know shit.”
Mendoza suddenly spoke. “Hey . . .”
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I looked over at Baranski. “I think I’ve got it all pretty much figured out, except for one thing.” I studied the back of Mendoza’s head. “Is he in on it, too?”
The Texan raised a hand, pointing toward the road. “Hey!”
Baranski looked at the side of his partner’s face, and I cleared the big Colt from under Hoang’s legs as the Texan grabbed at the steering wheel. Baranski swung back around as we struck something in the road, which sent the jeep in a two-wheeled spiral off to the left.
“What the . . . !”
The vehicle didn’t quite flip, but the jolt tore Hoang’s body from my grip, and I tumbled out the back with the .45 still thankfully in my hands. I hit a dirt pile and carried a lot of it with me into the barrow ditch beside the road. I lay there for a moment, trying to get my breath back, and looked around for Mendoza and Baranski, but the only body visible was Hoang’s, lying askew about twenty yards in front of me.
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