Next to Last Stand

by Craig Johnson

  I looked up at my undersheriff, framed in the doorway. “What?”

  “My new unit that you’re going to buy me.”

  “Oh, sorry.” I glanced up at the Seth Thomas on the wall. “I’m supposed to meet Bass Townsend over at the bank at ten. Do you want to go?”

  “Sure, maybe I can get a loan from him.”

  * * *

  —

  If you could imagine the response of a person who had just learned they’d inherited a million dollars, Bass Townsend’s wouldn’t disappoint. I thought for a moment that the man had swallowed his tongue, but then he’d finally spoken, and it was what I myself might’ve said.

  “You’re . . . You’re shitting me.”

  Well, maybe not exactly what I would’ve said. Wes Haskins seemed to be enjoying it too. I mean, how many times do you get the opportunity to effectively give somebody a cool mil?

  “It’s a million dollars in unmarked United States currency, and unless Walt here uncovers some reason why the money shouldn’t be your grandfather’s, you’re quite a bit richer, Mr. Townsend.”

  We all listened to the clock on the bank president’s office wall.

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “Nope, and then there’s the question of the security box he left that’s in our protection.” Wes smiled in spite of himself and the greater banking industry. “Of course, there will be probate and tax responsibilities—your grandfather could’ve done a better job in delivering the money to you than cash in a boot box.”

  Townsend said nothing more, probably because he was afraid he might repeat himself again.

  I sat forward in my chair as Vic leaned against the wall, preferring to stand and cover the smile on her face with a hand. “Are you all right, Mr. Townsend?”

  He still said nothing.

  “I said, are you all right?”

  “I um . . . I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Wes was up in an instant, taking Townsend by the shoulder and helping him as we both led the man out of the office. “The restroom is down there on the right.”

  We watched as he moved carefully down the hallway and disappeared through the appropriate door as Vic joined us. “Think he still thinks you’re shitting him?”

  “It’s not unusual, that kind of response.”

  “I’ve seen what a couple thousand dollars can do to people, but I’ve never actually told anyone about an amount as large as this in cash.” He waited a moment and then glanced at me. “Think he’s okay?”

  “I’ll give him a minute and then check on him.”

  “So, Wes, can I get a car loan if the county commissioners turn me down?”

  He glanced at Vic and then at me again.

  “She wants a new unit, and they’ve got one of those pursuit half-tons over on a lot in Sheridan.”

  “One of those five-hundred horsepower jobs?” He looked at her. “You’ll be dead in a week.”

  She folded her arms. “Shut up, Wes.”

  “I told you, you drive too fast.”

  She glared at me. “You shut up too.”

  Excusing myself, I headed down the hallway to the men’s room and, pausing at the door, tapped lightly. “Mr. Townsend?” There was a noise inside, but he didn’t say anything. “Mr. Townsend.”

  The knob turned, and he opened the door a few inches and looked at me, his face covered with sweat. “Um, yeah?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I just need another minute or two.” I started to turn away, but he added, “Is this really happening?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Is this real? I mean is there really a million dollars that’s really mine?”

  “As near as we can tell, yes.”

  “I’m honestly not feeling very well.” He studied me for a moment more and then added, “I just need a few more minutes.”

  I nodded. “Well, whenever you’re ready but take as much time as you need.” He closed the door, and I walked back down the hallway and rejoined the conversation. “I told her she could have it if it had a complete roll cage.”

  “Shit, I forgot about the roll cage.” She stared at me for a moment and then turned and started out of the bank, I assume to cross the street to our offices to order a roll bar.

  Wes watched her go and then turned back to me. “You realize you’re creating a public menace?”

  “I don’t have final say, that’s up to the county commissioners.”

  “They’re not going to tell you no, Walt.”

  “They tell me no all the time.” I glanced toward the restroom again. “Ever had this big of a response?”

  He glanced at his wristwatch. “No, not this much.”

  “You think I should check on him again?”

  He adjusted his glasses and shrugged. “Like I said, I’ve never had anyone have this long of a reaction.”

  We both walked down the hallway, and I knocked again. “Mr. Townsend?” No response. “Bass, are you all right in there?”

  Wes and I looked at each other, and then I tried the door, which was locked. “Mr. Townsend, if you don’t answer, I’m going to have to break the door down.” I listened but then looked at the banker. “Do you have a passkey?”

  “No.”

  I put my shoulder into it and felt the jam break apart. Townsend was lying on the floor, gasping for breath. I kneeled and felt the pulse at his throat and watched as his eyes fluttered.

  He looked up at me. “I was sick, but then my chest started hurting, and I couldn’t catch my breath . . .”

  “Does your chest still hurt?” He nodded, and I turned to Wes, standing in the doorway. “Get us an ambulance.”

  * * *

  —

  “He’s fine. It was a mild coronary blockage aggravated by the agitation, which might’ve caused an arrhythmia.”

  Standing with Isaac Bloomfield in the hallway of Durant Memorial Hospital, I was holding my hat and feeling a little guilty. “I guess we didn’t think that telling someone that they’d just inherited a million dollars would give them a heart attack.”

  The old concentration camp survivor smiled, pinching his lower lip with an extended thumb and forefinger. “Medically, it was bound to happen; unfortunately for you, perhaps, but fortunately for him, it happened on your watch. He’s resting peacefully, and we have him on a mild sedation to allow him to regain his footing. Do you know of anyone we should notify?”

  “Not that I’m aware. When will I be able to speak with him?”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “Possibly an hour, possibly a day.”

  “But he’s in no danger?”

  “Not at this point, I don’t think. I mean, he had an episode, but I think he’ll be fine.”

  David Nickerson came out of the room and approached us. “He’s asleep, and all his EKG readings are good. Does he have any genetic propensity?”

  Isaac nodded. “His grandfather, the one we did the autopsy on, was a victim of cardiac arrest, but there were mitigating factors, such as his age.”

  “Anything more on that?”

  “Not really, as I said, it appears that he had some sort of injection the night of his death but the toxicology report came back negative. There are some elements that might remain in urine or blood samples, but I suppose we’ll never know because such samples don’t exist.”

  “What kind of elements?”

  “Oh, speaking hypothetically . . . Sux, for example.”

  “Sux?”

  “Suxamethonium chloride, part of the rapid sequence intubation protocol, which would include respiratory support, but it’s been used by some clever murderers in the past.”

  Nickerson snapped his fingers. “The guy in New Jersey?”

  Isaac nodded. “And Florida. They now have acquired the detection abilities in t
issues and biological fluids to pick the stuff up, but you would need a urine or blood sample prior to death, which we don’t have.”

  The younger doctor glanced back at the door where Bass Townsend was comfortably resting. “Perhaps we should do a little further testing, just to be on the safe side?”

  “Possibly.”

  They both looked at me. “You’re going to have to take that up with Mr. Townsend.” Slipping my hat back on, I turned to head toward the emergency entrance. “You’ll let me know if there are any changes in his condition?”

  They both called out the ubiquitous Wyoming response. “You bet.”

  * * *

  —

  When I got to the curb, Vic was waiting for me in her soon-to-be-retired unit. “Get in.”

  I leaned against the door. “If you’re going to show me why you need a new unit I’m not getting in this vehicle.”

  “No, we got an emergency call from the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home.”

  I climbed into the nest she called a vehicle, pushing empty soda bottles, notepads, books, and fast-food wrappers to the floor mat. “What’s going on?”

  Vic jetted out of the parking lot, took a right, and then made the next right onto Fort Street, winding through cars with her siren wailing and lights flashing a Morse code of get the hell out of my way. “What’s up?”

  “Somebody broke into Charley Lee’s room.”

  “Good grief.” Buckling my belt, I braced a hand against the dash in hopes of mitigating the impending crash. “Why are we in such a hurry?”

  Passing two cars on the left, she rocketed back into our lane barely avoiding an oncoming semi whose horn rattled my fillings. “Police business.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “How should I know? Carol Williams called and said that the room had been broken into and that you might want to come up and take a look.”

  Once we’d barreled past the edge of town, I watched as she swerved around a slow-moving pickup and veered into the entryway of the Veterans’ Home, the four men in their wheelchairs waving as if this were an everyday occurrence.

  Roaring past the first parking lot and the administrative offices, she turned the corner and slid sideways to a stop in the no-parking area in front. I glanced up at the bumper-sticker-covered window on the second floor and could have sworn I could see someone’s shadow quickly disappear. Vic threw open the glass doors and charged in as Country Joe McDonald strummed his guitar and warbled “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die” from the speakers above.

  “Are you coming?”

  Breaking from my reverie, I turned and glanced at Vic and rushed after her as Carol intercepted us in the lobby. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’ve got the room blocked off.”

  “When did it happen?”

  She walked along ahead of us. “Must’ve been very early in the morning; the night man made his rounds at around three and didn’t see anything, but the morning man spotted the door on his first pass.” We arrived at room 124, and it was obvious somebody had used a crowbar or something similar to pry open the heavy door. “Looks like a professional job.”

  “Hmm . . .”

  Vic slipped on a pair of plastic gloves that she had taken from the kit in her unit and pulled the door open, which revealed an even greater mess than the one that had been there before. “Cripes.”

  Looking over her shoulder, I could see that all the piles of books and magazines had been toppled over and the artifacts had been swept from the shelves. “Somebody was looking for something.”

  I glanced around the room at the walls, but none of the hanging art was damaged. “Nobody could have done this quietly.”

  Carol peeked in. “The men on either side are medicated at night, and the rest in the area are pretty heavy sleepers.”

  “Was Charley Lee medicated?”

  She entered and made her way to one side, standing by the door to the bathroom, where the stack of books still sat on the toilet. “No.”

  “Isaac says he might’ve had an injection the night he died?”

  She waved her hand before her nose. “He mentioned it, but there was nothing on the charts.”

  “Did you have all the books cataloged?”

  “I can’t be sure, but it doesn’t look as if anything has been taken.” She glanced in the bathroom. “God, that smell. I’m going to have to let housekeeping get in here.”

  I scanned the room. “Why in the world would somebody come in here and dump the books over and . . .” My eye caught something that appeared to be out of place.

  Stepping over the collapsed stacks, I found an empty section of floor where the built-in elongated closet door hung partially open. Taking a pen from my pocket, I slipped it through the handle and pulled the door the rest of the way open.

  There were a few items hanging there, including Charley Lee’s dress uniform, topped by a shelf for his hat and a remarkable ball-cap collection, mostly military themed. There were a few dress shirts that had been knocked to the floor of the cabinet, but what caught my eye was the back of the closet, where a faux-wood panel had been pulled away.

  Curious, I reached in, took the items that were still hanging from the support rod and handed them back to Vic. I gripped the panel, which popped away with ease, and then carefully turned it sideways in order to remove it from the closet.

  Reaching my hand back to Vic, I stuck my head inside. “Give me your Maglite?”

  She did as I requested and then leaned in to watch as I shined the beam onto the open back where the drywall was chipped away to reveal a space about fourteen inches between the studs in the wall. Turning the beam upward, I could see that there was a hidden compartment that broke through the ceiling where the sill wood had been carefully chiseled away in a circle that continued upward.

  “What do you think is up there?”

  I turned to look at my undersheriff. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing now, but I’d be willing to guess that if you rolled up a nine-and-a-half-foot by fourteen-and-a-half-foot canvas, it would fit in this little cubby perfectly.”

  She looked back at Carol, who stood near the bathroom door. “Are you telling me there was a twenty-four-million-dollar painting propped up in this closet the whole time?”

  “Possibly.”

  I watched as she stepped into the bathroom and reached for the toilet handle.

  “Don’t flush that.”

  * * *

  —

  “So, who took it?”

  “I wish I knew.” As she drove away from the Veterans’ Home, I thought about it. “As near as I can figure, Charley Lee had only one thing in his life that could’ve been worth a million dollars.”

  “A twenty-four-million-dollar painting?”

  “Yep.”

  “So, you think he sold it?”

  “Possibly.” I thought about it. “Selling a twenty-four-million-dollar painting for a million? Of course, it’s difficult to sell one that was presumed destroyed and in possession of the Seventh Cavalry headquarters, a branch of the United States military, and in proxy the United States federal government.”

  “They have a lot of lawyers.”

  “Yep, they do.” Watching the rolling scenery go by I was momentarily mesmerized by the glimmering sun reflecting through the quaking leaves of the trees like vibrating million-dollar bills. I looked past the brick sign and the chiseled marble that made up the entryway to Fort McKinney and at the four wheelchairs parked by the road. “Stop.”

  She glanced at me. “What?”

  “Stop!”

  She locked the brakes, and the aged SUV slid to a halt as I flung open the door, circled around the hood, crossed the sidewalk, and stood in front of the Wavers.

  The old servicemen looked up at me in mild surprise as I stood there and s
tudied each of them in turn. Army Command Sergeant Major Clifton Coffman was going light today with an outlandish Hawaiian shirt, but the ubiquitous boonie hat still covered his crown. Kenny Cade, chief petty officer, was wearing a blue t-shirt with a blue-nose polar bear emblem I recognized from my time in Alaska. Air Force Master Sergeant Ray Purdue was still peering at me from under his cap with the scrambled eggs on the bill, and Delmar Pettigrew, the oversize sergeant major of the marines, was still holding down the far right with the everyday attire of satin jacket and red cap.

  I continued to study them and gave them a moment to study me as I slowly took off my sunglasses, summoning as much of my former commissioned officer as I could muster.

  Kenny was the first to clear his throat. “Can we help you, Lieutenant?”

  I waited another moment and then delivered the words slowly. “Custer’s Last Fight.”

  They stared at me, their eyes collectively widening a bit.

  Clifton had a coughing fit, and now they were looking at one another before allowing their eyes to come back to me.

  We stood or sat like that for a few more moments before Navy summarily pivoted in his electric wheelchair and drove off down the miniature rolling highway that led back toward the Home. Army followed suit along with Air Force, which left me staring at my comrade in service, Marine Corps, when he suddenly turned and followed after the others.

  Watching the diminutive convoy disappear over the hillocks, I became aware of Vic standing beside me. “So, you want me to shoot out their tires?”

  10

  I can’t see, but in a way I can see more clearly than ever before. There are small swirls and swipes, muted patterns, brushstrokes of mostly browns and greens with figures darting from all sides under a flat sky with waves of heat on a July, high-plains day. There is dust, and there are noises, screaming high and loud, not all of it human.

  I’ve got my hand around another man’s arm where a cuff of some kind embraces his bicep, and some sort of bone breastplate strains across his chest. Dark with dark features, he’s wearing some sort of headdress, but it’s a strange one and the orange feathers on top make it look like his head is blooming.