“Clearmont is already one of your towns.”
“I knew you wouldn’t go for it.” He looked at me. “There are a lot of people in this state that think you’re kind of a pain in the ass, Walt.”
“Are you one of them?”
“As a matter of fact, I’m not, but the next time something like this comes up I’d appreciate a call.”
“It wasn’t business.”
“It’s always business with you, Walt.” He shook his head. “If you come over here to go to the grocery store, I’m gonna send people out to scour the frozen food section for a body.”
It was a small lecture, but a lecture nonetheless. “You want it?”
“No, what I want is the courtesy of a phone call—is that too much to ask?”
I pulled in my horns. “No, no it’s not.”
He studied me for a moment more. “I’m glad to hear that.”
I nodded and studied my boots. “Do you remember Sundown Pierce?”
“Hell yeah, he locked me and my brother up in that ancient, historic jail during Clearmont Days one time and then forgot about us—came out the next morning and took us into Sheridan and bought us breakfast at the Palace.”
“He and Lucian had a turf war one time.”
“Really? I’d have paid to see that.”
“Lucian ran over his foot and broke three toes, and Sundown shot out the back window of Lucian’s old Nash.”
He laughed and shook his head. “Crazy ol’ bastards.”
“Yep.”
He studied me. “And you’re the last one.”
“I’m not crazy.”
“You know the first sign of crazy?”
“Saying you’re not?”
He grinned a consummate political smile, and it was easy to see how he’d been elected. “You got it.”
I studied him back and then looked through the open doorway at the lawn outside and the assemblage of vehicles. “Yep, well . . . How’s Katrina?”
“Out in the truck—hey, she’s cute. Are you going to get in trouble with Vic?”
“No, she’s usually with me when the bodies turn up.”
“Katrina Dejean—French?”
“By way of Russia.”
His face twisted. “We picked up a Russian very late last night—kicked some guy in the head at the Mint Bar.”
“His name wouldn’t be Serge Boshirov?”
“Might be.”
“Can you hold him?”
“As long as you’d like—the victim is still unconscious.”
“Do it—he might be involved with all this.”
He glanced around. “Oh my, like one of those Russian nesting dolls, two crimes for the price of one?”
“Might be.” I looked at the younger version of myself and thought about how many times I’d wished someone had given me the advice I was about to give to Carson Brandes. “Why don’t you go home?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Don’t think—go.” I smiled and set out for the parking lot where Dejean was, indeed, sitting on the tailgate of a Sheridan County Sheriff’s Department pickup. She was sipping a cup of what I assumed was coffee with Dog sitting at her feet.
“Your dog is begging coffee.”
“That’s because I only give him decaf.”
Lori Saunders, the silver-haired chief detective over in Sheridan County, laughed the way she always did at my jokes, one of the many reasons I really liked her. “I let your dog out.”
“I figured.”
“Can I have him?”
“No.”
“I’ll treat him better than you do.”
“Everybody treats him better than I do, that’s why I don’t have to.”
Lori stood. “You will make sure this nice lady and your dog get home?”
“No more questions?”
“No more questions for now. Get her home.”
I saluted. “Will do.” Helping Katrina off the tailgate, I closed it, and we watched as Lori fired up her Suburban and drove off into the burgeoning dawn. “Where is home, anyway?”
She glanced toward the ostentatious house.
“Oh.” Woody Woodson appeared in the doorway of said house and waved at me as I turned back to Katrina. “Take Dog and climb into my truck, and I’ll find you someplace to stay when I get done here.”
She called Dog, and the two of them headed toward the Bullet as I walked back toward the house. “What’s up?”
Woody peeled off the plastic gloves, punching them in his shirt pocket where they hung like a dead flower arrangement. “You want the good news or the bad?”
“Why not the good?”
“We have a positive ID, down to prints and blood type.”
“The bad?”
“It’s the Count.”
* * *
—
After dropping Katrina off at the Blue Gables at dawn, I swung around to the office and unlocked the door, climbed the steps, careened off the walls to the holding cells, and collapsed on one of the cots as Dog curled up on the floor. In two minutes, we were asleep, or I exaggerate and it was one and a quarter.
“Late night?”
Ruby was always the first in, unless I slept at the office, which I seemed to do more and more these days. “Go away.”
“I made coffee, you grouchy old bear.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll leave your mug on my counter to lure you out of your lair.”
“Okay.”
“Get up, or it’ll get cold.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She’d been treating me a lot nicer since giving up on teaching me how to use a computer, something that had severely tested our relationship.
Groaning, I rolled up to a sitting position and scrubbed my hands across my face to get some circulation going. Then I gathered my hat from the floor and sat it on my head to capture my wayward hair. Dog was gone, having better recuperative powers than I did, and had evidently joined my dispatcher in the main office.
I stood and stretched my broken parts that woke up slower than the other ones and steadied myself in an attempt to start walking toward coffee, the only thing that would save me from the desperation of coma.
When I got there, she had already pulled a stool up for me. I stared at it.
She sipped from her own mug, peering at me with the ferocious blue eyes over the lip of her drinkware. “What?”
“I might fall off.”
She reached down and petted Dog. “You’ll have to risk it—I’m not hauling a chair in from your office.”
“Is this going to be a long lecture?”
“Maybe.”
“I already had one from the Sheridan County sheriff last night . . .” I thought about it. “Maybe it was this morning.”
“Sit.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I did as instructed and then, satisfied I wasn’t going to topple over onto her, reached out and took the mug and held it under my face, allowing the steam to help open my eyelids that felt as if somebody had glued them together. “At the risk of sounding like an eighties’ action movie, I think I’m getting a little old for this.”
She nodded. “Surprisingly, among other things, that’s the title of today’s lecture.”
I sipped my coffee. “Go ahead.”
“You were in Sheridan County?”
“I was.”
“Running and shooting?”
“No, more like detecting and analyzing.”
“Well, that’s a relief and certainly more age appropriate.”
Nodding, I tried to smile. “I don’t usually look this good after a night of running and shooting.”
She continued to study me. “You are under the mistaken impression that you are looking good this morning?”
I shrugged, straightening my shirt that looked as if it had been slept in for a week. “Questionably representable?”
“Did it ever occur to you to call for some backup from a staff that is considerably younger than you are?”
“It was an impromptu situation.”
“With you it always is.” She lowered her mug. “Did you think of handing this situation over to the proper authorities in Sheridan County?”
“It was discussed.”
“And?”
“They didn’t want it. Besides, it might pertain to the case I’ve been working on.”
Her voice changed tone, and I was pretty sure about thirty-seven percent of the oxygen had just left the room. “And which case is that?”
I muttered. “The missing painting.”
“Walter . . .”
“It’s taken a turn.”
She sighed, more than audibly. “In what way?”
“Someone may have been murdered.”
“You’re not thinking Charley Lee Stillwater?”
“Possibly, but this is someone else.”
She sat forward a little. “So, who may have been murdered?”
“Philippe Lehman.”
“No Count?”
I sipped my coffee, the siren song of caffeine whispering to the dormant portion of my reptilian brain stem. “Proprieties for the dead, please.”
“Habeas corpus?”
“There’s a lot of blood and prints.”
“But no body?”
“Woody Woodson is working on that.”
She nodded. “He stopped in yesterday with his fishing pole.”
“That turned out to be wishful thinking.”
“On everybody’s part.” She glanced at the mass of Post-its on her own desk, and I casually wondered if she had stock in the company. “The grandson, Bass Townsend, is ready to be released from the hospital, but Isaac wanted to just give you a heads-up.”
“Hmm . . . Do you think we can get Jim over at the Blue Gables to just hold a cabin for us in perpetuity?” I sipped my coffee. “Did Isaac mention if the patient was capable of driving two days back to Los Angeles?”
“He did not.”
“But he’s doing better?”
“Apparently.” She studied me some more. “Isn’t that a glimmer of light in this particular part of this wide-reaching investigation?”
I reflected, which was what she wanted anyway. “Here’s my line of supposition, and you can correct me if you spot any errors in my logic.”
“Of course.”
“A local veteran dies under questionable conditions and leaves a box containing a million dollars’ worth of unmarked, nonserialized, hundred-dollar bills; an individual with an impressive layman’s interest in not only western art but in one piece of artwork in particular that was destroyed in a fire in a military facility in Texas at a time when and where he happened to be stationed.”
“Okay.”
“A study of said painting is discovered that matches the historic work of art exactly and after violence is perpetrated, it is stolen.”
“Granted.”
“Further investigation reveals a hidden cubby in the veteran’s ransacked room that could have contained said oversize, historic painting.”
“A painting no one has actually seen.”
“Granted, but Philippe Lehman, noted art historian and collector, is discovered missing with prints and an inordinate amount of blood saturating his kitchen floor.”
“But no body.”
I shrugged. “No.”
“So, once again, no painting and also no body.”
“Yes.” I drained my coffee cup. “There is one aspect you may or may not be aware of.”
“And that is?”
“There is an ex-KGB arm-breaker over in the Sheridan jail by the name of Serge Boshirov who might be mixed up in all of this.”
She looked at me, one tick past incredulous. “KGB arm-breaker?”
“Ex . . . Well, maybe a head-kicker—at least that’s why he’s in the Sheridan jail. Anyway, my next trip is over there to have a word with him as long as Carson Brandes and I are still on speaking terms.”
She sat her mug down. “Well, before you go, I have something serious to talk about with you.”
“This hasn’t been serious?”
“You need to call your daughter.”
“She could call me.”
“That’s not how parenting works, and you know it.” She studied me. “How long has it been?”
“Seventeen days, eight hours, and forty-three minutes.”
“Call your daughter.”
“Okay.” My turn to study her. “Something else?”
“I’m thinking of retiring.”
I felt my stomach flip. “Don’t say that.”
“I just did.”
“I’m going to pretend like you didn’t.” I sat my own mug down. “Look, if this is about the computer thing . . .”
“It’s not. Walter, I only have so many years for all this in me, and I need to know if you’re going to stand in the next election, because if you are, I’m going to start training a replacement and then retire.”
I stared at her. “And if I’m not?”
“Then I’ll ride out the rest of your tenure and assist in the transition of whoever comes in to dispatch for the next sheriff.”
“Meaning Saizarbitoria.”
“Whoever, I really don’t care—I’m just not going to leave all this to the next person that comes in to do the job. I’ve got another year in me, but I can stretch it to one and a half if I have to.”
“Either way, you’re leaving?”
“Yes.”
“You know, not all good things have to come to an end.”
“Yes, they do, it’s the nature of all good things.”
“I don’t think I want to be here without you. I’m not even sure I can.” I leaned in and took her hand. “When the whole computer thing was going on, I was sure you were going to quit. I told Cady, and she said to do whatever it took to make you happy.”
“She’s a good girl.” She waited a polite moment before continuing. “So, you’re not going to stand?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
I snorted out something that resembled a laugh.
“It’s not like I haven’t been thinking about it myself.”
“And?”
“I’m not sure what else I would do.”
“You and I both know that’s not a good enough reason to have this job.”
“Yep, well . . .” I looked at the floor. “I go up to the home for assisted living and look at Lucian, and I’m not so sure I can do that. I mean even working full time I can barely stay out of Cady’s and Lola’s hair.” I sighed. “Not that that’s been a problem lately.”
Her voice took on yet another tone. “Why haven’t you called her?”
“I need to tell her about Charley Lee, but was calling her too much, so I stopped.”
She shook her head at me. “All or nothing, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“Tough guy.”
“Not at all.”
“Why don’t you take a sabbatical?”
“I told you, I have been.”
“I mean from the job.”
“In case it missed your notice I was gone for two weeks in Mexico a few months ago.”
“That was hardly a vacation.”
“You think I need time off?”
“It’s better than just quitting—you could try having some time to yourself and see how it goes.” Her eyes stayed steady on me but then flicked over my shoulder where I heard someone coming up the steps from the main entrance. “Can I help you?”
I turn
ed to see the last person I expected, Lolo Long’s little brother, Barrett, who had stopped at the top of the steps and waved. “Hi.”
“Howdy.”
“Is there any other way up here?”
Ruby and I looked at each other. “What do you mean?”
“Lonnie is down here, and he wants to come up.”
* * *
—
“I need a job.”
I studied the résumé and looked up at the chief of the Northern Cheyenne and the little brother of the tribal police chief, figuring there wasn’t any way out of this in the political sense. “How come you don’t work with your sister?”
He glanced at Lonnie and then back at me. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Yep, I kind of was.”
“He is a very good boy—um hmm, yes, it is so.”
Lonnie nodded, and I wondered how old he was. I figured he had to be at least approaching a hundred. “You sure you want to lose him?”
The older man glanced at the younger one and nodded. “He is not a good driver.”
“With a car?”
“No, with my wheelchair. He runs me into things.”
Barrett interrupted. “Áahta . . .”
“Áahmomoto . . .” The older man looked back at me. “He also has trouble keeping his mouth shut, but I don’t think that has ever kept anyone from being a police officer.”
I studied the recommendations, which did not include Lolo. “What does your sister think about all this?”
“Nothing, she’s my sister, not my mother.”
“You understand, I’d prefer to have good relations with her department.”
“Me too, but I don’t belong to her.” He slumped back in the chair pushing a handful of thick hair from his face. “I’ve got two more semesters, and then I can work full time.”
“So, we’re talking about a part-time job for now?”
“Weekends and then the better part of a month during the holidays.”
“You worked security at the tribal headquarters, but you haven’t listed your sister as a previous employer.”
He gestured toward Lonnie. “He was my previous employer.”
“As I recall, you weren’t armed.”
“No, but I can be.”
“Not without six weeks down at the Law Enforcement Academy in Douglas.”
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