An Obvious Fact

by Craig Johnson

  I breathed a laugh and thought about the neo-Nazi reality star living next door as I carefully plucked the bullet from the dirt. I brushed it off and held it up into the moonlight—a perfectly mushroomed .40 slug. “You never forget your first time.”

  13

  “What good is it having a daughter who works for the attorney general if I can’t get a confidential piece of information every once in a while?” I could feel her fuming three hundred miles to the south as I sat there watching the sun come up, thankful that I’d finally gotten some sleep. “That information is with the courts, and I don’t have any pull over there.” She paused and then growled, “I just started last week—I don’t have any pull over here, either. If it’s a blanket bail, then they don’t have to disclose who supplied the money, Dad.”

  “Could you make a few phone calls for me?”

  “I can’t believe you’re asking me to compromise my position.”

  “Heck, if you weren’t there, I’d be calling the attorney general himself and hitting him up.” I waited a moment before changing the subject. “How’s the painting going?”

  Her tone brightened a little but not much. “It looks really great, and Lola seems to like it. Speaking of, how’s her namesake?”

  I yawned. “Probably going to the women’s prison in Lusk before this is all over with.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t know. I’m concerned about her son being hurt, but with the death of a federal agent, that’s kind of taken a backseat. Every time I think I’ve got something nailed down in this case, something worse happens that just complicates it.”

  “You’ll figure it out; you always do.”

  “Right.”

  “There was a big article in the Cheyenne paper that they got from the AP wire about the Save Jen campaign and the High Plains Dinosaur Museum. Wasn’t a very good photo of you, though.”

  “Yep, I saw it in the Rapid City paper.”

  She laughed. “You’re a big deal.”

  “Right.”

  “Stop saying ‘right.’”

  I held my tongue.

  “I found a nice lady who’s been doing day care for our Lola. Her name is Alexia Mendez; they’ve got an extended family here in Cheyenne.”

  “She’s nice?”

  “Yes, and she’s over six feet tall and probably three hundred pounds.”

  “Does Lola like her?”

  “Crazy about her.”

  “Well then, she’s okay by me.”

  “When are you and Henry coming down here for a visit?”

  I sighed and leaned back in the folding chair on the old flagstone patio near our room at the motel and watched Dog as he watered the vicinity. “What about Dog?”

  “Dog is always welcome, even when you’re not.”

  The phone went dead in my hand. I deposited it in my jacket pocket as the aforementioned beast came over and set his hundred and fifty pounds on my foot. “How you doin’, buddy?”

  He wagged and lolled his head back to look at me.

  “I gave up breakfast so we could have quality time, so have some time of quality, will you?”

  I scratched the fur under his chin just as a man in full motorcycle regalia—boots, torn jeans, black T-shirt, well-worn leather jacket, hair tied back under an American flag do-rag, Ray-Ban sunglasses over his eyes—made the corner at the other end of the motel. I watched him approach the door to our room.

  I cleared my throat loudly. “Can I help you?”

  He looked at me and walked over the rest of the way but slowed a little when Dog stood. “Is he friendly?”

  I got up and extended a hand. “Unless you’re a honey-baked ham.”

  He patted Dog’s head, and we shook. “Sheriff Longmire, I presume?” His voice was soft with a bit of California in it.

  “Yep. You John Stainbrook?”

  He pulled out a badge wallet hanging on a chain under his T-shirt and showed me his credentials, then dropped the badge back in its hiding place and gestured with a hand that had a lot of rings and tattoos on it. “If you could gimme some ID.”

  I pulled my badge wallet from my pocket and handed it to him.

  “Sorry. Saw that photo of you in the paper yesterday, but you can’t be too careful in my line of business.” He took his time looking at it and then handed it back. “What have you got for me?”

  “Other than the slug we dropped off last night with DCI?”

  His face stiffened under what looked like a beard on a Persian statue, ringlets and all. “I’d just like to hear your version before we go any further.”

  I gestured toward the other chair, and he sat. “Not much I can tell you other than what you already know, but I was hoping that if we shared our collective info we could make some headway on this.”

  He nodded. “I’m hoping as well, but to do that I need to know what you know. This is a federal investigation, and even though I appreciate your intimacy with the situation, I’m going to need to see your cards first.”

  “Okay.” I leaned back in my chair and told him about the first meeting with Post and, more important, about the second, when he had told Henry and me who he was.

  “He told you who and what he was?”

  “Yep.”

  Stainbrook, looking all the world like some ancient philosopher, shook his head and pulled at the beard. “Then he must’ve been under a lot of pressure. Brady never did that anywhere with anybody.”

  “I’ve got a trustworthy face.”

  He stood and walked a little away, finally standing at the edge of the patio and looking at the river. “Tell me about the hit.”

  “Textbook. Somebody, and we think we know who, placed the barrel of a .40 at his chest while he was either sleeping or resting in the Cadillac. No prints, nothing.”

  “Lola Wojciechowski’s Caddy?”

  “Yep.” I stood up. “Hey, do you want to tell me what her connection to all of this might be?”

  He turned and looked at me, even going to the trouble of taking off his sunglasses. “Her son, Bodaway, was moving guns for the Tre Tre Nomads, but then he got into business with some folks up this way and things got a lot heavier.”

  “In what way?”

  “Know anything about ASPs?”

  I shook my head and thought about it, finally throwing out a feeble bone. “Alleged Sensory Perception?”

  “Advanced synthetic polymers.”

  “Well, look what the cat dragged in!”

  We both turned to see Lola standing on the ramp of the parking lot that led to the cabins, hands on her hips.

  Stainbrook was faster than I was. “Lola, baby! I was just askin’ this cowboy where I could find you.” He walked over to her, and they shared an embrace before turning back to me, arm in arm.

  She gave me a hard look, flipping the black and silver hair from her face. “Where the hell is my car?”

  “Excuse me?” I had to think fast and come up with a story so that she didn’t just stroll into the Hulett Police Department looking for it.

  “My Caddy, where the hell is it?”

  I struck on a scenario. “Impound in Rapid City—evidently there was a speeding violation and a number of parking tickets.”

  She stared at me. “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “Wish I were.”

  She turned back to Stainbrook. “Have you two met formally?”

  He immediately stuck the same hand out I’d shook before, but this time he had a newfound name. “Ray Swift. Good to meet you. Any friend of Lola’s is a friend of mine.”

  I shook the hand now turned covert. “Well, I don’t know if I’d call us friends—maybe just acquaintances.”

  “Oh, Sheriff, now you’ve hurt my feelings.”

  He made a show of double-taking me. “Sheriff?”
r />   “Yep.”

  He glanced at her again. “You hangin’ with law-dawgs now?”

  “Friend of a friend.” She hugged him closer. “Buy me breakfast and gimme a ride over to Rapid City so I can get my car?”

  “Well, there’s a problem with that.” He turned her, and they started to head back toward the center of town. “Let’s go have breakfast, Lola, and I’ll explain.” He looked over his shoulder at me and winked. “I’ll catch you later, Sheriff . . . ?”

  “Longmire. Walt Longmire.”

  “Right.” He made a gun with a forefinger and cocked it at me, firing wide.

  “I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other.” I patted my leg and Dog came over, sitting on my foot again as we watched them jangle up the hill and across the parking lot, leaving me to thank the heavens that my facet of law enforcement was a little more straightforward. I’d briefly dipped into undercover work, but I always had trouble remembering who I was—and that stuff wore me out.

  I scratched behind Dog’s ears again and thought about the two-inch cube of plastic I’d found in Post’s motel room. “Advanced synthetic polymers—that ring any bells with you?”

  He wagged, and I took it as a yes.

  “Well, it sure doesn’t with me.”

  • • •

  “Advanced synthetic polymers.”

  “That’s what he said, but then Lola showed up, as she is wont to do, and we had to change gears. Evidently she knows him as Ray Swift.”

  Vic shook her head. “I need a player card.”

  “I know.” We leaned on the trunk of the Orange Blossom Special as the Bear finished up an interview with Iron Horse, a biker/girlie magazine. “So, the cube we found in Post’s room takes on a new importance. I’m not sure what it is exactly, but at least we know it’s part of the equation.” I looked at Vic. “I’ll just have to get Stainbrook/Swift alone so that we can acquire more information.”

  She studied Henry as he talked to the reporter. “Well, we know the one thing that’ll distract her more than anything else.”

  “True.”

  She reached in the window and petted Dog, who was commanding the driver’s seat. “You think they’re going to make him take his clothes off?”

  “I think it’s only naked women in that magazine, but times change.”

  “You’re just jealous, because he’s getting as much print as you are.” She studied me for a moment and then took my arm and led me around to the other side of the vehicle, where we were relatively shaded from public view. Once there, she reached underneath her leather jacket, pulled her signature Glock 19, and handed it to me.

  “What’s this?” I glanced at the Bear and the interviewer, who were paying us no mind. “You want me to speed up the interview?”

  “You know, I’m glad that you came to me with this, because if you had gone to Stainbrook or DCI, they would’ve said, ‘You know, we gotta get rid of this dumb-ass Longmire, because he’s so amazingly stupid.’” She pointed at the wicked-looking semiautomatic in my hands. “Advanced synthetic polymer.”

  “Plastic guns?”

  “Partially.” She shook her head at me. “Realizing your technical advancement pretty much stops at muzzle loaders, I thought I’d save you some embarrassment.” She pointed at the plastic portions of her sidearm. “ASPs.”

  “Oh.” I handled the Glock, feeling again how lightweight it was compared to my Colt 1911. “So, how long have they been doing these things again?”

  “There were earlier versions, but the ones that are popular now stemmed from the Austrian military and police service in the early ’80s.”

  “Gaston Glock, right?”

  “The Safe Action pistol, polymer-framed, short-recoil-operated, locked-breech semiautomatic.” She leaned against the car’s shiny flanks. “There was a bunch of shit about the reliability of a plastic gun, but that little baby right there holds the lion’s share of sales to American law enforcement agencies, at, like, sixty-five percent.”

  “So what’s the big deal about advanced synthetic polymers if they’ve been around for thirty-five years?”

  “I don’t know.” She took her sidearm and stuffed it back in her pancake holster. “Even the tan color of the cube is no big deal—they’ve been making that color for years. Hell, three-quarters of the guys in Afghanistan and Iraq are carrying them.” She stretched, raising her arms, which drew her shirt from her jeans, revealing her midriff. “And we still don’t know who the second ATF agent happens to be?”

  “Nope.”

  “I don’t think it’s Lola.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle. “I don’t think so, either.”

  The Cheyenne Nation finished up with the fourth estate and came over, resting his back on the Tangerine Dream along with us.

  “You make the centerfold?”

  “I refused to be airbrushed.” He raised an eyebrow and shook his head at her. “I feel like such a piece of meat.”

  “We have a job for you. Your ex has attached herself to the ATF CO, and I need to talk to him about this ASP thing.”

  We loaded into the General Lee and drove toward the center of all things Hulett. Vic shut the growling engine off and glanced around at the milling motorcyclists, just now dragging themselves out of bed after their previous night’s revelries. “When are all these people going to go home and return to being a problem for their local law enforcement agencies?”

  I pulled the handle, stepped into the alley, and caught a chorus of a garage-band version of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man.” “It’ll start winding down the day after tomorrow.”

  “So, the clock is ticking?”

  “In more ways than one.” I turned to Henry. “How do you want to play this?”

  He clasped the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger. “It will not be hard; as soon as she figures out that he does not have a car, she will attempt to employ her namesake.”

  “You think you can get word to Stainbrook that we’re out back?”

  “I think so. What do you want me to tell Lola when we get to Rapid and her car is not there?”

  “Knowing her, she’s not going to go into the sheriff’s office voluntarily, so you can just come back out and tell her that it was returned to Hulett, compliments of the South Dakota taxpayers.”

  “You are sure that DCI will be through with it later today?”

  “One can hope, but if not, we’ll deal with that burning bridge when we get to it.” Without another word, we watched as he disappeared through the beer garden into the restaurant proper.

  I turned to Vic. “I guess when Stainbrook comes out we’ll pretend that we’re taking him into custody and walk him up to the HPD and talk.”

  “I don’t think it’s Eddy the Viking, either.”

  “What?”

  “The second ATF agent.”

  “You keep narrowing the field.” I shook my head. “Let me know when you get it down to one.”

  • • •

  Agent Stainbrook was impressed with the interior of the USS Pequod, even if Vic, sitting in the back with Dog, wasn’t. “I think we should hang a shingle on this thing and let everybody know that we’re establishing squatter rights in it and opening up an office.”

  Stainbrook glanced around the interior of the behemoth. “What are they intending to do with this thing, anyway?”

  “I don’t honestly know—go fishing, I guess.” I turned in the seat and looked at his profile. “So, what’s the big deal about ASPs?”

  “All right, first off, I want you to know that it is against agency policy to give you this information in any form, and I’m placing myself and my people in a precarious position by telling you any of this.”

  I nodded, and then he looked back at Vic, who made the motion of locking her mouth and throwing away the key. I assumed Dog was
exempt.

  He took a deep breath and started in. “In 1986 the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment reported that a ninety-nine percent metal-less gun could feasibly be made of advanced synthetic polymers, with metal used just for springs, but that it was only a possibility.” He pulled out his own sidearm, which looked remarkably like Vic’s only slightly larger. “This is a Gen4 Glock G22, and it’s got ASP parts like the grip and trigger guard. Now, it’s difficult to recognize one of these on an X-ray scanner when it’s disassembled, but it can be done.” He handed it to me. “This weapon is eighty-three percent metal by weight.”

  I held the lightweight .40. “So?”

  “In ’88 there was a company based in Scottsdale, Arizona, called Dust Devil Development that claimed it was going to have a prototype of a completely ASP weapon in less than a year. Well, a lot of agencies figured it was just hot air to get investors interested in the company, but Congress lost their minds over the fact that these weapons could be impossible to detect. They ordered an investigation, and suddenly Dust Devil Development ceased to exist. Shortly after that, Congress passed laws that banned the production of any kind of fully ASP weapons.”

  “Scottsdale, huh?”

  He nodded. “You see, the difficulty had been in the parts of the mechanism that would wear out. Those had to be made with metal; there just wasn’t any ASP that was able to stand up to that kind of punishment.”

  “Till now?”

  “You got it. Enter Bill Tichenor, a polymer technician out of Silicon Valley’s Special Materials Division. Tichenor develops a ceramic material that’s supposed to replace the metal exhaust valves in automobile engines, and this stuff is supposed to be as strong as steel. Well, this does not go unnoticed by the FBI, and they clamp down on the Special Materials Division and classify the formula for the stuff.”

  Vic leaned forward. “If they were so spooked by this, then why didn’t they shut down production completely?”

  “They did that for the car exhaust valves, but when they went through Tichenor’s files they found designs for all kinds of applications, especially worrisome being the concept drawings for a small automatic pistol.”

  “Uh-oh.”