by Sue Hardesty
"Yep."
Another five minutes later, Harris carried the box into the property room and sat it on a table next to Loni.
"That dog bite?"
"Only if you piss her off." Loni closed her eyes and tried not to smile. "Just Harris? Is that your first or last name?" She already knew the answer.
"Both," he answered, skirting the dog. "My mom loved redundancy." He opened the box. "Need a receipt?" As usual, his round face flamed red with embarrassment.
"Yes," Loni answered, one eye opened a slit to watch him. "There's a phone and notebook I took off Rene, a shitload of money, a blood sample, and drug samples from Rene's plane as well as other debris from the scene. And a valve from the plane. The bullet's from a wall where someone shot at me. Ask the state lab to analyze the DNA on the blood sample. I think it's from the person who shot at me. And tell them to lift the print off the epoxy in the valve. That should be from the person who murdered Rene. Did you get all that?"
Loni smiled, watching Harris's round brown eyes widen at her flat speech as he picked up the plastic bags with the valve and bullet. "Think the valve and bullet are the same guy?"
Loni shrugged. "Don't know, but it makes sense." Harris opened the bag with the money, dropping it like a hot branding iron. Loni's laugh burst into the silence. "Maybe trace the money. See if the names and numbers in the notebook lead anywhere. Maybe trace the phone calls. And see if they can find a bullet match."
"That all?"
"Pretty much."
"I gotta count it before I give you a receipt," he said firmly, moving in slow motion. Reaching in the bag, he warned, "You have to watch me. With both eyes."
"Fine." Loni leaned back again in the rickety wooden chair. Ignoring the sound of Harris's voice counting the money, Loni closed her eyes again, dreading the patrol coming up.
A half hour later, Harris handed her the receipt for the box contents and the form for the lab to sign. "Have a safe night."
Pocketing the receipt, Loni got up and walked back around to the front of the counter to sign in for her shift and wait for Bobby to take over the booking desk. She ran her hand across the cool wood as she walked the eight foot of its length and felt the years of use and misuse in the nicks and chips dug into the dark surface. Bored, she eyed the filing cabinets lined up on the wall behind the long counter. Nothing was computerized.
Bobby was on duty now. He nodded at her as she signed in. "No extra assignments this morning. Bet you're glad about that."
"I will be if you keep it that way the rest of the night."
He sighed in agreement. "Don't count on it."
It was time for her to hit the road.
Coco kept shoving in the way as Loni tried to unlock the door to her SUV. Dancing in excitement, the dog scraped her leg on the opening door before she jumped in and huddled against the seat until Loni started the engine. Immediately Coco's mood changed to buoyant. She always seemed to worry until they were on the road.
* * *
They had not been on the road long when the radio crackled. "Crap!" Loni ended the call with Bobby. Another bar fight. She didn't know which she hated more, domestics or bar fights. Or coyotes. Loni turned around and sped back on the straight road across the desert toward The Oasis Bar. The large red and green neon sign showed up from miles away. Except for the occasional weave around old black dormant volcano hills and through washes or an occasional haphazard grouping of salt cedars around a tank or ranch and palo verde trees lining a wash, nothing much got in the way of far off views.
Surrounded on three sides by salt cedars, the old adobe bar had once been part of a string of stagecoach stops that turned into century old auto stops marking Old Highway 85 as it crossed the Arizona desert. Cars were lucky to travel fifty miles in a night in the dirt ruts. It was too hot and too dangerous to travel during the day. The shacks behind the bar where travelers stayed out of the heat were long gone, along with the service stations and small grocery stores where prospectors and traveling Indians traded for supplies and locals met to settle world issues.
Most of the cars were parked in a row across the front of the bar, but a few were up close to the trees, backed in until the bumpers hit the trunks. They huddled under long branches, their owners hoping to keep the cars out of the sun and cool enough to touch. It was long past dark, which meant the cars had been there a long time. The ones with splotches of paint eaten off by the erosive acid in the salt dripping trees were repeats. Loni searched for cars and pickups to see if she recognized any. These tree bumpers could be real mean drunks.
After 1:30 a.m., it was still over 90 degrees. Loni slipped around each car, watching for moving shadows in the soft glow of the moon. Nothing. She tried to peer in one of the windows of the bar, but it was covered.
Cautiously pulling open the thick wood door, her hand on her gun butt, she stepped inside and to the left, crab walking against the wall as she watched for flying bodies. All appeared to be quiet, even orderly, no chairs broken or scattered, no overturned tables.
Six cowboys with their hats on sat at one end of the long bar closest to her. Four couples perched at tall tables dotted around a small dance floor. Large hanging oval fixtures lit the three pool tables strung along the back wall. Pools of light bouncing off the green felt on the tables created a greenish tinge on the faces of the two couples who were playing.
Two cowboys at the bar pushed at each other as they watched her crabwalk along the wall. She had been laughed at before and she hoped they wouldn't get too stupid while trying to have a good time.
Moving toward the bar, Loni kept her back to the wall as she glanced around the room again. Old movie posters were taped in the windows. That's why she couldn't see into the bar from outside. Somebody fed the jukebox, and a couple got up to dance. Dropping her hand off the butt of her gun, Loni relaxed and approached the barkeep.
"You call for help?"
"Nope." He stared at her as he kept drying glasses.
Out of the corner of her eye, Loni saw Chui come out of the bathroom, smirking. She waited for him. "Did you call in?"
Chui shrugged and climbed on a bar stool in front of her.
Deciding to ignore him, Loni started to turn toward the door just as a drunk cowboy got off his stool. Sitting beside him, Chui put a foot out and tripped the drunk, sending him sprawling in front of her. The drunk struggled up off the floor, fighting mad, ready to swing. He looked strong as a bull. With an evil grin, Chui said to Loni, "What'd you want to do that for?"
"Whoa," she apologized to the drunk, who was staggering toward her as she kept backing and dodging. "Sorry." Finally the drunk got tired of trying to find her and staggered back to his stool, muttering unintelligibly. Following him back to his stool, Loni relieved the unhappy cowboy of his keys and tossed them to the barkeep as she tried to stare Chui down.
"Shit runs down hill," he said. "And dykes with it." He turned away from her.
Wishing she could just shoot him, she walked out the door.
The rest of the shift was uneventful. She signed out and was on her way to her grandparents' house before Chief got to work and found something else to get mad about.
* * *
Loni drove past the ranch house and parked beside the tired barn that squatted behind the house, its plank siding faded rock hard gray from drying in the incessant heat. Beside the barn, four square shacks squatted beneath a row of eucalyptus trees. Each had a screened-in porch and a rusty evaporative cooler along with rusted galvanized tin roofs that thrummed with a loud drumbeat when it rained, which wasn't often enough.
Parking under a salt dripping salt cedar, Loni got out with Coco at her heels. She stopped to pet Jack, Bahb's old dog, who had dug a hole under a tree and curled up in it to keep cool. He had been her dog until he was three and she left to go to college. A border collie, Jack was once a great heeling cowdog. She pictured him as he raced around the heels of kicking cattle and never got walloped, like a fish dodging rocks in a fast-moving str
eam. Those days were gone. Coco raced circles around him, trying to play with him.
"Cool it, Coco." she warned. "His play days are over." She ran her hands down Jack's sides and along his shaky legs, feeling for hot spots and ticks. "What a good old boy you are." He was relegated to alarm dog and gave out a single woof at Coco to prove he could do his job. With a couple of final rubs on his head, she herded Coco out to the barn. "Stay," Loni told her.
Three gunny sacks, each cut into a feeding halter, hung right inside the barn door. She filled them with rolled oats and walked out of the barn, looking around for the horses. She spotted them at the far end of the large corral that widened out from the barn into a grassy field surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Loni walked under the windmill, stopping at a long cement water trough. Feeling groggy and cranky, she leaned over to bury her head in the water and stood again, shaking herself like a wet dog as the cooling water ran down her back and between her breasts. God, it felt good.
She stood at the gate into the corral, looking out the once familiar scene. Everything seemed so much smaller than she remembered it. At the south end of the corral two determined mesquite trees stood their ground. Battered from years of horse teeth gnawing on them looking for salt, their limbs were bent out of shape and stripped of life. The small sparse lacy leaves barely fluttered in the slow hot breeze. Even fewer yellow, pea-like bean pods hung from their tops, waiting for a good wind. Desert raised horses preferred the mesquite bean to grain of any kind. Loni never understood it. It was bubble gum chewy without the sticky satisfaction. The only thing worse than its sickly sweet taste was Shiichoo's cactus candy.
Two horses stood in the pasture, stomping and occasionally swishing their tails against the flies as the hot sun beat down on their backs. Roanie was the closest to her. He wasn't the biggest of horses or the most beautiful, but he had a powerful essence. His big bumpy head sat on a short squatty neck, and his knees were so knobby they appeared deformed on his small legs. His rear end, though, was all quarter horse. Heavily muscled legs bowed out on both sides of his hocks all the way down to the knees instead of in like an old tired cowboy. His body flowed with amazing dance steps when he cut cattle.
The other horse, Paint, had been Willie's best friend as long as Loni could remember. A small desert broom tail Indian pony with large brown spots over white, he was a beautiful paint with the black, flowing mane and arched neck and tail of his Arabian ancestors.
Holding the sacks in front of her, Loni whistled, laughing as two heads jerked up in unison, their four ears twitching. Not sure where to look, they saw her at the same time and came trotting, small clumps of dust puffing around their hooves on the well worn trail through the grass. She stood in the shade of the barn overhang, enjoying the sight of them.
She opened the gate and walked into the corral, hurrying toward the shade of the lean to where Stonewall, their old pale yellow Brahma bull, stood, waiting. Both horses followed right behind her, pushing their noses under her arms to get to the grain sacks. Loni giggled again as she ducked under their necks to keep from being squashed between them as they vied for the grain sacks.
After maneuvering around the horses, Loni reached the shade of Stonewall's lean to. Always a gentleman, he waited his turn, stomping a huge hoof and flicking his lion tail over his back as he nodded his huge head up and down. She smiled, recalling her uncle's description of Stonewall as he flapped ears big enough to eat off. "Looks like a VW bug," he said. "With both doors wide open."
Roanie was first, of course. He stayed head of the pack. Pulling the sack up around his nose and hanging the halter behind his ears, she moved her hands down his legs, feeling for hot spots. It was a habit. He was a joy to ride while he worked, and didn't put up with any interference from the rider. He knew what needed to be done before the rider did, and he loved doing it. He especially loved bringing up the rear so that he could run up and bite a cow on the butt if it didn't stay in line. God help any cow that tried to run. And god help the rider that wasn't ready. He could spin on a dime and often did when he was trailing a herd. Because he never quit, he was famous along the Colorado River for running cattle in the bush. He was fearless.
During his sixteen years with Bahb, Roanie would disappear for days at a time and, just as suddenly, reappear, so beat up and crippled that he could barely walk for weeks. Loni never understood why Bahb didn't hunt down the thieves and hurt them. Hurt them bad. She would. Roanie was eighteen now, too old to work hard again, but he still wanted to go.
She pulled on Paint's black mane, leading him away from Roanie to get some space. Holding the sack up to him, she studied his teeth as she slid the strap over his ears. She counted the lines around his eyes, trying to figure out how old he was as she rubbed his small ears. "Bet you're twelve by now, huh old friend? I count twelve lines." Paint wiggled his ears to listen. "Then again, maybe not." His sweet face was trusting as a puppy dog. A direct descendant from the Arabian stallions the government brought in to improve the desert broomtail, most of the horses were too small to work cattle and became another worthless experiment like the camels whose soft hoofs couldn't walk on the hard, sharp rocks and cactus covering the desert floor. Bahb told her about seeing the last camel when he was a child, sometime during the late thirties. That camel spent his last days on the sand banks of the Hassampa River.
Loni turned to Stonewall, patiently waiting under his lean to. She grinned at his huge wiggling ears as he gently stuck his massive head forward, pushing his nose into the sack. Eyes half closed, he chewed, a happy boy. Everyone on the ranch had learned to ride on him. If anyone slipped, he would stop until they regained their balance or fell off. His huge hump made a natural saddle. She was always sorry he never sired any calves, something wrong with him from the beginning. But Bahb said the Spirit Way was as it was supposed to be. "He come, he stay. It always his home."
Waiting for them to finish feeding, she looked around, amazed that Stonewall's old shed was still standing. Four forked mesquite branches stuck in the ground held other limbs that shaped the roof. The sun shining through the hundreds of holes in the sad, rust-eaten tin sheets nailed onto the posts made patterns on Stonewall's back. Loni knew Stonewall could push the shed over if he ever decided to lean on it. She hoped he never wanted to scratch his butt on one of the posts.
When they finished chewing, Loni pulled the sacks off their heads and returned to the barn, hanging the empty gunny sacks back on their nails. She looked up at the well pulley above her. Maria had paid twenty-five dollars for it. They picked it up on one of their trips home when they took a side trip to the Verde River up on the Apache Indian Reservation at Fort McDowell. Driving by a sandwich house, she had spotted the wheel over a long abandoned well. Maria made Loni stop while she knocked on the door and asked the price.
The twenty-five dollars didn't include taking the wheel off the wood frame, and hanging over a deep hole didn't excite Loni one bit. Lucky for her, the ancient wood frame was so old she was able to pull it down and remove the board attached to the wheel from the frame. Loni remembered how successful she felt at pleasing Maria until twenty minutes later she got stuck in the river sand and had to ask a couple of her Apache brothers to pull her out. Maria never let her forget about that day. Whenever Maria wanted to drive, she reminded Loni of every mistake she had ever made, especially the two men pulling her battered truck out of the sand. Loni would give anything to have Maria back, even when she pointed her finger in Loni's chest and recited her litany of Loni's faults.
Signaling Coco to follow, she stuck her head into Willie's bunkroom. "Time to paint."
Willie stood and grinned at her. "Bahb get brush, too?"
"Of course!"
"I paint other side of room then."
"Me, too." They grinned at each other like co conspirators and walked back to the house, arm in arm. Willie had been her best friend all her life. Rock hard wiry, he could hold down a large cow. He came and went around the ranch and across the desert like a gh
ost. Loni never knew where he was. He just appeared. When he rode Paint through a herd of deer, few would shy away or even lift their heads to watch him.
"I swear, Bahb, I had already cleared that gully," she told her granddad when she had been out to help them a couple of weeks earlier. "He came out right behind me with a cow. How does he do that?"
Bahb grinned. "Hope you're better at cops and robbers."
"Nah," Loni shot back. "I prefer cowboys and Indians. I'm the cowboy."
"Like I said."
* * *
After a cold lunch, Loni cleaned the kitchen. Against her grandma's great protest, the wood stove had been left unfed since yesterday.
"What wrong with gray? It go with everything," Willie said from the doorway.
"Those walls are gray from age and soot." Loni was determined. "I want to see sunshine in here."
"Leave door open," said Willie. "I wash windows." He dropped paint brushes and tape on the floor in a corner and went out again, mumbling about too much sun already.
"How'd you get those two to help you, Shiichoo?" Loni whispered in her ear.