Junkyard Dogs

by Craig Johnson

Static. “Got it.”

  There was a five-inch layer of snow on the swings that silently shifted in the slight wind, and I tried to think of something more depressing than empty playgrounds in the middle of winter but couldn’t come up with anything.

  The tracks continued toward the Clear Creek walking path that wound its way west past the old Wyoming Railroad locomotive that used to chug out past my place between the world wars. An extension of Washington Park, the greenway was about twelve miles in length and not as cultivated as the part in town.

  As I started to cross the street, I saw the Basquo roaring up the hill on Klondike.

  I stopped at the side of the road and waited for Saizarbitoria’s vehicle to slide to a stop in front of me. He rolled the window down and looked up. “I called the number in to Ruby, and she indexed it with Qwest. It’s the public phone in the bar out at the bypass truck stop.”

  “That means it’s probably somebody on the move.” I nodded and glanced over the roof of the car. “I think Ozzie took to the walking path.”

  He peered through the passenger side window of his unit. “Why the hell would he go there? What’s he think he’s doing, going bird hunting?”

  I studied the dark path. “Not with a coach gun.”

  Sancho started to unbuckle his seat belt, but it was with a certain amount of trepidation. “You want to trade off, and I’ll follow him up the trail?”

  “No.” I rested a hand on the sill and extended my other one. “You got your flashlight? I think I left mine in the trunk.”

  “Yeah.”

  He pulled it from the lodged location in the crack of the bench seat and handed it to me—a two- cell. Hell, I even shortchanged the kid on his flashlight. “Thanks. You head up Klondike here and take a right on Clear Creek Road, it follows the trail and you can use your spotlight—just don’t drive off the ridge and into the water.”

  He didn’t smile. “I won’t.”

  The Basquo sprayed a little ice as he departed and headed left, up the other hill. He slowed at the ridge, and I watched as he focused the spotlight into the trees ahead of me. It wasn’t like I was going to sneak up on anyone.

  There was a phalanx of signs listing the rules for walking the pathway, the most important being no horses or unleashed dogs—it didn’t say anything about shotguns. I walked between the concrete posts that marked the beginning of the greenway and started up the trail less traveled. There was a mitten that someone had found stuck on a branch with its palm facing me like a traffic cop.

  Stop, go no farther.

  I clicked on the flashlight, scanned the surrounding area, and saw a set of hiking boot prints leading straight up the middle of the path. I kicked off on my sore foot and ignored the ache from my bite wound.

  The path was marked by small red posts at every tenth of a mile and, as I got to the first one, my radio crackled; Vic’s voice was so clear in the arctic- like air that it sounded as if she were standing beside me.

  Static. “Walt?”

  I held the radio up to my face as I walked, the clouds of my breath freezing in the air and blocking my view momentarily. “Yep.”

  Static. “I checked the building, but all but one of the kids were already gone. The lady in charge said that nobody in a bathrobe had come by and that with the amount of parents coming and going there was no way he could’ve gotten near the place without being seen.”

  I thumbed the button. “It was a long shot, but I just wanted to be sure.”

  Static. “Where are you?”

  “I’m on the extended walking path beside the creek. Sancho’s flanking on Clear Creek Road. I’ve got shallow boot prints in the snow, and I think it’s him.”

  Static. “Wait for me; I’m on my way.”

  “That’s okay. I’m already a tenth of a mile in, so I’ll keep going. I’m moving slow, and you’ll catch up.”

  Static. “Walt, I know he’s been pretty harmless, well, other than trying to beat another man to death with a pitching wedge, but now he’s armed.”

  “You worried about me?” I couldn’t help but smile as I listened to the jostling of her radio as she ran.

  Static. “Yes, asshole. I have this image of you walking up to Tweedledum and saying hi as he blows your guts around your spine.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  Static. “You suck.”

  I clipped the radio to my belt and continued following the tracks. Leafless trees bowered over the path, and it looked more and more like some fairy tale. There was no wind, and now the only sound besides the rushing of the creek was the distant motor of Sancho’s unit and the soft clicking of his emergency lights as he made his way along the ridge above. He was a little ways ahead, and I could see the sweeping spotlight working its way back and forth from across the creek bed to where the pathway rose and then disappeared.

  There was a bench at the top of the hill, and it looked like Ozzie had veered toward it and even stood beside it for a moment before he went on. The trail became open to the right, and with the glow of the dusk-till-dawn lights on Fetterman Street, I could see the old sports field.

  His tracks led me south where the cottonwood trees loitered near the creek. The path remained on the ridge and would actually meander through foothills for another seven miles, past the old power plant, finally ending at Mosier Gulch. There was a picnic area there, and it was accessible from the main road, so he could be using that as a rendezvous; still, Turkey Lane was closer.

  I pulled the radio from my belt again and keyed the mic. “Sancho?” I watched as the spotlight stopped moving up ahead.

  Static. “Yeah.”

  “Have you seen anything yet?”

  Static. “No.”

  “Turn around and head back over to Fort Street and get out to Turkey Lane. If he’s meeting somebody, I think that’s the place.”

  Static. “Where the hell is that?”

  “Left at the trailer park.”

  Static. “What if he crosses the creek and climbs the hill?”

  “He doesn’t have a flashlight, so I don’t think he’s going to get off the trail; I can barely see where I’m going with one.”

  The snow was picking up again and, with the dry cold, it was like walking in an ocean of snowy dust bunnies, with little puffs of frozen humidity rising from the path every time my boots hit the ground. There were a few juniper bushes and stands of chokecherry under which was another bench; Ozzie’s tracks led to it, but again he hadn’t stopped—five inches deep and undisturbed.

  Was Ozzie looking for someone on the trail, and why was he stopping at every bench? And why the shotgun?

  “Do you know it’s already ten degrees below fucking zero?” Vic had caught up. She was holding something in her hands.

  “What are you holding?”

  “The ladies at the day care like you and thought we might enjoy some coffee during our cold pursuit.”

  I cracked the plastic top on the to-go cup; it smelled really good, and the warmth was intoxicating. “Very thoughtful of them.”

  We walked on at an accelerated pace, pausing infrequently to sip our coffees. I wanted to find Ozzie as quickly as possible, but I also didn’t want to walk past him in the dark. Vic’s flashlight prowled the brush to our right as I played mine over the bank leading down to Clear Creek, but Ozzie’s tracks didn’t veer from the walking path.

  “I’m going to kill that little fucker when we find him. I’m freezing my ass off out here.”

  “You should’ve worn your fur hat.”

  “Yeah. Well, I didn’t think I was going to be hiking to the Donner Pass.” She slowed and sipped from her cup. I did the same. “He bought a shotgun in his bathrobe?”

  I reattached my lid as we continued on. “Along with a parka and a pair of hiking boots.”

  “What in the hell?”

  “My thoughts, exactly. I can’t wait to ask him.” I studied her upturned face and saw she was looking at a brief split in the clouds that revealed a half-moon.
<
br />   “Is it supposed to warm up soon, say, turn of the century?”

  “Nope, this cold front is supposed to settle in, and today was the high from now through the weekend.”

  “Three?”

  “Yep.”

  “I quit too, and I’m moving to a place where the temperature is in double digits.”

  Both our radios crackled at once.

  Static. “Boss, you there?”

  I pulled mine from my belt. “Yep.”

  Static. “There’s nobody here.”

  “Tracks?”

  Static. “Nope.”

  “Well, you’re our stopgap. Shut your lights down and see if anybody shows up, either from the road or the trail.”

  Static. “Roger that.”

  Vic sipped her coffee as she walked; a Pyrrhic victory. “What kind of shotgun?”

  “20-gauge, coach gun.”

  “Why in the hell would he buy something like that?”

  “Only thing that would fit under his bathrobe?” I shrugged and tried drinking from my cup as we walked but only succeeded in dribbling it on my coat. “I’d say he’s afraid of something.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  I recapped my coffee. “I’m not sure, but my mind would rest a lot easier if I thought it was us.”

  She stopped. “Do you see that?”

  I directed my flashlight beam along with hers. Someone was sitting on the bench ahead of us in a new North Face parka, with a bathrobe that hung down to where a naked pair of legs bloomed from a pair of hiking boots with no socks.

  I slowed as I came up beside him with my hand on my sidearm and the beam of the flashlight directly on his face. Vic held to the side with her hand on her Glock. From all outward appearances, the shotgun on his lap was loaded and the remainder of the shells lay spilled in his lap. “Ozzie, if you shoot me I am going to be very disappointed in you.”

  He didn’t answer, and he didn’t move.

  I kept the light on his face and noticed that his eyes were open, his jaw was lax, and a strand of spittle dripped from his mouth and hung from his chin like frozen spun glass.

  I stepped closer. His eyes were unfocused, and the liquid in them was already beginning to freeze. I continued around him and could see the burnt spot and the small amount of frozen blood where someone had pressed a medium-caliber handgun to his chest and shot him directly in the heart.

  I sighed.

  Vic’s voice came from behind me. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

  10

  “A .32.” Vic sipped her coffee. “We had a contract hit in Philadelphia, where some poor bastard rode around on a SEPTA line train for eight hours before somebody figured out he was dead.”

  I nodded philosophically. “When in Rome.”

  Bill shrugged. “I’ll know more when I get him to Billings. The size of the barrel is usually indicated by the corona of soot, but if they used a silencer, which I’m assuming they did, the diameter might be affected.”

  The conversation was bringing on another of my headaches. “Anything else?”

  “The wound was pinkish in color due to carbon monoxide produced by the proximity of the weapon.”

  I sipped my own coffee—it was the morning for it. “So there really isn’t any doubt that this was up close and personal.”

  The young man smiled the half-smile he used when he had to tell me things I didn’t want to hear. “Not in my mind. What were the tracks like?”

  “I’m bringing my expert in this morning. He was up on the Rez checking on the progress of getting his pipes thawed and trying to get permission for Cady’s wedding.”

  McDermott smiled with his whole mouth. “Well, if anybody can get it done . . .”

  I nodded as Dorothy brought over the pot and refilled our mugs and picked up our dishes and the detritus and debris of our food. “You three going to want anything else?”

  I smiled up at her, thankful that she allowed us the back corner table for my indelicate forensic evaluations. It was not lost on me that this was the table where Ozzie and I had sat before.

  Vic answered for the group. “I think we’re good.”

  Dorothy set the check down between us and glanced at Bill McDermott as I picked it up. “I’d be careful, bad things happen to people who eat with this guy.”

  He watched her carry the coffeepot, along with our primary and ancillary dishes, back behind the counter. “Is everybody in this county a smart-ass?”

  My deputy sipped her coffee. “Pretty much.”

  He studied me for a few seconds more and switched back to the subject at hand. “Often in these situations there’s a mark on the victim where the killer has held the individual while shooting them; I’ll keep an eye out for anything, but I swear it looks like somebody just walked right up to him and shot him in the heart.”

  “A professional killer in northern Wyoming?”

  “Doesn’t make much sense, does it?” I studied the patterns of ice frozen in the low spots of the steps as we continued up. “And why would a hired killer shoot somebody like Ozzie Dobbs?”

  She didn’t say anything, probably attempting to keep as much of the warm air from the Busy Bee in her lungs until we got back to the office. She tucked her face down into the upturned fur of her jacket.

  We got to the office, and I stopped.

  She paused on the steps and turned to look at me through the V-shaped aperture between her collar and her ball cap. “What, you’re going for a walk? It’s fucking ten degrees below zero.”

  I looked across the street at the bank sign again, which told me the exact temperature—seven degrees below zero—and time—9:05 a.m. “I need some information.”

  My mother had purchased a United States Savings Bond from Durant Federal for me when I was a child, and I still did all my banking there. I had my late wife’s trust instrument for my daughter, a checking account, a savings account, and a money market account that probably now had about as much in it as the savings bond’s face value.

  “Uh-oh, have we been robbed?”

  Since we’d started using direct deposit a few years back, I’d hardly ever set foot in the bank itself and was a little surprised at how much it had changed. John Muecke was the president; hell, I remembered when he’d been a teller at the drive-through. He was a handsome fellow, tall and tanned, with silver hair, an easy smile, and a ready disposition.

  I stuck my hand in his. “Anything you can do about that sign of yours outside? People are getting grouchy it’s been so cold.”

  He smiled a smile with perfect teeth. “They should go to Belize.”

  “That where you been?”

  “Yeah, Michele and I have been going down there this time of the year for about three years now.” I noticed he didn’t let go of my hand. “Walt, can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  He let go, and I followed him past the tellers to the back corner of the bank. His office was the one with the best view of the Bighorns and was nicely decorated with a few paintings by local artists. I sat as he shut the door behind us and came around, sitting at his desk. “Walt, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your daughter’s trust fund.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “No, nothing like that; in fact, it’s doing incredibly well, especially considering the economy. I just thought it might be time to do something else with the money. Martha’s trust expires when Cady turns thirty, and I was just wondering, as one of the executors, if she might like to transfer some of the funds from that account to something different.”

  “You have a branch in Belize now?”

  He laughed. “No, but it’s not an insubstantial amount of money we’re discussing, and I thought perhaps with her birthday coming up, it was something we should talk about.”

  “Well, you should speak to her. I don’t have anything to do with the trust, and I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

  He nodded his head. “Are you aware of how much money is in the account?”<
br />
  “No, and I don’t care to know. That would be Cady’s business.”

  He wrote something down on the legal pad on his blotter. We sat there in silence as his look suddenly saddened. “Hey, I heard Geo Stewart passed away.”

  There hadn’t been any formal announcement, but I wasn’t surprised that word had escaped in our little hamlet on the high plains. “Yep.”

  “I guess the old guy finally ran out of lives.”

  “Something like that.”

  John leaned back in his Aero chair—it didn’t flip over like the one in my office. “Is that why you came in?”

  I waited a moment, and his eyes stayed on me. “John, I need a favor.”

  “Anything.”

  I leaned forward. “It’s somewhat illegal.”

  “Okay.”

  I was expecting more of an argument but was willing to take what I was getting. “It’s going to be a matter of public record tomorrow, but for today I’d just as soon you keep it quiet. Ozzie Dobbs is also dead.”

  He took a deep breath, and neither of us said anything for a few moments. “Suicide?”

  “No.” I studied him. “Why would you say that?”

  He stared at the blotter and waited a moment before responding. “Walter, I have to go and attend to a couple of things.” He pulled a folder from a stack at the side of his desk, the one on top, and opened it. It was thick. He held it up between us so that I could read the label at the tab, which read DOBBS. He laid the folder on his desk and stood. “Would you mind waiting here until I get back? It’ll take me about five minutes.”

  I was having pretty good luck with people leaving me in rooms with open folders; so far this year I was two for two. “Okay.”

  He started for the door but stopped. “Could you leave me Cady’s phone number? I think I have it but want to make sure it’s current.”

  “Yep.”

  He closed the door, and I leaned forward, turning the folder toward me.

  “How do you get eighteen million dollars overdrawn? I go seven dollars over and the fuckers charge me thirty bucks.”

  I tossed my hat onto my desk blotter. “As near as I could figure, Ozzie was using Redhills Arroyo as an investment opportunity. He’d sold a number of the development properties to partners, but sales didn’t come close to paying them back and they all brought a collective suit against him. I guess Ozzie was in the process of declaring bankruptcy.”