Junkyard Dogs

by Craig Johnson

  She leaned against my doorway. “When somebody closed his proverbial account?”

  “Yep.”

  She hooked a thumb into her gun belt. “Henry called and said he’d meet you over at the walking path when you got back from your eye appointment.”

  I slumped a little. “Damn.”

  “Forgot about that, did you?” She smiled. “Ruby said to tell you that if you don’t go, she’s quitting, too.”

  I drove over to Sheridan for my eye appointment and sat in Andy Hall’s waiting room, where I read an aged issue of some outdoor magazine proclaiming our area as one of the top ten in the country for sportsmen. Yep, come on out; it’s open season on entrepreneurial junkmen and failed developers.

  Andy stuck his head out a door and looked across the room at me—he is one of those guys who would always look like a young man. I figured he was approaching fifty, but he looked like he was thirty. “Walt?”

  I stood and tossed the magazine on the side table. “Coming.”

  “You’re limping.”

  “Yep, but I don’t think it has anything to do with my eye.” I followed Andy into the examination room, took off my hat and my coat, and sat on a chair not unlike one in a barbershop, but this one had electric power. “How’s Jeannie?”

  “She’s good, but I’m never letting her on a four-wheeler again.” Andy’s wife had met with an unscheduled dismount a few months back. “How’s the greatest legal mind of our time?”

  “Engaged.”

  His eyes stayed on me. “You like him?”

  “Yep.”

  He wasn’t convinced. “What’s he do?”

  “He’s a cop.”

  He glanced at the star on my chest. “Well, I can see how you wouldn’t like that.”

  I nodded and thought about telling him about my reticence in having my daughter involved in another relationship so soon after the trouble in Philadelphia; instead, I fell back on some paternal boorishness. “You’ve got daughters; it just seems like you never stop worrying.”

  “No, you don’t.” It was quiet in the room, and then the eye doctor became all business by pulling some drops from a tray on the counter. “You seem kind of tired.”

  I thought about it. “It’s a case I’m working on. I was up just about all night, and it just took a turn for the worse.”

  “I’m sorry.” He tilted my head back and applied the drops. “Isaac says you’re having headaches?”

  “He seems to think it might have something to do with my eye.”

  “Frequency and degree?”

  “About once a week, but they’re not incapacitating or anything.” Like a good professional, he withheld comment. “I’m probably sitting too close to the television.”

  “You don’t have a television, Walt.”

  “I have an old one—it just doesn’t get any stations anymore.”

  “But you still watch it?”

  I nodded. “It’s soothing.”

  “Sitting close to the TV doesn’t do anything to your eyes.”

  “What about reading in bad light?”

  “Nope.”

  I gave him the horse eye. “Next thing you’ll be telling me is that carrots aren’t good for ’em, either.”

  “Actually they are, but you can get vitamin A from milk, cheese, and a number of other foods, too.” He smiled and took my head in his one hand while adjusting the examination light with the long fingers of the other. “Any vision loss?”

  “No more than would be normal at my age.”

  He continued to study my troublesome eye. “Any double vision?”

  “Sometimes when I look up.” I figured I better come clean if I was going to get anything out of the visit. “I get some flashes sometimes.”

  “When?”

  “When I turn my head too fast; just at the corner of my eye.”

  He folded his arms and looked at me. “Let’s take a look at it and see what we’re dealing with, shall we?” He placed what looked like a miner’s light on his head and picked up a lenslike device and regrasped my head, tilting it back again. “You do have a lot of scar tissue around the orbit. Did you ever get an X-ray series done after the accident?”

  “Which one?”

  He shook his head at me, and the light from his forehead played back and forth across my face as he lifted my eyelid. “Which injury was it that you had when you started having these symptoms?”

  “Probably the tough-man contest back in October.”

  “Tough-man contest.”

  “Yep, or it could’ve been from being rolled on by a horse, leg-whipped by a Vietnamese guy, pounded by a seven- foot Indian, falling off the back of a car in Philadelphia, the fight with a meth addict, or when I got frostbitten up on the mountain.” He continued to examine me with a concerned look on his face. “It’s been a busy year or so, or so Isaac Bloomfield keeps reminding me.”

  He sighed and kept tilting my head at differing angles. He stopped. “Hmm . . .”

  “What?”

  “Well, there it is.”

  “What?”

  “A horseshoe tear of the retina.” He let go of my eyelid and switched off the light on his head. “The viscous liquid from the eye has already infiltrated the rip so we’ll have to use a gas bubble to lift the retina and laser it.”

  I didn’t care for the sound of that. “Now?”

  He took the light off and placed it on the counter behind him. “No, but we need to schedule it for tomorrow.”

  “Nope.”

  He looked surprised. I guess most people didn’t argue with doctors, but I did it all the time. “What do you mean, nope?”

  “I’m in the middle of a homicide investigation.”

  He sighed. “You know it could be misconstrued as malpractice to allow you to postpone the procedure for an entire week.”

  I was firm. “My choice.”

  “All right, next week; Billings or Rapid City, take your pick.”

  “Next week?”

  “Yes, Walt. Next week.” He smiled and continued to shake his head at me. “Let’s be clear about this—you’ve had a tear in your retina for who knows how long. Generally headaches and double vision aren’t associated with retinal tears, but those symptoms could be a result of an upglaze from an old orbital fracture and the flashes could be from a vitreous traction. Triad of symptoms for a retinal tear with subretinal fluid would generally be floaters, flashes, and curtain or veil starting to obscure the area in visual space that corresponds to the pathology.”

  I understood most of that. “Yep, but what’s the worst that could happen?”

  His voice took on a more somber tone. “You could go blind.”

  I thought about it. “In one eye.”

  “Well, that’s an optimistic way of looking at it.”

  I thought back to a time when I was sure nothing like this would ever happen to me. “My father had eye surgery and had to stay in his bed with sandbags around his head for a week.”

  “It’s much easier now and faster—same day.” He repeated my options. “Billings or Rapid City?”

  “Which one is warmer, do you think?”

  “It’s an indoor procedure.” He was laughing.

  Ruby was going to call Betty Dobbs to tell her that her son was dead, but I’d felt that a more personal approach might be needed, so I swung up to Redhills Arroyo on the way back to town, but nobody answered the doorbell and I couldn’t see any lights.

  I circled the house and followed my breath back to the kitchen doorway that led in from the deck. I looked in and saw Betty ferociously scrubbing the floor on her knees where Geo’s blood had been spilled.

  Notifying the next of kin had to be at the top of my list as one of the jobs I hated the most. It wasn’t anything I thought I was particularly adept at, either, but I also didn’t feel good about passing the chore on to anybody else.

  I tapped on the glass, but she didn’t hear me. I tapped louder, and she looked around, finally settling on me. Sh
e smiled and got up, dropping her sponge into a small mop bucket. She unlocked the sliding glass door and pulled it aside. “Hello, Sheriff.”

  “Hi, Betty. Can I come in?”

  “Please.” She moved toward the kitchen proper as I slid the door closed behind me. “Would you like some coffee?”

  I didn’t, but I would. “Sure.”

  “Have a seat.”

  She had a bandanna tying her hair back, an oversized sweatshirt on, sneakers, and a pair of pants that used to be called culottes. She looked like a magazine version of those housewives from the fifties, an image only reinforced by the singer/standard playing from an under-the-counter radio, Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?”

  Great.

  “Betty, would you mind turning off the music?”

  She paused and turned to look at me as she poured us both a cup. “Don’t like Peggy Lee?”

  “No, she’s fine; it’s just that I need to talk to you.”

  She switched off the radio. “Black?”

  “Um, if you would.” I rested my hat on the table with the brim up, still attempting to catch all the luck I could.

  She brought the mugs over and sat in the chair next to me. “I love those old songs; sometimes turn the satellite radio onto that channel and just cry for the fun of it.” She smiled, and I thought about what she’d looked like when she’d taught Henry and me back in ninth grade. No wonder the Bear still had a little crush on her. “You look tired, Walter.”

  My eyes came up to hers, my pupils still moderately dilated. “I had a long night.”

  She played with her cup, making no move to drink from it. “I’d imagine Ozzie is very upset with me right now.”

  “Betty . . .”

  “I suppose it was just the heat of the moment, but I don’t have any tolerance for that kind of activity. And when he took it upon himself to go after poor George with a golf club . . . I still can’t believe he’s dead.”

  I leaned in and placed a hand on hers. “Betty, I need you to listen to me, because I’ve got something important I need to tell you.” Her expression became one of concern, but she was silent. “I’ve got some very bad news. Ozzie is dead, too.”

  I watched that chill that encloses people when you tell them this kind of news, an emotional front that arrives with the reminiscences of a lifetime. She shuddered and slowly crouched back into her chair. Betty Dobbs would remember everything about this moment, the look on my tired, stubbled face, the smell of the disinfectant bucket at our feet, and the sound of the wind as it pressed on the otherwise empty house. Who knows how long it would take for her to recover, but what I did know was that if I mishandled this she would be haunted for a long time, the moment indelibly printed into her long-term memory.

  I brought my other hand up, capturing both of hers in mine. “He escaped from the jail last night and died.”

  “He escaped?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at our hands. “How did he die?”

  “It appears to be a gunshot wound.”

  “Did you shoot him?”

  “No, we did not.”

  Another shudder ran through her. “Did he shoot himself?”

  “No.”

  Her lips moved, but it was like a foreign film with the sound dubbed incorrectly. The words finally caught up. “He was murdered?”

  “It’s looking that way.” I ducked my head in an attempt to get within her line of sight.

  “Who . . .” She cleared her throat. “I don’t understand. Why would someone want to kill my Ozzie?”

  “Betty, nobody wants to know the answer to that question more than me right now, but I think we should concentrate on what’s happened. Are there some phone calls I can help you make? People we need to contact?”

  “No.”

  “Betty, you’re very upset right now, and I just want you to know that . . .”

  A ferocity leapt to her eyes, and it was as if somebody had pulled a switch. “What? That you know how I feel?”

  “Well.” I composed the next words very carefully. “It’s different for everybody, but I had Martha and a close call with my daughter last year.” She didn’t say anything. “Is there somebody who can come over and . . .”

  She looked away and took one of her hands back. “I’m sorry, but I’d like you to go now.”

  “Betty . . .”

  “Please.” She took the other hand away from me and turned in her chair. Her voice was soft but clear. “I’d like you to leave.”

  I took a breath, collected my hat from the table, and stood. “Mrs. Dobbs . . .”

  “Please go.”

  I felt an involuntary tug at my neck muscles and nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  I sat in my truck and watched the wind sculpt the drifts in the driveway.

  It was always like this when you were the messenger of death; the reaper himself didn’t deign to deliver his own majestic messages but left that chore to us lesser beings, and the resonance of it stayed with you.

  My radio crackled to life, and it wasn’t Peggy Lee.

  Static. “Unit one, this is base. Come in?”

  I plucked the mic off the dash and keyed the button. “Hey, Ruby.”

  Static. “Saizarbitoria just called in and said your tribal reinforcement has arrived at the walking path.”

  I keyed the mic again. “Tell him I’ll be over there soon.”

  Static. “Roger that.” There was a pause. “Are you all right?”

  “I am a clamorous harbinger of blood and death.”

  Static. “Did you go see Betty Dobbs?”

  “Yep.”

  I stared at the Motorola but released the button on the mic. I sat there like that for a while, then was jarred by my own voice. “I like this channel, but I wish there was more music and less talk.”

  Static.

  11

  He crouched down, just outside the tape, and stared at the surface of the snow as though it were speaking to him. He inclined his head, and I could see the dark eyes underneath the long strands of black, broken only by a few intermittent threads of silver. When I saw him like this, I felt like a tourist on my own planet; I was here, but he was a part of it all in a way I’d never be.

  I leaned against the grille guard on my truck and sipped coffee with Lucian, who had shown up at the office and trailed after us. I was surprised to see the old nickel-plated .357 in a hip holster at his side. “How’s things goin’ with the Basquo’s bullet fever?”

  I turned back to watch the Cheyenne Nation as he studied the tracks around the bench. “I don’t know. Sometimes it seems like he’s coming back and then other times . . .” I let my prognosis trail off.

  The old sheriff allowed a respectable amount of time to pass as he rested his coffee on the hood of my truck, pulled out his pipe and the beaded tobacco pouch, and filled the bowl. He carefully lit it and smoked. “Had a deputy, Pat Cook—was before your time.”

  “I’ve seen pictures of him.” My closest friend in the world, the man I’d grown up with, fought a war with, and lived the majority of my life in close contact with, grunted from beside the bench. “Something?”

  The Bear considered without looking up at me. “I guess we are off for the golf tournament?”

  “I believe so.”

  Lucian continued puffing, attempting to keep his pipe lit. “Winter of ’70, I think. We got a call from out in the eastern part of the county ’bout this Poulson girl that was bein’ abused by her daddy. So he loads up and heads down Route 192 to the place, little trailer house on the other side of the tracks. When he gets there, there’s this twelve- year-old girl tied to the tire rack on a truck with nothin’ but her underwear on.”

  He puffed on his pipe again; this time the embers glowed in the burl wood bowl as it overcame the cold and lit. “Pat cuts this shivering girl loose and tells her to go stay in his cruiser with the heater and heads up the steps of the trailer, but about that time this fella by the name of Fred Poulson comes out
the front with a .410 pump.”

  The old sheriff shook his head and tucked his neck farther down in the collar of his Cacties coat. “Like he needed it; tall son-of-a-bitch with one of those big handlebar mustaches. Pat wasn’t a very sizable individual, but he steps up and yanks the pump outta Poulson’s hands and then knocks the coon dog shit outta him—whips his ass all the way around that trailer. Well, they make the first lap around the single-wide and around turn four Pat puts this Poulson on the ground. About that time he hears somebody rack a round into that .410 and looks up and damned if that girl didn’t go pick up her daddy’s shotgun.”

  Henry seemed to be focusing on the prints where Ozzie had been sitting in the brand-new Sorels. It wasn’t where I would’ve started, but like I said, I wasn’t connected.

  “From a distance, she puts a round in Pat’s face and chest, and then Poulson puts a round into Pat’s back just for good measure. He and the girl jump in the family International, leaving Pat laying there on the ground.” He tongued his lower lip between his teeth and held it there before it finally slipped loose with his words. “Lived—but his face was all boogered up.”

  “Whatever happened to him?”

  “Ended up sellin’ used cars off a lot up near Roundup.” He watched Henry along with me as the Bear stood, repositioned himself, and studied the surface of the snow leading toward the creek. “I bought two of those little Broncos for the fleet off of him, and the next time I was up there I stopped in to say hey but he was gone.” He sucked on the recalcitrant pipe. “Heard he was livin’ up in British Columbia in a little town somewhere on Vancouver Island, but never heard from him again.”

  I let out my breath and watched as the fog hazed the air around us like a veil. “They ever catch the man or his daughter?”

  “Nope.”

  Henry didn’t move as I glanced at Lucian. “Vic seems to think I’m wasting my time.”

  “She might be right, but then she might be wrong, too.”