Junkyard Dogs

by Craig Johnson

  Her head bobbed like her foot had in the office. “Okay.”

  “I’m trying to figure out who would’ve had a motive in killing Ozzie, or Geo for that matter.”

  Her eyes met mine for the first time. “Wait, you think somebody killed Grampus?”

  “It’s possible.” I waited, but she didn’t say anything. “Would you?”

  There was a pause. “Would I what?”

  I said it slowly this time. “Know who might’ve killed Ozzie or Geo.”

  Her hands shoved deeper between her legs, and she shrank in the chair. “I don’t think I should say.”

  “Gina, this is a homicide case, a capital crime, and anything you can tell me would be better for you in the long run.”

  She stared at her almost empty plate. “My momma once told me that when the police tell you it would be better if you did something, it meant it was better for them.”

  Henry bit his lip. I gave him a warning look.

  I tried to think of a way to argue with that statement but came up with a dial tone. “Um . . . Well, what I’m hoping for is what’s going to help us both.”

  She looked uncertain. “When you’re trying to figure something like this out, you’re probably gonna want to know who’d want to kill him, right?”

  “Yep, if we can find somebody who had something to gain by Ozzie’s death it makes my job a lot easier.”

  She said it quietly into the folded hands between her legs. “Duane, if he knew what was going on . . .”

  “Gina, Duane was in jail when Ozzie was killed.”

  “I know.”

  “Well . . . Then he couldn’t have been the one that killed Ozzie.”

  “Yeah. I know, but you were askin’ who would have the most to gain if Ozzie got killed and that would have to be Duane, and Grampus, too.”

  I ran the previous week through my head, just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. “Gina, we’d already confiscated all the marijuana by the time Ozzie was killed, so there wasn’t anything for Duane to gain by killing Ozzie.”

  She looked up at Henry. “Not for the money, no.”

  “What did you mean by ‘If Duane knew what was going on’?”

  She glanced down again. “The baby.”

  I whispered the next question in an attempt to be gentle. “You’re pregnant?”

  She nodded a quick nod and breathed the single word. “Yeah.”

  Henry ran a hand across his face and pulled the hair on one side over his shoulder. “You and Duane are having a baby?”

  She darted a glance at him and then back to me. “Not exactly . . .”

  12

  “That’s seriously fucked up.”

  “Yep.”

  “So while old lady Dobbs is shtupping the junkman, Ozzie is shtupping the granddaughter?”

  I was trying to get a few more winks and had my hat over my face. “Allegedly.”

  “What’s in the water over there, anyway?” She was sitting on the floor, was petting Dog, and annoying me. Considering the conversation, I was glad we weren’t within earshot of Duane, still in the holding cells out back. “How does she know it’s not Duane’s?”

  I continued to speak into the crown of my hat. “I don’t know, but Ozzie was the only other guy she was supposedly shtupping.”

  She was quiet for a respectable five seconds. “Old lady Dobbs is going to be crazy for this.”

  “Yep.”

  I felt her shift her weight against the bench. “Does Duane know?”

  “No, according to Gina.” I lifted my hat. “Is this conversation going to go on much longer? Because I was thinking about trying to get a little more sleep.”

  She looked at her wristwatch, which was reminiscent of the one Sancho sported, a snappy little chronograph with more dials than Carter had liver pills. “So Ozzie was the financial backing and know-how for the doobage.”

  I rolled up to a sitting position. “Yes, according to Gina.”

  “Life according to Gina.” She glanced up at me and paused in petting Dog. “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you through with your nap?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, then we can go over to the bar next to the truck stop and ask them about who Ozzie might’ve phoned yesterday from the Owen Wister.”

  The Bear was in my office making phone calls, which I assumed had to do with my daughter’s wedding—which left Vic and me alone in the barhopping expedition.

  “Henry seems preoccupied.”

  “Yep.”

  “Something up?”

  “His brother Lee has gone MIA again.”

  She gave me her patented side-glance. “Doesn’t that pretty much describe his brother’s lifestyle?”

  “Yep.”

  “Where?”

  “Last word was Chicago.”

  She pursed her lips. “He headed out?”

  “Not yet. He’s still got Cady and Michael’s wedding to plan.” She was smiling now. “What?”

  “I’m trying to imagine the Bear as a wedding planner.”

  The truck stop on the south end of the bypass was a place I infrequently visited, but my deputies were out there on a rotational basis, usually for drive-offs or for suspicious characters loitering around the truckers’ lounge.

  The phone call Saizarbitoria had traced had gone to the pay phone in the bar attached to the back side. Vic shook her head at a large neon sign that had a giant chick springing from an egg to do the two-step. The sign read THE CHICKEN COOP.

  “I hate this place.”

  There were other signs hanging off the building advertising line-dancing lessons, mechanical bull rides, and Kuntry Karaoke on Saturdays. “I can’t imagine why.”

  She opened the passenger door, got out, zipped her jacket up a little tighter, and straightened her gun belt. It was still blisteringly cold and, since the sun was setting, our hopes of getting above zero were plummeting. “It’s like the Redneck Ride at Disneyland.”

  I got out on my side, smiling at Dog in the back. “They don’t have one of those.”

  She met me at the front of the truck. “If they did, this is what it would look like.”

  We pushed our way through the old swinging doors and paused at the more substantial glass ones that were inside a shortened vestibule. There was a western boogie with accordion accompaniment scratching the paint off the inside of the place, and Vic paused to listen.

  “What the hell is that?”

  I tuned my ear and listened a little closer. “That’d be ‘Three Way Boogie,’ Spade Cooley.”

  She was wearing her fur hat again and a golden eye crept under it to look up at me. “Who?”

  “Spade Cooley. He was the one who coined the phrase ‘western swing’ along with Bob Wills; got his start as a stand-in for a lot of the movie cowboys in California—murdered his wife in ’61 because he thought she was having an affair with Roy Rogers.”

  My shapely undersheriff stared ahead in disbelief as she shoved open the inner glass door. “Happy fuckin’ trails.”

  The place was as big as a barn and carried the same atmosphere. There was sawdust on the floor, along with a smattering of spent peanut shells. There was a bar to the left with rows of saddles mounted on swivel pedestals in place of stools. There was a much larger sunken area to the right that held a dance floor and, to the left, a fenced-in one with a mechanical bull and a pit full of mattresses on which the one-beer-too-many cowboys could land.

  Smoking had been banned in most of the Wyoming bars, but a few still held their collective breath, and a thick haze of blue-tinted, elongated swirls hung in the air. There was a pretty good crowd in the place—a cluster at the far end of the bar and three couples out on the dance floor.

  Vic took one look around and made a proclamation. “I’m going to the bathroom.” She skirted the dancers as if denim might be contagious and entered an alcove where a pay phone hung, took a left, and disappeared.

  I made my way to the bar and leaned into an open spot beside the brass r
ailings of the wait station. The bartender was a young kid—handsome, tall, and heavyset. He leaned against the bar-back with his arms folded and talked to some patrons. An Elvis look-alike, he had sideburns that would’ve made a Civil War general envious, pointy-toed boots, ripped jeans, and a T-shirt decorated with, of all things, a bolo tie.

  I waited.

  He continued talking but glanced at me. I smiled, and his attention returned to the conversation he was having.

  I waited some more.

  He looked at me again and then said something to the group, who shared a few quick looks at one another. One man laughed but didn’t make eye contact with me.

  I waited some more, then reached across the bar and picked up an upside-down mug, flipped the Rainier tap on, and began filling my own glass. It was a bad thing to do on duty, but it was looking like if I waited till I was off, I’d be permanently on the wagon.

  My actions got his attention, and he bulled toward me, slinging attitude as he came. “Hey, asshole! What do you think you’re doin’!”

  I pulled off the tap and retrieved my glass of beer before he could get there. “I just figured this was the only way I was going to get a beer.”

  He was in front of me now, puffed up and scrambling one hand under the bar and reaching for my appropriated beverage with the other. “Gimme that!”

  “No.”

  His hand came out with one of those short clubs that the truckers use to check tire pressure, and he rested it on the bar. “Give it to me now.”

  I took a sip and began unbuttoning my sheepskin coat.

  “I said now, asshole!” He thumped the surface of the bar with the club.

  I hitched a thumb into my coat and pulled it back so that he could see my .45 and a quarter of my star. I heard a few snickers from down the bar and watched as the majority broke up and moved away toward the tables on the other side of the dance floor like a miniature stampede.

  I turned to look back at him. “Hi.”

  The billy club disappeared pretty quickly; I had to give him that. “Um, hi.”

  “You new around here?”

  “No, I mean yeah.”

  I studied him and risked resting my mug on the bar. “Which is it?”

  “I mean, yeah I’m new, now.” He stood there for a few seconds more and then stuck out his hand. “Stroup, Justin Stroup. I’m from over in Sheridan, but I’ve been away.”

  “You lose your manners?”

  “No. I, look . . .” He leaned in, his demeanor having changed rapidly. “I’m sorry, the boss says we’re supposed to throw a lot of attitude. You know, to add some flavor to the place.”

  “You were about to flavor yourself into nine days.” I smiled at him to let him know I was kidding and watched as Vic approached from the bathroom. She stopped at the jukebox. “Didn’t you see me walk in with a fully uniformed deputy?”

  He looked at her with more than a little interest. “Um, no.”

  This didn’t give me a great deal of hope for his being able to tell me who’d received the phone call yesterday afternoon, but I asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  The response was predictable but, with the attitudinal change, I was beginning to like him. I took another sip of my beer and nodded toward the alcove where the pay phone hung. “That the only phone in the place?”

  “We got a land line in the office and one behind the bar here, but they’re business phones.”

  “Big crowd last night?”

  “Yeah. It was line-dancing night, so there was a crowd.”

  Vic took my beer and had a sip, in direct violation of Wyoming statutes; I could at least button my coat and be undercover. I gestured toward the bartender. “This is Justin Stroup.”

  “So.” She flicked a look at him, and I could see traces of her lipstick on my mug as her eyes returned to mine.

  I leaned against the bar; I refused to sit on the saddle stools. “When did you start work yesterday?”

  “Six, like always.”

  “Well, this phone call would’ve been around five-fifteen. Were you here then?”

  “No. Carla, the part-timer, comes in and gets me set for the evening. The afternoon crowd is really light—we don’t even open till two.”

  I rested the mug on the bar and watched as Vic, completely unaware, swayed a little to the music as the jukebox shifted from Spade Cooley to a female singer I didn’t know. “I don’t suppose she’s here?”

  “No.”

  “Have you got a contact number?”

  He took a few steps toward the cash register, slid a spiral-ring notebook out, and flipped it open. “Sure.” He turned a page and slid it toward me. “Carla Lorme, the second one from the bottom.”

  “Mind if I use your phone?”

  Vic had moved toward the dance floor and had lifted her arms. Her jacket was open, and her eyes were closed as her head tilted back, her movements in perfect synchronicity with the music that seemed a little rock- and-roll for the place. Her dancing was simple, but it always looked that way with people who came to it naturally; and boy howdy, she looked like a natural out there.

  He pulled the phone from the bar- back and set it on the bar alongside the notebook without taking his eyes off Victoria Moretti.

  I dialed the number, but there was no answer and no answering machine. As the phone rang, I read the address in the notebook. It wasn’t far, just at the other end of the bypass, over the hill, and past the new high school.

  I hung up the phone and shoved it and the notebook back toward him. “Thanks.”

  The other dancers had vacated the floor, and it was no wonder. Vic was getting warmed up, and her head shot from one side to the other, the dark hair snapping the smoky room like bullwhips. She pivoted and slunk, something that wasn’t easy in the Browning tactical boots. I thought I recognized the melody from something my daughter had listened to. I inclined my head toward the young bartender. “Is that . . . ?”

  “Lucinda Williams’s cover of AC/DC’s ‘It’s a Long Way to the Top If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll.’ I didn’t even know it was on the jukebox; nobody’s ever played it.”

  I continued to watch my undersheriff as she did a silent, self-involved Salome. “It’s my new favorite song.”

  His voice carried from behind me and was a little wistful as we both watched. “Mine, too.”

  “I felt like dancing.” She read the mailboxes as we topped the hill south of town; we were looking for 223. “We do that in the big city sometimes. Most of us don’t particularly feel the need to take lessons and stand in a straight line to do it.”

  I widened my eyes and tried to forget the bit of pain I’d isolated behind the left one. “Or have a partner?”

  “You could’ve joined me anytime; it could’ve been my Valentine’s Day gift.”

  We almost missed the drive because of the piles of snow banked against the roadside, but Vic saw it and pointed. I hit the brakes, turned, and fishtailed a little as we slowed and continued down a narrow lane that opened into an area that had been plowed so that a vehicle could turn around.

  It was a small house, lodged against the hillside with a low fence leading around to one of those old-type garages, only large enough to accommodate models that didn’t have names but had letters like A and T.

  There was a light on in the back, and I pulled in behind a Toyota with local plates parked beside the gate. I looked at Vic. “You want to stay here?”

  “No, I’m getting my second wind.”

  I nodded and killed the motor and we cracked open our doors, which sounded like twin glaciers splitting. “Suit yourself—I haven’t found my first.”

  The small metal gate hung ajar, and I could see where someone had made an attempt to chip away the ice on the walkway but had given up. There was a concrete stoop and, beyond that, a front door that hung open. I could hear the forced-air heating system trying to keep up with the cold from the walkway.

  Vic and I cast a glance at each other and placed o
ur hands on our sidearms, Vic going so far as to unsnap hers. I was the first to reach the doorway and looked inside. It was tidy except that the braided rug was shoved to the baseboard and a picture next to the door hung awkwardly. There were scuff marks on the floor where it looked like there had been a struggle.

  I pulled my .45 from the holster.

  I cleared my throat and spoke in what my father used to refer to as the field voice. “Ms. Lorme?” There wasn’t any answer, the only sound being the valiant attempt of the heater to warm all of Absaroka County. “Carla Lorme, it’s Sheriff Walt Longmire. Hello. Is there anybody here?!”

  Vic looked at me. “Do you want me to get into character and say something?”

  I gave her a look and stepped through the door into the small entryway. There was another door to my left, a stairwell going up, and what I took to be the living room to the right where a large flat-screen TV hung on the wall tuned to, of all things, Cops, with the sound muted. There was a desk with a computer that had a screen saver of some tropical island, and I tried to think about how long those things stayed on an inactive screen before hibernating.

  There was a wooden chair, and a sectional sofa that half surrounded the room; a coffee table sat in the middle with a soft drink in an iced glass—another had been spilled onto the carpeted floor.

  “Carla Lorme!”

  I waited, but there was still no response.

  I continued through the living room and another opening that looked like it led to the kitchen—I left the door to Vic. There was a coatrack lying on the floor with a bunch of women’s coats still hooked to it.

  I listened as Vic opened the door, and I continued toward the back of the house where it looked like a light was on. It was an overhead bulb, but the room was empty.

  I heard Vic behind me, commenting on the television. “That’s what I call irony.”

  I was in the kitchen now and noticed the Formica counters, the economy appliances, and old cabinets.

  “You know how many cops it takes to screw in a light-bulb?” I glanced at her. “Ten; five to change the bulb, and five more to reenact it.”

  “Anything in the bedroom?”