Cold Dish

by Craig Johnson

  He had taken it upon himself to merge the two counts into one, which was his judicial latitude, and sentenced Cody and Jacob to a maximum of fifteen years in prison, far to the low side of the five- to fifty-year sentencing guideline. George had gotten the minimum of ten, but it all became academic when the judge had pronounced that the offenders would be incarcerated in a young adult institution in Casper and would therefore receive indeterminate terms. I guess Vern had decided that since they were all first offenders, the rape shouldn’t cost them the rest of their lives; never mind what it had cost Melissa.

  Cody Pritchard had turned to his friends in the back of the courtroom and playfully tossed his hat in the air and smiled. With time off for good behavior, Cody, Jacob, and George could see less than two years of soft prison time. Bryan Keller would receive two years of probation and one hundred hours of community service. The young men were once again released without bail, and Vern had nodded quietly in his chambers when I personally volunteered to drive the three of them down to Casper.

  When I got to the Busy Bee, I glanced through the window. Turk was slouched on his stool and was against the wall about as far as he could be. Lucian, with his lips barely moving, was leaning in and glared at the side of Turk’s face. Any thoughts of hunger passed, and I continued along the sidewalk to the Sportshop. When I went in, David was punching something into his computer behind the counter, and his wife, Sue, was waiting on an overweight middle-aged woman in the shoe department. I strolled up to the counter and leaned a hip against it.

  He looked up through the top of his bifocals. “Hi, Walt.”

  “What’s the number one selling hiking boot?”

  “Here?” He thought. “Vasque, maybe Asolo.”

  “Most popular size?”

  “Nine, maybe ten.”

  “Any way to track how many Vasques, size nines you’ve sold in the last year or so?”

  He looked at me and sighed. “You’re lucky Sue’s here today. I don’t have time for . . .”

  “Make time.” I looked at him for a moment to reinforce it.

  “I can ask Sue to go back through the special orders and check the stock, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on names if I were you. If they paid cash . . .”

  “I need you to do it now.”

  He pulled a pen from behind his ear and tossed it on the counter in defeat. “All right.”

  “One other question. Do you remember Jacob or George coming in to buy flies?”

  He crossed his arms and exhaled a long, slow hiss. “Maybe a week and a half, two weeks ago?”

  “Anybody else here when they were talking about where they were going?” It was a long shot, but I had to play it out.

  He shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  “Will you think about it?”

  “Sure.”

  “I mean really think about it.”

  “Sure.” Before I could get too far from the counter he said, “Nice clothes.”

  I stopped and looked down at my fancy duds. “You help her with the sizes?”

  “Did it all on her own.” He smiled. “Somethin’, huh?”

  “Yep.” I continued to the door and rested my hand on the brass handle.

  “You should be proud of yourself, she’s quite a catch.”

  “Yep.” I pulled open the door and started out. “Call me.”

  By the time I got back to the Bee, Lucian and Turk had vacated the place and nobody was visible, not even Dorothy. I went in and sat at the corner stool, next to the cash register. After a moment, a shadow cast across my plastic-covered, vinyl menu. “What are you having?”

  “Anything but the usual.” I closed the menu in one hand and reached it over to her. “I want to apologize for being sharp with you yesterday.”

  She took the menu and looked at my fingers. She had been talking to somebody because her next glance was up to my ear. “Feeling experimental, are we?” She reached down and threw two meat patties from a small Tupperware container onto the grill, then dropped a basket of hand-cut potatoes into the fryer. It appeared that hamburgers and french fries were not today’s usual. I asked her about Lucian and Turk. She raised an eyebrow. “I think you’re due a formal, verbal apology. Then I think the former, yet attending, sheriff intends to take a nap in the jail.” Her voice softened. “How’s the Bear?”

  I looked up. “I bet he’s out of there by this afternoon.”

  “Hard to keep a good man down.”

  I reached up to feel my ear. “You have no idea . . .”

  She slapped my hand away. “Stop that.” She turned back around and flipped the sizzling patties. “So, where are we on the case?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, Inspector Lastrade . . .” And I did. I left out any suspicions I had about Jim Keller, but that was about all. I was looking defeat squarely in the face, and pretty soon the county would be crawling with DCI investigators and Feds. I honestly didn’t think they were going to get any further than I had. Nonetheless, I told her I was considering a career in telemarketing.

  She filled a glass with ice and then with tea from a pitcher that sat on the cutting board. “You can make a lot of money.” She flipped a couple of slices of cheese onto the burgers, prepared the buns for reception on an oval-shaped plate, and pulled the fresh basket of fries from the deep fryer, hooking them on the rack to drip dry. My stomach gurgled in response to all the activity, and I was glad she had put on two cheeseburgers. “Okay, unlucky at cards . . .”

  I took a long sip of the tea. “Don’t even ask.”

  She scooped up the patties, scooting them expertly onto the bun beds, and covered the rest of the plate with french fries. “That bad?” She slid the dish in front of me. “Careful, hot.”

  “You know, I used to think I was pretty good at this relationship stuff . . .”

  She wiped her hands on her apron. “Oh, Walter.” She shook her head. “You know she’s had a rough life.”

  “Yep, I know. She’s having a rough time buying the White Mountains in Arizona right now.” The food, as always, tasted marvelous. Maybe when I was unemployed, I could work part time for Dorothy. She was still looking at me, and I had the feeling I was going to have to go seek employment elsewhere. “What?”

  “When her father killed himself ”—she had placed the pitcher on the counter, anticipating another fill—“there were some things going on out there.” The hazel eyes stayed steady under a salt-and-pepper lock.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She shrugged. “Just talk. I don’t think her marriage was very happy, either.” She looked down at my rapidly vanishing meal. “How’s the food?”

  I stopped chewing long enough to reply, “Marry me?”

  “That good, huh?”

  I looked up to check, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The wind was still kicking up, so I figured the snowflakes that kept waltzing around my head must have just hitched a ride; their changing patterns reminded me of the mountain in an unsettling fashion. I thought about the visions I had been having and chalked them up to strain and just plain fatigue.

  Turk was sitting in one of the reception chairs and stood when I came in. Ruby was seated at her desk with her lunch of a watercress sandwich on low-fat seven-grain bread, carrots, and a sliced apple unfolded before her, which looked fresh, healthy, and completely unappetizing. “What’s up?”

  He glanced over at Ruby, who was watching him. “Could I speak with you, Sheriff ?” His voice was still nasal with the muffling of the packing and bandages.

  “Yeah, sure. You wanna talk in my office?” He nodded and followed me in. I sat at my desk and gestured for him to have a seat. He shook his head and continued standing. He looked like nine kinds of hell; the bruising around his eyes had spread as far back as his side-burns, and it hurt to look at him. “What can I do for you?”

  “Uncle Lucian says this is a bad time to have this conversation with you, but I thought you ought to know about my intentions? I put my applicati
on in with the Highway Patrol.”

  I had to laugh; I couldn’t even keep a hold of Turk. “Really?”

  “Yes, sir.” He twitched his face to stop an itch I was sure he was going to have for a while. “Uncle Lucian said it might be for the best.”

  I nodded and crossed my arms. “He’s a smart fella, that one-legged bandit uncle of yours.”

  “Yes, sir.” He looked back up at me. “He also said that if I ever ran for sheriff, you’d just run against me, win and serve a half a term, and then step down, giving her two years to prove herself.”

  “He’s right, I would.” Pretty soon I’d be running the place by myself. “He say anything else?”

  I thought I saw just a glimmer of a smile at the corner of his mouth from underneath the droop of his mustache but, with the bandages, it was hard to tell. “He said that masturbation is a wonderful form of stress relief in the workplace and that the wildflowers are beautiful along I-80 in the spring.”

  I stuck a peeling hand out to him. He looked at it, then to me. I’m sure we were a handsome pair, him with his nose and me with my hands and ear. “I won’t give you a bad letter of recommendation.”

  He took my hand, hesitantly. “Thanks.”

  I knew the colonel down in Cheyenne, and he owed me a few favors. “I’ll make some phone calls.”

  He shook my hand a little more and then released it. “You really do want to get rid of me.”

  “Let’s just say I think it might be a better fit.” I really did. The narrower limitations of vehicular law enforcement along with a more regimented style of department could be just what Turk needed. That or the colonel would never owe me another favor for as long as the state had paved roads.

  I looked past him and saw Vic appear in the doorway. She glanced at Turk when he turned to see what I was looking at. “Jesus, you look like shit.”

  He turned back to me before he left. “Good luck.” I had no idea he had a sense of humor. I could have asked him about his .45-70, but it didn’t seem pertinent. It wasn’t him, and it wasn’t going to be.

  Vic sat in the chair opposite me, propping her feet onto my desk as usual, and arranging a sheath of papers in her lap. I sat back down. “Don’t play with your ear.”

  “Sorry.” I returned my hand to my lap. “Henry and Lucian are going even money on whether I’ll lose it. Ballistics?”

  She shuffled the papers. “Both leads match, which does not come as a great surprise, both contain the same chemical compound, and both are from the same slug batch, 30 to 1 ratio . . . Same shooter.”

  “How are your friends back in Washington?”

  She looked at me for a moment. “Quantico.”

  “Whatever.” I pulled out a pen, uncapped it, and underlined Jim Keller’s name. “I’ve always wondered why they haven’t tried to lure you back.”

  “There’s an opening with the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crimes Services in the Criminal Investigative Analysis Unit.”

  I nodded. “Do you have to say all that every time you answer the phone?”

  “There’s also an opening in West Virginia at the FBI Fingerprint Analysis Lab, and there’s always Philadelphia.”

  I exhaled slowly. “Well, I didn’t think we were going to be able to keep you forever.”

  She looked up from the papers then returned to them, and it was very quiet for a while. “We ran a check on Roger Russell’s gun . . .”

  “I didn’t even know you had it.”

  She looked back up, allowing her head to drop to one side in dismissal. “Somebody’s gotta run the place while you’re out traipsing around in the woods.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “Doesn’t match. And we got a call back from the Buffalo Bill Museum. They did acquire a Sharps .45-70 from Artie Small Song more than a year ago.”

  I shrugged. “Artie has also been locked up in the Yellowstone County jail since Saturday.”

  She made a big show of pulling a pencil from behind her ear and scratching through his name on her papers. “Jim Keller?”

  “Nothing.” I put the cap back on the pen and tossed it onto the blotter. “Which brings us to the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead.”

  She looked at her notes. “No match, but it’s been fired numerous times. Like a box of shells.”

  “Twenty rounds?” She nodded her head. “When?”

  “Just over a week ago.”

  “Right before the murders?”

  “Have you ever looked down the barrel of one of those things after they’ve been shot?”

  I thought back to Omar’s. “Yep, once.”

  “They lead up real bad. You throw twenty rounds through one of those things without cleaning it, you’re looking to get it blown up in your face.” Her hands rested on her lap. “I looked down the barrel, and you could hardly see daylight.”

  My ear itched, but I figured it was a good sign. “So why would somebody do that?”

  “Practice?” We looked at each other.

  “That lets your friend Henry off. He doesn’t need practice.”

  I leaned back in my chair. “When we were up on the mountain, he took the shotgun and gave me the rifle. He said something about not being as good a shot as me.” I stood up. “I better go get that damn thing out of my truck and bring it in here. It turns up missing, I’m gonna be even more cursed than I am now.”

  “It’s still in your truck?”

  I started around the desk and looked down at the top of her head as she studied her notes. “I forgot about it.” She shook her head, and I reached over and touched her shoulder. “By the way, thanks for the shells.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “That old box of shells in my truck, the ones that look about a hundred and fifty years old?” She didn’t move, but the tarnished gold came up slow. “Please tell me you left an aged box of .45-70 ammunition on the seat of my truck?” I waited. “Next to the rifle?”

  She didn’t say anything, just sat there looking at me. I think she was checking to see if I was really there. I wasn’t sure myself.

  15

  When we got to the truck, I was relieved to look through the passenger side window and see the cartridge box there. I was beginning to think that I was having some sort of mental breakdown and that the box lying beside the rifle on my seat was another phantom apparition. “Do you see that box on the seat?”

  She peeked past my shoulder and turned her face to look at me. “What box?”

  I nodded my head, ever so slightly. “Very funny.” I unlocked the door and opened it; the barrel of the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead was pointed directly at us. The box was on the seat in the exact spot where I had placed it after my brief examination. Using the inside liner of the pocket of my jacket, I reached in and showed it to Vic. “Was this in here when you put the rifle on the seat and locked the truck?”

  “No.”

  I looked at the box. “Anybody drive my truck while I was gone?”

  “Nobody. Did you leave your keys?”

  “On the rack, in case somebody had to move it.”

  “This is getting exciting.”

  I placed the small cardboard container on my desk along with the rifle and sat in my chair as Vic leaned against the desk with her thighs flattened on the edge and her arms crossed. We were both looking at the damn thing like it might jump up, do back flips, and run away. It was a battered little box with the corners dented in and the edges fuzzy. The black printing was faded and scuffed, but you could still make it out. The print was in assorted fonts and at least as ornate as the handwritten addition. There was a floral pattern and a series of lines on each side that encapsulated the words “This Box Contains 20 Metallic Cartridges, Manufactured by Sharps’ Rifle Mf ’g Co., Hart-ford, Conn.” There was a large hole, exactly the size of a .45 caliber slightly low and left of center with “400 yards” scribbled in pencil beside it. The writing was old, with a flourishing hand and detailed penmanship. It looked like the writi
ng in the old sheriff’s logbook. There was something familiar about it and, if the distance was true, it was scary shooting.

  When I looked up again, Vic was staring at me. “Well, are we waiting till Christmas?”

  I took two pens from my broken Denver Broncos mug and carefully held the box down with one and worked the flap open with the other. No sense in getting even more fingerprints on the thing. I slumped a little and rested my chin on my arm as I continued to look in the box. “If you were cartridges over a hundred years old, wouldn’t you be tarnished?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re not.”

  She leaned around the corner and peered into the box like something might come out. “Look like they were loaded yesterday.”

  I flattened one of the pens on the cardboard divider and slowly coaxed the box back, allowing two of the cartridges to roll out onto the blotter; they were both empties that had been fired. I spun one of the cartridges around with the pen so I could see the indentation at the primer. I turned the other one, and it was identical. “Two down.” I pinned the divider to the blotter again and nudged the box back, allowing two more shells to roll out. These were live, with lead and primers intact, as were those in the rest of the box. “Does it worry you that there are two of these shells spent?”

  “You mean how it matches up with our current body count?”

  “Something like that.” I looked along the shiny lines of reflection on the surface of the casing nearest me and clearly made out discolored spots whirling in the pattern of fingerprints. Whoever had handled these cartridges had not done it with any great care and, as I glanced at the other shells, I began to see more prints. With my luck, the individual who made them had been dead for seventy years. “Do you still have that shell of Omar’s that I gave you?”

  “Yeah.” She retreated into her office and returned with the cartridge. While she was gone, I flipped the box over. On the other side was another hole where the shot had passed through: impressive to the point of being mythic. I looked at the handwriting and was sure I had seen it before. When she returned and handed Omar’s bullet to me, she leaned over to peruse the shells on the blotter. “These are different.”