Depth of Winter

by Craig Johnson

  Reading my mind, she started pulling the light cotton blanket from the foot of the bed. “Take this, the night is warm enough that I only need the sheet.”

  “There’s another image I can carry through the night.” Gathering it from her, I stood there for a few seconds. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Taking the mask from the bed, she reached up and took off my hat and slipped the thing over my face again. “Your disguise.”

  Looking through the eyeholes, I took in the curves at her hips. “Right.”

  “And if you change your mind . . .” She turned and began unzipping the flamenco dancer dress she was wearing; I took advantage of the moment to bolt for the door.

  It was dark in the hallway, only a few of the candles on the stairs remaining lit. I stood there in the flickering, amber light and felt like a stranger in a strange land. My job had some relatively strict parameters, and even though I sometimes stretched them a bit, I was pretty much off the map now.

  There was a buzzing in my head that I couldn’t seem to shake, a feeling that I was doing something wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t even be here. Maybe I was endangering my daughter’s life with all this cowboying. Maybe I should’ve stayed in El Paso for the backup that was probably desperately attempting to find me, but I knew the clock was running and whatever it took, I was going to see this through.

  I turned to find the door to the other room and stared into the barrel of a 5.7x28mm Five-seveN pistol held in the slightly unsteady hand of David Culpepper.

  “Bob Lilly didn’t do his senior year with the Greyhounds. There was a drought, and his family moved from Texas to Portland, Oregon.”

  I took a breath. “You know, I always thought I should’ve paid more attention to high school football in Texas.”

  “Friday night lights, motherfucker.” He gestured toward the doorway of the next room.

  I raised my hands slightly, still holding the gym bag, and sidestepped out of the hallway, my boots crunching glass from the tall, broken windows where a slight breeze from the desert blew the torn and sun-faded curtains inward.

  Still holding the pistol on me, he gestured again. “Take off that stupid mask.”

  I took my hat off and transferred it to the bag hand and pushed the mask up. “I thought you were drunk.”

  He shrugged as he glanced both ways in the hallway before following me in. “Well, there’s drunk, and then there’s drunk.” Once again with the pistol, he gestured for me to back up some more. “Now, if it was up to me, I’d just shoot your big ass right now, but the boss wants you alive, so I guess we gotta figure things out. You got any handcuffs with you?”

  The way he was looking around, I was pretty sure that he was alone, maybe because he wanted the credit, or maybe because the others really were drunk. “No.”

  “A lawman without handcuffs?”

  “I told you no.”

  “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?” I didn’t say anything. “What’s in the bag?”

  “My jock—you want to sniff it?”

  “Funny.” He raised the semiautomatic and aimed it at my head and then motioned with it toward the bag. “Drop it in front of you.”

  I did as he said, and from the clunk it made on the tile floor, it was easy to discern that it wasn’t sports equipment.

  He smiled and slowly kneeled down to check it out for himself. “The boss didn’t have much doubt that you’d be coming.”

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  “She’s up at the monastery.”

  “She better be safe.”

  He glanced at the gun, palmed in his hand. “Or what?”

  “Did you kill Ricardo?”

  “Who?”

  “Alexia’s nephew.”

  He actually thought about it. “The housekeeper?”

  I lowered my arms just a bit, but he didn’t seem to notice. “What, you kill so many you can’t keep track?”

  “You know, I do.” He nudged his ball cap back on his head with the barrel of the gun and grinned up at me. “He was pretty easy, but I gotta tell you, herdin’ that monster of an aunt of his was a real pain in the ass.”

  “She’s not a part of all this?”

  He barked a laugh and bumped the sights of the FN on his teeth. “Nope, the boss took her to look after your daughter. He figured it’d be a lot easier if she had somebody she trusted with her, but in the end I’ll end up doing her, too.”

  “You gonna do me?”

  “Naw, I told you, the boss has special plans for you.” He reached forward with his free hand to unzip the duffel. “But hey, is that hotshot second-in-command of yours on her way down? The boss wants her skinned and on a wall, but I’d like to entertain her a bit before he does it.” He continued grinning. “White meat’s kinda hard to come by around these parts.”

  He had the gun, but I knew he’d be in trouble if he shot me without Bidarte’s consent. I guess he figured I was old or that I was tired and he was right, but I was also highly motivated to kick his teeth in—which I did.

  He clamped his jaw, saving the ivories, but I kept moving forward, half stepping and falling on him as he fell backward. I tried to get a knee on his gun arm, but he was young and probably a lot better trained in hand-to-hand than I was, so I settled for the front of his shirt. He swung like a spider monkey and wrapped an arm around my neck.

  I threw myself backward, somehow still blocking his gun arm. The wall shuddered and splintered, the plaster and lath exploding in the air, but he’d clamped his legs around me and was beating his head against the back of mine.

  I spun and made for the other wall but tripped over the gym bag and fell, luckily landing on his shoulder. I had the satisfaction of hearing the pop as it dislocated and he screamed, but somehow still held the gun.

  I put more pressure on that arm and rolled onto my back on top of him. I began slamming my head back, feeling the crunch of his nose and wondered just how much it was going to take to get him off me.

  I’d just raised my head for another slam when he managed to snatch his gun hand away so that I had to roll in that direction just to keep him on the floor. That proved to be a mistake because it left his legs free, and he braced both of them against my chest and with a surprising amount of strength was able to push me away.

  I was near enough to grab his leg again, so I pulled him toward me, happy that I wasn’t looking down the barrel of the 5.7x28mm again; when I looked up, I could see the FN was lying amid the broken glass by the open doorway.

  I kept pulling him toward me and away from the gun, but he got a desert boot free and cropped me a good one on the chin. I reached up and caught the waistband of his pants, but they gave way and he continued slithering bottom less toward the doorway and the gun. He paused in the effort just long enough to smile a bloody grin at me.

  I scrambled onto all fours after him, but it was a foregone conclusion that he was going to get the semiautomatic. I’d pretty much figured that I had done enough damage to him that he was unlikely to forgive and forget even though Bidarte had told him that he personally wanted to kill me. It was strange though, because when I reached forward and touched his legs again, they weren’t moving.

  Slowly, I raised my face and saw Culpepper’s naked ass in the moonlight, and above that, the even more impressive sight of a naked Bianca kneeling in the doorway with the FN pistol in her hands, smiling as she pressed the barrel against his forehead.

  “Hijo de puta, how ’bout them Cowboys?”

  6

  As fast as I went I couldn’t seem to catch up with myself. I was unmoored and disconnected with the feeling that I wasn’t in control anymore.

  “You look like shit, amigo.”

  I had given Adan the oil lamp I had carried and had raised the brim of my hat so he could get a clear view. “Yep, well, you should see the other guy.”
/>   “I have actually.” He followed me into the bedroom where Culpepper was tied to one of the metal office chairs with a bunch of wire hangers I’d found in the closet. “I think you are cutting off the circulation to his hands.”

  “He’s lucky I don’t wrap one around his neck.” Dressed in jeans and a white blouse, Bianca stood off to the side along with Alonzo. I took a breath. “You okay?”

  “Yes. Where were you?”

  “I had to go check something.” I turned to Alonzo. “We’re out of here in an hour?”

  He looked nervous but nodded. “Or less, if we can manage.”

  I gestured toward Culpepper. “That’s up to him.” I leaned forward with my hands on my knees and looked at him. “How you doin’ there, Tex?”

  He raised his bloody face, some of the glass shards from the floor still stuck in his flesh. “Fuck you.”

  “Rip-roaring and ready for love, right?”

  Culpepper spat and grinned, flipping the strands of hair with dried blood from his face. “You better let me go.”

  I took a deep breath, still winded from the fight and then the stairs. “Of all the things that are going to happen, I don’t believe that’s one of them.”

  “I’m telling you that if you know what’s good for you . . .”

  “Look, we can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way.” I straightened and looked down at him, picking a few more glass chips from my hands. “I’m going to ask you a few questions.”

  “Save your breath.”

  I paused for a few seconds. “I promise I’ll keep them short so you can answer with one or two syllables.”

  He strained against the wire as he enunciated each word. “Fuck. You.”

  I stared at him a moment more and then stepped around, turning the chair and dragging him out of the room backward. “I guess we’re doing it the hard way.” I glanced at Bianca and Alonzo. “You two stay here.” The back legs of the metal office chair scraped on the tile surface as I pulled him toward the stairs. “C’mon Adan, I need someone to carry the lamp.”

  Culpepper thrashed a bit, but I’d wired him in good. “Where the hell are you taking me?”

  “What do you care?” I think he was a little worried I was going to pitch him off the balcony but didn’t breathe any easier as I started dragging him down the stairs, the metal chair with him in it sounding like the 1812 Overture as we crashed our way down. Adan dutifully followed as I made a right and ventured farther into the building, past some counters that had been broken up and a few more vacant offices cluttered with debris.

  There was another set of stairs to my right, and I followed the same procedure as we descended into the depths of the building, Adan’s lamp the only light. I’m pretty sure I’d loosened a few more of Culpepper’s fillings by the time we got to the bottom.

  “Where the hell are we going?”

  I dragged him past a short hallway lined with empty shelves to our final destination. Propping the chair back up, I turned him so that he could see the large, steel door of the vault.

  The doctor entered and stood to the side, still unsure of my intentions but holding the lamp high so that we could all look around.

  I toed some debris as I pulled Guzmán’s brass knuckles from my back pocket. “When felons were induced to talk, they first were shown the instruments of their torture.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  I slipped the brass onto my hand, glinting menacingly in the lamplight. “The difficulty we’re having here is that right now you’re more afraid of Bidarte than you are of me, and I’m going to have to convince you that you need to be more afraid of me without damaging you so much that you can’t tell me what it is that I need to know.”

  “Fuck. You.”

  I punched the corner of the wall, pieces of concrete flying and filling the air with dust. On the other side of the doorway, Adan coughed and quickly pulled his shirt over his mouth. “Primitive, but damned capable these things. I think it was the Sikhs in the eighteenth century that came up with the basic design of the Sher Panja, but they really came into their own in our country during the Civil War. There wasn’t hardly a self-respecting soldier who didn’t have a set of these made out of brass or cast iron or even if they had to carve them out of wood or cast them out of lead bullets molded in dirt.”

  “Fuck. You.”

  I stepped toward him. “Now, you’re going to tell me all the things I need to know, like where exactly my daughter is, Bidarte’s plans, the basic layout at Monasterio del Corazón Ardiente, his manpower and armaments, and anything else I can come up with.”

  He smiled. “I don’t believe you will use those.”

  I stood there, not moving.

  His head dropped, and he laughed. “One of the things I’m good at is knowing how far people will go, and you, Sheriff, aren’t capable of following through on this threat, even with a piece of shit like me.”

  I could feel the muscles bunching in my right arm, calculating the distance between the two of us and the trajectory and amount of force it would take to loosen his jaw without shattering it.

  There was part of me, that vengeful, wrathful monster who was goading me forward, that wanted to beat him to a pulp and maybe to death—but in the end, I knew he was right. I pulled the knuckles off and stuck them back in my pocket.

  “That’s what a clear conscience gets you, Sheriff, nothing.” The grin broadened. “Now you’re talking sense. Get me out of this chair, and let’s get going. I can’t promise it’s going to be a good trip for you, but maybe we can just let your friends go home.”

  “Nope.”

  The smile faded a bit. “Nope, what?”

  “You’re not leaving.”

  Culpepper glanced around and sounded a little less sure of himself. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  I leaned against the wall and folded my arms just to give them something to do. “In the seventies, when I got back from Vietnam, we had a rash of bank robberies in Wyoming. Nothing too sophisticated, just the usual smash-and-grab kind of thing. Anyway, the security at a lot of the banks was out of date, so they had this big show in Casper about all the new varieties of equipment and vaults.” I walked to one of the walls and patted it. “I’m thinking this was built around the same time.” I turned to look at him. “Torero was probably a thriving little town before your kind got here.”

  “Fuck this town and fuck you. Look, if you want to get those knucks back out and beat on me, big man, you go ahead and do it, but I’ve been beat on before and I didn’t say anything then and I’m sure as hell not going to say anything now.”

  I studied him a bit more and then patted the wall again. “Reinforced concrete about five feet thick, backed by about six inches of steel.” I ran a hand toward the doorway. “Vault door with an iron face and another inch and a half of cast steel, another twelve inches of burn-resistant steel, and another inch of open hearth steel. This particular vault door has twenty bolts, each an inch in diameter that holds the door into a sixteen-inch steel jam set in sixteen inches of concrete.” I tapped the steel. “Now the door is precision made so you can’t pour anything into the seam.” I glanced around. “Even ol’ Dillinger would sure as heck have had trouble with this one.”

  He licked his lips, and I could see the panic growing in him like a virus. “Look, if your plan is to bore me to death . . .”

  I took the lamp from Adan. “Doesn’t look as though there’s been any money in here for quite some time.” I came over and set the lamp at Culpepper’s feet. “When it was in operation, I bet this place was kind of hard to get into.” I brought my face up to look at him. “However, what you should be specifically concerned about is getting out.”

  He was perfectly still now and not so talkative.

  I glanced back at Adan. “How long do you think this lamp will last?�
��

  He shrugged. “A half gallon of oil, it will probably burn for 150 hours, give or take.”

  “Six days.” I turned back to Culpepper. “You’ll be long dead before that.”

  He stared at me.

  I nodded. “People are always worried about starving to death, but it’s really dehydration they should worry about—it usually takes a week, but with your lack of body fat and recent alcohol intake, I’d say you’re probably already on your way.” I glanced back at Adan. “What do you say, Doc?”

  “Five days at the most.”

  “Do you stay hungry and thirsty all the way to the end?”

  He stepped forward, his voice surprisingly conversational. “No, the body is an amazingly adaptive mechanism—it will cry out for food and drink for the first day or two but then realizes that it isn’t getting any more and adjusts.”

  “How?”

  “It begins devouring the fat cells within itself, fat cells being full of water. It is how camels survive in the desert, by living off the fat cells in their humps.” He took another step toward Culpepper. “But you, my friend, have no hump.”

  “Side effects?”

  “His bowels and kidneys will continue to evacuate until they are empty, and there will be a great drying of the lips and mouth, but other than that, not much.”

  I stood. “Is it painful?”

  “After the period of hunger and thirst, no, I think not. In the research that has been done in voluntary suicide by dehydration, I have heard that it’s actually quite peaceful.”

  I shook my head. “That’s too bad.”

  His eyes flicked between Adan and me. “So what are you going to do, walk out of here and lock me in?”

  I pulled a piece of paper from my shirt pocket. “I found the combination chalked on the vault, pretty smart actually. I copied it down and then rubbed it off the door. Now there might be a few old-timers around here who remember the combination, but I don’t think it’s going to matter, because when I close that door, there isn’t going to be a living soul who knows you’re down here besides Adan and me.” I turned to the Doc. “I’m not going to tell anybody, are you?”