Cold Dish wl-1

by Craig Johnson

  Static. “Come in, Unit One.” Static and a worried, “Walter, are you there?”

  I swallowed, reached in, and grabbed the mic. “Yep. What’s the word on George?”

  Static. “They made it in; he’s at the hospital right now.”

  “Alive?”

  Static. “Yes. Ferg took the Espers over there just a few minutes ago. Turk is getting ready to leave now, on his way out to you.”

  “Don’t send anybody out. I’m on my way in, but I’ve got to take care of a few things.” I waited for a moment. “Is Lucian there?”

  Static. “I think he’s still in the back with Bryan.”

  “Will you get him for me?”

  As I waited, I thought about how personal and ugly things had gotten over the last forty minutes. A breeze picked up a little in an attempt to scour the countryside. I wished it all the luck in the world. Static. “What the hell do you mean don’t send anybody?”

  I smiled. “Good to hear your voice, old man. How’re you doin’?”

  Static. “You woke me up to ask me that?”

  I took a deep breath and laid the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead on the seat. “Lucian, do you remember back when Michael Hayes killed himself?” A long pause.

  Static. “What the hell does that have to do with the price of tea in China?”

  “What kind of gun did he use?” There was another long pause.

  Static. “Son of a bitch.”

  There were clouds at the mountains, and the snow pack reflected the sour-lemon sun into one of the most beautiful and perverse sunsets I had ever seen. The clouds were dappled like the hindquarters of an Appaloosa colt, and the beauty kicked just as hard. The head wind rattled the bare limbs of the cottonwoods as the longer branches swayed, and the remnants of grass and sage shuddered close to the ground. The buffeting of the wind against the truck reminded me that I had lost both of my jackets.

  I started at the beginning, working with the most innocent facts and making my way toward the most damning. I thought about the history first. No one knew exactly why Michael Hayes had killed himself. I was just a teenager when it happened, but I remember her saying that he had killed himself in the tack shed. Someone at the time had said he had done it with a large-caliber rifle, and anyone who knew Mr. Hayes would be happy to tell you he was not the type to take half measures. I remember someone making the statement that his brains had been scattered all over the walls.

  I thought about the night I had gone to her house for dinner, and how she had made me leave the rifle by the door. Could she have been responding to the weapon itself? I remembered how the dog had continually looked at the door that evening. Could he have seen the Old Cheyenne?

  I thought about the Vasques, size nines, and about holding those lengthy, supple feet in my hands. I thought about how she was only a head shorter than me, and how that sandy hair hung past her shoulders. It could have easily been she in the early morning light at Dull Knife Lake, and it would have been easy for her to carefully wind her way through the twisted branches at the second crime scene.

  I looked longingly at the bar as I passed. The lights were on, and there were a few aged pickups parked in equal distance around the building; in Wyoming, even trucks have personal space. Dena was in there, fleecing the local cowboys out of their $163 a week. I guess with the current events, she had decided to bag the Las Vegas tournament and take care of some of the local talent. It was well past the end of the working season; for some of the cowboys it would be the last check they would see until things picked back up in the spring. It would be a hard winter for them too, but for now, they were having fun losing their money to Dena Many Camps. I envied them the privilege.

  When I got to Portugee Gulch at the Lower Piney, the gate to the house was open. I picked up the rifle and listened for drums, bells, or voices of any kind, but the only sound was the wind as it swept down, undulating along the foothills of the mountains. I stepped out of the truck, and the halogen spotlights of the courtyard tripped on. It took me a second to remember how they had done the same thing when I had brought her home a couple of nights ago. The red shale crunched under my feet as I approached the house. When I got to the door, it was unlocked. I pushed it all the way open and looked in at the empty living room. Things were a great deal as they were when I had made my hasty departure the other night. The blanket was still crumpled on the sofa, but the fire was dead and cold. I thought about the dog and looked behind me. I listened very carefully as I glanced across the openings of the archways to the dining room and looked down the hallway that led to the kitchen. This was where I had seen him the first time, but the only sound was the wind in the courtyard and a soft whistling coming from the still open flue of the fireplace.

  I closed the door softly behind me and looked down at the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead; it had taken on a much more articulate quality with the amount of handling it had endured in the last week. The oils from many hands had given its ghostly finish a peculiar gleam, and the wood and Italian beads shone with a warning that it had come to life once again. The small, gray feathers looked soft and invited my touch. I jacked the lever down and checked the round just above the sliding block and then pulled the lever back up. I leaned the rifle against the wall and slid the action back on the Colt, releasing a live round into the chamber of the. 45. The hammer kicked back like a hitchhiker’s thumb. The sound of the thing was enough to wake the dead. I looked back at the Sharps; I didn’t want to take it, but I couldn’t leave it behind.

  I moved across the room and went up the couple of stairs into the dining room, still listening and looking for any signs of blood. I paused at the opening to the kitchen and raised the sidearm up into a ready position, holding the rifle behind me. The kitchen was empty, but I thought I heard a slight noise and looked around the room again. The copper pots and stainless steel appliances remained mute until the refrigerator kicked on with a low hum. I heard the noise again. It was like the shifting of weight against something solid. I glanced toward the mudroom, where the dog had been kept before. Something very large moved, and a second later he crashed into the door. He barked and snapped over and over again at the other side as he leaped and the center panel pressed out toward me. I raised the pistol, holding the rifle in reserve, but the latch held.

  I waited a moment for my heart to return to its regular pattern. It was going to be tougher from here on; I didn’t know the layout of the rest of the house. I went back out the opening to the kitchen, and there were four different hallways and two separate sets of stairs where I could continue my search. I had to think about where it was she might be, where it was that I would go if I were in her condition. I knew she was hurt and losing blood. Where would she go to doctor herself? There was no blood trail on the slick surface of the clay tile. She had not come this way, nor had she gone the other way into the living room or to the bedrooms beyond. She didn’t appear to have come into this part of the house at all.

  I went down the back hallway that led farther into the compound. It was lined with bookcases and opened into an atrium with hanging baskets and large pots filled with plants I didn’t recognize. There were Turkish rugs and wicker furniture, and the air felt moist. Here was the pool, about fifteen feet long and seven feet wide, with a motorized unit that must have created an artificial current to swim against. I looked around at the lead framework that was filled with the panels of glass that made up the majority of the back side of the house. I moved toward the end of the right side of the room to an exterior door, put the Sharps under my arm, opened the door carefully, and looked around. The yard was filled with the same red shale as the front, and there was an opening that lead into an indoor riding arena that was about forty feet across the courtyard. There were depressions at the center where a truck had been driven. It was getting late, and the skies above had dimmed to where the strong angles of the sun set everything on dramatic edge. It would be dark very soon, and I had to find her before then.

  I walked down f
rom the slate steps and started to cross, keeping an eye on the surrounding windows and doors. When I got to the side of the large open doorway, I stopped and placed my back against the tin surface of the wall and propped the butt of the buffalo rifle carefully on the ground. The owl feathers moved very slightly, and I had a feeling the messengers were calling. It was the stable section of the arena, with horse stalls on both sides. There were opaque skylights that allowed a certain amount of the failing sunlight to spill through so I could see red shale tracks where a truck had crossed the concrete floor to the right. It was a large building, one of those prefabs at least fifty yards long and about twenty yards wide. Two horses came over to the gates to see if I had treats. One was a grade bay with Chinese eyes, and the other was a big thoroughbred, at least seventeen hands. The big one stuck his head through the stall door and reached his soft nose out to me. I reached up and petted him but continued to keep an eye on the opening ahead. When I got past him, he whiffled at me, and I turned to give him a dirty look.

  Inside the large sanded space of the arena itself, there was a green Willys pickup, circa 1950, with the driver’s-side door hanging open. It wasn’t a ’63 Ford, but it was close enough. They were Arizona plates, antique. It was parked in front of another opening, and I could see lights on in the hallway beyond. I stayed along the plywood partitions that kept a rider from getting brushed off as he circled the arena on horseback and worked my way around to the truck. There was dried blood everywhere, and a small cotton bag of. 45-70s had spilled onto the floor. Wedged in the crease of the bench seat was a bloodstained, fake eagle feather. The ignition had been left on, although the motor was not running, and the dash bulbs had grown dimly yellow like the bug lights on an old-time porch. I turned back toward the opening and noticed that the architecture had changed in the hallway beyond.

  This stable way was different from the others; it was assembled with rough-cut lumber and river stone. The corners of the wood were hand-worn, and the surface of the planks was weather-stained as if they had originally been outdoors. There was a row of dirty windows to the right. The dying light made angular, sharp-edged patterns down the walkway and reflected small seas of floating dust motes. Everything here was old, even the tools on the walls, and it looked like a small rural museum that had gone to seed. There were cobwebs in the overhanging rafters, and ring shank nails punched through the stained plywood where someone had not bothered to check their length when nailing down the tarpaper above. A fine patina of dirt had settled over everything and, except for the tang of blood, it smelled moldy, old, and mousy.

  There were dark stains in the sand and a few on the stones that made up the walkway leading down the forty-foot hall. A Dutch door was open at the far end, and there was a light on. I stopped and listened; there was a brief crackle of what sounded like a radio frequency, but then it was gone. You could see a row of old saddles in there, but that was about all. I moved carefully past the abandoned stalls. Nothing had been in any of them for a long time, and I could just make out the scurrying movement of field mice as they busied themselves. I paused a little away from the door and noticed the blood on the galvanized handle. I started to speak. If I was going to be shot, it wasn’t going to be by mistake. There wasn’t any sound, so I inclined my head a little bit to see more of the room. “Avon calling…”

  She laughed, a wispy, hollow laugh like air escaping from a tire, and the sound went through me. I turned slightly to the right and leaned in a little more and, through the dim light of the dusty, forty-watt bulb, I could see her. She was sitting on a series of wooden steps, the kind that grooms use to assist foxhunters in mounting their horses. They were a dark, hunter green with gold trim and looked as if they hadn’t been used in a while. I couldn’t remember the last foxhunt in the county, but I remembered the white-painted fences, and I remembered the glasses of pulpy lemonade that Vonnie’s mother had brought out to us when my father had shod their horses. She had put Maraschino cherries in the bottom of each glass, and I remembered how her hand had lingered on my father’s arm as he had taken his.

  Vonnie was wearing a pair of dark coveralls that had been unzipped and peeled down to her waist and tied with the sleeves there. She had on a pair of Vasque hiking boots, and the blood had dribbled on them too. I wondered how she was still conscious. Then I noticed the Sharps buffalo rifle that was propped up between her knees with the butt resting on the floor. It was angled slightly in my direction. I knew how heavy the things were, but those fingers still wrapped around foregrip and trigger with a terrible determination. I could see that the massive hammer was pulled back and the rifle was ready to fire.

  I eased the rest of the way into the room. She was against the wall, and there was a counter to her left where her shoulder was. The surface was strewn with medical supplies, most of them for horses. There were blood-saturated gauze pads, plastic bottles of topical antibiotics, and even a couple of syringes. They looked as if they had been pushed aside with a sweeping gesture when she had lost interest in the procedure. There was also a police scanner sitting on the table and, from the illuminated dial, I could see that it was set to our frequency of 155.070.

  More saddles rested on log racks to her right, and the layers of grime made it clear that they hadn’t been disturbed in years. The ceiling was low, and I had to lean to one side to see around the naked light bulb that hung there. The glare from the proximity of the bulb was irritating. I was standing in the only door in the room, and there were no windows. There wasn’t anywhere to go, for either of us. I looked down and studied her face and could feel the sympathy twinge in my own. The damage to the left side of her head was only slightly evident in the tangle of blood-matted hair that stuck to the side of her face and strung down past her shoulder where the blood continued to drip. I was pretty sure her ear was gone and could only guess as to the extent of the rest of the damage.

  “Hello, Walter.” She stared at the automatic in my hand that pointed down at the wooden plank floor and then to the Sharps that hung loosely in my other hand. “Are you going to shoot me again?”

  I glanced down at the hammer of the Sharps she held but quickly looked back up at her eyes. With the dim light, I could barely make them out and wasn’t sure if they were dilated or constricted. “No.” I slowly lowered the hammer, placed the. 45 back in my holster, and pulled the snap over and clicked it shut. I raised the Cheyenne rifle muzzle up and leaned it against the wall beside the door. “It’s department policy to only shoot people once a day; it’s a budgetary thing.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.” She laughed. “At least what I can hear..”

  “Got your ear?”

  Her blood-covered hand started to come up but then rested back on the rifle beside the set trigger; if it had already been pulled, it wasn’t going to take much to set the thing off. “Yes.”

  I watched her hands for a moment. She was hurt and the effect was gruesome, but her movements were still sharp and, so far, the loss of blood hadn’t robbed her of any of her mechanical skills. “Pretty impressive. Getting hit like that would knock most people down and out.”

  “It did.” Her eyes twitched in response to the wound, but she rolled her head back a little so that I could see more of her eyes. “I was out for a minute or two…”

  “Pretty tough.” I waited for a moment, but she didn’t say anything. “We’re a pair, aren’t we? You with your ear and me with mine?”

  She nodded slightly, smiled, and the effect of the bright white teeth against the blooded gore made my heart trip. “I don’t think this relationship is going to work out.” The smile broadened and then relaxed, as the muscles in her face must have disturbed the ear. “You play too rough.”

  “Vonnie…”

  “I’m glad you’re here, though. It wouldn’t have been right if you hadn’t been.”

  I nodded and stepped to the side just enough to get the light bulb out of my face. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  She nodded slightly and gl
anced at the medical supplies scattered on the counter. “Not much of a Florence Nightingale, am I?” A moment passed. “I suppose my talents lie elsewhere.”

  As I started to move again, the muzzle of the Sharps leveled up between us and hung there. “No.” I stopped, still too far away to grab the gun. She leaned a little, the slope of her back resting against the wall. “We could just… talk.”

  “Well, we’ve got an awful lot to talk about.”

  I waited, and after a while her face shifted a little, saving me the view. “Why couldn’t I have met you a day earlier?” She readjusted her weight against the wall and turned a little farther. Almost none of the damage showed now, except that the blood continued to saturate her thermal top. “Maybe none of this would have happened.”

  “Vonnie…”

  “One day earlier, that’s all we would have needed.”

  “I don’t…”

  “Twenty-four hours, and maybe I wouldn’t have made all this mess.” She glanced over at the medical supplies. “Why you? Why did all this have to do with you?”

  “It’s my job.”

  She looked back at me. “Yes.” Her attention dropped to the barrel of the buffalo rifle. “We all have our jobs, don’t we?”

  I tried changing the subject. “What’s the story on the feathers?”

  “Oh…” She blinked and refocused. “A bit of dramatic effect, symbolic really… life and death… I had hoped that the eagle feather would heal Melissa, the breath of life to make her better.”

  “You took a lot of chances placing them.”

  She didn’t move. “That was the hard part, seeing them up close.. ”

  I thought about not telling her, but we were telling the truth and maybe it would keep her going. “They aren’t real. The eagle feathers, they’re fake.”

  Her eyes glazed over, and the stillness of her was betrayed only by a sharp nod. “Well, doesn’t that fit…”