Lizardskin

by Carsten Stroud

  “Lakota. My band is Sans Arcs. You’d call us Teton Sioux.”

  “Yes. Military service, too, I understand? A warrior?”

  Gabriel stared at the paunchy man for a long time, thinking that a word excluded more than it included.

  “Where’d you hear that?” he said finally.

  “You are talked about. The enigmatic Mr. Picketwire. Empirically, I observe that you have a familiarity with weapons. Also, you have a … directed quality that I have come to associate with men who have seen some sort of combat.”

  “I served for a while in Southeast Asia.”

  “Vietnam?”

  “No, I was never in Vietnam. What’s this all about, Doc? I gotta call a friend of mine.”

  “The lawyer in Helena—well, that brings me to my question.”

  “What question?”

  “What’s the Lakota word for lawyer?”

  “In Lakota? There isn’t one.”

  “Ah. I didn’t think there was.”

  6

  2245 Hours–June 14–Pompeys Pillar, Montana

  Bell’s Oasis was an island of corpse-colored light at the far end of the darkened main street of Pompeys Pillar. The only other business up and running at this late hour was Fogarty’s New York Bar, two blocks over on Custer Street. Beau could hear the music drifting through the still evening air as he rolled by on his way up to Bell’s. “Evangeline” by Emmylou Harris.

  There was a Mountain Bell van parked out in front of Bell’s Oasis. The yellow crime ribbon was still stretched around three pump islands. More of it was roped around the chain link fence enclosure and the propane tank. No other cars were around.

  Finch and Rowdy had checked out and gone home a few minutes back. Ron Thornton and Rita Sonnette were also off duty. Beau had gotten Patrolmen Pietrosante and Benitez—the Munchkin—away from their separate off-duty pleasures and out into the back country. Benitez had insisted on a cruiser, so Beau pulled one from the traffic pool.

  They were calling in now and then over the CB-Communications patch. Nothing. No sign of the morgue wagon, no sign of Danny Burt or Peter Hinsdale anywhere.

  Hinsdale’s mother was getting pretty worked up about that. Hinsdale was a nineteen-year-old part-timer taking a course as an undertaker at Billings Vocational College. Actually, Hinsdale’s mother had said he was “in the bereavement sciences course, specializing in grief management.”

  Bereavement sciences? Grief management?

  Christ help us.

  McAllister killed the cruiser lights and rolled to a stop beside the first pump bank.

  “Five eleven.”

  “Five eleven?”

  “Central, I’m gonna be out of the car here at Bell’s Oasis for about fifteen minutes. I’ll be OTA on the portable. Okay?”

  “Ten-four, Sergeant.”

  “That you, Beth?”

  “That’s me, Beau.”

  “How come you’re still on?”

  “Overtime. The swing-shift girl isn’t coming in tonight.”

  “Oh, right … the LT still there?”

  “No. He’s gone down to see Bill Garner. Big Horn County guys.”

  “Okay. Well, I’m ten-seven on the air.”

  “Bye-bye, Beau.”

  He got out and stood for a while, looking down at the blood patch on the pavement. It was funny about blood. Rain wouldn’t wash it away. Gas wouldn’t. That stain would be there for six months, until they salted the lot after the first winter snows. Salt would bleach it out. Somebody had once told Beau that blood was very similar to sea water. Salt water. Maybe this all meant something in a cosmic way, but probably not.

  Beau walked over to the doorway of the main office. The snack-bar lights were on. He stepped sideways to the plate-glass window and looked in. He could see a man hunched over a toolbox on the floor, in front of a row of pay phones along the back wall by the washrooms. MOUNTAIN BELL was stitched across the back of his overalls. Beau tapped on the glass.

  The man jumped up and swiveled, holding a screwdriver like a knife. Beau smiled at him.

  “Sorry to frighten you. Sergeant McAllister, Highway Patrol. Who’re you?”

  The man was lean and young, very pink-skinned. A wispy red moustache rode on his upper lip like a pet caterpillar. He had pale blue, wet-looking eyes, the eyes of a man used to bad luck. He came over to the glass and peered out at Beau.

  “You gotta badge?”

  “It’s on my shirt, son. Open up.”

  He stared at Beau’s pocket for a minute, moving his lips.

  Inbred, thought Beau. Bet he plays a hell of a banjo.

  The stringy kid slouched over to the door, threw the bolt. “Yuh gotta be careful. This here’s a crime scene, Sergeant.”

  “Yeah, I noticed. What’re you doing here, son?”

  He rolled his head on a boneless neck, indicating the bank of pay phones. “Service call.”

  Beau nodded. “You have some ID?”

  The kid stared at Beau as if Beau had grown a third eye.

  “Yuh kin see my uniform. I gotta truck.”

  “I see a uniform. I see a truck.”

  The kid rolled his eyes and let out a long sigh. He smelled of stale beer and peppermint gum. He dug around in his overalls and came up with a tattered card. As he handed it over, Beau could see patches of raw flesh and new scab on the fingertips of his right hand. He tried not to think what might have caused that. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t like the answer.

  HUBERT WOZCYLESKO. And a photograph of the kid without his pet caterpillar. It was Mountain Bell ID. Beau handed it back.

  “Thanks, Hubert.”

  “Woz. People call me Woz.”

  “Okay, Woz. How come you’re working this late?”

  “Supposed to service ’em this morning. Couldn’t. Hedda shoot-out here. Joe Bell killed some fuckin’ Indian. I guess you heard?”

  “I heard. Well, don’t let me stop you. I’ll just do a walk-around. See if everything’s okay.”

  The kid shrugged, swiveled on a heel, and headed back to the phones. Beau walked past him and into the kitchen. The back door was bolted and barred. The alarm-box light flickered in the darkened corner, green like a one-eyed cat.

  Hope Blasingame knows to feed the cats, thought Beau, strolling over to the doorway of Bell’s office.

  So. Is that packet still under the desk? Beau looked over his shoulder at Woz Wozcylesko from Mountain Bell. He had the casing off one of the pay phones and was picking away at the coin slot with something long and sharp, cursing softly to himself.

  Meagher had been pretty clear about the issue. Leave it alone. Laws were laws and rights were rights. A lawman was a man of the law, or he was nothing but a lawyer with a permit to carry.

  Meagher had once read an essay by somebody named Kant out loud to Beau over a bottle of Utah champagne, at the sleepy close of a retirement party for one of the Big Horn County cops. Meagher apparently kept the paper in his pocket because when he pulled it out it was so creased and worn, it almost fell apart.

  The essay had been about how lying was always wrong because no matter how good your motivation for lying, you were somehow breaking down the—the currency of honest exchange, was how Meagher had put it. The coin of ideas and belief. So when you lied or did something deceitful, even if you were doing it to save a life or right some terrible wrong, it was still a lie, and a lie eroded the … tacit … understanding we all share about each other. About being able to trust in each other. In every other. And this went double for cops. Truth was what cops were all about, was Meagher’s point.

  Interesting thought, Eustace, Beau had told him. Anybody ever put this guy Kant to the test?

  Not that Meagher had heard. What did that have to do with anything?

  Well, you know. Like if Kant was trying to—if a young girl runs into Kant’s apartment, her clothes are all ripped up and she’s bleeding. Obvious victim of an attack. So then Kant is pouring her some tea or something, and suddenly there�
��s this bang-bang at the door. So the girl jumps up and hides, like in Kant’s closet. And Kant opens the door, and there’s this huge outlaw biker asshole there, has his pants down around his ankles, loaded for bear, got a hard-on like pink steel, he’s waving a knife, wants to know if Kant has seen this girl run by his door. Does Kant know where this girl is?

  Yeah …?

  Yeah, so what does Kant do? Does he lie and save the girl, or does he tell the truth and get her killed?

  Meagher wanted to know if Kant was armed.

  Yeah. Let’s say he is.

  Well … I guess I gotta say he tells the guy the truth. Why do I get the idea this actually happened to you?

  Yep.

  So what did you do?

  What you said Kant would do. I told him the truth.

  You said she was there?

  Yep.

  Then what?

  Then I shot him.

  So what’s your point?

  The point is, trust in Allah, but tie up your camels.

  What?

  Tell the truth to people who have the truth in them.

  That’s not what Kant was saying.

  I know, but Kant wasn’t a cop.

  Cops aren’t all the law is. Cops are just the bouncers in the dance hall of the law.

  So let me see if I get this. What are the lawyers?

  They’d be the bartenders. Bar-tenders? Get it?

  Yeah, I get it. And the judges?

  They’re the disc jockeys of justice.

  Beau had laughed then. And what do they play?

  Truth—the song of justice.

  You really believe that, Eustace?

  Well, said Meagher, reaching for the bottle. There you go.

  Go where?

  Go get another. This one’s empty. Anyway, that argument’s irrevelant. Irrelevant. It doesn’t address the principal tenets of the thesis. It’s ad hoc.

  Say what?

  Ad hoc, Beau. Ad hoc!

  Hey, Beau had said, getting up to look for some more champagne. That’s a nasty cough you got there, Eustace.

  He was looking at the television set on Bell’s filing cabinet. There was a VCR underneath it, so it was probably what Bell used for his … diversions. Beau came around and flicked it on. What he got was a picture of the pump area out front, his cruiser, and the Mountain Bell truck glowing gray in the black-and-white image. There must be a camera mounted up on the roof, a cheap one from the look of the image, which was grainy and out of focus. Beau felt that kind of rare thrill a cop gets when something breaks his way in a case.

  He bent down to study the VCR. It had a tape in it, and the illuminated panel said STOP. The tape had run through to the end.

  Christ! Maybe he had the whole thing on tape!

  He rewound the tape and hit the PLAY button.

  The screen flickered and jumped, and then there was a blank screen with the TIME-DATE numbers running.

  Today’s date. Thirteen hundred hours this afternoon.

  Yes!

  Then the picture came up. It was just a fixed camera image, cars and trucks gliding in, people walking around, the normal business of a truck stop. There was no sound.

  Beau hit FAST FORWARD and everybody jerked into highspeed motion. The day-date-hour indicator flickered forward. Beau kept the button pressed, watching the screen.

  Trucks. Cars. People. Senseless motion.

  The time indicator ran through 1600 hours.

  It was getting close now. Beau took his finger off FAST FORWARD and watched the screen.

  Bell was in the picture, leaning in a car window, talking to someone, the driver; there was a truck blocking the view. Bell stood up and slammed the roof of the car. It was a big car, black or brown or dark gray. Maybe blue. It looked like an old Caddy. Bell came back up the line of pumps, and the old Caddy pulled away. Bell watched it go, turned back, his face set and his mouth moving. He disappeared out of the camera line.

  Beau hit the FREEZE-FRAME button.

  Then he hit REVERSE and FREEZE again.

  He leaned forward and looked at the old Cadillac for almost a full minute. The screen popped, and static arced and crackled across the image of the car, Bell leaning in the passenger window.

  Beau shook his head and released the FREEZE button.

  The car was—no, he thought. That’s a different car. Anyway, the image quality sucks. That’s another car entirely. He put the thought away and watched the video roll. Almost time.

  Trucks were moving. Beau saw the J. B. Hunt tractor-trailer crossing the lot. More cars pulled away and—

  The picture went blank—jumped—popped.

  God-damn. Someone had shut the camera off.

  Bell had shut it off.

  Son of a bitch!

  He ran the tape forward. Junk. Home movies. Some disconnected activities. Then a couple of women, naked, in a hot tub. This part in full color. Beau shut the machine off, and a terrible feeling washed over him.

  He was already down on his hands and knees, feeling around under the drawers. He felt under there for a while, but it was just for something to do while he cursed himself out, cursed out Meagher and Joe Bell and the renegades and Vanessa Ballard and everybody else he had locked horns with today.

  Because that packet was gone.

  There was a sticky patch where the tape had been, and shreds of tape still stuck to the bottom of the drawer. But there was no package. Somebody had got to it. Somebody with the brass to walk through a police crime scene ribbon and take it.

  Somebody with a uniform, maybe?

  Somebody who knew where it was.

  Oh, well, this is real irritating, isn’t it? There sure as hell is something going on, and now if Bell comes back here to look for it and it’s gone, the first thing he’ll do is come to Beau and ask where the fuck it is. And when Beau doesn’t know, he’ll ask the LT, who sure as God made cold sores will come around and ask Beau what the hell he did with it.

  And Beau couldn’t even go back to Eustace right now and tell him that the thing was gone because then Eustace would want to know how he knew it was gone, and Beau would have to tell him that he knew it was gone because he was down here on his knees looking for it. And he’d have to tell Meagher about the tape, and when you looked at it, the tape wasn’t really relevant. It might show that Bell deliberately shut the camera off, which might suggest that Bell knew something was about to happen.…

  A lot of suppositions. Better to keep it simp—

  “What’re you looking for there, Sergeant?”

  Beau jerked up and slammed his shoulder on the edge of the desk. That made it twice today somebody had snuck up on him while he was here in Bell’s office.

  “God-damn it, Hubert! Don’t tippy-toe around like that. Whaddya want in here, anyway?”

  Wozcylesko twisted his large mouth sideways, a man with a party-trick face. “Nothin’. I was just sayin’ I gotta go now.”

  “You leaving? Fine. You get it done?”

  “Nah. They’re fucked good. Fucking truckers.”

  “Truckers—what’d they do?”

  “Jokesters. Think they’re funny as tits on a door.”

  “Why?”

  “Always doing that stunt, fucking up the coin slots like that.”

  “Like how? They stick a slug in one? Bubblegum?”

  He shook his head vigorously. Beau could almost hear his brain rattling around inside like a dried-up pea in a box.

  “Nah … they put that Krazy Glue in ’em. You know, into the coin slots.”

  Beau got to his feet and walked across to the phone banks. There were ten phones in a row, three of them electronic ones set up to take credit cards, the other seven coin-operated phones. The kid followed him over and was now putting his tools away in the box.

  “How many were vandalized?”

  “Just a couple. They’re junk now.”

  “And you say the truckers do this? They do it all the time?”

  “Yeah … well, not
here. But—you know. I heard about this shit. It happens. Kids do it. Truckers. Tourists sometimes.”

  “But not here before. Not that you know?”

  “Well, no. Not here. This’s my route. But I seen it other places. Really.”

  “These the only phones?”

  “Nah. There’s three out by the diesel pumps.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “You check them?”

  “Nah. Not on my sheet.”

  “When’d you get the call?”

  “To fix these things? Call came in this afternoon. So I hear a whole bunch of people got shot to shit here?”

  “Nobody got shot to shit except one young kid. Come outside for a second?”

  The kid flinched and twisted his mouth again. “What’re you gonna do? I didn’t do nothin’ wrong. I’m supposed to be here.”

  “You go into Joe Bell’s office here?”

  “Yeah, once. I hadda call in.”

  “You look under his desk?”

  “What the fuck’d I do that for?”

  Beau stared hard at him. “Take the top off that toolbox.”

  “What for?”

  “Just do it!”

  “Okay … okay … here.”

  He lifted the top tray off. Beau knelt down and sorted through needle-nose pliers, bits of wire, fuses, and connectors.

  “Okay. First we’re gonna go look through your truck. Then we’re gonna check out those other three phones.”

  “You haveta have a warrant.”

  “For what?”

  “That’s a Mountain Bell truck. That’s a public utility, belongs to the government. I can’t let no civilian in there.”

  Beau reached out and gently, very gently, took hold of the kid’s caterpillar moustache. The kid backed away and winced as the moustache stayed where it was, pinched in Beau’s fingers.

  “Hubert. Woz. You gotta help me here. I’m being as civil as I can be.”

  The kid started to squeal. Beau let him go, and he lurched back. Beau caught him by the arm and led him out toward the gas pumps. The kid was silent. He radiated sulk. Something else Beau would hear about next week.

  Beau spent ten minutes rooting through the junk in the back of the Mountain Bell van. He found nothing. The van smelled strongly of solvent. It burned the nostrils and made his eyes run. And under that, another scent, spicy, like incense or …