“Leeman was a star prosecutor in Ohio. He looks like some preppy limp wrist but he’s a killer. He put away hundreds of murderers and he never lost. No one would dare face him for the state spot there.”
“A big deal in Ohio? Ohio may as well be Mars. The only politicking you had to do was reassure him we wouldn’t steal this case from him. Instead, your bosses ran so fast they tripped on their tails.”
“This isn’t about me it’s about you. You don’t help yourself Lane. You’re investigating the Jackal’s Motorcycle Club? What’s your play Lane, our hero struggling with death crazed biker Nazis? I don’t get it. Nobody gets it.”
“I’ll follow any lead I get. I don’t have the luxury of sitting on my ass theorizing. I have to take action. I have to shake things up.”
“We have two women dead in the forest and you are digging into real estate deals, digging into the Jackals, on what, Casino money laundering? And you say I am abandoning these victims? Lane, this is about who killed Catherine Kinderdine.”
“And Lara Mazer,” Brouwer said. “It is about who killed Catherine and Lara.”
“I know Lane. I know. I’m proud of you, and proud to be your friend. All you ever wanted was to be in Jackson Hole and have your own place there, but it’s over. We had to cut a deal and leave this to the county.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing Jennifer. Leeman is saying he won’t run against your guy here, so you close down our office, and guess what? Leeman will run anyway, and he will say that your men let the valley down, and that they ran away in the middle of a murder investigation. The state abandoned this town while a killer stalked it. You’ll lose the election not just to Leeman but to his men all across the Montana line. He played your governor like a country rube. Down east city man tricked some hicks. That shit ain’t new. Sweet deal you put together bestie.”
She threw the phone onto the passenger side floorboards. She breathed heavy. Sweat ran down her chest. With the window closed and no air conditioning, the cab of her Jeep was hot. She unrolled her window. More traffic. Semi-trucks. The midday sun glinted off their mirrors as they belted along the foothills.
24.
On a sunny afternoon, earlier that spring, Brouwer and Sheriff Hargrove hiked Snow King Mountain together. Swathes of brown grasses sprouted bright green after a long winter of deep snow. From atop Snow King, the town was a grid of broad streets pushing low buildings aside. Across the valley, the empty ski runs of Grande Teton were green slices, as though the granite bled lushness when cut. They leaned deep into their steps up the steep incline. She waited for him to lead the conversation but he never did.
That first year of working together, they felt one another out. They were professional. Sheriff Hargrove had been respectful, keeping distance between them, distance he must have assumed she wanted. They moved around one another in the office, working case files, staying polite. In the election campaign, he spoke of eliminating the state from the day-to-day lives of Wyomingites, of eliminating government waste and redundancy, these brief speeches came in the form of polished, well-worn maxims critical of all levels of government, given to small huddles of local reporters; “small business creates jobs, not state officials.”
His talking points included ridding the valley of the state police and the Highway Patrol, policing should be done locally with much less tax burden on families. As forceful as he was, the sheriff was never contemptuous of Brouwer herself, and never excluded her from the work of public safety. Still young and potent, having made his way as a war hero, broad jawed beneath a dressy cowboy hat, a western blazer with suede chest patches over ample pectorals; Hargrove was clearly the future sheriff. The locals were grateful he launched his policing career in Jackson, having recently brought his family to Wyoming from Texas on the opportunity to run for sheriff, finding himself in an upstart party of candidates running against the bloated establishment, he became fast friends with a growing political movement, and fell in with Leeman. Sheriff Hargrove won the election handily. With charm in spades, wealthy women who had moved here from the cities warmed up to him immediately.
He asked her to the Last Cowboy Bar for a beer that Friday afternoon. Instead of a beer, she said he could join her on her daily hike up Snow King. Sliding on the grassy slope in heeled cowboy boots, even prat falling for her amusement, he made her laugh aloud. She’d laughed hard with him, and she hid her face. On the sunny summit, they sat in the grass, looking over the squat roofs of Jackson.
“Okay, lady,” the sheriff said, “I definitely earned that beer.”
They took their seats at a small round table near the dance floor of the large barroom. He wanted to know about her.
“It can’t just be a gal and her horse.”
“What else is there?”
“You don’t seem to need a lot of companionship, makes me curious. Makes me want to know more about you, I guess. You don’t get lonesome, being all alone up there?”
“I’m getting a dog, but I haven’t had time to make it by the shelter to pick one up.”
With his broad country grin, he implied she was lonely. “How can a young woman spend her nights alone sewing in a cabin?”
“It’s actually quilt making. I also lead a women’s hiking and skiing club.”
“You teach women’s skiing only, you don’t allow men?”
A neon jukebox played Big City Turn Me Loose and Set me Free by Merle Haggard. Circles of red and blue light turned on the empty parquet dance floor.
“My classes are for women only. Were you looking for lessons?”
“This Texan doesn’t ski unless it’s behind a boat. Is that constitutional?” he grinned.
“Water skiing? It’s within your rights, but with freedom comes responsibility.”
“No, I meant excluding men from your lessons,” he laughed.
“Well, I put the poster up at the country clubs saying women’s downhill ski instruction and no men tried to join, so I haven’t had to exclude anyone yet.”
Sheriff Hargrove was married with young children but something worked its way through him, pining for her approval. His charm was easy, rewarded often probably, rewarded easily. With her, through the early months especially, she felt he was laboring it; he wanted her in bed, more even than she wanted him, maybe. She knew he watched her, of course, watched her body beneath the cotton western shirts. It gave her an edge on him.
“How has Jackson treated you?” he asked.
“Before the election you mean? Before the election I was treated pretty well actually,” she said.
“I don’t feel great about some of the things said about your office Lane. I guess I didn’t know you then. In politics, boldness wins the day.”
“I wouldn’t know Sheriff,” she said. “I’m a policeman, not a politician.”
He nodded at this and seemed to feel bested. The foam slide in his narrow glass and his eyes swept casually over her neck and collarbones.
Men looked at her. At thirteen, she traveled to Bozeman with her father to buy antibiotics for the cattle, a day of branding and tagging calves with uncles and neighbors ahead. Left on her own to get a tank of acetylene, used to heat branding irons, she went into the agricultural supply and tack store with her dad’s list of goods to charge. Small eyes under low hats followed her along the counter, men in a row. Her body had changed but she had not known until then what that meant, the ramifications. Eyes moved across the room with her as she made her way to the counter top. Mouths worked Chewing tobacco or toothpicks. On her tiptoes, looking over the large counter, she handed the man the list. Studying her, then the list, the man let tobacco juice run from his lips into a browned Pepsi bottle.
“Girl, your daddy won’t have credit here if he don’t pay his bill.”
It was not the same for her as it had been before. She shrank out of the farm supply store, her body like liquid. She couldn’t get her father the supplies he needed.
“I have to ask how you aren’t married up,” t
he sheriff said.
“Lucky I guess,” she said. “I joined Highway Patrol when I got out of College, started out as a patrolman.”
“You were young, educated, with so much opportunity, and you chose the highway. Why?”
“I remember being in the passenger seat of Dad’s truck, with my dog. Dad was taking some hogs into town, his health wasn’t good, and he was the type of man who didn’t fare well once his wife was gone, he was fading fast, those days weren’t easy. I did a lot of helping on the farm. We had on old livestock rack he fitted into the box of his old Chevy. We came by a crash at nighttime coming back from the auction. A semi-truck hit a motorhome going into the mountains, crushed it like tinfoil. It was scary. I remember seeing a tall figure directing traffic around, in control, she was a tall Patrol officer, she had her troop hat on, that big belt above her hips full of her tools, and she used a nightstick and long flashlight to direct where to go. She was a giant to me.”
“Your daddy still up there farming?”
“He passed away while I was in college. By the time they had an estate auction, the local credit union owned the place.”
“That must have been tough, when you’re just starting out in life, to lose your father.”
“I paid for state university by playing division one Alpine sports and rodeo. So I didn’t have much time to worry about it. They gave me my degree and straight away, I joined Wyoming Highway Patrol. I asked from day one, to any brass who would listen, to send me to Jackson Hole.”
“You paid your dues to get your posting. Patrol looks too lonesome to me. Sitting on those empty highways all night,” he said. He seemed genuinely interested in her, to know more about how she felt. She realized he was not the man he first seemed to be.
“I loved being patrol,” she said. “Riding the lonesome highway in my cruiser, I sound like a song on that jukebox,” she smiled. “But I wanted to be up here more. I have my cabin and the DCI and I have to tell you, it suits me here damn fine. This life, in Jackson, is what I want. People pay millions of dollars to live here. When the state finally gave me this posting, I died and went to heaven. I am back in the mountains, being police and skiing and riding. I don’t play at politics or career climbing because I already have what I want. I wish more people felt the same.”
He looked at the table. “I’m jealous. You have things figured out. You knew what you wanted and you went out and got it. Not everyone can say that.”
“So you see then, when you threaten my position here, my posting in Jackson, it’s not something that is easy for me to ignore. It may be just the sound of politics to you, but it’s everything to me to be here,” she said.
“I believe you Lane. And I’m sorry you got caught up in the county wanting to take back its future.” He seemed to hesitate, unsure whether he should press forward, but he did. “State governments have been running rough shod over counties in the mountain west for years. The state legislature overturns our local laws, even putting in a minimum wage for tourism workers, which was a progressive act, because they want control. It’s a shame. Politics aside, I want to say, over a beer, that I have seen how hard you work. I’ve gotten to know you a bit, and you can trust that I will never work with them to close down your office here in Jackson,” he said.
“I’m very grateful. It’s so generous of you, not trying to destroy my career.” She signaled for another round of beers.
As the conversation moved away from politics, they sat together in comfort. More people had come into the bar, tourists sat alongside the bar top, young tourisms workers, twenty somethings who led hiking tours, and guided walks, began two-step dancing. In revealing cutoff jean shorts, two young women who had never country waltzed before, playfully moved around the dance floor together. George Straight songs about Texas and rodeo played from the jukebox as the young women spun one another around. Brouwer felt warm and when the sheriff held his hand up, she took it without thinking. Afternoon sunlight streaked the dance floor as she eased into a waltz with him. Neon lights turned, and her cheek pressed lightly on his chest. As he turned her lightly around she came to face up to him.
“You go home to love Yolanda and I’ll go home to feed my horse,” she said.
25.
Once, in Texas, he entered a house filled with partying teenagers. Neighbors had reported the noise. He waded through the house without speaking, teenaged partiers in silent awe of the strong, fearsome police officer.
At the kitchen table, silent among the throng, in her black abaya robe and full hijab, she was still. Skinny teenagers in skate boarding t-shirts and faux western wear shrank before him. He stood for a long time hoping she’d speak but she never did. Teenaged kids gathered around the policeman and the empty chair.
#
The sun was enormous and full that morning. Boots worked gravel into sand as the unit advanced through city noise. He remained eager. Despite weeks of searches, kicking in doors for wanted Sunnis but finding none. Shocked families questioned through overworked translators, armored vehicles rumbled amongst honking horns, blowing dust, the last Baathist stronghold a hollow shell, but for the 4th Infantry rattling down streets, busting in doors.
Lieutenant Hargrove was forward on the street, up the road. The ledges of buildings above were a finely drawn line against the pale sky. Despite the bombast with which they prepared, Tikrit was taken with ease. They searched for the fight they were promised.
“This shithole is all sizzle and no steak,” a Carolinian drawled. “What I wouldn’t give for a fighting age male.”
A bus rumbled down the street, turned into the intersection and stopped. An infantryman named David Davidi tapered in toward the building, more soldiers behind. A Humvee diesel engine whined. A gunner in the back operating a .50 caliber stood at the ready, a soft pink bubble of gum burst against his lips. Speeding up the street toward the bus, suddenly the Humvee stopped. A group of women with luggage scattered. A private named Alejandra, ran, shouting at the Iraqi women to clear the street and they did, briskly.
From out of a doorway into the street, she opened up her figure boldly in front of him, not the usual passive mannerisms of an Iraqi woman, not one he’d ever seen. Unflinching, steady in her manner, her eyes held him through the black slit, galvanized. To enter the street filled with infantrymen and armor was lunacy.
The Carolinian drawled, “Bitch, are you bananas or what? Get your ass off the street.”
Cloaked, holding Lieutenant Hargrove’s gaze, she moved with the larger motion of people down the street. Her brown eyes were melted toffee in the hijab, and the black cloth fluttered with quickness. She walked backward several steps. Beneath her robe and veil, she would wear a brightly colored dress, something short, provocative, her legs shining and bare, hidden by the length of black material. She was not afraid, which was impossible. She spoke in Arabic, not loud enough over the armored vehicle engines, but her jaw worked beneath her veil and her eyes held his. She was telling him something in her tribe’s tongue.
Running up the street, PFC Alejandra was frantic. Gesturing to lieutenant Hargrove No, by holding her right hand out, wagging her finger, she walked backward facing him. Twenty years old, no more than twenty-five, yet she was beautiful in an ancient way. She was telling him to do the opposite of her command.
Alejandra shouted from up the street and Davidi ran on. Hargrove surveyed the street. Something was very wrong. Her brown eyes came through her veil like beacons. Her forefinger back and forth, telling him to stop, an Iraqi hand gesture, but he marched toward her, the muzzle of his M4 down and away, his radio crackling, voices over voices, the woman in black before him. Dust from the Humvee swept into her flowing robes, over the suitcase on the road, small arms fire and then blinding white light pierced his eyes, tiny blades sweeping them all together. She rose straight into the air and then out toward him. A childhood fairy tale witch, disappearing in a puff of smoke, one time he thought of her like that, of her spinning as a cartoon witch, and he puked o
ver the side of his hospital bed. She was real. Her blackness in that moment had been like the eye of a tornado, the depth of a prairie storm. They never found her, and never found Private Alejandra or David Davidi.
In Germany, in the hospital, he was lucid, lying all day over a polished floor along a white wall. She stood at the edge of the bed, brown eyes unexpressive. Had he failed her, or had done what she wanted. She had tried to warn him or she had lured him to his death.
He told the doctor about the Sunni woman. The doctor, a Frenchman with good English moving along the polished floors without sound, to lean silently over rows of wounded. He said he knew about it, that a young tribal woman was visiting him, and that he would try to get help.
He had largely managed to put the woman in black out of his mind, until drinking beer that sunny afternoon, all those years later, building trust with his respected colleague. Lane Brouwer walked away from him, out of a bar into the bright sunlight, and for reasons he could not determine, the woman in black came back to him.
26.
Swindle Vetch walked across the gravel yard to an old public pay phone at a power pole across from the motel. The driveway was hot, and mirrors and windshields in the junk yard glared in the sun.
Plastic phone receiver in hand, he called the sergeant-at-arms, John “Heavy” Dunbar. The Jackal he knew the longest and trusted the most, Heavy had worked with Swindle to turn the club toward profitable business. Heavy once beat a man to a bloody stillness, but as sergeant-of-arms of the Jackals, he only did one murder. He had done ten years into the 1980s at Stoney Mountain pen for killing a member of a rival California club that rolled into Colorado like actors in a biker movie, as though a turf war was something that you did for kicks. Heavy Dunbar put an end to all that one hot July day on the outskirts of Denver. A patched member of the upstart California club walked out of a diner and Heavy hit him with a crow bar so hard the metal claw pounded through skull. The rival man stumbled around the parking lot with a crowbar hanging from his head. That was years ago. After that, Heavy, like Swindle, never wanted profile. All he wanted was money and the freedom it bought.
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