An Obvious Fact (13 page)

I stared at her.

“That last part was just me.”

I continued to stare at her.

“And if you don't say or do something right now, I'm going to kick you in the nuts.”

I leaned forward and gently kissed her on the top of her head.

It might've gone further, but then two more highway patrolmen howled by like internal combustion bandits on Boulder Canyon Highway, one after the other.

She looked at the pine needles I had disturbed, then turned
back to me, and I could tell the spell was broken. “Speaking of cases that have ground to a stop . . .”

I nodded and thought about the man who might've been responsible for Michael's death. “I've got feelers with the FBI.”

“McGroder?”

“Yep. He's got contacts over at State and the NSA, and they are looking for anything on Bidarte. Some of the leads say he's near the border in that Copper Canyon area, but others say he's in Mexico City.”

“When do we leave?”

I took a deep breath. “It's not that easy.”

“No? The asshole killed my little brother.”

“We don't know that for sure.”

She shrugged, unconsciously hugging her abdomen. “That's okay; there are plenty of other reasons to kill the son of a bitch.”

I reached out, draped an arm over her shoulder, and pulled her in close. “Yep, I just want to make sure which one it is before we go hunting for him.”

“You're so law abiding.”

“I try.” I looked up the dirt and gravel road leading to the top of a ridge and turning to the left. “So, you ready to go four-wheeling?”

She shrugged. “Fuck it—it's a rental.”

• • •

The Challenger did pretty well, but there were a few spots where we could hear the low-slung undercarriage dragging on the rocks and catching on the sagebrush. “I don't think this is what this thing was made for.”

We topped the ridge and barely missed the trunk of one of the aforementioned pine trees. “You could be right.”

“I think it's only about a quarter mile or so to the paved road, so we might make it.”

There was a small wallow and then a turn, and I could see the gravel lot and turnaround where the pavement started up again. I could also see the Pennington County sheriff sitting on the grille guard of his shiny black Tahoe, and replacing his worn-out chewing gum with another stick.

“Been chewing that gum long?”

“Three sticks. I figured you would've showed up by now.”

I shut the door on the Dodge. “We were enjoying the environs.”

“I bet.” He pulled himself off the hood and stretched his back.

“Where's the Highway Patrol?”

“I don't know, probably out patrolling the highway.” He smiled at Vic as she closed her door, and then walked around the front and extended his hand to her. “We meet again?”

“Always a pleasure.”

He turned back to me. “Just because I know where you are doesn't mean they know where you are. We got to the roadblock in Deadwood, and they said this pumpkin latte hadn't showed, so I started thinking.”

“And here you are.”

“And here I am.” He waited a moment and then asked. “Explanation?”

I shrugged. “Which part?”

“What's so interesting about this kid over in my hospital?”

“I'm not sure, but I'm thinking it must have something to do with guns or drugs.”

Engelhardt breathed a sigh. “Usually does.”

“The problem is, how do you haul enough of something on a motorcycle to make it worth killing somebody for?”

“How do you know it was something on the bike and not just something personal?”

“Mike Novo ran the scene, and he says it was weight or possibly somebody else on the bike.”

“Mike would know. Who found him, anyway?”

“A young woman by the name of Chloe Nance.”

“Bob Nance's daughter?”

“Yep.”

“He's kind of a big dog around these parts. Is that the only connection, the daughter finding the Torres kid?”

“Maybe not. I came into possession of Bodaway's phone, and she had called him a number of times before the incident.”

“Chloe.” He tilted his head. “She had a drug problem herself.”

Vic sat on the front of the Challenger. “Hell, heroin is a hundred and ten dollars a gram, with crack cocaine at six hundred; methamphetamine is sixteen hundred dollars an ounce, and LSD three thousand a gram. In a single set of saddlebags the kid could've been carrying millions.”

I shook my head. “Funny enough, he doesn't have any dealings with drugs on his rap sheet.”

My undersheriff seemed incredulous. “Nothing?”

“Nope.”

Irl listened as another siren rose in the distance and then quieted. “What was the other thing you mentioned?”

“Guns—he's got a record of gun running.”

Engelhardt made a face. “I don't hardly think you could carry enough guns on a motorcycle to make it worth attempting to take somebody's life. Any history of dealings in antiquarian weapons? I mean, he wasn't carrying around Jesse James's pistols or something?”

“No, just street stuff.”

“Then I think you're going to have to stick with drugs. Who knows, maybe he's broadening his horizons—Lord knows the money's better.” He tipped his hat back and studied the two of us. “Now, maybe you can tell me why it is you were going a hundred and fifty miles an hour on my highway?”

Vic smiled, webbing her fingers together and cracking her knuckles. “One seventy.”

Irl looked at the Challenger with renewed respect. “This big dude'll do that, huh?”

Vic ran her hand over the hood as if petting an oversized cat. “Advertised at just under two hundred.”

I interrupted. “Lola was driving over the speed limit by a somewhat wide margin, and my undersheriff decided to provide a decoy to keep her from going back to slam.”

“I see.”

“You're not going to arrest us, are you?”

He sighed. “No, I'm just trying to think of how to get you out of here. I could call in the situation, but I'd just as soon not owe them a favor.”

Vic pushed off the Dodge and stood. “Trade cars with us;
then, if they pull you over, you can say you found the ditched car and are impounding it.”

He shook his head at her. “Boy, if you want to know how to break a law, ask a cop.” He laughed. “How do I get my car back?”

“We'll drive it to Rapid tomorrow and pick up the Dodge; by that time the heat will have simmered down.”

“That's all fine and well for you, young lady, but what about me? I'm going to get pulled over by every highway patrolman between here and my impound.”

“And then they'll owe you a favor for pulling you over and wasting your time.”

He turned to me. “She's got an answer for everything, huh?”

“Welcome to my world.”

“Well, speaking of favors.” He hitched his thumbs into his duty belt. “Walt . . .”

“Yep, I know.”

“Do you? Like I said before, this is the biggest week of my year, and instead of paying notice to the things that require my attention, I am continuing to babysit you and your staff. Now, I appreciate you taking care of the investigation for those fellows up in Hulett with this hit-and-run, but it's not in my county, not my state, and not my problem.”

“I'm aware of that, Irl.”

After a second, he smiled with one corner of his mouth. “You goin' all cowboy on us?”

I shook my head. “No. None of this was planned. We'll try and be a little more circumspect.”

“I'd appreciate it, at least for the next week.” He tossed the Tahoe keys to Vic and then pointed at her. “Not one scratch, young lady.”

She crossed her heart. “Hope to die.”

“Where are the keys to this ridiculous conveyance?”

“In it.”

He paused. “You had this planned out all along?”

She smiled again. “You bet your ass.”

He shook his head and walked around, calling out before climbing the rest of the way into the car, “I'll be heading south on Crook City Road, so you head north and in Whitewood you can jump on 34 to Belle Fourche; then it turns into 24 in your godforsaken state and takes you straight into Hulett.” He started to duck his head but came back up with one last warning. “Keep 'er under the speed of sound, would you?”

• • •

As we drove through the bucolic beauty of western South Dakota, Vic caught me glancing at the clock on the dash of the souped-up Tahoe. “What, you've got an appointment?”

“I was invited to a benefit trap shooting competition up at the Hulett golf course.”

“By who?”

“None other than Bob Nance.”

Vic navigated the sweeping turns of the Bear Lodge National Forest. “Oh, la de da.”

I pulled my hat off, rested it on my lap, and leaned back in my seat. “I'm thinking it's something I should do.”

“I assume you can bring a guest?” She glanced at me. “So,
are we doing this because we're good citizens or because we want to give the daughter a look?”

“Well, there's something going on; I'm just not sure what. I mean, what was she doing out on the road at that time of night, and why was she calling him so many times?”

“Did you ask her?”

“Surprisingly, I did.”

“And the answer?”

“Noncommittal, but her father mentioned that he'd been running interference on a potential relationship for almost a year now.”

“A year?”

“Eight months.”

“So, this isn't just some met-him-in-a-bar-and-took-him-home-and-clean-his-plugs-and-blow-out-his-lines kind of thing.”

I turned my hat over and looked at the band with the letters of my name faded gray. “I guess not.”

“You said this Bodaway character was from Arizona?”

“Tucson area.”

“And she's from here?”

“Well, I guess lately Los Angeles—aspiring actress.”

“And Daddy was here?”

“I suppose.” I was starting to see what she was getting at. “So, how did California and Arizona hook up, and, more important, how did Big Dog break it up from Hulett?” She stepped on the accelerator. “And it's been going on for eight months? That's a lot of driving time in that three-way.”

“Yep.”

“Well then, let's go shooting.”

A few minutes later she made the left heading up the
plateau to the Golf Club at Devils Tower clubhouse and the packed parking lot overshadowed by the massive MRAP, now fully decorated with the emblems of the Hulett Police Department and the name
PEQUOD
on the rear.

“What is that?”

“Oh, just a little gift from Bob Nance to the local constabulary.”

“We need one of those.”

“No, we don't.”

The construction I'd seen the other night was now a series of platforms arranged at the edge of the cliffs looking back toward the snaking Belle Fourche River and the town. We got a few strange looks as Vic parked the Pennington County sheriff's vehicle in the
NO PARKING
area—the wrong county and the wrong state.

She shut the car door and came around to meet me in the front. “So, we're going to assume that Henry's all right?”

“He's a big boy and can take care of himself.”

“Uh-huh.” Vic scanned the assembled crowd and checked out the high and low towers on each end of the elaborate decking. “What the hell is all this, anyway?”

“The original discipline back in the 1900s was called ‘trap' for the cages they used to hold the pigeons in before releasing them.”

“And blowing them out of the sky.”

“Um, yep. With fluctuating sensibilities, the sport switched over to clay pigeons.”

“The ashtrays?”

I nodded. “They are even biodegradable these days. Anyway, the sport evolved further, taking the name ‘skeet,' which,
oddly enough, came from Gertrude Hurlbutt in Dayton, Montana, who won a hundred dollar magazine contest with the word that's derived from the Scandinavian for ‘shoot.'”

She stopped and, shaking her head, studied me. “I am consistently stunned by the shit in your head.”

I looked for a place to check in. “They used to do it in a circle, but that proved awkward for spectators.”

“I bet.”

“The typical course spans one hundred and eighty degrees and has ten to fifteen different shooting stations.” I spotted an event table to the right and began angling that way like a pulling guard, with Vic following closely. “And now we have sporting clays, which started in England and spread here in the '70s. They are laid out to simulate the unpredictability of live-quarry shooting with different trajectories, angles, elevations, speeds, and distances, usually on a trail.”

We got to the table, and Vic studied the elaborate setup, which looked almost like a cliff dwelling. “So, golf with shotguns.”

“I guess.” I stood at the table and waited until the man I'd met the previous night finished up with the shooter in front of me. He shifted a piece of paper to his cohort, Frack, as I glanced around for Nance. “Mr. Frick.”

“Sheriff.”

“I was invited by Mr. Nance to participate in the tournament.”

He sighed and ducked his suntanned face into the popped collar of his black polo shirt. “What's your name again?”

“Longmire, Walt Longmire.”

He studied the sheet, flipped a few pages, and then looked
back up at me again, this time with a smirk. “You're not on the list.”

“Is Mr. Nance around?”

He looked over his shoulder. “He's probably at the shooter's table getting ready to compete.”

“Well, is there any way to ask him?”

“Not me; he gets real serious when he's shooting.” He glanced past me at my undersheriff as she watched the participants approaching the different stations. “All the shooters have registered, including the alternates—so there isn't any room anyway.”