“Who is it?”
“Fellow by the name of Felix Polk. Ever heard of him?” The response was predictable. “No.”
“You never heard Duane or Ozzie mention that name?”
“No.”
“If I get you a picture of him, can you tell me if you’ve ever seen him?”
She sighed in exasperation, kind of like Cady did, but without quite the intelligence. “Why don’t you just introduce him to me?”
I paused, wondering if I really wanted to add to the death count in Gina’s head. “He’s indisposed.”
“What’s that mean, he’s in the bathroom?”
I figured the hell with it. “He’s dead.”
“Oh.”
From her response, he might as well have been in the bathroom. Other people’s deaths didn’t seem to make much of an impression on Gina.
I needed to talk to Duane, but so did she. The problem is, she wanted me to be a part of her conversation, and I wasn’t too keen on the idea. On the flip side, I wanted her to be a party to my conversation, and she didn’t seem interested in that. We were at an impasse, and the only answer was a very emotionally messy round robin.
“I am going to speak to Duane before you go in to talk to him.”
“Why do you get to go first?”
“Because what you’re going to say to him is going to be like an atomic bomb, and I’d just as soon get some answers before it goes off.”
She folded her arms. “You think it’s that big of a deal?”
I stared at her; I couldn’t help myself. “That you’re having another man’s baby? Yep, I think that’s going to put my questions on the back burner.”
She shrugged again; the shrug really was Gina’s art form.
“Duane, we know you had a partner in your little 4-H project and, since things have gotten more serious, I’m going to need you to tell me who that was.”
He glanced at his young wife seated on a folding chair to my right and then back to me. “I didn’t have a partner.”
I sighed. “Do you remember that talk we had about this conversation?”
“Huh?”
I nodded in an attempt to get him to remember. “The one about coming back here and having another conversation where you weren’t quite so guilty?” He was nodding along with me now. “That would be this conversation.”
He stopped nodding. “Oh.” He paused and looked at his wife again, and it was almost as if he had to try to remember. “Ozzie, Mr. Dobbs, had the money.”
I pushed my hat back and scratched my head. “I figured that one out, but I also need to know who had the know-how.”
“Ozzie did. He had these equipment books and all this other stuff that told you how to do it.”
“What kind of stuff ?”
“Notebooks.”
I rested my elbows on my knees and leaned in. “I don’t suppose you know where those notebooks are?”
“Nunh-uh.”
I threw a glance toward Gina; the response was predictable—she shrugged.
I clasped my hands together and tried not to think about Sancho’s remark that the two in front of me weren’t likely to be clever enough, collectively, to overturn cows. “Did Ozzie ever mention a guy named Felix Polk?”
“Nunh-uh.”
He really seemed pretty much incapable of lying. “So you’ve never heard that name before?”
“Nunh-uh.”
Unfortunately, I believed him.
I cleared my throat. “Duane, I think Gina has something she wants to tell you.”
15
“What do you mean it’s not the gun that killed him?”
“It’s not a match. I’m sending it off to DCI, but I did the prelims on the lead after McDermott dug it out of him and the markings are nowhere near the same as the one I tested—besides, Polk’s gun was a 9- millimeter and the one that killed Ozzie was a .32.”
I raised my hat and sat up, tossing the blanket that Ruby had used to cover me with a quick flip. My familiar and recurring headache blistered across my brain. “What’d you test it in?”
“A gallon of Jell-O and a box of sand.”
I sat up, slumped against my desk, and draped a hand down to pet Dog. “Aren’t we enterprising.”
“Hey, don’t be pissy with me for doing my job.”
I held my temples for a moment. “I thought it was DCI’s job.”
“I was bored. I don’t have a house and nobody bought me anything for Valentine’s Day.”
We both sat there for a moment, looking at Santiago Saizarbitoria’s duty belt, semiautomatic, and badge lying on my desk. I hadn’t noticed it when I’d come into my office. “What’s Saizarbitoria’s badge doing here?”
“I guess he dropped it off when he turned in my unit. Ruby says he left it at her desk, and she didn’t know what you wanted to do with it.”
I sat there staring at the six-pointed star with the circle around it, the mountains with the tiny star over them, the open book, and the words that you could barely make out,
Vero est Justicia
.
Truth is justice. Indeed.
I stood and folded my blanket, laying it on the chair with the pillow. I picked up my hat and quickly walked around my desk, as though the Basquo’s equipment might’ve been haunted. I glanced back at the badge. “Kind of has a note of finality about it, doesn’t it?”
Vic looked up at me. “I’m sorry.” She stood and held my hand as she pulled me into the hallway. “C’mon, I’ll buy you lunch.”
When we got into the reception area, Ruby peered at me from over her computer. “This means Felix Polk didn’t kill Ozzie Dobbs?”
I yawned and then made a face, attempting to draw the pain from my head. “No, it means that Felix Polk didn’t kill Ozzie Dobbs with the same gun with which he attempted to kill me. We haven’t done a complete search of the neo-Nazi’s cabin, but I’m sure we’ll find other firearms there.”
Vic stood beside me, petting Dog, who had followed. “And what if we don’t find the .32 that killed Ozzie?”
“Then Polk disposed of it.” My voice carried a little edge.
She studied me. “Or?”
“Or somebody else did it.”
She didn’t smile, but her eyes softened. “You’re grumpy. Get up on the wrong side of your chair?”
All three of them were looking at me now. “What it means is that a deputy of mine with PTS just killed a kidnapper for pointing a gun at me and that there might be another murderer running around out there somewhere.”
“Then what would they, whoever they are, gain by killing Geo and then Dobbs?”
I let out a deep sigh, and even I thought I sounded like a tire going flat. “Somebody’s circling the wagons.”
Vic pushed me toward the stairs. “I’m hungry, so I’m betting you’re starved.”
“I am, so we’ll grab something at the Dash Inn on the way.” I snagged my coat from the hooks on the wall beside Ruby’s desk and glanced back at my dispatcher. “Where’s the Bear?”
She looked up at us as Dog joined the group. “He hijacked a plumber here in town and was last seen headed for the Reservation.”
My shoulders slumped. “If he calls in, tell him I need him.”
“Are we going somewhere?”
“We’re going to head out to the Stewart place and look for those notebooks that Duane was talking about or anything else that might lead to a connection between Ozzie Dobbs and Felix Polk.”
Ruby looked past us and through the whiteout windows in the doors behind us. “If Henry is unavailable, who do you want me to call while you two are traipsing around the junkyard?”
“Get the Basquo back in here. Tell him it’s an emergency.”
“You know that’s against the law.”
“Whose?”
Ruby looked down and spoke the words neither Vic nor I would. “He quit, Walt. He’s gone.”
We’d only passed three other cars—well, trucks, actually—since leaving the office. Durant was like a frozen ghost town. The snow was another eight inches deep since I’d come off the mountain this morning, and the tires of my truck were completely silent as we slowly wheeled our way off Main Street and took a right onto Route 16.
Vic scrunched down in my passenger seat. “I guess we’re getting all the snow for the winter at one time.”
“Hmm.”
She watched the side of my face and then spoke in a deeper voice. “How’s the house hunting going lately, Vic?” The next voice was hers. “On hold.” She once again spoke in a voice I was sure was supposed to be mine. “Well, we’ve been a little busy lately.” She concluded the conversation with herself in her regular voice, but I’m sure it was directed at me. “Yeah? Well, you’re an asshole.”
She looked out the window, and now I drove in absolute silence, almost wishing for some tire noise.
We ordered three super- dashburgers—one for Vic, one for me, and one for Dog—with fries and two coffees. We sat there waiting at the drive-through window for our food, and I watched as another eighteen-wheeler slowly made its way off I-25 and parked alongside the road. WYDOT had informed us that they were closing the highway, and the trucks were piling up.
“So, how’d the Basquo take it when he found out the truth concerning the case of the missing thumb?”
I looked at her. “I’m sorry, is this a real conversation or another dramatic interpretation?” She stared at me for a long while, and I caved, incapable of withstanding the kind of silence she could put out. “He did the right thing.”
She turned her head, and I watched her breath cloud the glass. “There are going to be questions.”
“Yep.”
“Especially since Polk’s gun wasn’t the one that broke Ozzie’s heart.” I looked at her. “Sorry.”
My eyes returned to the road. “We’ll find that gun.”
“It doesn’t look good with him quitting right afterward.” Her voice was softer. “I’m just trying to look at it from the state attorney general Joe Meyer’s point of view.”
“I know.”
She took her time before speaking again. “You should seriously consider whether you might’ve happened to have seen the reflection in the window of Felix Polk holding that gun to the back of your head.”
I didn’t say anything.
The food came along with a few biscuits for Dog. “Thanks, Larry, you guys calling it a day? They’ve closed the highway.”
He smiled and shouted as I handed Vic the bag of food and stuffed the biscuits in my pocket to give to Dog later. “Yeah, we’re going home while we can still make it!”
I smiled back as he handed me our drinks and quickly slid his window closed. I hit the button to roll up mine, a spray of wayward flakes swirling in the open window as I watched Vic lodge her coffee into the passenger cup holder and mine into the center one. “A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou.”
My dissertation was interrupted by Ruby. Static. “Unit one this is base, come in.”
Vic looked at the radio and unwrapped her dashburger. “Your truck—your radio.”
I sighed and pulled the mic from the holder. Ruby was still trying to win us over to a more businesslike attitude toward radio communication, and everybody had pretty much caved, except for me. “What?”
Static. “I just got a weather report.”
I keyed the mic. “How much are we supposed to get?”
There was a bit of jostling before the next communiqué, and it became obvious where Ruby had found reinforcements. Static. “Ass deep to a nine-foot Indian.”
I keyed the mic again. “Hello, Lucian.”
Static. “What the hell are you doing out there?”
“Checking on the remainder of the Stewart clan.”
Static. “They say we’re gonna get eighteen inches by tomorrow morning.”
“I won’t tarry.”
Static. “See that you don’t; I brought my chessboard with me.”
By the time we got to the dump/junkyard, Vic had fed Dog his burger and half of hers. I’d eaten mine in four bites and was just now finishing off my fries as we arrived at the Stewart driveway.
Mike Thomas was leaving as we got there, so we slowed and stopped. He pulled the ’78 orange Ford alongside my truck and rolled his window down.
“What are you doing out in this weather, Mike? Neighborhood watch?”
He shrugged under his insulated coat and frowned, throwing a thumb back to the tarp-covered heap in the bed of his truck. “Was gonna drop a load off at the dump, but Gina said they were closed today and waved me off.”
I looked up to emphasize the point. “Well, it is kind of inclement.”
“I’m off to the Caribbean tomorrow, if it ever stops, and wanted to clear out my shop.” He leveled an eye on me. “In sixteen years, I’ve never seen a workday when Geo Stewart closed. I guess it’s all different now that he’s gone.”
“You heard?”
“Yep, and when I pulled up to the house to see what was going on, Gina was piling stuff into that piece-of-shit Toronado again like she was pretty intent on going somewhere else.”
I glanced at Vic, then back to the sculptor. “You sure she wasn’t unloading? We caught her on 16 the last time you called and turned her back.”
He thought about it. “Hell, she might’ve been unloading for all I know.”
“Well, we’ll go in and check on her.”
He shook his head and began rolling up his window. “Good luck.”
The Toronado was parked in the driveway close to the house, but the snow on it had been swiped off recently.
I stopped behind it and threw the truck into park. “Let’s go.”
Dog started his leap over the center console and into the front. “Not you. If those two beasts of theirs are in there, I don’t need you starting anything.”
He looked disappointed, but I left the windows down a little and shut the door after me. Vic was at the front of the truck when I got there. She glanced up at me. “I’m assuming you didn’t mean me?”
We trudged through the snow to the driver’s-side door of the Toronado. “Does that look like more crap than was in there before?”
My deputy peered through the frosted window. “Arf.”
I studied the prints leading up to the house and onto the porch; three trips at least. It appeared that Gina was still intent on leaving, even with the weather and the warning.