He smiled, just enough so that you weren’t sure if he’d done it at all. He took a card from his breast pocket and handed it to me. His head dropped, and he headed for the door. He looked back when I followed him and paused for a moment with his head still down. The smile was gone. He pushed the door open and disappeared.
Santiago stood and laid a five on the bar. “If you think of anything, here’s my card, give me a call?”
Phillip Maynard palmed the fin and the card. He called after us, but mostly to Cady. “Come on back anytime.”
The glass door bumped unevenly behind us. Tran Van Tuyen was driving west in the Land Rover, which looked like a passing emerald in a backdrop of overexposed sepia as it rolled down the Main Street of Powder Junction.
It was an absolutely gorgeous summer afternoon, and I took a deep breath like I always did when I remembered it was the pay-off time of the year; and felt like crap.
Cady pulled my arm, always reading the fine print of emotion when I was attempting to appear unruffled. She hugged me. “What’s the matter?”
"What’s WiFi?”
“Daddy . . .”
I took a deep breath and hitched a thumb in my gun belt. “I’m afraid I may have just engaged in a bit of profiling.” I watched as Tuyen faced straight ahead and the shiny green utility vehicle made the turn on 192 and then under the overpass of I-25. I squeezed her arm back. “You were popular in there.” I plucked a pen from my deputy and scribbled Tuyen’s license plate number on the envelope of the dead Vietnamese woman’s personal property packet. I read his card—Trung Sisters Distributing, with an address in Culver City and three phone numbers. I glanced at the Cheyenne Nation as I handed Saizarbitoria back his pen. “What do you think?”
Henry took a breath. “Yes, Walter, you are deeply prejudiced, and I have long been meaning to discuss this with you.”
I nodded and dug into the property envelope as they all watched me. “Only against Injuns.”
He nodded. “It is to be expected.”
I plucked out the plastic bag I wanted and handed the larger one back to Sancho, who was smiling and shaking his head at our banter. “You didn’t ask him about the Indians and the matches, boss.”
“No, I didn’t... Call those two numbers in to Ruby and see what she comes up with, then check the Hole in the Wall to see if he’s registered and alert the HPs just in case he decides to go somewhere.”
“Got it.” He disappeared into his unit and left us standing on Powder Junction’s old west boardwalk.
The Cheyenne Nation and my daughter watched as I searched the ziplock. She tugged at the short hair near the scar. “What are you doing, Daddy?”
I didn’t answer her but held up the key fob, still in the plastic, and pushed the button. The lights flashed, and the doors unlocked on the maroon Buick junker at the end of the row.
5
The car had been stolen from a not so small community in Southern California called Westminster, which was, according to the dispatcher at the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, better known as Little Saigon. Ruby said she’d spoken with a charming young man who’d confirmed the not so grand theft auto. He said that the vehicle had been stolen from a recycler’s lot and that the former owner, Lee Nguyen, had stated that he’d donated the Buick to charity but that the organization must have decided the car wasn’t worth the trouble.
We’d done as much physical investigation of the automobile as our limited abilities would allow, so we loaded the rusty sedan onto a flatbed and shipped it off to Cheyenne. The fingerprints we’d lifted from the vehicle were probably female, judging from their size, or possibly from a child, and the tread deposits were from the immediate vicinity. There was nothing in the trunk, and the only thing in the glove compartment was a receipt for a new water pump that had been replaced in Nephi, Utah, only three days earlier.
I sent Henry and Cady back to Durant in my truck since Cady was looking a little tired and hitched a ride with Saizarbitoria over to the sheriff’s substation. We drove with the windows down, since the Suburban didn’t have air-conditioning.
* * *
Santiago spoke over the heated wind and the monster motor that got about eight miles to the gallon. “The bartender didn’t seem genuinely surprised about the Buick.”
We’d gone back in and questioned the guy again; he said he’d noticed the car there, but that he didn’t think it was a big deal. He said that even in the short time he’d been here, he’d noticed a lot of people got ripped and left their cars and trucks on the street rather than be harassed by us. I had asked him if a lot of them came from California, to which he’d responded that he hadn’t noticed the license plates. “Did he seem more nervous the first time we questioned him?”
The Basquo thought about it. “Yes, he did.”
“Why do you suppose that is?”
“The guy in the corner, Tuyen?”
“I think so, too.” We parked in front of the WYDOT annex where we had a small office. “I’ll call Ruby and see if she’s got anything on this Tuyen guy or heard anything from DCI. You check on the repair bill in Nephi.” I handed him the plastic bag which had the receipt in it.
He looked at me, a little worried. “I think they only have one phone down here.”
Powder Junction was going to take a little getting used to.
“Then I’ll call her on the radio.” I plucked the mic from the dash and stopped him as he started to close the door of the unit. “Hey? Call Maynard in about an hour and tell him that we need him to come and talk to us tomorrow morning here at the office.”
Santiago smiled. “What time?”
“Make it early.”
He continued to smile and adjusted his sunglasses like a movie star, and it wasn’t hard to imagine the gascon with a beret, feather, and sword. “Does this mean I’m being promoted to chief undersheriff of the Powder Junction Detachment of the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department?”
“Acting CUSPJD of the ACSD. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? I’ll look into getting you a second phone line.” As Saizarbitoria went into the office, I keyed the mic and sang, “Oooooh Ruuuuuubeeee, don’t take your love to town. . . .”
Static. “Stop that. Over.”
“So, you have any news?”
Static. “I’ve got information on the guy from California.” “I’m all tin ears.”
Static. “Tran Van Tuyen became an American citizen in 1982, which is when he obtained an operator’s license. He doesn’t have so much as a parking ticket to his name.”
“Well, it was worth a try.”
Static. “You’re not going to start singing again, are you?”
I keyed the mic and ignored her. “Keep digging. He said he was here looking at some property, the Red Fork Ranch. Get a hold of Bee Bee and see if she’s ever heard of the guy, then call Ned Tanen at the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and see if he can come up with anything.”
Static. “Roger that.”
“Anything from DCI?”
Static. “They just faxed up the report.” There was a pause, and I listened to the silence of the radio. “They got an ID on the young woman.”
“Who was she?”
Static. “Her name was Ho Thi Paquet. Turns out she was a Vietnamese illegal who was picked up on prostitution charges in L.A. six weeks ago. She was scheduled for deportation, but I haven’t gotten any straight answers about what she might have been doing in Wyoming.”
“Ask Ned to talk to his friends in the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and to throw that name around along with Lee Nguyen and Tran Van Tuyen; see if they can come up with something down in Little Saigon. Anything else?”
Static. “I’ll just let you read the report. When are you coming back up?”
“I’m going to run out and talk to the Dunnigan brothers, and then I’ll have Saizarbitoria give me a ride back. I figure I can let him have one more night with his wife before banishing him to Powder Junction. How’s Dog?”
Static. “He’s fine.”
“Thanks, Ruby.” I paused. “Cady and Henry make it back?”
Static. “Yes, and they’re planning on having dinner later.”
“They say where?”
Static. “I’m not allowed to say.”
Cahoots.
Static. “I have a Methodist women’s meeting at seven o’clock, so can you make it by six-thirty?”
I pulled my pocket watch from my jeans and flipped it around. “Easily.”
Static. “I’m holding you to that.”
* * *
After talking to Santiago, I commandeered our only vehicle and drove out toward the Rocking D and the ghost town of Bailey. The two kids who had been standing in the fenced-in yard were still there. It took me a minute to find the appropriate switches on the unfamiliar Chevrolet, but I tapped the siren and lights and watched as they jumped up and down, this time in counterpoint, both of them continuing to wave as I made the turn and headed west.
Small joys.
There had once been a coal mine near the town, but with the caprice of geology and with the disaster that had claimed the lives of seventeen miners just after the turn of the century, the last one, Bailey had bailed. All that was left of the settlement were a few buildings clinging to the trailing end of the Bighorn Mountain range and a cemetery.
I slowed to look at the abandoned buildings in the late afternoon sun, vertical structures attempting to join the horizontal landscape. There were only six—a few were wood frame and a few were stone, a couple had storefronts, and only one was worthy of a second story. The old grayed walkway was twisted, and the wood was pulled from its substructure, but the rough-cut two-by-eights were still there, waiting for the ringing sound of silent boots.
There was a union hall and a tipple at the end of the street, with an assortment of roofless shacks that had been built along the stone cliffs that rose at the end of the abandoned town; the weedy graveyard was on the far side. Seventeen markers had been placed where there were no bodies. The disaster had happened when the unfortunate miners had hit a gas pocket, and the resulting explosion had shaken the ground all the way back to Powder Junction almost twenty miles distant.
None of the bodies were recovered, and I always felt strange driving by the lonely little spot of abandoned civilization.
There weren’t many ghost towns left in the state; most had been packed away and carted off to amusement parks and tourist destinations along I-80. I guess it would be for the good of the county if we got rid of the fire hazard, but it would be sad to see the place go. One of the buildings had already partially burned when some kids had come up from Casper, had drunk too much beer chased with too many shots, and had decided to see how quickly hundred-year-old buildings would burn. We were lucky in that it was winter, and the snow had isolated the damage to one collapsed wall, one DUI, and three minors in possession.
I doubted many tourists came up 190 to the gravel Bailey Mountain Road, and those that did probably mistook what they saw for the real Hole in the Wall of Butch-Cassidy-and-the-Sundance-Kid fame. Through a side canyon, the road leaves the river and the formation of stunning red sandstone with a passage just large enough to allow the entry of a single wagon. A handful of men at this location could hold off an army of sheriffs, but they’d never had to, the Wild Bunch’s reputation doing their fighting for them.
Fiction writers would have you believe that this spectacular location was the Hole in the Wall of western fame; it was in reality a cinematic fabrication at best and an uninformed lie at worst. The actual Hole in the Wall was a good thirty miles south and barely noticeable as a slight break in the cliffs, allowing just enough slope for a man on horseback to pass. It had been described by my father to me as the least memorable historic spot in Wyoming.
It was now private land on the Willow Creek Ranch, and the Ferg had been pestering me for years about getting him on the place to do a little fishing at the rustler’s settlement, where Buffalo Creek tumbled out of the canyon and into a perfect triangular pasture. The dozen or so log cabins that Butch, Sundance, and the Wild Bunch had used were all gone, the last having been hauled over to Cody and the Buffalo Bill Museum.
I continued on my way and drove past the Bailey public school, which was a one-room schoolhouse, a last bastion of public education with, at last count, two students. It troubled me to think about the school closing, the cabins disassembled, and the ghost towns being flattened; it reminded me that the majority of my life had passed. I had started my education in a school very much like the one here and had spent my childhood in a town a lot like Bailey would have been if there had not been the mining disaster.
I thought about Cady as I drove; about Michael, who was due to arrive imminently; about Vic; then about the upcoming election in November and the debate on Friday.
I tried to stop thinking and propped my hat over the big eyelet hook that was anchored on the dash. We had a lot of DUIs in Powder Junction, and I guess Double Tough had improvised this way to secure drunken drivers to the vehicle.
The road was rough—it obviously hadn’t been graded since early spring—and the ruts and bumps kept me from getting the twenty-five-year-old unit above thirty. The clouds of dust obscured my view to the rear as I took a right and continued up through the lodgepole pines and scattered cottonwoods that grew along the draws. It was as if life had chosen to run away and hide in the ragged crevices of the harsh country and forgotten to come back out.
I trailed along a small ravine where swallows cartwheeled in the thermals of the russet cliffs, and glanced over the edge to where the creek still carried the snowmelt of the Bighorn Mountains. It looked like pretty good fishing on the Dunnigan place, but I’d also noted the NO HUNTING signs, and figured that the fish, like everything else, were something the brothers didn’t give away.
They were both handsome old bachelors; I figured that they hadn’t married because they were too tightfisted to consider a wife. To hear Lucian tell it, their father, Sean Dunnigan, had been like that as well, except that back in the dirty thirties he had had no choice but to marry Eileen if he wanted to eat—he was that broke. Hence Den and James.