“You didn’t get me any dinner?”
“You want mine?” She took a sip of her Rainier. “This beer’s not very cold.” I watched her play with the meat loaf, trying to give it a palatable posture on the turquoise plastic tray. “What are we going to do next?”
“The cookies were clean?”
“Will you give up on the fucking cookies?”
“I wish we had them now.” An elderly woman on a walker paused at the doorway of Louis’s office long enough to register a dirty look; maybe it was the language, maybe it was the beer, or maybe that was the way she looked at everything. I noticed that the cans of Metamucil had been opened. “You already start testing these?”
She nodded. “It doesn’t smell like they’ve got anything in them, which means they probably don’t have anything in them.”
“Well, so far that is pretty much representative of the case: where there’s smoke, there’s smoke.” I thought about all the things that needed to be done. “Could you throw a check on the terrible twins and see if anything turns up? I realize it’s a long shot.”
“I already did; Kay’s clean as a whistle, and Carol’s been involved in some questionable deals down in Miami, but nothing that leads me to believe that she’d be capable of something like this.” She continued to study me. “Walt, trust me, I’d like to like them for this, but there’s just nothing there.”
I stared at the window until she spoke again. “Now what’s the matter?”
“I’m resigning myself to the wonderful homecoming I’m giving Cady.”
She crossed her arms and considered me. “Yeah? Tell her to come out to the Morretti mobile manse by the motorway and listen to the wind and the 18-wheelers jake-breaking, then she’ll appreciate what she’s got.”
I looked at my recently divorced deputy, a beautiful, intelligent woman with a body like Salome and a mouth like a saltwater crocodile. I had been to her house trailer when I had hired her, but that was the last time I’d been there. I started to wonder why she hadn’t ever invited me over for dinner when it came to me that I had never invited her out to my place either. I guess it had never really occurred to me, even though I continually swam against the undertow of my attraction toward her. The thought of myself involved with a woman who was about the same age as Cady was an image so pathetic that I erased it in wide sweeps on a regular basis. “You going home for Christmas?”
“No. Mom says Nona should be dead by then, or so she’s promising. Vic Junior got this new girlfriend/fiancée who’s a hairdresser and pregnant, and Alphonse is running off upstate with some friends. Tony’s working at the restaurant with Uncle Al, and Michael said fuck the bunch of us.”
We talked about her extended Philadelphia family on an infrequent basis. As far as they knew, the world stopped at the Main Line in Paoli. I had the most contact with her mother, had spoken to her on the phone a couple of times and seen a picture of her once. Lena was languorously gorgeous with the same olive-skinned, exotic beauty as her daughter but with a few more years on the vine to ripen. She had an equally handsome husband who Vic said pretty much ignored her mother. He was severe and driven and occupied himself with being the Chief of Detectives North, Sixth District, and liaison officer with the Mayor’s Task Force on Organized Crime. “How’s your Mom?”
She crushed the Rainier after the final swallow. “She says I need a good fuck.”
I nodded, sage-like, and looked at the crumpled can still in her hand. “Maybe she’s right.”
“She says you need one, too.” She tossed the wad of aluminum in the trash can under the desk. “Don’t take it personally. It’s been her advice on the human condition since Khrushchev pounded his shoe on the table at the UN, and Dad says it’s always been the case.”
“Something tells me your mother doesn’t use the term good fuck.”
“No, she uses the term roll in the hay, but it just doesn’t have the same poetic ring.”
I found myself becoming slightly aroused as it dawned on me that Vic probably talked dirty during sex, which shouldn’t have come as such a surprise since she did it in accompaniment with everything else. “So, you think your mother needs a roll in the hay?”
“Since Khrushchev.”
“That’s a lot of rolling.”
Her attention went back to the reports. “Yeah. Well, she’s married to supercop.”
She didn’t talk about her father all that much, but his influence was plainly felt. It would have been easy to dismiss Vic’s relationship with him as the difficulties a man with four sons had when confronted with a daughter, but his dealings with the four boys didn’t seem any less rocky. She yawned.
“Go home.”
I helped her put her coat on, and she turned and stood there studying me, looking nothing like a deputy is supposed to look. She grabbed the lapels of my sheepskin jacket and then smoothed them with the palms of her hands. “I still can’t believe you’re getting laid before I am.”
I exhausted a short breath, a reasonable excuse for a laugh. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m not.”
She picked up the containers of Metamucil and waited till she was around the corner and a couple of steps down the hall before calling out. “It does.”
* * *
When I got back to Lucian’s room, it was quiet. The door was closed and locked again. I knocked. “Lucian?” There was no answer, but I could hear muffled sounds along with some splashing noises. “Hey, you getting bashful in your old age?” I listened and could swear I could hear more than one person in there. I glanced back down the hall, where I had returned the passkey, but there was another sharp noise, and I was committed.
I couldn’t hear anything anymore, and a surge of panic raised my head by contracting the muscles along my shoulders. “Lucian!” I pulled my .45 out and crossed the hall; I knew from past experience that if I used my foot to break down the door, my foot would be the only thing that went into the room. I could hear more noises now, so I charged across and planted my entire side, shoulder first, into the door. It exploded and blew me against the wall beside the bathroom. I saw a leg move in the bathtub and brought my head around to see someone running up the hillside outside Lucian’s patio, someone big.
“Sheriff, freeze!” He was gone. I rushed into the bathroom, my lungs settling as I holstered my sidearm and bounced off the edge of the tub as I hit the slippery floor.
The shower curtain was wrapped around the old sheriff ’s body, and the water was still running. I pulled the curtain from around him and cut the tap. His leg was still up on the seat, but the rest of him was lying on his side with a fist clenched at his chest. I reached under his neck and pulled him up from the accumulated water that, having been freed from the curtain, was now swirling down the drain. He coughed, and I turned his face so that when he threw up, it would follow the water. It smelled like bourbon, and I held the one-legged man against my chest as he retched to a stop. He blinked his eyes and looked up at me. “What’re you doin’ here? Go get that son of a bitch!”
I grabbed a towel from the rack, placed it under his head, put him back down, and raced from the bathroom, through the main room, and out the patio doors. I pulled my sidearm, slid to a stop, and looked at the boot prints. They trailed up the hillside. It looked as though someone had brushed against one of the pine trees about halfway up the hill. He must have slipped but had regained his footing and had continued on. The Datsun pickup was gone.
I paused at the edge of the parking lot, having been careful to make my own path up the hill. The tire tracks and the exhaust melt of the Datsun were still compressed in the snow, and I knelt to look at the boot print where he had gotten in the truck. All the prints were marred enough so that we’d never get a decent imprint, but I placed my boot alongside: big, bigger than mine.
Lucian had struggled up to a sitting position by the time I got back to the bathroom, and I was glad I’d shut the sliding glass doors. He was shivering and clutched his remaining extremities, so I propped him back up on his seat and wrapped another towel around him. I pulled a thick Royal Stewart bathrobe that Cady had given him last year from his closet and picked up one moccasin. I caught myself looking for the other one before remembering that he didn’t need it. His prosthetic leg was leaning against the door and on it was the other slipper. I snatched up the leg and continued back into the bathroom, where he looked up at me, still clutching himself. I sat on the toilet and wrapped the bathrobe around him, placing the leg against the tub, secure in the thought that this should be the order of things.
There was a little blood in his smile; he must have bitten his tongue in the struggle. I pulled the old man in and tried to warm him up before looking for a phone. He was struggling with something and, after a moment, his clenched fist came out from the folds of the robe, and he opened his hand. In his palm was an almost foot-long hank of jet-black hair.
The bloody smile held. “Got a piece of ’im.”
10
No one at the home drove a Datsun pickup, and the only one in our tax records was a rusted hulk out on the Miller Ranch down near Powder Junction. It hadn’t run since Steve and Janet’s daughter Jessie had planted it in an irrigation ditch back in ’89. Steve told Ruby I could have it for the annual sheriff ’s auction if I came and got it; I gratefully declined.
I sank my head back onto my folded coat and draped my arm down to pet Dog. I was having a hard time getting Ruby to concentrate on the Datsun pickup rather than Lucian.
“How about the DMV?” Except for the sound of the plastic keys, it was quiet in the office. Cady had left a message last night that she had gotten a ride from Henry and that she had arrived at the cabin safely. She also said that she and the Bear had stopped at the grocery on the way out. She also thanked God that they had. She also reported that it had only taken ten minutes to shovel out the living room and that Henry had used more duct tape to seal up the roof. She was asleep when I got there and, when I risked a kiss on the top of her head this morning, she hadn’t stirred.
The tapping stopped. “Three.”
“Locations?” From my perspective on the wooden bench of the reception area, I could see the serrated clouds on the ridges east of town. The sky was a striped fiery orange, and the snow between was pink.
The thin, nimble fingernails coated in lacquer continued typing. “Lusk, Laramie, and Lander.”
I gave out with my best Basil Rathbone and wondered about the location of Watson. “Hmmm, I’m beginning to see a pattern.”
“They all start with L?”
I held up an index finger. “Perchance a clue. Let’s start with the closest.”
Tapping. “Ivar Klinkenborg.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“Wants or warrants?”
More tapping. “None.”
“Age?”
“Sixty-eight.”
“Next.”
There was silence for a moment. “Which is closer, Lander or Laramie?”
I didn’t answer, because I wasn’t sure. Vic and Saizarbitoria had gone out to a vehicular altercation on 196 just south of town, and it was the Ferg’s day off. The Bear was MIA and was probably back on the Rez. I was idly thinking that at least I had Dog, when he got up and moved back over to Ruby. “Let’s do reverse alphabetical order.”
I got a look on that one. “Jason Wade.”
“Wants or warrants?”
Tapping. “One DUI, two moving violations, both HPs. Recent registration from Nebraska.”
This time I stuck a fist in the air. “Go Huskers. The big red
N
stands for knowledge.”
Another pause. “Is that a no?”
I threw my arm back over my eyes. “Height?”
“Five-eight.”
“Next.”
More tapping. “Leo Gaskell, thirty-six, three moving violations and a domestic violence charge from two months ago.” Even more tapping. “Involuntary manslaughter, did a five spot in Rawlins, weapons possession, processing, drug abuse violations, clandestine lab operation five years ago, did a year in Fremont County, more drug abuse violations. There’s an assault on a law enforcement officer with no charges pending.”
I was already up and watching her. “Height?”
“Six-five.”
“Hello.” She looked over at me as I thought about it for a moment. “Call up Bill Wiltse in Fremont County and ask him what he knows.” It was quiet for far too long. “What?”
“Had it occurred to you, as a trained and veteran officer, to get the license plate number?”
I let out a large sigh in hopes that she would feel sorry for me. “Maybe I’m slipping.” I slumped back on my folded coat. She took a sip of her green tea that I knew, from one small sample, tasted like lawn clippings. I rearranged my arm and pulled my hat down, knowing full well the silence was about Lucian. “He’s fine, Ruby.”
She exhaled a response, and I waited in the silent darkness of my hat. “You’re sure?”
“You couldn’t kill him with a ball bat.” I thought about how Lucian had looked when I’d run him over to Durant Memorial, flushed with excitement. “He looks better than he has in years. If I’d known what an effect it was going to have on him, I would’ve tried to kill him years ago.” I waited, but she seemed satisfied. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you lie about not knowing Mari Baroja?” It was quiet again.
“At that point in time, I thought it concerned Lucian’s personal life.”
I lifted my hat. “Fair enough.” I stood up and started down the steps to the little kitchenette in the basement. “I’m going to go make coffee.”
“I’m sorry I lied.”
I stopped on the landing and looked up at the painting of Andrew Carnegie, a leftover from the library years. All the time I’d worked with Lucian, he would salute Andy every time he went by. I smiled back up at her. “It’s all right, you weren’t that convincing.”
I paused there on the landing and looked at the photographs, the six black and whites and the one color photo, all in cheap frames. I was the color photo, the one with the silly mustache and the too long sideburns. I scratched my beard and thought about my professional lineage.