I scrunched down in the chair, my collar came up even with my nose, and I fought the urge to go to sleep; I didn’t last very long, and soon I had that feeling, not so much that I was falling, but that the world was receding.
* * *
The snow was blowing in my dream as well; it seemed that no matter where I went, snow followed. It was dark, with the only light diffused and from a distance, as if the illumination was split and redivided by the air alone. There was the laden feel of fog, which carried a weight in my lungs. I concentrated on the snowflakes as they flew in the light, but it was as if I’d left my peripheral vision behind. There was something out there, a bird maybe, but it was larger than any I’d ever seen, its wings pulling at the air that rushed around us. It was as if it had risen from the snow and was growing as it came closer. I kept looking, but it just wouldn’t focus. Something was wrong, and my neck muscles drained as my head lolled forward. There was a weight in my face that was heavier than it should have been, so I freed a hand and brought it up. It was cold, but I didn’t have any gloves. My hand was almost to my mouth when another reached out from the darkness at my left. It was small, but I could feel the fingers as they tightened around my wrist. It wasn’t aggression but desperation that fed her touch. Dark hair fell into my sight, and she tightened her grip. My head fell forward and my chin struck my chest and there was a flash as my one eye tried to focus. My voice sounded strange to me. “I’m sorry, I don’t . . .”
It was impossible to see her face, backlit by the light, but even in urgency her voice was sultry, and I could feel my blood thicken as she started to speak.
“I can’t . . .”
She looked up and back toward the light; the large bird-like creature continued to draw closer. Her hand deftly released mine, caught my chin, and threaded its way into my beard. Her eyes locked on mine. I could see the lips moving, but the voice seemed to come from very far away.
“Gero arte.”
* * *
“Are you all right, Daddy?” I looked up with both eyes at my daughter, who was standing in front of me in the same, full-length coat she’d arrived in. I watched the width of the coat fall open as she placed her hands on my shoulders, the length of it spreading like wings.
I yawned and glanced around at the assembled group. “Just a little tired.” I took one of Cady’s hands and turned to look at Lana. “How did the meeting go?” It was a modified turban now, and the absence of the silk robe and bunny slippers made me long for resort wear. She didn’t say anything, just folded her hands in her lap. “Well, at least you had good representation.” I looked up at Vic and got the ball rolling. “Fax that photograph of Leo Gaskell out to DCI, the HPs, and everybody else on the high plains. Get Bill Wiltse over in Fremont County; tell him I need everything they’ve got on Gaskell. I want to know where he came from, where he’s been, and why. Have Ruby run a check through the NCIC and then get over to the home and get some background on Anna Walks Over Ice. I want to know everything they have on her.”
She smiled, and I caught a glimpse of that slightly overgrown canine tooth. “You bet.” I watched as she man-walked out the double swinging doors.
“Santiago?”
He left McDermott and came over. “Sir?”
You had to love it. “I need you to go to registration and records over at the courthouse. Hurry because they will close right at 5:00.” He nodded. “And find whatever you can on Ellen Runs Horse and Anna Walks Over Ice.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hey, Sancho?”
“Yes, sir?” He stopped, but only his head turned.
“What does
gero arte
mean?”
His eyes narrowed. “It’s Basque for see you later.” He stood there for a second longer and, when he was sure I wasn’t going to stop him again, he disappeared, too.
I turned back and met Cady’s gray eyes, the ones that had been certain of every situation and had realized how all things were since she was nine. “Would you escort Ms. Baroja back to her room while I have a brief technical conversation with Sweeny Todd and the boys?”
She gathered her purse and pulled her coat around her. “Yes, sir.”
Smartass. I turned and looked at Henry. His look told me he was in for the long haul. With the addition of the murder of Anna and with the disappearance of Ellen, the situation had also gotten personal for him.
I turned to Isaac Bloomfield and Bill McDermott, who were continuing their discussion at the nurse’s desk across the hall. “Gentlemen?” They both turned and looked at me. “I need your help.”
* * *
Things had gotten complicated since we had decided to bring Anna Walks Over Ice back from the dead. Henry had been cast in the lead role as he was the only Indian. The Bear had wanted the room directly below us, but I figured we had a better chance of isolating Leo on the second floor.
“Were they able to get it out this afternoon?”
“The paper came out late, kind of like a special edition.” I handed him the paper I was holding with Anna Walk Over Ice’s photograph on the front page. In bold type it read, LOCAL WOMAN STILL ALIVE AFTER TERRIFYING ORDEAL. “If this works, I owe Ernie Brown, Man About Town, a beer.”
Vic came in from the hallway and stood at the foot of the bed as the Bear read about his pseudo-self in the
Courant
. She looked strange in the scrubs, her disguise complete with a mask, matching cap, and stethoscope. “How’s the patient?”
He didn’t look up. “Resting comfortably.”
I glanced back at the Bear. “You want to keep the paper?”
“Yes, it might be a long night.” He pulled his Vietnam tomahawk from behind his pillow and placed it in the fold of his sheets, just under his right hand. It was a wicked little beast with an adze end in one direction and a hatchet blade in the other, and Henry could throw the thing with a frightening accuracy.
“You do know we want him alive, right?”
* * *
I met with the rest of our little troop out by the second floor nurse’s station. We were a motley bunch with Dr. Moretti, Saizarbitoria in his North Face cap with a blanket in a wheelchair, and the Ferg in street clothes with a shopping bag. I looked around at our assortment of hidden firepower and almost wished Leo Gaskell wouldn’t come; somebody was sure to get killed.
“There are only two ways he can get to the room, either past the nurse’s station here or the end of the hallway. “Ferg, I want you seated in the waiting area with a clear view down the hall. Santiago, I want you at the doorway near the stairwell as if you’re getting ready to go into or have just come out of your room and get rid of those tactical boots. You look like a cop from a mile off.” I turned to Dr. Moretti. “Vic, you can wander. Everybody ready?”
They all nodded.
“This character doesn’t show a lot of patience, and he’s desperate, so I’m expecting him tonight. It’s still relatively early but that doesn’t mean he won’t come waltzing in here in the next five minutes, so stay sharp. He’s big, he’s mean, and he’s probably self-medicated, so don’t be a hero. If you spot him, sing out.”
They all nodded again.
I checked all the hallways on my way to the elevator and ran into Leonard Goes Far, the Crow gentleman that made sure the floors of the hospital glowed like thin ice. He nodded, which was all you usually got out of Leonard, so I continued into the elevator and felt the drop of my internal organs match my descent.
There was no third floor on Durant Memorial and there were no patients on two that weren’t in on our deception, so there was only one floor and one direction we’d have to worry about. When I got to the front desk, Ruby was waiting, straightening her wig, her eyes a little wider than usual. “You sure he’s not going to recognize you?”
“I am.” Ruby relaxed just a little. “Vic caught him at the door and ushered him back to her office. I doubt he even remembers I was there.”
I nodded. “All the other doors are locked, so the only way he can get in is through here. If he comes in and asks, you just tell him that she’s on the second floor and then get busy with something else. “When you’re sure he’s gone . . .” I waited a moment until she looked back up at me. “When you’re sure he’s gone, use this.” I pointed to the two-way that was under the counter. “Just hit the red button once, that’s all it’ll take. Nobody else is going to use that red button, so I’ll know it’s you, and then I’ll know he’s in.” We were all wearing the walkie-talkies set on vibrate.
I had moved Lana to Room 132, one of the inside corridor rooms where there was a thick, metal-core door that could be locked from the inside. She was in there with Cady. I could have taken them both back to the jail, but I figured it was more prudent and safer to keep all the eggs in one basket. I knocked three times, then once. Cady asked who it was, then opened the door enough to look up at me. “C’mere.” She followed me just outside the doorway where I tried to hand her a snub-nosed detective’s special. “Still remember how to use this?”
She looked at the gun in my hand. “Yes.”
I extended it a little toward her. “Just in case everything goes wrong. Whether it was an accident or not, it looks like he tried to kill her before, he may try again.” I placed the revolver in her hand. “There’s no safety. It’s resting on an empty chamber, double-action, all you have to do is pull the trigger.”
“I remember.” She glanced up at me. “Anyway, I belong to a gun club back in Philadelphia.”
“What?”
Her gaze intensified. “A bunch of the attorneys go out every week and shoot at a local gun club up on Spring Garden. One day they asked me if the cowgirl knew how to shoot, so I went with them.” She leaned against the wall. “I had a really good teacher.”
I waited a moment, but she didn’t say anything, so I pulled her in and hugged her. I held her there and squeezed her close. “If you pull it, use it, if you use it, use it to kill.”
* * *
It was a large closet as supply closets go. There was a built-in drain in the floor with a set of faucets and shelves full of cleaning supplies, mops, brooms, and buckets. I had been smart enough to place one of the waiting-room chairs in there earlier. With the door slightly ajar, I could see the one leading into our Special Forces Anna Walks Over Ice. I hadn’t checked on the Bear; I figured he had his tomahawk.
I settled in and tried to think of something to do while I waited, something other than waiting. I read a couple of labels on some bottles, flipped a mop handle between my hands, and thought. I thought about whether Leo Gaskell would win, place, or show.
I heard someone at the end of the hall. It was a familiar voice. I picked up my hat and opened the door as he continued, “And undercover means you don’t leave the handle of that goddamned Remington, sawed-off scattergun hangin’ outta the shopping bag for every Tom’s Dick and Convict to see.”
Vic was already there when I got to them. “Lucian, what are you doing here?”
“This the way you run a stakeout, with peckerhead here advertising the whole show?”
Peckerhead was the descriptive term Lucian used equally for plants, animals, and inanimate objects. “Lucian . . .”
“I come up here to see how this pissant operation was goin’, and from what I can see, it ain’t.”
I pushed my hat back and sighed. “You were supposed to stay with Isaac.”
“Christ, he snores loud enough to wake the dead. I locked the door when I left.”
I looked back at Vic, who was smiling and folding her arms over her breasts the way she always did when Lucian was around. The Ferg continued to look at the floor. The old sheriff wasn’t going to go back willingly, and I couldn’t leave him out in the open to abuse the staff and draw attention to himself.
* * *
“Dark as the inside of a cow in here.” He sniffed. “Smells funny.”
“It’s a supply closet.” I heard him rustling around and smelled the tobacco pouch he had just unzipped. “Don’t even think about loading up that pipe and smoking it.”
He continued, “Tryin’ to improve the environment.”
“And Leo Gaskell will smell it from halfway down the hallway.”
He zipped up the beaded pouch, for now. “Who the hell is this Gaskell person, anyway?”
“Please keep your voice down?” I leaned my shoulder against the doorjamb and tried to find a comfortable position. “We’re pretty sure he’s the one that tried to drown you in your bathtub.” I let that one settle in for a while. He didn’t say anything. “Leo Gaskell may be related to Ellen Runs Horse. That name mean anything to you?” He still didn’t say anything, so I turned around and looked at him. “Maybe Ellen Walks Over Ice?”
He was sitting with his real leg propped up over the fake one, staring at the tobacco pouch and pipe sitting in his lap. “Yep, Anna’s sister.”
“Did you know she had a kid with Charlie Nurburn?”
“Yep. I was a deputy, for Christ sake.”
“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me, while we’re on the subject?”
He exhaled deeply. “Kid’s dead.”
I continued watching him in the thin strip of light from the partially open door. “Charlie Nurburn’s illegitimate son died?”
“Yep.”
“How do you know that?”
“She told me.”
“Ellen Runs Horse?” He nodded but didn’t look up. “Saizarbitoria couldn’t find any reference to Ellen Walks Over Ice or any children at the courthouse.”
“It was an illegitimate, half-breed kid born and died of cholera in Acme in 1950, and you think there were gonna be certificates?” He snorted and stuffed his pipe full.
I decided to let him smoke; maybe it might occupy his mouth. “I’m working on a motive, and I was trying to put together a connection between Leo Gaskell and the Barojas, but if Charlie and Ellen’s kid died, then there isn’t any way to connect the two. I was working under the assumption that Leo might be the grandson, since he had one of Charlie Nurburn’s pistols.” He lit the pipe, and I had to admit that it smelled better. I watched him in the half-light, the smoldering embers of the pipe glowing red in the dark closet. “Lucian, where did you bury Charlie Nurburn?”