The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volumes 1-4 (129 page)

I drove slowly down the short street, looked back and forth among the buildings, and pulled my truck in front of Tuyen’s vehicle. I got out and walked over to the Land Rover; it was locked and unoccupied. Tuyen’s bags were in the back, along with a solid case that looked like the kind that might hold a computer.

I looked around the street again and unsnapped the strap on my Colt.

Nothing.

I stepped up onto the warped boardwalk and started down one side of the street. I tried to be quiet, but my boots resonated off the planks like I was starring in some B-movie western.

Most of the windows in the buildings were broken and boarded up, but between the cracks I could see the gloom of the interiors; the floors in most of them had held up. The buildings were dusty and dirty, but they were solid, and only Zarling’s Dry Goods, which was at the end of the street and had been the one with the fire damage, looked as if it might fall over.

There was a stone wall at Bailey’s far end; it was partially collapsed and provided a large, picture-framed view of the hillside that led to the mine, the weed-filled graveyard and, above the overhang, the union hall.

There was a wrought-iron fence around the old graveyard, a token of condolence from a company that hadn’t bothered to try to retrieve the bodies of the seventeen dead miners. Tran Van Tuyen sat on one of the thick iron rails beside the gate, with his back to me.

I walked the rest of the length of the boardwalk and down the stairs to the dry, cracked earth of the roadway and began walking up the hillside to the cemetery. The trail was overgrown with purple thistle and burdock, and the only thing you could smell was the heat. As I approached, Tuyen didn’t move even though I was sure that he’d heard my truck and me in the street below.

I stopped at the gate and looked over at him. He was sitting with his hands laced in his lap, his head drooping a little in the flat morning sun. He had the same light, black leather jacket he’d had on in the bar draped over his knee, and the sunglasses. It was hot and getting hotter with every second, but he wasn’t sweating.

After a minute, I saw his back rise and fall. “All of them died on the same day.”

I continued to watch him as the cicadas buzzed in the high grass, and I thought about rattlesnakes. “It was a mining accident, back in 1903.”

“A terrible thing.”

“Yep.”

He paused again. “Do you believe in an afterlife, Sheriff?”

It wasn’t the line I thought the conversation would take. “I’m not sure.”

"What do you believe in?”

“My work.”

He nodded. “It is good to have work, something you can devote your life to.”

Something wasn’t right. “Mr. Tuyen, I need to speak with you.”

“Yes?”

“It’s about the young woman.”

He nodded. “I assumed as much.”

“We questioned the bartender at the Wild Bunch Bar, and he said you were asking questions about this Ho Thi Paquet, and that you paid him some money.”

His hand moved, and I found mine on the .45 at my hip. He had been holding something in his hands, and he extended it toward me. It was a photograph of the same young woman wearing a dance outfit, perhaps younger, a snapshot of her in a crowd; she had turned her head and was smiling.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “This was taken when she graduated from a dance school in Thailand when her mother came to see her perform.” I thought he was done speaking, but the next words barely escaped him. “She was our only grandchild.”

7

We sat in the office. Tuyen was holding his coffee cup, the contents of which he had doctored using the supplies that Saizarbitoria had procured from the Powder River Mercantile. He must not have liked the nondairy substitute, because he had yet to take a sip.

“I have another business; a group that unites Vietnamese children with their American relations—
bui doi,
which translates to ‘dust child’ in English.” He stared at the floor. “Children of the Dust is a nonprofit organization, and I became active in their efforts two years ago.”

“Working with the Vietnamese Amerasian Homecoming Act?” Santiago looked at me, and I shrugged.

“Exactly.” Tuyen glanced at Saizarbitoria. “Since 1987 we have assisted twenty-three thousand Amerasians and sixty-seven thousand of their relatives in immigrating to this country.”

I sipped my coffee. “Must be rewarding work.”

“Very.”

I nodded and made the mental note to ask Ned to check the organization from California. “What’s all this about Trung Sisters Distributing?” I thumbed his card from the folder on the desk.

He looked up. “It is another of my businesses, and the one that makes a profit.” He pulled another card from his jacket pocket and handed it to me; this one was emblazoned with the words CHILDREN OF THE DUST and had an address the same as the one for the film office, with the same three phone numbers. “I sometimes find it more advantageous to be in film distribution than an individual tracking down men who may have illegitimate children.”

I nodded. “Especially men in my age range who might’ve been in Vietnam?”

“It can be rather shocking, and sometimes responses are not particularly positive.”

“I can imagine.” I put my coffee cup on the desk. I had had enough of the stuff. I looked at Saizarbitoria, who seemed to be studying me. I turned back to Tuyen. “What about the Red Fork Ranch?”

“I am genuinely interested in the property.”

“But that’s not why you’re here.”

His face lowered. “No.”

“Mr. Tuyen, I’m really sorry to be insensitive, but I need to know about your granddaughter.” He placed his still untouched coffee on the desk, and I wasn’t happy about what I had to do next. “I’m assuming her married name was Paquet?”

“Yes, she was briefly enjoined to a young man, here in the U.S.”

"And that would be in California?”

“Yes. Orange County, Westminster.”

“Little Saigon.”

He looked up and smiled sadly. “I am not used to people referring to the area in that manner outside of Southern California.”

“Mr. Tuyen, do you have any idea why your granddaughter might’ve stolen a car and then run all the way to Wyoming?”

“A number of them, actually.”

“She obviously didn’t want you involved, so how was it you were able to find her?”

“She acquired one of my credit cards, a gas card. She also, well, borrowed a valuable laptop computer, some jewelry, and a few other items, but it was through the credit card I was able to follow her.”

I watched him for a moment. “We didn’t find any credit cards on your granddaughter’s person.”

“The card was left at a Flying J truck stop in Casper. I recovered it there.”

“So you figured she was heading north and drove to Powder Junction?”

“Yes, it was as good a guess as any other.”

“Did it occur to you to contact any law enforcement agencies to see if they could find her?”

He laced his fingers in his lap and stared at them. “My granddaughter . . . Ho Thi had some unfortunate incidents, which I thought might color a more official response to her disappearance.”

I looked at the planing light on the side of his face and then plunged ahead. “That would have to do with the troubles of a month and a half ago?”

It took a commensurate amount of time for him to respond. “Yes.”

“So you figured with your experience in working with Children of the Dust, you would find her yourself?”

“Yes.”

“These incidents you referred to concerning Mrs. Paquet: We got some information from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department concerning some charges?”

He looked at me with a sharpness that he couldn’t or didn’t want to hide. "I don’t see how that is...”

“I’m just trying to get a clearer idea as to her situation, and how and why it is she ended up here the way she did.”

His eyes stayed steady with mine. “I understand you have a man in custody?”

I knew he was upset, but I needed answers. “The prostitution charges?”

He took a deep breath. “It was the young man she was married to; he was party to a number of illegal ventures and got her involved.”

“In prostitution?”

“Human trafficking.” He picked up his cup but only looked into it. “There is an underlying problem with the Vietnamese Amerasian Homecoming Act in that a number of corrupt Vietnamese staffers in the U.S. consulate, along with human brokers who acquire these mules who assist them, are—what is the colloquialism?—piggybacking illegals into the United States. Visas are granted as long as they are prepared to take their new, well, family, one can say, along with them. These human brokers make close to twenty thousand dollars for each accompanying visa.”

“And this man, Paquet?”

“Rene Philippe Paquet.”

“He’s involved with this?”

“Was. He died in Los Angeles.”

“How did he die?”

Tuyen swallowed, as if the words were leaving a bad taste in his mouth. “He was also involved in the drugs and found dead in his apartment.”

I got up and walked over to the only window, which was in the top of the only door, and looked through the curling and sun-faded decal of the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department at the overexposed light baking the empty playground of the elementary school across the street. “I guess I’m a little confused, Mr. Tuyen. How did Ho Thi, whom I’m assuming was a United States citizen, get involved with Paquet?”

From the sound of his voice, I could tell he had turned toward me. “I’m afraid you may not understand the complications of my relationship with my granddaughter, Sheriff.”

I leaned on the door facing with my back still to the desk and waited.

“Perhaps, Sheriff, I should tell you my own story first?”

“You were in the war?”

“Yes.”

A rusty, half-ton pickup chugged by on the otherwise empty roadway. “You speak English very well.”

He took a deep breath. “Yes. I was drafted from a small village in the Lang Son Province and, because of my ease with acquiring languages, was sent from the South Vietnamese Army to the Rangers. I spoke English especially well, along with French, Chinese, and Russian, and so they conscripted me in conjunction with the American Special Forces and the Short Term Road Watch and Target Acquisition program.”

“Black Tigers and STRATA?”

“Yes. I was twice wounded and received a battle citation before being transferred to the American Embassy in Saigon. As the war worsened, I was given the opportunity to expatriate myself to the United States, but not with my wife and son. I stayed, and we survived through my bureaucratic skills until I was able to take my family on a vacation to Taiwan, where we escaped to France and then here. With my contacts in the embassy, I was able to procure a job in film distribution and six years ago was finally able to open my own business.”

Santiago poured himself another coffee. “Sounds like the American dream come true.”

I kept looking out the window. “I notice you didn’t mention a granddaughter?”

“Yes.” Something in the way he said it caused me to turn my head and look at him. “It is sometimes difficult to explain the abandonment of wartime to those who have not experienced it. You were in the American war, Sheriff?”

“I was.”

He studied me awhile. “Then perhaps you will understand. There was a woman whom I spent time with in Saigon, both during and after the war; not my wife.”

I nodded, abandoned the playground, and came back to sit on the corner of the metal desk. “Your participation with Children of the Dust came from your personal experience?”

“Yes, and then my granddaughter arrived over a year ago, and it was obvious that she had not had an easy life which, as she grew older, exhibited itself in numerous ways.” He took another breath. “She did not speak English and made no attempts to learn the language after arriving. She was trenchant and rebellious toward us and began spending more and more time with the young man I mentioned.” I watched as he examined his laced fingers. “She was arrested for solicitation six weeks ago.”

“I think I’m getting a clearer picture as to why she would want to run away, but do you have any idea why it is that she would come to Wyoming?”

“None.”

Saizarbitoria was still watching me as I reached over the desk and into the Cordura shooting duffel. I slipped the photograph, still in the plastic bag, from one of the folders and handed it to Tuyen. “Do you know this woman?”

He took the photograph and studied it, finally looking up at me. “No.” His eyes stayed on me for a moment, went to the photo again, and then back to me. “And this is you?”

"Yes.”

"When was this picture taken, if I might presume to ask?”

“The end of ’67, just before Tet.” He studied the photograph again, and I could hear the years clicking in his head like abacus beads. I leaned forward. “Third generation; is it possible that this is Ho Thi’s grandmother?”

“It is not the woman I knew....”

“Then possibly her great-grandmother? This woman in the photograph, her name was Mai Kim and she died in 1968.”

He stared into the black-and-white, memorizing the woman’s face and comparing it with his granddaughter. “It is possible. Did you know her well, Sheriff?”

“Not in the personal sense, but she was a bar girl at the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge just outside Tan Son Nhut air force base, where I was sent as a Marine inspector.”

“You were a police officer then, too?”

“Yes.”

He thought about it some more. “You think it is possible that Ho Thi received this photograph from her mother or another woman within the family and mistakenly believed that she was related to you?”

“Right now, it’s all I’ve got to go on and the only connection to Wyoming that I have.”

“I see.”

“Mr. Tuyen, I’m going to need you to look at some photographs of your granddaughter for purposes of recognition, see some identification that she was, indeed, your granddaughter, and then we can make arrangements with the Division of Criminal Investigation to have the body shipped back to California. ”

“Yes, of course.”

“Were you planning on heading back anytime soon?”