The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volumes 1-4 (147 page)

“No thanks.” I shook my head. “James, have you seen anybody else around here?”

He brought the flask back to his lips and took a swallow, then brought a finger up and touched the shift knob on the old truck. “You know, most people don’t believe the things I tell ’em. . . .” He turned his head and looked at me. “So I just stop tellin’ ’em.” His eyes wavered a little, and I noticed he was looking past me and to the right—I turned and followed his gaze, but there was no one there. “Do you know you’re bein’ followed?”

I turned and looked again but still couldn’t see anyone. “Now?”

“All the time.” He took another sip from the flask, and his eyes returned to the dash. “They’re with you all the time, or all the times I’ve ever seen you.” I continued to study him, but he didn’t move. “... Met a giant.”

It took me a second to respond. “You did?”

“Yep, real big Indian fella.”

“And where was that?”

He leaned forward and peered through the top of the windshield. I followed his gaze past the graveyard and above the rock shelf at the end of town. “Up there.”

I pushed off with the Colt still camouflaged beside my leg. “Thanks, James.”

“That big Indian, he brought me back down here, took my keys, and told me to stay in my truck.” His look trailed up toward the union hall. “I offered him my saddle-gun, but he said he liked to work quiet.” I nodded and turned to continue up the street, where the edge of the moon was just beginning to clear the cliffs. They looked black, the way blood does in moonlight. “Hey, Walt?”

I stopped and looked back at him through the reflection of the vent window. “Yep?”

“Is that big Indian a friend of yours?”

I thought about it. “Yes. He is.”

He cast a glance up the street and then back to me. “Is he...?”

I waited, but the drunken man who saw things that nobody else saw just continued studying me. “Is he what?”

He took another slug of the brandy and then turned to look back up the hill. “Is he dead, too?”

“I sure hope not.” I started to grin, but it wouldn’t take. “Stay in the truck, James.”

He nodded. “I will.”

* * *

I walked up the street with those feathers of anxiety scouring the insides of my lungs as I checked each dilapidated building. I still saw no sign of Virgil, Tuyen, or the girl. A ghost town and, except for James and me, deserted.

It was like the place was swallowing souls.

I saw a glimmer of something beside the collapsed wall of the saloon and eased myself down the wooden boardwalk far enough to see the nose of my truck. I took a breath and raised my Colt. Staying next to the crumbling wall, I slipped in behind the Bullet and saw that the doors were locked and the keys were gone.

I pulled the two-way from my belt and gave it another try. “Unit one, anybody copy?”

Static.

I looked up past the cemetery to the union hall, at the castellated cornices and second-story outcropping that gave it the appearance of a fortress standing on the hill. The still listless moon was at a full quarter, and I could see that the sicklelike point had just cleared the cliffs.

I started the climb, keeping the .45 in front of me. I was unconcerned about the rattlesnakes since the evening was cool and they’d likely be sleeping in the crevices of the stone outcroppings off to the right, attempting to glean the last bit of the day’s warmth that was still held by the rocks.

I paused at the cemetery and laid a hand on the steel railing, looked up at the dark windows, and then peered up at the path. In the darkness it would be difficult to see if anyone had passed. The steps appeared the same but, as I tipped my hat back for a better view, I could see the door to the union hall was open. I knew that I had closed it.

The sweat at the middle of my back had adhered my uniform shirt to my spine, and I shivered in the cooling breeze.

It was a steep climb, and I took a few deep inhales to steady my breathing. I stood at the doorway and looked down the shotgun hall, past what used to be offices and into the gloom of the back rooms. I could see the size 13 swirls my rubber-soled ropers had left in the heavy dust from my previous visit, and there was an obvious trail where I’d gone farther into the building and then doubled back to go up the stairs to the dance hall.

Barely visible inside my boot prints were a set of well-defined, high-arched, tiny footprints exactly tracing my tracks.

I stepped into the entryway and led with the .45. She had continued up, carefully placing her bare feet inside mine. I shifted my weight, clicked off my radio, and stared up the stairs, then climbed as quietly as I could. It was useless—I sounded like a collection of squeals and creaks, ascending.

I paused at the landing and looked at the dance hall floor. The wavering moonlight cast across the flat surface and illuminated our joined tracks like pools of liquid mercury. I eased myself further up the steps and took hold of the railing at the top. The old upright piano sat on the stage, alone.

Standing room only and nobody there.

The moon suddenly decided to take an interest, and the full force of its shine spread through the bay windows at the front of the hall, through the half-glass doorway that led to the balcony beyond, and across the dance floor in a blue light of growing rectangular proportions.

I stepped up onto the floor, my eyes following the tiny footprints that had continued in mine as they crossed the room, up the three steps to the right, and across the stage.

I trained the Colt from corner to corner and then approached the proscenium arch. She had stopped at the piano. I placed my empty hand on the lip of the elevated area and hoisted a boot onto the edge, effectively, if not gracefully, taking the stage.

There were no more footprints. It was as if she’d walked there and then not so simply had disappeared.

The cover was open, and I could see the dust on the hammers of the keys that I hadn’t played and a new accumulation on the ones that I had. She hadn’t touched the keys.

The bench was still under the piano. There were no fingerprints on it, no sign that she had sat there. I nudged it out a little bit, put the .45 next to me, and sat, half facing the dance floor. I extended a forefinger and touched an F, the offkey sound almost reverent in the empty hall. I thought “Moonglow” would be appropriate, but changed my mind, thinking that I should play “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” for Mai Kim’s great-granddaughter.

I played an octave lower than it was written in an attempt to stay within the narrow confines of the soundboard. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but after playing a few stanzas, I heard a noise to my left. I picked up the Colt and turned with it extended to see that a small trapdoor had risen about four inches at center stage.

I stopped playing, and my breathing was the only sound in the room. The door in the floor slowly and silently shut.

I noticed that the footprints leading past the trapdoor were slightly smudged; she must have retraced them and retreated exactly upon them. I lowered my sidearm to my knee, turned back toward the piano, and placed my free hand back over the keyboard, plinking the F again as a starting point. I played the melody this time with one hand, and after a few seconds, the trapdoor rose again, allowing me a view of the small fingers that had pushed it.

I continued to play one-handed, then turned back, set the .45 on the bench, and allowed my left to join my right. I thought about Vietnam, and about how I’d filled the empty evenings at the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge with Fats Waller.

Like a snake charmer, I played the song that Mai Kim must have told her daughter about and about which she must have told her daughter in turn. I played a smooth and steady version that left off with a trilling finish. I sat there, unmoving, until I couldn’t stand it any longer and turned.

She stood beside the trapdoor that was in the stage floor. She was tiny, and she wore a cheap slip dress that perversely made her look even more like a child. Her black hair was long and tangled, and it covered part of her face so that I could only see one of her dark eyes. She held a laptop close to her chest. Her thin arms crossed its lid, and she looked like a computer with a head and legs.

She didn’t move, and I found a word sliding up my throat and filling my mouth. "Hello...”

She still didn’t move, but her head inclined just a little. “Hi.”

I smiled and steadied the .45 on my knee. She stepped back, and I raised the other hand in reassurance. “Wait, I’m not going to hurt you.” She stood there, silent again. “I’ve been looking for you, and I think you’ve been looking for me.”

Her weight shifted, but that was all. She looked like Mai Kim. “What’s your name?”

“Her name is Ngo Loi Kim.”

I snatched up the Colt and leveled it at Tuyen’s half-hidden face as he stood there on the last step of the stairs with his own arm extended. In his hand was Saizarbitoria’s Glock, and it was pointed directly at the girl. I’d neither seen nor heard him.

Ngo Loi Kim dove for the trapdoor and scratched for the inset handle, but when it wouldn’t open she scrambled to the back wall and crouched against the floorboards. She held the computer like a shield in front of her and whimpered, terrified. I was off the piano bench and had taken a step toward the edge of the stage. “You’re under arrest.”

He took the last step from the darkness and, with the moonlight raising shadows across his legs, his voice seemed disembodied. “I’m willing to make you a deal.”

“I don’t deal. Drop the weapon.”

“Try to shoot me, and I shoot her.” He didn’t move. “The girl for the laptop.”

I stared down at him and could see his muscles straining the sleeve of his leather jacket. I figured the only thing to do was shoot. His weapon was pointed at her chest and chances were he’d hit her, but it was possible that my first shot would be on target and would do more damage than his responding fire.

I could feel the weight of the big Colt in my hand. What if I missed? What if he didn’t? I was willing to take those types of chances with my own life, but not hers. I thought about who she was, and what she’d gone through—all to find me.

Talk. It was the only way.

“Ho Thi wasn’t your granddaughter.”

“No.”

I swallowed and prepared myself for any opening that might present itself. “Did you kill her, or did Maynard?”

He looked at me. “He did.”

I didn’t believe him for a moment. Phillip Maynard hadn’t been the type, but Tran Van Tuyen was. “Okay, let’s say that’s the truth. Then why kill him?”

His gun hand stayed steady, and he was focused on the whimpering girl at the wall. He’d had the better part of a week to get to know me, and he’d done his homework well—he knew that I wouldn’t endanger her. “He committed suicide, as you said.”

“You’re lying.”

He glanced at me. “One of the ranchers, Mr. Dunnigan...”

“You’re still lying.”

“I am to assume from this that the bent bottle caps didn’t succeed in misdirecting you?”

“No.”

“It was a habit Phillip Maynard informed me of.” He actually smiled and finally took a breath. “Phillip was actually blackmailing me. He was supposed to retrieve the girls, and more importantly, the computer. He made a mess of it and killed Ho Thi. I suppose he thought that if he planted the girl near the culvert and threw the purse in with the Indian, there wouldn’t be any questions. I assume he was counting on a preconceived prejudice.”

“So you drugged him, just like Rene Paquet, and hung him?”

He didn’t say anything. The unspoken truth lay there between us like a bad smell, and I started formulating a new plan in hopes that he’d become so agitated with me that he might change his aim. “Paquet wanted to save Ho Thi and get her out of whatever human-trafficking scheme you’ve got going, which is why she got picked up by the undercover detachment in L.A.”

He studied me. “You know, I really am unfortunate to have arrived in your county, Sheriff.”

“So you killed him and, consequently, the forty-two people in Compton.” He took another breath but didn’t move or say anything. “So, under the auspices of Children of the Dust, you retrieved Ho Thi and returned her to the brothel, but once there, she met the sole survivor of the Compton truck massacre. ” I nodded my head very slightly toward the young woman at the wall. “Ngo Loi Kim. She and Ho Thi were desperate, and I’m assuming Paquet was the one who had given them this laptop as an insurance policy in case something happened to him.” His resolve didn’t appear to be weakening, so I kept talking. “The wild card was the photograph of Ngo’s great grandmother, sitting in the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge with an unidentified Marine investigator who played Fats Waller, and once told her about a favorite fishing hole in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, USA.”

“You have an overactive imagination, Sheriff.”

“It doesn’t take any imagination at all, and you’re still under arrest.”

There was a long silence, where we both reviewed our options. “My offer still holds—the girl for the laptop.” I was thinking about how I could prolong the conversation, but I was running fresh out of options and he confused my silence with my considering his offer. “You don’t know what is in the computer, nor should you care. It is nothing in comparison with the life of this girl—the great granddaughter of a wartime friend—and you can save her.” He took another step. “You didn’t know I existed last week, and I can assure you that you’ll never know I existed tomorrow.”

“You can’t possibly think you’re going to escape.”

“It is something at which I’m very good.” He smiled again.

He wasn’t going for any of it, and now was the time I would have to choose—fire or give him the computer for Ngo Loi. I took a deep breath, and the darkness shifted. It was as if the entire stairwell was growing behind Tuyen, and a face appeared almost a foot and a half above his.

Something was there.

Somebody.

Virgil.

Apparently, Tuyen was not the only one who had used my piano playing as a cover to ascend the steps, our conversation notwithstanding. My expression must have changed, because the lithe man’s face suddenly stiffened and he spun.