Astride a Pink Horse

by Robert Greer

  “Fine. I’m on I-25 and headed back your way from Grant Rivers’s ranch right now.”

  “Is ten this evening too late?”

  “Works for me. I’m going to grab a bite to eat, then take my time getting back to Cheyenne.”

  “Where do you want to meet?”

  “The Cheyenne airport. And I’ll pick you up.”

  “That’s an odd place to meet.”

  “Not if your conference room’s the main cabin of a Gulfstream. Freddy Dames called me a little bit ago. He talked to a guy named Howard Colbain today. Colbain’s a potential suspect. Freddy’s going to fly into Cheyenne from Albuquerque a little later this evening and he wants me to meet him at the airport so we can compare notes. Three heads might well be better than two. You still game?”

  “Yes,” said Bernadette, feeling a bit guilty about never having mentioned Colbain to Cozy.

  “Fine. I’ll call you when I’m a half hour out of Cheyenne, and you can tell me then where to pick you up.”

  “Your boss owns his own jet?”

  Cozy chuckled. “A Gulfstream 150 with the cabin configured so that Freddy has space for his motorcycle, a pull-down bed, and a full bar. Sort of puts the two of you on common ground, don’t you think?”

  “Not really,” said Bernadette, still upset over Freddy’s critical internet piece. “Besides,” she said proudly, “I flew government-owned fighters, not corporate toys.”

  Aware that Freddy had plunked down $18 million for Sugar, Cozy said, “I’m willing to bet that Freddy’s accountants have Uncle Sam somehow paying for his toy, too. I’ll call you later, okay?”

  “Okay,” said Bernadette, wondering as she hung up how two men who were obviously as decidedly different from one another as Cozy and Freddy Dames could be friends.

  For Rikia Takata, the trip from Laramie to Heart Mountain had been predictable and boring, and now, as his aging station wagon bumped across an eroded sagebrush flat toward the gathering twilight and onto Heart Mountain property, he knew he wouldn’t enjoy the next twelve hours.

  Shifting her weight in the Volvo’s front seat, Kimiko, who’d driven during the second leg of the trip, stared out at the russet-colored sky. “It’s time to read the passage,” she said softly. “And in English, please, Rikia.”

  Knowing that the English translation of what his grandfather had written sixty-seven years earlier always seemed to fill Kimiko with a deeper anger than the same passage in its original Japanese, Rikia looked out on the orange-and-purple glow of the sunset. Aware that Kimiko would continue her ritualistic Heart Mountain agenda no matter what until sunrise the next morning, he opened his grandfather’s leather-bound diary and began reading aloud from it: “ ’I was working as a news photographer outside the city of Hiroshima’s water plant when I heard a loud explosion and almost instantly felt a searing rush of heat. My first thought was that a nearby army base’s gas tanks had exploded, but sadly the thought soon disappeared. I knew in my heart what the flash of light that I had seen to the north represented because for more than two months Japanese newspapers, including my own, had been printing stories warning everyone that a new type of bomb would soon be used by the Americans on the Japanese people. The stories claimed that the bomb had the capability of wiping out an entire city. However, even as a newsperson, I had no reason to believe that the stories were any more than propaganda published by fainthearted men like the editor of the Nippon Times.

  “ ‘But as I stood there in the suffocating heat, panting like a dog, realizing that the hair on my arms had disappeared as I’d listened to the rumbling explosion of thunder from another world, I knew the special bomb that the newspapers had spoken of had been dropped on our city.

  “ ‘Out of reflex, I suspect, I decided that what I needed to do was take pictures of what was occurring, so I headed in the direction the explosion had come from. When I reached a collapsed army warehouse that had been flattened like a cardboard box, I stopped to watch a white column of smoke that soon turned to pink rise in the sky. Eventually the top of the column began to swell until after twenty minutes or so the entire ungodly-looking thing had the appearance of a saucer on a stick. I took picture after picture of the strange-looking column with the saucer on top, never knowing whether or not the pictures would come out.

  “ ‘After another ten minutes or so, rain began to fall, rain that was at first dirty brown and then smoky black. The rain seemed to release a kind of poisonous gel that stuck like glue to my skin. Shivering in disbelief, I put my camera away and headed toward the city. I walked for nearly an hour, making my way into and through clouds of dust. I walked along the edge of a foggy yellow drizzle that hugged the river. I walked for a good twenty minutes without seeing anyone until, out of nowhere and directly in my path, I saw a cavalry horse standing alone in front of a clump of leafless trees that had been scorched to their roots. The horse was salmon pink. The blast from the bomb had seared off all its hide. As the pitiful-looking beast approached me, faltering with each step, I realized that it was carrying a rider who was charred almost black from head to toe. I watched for a few moments as animal and rider, unaware of my presence, veered to my left and walked toward the river to disappear into the yellow haze. Thoughts of my wife and children, coworkers and countrymen, worked their way through my head, but it was the image of the charbroiled rider astride a pink horse that stayed with me the rest of the day.’ ”

  Rikia stopped reading and looked at Kimiko, who’d pulled the station wagon to a stop. He knew that she expected him to read for the next five pages, on to a point where his grandfather borrowed a bicycle from a local doctor only to realize as the doctor handed the bike over to him that the doctor’s fingers had been fused to the handlebars. But he didn’t. Perhaps it was because everything around him seemed so suddenly peaceful. Or maybe it was because, for a change, Kimiko wasn’t urging him to read on. Whatever had sparked the change in her ritual was known to her alone. A minute or so later, when she moved to get out of the station wagon, he knew that she was back on track. Once she was out of the vehicle, he knew she would perch herself on the three-legged stool she’d brought and stare trance-like toward Heart Mountain Butte, and remain there mumbling to herself, sometimes in Japanese, sometimes in English, until he’d set up their campsite.

  He’d often wondered why Kimiko insisted that their visits to Heart Mountain remain such a raw, primitive experience. Why after so many years couldn’t they at least bring modern camping equipment or, even better, stay in a motel? He’d asked her once when he was a college student, after two hellish rainstorm-filled days at Heart Mountain, why they had to endure such god-awful conditions. She’d simply replied, “Because it tests our courage, our commitment, and our sanity. Things you’ll surely need in abundance one day, Rikia.” He’d never forgotten that comment even though their trips to the remote, 740-acre patch of nowhere named after nearby Heart Mountain Butte now numbered in the sixties, and the internment center’s military-style barracks and ancillary buildings, which had once sat a mere sixty miles east of Yellowstone National Park, had either been sold to local residents or allowed to decay.

  It wasn’t until 2007 that 124 acres of the internment camp became a national historic landmark. Somehow Kimiko had learned that the barrack she had lived in had been on a fifty-acre parcel carved from the original Heart Mountain acreage and purchased by the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation in the late 1990s. On one of their trips to Heart Mountain, she’d even been able to pinpoint the barrack’s exact location, pointing out a rusting water spigot and a granite building foundation corner in which she’d once carved her initials. Now, whenever they made a trip to Heart Mountain, she made a point of turning over a spadeful of dirt at that site. Burying the past, Kimiko called it.

  Rikia had just finished preparing their campsite when Kimiko finally rose from her stool and turned her gaze away from Heart Mountain. Knowing better than to engage her while she was still so focused, he remained silent and watched her walk
away from the mountain into what had become darkness.

  Following Cozy’s introduction moments earlier, Bernadette and Freddy Dames had circled one another like determined heavyweights, Bernadette looking incensed and Freddy not at all apologetic. Deciding to save her grievances until later, however, Bernadette had tempered her upset and now sat at the controls of Freddy’s Gulfstream 150, surveying the cockpit and thinking that for $18 million the plane should have had more legroom.

  The flight deck was clearly more posh, user-friendly, and inviting than the utilitarian, space capsule–like, black-on-black, instrument-filled cockpit of an A-10, a space she would’ve given anything to be cramped inside right then. But it was a flight deck, and it was the first time she’d set foot in an aircraft cockpit for over a year. All but salivating, she found herself excitedly fiddling with every switch, button, and toggle in sight as Cozy looked on, smiling.

  By the time Freddy, who was standing behind her in a half crouch, had finished his spiel about the aircraft and Cozy had brought both of them up to speed on his visit with Grant Rivers, Bernadette’s hands were moist with a strange, lost-opportunity kind of anticipation. Gazing wistfully out the cockpit window, she found herself eager to take Sugar for a ride.

  “So what do you think of my Sugar?” Freddy asked Bernadette as Cozy, tired of crouching, headed for the main cabin.

  Bernadette turned and realized that Cozy had stopped to stare at a motorcycle that was secured to the cabin’s rear bulkhead by four leather straps. She said, “I like. But the motorcycle’s a little bit on the overkill side of speed, don’t you think?”

  “I like to enjoy speed wherever I am.”

  Bernadette watched Cozy continue to stare at the motorcycle as if it were something venomous. “I’m not sure Cozy feels the same,” she said, watching a look of guilt spread across Freddy’s face. She knew she’d touched a nerve when Freddy stood, nearly bumping his head on the ceiling, and said, “I think it’s time we get to the business at hand.”

  Moments later, as they sat around a small, marble-topped table in the main cabin, Freddy, still looking uncomfortable, said, “So here we are. Three peas in a pod. Who wants to start?”

  “I think we should thank Bernadette for meeting with us first,” Cozy said. “She’s taking a heck of a risk, especially since she’s been ordered not to talk to us.”

  “By some pinhead?” Freddy shot back.

  “Can we stay away from any name-calling, Mr. Dames?” Bernadette said, looking to Cozy for support.

  “Ease up, damn it, Freddy, okay?” Cozy’s authoritative response to his boss surprised Bernadette. Thinking, Secure brother, she tried not to smile.

  “Yeah, yeah, sorry, and like I told you earlier, Major, I prefer Freddy. Why don’t we start with what I dug up on Howard Colbain since Cozy’s already given us a thumbnail on the right-leaning Mr. Rivers.”

  “So, how did Colbain strike you?” Cozy asked.

  “Much like Rivers, he’s angry. Turns out Sergeant Giles destroyed his marriage and, in his eyes, at least, drove his former wife to commit suicide.”

  Bernadette looked startled. “Suicide?”

  “Yep. Shot herself in the head with a .38 a couple of years after ending her affair with Giles.”

  “So Colbain had a reason for wanting to kill the good sergeant,” said Cozy.

  “Absolutely. And I’d say Colbain’s got enough resentment and pent-up anger trapped inside him to have done it. Not quite the same level of anger as Grant Rivers’s, though. I’d say Colbain is a high simmer, and Rivers is more of a full boil. Even so, I don’t think either of them could’ve muscled Giles into that missile-access tube on their own. Colbain has a big blockhead of a yardman who could have helped out.”

  “And Rivers could have had help from that tractor-driving son of his that Cozy mentioned,” said Bernadette.

  “And both men know their way around heavy equipment,” Freddy added. “They probably have the mechanical and explosives know-how to blow an access-tube hatch cover.” He looked at Bernadette for confirmation.

  “True on all counts,” Bernadette said. “But like those tricky old college exam questions we’ve all sweated through like to ask, is what we’ve dug up on the two of them, although perhaps true, unrelated to the Giles murder?”

  “Good point,” said Cozy. “Why drop Giles’s body off at Tango-11 after you’ve stabbed him to death somewhere else if you’re Colbain or Rivers? You’d only risk incriminating yourself, it seems to me.”

  “Maybe Rivers was simply out to thumb his nose at the air force one last time. And maybe Colbain’s one of those catch-me-if-you-can types,” said Freddy. “I can tell you this about Colbain: he’s a bulldog. He had a PI tracking Giles for sixteen years, and that’s one hell of a long time to stew. Right now I’d put him at the top of my list of suspects.”

  “What about you?” Bernadette asked Cozy.

  “No reason to scratch either man off.”

  Suddenly sounding almost competitive, Freddy said, “Here’s another Colbain nugget. Turns out that all those years he had Giles tailed paid some dividends in the end. His PI found out just before Colbain cut the money spigot off that Giles was leaving Seattle and a job he’d had for years for one in Canada. Do either of you have any information about that?”

  “No,” Cozy said, looking at Bernadette.

  When she hesitated, Cozy said, “You’re in up to your eyeballs now, Bernadette. Might as well lay everything you’ve found on the table.”

  “I could get court-martialed.”

  “And the pope could renounce his religion. Come on, Major, we’re dealing with a murder here,” said Freddy.

  “Actually, we could be dealing with issues that are far more serious than that. I found out that after Sergeant Giles left the air force, he went to work for a weapons guidance system firm in Seattle and from there, like Colbain’s PI confirmed, Giles moved to Canada to work for a company that makes radiation therapy equipment.”

  “And the connection between what he did in the air force and what he did for those companies in Seattle and Canada is?” asked Freddy.

  “The connection, I’m afraid, is nuclear.”

  “Any chance Giles could have gotten himself involved in selling nuclear secrets?” Cozy asked.

  “Perhaps,” Bernadette said, nodding. “He had immense practical and technical knowledge about nuclear warheads and their maintenance. And there’s no question that after the air force stuck him out in the California desert, effectively ending his career, his ego was bruised. I’ve read through his personnel file.”

  “More like crushed, according to Colbain,” Freddy said.

  “What better way to exact a little revenge on the people who did the crushing than to peddle a little inside dope about the workings of the American nuclear-missile arsenal to someone out there who might be interested?” said Bernadette.

  “What could he have told them?” Freddy asked.

  “Lots,” Cozy said quickly. “Like how the pieces of a nuclear warhead fit together, maybe, or insight on how the things are wired. Maybe he could even have told somebody how to trigger one.”

  Bernadette shook her head. “All of those would be a stretch.”

  “Okay,” said Cozy. “So, back to my earlier question. Why kill Giles, move his body to an abandoned missile site, since according to Sheriff Bosack he clearly wasn’t killed at Tango-11, and string him up naked for the world to eventually see if you’re involved in secretly buying U.S. military secrets?”

  “I don’t know, frankly,” said Bernadette. “Maybe we should ask a psychologist.”

  “Or somebody like Howard Colbain or Grant Rivers,” said Freddy.

  “Which means we’ve come full circle, and we’ll need to dig a whole lot deeper to figure out what the real murder motive was,” said Bernadette.

  “So, we’ll do that,” said Freddy. “For the time being, why don’t we move on to the Takatas; Sarah Goldbeck; and sweet, lovable ol’ Buford Kane. H
ow do you think the four of them fit into all this?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Bernadette. “Other than we know for sure that Goldbeck and Kimiko Takata spent years trying to put the brakes on all things nuclear.”

  “So maybe by killing Giles in the manner they did, they get their antinuclear message resurrected,” said Freddy.

  “Maybe. But just like Rivers, Goldbeck, Kane, and the Takatas claim they’ve never heard of Giles.”

  Freddy shook his head in disbelief. “Strange that nobody who’s a suspect, except Colbain, has ever heard of the murdered man. Damnedest thing.”

  “Well, somebody out there knew him,” said Cozy. “You talked to Rikia Takata, Bernadette. What’s your take on him?”

  “Calling the man ‘excitable’ would be an understatement, and like Colbain and Rivers, he’s angry.”

  “About what?” asked Freddy.

  “About the internment of Japanese Americans here in Wyoming during World War II, for one thing, and about not getting his scientific due, for another.”

  Cozy looked puzzled. “But it was his cousin Kimiko who was interned, not him, right?”

  “Right. And who knows, she may be even angrier than he is. We’ll just have to find out.”

  “I like your use of the word we, Major,” Freddy said, smiling. “It’s almost as if you’ve been recruited to the dark side.”

  Bernadette’s unsmiling silence caused Freddy to quickly ask, “Is there anybody else who might have known or interacted with Giles that we’re leaving out?”

  “There’s that preacher here in Cheyenne, Wilson Jackson, but thankfully, he’s Colonel DeWitt’s cross to bear, not mine. He could have known Giles. DeWitt’s been avoiding him like the plague, by the way.”

  “Well, knock me over with a feather,” said Freddy. “Someone who might have actually known the murdered man. Why’s DeWitt dodging the good reverend?”

  “Because he doesn’t want what at this stage is a simple break-in and security-breach investigation to turn into a hate-crime investigation. If it does, there’ll be lawyers and FBI types crawling all over Warren, looking in every sock drawer. That’s never a good spot for anyone who’s looking to make general to be in.”