Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

by C. J. Box

  Dad stepped back from the tractor and wiped his hands on a rag with very little white left on it and watched us approach. His face had filled out some recently, and his lenses were so thick they distorted his eyes bigger. He looked old, which shocked me.

  “Couldn’t cut it in the big city, huh?” he said. “Coming back begging for your old jobs back, you two?”

  My belly clenched, but Cody realized he was kidding and said, “Naw, Walt. We just want our wages. We don’t want to have to work for ’em.”

  “Nothing’s changed in that regard,” Dad said, before breaking into a grin. “Good to see you, Jack,” he said, reaching out. My God, I thought, is he going to kiss me? And he did! After a rough one-handed hug, he kissed me on the cheek before letting me go. I was left with a whisker burn and a lingering smell of engine oil in my nose. “You boys mind helping me put away these tools before we go in and eat?” he asked.

  “See what I told you?” Cody joked.

  “Hurry up,” Dad said. “I want to go in the house and see my good-looking daughter-in-law and especially my granddaughter!”

  “It’s not like you haven’t seen her, Dad,” I said, gathering up from the floor scarred wrenches that were as familiar to me as my own fingers and toes.

  “Yeah, but that’s when you first brought her home. When she was just a little pink thing. I haven’t seen her since she became a person.”

  “I’m sorry we just showed up without any warning,” I said. “This was kind of a last-second trip.”

  He shrugged. “I’m just glad you’re here. Besides, after dinner I got some fence that needs fixed.” Again, I thought he was serious. Again, he was joking. What had happened to him?

  “You sure you don’t mind us crashing dinner?”

  “As long as we’ve got enough steaks we’re okay,” he said, gesturing to the hundreds of bawling cattle out in the meadow. “I think we’ll be okay.”

  DINNER WAS PLEASANT. No, it was more than pleasant. I was joyous. Angelina, as she had with Jeter Hoyt, spent most of the time trying to get Dad’s attention. In turn, he doted on her, fed her, made funny faces that made her laugh. I looked at Melissa, and Melissa shook her head, as surprised with this new turn in both of them as I was.

  Cody declined the offer of a beer with dinner since he was driving, which I thought admirable because I knew he wanted one.

  Through a mouthful of steak, Dad said the ranch had sold, the result of a divorce settlement with the old owner. It was bought quickly by a hedge fund manager in New York City.

  “This new bird, I don’t know,” he said, gesturing with his fork, “I’m not sure we’re gonna see eye to eye.”

  “Give him a chance, Walter,” Mom said. “We’ve been here a long time. I’m not sure I’m up to moving again.”

  “Hell, I’ll give him a chance,” Dad said, grumbling. “As long as he doesn’t say the word ‘bison’ again in my presence, we might get along. There are too many goddamn buffalo in Montana as it is, and too many Ted Turners.”

  For the first time, I thought about what my parents would do when they finally left the ranch. Did they have retirement savings? Medical insurance? These were things that had never been discussed in my presence. Where would they live? I thought about the marriage they had, which, despite its flaws, had lasted forty years. Just the two of them, out here twenty miles from the nearest town on an expanse of land so big and raw it could have easily swallowed them up. God, I thought, they’re tough.

  The topic turned to Judge Moreland and Garrett. Melissa told the story but left out the most unpleasant details. Even with that, it was too much for Mom to handle, and she simply shook her head as if it were another of those big-city things she’d just never understand.

  “Tell them to screw themselves, I like this one,” Dad said, reaching over and mussing Angelina’s hair, which resulted in a belly laugh that was contagious. “Keep her.”

  As if that were the end of the subject.

  Angelina tried to reciprocate and stretched her arm out at him. Surprisingly, he bent forward and dipped his head so she could tousle his white hair.

  “Yup,” he said, sitting back while she laughed. “Keep this one.”

  “ARE YOU SURE YOU CAN’T STAY?” Mom begged. “Jack and Melissa can stay in Jack’s old room. Cody can have the spare or the bunk house if he’d prefer. Jack’s old crib is up in the attic for Angelina.”

  Looking past the fact that they’d kept my crib all these years, I explained that I had to go to work Monday, that I’d just returned from overseas the night before and had follow-up to do.

  “I’ve never understood your job,” Dad said. “What—you go to foreign countries and hand out maps? You get paid for that?”

  Actually, I’d explained my job to him three or four times over the years. His eyes glazed over each time.

  “Why don’t you stay?” she said again.

  He said, “I’m sure they can spare you for one day, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  His face darkened, and I braced for it; you sure are sorry or something similar and cutting. He was still Walter McGuane in there. But he caught himself, held it in, let it pass. “I wish you weren’t going to take this little one away from me,” he said instead, tickling her, making her laugh.

  “Isn’t there supposed to be a big storm coming down from the north?” Melissa said. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want us to be snowed in here.” She was good at saying reasonable things.

  “Hell,” he said, “I wouldn’t mind.”

  WHILE MELISSA AND MY MOTHER cleaned up dishes, Dad said he wanted to show me something out in the barn. He didn’t. As we walked outside in the last gasp of dusk in the cold, he didn’t look at me as he said, “I’ve realized something since you left this place, Jack. I was hard on you. I guess I didn’t know how to be a father. My old man was a bastard, and he’s the one supposed to teach you those things.”

  “You did okay,” I said, a lump in my throat. All I remembered of my grandfather was a tall man with a full black beard that smelled of cigarette smoke and eyes that weren’t kind.

  “Naw. But that don’t mean you shouldn’t know how to be a son. Call your mother more. Hell, invite her to Denver. That little girl in there is her only grandchild. I’ll survive if she comes down to see you. I know how to cook a steak.”

  We walked to the Quonset, crunching gravel. So much to say. “I’ll do that, Dad. But didn’t you hear what Melissa was saying about Angelina?”

  “I did.”

  “We may not get to keep her.”

  “Bullshit. Fight it.”

  “We are.”

  “Good,” he said. “And if you ever get the time from your busy damned job passing out maps of Denver, come back and stay a little while. I got fence to fix.”

  I laughed.

  “I’m proud you done so well on your own,” he said. “I was telling a cattle buyer about you just yesterday morning. He acted all interested, but you know you can’t trust those bastards. But I am proud of you.”

  IN THE CAR, the lights of Bozeman looking like the last vestige of civilization in the pure dark of a cloudy, moonless night, Cody said, “We’ll never figure ’em out, Jack. They are what they are. My old man’s a drunk. I didn’t fall very far from that fucking tree. This is a good place, Montana. I hope to come back someday.”

  “It is a good place,” I said. “Or is it just because it isn’t Denver right now?”

  “Maybe for you. I just hope I can figure out a way to make it back.”

  Why did he say that as if he never would?

  I WAS SLEEPING when Melissa’s cell phone burred. I sat up, had no idea at all where we were in Wyoming. It was midnight.

  “It’s Brian,” she said from the backseat, looking at the display.

  She listened, mostly, saying, “That’s great,” and “You be careful, Brian.”

  She closed the phone, said, “Brian’s meeting the guy with the photos to night som
eplace downtown. By the time we get back, we’ll have them.”

  “Everything’s working,” I said. “I’m glad we canceled that thing with Jeter.”

  “We’ll see,” Cody cautioned. “Brian could just as easily be on a wild-goose chase. That would be very Brian-like.”

  WE WERE APPROACHING CASPER at two in the morning when Melissa’s phone rang again. She said “Brian again,” and answered. A few seconds went by when she gasped, and said, “Who are you?”

  “Give it to me,” I said, and she quickly handed the phone over, as eager to get rid of it as I was to get it.

  I could hear city noises and the sound of someone laughing in the background.

  “Who is this?” I asked. “What are you doing with Brian’s phone?”

  “Brian?” the voice said. A young voice, Hispanic accent. “Brian? We kicked his ass.”

  Again the laugh in the background, and a phrase I’d heard before. My entire body went cold.

  We fucking own you, man.

  “Brian,” the caller said before punching off, “is one dead faggot.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “Someone called us on Brian’s phone, and I think I heard Garrett in the background.”

  “Shit,” Cody spit, and floored it.

  Denver

  Sunday, November 18

  Seven Days to Go

  FIFTEEN

  WE HURTLED DOWN I-25, reaching speeds of 110 miles per hour, with Cody barking out the names of detectives he used to work with. I’d locate the numbers on his cell and speed-dial them and hand the phone over when someone answered. We woke up a lot of detectives. All were groggy from sleep. Cody asked whether the detective was aware of a homicide or attempted homicide in downtown Denver.

  “Okay, thanks, man,” Cody said three times in a row. “Sorry to wake you up,” and handed the phone back to me to place the next call.

  “Nothing?” I said. “Could it be a joke? A way of screwing with us?”

  “That was Brian’s phone they used,” Melissa observed. “How would they have gotten it?”

  “She’s right,” he said. “Goddammit, who was on shift? They won’t tell me anything if I call the desk. I’ve got to find who might have worked it and talk to them personally. Jack, scroll down through the numbers. I can think of two other guys who might know something.”

  I found both numbers and called each in turn and switched on the speaker feature of the cell so Cody could talk and speed at the same time. It scared me when he held the phone to his ear and drove at the same time because he was incapable of talking without gesturing as well. The first detective didn’t pick up, the second asked Cody if he was drunk to be calling at this hour.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I need to know who was on shift tonight.”

  “The FNG—fucking new guy. Who else would be on midnights?”

  “Torkleson?”

  I felt a little trill of recognition.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know his cell number?”

  “It’s fucking four in the morning, Cody. I don’t know anything except that I want to go back to sleep. He’s the FNG. I’m not sure I wrote his number down.”

  “Please, Dan, I really need to know it.”

  “Are you even working? Aren’t you suspended?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What the hell are you doing, Cody?”

  “Checking on a friend. Please, Dan.”

  Dan sighed, and grumbled, “Hold on.”

  I was afraid we’d drive out of cell-phone range before Dan found the number. Wyoming was notorious for huge expanses where there was no signal. Luckily, it was also notorious for its lack of state troopers on the highway. Finally, Dan came back and gave Cody the number.

  “Can I go back to sleep now?” Dan asked.

  “Sure. Thanks. Good night.”

  To us, he asked, “Got it?”

  “I do,” Melissa said, and tore out the page of her check register that she’d used to write down the number.

  I punched the numbers in, keeping the speaker on.

  “Yeah?” the detective answered, no doubt leery of the late-night call.

  “Jason, it’s Cody Hoyt.”

  “Shit, I didn’t recognize the number, and it’s four in the morning. What can I do you for?”

  “I need to know if you worked an incident to night. The subject’s a friend of mine named Brian Eastman. Tall, thin, Caucasian, midthirties. Probably somewhere down-town.”

  After a pause, Torkleson said, “He’s a friend of yours?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh man, I’m sorry to hear that, I really am. We took the call an hour ago—some drunk found a body in an alley. We just sent him to the trauma center at Denver General.”

  Melissa gasped in the backseat and buried her face in her hands.

  “How bad?” Cody asked.

  “Real fucking bad,” Torkleson said.

  “What happened?”

  “Well, it looked like somebody tried to kick his face off. The paramedics weren’t even sure at first if he was still alive, man. I’ve seen some beatings, but this one was really, really bad. I hate to tell you this considering he’s a friend of yours and all.”

  “And I hate to hear it,” Cody said softly.

  Melissa began to cry.

  “Hey, who’s that with you?” Torkleson asked.

  “My girlfriend,” Cody said absently, obviously not wanting to explain our circumstances.

  “Hey, I’m not sure your girlfriend wants to hear this.”

  “It’s okay,” Cody said. “Tell me, did you find anything on him?”

  Torkleson’s radar went up. “Like what?”

  “You know,” Cody said, tap-dancing. “His wallet, keys, phone, documents, anything?”

  “You mean does it look like a robbery?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

  “That’s what it looks like. His ID was on him, and we found a cell phone in the alley. Nothing else unusual on him. What kind of documents?”

  “Any kind.”

  Photos, I thought.

  “No. His wallet had been cleaned out of cash and dumped. There’s no way to know how much was in it.”

  Thousands, I thought, to pay off his contact.

  “Denver General, you say?”

  “Affirmative. I’m still at the scene, though. We’ve got the photographer and forensics team going over the alley, then I’ll head over to the hospital myself to see if we can get any kind of statement. But from what I saw …”

  “No witnesses?”

  “None that have come forward, which isn’t surprising. This is a crappy part of town. People don’t tend to talk.”

  “It happened in an alley,” Cody asked. “Any lighting? Any windows that overlook where he was found?”

  I could hear Torkleson’s voice tense up as he sensed Cody was trying to horn in on his investigation.

  “There are overhead lights,” he said, “but no lightbulbs. They’ve all been shot out. And yeah, a couple of windows but no residents in the buildings.”

  “Sounds like the Zuni Street area,” Cody said.

  I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Near the Appaloosa Club, then.

  “That’s where it is,” Torkleson said. “Hey, I’ve got a question for you. Where did you hear about this? I can’t see you sitting at home with your girlfriend at four in the morning listening to a scanner.”

  Cody snorted. “No chance of that.”

  “So how did you hear about it?”

  “The perp called us from Brian’s phone.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll meet you at the hospital, Detective. Make sure you secure that phone you found and get somebody competent to download the call log and the text log. Do it now! And I hope to hell you dust that phone for prints, Jason, because whoever stomped Brian held it in his scummy fucking hand.”

  “Cody, can I ask you something? Aren’t you suspended? Should we even be having this conver
sation?”

  Cody deftly swerved to miss a pronghorn antelope on the highway. Melissa said, “My God, that was close.”

  He didn’t miss a beat. He said, “Torkleson, that’s my friend you found. We’ve been friends since grade school in Montana. I want to find out who did this, and you can either work with me or against me. Do you really want me pursuing this as a private citizen? Showing you up?”

  “No.”

  “Then meet me at the hospital with those logs.”

  WE ARRIVED at Denver General at nine in the morning, after dropping Melissa and Angelina at our house. Not that Melissa didn’t want to be there to be with Brian—she wanted to be there desperately—but she didn’t think she could take the baby with us after twenty-eight hours in the car. Angelina was crabby and sleep-deprived but had been a good traveler overall.

  As Cody and I walked down the humming, antiseptic hallways, I felt as if I were shell-shocked. I was sleep-deprived myself, but the visit with my parents and the news about Brian seemed to knock me sidewise. At the front desk, Cody asked about Brian and was told by a severe black woman the patient was in ICU, and there could be no visitors except immediate relatives.

  “Damn it,” Cody said, reaching back into his jacket, where he produced a wallet badge and flashed it at her. “We need to see him now.”

  “Go right up,” she said, eyes wide. “Seventh floor is ICU. There’s one of your policemen up there already.”

  Cody nodded and pocketed the badge. In the elevator, I said, “I thought they took that away from you.”

  He nodded. “They took my real badge away. But any cop worth his salt has a couple of spares. You can buy ’em from cop catalogs. No one ever reads the details—they just see the flash.”

  The officer on the seventh floor wasn’t Torkleson but a uniform assigned to Brian. He sat on a metal folding chair outside a pair of entry doors to the Intensive Care Unit signed ICU STAFF ONLY.

  “How is he?” Cody asked the uniform, who was young with a crew cut and a wisp of a mustache.