The Best American Mystery Stories 2017

by John Sandford

  Three—no, four people were piling out of a dented white Jeep Cherokee with County 23 plates. So they were local after all, he thought.

  The driver, who was standing outside his door waiting for the others, was tall, wiry, and bent over. He looked to be in his seventies and he wore a wide-brimmed cowboy hat and pointed black boots. He saw Brandon and grinned as if they were old friends.

  An obese woman grunted from the back seat as she used both hands on the door frame to pull herself out. For a moment her feet stuck straight out of the Cherokee while she rocked back and threw her bulk forward to get out of the car. She had tight orange-yellow curls and wore a massive print dress that looked to be the size of a tent.

  Two younger men about Brandon’s age joined the wiry older one while they waited for the fat woman. One of the younger men had a shaved head, a full beard, and tattoos that crawled out of his collar up his neck. The second man looked like a local ranch hand: jeans, boots, Carhartt coat, battered and greasy KING ROPES cap.

  Brandon stepped out on the porch and closed the door behind him. He could feel Marissa’s eyes on his back through the curtains.

  He said, “What can I help you folks with? There’s no need for all of you to get out.”

  The wiry man continued to grin. He said, “You might not remember me, Brandon, but I sure as hell remember you. How you doing, boy?”

  Brandon frowned. There was something familiar about the man, but whatever it was was inaccessible to him at the moment. So many of his memories had been locked away years before.

  “Do I know you?”

  “Dwayne Pingston. I remember you when you were yay high,” he said, holding his hand palm down just below his belt buckle. “I don’t blame you for not remembering me from those days, but I was close to your old man.”

  Brandon nodded. Dwayne Pingston.

  The Dwayne Pingston who Brandon had discovered butchering a deer out of season in the garage. The Dwayne Pingston who’d lifted Brandon off his feet and hung him by his belt from a nail while he finished deboning the animal.

  “This is my lovely wife, Peggy,” Pingston said, nodding the brim of his hat to her as she struggled to her feet next to the car and smoothed out her dress.

  “My son, Tater,” he said, and the man in the jeans and ball cap looked up.

  “And my buddy Wade,” he said, not looking over at the bald man.

  “Nice to meet you all,” Brandon said. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  “I guess you could say I’m here to collect a debt,” Pingston said.

  Brandon tilted his head. “A debt? You know the old man passed a couple of weeks ago, right?”

  “Oh, I heard,” Pingston said. “They wouldn’t let me out to attend the service, though.”

  “What kind of debt?” Brandon asked. “I’m officially going through his books now, and he didn’t leave much of anything.”

  “Tell you what,” Pingston said, moving over to Peggy and sliding his arm around her. “Why don’t you invite us inside so we can discuss it? If you haven’t noticed, it’s snowing right now and it’s getting colder by the minute. I nearly forgot how much I didn’t miss Big Piney until I stepped outside this morning and the hairs in my nose froze up.”

  Pingston started to lead Peggy toward the front steps and the two other men fell in behind them.

  “Hold it,” Brandon said. “My wife’s inside, and we really weren’t planning on any company. She’s expecting our first baby, and now isn’t a good time. How about we discuss whatever it is you want to talk about tomorrow in town?”

  “I wanted to talk about it with you today,” Pingston said, still smiling, still guiding Peggy toward the porch, “but when I called they said the phone was disconnected. So we had to come out in person. I didn’t realize Peggy’s Jeep had a headlight out. Those are the kinds of maintenance things I used to take care of before they sent me away.”

  Sent me away, Brandon repeated to himself in his head. They wouldn’t let me out to attend the service.

  “Really,” he said. “You folks need to get back in your car and we’ll meet tomorrow. How about breakfast or something?”

  “Won’t work,” Pingston said, withdrawing his smile. “I got to hit the road first thing in the morning. I’m only here for the night.”

  “That’s not my problem,” Brandon said. “Look, there’s going to be a legal process in regard to everything my dad left behind. You need to contact his lawyer about your debt—not me.”

  Pingston shook his head. “Brandon, you’re the one I want to see. We don’t need no lawyers in this.”

  Wade with the shaved head stepped out from in back of Pingston. “Open the door,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  His glare sent a chill through Brandon that had nothing to do with the temperature outside. Wade was tall and solid and the bulk of his coat couldn’t hide his massive shoulders.

  “Give me a minute,” Brandon said. “Let me talk to my wife.”

  “Don’t take all day,” Pingston said. “It ain’t getting any warmer.”

  Brandon entered the house and shut the door. Marissa was still behind the couch, rubbing her belly almost manically.

  “They want—”

  “I heard,” she said.

  “I’m not sure what to do,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Pingston used to work for the old man. My guess is he wants back pay or something like that. Knowing the way my dad was, they probably had some kind of dispute.”

  “What did he mean, they wouldn’t let him out to attend the funeral?”

  Brandon shrugged, because he didn’t want to answer.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked, incredulous. “Invite them in?”

  “What choice do I have?”

  Before she could answer, the front door opened and Tater poked his head in.

  “Look, folks, my mom is standing out there in the freezing snow. She’s gonna get pneumonia and die if she don’t come in here and warm up.”

  Brandon looked from Marissa to Tater to Marissa. She was saying No with her eyes.

  “Come on, Mama,” Tater said over his shoulder. Then he walked in and stepped aside so Peggy and Pingston could enter, one after the other. They couldn’t do it shoulder to shoulder because Peggy was too wide.

  “Thank you kindly,” she wheezed. Her cheeks were flushed and she labored the four steps it took to reach a recliner, where she settled in with a loud sigh.

  Pingston came in behind her and looked around the house. Wade slipped in behind him and shut the door.

  “Hasn’t changed much,” Pingston said, removing his hat and holding it by the brim with both hands in front of him.

  “Please,” Brandon said, moving from Marissa closer to Pingston. “There’s nothing I can do for you. All I can do is make a recommendation to the lawyers on selling the assets and either splitting up the estate or selling it. I couldn’t write a check from his account if I wanted to.”

  Pingston smiled as he nodded his head. “That’s just blah-blah-blah to me, Brandon. We don’t need lawyers to settle up accounts. We can do this man-to-man.”

  Brandon didn’t know what to say.

  Wade had positioned himself in front of the door with his arms crossed over his chest. Tater stood behind Peggy and had opened his coat. Brandon wondered if Tater had a weapon tucked into the back of his Wranglers and had opened his coat to get at it more quickly.

  Suddenly Marissa said to Pingston, “You were in prison, weren’t you?” It was an accusation. “You just got out.”

  Pingston shook his head sadly and looked down at the hat in his hands. “I’m afraid so, ma’am. It isn’t something I’m proud of, but I paid my debt to society and now I’m back on the straight and narrow. Peggy here,” he said, nodding toward his wife, “waited for me for the past five years. She struggled, and it wasn’t fair to her. Now I’ve got to make things right with her and my boy.”

  “Make things right?” Brandon asked cautiously.
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  “Now you’re gettin’ it,” Pingston said.

  “So how do we make things right?”

  “You were in prison with him?” Marissa said to Wade.

  “We shared a cell,” Wade said. “We got released within a couple of days of each other last week. I’m just here to support my buddy Dwayne.”

  “Support him,” Marissa echoed.

  Brandon looked over at his wife and implored her with his eyes to please let him handle things. But she was glaring at Wade.

  “You people need to leave this house,” she said. “You have no right to be here.”

  Wade raised his eyebrows and shook his head. Nobody moved.

  Peggy asked Marissa, “How far are you along, honey?”

  It broke the tension slightly. Brandon looked on.

  “Seven and a half months,” Marissa said.

  “Boy or girl?” Peggy asked Marissa.

  “A little boy. Our first.”

  “Well, God bless you,” Peggy said. Her face was strangely blank, and it didn’t match her words, Brandon thought. “The last thing you need right now is a bunch of stress in your life, I’d bet.”

  Marissa agreed with a pained smile.

  “That’s what I thought,” Peggy said. “So what I’d suggest to you is to talk to your husband here to get this thing over with. Then we’ll all be out of your hair and you can get on with your life. How’s that sound?”

  As Marissa thought it over, Pingston said to Brandon, “It ain’t gonna be as bad as you think. It’s going to be downright painless.”

  Brandon and Marissa exchanged a glance, and Brandon said, “So what is it you want with us?”

  “First of all,” Pingston said, “I need to tell you a little story. It’ll explain why I’m here.”

  “Go ahead,” Marissa said.

  “Six years ago this area was booming with oil-field workers. That’s before the bottom dropped out of the market. I’m sure you know about that,” he said. “Them boys had more money than they knew what to do with, and for a short time there were four banks in town. Now we’re back to one, as you probably noticed.

  “The old man resented the hell out of the oil boom, because none of it was on his land. Plus he didn’t like it that a bunch of out-of-staters had moved into the valley and they were acting like big shots. As far as your old man was concerned, they didn’t deserve to run the county.

  “Well, somebody got clever and hit one of the Brink’s trucks after it picked up a bunch of cash at one of those fly-by-night banks they had then. Nobody got killed, but the driver and the guard were pistol-whipped and tied up and the thieves stole all the cash out of the back of the truck. Something like a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, if I recall. It was quite the big story in Sublette County: an armed robbery at gunpoint.”

  “I remember reading something about that,” Brandon said. Maybe in one of Sally’s letters?

  “At the time it happened I’d just told the old man I was quitting the ranch to seek employment in the oil patch,” Pingston said. “I thought to myself, why should I bust my ass for that mean old bastard when I could get a job driving a truck or delivering tools for twice what I’m making out here? Peggy deserved a better life, and Tater was in junior high at the time. So why should I put up with that old bastard?”

  Brandon shrugged.

  Pingston continued, “The old man didn’t like that. He knew the word was out up and down this valley that he was a bastard to work for and he didn’t pay much. So he said he needed help around here and he wouldn’t let me quit. He said I had to pay off all this damage he claimed I’d caused when I worked for him—wrecked trucks, cattle that died during the winter, anything he could think up at the time and pin on me. You know how he was,” Pingston said.

  “I do,” Brandon said.

  “I told him to shove all that up his ass,” Pingston said. “I didn’t owe him a damned thing. You can imagine how well he took it. The last I seen of him, he was limping toward this house to get his gun so he could kill me. He was so mad smoke was coming out of his ears. So I jumped in a ranch truck and beat it toward town. It was that old ’48 Dodge Power Wagon that had been here forever. I figured I’d leave it in town for the old man to pick up later.”

  Pingston paused and looked around the room. Brandon guessed that Wade, Peggy, and Tater were about to hear a story they’d heard many times before even if Brandon and Marissa hadn’t.

  “The sheriff’s department intercepted me before I could even get to Big Piney,” Pingston said. “Lights flashing, sirens going, the whole damn deal. The old man must’ve reported a stolen Power Wagon, and they had me on that. But before I could explain I was fleeing for my life they had me face-down in the dirt and I was being arrested for that armed robbery and for hurting them two Brink’s guys.”

  Pingston lowered his voice now for effect. He said, “The old man said it was me who did that Brink’s job. He told the sheriff some bullshit about me being gone the day it happened and that he’d suspected it all along. If you remember the sheriff and the judge here at the time, you know that ranchers like your old man pretty much told them what to do and they did it.

  “Supposedly the sheriff found a pistol in my duffel bag in the truck that matched what was used in the armed robbery, but I always suspected he planted it there after the fact. I was in prison in Rawlins at the Wyoming State Pen before I knew what hit me, just because I quit my job here. Your old man put it to me, and hard.

  “To make matters worse,” Pingston said, “Peggy had to get a job to survive, and the only one she could find was at the senior center.”

  Peggy spoke up. “So two or three times a week I had to ladle the gravy on your old man’s lunch and pretend I didn’t know what he’d done to my Dwayne,” she said. “There he was with that big roll of cash he always kept in his pocket for buying drinks for politicians, but he never missed a free lunch at the senior center with old folks who didn’t have two nickels to rub together. I’d look out from behind the counter at your old man holding court with his cronies and think of my Dwayne down in Rawlins surrounded by murderers and rapists.”

  She turned to Marissa. “Honey, you may think having a child is hard. But what’s really hard is putting a fake smile on your face and serving the man who put your husband away.”

  Wade shifted his weight and sighed. It was obvious he was bored by the story he’d no doubt heard a thousand times before.

  Brandon said, “If you’re asking me to make you whole out of the proceeds of the ranch, I don’t know how I can do it. There are liens on the equipment and the cattle, and the old man hadn’t paid any bills in months. He might have always had a roll of cash on him, but he didn’t use it to pay off his debts. All those people are filing claims, and they get their money first when everything gets sold. I sympathize, but I just don’t know what I can do.”

  Pingston stared at Brandon for a long time. Finally he said, “I kind of figured that.”

  “So why are you here?” Marissa asked, exasperated.

  “I want that ’48 Power Wagon,” Pingston said.

  “What?” Brandon asked. A wave of relief flooded through him, but he tried hard to conceal it.

  “It’s a goddamn classic,” Wade said.

  Pingston nodded and said, “People don’t realize what a workhorse that truck was. The greatest ranch vehicle ever made. Three-quarter-ton four-by-four perfected in WW Two. After the war, all the rural ex-GIs wanted one here like they’d used over there. That original ninety-four-horse, two-hundred-and-thirty-cubic-inch flathead six wouldn’t win no races, but it could grind through the snow and mud, over logs, through the brush and willows. It was tough as a damn rock. Big tires, high clearance, a winch on the front. We could load a ton of cargo on that son of a bitch and still drive around other pickups stuck in a bog.”

  Brandon shook his head, puzzled. “That’s what you want?”

  Pingston nodded. “Look, I suppose you’re thinking that if I restored that be
ast to its former glory, I could make a lot of money on it, and you’re right. I’ve seen where some of ’em sell for seventy thousand or more in cherry condition. But I don’t give a crap about that. I want to fix it up and get it running. This one is too damned beat up to ever amount to much.”

  “Then why do you want it?”

  “It means something to me,” Pingston said. “That was the truck I drove every damned day I worked on this ranch. Twelve years, Brandon. I know that truck as intimately as I do Peggy.”

  Peggy smirked at that. Brandon thought that odd.

  Pingston said, “I know when to downshift going up a vertical hill, how to power through six-foot drifts, how to use that winch to pull myself up the side of a damned cliff. If I ever go elk hunting again, that’s the vehicle I want to take.

  “Plus,” Pingston said with a wink, “it’s the truck I borrowed to go to town when your old man sent me up the river. I like the idea of that old bastard rolling in his grave knowing I’m riding around in high style in the Power Wagon he owned all his life. It gives me a small measure of satisfaction, if you know what I mean.”

  Marissa said, “If we give you the truck, will you all go away?”

  “That was rude,” Peggy said. She folded her thick arms over her bosom.

  Brandon said, “I should discuss this with my brothers and sister, you know. We all have a say in how the assets are divided up.”

  That’s when Wade stepped forward and said, “We don’t have the time.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Brandon saw Marissa tense up and move back.

  Brandon said, “If I give it to you, how are you going to get it out of here? I doubt it’ll start after all these years. I don’t even know if it still has a motor in it—or tires. And I don’t even know if it’s in the shed out there.”

  “Oh, we brung a tow rope in the Jeep,” Pingston assured him.

  Brandon hoped that the Power Wagon was not only in the shed but also in good enough shape for them to take it away that night. He was still basking in the relief he’d felt at the words I want that ’48 Power Wagon.