Cold Skies

by Thomas King

  The last monitoring station looked exactly like all the rest. Wellhead. Cyclone fence. Moses got out of the truck slowly and sat down on the running boards.

  “In the old days, much of the grass around here was thick and tall,” said Moses. “The tall grass was my favourite. But there was other grass that was shorter and there was some that was in the middle.”

  “Not much of the tall stuff left,” said Cooley.

  “My mother knew all the grasses,” said Moses. “She paid attention to the land.”

  “Auntie knows the grasses,” said Cooley. “It’s one of the things that women do.”

  Moses stood and walked to the fence. “If my mother was still alive, I could ask her about this.”

  At first, Thumps didn’t see it. And then he did. About a hundred yards from the wellhead, there were six perfectly straight mounded swatches of new-growth short grass, thick lines drawn on the prairies, each line about fifty yards long and about twenty yards wide.

  “This grass doesn’t belong here,” said Cooley.

  “No.” Moses reached down and touched the earth. “This grass is White man grass.”

  Thumps walked one of the trench lines. It was perfectly straight with squared corners. “This was made by a machine.”

  “Yes,” said Moses. “The White man’s machines are everywhere.”

  “My truck is a White man’s machine,” said Cooley.

  “I prefer a horse,” said Moses, “but a truck can certainly be handy.”

  Thumps tested the surface of each trench. The earth was soft. The trenches or furrows or whatever they were had been dug deep, and the earth hadn’t settled.

  “Tire tracks over here,” said Cooley. “Fresh.”

  The tracks were faint, slight depressions on the grass and dirt.

  “Big tire,” said Cooley. “Truck or an SUV.”

  Moses turned to Thumps. “So maybe you can help us.”

  “Help you with what?”

  “You’ve lived with the White man for much of your life,” said Moses, pointing his lips at the trenches. “Maybe you know what these are.”

  “No idea,” said Thumps. “But someone went to some trouble to cover them up.”

  “We thought it might have something to do with the testing,” said Moses, “but this is the only station with these marks.”

  “Moses said we should ask you,” said Cooley, “before we considered the question of aliens.”

  “I don’t think aliens made these.”

  “No,” said Moses, “aliens would have used better grass.”

  Thumps tried to find a discernable pattern to the trenches, but nothing came to mind. The tire tracks were interesting. Someone had come out here in the last few days.

  “It could be a burial site for the mob,” said Cooley. “But it’s a four-day drive from New Jersey to here.”

  “We could ask Mr. Lester or Dr. Knight,” said Moses, “but they’re dead.”

  “Oliver Parrish might know,” said Thumps.

  “See,” said Moses. “I told you your uncle wouldn’t let us down.”

  COOLEY AND MOSES dropped him off at Claire’s place. Thumps checked the house on the off chance she had returned. He hadn’t expected that she would. She’d be busy with the conference at Buffalo Mountain all day and into the night. And it was just as well. He had no idea what to say.

  The Volvo was sleeping next to the barn and didn’t look to be in any hurry to wake up. Thumps set the envelope on the passenger seat beside him. He didn’t plan to look at Roxanne’s list any time soon.

  Maybe never.

  Like most of the important things in life, he knew he was going to have to figure this one out on his own.

  Thirty-Three

  Thumps pulled up in front of the sheriff’s office and parked in the only spot on the street that didn’t have any shade. He wasn’t sure how he was going to tell Duke that he had lost the envelope with the emails and the photos. In his defence, he would point out that it wasn’t his fault, that he had been robbed, but that confession would make him look more incompetent than victim.

  When he caught up with Jayme Redding, the two of them were going to have a meaningful conversation.

  The sheriff had changed out of his tan uniform into slacks and a short-sleeve shirt. He had a tie knotted around his neck that looked as comfortable as a hangman’s noose.

  “We’re still waiting for the stomach-content results,” said Duke, “but Beth did some fancy test with urine and she’s pretty sure that both Lester and Knight were drugged.”

  “Rohypnol?”

  “That’s her guess.”

  “So Lester didn’t kill Knight.”

  “Lester died of a coronary,” said Hockney. “Man has a history of heart problems. The drug probably triggered a massive seizure.”

  “Which is why he was dead before he was shot.”

  “Exactly,” said Duke. “You get a chance to look at those emails and at the stuff on the thumb drive?”

  “Sort of.”

  The sheriff’s head came up. “Sort of?”

  “I looked at the photographs on the thumb drives, and I was going to look at the hard copies, but I lost the envelope.”

  “Lost the envelope?”

  “Actually,” said Thumps, “it was stolen.”

  Duke waited.

  “By Redding.”

  Duke waited some more.

  “I caught her coming out of Knight’s room at the Wagon Wheel.”

  “Our crime scene.”

  “That’s right,” said Thumps. “So, we went to Dumbo’s for doughnuts and coffee, and when I wasn’t looking, she took the envelope from my car.”

  “Okay,” said the sheriff, “let’s recap. You saw Ms. Redding come out of a police crime scene and instead of arresting her, you took her out for doughnuts and coffee, and then, in a gesture of good will and generosity, you let her help herself to police property. Is that accurate?”

  “I like the tie,” said Thumps. “Goes nicely with the shirt.”

  “Don’t change the subject,” said Duke. “You actually ate at Dumbo’s?”

  “Just a doughnut and coffee,” said Thumps.

  “And while you were enjoying your caffeine and sugar fix, Redding took the envelope?”

  “She pretended to go to the bathroom and slipped out the back,” said Thumps. “I think Cruz picked her up.”

  “So now it’s Cruz and Redding?”

  “Somehow they’re connected.”

  “God, but I love conspiracy theories.” Hockney sighed. “Deanna Heavy Runner called. Left a message for you.”

  “For me?”

  “Something about a practicum?” Duke didn’t bother to try to hide his annoyance. “Said that Mr. Parrish and Mr. Austin are having lunch at Buffalo Mountain, in case we wanted to talk to them?”

  “You go.”

  Hockney stood and grabbed a sports jacket from the back of the chair. “Can’t,” he said. “Have to go to a council meeting. Besides, it’s good practice for you.”

  “I’m going home.”

  “Someone’s going to have to sign off on Heavy Runner’s practicum,” said Duke. “You want to be the one to tell Roxanne that you wouldn’t help her sister?”

  Thumps felt a cold front pass over his body.

  “I hear Roxanne doesn’t have a well-developed sense of humour.” Duke struggled into his jacket. “Not real forgiving either.”

  “That’s low.”

  “It’s the job talking.” Hockney opened the door and let the spring light stream in. “It’s not me.”

  “Sure sounds like you.”

  “You say that,” said the sheriff, “because you don’t understand the complexities of personal interaction and the dynamics of group motivation.”

  THUMPS LEANED BACK and considered the new curtains on the window. Here wasn’t where he wanted to be, but all in all, the sheriff’s office wasn’t bad. It was cool and quiet. He might even find a cozy cell and lock the d
oor behind him.

  Outside he could hear the vague sounds of the human herd going about its business. Work. Play. Raising children. Trying to make sense of life. And he wondered how many were dreaming of some new beginning, of sailing away, of striking out for the territories, telling themselves all the while that nothing would go wrong this time.

  Thirty-Four

  The inside of the Volvo was hot and sweaty. Thumps opened the doors and retreated to the shade of one of the trees that the council had planted to help beautify the city. While he waited for the car to exhale.

  Ginkgos and red maples.

  Neither tree was native to the area, but then neither were most of the people who lived in the state. According to the last census, over half of the population had moved in from places such as Colorado and Wyoming and Utah and eastern Washington.

  Predominately White, with Indians a distant second.

  As if that told you anything about people. Or trees for that matter.

  IT WAS AFTER TWO by the time Thumps turned off the highway and onto the winding road that led to Buffalo Mountain Resort. The complex had been designed by Douglas Cardinal and had won numerous awards for the innovative ways in which the architect had settled the casino, along with the conference centre and condominium complexes, into the natural contours of the land while maintaining views of the mountains and the Ironstone River as it raced down White Goat Canyon and leaped over the edge of the Bozeman Fault.

  The main parking lot was full, and Thumps had to leave the Volvo in the overflow area behind the administration offices. The car baulked as he squeezed it in between an overweight dump truck and a shifty panel van whose wheel wells had rusted away.

  “They won’t bite,” he told the car. “And I won’t be long.”

  But the Volvo wasn’t having any of it. It puttered and sputtered, the engine continuing to turn over slowly, as though it were gasping for breath or gearing up for a minor coronary. He was halfway to the conference centre before the car gave up the post-ignition dramatics and reluctantly settled into a sullen heap.

  DEANNA HEAVY RUNNER caught him as he crossed the atrium.

  “You’re late,” she said.

  Thumps had to take a moment to remember where he was. “I thought you worked at Shadow Ranch.”

  “Sure,” said Deanna, “but I don’t get enough hours there, so I work the special events here.”

  “Big conference?”

  “Big enough,” said Deanna. “But you missed Austin.”

  Thumps felt a little air go out of his body. He didn’t know what it was he had hoped to accomplish, but now that Boomper wasn’t here, there seemed no reason to have made the trip.

  “But Mr. Parrish is still in the restaurant.” Deanna’s eyes were sparkling with excitement. “He’s having dessert.”

  “Dessert?”

  “Crème brûlée,” said Deanna. “Did he kill those two people?”

  Thumps turned toward the dining room. And then he turned back. “Do you know how long their lunch was?”

  Deanna reached into a pocket and came up with a notebook, the kind that Thumps had carried when he had been a cop in Northern California.

  “Mr. Parrish was shown to his table at 11:47,” said Deanna. “Mr. Austin joined him at 12:13.”

  Thumps couldn’t help the smile.

  “Mr. Austin left at 1:52. Lola said that both men were friendly and that Mr. Parrish seemed especially happy.”

  “Lola?”

  “One of the servers,” said Deanna. “She’s a criminology major as well.”

  “So, you asked Lola to spy on Austin and Parrish?”

  “Observe,” said Deanna. “As of right now, I figure I’ve put in five and a half hours on the practicum. Does that sound right to you?”

  “Absolutely,” said Thumps.

  “Are you going to interrogate Mr. Parrish?”

  “Probably just talk.”

  Deanna moved closer and lowered her voice. “Can I watch?”

  OLIVER PARRISH WAS by the window. He had his cellphone out and was staring at it as though it contained the formula for eternal life. He didn’t look up until Thumps reached the table.

  “Mr. DreadfulWater.” Parrish slipped his cell into his pocket and gestured to the chair. “Please, sit down.”

  Parrish looked like a mannequin in the window of an upscale men’s store. A black knit T-shirt, a lightweight seersucker jacket, and a pair of charcoal slacks. All expensive. All complementary. He had exchanged his fancy wire-rim glasses for fancy red plastic ones.

  “No espresso,” said Parrish, “but the pie is decent.”

  “Good to know.”

  Thumps glanced at Parrish’s watch. It was a complicated-looking thing with gears and wheels showing, all encased in rose gold, and a black leather strap. He guessed it cost more than his house.

  “I’m told that Lester and Knight were murdered.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  Parrish poked at the brûlée with his spoon. “Is that why you’re here?”

  Thumps turned to see if one of the servers was nearby with a coffee pot. “You recall how many monitoring wells Orion has on Bear Hump?”

  Parrish shook his head. “Not my area,” he said. “Margo took care of all the science.”

  “So you’ve never been out to see the wells?”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Curiosity?”

  Parrish laced his fingers together and closed his eyes. “I manage the office. I tell the clerical staff what to do. I arrange meetings and make sure that everything runs smoothly. I don’t hike through the wilderness because I’m curious.”

  “Okay.”

  “Have you ever seen a monitoring well?” Parrish’s blue eyes flashed behind the red frames. “How exciting can they be?”

  Thumps raised his cup and a young woman hurried over with a coffee pot and a menu. “Would you like something to eat?” she asked.

  “Just coffee,” said Thumps.

  “I’ll take my bill,” said Parrish. “Put his coffee on it.”

  Thumps waited until the server left. “One last question. Do you know who built the monitoring wells?”

  Parrish frowned.

  “I mean, Orion isn’t in the business of digging wells and putting in monitoring stations, so it stands to reason that they would hire another company to do that. That would be your area, wouldn’t it?”

  “Hardly,” said Parrish. “Again, Knight took care of stuff like that. Or it might have been Lester. I’m just a glorified office boy.”

  Thumps tried the coffee. It was unremarkable.

  “I take it I’m a suspect,” said Parrish.

  “What?”

  “If Lester and Knight were murdered,” said Parrish. “I assume I’m a suspect.”

  “You’d have to ask the sheriff about that,” said Thumps.

  Parrish chuckled. For the mess that Orion Technologies found itself in, the man seemed inappropriately jolly and pleased with himself.

  “It’s rather exciting.” Parrish straightened his jacket. “Being a suspect. Tell me, what do suspects do?”

  “Sometimes they confess,” said Thumps. “Other times they make mistakes.”

  “Are Boomper Austin and his man Cruz also suspects?”

  “You’d have to ask the sheriff about that as well.”

  “And Jayme Redding?” Parrish was on his feet. “She seems . . . dangerous.”

  “You’d have to . . .”

  “Yes, ask the sheriff about that.” Parrish put his napkin on the table. “We should talk more often.”

  THE VOLVO DIDN’T seem happy to see him. The dump truck and the panel van were still there, and there was no indication that the three of them had even tried to find common ground. Thumps climbed in behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition. Nothing. He tried it again. Nothing.

  “I didn’t desert you.”

  Another turn. Another nothing.

  “I bet that
Jeep at Chivington’s would start first time.”

  Thumps worked the key once again, and the engine reluctantly turned over.

  “Thank you.”

  The engine sputtered and coughed, but it didn’t die. Thumps sat and waited for the car to sort itself out. Deanna was right. Parrish did seem inordinately happy. And the only thing that Thumps could think of that made people like Parrish happy was money.

  Thirty-Five

  The Volvo complained all the way back to Chinook. Thumps tried to ignore the car and concentrate on the puzzle that was James Lester and Margo Knight.

  Several years ago, Orion Technologies had leased land on the Bear Hump and put in monitoring wells to test their Resource Analysis Mapping technology. Lester and Knight had come to Chinook to report their findings, and Thumps found it hard to believe that they had come all this way if their system had proven to be a failure.

  So the technology worked.

  The water conference was to be a victory lap, a chance to show it off. Certainly the findings themselves would generate interest, but what Orion was hoping for was that the scientific data would start a bidding war. Instead someone had drugged and murdered the two principals and tried to make it look like a murder-suicide. Indeed, if Lester hadn’t had a wonky heart and died before he was shot, that’s probably what a coroner’s inquest would have concluded. A lover’s quarrel. A business disagreement. Corporate espionage. Greed.

  Take your pick. Case closed.

  Neither Lester nor Knight had been local, so it stood to reason that they had brought their destruction with them. Boomper Austin. Cisco Cruz. Oliver Parrish. Jayme Redding. Not that any of them had a logical motive for killing the two partners. At least, not one that was readily apparent.

  Of course, it could have been someone from the reservation, someone who was angry with the construction of the monitoring wells, but Thumps dismissed the idea. There had been no serious protests when the stations were first built and there were no protests now. Moreover, with the discovery of the Holland journal, the tribe was on the verge of winning the land claim and getting the Hump back. There was little to be gained, Thumps reasoned, with killing off a businessman and a scientist.

  Austin and/or Cruz were the most likely suspects. Austin had a strong interest in Orion’s technology. Cruz worked for Boomper. Would he kill for his boss? Thumps didn’t think so. Cruz seemed smarter than that. And why would Austin have Lester and Knight killed when he could just buy the technology or the company? Or both.