Cold Dish wl-1

by Craig Johnson

  5

  I left the house around 5:30 in the morning and succeeded in avoiding Red Road Contracting and Henry. I wasn’t sure if he was going to make me run two days in a row, but I didn’t want to risk it. It was partly cloudy, but the sun was making a valiant attempt at clearing the sky, and it promised to be warmer than it had been in the last few days. I sometimes thought about moving south, following the geese, shooting through the pass at Raton, and seeing if there were any sheriff openings in New Mexico. Good Mexican food was hard to come by north of Denver. I liked Taos, but Hatch was probably my speed.

  I took 14 to Lower Piney and cut across 267 to Rock Creek, slowly tacking my way up the foothills. I thought about Vonnie and missed her a little bit. It was probably way too early for that. I was going through that little bit of worry that I had said or done something wrong and that she might not want to see me again. I saw me every day, and I wasn’t so sure I was that fond of my company. I promised myself that I would call her up and make a real date, maybe a lunch of lessening expectations.

  As far as I knew, Ruby hadn’t gotten any response from the Espers. I was going to have to swing out to their place and square things up on the way back from Omar’s unless I radioed in and got Vic to do it. With Turk back in Powder, I was shorthanded. I thought about Turk and forced my train of thought elsewhere. It was a big train. I waited till I got to the top of one of the ridges to tell Ruby to send Ferg out to the Esper place. She reminded me that I hadn’t taken my sweatpants and that Vic’s feelings were probably going to be hurt.

  “Is she there?”

  “Talking on the phone with Cheyenne.”

  “This early? Well, tell her that the evidence stuff is on my desk from…”

  “She’s already got that.”

  “Oh.” I waited for a moment, but she didn’t continue. “Anything you need from me?”

  “Like where you are?”

  “Yep, like that.”

  “No, we don’t care.” I thought I heard someone laughing in the background, but I wasn’t sure.

  Palace Omar was made of logs, same as mine, but that was where the likeness ended. Unlike Vonnie’s, you had to park in a circular holding area after being buzzed through the gate, which was about a mile back down the asphalt road. No one said anything, but the gate had slowly risen, and I smiled and waved at the little black video camera. I looked up at the house and wondered how many cameras were on me now. The place was impressive, as multimillion-dollar mansions go. The architects from Montana had used a combination of massive hand-hewn logs and architectural salvage to produce a combination of old and new and all expensive.

  I knocked and made faces at the security camera at the door, but no one answered. Entering Omar’s house unannounced was less than appealing, but I could hear a television blaring in the depths of the structure and decided to risk it. I pushed open the doors, listened to the satisfied thump as the metal cores closed, and walked into the two-story atrium that made up the entryway. I counted the mounted heads that were hung down the great hallway to the kitchen in the back. There were twenty-three. I knew the inside of the house pretty well; I had followed Omar and Myra through the majority of it while listening to their running, psychosis-ridden monologues on how they were going to kill each other.

  As I made my way toward the kitchen, the sound from the TV became more distinct, and I was pretty sure some pretty dramatic lovemaking was going on. Obviously Omar got a lot better reception than I did. When I got there, Jay Scherle, Omar’s head wrangler, was standing at the counter and watching a watered-down version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which I gathered was taking place in a hayloft somewhere. Every time the leading lady became overcome with passion, the camera would drift to the casually billowing curtains at a window. Jay was dressed for work, complete with chaps and spurs. I asked if Omar was up. His eyes didn’t leave the screen. “I’ve worked here for seven years, and I’ve never seen the son of a bitch sleep.”

  I nodded and watched Jay watch the flip-down flat screen that was hung under the kitchen cabinets. I wasn’t sure if D. H. Lawrence would have recognized his work, but the plastic surgeon specializing in breast enhancement would have recognized his.

  “Where is he?”

  “Out back, getting set up.”

  I looked at the screen, a curtain again. “Set up for what?”

  “Hell if I know… took a pumpkin with him.” After a moment, he spoke again. “You ever seen a barn with so many damn curtains?”

  I walked through the french doors Jay had indicated with his chin, across an expansive deck, and down a stone walkway to a courtyard walled in by four feet of moss rock topped with Colorado red granite, but I didn’t see Omar. I was about to go back in when I noticed a couple of sand bags, shooter’s glasses, and a spotting scope laying on the picnic table at the other side of the wall. My eyes continued up, and I saw Omar at the foot of a hill about a quarter mile away. He had been watching me and slowly raised his hand. I wasn’t sure if it was an invitation, but I started walking, my breath still blowing clouds of mist into the warming, easterly breeze.

  When I got there, he was putting the finishing touches on the vegetable by adjusting it in the lawn chair just so and placing a thick piece of rubber behind it. Beside him on the ground lay a Sioux rifle scabbard, which was completely beaded with eagle feathers leading from the edge all the way to the butt. If the Game and Fish knew Omar had real eagle feathers, they’d come take them away and slap Omar with a $250 fine. I figured Omar probably lost that much in the daily wash. It was brain-tanned leather, as soft as a horse’s nose, and the color of butter melting in the sun. The minute glass trading beads were Maundy yellow, a faded mustard tint I recognized as over a hundred years old. He picked up the scabbard, and we started back for the house.

  “How far have we gone?” He was wearing a black, ripstop down jacket and now favored Ted Nugent over Custer.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Use the range finder.”

  I aimed the little scope gadget he had given me at the pumpkin that was sitting in the aged lawn chair. The distance did nothing to diminish the ludicrous image, especially with the little green indicator numbers jumping back and forth in the lower-right-hand corner. I lowered the scope and looked at him. “You tell me, Great White Hunter.”

  He looked back across the slight grade at the squash luxuriating at the base of the hillside. “Three hundred and one yards.”

  I smiled. “Close. Three hundred.”

  “Step back here where I am.” He continued walking as I stood in his spot and looked back. The range finder read 301, and the small hairs on the back of my neck stirred. He stopped and looked back at me and then unbuttoned three Indian-head nickels from the scabbard and slowly slid the rifle from its protective covering. The sheath looked like the skin of a snake coming off and what glistened in the early morning sun looked twice as deadly as any rattler I had ever seen.

  The eighth-century pacifist Li Ch’uan branded the use of gunpowder weapons as tools of ill omen. “Eighteen-seventy-four?”

  “Yep.”

  “. 45–70?”

  “Yep.” He handed me the rifle and crossed his arms. “You ever seen one up close?”

  “Not a real one.”

  It was heavy, and it seemed to me that if you missed what you were shooting at, you could simply run it down and beat it to death, whatever it was. The barrel was just shy of three feet long. I gently lowered the lever and dropped the block, looking through thirty-two inches of six groove, one in eighteen-inch, right-hand twist. From this vantage point, the world looked very small indeed. The action was smooth and precise, and I marveled at the workmanship that was more than 125 years old. The design on the aged monster was a falling block, breech-loading single shot. The old-timers used to take a great deal of pride in the fact that a single shot was all it took. The trigger was a double set, and the sights were an aperture rear with a globe-style front. I pulled the weapon from my shoulder and
read the top of the barrel: Business Special.

  What kind of special business had Christian Sharps intended? In 1874 the rifle had been adopted by the military because it could kill a horse dead as a stone at six hundred yards-six football fields. Congregational minister Henry Ward Beecher pledged his Plymouth church to furnish twenty-five Sharps rifles for use in bloody Kansas. Redoubtably, the preacher may have done more for the cause of abolitionism with his Beecher’s bibles than did his sister Harriet with her Uncle Tom’s Cabin. But it was John Brown who brought the Sharps to a bloody birth at Harpers Ferry, and a nation’s innocence was lost at Gettysburg. After the Civil War, free ammunition had been handed out to privateer hunters to usher the vast, uncontrollable buffalo herds into extinction. Then there were the Indians. Good and bad, these actions had earned the Sharps buffalo rifle the title of one of the most significant weapons in history and in language. Sharps shooter: sharp-shooter. “What makes you think…?”

  “The amount of lead, cartridge lubricant, no powder burns… A feeling.” He turned and walked toward the house, the rifle scabbard thrown over his shoulder. After a moment, he stopped. “Three hundred and seventy.” Big deal.

  I was sitting at the picnic table and contemplated muzzle velocity and trajectory sightings at 440 yards. The Sharps was now wedged between three small sand bags, and a much larger spotting scope sat atop a three-pronged pedestal at my elbow. Omar returned with two cups of coffee, at my request. The cups were thick buffalo china with his brand on them, and it was really good coffee.

  “Jay still enjoying the matinee?”

  “You know, I’ve seen men ruined by drink, drugs, and Dodge pickup trucks, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen one ruined by soft-core porn.” He nudged his mug a little farther over and leaned his elbows on the table. “You’d think he’d never seen a set of tits before.”

  “Amazing what they can do with special effects these days.” I looked down the three-foot barrel. “Trajectory?”

  “Like a rainbow, and it hits like a twelve-pound sledgehammer at fourteen hundred feet per second.”

  “Sounds slow and painful.”

  The noise he made was not kind. “Like my marriage.”

  I looked across the range and unbuttoned the top button of my uniform coat. The sun was getting higher, and the warmth felt good on my back. “You think this is what did it, huh?”

  “Reasonably sure.”

  “We need to broaden our search grid.”

  “By a wide margin.” He pushed the mug even farther away; maybe he didn’t drink coffee. “If you want, I’ll go up there and do a walk around. Might be less intrusive than Search and Rescue.”

  I wondered why he was being so helpful. “You curious about this case?”

  “A little.”

  “I’d have to send somebody with you.”

  He laughed. “Does this mean I’ve made the list?”

  “Don’t feel so honored, everybody with two ears and a trigger finger has made it so far.”

  “Maybe I can help you to shorten it.” He looked out at the doomed pumpkin. “Well…”

  “Well, what?”

  He nudged the butt of the rifle toward me with his fingertips. “I’ve shot it before. Your turn.”

  By the time I got back to the paved county road we were in a full-blown Chinook, and the temperature had risen above sixty-five degrees. I regretted not taking off my jacket before I’d gotten in the Bullet and flipped the heater over to vent. The Esper place was out near the junkyard south of town, so I hopped on the interstate and blew by Durant. I was about a mile past the exit when I remembered that I had told Ruby to send Jim. I figured I’d just keep going and radioed in to tell Ruby to tell Ferg I’d just take care of it myself.

  “I left a message at his place and on his cell. It’s before noon, so he’s probably out fishing.” Static. “When are you going to get a mobile phone?”

  “Then we wouldn’t be able to say cool things like ‘roger that.’ ”

  More static. “I’m willing to make the sacrifice.” Static. “You better get back here and let the Ferg go round up the Espers, Vic says she’s got news from DCI.”

  I was already looking for a turnaround and spotted one at the top of the next rise. “Nothing she wants to tell me over the radio?”

  Silence for a moment. “She says she’d tell you over a mobile phone.”

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes.” I whipped through the official vehicle crossover, checked my speed, and automatically looked around for the HPs; they love to give tickets to sheriffs.

  I parked the Bullet and reached over onto the passenger seat to get the small satchel Omar had given me. Vic was seated across from Ruby in one of our plastic civilian chairs with her feet propped up on Ruby’s desk. Her legs were barely long enough to make the reach. It didn’t look comfortable, but it was Vic.

  Big smile. “How you doin’, faddass?”

  “I’m sorrowed to see the time spent in the echoing halls of criminal investigation have done nothing to curb your native vulgarity.”

  They looked at each other, and Vic raised her eyebrow. “He are a college graduate.”

  I slapped her small feet and continued on to my office. She followed after me and watched as I eased into my chair. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “I’ve been running.” I was watching, but her expression didn’t change.

  “Bullshit.”

  “Honest.” I didn’t have to tell her how far.

  “How far?” I smiled at her. “I mean from the Bullet into the office doesn’t really count.”

  “Sure it does.”

  “Or up to the drive-through to get more beer.”

  “It’s a cumulative effect, right?” She tossed another registered packet onto my desk; this one was from the Store. “And this is?”

  “You’re king of the big words this morning, you tell me.” She turned and swaggered out of the office. “I’m getting another cup of coffee. Should I get you one, or do you want to run out here and get your own?”

  I was reading the cover letter when she put my coffee in front of me. She sat in the chair opposite and now propped her feet up on my desk. I looked at the Browning tactical boots laced up past her ankles. I followed them up to her big, tarnished gold eyes, one of which winked at me over the Philadelphia Police mug. “Glad to have me back, aren’tcha?”

  I grunted and turned the letter around for her to see. “We have a state ornithologist?”

  She sipped her coffee. “Makes you proud, huh?”

  “Haliaeetus leucocephalus?”

  “Sounds dirty, doesn’t it?

  I shook my head. “Boy, are you in a mood.”

  “I actually got some sleep; you ought to try it sometime.” She continued to look at me over the lip of her mug.

  “Are you going to help me out with this gobbledygook, or do I really have to read this?”

  “Haliaeetus leucocephalus, the national bird of los estados unidos.”

  I read a little farther. “ Meleagris gallopavo?”

  The gold rolled to the ceiling. “Think Thanksgiving.”

  “Turkey?”

  “The feather they found on scene with Cody Pritchard.”

  “So, they’re saying that it wasn’t an eagle feather, that it was a wild turkey?” I let that sit awhile. “I wasn’t aware that eagles or turkeys were suspect; I thought we had all agreed that the gunshot wound might have had something to do with the cause of death.”

  She uncrossed her legs, put her feet on the floor, and sat her cup on the edge of my desk. “Wait, it gets better.”

  “If you bring Cock Robin into this, I’m going to send you back to Cheyenne.”

  “It was a turkey disguised as an eagle.” She reached across the desk and reopened the extended envelope, plucking out the feather, and handing it to me in its cellophane wrapper. “It’s a fake.”

  I turned on my desk lamp and examined it under the light. It looked real enough to me.r />
  “They sell ’em all over the place, even got ’em down at the pawn shop with all the shells and beads and shit.” I thought about the eagle feathers hanging from Omar’s rifle sheath. “They use them for crafts and such. You can fit your thumbnail into the spline of a turkey feather, but not a bird of prey like an eagle.”

  Sure enough, my thumbnail fit in the spline ridge. “What was Cody Pritchard doing with fake eagle feathers?” She sat back in her chair. “You don’t think…?”

  “I do.”

  I looked at the feather again; it was about a foot long and the quill was about a quarter inch thick. It was dark about three-quarters of the way up, then solid white where it had been bleached. “A calling card.”

  “Knowing Cody’s predilection for all things Native American, I would say that’s a safe bet.”

  I continued to look at the faux feather. “Damn, I don’t like the direction this is taking.”

  Her eyes dropped; she didn’t like it either. “I confiscated some samples from the pawn shop and FedExed them down to Cheyenne to check the dye lots, but they said not to hold our breath. They said the majority of Native Americans just dip them in Clorox themselves.” She laced her fingers together and leaned forward. “I could get some more samples from over in Sheridan. Bucking Buffalo Supply Company over on Main Street carries them, too. I don’t know about Gillette.”

  I held up the feather and looked at it. “Working on the supposition that this is a calling card, who should we say is calling?”

  “Good question. I guess this means we can keep our shingle out.”

  “Yep, business is good.” I turned the feather in my hand. “All right, bearing this in mind, we’re looking at a murder.”

  “Yeah.” She looked resigned.

  “But we’re going to have to go back and check the feather thing with Cody’s family, friends, and such.”

  “Let me guess who’s gonna have to do that.”

  “I can stick the Ferg on it. His fishing career is about to get cramped.” I held the feather up between us. “This immediately points to Indian involvement.” I looked at the feather some more. “Well, on the surface of it.”