Cold Dish wl-1

by Craig Johnson

  I opened my eyes and looked up at him. “And?”

  He continued looking out the window. “He did not.”

  “What?”

  “Fly.”

  I thought about it. “Is that story supposed to make me feel better?”

  I looked up at the back of Omar’s head. He wasn’t happy about the current situation either. We were just cresting the meadows at the head of the valley, and the treetops swayed as the big rotors batted them away. I looked past the trees to the sky and made a few more calculations on the weather. I picked up the headset from the console beside me, held one of the cups to my ear, and adjusted the microphone. “Omar?”

  He turned a little in his seat, and I could see him speaking. “Yes?”

  “I figure about two hours before it hits?”

  He studied the horizon ahead. “Maybe three, you never know.”

  “Let’s make it two; I want to know.”

  He nodded his head, and my stomach did a half gainer with a full twist. I thought about all the light aircraft crashes I had investigated in my tenure as sheriff; it seemed like there was one every couple of years. Good pilots, good aircraft, but the mountain weather was always unpredictable. Between the thermals, downdrafts, and quirky winds, I wasn’t sure how anybody kept the things aloft except with a liberal application of positive thought. “Doesn’t this stuff bother you? Just a little bit?”

  He looked at me, slightly swaying back and forth with the movements of the helicopter. “No, it does not.” He watched me for a while longer.

  “What does bother you?”

  “You, thinking I might be capable of murder.”

  I looked at him, with the shotgun’s barrel between my eyes, and tried to figure if this was really something he wanted to talk about or if it was just another distraction. In the end, I decided that it didn’t matter. “You are capable of doing it.”

  He nodded. “Physically, technically, I suppose so.” He leaned forward a little. “But do you think I would?”

  “Do you think you’d be here if I did?”

  He considered this. “There is the old saying ‘Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.’ ”

  “You think you’re an enemy?”

  “I am trying to find out if you think I am.” He leaned back in the cream-colored leather and looked up at the monitors on the ceiling. “Sourdough Creek.”

  We were more than halfway there. “Try to look at it from my point of view.”

  He closed his eyes. Henry could surrender himself to a hypothetical, even if it included making himself the suspect in an ongoing murder investigation. He never worked on a single level. “MMO?”

  “Motive.”

  “One through three?”

  We had played this game numerous times, but never with Henry as the perpetrator. “One?”

  He was talking fast with his eyes still closed. “It cannot be conclusively shown that I have ever met Cody Pritchard or Jacob Esper or had reason to have feelings of ill will toward either of them.”

  Impossible. “Two.”

  “Not only have I met Cody Pritchard and Jacob Esper, but there are hard feelings between us since they took my niece into a basement and raped her repeatedly with their tiny, little, circumcised dicks, with bottles, and with baseball bats.”

  A chill was starting at the base of my spine. “Three.”

  “I was seen stalking through the courthouse after the trial with a Sharps. 45–70 under my arm and muttering something about Cody Pritchard and Jacob Esper canceling their subscriptions to Indian Country Today.” He opened his eyes. “I give motive a two.”

  “Two and a half.”

  He genuinely looked hurt. “Why?”

  “Al Monroe’s description of the perp, large with long, darkish hair.”

  He sighed and pulled the Weatherby back against his chest and folded his arms around it. “All right, two and a half, but I’m not going to be as easy on the next two.”

  “Means?”

  He thought. “One: I have been stricken by a strange, tropical disease, which has paralyzed both of my trigger fingers.”

  “Uh, huh. Two.”

  “Both of these boys have been killed by a caliber of weapon of which I am in possession.”

  “Three.”

  “Ballistics matches this weapon with the slugs that killed both of these boys.” He shrugged and looked out the window. “Two.”

  “Means, two.” I studied the lines on his face, and it seemed as if some of the joy had receded from the game. “Opportunity?”

  “One: I was in Vatican City with the pope at the time.”

  “Two.”

  “I was seen in the area of both murders, but no one can place me at the scene of either.”

  “Three.”

  “I am found standing over both bodies with aforementioned. 45–70 in my hands as both Cody and Jacob respectively gasp out their dying breaths.” He looked back at me. “Opportunity knocks twice?”

  I shook my head. “One and a half. You had the argument with Cody at the bar, not too distant from the Hudson Bridge, but nobody saw you on the mountain.”

  “Al Monroe’s description?”

  “Not a positive identification; anyway, we already used it on motive.”

  “What about the feathers?”

  “Circumstantial; fake feathers indicate a fake Indian to me.”

  He smiled. “I was late running yesterday.” I stared at him for a moment. “No sense playing the game if you can’t play it honestly. A two.”

  We sat there looking at each other. The theory was that three out of nine meant you should be looking for another suspect, and nine out of nine meant you started having the suspect’s mail forwarded to Rawlins. Prosecutors usually liked higher than a six before going to trial, so Henry’s six barely let him off the hook. “Looks like you’re innocent, of the murders at least.” I paused. “Honestly, who do you think is doing it?”

  “Honestly?” He sniffed and dropped his chin on his chest. “I think it is somebody we do not know. I think it is somebody we have not thought of.”

  “A sleeper?”

  “Yes. Somebody that is doing this for very strong reasons, something we do not yet understand.”

  I nodded. “Do you know Jim Keller very well?”

  He looked up, very slowly. “No.”

  “Which of the four boys do you consider the most innocent, and whose life’s been messed up by this the most for the least cause?”

  “Bryan.” His eyes stayed steady. “The clever thing gets in the way in your line of work, does it not?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Is Jim Keller a shooter?”

  “He’s supposedly in Nebraska hunting with some friends.”

  I watched him turn the wheels. “Would you run off and leave your son here with all these things going on?”

  “He never came to the trial.”

  The eyes didn’t move. “Neither did I.”

  “She wasn’t on trial.”

  “The hell she was not.”

  I didn’t feel like pursuing that line of answering. “I guess we are back to you. Know your rights?”

  “Yes, but it is the wrongs that keep getting me into trouble, Officer.”

  We watched the trees swing below as Omar and the department-store helicopter used a variation on the IFR, or I Follow Road, method of navigation to get us to Lost Twin. I thought for a moment and became aware that my stomach had settled. West Tensleep Lake lay at the base of the high valley that continued up the ridge until you got to Cloud Peak, the crowning jewel of the Bighorns. The Indians had named it Cloud Peak because, like most accentuated landmasses, it developed its own weather patterns. It hid from the plains below most of the time, peeking out at us from behind a haze of high-altitude cumulus.

  Omar was rounding off the edges to get the most out of his three-hundred-mile travel range. We had been up for the better part of an hour and, through the front glass of the passenger side
of the cockpit, I could make out a few cabins that had been built before the government had acquisitioned the land. We were now technically in Big Horn County, but the less said about that the better. By the time we followed Middle Tensleep Creek below Mather Peak we would be back in Absaroka County and my proper jurisdiction. You could feel the lift and roll as the chopper followed the creek toward Mirror Lake and continued up the small valley to our final destination, the Lost Twin. They were both sizable. I noticed Omar’s hand waving in the cockpit. I picked up the headset and adjusted the microphone. “Yep?”

  “You’ve got a call on the single band; I’ll patch it through.”

  A moment of static, and Ruby’s voice was there in my ear. “Walt, the Game and Fish called. They said there wasn’t anyone signed in at the trailhead to go to Lost Twin, but they said they’ve got a black Mazda Navajo with the plates Tuff-1 at the Tensleep parking lot.”

  “That part’s good news. Anything else?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Affirmative? Hey, you really are getting the hang of this.”

  “Walt, I was going back over the duty roster so that I could write the Roundup for the week. There was a complaint phoned in yesterday morning that sounds suspicious.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Tracy Roberts, Kent’s sister called; they’ve got that place down on Mesa road, on 115? Well, she and her dad were out feeding cows yesterday morning when the old man saw a porcupine that’d been doing some damage, so he makes her stop so he can shoot it.”

  “On the county road?”

  “I know, she wasn’t sure if she should call in, but she was angry. She says that somebody came roaring down the road and almost hit the old man.” I waited. “She said it was a green pickup, an old one.” I looked over at Henry, who continued to look out the window at the rushing scenery.

  “What time?”

  “A little after dawn.” I continued to look at my friend who had just moved above a six. “Walt, do you copy that?”

  “Yep, they get a look at the driver?”

  “No.”

  Radio silence for a few moments. “Roger that. Over and out.”

  I pulled the headphone and rested it on my lap and studied him. After a moment he turned. “Something?”

  I nodded slowly. “Yep.” I explained about the black Mazda and the lack of sign-in sheet but neglected to mention the sighting of a green truck very much like his.

  He smiled. “Lost Twin, how could it be anything else?”

  We continued on as I tried to harness the thoughts that made the helicopter seem as if it were standing still. I looked out the side window and watched. I felt the blood in my body shift forward as Omar slowed the helicopter from 160 to nothing and poised over the small ridge that separated the two lakes. I could easily make out the pattern the rotors made on the surface of the water, spiraling dimples that rotated outward to feathering waves that agitated the surrounding shores. Without my asking, Omar began a slow, clockwise rotation to give us the maximum view. Henry went to the door on the other side as I hunched against the Plexiglas window and searched the area for any signs of human activity below.

  The lakes are situated at the bottom of the Mather Peak Ridge that touches just over twelve thousand feet. Only through the valley in which we had made our approach could you make any kind of retreat and that was due northwest, the exact direction from which the storm was approaching. So far there were no real signs of the front, and I was beginning to think that the skin-of-our-teeth thing wasn’t going to be an issue when my attention was drawn to the higher peaks to the west. It was still coming; it had just paused for a moment to gather its breath to make the run up the west slope of the Bighorns. The surrounding area was going to be swept into a frozen maelstrom a little before dark. I had every intention of being out of there by then but, just in case, there were two six-thousand-cubic-inch packs lying on the floor between Henry and me. They had extra clothes, food, a tent, two sleeping bags, and enough emergency supplies to keep us going for a little less than a week. Every time I looked at the oncoming clouds, I nudged my boot up against the packs and felt better.

  “Hey.” It figured Henry would spot something first. I turned and looked into the cockpit; Omar had seen something too and pointed to an area in a small gully hidden among the trees directly beside the farthest lake. His arm was decorated with three turquoise bracelets. Style. The nose of the helicopter dipped as we accelerated to the area and hovered just above the treetops. There was a small, green tent there, a little two-person job, with a rain fly staked to the ground. It was holding its own against the pounding of the Bell.

  I reached up and tapped Omar on the shoulder. He nudged one of the ear cups forward and inclined his head toward me. “This thing got a PA?” He nodded and flipped the appropriate switches on the overhead console and motioned for me to pick up my headset and use the microphone. The helicopter had little bud vases, how could it not have an announcing system? I cleared my throat and listened to it echo from the surrounding mountainsides. I glanced up, as both Omar and Henry looked at me. “Shit.” This too echoed across the peaks.

  Henry shook his head. “You think he cannot hear the helicopter?”

  I frowned at him and continued. “George Esper?” The volume gave me more of a sense of authority, so I continued. “This is Sheriff Walt Longmire of Absaroka County. If you are down there, would you please reveal yourself to us?” We watched closely as nothing happened, and the only thing I could think of was how difficult it was going to be to find his body in a snowstorm. We continued to scan the area, but nothing was moving down there except with the insistence of the helicopter’s downdraft. I tapped Omar on the shoulder again, but he pointed to the headset and flipped the switches on the overhead. “You see any place you could set down?”

  His head swiveled and the helicopter turned to the left. It was like being in Omar’s head, and I wasn’t so sure that was such a great place to be. His arm came up again, indicating a small meadow clearing to the north side of the lakes where the trail swerved and ran along the shore. “There.”

  The nose dipped again, and we sideslipped to a very small rock outcropping where the buffalo grass and the small alpine plants were plastered against the hard ground. There wasn’t much room, and the tips of the rotors clipped the large pines that surrounded the area on the north side. I looked back at Omar, but he remained concentrated on the skids as they settled on the bald cap of rock perhaps two feet from a sharp ledge that sloped to the lakeshore below. It was good I didn’t have to pay him, because I couldn’t afford him or his helicopter. He took off his headset and turned in the seat to look at us; there was a large thumping noise as he unlocked the doors of the aircraft. “I want to be clear about this. We have consumed exactly one half of our fuel and, with current conditions, I can say that you have only about forty-five minutes to find George Esper and then have the ride of your life getting out of here.” I scrambled out of the helicopter on the uphill side and waited as Henry tossed me the Weatherby and slid out after me. Omar was pointing at the bags. “Get rid of those; either you use them or we leave them here. When I get ready to head out, I want the least amount of weight possible.”

  Henry reached into the luxurious cargo section and pulled the packs across the contoured carpet out after us. As he dropped them on the moss-covered granite he took the. 308 back and saluted Omar through the pilot door. “Sir, yes sir.”

  Omar ignored him and looked at me. “Forty-five minutes. You go check on the kid, and I’ll do a run-through on this beast.”

  We threw the packs on our shoulders and headed off in a crouch toward the nearest lake. After a few steps, when we were assured we were beyond the slow deceleration of the rotors, Henry leaned toward me. “I do not think he likes me.”

  “You’re an acquired taste.”

  The patchworks of snow led from all the high areas north, so we abandoned the covered trail for the banks of the lake and quick-stepped it toward the
ridge. Once we got there, it was a short traverse to the other side where we had seen the tent. I looked back as we climbed. Somehow, I had gotten ahead of Henry. I stopped and waited as he made his way up in my footprints; if you were tracking him, it would have been as if he had disappeared. He held out his hand, and I pulled him up; to my surprise, he was breathing heavier than I thought he should, so I caught him as he shifted the Weatherby to his other hand. “You all right?”

  He looked around at the collection of peaks that ringed the area; there was hardly any lower ground than where we now stood. “I do not wish to dampen your spirits, but this is a wonderful place to be shot.”

  “Kind of like being in a toilet bowl.” We were in the open, with the deep cover of pines darkening into the surrounding area. I was having one of those creeping, grave-step feelings. “Let’s go.”

  At the end of the ridge, the trail deflected into two paths that circled a large boulder and separated as one continued the high road around the far lake and the other dropped into the depression where the tent was pitched. It was a good spot, dry, but close to water. It didn’t have too much of a view, but it was well protected from the wind. I looked back up the valley to the northwest and could more clearly see the dark line of clouds that continued to eat up the western sky. It was calm at the moment, but the intersecting triangles of black granite and fresh snow seemed to be holding their breath in preparation for what was coming. They looked like long teeth.

  Henry put out a hand to stop me and looked down at the path. “Tracks.” He lowered to one knee, shifting his shoulders back so that the weight of the pack wouldn’t propel him down the hill. “How big is George Esper?”

  I blew out a breath and thought. “Under six feet, maybe a hundred and seventy pounds.”

  “Size nine, Vasque hiking boots?”

  I froze. “What?”

  He looked up, his eyes very sharp. “Vasque hiking boots, looks like a size nine. Mean something?”

  “Is there a little pattern on the arch, like a little mountain range?”

  He didn’t look. “Yes.” His neck strained as he scoped the surrounding area. I leaned over his shoulder and looked at the print. “Is there something you would like to tell me?”