Lizardskin

by Carsten Stroud

  Moses Harper heard Dell’s voice on the radio saying that a man had been shot at the Dwight Clinic and that 229 was in pursuit of a brown—Moses was thinking it wasn’t really brown, it was more of a red-rust color—1974 Ford pickup—Dell was really pretty good at identifying running vehicles. He was about to cut in with the license number—it was red and white, a South Dakota plate—victor alpha niner seven four—in fact, he was reaching down—now isn’t that—hell, that’s Charlie Tallbull’s truck—why the hell is—looking down for the handset—shouldn’t have done that—so when he looked up again, all he really saw was a massive blur of chrome and blue paint as a Kenworth eighteen-wheeler came over the hilltop, and then Moses saw Charlie Tallbull’s pickup dive—the tail-lights suddenly bright red—and then the blue Kenworth sounded its horn and that was all Moses could hear—that tremendous buffeting blast—he hit his own brakes and pulled hard to the right as the Kenworth skimmed his door, huge wheels spinning at his shoulder, a wall of sound and iron and smoke and it caught—met—butted the rusted pickup.

  Broken glass flared in the sunlight like a spray of water.

  Folding, the pickup bounced away, the Kenworth climbing up and over it. The pickup rolled over, a shimmer of sun on the black greasy underbelly as it rolled, and the Kenworth kept riding up on top of it. There were sparks now, as the cab of the pickup was driven into the road, the metal grinding away on the stones and gravel at the side of the highway. Moses got his cruiser stopped and sat there, maybe fifty yards back now—a ringside seat—as the Kenworth rode the pickup down the side slope and settled onto it like a cast-iron avalanche, and then the dust cloud rose up, billowed, spread, settled back down over the scene, shading it and softening it, tinting it amber and sepia so that it seemed to Moses that he was watching something through stained glass, something that took place a long time ago.

  At the Julia Dwight Clinic, Dell Greer got Bill Haugge some help, and after a while he got enough out of the distraught nurses to figure out that Mary Littlebasket had simply taken her own child out of the hospital and that what had happened here this morning could very well turn out to be the kind of career-blasting, sixteen-ton, great-bellowing-balls-to-the-wall fuckup that would pass into Big Horn County legend and make for interesting sunsets in eastern Montana for years to come. Dell Greer went up the back stairs to Mary Littlebasket’s room and stood in the doorway, thinking about it all, listening to Moses Harper’s voice on his portable radio trying to sound in control, Harper calling in Fire and Rain and the ambulances. The bed still showed the impress of her body. A pair of paper slippers sat neatly in the near corner. A damp handkerchief lay twisted beside a Bible on the bedside table. Greer went into the bathroom and saw Mary Littlebasket’s sign in lipstick on the dripping mirror.

  It meant nothing to him.

  Well, whatever had happened here, it looked like it was still happening. As he turned to leave, he looked down and saw a ribbon on the floor. Cornflower blue, grosgrain, it must have fallen from her hair. He left it there. It all belonged to the detectives now. He was just Patrol. The state boys would have to unravel all this. When it was over, maybe someone would tell him what it all meant.

  1

  1600 Hours–June 14–Pompeys Pillar, Montana

  Engine racing, rear wheels spinning in the dry wash, McAllister’s patrol car butted through a windbreak of gorse and dry sage. He hit the brakes. He was right at the crest of Bull Peak, and fifty square miles of Yellowstone County stretched away south and west, a watercolor wash of greens and blue-gray, ochre and amber and copper fading out along the distant horizon where the last of the spring snow on the roof of the Beartooth range glimmered pink and silver in the waning sunlight. It would have been a sight to raise a man’s heart if it weren’t for the little corpses scattered all around.

  To the right of the cruiser, like a deep cut in old green hide, a massive crater scarred the slope. New earth and cracked rock covered the prairie grass. Prairie dog corpses were scattered around like pillows in a cathouse. Some of the bodies were about to pop. It looked like a tailgate party for crows and coyotes.

  He powered down the window. The midafternoon heat moved across his face and down into the cool of the car.

  Even McAllister could read this kind of trail sign in the roadway. The little tiptoed skitter of the coyotes. Those crisscrossing hatchwork trails under the coyote sign would be the crows. Shiny blue-black, as big as dogs. Waddling back and forth between the bodies like lawyers at a nine-car pileup.

  And this track here … he leaned out the window to follow it. A kind of shallow trench with hills of yellow dust looking a little like waves. Fresh, since the wind up here in the hills was always pretty good. And big … a full-bore male.

  So he’d be … close. Good to know how close. Not that McAllister was getting out of the patrol car. But it was an interesting problem. It was always good to know who was where. He shut down the engine and opened all the windows. The car needed an airing anyway. He tugged his garrison belt off and dumped it in a pile on the passenger seat, the Browning on top.

  It would have been Walker’s crew. They were working up this slope, trying to cut a roadway through the crest over to Musselshell. God knew what for. The best thing about Musselshell was there were two ways to get out of it.

  Walker must have hit bedrock here. No county bulldozer could have done this. McAllister had never been on a battlefield, not a fresh one anyway, but this was what he thought it would look like. Bodies all over the place. New earth ripped up in heaps and piles. New white stones that hadn’t seen the sun for a half a million years. Wind in the grasses—he looked up at the skyline, and as usual it hit him that this was possibly the finest work God had ever done, this fifty square miles of Yellowstone County, sea green and rolling from the massed blue line of the Big Horn Mountains in the south all the way west to the Beartooth range. Most of it as full of little murders as this ridge.

  When Walker’s charge went off, it had blown away a section of this hillside up here to his right. It had opened up a prairie dog town and spread it down the grassy slope. Most of them had died right then. The rest, those who could, had split for a better neighborhood. But since it was June in Montana, everything that had lived through the winter was breeding furiously. There were some mothers with litters around, trying to get whatever was left of their broods into a safe place.

  What had looked to McAllister like a pile of pebbles in the roadway was now sitting up and looking around. One large gray-brown prairie dog. The mama. And one—kit? pup?—at her forelegs.

  And another about a yard away.

  So where was the rattlesnake?

  There he was—where the waving track went into a low screen of sagebrush. He must have been making his run when McAllister came up the hill and scared everybody. A big old son of a bitch from the look of him, a dirty-brown loop of thick rope with a pattern along his spine. A diamondback maybe, although the purple shadow made it hard to tell. He might go six feet, judging by how thick he was, coiled up there. Under the sage, Scratch was perfectly still, except for his tongue. Now and then, McAllister could see it flutter out and back. Scratch was tasting the air, tasting the oil and gas smell of McAllister’s cruiser. Calculating the odds and the distances.

  McAllister glanced down at his Browning, trying to work out his position in this thing. Knowing he didn’t really have a position in whatever happened next.

  The mama-dog was up now on her back legs, looking sideways at McAllister. She couldn’t smell him in the car. Her tail flicked and trembled, and the pup at her feet started to move. McAllister could hear it making a little beeping sound.

  That was enough for Scratch. He started to slide out of the shadow, like a wave curling across a pond.

  McAllister picked up the Browning and thumbed back the hammer.

  This was silly—he’d shot more prairie dogs than this snake could eat in three lifetimes. Why was he getting involved now?

  Was it because of the two babies?
He had babies. Well, not babies. Girls. One grown now, twenty-two and somewhere down in Wyoming at an archaeological dig. And Bobby Lee, six this very day, waiting for him at what used to be his house and was now generally known as the Bitch’s Bungalow.

  No turning back now. Scratch was committed. He’d get to within a lunge of the prairie dog, and suddenly he’d be on them. You’d never see the move. There’d just be a snake with a dead prairie dog in his jaws. Mama was still thinking about McAllister’s cruiser. She was not paying enough attention to what was going on around her.

  Cold little brown eyes on her. She reminded him of Maureen, which reminded him about his date—no, appointment was more like it. His appointment with Maureen to pick up Bobby Lee at six tonight. It was four now, and he still had to get the car into the station house, shower and change, wrap the present.

  Maureen did not like it when you were late. That was your problem, Beau. You were always late. That isn’t nice, Beau. So don’t be late, Beau. Thinking on that, he reached down and turned off his radio. What could happen this late on a slow Friday?

  Well … just about anything, but they could get into it without any more help from Beau McAllister. He’d pulled his weight long enough to get some slack.

  He watched the snake sliding through the grasses, in and out of the sunlight. It was interesting to watch. You could pick a portion of that body and focus on it, and it would be as if that part didn’t move. The pattern there would compress, and the rest of the snake would just flow through that section. It was like watching the light bulbs on the roof of the Cineplex in Billings. You watched the bulbs and you missed the pattern, or you watched the pattern and the bulbs seemed to move.

  Scratch was picking up a little speed here. Jesus, these things could really cover the ground. McAllister moved the Browning across his chest and lined the sights up on Scratch’s head, tracking it as it made that little sideways move, back and forth, the tongue out and flickering. A few yards away, a soon-to-be-ex-prairie-dog mama continued profoundly misunderstanding her situation. Come on, Mom!

  Then she seemed to vibrate for a half-second—a flicker and a spurt of dust and she was—gone. A rustle in the grass at the far side of the road. A flash of gray tail. Leaving the kids in the roadway.

  Christ, what a cold-assed bitch!

  So much for motherhood.

  And here comes Scratch, making his run at the half-blind pups in his path. McAllister tightened his grip and began to pull. He had maybe a couple of seconds.

  beep beep beep

  Christ! He’d forgotten to shut off his beeper. God-damn all beepers! Somebody was trying to get him and knew his radio was off. He flicked the switch to his radio and picked up the handset just as Scratch got to the first pup.

  “Five eleven.”

  Man. Just like that. A cocktail sausage.

  “Beau! Where the hell are you?”

  In the background of the transmission, McAllister could hear the tone-beep of the emergency system. Armed robbery, or a gun run. Nice timing, Beau.

  “Up on Elbow Hill, a coupla miles, Eustace. What’s up?”

  “Well, if it’s not an imposition, maybe you might get yourself down to Joe Bell’s place. He’s got a robbery in progress, wants to know if we feel like helping out.”

  McAllister started up the cruiser, not soon enough to distract Scratch from the next pup down the road.

  “Why me? That’s a County call. Get the Yellowstone guys onto it. Get the Big Horn guys. Get anybody but me.”

  “Bell’s place is on the interstate, last time I looked. That’s us. Quit jerking me around, Beau.”

  “Any guns?”

  “One thing for sure—Bell’s got one.”

  By now, McAllister had the white Ford LTD rocking down the dirt road toward Pompeys Pillar.

  “He tell you that?”

  “He didn’t have to—I heard him doing it. Ronny’s on the way. And Rita. The rest of the guys are all over the County.”

  Shit, thought McAllister. Never answer the phone on a Friday afternoon.

  Joe Bell was a retired railroad man who ran Bell’s Oasis, a huge truck stop and Shell gas station on I-94, at the east end of Pompeys Pillar. Bell’s Oasis was the major business of Pompeys Pillar. Joe Bell was a big bald cracker with his hand in all sorts of pockets around Yellowstone County. Like everybody in Montana, Bell had a do-it-yourself attitude about law enforcement, and he seemed to be doing it himself right now. McAllister had the Ford shuddering over a washboard track as the radio popped and snarled with chatter.

  “Four nine nine, come on?”

  “Yes, Sergeant?”

  “Where’re you, Rita?”

  “I’m behind an RV, ’bout a mile out. No—wait—shit!”

  “Rita? Rita?”

  “I’m fine—I just took him on the shoulder there.”

  McAllister could hear the siren in the background as she talked. Rita was new and very intense.

  Eustace Meagher was back on the air. “Rita, cut the chatter. Beau, you there?”

  “I’m here, Eustace.”

  “It looks like Joe’s out there by the pumps, shooting the buttons off everything.”

  Christ.

  “By the pumps?”

  “Yeah—I called Fire and Rain. ETA is ten minutes.”

  “I’m just about there.”

  “Sergeant?”

  “Rita?”

  “Yeah—I can see it now. You want me to wait for you?”

  “You block the east end. Where the hell is Thornton?”

  There was an explosion of static and then Ronny’s voice, breathless and wired up.

  “This is 495. You’re gonna blow right by me.”

  McAllister could see the town now, a ragged line of low buildings set in the lee of a dry wash. The Shell sign was the tallest thing in town. At the point where the gravel road hit the pavement, McAllister could see Ron Thornton’s cruiser.

  “Sarge, I can see you!”

  “Yeah. Rita, stay put! We’ll come east on the service road. You block the far end. Ronny, when we get there, keep that goddamned werewolf in the car. We don’t need him ripping up the citizens. Rita, you read me five by five?”

  “Ten-four, sir. I’ll hold.”

  McAllister was doing a flat eighty as he flew by Ronny’s cruiser. Ron Thornton was a heavy-set, barrel-bodied youngster with a pencil-thin moustache that made him look like a Mexican pimp. His dark face was hot and bright. Through the slots in an aluminum barrier, McAllister could hear Ronny’s police dog howling and snarling.

  Ronny stayed right on McAllister’s bumper all the way up the main street of Pompeys Pillar, sirens yipping and the people all lined up on the walkways. Bell’s Oasis was at the far end of town. At a hundred yards out they heard the solid percussive boom of a shotgun.

  Ronny and McAllister slid to a stop in the lee of a J. B. Hunt tractor-trailer. The driver was already flattened up against the wheels. He grinned weakly as they ran over and got their backs up against the trailer.

  “What the hell’s goin’ on here?” McAllister asked the driver.

  “Beats me, Sergeant,” said the driver. “All’s I know is, one minute I’m sitting in my cab, and the next Joe’s shooting the shit outta a bunch of Indians at the pumps.”

  “Indians? What kind?”

  The trucker’s lean face split along his worry lines. “Jeez, man! Indians! Crows, likely, or Cheyenne from Busby. Bell give one of ’em a bellyfull of shot, I know that!”

  McAllister ducked down to take a look under the trailer bed.

  Across the tarmac, Joe Bell was crouched down beside a line of gas pumps, head down, feeding shells into a semiauto twelve-gauge Winchester shotgun.

  Twenty feet away, a dark-skinned boy in faded jeans and a blue plaid shirt lay on his back in a widening lake of thickening blood. One of his boots was off. It was standing, oddly, upright. A black Stetson with one eagle feather lay on its peak a foot away. Most of the boy’s side was scattered in a pul
py red fan over the pavement. McAllister could see his chest rising and falling. Still alive.

  “Ronny, you get back to the car, you tell Fire to bring the paramedic van and not to screw around doing it!” Fire and Rain was what they called the Emergency Service Unit.

  Ronny jumped and ran. McAllister peeked back around the end of the van. A dusty blue Chevy pickup was parked at the pumps. Its hood was up, and the oil dipstick was on the ground in front of the truck. Jubal’s pickup.

  “Hey, Bell!”

  Bell pivoted with the shotgun, shouldered it, and fired in the direction of Beau’s voice. The back of the trailer rocked, and a license plate flew fifty feet into the ditch.

  “Christ, Bell! It’s Beau McAllister!”

  Joe Bell’s bald head and heavy red beard rose up above the top of a gas pump.

  “Beau?”

  “Yes! For chrissake, Bell!”

  “You see ’em, Beau? Over by the propane tank?”

  Oh, great, thought McAllister. About fifty yards away, there was a big enclosure marked off by a Lundy fence. Inside, a huge white torpedo tank sat atop a series of concrete supports. He could just see some huddled shapes through the support pillars.

  “First thing, Bell, you stop firing at that thing. You hit that tank right, we’re all gonna go way up high and come back down as pink rain.”

  “It was just grazing fire, Beau. I know what I’m doing!”

  Sure, thought McAllister. You sure grazed that boy pretty good, didn’t you? “What the hell’s goin on, Bell?”

  “There’s five of them. Look like reservation Indians. I got this one. There’s three men and a girl. They come in with that old blue pickup there, and I braced ’em. Then they go for the weapons.”

  “What kind?”

  “A knife. A big one. Other weird shit. I didn’t stop to make a fuckin’ list!”

  “What’d they do?”

  “Do? They go for weapons, I figure it’s a fight!”

  McAllister turned to Ronny, who was once more pressed close to the truck. “Go get me the hailer, Ronny. I’m gonna see if we can talk our way outta something here. I don’t have time for this shit.”