Lizardskin

by Carsten Stroud

  “Rusty-red, it was,” said Harper.

  “Brown. It was a brown pickup.”

  “South Dakota plate?” asked Beau.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “That’s Charlie Tallbull’s pickup. He keeps it registered in South Dakota because he gets a break on insurance.”

  “Yeah. I realized—while I was chasing him. All of a sudden I realized it was Charlie Tallbull’s truck,” said Harper. “If I had known who it was, I wouldn’t have been chasing them. I would have driven over to Wyola and waited for him to show up.”

  “Why did they run?” Harper and Greer thought it over.

  Finally, Harper said, “I think they ran because that asshole Haugge was shooting at them.”

  “He fired at the pickup?”

  Harper shook his head. “No—well, he says no. He says he fired to get her to stop running.”

  Beau was trying to keep it all straight. “Mary Littlebasket? Where was she when Haugge fired?”

  “According to Bill, she was getting into this pickup.”

  “Why was he so heated up about it? So some patient checks out without asking. So what?”

  “Haugge says he was told by one of the nurses that she—that Littlebasket was stealing—”

  Greer interrupted. “I got here in my notes that the nurse told Haugge that Littlebasket was taking a baby.”

  Beau looked around at him. “Taking. Not stealing?”

  “She says taking. The kid was hers.”

  “Where’d she take the kid from?”

  “They have a neonatal and preemie unit. The kid was on a machine of some kind.”

  “Was the kid sick?”

  “Yeah, according to the nurse. Very sick.”

  Beau looked back at Harper. “Who was the nurse?”

  Harper shrugged, looked at Greer in the rearview. Greer coughed and fussed with his uniform collar.

  “I get it,” said Beau. “It was Maureen.”

  “Yeah. Maureen Sprague,” said Greer. “That’s your ex, right?”

  “Right. What did Maureen say was wrong with the baby?” Greer was silent, staring at his notebook.

  “Okay … baby male … it was, I gotta spell this out for you, Beau. ANENCEPHALIC. An-en-see-fallic. That mean anything to you?”

  “Something about the head. I’d have to ask Maureen. Why was Mary Littlebasket trying to take the kid out of the clinic?”

  Harper looked out the side window. Greer drummed a bit on the seatback. Beau waited them out.

  “Okay. Here’s about the time that things got nasty. Your wife—excuse me, your ex—she’s not a real big fan of Indians, is she?”

  “No, she’s not.” Beau didn’t feel like explaining about Alice Manyberries, or his daughter Laurel and the way Maureen had driven her out of the house. And Littlebasket was a Crow, too.

  “Well, as far as we could get it out of Miss Sprague, the Littlebasket baby was very sick, but his mama wouldn’t believe the doctors. I got the impression your—that Maureen Sprague, that she felt this broad—Littlebasket—was just too stupid, just another stupid Indian, like what could you expect, was her attitude. Anyway, Littlebasket wouldn’t cooperate with them. She was always crying and saying that the doctors had done this. That they’d done something to her baby and now they were trying to steal it. Maureen said it was postpartum depression. That right?”

  “Yeah,” said Beau. “It happens sometimes, after delivery. The hormones are all screwed up and the mother can react badly. Especially if the kid turns out to be sick. What I don’t get is why Charlie Tallbull would have helped her do something that stupid. He’s a sensible guy, he knows the difficulties getting healthy babies out of the reserves. Charlie Tallbull was the one who talked Hogeland into expanding his clinics into Hardin in the first place. Now you tell me he was helping some hysterical girl take her sick kid out of the clinic. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

  Greer handed his notebook over to Beau.

  “See that, that drawing there?”

  “I see it. What about it?”

  “It was on her mirror. Mary Littlebasket wrote it on her mirror in lipstick, just before she ran. Mean anything to you, Beau?”

  Beau studied it for a while.

  “Not offhand. Arrows usually mean protection. Or direction. What this thing in the middle is … who’s doing the investigation for Big Horn? Garner?”

  “Yeah. Bill got us to take shots of the mirror.”

  “Looks like a warning to me,” said Harper, leaning over to examine the notebook page. “I saw that, I’d go the other way.”

  Beau shook his head, puzzled. “I don’t know it. Maybe I can show it to Charlie. It might mean something to him. It’s sure as hell Indian.”

  “I hear Charlie’s gonna make it,” said Greer.

  Beau twisted around again, wincing at the pain in his leg. “Where’d you hear that?”

  Greer shrugged. “The guys. One of the C Watch guys has a girlfriend in the ICU there.”

  “It’d be nice if she was right,” said Harper, his face grave. “It’d be nice if something good happened in the middle of this. I never want to see another Kenworth as long as I live.”

  Beau popped the door and eased his right leg out. Greer and Harper got out and came around to stand beside him. Beau stood with one hand braced on the door latch, looking at Bob Gentile’s morgue wagon, parked inside the evidence compound.

  Greer and Harper watched him for a minute.

  “You sure you ought to be outta the hospital, Beau?” said Harper. “You don’t look too great.”

  “I’ll be okay. Anybody hear how Peter Hinsdale’s family is taking it?”

  “About the way you’d expect.”

  Beau was seeing the kid’s face, seeing the fear and the need in it. He had failed that kid.

  Harper put a hand on Beau’s shoulder. “It was rat-fuck, Beau. It wasn’t your fault. You’ll see. The shooting board’ll clear you, no sweat.”

  Beau pushed himself off the door and eased his weight onto his right leg. He shifted his Smith and started to hobble toward the back door. Halfway there, he looked back at Greer and Harper.

  “Moses. How did Charlie Tallbull manage to get out of the pickup? Was he thrown?”

  Harper’s face was grim. Greer answered for his partner.

  “Moses got him out. He had to climb in under the Kenworth to do it. It was pretty bad. Moses had to leave the girl and her baby, they were all—”

  “Beau’s got the picture, Dell.”

  Beau nodded toward the two troopers. “You guys are on leave right now. That right?”

  “Yep.”

  “If I need some help, can I call you?”

  Harper and Greer looked at each other.

  “Can we clear it with Garner?”

  “I’ll do that, if you like?”

  “Okay, Beau. If Garner says so, we’ll do what we can. But what the hell are we supposed to be doing?”

  “Well, can you look into the fire at the Mountain Bell yard?”

  Harper nodded. “I’ve got some buddies in the fire department. I’ll get them to pull me a sheet. Are we looking for anything special?”

  “Yeah,” said Beau, turning. “But I’m damned if I know what it is yet. See you guys at the shooting board.”

  • • •

  Marco Vlasic was bending over a stainless-steel sink, washing his forearms with yellow soap and talking into a hanging microphone when Beau shuffled into the pathology lab. He turned and stared at Beau, a gnomish young man with a perpetual crease of worried concentration scarring his pale forehead. Still talking into the mike, Vlasic smiled and held up a hand, three fingers spread out.

  Beau nodded and walked away toward the row of steel tables. The room was lit by a bank of fluorescent lights that bleached out everything to pale green or pale purple or shiny steel and white, like an old film that has lost its colors.

  There were nine bodies visible, lying on stainless-steel trays, covered with plastic
sheets, translucent and cold-looking. The bodies looked as if they had been frozen in blocks of ice. The room smelled of Lysol, stale blood, and old meat. Beau walked around until he reached one that looked familiar. He pulled the plastic sheet away from the head. And winced.

  Marco finished washing up and hit a switch on the wall, shutting off the tape. He came over and stood next to Beau, drying his hands on a paper towel.

  “What a difference a day makes, eh, Beau? What the hell are you doing here? Meagher said you were out of it, on your back in the hospital.”

  “I got better.”

  “Yeah? You don’t look it. You look like last year’s roadkill in a plaid shirt. The hospital release you like this?”

  “They weren’t happy about it.”

  “I guess not. Maybe you oughta go back, Beau. They had plans for you.”

  “I had other plans. Skip it, Marco.”

  “Okay … anyway, you wanna see your guy? I got him over there, next to the door.”

  “In a minute. You have a guy in here, victim of a fire? Wozcylesko. Would have died in a van fire.”

  “Yeah, he was here. They took him over to Sweetwater General to do a toxicology run on him. Sweetwater has a contract with the state agencies. Anything accidental that affects a civil employee, it goes to Sweetwater for the insurance investigation. They just brought him in here for the coroner’s ID.”

  “Mountain Bell’s not a state agency.”

  “No, but the insurer is state-contracted, so it amounts to the same thing. What’s the problem?”

  “No problem. I was just curious, you know? You get a chance to look at him?”

  “A once-over. Danny Burt was waiting for him, real impatient. Gentile’s has the wagon contract for Sweetwater General, too. I was just supposed to sign the certificate.”

  “So what’d you sign him off on?”

  “This a police matter, Beau?”

  “I don’t know. Hell, I don’t know anything lately. I saw the kid earlier in the evening. He was at Bell’s Oasis.”

  “That’s supposed to be suspicious? What was he doing there?”

  “Fixing the phones.”

  Vlasic clapped a palm to his forehead, bugged his eyes wide, and staggered backward a yard, weaving dramatically.

  “No! Holy Connections, Batman! You mean, a Mountain Bell guy was actually fixing a phone? No wonder you were suspicious!”

  Beau suppressed a cranky snarl. “Funny, Marco. Real amusing.”

  “Well, jeez, Beau. I’ve been through enough autopsies with you. Sometimes you see things, they aren’t there. Anyway, the party line on Wozcylesko is accidental death. He was smoking in the van, van was full of flammable vapor from a can of solvent. Cause of death, terminal stupidity! Happens all the time.”

  “Whose party line?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who’s saying it was accidental?”

  Vlasic looked at Beau for a time, his hand resting on the tray, his eyes narrowed.

  “Beau. Is something going on in town?”

  “Christ. In Billings? Nothing ever goes on in Billings, Marco. People drive all the way to Coeur d’ Alene just to blink. I don’t know, Marco. Look around you. You ever been this full before?”

  “Lots of times, Beau. How about last September? That eighteen-wheeler thing? Guy has a heart attack, slams into a rest stop. Life’s a lottery, Beau.”

  “What was he smoking?”

  “Who?”

  “The kid—what was he smoking in the van?”

  “Well, Beau. My guess’d be tobacco. Most people, you see them smoking, they’re smoking tobacco. Hardly ever see anybody smoking turnips lately, and the whole asparagus craze is pretty well over. Now and then, you’ll see a guy light up a hamster, but the little fuckers squeal like hell, plus they go out too easy and you can’t keep the filters on ’em. Nope, my guess, I’m definitely going with tobacco.”

  “How about dope? Anybody find out exactly what he was smoking? Find a butt or a roach?”

  “In what? The van was totaled.”

  “Who’s doing it for the fire department?”

  “I’ll find out. Want me to get the form?”

  “No. I think Moses Harper’ll do that for me.”

  “Since when is Big Horn County working for Highway Patrol?”

  “Meagher’s getting Garner to do me a favor, lend me some guys. I needed somebody from another force who wasn’t going to have to answer to the CIB.”

  “What is there you have to keep from the CIB? Or is it Howdy Klein? Finch Hyam’s partner? Now that’s a reason. Howdy is a depressingly stupid butthead with the forensic brilliance of a balpeen hammer. Which everybody but Klein knows already.”

  “It’s coming down to, why the hell did I shoot Joe Bell instead of the people who were robbing him?”

  “Sounds reasonable.”

  “Yeah. If it really was a robbery.”

  Beau stood in silence for a long time. Vlasic was used to Beau’s ways and was at any rate a fairly self-contained and steady man, working as he did at the near shore of the Styx and in regular contact with the boatman. He waited patiently.

  Sighing again, he gestured at the corpse in front of them. “What happened to this guy?”

  “He got Meagherized. See this here?”

  He put his fingers against the leathery cheek and pushed the head to the side, revealing a massive neck wound. The skin looked rubbery and pale, pulling back from the ruined muscle and cartilage beneath it. Pink slivers rode in the blue meat, and arteries showed like white worms in the exposed muscle at the neck.

  “Buckshot?”

  “Full bore. Meagherized unto death. Too bad the lieutenant got him in the head there. Would have made a nice mount. Put it up on the wall behind his desk. It’d look good with all his FBI stuff. One aboriginal male in his prime.”

  Vlasic pulled the plastic all the way down to the foot of the tray. The torso was thick and muscular. Two incisions started at the points of the shoulders and ran inward, where they met the major cut, which ran from the breastbone down to the pubic bone. The man’s face was puffed and swollen, and the features had that imbalance that comes when the calvarium is removed and the skull-flap is peeled back over the face. The man’s head stopped at his eyebrows. Long thick black hair was matted around the back of the neck. The rest of his skull was missing. Beau could see the interior of the skull, like the inside of a nautilus shell, the arches and supports for the absent brain, the basal roots, the white nub of the upper vertebrae. Vlasic lifted the heavy left arm, let it fall.

  “Rigor was sudden and passed in a couple of hours. Mainly confined to the face and upper neck. What we had here was an aboriginal male, in middle age, no congenital malformations visible. The eyes and the conjunctiva were normal, although there was some sign of old trauma in the left orb. Nares patent. Teeth all fucked up. Can’t have good teeth in America without cash. Hemorrhage in the canals consistent with ballistic trauma. See here, this entrance wound exposed the carotid, pulled back on the lines of cleavage. This discoloration is normal postmortem lividity in situ. No forensic significance. Hey, we’re not looking for cause of death, anyway. You been to the shooting board yet?”

  “Not yet. Probably sometime Monday.”

  “Who’s gonna sit on it?”

  “Hell—probably the usual. Meagher. Vanessa Ballard. Finch. Maybe Rowdy Klein.”

  “Klein? You’re right to worry about him, Beau. He was in here earlier, taking pictures of everything. The CIB’s got something unseemly planned for you, I’ll bet. Anyway, how’s Meagher gonna sit on a shooting board when he’s one of the shootees? You better keep your back to the wall.”

  “I’ll wear my chain-mail boxers, Marco. You were saying?”

  “About the internal, we did the usual thoraco-abdominal incision. No hernias, domes were normal. So were the pleurals. Pericardium okay, contents normal. Mediastinum as well. Pharynx had clotted blood, same source. You want the whole thing? Lungs and
lights?”

  Beau shook his head. “Let’s go straight to dessert, Marco.”

  “Well—stomach showed some incipient ulceration. Blood in the mucosa. Liver had some signs of previous hepatitis, but no necrosis.”

  “Drugs? Needle sharing?”

  “No tracks. No signs. I’d say, more likely he caught it on a reservation. Doesn’t look like a user to me. No, I wanted to show you something—give me a hand here, I want to turn him.”

  Beau studied the Y-shaped incision. “Those stitches hold?”

  Vlasic glanced down, grinned. “Like in that old M.A.S.H. movie, eh? Use big stitches, he’s an enlisted man. Hell, Beau, he’s not going to be hitting the beach anytime soon. He doesn’t care if he looks neat. They’ll hold. I’m a pathologist, not a seamstress.”

  “That’s for sure. He looks like you stapled him together.”

  “Here, just help me lift him up there.”

  “You lift him. I just had breakfast.”

  “Wimp. There … whoof. See these?”

  Vlasic had rolled the body onto its side, exposing the back. The skin was stained with red blotches where the blood had settled. But Beau could see a row of white circles, five of them, each the size of a quarter and shiny with scar tissue. Vlasic let the body drop back onto the tray. The left arm flipped out and hung down at the side. Vlasic raised it back to the tray and arranged the body in a more natural position.

  “What do you make of those, Beau?”

  “Bullet wounds. Automatic weapons. The guy took a burst in the back. I’d say a long time ago. Big rounds. And fast. Probably military.”

  “I’d say so. There were three exit wounds in the lower abdomen, and the pelvic bone showed severe scoring. But old. And the rounds were spent, or they’d have blown him apart. Ran into an ambush, probably. I think we have a Vietnam vet here, unless he was a mercenary. Caught a burst in Rhodesia—Zimbabwe now—or in Angola.”

  Beau studied the blunt brutal features. Vlasic had closed the man’s eyes, but the movement had brought one lid up a bit, and the lower half of a cloudy black iris showed.

  “Looks like a hard-handed man.”

  Vlasic was wiping his hands on a cloth soaked in alcohol.