My professional interaction with the Dunnigans was mostly with Den. There had been an incident where he had almost killed another rancher with a shovel in an altercation over water rights and another where he’d broken a bottle off on the bar in town and threatened to perform an amateur tracheotomy on a rodeo cowboy, but other than that, we’d been limited to the instances when Den would call in a lost James. He did this on a periodic basis. A couple of years earlier, during hunting season and an early snow, we’d responded, along with the highway patrol and the county search and rescue, only to find James seated at the Hole in the Wall Bar, adamant that he had phoned his mother and explained that he was safe and spending the night in town.
The problem was that his mother had been dead for a quarter of a century.
I rolled across the cattle guard and parked beside a turquoise and white ’76 Ford Highboy; the motor was running, but nobody was in it. The ranch house was simple, sided horizontally with a low-slung roof, and there was a metal shop nearby that was four times the size of the house.
By the time I got to the sidewalk, Den was coming out the front door. His eyes widened beyond his usual squint and then settled into a general dissatisfaction at seeing me. He had on a clean, white straw hat, hard like plastic, with a black, braided horsehair band, and was dressed in a freshly pressed shirt and creased jeans that cut the air as he walked. There was a red and white cotton bandana at his neck, and he’d even polished his boots. “I guess I need to turn off my goddamned truck.”
I stopped at the single step leading into the house. “Sorry, Den, but I need to speak with you and James.”
He stood there for another moment looking at me and then hobbled past on bowlegs, which approached a full circle, to the parking area where he reached into the side window of the old Ford and shut off the motor. A rifle rack cradling a beaten .30-30 Winchester showed through the rear window.
Den came back down the poured concrete walk, and I could smell the beer on his breath as he scuffled past. I followed him into the house without a word or invitation.
The tawny light of early evening was spreading across the Powder River landscape, and it settled a comfortable glow inside the kitchen. James was seated at a Formica table with a shot glass and a bottle of Bryer’s Blackberry Brandy, which I assumed was dinner. There was an empty bottle of Busch with more than a few bottle caps pinched together and scattered across the table where I assumed Den must have been sitting before my arrival. The walls were paneled in knotty pine, and all the appliances were what they had called golden harvest in the fifties. I was sure that nothing in the kitchen had been changed since their mother had died.
The heat was oppressive, even with the industrial-type box fan that was propped in one of the windows. The older of the two brothers stood when I entered, wiping his palms on his jeans and sticking out his hand. He seemed embarrassed that I’d found him drinking in his own home. “Hello, Walt. Would you like some coffee? Mother makes it in the morning for us.”
I withheld comment. "No, thanks. Mind if I sit down, James?” He pulled out a chair for me and glanced at his brother, who stood by the door with his arms folded and his hat still on. “I suppose you know why I’m here?”
James sat back down and laid an arm along the table. “It’s about that girl we found?”
“Yep.”
He nodded and then trapped his lips between his teeth. “About the bar?”
“Yep.”
“We did see her there.”
I took my hat off and set it on the orange vinyl seat of the chair beside me. “That’s what I understand.”
James looked at the surface of the table. “Well, we...”
“We don’t have to tell you a God-damned thing. We didn’t do nothin’ to that girl.”
I turned toward Den, but his eyes were fixed on the linoleum. “I’m not aware of anyone having said you did.”
He folded his arms a little tighter and continued to look at the floor. “But that’s why you’re here, ain’t it?”
“There are some questions I wanted to ask you and your brother.” I waited a moment. “Why don’t you have a seat, and we’ll talk.” He sat on a fold-out stool by the refrigerator. I turned back to James. “You want to tell me about the bar?”
It took him a while to speak, and he didn’t answer my question but instead gestured toward the bottle on the table. “Would you like a little, Walt? I’ll git you a clean glass.”
“No, thank you.” I waited and started getting the feeling that there might be something more to this than I had at first anticipated.
James licked his lips and poured himself another shot of the sugary liquor. “It was hot on Friday, so we took a little break about one or two in the afternoon. You know, duck in for a cool one.” I noticed his hands were shaking as he put the bottle back down. “She was in there, sittin’ at the end of the bar. So, Den and I sat a couple’a stools away.” He looked up and smiled sadly. “She was a good-lookin’ young woman, and she kept glancin’ over at us.” His eyes turned to the full shot glass. “We’re just a couple of old hands, Walt. We’re not used to a good-lookin’ young woman payin’ us much attention.”
“You talk to her?”
Den interrupted. “Hell, we thought she was a Jap. She didn’t speak no English.”
I waited, and James started again. “We tried to buy her a couple of drinks, but she wouldn’t take ’em. After a while she got up and waved a little wave at us and left.”
“Bartender can tell you that.”
I looked at Den. “Then what?” He clammed up, sullen again, but James cleared his throat, and I turned back to watch him down his shot. It seemed to me his face was redder than it ought to have been.
“We went out and started to get in the truck, and she was standin’ by her car like she was waitin’ for us.”
Den interrupted again. “She was damn well waitin’ for us.”
I tried to keep the conversation moving. “Then what?”
James cleared his throat again and looked as if all the blood in his body was rising in his face. “She needed gas money....” His face continued to grow redder, and if I hadn’t known any better, I’d have said that both of the Dunnigan brothers were about to implode of embarrassment. “And she . . . she wanted to couple with us.”
I sat there for a moment to make sure I’d heard what I heard. “I thought you said she didn’t speak any English?”
James seemed to be on the edge of a cardiac arrest. “She didn’t. She didn’t, but...”
“Then how could you tell that?”
Den yanked off his straw hat and threw it against the kitchen cabinets. “She grabbed James’s crank and pointed toward the gas cap. That good enough for you, God-damnit!?”
I stopped at the top of the office stairs and stood there glancing around the reception area and listened to the continuing ring of the phone. It was late, but the lights were all on and Ruby’s purse sat in her chair along with her sweater.
I stumbled forward and ran to get the phone, but as I reached for it, it stopped. I stared at the red light that had stopped blinking but stayed steady; someone had gotten it, someone in the building.
Dog was gone, too. I walked down the hallway and past my darkened office where I looked for any Post-its on the door jamb—Post-its were our prose form of communication—but there was only one and it was from Cady. I held the yellow square up to the light and read, “Daddy, we’re at the Winchester—come join us.” Ruby had marked the time at 6:17 P.M. Four hours ago.
There was a noise from the back of the building, so I continued to the end of the hall where I could see the lights on in the holding cells and the kitchenette.