I tried to readjust my position, but wedged in the walkway there wasn’t anywhere to go. “What about Mendoza?”
“The beaner? What about him?”
It hurt just to breathe, but I had to keep talking. “Was he in on it?”
“Nah, I had him pretty much trained to look the other way. The only thing was I figured he’d get suspicious if I fragged you.” He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and spit out a piece of tobacco from his tongue. “He was pretty torn up from the wreck, so I just walked over and put one in the back of his head. Put him out of my misery. Kind of like I’m going to do to you. I’m glad that I didn’t kill you the first time. It’s nice that I get to see you, see your expression when I shoot you in the face.” The Walther came back up and leveled at my eyes. “Look at me, not a scratch. You know, they say that George Washington was like that; Patton, too; there’d be a battle with bullets zipping around all over the place and they’d never get touched.” He smiled again, and I watched as his finger tightened on the trigger. “Like them, I guess I’m just fucking lucky that way.”
The blast of the gun sounded like two, and the blood sprayed everywhere.
I lay there for a moment thinking that I shouldn’t be thinking.
I blinked and looked up through the blood on Baranski’s face, at his lips where the cigarette continued to hang, just before he toppled over and landed on top of me. He shuddered once and then lay still. I looked up at the one-eyed sergeant who was seated against the bulkhead and still holding the AK-47 with the thin trailing of smoke drifting from the barrel.
His voice had a singsong quality to it, just before his single eye closed again. “I guess your fucking luck just ran out, asshole.”
There was no one at the school.
I pulled into the driveway and got out, pulling the Mag-Lite from the pocket in the door along with the handheld two-way radio. The batteries were weak in the flashlight, but it provided more illumination than the listless moon that was just rising. I listened to the soft tinging of the hardware against the flagpole and remembered the school on the Powder River that I’d attended. I walked up to the front door of the single-story, concrete-block building and saw that it was padlocked. I peered through the window and could see a couple of desks and a computer on a side table. Abandoned for summer, it looked like no one had been in the place in a couple of months.
I sighed and glanced around, hoping to see a Vietnamese girl somewhere in the high-plains night. I was disappointed.
I punched the button on the radio and looked up at the red cliffs that seemed to soak up the light of the moon. “Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department, this is unit one. Is anybody out there?”
Static.
Damn cliffs.
I drove over the hill back to Bailey and parked the Suburban in front of the Dunnigans’ old Ford. I climbed out with the flashlight in my hand again—this time, someone was sitting in the driver’s seat. I pulled my .45 and shined the dimming flashlight into the cab; I recognized the profile and spoke through the open passenger-side window. "James?"”
He turned to look at me as I trailed my sidearm below the window where he couldn’t see it. “Hey, Walt.”
I waited a second and then lowered the beam of the Mag-Lite, but he didn’t continue. “What’re you doing here, James?”
He took a deep breath, pushed his straw hat back, and sipped from a tarnished flask. I could see the .30-30 lever-action propped up next to the door. “Oh, I was headin’ back from the bar and come lookin’ for that girl...the dead one.”
I studied him and then rested an elbow on the door to strike a more conversational posture. “What’s the Winchester for? ”
He smiled and looked embarrassed. “This place, it kind of worries me.... I guess I’m gettin’ scary.”
“You mind if I take it?”
He studied the rifle, then me. “Sure, sure . . . nothin’ to be afraid of if you’re here.”
I carefully reached in and pulled the Winchester through the window, threw the lever a couple of times to empty it, and then shuttled it and the loose rounds onto the floorboard of the Suburban. I locked the truck and watched James, who hadn’t moved except to drink from the flask. “You find her?”
He took a breath to give himself time to think and then shook his head. “No, no, no...” He stared at the dash as we listened to the soft tick of the big-block cooling on my vehicle. He extended the flask toward me, and I could smell the trademark brandy. “Care for some?”
“No thanks.” I shook my head. “James, have you seen anybody else around here? ”
He brought the flask back to his lips and took a swallow, then brought a finger up and touched the shift knob on the old truck. “You know, most people don’t believe the things I tell ’em. . . .” He turned his head and looked at me. “So I just stop tellin’ ’em.” His eyes wavered a little, and I noticed he was looking past me and to the right—I turned and followed his gaze, but there was no one there. “Do you know you’re bein’ followed?”
I turned and looked again but still couldn’t see anyone. “Now?”
“All the time.” He took another sip from the flask, and his eyes returned to the dash. “They’re with you all the time, or all the times I’ve ever seen you.” I continued to study him, but he didn’t move. “... Met a giant.”
It took me a second to respond. “You did?”
“Yep, real big Indian fella.”
“And where was that?”
He leaned forward and peered through the top of the windshield. I followed his gaze past the graveyard and above the rock shelf at the end of town. “Up there.”
I pushed off with the Colt still camouflaged beside my leg. “Thanks, James.”
“That big Indian, he brought me back down here, took my keys, and told me to stay in my truck.” His look trailed up toward the union hall. “I offered him my saddle-gun, but he said he liked to work quiet.” I nodded and turned to continue up the street, where the edge of the moon was just beginning to clear the cliffs. They looked black, the way blood does in moonlight. “Hey, Walt?”
I stopped and looked back at him through the reflection of the vent window. “Yep?”
“Is that big Indian a friend of yours?”
I thought about it. “Yes. He is.”
He cast a glance up the street and then back to me. “Is he...?”
I waited, but the drunken man who saw things that nobody else saw just continued studying me. “Is he what?”
He took another slug of the brandy and then turned to look back up the hill. “Is he dead, too? ”
“I sure hope not.” I started to grin, but it wouldn’t take. “Stay in the truck, James.”
He nodded. “I will.”
I walked up the street with those feathers of anxiety scouring the insides of my lungs as I checked each dilapidated building. I still saw no sign of Virgil, Tuyen, or the girl. A ghost town and, except for James and me, deserted.
It was like the place was swallowing souls.
I saw a glimmer of something beside the collapsed wall of the saloon and eased myself down the wooden boardwalk far enough to see the nose of my truck. I took a breath and raised my Colt. Staying next to the crumbling wall, I slipped in behind the Bullet and saw that the doors were locked and the keys were gone.
I pulled the two-way from my belt and gave it another try. “Unit one, anybody copy?”
Static.
I looked up past the cemetery to the union hall, at the castellated cornices and second-story outcropping that gave it the appearance of a fortress standing on the hill. The still listless moon was at a full quarter, and I could see that the sicklelike point had just cleared the cliffs.