“Skeeter,” Larry said, chinning toward the window. “Maybe the sheriff, too. At least three units. A whole shitload of ’em.”
Cody didn’t look over.
“The coins,” Larry said. “Were they gold coins or something? Valuable? So you’re saying maybe it was a robbery and a murder?”
Cody shook his head. “The coins weren’t worth shit.”
“So what are you driving at?”
“They’re AA coins,” Cody said softly. “Twelve-step program coins. One for every year from the local chapter. They’re probably worth twenty bucks each, if that. There’s a goddamned elk on the Helena Chapter ones. Hank had nine of them. I’m ten months away from getting my first one and I’ve never wanted something so bad. And they’re missing.”
Larry shrugged. “So your point is what?”
“They’re gone,” Cody said.
Outside, he could hear the sound of doors slamming and loud voices.
Larry said, “We better go out and fill them in.”
Back out in the rain, Larry said over his shoulder, “My cynical cop mind tells me Henry, I mean Hank, tossed the coins away when he decided to go on a bender. You know, like symbolic.”
“Not Hank,” Cody said.
4
Sheriff Edward “Tub” Tubman and Undersheriff Cliff Bodean arrived on the scene in identical beige GMC Yukons with LEWIS AND CLARK COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT decals on the front doors. They parked side by side next to Larry’s rig. Dougherty jumped out of his car to greet them. Both hikers remained inside his vehicle. As Larry and Cody approached, Tubman was unfolding his rain suit. His new gray Stetson rancher-an affectation that appeared the day after he declared he was running for reelection-was on the wet hood of his Yukon, the top of it already darkened from the rain. Cody was annoyed the sheriff didn’t know enough to rest a good hat like that crown-down on a surface like real ranchers did.
Bodean was still in his vehicle and talking to dispatch over the radio.
The sheriff shot his arms through the sleeves of the suit but it got bunched around his head and he struggled. Cody was reminded of a turtle.
“Let me help you with that,” Dougherty said, giving the back hem of the coat a yank. When he did, Tubman’s head popped through the material and he came up sputtering.
“Damn thing anyway,” he said, reaching for his hat. “So what have we got, boys?”
Tubman was short and doughy with a gunfighter’s mustache and a tuft of hair that circled his round head like a smudge.
Larry and Cody exchanged looks, waiting for the other to start.
“A body, right?” Tubman said, annoyed. “You’ve got a body?”
“We’ve got that,” Larry said. “Likely three days old. Male. Burned up in the fire.”
Larry briefed the sheriff on the crime scene and what they’d found. He offered no opinions or speculation, just a solid accounting of the facts as they’d found them. He did it with such authority, Cody thought, that on the facts alone there was only one conclusion. He appreciated that Larry didn’t even hint at their earlier discussion.
“Accidental death then,” Tubman said with some relief. “Or what we like to call ‘death by misadventure,’ if you add in the empty bottle. Is Skeeter on the way?”
“As far as I know,” Larry said. “Cody had him called.”
“Let’s hope he shows up alone without his fan club,” Tubman said, shaking his head.
The sheriff nodded toward the hikers in Dougherty’s truck. “Those folks the people who called it in?”
“Yes, sir,” Dougherty said. “I questioned them separately.”
“Did they check out?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are they county residents?”
Cody heard, Are they voters?
“No, sir,” Dougherty said. “The man’s a college professor from MSU. The woman’s his student, apparently. They really don’t want their names out, if you catch my drift.”
Tubman smiled. “Too bad. Their names will be in the report. So tell the professor he better start doing some damage control with his wife.”
Dougherty laughed.
“And get them out of here,” Tubman said. “Take them back to their car so they can go home.”
“Yes, sir.”
Cody watched Dougherty get into his vehicle and start it up. He waited for the professor to remember his backpack in Cody’s Ford, but the professor looked distraught. The woman stared out the window, as if contemplating what the rest of the semester would be like now. As they left the two of them appeared to be engaged in an angry exchange, based on the waving of hands.
Cody thought: They left the backpack.
Then he thought: Fate.
The bad blood between the sheriff and the coroner had recently come to a boil when Tubman was quoted in the Independent Record declaring that the cause of death of a twenty-five-year-old drifter found in Lincoln was due to an overdose of meth. He used the opportunity to make a case for increased drug-enforcement funding for the sheriff’s department. The next day, Skeeter held a press conference for the newspaper and the two television stations and made a point of saying they were awaiting autopsy results and, “Maybe our local sheriff should just stop by my office to learn how we actually do our job, since he seems to somehow know things that haven’t yet been determined scientifically.”
Although the victim was later declared to have died due to an overdose, the war had begun over which one of the two would be the official spokesman for law enforcement in the county when it came to dead bodies. Because both men were running again and wanted as much authoritative face time in the press as possible, it was often an ugly race to the cameras for both of them.
Bodean opened his door and leaned out. “We’ve nailed down the owner of this place,” he said. “Local man name of Henry Winters, age fifty-nine. No record.”
“We found his ID,” Larry confirmed.
“It didn’t burn up?” the sheriff asked Larry.
“The wallet was in his bedroom in the side of the cabin that’s still standing.”
“I don’t know him,” Tubman said dismissively. Meaning Winters wasn’t influential with the city council or a campaign contributor.
I did, Cody thought. He was angry with the sheriff’s gut reaction.
Tubman took his wet hat off and looked at it in his headlights. “I gotta get me one of those plastic hat condom things so the felt doesn’t get stained.”
Another set of headlights strobed through the lodgepole pine trees.
“Who smashed up the unit?” Tubman asked, turning his attention to Cody’s dented Ford.
“I hit an elk on the way up.”
“I hope you’ve got good insurance,” Tubman said, not kindly.
“I hope you’ve got a cow permit,” Bodean laughed.
Cody cleared his throat. “I think it’s a homicide.”
Even in the diffused light from the headlights, Cody could see the sheriff’s face darken.
“Larry thinks it could be accidental, but I don’t. I think somebody killed Hank and tried to cover the crime by burning the place down. If it wasn’t for the rain, he would have completely gotten away with it.”
Tubman spat between his feet. “It sounds accidental, Cody.”
“I’ll give you that. But I knew the man. It wasn’t an accident.”
The sheriff turned on Larry: “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
Larry shrugged. “We’re still working it out,” he said.
“Before Skeeter gets here,” Tubman said to Cody, “tell me why you don’t think this is what it appears to be.”
Cody told him, leaving out the part about him being in AA. Leaving out the part about the missing coins. Saying he knew Hank Winters never drank alcohol.