He turned to regard the screen as the usual blobs moved about in indiscriminate patterns. “You have got to be kidding.”
I crossed the room and leaned against a six-by-six. “Vonnie, welcome to Chateau Tyvek.”
“Is this the uniform of the day?”
Henry was right; I was going to have to make some changes. “Oh, this was just a little something I threw on.” I looked at the Cheyenne Nation. “What’s the score?”
He stood with his hands on his hips as two vague football helmets collided and exploded into a million pieces on the screen amid triumphant musical accompaniment. “It hasn’t started yet. Is it me or has football gotten more and more like wrestling these days?”
She squeezed my hand. “Bear says he doesn’t mind Native American mascots for athletic teams.” I noticed he didn’t correct her use of the term Native American.
“I don’t have a problem with native accoutrements. If they wish to use the tools of our trade to strike fear into their enemies’ hearts, who am I to deny them?”
This from the man who had worn a horse-head amulet around his neck for four years in Southeast Asia. Chinese Nung Recon teams and Montagnards believed it had been carved from the sternum of an unfortunate NVA colonel. Henry had done nothing to dissuade them from this thought, and only he and I knew the bone had come from the leg of his mother’s old, dry dairy cow that they had had to put down. “How’s lunch coming?”
“Who am I, Hop-Sing here?” He opened the oven door and peered in. “Almost there. Plenty of time for you to go put some clothes on.”
Her hand trailed after mine as I started for the bedroom. “Don’t go to any trouble on my part.”
I continued into the bedroom so she wouldn’t see how red my face was growing. I looked around the room and saw my life as it was. The edges of the mattress were threadbare and dirty, the sheets an uninviting gray. A battered gooseneck lamp sat on the floor beside the bed with a copy of Doctor Dogbody’s Leg opened to page seventy-three, where I had left it a while ago. The ever-present beer boxes loomed at the far wall, and the naked light bulbs allowed none of the low-rent squalor to escape. It was like living in an archeological dig. I thought about the woman in the other room and felt like climbing out the window. Instead, I went over to the crate that stood as my bedside table and punched the button just below the flashing red light on the answering machine. Evidently, I hadn’t heard it ring.
“Okay, so, after forty-eight hours of intensive ballistic study, we’re no fucking closer than we were at the beginning of the weekend.” She sounded ragged and edgy, and I was glad I was five hours away. “The cast content on the ballistics is fairly soft; 30 to 1, lead to tin.” She took a breath. “Here’s the kicker. There’s some kind of strange chemical compound… You remember those old Glaser Safety Slugs? The GSS’s? If that’s the case, Cody was SOL.”
Shit out of luck.
“So, can you imagine somebody tracking that kid down with Teflon slugs?”
No.
“Yeah, well me neither.” There was a pause. “Anyway, I’ve done all that I can do here, and the pizza at Larry’s sucks. So, I’ll be home tomorrow. Any questions?”
I stared at the phone machine and shook my head side to side.
“Good. I’m taking tomorrow off. Any problem with that?”
I continued to shake my head.
“Good.” Pause. “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow anyway.”
When I entered the kitchen, Henry was holding the photographs that had been in the envelope at arms length.
“You need new reading glasses or longer arms?”
“Both.”
Vonnie was glancing at the television and questioning him. “Twenty-five percent of all domestic murders go unsolved each year?” She shifted on the stool and smiled at me.
I poured myself another cup of coffee and extended the pot toward her. She shook her head and waited to capture my next words with those eyes. “About five thousand cases go unsolved.” Her eyes widened. “About sixty-two percent of homicides in the United States involve firearms, which means me and my compadres have failed to identify some thirty-one hundred killers and their weapons every year.”
“Seems like the guys on TV and in the movies always get their man; you real cops must be falling down on the job.” He lowered the photographs, and I noticed Vonnie made no effort to look at them.
“Personally, I never miss an episode of Dragnet.”
She cocked her head, and the eyes narrowed. “It seems like a lot. It was Sheriff Connally here before you, wasn’t it?” She grinned and looked off toward the front door.
“You know Lucian?”
“Oh, I had a few run-ins with him back in my bad old days.” She laughed, flashing that canine tooth that sparkled like a Pepsodent commercial. “Some of my posse and I had absconded with a fifth of my father’s Irish whiskey and high-tailed it to the Skyline Drive-In in Durant.”
Henry perked up. “I think I heard about that. Didn’t you and Susan Miller dance naked on the hood of that ’65 Mustang during Doctor Zhivago?”
She was turning just a little pink at the throat. “I was of a young and impressionable age.”
“Hell, I would have been impressed too.” He stuffed the photographs back into the envelope and handed them to me. “Good luck.”
Her smile went away. “You don’t think it was an accident?”
“Not really.” Henry crossed behind me and opened the refrigerator door to pull out a pitcher I had never seen before, filled with a murky maroon liquid, ice cubes, and lemon and orange slices. I sat the envelope down on the counter and stared at it. “I’m hoping real hard that it is, but evidence is mounting that such is not the case.”
“Why?”
“Short-range weapon did the deed, no way you could sneak up on somebody out there. I’d hazard to guess that there aren’t many hunters looking to shoot pronghorn or mule deer with a 12 gauge. And there are some things that just don’t make sense.”
He stirred the contents of the pitcher. “Powder burns.”
She was following, but I figured I should explain the details. “When you shoot a shotgun at any range…” I paused and weighed the next question. “You know what a shotgun is?”
Her eyes stayed steady to show no offense. “My father used to shoot skeet.”
“Right. Well, this is looking like a rifled slug.”
“Slug. Doesn’t sound pleasant.”
“It’s not. Slugs basically convert shotguns into oversize rifles with enough power to crack automobile engine blocks.”
“Why would somebody want to shoot somebody with something like that?”
“Emphasis.”
It rumbled in his chest, and I wondered about all the people who would consider it a good thing that the world was shed of Cody Pritchard. “Cody wasn’t exactly beloved by the…” I gave him a sidelong glance. “Indian community.”
She placed a hand on the counter to get his attention. “It’s not Indian anymore, it’s Native American. Right, Bear?” She nodded for confirmation.
He looked up and pursed his lips sagely. “That is right.” He turned his head toward me ever so slightly. “You must learn to be more responsive to Native American sensibilities.”
Bastard. “The problem is the slug decreases the range of an already relatively short-range weapon.”
“But wasn’t he shot in the back?”
“Yep, but you’d still have to get close.”
“Could he have been drunk or asleep?”
“Drunk, certainly.” Henry wandered over to look at the blobs moving in the television. I had forgotten about the game. “Even with the complications of extensive tissue damage, his posture was likely erect. And since Henry was the last to serve him food and see him alive, I can take his word that Cody was at least capable of driving his truck and walking.”
She turned her stool. “You saw him last?”
He stared at the television screen, his arms crossed. “Do not ask me how I can tell, Walt, but I think your team is winning.”