He took another slug and handed the bottle back. “Damn, that stuff’s addicting. Better have another pull and put it back in there where it came from.” He burped. “Fore we get drunk as a couple ’a hooty-owls. Bastards around here’ll steal anything that ain’t nailed down… What?”
“Sheriff stuff.”
“More?”
He watched me look out the glass doors for a change. “I don’t know how much of this you want to hear about…”
“Oh, hell, I got important crafts to make out ’a tongue depressors tomorrow morning. I’m not sure if I wanna cloud my mind with a murder case.”
I turned around. “What makes you think it’s a murder case?”
“What makes you think it’s not?” I stood there looking at him. “Sit down, you’re puttin’ a crick in my neck.” I did as ordered. “Don’t look so surprised, I read the damn newspaper.”
“It could be a hunting accident, Lucian.”
He crossed his arms, concentrating. “Bullshit. Near as I can figure, there’s an awful lot of folks out there that would just as soon see that kid dead, one of ’em just decided to take the law into his own hands.” I told him about the ballistics. “Goddamn, was there anything left of the little bastard?”
“Extremities.”
“Where’d it hit him?”
“Center shot.”
“Front or back?”
“Back.”
“Not much of the front left, I suppose?”
“Nope.”
“Lead?”
“Yep. It’s pretty scattered, but everything seems to support the theory that it’s a big caliber breechloader.”
“Sharps.”
“Well, there are others…”
“Sharps.” He rested his chin in the palm of his hand, the stubby fingers wrapped around his jaw like a knuckleball. The gnarled old fingers looked like they could crack walnuts. Lucian’s grip was legendary and, if you were ever unfortunate enough to have him lay hands on you, you suddenly paid very close attention. It was fun to watch the mechanisms start up, to see Lucian’s eyes flying over Absaroka County, sweeping down from the mountains, through the gulleys, over the foothills, and into every attic, cedar chest, closet, and gun case in a hundred square miles. He added five more names to the list, none of which were Indians. I told him about the feather. “Shit. Anything else?”
“Nope.” He chewed on the inside of his mouth but, other than that, he was still. After a while, I asked, “What are you thinking about?”
“I’m thinkin’ about gettin’ that bottle ’a bourbon back out.” I carefully put the little kingdoms back into their storage place in the compartment within the board. I figured we were done with chess for the night. “You still runnin’ with that Indian buddy of yours, Ladies Wear?”
“Standing Bear.”
“Yeah, him.” Lucian did things to Indian names that were nothing short of criminal. He called the Big Crows the Big Blows, and the Red Arrows were Dead Sparrows. The list was endless and, no matter how many times you corrected him, he would just smile a little smile and keep on talking. Even with all this, the Indians loved him. They respected him for his toughness and his sense of fair play. On the bridge where I had recuperated yesterday, Lucian had waged a campaign against public intoxication when he stopped his overturned bathtub of a Nash and demanded the bottle from which two middle-aged braves were drinking. They took one last sip and then tossed the container into Piney Creek. “What bottle?”
Lucian unstrapped his wooden leg at the bank, took off his hat, jumped into the creek, and a minute later came up. “This goddamned bottle.” They helped him with his leg and his hat and then cheerfully jumped in the back of the squad car for the ride into town. The Cheyenne elders were careful when they spoke his name, Nedon Nes Stigo, He Who Sheds His Leg.
Lucian knew who Henry was, and he knew his name. “He can probably help you figure out who did the feather and where on the Rez it came from. Gawd, all my contacts out there are dried up dead and traveling on the wings of the wind. But you gotta start with that girl’s family.”
“Henry is her family.”
He shook his head. “How’s Ladies Wear tied into the Thunderbirds?”
“Little Birds. Melissa’s father is Henry’s cousin.”
“So, the daughter’d be his second cousin.”
“Yep, but with the age discrepancy they just call her his niece.”
“Her father the one that lost his legs, Lonnie?”
“Diabetes.”
“Damn, that’s rough.” I looked at the one-legged man before me. “The mother was a drunk, and the kid turning out feebleminded the way she did…” The hand went back to his face, and the air that came from his lungs rattled like a snake. “Well, go talk to ol’ Ladies Wear.”
“You don’t think he’s a suspect?”
His eyes quickly looked like the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun. “Do you?”
“No.”
He continued to look at me. “He’s your best friend, seems like it’s something you’d know.”
“Yep.”
He leaned his head to one side and half-closed the nearest eye, sighting me in. “You don’t sound so sure.”
“I am.” He watched me as I reached over to the sofa and got my coat. “Anybody else I should put on the list?”
He shrugged. “How the hell should I know. I’m retired.”
It was still nice when I got outside. I always used the emergency exit by the commissary at the end of the hallway. I never looked down into the sliding glass windows as I crossed the parking lot; it seemed demeaning to Lucian. In my peripheral view, I could see the lights were still on, and I was sure he still sat there watching me, waiting for next Tuesday. I turned around.
“What the hell do you want now?”
It hadn’t taken long to get back to his room. I leaned on the doorway, pretty much filling the opening and pushed the brim of my hat back. “Have you thought about that dispatcher’s job we talked about a while ago?”
He had unbuttoned his shirt and hopped to the dividing wall, his hand steadying him. “Two years ago?”
“Yep.” He stared at me through the eyebrows. “Things are awful busy, and I could use some help.”
“Two days a week?”
“Weekends, yeah.”
“I’ll have to think about it.” He didn’t move, embarrassed at being caught hopping through his suite and heading for bed.
“You were going after that bourbon, weren’t you?” He didn’t smile very often but, when he did, he had great teeth. I wondered idly if they were his.
I started back to the office with the windows down. If it was going to snow, it wasn’t giving any indication of it. The moon glowed a clear white, slipping through the slender arms of the willows along Clear Creek. Late at night you could hear the water, and most of the summer I would leave the windows in my office open so I could listen. It was only about eight-thirty, but the town had already put itself to bed.
There was a note from Ruby saying that Ferg had swung by the Espers but that nobody had been home. He would telephone them himself and stop by again tomorrow. There was an addendum Post-it, in which she related that she had informed him that he was being drafted to full time. She said his response hadn’t been enthusiastic, but he hadn’t been spiteful enough not to leave four dressed brown trout in the refrigerator for me. I wandered past Vic’s office and looked in at the explosion of legal pads. The display was daunting, and I would be cursed at if I messed up any of what I’m sure was a carefully detailed arrangement. We were little but we were mighty. I thought of Don Quixote, being far too powerful to war with mere mortals and pleading for giants.
I sat at my desk and looked at the phone as the windmills loomed overhead. Vonnie would still be up, but my courage had curdled. There was a sheet of paper from one of Vic’s legal pads with her angry scrawl spreading across the top quarter. I picked it up, turned on my desk lamp, and read… “Where the hell are you? Spiral searched the site with a fine-tooth comb. Full six hundred yards, and do you have any idea how fucking long that took? Numb-nuts thought there might have been some grass blowdown on one of the rises about five hundred yards away, so we had to stake and cover it. Guess how fucking long that took? He’s an expert with a camera, too. Go figure. Asked me out for a drink. Guess how fucking long that took?” It was signed, VIC. With an addendum, “PS: More grist for the investigative ballistics’ mill tomorrow, nothing worth hampering your extensive social life with.” And another. “PPS: I took the film over to the drugstore, and they said they would drop it off tomorrow morning, first thing. Read: noon.”