The interior of Al’s cabin was far worse than the outside, kind of like Fibber McGee’s closet gone bad. There was a dilapidated sofa of indiscriminate color and shape along the wall, a La-Z-Boy of approximately the same vintage, and a gray Formica kitchen table surrounded by three folding chairs-two brown, one off-brown. At the center of the room was one of those homemade stoves that you put together with two 55-gallon drums; the underside of the bottom drum glowed orange, and I was sure it was close to a hundred and ten degrees in there. There was a halfhearted attempt at a Tiki theme, with native paintings of naked women and carved wooden sculptures as decoration. The most amazing stacks of magazines and catalogs towered against the walls; National Geographic and American Rifleman made up the visible majority. It was like being in the dead letter office on Fiji.
I followed him in and reluctantly closed the door behind me as he threaded his way back to the kitchen area. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his entire upper body was covered in tattoos. When he returned with a steaming cup of coffee, I expected to see an albatross hanging from his neck. He seated himself on the La-Z-Boy and gestured for me to sit on the sofa. I pushed back my hat and looked at him. “Merchant marine?”
He scooped up his martini from a convenient stack. “Goddamned Eleventh Engineers, you?”
“First Division.”
“I’ll be damned.” He leaned forward and extended his hand, and we shook like old friends. “Semper Fi. I bet you seen some shit.”
“Al, I need you to do something for me.”
He did his best to look serious. “Name it.”
I pulled the digital Breathalyzer out of my jacket pocket and handed it to him as I took off my coat and laid it beside me. “Need you to blow into this.”
His eyes looked at the device and then back at me; then he shrugged. “No law against driving a mule drunk.”
“Only way you’d catch me on one.”
He blew into the device and handed it back to me. “How’d I do, General?”
I tapped the Breathalyzer, but it remained at 4.2. “Rapidly approaching alcoholic coma.” He toasted with his martini glass and added to the percentage of complex sugars already racing through his bloodstream. “Al, how come I don’t know you?”
He shrugged again; it seemed to be his favorite form of communication. “I don’t know. Hell, how come I don’t know you?”
I looked down at my civilian clothes, my sheepskin coat, and the brim of my unadorned silver-belly hat. “Al, I’m the sheriff of Absaroka County.”
“Really?” He processed the information for a moment. “Where’s that?”
“You’re in it.”
He looked around as if there might be a sign. “I thought we were in Big Horn County.”
I studied him for a moment. “You a bartender, Al?”
“Thirty-two fuckin’ years.”
“How’d you get here?”
“Buddy’n me partnered up and bought it off some asshole in Kemmerer.”
“That where you live the rest of the year?”
“Lander.” He took another sip of his martini, and I took the first sip of my coffee; it wasn’t bad, and it was hot. “I need to ask you some questions.” I tried not to concentrate on the fact that my primary witness had been drunk for the last three days. “Hear any loud noises early this morning?”
“Like that goddamned howitzer that went off just before dawn?”
Our eyes met. “Hear that, did you?”
“Well, hell, it’s hunting season, so it’s been soundin’ like a small arms war ever since I got here. Had to tie ribbons all over Sally, so the simple-minded bastards wouldn’t shoot her.” He paused for a second, remembering. “But this was different, closer; and it was early, real early.”
“I don’t suppose you noticed what time it was?”
He sniffed. “Oh-five-twelve.”
My eyes widened after making the translation. “You’re sure of that?”
“Oh, hell yeah.” He gestured to the large windup alarm clock that sat on the table. “Looked at my clock.”
“Then what?”
He gestured. “Went over here to the door and shouted for ’em to knock that shit off.”
“Why did you go to this door?”
“S’where the shot came from.”
“East or west?”
He shook his head. “Directly up the hill.” I nodded as he sipped his martini. “That what killed that boy?”
“Maybe.” I leaned forward and rested the coffee cup on my knee; it was still very hot. “When you went over to the door, did you open it and look out?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you see anything?”
“Saw somebody walkin’ back up through the tree line with their back to me.” My expression was probably easy to misinterpret. “This any help?”
“I never had it so good. What’d they look like?”
“Pretty big, near as I could tell. It was early, and there wasn’t much light.”
“Any distinguishing features? Hair?”
He shook his head no. “Wait.” I could feel my heart beating. “It was long.”
I’m pretty sure I skipped a beat. “Long hair…”
“Yeah, now that I think about it. Yeah.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Yeah, long hair.”
“How long?”
“To the shoulders, at least.”
“Color?”
“Dark?” But then he shook his head. “Not enough light to tell, but dark, I think.”
“Hat?”
“Nope.”
“Could you tell what kind of clothing?”
He nodded slowly. “Overalls, one of those insulated jobs.” He waited for a minute. “You okay?”
It took me a moment to think of a word and get some moisture in my mouth. “Yep. This individual was carrying a weapon?”
“Yeah, a big one.”
“Type?”
“Couldn’t tell you. I mean, I could see ’im carryin’ something, and from the way he carried it…”
“Both hands?”
“Nope, one. Hanging down to the side.”
“Why do you say big?”
He sat his martini glass down and spread his hands apart by more than four feet. “Long.”
“Anything else? Wooden stock?” He shook his head and shrugged. “Anything hanging off the rifle?”
He continued to shake his head. “Sorry.”
“Anything else? Anything at all?” He stared at the arm of his chair and shook his head. “You want to revise or amplify anything in these statements?”
He looked confused. “Wha’? I’m under arrest or somethin’?”
I shook my head and smiled. “No, you just made a very important statement in a homicide investigation. I want to make sure there isn’t anything you might have left out.”
He looked around for the invisible signs that were supposed to tell him where he was, what he was doing, and when he should do it. I was starting to understand Al’s relationship with the clock. “Something might come to me?”
“That’s fine. When did you notice the truck over there that was running?”
“Didn’t.”
“You didn’t. All day?”
“Nope, went back over to the sofa there and went back to sleep.” He stopped and then looked around at the painted concrete floor for the thought he had lost. “Did notice it around lunchtime. Got up and heated some stew.” He started to get up now. “You want some?”
I stopped him with a hand. “Maybe later. What time was that?” “Twelve hundred forty-seven.”
I glanced over at the kitchen table at the two-handed face that told me it was now one. “You look at the clock a lot, Al.”
“Thirty-two fuckin’ years of waitin’ for closin’ time.”
He confirmed the fact that he had yelled at the two guys in the Hummer at exactly twenty-one hundred twelve. As I went off to check the ridge, I asked Al if he would hitch up the one-mule team and take my ardent deputy a cup of coffee and some stew. He said he would be fucking happy to.
The hill was steep, and the fact that I was wearing cowboy boots didn’t help. The snow had tapered off, but the wind remained persistent, and by the time I got to the top I had worked up a decent sweat. I stood there, catching my breath and looking down at the lights of Al’s cabin and at the red-and-blue emergency lights revolving from our vehicles in the parking lot. The only consistent sounds were the wind, Sally munching, and the revolving click of our lights. It was a beautiful place, peaceful, terminally peaceful for Jacob Esper.