It was a four-hundred-yard shot if it was an inch. It was colder this morning, probably with a slight to negligible headwind and an approximate scale of elevation would be eighty at four hundred yards. I sighed a full breath and watched the steam blow back in my face. It was quite a shot, even with a scope.
I started at the first few trees at the ridge’s edge, shining my flashlight down along the partially covered ground. Al had said that the shooter was big, but Al is short, so I was beginning to wonder how big big meant. There were no telltale signs in the stiffening grass, so I began using this trail as my pathway as I searched the surrounding area on both sides. If I were shooting someone, would I use the trail? Probably not. I kneeled by the end of the opening that faced the lake and went over each blade of grass. If I were shooting someone from four hundred yards, would I lie down? Probably. There was something funny about the slight depression in the grass to my right, so I walked out of my safe area and looked back where the grass seemed to lay in an odd pattern. I kneeled down and looked back into the hypotenuse of a thin triangle: All the blades bowed in my direction.
Blowdown. This is where it had all started, all. 45 caliber seventy grains of it. There was a weak swipe where someone had scuffed a foot across the area in an attempt to hide the marks, but Al Monroe’s appearance must have curtailed such activity. I extended my view and looked straight back through the trees. I suppose somebody my size could make it through, but their ability to limbo would have to be considerably better than mine. I went back to my path and began working my way deeper into the woods, searching the narrow area for footprints but finding none. If they were big, they were light on their feet. I transferred my search to above ground, looking for any disturbance in the thick foliage of the pines. Nothing.
I thought about Henry and took my first full breath since Al had made his partial identification. I stood there with my hands in my pockets and tried to convince myself that a man with 4.2 blood alcohol content would be lucky if he could properly identify his own mule. It wouldn’t wash; he had been too precise about all the other points. Al might be a professional alcoholic, but he was an observant one.
Why would Henry do it? There was the immediate connection with the family; the oldest of motivations, revenge. If somebody had done this to my niece, how would I react? I kept thinking about Omar’s remarks about Henry; was it productive to look at those who had killed when looking for a killer? It wasn’t easy to do, take a life. Henry had killed men, but so had I. Try as I might, I couldn’t develop Omar’s line of thought and went back to the one I liked best, the rationalization of why it didn’t have to be Henry.
With Al’s partial physical description, we were looking for a largish person, probably male and possibly Indian. Sticking with motivation, it had to be someone connected to the victims’ victim, Melissa Little Bird. And that meant Artie Small Song or Henry Standing Bear. I was going to have to have a conversation with Artie Small Song.
Did long hair necessarily mean Indian? Omar had long hair and half my staff had longish hair. Vic and Turk both had hair at least to their shoulders. Vic had been growing hers for the last two years, and Turk’s hockey hair was perennial. I always tried to keep an open mind when lining up the suspects. Law enforcement personnel were people, too, which meant they could commit murder just like the rest of us. If I was going to play the game, everybody got a piece.
Why would Vic do it? She was a pretty militant female, a master in ballistics, and she was also the first on both crime scenes. I had talked her into joining up about two years ago, when these boys had been handed down their suspended sentences. I looked down at the revolving lights, at the flickering shadows cast on the sides of the vehicles, and at Jacob’s shadow-smear that didn’t move. Her sense of justice just didn’t seem to fit. She didn’t have any reason to do it, and she wasn’t big, even if she had the hair.
Why would Turk do it? Just being a prick wasn’t enough, and the fact that I was looking forward to our next meeting like Grant did Gettysburg shouldn’t interfere with my abilities to investigate. Did he want my job bad enough to try and make me look this bad? None of it seemed likely, but he was big, his name was on Dave’s list, and he had the hair.
Why would Omar do it? Omar could make this shot, but what could his motivations be? I started thinking about which grade B actor would play Omar in the television movie of the week and quickly dropped it. But he was big enough, had the hair, had a Sharps, and knew how to shoot.
Why would Artie Small Song do it? And why wouldn’t he have used a rocket launcher or a bazooka? This spoke to the violent-death side of the case, and his family connections loomed large. Basic investigative technique was jumping up and down and screaming it was Artie. He was large, might have the weapon, and he had the hair.
Why would Henry do it? I didn’t believe he did, and that was all there was to it. But… he had been late running yesterday morning; he hadn’t gotten to my house until after eight. I thought back and tried to think of what time it had been when he arrived, but I didn’t have Al’s gift for chronographic pinpointing. If the Cheyenne Death Rifle was the one he used, how did he get it back to Lonnie in time? Two men could keep a secret if one of them is dead, or so the old saying goes, but I didn’t think it was possible to get from here to the Rez and back to my place in three hours.
I took one last look around, satisfied that I had done as much as I could, and started down the hill. By the time I got to the path, Al was making the return journey to his cabin. “Al, how long are you going to be here?” He truly was a vision atop his mule with his floral print trunks in full display.
“I was thinkin’ about getting the hell outta here tomorrow, but with all this stuff happenin’ I might just stick around.”
“Well, if you do decide to head back, would you mind checking in at my office? It’s down in Durant, behind the courthouse, or you can just give me a call.” I handed him a card. “This’s got my home phone on it, along with all the office numbers. If you think of anything else, anything at all, be sure to call me. There’ll probably be somebody over later to ask you the same questions and get your personal information. Do you want me to tell them to wait till the morning?”
“What time is it?”
I started to laugh, then pulled out my pocket watch. “Oh-two-hundred.”
“Aw, hell, it’s the shank of the evenin’. Send ’em on over.”
I got out of the mule’s way and started the long slog around the lake. When I got to the scene, Vic was warming up in her unit. I walked over and kneeled beside Jacob Esper. Something was bothering me, something had been niggling at me for the last few hours. I looked at the body and back over my shoulder. It was a clear shot and had planted the young man squarely against the side of the truck. How did the perpetrator get the feather onto the body? Granted, there seemed to have been long periods of Al’s drunkenness where somebody could’ve planted an entire aviary on Jacob, but it did add to the time that it would’ve taken Henry to complete the journey to my place. It was another reason my buddy couldn’t have done it, and I was feeling a little better. Even if I was feeling better, the niggling thought remained like an itch at the middle of my back. There was something here, something I’d seen that was out of my reach. I stared at Jacob Esper, just like I’d stared at Cody Pritchard, and I hoped like hell that I came up with better answers.