She caught up, and we walked along. “Where are you going?”
“I’m headed down. I’ll get things set up at the office, then I’ll be back.” I opened the door and took the Cheyenne Death Rifle from the seat of my truck and handed it to her.
She held it, carefully studying the sheath, then tightened her lips and looked up at me. “Henry?”
“Lonnie, by way of Henry.”
She slowly exhaled and then pulled the rifle out, holding it up in the morning light. “Fuck me running through the forest.”
“We already discussed that.”
She ignored me and continued. “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.”
“That seems to be the general response to this particular weapon.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s haunted. There are supposed to be Old Cheyenne hanging around the thing looking for people to abduct and take back to the Camp of the Dead.”
She studied it some more. “Cool.”
She went off to my truck, and I walked over to the back of one of the DCI Suburbans, where Ferg and Al Monroe were having an animated conversation concerning the relative advantages of the Bitch Creek Nymph over the Number Sixteen Elk Hair Cadis. I always wondered about men who spent their time trying to anticipate and know a fish in a world where man’s knowledge of each other could only be called scarce. It just seemed to be gratuitously ignorant for any man to think that he could think like a fish. Then there was the high deceit of the artificial fly; subtlety, guile, and sly deception created and instilled only to lure a cautious and tentative fish to its death. They were as bad as drug fiends, living in their shadowy world of aquatic intrigue.
I sometimes fly-fished, but it was catch and release, and I always brought a book. “Ferg, have you looked at the equipment he was carrying?”
“Yep.” He looked at Al for confirmation, and they nodded somberly to each other. “Yellow and Royal Humpies, Parachute Adams, Light Cahills, and a couple of wet flies, mostly Montana Stones.”
“Nothing like a Royal Humpie. Any ideas on where George might have gone?”
“Some.” I waited. “Meadowlark, West Tensleep Creek, Medicine Lodge, Crazy Woman, head of the Clear, maybe even north fork of the Powder.”
“Well, that should narrow it down to about 189,000 acres. How long do you think it’ll take you?”
Dejectedly, he looked at the skies west of us. “A little while.. ”
I followed his gaze to the dark lines of clouds converging across the Big Horn basin and the Wind River Range. This was the one that was going to signify that autumn was over. If you lived here long enough, you could sense them coming. The few leaves left on the aspens quaked, and you could almost feel the barometric undertow as the storm gathered momentum. The clouds looked flat and mean, and they stretched into the distance; it made my eyes hurt. I was having enough trouble operating a homicide investigation without a raging blizzard at ten thousand feet. As he started to go, I leaned over to him. “You got a rifle in your truck?”
He stopped dead and looked at me. “What?”
I glanced over at Al as he suddenly found DCI’s proceedings of great interest. “Do you have a rifle in your truck?”
“Um, no.”
“Get Vic’s. 243. Just because we don’t know where George Esper is, doesn’t mean somebody else doesn’t.”
The drive down the mountain wasn’t too bad; the only place where there was ice was on the flats, where the wind had continually applied a fresh coat of melting snow. Any other time, swooping over the gentle hills of the high meadow was a mind-freeing experience, but my mind snagged on the teepee signs for the campgrounds in the Bighorn National Forest. Henry was right, there had been no Indians on the jury.
On Wednesday, the jury had come in dressed up and, in the back hallways, we all thought that after eight days of deliberation we were close to a verdict. I still remember the look on all of our faces when the red light went on. The family members took their seats in the first three rows, quietly, like it was church, as if how little noise they made would have an affect on their loved ones’ fate: the Espers, the Pritchards, and Mrs. Keller in the front row, Jim Keller never attending; Lonnie Little Bird in the aisle with his trusting smile, the chrome on his wheelchair seeming shiny and out of place. Then there were the defendants, three of them smirking and Bryan Keller looking sad.
“Please rise.” Vern’s voice was steady and carried the patrician quality that resonated that fervent prayer, that desperate plea for justice. Whose justice we were about to find out. Bryan closed his eyes, Jacob and George remained emotionless, and Cody glared. Cody Pritchard was found guilty of two counts of first-degree aggravated sexual assault; one count was for assaulting a mentally defective woman, and the other was for using force or coercion in that assault. He was also found guilty of conspiracy in the second degree. Jacob Esper, same verdict. George Esper was found guilty of one count of aggravated sexual assault in the second degree and was guilty of second-degree conspiracy. Bryan Keller was acquitted of the more serious charges but was found guilty of second-degree conspiracy.
After Vern was through reading the verdict, Cody leaned over to Jacob and whispered something; they both laughed. I felt like going over there. I made a mental note to keep a closer eye on them from then on and, if possible, to take a personal interest in their miseries. Sentencing was set for three weeks. All four were released with nominal bail and, after two years of freedom following their crime, they were set free again.
When I made the final sweep of the now closed courtroom, there was only one person left. “Quite a show. Mm, hmm, yes. It is so.”
I stood there in my cotton-poly-blend uniform, looked past him at the cheap paneling on the walls, and felt the fraud of human institutions. His eyes wouldn’t let me go, wouldn’t let me usher him out and get it all over with, so I went and sat on the armrest of the chair in front of him. He smiled, looking through the thick lenses in his glasses, and patted my leg. “Long day?”
I smiled back. “Yep.”
He looked around, his hand remaining on my leg. “Doesn’t take long for everybody to get out of here, huh?”
“No.”
“Mm. Not like on the television.”
“Is there somebody here to help you, Lonnie?”
“Oh, yes. Arbutus has gone to get the car.”
“Do you need help getting down?”
“Oh, no. I use the elevator.” We sat there in silence, as the radiators ticked and groaned. His eyes drifted down to the gun that also rested on my leg. “Those boys?” I waited. “They went home?”
I cleared my throat. “Yep, Lonnie. They did.”
His eyes remained on my gun. “You will go and get them?”
I paused. “They’ll be right back here in three weeks to be sentenced. That’s when Vern decides what will happen to them now that they are guilty.”
His eyes came up, and he looked profound. “That judge, yes, he looks like Ronald Colman. Mm, hmm. It is so.”
By the time I reached the office, I had worked myself into a righteous rage, and I wheeled into the parking lot, the Bullet sliding to a stop. My emotional state was not improved when I saw Turk’s car sitting next to the door. He came out of the office as I got out of the truck, his thumbs hitched in his gun belt as he came down the steps. I noticed how big he was, how young. “Damn, you keep drivin’ like that, and I’m gonna have to…”
He didn’t see it coming, nobody would have. He was used to my irascible moods and just thought he had caught the sheriff at a bad time. He had. I brought my hand up in a full-reach swipe that caught the side of his head and propelled it face first into the quarter panel of the Thunder Chicken, as my right boot scooped his feet out from under him. The impact was thunderous on the hollow flank of the car, and the dent it left was substantial. He didn’t get up but lay there beside the rear wheel, a small pool of blood spreading from the side of his downturned face.