I set it aside and reached into the hole again, this time coming up with a copy of Playboy, January 1972. The magazine was as worn as the gun almanac, and I had to admit that Marilyn Cole, leaning against a bookcase with a novel in her hands and little else, was still looking good considering her photo was over a quarter of a century old and folded into three equal parts.
I rested what hardly seemed to be even mild porn anymore on the stack with the gun porn and reached into the hole again, this time pulling out a moldy-looking tome—threadbare black with gold lettering—the Book of Mormon. When I carefully opened the cover, I noticed that it was published in 1859, and the handwritten inscription on the title page read “For my son Orrin, Man of God, Son of Thunder—your loving mother, Sara.”
I tucked the antiquarian book under my arm and stuck my hand back in the container in the floor but couldn’t feel anything else. I looked around the place for something, anything, but there was nothing. I returned everything except the book back to the hole, closed the lid, and kicked a little dirt back over it. I stood, keeping the book with me, and walked around the pump to give the dirt-floored room one more going-over. I stepped through the door, closed it, and hooked the clasp of the lock back through the loop, careful to leave it as I’d found it.
When I got back to Barbara Thomas’s home, I rapped my knuckles on the screen door and waited until Barbara appeared on the other side of the tiny squares, her image pixelated into a thousand parts. I held up the book and asked, “Who’s Orrin?”
She placed a hand against the doorjamb for support and silently put her other hand to her mouth.
• • •
“I don’t know where he’s from.”
I watched as Double Tough took another cookie from the plate on the kitchen counter. Barbara, Vic, and I and the Book of Mormon sat at the kitchen table trying to sort things out. “Well, when was the first time you saw him?”
“Like I said, about two weeks ago.”
“You also said he was an angel.”
She blinked and looked out the kitchen window leading toward Clear Creek and the pump house. “I . . . I might have been confused about that.”
Vic had discarded the now-thawed peas for a cold pack, and her voice was thankfully muffled through the dish towel. “Amen, sister.”
“Have you spoken with him?”
“No.”
“Where did he get the cot and blanket?”
She thought, as she continued to look out the window. “There were things in the garage that I noticed were missing, but I didn’t really connect the two.” Her eyes came back to me. “Do you really think he’s been living in the pump house these last few weeks?”
“I’d say it’s a safe assumption; how, exactly, have you been feeding him?”
She looked at Double Tough, still munching on a cookie. “I just leave the food on the counter.”
My deputy, feeling a little self-conscious, threw out a review as he chewed. “Oatmeal–Chocolate chip, they’re really good.”
The older woman’s eyes returned to mine. “Can’t we just leave him alone?”
I cleared my throat. “Um, no, we can’t. . . . He’s not a stray cat, Mrs. Thomas; we’ve got to find out who he is and where he belongs. There might be people out there looking for him. You understand.”
“I do.”
I picked up the book and opened it to the title page. “A couple of assumptions I’m making are that he’s Mormon and that his name is Orrin.”
Vic couldn’t resist. “Orrin the Mormon?”
I ignored her and continued. “I’m going to place my deputy here in your house this evening, if you don’t mind, in hopes that the boy will return.”
She nodded, first looking at Vic and then settling on Double Tough. “That’ll be fine.”
I stood and gave my Powder Junction deputy his command. “I’ll come by at around eleven to spell you, if that sounds good.”
He picked up another cookie and nodded. “Yup.”
“And try not to eat all the cookies.”
He didn’t answer as he took a seat by the kitchen window, lifted his tactical binoculars to his eyes to view the pump house, and chewed.
• • •
Vic fed her uneaten pizza crust to Dog as she picked up a can from my Rainier stash and gulped. “Shit, I just wish someone around here would do decent pizza.” She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and the front on Dog’s head. “I checked the National Crime Information Center for info on Orrin the Mormon but so far he’s about as available as the Holy Ghost. I left a message at the local Church of Latter-day Saints—who knew there was one here—with Bishop Drew Goodman and even checked with social services over in Utah, but so far nobody’s ever heard of the kid.”
I sipped my own beer and flipped through the pages of the Mormon bible. “This thing is probably worth a fortune.”
“What about the City of Belle Fourche’s traveling pants?”
I set my beer down. “I’ll call over to Tim Berg—the sheriff over there—and see if he has any ideas about the pants or the kid.”
She held her beer close to her lips and smiled the crocodile smile. “The human pencil holder?”
“Yep.” During classes at the National Sheriffs’ Association, Tim was famous for placing numerous pens and pencils in his prodigious beard and then forgetting them.
She looked up at the old Seth Thomas hanging on the wall of my office, the hands gesturing toward 10:45 like Carol Merrill from Let’s Make a Deal. “I was thinking about hanging around and seducing you, but my nose hurts, so I might take it home and go to bed.” She took another sip of her beer and then held the cool of the can to the spot between her eyes. “How do I look?”
I studied the two small wings of purple unfurling beneath her lower lids. “Like you coulda been a contendah.”
“Yeah, well, if I catch Orrin the Mormon I’m going to pound his head like a friggin’ bongo.” She stood and stretched, the dress hem riding up her thighs as she sang in a thick Italian accent, à la Rosemary Clooney, “Come on-a my house, my house. I’m-a gonna give you candy.”
I smiled up at her. “I thought your nose hurt.”
She backed into my office doorway and attempted to draw me forward by crooking an index finger. “It does, but I just remembered a great way to take my mind off it.”
I gathered up the detritus of our impromptu feast, crushed a few of the cans, and tossed them into the empty box—I knew I’d catch hell from Ruby if I left beer cans in the office trash. “I’ve got to relieve Double Tough in twenty-five minutes.”
“We could make it a quickie.”
I closed the box, picked it up, and walked around my desk to meet her. “What do you hear from the newlyweds?” Her face darkened beyond the black eyes, and I suddenly realized that clouds were gathering and lightning was flashing in the tarnished gold pupils. “What?”
“I’ve warned you about that.”
“What?”
She leaned against the door frame and downed the last of her beer. “Every time I talk about us, you talk about them.” She pushed off the frame and looked up at me, placing the empty can on the flat surface of my box like a smokestack. “I’m not going to get all Freudian and try and figure that out, so just stop. Okay?”
“Okay.”
She turned, walked past Ruby’s desk, and paused to curtsy, her hair, which she had grown out, striped with highlights. “By the way, you lost your shot at a quickie.”
She disappeared down the steps, and I heard the heavy glass doors swing shut as I called after her, “I kind of figured that.”
Dog, probably hoping for another crust, appeared at my leg as I took a few steps down the hall toward the holding cells and the back door. “C’mon, you want to go to the Dumpster?” I glanced over my shoulder and noticed he’d sat. “I’ll take that as a no?” He didn’t move, so I continued on my own. “Well, you’re going over to Barbara Thomas’s place here in a few minutes whether you like it or not.”