“Mail order? Like from Sears?”
“No. From mescal growers. But it was legal to mail it—”
Dalton broke off suddenly, remembering the fragment of burned paper that the Langley techs had examined, the return address of Timpas. Was somebody named Horsecoat mailing the ingredients of Sweetwater’s drug to Venice?
“Anyway, from what I remember about their beliefs, the Native American Church was all about finding peace, with harmony and the purification of the spirit. I do admit I’d like to pay a call to the Horsecoat clan in Timpas and ask them how they happen to be mailing letters to a guy in Venice, Italy, calling himself Sweetwater.”
Fremont’s face changed, his features going slack. He looked up at Dalton with a narrow, pinched expression, a wary, hostile look. “Sweetwater? Where’d you get the name Sweetwater?”
Dalton leaned back and studied Fremont’s face.
“I may be a dried-out drunk,” said Fremont, standing up and bracing himself, “but I damn well won’t be handled.”
There was no sign that Fremont’s anger was in any way forced, and no indication that he was trying to hide anything. His reaction was straight and simple and it had the unmistakable ring of truth.
“Actually, I’ve been waiting for you to bring it up.”
“Me? Why?”
“Because I think there might a connection between this guy calling himself Sweetwater and what’s been happening to your unit.”
Fremont, his anger subsiding a little, sat back down in the chair and stared at the cup in his hand. After a time, he set the cup down.
“Okay, yeah. The name did freak me a bit. It was a cover name and we kept our cover names pretty close. Sweetwater. Yeah, one of the guys in our unit, he used the Sweetwater jacket. We all had legends. I was a guy named Fetterman—”
“Who used the Sweetwater jacket?”
“Before I tell you who, you saw this guy? Describe him.”
“He looked like a lot like an American Indian. He was tall, tanned, over six feet, heavy-built, with long silver hair all the way down to his shoulders. He wore lizard-skin cowboy boots and had a lot of heavy silver jewelry on him. He also wore an earring, a cross under a crescent moon. This sound like anyone you know?”
“A silver earring? Real small, in his left ear?”
“Yes.”
“The guy you’re describing is Moot Gibson.”
“And Gibson’s legend was Sweetwater?”
“Yeah. It was.”
11
They had gotten out of the safe house before first light, a cold pink day with a hoarfrost on the cottonwood trunks and the windows of the Crown Victoria as delicately ice-etched as saloon glass. They were doing a steady 85 eastbound on I-90 as the first sliver of the rising sun cleared the eastern ridge of the Bridgers. The trunk was full of gear; Dalton’s briefcase and his laptop, a blue canvas Nike bag with what little clothes Fremont still had, the com sets, two Steadicam binoculars, rough-weather gear, the big Remington bolt-action, six big boxes of hollow-point rounds and the Leupold ten-power scope, Dalton’s Colt, and a 1911 collector’s-grade .45 semiauto with a gold frame and mint-fresh bluing that Fremont had claimed as his own as soon as he saw it in its hardwood case. They picked up fresh rounds for the .45 and a change of clothes for Fremont at a Conoco truck stop in Butte and pulled out of the realm of the Copper Kings with egg-salad sandwiches in their hands and steaming-hot coffee in the armrest cup holders between them.
The Interstate was empty for a Monday, now and then an eighteen-wheeler rolling out of the Rockies on the long continental downgrade that runs from the eastern foothills of the Rockies all the way to the Minnesota border. A mile this side of Whitehall they passed a long lumbering train of slow-moving RVs with Alberta plates, their drivers goggling stupidly at the purple Rockies in the south, the ragged granite peaks tinted pink by the rising sun.
Wearied by a night of bee swarms and tense inconclusive talk, neither man had much to say and a lot to think about as they squinted into the sun and listened to the police cross-talk on the radio.
Dalton had been checking his cell phone for a connection. The screen had read NO SERVICE ever since they left the safe house, but a few miles west of Bozeman he found he was getting a strong signal. He punched in Jack Stallworth’s number (it would be 9:45 on a Monday morning in Langley) and finally got through to Sally Fordyce after a long wait.
“Sally, this is Micah. Jack there?”
“Jack’s out of the office, sweetie.”
“Where’s he gone?”
“Didn’t say. Just told me he’d be unavailable for a couple of days. He left some information for you, and if you really need to speak to him he’s going to call in every evening for messages.”
“This is a damned strange time for him to go dark.”
“You know our Jack. He took your butt-kissing orchid with him, by the way. What a beastly thing, like a pug dog with the mange.”
“Thanks. It only cost me four grand U.S.”
“Want the info?”
“Yes. Go ahead.”
“You’re not gonna like this, but the guy you think got to Porter and his family, this Pinto guy? Well, it looks like he’s more than slightly dead.”
“Pinto’s dead?”
“Extremely dead. Dead enough to qualify for burial, which usually resolves any of those lingering ambiguities. Died near a place called Comanche Station, near Timpas, in southeastern Colorado.”
“How long ago?”
“About a month?”
“About?”
“Yes. As in ‘on or about.’ Serena and Mandy were doing a prelim search on the guy yesterday and they turned up his death notice. Called me from London. I called Colorado. According to the state troopers, he was found in a pickup parked way out in an area called the Comanche National Grassland. He’d been there for at least a month, but maybe even as long as six weeks, according to the local smokies. Pretty chewed up by the wildlife, and dried out like an old corn husk, according to this Captain Bondine guy. He’s the CO of the local Crowley County Sheriff’s Office. They took the call from the state guys and went out there to police him up.”
“What killed him?”
“Bullet.”
“Don’t go all laconic on me, Sally. You know what I mean.”
“Bullet from gun.”
“Sally.”
“Sorry. I talked to this Captain Bondine for an hour yesterday afternoon. He talks like that, like he has to pay for every consonant he uses out of his own salary. Reminded me of Gary Cooper in High Noon. I kind of liked him. Captain Bondine says the autopsy showed a single entry wound in the left temple, a big round, from a brand-new forty-four-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver.”
“How’d they know that?”
“Your good old-fashioned police work, plus the gun was still in the man’s lap, his left hand around the grip. Round blew his left eye completely out of the socket and ruptured his right. Most of his brains and a big section of the right side of his skull ended up on the passenger window, which also had a major hole in it.”
“Suicide?”
“You’re so good at all this manly spook stuff, aren’t you.”
“How’d they know it was Pinto?”
“They brought in people who knew him, a kid named Wilson Horsecoat, kind of a clan cousin of the local Escondido Comanches. And an aunt named Ida Escondido. They both made positive IDs. And the truck was registered to Daniel Escondido, which is Pinto’s real name. Had a wallet in his jeans pocket stuffed with ID, Bureau of Indian Affairs card. Colorado driver’s license with his picture. Patient card from a walk-in clinic in La Junta. Pictures all matched the shot you gave Jack before you left. But the main thing was a personal ID from two of his clan members.”