It was a boy. I kept dipping my little finger into the water bottle so that he could drink the drops; I wasn’t much of an expert, but I estimated his age at about six months. He’d stopped crying and, amazingly enough, seemed to have survived the fall with not much visible damage.
He’d had help.
In a perversity of timing and luck, we’d once again blown through the intersection of BIA 4 and state Route 212 in Lame Deer just as the rear end of a black Yukon headed east.
When we got to the Indian Health Services building on the north end of town, Henry slid Rezdawg into the parking lot with a ferocity of which I hadn’t thought the vehicle capable. Under the canopy of the entrance, I handed the child off to the Cheyenne Nation, pretty sure that he was more adept at negotiating the bureaucracy of federal health care than I.
I watched as he held the child close to his chest and rushed into the eleven-year-old building with the alacrity of the All-American running back he’d been at Cal in the sixties-before Vietnam had changed his life and him.
There was a story about Henry’s first days at Berkeley. It seemed that four California boys from Stockton had taken it upon themselves to give Geronimo a haircut during the two-a-day practices, but after three broken fingers, a broken nose, a dislocated shoulder, and a concussion, they’d decided to go seek entertainment elsewhere.
Dog followed Henry inside at a clip, unwilling to leave the child’s side; only fair, since he’d been the one to find him.
I circled around the truck and climbed in to move it away from the emergency entrance, but my smile faded as the truck’s engine stumbled and died as soon as I closed the driver’s door behind me. “Oh, you…” I ground the starter and pulled the choke out just the tiniest bit, but the cantankerous V-8 only grumbled and ignored my efforts. Figuring I’d just shove the piece of crap out of the way, I slipped the truck into neutral and threw open the door to start pushing.
When I brought my face up, there was a black Yukon nudged right against the back bumper and, more important, a very irate tribal police chief Lolo Long staring me in the chin.
“Hands on the vehicle.”
“Look…”
I didn’t get anymore out because when I started to continue speaking, she shoved my shoulder and trapped my right hand in a reverse wristlock that threw me against the scaly side of Rezdawg’s bed. It was a good move and expertly executed, but I was a lot heavier and turned just a little to let her know I still could. “Officer, if you’ll just listen…”
She put a lot more pressure in the wristlock, and the position of my arm forced me back toward the truck. My immediate response would have been to back pivot and deliver a roundhouse elbow into the side of her head, but I was hoping we weren’t at that point just yet. “We’ve got an emergency.”
She frisked me with her free hand under my arms and down my back. “Stop talking.”
I could feel the weight of Rezdawg shift beneath me as the front tires edged toward the slight drop-off where the emergency area had been repaved. “We’ve got a child in there who might be hurt and a dead woman at the base of Painted Warrior cliff.”
“I said shut up.” Her hand froze at the middle of my back. “What’s this?”
I sighed. “It’s my duty sidearm, a Colt 1911, both cocked and locked, and I’d appreciate it if you’d handle it with a little care.”
She fumbled with my canvas jacket, unsnapped the pancake holster, and yanked the semiautomatic from the small of my back, still holding me against the ever-so-slightly moving truck. “You know that carrying a concealed weapon onto semiautonomous federal lands or reservations is illegal unless you happen to be of tribal descent-and you just don’t look like Chief Cleans His Bore Regularly.” She spun me around and stuffed my Colt in the back of her jeans, then pulled her S amp;W. “You’re under arrest.”
“Oh, come on.”
She leveled the. 44 at my chest and tossed me her cuffs. “Put those on.”
I could feel the truck behind me as it picked up just a little bit of momentum, rolling off the asphalt patchwork and starting toward the great, wide parking lot.
I snapped one of the cuffs on a wrist and turned to watch Rezdawg gain a little speed, Lolo Long’s eyes now looking past me at the unpiloted three-quarter-ton as it continued to slip away.
Her face now took on a little panic. “You… you need to stop that vehicle.”
“Sorry, I’ve been arrested.”
She kept the Magnum on me but started moving past, undecided as to whether her responsibilities lay with her prisoner or the unbridled truck. “I said stop that vehicle.”
I shrugged and held up my cuffed hand, the other end rattling against my forearm. “Nothing I can do.”
Rezdawg was now in a full advance toward the car-filled parking lot, and Officer Long suddenly made the lunge to catch it, racing across the distance at an impressive speed-a heck of a lot faster than I would’ve been able to accomplish. She holstered her weapon and grabbed the door handle, but, as I would have anticipated, the latch didn’t appear to work. She punched at the button and yanked mightily at the handle, even placed a boot against the bed and pulled as she hopped on one foot, pogo-style, all to no avail.
I leaned to the side and tried to judge the trajectory as the ugliest truck on the high plains took one of the loveliest, if irritating, law enforcement officers for a ride. It looked to me as if the point of impact was going to be a maroon ’86 Cadillac parked at the end of the row.
Never a fan of spectacle, I turned and walked through the automatic sliding glass doors with one last glance at Lolo Long as she scrambled through the open window of the rolling Rezdawg.
Henry was standing at the reception desk talking urgently to a very large woman, but he raised his face at the sound of my boots on the tile floor. “Trouble finding a place to park?”
“No, no trouble at all.” I glanced around. “Where’s Dog?”
The Cheyenne Nation smiled. “In the examination room; we tried to hold him back but he gave every indication that he was going to eat all of us alive if we separated him from that child.”
I nodded, leaned against the counter, and looked at the heavyset Native woman a little younger than Henry and I. “Hello.” I extended a hand, suddenly remembering that it had a handcuff dangling from it. I decided to play it like being cuffed was nothing new for me. “Walt Longmire.”
She looked a little uncertain. “The sheriff from Absaroka County?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Hazel Long.”
“Good to meet you, Hazel.” I paused. “Are you related to Chief Long?”
She glanced at the cuffs again. “Lo is my daughter, yes.”
“Hmm.” I glanced at Henry as he stared at my hand. “What?”
He closed his eyes and cleared the expression from his face. “We need to contact the authorities.”
“Oddly enough, they’ve been contacted.” I threaded the office key chain from my jacket pocket and used the ever-present universal cuff key that dangled from the ring to extricate myself, allowing the hardware to fall onto the counter. “Or, rather, they’ve contacted us.”
He looked past me and down the hallway, and I could just about bet what was coming. “I believe she is about to make contact again.”
Long grabbed my shoulder and yanked at me, half-pulling me around to face her. She was sweating, and I was momentarily entranced by the beads of perspiration at the base of her throat. “You are still under arrest.” Her face was now about six inches from my own. “And you’re going to pay for the damages to the cars in the parking lot.”
Cars, plural. I guess Rezdawg had gotten more than one. Good for her.
“I was and still am under arrest, and therefore not responsible for the vehicle in question.” She straightened, a little surprised. “I’m pretty knowledgeable about vehicular codes, along with concealed-carry laws within federal jurisdiction.”
“Lo?”
It took a second for her to disengage from her primary target, but when she realized that it was her mother speaking to her, she locked on her. “Excuse me?”
The large woman started to stand. “Lo, there’s been an…”
She snapped back in the way that only family can. “Is this official business? Because I am engaged in arresting this man and unless you have something pertinent to say concerning…”
“Lolo Louise Long, stop acting like an ass. There’s been an accident. A child is hurt, and a dead woman, who is going to be a major part of your official business, is lying at the base of Painted Warrior cliff.” She took a deep breath and shot air from her nostrils like a bull. “And, by the way, may I introduce you to Sheriff Walt Longmire of Absaroka County, Wyoming.”
“You’re still under arrest.”
“Okay.” I braced a hand against the dash as we swerved down BIA 4 at about a hundred miles an hour. “Can I have my gun back?”
“No.”
I glanced past the elongated hood of the Yukon as we passed another unsuspecting motorist. “You might want to turn on your siren.”
She said nothing and continued slicing the wheel.
“Seriously, if you…”
She fairly screamed it. “I don’t know where the switch is!”
I gave her my best double take, but fortunately her attention stayed on the road.
Reaching across to the upper center console, I flipped down a small door and pulled a switch, flooding the surrounding area with the blooping noise of the hi-tech siren.
She flashed the amber eyes at me. “Thanks.”
I nodded and thought about how I was getting myself involved with a federal investigation on reservation land. I’d thought about asking Henry to go with her but came to the conclusion that I was probably a little less of an adversary. The Bear looked just as happy to stay at the hospital with the child, Dog, and no Lolo Long. “Are you new to this?”
“What?”
“Law enforcement; I assume that this isn’t what you did over in Iraq, huh?”
The response was more than a little defensive. “No, it wasn’t.”
“What did you do over there?”
“None of your business.” She glanced at me, a sliver of jasper at the corner of one eye. “You serve?”
“I did.”
“Union or Confederate?”
More and more like Vic. I went ahead and smiled; it was funny. “See, up until now you’ve kept that rapier wit sheathed.”
The radio interrupted with a call from the Montana Highway Patrol, informing us that the FBI investigator would meet us on scene and would be bringing a team along with him; standard procedure on the Rez. Officer Long plucked the mic from the dash and rogered the call.
She hung it back up. “I know you. I mean, I know of you.” She glanced at me again. “You were involved with the Melissa Little Bird rape case a few years ago.”
I pulled the shoulder belt away from me with my thumb, my chest suddenly feeling a little tight. “Yep, I was.”
“That was a cluster.”
My chest got even tighter. “Yep.”
She started to drive more steadily, braking before and accelerating into the curves, although our speed was still way over the limit. “There were a lot of rumors swirling around when those boys started showing up dead.”
“Uh huh.”
“One theory was that it was that buddy of yours, Standing Bear.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Another was that you were the one doing it.”
I still didn’t say anything.
“You caught somebody, didn’t you?”
It took a moment, but I found words in my mouth. “We stopped the shootings, if that’s what you mean.” She rocketed past a windmill on the side of the road. “You’re going to want to take a left at the next dirt cutoff.”
She dutifully slowed the SUV and made the turn at a reasonable speed but accelerated again, still bouncing us against the seat belts. I indicated the spotter road, and she took it as I reached across and turned the dial, putting the GMC in four-wheel-drive, her glance letting me know I’d overstepped my boundaries. “I’ll operate the vehicle from here on out, if you don’t mind.”
We got to the ridge and parked and, pulling a crime scene pack from behind her seat, she followed me as I retraced the path to the base of the cliffs. Our approach spooked a coyote, and we could hear the buzzing of the flies before we got there.
Chief Long was to my right as we got closer to the small stand of juniper trees, and I could see that the young woman’s naked leg was still sticking up at an odd angle beside her face.
I turned to look at Officer Long, but she had stopped and, staring at the dead woman, was simply standing in the grass.
I waited a moment and then took a step back, blocking her view. “You know her?”
She looked surprised and then nodded in a distracted way, a traumatized look I’d seen before. “Yeah, yeah I do.”
“Gimme the case.”
She blinked once and then looked up at me. “No, I… no.”
“Gimme the case and go sit by the creek; if I need you, I’ll call.”
She didn’t move, even after I took the pack from her loose hand.
“Go.”
She stood there for a bit longer and then turned and walked down the hill.
I moved back to the dead woman and set the case down without actually looking at her. There was a charade I played with myself in these situations, a falsehood that allowed me to do the job-telling myself that it was only an exercise. This woman was not dead to me, not yet. That part would start soon enough: the ferocious desire to find out who she was, why this happened and, if it was a factor, who did it.
Was it an accident, a suicide, or a homicide?
I put away my sunglasses and raised my face, getting a clear look at the cliff and watching the clouds race over in bleached streaks, leftovers from the storm that had hovered near Lame Deer. There was another crime scene up there where the majority of the questions would probably be answered, but that could wait.
I judged the distance and did a quick calculation of the physics, which were not unlike the deceleration and impact forces found in automobile accidents in which the occupants neglect to wear seat belts. In the tenth to twelfth second of free fall, terminal velocity is obtained-terminal velocity being one hundred and ten miles an hour. She wouldn’t have made that, but she’d gone fast enough. There would be fractured bones and lacerated damage to internal organs as well as to the head and spine. She had told me that in those last few seconds-I only wish she could’ve told me more.
I felt the falsehood of ritual flow over me, insulating me from the lingering results of death, humanity’s ultimate adversary. I unzipped the crime scene case and was immediately faced with another adversary, a camera. All these years and I still hadn’t mastered the art of anything except the IPH model.
This reminded me that we had left Henry’s camera on the ridge near where we had parked the Yukon, and I made the mental note to pick it up on the way back to the vehicle. The camera from the kit was large-bodied like Henry’s but of a simpler design, which I appreciated. I switched it on and began the photographic procedure of shooting the entire scene-the relationship area, distance of fall, and the point where she had struck the cornice.
When I began photographing her, I noticed that there were bruises on her face and arms, some of them older than those caused by her fall. There were also scratches on the backs of her arms that looked like they might’ve been inflicted by someone grabbing her with great force, maybe a week ago.
The devil must be beating his wife.
I continued photographing.
The fingernails on her left hand were bloody and bent back, some even missing, but other than this and the indications of abuse, she appeared to have been a normal, healthy young woman. I noticed that there was even a small purse still trapped under her arm as I covered her with the plastic sheet from the case.
I was tempted to move her and go through the purse, but I assumed the Montana authorities would just as soon do it themselves, making sure to use special care not to disturb any trace evidence. It seemed odd that she had decided to walk the air with her child. I thought that, at that horrible moment when I’d seen her fall, her only concern had been something in her arms. I finished up and put the camera away. My work would be preliminary in comparison to the crime lab that would soon be here from either Hardin or Billings.
Besides, I had other resources.
I walked down the hill to the creek and found Chief Long tossing small pebbles into a pool a little downstream. A small, brown trout had risen from the depths but then disappeared under my shadow. “How you doing, troop?”
She turned, sheltering her eyes with a hand, and looked at me. “What’d you just call me?”
I crouched down beside her and watched the lazy water coat the rocks so that she wouldn’t be self-conscious about her red-ringed and still-damp eyes. “Troop. It’s a term my old boss used to use on me when I was starting out; I use it with my deputies.”
“Well, don’t use it with me.” She took a breath and tossed another pebble; this time the fish ignored it.
“We’re pretty much done down here.”
She looked at a simple Luminox wristwatch, the kind that Spec Ops used. “What the hell is taking them so long?”
I raised my eyes and looked at what now seemed desolate surroundings; as unlikely as it was that Cady would have gone for this site before, it was surely out of the question now. “Hopefully they didn’t get lost.”
“Yeah.”
“Looks like it’s still going to rain.” I studied her, judging whether now was a good time and figuring the basics wouldn’t hurt. “What’s her name?”
She didn’t move, and her voice might as well have been coming from the trees or the cliffs above. “Audrey Plain Feather; she was half Crow.”
Audrey. “And the child’s name-the boy?”
“Adrian.”
I nodded to myself and looked up the slope; there was a more manageable route to the west, an area where the ridge fell back-it would be easier to make the grade, especially at an angle. “I’m going up.”
“I’ll go with you.”
I placed a hand on her shoulder. “Somebody’s going to have to stay here and wait for the crime scene folks.”
She shrugged off my hand and stood, partially pulling the radio from her belt. “I’ve got this, and I figure they’ll be able to get close on their own. I can spot them on the main road easier from up on the ridge anyway.”
“Well then, can you do me a favor?”
“Depends.”
I sighed. “It’s going to take me a lot longer to get up this cliff than you, so I want a head start.” I smiled, but she didn’t smile back. “On the next ridge over there and toward the saddle?” I pointed to the area across the creek. “There’s another camera sitting in the grass where Henry and I dropped it when we saw Audrey fall; would you mind going to get it and bringing it with you or putting it in your vehicle?”
She took a second to respond. “All right.”
I looked up at the gathering gloom and then called after her. “You’re sure you want to go up there?”
“Yes.” She turned back and opened an ear stem of her sunglasses with her teeth, then carefully navigated them onto her face. “Besides, you’re still under arrest. Now get moving-I don’t want to have to wait for you.”
She started up the hill, her broad back and strong legs aiding her climb effortlessly.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The grade was indeed easier up to the right, and there was a gully to the left with trees in it to lean against; the older you get the more important things like that become.
The ground was soft where the earth had sloughed from the ridge above, and after a while I gathered a rhythm that seemed familiar and similar to the one that had carried me up Cloud Peak only two months ago. The thought of that adventure brought a chill, even though the ambient temperature lingered around ninety.
I removed my hat and took a breather about three-quarters of the way up. From this height I could see Lonnie’s crows harassing an eagle that was lazily circling in patterns along the valley. The crows probably had nests nearby and were protecting their young, or just getting their exercise before the thunderheads massed and we had a real frog strangler.
I inhaled and started up again still using the smaller trees as walking sticks, finally getting to the depression at the ridge. When I did, I looked to the right and could see Lolo Long making mincemeat of the more difficult direct route.
I would’ve yelled to her, but I didn’t have the breath.
There was a two-track dirt road that stretched in both directions just a little bit back from the precipice, so I turned right and worked my way along the ridge. After a few minutes, I noticed that the grass was flat and there were tread marks in the dirt; I stopped and kneeled down to look-someone had driven up here and back out and not long ago. My eyes followed the tracks where the vehicle had parked, made a two-point turn, and then gone out the way it had come. The depressions were deeper where the vehicle had sat for a period of time-there were even two small oil leaks with matching soot marks from where what I was assuming was a truck had been parked.
After a couple of hundred yards the grade leveled and the rounded surface of the rock fell away to the cliffs-a dangerous place. Lolo Long, looking out into the distance with her hands on her hips, stood about ten feet from the edge.
“Hey, Chief.”
“What?”
“Somebody drove a four-wheel-drive up here and not too long ago. There are two patches of differential fluid, and the tires are wide and the duel exhausts are set close-I’d say a Jeep, something like that.”
She turned to look at me. “How do you know where the exhaust was?”
I pointed. “The two soot marks from where it was restarted.” I stood. “They’re going to need a ring job before too long.” Something further back on the trail caught my eye, and I walked over to where it was lodged among the taller stalks of Johnson grass; it was a plastic bag, the kind you find at any grocery or convenience store. “Did she have a vehicle like that?”
Her lips tightened into a line, and the muscles in her jaw worked. “No, the guy she was shacking up with, Adrian’s father, does.”
I pulled the blue plastic sack from the weeds. It was full of crushed beer cans, a couple of empty chip bags, and some candy wrappers. There was a receipt in the bottom of the bag, soggy from the remnants draining from the containers.
I pulled the receipt out and held it up. Across the top were the words WHITE BUFFALO SINCLAIR and listed below were the items that were in the used bag, with the exception of the beer and a pack of cigarettes, as well as thirty-two dollars’ worth of regular gasoline; the date was today at 11:22 A.M.
Chief Long approached, and I handed the sack to her, along with the receipt; she read it, withdrew a couple of evidence bags, and carefully placed the slip of paper inside one, the blue plastic into the other.
I took out the camera and began taking pictures again, sucked in a breath, and trudged along to the precipice.
The surface was a loose scrabble of sedentary shale that looked like shattered terra-cotta in a wild cathedral floor; the footing was unstable, and a few lizards scrambled like ball bearings over the hard surface. I moved toward the edge and kneeled down to look at the disturbed rock shelves at the point where the woman had fallen. The wind picked up a little, nudging me from behind, as I allowed my eyes to drift toward the clouds again, some of them trailing low enough to almost reach out and touch.
The crows and the eagle continued to flirt with them, pinwheeling and passing away from each other, circling, and using the rising thermals and gusts of wind for lift.
There was a rapid movement that pulled me from my trance-a little pygmy rattler swiveled from a small outcropping to my left-probably after the lizards. I picked up a small rock and tossed it toward him to let him know he should keep going away from us, and he obliged by disappearing.
I could see where Audrey had gone over the edge, and where she’d desperately attempted to hold back the inevitable with one hand-must have been the one that was missing fingernails. There was another area of disturbance in the rocks right in front of me, possibly where she had tripped or possibly where there could’ve been some sort of struggle.
I shot a look back at Chief Long and pointed to the edge. “Do you see that?”
She stood her ten feet back and made no effort to move. “What?”
“The marks in the rocks.”
She glanced over my shoulder. “Yeah.”
“You can see it better from over here.”
She adjusted the strap of the crime scene bag on her shoulder. “I can see fine.”
I took another series of shots, the rocks crumbling and shifting under my boots. Catching my balance, I took the few steps back to where she stood like a pole. “You okay?”
“Yes.” It was a quick answer and was meant to cut off any more conversation on the subject-the kind of response I’d learned to ignore.
“What’s up?”
She gave me the full kaleidoscope eyes, and I felt like I’d been kicked.
“I don’t like heights.”
I gazed back at the cliff and gestured toward it. “Well, it’s only natural, considering…”
“That’s not it.”
I tipped my hat back and studied her; she really was beautiful, and I could see the complexity of conflicting thoughts as they played across her face. I raised a hand toward her. “What then?”
She swallowed and retreated from the edge and my touch. “I… I have this urge to jump.”
Shrugging a shoulder, I stepped past her toward the main part of the grass-covered trail. “That’s normal, too. It can be categorized as a risk impulse; it’s the subjective aspect of our natures that makes rodeo riders strap themselves to Brahma bulls or skydivers jump out of perfectly good airplanes. Freud called that kind of risk-taking behavior the ‘death drive’ and associated it with gambling, sex and, well, a lot of other things.”
She stayed put and kept looking for signs in the passing clouds. “He connected everything with sex, didn’t he?”
“Pretty much.”
She turned and looked at me as her radio crackled. She lifted it out of her belt and looked at the road below. “Roger that, unit 1. We’re at the top, but we’ll be right down.”
I walked back toward the cliff and could see a white Yukon, a black Expedition, and a highway patrol cruiser. “Looks like they didn’t get lost after all.”
“Yeah.” She didn’t move after reholstering the two-way.
“You want to go down and meet them?”
She nodded and reset her jaw. “Are we through up here?”
“With the limited resources we have, yes.”
She still didn’t move, and I could tell there was a lot more she wanted to say. “Look…”
I waited, but she didn’t say anything else. Then she cleared her throat and coughed up a few words. “I’m… I’m new to this stuff, but I don’t feel like being railroaded by the… I mean, maybe I’m a lousy cop, but I’d like to find out on my own.” She stopped and turned to look at me. “Before we go down there, I’d like to make sure we’re on the same page.”
“Meaning?”
“I know more about this case than you or they do; I know the people involved, and I’m not buying it.” Her eyes came down to the edge of the cliff and studied the surface-fractured and dangerous. “It’s not that high.”
“Most suicides are from approximately five hundred feet-high enough to kill, but low enough to not last too long.” The wind gusted, and I was reminded that this was no longer a good place. “You’re not buying what?”
Lolo Long stood there like a sentinel. “There’s no way a woman walks out to the edge of a cliff like this with her child in her arms.”
Bingo.
I smiled and studied her in a professorial manner. “Maybe you’re not such a lousy cop after all.”
Her eyes flared and she looked directly at me, and I thought for a moment that she might try and throw me off the cliff. She took a step and turned to the right toward the direct path down, then called over her shoulder. “There’s another reason.”
I followed along behind her. “Reason for what?”
I barely heard the words as they drifted back with the breeze that continued to stiffen. “For jumping: just to have it all over with.”
The Feds were already setting up camp on the same ridge where we’d parked, and a blond-haired young man, who looked like one of the agents, and a highway patrolman were the first to reach us. The FBI agent, in a short-sleeved shirt, held out a hand to me.
“Bo Benth. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sheriff. I’ve heard and read a lot about you.”
I shook his hand and introduced Lolo. “This is Chief Long.” I went ahead and threw in the next, just so there wouldn’t be any confusion. “She’ll be the primary investigator.”
Agent Benth smiled as Long studied her ropers. He glanced up at the cliff. “We understood it was pretty cut and dry.”
“No, actually, it’s not. There’s a survivor, and a friend of mine and I actually witnessed the fall. Chief Long and I have already done the preliminary crime scene work, here and above.”
He looked at the gathering thunderclouds building over the cliffs. “Good, ’cause I’ve got a feeling we’re about to get pissed on.” They started past toward the deceased. “As to whose responsibility this is, you can take that up with the new agent in charge.”
“Where’s he?”
Benth threw a thumb over his shoulder and gave me a strange smirk. “Trying to get reception on his mobile back in the vehicle. You’re gonna love him.”
As we walked down the hill, Officer Long hooked her thumbs into the pockets of her jeans. “Great.”
“What?”
“A new AIC; just what I need.”
I nodded. “Did you know the last one?”
“Only over the phone; I was lucky.” She glanced back at Painted Warrior. “I guess my luck ran out.”
We passed a few more crime lab infantry, but not my good friend Bill McDermott, who must’ve been working another part of the state.
The white Fed Yukon, which was the AIC vehicle, was parked the farthest away, and a tall man with a goatee and wild-looking hair dressed in a pink shirt and blue blazer hung an arm over the sill of the open door. He held his cell phone at the other arm’s length and was looking at it with an expression of disgust, his sunglasses perched on his forehead.
Lolo Long glanced back at me. “I’ll handle it this time.”
The federal agent tossed the mobile into the backseat of the Yukon. “Is there any cell reception in fucking Montana?” He glanced at me. “I mean, I know there isn’t any in fucking Wyoming, but fucking Montana, too?”
He turned to study Chief Long. “Hey, things are looking up.”
Long ignored the remark, adjusted the crime scene pack strap on her shoulder, and held out her hand. “Lolo Long, Cheyenne tribal chief of police. I’m the primary investigator on this case.”
He kicked his face sideways and smirked with even more enthusiasm than had the younger agent-evidently it was a bureau thing. He looked at her hand but didn’t shake it. “You don’t say?”
She was showing remarkable patience and ignored that remark, too-but her voice was now carrying that edge. “I am intimate with the subjects involved and have information that may lead to an early arrest.”
He shook his head as if to clear it, glanced at me, and then back to her. “Early arrest, huh?”
She took a breath and finally lowered the hand. “Sheriff Longmire and I-”
He interrupted her carefully planned speech and glanced at me again with a more than knowing look. “Uh huh?”
She stumbled but then regained her footing; she was getting angrier. “We… I have reason to believe that this may be more than a simple case of misadventure.”
“You do?”
Full on angry now. “Yes.”
He took the sunglasses off his forehead, tossed them after the phone, and massaged the sockets of his eyes on either side of his elongated nose with thumb and forefinger. “Sounds like I don’t have a thing to worry about.” He raised his face-and this time it was a grin, the kind hyenas have-then reached out a fist and actually punched her shoulder; then he spoke in the singsong pattern of bad TV. “Well, how ’bout I introduce myself-Cliff Cly of the FBI.”