I was pretty sure that the two of us looked like a human junkyard. We were sitting at the veterinarian’s office. Henry struggled out the next sentence with the good side of his mouth, “How is your leg?”
“It hurts, but only when I walk. It’s not so bad when I talk.” He nodded, and we both looked at the carpet. “DCI is going to want to talk to you.” He didn’t move, so I continued. “How about I go through the story, and you can make corrections and additions as we go?”
“Hmm.”
“What?” He turned to look at me, and I could see the bulge of the bandage at his jawline. “Just kidding. So, you found the highway patrol cruiser buried in the snow up on the flat?”
“Hmm.”
“And you stopped the truck and got out to take a look, and the driver didn’t move. So, you opened the door.” I nodded my head for a moment. “What kind of rookie move was that?” He didn’t respond, but I could see his jaw flex. “So he raised the glorified. 22 and shoots you in the face right off the bat?”
“Hmm.”
I nodded some more. “You’re lucky it was a. 32, the. 357 would’ve deviated your septum. You don’t have to answer that.” He didn’t. “All right, you fell backward, and then Leo rolls you over, takes you for dead, and strips your coat off of you?”
“Hmm.”
“Because of this, Dog tries to eat Leo alive, and he shoots Dog twice and drives off with my truck?”
“Hmm.”
I shook my head and looked at the operating room door. “Then you got up, sprinted after the truck, and followed Leo back to the canyon with half your face tied on with a bandana? You ran a half a mile with a subcutaneous bullet trail running from the cleft of your chin to the back of your neck?”
He held the bloody fragment of lead that Isaac had pulled out and handed it to me. “Hmm.”
The door to the operating room was opening and, from the corner of my good eye, I could see Mike Pilch coming out to give us the prognosis on Dog. Mike was a vet who was something of an oddity in Absaroka County in that he actually tried to save domestic animals as opposed to giving up and putting them down. He stopped short. “Wow, you guys look like eight kinds of hell.”
I held a finger to my lips to silence him. “We escaped from the hospital.” I glanced over at Henry to see him wave a feeble hand at the veterinarian and readjust the leather duster over his knee. “The Indian’s not talking today.” He nodded and studied the Bear’s face a little more closely. “How’s Dog?”
He pulled his eyes away from the spectacle of Henry to look at me; I don’t guess the view improved. “It’s pretty bad, but he’s tough whatever he is.” He moved over and sat in the chair beside me. “The first bullet just grazed his skull. It was the second bullet that did the most damage, entering the abdomen and lodging in the muscle near the spine. I did an exploratory and found a section of the intestinal tract was perforated and had to remove eleven inches. I flushed the stomach with sterile saline and placed several drains. With the bullet so close to the spine, we’d probably do more harm than good if I tried to take it out, but the body will wall it off and it shouldn’t cause any future problems. He’s still dopey from surgery but seems to be doing well. I’ll need to keep a close watch on him for the next few days.”
As we left Mike’s office, I finished questioning the Bear. He was buttoning his leather duster. “Did you put the axe in the base of Leo’s skull just to save your coat?”
He gathered it up as he wearily climbed in the truck. “Hmm.”
“Wow…” I glanced back at the Bear. “You could’ve missed. What kind of rookie move was that?”
It had been a long night. We had staunched our bleedings and had huddled in the cab of my truck with Ellen Runs Horse until Double Tough showed up in a D9 Caterpillar and pulled my three-quarter ton out of the creek bed like it was a Flexible Flyer. He had rendezvoused with the HPs so that Dog could be brought to Durant for more professional care and had drunk about a half a bottle of Wild Turkey in the meantime, but he seemed as impervious to liquor as he had been to bullets. He pulled us up and out of the canyon, angling the blade so that a slow-motion wall of snow cascaded away from the dozer and cleared a way for us as we were pulled along. By the time we had gotten to the flat above, revolving blue and red lights joined with our own, telling me that the rest of the cavalry had arrived.
Vic’s unit was the only one that could make it this far. Before we had come to a stop she was there, yanking the door open and applying a more professional pressure bandage to my leg; Saizarbitoria helped Henry on the other side of the cab. We left the Bear in my truck, thinking it might help maintain the quiet Ellen Runs Horse had surrendered to. Saizarbitoria would drive it to the hospital with them, while I would ride along with Vic. As I leaned against her, she tipped her head around to give me a look. “You get him?”
My smile couldn’t help but fade. “The Bear did.” I glanced into the truck bed. So did Vic. The half-frozen body of Leo Gaskell was buried into the cradle of snow that had accumulated there. The black alloy tomahawk still stuck up from the back of his head like a pump lever.
She blew a brief breath from pursed lips. “Fuck.”
There were four HPs parked at the underpass.
Wes was dead, only one week away from guarding those golf course ponds. They found him where he must have pulled Leo over. He was a veteran cop with more than thirty-five years on the job, and he had known that Leo was armed and highly dangerous, but something had gone terribly wrong.
There was a buzz of activity at the hospital emergency room, one that I had grown used to as of late. Out of the three of us, triage speaking, I was third. I waited on a gurney as they stabilized Henry. Bill McDermott had cut off my jeans above the wound, irrigated the hole in my leg, and was now bandaging me up; Ferg leaned against the wall and watched the process. I glanced at him, trying to ignore the pain in my leg. “Cady and Lana?”
He smiled. “Christmas shopping over in Sheridan.” He shrugged. “They weren’t going to stay in that room any longer, and they don’t know about all of this.” He waited a few moments before asking. “Leo Gaskell dead?” I nodded, as we both stared at my leg. “You do it?”
“Henry.”
After a while he spoke again. “Good.”
It was a strange remark for the Ferg to make. “Why good?”
“He’s better at living with it.”
I felt the dull throb through the anesthetic and wondered where I could get a pair of pants that would fit around the bandage. I looked down at the coroner as he finished. “Does it bother you if I talk to you while you’re working?”
He smiled. “Most of my patients don’t, but go ahead.”
“How’s Ellen Runs Horse?”
“For a dehydrated old woman, who is suffering from exposure and malnutrition, she’s doing quite well.”
There was a nurse at the desk outside the Intensive Care Unit, but she was committing a copy of Redbook to memory and so only raised her head briefly as we passed. Ellen was in the curtained-off section to the far right with no one else in the room. They had cleaned her up, and she looked a lot better. I only felt marginally shitty about what we were doing, but when I thought about Mari Baroja, Anna Walks Over Ice, and Wes Rogers, I felt better about it. Too many people had died.
I dug into my pocket and handed Henry the ornament that I had taken from the tree in her trailer, and her eyes followed it from my hand to his. He held it there between them; the Mason jar lid that dangled from the yarn turned slowly revealing the photo on one side and the name on the other. She stared at me long enough to convince me that I was interfering with the investigative process, so I went to the other side of the curtain. I could hear her whispering.
The next thing I knew, Henry was standing next to me. “Anything we can use?”
It pained him as he spoke. “She keeps repeating a phrase that means ‘give up’.”
“She’s throwing in the towel after all this?” He shrugged as I glanced back and saw that she was watching us. I smiled and to my surprise she smiled back. She didn’t look like somebody who was calling it quits.
“She is apologetic about it.” I noticed that he was able to talk softly from the right side of his mouth.
She was still holding the Mason jar lid. “I’m going to need that ornament.”
He looked back, and she smiled at us some more. “We will have to wait until she is asleep.”
Vic had yelled at me last night, and I was thinking there wasn’t anybody left to yell at me when I saw Ruby’s car. It was a Sunday, but Lucian must not have felt well enough to come to work. Henry quietly closed the door behind us, and I felt like we were sneaking in after an all night drunk. We stood there on the landing as a set of ferocious blues looked down on us.
“How is Dog?”
I tried a weak smile. “He’s going to be all right. We can visit him in a couple of days.” The eyes disappeared.
We struggled our way up the steps with Henry assisting by allowing me a hand on his shoulder. My leg was throbbing, so we stopped at the top, and I caught my breath. I looked at the bench by the door; someone was sleeping, covered with one of our PROPERTY OF ABSAROKA COUNTY JAIL wool blankets. The place was like a boarding house. “Who is that?”
She didn’t look up from the computer screen. “The methane foreman.”
I looked over at Henry, who was risking injury by smiling. “Let’s go to my office, shall we?”
My chair felt good, and I thought about spending the rest of the day there, but the obligations of duty called my attention to a large tan envelope that read Sheriff Sweetie Pie; I had forgotten that she had dropped off an envelope what seemed like an eternity ago.
There was a crisp piece of legal paper clipped to a photocopy. I started with the note, a gracefully looping script in red that sprawled across the rigid lines of light blue on yellow. “Mon Amour, I’ve left you a little present I found in one of my investigations of Durant National Bank’s safe-deposit boxes. The manager found an old registration for box number 283, a Mr. Charles Joseph Nurburn. It hadn’t been opened since 1950 but someone had paid the rental fee until around ten years ago when the bill came back with addressee unknown.” I thought about the timing and that was when Lucian had taken up residence at the Durant Home for Assisted Living. I guess he had forgotten about the rental.
I looked up at Henry, but he was looking out the window, so I continued reading to myself. “I’m here for another day and a half, but then I’ve got to be in Denver on the 24th at 9 A.M. Call me.”
I looked up at the old Seth Thomas clock, figuring maybe I could just catch up with her and convince her to stay another day but then wondered how Cady would feel about that. I hadn’t seen her in almost two days and she’d be gone before I knew it. I flipped the note over and looked at the photocopy. It was Charlie Nurburn’s Will and Testament or a copy thereof. It was pretty cut and dried and left all Charlie’s assets to Joseph Walks Over Ice.
Joseph.
We had a name. I handed the copy to Henry and called for Ruby. Even with the limp, I met her at the door. “Get the NCIC and ask about a Joseph Walks Over Ice, male, about fifty-five years of age, born in Sheridan County. See if anything pops up.” She disappeared around the corner as I turned back to the Bear. “Ring any bells?” He shook his head as I went around the desk and sat back down. “I’ve got an idea. ..” His eyes stayed steady with mine. I stared at the surface of my desk. “Whoever killed Mari Baroja did it to get her money. Since illegitimate or stepchildren cannot inherit directly, the only way to do that was to have Mari predecease Charlie so that he could collect his elective share. Then you kill off the already dead Charlie and inherit the money he left you.”
The Bear’s eyes widened, and I continued. “Leo Gaskell and, more importantly, Joseph Walks Over Ice found it suddenly financially beneficial to keep Lucian’s ruse going after the methane started producing. I think it snowballed on them. I don’t think they thought that that many people knew Charlie was dead. Even Lana would have to be on the list. She told me that Lucian had killed her grandfather the day I met her. Everyone who knew Charlie was dead has been either attacked or killed.” I slumped back in my chair and yelled into the other room. “Have you got anything?”
The reply was curt. “Hold your horses!”
“There’s something else that’s bothering me.” Henry handed me back the Will, and I laid the photocopy on the desk. “I’m sure they killed Anna because she was trying to tell Doc Bloomfield about Leo’s plans or Joseph’s, but how did Leo kill Wes Rogers?” It was quiet in the room. “Wes would have known… unless Leo Gaskell was not driving the car.”
Ruby’s voice called from the other room. “I’ve got something.”
We rushed in, as best we could, and crowded around the computer screen as Ruby summoned forth Joseph Walks Over Ice. “The name came up in the Department of Child Services in Cheyenne. A child was given up for adoption to a Catholic orphanage, a Saint Anthony’s in Casper, back in 1951.”
Henry and I locked eyes. It wasn’t that Ellen was giving up; it was what she had given up. “What else?”
“The child had numerous altercations and was described as emotionally disturbed. He was never adopted and left the orphanage at age sixteen.” She looked up at me. “That’s as far as it goes.”
Henry spoke softly through his bandage. “At that period in time, a lot of Indian children took the surname of the priest who ran the orphanage.”
Ruby’s fingers started dancing again. She turned to me. “The priest who signed off on Joseph’s papers was a Father Mark Lesky.”
Lesky, Joseph.
Joe Lesky.
I grabbed the phone from Ruby’s desk and punched in the number for the home. Jennifer Felson answered, and I asked her if Joe was on duty. “He was here a little while ago, but he got off at 8:00. Is there a problem?”
“Is he still around?”
“I’ll check.” I stood there with the phone in my hand. “Shelly saw Joe walk out of here with Lucian about twenty minutes ago.”
“If they show up, call me. Thanks, Jennifer.” I hung up and looked at Henry. Double Tough had woken up with all the commotion and was now standing with us. “He has been everywhere in this case.” I looked down at Ruby. “Where are Vic and Saizarbitoria?”
She stuttered. “There was a fender bender on the highway bypass.”
“Radio them and get them in here now. Joe Lesky’s out with Lucian.” I took a deep breath, trying to clear my head. “Where would they go?” I took another breath and thought out loud. “Where would Joe take him?”
It was the clearest I’d heard him speak since he had been shot. “Breakfast?”
I turned to Ruby on our way out. “Tell Vic and Saizarbitoria to meet us at the Bee.” As we started down the steps, I noticed that the methane foreman was accompanying us. I turned my head toward him so that I could see him with my uncovered eye. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
He smiled as he caught the door and allowed Henry to go through first. “I thought ya might need somebody who could both walk and talk.”
He had a point.
We pulled up alongside the Busy Bee, just as Vic’s unit slid to a stop beside us, only missing the front of my truck by inches. Her window was rolled down. “Joe Fucking Lesky?”
The place was packed as we flooded in, all the patrons freezing at the sight of an armed sheriff, two deputies, an Indian, and a construction worker; we probably looked like the Village People.
I caught Dorothy’s eye from behind the counter. “Lucian and Joe Lesky?”
You couldn’t ruffle her feathers with a brick. “Haven’t seen them.”
We regrouped on the sidewalk, and I started breaking it down. “Vic, you and Double Tough go to the home and wait. If they show up, just tell Joe that we’ve got some papers for him at the office. Try not to tip him off but bring him in no matter what.” They left in Vic’s unit as I turned to Saizarbitoria. “Santiago, get Ferg and do a perimeter. Radio the HPs and tell them to stop anything heading south on I-25 and that we’re looking for Lucian and Joe Lesky.” I tossed him the keys to the Bullet, and he was gone.
I turned to look down Main Street and then back at the Bear. I thought for a long moment. “I’ve got a question for you.” He didn’t say anything. “What makes us think that Joe took Lucian?” I looked back down the street at the Euskadi Hotel sign. “What if Lucian took Joe?”
“Mornin’ Lucian. Joe…”
I limped the twenty feet to the table; Lucian was facing me as I came in, the old gunfighter to the end. Joe had his back to the door but turned and lightly smiled as I entered. There were two cups of coffee on the table, but it looked like Joe was the only one drinking. Lucian’s hat was off and placed on the chair beside him with the brim down, which struck me as strange. The old sheriff looked relaxed, leaning back in his chair with his hands folded in his lap. Joe had his elbows resting on the table. Neither of them had their coats on, both were hanging from their chairs, and the jukebox was playing Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanian’s “Ring Those Christmas Bells.”
I hobbled past them to the bar back and poured myself a cup of coffee and gently placed it on a saucer. Coffee bought ten minutes. I raised a cup to Henry, who had stayed back by the door. He shook his head no. As I stalled at the bar, trying to think how I was going to play this, I thought of the mixture of excitements the next few minutes could unleash.
“What happened to your leg?” Joe was looking at me, but he was also glancing at Henry and his bandaged face. “And what happened to you?”
I shuffled back over to their table, turned one of the bentwood chairs around, and sat, giving me ready access to my sidearm and Joe. “Oh… we got shot.”
They were both staring at us now. Lucian the first to ask. “Who the hell shot ya?”
I studied the little vase on our table with its decorative plastic sprigs of holly and mistletoe, then trailed an arm over the back of the chair and took a sip of my coffee, my sore hand hardly fitting the delicate dinnerware of the Euskadi. “Leo Gaskell.” I kept my eyes on the old sheriff. “We’ve got him up at the hospital, and they’re patching him up.” Another Lazarus on the pile.
It was quiet for a moment, but then the music swelled with the false vibrancy and good humor of the season. “Who’s Leo Gaskell?”
I turned and looked at Joe Lesky. You had to give him credit; he was good. “Drug dealer from over in Fremont County; looks like he’s the one that hurt Anna Walks Over Ice.” May as well keep everybody alive. “He’s up there talking to the investigators now.”
Joe’s head nodded. He too was trying to buy time but in an establishment where nobody was selling. “Well, it’s good you got the guy that did it.”
“Yep.” The old sheriff was watching me very closely as I turned back to him and tried to get a read. “What’re you up to?”
“Doin’ some Christmas shoppin’.”
“The stores aren’t open yet.”
He looked back at Joe. “I got plenty a time.” He adjusted his hat on the seat of the chair beside him. Now I knew where the gun was.
Joe started to push off from the table. “Well, it sounds like you fellas have a lot to…” Out of the corner of my good eye, I could see Henry’s hands move from his pockets.
“Sit.” It was the soft voice he used when he would ask me if I really wanted to make a move in our chess games, the warning voice that sounded like the guttural vibration in the back of a cougar’s throat. Joe eased back into his chair, and I turned to Lucian.
We looked at each other like we had for decades, a blind man talking to a deaf one. There was a line that neither of us was able to cross: his sneering at my supposed weakness and my righteous indignation at his immorality. I was sure that the chasm between us was a generational one. Lucian’s world was simpler, and he was unable to see that law enforcement had become complicated in the modern era; or was it that he was so close, so much of a part of the whole mess, that he had lost perspective on it long ago? Charlie Nurburn hung out there like a reoccurring nightmare and in Charlie’s child and his child’s child.
I guess the heat was getting to Joe, because he felt compelled to interrupt. “We were just having a little conversation somewhere quiet.” His voice was a little unsteady. “I came across some information I thought might interest Lucian.”
I glanced back as Lucian pulled his pipe from one jacket pocket and the beaded leather pouch from the other. The tension eased but only a little. “I got some information, too.” Lucian filled his pipe and struck a match on the side of his chair. “I, um…” He sucked on his pipe until he got it going, the thick plume of smoke roiling from the corner of his mouth. “Beebee Banks was visitin’ her mother over at the home. Walt, she told me to tell you she found out who had that little Baroja girl’s bakery building before she did.” The smile played on his face like a reflection on moving water. “Why, it was Joe here.”
Like the motor drive on an automatic shutter, I counted six different stills as my head rotated to Joe, like six separate heartbeats. “Don’t move.”
The weight of it was in the room with us now like a cold cloud-burst had suddenly let loose; the rain of recognition was dripping from all of us and, as I saw Joe’s hand slip from the table, I was positive that of the four men in the room, three had guns. I saw the Bear move, but I was closer.
The bones in his wrist crunched with a nauseating give, and I finally got a look at the Joe Lesky that had been so carefully hidden from me as, with a snarl of rage, he tried to twist and pull away. My left held, but I wasn’t going to trust it to do the job alone. His expression changed as the cold barrel of the. 45 pressed up under his jaw, forcing his head back to where he had to look over the contours of his face to see me.
I took a deep breath. “I said, don’t move.”
I watched as his nostrils spread, and he pulled air in like a bellows. “Let go of my wrist!”
“I don’t hardly think so.” I eased the pressure of the. 45 and allowed his head to lower enough so that I could see his expression. I thought of an old drill sergeant who had told me that a professional is the one who always has his gun. I risked a glimpse to the right, around the damn eye patch, and saw the long-barreled. 38 of Lucian’s duty revolver extended across the table eight inches from Joe’s face.
I looked back at Joe, who was glancing at his coat and thinking about trying the reach with his left. “You do, and I will splatter your brains all over the pressed tin ceiling.” His eyes came back to mine. “Now I’m going to place your hands back on this table, and you are not going to move them, do you understand?”
I swept my hand behind him, lifting his coat and throwing it to Henry. I pulled my cuffs from my belt. “Put those on.”
“You broke my wrist.”
“Put those on.” He pressed the one loop through and delicately placed it around his damaged wrist, only partially locking it as I counted only three notches that clicked. “All the way.”
He looked at me. “It hurts.”
“So will the. 45.” He clicked it again and then did the other hand as specified. I leaned back and took another deep breath as I pulled the Colt away from the underside of Joe’s chin. I turned my head, so that I could see Lucian with the inside of my good eye. “You all right?”
“I ain’t the one without a gun, if that’s what ya mean.”
I looked back at Joe. His eyes shifted from me, to Lucian, and then back to me. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m not saying anything until I talk to a lawyer.”
Lucian snorted. “What makes you think that you’re gonna see a lawyer?”
My voice sounded a long way away, like it was coming from the land of reason. “Lucian.”
The old sheriff ’s hand didn’t move, and the extended barrel of the Smith and Wesson stayed even with Joe’s eyes. “I aim to kill this son of a bitch, right here and right now.” He pulled the pipe from his mouth and blew a strong lungful of smoke away from us. The pounding of “Ring Those Christmas Bells” continued as the jukebox charged on.
I cleared my throat and swallowed. “Lucian, I’m going to need you to lower your weapon.”
He gestured toward Joe with the stem of his pipe. “You killed my wife.”
I needed to buy some more time. I studied Joe. “When did you find out that Charlie Nurburn was dead?” He didn’t move, but his eyes switched from Lucian to me. “I’m betting that you knew he was dead by the time you contacted Leo. I guess you figured that Lucian here had kept Charlie alive for fifty-odd years and there was no reason why you couldn’t keep him alive for a little while longer or at least until you could get a share of Mari’s money.”
He didn’t move. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His tongue flicked across his lips. “Walt, you’ve known me…”
“No I don’t.” I leaned in on the back of my chair. “Did you kill Mari Baroja before you got Leo over here? You knew you could get him to kill Lana and Lucian, certainly Anna, but he didn’t kill them all, did he? And you didn’t do so well with Isaac.”
I was tired, and I wanted it all over with, but there was so much more to tell. “Leo tried to save his grandmother; he was hurt and was going to run for it but you knew we were down on the old Nurburn place. You were the one that shot Wes Rogers, and then you sent Leo down there in the cruiser even though you knew we were waiting and either way, you figured this problem would solve itself.” I kept the. 45 leveled between Joe’s eyes. “What were you going to do, Joe? Blame it all on Leo?”
His voice was strained. “I want a lawyer.”
Lucian exhaled, his arm still extended. “Best you can hope for is a priest, and that right soon.”
“You can’t prove any of this.”
I looked into Joe’s eyes, trying to see some common ground between us, but there was nothing there. I glanced back at his rumpled coat, hanging from Henry’s hand. “If I go over there and pull a. 32 automatic from your coat pocket, and it makes a ballistic match with the gun that shot Wes Rogers, I can start proving a lot.”
I reached into the pocket of my jacket and lay the Christmas ornament on the table, face up. I slowly pushed it toward Joe, where the visible part of the man’s face in the photograph matched the man in front of me. “Never mind all the others… he was your son, Joe. How could you do that to your child?”
The old sheriff cocked the revolver.
I could see the lanyard ring at the base of the pistol’s butt, the loop that used to attach Lucian’s old service revolver to his belt in the style of the cavalry riders so that they wouldn’t lose their sidearms while mounted. Like Lucian, this morning it was untethered, out there in the wind where bad things could and would happen. “Lucian, you know what it is Joe here was getting ready to tell you. Whether it was as a bartering chip or leverage, you can’t do what you were planning to do because you’re not alone in this anymore.” He blinked, and I could see the welling in his eyes as Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians took the Christmas train home amid four-part harmony.
I saw his trigger finger tighten, and the legendary grip squeeze the wooden handle like a lifeline. The best I could hope for was to knock it away with my own gun, flip the table, or throw myself sideways into him. In the split second I was thinking this, Lucian swung the revolver around and emptied it with five thundering reports into the shuddering and now forever silent jukebox. He tossed the empty. 38 back onto the table where it clattered and spun with its barrel pointed at an absolutely immobile Joe Lesky. Lucian’s voice was low and weak in the silence. “Jesus H. Christ… I always hated that damn thing.”