Land of Wolves, page 4
She stared at me. “You’ve lost what, thirty, maybe forty pounds since your adventure in the desert?”
I continued petting Dog’s head. “I don’t know.”
“Not that you don’t look good, I mean better.”
“Thank you, I think.”
She continued to study me. “Not that I don’t enjoy your company, but I think you need to go see a guy.”
“Any particular guy?”
“Yeah, the guy you usually see when having these internal philosophical debates. I don’t mind doing it for a while, but then my head hurts and I want to shoot something.”
“Okay.”
“So, unless you want a beer, or the horizontal bop or both?”
“I’m not sure if I have the energy for either.”
She shrugged. “So, you need me to give you a ride home?”
“No, I think I can make it on my own.” I carefully stood, still feeling the tremors of pain from my side echoing through my nervous system like distant thunder. “I think I’m just going to go home and go to bed.”
“Without company?”
“I’m afraid so.” I held out a hand, and she took it. “I wonder . . .”
“Don’t. Don’t wonder about you and me right now. Okay?” She curled my arm around her, slipping herself gently into my damaged side as if making it whole. “You’ve got enough to think about.”
Draping my arm over her shoulder, she helped me with my jacket and then walked me out of my office and around Ruby’s dispatcher’s counter toward the steps.
“Who’s leading the office pool?”
“Think our adventures in the mountains.”
“Sorry.” After saluting the painting of Andrew Carnegie, I held the door for her and Dog as we passed through and into the night. She leaned against the adjacent glass as I locked up and thought about who had the pager that one of us always carried home at night. “Whose got the Rock?”
“Sancho. He said he’d meet you here early and go with you out to the Extepare place—he figures speaking Basque will give you an advantage.” She leaned back and looked up at me. “You ever need an expert in sarcasm, you’ll let me know, right?”
“Undoubtedly.” We’d just started down the remainder of the stairs when I noticed a white Toyota pickup with Montana plates and a slide-in truck camper sitting in the parking lot.
Vic noticed my gaze. “Somebody moving in?”
“I believe that’s Keasik Cheechoo’s vehicle.”
“Choochoo the wolf woman?”
“For lack of a better name.”
As the three of us approached, I could see a large lump of blankets in the cab and the border collie snugged into the pile with her owner.
“She’s sleeping in our lot?”
“I guess so.” I gestured toward Vic’s vehicle parked next to mine. “Throw Dog in my unit and then get out of here and I’ll talk to her.”
“Fuck that, you and Dog get out of here and I’ll talk to her.”
“That will end with you putting her in a cell.”
“Qué será, será.”
“That means someone has to stay here tonight with her.”
My undersheriff slumped, some of the wind having effectively escaped her incarceration sails. “I don’t like her.”
“Enough to spend the night with her?”
“Point taken. Just don’t be long and then go home.” I watched as the new and improved Glock 19 Gen 4 in Midnight Bronze bounced off her hip as she unhappily retreated before opening the passenger door of my truck for Dog, then she climbed into her own unit, started it, and circled around, rolling down the manual window. “I’m back here in forty minutes, and if the two of you are still here I’m arresting you both, and she can listen to the two of us having sex in the next cell.”
Vic drove off, and I reapproached the Toyota with Dog watching from the passenger seat of my truck. I rapped my knuckles on the window of the white pickup.
The border collie, Gansu, unleashed a series of yipping barks as she stood on the seat. Keasik Cheechoo pulled the Tibetan hat from her face.
I raised my hand again. “Howdy.”
She rolled her window down and massaged her eyes. “What time is it?”
“A little after nine.”
“What were you doing in there?”
“Working.” I lied.
“Yeah, well, I’m waiting for our meet.”
“I’m sorry, did we schedule something?”
“Not since you drove off and left me standing in the hospital parking lot.” She pulled the blanket aside and then reached over and took her cell phone from the dash, the condensation of her warm breath filling the open window. “My plans have changed, and I’m leaving in the morning.”
I rested an arm on the roof of her vehicle. “Something come up?”
“Work related, so if you want to talk to me you need to do it now.”
“I’m sure we can just do it on the phone.”
“Now you tell me?”
“Well, you could’ve come in the office.”
“I don’t like police stations.”
“Okay.” I tapped the top of her truck. “You’re off the hook and can head back to Missoula.”
“Colorado.”
“Wherever, so long as I’ve got your cell phone number.”
She lodged the blanket between her and the dog. “I thought I should let you know, I’ve already contacted the Chilean government and lodged a formal protest on Miguel Hernandez’s behalf, stating that his ultimate death was a result of unsafe working conditions.”
“Good to know.”
When I said nothing more, she looked up at me. “You’re not worried?”
“I didn’t employ the man, Ms. Cheechoo.”
“It was your job to protect him.”
I stared at her for a moment. “Yep, it was.” I tapped the roof once more and then turned and walked toward my truck. “Travel safe.”
The door opened and slammed shut behind me, and I could hear her rushing to catch up as I got to my own unit. She caught me off-balance just as I was turning, and I tripped over my own feet, falling against my truck and sliding down into a sitting position, my hat landing in my lap.
Dog thudded against the window above me and growled before breaking into a series of barks that only stopped when I beat on the door with my knuckles. “Knock it off, I’m all right.”
She’d backed away but now was reaching down to try to help me. “I am so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
Brushing her hand away, I told her, “I’m fine,” and started to stand but just couldn’t summon up the energy. “Actually, I’m not . . . would you mind helping me up?”
Between the two of us, we grappled myself to a standing position, and I placed an open hand on the window to stop Dog’s intermittent motorboat impersonation.
She backed to arm’s length as if the beast might come through the window. “What kind of dog is that?”
“I don’t really know.”
“He’s yours?”
“It’s more like I’m his.”
“I can see that.” Allowing me to catch my breath, she held onto my arm. “Would you like me to call someone?” She was distracted for a moment but then raised her head to look at me. “My God, you’re bleeding.”
Glancing down, I could see a dark stain seeping through my flannel shirt. “Well, hell . . . I must’ve pulled some stiches in the drainage hole.”
“Drainage hole?”
“I was stabbed a while ago.”
She stared at me in disbelief. “We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”
“I’d rather go home and bleed, really.”
“You can’t just go home.” She glanced back at the defunct library that served as our office and jail. “You must have emergency equipment in there?”
“Yep, but I can take care of it myself.”
“No, you can’t. I’m a medical technician for God’s sake—if you’re not going to let me take you to the hospital, then you have to at least let me patch you up here.”
Realizing I was fighting a losing battle, I acquiesced and turned to look at Dog. “Stay here, and don’t eat the steering wheel.”
* * *
—
I unlocked the door and, with the help of the banister, climbed the steps up to the desk where Ruby kept a large first aid kit. Sitting on the lower section of the counter, I shrugged off my coat and, grimacing a little, began carefully pulling out my shirttail and unbuttoning my shirt.
She stood at the top of the steps and looked around. “How did you get stabbed?”
“It’s a long story.” Getting the shirt out of the way, I could now see that the bleeding was coming from the bottom of the Ace bandage that Bloomfield and Nickerson had wrapped around me at the last dressing change. Giving up on discretion, I shouldered off my jacket, unbuttoned the rest of my shirt, and then slowly unwrapped the flexible bandage to reveal the gauze patch and medical tape that had come loose when I’d fallen.
“Let me see.” Pushing my hands aside, she knelt and peeled the gauze back. “It’s not so bad—one of the stitches must’ve pulled, but it’s already stopped bleeding.” Pulling some antiseptic cream from the kit, she applied it onto a sterile pad and replaced the bloody one with deft hands. “So, who stabbed you?”
“A drug kingpin, down in Mexico.”
She continued to work. “Kind of out of your jurisdiction as a Wyoming sheriff, isn’t it?”
“A little . . . he had my daughter.”
There was a pause. “She in the drug business?”
“No, worse—she works for the attorney general’s office in Wyoming.” Keasik glanced up at my face again. “It was personal—between him and me.”
“Yeah, looks personal all right.” Finishing the work, she began rewrapping the flexible bandage around my midriff, her arms surrounding me. “How old is this wound?”
“A month or so, why?”
“It shouldn’t be draining like this after that much time.”
I reached over, put on my bloody shirt, and changed the subject. “So, why the emergency in Colorado?”
She stared at me for a moment and then reached out and flipped my collar down smoothing it. “Don’t you have a clean shirt?”
“No.”
Shaking her head, she began buttoning the dirty one for me. “I’m assuming you’re not married.”
“And why is that?”
“Married men always have a clean shirt—it’s one of the perks.”
Unmoved by the distraction, I asked again. “Colorado?”
She finished buttoning and stepped away to admire her handiwork. “I made that up. I’m not really leaving, but I thought it might motivate you. Instead, all it did was induce me into aggravated assault on a police officer.” She folded her arms. “You gonna book me?”
“It would be a hard sell on a jury, considering you’re the one who scraped me off the parking lot and brought me in here to patch me up.”
She nodded. “Also, I’m sorry about the parking ticket remark back at the hospital.”
“I’ve heard worse.”
She smiled, and there was warmth in it for the first time. “What are you going to do about Miguel?”
“Ms. Cheechoo . . .”
“Keasik, please.”
It seemed stupid to try to remain professional after she’d seen my insides. “Keasik, the first thing I’m going to do is find out if there’s anything to investigate. I mean, if the man committed suicide there really isn’t anything . . .”
“People can be driven to suicide, you know?”
“I do, and if there’s anything like the treatment you’ve mentioned, we’ll act on it.”
“Honest?”
“Honest.” I crossed my heart and did the Cub Scout salute. “You seem sure that wasn’t a suicide, and if it was that there were mitigating circumstances.” I stretched my neck and looked at her. “How well did you know Mr. Hernandez?”
She studied me, stiffening and saying nothing at first. “What are you insinuating?”
“Just what I asked—how well did you know Miguel Hernandez?”
Still folding her arms around herself, she took a few steps toward the marble fireplace, a remnant from when librarians used to check out books using a card-catalog Dewey decimal classification system. “We slept together. I guess that’s pretty well, huh?”
Standing, I tucked my shirttail in, careful to avoid the wound. “Keasik, I’m honestly not trying to pry—it’s just that in the course of an investigation I’m going to need to get the lay of the land and I’m going to have to ask some questions that might not be pleasant.”
“You knew.”
“I suspected.” I chose my next words carefully. “You seem to have an emotional investment in all this.”
“He was my friend.” I stared at her, waiting. “And maybe a little more.”
“How long had you known him?”
“A couple of years; since the incident in Colorado.”
“And that was with the Department of Labor job there?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know of anyone who would wish him harm?”
She crossed back toward me. “Tons of people; he was a political dissident and was on the forefront of decent treatment of nomadic tradesmen.”
“In Chile?”
She gestured with her arms wide. “And here.”
“I guess what I’m looking for are individuals who had both a method and motive—if he was murdered. First off, someone who could’ve been placed in the Bighorn National Forest within the last forty-eight hours, which limits the suspects.”
“Some of the people who hired him could want him dead.”
I took a breath and shook my head. “Now, don’t get me wrong, I know the Extepare family and they’ve got a few rough edges, but I don’t see them hanging their own shepherd.”
“Someone else, then.”
“Who else does he know up here?”
“He worked for some other ranches in Wyoming.”
“Can you get me the names from the Colorado Department of Labor?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well, that’s a start.” Standing, I shrugged on my jacket. “I will talk to Abarrane first thing in the morning. Is there anyone else he may have had contact with, other than yourself?”
“I really wouldn’t know.” She studied on the subject, finally pulling her fingers through her hair. “I know he’d come into town every couple of months, but I wasn’t with him, so I don’t know who he could’ve met.”
“I’ll check into it.”
She grinned. “Well, there’s a Basque bar in town.”
“Yep.”
She became even more excited. “And a Basque bakery.”
“I know that too. I live here.”
“Right.” Her enthusiasm dampened, she dropped her head and the smile. “I guess you get that a lot. Junior G-men who want to help?”
Ignoring the question, I thought of something else. “But he wasn’t Basque.”
“No.”
“Then why would you mention the Basque establishments in town and not, say, the Mexican restaurant?”
Her eyes stayed steady on me. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
“I try to be thorough, but you still haven’t answered my question.”
“He had more in common with the Basques than the Mexicans, I suppose. He was always kind of old world, if you know what I mean, at least that’s what his reading tastes were.”
Remembering that I had taken the books from the herder’s wagon, I brought them back into the room and pulled the handwritten poem from the book of poetry. “Any idea whose handwriting this is?”
She studied it. “No.”
“Not his?”
“No.”
I took the piece of paper back and studied it. “I’m no expert, but I’d say it was a feminine hand, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.”
I nodded and placed the sheet back into the book, lodging it under my arm.
She cocked her head and reached out to tap the binding. “What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know, but to be honest it’s more important to ask all the questions than to have answers at this stage of an investigation.” I looked directly at her in anticipation of her next question. “Because at this point some of the answers would inevitably be wrong, and all that does is slow the pursuit.”
“Pursuit?”
I nodded, moving toward the door in hopes that she’d get the idea. “If Miguel Hernandez was murdered, then I am hunting for a killer, and the sooner I find him or her the better.”
Following me, she paused at the top of the steps. “Before he or she kills again?”
I took a breath and tried not to sound too pedantic. “And for the sake of justice and Miguel Hernandez.”
“All this for a three-year working-visa Chilean?” I watched as she went down the steps, turning at the landing to look at me and smile. “They’re growing an odd crop of sheriffs here in Wyoming these days.”
I stood high above her, attempting to cover my stained shirt with an arm—if you’re going to appear epic, it’s best to do it without looking like you’re bleeding to death. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m not a bad person, you know?”
I didn’t say anything.
“I knew he was married and had kids and everything, but he was so lonely.”
I dropped my head to examine my boots. After a moment there was a noise, and when I looked up she was gone. Having carefully avoided the minefield of personal interaction, I turned off the lights and eased down the steps, saluting the painting of Andrew Carnegie, along with all the 8 × 10s of the entire previous sheriffs of Absaroka County who had and had not avoided their own personal perils along the way.
When I got to the door, the Toyota was pulling out onto the main street, the yellow traffic lights strung through town blinking long after all good sheriffs should be home in bed.
