“Me?” We both looked at the Winchester. “I bring that thing with me everywhere I go anymore. With all the things goin’ on out here, I figure a man ought’a have some protection.”
I walked back through the gate and leaned on the grill guard of his truck. “Who else has a red Dodge like yours?” He sat there, looking at me blankly. “Your new truck-anybody else have one like it?”
“No, don’t think so.”
“When did you put the plates on?”
He thought about it. “This morning. I got ’em in the mail yesterday.”
“Anybody else use your truck?”
“No.” Then he reconsidered. “I let Hershel use it to haul some of the equipment over for the auction, but that’s it.”
I thought about last night, when I’d carried the cowboy home. “Were you driving out on the Barton Road by the corrals last night?”
He laughed. “That was you that brought Hershel back?” He laughed again. “I always make a loop to make sure he gets to his trailer all right.” He shook his head. “I was on my way home.”
“When I saw your truck at the corrals, it passed me, then headed south and east.”
It was silent for a bit-we both knew his place was north and west. He sniffed and covered his face with a hand. “I sometimes take Barton down to Middle Prong and then circle back on Wild Horse-just cruisin’.” He slid the palm of his hand down and rested his chin. “You’d be amazed at the things you’ll do if you think you’re never gonna see a place again.”
I looked over my shoulder and could see someone on horseback on the road leading up to and alongside the cliffs. “How about at the bar?”
“When?”
“Afterward.”
He sounded honestly confused. “Like I told you, I went home and hung my keys by the door like I always do.”
“So, you weren’t at the bar in Absalom at about one-thirty this morning?”
“Hell, no. Like I said, I was at home asleep. I was in bed by midnight-I can guarantee it.” He fished in his shirt pocket, pulled out a plastic medicine vial, and rattled the contents. “Took two of these-boom, boom, out go the lights.”
I held out a hand, and he threw me the bottle. I read the paper label and looked up at him. “Where did you get Mary Barsad’s medications?”
He studied me. “It’s not what you think.”
I didn’t say anything.
“It’s not.” He started to reach for the container, but I tightened my hand around it. His hand dropped. “She gave ’em to me. I was having trouble sleeping, and she thought they might help.”
“Did they?”
“Like a pole-axed steer.” I waited. “We were just friends, that’s all.” He watched me, trying to gauge my reaction. “I’d see her out ridin’ and we’d talk; pretty soon she’d stop by and have a cup of coffee. We got to talkin’, and if I was to tell you the truth, I think she felt sorry for me-and shit, Walt, I let her.”
“Then I take it that you knew her pretty well?” He nodded. “Do you think she shot Wade?”
He took a deep breath. “God, I don’t know-” He slipped off the fence, stretched his muscles, and walked toward the middle of the road with his palms at the small of his back. He spoke to the cliff. “I’d like to think that she didn’t do it but she says she did, so what the hell do you think?”
I decided to keep a few hole cards where they belonged. “I’m not sure.”
“I mean, they found her with the gun-”
I knew the story. I’d heard it from Hershel and had read it in the Campbell County reports, but I figured I’d play along. “Who did?”
“Well, Hershel; then he came and got me.”
“Did he bring her?”
“Nope, left her sitting there in the yard, but he took the gun and came and got me.”
“He left her sitting in the yard with the house burning?”
He turned to look at me. His voice was strained and was carried away by the wind. “Only the barn was burning when he came to get me, but by the time we got back over there the house had gone up, too. We found her sitting right where he’d left her.”
“Hershel didn’t go in before and check on Wade, to see if he was dead?”
“Yeah, now that I think about it, maybe he did.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t have done it.”
I tossed the container of pills in the air, caught it, and held it up between us. “In the kitchen, you mentioned something about Mary, something you wanted to show me. Was it this?”
He nodded and smiled. “Yeah, I figured it was the only guaranteed way to get you to come along with me.”
I nodded. Dog had been sitting on my foot but raised his head to look at me when he noticed that the rider, who had a small child seated with him on the horse, was only a hundred yards off. I looked at the mounted young man in the cowboy hat. Tom Groneberg, to whom I leased the place, and the two-year-old boy who was sharing his saddle both recognized me and began waving. “You mind if I hang on to these?”
“Not if you think it’ll help, but can I have two for the road?” I walked over, popped the cap, and tapped two of the white, oblong pills imprinted with “S421” into his open palm. “You never know when you might have a rough night.”
Or a rough day. Boy howdy.
October 22: six days earlier, night.
Her eyes had reflected the streetlights that shone through Virgil’s window. She never seemed to really sleep, and I had begun to think she should try it standing up, like a horse.
I stood, but she didn’t move, so I quietly patted my leg for Dog to follow. We slipped back into the main hallway and walked toward Vic’s office, where I could hear her softly tapping her keyboard.
Her office was small, with the Wyoming law binders covering the walls, but she liked it crowded. Her legs were stretched out with her naked feet crossed at the ankles on the edge of her desk, the keyboard in her lap. Dog settled on the floor, his big head between his paws, and I occupied the gray plastic chair. “What’s the word, Thunderbird?”
She waved for me to hold on a second, continued typing an e-mail message, and pressed send. She mumbled in response to my question. “What’s the price, forty-four twice. What’s the joy, nature boy. What’s the reason, grapes are in season.” She turned and sighed-an undersheriff’s work is never done. “The toxicologist in Cheyenne is flirting with me.”
“On state time?”
She shrugged an eyebrow. “Hey, I get it where I can.”
I ignored the comment. “I thought Saizarbitoria was going to research this-”
She interrupted. “I sent him home.”
“-medication.”
“No thanks, I’ve got plenty.” She stared at me as I waited, finally glancing up at the ceiling and reciting, “Eszopiclone is a nonbenzodiazepine, nonimidazopyridine, cyclopyrrolone hypnotic sedative. The stuff was developed in the eighties, refined and tested in the nineties, and is now a widely available prescription drug.”
She placed the keyboard back on her desk but kept her shapely ankles on display. Her boots and socks were on the floor by the wastebasket. It was a warm night, so she had taken them off, which revealed her perfectly pedicured feet. She had rolled up her jeans to make Wyoming culottes, something she did a lot in the summertime-I guessed this wardrobe decision was her swan song-and her muscled calves showed to perfect advantage.
“It works by binding to the GABA receptors in the brain, but beyond that connection they’re really not sure how the stuff works.” She glanced at the computer screen, hit another button, and the drug company’s logo and active screen commercial came up. Vic knocked the syrupy music down and looked at me. “Most of these hypnotic and sedative drugs are still a mystery to the companies that produce them-all for people with chronic insomnia like your friend back there.”
“So, the pills are legit?”
