the last part indignantly, and Joe nodded.
“Back to the bar,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Who else was there? Anyone you didn’t know?”
She shook her head, “Just energy guys. You know, hardworking Americans providing power for the rest of the country so they can all look down on us with their lights on. Oil guys, coal miners, gas guys. Some juggies and some surveyors loading up before they had to go home. Badger was there, of course.”
“Mm-hmm,” he said, scribbling, encouraging her to keep talking. A surprising number of witnesses loved to have their words inscribed, he’d found over the years. It made them feel important that their words mattered to someone. It was the same impulse some people had to immediately commence talking whenever a television camera was around.
“What I’m wondering,” Joe said, “was if there was anyone in the bar you didn’t recognize? Or maybe they just didn’t fit?”
She gnawed on her fingers and looked up at the sky and closed her eyes. “Thinking,” she said aloud. Then she snapped her fingers. “There were two guys sitting in back by themselves,” she said. “I remember them now. One older guy and one handsome dude, but in an Eastern, kind of faggy bark-beetle way . . .”
Joe interrupted. “What do you mean by that? Did he look homosexual?”
She laughed huskily and shook her head. “No, worse. He looked like an environmentalist. I can spot ’em a mile away. You know how some people have ‘gay-dar’ when it comes to picking out gay people? Bo said I had ‘Gore-dar,’ the ability to pick out whacko enviros. You know, after Al Gore.”
“Got it,” Joe said, suppressing a sigh.
“Anyway, they sat a back table keeping to themselves. I think they were arguing about something. Badger kept delivering them drinks. I noted they shut up every time he took drinks over to them, like they didn’t want him to hear what they were talking about. That was unusual because everybody around here knows everyone else’s business. Well, they acted like they were having a big important discussion. The good-looking enviro had a laptop out, and he kept pointing at the screen to the old guy.”
Joe paused. “Can you describe them a little better? I don’t have Gore-dar.”
She giggled. “Sure. The old guy was big—he had a big head and a big face. Dark hair, mustache. Mid- to late sixties, I guess. He was dressed pretty well in that he wasn’t wearing Wranglers. Definitely not from around here. He had nice eyes—I remember that. Maybe six foot or a little over. Maybe, I don’t know, two hundred and fifty pounds? The one with the laptop had wavy brown hair and his shirt was open too much for around here. Like I said, handsome in a faggy way.”
Joe thought,
“Was anyone with them?” he asked.
“Not that I can remember.”
“A teenage girl, maybe?”
She barked a laugh. “Believe me, mister, if there was a teenage girl in that joint, I woulda known about her! I was the only female in the place!”
Joe nodded. “You mentioned you went outside a couple of times. Did you see anyone in any cars?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t look,” she said. “I was, you know, getting high.”
He paused, thinking what to ask.
Then she said, “Hey, I remember something. Bo came back in once. He’d gone outside to piss. He likes—liked —to piss outside rather than inside. One of his quirks. Anyway, he sat down by me and said there was an underage girl out there in one of the cars who saw him pissing. He said she was kinda cute. I smacked him. I thought he was shitting me about seeing a girl. You know, hallucinating. Are you saying he wasn’t?”
PORTENSON MADE CALL after call with a satellite phone. He was lit by the green glow of the instrument panel. He looked distressed and angry. The pilot sat silently next to him but made it a point to look away as if he found something out in the dark sagebrush worth careful study. The pilot wore sunglasses and headphones. Joe guessed he’d wear a grocery bag on his head if one were available.
Coon stood for a long time looking at the body of Bo Skelton behind the wheel of the pickup and cursing. Joe asked Coon to watch his language in deference to Sheridan, who leaned against the grille of Joe’s pickup with her arms crossed. Her cell phone, as always, was in her hand. Joe felt the need every ten minutes or so to approach her and give her a hug or a squeeze until she finally asked him to relax. She insisted she was okay, that the events of the night hadn’t traumatized her in any way.
“Don’t go near that SUV,” Joe cautioned. He’d caught a glimpse of Skelton’s body earlier. Machine-gun fire had practically gutted him and there were two bullet holes neatly spaced in his forehead like another set of eyes. Joe was thankful it had been a long time since he’d eaten anything or he likely would have lost it, like Coon had.
“I’ll stay where I am,” she said. “Should I call Mom and let her know we’re okay?”
“Yes, please.”
THERE WAS A THUMP on the inside of the Plexiglas bubble as Portenson smacked it with the heel of his hand. Joe looked up from where he was with Sheridan. Portenson was obviously furious and sharing his frustrations with the pilot, who listened without removing his sunglasses or headphones.
The FBI supervisor opened the hatch and climbed out. Joe said to Sheridan, “Hope he doesn’t scorch your ears.”
Sheridan said, “You are
Portenson paced and spoke as much to himself as to Coon in the distance. “We have to stay right here and wait. So forget trying to find Stenko for the time being. The powers that be are sending up an incident team from Denver, and our orders are to stay right here and not touch anything. Like we’re a couple of suspects. Touch nothing! Hear that?”
