The tall woman said, “He’s my father and ‘the old lady’ is my mother. She’s in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s, and this is the only way he can connect with her these days, by reading children’s stories.”
Cody slumped and sighed. “I’m such an asshole,” he said.
“Yes, you are,” the tall woman said. “But I can see you didn’t know.”
The blond mother shushed them both.
Cody said to the tall woman, “When he’s done will you introduce me to him?”
She almost smiled. “How can I introduce you when I don’t know your name?”
“Cody Hoyt,” he said. “I’m a cop.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “Is this official business? You don’t seem to have a badge.”
Cody said, “It’s more important than that. Give me a few minutes and I’ll lay it out.”
“Angela Mitchell,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m the proud daughter.”
Cody thought,
The blond mother leaned toward them hissing,
And Bull Mitchell read:
Cody hovered behind Angela and Bull Mitchell as Bull pushed his wife through the aisles in her wheelchair to the van to return her to the nursing home. The children had joined up with their mothers or nannies and dispersed. Bull said to Angela in a flat, declaratory tone not unlike his reading, “So who’s the guy?”
“He says his name is Cody Hoyt. He wants to meet you.”
“Hoyt?” Bull barked.
“Yes.”
“I knew a couple guys named Hoyt. One was a drunk and the other one was a criminal. Why does he want to meet me?”
“Hey,” Cody said, “I’m right here. I can speak for myself.”
Bull paused and twisted slightly to a quarter profile, as if he wasn’t sure turning around to talk to Cody was worth more than that. He looked Cody up and down, said nothing, and said to his daughter, “Tell him not to interrupt my stories, goddammit.”
“I apologize,” Cody said. “I just wasn’t expecting a guy named Bull in the children’s room.”
Bull kept his back to him and guided his wife’s wheelchair out the front doors of the library. The attendant in the van climbed out to help position her chair on the lift. Cody saw she was still smiling and her eyes were wistful. She was small and reed thin and her body seemed to be drawing inward as if to fold up on itself. Her back was hunched, which made her head stick out forward rather than up. A baby bird, Cody thought, she’s turning into a baby bird in the nest, stretching out on a long neck. He felt sorry for her, for Bull, for Angela, and for him being there at that moment.
In a wavery voice as light as mist she said to her husband, “That was a wonderful story, Mr. Bull. One of my favorites. I wish I could have read it to my daughter Angela, you know.”
“I know,” he said softly.
Cody noted how Angela flinched when she heard what her mother said. She didn’t say
Bull dropped to his haunches so he was eye level with his wife. She smiled at him with big teeth stained by decades of coffee.
“Good-bye honey,” he said, and bent forward and kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll read to you in a week.”
Her waxen face flushed pink and she giggled and batted her eyes, admonishing him, “Mr.
He leaned forward and whispered something in her ear and she blushed further and windmilled her tiny hands as if naughtily delighted by the words. Cody looked away.
The van driver activated the hydraulic lift and secured her in the van and drove away.
Angela said, “She was happy.”
Bull grunted.
“I think she’s falling for you,” Angela said.
“Who wouldn’t?” Bull said. Then he focused on Cody. His tone was gruff. “Now what do you want?”
Cody said, “Can I buy you and Angela a cup of coffee? I need your help.”
“You can buy me a beer,” Bull said. “Come on, I know a place a few blocks down.”
In the gloom of the Crystal Bar, the kind of old dive Cody loved with its dim lighting and the midafternoon musical clicking of pool balls from a table in back, Bull said to the waitress, “I’ll have a PBR.”
Cody hesitated a moment, then ordered a tonic water. Angela asked for coffee.
Bull eyed him across the table for an uncomfortable length of time, then said, “You don’t like Pabst Blue Ribbon or are you an alky?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because only alkies drink tonic water. It kind of reminds ’em of a real drink. Or so I’ve been told.”
“Guilty,” Cody said.
“Thought so,” Bull said. “You have that look about you. Believe me, in this country I see that look you got a lot.”
Cody looked to Angela for help. She shrugged back with a
“So,” Bull Mitchell said, “why are we here?”
Cody shot a quick glance to Angela, then told the entire story, leaving nothing out. Hank Winters, his binge, the coroner, his suspension. Bull listened wordlessly. Angela squirmed toward the end, getting more and more alarmed.
“So that’s the deal,” Cody said. “I need to find that pack trip as fast as I can but I don’t know the park well enough and I’ve got to keep quiet about it or I’ll lose my job at the very least. You’re the only guy I can think of who is familiar with Jed McCarthy and ‘Back of Beyond: the Ultimate Yellowstone Backcountry Adventure.’”
Bull scowled, “I didn’t name it that. That was Jed’s deal. He thinks he’s a wizard with words.”
“And women,” Angela added acidly.
Cody waited for more but it didn’t come and she obviously wished she’d said nothing by the way she shifted her weight in the booth.
To Bull, Cody said, “You’ve done it, this trip I’m talking about, right?”
“Dozens of times,” Bull said. “I blazed the trail in the first place after the park rangers at the time said there was no realistic way to take packhorses where I told them I wanted to go. So I had to prove them wrong. I goddamn
Cody tried to keep himself low-key and persuasive when what he really wanted to do was get going. He said, “Can you tell me how to find them? Where they left from, which trail they took? Where they’d likely be right now as we’re talking?”
Bull nodded. “Pretty close. But what are you going to do?
“Dad,” Angela said with alarm, “he wants you to guide him.”
Cody kept quiet.
Bull said, “I don’t do that kind of stuff anymore. I haven’t in years.”
“I’ll pay you,” Cody said, trying not to let Angela’s glare penetrate him.
“How much?” Bull said, gesturing to the waitress for another beer. “Jed McCarthy charges more than two grand
