There was talk in the background, and Henry spoke again. “She wants to know if you have eaten.”
I stared at the sandwich that was still wrapped on the table in front of me. “Not yet, so tell her to save me some lasagna.” There was more talk, but I interrupted. “Hey, Henry?”
“Yes.”
“Have you had any contact with Virgil since last summer?”
“I will ask Vic to save you some lasagna.”
“Virgil White Buffalo was briefly a suspect in a homicide case we had last August.”
McGroder, trying to get a read on why I was telling him all this, studied me as he ate his turkey sandwich. “Uh huh.”
“He wasn’t guilty, but he did display a number of antisocial characteristics and is… at large.”
The Basquo stated flatly, “In more ways than one.”
McGroder glanced at Sancho and then back at me. “What the hell does that mean?”
“He’s a very big man.”
The Utah agent studied me. “Bigger than you?”
“Much.” I took my hat off and balanced it on my knee. “In our part of the world, he’s what some people refer to as an FBI.”
Sancho provided the translation: “Fucking Big Indian.”
McGroder stopped chewing. “Dangerous?”
“He has had his moments.”
The agency man set his sandwich down. “Let me get this straight. You’ve got a giant Indian sociopath running around in these mountains who may be related to our victim?”
I noticed he’d lost the politically correct sobriquet. “I’m checking on that, and besides, he may not be anywhere near here. All we have are rumors. The Cloud Peak Wilderness Area alone is 189,039 acres and it’s completely surrounded by the Bighorn National Forest, so the chances of running into him or of him knowing anything about your investigation are slim.” I drank some of my coffee and listened to my stomach complain about waiting for the lasagna. “We didn’t know about the investigation until a few hours ago.”
McGroder sat there looking at his half-eaten sandwich, his appetite having just taken a hit. “I don’t like coincidences.”
“I’m not too fond of them myself, but I thought it was information you should have.”
“Thank you.” His hand came up and covered most of his face.
“There’s another concern.”
He looked at me through his fingers. “There is?”
“Have you guys checked the weather recently?”
The agent glanced out the window with a glum expression. “It’s shitty. Why?”
We both watched as the waitress pulled her aged SUV from the lot and turned left, driving carefully onto Route 16. I assumed she was done for the night and heading home the twenty miles to Ten Sleep where she probably lived.
“It may get worse. The temperature is dropping and in an hour or so this whole mountain range is going to be encased in a couple of inches of ice.”
McGroder sighed, and I continued. “There aren’t any working facilities open in any of the lodges around here, so you’re going to have to haul your people back to South Fork Lodge. I think you should secure the scene and get the rest of these prisoners off the mountain.”
He plucked the Motorola from his hip and clicked the mic. “AT, when can you be ready to go?”
After a moment, a strong signal came back from the van in the parking lot.
Static. “Can we eat first?”
He glanced at me, and I spread my hands.
McGroder clicked the mic again. “As soon as you’re done, get out of here.” He rested the radio on the table and looked at me. “Six hundred and some miles back to Salt Lake?”
“Six hundred fifty miles from Durant, about eight hours in good weather.” We both looked out the windows again. “Which you are not going to have until you descend a couple thousand feet.” My eyes stayed on the DOC van holding Raynaud Shade. One of the marshals was proffering bags of food to Benton, who divided it and handed some to the prisoner. “What about him?”
“He stays.” McGroder sipped his coffee. “But there’s no reason that you have to. If I had a warm bed and hot lasagna an hour away, I’d be leaving skid marks.”
I glanced at my deputy, who was making a pretense of reading and probably anxious to get home to his wife and young son. “You’re sure you don’t need us?”
“In about twenty minutes, I’m going to have a mobile task force of two field agents and four marshals to guard only one man.” He stood and extended his hand. “I think we can handle it. Would you mind borrowing one of our vehicles so that we can keep him in yours?”
I placed my hat back on my head and reared up into a standing position. I could see the relief on Sancho’s face as McGroder handed me a set of keys. It was nice that I hadn’t had to remind him that even though it was his investigation, it was still my county. “When do you want us back at the scene?”
“Weather permitting, probably early in the morning-say 0800.”
We shook hands, and I stared at his crew cut again. “Semper Fi?”
He grinned. “Yeah, you?”
I picked up my coffee and put the lid back on. “First Division.”
Wearing a pasted-on smile, he slapped me on the shoulder. “Get some sleep, Sheriff. I’ll see you at South Fork in the morning.” He stretched a hand toward Saizarbitoria but looked at the both of us. “Thanks for your help, Deputy. If I don’t see you again and you’re ever over Salt Lake way, look me up. I’ll get you over to The Pie for a good pizza.” As we got ready to go, he picked up my wrapped sandwich and tossed it to me. “Something for the road?”
“Class act.”
“Yep.” I was contemplating the sandwich in my lap and wondering if I could eat it now and the lasagna later. The Basquo momentarily slid the borrowed Suburban into a turn, then carefully corrected and straightened. “Slick?”
He nodded but kept his concentration on the road. “Like greased goose shit.”
“Better slow down.”
He heeded my unneeded advice, and we rolled/slid along the road at forty-five. “You think the Shade guy did it?”
“Well, he all but admitted to it when I took him to the bathroom.” I thought about the adopted Crow Indian we’d passed on our way to the borrowed federal vehicle. He had been eating while Benton, still holding the shotgun, watched. The marshal had nodded to us as we’d walked by in the freezing sleet, but it was Raynaud Shade’s eye, the glass one, that seemed to track along with us as we passed. The thing was wayward at best and it was probably just another reflection, but it was as if the dead eye was watching me.
“What?”
I turned to look at the Basquo. “Hmm?”
He continued to study me. “You were thinking of something?”
I fiddled with the waxed paper. “Did you read the file on Shade?”
“No.”
“He was one of the last of the Tukkuthkutchin tribe up in Canada-Northwest Territories.” I refolded the sandwich and stared out the window. “Transferred from one of the residential boarding schools to a private orphanage when he was eight. They tested him, and his IQ was off the chart. Raynaud ran away to live with his non-Indian father, who took responsibility for him. Two years later a social worker stopped in to check on the boy and discovered that the father had died eight months earlier.”
Sancho stared ahead. “What’d you do, commit the file to memory?”
I thought about it, about the parts I wasn’t telling. “That ten-year-old boy had been living in a cabin with his dead father in the bedroom for eight months. He got kicked around to a number of foster homes before being
