He yawned again. “Somebody meant business.”
He held out a hand, and I dropped into it the most important piece of evidence in our case. He palmed it for a moment, bouncing it between the band of his gold-trimmed Rolex and the three turquoise rings on his right hand. Omar was ambidextrous. Style. “Soft?”
“30 to 1, lead to tin.”
“Anything else?”
“Some sort of foreign substance, SPG or Lyman’s Black Powder Gold.”
“Lubricant made specifically for black-powder cartridge shooting.”
“Black-powder cartridge?”
It was the first time he looked at me. “How many people have seen this?”
“Vic, T. J. Sherwin at DCI, Chemical Analysis at Justice, and Henry.”
He blinked and continued to look at me. “The Bear didn’t know what this was?”
I paused. “We figured it was an antique shotgun slug, black powder?”
“Hmm…” He could noncommittal hmm almost as good as me.
“Something?”
He handed me back the baggie and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I could tell you, but I’d rather show you.”
“You’re that sure?”
He looked at the pointed toes of his handmade, belly-cut, alligator-skin Paul Bond boots. “I’m that sure.”
I ran through the rest of my day. “After 5:30?”
He looked again to the sky above Cloud Peak. “Tomorrow morning would be better, Sheriff. I’ve got a business to run.”
“What time?”
“Doesn’t matter, I’m always up.”
By the time I got back to the office, a green Dodge with a flat bed and fifth wheel was pulled up to the building, and the woman in the front seat made a point of not seeing me as I went in. Barbara Keller did not believe her child was guilty and never would. I went in the office and motioned for the two men to follow me. “Get you fellas some coffee?” Jim Keller shook his head, and Bryan studied his hands. “You sure? It’s been brewing since about eight this morning. Should be about right.”
“How can we help you, Walt?” Of all the young men in the group, I had found it the hardest to believe that Bryan had been involved with the rape. I wasn’t sure if he had always looked so sad or if the look had just intensified since the trial. “Jim, you own that land out next to the BLM where Bob Barnes runs Mike Chatham’s sheep?”
“Yes.”
“That’s where we found Cody Pritchard.” I glanced at Bryan. “You didn’t have any contact with him in the last couple of weeks, did you?”
“He has not.” I turned to look at Jim. Jim in turn looked at Bryan, who in turn looked at his hands. “Have you?”
Bryan found his hands even more interesting. “No, sir.”
“Jim, your wife is looking a little upset out there in your outfit, maybe you ought to go check on her?”
He gave Bryan another look. “You tell this man anything he wants to know, and you better damn well tell him the truth.”
I let the directive settle till the front door quietly shut. Bryan Keller was a handsome kid with wide cheekbones, a strong chin, and a small, hooked scar at the jawline. He had taken life on, and life had kicked his ass. I looked at the young wreck and felt sad too. “Bryan?” The jolt was two staged, and his eyes briefly met with mine. “Did you have any contact with Cody?”
“No, sir.”
“None at all?”
“No, sir.”
I believed him. Shells don’t lie, mostly. I stretched and laced my fingers behind my head. “Have you had anything to do with him since the trial?”
“No, sir.”
“Are you aware of any threats that might have been made toward him? Any enemies he might have had?” This got a brief exhale. “Other than the obvious?”
“I’d liked to have killed the son of a bitch.”
I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrows. “Really?”
His eyes darted back to his hands. “Is sayin’ that gonna get me into trouble?”
“No more than the rest of us.” I went out into the reception area and poured myself a cup of coffee. “You sure you won’t have some? It really isn’t that bad.” He said okay, probably because I asked him twice and he had been taught that if somebody asks you something twice you say yes, no matter what it is. It looked like a heated conversation going on in the truck out front, and I thought about my child. I don’t know how you get them to make right choices, how you keep them from ending up like the two-parent pileup that was sitting in my office.
I brought Bryan his coffee and sat down in the chair beside him, taking off my hat and tossing it onto the desk. My gun belt was digging into my side, but I was ignoring it. We were both ignoring it. I sipped my coffee. “Bryan… Just for the record, I don’t think you killed Cody Pritchard… As I recall, your statements and testimony indicated that you didn’t participate in the rape.”
“I didn’t.” His eyes welled up, and I wished I washed cars for a living.
“You were only convicted as an accessory, with suspended sentence.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, that’s a good thing.”
He took a sip of his coffee and made a face. “There are days when I just can’t stand it.” He was crying openly, and I watched the tears stripe his face and drip onto his shirt.
“Stand what?”
He wiped his face with the sleeve of his Carhartt. “People… the way they look at me… like I’m not worth shit.”
“Well, at the risk of sounding trite, I guess it’s up to you to prove them wrong.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stop yes-sirring me.”
“Yes, sir.”
I bought shampoo on the way home. When I got there, the substructure of a porch ran the entire distance of the cabin. Six six-by-sixes stood unflinching in the growing wind, and the little red Jeep was gone.
5
I left the house around 5:30 in the morning and succeeded in avoiding Red Road Contracting and Henry. I wasn’t sure if he was going to make me run two days in a row, but I didn’t want to risk it. It was partly cloudy, but the sun was making a valiant attempt at clearing the sky, and it promised to be warmer than it had been in the last few days. I sometimes thought about moving south, following the geese, shooting through the pass at Raton, and seeing if there were any sheriff openings in New Mexico. Good Mexican food was hard to come by north of Denver. I liked Taos, but Hatch was probably my speed.
I took 14 to Lower Piney and cut across 267 to Rock Creek, slowly tacking my way up the foothills. I thought about Vonnie and missed her a little bit. It was probably way too early for that. I was going through that little bit of worry that I had said or done something wrong and that she might not want to see me again. I saw me every day, and I wasn’t so sure I was that fond of my company. I promised myself that I would call her up and make a real date, maybe a lunch of lessening expectations.
As far as I knew, Ruby hadn’t gotten any response from the Espers. I was going to have to swing out to their place and square things up on the way back from Omar’s unless I radioed in and got Vic to do it. With Turk back in
