“How’d you get here?”
“Buddy’n me partnered up and bought it off some asshole in Kemmerer.”
“That where you live the rest of the year?”
“Lander.” He took another sip of his martini, and I took the first sip of my coffee; it wasn’t bad, and it was hot. “I need to ask you some questions.” I tried not to concentrate on the fact that my primary witness had been drunk for the last three days. “Hear any loud noises early this morning?”
“Like that goddamned howitzer that went off just before dawn?”
Our eyes met. “Hear that, did you?”
“Well, hell, it’s hunting season, so it’s been soundin’ like a small arms war ever since I got here. Had to tie ribbons all over Sally, so the simple-minded bastards wouldn’t shoot her.” He paused for a second, remembering. “But this was different, closer; and it was early, real early.”
“I don’t suppose you noticed what time it was?”
He sniffed. “Oh-five-twelve.”
My eyes widened after making the translation. “You’re sure of that?”
“Oh, hell yeah.” He gestured to the large windup alarm clock that sat on the table. “Looked at my clock.”
“Then what?”
He gestured. “Went over here to the door and shouted for ’em to knock that shit off.”
“Why did you go to this door?”
“S’where the shot came from.”
“East or west?”
He shook his head. “Directly up the hill.” I nodded as he sipped his martini. “That what killed that boy?”
“Maybe.” I leaned forward and rested the coffee cup on my knee; it was still very hot. “When you went over to the door, did you open it and look out?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you see anything?”
“Saw somebody walkin’ back up through the tree line with their back to me.” My expression was probably easy to misinterpret. “This any help?”
“I never had it so good. What’d they look like?”
“Pretty big, near as I could tell. It was early, and there wasn’t much light.”
“Any distinguishing features? Hair?”
He shook his head no. “Wait.” I could feel my heart beating. “It was long.”
I’m pretty sure I skipped a beat. “Long hair…”
“Yeah, now that I think about it. Yeah.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Yeah, long hair.”
“How long?”
“To the shoulders, at least.”
“Color?”
“Dark?” But then he shook his head. “Not enough light to tell, but dark, I think.”
“Hat?”
“Nope.”
“Could you tell what kind of clothing?”
He nodded slowly. “Overalls, one of those insulated jobs.” He waited for a minute. “You okay?”
It took me a moment to think of a word and get some moisture in my mouth. “Yep. This individual was carrying a weapon?”
“Yeah, a big one.”
“Type?”
“Couldn’t tell you. I mean, I could see ’im carryin’ something, and from the way he carried it…”
“Both hands?”
“Nope, one. Hanging down to the side.”
“Why do you say big?”
He sat his martini glass down and spread his hands apart by more than four feet. “Long.”
“Anything else? Wooden stock?” He shook his head and shrugged. “Anything hanging off the rifle?”
He continued to shake his head. “Sorry.”
“Anything else? Anything at all?” He stared at the arm of his chair and shook his head. “You want to revise or amplify anything in these statements?”
He looked confused. “Wha’? I’m under arrest or somethin’?”
I shook my head and smiled. “No, you just made a very important statement in a homicide investigation. I want to make sure there isn’t anything you might have left out.”
He looked around for the invisible signs that were supposed to tell him where he was, what he was doing, and when he should do it. I was starting to understand Al’s relationship with the clock. “Something might come to me?”
“That’s fine. When did you notice the truck over there that was running?”
“Didn’t.”
“You didn’t. All day?”
“Nope, went back over to the sofa there and went back to sleep.” He stopped and then looked around at the painted concrete floor for the thought he had lost. “Did notice it around lunchtime. Got up and heated some stew.” He started to get up now. “You want some?”
I stopped him with a hand. “Maybe later. What time was that?” “Twelve hundred forty-seven.”
I glanced over at the kitchen table at the two-handed face that told me it was now one. “You look at the clock a lot, Al.”
“Thirty-two fuckin’ years of waitin’ for closin’ time.”
He confirmed the fact that he had yelled at the two guys in the Hummer at exactly twenty-one hundred twelve. As I went off to check the ridge, I asked Al if he would hitch up the one-mule team and take my ardent deputy a cup of coffee and some stew. He said he would be fucking happy to.
The hill was steep, and the fact that I was wearing cowboy boots didn’t help. The snow had tapered off, but the wind remained persistent, and by the time I got to the top I had worked up a decent sweat. I stood there, catching my breath and looking down at the lights of Al’s cabin and at the red-and-blue emergency lights revolving from our vehicles in the parking lot. The only consistent sounds were the wind, Sally munching, and the revolving click of our lights. It was a beautiful place, peaceful, terminally peaceful for Jacob Esper.
It was a four-hundred-yard shot if it was an inch. It was colder this morning, probably with a slight to negligible headwind and an approximate scale of elevation would be eighty at four hundred yards. I sighed a full breath and watched the steam blow back in my face. It was quite a shot, even with a scope.
I started at the first few trees at the ridge’s edge, shining my flashlight down along the partially covered ground. Al had said that the shooter was big, but Al is short, so I was beginning to wonder how big big meant. There were no telltale signs in the stiffening grass, so I began using this trail as my pathway as I searched the surrounding area on both sides. If I were shooting someone, would I use the trail? Probably not. I kneeled by the end of the opening that faced the lake and went over each blade of grass. If I were shooting someone from four hundred yards, would I lie down? Probably. There was something funny about the slight depression in the grass to my right, so I walked out of my safe area and looked back where the grass seemed to lay in an odd pattern. I kneeled down and looked back into the hypotenuse of a thin triangle: All the blades bowed in my direction.
Blowdown. This is where it had all started, all. 45 caliber seventy grains of it. There was a weak swipe where someone had scuffed a foot across the area in an attempt to hide the marks, but Al Monroe’s appearance must have curtailed such activity. I extended my view and looked straight back through the trees. I suppose somebody my size could make it through, but their ability to limbo would have to be considerably better than mine. I went back to my path and began working my way deeper into the woods, searching the narrow area for footprints but finding none. If they were big, they were light on their feet. I transferred my search to above ground, looking for any disturbance in the thick foliage of the pines. Nothing.
