The sheriff gave a moment’s thought. “When the snow in the high country has melted sufficiently.”
“I don’t think you’ll find it,” Cork said.
“Any particular reason?”
“I don’t think it’s in the high country.”
That seemed to catch Kosmo by surprise. His brows lifted, and a little energy came into his eyes. “Oh? Where do you think it is?”
“That’s one of the questions I’m here to answer.”
The sheriff walked to his own chair and sat down. He folded his hands on his desk. “What makes you think it’s not in the mountains?”
“A PI name of Stilwell came here a couple of weeks ago. Probably checked in with you. A courtesy call.”
“What of it?”
“He’s gone missing.”
“Well, I can pretty much say for certain he left this county in one piece.”
“What about Felicia Gray?”
“What about her?”
“She was asking questions about the plane crash, too. And she ended up dead in a gulch.”
“That was an accident.”
“Funny, as soon as I started asking questions about the missing plane, I had the same kind of accident. Only I was luckier than Ms. Gray.”
Kosmo sat back and gave him a long, dark, weary look. “Tell me straight what’s going on here.”
Cork laid it out for him: the mob connection, the money laundering, the possibility that Ellyn Grant was complicit in it all, including the missing charter. He didn’t tell Kosmo everything. Not wanting to show every card he held, he said nothing about his suspicion that Nightwind was the pilot or about what he suspected was the relationship between Nightwind and Grant.
Kosmo listened without interrupting. At the end, he took a breath that sounded like a bull’s snort and said, “You believe this?”
“Give me another read,” Cork countered.
Kosmo slid his rolling chair back, stood up, and returned to the window. Through the glass panes, Cork could see the main street of Hot Springs, its storefronts and businesses, mostly old buildings that had started as one enterprise and now housed another. It was clearly a town looking for a way to survive.
“Let me explain something, O’Connor. For a long time, Hot Springs had a lot of life in it. Folks used to come for the waters, stay awhile, spend money. It was a destination. Now? Hell, everybody in the United States has got a hot tub in their backyard full of water that doesn’t stink. No reason to come to Hot Springs anymore. Last couple of decades, things have been hard for folks around here. White and Arapaho.”
“My guess is that they’ve always been harder for the Arapaho.”
“Maybe so. But that casino gets built up near Yellowstone, it’s going to bring a lot of traffic through Hot Springs wouldn’t otherwise come this way. People’ll stop here for the waters and for the Blue Sky Casino.” He looked over his shoulder at Cork. “You got any idea the revenue that could bring into this county?”
“Some. We’ve got a casino in my county back home.”
“Tell me something. What if your casino shut down?”
“Who says we’re here to shut down the Arapaho casino?”
“I’m looking at the larger picture, O’Connor, the total fallout.”
“You make it sound like we intend to detonate a nuclear device.”
“Economically, the effect could be the same.”
“You’re a lawman, Sheriff. Shouldn’t you be concerned about the law?”
“My concern is the well-being of Owl Creek County. Let me tell you something else. We had us a drug problem here a while back. Significant problem, centered out on the reservation. Bunch of Mexican drug dealers married Arapaho women, began using the reservation as a base for their operation. Us, state drug task force, DEA, none of us could break it up because none of the Arapaho would talk. Family business, you know. And, hell, lot of those folks out there are dirt poor, out of work. The drug money was pretty good. Know who took ’em on and beat ’em? Ellyn Grant. Did it by offering hope mostly, a different kind of hope than the drug money and all the evil goes along with that. Stood up at great personal risk. That woman can be a pain in the ass, sure, and we don’t always see eye to eye, but there’s much about her to admire.
“Now, I’m not saying I don’t understand your motive in coming here. It’s a crazy story you tell, but you obviously believe there may be some truth to it, so I get how you must feel. What I’d like is for you and me to reach an agreement. While you’re in my county, I expect an open exchange of information. Whatever you need from me or my people, you’ve got it. In return, I want to know where you’re going, where you’ve been, and what you’ve found. Fair enough?”
“All right.”
“What’s your itinerary for today?”
“Sightseeing in general.”
“Sightseeing? You’ve got to do better than that, O’Connor.”
“Best I can do right now. Is that all, Sheriff?”
Kosmo looked at him a long time, dark and disappointed. “I’ll be watching you, O’Connor.”
“I’m sure you will, Sheriff.”
Cork stood, turned with Parmer, and they left. He stopped to talk with Quinn at the contact desk.
“You remember that TV journalist who died in a car wreck a few weeks ago, Dewey? Felicia Gray?”
“Of course. A real tragedy, that.”
“She was out here just before the accident, is that right?”
“Yeah. But she was out here a lot. Did a number of stories about the Arapaho and the casino. Always digging. I heard she wanted a job in an important television market. Denver, place like that. Maybe she thought if she came up with something big, it would be her ticket out. Believe me, I understand.”
“Who investigated the accident?”
“We did. It happened just inside our county line.”
“You find anything unusual?”
“No. Pretty clear her front tire blew. Just bad luck it happened on a curve.”
“Yeah. Bad luck. Thanks, Dewey.”
“Sure. Going to stick around and wait for the snow to melt?”
“We’re going to stick around,” Cork said.
Outside, Parmer asked, “Do you really intend to keep your promise to the sheriff?”
“About as much as he intends to keep his promise to me.”
They drove north out of Hot Springs on the highway toward Cody. Ten miles out of town, they turned west onto Horseshoe Creek Trail, a dirt road that followed a thread of water toward the distant Absarokas. The route that Rude had carefully laid out for them would take them through the north part of the Owl Creek Reservation, then southwest to their destination, a total distance of seventy miles over dirt tracks that could hardly be called roads and that, Rude had warned them, were often barely navigable.
Cork had been born and raised in Tamarack County. To him, the place he lived was alive with energy-the dance of sun off water, the song of trees in wind, the electricity of a forest just before a storm-and everywhere he looked there was only beauty. What he’d seen of the Owl Creek Reservation felt to him blasted and barren, and he wondered at the deep love the Arapaho held for the land they called home. There was a certain desolate splendor he could understand. The long ridges and buttes sculpted of red rock, the yellow sand, the pale green sage and spiked cactus, the bruised mountains looming against the iridescent sky. To be alone in such a place could, he understood, help you to an awareness that you were in the heart of a great spirit. It could also, if you were ill- prepared, scare you to death and probably kill you. It seemed a land impossible to love.
Two miles off the highway, they crossed an old wood bridge over the creek, and after that the road was rough and the going slow. Cork often kept the Wrangler to a crawl as he maneuvered up and down tiers of bare stone or around boulders strewn along the bed of a dry wash.
“You’re from the West,” he said to Parmer. “What’s the difference between a gulch, a wash, and a draw?”
