They headed out of Red Hawk along the potholed road toward Hot Springs. Behind them, the sun was just dropping into the grasp of the mountains. The late afternoon light turned the sage nearly gold and made the barren hills seem dipped in honey.
“Sheriff’s pretty hot under the collar,” Quinn said.
“I can imagine.”
“Said you screwed him on a promise you made.”
“I guess I did.”
Quinn glanced his way. “Look, he doesn’t let me in on things sometimes, so I feel like I’m trying to play in a ball game but I’ve got no bat to swing with. You mind telling me what’s going on?”
Cork didn’t see any reason not to. While the sun finished setting behind them and the desolate land the Arapaho called home turned blue-gray in the twilight, Cork filled Quinn in completely.
“Ah, Jesus.” The deputy slapped the steering wheel. “It all makes sense now.”
“What makes sense?”
“Little things. They don’t seem like much separately, but when you put them all together they make a clear picture.”
“What little things?”
Quinn shot out a hot breath and seemed angry with himself. “When I was helping coordinate the search for the plane last year, the sheriff insisted I keep all the aircraft involved out of airspace over the reservation. He told me he wanted to be certain the most probable routes were given the highest priority.”
“Nightwind flew us over the rez on the way to Baby’s Cradle.”
“Sure. He’d know exactly where not to fly. The sheriff was almost fanatical about no one else going there.”
“I was under the impression you and the Civil Air Patrol commander made the decisions about the search.”
“Kosmo sometimes gave me certain directives, and that was one. And here’s the kicker. A few days before the plane went missing, we received a report of unusual activity on the north part of the reservation. Somebody spotted heavy equipment moving along one of the back roads up there. Only you can’t really call them roads. Anybody who doesn’t know the area well would get lost trying to follow them.”
“I tried following a few of those today,” Cork said.
“The concern was that somebody was doing some unauthorized prospecting on the reservation, probably oil and gas exploration. Happens sometimes. Kosmo and No Voice said they’d handle it. Went out, came back, claimed it was a bullshit report. Nothing to it.”
“What’s this got to do with the missing plane?”
“I’m getting to that. We had us a pretty severe drug problem a few years back. Mostly the problems came from the reservation.”
“We know about that.”
“I worked with guys from DEA who said that drug dealers will sometimes take a vehicle or a plane that’s been used to transport the product and bury it. Makes all the evidence disappear easily. Now, think about Will Pope’s vision, Cork. What if the cradle was a hole in the ground? These people buried the plane, and the snow that was falling covered it completely. The white blanket Pope talked about.”
Cork sat back, letting it all play out in his mind. “And that heavy equipment was used to dig the hole.”
“And probably to scrape out a runway.”
“You have any idea where this was?”
“I can check the files for the report to be sure, but I have a pretty good idea. There’s a box canyon up that way with a nice flat run right up to it. If I were going to create a landing strip, that’s where I’d do it.”
“Can you show me on a map, Dewey?”
“I’ll go you one better. I’ll take you there myself. I’ve got lots of vacation saved. I’ll take a day tomorrow. Ten miles north of town on the highway to Cody, there’s a cutoff for a road called Horseshoe Creek Trail.”
“I know the road. That’s how we headed out this morning.”
“Okay. A couple of miles in you come to a place where the road crosses an old wood bridge over the creek. Meet me there at sunup and we’ll head out together. I’ll bring some shovels and some other digging tools. I also got me a pretty good metal detector from the days when I was doing a little prospecting myself.”
“Throwing in with us, you could be headed into a lot of trouble, Dewey,” Cork said.
“I don’t just work here, I live here. If there’s something dirty in this county, I have to know.” Quinn frowned and hesitated a moment. “I hate to say this about my own people, but I’ve got no idea who might be tainted. It’s best if we don’t say anything to anyone until after we’ve had a chance to check this out thoroughly. I’d say that includes Jon Rude. I know you trust him, but we have to be sure.”
“I agree.”
“And I wouldn’t risk any calls. God only knows who might be listening.”
“All right.”
“Look, I hope you understand what I’m about to say. Christ, I hope I’m all wrong about this. He’s a strange man sometimes and hard to figure, but I like Jim Kosmo. I’d hate to see him go down.”
Cork said, “If he had anything to do with Jo’s death, I’ll take him down with my own hands.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Nightwind.” Kosmo squinted as if he was trying to picture something in his mind’s eye. “And you figure he’s the Indian pilot who took Bodine’s place.”
Cork and Parmer sat in the sheriff’s office, in the same orange plastic chairs they’d occupied that morning. Kosmo seemed restrained. If he was angry, he was keeping it well in check.
“It fits,” Cork said.
Kosmo sat at his desk. The big man’s head was framed by a hint of blue lingering in the twilight sky visible through the window at his back. It struck Cork like a faded halo. The overhead light was off, and the room was lit by the lamp on his desk. It created a small, illuminated circle that enclosed the three men.
“What do you know about Nightwind?” Kosmo asked.
“He’s in love with Ellyn Grant. So maybe he’d do anything she asked, including murder.”
Kosmo sat back and studied the two men, companions in the light, then he said, “When I was a kid, there was a family lived down the street from us. The Halbersons. Had this German shepherd they called Pooch. Most days they kept him tied to a leash on the front porch. That dog was real unusual. I never once heard him bark. He’d just sit there all day long, watching everything and everybody. Mailman would slide mail into the box at the gate, dog just watched. Paperboy came by, tossed the evening paper in the yard, dog just watched. Us kids, we’d holler at him, make faces, sometimes throw things just to try to get a rise out of Pooch. No dice. Just looked at us like we were, I don’t know, bushes or something. One kid, Harvey Groat, he swore the dog was blind or deaf or retarded. We all dared him to go into the yard and see if he could get Pooch to bark. So Groat, never the swiftest boat in the fleet, opens the gate, creeps into the yard, gets one foot on the front steps, and Pooch is up. Lunges so hard and fast he snaps the leash and he’s all over Groat, chewing the hell out of him. Groat’s screaming and we’re screaming and finally the front door jerks open and Mr. Halberson comes flying out. Kicks the shit out of Pooch before the dog finally retreats and leaves Groat be. Groat, he ends up getting a few dozen stitches. Carries the scars to this day. Pooch, he got put down for the attack, which was a shame because he was only doing what he’d been trained to do, which was protect that family and its property. You know, during the whole incident with Groat, that dog never uttered a sound. I bet he went to his death without a whimper.”
“And the point is?” Cork said.
“Nightwind, he’s just like that dog, O’Connor. You never hear him. He never makes trouble. But you always have the feeling that, if he wanted to, he could give you a whole lot of hurt real fast. I was you, I’d stay clear of him.
“He called me before you got here. Said he didn’t want any charges brought. Said it was all a kind of misunderstanding. Me, I’d just as soon toss you in a cell for a while. Probably couldn’t make anything stick. And I’ve been checking on Mr. Parmer here and I kno
w that he’s richer than Rockefeller and would most likely haul in a whole cadre of lawyers to make my life miserable. So I’m just going to let you go. Mark my words, though. You make any trouble for me, for those folks on the reservation, hell, you spit on the sidewalk, I’ll come down on you like old Pooch on Groat, don’t think I won’t.”
All the light had faded from the sky, and what framed Kosmo now was black night. Cork was quiet for a moment, then asked, “It doesn’t matter to you what I’m trying to accomplish here?”
Kosmo brought his hand up to his face and used his thumb to rub his eyebrow. “I have sympathy for your situation, O’Connor. I just don’t buy your read of the circumstances.”
“Why? Because it craps all over this dream you and everyone here have for Owl Creek County?”
“No. Because if you really listened to yourself, you’d realize how crazy it sounds. And because you haven’t been able to offer one solid piece of evidence in support.”
“Why do I get the feeling I could dump a garbage truck full of evidence on your desk and it wouldn’t make any difference?”
“See, O’Connor? You’re reading me all wrong. And because I know that, I know that your own reading of this whole situation is way off target.”
“Fine, Sheriff. You just sit there. I’m going to gather myself a garbage truck full of evidence and I’m going to dump it in your lap. Then let’s see what kind of lawman you are.”
“You’ve got me all figured out, have you?”
“Right down to the lint in your boot socks.”
Kosmo scooted back from his desk, taking himself out of the light. “I guess at the moment there’s nothing else to discuss.”
“I guess you’re right. We’re free to leave?”
“Oh, yeah. But if I were a betting man, and I just happen to be, I’d lay odds that we’ll be talking again real soon.”
Cork and Parmer left. As they passed Dewey Quinn in the common area, Quinn gave them a surreptitious thumbs-up.
In the parking lot outside, Parmer said, “That could have been worse. I thought he’d tear us both new assholes.”
Cork looked back up at the window of the sheriff’s office. He could see the light from the desk lamp inside. “I think Sheriff Kosmo would prefer to deal with us in a more private way. I had a long talk with Quinn on our way here. Very enlightening. Let’s grab ourselves a couple of steaks and some beers and I’ll tell you all about it.”
They ate at the Bronco Saloon on Main Street, a place where the nostalgia for the Old West was clearly evident in the Remington prints and the photos of roundups and brandings and bronco bustings that hung on the walls. Cork had first arrived in Wyoming with certain preconceived ideas that came from Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour, and from John Wayne and Randolph Scott. Everyone wore Stetsons and spurs and walked a little bowlegged from a lifetime mounted on the heaving flanks of cow ponies. But judging from the people he’d seen on the streets of Hot Springs, folks in Wyoming bought their clothes from JCPenney and Lands’ End, same as people in Minnesota. The kids were partial to baggy jeans and printed T-shirts and baseball caps worn askew, and they rode skateboards instead of steeds. The culture of the Old West, if it ever really did exist, had been tamed and replaced by the uniformity of the Walmart–strip mall–McDonald’s homogenizing of America. It was happening in Minnesota, too. Hell, it was happening everywhere in the world.
Over a juicy rib eye and a couple of draws of Fat Tire beer, Cork related to Parmer the conversation he’d had with Quinn.
“You did a good job back there not tipping your hand to Kosmo,” Parmer said. “Are you going to let Liz and Becca know?”
Cork took a final bite of steak, laid his fork down, slid his plate away, and shook his head. “I don’t want to get their hopes up if it turns out to be nothing.”
“It won’t be nothing. There’s something to this.”
Cork shook his head. “Until we find it, I don’t want to risk letting the other side know what we know. I’m not sure there’s a safe way to talk to Liz and Becca.”
Parmer laid his own fork down and folded his hands above his plate. “Cork,” he began tentatively, “if it’s there . . .” He hesitated, then tried again. “Have you thought about . . .” Once more, he seemed at a loss to know how to proceed.
“Yeah? Go on.”
“What I’m trying to get at is this. If we find the plane, what’s inside won’t be pretty. Have you considered that?”
“Whatever’s inside, Hugh, it can’t be worse than not knowing. I don’t care how bleak the truth is, it’s better than living with the question. Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Then let’s get out of here. We need a good night’s sleep.”
But a good night’s sleep didn’t come to him. Cork lay awake a long time considering Parmer’s question. He assumed that if the plane had been buried, the bodies had been left inside. Six months. Six months in an airless tomb. What would remain of the woman he loved? He tried not to think of that. He tried to think of Jo as she’d been, smart and loving and dedicated and beautiful.
The plane had become a crypt, and what was inside wasn’t Jo, he told himself. It would be like the dirt and rock that surrounded it. It would be what had once been earth becoming earth again. And Jo? Jo was somewhere else. Beyond pain. Beyond fear. Beyond anger. Beyond caring. These were the burdens of the living.
Long after he lay down, he finally fell asleep, oppressed by the weight of being alive.
THIRTY-SIX
At sunup next morning, they found Dewey Quinn waiting where he said he’d be, at the old wood bridge on Horseshoe Creek Trail. Quinn wore a straw cowboy hat, faded jeans, and work boots that looked pretty new. He drove a white pickup that had been recently washed, but the tailgate and rear panels now carried a patina of brown dust, courtesy of the dirt road. Quinn directed Cork to park the Wrangler among a gathering of cottonwoods fifty yards north of the bridge. Parmer grabbed the knapsack they’d brought. Everyone piled into Quinn’s pickup and headed west for the Absarokas, forty miles distant, lying low on the horizon, the snowcapped peaks like sharp teeth gnawing on the blue bone of sky.
“Once it all fell into place,” Quinn said, over the squawk and hammer of the suspension, “I could’ve kicked myself. This box canyon we’re headed toward, it pretty much sits in the shadow of a mountain that has no official name, no name that appears on a map anyway. But the Arapaho have a name for it. I can’t pronounce it to save my soul, but it means Eagle Cloud. In Will Pope’s vision, the eagle dropped out of a cloud into a box. That’d be the canyon, I figure. It was right out there in front of me. I just didn’t see it.”
“Nightwind and Grant did a pretty good job of misdirection,” Cork said.
“I still feel bad. I could’ve saved you a lot of grief.”
“Nobody could’ve done that, Dewey. Let it go. What’s done is done. And we’re closing in on the answers now, thanks to you.”
“Thank me when we’ve actually located the plane.”
After forty minutes, they left the road and struck northwest, cross-country. The undercarriage of Quinn’s pickup had an unusually high clearance, and the suspension was tough, both of which Cork commented on.
“Like I said, I used to prospect some before I was married. Wanted to be a rich man. I needed a vehicle that could get me into places only snakes and maybe mountain goats could go. Saw a lot of the backcountry that way. That’s how I knew about Eagle Cloud and this canyon.”
The ground rose in swells of red and yellow rock. Quinn kept to the troughs of the ridges, weaving the pickup among great blocks of shattered stone. This was an area of upheaval, of cataclysm, Cork thought. The nearer they came to the mountains, the more pronounced was Heaven’s Keep. It thrust above the rest of the range in stark, foreboding grandeur, looking in every way like a fortress, an unassailable hold of secrets.
They came to a dry wash full of sand the color of bread crust. As Quinn started down, Cork s
aid, “Wait a minute, Dewey. Hold up.”
Cork got out, walked into the depression, and knelt in the sand. Quinn and Parmer joined him.
“What is it?” Parmer asked.
“Tire tracks,” Cork said. “Somebody’s been this way.”
Dewey said, “That’s unusual. This isn’t exactly on a standard road map.” He knelt, too. “On the other hand, no telling when these tracks were made. We haven’t had a good rain here in a while.”
“Why would anyone be out this way?” Parmer said.
Quinn shrugged. “Prospecting, maybe.”
“Maybe,” Cork said. He stood up and looked toward the mountains. “I think we ought to be prepared for a reception, though.”
“Who could know?” Quinn asked.
Cork said, “It wouldn’t surprise me if these people know everything.”
They returned to the pickup. Quinn dropped the tailgate and hopped into the bed. He stepped around the shovels and pick and pry bar and the metal detector he’d loaded that morning, and he bent over a toolbox secured to the side. He unlocked the lid, lifted out a box of cartridges, and tossed them to Cork.
“Hang on to those,” he said.
He locked the toolbox, nimbly leaped to the ground, and slammed the tailgate shut. From the rifle rack affixed to the back of the cab, he pulled down a flat-sided, lever-action Winchester that had been cradled there. He slid half a dozen cartridges into the magazine and looked at Cork.
“You a good shot?”
Cork considered the weight in his hands. “Used to be,” he said, “but I haven’t fired one of these for a while.”
Quinn squinted at Parmer. “Can you shoot?”
“I was born to it. But I have my own weapon.” Parmer grabbed the knapsack and pulled out his Ruger.
Quinn said, “Let’s do it this way, then. Cork, you drive and I’ll ride shotgun. It might be a little rough, but it’d be good if you rode in back, Hugh. Somebody tries to hit us, we can both respond. I need to stay in the cab and guide Cork.”
“Works for me,” Parmer said.