Bad Company (24 page)

He closed his eyes, concentrating.

“Think!” his mother snarled. “Don’t just zone out on us!”

He squinched his eyes shut tighter as he worked the apple down to the core. “Let me see. Okay, when they got there, I was sitting on the tailgate of some guy’s pickup. I had my duffel bag with me. When I went with them, I took it with me. Then we sat in the car. I was in front with Adolph, and Monette sat in back. At first I had the duffel on my lap, but after a while I put it on the backseat next to her.”

“Was the bag zipped?”

Jerry Jeff looked sheepish. “Er, actually, the zipper’s been broken for a while. I’ve been kind of shoving it together with safety pins. When I remember. It works okay.”

“So Monette could easily have taken something out of the bag, yes?” Sally asked.

“I guess so.”

“Like your piggin’ string,” Delice added.

“Uh-huh.”

“And she could have just stuck it under the seat while you weren’t looking?” Sally’s turn.

“She could have.” Apple finished.

“And then, when you all finished smoking the joint, you picked up your bag and took it where?”

“Hmm. Give me a second. Oh yeah, since they wanted to look around, I went to put it in the contestants’ locker room, but it was all locked up. So I ended up sticking it inside the VIP lounge.”

“The lounge wasn’t locked?”

JJ thought about it. “Nope. Usually it is, but sometimes, when there’s a lot of traffic in and out, they leave it open. There were a bunch of committee guys out there that afternoon, doing stuff to get ready for Jubilee Days.”

“Do you usually leave your things in the lounge?” Sally asked.

“No. Generally I put everything in the locker room, but I already told you it was locked. But Uncle Dwayne was there, and he told me it was okay for me to leave the bag in the lounge, and pick it up later.”

Chapter 22
Fabulous Food and Toxic Waste

Sally was just dying to tell him everything she’d learned that day, but when Hawk got home from Cheyenne, he had to call Molly Wood. Once again, no answer. Sally heard him leave the message: “This is Josiah Green. Molly, please call me as soon as you can.” Josiah. It made Sally grin.

But Hawk wasn’t smiling. “I wonder what the hell’s going on out there,” he said.

“She’s probably out by her pond, looking at ducks,” Sally said, trying to reassure him, but a little concerned herself. “Or maybe she’s visiting a friend, or buying groceries in town. Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll hear back from her.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said, getting a can of club soda out of the refrigerator. “I’m going to go take a bath. I need to think.”

Think. Okay. When absolutely necessary, Sally could manage patience. Living in such a small house, they’d learned, after quite a number of snarling exchanges, that there was wisdom in claiming and ceding each other as much domestic space as they could find. He sloshed in the tub. She sat in the backyard and played her guitar and gave her voice the kind of workout she knew it needed, getting ready for the gig the next night. Then the bath was hers. He weeded the garden. Both thought. She had to admit, it helped.

And so they passed the time until they dressed to go out for the first decent meal they’d had all week. She wore a slinky black dress, high-heeled sandals, the gold drop earrings he’d bought her for her birthday, the emerald ring her mother had left her. He wore a black silk shirt, black jeans, polished boots. They gave each other the once-over and smiled. Tonight we’re settin’ the woods on fire.

Downtown Laramie looked like the governor had declared Wyoming Pedestrian Day. Most of the strollers wore cowboy hats, and many were a little unsteady on their stacked-up, slope-heeled boots. The bars were hopping with people hanging on after happy hour, and the restaurants had lines out the doors. Out on Old Ivinson Street, Sally and Hawk picked their way among revelers carrying plastic to-go cups that smelled like Coors Light and Southern Comfort.

Most people navigated pretty well, but there were those who didn’t, with mixed results. A compactly built blond staggered into a chunky baldy with his name burned into the back of his belt, and it was true love. A tourist in shorts and fanny pack stumbled against a Harley, and the owner, in sleeveless leather vest and greasy jeans, objected. But before the objections became too strenuous, one of Laramie’s finest intervened, reminding the motorcyclist that Jubilee Days was a lot more fun for people who weren’t incarcerated.

The crowd at the Yippie I O café was short on hats and long on attitude. It was the best restaurant within a two-hundred-mile radius—farther, if you didn’t count Denver, and maybe farther even if you did. The decor was pure nouveau cowboy glam—original pressed-tin ceiling, tall walls painted to resemble blue sky with puffy clouds, dark gleaming floor, and in between, a color scheme that Delice had once described as “a cross between a Hereford steer and the Castro District.” The showpiece decorating touch was the bar, a crimson resin swoosh mounted on a museum display of cowboy boots embedded in Lucite. In the open kitchen, the brick chimney of a wood-burning oven was festooned with a cow skull wearing a fez. The philanthropic owner, Burt Langham, and his genius chef partner, Frank “John Boy” Walton, had recently been inducted into the local lodge of the Shriners, for civic generosity that evidently overbalanced any uptight homophobic tendencies among the boosters. Rumor had it that Burt and John Boy would even be piloting mini-Corvettes in the Jubilee Days parade.

Brit was at the host podium tonight, looking luscious as always but glowering at a couple who appeared to be leaving in a huff. “Assholes!” she hissed to Sally.

“Aren’t you supposed to greet us with ‘Good evening. Welcome to the café’?” asked Hawk.

“Yeah yeah. Those idiots claimed we lost their reservation. Said they made one a week ago—said ‘some young woman’ answered the phone. I guess it’s possible, but, like, the only young woman who even bothers to pick up the phone here is me, and I sure as hell don’t screw up reservations!” Brit fumed.

“Temper, temper, now darlin’,” said Sally. “You’re in the hospitality industry.”

“Hospitality, shit!” Brit pronounced through her teeth, snagging menus and stomping toward a small corner table, private but with the best view of the action. “I swore I’d never set foot in a restaurant again, but Burt kept upping the ante. If it weren’t for a month of free meals and double overtime, I’d be kickin’ back at the rodeo watching somebody else work.”

“Don’t forget to ask Herman about Adolph,” Sally reminded her.

“We’re going dancing later,” Brit murmured. “Leave him in my hands.” Then she pulled out chairs upholstered in brown and white cowhide and stood back, squared her shoulders, smoothed her silk skirt and blouse, and shot them a smile so dazzling that Sally wondered briefly if Brit had manic tendencies, or just a great game face. “Time to please the people,” Brit said. “Enjoy your dinner.”

For such a nouvy-groovy place, the table setting was classic—white linen tablecloth, cut-glass vase with fresh flowers, creamy candles, silver and crystal. Their waiter, clad in Levi’s, well-worn boots, a crisp white shirt, and a wide tie decorated with a hand-painted giant saguaro cactus, appeared to understand the hospitality concept rather better than Brit. He said his name was Mike, and the special was a huckleberry duck breast, and they had some very nice sushi-grade tuna that the chef did with a wasabi butter and a bouquetiere of Asian vegetables, but personally he’d always been partial to the steaks. There were a few other things he’d be happy to tell them about, but first they’d probably want something to drink, right?

Boy howdy.

When Hawk ordered two Jim Beams, Mike the waiter allowed as how Burt Langham made the best highballs this side of New York City, and maybe they’d like to try something a little more uptown. “Okay,” Hawk said. “Tell Burt we’re in his hands. Just make sure it’s mainly something brown.”

Shortly, they were sipping Manhattans out of martini glasses. Sally felt her heart rate begin, finally, to slow down. Hawk was savoring his cocktail, torturing her. Finally he said, “So honey, how was your day?”

Lucky for her, Burt Langham and John Boy Walton believed that restaurant diners should be far enough apart that people wouldn’t be listening in on seductions in progress at neighboring tables. The high tin ceiling made the place just noisy enough that she could fill Hawk in on everything she’d learned since her unappetizing breakfast at the Wrangler that morning, without fear of setting the rumor mill whirring. She talked all the way through the ordering phase and well into their salads (
ensalate caprese
for her, romaine and Roquefort for him).

Hawk listened. He had the gift of sitting in repose, utterly focused, eyes wide and intense behind his spectacles, taking in everything. Eating didn’t seem to break his concentration, although from time to time he put down his fork and rested his beautiful hands on the table, barely clasped. Watching Hawk listen as she talked produced an effect on Sally that some people got from reading erotic poetry.

He finished the last of his salad and spoke. “It doesn’t really surprise me that Monette was tied up with JJ’s piggin’ string, or that she sold him dope, or that he’s smoking it. What they found out at the autopsy is horrible, of course. But it’s not astonishing news. The part about the garbage from the Wrangler ending up at the crime scene is a little puzzling, isn’t it? Why would somebody haul litter all the way out there?”

Sally shrugged. “Trying to make it look like she’d been partying with lowlifes, I guess. Figure it this way— imagine if we hadn’t found the body when we did. It’s possible that she wouldn’t have been discovered until the next morning, at the earliest—we got a late start, and from what I saw, we were the last people up there Monday afternoon. Overnight, the litter would have blown around, but it might still look like a party scene. One way or another, it was meant to leave a false trail and confuse the cops.”

“A false trail, left by somebody who somehow managed to snag Jerry Jeff’s piggin’ string,” said Hawk.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe Monette had it with her. After all, she’d had the chance to lift it last Saturday when she and Adolph Schwink and the kid were getting high. Of course, Adolph could have taken it, but we know he didn’t go up to the Devil’s Playground that afternoon. So if he stole the piggin’ string, somebody else would have had to get it from him. I asked Brit to get Herman to lean on Adolph a little.”

Hawk pressed his lips together. “What about the brother?” he asked.

“Herman? No!” Sally exclaimed. “I just don’t see it. He seems way too wholesome.”

“So did Ted Bundy,” said Hawk. They’d moved on from the Manhattans to a decent Merlot. He swirled the wine in his glass, tasted it, and said, “From what you’ve told me, Dwayne had a chance at the piggin’ string too, when JJ left his bag in the VIP lounge.”

“So did anybody else who went in or out of there. Scotty ought to have fun questioning the rodeo committee this weekend, huh?”

“Scotty. Yeah. Hmph,” said Hawk.

Mike the waiter arrived to take their salad plates. The pause in the conversation gave Hawk an opening to change the subject. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the idea of old Sheldon Stover chasing you around. Ridiculous as he is, it bugs me.”

“For God’s sake, Hawk, of all things to worry about! I mean, let’s face it, Sheldon’s experimental ethnography is pretty low priority at the moment.”

“It’s not that, Mustang.” He held the wine to the candlelight, gazing at the glass. “What bothers me most is that even that moron could get close enough to hurt you without your even noticing. The events of the past week don’t seem to have had a good effect on your powers of observation.”

No point being defensive. “Okay. I might be a little rattled. But I’m paying attention. And after all, I did manage to dig up some interesting stuff in the library and the archives today. Seems that ruin you found up at Happy Jack is an old railroad tie plant—”

“My turn,” he interrupted. “Let me tell you what I found in Cheyenne, and then we can compare notes.”

He knew what she knew, and more. The tie plant, closed down in 1963, had been operating on leased federal land, not by the railroad itself, but by a contractor called Golden Eagle Enterprises. It wasn’t entirely clear why the plant had closed—the interstate hadn’t yet been completed, so the rail lines were still the main conduits for freight, in and out of Wyoming. “I found that much in the state Revenue Department records,” Hawk said. “That took me a while. I was looking for tax records on the railroad’s holdings in Albany County. This Golden Eagle outfit was buried pretty deep, and there wasn’t much documentation there. They paid their bills, as far as I can tell, and then just folded their tent and melted off into the shifting sands.

“That seemed a little drifty to me. So I decided to play a hunch and went over to the Department of Environmental Quality. Are you enjoying your steak?” he asked.

Sally gently sliced off another morsel of succulent tenderloin
persillade.
She nodded enthusiastically, mouth full.

Hawk looked down at his two-inch-thick New York strip. “Me too. Maybe I shouldn’t go on with this story.”

“No problem. My stomach is plenty strong enough for fabulous food and tales of toxic waste,” Sally insisted.

“You asked for it,” he answered. “All right. When I asked the clerk at the DEQ for anything he had on the tie plant, he hemmed and hawed and talked about ‘proprietary information’ and stuff like that, but I kept reminding him that he was supposed to be in the business of providing access to public records. Finally he went behind a door and came out with a nice, thick file.

“Looks like for thirty-five years, the old plant just sat there decaying, dust to dust and all that. But then two years ago the state geological survey happened to hire a new graduate of the UW program in groundwater hydrology, who happened also to be an amateur photographer who had a thing for industrial ruins. He followed one of the dried-up wastewater ditches downhill, snapping away, and came to a spot where the grass was dead all around the ditch. And then, lo and behold, he found the carcass of a deer that had evidently been grazing by the brown patch. He called up the game warden, who came and looked at the deer, and noticed that there were blisters on its mouth.”

Sally put her fork down. “Maybe you were right.”

“Okay. I’ll leave out the dead animal stuff. One thing led to another, and by last year, the Environmental Quality Department had started doing soil and water sampling downstream of the mill.”

“Water sampling? In the beaver pond on that swap property, for instance?” Sally was pretty sure she knew where this was going.

“Yeah. The pond and the creek checked out clean.” Hawk carved off a big bite of his steak and chewed with relish.

“Clean! Well, hell. I mean, that’s good news, but I have a feeling that’s not the end of the story,” Sally said.

“Right. The surface water is fine, but there’s a bit of a soil and groundwater contamination plume spreading underground, downstream from the old plant.”

“You’re kidding! How come it hasn’t been in the newspapers? How come they haven’t declared it a toxic site or something?” This was outrageous.

Hawk gave her a long, tender look. “You know, Sal, in some ways you’re so naive. It’s kind of sweet.”

Sally glared. “Thanks. Spare me the condescension and get to the point.”

He laughed. “The point is that the soil sampling found enough creosote, dioxin, and PCBs to suggest that any wise stockman would think three or four times before letting his herd loose on the national forest up there. More importantly for our purposes, I’d guess that Molly Wood ought to be very wary of buying a piece of property where it would be, to say the least, imprudent to dig a well.”

“Why? What would drinking the water do to a human?”

Now Hawk put his own fork down. “How many ways are there for a person to get cancer?”