I picked up the file from the center console, glancing through it but not finding the information I wanted. “Where did she work?”
“Kmart.”
I glanced at the coffee urn on the passenger-side floor and then looked up at him. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope, why?”
“There’s another woman who worked at the Flying J Truck Plaza, which is right across the parking lot, who has been missing for about three months, name of Roberta Payne.” I shuffled through the folders. “And then another woman missing about five weeks now by the name of Jone Urrecha out near Arrosa, which is east of town?”
“Yeah, about eighteen miles—just go straight up Boxelder, left on Fox Place Avenue, and then a right on 51. You’ll run right into the middle of the town or what there is of it, ’bout five hundred people.”
I rested the files back on the console. “Thanks.”
“You think there’s a connection?”
I shrugged. “I’m sure they already thought of that what with the two missing women separated by only a parking lot, but the other woman ten minutes out of town—”
“Seems odd.”
“Yep. You never heard about these other women in squad meetings, nothing?”
“No.” I looked at him as he dropped his Oakley sunglasses and glanced in the direction of Arrosa. “Any of this have to do with that strip club?”
I nodded. “The Urrecha woman worked there.”
He whistled under his breath. “Be careful out at that place.”
“Meaning?”
He threw a shoulder in a half shrug. “We get warrants, do raids, they pay the fines, and nothing seems to happen.”
“Somebody’s connected?”
“All I’m saying is that nobody ever seems to go to jail, you know what I mean?”
He said nothing for a moment and then pulled a business card and a pen from his pocket, scribbled a number on the back, and handed it to me. “You need any help—day or night—you let me know?”
I glanced at the printed number on the front and then the written one on the back with a 509 area code. “What’s this one?”
“Mike Schaffer’s in Spokane, just in case you wanted to talk to him.”
I held the card and noticed the pressure he’d used in writing it, almost as if he’d been engraving the paper. “You have it memorized?” He said nothing, and I watched as he climbed back in his unit, pulled out, did a U-turn, and headed back toward town without another word.
—
I made my own requisite turns, passing the Gillette Country Club, which I hadn’t known existed, and then backtracked on 51 under the highway to make a quick stop at the Wrangler so that I could drop off the coffeemaker with the disgruntled owner.
As I headed east, the houses began thinning, but there were a few businesses along the way, including the Gillette Lightning Speedway, High Mountain Shooters—with a neon sign advertising GUNS & AMMO and an indoor shooting range—and then a Wyoming Department of Transportation Office, all of which were overshadowed by a rail yard and the monstrous tipple of the Black Diamond Mine that stretched across the wide valley and up into the sky far enough to be seen from Gillette proper.
I crossed some tracks and pulled up to the only stop sign in town, which was at the Arrosa Elementary School, HOME OF THE MUSTANGS, and the post office, and pulled through the intersection into the parking lot of a small bar with a large sign that read SIXTEEN TONS, BEST BAR IN ARROSA.
Glancing around for any other bar in Arrosa, I gave up, turned off the ignition, and pivoted in my seat to look at my faithful companion. “What do you think—post office or the bar?”
He stared at the dash and the red foil package.
“Ham is not an answer.”
He continued to stare at the dash.
“I bet they’ll let you in the post office.” I opened the door, and he jumped out just as the railroad barrier arms dropped across the road that I’d just passed, the lights flashing and the bells ringing. “Hah, beat you.”
I stood there watching the orange and black Burlington Northern Santa Fe thunder by, shaking the little hamlet of Arrosa like a righteous fist.
Beyond the freight, farther down the road, there was an illuminated sign at the top of a pole of a blond woman with impossibly blue eyes, her fingernail provocatively placed between her smiling teeth, and the words DIRTY SHIRLEY’S EXOTIC DANCING under her high heels. Down below was a lettered sign that could be changed daily which read TITTY TWISTER TUESDAY and below that, HUMP DAY AMATEUR STRIP-OFF.
I called Dog and walked across the parking lot to the modest post office, pushed open the door, and allowed the beast to go first.
“This is a federal government facility, and dogs aren’t allowed.” The voice came from an area beyond the P.O. boxes to my left behind one of those roll-up steel gates, where a handsome, lean man stood on a stool; he was taking down garland that must’ve decorated the federal government facility for the holidays just past.
“He could be a service dog.”
He looked at Dog and then at me doubtfully. “And what kind of service does he provide?”
I walked to the counter, and Dog followed as I leaned a hip against the edge and pulled out my badge wallet and watched it flip out of my hand again and fall onto the floor. Dog nudged it with his nose and then looked at me.
Stooping down, I scooped the thing up and stood, badging the inspector general with the star of the Absaroka County sheriff. “Obviously, he’s not a retriever.”
He studied my star through wire-rimmed glasses, and I noticed he had a prodigious ponytail hanging down the middle of his back. “You’re in the wrong county.”
“I’m looking for a girl.”
He stuffed the Christmas decorations in a box on the counter. “Aren’t we all?”
“Her name is Jone Urrecha.”
He sighed, walked away into the bowels of the office, and returned with one of those white plastic bins; scooting the decorations box aside, he replaced it with the basket. “I’ve called the number that detective gave me about a half-dozen times but nobody ever answered, so I was about to send them back.”
I looked into the bin. “This is her mail?”
“The last couple weeks of it, yeah.”
“Do you mind if I ask what number it was Detective Holman gave you to call, mister?”
He shook my hand. “Dave Rowan.”
He disappeared again but in a moment was back with one of Holman’s business cards that had a number scrawled across it that looked remarkably like the one the Gillette patrolman had given me. “You didn’t call the office number on the front after you couldn’t get an answer?”
The postman shook his head. “Nope, he was very specific that I only call that number written there. I left messages, but he never came in and never called me.”
I leafed through the pile. “Hmm.”
“Pretty shitty police work if you ask me.”
“Yep, well . . . He’s kind of gotten slowed down lately.” I pulled the tub toward me. “You mind if I take this?”
“Nope, just bring back the bin.”
“Okay.” I read the address on the top envelope—it was from a student loan financier and was marked URGENT. “This her address?”
“4661-A, Highway 51.”
I looked back at him. “You know the address of everybody in Arrosa?”
“For thirty-two years now.” For the first time, he smiled. “They’re my people.”
“What was she like?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Carefree.” He noticed the look, or lack thereof, on my face. “I know; most of them aren’t like that—”
“The dancers?”
He pulled up the stool and sat. “Most of them are having substance difficulties, psychological problems, you name it . . . But she was different.” He pulled at his ponytail. “You could tell she was smart, that she was going places, and this was just a stopover at the edge of the world where she could make some money and then move on—you know what I mean?”