I leaned into him. “Lucian . . .”
He gave me the horse eye. “What?”
“You can’t go around giving people names according to their nationality.”
The small young man, dark-haired, with an enormous if crooked smile, approached from the back, and the old sheriff gave him the high sign for two more before leaning into me and whispering fiercely, “Damn it, his name really is Haji.”
The bartender in question, who indeed had a name tag that said Haji, sat two more Rainiers on the bar along with a bowl of stale peanuts. “How are you?” He smiled an enigmatic grin and disappeared into the back as I took a sip of my beer in an attempt to wash down the nutty meal in my mouth.
“Where the hell did you go all day?”
I pointed toward the coffeemaker as the bartender reappeared and studied the oil workers with a worried grimace. “Kmart, for one . . .” I sipped my beer again. “Met with Richard Harvey, Gerald’s replacement.”
He nodded. “The pointy-head from New Mexico?”
“Yep.”
“Never have figured out why they call that state by that name, it ain’t new and it ain’t Mexico—am I right, Haji?”
The bartender nodded and smiled again.
“What’d pointy-head have to say?”
“We just discussed the cases Holman was working on.”
He pursed his lips and readjusted his prosthetic leg on the bar stool. “Like what?”
“A couple of missing persons; three women from this vicinity and all in the last year.”
He grunted and gave the oil workers a dirty look as another outburst of braying erupted from their table. “Hey, you assholes wanna keep it down over there? We’re tryin’ to have a conversation.”
They all looked at him, somewhat thunderstruck, and then waved him off and went back to yowling among themselves.
Lucian turned back around and grumbled. “Campbell County?”
“Gillette proper and within a ten-mile radius.”
“Sandy know about all this?”
“I’m assuming, since it’s his detective’s reports I’m working from.”
The door opened, and the oil workers hooted and howled even louder. I’d just about made up my mind to go over and badge them when I turned and saw that the biggest of the men was holding Lorea Urrecha’s wrist.
Once again, the missing stripper’s sister was holding a stack of posters and a staple gun, obviously intent on putting a fresh one up on the bar’s bulletin board near the door.
The large man was trying to engage her in conversation even though she was attempting to pull away. He was kind of in shape but carrying a lot of beer fat and wore a jacket that read FOREMAN.
I slipped off the stool and turned, walking over to the table, catching only the tail end of the oil worker’s statement: something about him, her, and a meaningful relationship of about three minutes. “Let her go.”
He glanced up at me. “What?”
“I said let her go.”
The nearest man turned in the booth, and I now had the attention of all four. The big guy pushed the bill of his greasy welding cap back and looked at me. “Hey pard, we’re just havin’ a little conversation. The lady and I know each other, so how ’bout you just run along?”
I glanced at the young woman, but she wouldn’t make eye contact with me. “I don’t think the lady appreciates the attention.” I let my arms drop to my sides, my face growing cool and my hands still. “Let her go.”
It probably would’ve ended there, maybe with a few parting barks, but it was at that moment that Lorea dropped the photocopies, raised the staple gun, and slapped a round in the guy’s forehead.
I don’t know how deep the thing went, but she’d put a lot of emphasis into the action and I had a sneaking suspicion it was going to take a pair of needle-nose pliers or a quick visit to the emergency room to get the thing out of the thin layer of skin that covered his thick skull.
The staple to the head had the expected response in that he let go of her wrist and grabbed his head with a roar, trying to get a fingernail underneath the staple to pry it from his face. He shouldered her as he lumbered around, and she fell backward into the wall where she bounced against a coatrack, taking it down with her.
I made a move to catch her, but the three other guys started climbing over the bench seat, possibly thinking that I was the one that had damaged the foreman, who was now trying to get his hands on me but was impaired by the blood flowing into his eyes.
He managed to slam an elbow down on my shoulder, and one of the others grabbed my right arm before I could get loose. Another grabbed the back of my coat and propelled all of us through the glass door onto the sidewalk, where we landed with a thump in the snow that had been piled in the handicapped spot.
I pushed off, but the three of them were still attached to me as the staple guy pulled my head back and swung, glancing a fist off the crown of my ducked head and busting a few knuckles in the process. I forced one of my assailants down and then got an arm loose just enough to push one of the others back into the one of the four who seemed undecided about the whole melee.
Getting my feet under me, I was half standing when the big guy brought a knee up, sending me flailing backward into the ice-capped snow. I started to get up, but he was on me pretty quick and was winding up with his left hand in a fist when, in the echoing chamber of the concrete alcove, there was the thunderous report of a gunshot.
The foreman froze, and as I forced my eyes to focus, I could see the four-inch barrel of a Smith & Wesson service revolver stuck in his left ear.
He slowly raised his hands as Lucian Connally spoke as though holding a pistol against someone’s earlobe was an everyday occurrence. “You know, you look like one of those guys that lifts weights and I bet you are strong as a bull-ox.” He leaned forward into the big man’s line of vision, his grin in the half light looking like a death’s head. “I been workin’ out a lot lately myself—you know, gettin’ in shape.” He continued to smile. “But mostly I been exercisin’ this finger enough so that I can pull the couple of pounds of pressure on this trigger that’ll scatter your chickenshit brains all over this parking lot.”
—
“Do I need to set up a sheriff’s substation over here at the Wrangler Motel to keep you two out of trouble?” Sandy Sandburg looked at the two of us as though we were truants. “And remind me again about how the two of you are over here to make my life easier?”
“Lucian started it.”
The old sheriff looked at me. “And how the hell’d I do that?”
“You called them assholes.”
“Just introducin’ myself, and I’m not the one who went over there and attempted to single-handedly take on Marathon Oil’s second shift.”
I adjusted my hat, held the bag of ice Haji had given me against the swelling on my head, and addressed Sandy. “How’s Lorea?”
“We disarmed her and cut her loose.” He looked over his shoulder at the big guy, now seated in the back of a Campbell County cruiser and being ministered to. “Damn, did you see the staple in that guy’s head? I mean that was one of those big industrial jobs—”
“I think she wanted the thought to stick.”
“One of my deputies is trying to pry it out with a Spyderco knife.” He smiled. “The guy’s got some priors, a battery and a few controlled-substance abuses; you want to press charges?”
“No.”
“Well, he does.”
“On me?”
“No. On her, but I think I can dissuade him if you want.” He blew his breath out between his teeth. “I’m half a mind to let him have her and then send her butt back to Boise, she’s been such a pain.”
“She’s just concerned about her sister.”