Vic waited a few seconds and then asked, “You mind telling us about Linda?”
“What do you want to know?”
My undersheriff thumbed the files. “We’ve got reports, but we think that really knowing these women might give us more opportunities to catch whoever it is that’s doing this.”
He took another drag on the cigarette. “Met her here, right out on that floor; she was an incredible dancer.” He grinned. “She had the shittiest laugh; really high and funny sounding . . .” He took a deep breath and then stuck the cigarette in his mouth again. “I’d give just about everything I’ve got to hear that laugh just one more time.”
“Hobbies?”
“Jujitsu.”
Vic snorted. “You’re kidding.”
“Kata and mixed-style, even Randori.”
She made a face. “What the hell is that?”
“Random attack competitions; she was really good at it. She could kick some serious ass if you came at her; she whaled on me a couple of times.”
My undersheriff and I looked at each other before I turned and asked Schaffer, “Did you tell Patrolman Dougherty that?”
“I don’t know, maybe.” Thinking, he stretched his jaw. “I don’t know, man; it was months ago.”
Vic opened the folder and searched the file. “Not in here.”
“What’s the big deal—is it important?”
Tracy brought the drinks over, sliding Mike his Coors and a shot of amber happiness and then setting the two coffees in front of us, along with a bowl of cream containers and sugar before addressing the biker. “You want a tab?”
“Please.” He waited until she was gone and then asked again, “Why is jujitsu a big deal?”
“If it was an abduction . . .” I leaned forward and took a sip. “It tells us something about the abductor—that either he was incredibly powerful, capable, or . . .”
“Or what?”
Vic dumped her requisite three creams and five sugars into her coffee and stirred it with her pencil. “Or she knew him.”
Schaffer nodded his head for a few moments, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t even aware that he was doing it, and then downed the contents of the shot glass in a swallow, followed by a deep draught from the can of beer.
“Tell me about the night she went missing.”
His eyes came back to mine. “She was supposed to meet me here for a drink, but she never showed.” His eyes diverted to the table again, and he sounded like he was reading from a script. “It was a Thursday night, and I waited till an hour after she was supposed to be here and then drove over to Kmart where she was working, but by that time they were closed. I got one of the cleaning guys to let me in, but they said that all the regular employees had already left.”
Vic leaned closer. “What about her car?”
He shook his head. “Wasn’t driving one; walked everywhere, when she wasn’t running.” He drank some more of his beer. “I figured she’d just forgot we were supposed to meet and went home. I found the babysitter and Michael watching a movie, and I asked them if they’d seen her, but they hadn’t so I drove back over here.”
I turned my cup in the ring it had made on the table. “Then what?”
His voice rose, and he called out to the waitress/bartender/owner/operator. “Hey, Tracy, can I get another one over here?” His eyes came back to mine. “I ran into some buddies who were playing pool, and we had a few drinks . . . Later on, I just headed home and went to bed.”
“What about the babysitter?”
“She had a car, drove herself.”
“Remember her name?”
He thought as Vic worked her way through the files. “Shit, no.”
Her face came up. “Would Michael?”
Schaffer laughed. “Yeah, he probably would.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “Just a sec.” He punched in the numbers and waited, and when he spoke his voice changed instantly. “Hey buddy, how you doin’?” He waited. “Yeah? Hey, I’ve got a question for you; you remember the babysitter you had here in Gillette?” Another pause. “Yeah, her.” He listened. “Yeah . . . you remember her last name?” He stubbed out the cigarette. “No, I’ll be back when I said, I promise. Love you too, buddy.” He punched a button on the cell. “Ashley Reich.” He spelled the name for Vic, and she wrote it on the outside of the folder.
“Sounds like you have a pretty good relationship with that son of yours.”
He looked back at me. “Why do you say that?”
“He said he loved you—in my experience you have to get that out of your kids with a crowbar.”
He sat the phone down on the surface of the table, turned it, and slid it over to me. On the screen was a handsome boy with an enormous smile, holding up a pretty good-sized rainbow trout. “That, right there, is my life. He’s all I’ve got left . . .” He swallowed and straightened up in time for the waitress to bring him another round. After she left, he spoke to the surface of the table, but it was meant for us. “Do me a favor?”
“What’s that?”
“If you find him, whoever he is . . .” He glanced at Vic and then back to me. “Don’t kill him right off; make sure that he suffers—a lot.” He slammed back the second shot, and his head started bobbing again as he picked up the phone. “He looks like her.” He sipped the beer and put the cell away, along with some of his thoughts. “And if you need any help with that, you just let me know and I’ll be happy to get some guys to assist.”
Some of the thoughts were put away but not all of them.
—
Mount Pisgah really isn’t much of an ascent and ranks as the 1,336th highest mountain in Wyoming, but the real puzzle is that although the cemetery that has its name is in Gillette, the mountain itself is actually near Newcastle and is not even in Campbell County.
Mount Pisgah Cemetery is the crown jewel of the County Cemetery District and is located in the heart of the city. Atop one of the highest points in the town, the sprawling, fifty-seven-acre resting place is a beautiful spot in a not-so-lovely city with enough majestic old cottonwoods towering over the place that when they release their seeds in May and June, you would swear it was snowing. With rolls containing 5,600 burials, it has monuments dating back to 1879 and graves older than anyone can remember.
As I parked the truck in front of the large, Victorian-style house next to the cemetery, Vic turned and looked around the place. “Mount Pisgah in a pig’s ass—this is a hill at best.”
“It and the slope near Newcastle are named for a mountain in the Bible that’s in a region directly east of the Jordan River and just northeast of the Dead Sea, usually referred to as Mount Nebo, the highest of the Pisgah range, a cluster of hills to the west of the Trans-Jordanian Plateau.” I dredged up the chapter and verse. “‘And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho.’ Deuteronomy, chapter thirty-four, verse one.”
She pulled the door handle and slipped out, holding the suicide door open for Dog. “Jesus.”
“No.” I did my best Yul Brynner imitation. “Moooooses.”
“Was your mother some kind of religious fanatic?”
“No, but my grandfather spent most of his dotage reading and memorizing passages from the Bible, and since I spent most of my summers on his place it rubbed off.” We looked up at the gate of the cemetery, and, as Dog did his business, at a strong snow beginning to curtain the landscape. “Pisgah is actually Hebrew for ‘high place,’ but lost its meaning over time and became the name of the range.”
She thumbed through the files, holding them close to her chest and moving Roberta Payne to the top. “More developments from the photographic mind?”
“No, I had a Jewish girlfriend in college; you’d be amazed at what you can learn when motivated and with the right teacher.”