He nodded. “Catchy.”
“Delgatos continued perfecting his craft in Susanville, where he supposedly killed another inmate and had a hand in shanking a guard. Through overcrowding, they let him out, and Big Daddy got himself a brand-new bag in Vegas, where he falsified just about everything about himself down to his DNA and got a license with the Gaming Commission to push cards.” She looked up. “Now, here’s the funny part—Deke had a condo, a brand-new Corvette, a powerboat, a winter home in Puerto Vallarta . . .” She shook her head. “Either this scumbag’s stackin’ the deck, or he’s got a little something on the side, right?”
I sat my empty juice cup on the tray. “He intimated to me he was a hit man—not exactly somebody you find on Craigslist.”
Vic put a finger in to hold her place and closed the folder. “She goes missing for three months and suddenly turns up two hours away?” She shook her head. “You think he was stupid enough to just keep siphoning money out of Roberta’s account until you showed up?”
“He said he figured that I would be the one—I think he was counting on it.”
Henry poured more juice into my plastic cup and drank it. “And why shoot her in front of you?”
“Just happened that way. I think she had become a liability; she certainly didn’t know what was coming.”
Henry nodded again. “She went to extraordinary lengths to stay with him.”
“He was a hit man, and if I was making a guess, and this is a guess, mind you, I’m betting he told her he’d kill everybody she knew if she tried to escape.”
The door to my room opened slowly and a smiling man with a gray mustache peered around it; seeing he wasn’t disturbing anything, he entered, carrying a large stack of file folders. “Walter, I thought we had an agreement—you can kill as many people as you like in Wyoming but not here in South Dakota.”
“Hi, Bruce.” I watched as he pulled up a chair and sat by my bed. “Anyway, he tried to kill me first.”
He tapped the stack of papers with a forefinger. “Is that how I should start the formal report?”
“You bet.”
He glanced at Henry. “Mr. Bear.”
“Mr. Pivic.”
He smiled at Vic. “Have we met?”
My undersheriff turned on her most ingratiating Mediterranean smile. “Moretti, Victoria Moretti.”
He carefully took her hand and actually kissed it. “Ah, you’re Italian?”
“Udine, the Friuli–Venezia Giulia region.”
He smiled and then smoothed his mustache and stared at the stack of papers in his lap. “Walter, this is going to take a while—”
“Bruce, I’d love to help you, but my neck hurts and my head hurts and I can feel a high-octane nap coming on.”
He watched me, his mustache twitching under his nose. “I just spoke with the head nurse, and she said now would be an opportune time to speak with you.”
I sighed and faked a yawn.
He stood. “I’ll go speak with her again and arrange a more convenient time.”
As he went out, I gave him a little wave and looked at a door to my right. “Where does that one go?”
Vic made a face and then covered it with her hand.
The Bear, figuring our odds, looked toward it. “An adjacent room, which connects to a short hallway leading to the fire escape.”
I nodded. “Now the big question.”
Vic spoke through her fingers. “Who hired him?”
I smiled at her. “Where are my pants?”
—
Lead, South Dakota, is pronounced as is the verb, not as the malleable heavy metal. Once home to one of the most productive gold mines in the Western Hemisphere, Lead now leads the area in twisting, straight-up-and-down, kiss-your-own-butt roads, currently covered with a foot or so of snow.
The address we had for Willie was half a duplex jammed into a hillside leading up to the city proper. There were side streets and a frontage road that ran parallel with Main, but even though it had stopped snowing for a bit, they were so choked with the stuff that there wasn’t anywhere to park.
Vic slipped the Bullet in behind a covered Cadillac with Nevada plates and turned off the ignition, as I reached back with my good arm and ruffled Dog’s ears. “Must be the place.” I slipped off my seat belt shoulder harness, which was killing me anyway, pulled an emergency blanket from under the seat, and draped it over my shoulders.
Vic glanced at my outfit.
“What?”
“We’re really going to do a forced entry into a place with you looking like that?”
“Like what?”
“A fluorescent homeless person.”
I adjusted the optic-orange blanket. “It’s all I’ve got until I can go shopping, all right?”
“You also don’t have a weapon.”
“Hop out, and I’ll get my standby.” I flipped down the center console with my good arm, opened it, and pulled out the holstered Colt Walker.
“You’re kidding.”
I palmed it in my hand. “Well, until the SDDCI gives me mine back, this one will have to do.” I slung the vintage holster over my left shoulder, and we started slogging around the house, tramping a path toward the steps in the foot-deep snow.
Henry took the lead with me following and Vic bringing up the rear. “You know, we could go by the National Guard and get an antitank gun that we could tow around on the back of your truck; that way we could just set up out there in the street and lob shells in on people.”
I ignored her and followed the Bear up the steps to the first landing, where we changed direction and found ourselves standing at a peeling, glass-panel door with tinfoil taped over the window.
The Cheyenne Nation drew the frightening knife that he always carried from the small of his back, the one with the stag handle and turquoise bear paw inset in the bone, and pointed at the foil with the blade. “In my experience, this is rarely a good sign.”
“I agree.” I reached out to check the door and was unsurprised that it was locked. “Kick it?”
Henry, always the thinking-man’s felon, slid the blade of the knife between the door and the jamb, popping the bolt and gently swinging the door wide.
“I could have done that if I had had a knife.”
He and Vic ignored me as they looked inside.
There was a large room with an efficiency kitchen which looked as if it had been assembled from appliances cannibalized from an RV, with a hallway where there were a couple of closed doors—I figured a bedroom and a bath. The Bear was about to enter when a tan and white pit bull appeared at the other side of the kitchen.
“You first.”
He turned to look at me, and probably would have responded, except for being interrupted by the low, guttural growl emitting from the dog just before it launched itself toward us.
The Cheyenne Nation quickly slammed the door as we listened to the pit bull clawing and barking. He finally turned and looked at me. “Any other bright ideas?”
“You still have those muscle relaxers?”
—
We sat in my truck and waited about twenty minutes. I’d bought a container of hamburger at the convenience store at the bottom of the hill and had inserted one pill in each of two meatballs that I had made; Henry had climbed the stairs and had quickly tossed one of the balls onto the kitchen floor of the apartment. Not wanting to overdose the dog, I’d kept the other in reserve. The rest of the burger Dog consumed in a second or less.
“You think that did it?”
The Bear nodded. “Considering it is approximately a quarter of my weight, I would say yes.”
Making sure I had the extra meatball safely ensconced in a paper cup in my shirt pocket, I pushed open the door of the truck, which was covered in a blanket of snow that was handy in keeping us out of sight of the myriad South Dakota law enforcement that was likely out prowling the Black Hills in search of us.