Dougherty stopped petting the dog but left his hand on her head. “How do you do an entire afternoon of interviews and then check into the Wrangler Motel and blow your brains out?”
Vic handed me the folder. “More important, what do you find out in those interviews that leads you to do it?” Inconclusive, the file simply read that Holman had made stops at Dirty Shirley’s, the Sixteen Tons Bar, and another location identified as undisclosed in or near Arrosa. I looked up at the group. “What other location is there, undisclosed or otherwise, in or near the town of Arrosa?”
Vic posited, “Private home?”
I thought about it. “There’s an elementary school and a post office . . .”
Henry studied me. “Nothing else in the immediate vicinity?”
“No.”
He smiled. “This should make things easier.”
Vic’s cell phone rang, and she pulled it out, looking at it and then to me.
“What?”
“It’s your daughter.” I didn’t say anything. “The pregnant one.”
They all looked at me. “You answer it.”
“Chickenshit.” She held the phone up to her ear. “Hello?” She nodded her head. “Yeah, well he’s around here somewhere . . .” She listened again. “Right.” She listened some more, and I could hear the edges of my daughter’s voice traveling through the airwaves from the City of Brotherly Love. “Yeah, yeah, he told me that . . .” She was silent for a moment. “It is a case.”
I glanced at the Cheyenne Nation and then cleared my throat and held a hand out for the phone.
Vic shot eye-torpedoes at me and continued to speak, glancing at the Bear. “Yeah, he’s around, too—helping your dad.” There was another, longer pause. “I’ll tell him.” She pulled the phone from her ear and looked at it. “And a see you later alligator to you, too.”
“What?” I slumped in my chair. “Please tell me she hasn’t had the baby.”
She deposited the phone into her other hand and pointed at me with it. “No, but they are inducing her tomorrow, and there are three tickets for the noon flight to Philadelphia at the Gillette Airport for you, yon Standing Bear, and me, and I was informed, and I quote, that if we were not on that flight then we could all kiss good-bye any thoughts of ever seeing the grandchild within our collective lifetimes.”
“Gimme the phone.” She did, but I handed it back to her. “Could you dial it for me, please?” She did, without comment, and gave it back to me.
It barely rang once, and my very angry daughter was on the line. “Chickenshit.”
“Boy howdy.”
“Daddy, I want you on that plane at noon.”
“Cady—”
“I’m not kidding.”
I took a deep breath, like I always did when facing total annihilation. “I know, it’s just that there are some details that I’m going to have to take care of—”
“For who? A guy you never met who killed himself? Some women who’ve been missing for months now?”
“Well, there have been some developments—”
“I. Don’t. Care. I, your only child, am about to have a baby, who is likely to be your only grandchild. My mother is dead, and it is your solemn and imperative duty to be here with me.”
Feeling that a little privacy might be a nice addition to the conversation, I took the phone and started up the steps. “Cady, I promise I’m coming—”
“When? A week from now, a month?”
I turned the corner, walked down the hallway, pushed the outside door open, and stood on the elevated stoop behind the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department. I leaned on the metal railing and watched the interminable snow continue to fall. “I just need a little more time to—”
“No, don’t go on autopilot here.”
“Honey—”
“Don’t honey me.” She took a moment to calm herself, and I could see her threading her long fingers through her auburn hair, and I was glad there were more than two thousand miles between us. “I knew this was what you were going to do to me . . .”
I stopped myself from saying honey. “I’m not doing this to you; it’s just that I have responsibilities.”
“Your responsibilities are to me and the baby.”
“I know that.” I looked out into the parking lot and could see Dog looking at me through the windshield, fogging the glass with his breath. “Lucian is over here, along with Dog.”
“Dog is also on the noon flight—I paid them more so he could go on the small plane—but you need to get a crate.”
I pushed my hat back on my head and clutched my forehead. Of course, the Greatest Legal Mind of Our Time had gotten Dog a ticket. I smiled in spite of myself. “What about Lucian?”
“Uncle Lucian can drive the Bullet back to Durant so you don’t have to pay for parking.”
“We have free parking at all the airports in Wyoming, or did you forget?”
She shrieked, finally having had enough of me. “I don’t care!” She was fighting valiantly, but I could hear the breaks in her voice as she spoke, and then there was a small sob. “Daddy, I’m afraid. Okay? They say there are complications and . . . I need you here for this.”
I nodded into the phone, Virgil’s words of disaster on the horizons of my life echoing in my head. “Right.”
“Please.”
“How much time do I have?”
It was silent on the line for a moment. “I knew you were going to do this—”
“When is the last moment I can leave?”
She literally growled into the phone. “You are not really booked on the noon flight.”
That stalled me out, and I was unsure of what to say next, finally deciding on something original. “I’m not?”
“No, I just switched you to the eleven-forty-two P.M. one to Denver and then the red-eye to Philadelphia where you will get in a paid car and come to the maternity unit of Pennsylvania Hospital on Eighth Street by eight tomorrow morning—thus sayeth the Greatest Legal Mind of Our Time.” There was a pause. “I know you.”
I breathed a laugh and shook my head at my wet boots. “Yep, you do.”
“Eleven forty-two tonight, got it?”
“Yep.”
“That leaves you fourteen hours and forty-two minutes to break the big case.”
“No pressure.”
She pressed her advantage. “Now take Henry, Vic, and Dog to the airport so that they can catch their flight. Don’t forget the crate.”
“You said.”
“Move.”
“Yep.” I quickly added. “Hey . . . ?”
“Yes?”
I tucked that tiny phone in tight, hoping she could feel me. “I love you, and everything’s going to be all right.”
She sniffed. “You promise?”
I took a deep breath and whispered the truest words I’d ever uttered. “That, I do.”
Walking down the steps, I found Vic and Henry standing by the stairwell, and I was surprised to find the pit bull sitting next to Dougherty, with her head on his knee.
“Does she have a name?”
“Probably, but the guy that knew it is dead so make one up and let her get used to it.” Vic shrugged. “She’ll get fully awake here in a few hours but be careful because she might be a little wonky and she doesn’t care for strangers.”
I reached into my pocket and handed him a cellophane-wrapped orb. “If she gets really anxious, give her another magic meatball.”
As we trooped out the door and up the stairs, Vic added, “Personally, I’d let her wake up and then post her at the door here for when the Dick gets back.”
Dougherty called out after her. “Wait, she’s aggressive?”
My undersheriff yelled back down the stairwell, “She’s a bitch, after all; between her and the Dick—my money’s on her.”
As we trudged to the Bullet, I explained our newfound travel plans.
Vic buckled herself in the center seat as Henry closed the door and turned to look at me. “You should get on the plane with us; we can deal with this shit when we get back.”
I started my truck and headed for the Kmart again. “I’ll follow orders and grab the red-eye. I don’t suspect I’ll have much luck, but I’ll follow up on what we’ve got so far.”