“Yep, well . . . I started it, so I’m going to finish it.”
He turned to the assembled manpower. “Run along and try not to be an embarrassment to your collective departments.” They nodded and did as he said, the automatic doors opening and closing, allowing the arctic wind to creep in, always uninvited. “I don’t know if that plane of yours is going to get off the ground tonight. Not with all this fog.”
Walking past him, I paused to let the air in again. “It will clear before midnight.”
—
I held the door open for Lucian, and I helped him climb into my truck but then he stuck a boot out to hold the door open. “How ’bout we just get a head start over to the airport; I got a funny feeling about this one.”
I stood there, the cold trying to creep up the backside of my Fauxhartt Kmart special coat that the hospital staff had returned to me. “You getting scary in your old age?”
“Maybe so.” He didn’t move but sat there with his boot still propped in the door—a spanner in the works, Lucian style. “In all my years on the job, I don’t think there’s ever been a situation I’ve looked forward to less.”
“Maybe you’re the one who should sit this one out.”
He studied the sticker on my dash, the one that read WARNING, USE OVERDRIVE IN HIGH SPEED PURSUIT, and the addition Vic had made in marker below that read AND DO NOT SHOOT THROUGH WINDSHIELD. He started to say something but then stopped and then started again. “I warned her that you were like a gun; that we had to be careful where we pointed you . . .”
I thought about how it had all started, how it had been a favor for a woman with a set of legs that didn’t work because of a carefree accident with to-go cups so long ago. I thought about how it had been a search to find out why a man who had never broken a rule in his life had checked into the Wrangler Motel, locked the door, and taken his life. “I’m sorry.”
He looked at me. “For what, doing your job?”
I nodded. “This job is hateful sometimes.”
His jaw clamped shut, but the words still escaped. “If I never taught you anything, I taught you that a long time ago.” He moved his foot and gestured toward the door. “Now close that damn thing before I catch my death.”
I shut it and thought to myself that it would take a sight more than that to kill Lucian Connally, and then walked around the back of my truck as the Campbell County Sheriff’s car pulled up and stopped, the Campbell County Sheriff rolling the window down and airing an elbow. “How ’bout you just head on out to the airport, Walt?”
I stopped and looked into the muted distance at the southern hills. “Why is every cop in Wyoming trying to get rid of me?”
“We like you; that’s what we do with people we like.” He shrugged and gestured toward Dougherty, sitting in his passenger seat. “Right?”
The patrolman smiled a thin grin.
“You’re playing backup on this one, Sandy, I don’t even want you in the house.”
He studied me. “You’re sure about this, huh?”
“Yep.”
“It’s going to be a big deal.”
I pulled my keys from my pocket. “Look on the bright side.”
“What’s that?”
“Your family’s not involved after all.”
I climbed in the Bullet and began the slow drive to the west of town and the Iron Horse subdivision. The weather didn’t seem to be getting that much better, and although the snow had stopped, the term “socked in” kept coming to mind, and I started thinking about promises. There was supposed to be more weather tomorrow, but I hoped to be gone long before then.
The whole case wasn’t ending the way I’d hoped it would, but that was usually the scenario in my line of work. I drove carefully on the unplowed Echeta Road, guiding the tires in an almost out-of-body experience. I looked over at Lucian, but he was staring out the passenger-side window, lost in his own thoughts. In some ways, I’m sure he was sorry that we’d ever become involved in this investigation, but like me, he knew that you had to ride the trail till it ended. It was a lonely pursuit we had chosen and one that always finished with reading one more report, making one more phone call, or knocking on one more door—and reading one more person their rights, if you were lucky.
I took a right and then pulled up to the railroad crossing and stopped, making sure I looked both ways.
“I bet you’re gonna be a lot more careful around these things, huh?”
I pulled out and made the right into the warren of streets.
—
The only addition to the Holman household was a blue Volvo, sitting in the driveway, but other than that, everything looked the same as it had—even the Santa was still lying in the yard like a New Year’s Eve drunk, the coal dust spread across him like Lucian’s pulverized pepper steak. “You’re not going to reinflate that silly bastard again, are you?”
“Yep, if for no other reason than good luck.” I pushed open the door and started across the yard, picked up good St. Nick, and plugged in the tiny air pump, just as I’d done before. I watched as the sheriff’s car pulled up behind mine and also saw three more deputy cars down the street, along with three from the Highway Patrol.
Sandy, Dougherty, and Lucian met me at the sidewalk as I gestured toward the assorted manpower. “What the heck is that?”
“I told ’em to go away, but they won’t.” The sheriff glanced over his shoulder. “It’s your escort to the airport.”
I glanced at the door. “You’re still not going in.”
“The hell I’m not, it’s my county.”
I cast my eyes at Lucian. “We started this, and we’ll finish it.”
He glanced at us. “You two armed?”
“Nope; there isn’t going to be any shooting.”
He nudged his hat back. “Nice to be sure about those types of things.”
“Yep, it is.” I turned and walked toward the front door with Lucian in tow.
I knocked and then rang the doorbell.
Nothing.
Lucian tried the knob, and the door floated open into the museum-like interior of the Holman home in a déjà-vu-all-over-again experience. With a glance back at the old sheriff, I entered. Everything was exactly as it had been the first time we’d walked into the place, our boots making strange, crisp sounds on the plastic walkways that crisscrossed the house.
Heading into the kitchen, I stopped when I noticed something out of place, a coffee cup on the kitchen counter with peach lipstick on the rim.
Lucian touched the handle of the mug, turning it with a finger. “Not Phyllis’s shade.”
“Any reason to check the upstairs?”
He shook his head. “Not that I can think of.”
I moved toward the basement door, noticing that the wheelchair was still parked at the top.
There was no muted sound of a ballgame as there had been before, just an uneasy silence and three black screens looking back at the woman. Easing my way past the stair elevator, I stepped to the side and Lucian joined me.
Phyllis Holman wasn’t working; her fingers were laced in her lap over a knitted afghan. At first, I thought it might’ve been a commercial break, but there was no graceful tapping at the letters that would form sentences, that would form paragraphs, that would form the kind of entertainment that would distract people from their lives, lives that sometimes led to the situation we now found ourselves confronting.
The elderly woman stared at the blank screens, dark as the world collapsing around her, and refused to acknowledge our presence.
I stepped forward, positioning myself between two of the monitors. “Mrs. Holman?”
She didn’t respond.
“Mrs. Holman.”
She looked up at me, at first annoyed, but then focused on my face and the bandage around my neck. “You’re hurt.”
I took off my hat. “Yes, ma’am. It’s been a long day.” She nodded and then returned her eyes to the television without saying anything more, and I waited, but not very long. “No game?”