They accelerated and kept up, Cady driving, Lena talking. “Two felonies with one stone?”
“Something like that.”
She turned and was talking to Cady. “The driver says to remind you that you have a luncheon in thirty minutes.”
“I’ll be there.”
There was another brief conversation. “The driver says to tell you that we’re taking it on faith that since you’ve holstered your weapon, your life is not imperiled?”
I was getting a little of my air back and responded, “He may run me to death, but he’s not armed, if that’s what you mean.”
“You’re sure you don’t want our help? We do our best work from concours vintage automobiles.”
I waved them on. “I bet.”
They sped off, and I watched as the driver didn’t spare the horses.
Good girl.
It was pretty much a straight shot along Rosebud Creek, so other than a few high stands of grass, I could see about a hundred yards heading south and left toward Lame Deer. I glanced out at the swathed fields to my right and could see all the way across that flat area as well. No one.
I stopped as I remembered something Henry had once told me-something about a culvert nicknamed the “time tunnel,” which was somewhere in the area. It was reputedly filled with mattresses so that those who had imbibed and didn’t want to run the risk of becoming the forgotten dead up on Route 39 could sleep it off. Dire stuff, but better than being roadkill.
I turned and looked north. I had automatically followed the flow of the traffic on my side of the road and started south, but what if the time tunnel was north? It was a crap shoot.
Standing there for a moment more, I made a decision, turned, and began trotting back up the path. After about three hundred yards, I came to a culvert and stopped. The grass was high and only a little water spilled from the corrugated pipe, which was almost as tall as a man.
I thought about the last time I’d climbed in one of these things and had almost been killed by a big Crow by the name of Virgil White Buffalo. I reached around to my back and felt for my venerable Maglite, but then remembered I wasn’t wearing my duty belt.
Standing there, I could see that there was an uneven light at the end of the tunnel where it opened out on the other side. The smell of the place was less than inviting, but in I went, crouching down and once again pulling the Colt from the small of my back. “Kelly Joe, if you’re there I want you to know I’m coming in!”
Nothing.
I kept a wide stance and trudged over the first mattress that smelled more disgusting when I stepped on it. I cleared my throat and tried to breathe shallowly, in hopes that the odor wouldn’t overtake me before I got out.
Stepping to one side, I watched as some sort of snake slithered from under the mattress and continued on in the direction from where I’d come. I started talking to the animals again. “You’re not the variety I’m looking for.”
I turned and reached the halfway point, where one of the mattresses was bunched against another. Thinking that it was pretty much the only place where someone could hide in the confined space, and with a few more flashbacks to the other culvert down on Lone Bear Road, I put a foot on the mattress and pushed. Burns once again flung himself from cover and ricocheted down the culvert like a pinball. I thundered after him but tripped on the corner of a soggy sleeping bag and fell forward. I scrambled to get to my feet, but it was slippery and I knew in my heart of hearts that I was going to lose him.
God hates a quitter, so I staggered forward and watched as he got to the opening at the other end and the bright sunlight lit him up like a candle.
That was when the candle snuffer came down with a vengeance.
Lolo Long must’ve been waiting above the tunnel on the other side, and I watched with a great deal of satisfaction as she landed on Kelly Joe with all six feet of everything she had. She planted him face first in the mud with a knee at his back as she grabbed two fistfuls of his wifebeater T-shirt.
He struggled to get at her, but it was like a replay of the events at Clarence’s house when she’d pig-wrestled him.
I staggered out into the light as she slapped her cuffs on Burns and dragged him to his feet, his entire body smeared with blackish mud.
“I want a lawyer.”
She smacked the side of his head. “You’re gonna see a lot of lawyers, trust me.”
I took a couple of deep breaths and could smell the strong scent of stale beer coming off of her. “Did you find the bag?”
She smiled as she took the drug dealer’s arm. “I did, and inside was about five hundred grams of methamphetamine in tiny, individual-serving baggies.” I took his other arm, and we walked him up out of the ditch toward the Jimtown Bar parking lot. “That’s almost a pound of Schedule II substance, and you know what that means, don’t you Kelly Joe?”
She was happier than I’d ever seen her as she informed him of his Miranda rights. When she finished, Kelly Joe continued to say nothing so she turned to me. “I’m sorry it took so long and that I smell like an old brewery, but the cans covered up the bag when it hit on the other side of Mount Rainier and it took a while for me to find it.”
“No big deal.”
“Do you know how long I’ve been looking to get this rat?” She laughed, and I was glad I hadn’t spoiled her moment in the sun. “Two months, and this is by far the biggest bust of my career.”
I was happy for her; there’s a camaraderie and euphoria that goes along with these situations, when you get the bad guy with so much evidence that there’s no way an informed jury or sober judge will ever let them walk. It’s a feeling that is amplified only by the fact that no one was hurt and that everybody, with the exception of the perp, got away clean-well, mostly clean.
My mind kept drifting back to the case at hand, though. I thought about the dead father, the injured child, and the woman we’d watched fall. I kept my mouth shut as she stuffed the drug dealer in the back of the Yukon and turned to look at me with her hands on her hips.
The smile, a million watts, only slightly dimmed. “Audrey.”
I focused on the tribal police chief’s face. “What?”
“On the recording; the woman’s voice.”
I waited.
“It’s Audrey.”
14
We had deposited Nattie Tyminski in the BIA jail, where there was a female docent. She would probably walk as we hadn’t actually seen her in possession, but a little time behind bars wouldn’t do her any harm.
We sat on the folding chairs in the Tribal Police Headquarters and stared at Kelly Joe-he sat on the bunk in the corner of the holding cell with his knees drawn up in protection. So far, Artie Small Song hadn’t made any aggressive moves toward him, but the drug dealer was playing it safe; I didn’t blame him-it was like being trapped in a Havahart with a pissed-off badger.
Artie’s fingers were wrapped around the bars like the kind of vines that choked trees to death. “I don’t have any idea.”
“You must have had some kind of interaction with her.”
“No, I didn’t.” He flung himself from the bars and started pacing back and forth, Kelly Joe’s eyes tracking him like radar. “The only time I ever laid eyes on the woman was there at Human Services when I was trying to get my mother’s support check.”
“No other time?”
He turned the corner at the far end of the cell and started back past me. “Never.”
“Not even on the phone?”
He stopped on the next pass. “Ever.” He grabbed the bars again, and Kelly Joe jumped. “And I wasn’t at that bar that night! You ask and see if anybody remembers me being there.”
“Your truck was there.”
“My nephew was driving it.”
“With your elk on the hood?” I got up and leaned an elbow between the bars and paid a glance to Burns. I would’ve been lying if I’d said I wasn’t enjoying the drug dealer’s discomfort. “Then where were you?”