He was even wearing the hat and was leaning on the security desk, an unopened bottle of Wild Turkey sitting on top of the sign-in ledger.
I stopped and watched as he stepped into the center of the hallway and faced us, his hands clutched together. “Fancy meeting you here, Herbert.”
He paused. “Hi, Sheriff.” He pulled the unlit cigar from his mouth, and his voice was desolate and removed. “I thought I’d better clean up before you guys found out what I’d done.” He exhausted a sad laugh and shook his head. “It’s all so messed up.”
“You killed her?”
The response was choked in his throat, crowded there along with his heart. “No. No, I didn’t.”
“She fell?”
“I was trying to talk to her, but she backed up and lost her balance. I tried to get to her, but she fell.” His head jerked around in an attempt to find a way out of a place with no emotional exits. “I wouldn’t have tried to kill my own child.”
“So Adrian’s yours?”
“Yes.” He took a step forward, and I could see his face beneath the brim of the gray top hat, the eagle feather forward. It was at that moment I saw that he had put the cigar back in his mouth and was holding the old, combat-cut, brass-covered Zippo lighter in his hand.
I started to speak but coughed with a whiff of the heavy gas. “I don’t suppose you’d like to take this conversation outside?”
He shook his head. “No.” I took a couple of steps toward him, still supporting Albert, narrowing the forty feet between us.
He lifted the lighter toward the cigar. “I think you better stay there.”
I stopped. “Did you kill Clarence Last Bull?”
He turned his head and looked at the door to the basement that he’d propped open to allow the gas to filter in. “He deserved it; he was a disease.” He gestured with the cigar, pointing it at me like a gun. “He beat her. He beat her, and he hurt my child.” There was a sob in his voice. “He slept with any woman who would have him… The drugs around the place-it was horrible. My beautiful, strong son living in a place like that.” He lowered the cigar but held the lighter next to his chest.
I waited a moment. “Are you planning on taking all of us with you?”
He nodded a curt nod. “That was the idea.”
“Was?”
He cleared his throat. “I’m just… so tired of all of it.” He looked down the hall. “Where’s Barrett?”
“He got out through the old coal chute in the back.”
“That’s good; I wouldn’t want him getting hurt.”
I took another step and nodded toward the bottle of liquor on the desk. “So, it’s just you, me, and Albert here to celebrate?”
I could see him swallow as he brought the cigar back up and glanced at the bottle. “I guess so.”
I took a few more steps. “So you’re going to kill off the only blood relative Adrian’s got?”
He paused. “I don’t see any other way out of this.”
“There isn’t any way out of this, but there’s a way through it-you killed a man, and you’re going to do time; I don’t know how much because that isn’t my decision, but you’ll be alive and can tell your son what happened. You can tell him about his mother.”
He nodded, but I could see his face tighten as he coughed. “She was a good woman.” He stepped to the side and gestured with the cigar again, as if ushering us out of a movie theatre. “You might as well get out of here, Sheriff. The stairwell is unlocked. That way I can have a last drink and light my cigar.”
I took a few steps closer. “You’re sure that’s what you want to do?”
He nodded his head some more, and I got within twenty feet of him before he stuffed the cigar in the corner of his mouth and flipped open the aged Zippo. “I’m sure.”
I looked down and could see the old chief’s eyes, dazed but watching us. “Albert?”
The eyes wobbled toward me. “Yes?”
“You think you can make it out of the building on your own?”
He nodded. “I think so, but…”
“You need to go. I’m just going to stay here for a minute and talk to Herbert.” Even with his passive resistance, I ushered him through the side and watched as he carefully made his way toward the exterior door. He pushed on the bar, the door swung wide, and he turned to look at me.
I was thankful for the flood of clear air, but it didn’t last long as the heavy door swung back and closed like a tomb.
Casually, Herbert lifted the lighter to the cigar, his thumb on the wheel of the thing; his only souvenir of a long-dead war. He didn’t move but just stood there with his head dipped, ready to strike. “Tell my son that I loved him.”
Keeping my intentions clear, I turned and folded my arms, leaning my back against the coolness of the corner of the wall behind me. I crossed my boots and stared down at the six feet between us as if I had all the time in the world. I brought my face up slowly to look into the one brown eye that was revealed under his hat with the one gray eye under the brim of mine.
He still didn’t move but spoke out of the side of his mouth. “I’m not bluffing, Sheriff.”
“I know that; I also know that as soon as this propane hits an ignition source like a water heater or a pilot light, it won’t matter who’s bluffing.” I blew air through my nose in an attempt to drive some of the gas away. “You say you’re tired and that you’ve had enough. Well, there’s really only one way to end this in a respectable fashion-give me the lighter.”
If I was going to make a grab for it, now would’ve been the time.
It was then that there was an incredible clatter behind Herbert from the other end of the hallway. I fully expected the building to go up, but it didn’t, and we both stood there as I glanced out the window and saw Barrett Long’s truck dragging the doors at the end of a tow strap.
I was right; he did figure it out.
I was just glad the sparks the metal doors were making on the surface of the parking lot were far away and receding.
Our attention was suddenly drawn to the other end of the hall where Lolo Long had thrown herself through the door and had swung both the beam of her Maglite and the barrel of that big revolver of hers toward us. “Freeze. Police!”
She was doing better.
Herbert backed against the desk and looked at me, his thumb still on the wheel of the Zippo.
I shouted as quickly as I could. “Don’t shoot. The entire basement is full of propane; one shot and the whole place goes up.”
She looked uncertain but continued down the hall toward us with her sidearm and flashlight still pointed toward Herbert. It was only when she was about twenty feet away that she noticed the cigar and, more important, the lighter in his hands.
“Holster the weapon, Lolo.”
She ignored me and gestured at him with the barrel of the Smith. “Drop the lighter.”
We stood there with her on one side of the stairwell opening, me on the other, and Herbert facing the creeping gas that continued to seep up from the basement.
“Chief, holster the weapon.”
She looked at me for the briefest of seconds and then did as I’d asked.
I took a breath before speaking again, hoping it wasn’t my last. “Herbert? I sure would hate to think that after all the places we’ve been and all the stuff we’ve been through, that it would all end like this.”
After a moment, his eyes turned to mine.
I pushed off the wall and stuffed my hands in the pockets of my jeans. “You say you’re tired. Well, I’m tired too.” I watched as his eyes shifted, and he studied the lighter in his hands. “My daughter is getting married at Crazy Head Springs in a few days and I sure would like to be there for that, just like I’d think Chief Long here would like to go see her son up in Billings, and I imagine you’d like to be around for Adrian’s first birthday whether it’s through Plexiglas or not.”
He didn’t move, and I wondered for just the briefest of moments what it would be like to be flash fried in the instant it would take for him to roll the thumbwheel on the flint and spark the tiniest of flames in the lighter’s windscreen. The alarms would clamor and most likely the building itself would be lifted off its foundation; the sprinklers would come on, but unlike the movies, reality would dictate water pressure-and the Tribal Headquarters of the Northern Cheyenne would burn again.