“What?”
Her gaze intensified. “A bunch of the attorneys go out every week and shoot at a local gun club up on Spring Garden. One day they asked me if the cowgirl knew how to shoot, so I went with them.” She leaned against the wall. “I had a really good teacher.”
I waited a moment, but she didn’t say anything, so I pulled her in and hugged her. I held her there and squeezed her close. “If you pull it, use it, if you use it, use it to kill.”
It was a large closet as supply closets go. There was a built-in drain in the floor with a set of faucets and shelves full of cleaning supplies, mops, brooms, and buckets. I had been smart enough to place one of the waiting-room chairs in there earlier. With the door slightly ajar, I could see the one leading into our Special Forces Anna Walks Over Ice. I hadn’t checked on the Bear; I figured he had his tomahawk.
I settled in and tried to think of something to do while I waited, something other than waiting. I read a couple of labels on some bottles, flipped a mop handle between my hands, and thought. I thought about whether Leo Gaskell would win, place, or show.
I heard someone at the end of the hall. It was a familiar voice. I picked up my hat and opened the door as he continued, “And undercover means you don’t leave the handle of that goddamned Remington, sawed-off scattergun hangin’ outta the shopping bag for every Tom’s Dick and Convict to see.”
Vic was already there when I got to them. “Lucian, what are you doing here?”
“This the way you run a stakeout, with peckerhead here advertising the whole show?”
Peckerhead was the descriptive term Lucian used equally for plants, animals, and inanimate objects. “Lucian…”
“I come up here to see how this pissant operation was goin’, and from what I can see, it ain’t.”
I pushed my hat back and sighed. “You were supposed to stay with Isaac.”
“Christ, he snores loud enough to wake the dead. I locked the door when I left.”
I looked back at Vic, who was smiling and folding her arms over her breasts the way she always did when Lucian was around. The Ferg continued to look at the floor. The old sheriff wasn’t going to go back willingly, and I couldn’t leave him out in the open to abuse the staff and draw attention to himself.
“Dark as the inside of a cow in here.” He sniffed. “Smells funny.”
“It’s a supply closet.” I heard him rustling around and smelled the tobacco pouch he had just unzipped. “Don’t even think about loading up that pipe and smoking it.”
He continued, “Tryin’ to improve the environment.”
“And Leo Gaskell will smell it from halfway down the hallway.”
He zipped up the beaded pouch, for now. “Who the hell is this Gaskell person, anyway?”
“Please keep your voice down?” I leaned my shoulder against the doorjamb and tried to find a comfortable position. “We’re pretty sure he’s the one that tried to drown you in your bathtub.” I let that one settle in for a while. He didn’t say anything. “Leo Gaskell may be related to Ellen Runs Horse. That name mean anything to you?” He still didn’t say anything, so I turned around and looked at him. “Maybe Ellen Walks Over Ice?”
He was sitting with his real leg propped up over the fake one, staring at the tobacco pouch and pipe sitting in his lap. “Yep, Anna’s sister.”
“Did you know she had a kid with Charlie Nurburn?”
“Yep. I was a deputy, for Christ sake.”
“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me, while we’re on the subject?”
He exhaled deeply. “Kid’s dead.”
I continued watching him in the thin strip of light from the partially open door. “Charlie Nurburn’s illegitimate son died?”
“Yep.”
“How do you know that?”
“She told me.”
“Ellen Runs Horse?” He nodded but didn’t look up. “Saizarbitoria couldn’t find any reference to Ellen Walks Over Ice or any children at the courthouse.”
“It was an illegitimate, half-breed kid born and died of cholera in Acme in 1950, and you think there were gonna be certificates?” He snorted and stuffed his pipe full.
I decided to let him smoke; maybe it might occupy his mouth. “I’m working on a motive, and I was trying to put together a connection between Leo Gaskell and the Barojas, but if Charlie and Ellen’s kid died, then there isn’t any way to connect the two. I was working under the assumption that Leo might be the grandson, since he had one of Charlie Nurburn’s pistols.” He lit the pipe, and I had to admit that it smelled better. I watched him in the half-light, the smoldering embers of the pipe glowing red in the dark closet. “Lucian, where did you bury Charlie Nurburn?”
A second passed. “Yer just not gonna let that go, huh?”
“I think Leo Gaskell may have found him.”
He was silent for a moment. “Yer shittin’ me.” He chewed on that one for quite a while. His dark eyes blinked, he took the pipe from his mouth, and pointed with the stem across the hall. “Who you got in the room?”
“Henry Standing Bear.”
“Well hell… if he gets in there ol’ Ladies Wear’ll cut him from cock to crown with a dull deer antler and save the taxpayers some money.”
Lucian had a way with Indian names that was nothing short of creative. I started to respond, but the air caught in my throat for a second, and we both remained absolutely still. There were voices at the end of the hall, this time they came from Saizarbitoria’s direction, and they were growing louder. I had forgotten that the door opened to the inside of the closet, and two sheriffs with a collective three legs trying to get out offered a variety of excitement.
Once we finally made it, I could see Vic talking to a man whom they had against the wall beside the stairwell door. Santiago had the man’s arm in a reverse wristlock high at the middle of his back with his feet pulled out and spread so that his weight was against the partition. Vic had holstered her Glock, and it looked as if she was trying to keep from smiling.
As Lucian followed me down the hallway, I noticed a potted poinsettia and a card lying on the floor and scooped them up. I stopped a couple of yards away and called off the armada. “Let him go.” Sancho did, and Vic stepped behind Saizarbitoria so that he couldn’t see that she was trying not to laugh out loud. “Joe, what the hell are you doing here?”
He cleared his throat and gestured to the card and plastic-wrapped flowers I held. “We were just glad that Anna was all right, and we all chipped in.” He glanced around again and then over to Saizarbitoria’s empty wheelchair. “Do you mind if I sit down, I think I might be having a little trouble…”
Santiago holstered his weapon and held the chair as Joe sat. I thought he might be having a heart attack but then noticed the dark spot on Joe’s pants. I glanced over to Vic and she nodded, knowing I would want to speak with Santiago. I looked back down to Joe. “How about we get you to the bathroom, then we can talk?”
He folded his hands across his lap and nodded, his face pale and his hands trembling. “That would be good.”
I watched as Vic wheeled the poor man down the hall toward the bathrooms near the nurse’s station and turned to the Ferg, Lucian, and Saizarbitoria. “What happened?”
“He came out of the stairwell, and I spoke to him, but he didn’t stop, so I bumped him, and he started yelling like a mad man.”
Great. I glanced to the elder statesman. “What are you smiling about?”
Lucian responded, of course. “Well, as incapable as this outfit may look, we’re still able to scare the piss outta the local gentry.”
I shook my head, turned, and made my way back down the hallway to Henry’s room. He was at the door when I got there with the handle of the tomahawk palmed against his forearm as he leaned against the opening. I noticed that the surface of the thing absorbed light. He seemed perfectly relaxed. “False alarm?”
I was about to speak when the walkie-talkie at my belt began to vibrate.
13
I jerked my head up and looked down the hall at Ferg and Saizarbitoria as they stared from their belts to me. I searched in the other direction, but Vic had disappeared around the corner; when I got back to Henry all he said before shutting the door in my face was “Go.”