It was, of course, the mansion with the best view of the mountains.
I slid the truck into the driveway, grabbed a wool muffler that was on the seat, unclipped my handheld radio from the dash, and quasi-leapt into the drifts of snow that had collected on the concrete. I made my way to the door beside the wooden and windowed garage doors that probably cost as much as my house.
It was locked, so I pulled my Maglite out and made my way around to the back on the sidewalk that circled through the landscaping surrounded by nonindigenous, Colorado red-rock walls. The large sliding glass door was opened to a deck with light cascading from inside the house that painted stripes across the snow-covered lawn; there was a blood trail to my right.
When I got to the top of the steps, I could see where a few drops of blood had splattered across the travertine tile. There was a golf club lying on the floor, and it had blood on it as well. I stepped in the doorway with my heart palpitating like a friction motor, but there was no Geo.
Somewhere in the house I could hear someone crying, but it was muffled and distant. It was cold inside with more than a little snow blown in on the tile—I closed the door against the slamming of the wind. There was no blood on the thick carpet that led upstairs and, all in all, there was more blood on Ozzie than in the house.
I slipped my flashlight back into my duty belt. “Mrs. Dobbs?” There was no response, but the crying continued. I mounted the suspended steps that overlooked an expansive living room to the left and continued to the second door on the right. I didn’t really want to intrude on the woman, but I needed a more detailed description of what had happened.
I knocked. “Mrs. Dobbs?” I heard a shuffling, and then the sobbing stopped. “Mrs. Dobbs, it’s Walt Longmire. Can I speak to you?”
I listened as she padded to the door and turned the knob. When she saw me, she started crying afresh. “Oh, Walter . . . Oh, my God.”
I leaned down so that I could be on her eye level. “Mrs. Dobbs, where is George Stewart?”
She began really sobbing now, and her hands clutched for the lapels on my coat. “Walter, it was horrible. Ozzie Junior started screaming and George was shouting back at him and then he pushed him . . .”
I tried to get her to look me in the eye. “Mrs. Dobbs, where is Geo?”
She continued to study my duty shirt as she reconstructed. “Ozzie Junior fell, grabbed the golf club, and I swear he only swung it to warn George, but George stepped toward him and . . . and I just ran from the room.” I nudged her chin up with my hand and finally got her to look me in the face. “Walter, Ozzie killed him.”
I thought about the blood trail that I’d followed on the deck steps. “Mrs. Dobbs, did the fight take place in your kitchen?”
She caught her breath and nodded. “Yes.”
“And that’s where you left the two of them?”
“Yes.”
I nodded and tried to smile a little reassurance into her. “Well, your son is at my office, and there’s nobody down in your kitchen. In my profession, dead people tend to stay where they drop, so I think that Geo came to, noticed that nobody was around, and went home.”
“Oh, Walter, do you think so?”
“Yep, I do. Head wounds tend to bleed a lot, but there’s really not enough blood down there to indicate a serious injury.” I straightened. “But if he’s out there wandering around in this cold and snow with any kind of head wound, I have to go find him. Now, the EMTs are going to be here anytime now, and I need you to tell them to sit pat till I call in to them on my radio, okay?”
She sniffed. “Okay.”
“Why don’t you go down in the living room and wait by the front door?” I looked at her seriously. “And don’t go in the kitchen.”
She wiped her eyes with her fists. “I won’t.”
The weather had stiffened, and it was worse on the ridge above the Redhills Rancho Arroyo’s back nine, with beads of snow sandblasting horizontally and my muscles grinding together like ice floes in a wind-lashed sea.
I couldn’t pick up enough of the blood trail but found a small piece of Geo’s Carhartt flapping on the barbed wire fence where he’d climbed over. I straddled the old three-strand attached to posts so aged they looked as if they might’ve grown there, pulled the tail ends of the muffler up from where it was wrapped around my hat, and played the beam of the big flashlight across the drifts.
I could still see the boot tracks in the foot-deep snow—he hadn’t continued straight but had tacked against the wind. I twisted my hat down harder, so that the aperture between it and my scarf was like the visor on a knight’s helmet, and pressed my face against the inside of my upturned collar. My stomach growled, and I thought about the two burritos lying on Ruby’s desk; Henry had probably fed them to Dog.
I climbed the ridge and looked down at the path that skirted the junkyard/dump and saw where it ended at the back of the Stewart compound. With the abandoned vehicles and trailer houses, it reminded me of Khe Sanh in Vietnam—just a hundred degrees colder.
My radio crackled. Static. “Unit 1, we’re 10-23 at 441 Eagle Ridge.”
I plucked the radio from my belt and hit the button. “That you, Chris?”
Static. “Yeah. Mrs. Dobbs said to contact you for information about the victim.”
I ducked my head to avoid the wind. “Well, get over to George Stewart’s place by the dump and wait for me there. I’m pretty sure that’s where he’s headed.”
Static. “Roger that.”
I replaced the radio back under my coat. The trenches that Geo’s boots had made continued down the canyon edge and arced toward the house. I followed as quickly as I could, but the snow continued to scour slick under my boots and the grade became slippery. I slid a little to the side in an ungainly split and then continued my descent, second-guessing my choice of leaving Henry Standing Bear at the office.
I was about halfway down the grade when I came to a second fence and a copse of naked apple trees crouched by a smaller path that led down the edge of the ravine toward the junkyard. Buried in the hillside across from the frozen idyll was an old cellar door that must’ve been the exit from the clandestine tunnel.
The spot where it had all started with an apple and a kiss.
The drift was at least a foot and a half deep in front of the doors, and they lay there undisturbed like peeling gray gates to the underworld. I couldn’t see the boot prints any longer, so I backed up, crouched down, and panned the beam of the flashlight across the surface of the snow. The only thing I could see were the craters where my boots had broken through the hard crust of the surface. I stood there in a continual riptide of flakes that traveled quickly across the polished snow.
It was as if he’d disappeared.
I peered at the cellar opening again. It was strange, but there was a relatively new clasp and massive padlock hanging against the door, one of those locks with the rubber covering to protect it. There was nothing, though, to give any indication that he’d stood there, unlocked and opened the ancient doors or even continued in that direction. I turned the beam back toward the main pathway and caught sight of one snow-filled print that wasn’t mine. He must have turned and continued down toward the junkyard.
It was a narrow path, just wide enough for a man. There was a wooden gate about two-thirds of the way down, nothing that would keep anybody out if they were serious. The footing was worse than before, and I had to take my time but soon arrived at the level space of the old quarry in the oldest part of the lot. I could date Detroit design by the surrounding stacks of automobiles, massive, skirt-fender beasts from the bulbous forties and sleek, high-finned quarter-panels from the futuristic fifties.