“You gotta watch ’em in the cold like that, it’ll kill ’em.”
“I’m sorry to say, but for our purposes it doesn’t matter if the plants are dead or alive.” I pulled a folding chair over and sat on my good cheek. “Duane, I hate to add to your miseries, but I need to ask you some questions. Depending on whether I’m satisfied with your answers, I can either charge you here in county, hand you over to DCI, or to the Feds, who are not likely to let you off with a stint picking up trash along the side of the roads in an orange jumpsuit.”
He continued to study the concrete floor and then mumbled a response. “Yunh-huh.”
Vic returned and leaned against the wall. I looked back at Duane. “Whose idea was the marijuana?”
“Mine.”
I shot a glance at Vic, who rolled her eyes, and waited a moment. “You’re sure?”
“Yunh-huh.”
“Duane, do you know what the sentencing guidelines are for this kind of distribution activity?”
“I wasn’t distributin’ it.”
I took my hat off and held it between my knees by the brim. “My deputy, Mr. Saizarbitoria, spoke with the Powder River Co-Op folks earlier this morning after we did a little trash pull out at your place, and they said your electric bill for the last six months has been over seven hundred and fifty dollars a month.” I took a deep breath and tried to explain the hopelessness of his situation. “Duane, possession with intention to distribute is not a specific intent crime—the quantity alone proves intent to deliver. The state of Wyoming doesn’t need to prove specific intent with this amount of marijuana; knowingly possessing this quantity is a prima facie case.”
He looked at me blankly. “We use a lot of electricity, watching TV and stuff.”
Vic suppressed a guffaw as I continued. “Duane, I’m afraid there isn’t a court in the land that would believe that even two Olympic-grade hopheads such as you and Gina could possibly smoke that much dope.”
“Gina don’t smoke it, jus’ me.”
I dropped my hat for dramatic effect. “Duane, I like you, and I want you to listen very carefully to what I say next—I don’t want you to be guilty of all this stuff alone.”
Vic stepped from the wall and trailed an arm onto the bars. “Let me tell you, shitbird, I have heard some really lame-ass alibis in my life, but saying that you personally rocked the ganja to the tune of this much gear per annum is the worst alibi I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s true.”
“It fucking sucks.”
He started looking like he might cry. “It’s true.”
“It.” She repeated. “Fucking. Sucks.”
I retrieved my hat and stood, smiling at the young man to give him a little reassurance. “I’ve got a couple of other things to attend to, Duane, but then I’m going to come back and you and I are going to have another conversation, a conversation where you’re not so completely guilty. Okay?”
He gathered a little fortitude and smiled back. “Okay.”
Vic joined me as I walked around the corner, past the two Polaroids of our guests that we used to remind the staff that we actually had somebody in the holding cells. She studied me. “Business is picking up.”
“Yep.”
We turned the corner and looked in on Ozzie Dobbs Jr., who was still in his bloody clothes and was standing by the bars with his face pressed between them. “How’s it going, Ozzie?”
“I want to press charges.”
I nodded. “You were pretty upset about killing Geo last night.”
“Yeah, but now that he’s okay, I want to press charges.”
It appeared that last night’s repentance was limited. “What leads you to believe that he’s okay?”
Ozzie Dobbs was the perfect picture of someone who had just had the bottom dropped out from beneath him. “He’s not?”
“He died last night, Ozzie. He tried to make it back home in the snow and had a heart attack. Now we’re not sure if it was the beating, the exertion, or something else—but Geo Stewart is dead.” I stepped over to our little kitchenette and pulled a mug from the stack and turned it over. “You want a cup of coffee, Ozzie?”
He blinked and then looked at the two of us. “You guys are kidding, right?”
I stood there for a moment, wondering if more coffee was really going to help. “Not about the coffee I’m not.”
He swallowed and nodded his head quickly. “I would love a cup of coffee.”
I turned over another for myself and looked at Vic, who shook her head. I poured myself a cup and then one for him; I was guessing, but he didn’t stop me from adding cream and sugar. I handed it through the bars, and he took it like a serum. “Geo’s dead?”
“Yep.”
“Oh, God.”
I leaned against the bars and couldn’t help but reassure the man. “If it makes you feel any better, and I’m breaking a number of laws myself by saying this, the beating may have been an aggravating factor, but I don’t think you killed him.”
He crossed back to the bunk and sat without looking at me. “You’re just saying that to make . . .”
“No, I’m not. Now, I don’t know how current you are on the situation with the Stewart family and your own, but I’m going to need some answers from you about everything that you might know.”
He stared at the floor and then slumped with resignation. “I’ll tell you everything I know, but can I get a shower? I’m worried that all this blood might be giving me AIDS.”
I stared at him. “You weren’t all that concerned last night, when you took the time to finish off a fifth of tequila.”
“I wasn’t in my right mind then.”
Vic’s eyes narrowed, and the iridescence was like a solar flare. “No shit, little beaver.”
“Put your mind at rest, Ozzie. If Geo was HIV-positive, Doc Bloomfield would’ve told us by now.” He didn’t say anything more, and I figured after all he’d been through that it was the least I could do for him. “But, I’ll get you downstairs for a shower.”
Vic pushed off the counter and started toward the hallway. “If you can get through there without a machete; the basement looks like the Jamaican Botanical Gardens.”
“Sancho says it’s British Columbia Bud.”
“Whatever.”
Ozzie’s voice carried after us. “Hey, Walt, can you ask my mother to bring me some clean clothes?”
When I got to the hallway outside my office, Vic was waiting for me on the other side of my open doorway. “Mrs. Dobbs already came by with his things, but she doesn’t want to see him.”
“Great, we’ll just round up all the idiots and send the whole damn bunch off to Rawlins.” I sounded a little fed up, even to me, and then noticed the odd expression on Vic’s face. “What?”
She nodded to the open doorway between us. “Um . . . She’s here. In your office. Right now.”
I tried to exude an aura of blustering professionalism as I entered, tossed my hat onto my desk, and pulled out my chair.
“Hello, Mrs. Dobbs.”
She’d made herself at home and taken off her coat, the shopping bag with her son’s clothes sitting on the corner of my desk. “I suppose I’m one of the idiots you’re wanting to send off to Rawlins.”
I sat and looked at her. “Not specifically. I hear you don’t want to see Ozzie, but I think he needs your support right now.”
“Walter, this was a completely unprovoked attack, and a man I cared a great deal for is dead.”
“This is your son we’re talking about.”
She sighed audibly through her nose. “All the more reason.”
I thought about the emotional linchpin that the entire episode hung upon and figured that if I could get her to focus maybe we could avoid all of this. “Mrs. Dobbs, is this the first time that your son has found out about . . . I mean, known for sure that you . . . ?” I waited for her to provide the rest so that I wouldn’t have to come across with a more palatable version of shtupping the junkman.