Sancho came over with his clipboard.
“What’ve we got?”
“It’s up to you, boss.” He shrugged. “If it goes to the U.S. attorney or the DEA, it means we lose jurisdiction, and it goes to Casper or Cheyenne. You want to go spend a week in Casper or Cheyenne testifying?”
“Not particularly.” I knocked on the door behind me. “Ozzie, you undressed yet?”
His voice came through the door. “Um, yeah.”
“You want to hand me your dirty clothes?”
“Okay.”
The knob dutifully turned, and he handed me the wad of stained, filthy clothing. “Shoes?” After a second, they followed.
“Can I have my other clothes? It’s kind of cold in here.”
“You’ve got your bathrobe. I’ll give you the clean ones after your shower.” The door hesitated and then closed.
I threw the dirty clothes on the floor of the locker room and listened as the water in the shower stall came on. I turned back to Sancho. “So, we go local?”
“I don’t think the feds would go for that, and besides, it might be hard on the county financially.”
I attempted to be entrepreneurial. “Well, we do have a cash crop.”
He ignored me and slid the clipboard under his arm. “What’s Mister Greenjeans saying?”
“That he grew it for personal use.”
The Basquo looked around the room at the product, his dark eyes narrowing. “You’re kidding?” He shook his head in disbelief. “This is a high-profit, elevated narcotic value crop—sinsemilla.”
I had a hard-fought knowledge of drugs, but my education was full of holes. “How can you tell?”
“All female plants. I’d say Duane’s been hiding his light under a bush, so to speak. The cultivator has to be able to tell the male plants early in development and remove them, then by controlling the light regimen you hyperstimulate the female plants into producing buds.” He looked around at the jungle that surrounded us again. “Like these.”
I was pleased that a little of the old light was back in Sancho’s eyes. It was possible that I could shut down the make-believe case of the missing thumb. “So what you’re saying is that Duane’s not just a pot grower, but the Johnny Appleseed of pot growers.”
“He’s using advanced cloning techniques, root enhancement hormones, and a lot of other stuff I’ve never seen.”
The water was still on in the shower. “Ozzie, are you all right in there?”
His voice sounded over the noise in the metal stall. “Yes.”
“Well, hurry it up; we’ve only got so much hot water in the building.” I turned back to the Basquo. “You don’t think Duane’s smart enough to do this on his own, do you?”
“I don’t think he’s smart enough to tip cows.”
“How about Gina?”
He leaned on the other bathroom door facing. “Between the two of them, they might be able to tip cows. Boss, he was using high-intensity discharge lighting, industrial-grade humidifiers, ozone generators, and CO2 flow valves; there’s about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of equipment alone down in that tunnel.”
“Couldn’t he have used the profits from an earlier crop to purchase all this stuff?”
He plucked the clipboard from under his arm, took a manila envelope from it, and handed it to me. “Receipts for all the equipment from a botanical supply company in Miami—all bought at the same time, six months ago.”
“Why in the world would he keep the receipts for the equipment?”
“They were hanging on the wall in the tunnel along with the warranties, all of them registered.”
“You’re joking.”
“Nope, I guess he figured if something went wrong with the equipment . . .”
I pulled a few of the slips out and looked at the dates. “You think somebody fronted the entire operation?”
“It sure looks like it.”
The water continued to run in the bathroom, and I knocked on the door. “Ozzie?”
It took a moment, but he responded. “Yes?”
“Hustle it up.”
I worked my way through the receipts. “I had a nice visit with your wife and Antonio yesterday.” I tried to make it as innocent a statement as I could, so I added, “We had tea.”
He studied the concrete floor. “I should have warned you—she likes tea.”
“Hmm.” I stood there listening to Ozzie’s shower.
“I don’t think my son likes me.”
Once again, he didn’t use the boy’s name, but it was an opening that I wasn’t about to let pass. “Why is that?”
“He cries whenever I’m around.”
I stuffed the receipts back in the envelope. “I wouldn’t take it too seriously; babies are odd that way and pick up all kinds of anxiety from their parents. A lot of times a stranger can hold them, and they just stop crying. Maybe it’s because it’s someone different, and they can sense that there are no expectations; I don’t know. I’m not sure sometimes if my daughter likes me, and she’s in her late twenties.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything.
“I offered you a raise.”
He looked up. “Through Marie?”
“Yep.”
“How much?”
“Another two thousand a year.”
He didn’t seem all that impressed. “What’d she say?”
I allowed myself a smile. “She said she didn’t do your thinking for you.” He laughed at that, and it was nice to see the old Sancho. I extended an arm and knocked again. “Ozzie?”
No answer. The Basquo and I exchanged a look. “Ozzie?”
I turned the knob and swung the door wide to reveal an empty bathroom with the water still running in the shower and the tiny bathroom window open to the outside. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
9
It was the first time I’d put out an APB on a hundred-and-twenty-five-pound barefoot man dressed in a bathrobe.
“You know, I leave you two alone for five fucking minutes . . .” Vic was giving us a tongue-lashing as we hustled through the reception area. She snatched our radios from the charging station beside Ruby’s desk and handed them around.
Ruby turned in her chair and looked at us with her phone receiver in hand. “Mrs. Dobbs wants to know if those clothes were the ones that Ozzie wanted?”
I waved her off and continued down the steps with my two deputies flanking each side. “Tell her we’ll get back to her.”
We blew through the doors and into a black glass wall of snow. I looked at the time and temperature on the Durant Federal sign across the street and noticed we’d warmed up to three degrees and that it was 4:45. He couldn’t have gone far barefoot.
We circled to the right and the open window. We hadn’t bothered with bars since it was so small and high up and because I was practically the only one who used the shower.
“How in the hell did he get through that?”
I shot a look at her. “Determination.” There was a wallowed-out spot in the snow where Ozzie had landed and a clear set of footprints leading diagonally across the lawn toward the back door of the courthouse.
The assessor’s office was immediately to the right with a recessed room for their maps, and there were two sets of stairs that led to the courtroom above, one to the right and one to the left. The county clerk’s office was down the hall, and the treasurer’s counter was opposite to the right with a set of glass doors leading out to Main Street.
I looked up the steps. “If I was running around town with no shoes, a bathrobe, and a constitution like a hummingbird, I might stay inside, but that’s just me.”
Saizarbitoria leapt up the staircase and in a second was gone. Vic disappeared into the maze of the assessor’s rooms, and I continued down the hall to the long counter in front of the treasurer’s office. There were lots of mimeographed slogans and pithy remarks taped to the wall—IF YOUDON’T LIKE THE SERVICE, LEAVE, or, PROCRASTINATION ON YOUR PART DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A PANIC ON OURS. The signs were exemplary of the Absaroka County Tax Mob’s attitudes toward uncivil service.