I brought my head around and could see the stocking feet of Felix Polk shudder, lie still, and then twitch.
When I looked up, Sancho was standing at the open door with his semiautomatic pointed at the large man who now lay on the floor. Santiago also shook, and he looked as white as I’d ever seen him. “He had a gun.”
I stared at my deputy, then lurched up and crouched over Polk with a pair of fingers at his throat. There was no pulse, but his lips trembled and blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. His eyes stared at the ceiling. Center shot; the man had been dead before he hit the ground.
I looked at his hands and at the floor around him but could see nothing there. I looked back up at Saizarbitoria. “Sancho, there’s no . . .”
He was on the verge of hysteria. “There was a gun!”
I stood and turned to make sure the .38 was still on the kitchen table. The Basquo watched me. “Not that one. Another one.” His voice came from behind me. “It was lying on top of the hot water heater in a cabinet in the bathroom. That’s why I circled back.”
I searched the floor where Polk’s blood was lining the tongue-and-groove planking like pinstripes. A postmortem gasp gurgled in the back of his throat as the pressure of his lungs sought to equalize with the air in the room.
I looked away and saw that just under the corner of the refrigerator was the wooden knob of the butt-end of the magazine—9mm Luger.
14
I watched him from the hospital reception desk.
The weather had followed us down the mountain and had settled over the town. It was still morning, but the snow had stifled Durant, and even the hospital seemed empty. If it hadn’t been for the most recent of miseries, it would’ve been a lovely way for Sancho to end the week—to go home and sit by the fire with Marie and play with Antonio.
He was sitting in the waiting area, his profile sharpened by the snow that cemented itself to the outside of the glass with enough force to make the casings groan. I couldn’t help but think that he was feeling like the window—thin, transparent, and liable to break.
“Yep.” I kept my voice down as I spoke into the phone. “But we need that file after all. The situation’s changed.”
There was some noise in the background, and it sounded like Sheriff Montgomery was reconnoitering his thoughts. “He’s been a bad boy?”
“Yep.”
“You think he’s a flight risk?”
I glanced up at the Basquo. “Not anymore.”
He hadn’t caught my tone. “Because we can arrange a warrant and have him brought back to Texas if you don’t feel like dealing with this character.”
“We’d have to ship him freight.”
It was quiet in the Lone Star State. “Oh.” He cleared his throat and sighed. “I’ll head over to the records building today and supervise getting those files personally but no guarantees.”
“I’d consider that a favor.”
I handed the receiver back to Janine, and she stared up at me with that look you sometimes get from people, even people close to you, that reminds you of just how far the distance is between you and them. Our society, our culture, and our humanity depend on never crossing certain lines, and here we were, slipping back and forth as if they didn’t even exist.
She fumbled with the phone, and I gave her a quick smile as I retreated across the carpeted area to Santiago. He was leaning back in the chair, slumped down with his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, his dark eyes focused on the hand that had shot Polk.
I thought about the connection between Ozzie Dobbs and Felix Polk and what it was that could’ve been worth both their lives. It had to do with the marijuana. If Ozzie was providing the bankroll, then perhaps Polk was providing the know-how. We’d have to check the ballistics on the bullet that killed Ozzie, but I was relatively sure that we had our man.
I needed to talk to sharecropper Duane.
When I glanced back up, the Basquo was looking at me. “How are you doing, boss?”
“Happy to be alive.” He didn’t answer but went back to studying his hand. “How about you?”
He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, allowing only a fraction of the tension to leave his body. “Tired.”
He looked it.
“Hey?” The eyes came back to me. “You killed a murderer, and you saved my life—that’s a good thing.”
“Yeah.”
“Of course, I’m biased.”
That got a smile.“I should go home.”
“Yep, you should.” We sat there in the smothering silence of the snow and our thoughts.
“I’m not sure if I have the energy.”
“Well then, why don’t you take a little more time.” I stuck out a hand and gripped his. “You want me to call Marie and tell her everything’s all right?”
“She doesn’t know anything’s wrong.”
I nodded and thought about just how much drama had taken place in such a small amount of time. “Is there anything I can get you?”
His voice was brittle. “I could use a glass of water.”
I patted his hand and then immediately felt like a fool for doing it. “I’ll get it for you.”
I filled the paper cup Janine gave me, and when I came out of the bathroom Isaac Bloomfield was waiting. “Changing of the guard?”
“I understand you were Maced last night?”
“Pepper spray.”
He stood up on tiptoes to examine my face. “Your eye looks irritated.”
“Pretty much all of me is irritated lately.”
The Doc looked around the corner and down the hallway. “I’m assuming you want to know about the Lorme woman?”
“I do.”
“She was beaten up pretty badly, and she’s suffering from exposure. Where did you say she was?”
“In the pump house of his cabin, farther up the canyon and down by the stream.”
The Doc shook his head. “She’s going to be all right, but I was thinking of sedating her. I know you wanted to speak with her and thought this might be a good time.” He rubbed his long nose. “Then there’s the dead one.”
“What about him?”
“I’m doing the preparatory phase of the postmortem to save that young man from Billings a little time, and I think you might want to have a look at the late Mr. Polk.”
“Oh, now, why don’t I like the sound of that?” How many times had I said that lately?
“When you’re through with Ms. Lorme, I’m in room 31.”
“The much vaunted room 31.”
When I got back to the waiting room, Saizarbitoria was sleeping what looked like peacefully on the sofa. I put the water on a nearby table and fetched a pillow and blanket from the linen closet around the corner; I tried not to dwell on how intimate I was with the workings of Durant Memorial Hospital’s emergency wing.
I didn’t want to disturb the Basquo so I put the pillow beside him and covered him up with the blanket. I stood and looked out the windows; the visibility had dropped to the point where I was starting to question whether my eye was getting worse or whether it was that I just didn’t want to see anymore.
“So, you’d never seen him before last night?”
“No.”
“Never at the bar?”
She was shaking her head before I’d finished the question. “No.”
“Did he say anything while you were with him? Anything that might help us figure this out? Anything at all?”
Carla bore more than a passing resemblance to her younger sister, and Claudia enhanced the kinship by sitting on the chair at her bedside. “He made a phone call while I was tied up in the car.”
“With a cell phone?”
“No, it was at a pay phone.”
I moved a little closer and sat on the foot of her bed. There was a large bruise running the distance from her jaw line to her temple, a terrific split at her lower lip, and the marks on her wrists where he’d used zip cords. “Where?”