“For a drive.”
“A drive the fuck where?”
“You’re going to show me a grave.”
“Whose grave?”
“Pinto Escondido’s grave.”
They drove west into the rising night, across miles of rolling flatland, following two narrow ruts worn into the hide of the earth itself. In the far west the Rockies were a towering wall of peaks, black against the evening sky. The pickup pitched and bounced across the plains. In the space behind the front seat Irene sat quietly, staring hungrily at the back of Wilson Horsecoat’s head. Horsecoat sat slumped against the passenger door, unsuccessfully affecting disdain and contempt, his left knee jumping rapidly.
Dalton pulled out his cell phone, dialed Sally Fordyce.
“Micah? Where are you?”
“Colorado. I need you to run a serial number for me.”
“Sure. Hold on… okay. Let me have it.”
Dalton lifted the Ruger up and read the maker’s markings off the slide, and the serial numbers under it. Horsecoat was staring at him, his face bony and frightened.
“Okay. Got it. It’s out of our armory at Alexandria. Suppressed Ruger Mark 2. Issued to… Agent Milo Tillman. Requisition franked by Bob Cole. Tillman’s unit commander. Both men marked deceased. Weapon lost in ’ninety-seven. Never recovered.”
“When was it issued?”
“Let’s see… September seventeenth, 1994.”
“Thank you, Sally.”
“You’re welcome. What are you doing in Colorado?”
“Hunting,” he said, and he closed the phone.
“Was that about me?” asked Horsecoat. “What did they say?”
Dalton stared out at the oncoming grassland and said nothing. Hard dry grasses whisked and rustled along the underbody of the truck, and out here away from the town the air was cool and clean and smelled of sweetgrass. Wilson Horsecoat smelled strongly of fear. After a few miles, as Dalton expected, Horsecoat had to speak, if only to find some comfort in the sound of his own quavering voice.
“Come on, man. What’s this all about, anyway?”
Dalton said nothing.
“You can’t do this, you know. I got rights.”
Nothing.
“Man, you know, you’re so totally fucked, man.”
Nothing.
“You don’t know who’s coming for you, do you? I got heavy people on my side, man. Hard guys. You think you’re a hard guy? You’re a fuckin’ pussy.”
“How far?”
“How far to what?”
“Pinto’s grave.”
“It’s just up there, by the Little Apishapa. See it?”
Dalton stared out at the plains, into the cones of his headlights. There was a low rocky mound a thousand yards out. Some sort of pole had been stuck into it, and a scrap of cloth flickered in the wind. Irene began to whimper. Dalton turned to stroke her flat blade-shaped head. She was shaking now and her nose was working, her nostrils wide, breathing in, her broad chest heaving, her eyes wide.
“What’s with the bitch?” asked Horsecoat.
“She smells something.”
“Fuck yeah,” he said, with a honking snigger. “Fucking corpse, man. Guts bubbling. Worms crawling. Eyeballs rotting. That’s what that cunt-dog is smelling.”
They reached the mound in a few minutes. By now Irene was trembling violently and her mouth was wide open, her pink tongue working. Dalton brought the truck to a halt a few yards from a mound of river rocks about five feet high and eight feet long. A pole had been driven into the top of the mound and a small flag, red, carrying the crest of the United States Marine Corps, shredded by the endless prairie winds, fluttered and snapped at the top. As he opened the driver’s door Irene scrambled out of the cargo space and vaulted out of the truck. She raced across the sweetgrass and clambered up onto the rock pile, her head low, snuffling and growling. Out in the darkness a coyote yipped. Bats flicked and whipped in the sky, small fleeting patches of utter black against a glowing field of countless stars.
Horsecoat got out of the pickup and came around to within a few feet of Dalton, staring at the mound, watching Irene as she padded up and down the mound, whimpering, scratching.
“What’s with your dog?”
“She’s not my dog.”
“Whose dog is she?” he finally asked.
“She belongs to the man in that grave. Moot Gibson.”
Horsecoat’s body tensed and he said nothing for a time. “Yeah?” he said, defiantly. “And who’s Moot Gibson when he’s at home?”
Dalton looked at the skinny young man, his hands shoved into his back pockets, his face shiny with sweat. Irene stopped moving, sat back on her haunches, lifted her muzzle to the stars, and began to howl. The skirling, soaring wail rose up and echoed across the plains. The far-off coyote stopped yipping and the bats fluttered away.
Irene, settling deep into her grief, howled and howled.
“Shut her up, will you. Cunt-dog’s giving me the creeps.”
“You talk like that again and I’ll knock you down.”
They stood there, listening to Irene, for a long while, and then Horsecoat shook his head.
“Can I say something?”
“If it’s polite.”
“You’re CIA, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you here for Pinto?”
“You told the Colorado state cops that Pinto was dead.”
More silence, while Horsecoat tried to work out a way of dealing with his present situation; although barely twenty-seven, he’d had years of practice in the deceitful arts, honing his manipulative powers on a succession of band counselors and social workers and youth justice advocates and probation officers, and although he wasn’t brave he had a lot of low cunning, which is sometimes a lot more useful, at least in the short run.
“That true, what you said about the Ruger?”
“Yes.”
“I can go to death row just for having it?”
“Absolutely. And I will personally guarantee it.”
“Did a guy really get shot in the head a couple a days ago?”
“Yes. With this gun.”
“But I didn’t have it a couple days ago. I loaned it to a friend.”
“What friend?”
“What’s in it for me if I talk to you?”
“I won’t kill you.”
Some sort of sly internal voice persuaded Wilson Horsecoat that now was the right time to show Dalton a little ’tude, a touch of moxie.
Horsecoat was poorly advised.
“Hey! Lick my dick, you fag. You can’t do nothing to me.”
Dalton looked at him, at the young man’s bony underfed body, his thin pretense of street fighter’s toughness. He backhanded the boy across the cheekbone, knocking him backward into the sweetgrass.
He scrambled to his feet and backed away from Dalton.
“I told you not to swear,” said Dalton, his tone gentle.
“Are you nuts? Do you wanna die?” he said, his voice breaking, his round eyes showing white. “I’m not the problem. It’s not me. It’s Pinto. He’s the problem. I talk to you, Pinto will come for me.”
“Pinto’s not here. I am. Why did you kill Moot Gibson?”
“I didn’t. Pinto did it.”
“Why?”
Dalton watched while the young man worked out the angles, the desperation clear in his pale wet face. There had to be a way to handle this, he was thinking, some way to get around it. He looked at Dalton’s stony face, his cold hard stare, and saw nothing there but sudden death. It was either die now or maybe die later, and maybe dead later was way better than certainly dead here and now. Hell, it really didn’t matter what he told this mean-tempered son of a bitch, because Pinto was going to gut and flay the guy before first light no matter what happened here. The idea here is stay alive, keep the guy talking, and shuffle the deck. He shrugged, wiped his face with both hands.