“Okay. Why not? Pinto needed the guy’s life. He needed to be Moot Gibson. So he could move around and do what he had to do. Pinto’s an ex-con, got no passport. Gibson had all of that. They were about the same size, and Gibson had real tanned skin, wore his hair long, dressed like a Wannabe Indian, so Pinto killed him. Made it look like a suicide. Out there in that pickup. Windows open so the crows would fuck him up. Me and Ida told the cops it was Pinto’s body. We had to, or he’d have killed us.”
“Pinto had a passport with Gibson’s name on it. How?”
“Pinto knows guys from when he was in Deer Lodge. Guys in that business. They also give him a Wyoming driver’s license. He and Gibson looked a lot alike anyway, same build, same size.”
“And the money? Where does all his money come from?”
“The church. Our church. Pinto… Pinto is a priest. A roadman, for our church.”
“What church?”
“Goyathlay’s Throat.”
“Goyathlay was Bedonkohe Apache. You’re Comanche.”
“Yeah, but now we’re all part of the same church, all of us, Kiowa, Apache, Comanche. We all serve Goyathlay, who speaks through Peyote himself. Pinto is the new voice of Goyathlay. Pinto made a new way of calling Peyote. Instead of mescal buttons he had something new — datura root, also crystal meth, and this plant called salvia. Pinto used to run a meth lab over in Colorado before the DEA got on to him, and he studied on ways to make Peyote stronger. He found a whole new Peyote to preach with. So the word got around and our church grew. People began to come from everywhere, and Pinto charged a lot for the ceremony. I helped. We made good money.”
“How?”
“People will pay a lot to talk with Peyote. Also from their confessions, when they see the god Peyote. Some people talk too much when Peyote is in their hearts. Pinto listens. Later, he tells them that the way to atone for the really bad sins is to give their money to our church. If they don’t give the money, Pinto says that Peyote will come to the sinner’s family, Peyote will tell the family what he did. If their sins are bad enough, the sinners will always pay.”
“What does this have to do with Moot Gibson?”
“Like I said, Gibson was a white man who wanted to be a Comanche. He came down here six months ago, from up in Wyoming, he was angry with the U.S. government, they took away his horse farm, whatever, and he wanted to find out how to have magic power against them. He had heard about Goyathlay’s Throat from some Apaches out in New Mexico, and he came here to see about being a part of a sing. Pinto let Gibson into a sing. They shared the new god Peyote. I don’t know exactly what happened, but Gibson said something during the telling of sins, and Pinto went totally nuts.”
“What did he do?”
“He took Gibson out to a hut near here, doped him up, real nice and respectful, got him to talk all about what his sins were — Gibson was like you, he was CIA. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Pinto told me later that Gibson had killed his little sister Jewel and his niece Amber. Down on Interstate 25, maybe ten years ago, back in ninety-seven, they were trying to kill someone else — another Comanche, a woman named Consuelo Goliad. Anyway, Pinto got it all out of Gibson: who the other guys were, where they lived, all except the guy who went into the Jeep and broke her neck. Gibson called him ‘the man in the long blue coat.’ Swore he didn’t know the man’s real name. Said he was called ‘Cicero.’ Like a code name. Cicero. Gibson told Pinto that only Goliad was supposed to die, but things went haywire.
“Did Gibson name the man who was running the operation?”
“Somebody named Cole. Bob Cole. Something like that.”
“And who was the actual killer? The man in the long blue coat?”
“Cicero was all he could get out of Gibson. Gibson never knew his real name. He wasn’t a full-time member of their unit. Gibson called him ‘the parachute pro.’ Said he wasn’t needed. Pinto talked him into trying to find out Cicero’s real name, said that he couldn’t be pure and find his spirit power unless he atoned for all of his sins.”
“When was this?”
“Maybe three months ago. Man, by that time, Gibson was a real head case. Pinto dosed him up almost every day while he was getting the story out of him. Pinto can be real nice, talk low and soft, he can make you think he’s a sweet guy, but he is not a nice guy.”
“Did Gibson find out who the inside guy was? The man in the long blue coat?”
Horsecoat shook his head, lifted his palms. “No. And Pinto pushed him hard. Even when he was talking to Peyote himself, the guy had no idea. Pinto told him that there would be no forgiveness without atonement, and that could only happen when all the people who helped to kill Amber and Jewel were dead. But Gibson couldn’t find out. He tried. Gone for days. But there was no way.”
“That’s not true. The man in the long blue coat is dead.”
“I know. Pinto told me. Pinto went to England to find him.”
“But you don’t know how Pinto got Cicero’s real name?”
“No. Maybe it was something in the wreck?”
“What wreck?”
“There’s a big old Suburban down by the Apishapa. Been there for fucking years. Black. Has a corpse in it. That’s where I found the Ruger, man. Honest. I didn’t know it was illegal. I found it in the wreck.”
“You found the wreck? Not Pinto?”
“No. I found it. I showed it to him later.”
Dalton gave the man a long hard look and decided he was telling the truth. It made no sense, but it had the ring of truth.
“Okay. Where do I find Pinto?”
Horsecoat laughed, a strangled, mirthless rattle in a tight throat.
“Find Pinto? Pinto’ll find you, man. He’ll find us both.”
“Where’s this wrecked Suburban?”
“Like I said. Down there by the Apishapa. About a mile.”
“Show me.”
Irene wouldn’t leave Moot Gibson’s grave. When Dalton tried to take her by the collar, she bared her teeth at him, so Dalton left her there. It was deep-blue dark under a sky full of stars by the time they reached the dry wash of the Little Apishapa, a broad gully worn out of the grassland by the meandering course of the creek.
He stopped the pickup truck at the edge of a drop-off and they got out, Horsecoat walking a little ahead. A low line of sorrel and sage marked the edge of the arroyo. Horsecoat stopped there and looked back at Dalton, his eyes glittering in the glare of Dalton’s flashlight. He extended his arm and pointed down.
“It’s down there. Been there for ten years.”
Dalton shone the beam downward into the darkness. The under-carriage of a large SUV, rusted and scaled, four tires coated in mud, part of a side panel that had once been black.
“You first.”
Horsecoat led them as they slipped and slid down the bank, holding on to shrubs and skidding on their boot heels. Dalton came up hard against the rusted side of the Suburban. The ground was littered with broken glass, scraps of faded blue cloth, pieces of bone.
Dalton shone the flashlight beam into the interior of the truck. The skeleton of a large man was hanging upside down in the overturned truck, still strapped in. The skull had dropped off the verte-brae long ago, to be carried away by some large animal, and the torso had been attacked by crows and other foragers. Dalton looked at the rags and bones still suspended from the ceiling and knew that he was looking at the remains of Milo Tillman. He pulled his head out of the truck and stood there, looking at the wreck, while Horsecoat slouched against the bank. Did Milo Tillman get lost while going cross-country to avoid the cops? Did he just blunder into this arroyo and die here?