Dry Bones: A Walt Longmire Mystery (17 page)

The manager, Dan Crawford, pulled up and raised a fist. “Save Jen!”

I returned the salute; this stuff was wearing me out. “First name Jennifer, works out at the High Plains Dinosaur Museum.”

He continued nodding. “She was in here when we opened this morning at six. I thought it was kind of strange in that most people aren’t usually in that big of a hurry to buy groceries.” He motioned toward the youth. “Taylor was here and spoke with her a long time, as I recall.”

We all turned toward him, and he looked pretty unsettled. “Toilet paper—she bought a lot of toilet paper.”

I avoided Lucian’s eye.

 • • • 

“It’s a large county.”

Dino-Dave leaned forward and looked at the map unfolded on the hood of my truck, the fuzzy edges of where it was folded betraying its age and use. “I’d imagine you want to concentrate on the areas where we’ve had digs, the places she’d be most acquainted with?”

The breeze was picking up, and the tail end of the storm that had hit us the day before was subsiding only to kick up its heels a little at the end. I glanced back at the vague shimmer of platinum light that was being swallowed by the mountains, and began wondering if it really was over. “Exactly what I was thinking.”

“There’s the dig on the northern part of the county that’s associated with the University of Montana.” He pointed to a different area on the map. “This one is south, down near Powder Junction on property owned by the University of Wyoming in that red Hole-in-the-Wall country.” He stood up straight. “If I was looking to get away from everyone . . .” He glanced at McGroder, his arm hanging over my side-view mirror. “. . . you know, till things cooled down, that’s where I’d go.”

Lucian added his two cents’ worth. “Hell, it’s where Butch and Sundance holed up.”

I noticed Dave didn’t mention the site where Jen had been discovered. “Why not the Lone Elk place?”

“That’s a working ranch—there are people on it.” He pointed back at the map and the site farther south, tapping it with a nail. “That’s where I’d be.”

“Yep, but is that where you would be if you were Jennifer?”

He looked up. “Well, you have a point; she does have a connection to Jen.” He glanced at me. “The tyrannosaur, I mean.”

“Right.”

“She found it, after all.”

I thought about the overhang where we’d taken cover until the flash flood had flushed us out. “Has she ever gone down there and stayed?”

He nodded, thoughtful. “Well, we practically lived down there when we were working the dig, but with the animosity that Randy and his family have shown lately, I find it hard to believe that she would be back down there.”

A niggling feeling was working at the back of the reptile stem in my brain, the part of me that was closest in lineage to Jen, the tyrannosaur. “Give me those exact coordinates, and I’ll have Saizarbitoria use a GPS to find this spot and we’ll go ahead down to the Lone Elk place.”

I noticed the acting deputy attorney standing to the side of my truck and looking none too patient. “Sheriff, if I might? I need a word.”

“Make it a short one—I’ve got a missing woman on my hands and a little over four thousand square miles in which to look for her.”

He stepped closer and looked up at me with a severe expression. “You missed the press conference.”

“Excuse me?”

“The national outlet press conference I arranged.”

“I’m not aware of having said that I would be there, Mr. Trost.” I thought about the conversation I’d had with Joe Meyer and attempted to suppress my temper. “I’m sure you’ll understand when I say that the importance of a missing woman supersedes any obligations I might have to you.”

“Some random woman.”

I stared at him. “Excuse me?”

“This is some random woman who’s missing?”

I stood there for a moment more and then began folding my map. “Not that it matters in the random scope of things, but the woman happens to be Jennifer Watt, the paleontologist who discovered Jen, the fossil remains that are the centerpiece of your investigation.”

He was held in check by this information for a moment and then turned to McGroder. “Why was I not told this?”

The special agent frowned. “Um, because we just found out about it.”

He turned back to me. “The press conference was embarrassing.”

I stuffed the map in the interior pocket of my jacket, nodded, and started for the door of my truck. “I know that; I’ve been to your press conferences before.”

 • • • 

Lucian fumbled with his pipe and tobacco bag but then remembered he was forbidden to smoke in my truck. “Who was that asshole?”

“Somebody I’m supposed to be nice to.”

He nodded. “Well, you’re doin’ a hell of a job.”

Henry leaned up between the seats. “Why are you thinking the Lone Elk Ranch?”

I navigated the truck off of the main road and headed out of town south by southeast. “Because, when you hauled us out of that overhang in that back-door canyon, I noticed there were the remains of a campfire, and it looked like someone had done some work to make the place habitable.” I wheeled off the road and slowed my acceleration. “In all the excitement of potentially drowning, I kind of forgot about it.”

The Bear’s eyes went to the windshield and the clouds, tinged mercury of all things, swelling above the hills of the high plains. “You are thinking that she is staying out there periodically?”

“Somebody is.”

“Or you think that whoever it is that is impersonating Danny might be living out here?”

“That’s a theory. All I know is that somebody’s staying out here and we’re looking for somebody who we’re assuming wants to stay out of sight, so whether it’s her or somebody else, maybe we can get some answers.”

We discussed the finer points of the investigation until I slowed and pulled up to the gate that led to the dig and stopped.

Lucian looked between the two of us. “Well, why are we sitting here?”

I gestured ahead. “Somebody has to open the gate.”

The old sheriff looked at the Bear, who made no attempt to get out, and then back at me. “You two sons-a-bitches are gonna make the one-legged man open the thing?”

Neither of us said anything.

“I’ll be damned.” He pulled the handle and climbed out, taking his cane with him and slamming the door. “I would like to point out that I almost died and was in the hospital no more than a day ago.”

“I am assuming there is a reason you wanted to get rid of him?”

“McGroder made some calls, and he says that Tomás Bidarte is in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.”

He nodded his head and then became motionless, like a hunter in a blind. “Should I be looking for my passport?”

We watched as Lucian made a show of opening the gate and dragging it aside, ever so slowly. “Nope, I’m sticking to my guns. I just wanted you to know.” I pulled the truck forward and stopped, watching the old sheriff through the rearview mirror. “We could leave him, but he’d probably shoot at us.”

As Lucian hobbled closer, Henry got out of the truck and held the door for him, a chivalrous act that I didn’t quite understand until he let Dog out with him and then closed the door.

Lucian rolled down the window, looked at him, and then at Dog. “Where the hell are you and Rin Tin Tin going?”

The Bear ignored him and looked around on the broken turf, grass, and sagebrush. “The ground is still wet, and there are tracks where someone has driven in here recently.”

I rose up and looked, and indeed, there were tire tracks going through the gate and veering to the right. He kneeled down and looked in the direction of the tread marks. My eyes played over the area where we’d parked and been shot at before. “That’s not in the direction of the site.”

He stood and started walking toward the hills the other way with Dog in tow. “No, and more important . . .” He raised a hand and pointed toward a plume of dirty smoke that was spiraling up from the other side of the ridge. “. . . that is more smoke than a campfire would make.”

“That ain’t smoke signals.” Lucian inclined his head toward the darkening sky as the Cheyenne Nation and Dog took off at a good pace, and then turned to look at me. “That’s a vehicle fire.”

I pulled the truck down into gear and gassed it in an attempt to keep up with Henry and Dog, who were able to take a more direct route over the rock ledges.

Lucian gripped the dash and braced his good leg against the transmission hump in an attempt to stay upright. “Damn, this is rough country.”

“Why would you drive out here?”

He shrugged. “To escape a speeding subpoena.”

As we pulled around the edge of the ridge and started toward the source of the smoke, I could see tracks where the van must’ve been intentionally driven off one of the cliffs into the canyon. “Oh, no.”

Staying to the right I was able to park pretty close and watched as Henry and Dog stopped at the edge to look down and then disappear over the brink.

Throwing the door open, I followed and could see the old Chevrolet, billowing in flames, lodged in the rocks below with the driver’s-side door hanging open. I scrambled after Henry and Dog and then fell on my butt and slid down a scrabble heap.

The heat from the fire was tremendous, but the majority of the flames were toward the front of the vehicle, making it unlikely that the tank had blown.

Veteran of numerous vehicle fires, I was aware that the majority of them aren’t like the ones in the movies; in actuality, the tank melts and then the proper mix of fuel and air combusts since it’s the vapors that burn and not the liquid. When they go, an exploding gas tank is more like a flash, not making it, at close range, any less dramatic or dangerous.

I yelled at the Bear as he tried to get closer to the open door. “Henry, don’t!” Dog, hearing me, retreated immediately, but my friend was less well behaved. Raising an arm, he attempted to get nearer, but from my perspective, there was no way anyone could be in the gutted hulk and still be alive.

Sliding the rest of the way down, feeling the waves of heat, I collected Dog by his collar and moved down to where the Bear was. “You see anybody?”

He shook his head. “Difficult to say.” He moved toward the front and tried to see through the shattered windshield, but like me, could see nothing. “She had a dog?”

“Yep.”

He scanned the surrounding area. “Most of the time animals are thrown free or find a way to get away, but they will generally stay in the immediate vicinity.”

I glanced down at Dog. “If there was another dog around here he would’ve been aware of it.”

“Yes.” Henry watched the fire.

“What are you doing?”

His eyes flicked toward mine. “Smelling.”

I immediately caught his meaning. The smell of burning human flesh is particularly pungent, and you can usually make out the one stench from all others. I couldn’t smell it, but generally his senses were finer tuned than mine. “Anything?”

“No, but that does not mean she is not in there.”

I moved next to him and gripped his shoulder in an attempt to get his attention. “When that tank melts, we’re going to be in a bad place.” I glanced back up the cliff and could see Lucian standing there with his cane, silhouetted by the last rays of the day making their final eight-minute trips from the sun. I raised a hand to the side of my mouth and yelled to be heard above the roar of the fire, “Call it in and get the fire department out here!”

He kicked a small rock from the edge where it bounced down and slid to a stop just before reaching us, and yelled back, “It’ll burn out before they show up.”

“Call them!” I turned back to Henry. “Just in case she’s in there, I want to save as much evidence as I can.”

He nodded, and we stepped back and began the climb up to the rim, finally reaching the edge and standing there, watching the vehicle enveloped in the undulating flames. As I’d figured it would, the tank let go and there was a great
whoosh
as its contents flushed underneath and mushroomed in an orange ball that blew from beneath the van, momentarily lifting it and then allowing it to resettle in the rocks and debris.

I sighed, regretting the loss of the evidence that was cooking in the inferno below, and stepped back still holding Dog’s collar. He seemed to show no untoward urge to go down to the fire, so I released him.

Lucian was smoking his pipe, seated in my truck with the door propped open. I suppose he figured the rules didn’t apply when the door was ajar or that there was enough smoke in the immediate vicinity that it really didn’t matter. “They’re on their way.”

“Good.”

“Should be here by Thursday.”

 • • • 

Henry had wandered to the right and was kneeling, looking at the tracks that led to the edge. Figuring it was the only way I was going to find out what was what, I followed, Dog tagging along.

“Something?”

“She did not hit her brakes.”

He looked up at me and then back at the tracks. “Fortunately, you drove parallel to these tread marks without disturbing them.” He planed his face to one side, reading the impressions in the grass and sagebrush in the fading light. “There is a spot a little bit further back where the van stopped; it sat there for an extended period and then restarted before driving into the canyon.”

I looked at the distance between the canyon lip and us. “So, she did it on purpose?”

He stood and walked past me, stopping again about two-thirds of the way toward the precipice, and then stooped again. “She swerved here.”

Lucian joined us from the other direction and watched Henry. “She have second thoughts?”

He ignored the old sheriff and stood, taking a few more steps forward and then, looking at the ground to the left, walked in that direction and then once again kneeled. Dog, taking it as an invitation, approached the Bear, who reached out and scratched the space between the beast’s ears. “I do not know if Jennifer or her dog are in there.” He glanced over the canyon edge where the flames had grown so high they licked the cooling air, almost as if the crust of the earth had opened up and swallowed the Chevrolet as a tidbit. The fire’s orange swirls tasted the air, and it looked like the flame was inside Henry’s eyes, lighting his face. “But the driver jumped out here.”