“Picture a cowboy,” the girl says.
Dean is sitting with Billy Grimes’s girlfriend Willa Busby in a dim-lit observation room at the Passages Women’s Shelter. In the see-through expanse of one-way looking glass behind them Willa’s wiry reflection pantomimes a cattleman with amped, ants-in-pants dramatics. A half-dozen children are at play on the brighter side of the mirror.
“Let’s call him Roy,” Willa says, red-shot eyes roving. “Roy’s roaming the wide blue yonder. Amber waves of grain and such. Yodeling, playing his harmonica. Some kind of cowboy shit. Suddenly he’s surrounded by Indians. Big red badmen like you and Billy. These natives are ornery. They’re in this killing kind of drought. So the braves decide to sacrifice Roy to the rain gods. Spirits. Whatever.”
A discordant swirl of hoots and hollers from the opposite room. Aggrieved, high-pealing howls and extravagant, cackling laughter. Willa’s five-year-old son Caleb sits cross-legged on the playroom floor, immune to the chaos, absorbed in a Rubik’s cube. From her seat by the door a middle-aged brunette observes the boy’s every gesture, a clipboard balanced on her ample lap.
“That’s right, the savages intend to kill poor Roy. But first the chief tells him: ‘We grant you one last request.’ So Roy says, stoic-like: ‘Bring me my horse.’”
Caleb has almost solved the blue side of the cube. The little boy’s lips move as he works. The woman writes something on the clipboard.
“The chief brings Roy his horse. We have to call him Trigger, right? Old Roy whispers in Trigger’s ear and that mount is off like a shot.”
Dean doesn’t have time for this. But he can’t find the heart to shut her down. Willa’s funny, emotive. She’s got the pressured eloquence of the stand-up comic down cold.
“Well just before sunset Trigger comes trotting back with—get this mister Dean—a nekkid lady perched in the saddle!”
Willa cups both hands beneath her breasts and squeezes.
“She’s packing some guns herself. So Roy looks at this painted lady and shrugs. He takes her into his tent. Teepee. Whatever. And proceeds to shag that girl like there’s no tomorrow. Roy and this strumpet go to town. The earth, it literally moves. Well and you know how drafty these teepees can be. Everyone in the tribe can hear what’s going on.”
Willa’s knee bounces manic pumpjacks beneath the table. She’s geeked to the gills.
“So the next day the chief comes to Roy’s tent. ‘Cowboy strong like bull,’ this chief says. ‘It is good for my warriors to see. We give you one last chance, mister paleface. One more request. Then tomorrow you die.’ So Roy says again: ‘Bring me my horse.’ Same thing: Roy whispers into Trigger’s ear. Trigger takes off into the sunset, brings another nekkid woman back to camp.”
“What about the first woman?” asks Dean.
“Don’t overthink it.”
“The one with the guns?”
“She doesn’t matter. Like I was saying. Roy and his new dish head back into the teepee for some sexy time. The stars align. Lightning crashes. Et cetera. The tribe gathers round the tent to wonder at Roy’s exploits in the sack.”
“She matters.”
“Jesus lumps-of-fat-fucking-Christ.”
“You need to think about what happens to this woman the next day,” Dean says. “The day after that one.”
“Well, day after this one, Roy comes from his tent. The Indian chief bows down. He might even be blushing. It’s hard to tell, get me? ‘You make big love last night,’ says the chief. ‘I will give one more request. But come sunrise tomorrow, nothing can save you.’ Again, Roy calls for his horse. But the cowboy’s done whispering. Trigger isn’t listening. Roy’s shouting now.” Willa gooses Dean’s leg and yells, “I said POSSE, you idiot!”
Dean tries not to laugh but can’t help himself. Eventually he says, “Tell me about Billy.”
“Billy Grimes was an unholy terror.”
“I’m looking to help him.”
Willa summons a strangled sort of croak. When she understands Dean isn’t kidding she says, “We were in that hot-sheet motel for months.”
“You and Billy and Caleb?”
“Plus the goddamn cat.”
“Billy was rolling johns,” Dean says. “With you as bait.”
“A girl’s gotta work,” Willa says. “That night, he was five days in on a drunk like to . . .”
Dean lifts a finger and presses it against Willa’s cracked lips. She stops talking, dark-rimmed eyes going wide. Good. The girl is seeing him. “I don’t need to know about that night,” he says, lowering the finger. Her lips are softer than they look.
She folds a bruise-blued arm over her chest and draws away from Dean. “You’re certainly a first.”
“I only want the high points.”
“The happy days.”
“You said it.”
Willa examines her fingernails, knee jiggling. “He was a pretty good father.”
Dean leans in, listening. He’s not taking notes.
“No shit, mister Dean. When he wasn’t just blotto, Billy spent all his time with Caleb. They spoke in code.”
“Code.”
“It was hah-lih-toh this and umm-bih that and mih-hah-moh-mah all the time.”
“Miha moma,” says Dean. “Umbi. Halito.”
“It was like living with two retards,” Willa snorts. “But it grew on you.”
Caleb has forgotten the cube and is now staring through his playmates with the X-ray gaze of the truly traumatized. The brunette and her clipboard have left the room.
“This deal with the D.A.”
“What of it?”
“It doesn’t mean you’re off the hook.”
“This is some kind of news.”
“You’re still on parole.”
“Some kind of news, mister Dean. This deal is my get-out-of-jail-free card.”
“Let’s say, just for the sake of saying it, let’s say you piss a dirty U.A.” Dean snaps his fingers. “It would be straight back to jail, Willa. Do not pass GO. Do not collect two hundred dollars. And CPS would dump Caleb to live in a foster home.”
Her knee freezes mid-jerk.
“This is no joke. You pop positive for meth, for coke—for anything—it turns into some kind of sob story.” He stands and says, “Your parole officer, what’s his name?”
“Sampson?”
“Sampson. Right. Sampson and I are tight.”
“I’ll tell you, mister Dean. You sure can ruin a mood.”
“Get your head straight.”
“Downcast Dean,” she says. “Dean the downer.”
“Wait here.”
He leaves through a green door, searching for the brunette who had been observing Caleb. He finds her talking with Joanne Perry in the shelter director’s office. Dean knocks on the aluminum door frame and both women look up.
“How did it go with Willa?” Joanne asks.
“It’s still going,” Dean says. “How’s the boy?”
Joanne defers to the brunette.
“I think he needs to see a psychologist, psychiatrist. Something,” the woman says to Joanne. “He’s pretty well shell-shocked. Caleb doesn’t make eye contact. He speaks nothing but gibberish. He’s so . . . sad.”
“He was in the motel room,” Dean says, “when it happened.”
“I don’t understand how people get into these life situations,” the brunette says. A plastic ID card clipped to her blouse reads VOLUNTEER.
“Well if you ever figure it out,” Joanne laughs, “let me know.”
“He might be talking Choctaw.”
Both women look at him.
“Can you translate for us?” Joanne asks.
Dean plays dumb but promises to fax them the number of a Choctaw translator. He’d been putting Willa’s interview off for this very reason. Beyond the strict scope of his duties at the public defender’s office, beyond this deep dive into Billy’s background, he’d rather not get involved. Too much work, too little time in which to do it. A few days ago he reached out to the victim’s grandmother in Langston, one Opal Jefferson, and has just learned that Carl’s older sister, a nurse, rents an apartment in nearby Stillwater.
Dean extends his hand to the brunette woman and says, “I didn’t catch your name.”
The volunteer lowers her clipboard to shake Dean’s hand.
“How rude of me! I’m new around here. It’s Becca,” she says. “Becca Porter.”