THREE HOURS LATER, and two hundred and thirty miles away, as the dusk sun lit up the western flanks of sagebrush-covered but treeless hills, Dallas Cates pointed at an exit sign for Walcott Junction and said, “Turn here.”
They were on Interstate 80 driving east from Rawlins. The right lane of the highway was a stream of big rigs. They reminded Dallas of train cars that were inexorably linked together, but with no engine and no caboose. The hundreds of trucks all struggled up hills together and shot down the other side. It was the same scenario on the westbound lanes.
“Why here?” Bobbi Johnson asked. “Aren’t we headed the wrong direction?”
“No, ma’am,” he said.
“Okay, well, I need gas anyway,” she said. “I’m down to an eighth of a tank.”
“There’s a Shell station,” he said. “Pull in there.”
“I’m a little low on cash, Dallas. You’ll need to help me out here.”
He bit his lip. Johnson had all kinds of elaborate plans about picking up her sister and driving to California to start a new life, but she didn’t think very hard on the here and now. Of course she was a little low on cash. Of course she hadn’t brought a firearm with her when she picked him up. And of course she didn’t have a problem taking the desolate interstate highway across southern Wyoming with barely an eighth of a tank of gas.
“I’ll cover the gas,” he said.
“Where are we going, anyway?” she asked as she pulled up next to a bank of pumps.
“You’ll see,” he said as he climbed out.
*
HIS CREDIT CARD had expired while he was in the penitentiary, so in order to fill the tank he needed to go inside the lonely station and pay cash in advance. That was best anyway, he thought, because he didn’t want to leave a paper trail of his whereabouts. On the way in he noticed a hand-painted sign that read ARMED GUARD AFTER DARK.
Inside, it was claustrophobic and the racks were filled with candy, snacks, and automobile fluids. Yacht rock played from a tinny speaker—“Sailing” by Christopher Cross, a song Cates hated and that he wished had gone away during his time in prison. The man behind the counter was rotund with a mullet and shifty eyes. He wore a shoulder holster with the grip of a semiauto pistol in clear view. He glared at Cates in an unhealthy way, Cates thought.
“I’ll give you a hundred dollars and come back for the change after I fill the tank,” Cates said.
“That’ll work,” the attendant said. He had an airy, high-pitched voice. He was a strange one, Cates thought. The kind of guy who worked at a gas station thirty miles from the nearest town and probably slept in the single-wide trailer out back.
Eighteen hundred dollars seemed like a lot of money inside prison, but it wouldn’t last very long at this rate, he thought. Not at a hundred bucks a tank. He peeled off a bill from inside his roll and placed it on the counter.
“I know you,” the attendant said. “You’re Dallas Cates, ain’t ya?”
That was why he was looking at him so strangely.
“Who?”
“Dallas Cates. World champ rodeo cowboy.”
“Never met the man.”
“Damn, you sure look like him. Last I heard, he was in Rawlins.”
“Maybe he’s still there,” Cates said, turning his back on the attendant.
He sent Johnson inside to get his change—all of seven dollars’ worth.
*
“I LOVE IT,” Cates said as he looked at the landscape after they’d left the Shell station. “I just fucking love it.”
“It looks like a whole lot of nothing to me,” Johnson said as she drove.
They were on a two-lane highway headed northeast. The interstate hummed with trucks behind them, but there was no traffic on U.S. 30.
It was stark country with rolling sagebrush hills, large herds of pronghorn antelope, snow fences, huge electrical transmission lines, and no trees. Elk Mountain loomed to the south and was half-shrouded with low-hanging clouds illuminated by the setting sun.
Rattlesnake country, Cates thought. There was row after row of granite outcroppings stretching north to south in the terrain. They looked like the exposed spines of massive dinosaurs.
Cates’s burner phone chimed and he drew it from his pocket and read the new text message.
“Why are you smiling?” she asked him.
“I got good news,” he said. “Remember that guy I told you about who I bonded with while in prison? The guy I actually haven’t even met?”
“Yes. What about him?”
“He’s on his way,” Cates said. “He just needs me to text him where to meet.”
“This is all fucking weird and mysterious,” she said. “Why meet up with a guy you don’t even know?”
“I told you already,” Cates said. “We have a common purpose, and now I have a plan that came to me last night. Plus, he’s loaded, and at this rate we’re gonna run out of cash soon.”
“I don’t think I like where this is going,” she said.
Cates ignored her. “You don’t know how good it feels to be in open country again,” he said. “It’s hard to describe.”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” she said. “It’s kind of creepy.”
He grinned.
“Now tell me where we’re going, Dallas Cates,” she said firmly.
“Have you ever been to Hanna?” he asked, gesturing ahead.
“I ain’t even heard of it,” she responded.
“Then it will be a new adventure,” he said.
“I’m game.”
“I knew you would be.”
*
THEY TOOK THE exit for Highway 72 and passed by a green sign that read:
Hanna
Population 683
Elevation 6,818
State Highway 72 descended into a swale pockmarked with scattered houses and other structures. Railroad tracks neatly split the town in two. A tall line of pine trees bordered the left side of the road and acted as a “living snow fence,” protecting the road by affecting wind speed and direction and causing snow to drift short of the blacktop.
They drove by the high school on their right, which was a brick building marked by a billboard with a painted figure of a heavily muscled man wearing a hard hat and swinging a pickax.
HOME OF THE MINERS, the sign read.
“They used to mine coal here,” Cates said as Johnson drove over the train tracks on a long overpass. “It looks like a mining town, the way the houses are built into the hills and they’re all over the place. But you know what happened to the coal industry. A few people stuck it out, I guess.”
“And that matters to me how?” she asked.
“Just giving you some background,” he said. “I used to rodeo with a guy from here named Cody Schantz. He told me all about it.”
As the sun set, it was obvious that only about a fifth of the homes they could see had interior lights on. A complex of apartment buildings up on the highest hill was totally dark.
“Lots of empty houses,” she said. “It feels real lonesome. Does your friend still live here?”
Cates shook his head. “He died in a car crash trying to get to the Pendleton Round-Up.” Then: “Nearly everybody I know is dead. Friends, family, everyone.”
Johnson’s eyes got moist and she wiped at them with the back of her hand. “You’ve got me,” she said.
“And I’m thankful for that,” he said. “Up there—that bar up on the hill. The lights are on. Let’s go there.”
*
IN THE GRAVEL parking lot on the side of Skinny’s Beer Garden, parked right in front of a faded painted mural of a tropical island scene, Cates asked Bobbi Johnson to go inside and get them a fresh bottle of Jim Beam and a six-pack of beer. He handed her two twenties.
“Don’t you want to go inside?” she asked.
“No.”
“Why the hell not? I don’t want to go in this place by myself.”
As she said it, she gestured toward the four muddy oil-field and utility trucks parked haphazardly in the lot.
He said, “You know what happened back there in that gas station, right? That guy recognized me. This is a little redneck town full of rodeo fans. I stopped by here with my buddy Cody once on the way to Steamboat. I’ve got to be low-key.”
“Why?” Johnson said. “What do you plan to do here?”
*
WHILE JOHNSON WAS in Skinny’s, Cates leaned against the passenger window and surveyed the town below. It didn’t take long before he spied what he was looking for. His rodeo buddy had described it as being almost directly below the overpass looking out at the train tracks.
The interior lights of the cab came on when Johnson returned and climbed back in. She seemed flustered as she plopped the bourbon and beer on the bench seat between them.
“You can only imagine the attention a woman alone gets in that place,” she said. “One guy wanted to dance with me and started feeding quarters into the jukebox.”
Cates smiled. “But you disappointed him.”
“Dude, I was out of there before the first song played.”
*
CATES DIRECTED JOHNSON to drive around the entrance to the overpass toward the tracks, through two blocks of clapboard houses that were dark and boarded up. Except for the ribbons of train tracks that reflected the moon out front, there was nothing in the field in front of the museum.
They took Front Street and slowly cruised by a neatly appointed white structure with three brick chimneys and brown trim around the doors and windows.
A sign out front read:
HANNA MUSEUM
SUMMER HOURS:
FRIDAY THROUGH SUNDAY 1–5 PM
WINTER HOURS: FRIDAY 1–5 PM
“There it is,” Cates said.
“A museum?” Johnson asked, exasperated. “We came all this way to go to a museum?”
“Yes.”
“It’s very clearly closed.”
“Drive around back and park,” he said. “We don’t want to be seen from the street.”
“There’s no traffic,” she said. “Not a single car.”
“Please, Bobbi,” he said in a quiet tone that others had described to him as menacing. As usual, it worked.
*
“YOU STAY HERE,” Cates said to Johnson after they’d parked. The overpass stretched over them and he’d asked her to position the truck so that it couldn’t be seen from above.
Johnson was clearly flummoxed. “If we were gonna rob someplace, why not that bar back there? Why not a damn ATM or something? I saw one on the way in. Why a museum?”
“It’s not for money,” he said, stepping out of the truck. Before closing the door, he leaned back inside. “Stay right here and keep your eye out. Turn the truck off so there’s no lights. And if anybody comes, let me know.”
“How long are you going to be?” she asked. “I’m getting hungry.”
“Ten, twenty minutes, I’d guess.”
“Hurry,” she said. “I don’t want to freeze in here.”
He closed the door without responding.
*
THE WINDOWS ON the back of the museum were shoulder-high, with old wooden frames and wavery glass. They were locked, but he could clearly see on top of the nearest window the inside metal latch that held it in place. It was obvious that the facility didn’t have a security system of any kind, at least not in the back of the building. There were no embedded wires in the glass or exterior cameras. Not in a town of six hundred and eighty-three people.
Cates found a rusted railroad spike in the tawny grass on the side of the building and carried it back. He used the spike to break through one of the panes of the window most deeply in shadow, then reached in through the hole and unlocked the hardware and slid it up.
There was no gust of warm air from inside, he noted. They probably kept the heating system off when the museum wasn’t open, which was most of the time, it seemed. Before making his move, Cates looked around. Johnson sat behind the wheel in the dark cab, studying his every movement. He was grateful she wasn’t staring at her phone, reading Facebook. There were no cars on the road in front of the museum or on the side.
Satisfied they were alone, he deftly launched himself up and through the open window and he was inside.
*
THE MUSEUM WAS mostly dark, but what he could see was lit by the red glow of several emergency exit signs mounted over the front and side doors. They threw a pink light through the interior and created deep shadows. He didn’t want to turn the lights on and he cursed himself for not buying a cheap flashlight at the Shell station.
Cates waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. What he could see had been described to him by his buddy Cody. It was primarily a railroad museum, with dioramas of Union Pacific model train sets, old mining tools and equipment, and a corner filled with memorabilia from when Hanna was founded in 1889 to service both the mines and the Union Pacific. The displays were neat and orderly and no doubt interesting.
But that wasn’t what Cates was looking for.
Around a glass display case filled with local jade and other minerals, he saw it: Zeus the Grizzly Bear. The mount towered nearly eight feet tall, the top of its head brushing the ceiling.
Cody had told him the story that he’d heard from his mother, who at the time had been the volunteer director of the museum. Her name was Peggy Schantz. In the 1900s, the five-hundred-pound male had wandered down from Elk Mountain into the outskirts of Hanna and killed several cattle and a mule. A local killed Zeus, and a collection was raised among the new townspeople to have the bear mounted for posterity. Eventually, it wound up in the museum.
The grizzly’s coat was thick and dusty, but its massive claws and gleaming teeth glowed in the pink light. The creature had been positioned to look like it was roaring and about to lunge at the viewer. It was huge and menacing, even while frozen in time. Cates felt a chill shiver up his back, since Zeus was the inspiration for getting the grizzly tattoo on his arms in the first place.
It took less than a minute to locate a large crosscut saw that was hanging on the wall of the museum. It was in a display describing how tie hacks cut and shaped wooden ties for the railroad out of lodgepole pines that had been floated up the North Platte River from the south. As he pulled the saw from the wall, one of the teeth tripped a light switch and suddenly the interior of the museum was bathed in light.
Temporarily blinded and his heart beating fast, Cates located the switch and doused the museum back into gloom.
“Damn it,” he whispered.
*
THE GRIZZLY BEAR mount crashed hard to the floor when Cates pushed it over, the carcass narrowly missing two glass display cases. It landed between them and produced a cloud of decades-old dust from the thick fur.
He used the saw to cut off the huge front paws and he stacked them beneath the open window. They were the size of pizza pans.
It wasn’t quick work. While modern taxidermists used Styrofoam to replicate the body shape and mass of the animals, Cates learned that beneath the hide of this creature there was a heavy plaster mold. It was difficult to cut through and soon the interior of the museum was coated with a fine layer of white dust. He was grateful that he’d spent so many hours pumping iron in the prison gym to build up his muscles.
There were only about two and a half inches of the neck left to saw through when red and blue wigwag lights lit up the front windows.
“Dallas, there’s a cop out front,” Johnson hissed from somewhere. He looked up to see that she was at the open window, her hands pressed against the sides of her face in alarm. “He came out of nowhere,” she said.
“Now you tell me?” he said. “Were you staring at your damn phone when he drove up?”
“Come on, come on,” she implored. Then: “What in the hell are you doing?”
“Shhhhh,” Cates said, holding a finger to his lips.
She vanished from the open window, but he could hear her grumbling and cursing to herself just out of sight.
He stood up from where he’d been bending over the mount and working with the saw. The lights outside continued to pulse and spin, but the vehicle they came from was obviously stationary. He tried not to make a sound.
Maybe the cop would just move along.
Then there was a knock on the front entrance door, and an older male voice: “Hey, this is Marshal Bertignolli. Is anybody in there?”
Cates thought, Hanna has a marshal? A marshal?
“Peggy, are you in here tonight? Somebody called and said they thought they saw the lights flash and that maybe someone was in here.”
Peggy Schantz. Cody’s mother.
Cates was still. He looked over at the two bear paws under the window, then at the nearly decapitated head at his feet. Another minute, and he’d have it off. The head was huge, and likely heavy, he thought.
There was a jangle of keys on the other side of the door, and for a moment Cates froze. Dive out the window without the paws and head, or confront the visitor?
*
THE FRONT DOOR cracked open and the beam of a flashlight lit up the dusty floor inside.
“What the hell?” the man said, pushing his way in behind the flashlight. As he reached out with his right hand for the light switch, Cates stepped out from behind the door and pressed the tip of a rusty railroad spike into the base of the marshal’s neck.
“Don’t move or I’ll blow your head off,” he said. “And keep that light off.”
The marshal, or whatever he was, stiffened. Cates could see in the undulating pulses from the vehicle’s light bar that the man wore a battered cowboy hat and a canvas coat with a patch on the sleeve that identified him as HANNA MARSHAL. He was armed with a weapon in a belt holster, but the safety strap was still fixed.
Cates pulled the marshal inside and closed the front door behind them with the heel of his boot. As he did, he reached down with his free hand and drew the marshal’s gun from its holster. A Glock 48 Slimline nine with a ten-round magazine. A solid piece.
“Let me go and we can work this out,” the marshal said. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, but there isn’t anything of value in here. Just don’t tell Peggy I said that.”
He was in his late sixties or early seventies, Cates thought. Tall but soft, no muscle tone, a weak chin, and a classic cop mustache. An unimposing man who happened to have a badge and a gun.
“I mean, there’s no cash,” the marshal said, his voice rising with anxiety. “This place runs strictly on donations, and I’m afraid to say there just aren’t many.”
Cates replaced the railroad spike with the Glock and he used the muzzle to push the marshal forward against a glass display case. As he did so, the marshal nearly tripped over the almost-severed head of the grizzly bear.
“What in the hell are you doing in here to old Zeus?” the marshal asked. His eyes slid from the bear to the glass, and Cates found himself looking into the man’s eyes in the reflection.
“Hey,” the marshal said. “I think I might know you.”
“You don’t.”
“I met you through Cody a few years back. You’re Dallas Cates.”
“I’m not.”
“Look—”
Cates grabbed the marshal by his opposite shoulder and spun him around until they were face-to-face, nose to nose, eye to eye. “I’m not going back to jail,” Cates said.
The marshal started to speak, when Cates shoved the muzzle under his chin and fired. The exit wound blew his hat off his head and painted the glass of the display case red.
Cates stepped back while the marshal slid down the glass case to the floor, where he sat with his head flopped to the side and his legs sprawled out.
“Dallas? Are you all right?” Johnson yelled from the window.
“Fine,” Cates said.
“I thought I heard a shot.”
“You did. Now start up the truck. I’ll be right out.”
*
BEFORE TOSSING THE bear’s head and paws out the open window, Cates returned to the marshal’s body and stood over it. He thought about staging a suicide, leaving the gun in the marshal’s hand. Cops killed themselves all the time with their own weapons, and it wasn’t out of the question that a small-town marshal, who probably got paid next to nothing with no further job prospects due to his age, might be the victim of depression.
But Dallas Cates wanted to keep the gun. He needed it.
Plus, his DNA was probably all over the museum. He hadn’t worn gloves, and his fingerprints were on the saw and his footprints were everywhere in the fine plaster dust on the floor. That idiot Shell station attendant could place him in the vicinity the night of the murder.
So, after locating several gallons of isopropyl alcohol in the storeroom and splashing it across the floor, Cates tucked the Glock into his belt and climbed out the window. He loaded the bear parts into the back of Johnson’s truck bed. That grizzly head was as heavy as he thought it would be.
Then he returned to the building and tossed a lit match through the open window. Not until the fire caught with a breathy whoosh did he jump into the truck and tell Johnson to get the hell out of Hanna, Wyoming, now population six hundred and eighty-two.