Forty-Six

Everything from Albuquerque to Oklahoma City was brown. Six and a half hours of endless sky, straight road, and a horizon that never got closer, until a silver-skinned spire above downtown threw spears of reflected light across the prairie.

Bronkowski had stopped once for gas. He was eating and drinking out of the cooler on the seat next to him. No need to stop to tap a kidney. That’s what Coke bottles were for.

He pulled over when Aragon called. He told her he had last seen the Beretta in the dining room, but Fager may have returned it to the desk in his home office.

She asked what he was doing in Oklahoma. He explained about chasing down the oilman who had purchased a Cody Geronimo statue. He would turn around immediately. Fager needed him. She said he would do more good completing his mission than rushing back to be with his friend. If his hunch was right, none of Thornton’s misdirection would matter.

When the call ended, Bronkowski sat on the interstate’s shoulder with semis shaking his Camry. After a few minutes he put the car into gear and continued into Oklahoma City.

He had done his research. Grady Fallon had been a broke cowboy delivering irrigation pipes to ranches when he got the bright idea of selling scrap pipe to wildcatters. Now he was pulling up pipe three miles long from the North Sea and reselling it on the other side of the globe to Russians punching holes in the ocean bottom north of Japan. Tomahawk Pipe and Casing today had more office space in Asia than in Oklahoma.

He had reached Fallon at his office in one of those towers looming over the prairie. Fallon said he’d be glad to talk about the statue he brought back from Santa Fe in his motor home. Maybe Bronkowski could figure out why he couldn’t get it in the house. Nothing to do with size; it made the dogs go crazy. Bronkowski remembered Fallon’s wife saying the statue had spoken to her. Now it was speaking to the guy’s dogs.

He took the bypass around downtown and I-35 north, following Fallon’s directions to Edmond. He exited at a Walmart by the highway, then headed east into rolling green hills, where he was told to find a lake. A private road bordered by white pipe fence (no doubt excess inventory of Tomahawk Pipe and Casing) led him around a tree-lined shore to a plantation-style mansion. A black motor home fit for a touring rock band sat in a circular drive, where it peeled off to a six-car garage.

The man Bronkowski had seen in Secret Canyon Gallery was washing sidewalls with a hose in one hand and a beer in the other. Fallon could probably buy every truck wash in the state and here he was cleaning his own tires. As Bronkowski got closer he saw a full wet bar, with stainless-steel refrigerator and sinks, projecting from the motor home’s flank.

Fallon was dressed in blue jeans, with the belt buckle hidden under his belly. He tilted the bottle to his lips as Bronkowski got out of his car and came over.

“In the gallery you’re a guy from Malibu with money to burn. On the phone you’re a PI working for a friend whose wife was murdered.”

“I was working then, too. That guy in the suit with me, that’s my friend.”

“You’re the third person today who’s called about that thing.” Fallon cracked another beer for himself and offered one to Bronkowski, who accepted. “That news about bodies at Geronimo’s place. I’ve already been offered thirty percent more than I paid last week. I expect to double my money when he’s arrested. Damn,” he drank beer and swallowed, “I thought the oil racket was ugly.”

“I’m not here to buy. I’m here to tell you what you’ve bought.”

“I can see what I bought. Glued-together garbage.”

“Somewhere in that glued-together garbage,” Bronkowski said, putting down his untouched beer. This wasn’t news you delivered with a Bud in your hand. “Are pieces of women Cody Geronimo killed.”

Fallon let out a whoop.

“That explains it. C’mon inside. I gotta tell Ginger.”

Ginger was dressed in pink and jumping up and down to an exercise video on the biggest screen he had seen outside a football stadium. A two-story window framed the lake outside the house.

“You need to hear what this fellow has to say,” Fallon said as he picked up a remote and paused the video, leaving the instructor suspended on the screen in mid-leap.

Fallon insisted she sit for the news. Her eyes went wide in horror before Bronkowski had finished.

Two dogs entered the cavernous room. One was a fluffy Bichon Frise, the other a black Labrador with the white whiskers of age around its muzzle.

“That’s the one goes nuts over the statue,” Fallon said, leaning down to scratch the old Lab’s ears.

“He’s our boy’s dog,” Ginger said. “Bobby’s in Arabia.”

“Bahrain,” Fallon said. “The Lab’s name is Uncas—you know, Last of the Mohicans. Bobby raised him from a pup in Alberta when Tomahawk was going and blowing strong in the Rockies. Bobby did search and rescue. Uncas was a star. Found three skiers buried in an avalanche.”

“And he goes crazy around that statue?” Bronkowski asked.

“Whines and moans, then gets to growling. That upsets Little Bijou. She runs in circles and snaps,” Ginger said. “It’s because Uncas smells someone inside that statue, isn’t it?”

Fallon opened a china cabinet. It was a faux beer cooler. He pulled one for himself, and offered another for Bronkowski, who waved him off this time.

“You want me to give that statue to the police,” Fallon said after he took a long drink. “They’ll take it apart. I’m out three-hundred grand. All because an old dog is trying to tell us something.”

“I don’t want that thing on this property.” Ginger had her hands on her hips.

“But it spoke to you, hon.”

“I’ll hear it in nightmares. Get rid of it.”

Fallon opened the hidden beer cooler again and took the remainder of the six-pack.

“You can’t fit that big ol’ thing in your rice burner,” Fallon said. “Let’s take it apart until Uncas shows us what’s in there he don’t like.”

Ginger pressed play on the remote. The instructor returned to earth and spread her feet wide. Ginger rushed to catch up.

“She keeps trying to get me to do pilots,” Fallon said as he headed out with dogs at his heels.

“Pilates!” Ginger shouted over her shoulder as she did some kind of jumping jacks. “Thinks he’s being clever, showing his ignorance.”

“Nice meeting you,” Bronkowski said, and turned to follow Fallon.

“Mister B,” Ginger called out as she dropped her head between her knees and looked back through her legs, hair sweeping the floor, breasts on her jaw. “I’m sorry I can’t say your name. If he breaks out the Early Time and fires up that diesel, you get yourself and those babies right back here.”

The vanity plate on the front of the motor home said Black Castle. Inside was a fireplace and tile floor. An ivory steering wheel at a driver’s seat as big as a La-Z Boy. Chandeliers. Teak paneling, a full sofa, two recliners, a smaller version of the exterior wet bar, and televisions everywhere. The Geronimo statue called “Spirit Wing” stood in the middle of the floor, just up the steps from the driveway. The Lab had its lips curled back, black gums and worn canines showing. A sorrowful whine escaped its chest.

“Toolbox behind the driver’s seat,” Fallon said, as he held the old dog by its collar.

Fallon was ready to disassemble a piece of art that cost more than Bronkowski’s house. It was Bronkowski who hesitated. Even if they found a bone or skin or whatever human was in there, he saw Marcy Thornton turning it around: He worked for Fager, the damning evidence was never in the statue, Bronkowski had planted it at his boss’s order to falsely throw guilt on Geronimo, part of Fager’s scheme to divert attention from himself. And where did it really come from? From the women Fager murdered and buried at Geronimo’s ranch.

“I need a video camera. We have to document taking it apart, finding what we find.”

“Right there.” Fallon pointed to the big screen. “I let Ginger take the wheel while I talk to my people all over the world. I see them, they see me, so they know I really exist. I need to remember how to make it record. Runs through a computer somewhere in the belly of this rig.”

Fallon used a phone built into the dashboard to call his wife inside the house. Bronkowski heard Ginger’s voice saying, “Are you crazy?” when Fallon asked if she would come out to give them a hand. She told him how to work the camera while Uncas whined and paced and scratched the front door to get out. The Bijon Frise raced across the floor, its nails scrabbling tiles, snapping at Uncas when he came near, taking his turn scratching to get out.

Fallon locked the dogs in the back room, where Bronkowski saw a king-size bed under a chandelier and another gargantuan TV.

They were able to disassemble the statue, one scrap of leather, feather, stick, reed, and stone at a time. Below the surface they found bones connected by wires and screws. They dismantled the strange skeleton and arranged the bones on the tile floor. Fallon brought out Uncas, but forced the other dog back into the bedroom. Uncas alerted immediately on the largest bone. Bronkowski didn’t need a dog to tell him he was looking at a human shoulder blade.

“Spirit Wing. Jesus.”