Twenty-Nine

Arn downshifted into first gear once he drove off the county gravel onto the ranch road that was little more than a dirt two-track. Hubert and Henrietta Pott had owned the Circle Trot since before he’d worked for the Cheyenne PD. The couple had never had much, except two sections of land that they raised sheep and some milking goats on and an occasional steer they fattened up for butchering every fall. Arn had hunted antelope on their northern range when he was a youngster, and the couple seemed never to age.

At the end of the half-mile drive, a ranch house seemed to rise up out of the ground. Arn recalled Hubert Pott painting the house a bright white every other spring, and painting his shutters a quaint baby-shit brown. To match his eyes, Hub always claimed.

A stooped woman in a baggy dress and baggier apron stopped in the middle of the yard and watched Arn approach. She carried a basket filled with eggs as she walked from the brooder house, and now hobbled over to where Arn climbed out of the car. Squinting, she brought her head up to look through her trifocals. “Arn Anderson.”

Arn took off his Stetson. “Mother Pott. Good morning.”

“Been a long time, Arn. You here to hunt?” She eyed Arn’s Oldsmobile. “’Cause that sure ain’t no huntin’ outfit.”

“More importantly, it’s not hunting season.”

Her eyes twinkled through her glasses. “Never bothered me before.”

Arn smiled. “I’m looking for Scott Wallace.”

She chin-pointed to the barn. “Him and Hub are working on our filly what came up lame yesterday.”

Arn thanked her and started for the barn when she called to him, “There’ll be lemonade and cookies on the porch when you’re done.”

Some things never change, Arn thought.

He walked into the barn to the smell of fresh horse dung and damp straw that made him homesick, taking him back to when he worked area ranches as a kid. An Australian shepherd greeted him with a stub of a wagging tail and the mandatory sniff of the boot. Arn stroked the dog’s head and walked around her when he spotted Scott and Hubert bent over a filly lying on a bed of straw at the far end of the barn. There was a brief moment of recognition and a faint smile before Hubert’s grin disappeared as he looked down at the horse with those sad eyes again.

The old man used the side of the stall to stand. He’d developed a noticeable dowager’s hump since Arn had last seen him, but he held out a hand deformed by rheumatoid arthritis. “Arn Anderson. Been … fifteen years?”

“More like thirty-five. How are you, Hubert?”

Hubert pointed to the filly. “Better than she’s doing.”

Scott looked at them over his shoulder. “You’re that feller who talked to me at the Archer Complex.”

“I am.”

“You come here to help?”

“Believe me, I would if I knew what to do. I just want to visit for a moment.”

Scott reached around and grabbed a duffle bag. He pulled off a glove and grabbed an ACE bandage. “If you’ll hold her head I’ll wrap another bandage around her leg before I set her loose.”

Arn held the sorrel’s head, a beautiful brown horse with contrasting blond mane and tail. She looked wild-eyed at Arn, but remained lying down while Scott wrapped the bandage tightly around her foreleg and over a splint he’d wrapped earlier. When he finished, he stepped back. “I’ve done what I can for her,” Scott said. “Now it’s up to the Lord.”

They let go of the horse, and she struggled to stand. When she finally stood on wobbly legs, she held the injured one several inches off the floor of the barn. “She stepped in a gopher hole,” Hubert said, as if he needed to explain.

Scott shook his head. “Thing I’ll never understand is how an animal with as much power as a horse can possess such delicate legs. Prone to twisting and breaking.” Tears filled his eyes. “You gotta feel bad for them.”

Arn waited until Scott had composed himself before he spoke with Hubert. “Me and Scott needs to jaw for a minute.”

Hubert looked at the horse one last time and started for the house. “Cookies and lemonade when you two are finished.”

Arn waited until Hubert left before he spoke of the horse. “She’s not going to make it.”

Scott ran a gloved hand over the filly’s twitching withers. “You know your horses. Not much even I can do for a critter who breaks a leg. God or no, this time tomorrow I’m afraid I’ll have to put her down.”

“Tough thing to shoot a horse you’re fond of.”

“I won’t shoot her,” Scott said, slapping dust and straw off his trouser leg. “I got tranquilizer medicine that’ll euthanize her. Painless and instant.” He stroked the filly’s muzzle a last time. “We can talk outside.”

He led Arn outside, to where a plank had been nailed to the side of the barn. He sat and grabbed a bandana from his back pocket, wiping sweat from his head that had run down to the neckerchief around his neck. “Somehow I think they always know when it’s their time.” He hung his hat over a nail jutting out of the side of the barn. “It does look like I won’t be able to save her.” He forced a smile. “But my track record is actually pretty good. I’ve saved more critters than not since I’ve been here.”

“How long is that?”

Scott looked up at the clouds as if the answer was floating up there. “I’ve worked for the Potts for two years now.” He peeked around the corner of the barn and withdrew a pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket. “Got to be careful. Hubert and Henrietta are pretty religious.”

“So I recall when I’d come out here hunting as a kid.”

“Then you know they’d have a cow if they knew I smoked.” Scott lit up and blew smoke away from Arn. “They’re good people, but a little set in their ways.”

“Wouldn’t you be if you were in your eighties?”

The wind blew his sweaty neckerchief into his eyes, and he moved it lower. “Good point.”

“But it must be hard on you,” Arn said, “working here. If they keep such a tight rein on you they forbid even cigarettes.”

“This place has its advantages. I can live with the house rules,” Scott said. “Me and Hubert’s got an understanding: when I need to leave for a while, he lets me go. In exchange, I make meager ranch wages and he lets me fill up my truck with his ranch gas.”

“That’s right—you do some freelance shearing,” Arn said. He wasn’t comfortable with the ease with which Scott told him things. He wasn’t used to that.

“I do some doctoring for friends around the area. I got the touch, as they say. But most times as not I’m gone shearing sheep during season. I’m very good.” He laughed.

“How good?”

A twinkle formed in Scott’s eyes. “Twenty seconds a lamb. Consistently.”

Arn whistled. “That’s good! “

Scott nodded. “I’m in demand, and I go where the real money is.” He waved his hand around. “The money Hubert and Henrietta give me could hardly pay to drive across the state. Even with a tankful of their petrol.”

“Which is why I’m here.” Arn took out his notebook and flipped pages. “You sold your truck to Floyd Pompolopolis.”

“How could I forget.” Scott chuckled. “When he told me his name for the bill of sale I thought he was messing with me.” He blew smoke, but it hung just above him before the wind took it. “Ford dealership wouldn’t give me squat for trade-in, so I figured I’d do better selling it outright. Why do you ask?”

“It had an unusually high number of miles.”

“Like I said, I drive a lot.”

“Odd to trade a truck in that’s only a couple years old.”

Scott shrugged and kept peeking around the side of the barn like a little kid watching for his parents to return and catch him smoking. “It was a gasoline truck. Not a diesel. I needed a dependable outfit.” He looked at the barn like he could see the horse on the other side. “The truck started nickel and diming me. I knew it didn’t have long before something went to hell and I’d have to euthanize it. I was glad Floyd bought it.”

Arn stood, thinking of a way to ask Scott more questions about the high mileage. There was just no way to do it cleanly. “I have reason to believe the man who killed Jillie Reilly puts a lot of miles on his truck every year.”

It took a moment for the accusation to sink in. When it did, Scott’s face turned red and he stood. “What the hell. Are you accusing me of killing that woman the newspaper and TV’s been covering?”

Arn held up his hands as if to ward Scott off. “All I’m saying is that every time I find someone with mileage as high as your truck had, I get suspicious.”

“That’s it?” Scott flicked his butt onto the ground. “That’s what you’re basing your accusation on?”

“It’s not an accusation. But Floyd did need to buy new tires as soon as he brought your truck.”

“Of course he did,” Scott said, pacing in front of the barn. “I wasn’t about to put new tires on it if I was going to trade it or sell it.” He stood and faced Arn. “If you check into it closer, you’ll see I just deposited eleven thousand dollars in the bank. That was pay for shearing sheep this past season. As far away as Utah.”

“All right,” Arn said. “Just consider this interview as going a long ways toward eliminating you as a suspect.”

“I thought cops never fully eliminated a suspect.” Scott snubbed his cigarette butt out and used the toe of his boot to cover the filter. “But while you’re here, what else you want to know about me?”

“All right,” Arn said. “For starters: where were you the night Jillie Reilly was killed?”

“What day was that?”

“Two Saturdays ago.”

“I was”—Scott looked around the corner of the barn again—“at a bar in town.”

“The Boot Hill?”

Scott shook his head.

“Ever been in there?”

“Never.”

“So what bar were you drinking in that night?”

Scott lowered his voice. “I was at the Green Door.”

“The strip bar?”

“Shush! Not so loud. I was there all night. I brought a wad of one-dollar bills along to stick in the girls’ g-strings.” He put his finger to his lips. “This isn’t going to get out? Like I said, Hubert and his missus are pretty religious. If they found out I was at a titty bar—”

“I won’t say a thing to them. But can they at least vouch that you were gone that night, and what time you returned?”

“Do I need someone to corroborate my story?”

“You tell me.”

Scott hung his head. “No, they can’t. I live in their sheepherder’s cabin out on their north range. Half a mile from here. They can’t see when I come and go unless they’re sitting on their porch.”

“Can anyone vouch for you?”

Scott’s face lit up. “Sure. A lot of guys will say I was there.”

Arn grabbed his pen and flipped to a clean page in his notebook. “Give me names.”

Scott rattled off names, none of which Arn recognized, of people who were at the strip club until closing. “They were all by the stage stuffing bills down thongs, same’s me. They’ll tell you.”

“Mind if I take a picture of you?”

“No.” Scott took off his hat. “But why?”

“These guys your personal friends?”

“Only time I see them is when I go to the Green Door.”

“Then I’ll need a picture to show them.”

Scott shrugged and grabbed his bandana from his back pocket. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. He smoothed his hair falling over his face. “Profile or frontal?” he asked as he adjusted the bandana around his neck.”

“How about both.”

Scott stood straight and smiled at Arn’s cell phone. “Have at it.”

Arn used his phone to snap a frontal and a profile picture of Scott. “That should be all. But if I need to talk further, you’ll be here?”

“Unless one of the neighbors has a critter that needs doctorin’. I got no shearing lined up for some time. I’ll be here.” He nodded to the barn. “Hope I can conjure up a miracle for that filly.”

When Arn got back into town, he thought about calling Little Jim Reilly to warn him about following Ana Maria. But it was only another eighteen miles to his ranch, and he felt he could read the man better if he talked with him in person.

When Arn drove into the ranch, he spotted him sitting atop an Allis Chalmers tractor that looked altogether too small for his large frame. Black smoke puffed from the smoke stack every time a cylinder fired, and Little Jim bounced on the hard metal seat as he drove across his pasture. He picked up a round bale of hay and slowly lumbered across the field to a herd of heifers waiting for their dinner, while Jillie’s dog seemed content to lope along beside the tractor. Little Jim set the bale down and shut the tractor off when he reached the fence. “You’re a ways out of town,” he said as he stepped over the fence and walked toward Arn’s car. “If you came this far, it must mean you found something out.”

“I’m here because you followed me a couple nights ago.”

Little Jim shrugged. “I thought we had our little pissing contest that night in the park.”

“I warned you not to follow me again.”

Little Jim stepped closer to Arn. “What’s your point?”

“That went for Ana Maria Villarreal as well.”

Little Jim’s eyes squinted in the bright sunlight. “I’m not sure I like your tone. What are you implying?”

Arn stepped closer and looked up. He wanted to gauge Little Jim’s reaction to his question. Even if meant being within grabbing range of the big man. “Have you been following Ana Maria?”

Veins throbbed on Little Jim’s forehead. “I want the son-of-a-bitch who killed Jillie in the worst way. But I’m sure as hell not going to frighten another man’s daughter. Of course I never followed that TV lady.”

Arn felt his stomach churn. He’d asked Little Jim straight up, and he had answered honestly: Little Jim had not been following Ana Maria.

Someone else had.