Asah didn’t need Thumps to tell him how to find Noah. The FBI trained people to find people. Asah’s question was a test to see if Thumps was really going to help or if his allegiances lay elsewhere. With Dakota, for instance. Any way you looked at the situation, Dakota was the key. If Noah was alive, he would come back to Dakota. He would come back, because he had nowhere else to go.
“Watch Dakota.”
“That’s the right answer,” said Asah.
“Sheriff will come up with it too.”
“Three pairs of eyes are better than two.”
“But that’s not what you want me to do?”
“Stakeouts are boring,” said Asah. “Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t.”
“You want me to beat the bushes.”
“Can’t hurt,” said Asah. “Never know what might break cover and run.”
THUMPS CALLED FROM the lobby. “Can I come up?”
“Who’s with you?”
“Just me.”
The door to Dakota’s room was open. Dakota was sitting in a chair by the window. She reminded Thumps of a painting he had seen at a gallery in San Francisco years ago. It was of a woman waiting on a balcony overlooking the ocean, waiting for her lover’s ship to appear on the horizon. Or at least that’s what the write-up next to the painting said.
“I don’t know where he is.”
“Has he called?”
Part of the mystery of the painting was that you couldn’t see what the woman was looking at. It could have been street vendors or the bustle of a wharf or another woman sitting on another balcony. The window Dakota was sitting in front of offered no such mysteries. Thumps could see what Dakota could see. Snow and the vague outline of buildings.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“A couple of hours ago.”
“He knows we’re looking for him.”
“He knows.”
Thumps tried to imagine what Dakota was feeling. Betrayal. Confusion. Anger. Perhaps all three. Noah had brought the house down on his head. But most of the pieces were going to land on Dakota.
“Why can’t you believe him?” Dakota turned away from the window. “Why can’t you believe that someone is trying to kill him?”
“I believe him.” This was the part Thumps didn’t like, and once he began, there would be no going back. “We found a body.”
Dakota held her face steady.
“It wasn’t Noah.” Thumps waited to see if he could read anything in Dakota’s eyes. “It was Reuben Justice.”
“Reuben?” Dakota hadn’t seen this coming. “You’re lying.”
“Shot. Same gun as Street.” Thumps was suddenly tired of playing cop. It was time to stop. “The sheriff is going to come by before the day is out.”
“Reuben can’t be dead.”
He had expected Dakota to be angry. But her voice was almost matter of fact, as though she had run out of anger, as though all she had left were echoes. Thumps pulled up a chair and sat down next to Dakota. There were any number of ways to begin, none of them easy. He leaned in and touched Dakota’s shoulder. “Tell me about Salt Lake,” he said as gently as he could. “Tell me about Lucy Kettle.”
BY THE TIME Thumps got back to the lobby, Asah was gone. Not surprising. He was probably on the phone to Denver, explaining why they didn’t need to send a team of agents, telling his bosses that he had everything in hand. If Thumps read the man correctly, Asah would not like anyone thinking that he couldn’t do his job.
He walked briskly down Main Street toward the sheriff’s office, the snow dancing around his feet. The skiers would be happy. So would the snowboarders. And the cross-country skiers. Thumps didn’t harbour any malice toward any of these sports, but they could all go to hell as far as he was concerned.
Hockney’s SUV was parked at the curb. Andy and the sheriff were standing around the desk drinking coffee. If Thumps hadn’t known better, he would have thought he had walked in on an office party.
“Figured you’d show up soon enough.”
Hockney set his cup on the desk. “Tell Deputy Thumps what we found.” Andy picked up a plastic bag. Inside was a letter. “Guess what this is?”
“A letter.”
“You’re a real smartass,” said Andy. “You know that?”
Hockney took the bag from Andy and tossed it to Thumps. “Looks like your girlfriend’s been busy.”
The letter was short and to the point. Thumps read it quickly and handed it back to Hockney. “You found this on Reuben?”
“I found it,” said Andy quickly. “It’s what real cops do.”
Checking the pockets of a dead man hardly constituted brilliant police work, but Thumps let it go. Maybe the sheriff was right. Maybe he should try to make friends with Andy.
“Dakota and Reuben knew each other,” said Thumps. “No big secret there.”
Andy could hardly contain his excitement. “Sounds to me like she’s arranging a hit.”
Making friends with Andy was going to be harder than Thumps had imagined. “You must be kidding.”
“She tells him where Ridge is going to be and when.”
“It’s a letter to a friend.”
“What I’m curious about,” said the sheriff, stepping into the line of fire, “is why Ms. Miles would write Mr. Justice and invite him to our fair city, and why he would come.”
“Well, you sure as hell can’t ask Justice,” said Andy.
“Then,” said the sheriff, turning to Thumps, “we should probably ask Ms. Miles. That make good police sense to you?”
Thumps was getting tired of people lying to him. Especially people he cared about. Dakota could have told him that she knew Reuben was in town. She could have told him that she had written him. But if she hadn’t been willing to share that information with him, Thumps doubted she was going to share it with Hockney.
Andy picked up the phone on the first ring. “Okay,” he said, “that’s great. Yeah, we’ll let you know.”
“That the rental company?” said the sheriff.
“Yeah,” said Andy. “South side of the lake. Near the park.”
Hockney slipped into his coat. “Justice rented a car in Missoula. Blue Taurus. Had one of the GPS devices in it.”
“You think Noah’s driving Justice’s car?”
“Not for long,” said Andy. “Stick around and watch real cops work.”
Andy had all the enthusiasm and optimism of a fourteen-year-old, and all the brains of a dinner roll. If Noah had killed Reuben, and if he had driven off in Reuben’s car, he would certainly not be sitting in the vehicle waiting to be arrested.
“You tell Special Agent Asah about Justice?”
“Who says I saw him?”
“Now, that,” said Hockney, “is what we in law enforcement call ‘evasive.’”
“Oh, he told him,” said Andy. “Probably used to kiss federal ass all the time back in Oregon.”
“California,” said Thumps. “Yeah, I told him. That a problem?”
“Nope,” said the sheriff. “Saves me the bother.”
“Why don’t you do something useful,” said Andy, “and watch the place while we’re gone.”
“Not a bad idea,” said the sheriff. “Give you time to figure out why this case doesn’t make any sense.”
ANDY MIGHT BE an idiot, but Hockney wasn’t. The case made little sense. Lots of pieces, to be sure, but none of them connecting to anything.
Thumps eased himself into the sheriff’s chair. It was an old-fashioned swivel chair, wooden and broad with a high back. It was comfortable enough, especially if you put your feet up. And Thumps might have sat there all day had Cooley not come in through the front door.
“You practising for the sheriff’s job?”
Thumps took his feet off the desk. “Just watching the store. You want some coffee?”
“Sheriff make it?”
“Probably.”
Cooley looked at the pot for a moment and decided to play it safe. “Heard they found a body out at the Connor place.”
“One of your associates?”
“The doctor lady stopped for gas at the Red Tail Lake store. Dora said she had a body bag in the back.”
“Dora? Dora Manning is one of your associates?”
“Lot of people think she’s antisocial,” said Cooley, “but she’s not.”
Thumps ran through the reasons why he should not tell Cooley about Reuben Justice and couldn’t think of any. “Guy by the name of Reuben Justice.”
“Justice,” said Cooley. “He got something to do with Ridge?”
“Maybe.”
Cooley smiled. “That’s what the sheriff would have said.”
“Is that what you came to ask the sheriff?”
“Nope,” said Cooley. “I came to give him some information.”
“Okay.”
“You’re not the sheriff.”
“I’m a deputy.”
“Yeah,” said Cooley, “I know.”
There were any number of people who would figure Cooley for a man of average intelligence. They’d make the mistake of thinking that, because he was large, he was slow or stupid. Thumps had made that mistake once, and he had never made it again.
“You know where Noah is?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s the kind of answer I’d expect from the sheriff.”
Cooley nodded. “You know how to make coffee?”
THUMPS AND COOLEY sat in the warmth of the sheriff’s office and ran through the current pieces of reservation gossip while the water and the coffee grounds bubbled away. Thumps wasn’t sure there was any hope for the coffee, fresh or otherwise. The inside of Hockney’s pot looked as though it had been coated with black lead. Even Cooley, who tended to be an optimist, wasn’t enthusiastic.
“My cousin makes coffee in a pot like that,” said Cooley, “but she knows what she’s doing.”
Thumps was able to get caught up on Elaine Browning’s new business, a computer-dating service that matched Native people from around North America, and Cooley filled him in on Marvin Bigcorn’s legal battle with Chief Motors.
“Elaine puts everyone into their major cultural groups and languages first,” said Cooley, “so they’ll have something in common.”
“How’s it going?”
“Not as well as she hoped,” said Cooley. “Lot of Indians are marrying Whites these days. The Irish are real popular.”
Chief Motors had sold Marvin a truck that came up lame with a bent crankshaft, and the two of them had been arguing for more than a year about who should pay for the repair.
“Marvin says the truck was like that when he bought it, and Chief Motors is insisting that Marvin bent the shaft.”
“They going to go to court?”
“Nope. Both of them are too cheap to hire a lawyer.”
By the time the coffee was done, the conversation had slid back to the matter at hand. Cooley poured himself a cup and took a tentative sip.
“It’s not real good,” he said, “but it probably won’t hurt you.”
“You know the sheriff is out looking for Noah right now.”
Cooley took another sip. “Where’s he looking?”
“South end of the lake.”
“Won’t find him there.” Cooley took a notebook out of his jacket.
“Is this one of those things in the Unusual column?”
“Just before the snow really began coming down, Dora says that she thought she saw someone out on the lake.”
“It’s not frozen yet.”
“Not so you could set up a fishing hut.”
“She sure about this?”
“Saw him for just a moment.” Cooley set the cup on the edge of the desk. “If she saw anyone at all.”
“So, she’s not sure.”
“By the time she got Arthur’s binoculars, the lake was empty.”
Thumps looked at the pot and decided not to take a chance. “But if she did see someone on the lake in the snow . . .”
Cooley yawned and shifted his weight to one side of the chair. “Then that someone was headed north.”
“North?”
“Walking around in a snowstorm like that on Red Tail Lake, you got to figure one of two things.” Cooley poured himself a second cup. “Either the guy’s lost or he knows where he’s going. And if he knows where he’s going, then the only reason to be out walking on the lake is to make sure that no one else does.”