The snow had been falling steadily for the past two hours, covering Jackson Hole with an almost Thomas Kinkade–like glow. Leonard Kanesewah drove the Buick slowly past the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar in all its garish electrified splendor. It was just after midnight. Gloria was staring out at the glowing marquee and the crimson-outlined saddle bronc and rider balanced precariously on the rooftop.
Sharon Nakai scanned the crowd of pedestrians for a familiar face, not knowing what she would do if she were to find one, but hoping nonetheless. Recognizing no one, she gazed out her side window and watched helplessly as the happy, laughing crowds carried on, blithely unaware of their presence.
Kanesewah’s eyes, however, were busy roaming the crowded street, searching for the next vehicle for the final leg of their journey. It was somewhere in this town, among the rustic-looking restaurants, art galleries, and boutique shops of North Cache Street. The black facade and white-trimmed windows of the Anvil Hotel seemed to catch his eye, and the Buick slowed to a crawl as they passed. But nothing in the parking lot interested him, so he continued up Cache Street.
Sharon sat quietly in the back seat, remembering her college days, when she and a few of her friends had driven up to Jackson for a long weekend away from their New Mexico State University studies. They spent their days hiking the trails of the Tetons, and their evenings in the bar, shooting pool on any of the four red-felted tables while rebuffing thinly veiled attempts at conversation from drunken boys and horny middle-aged men. Funny, she thought, the kinds of things you thought about when trying to control the fear and focus your reeling mind.
Kanesewah tapped the brakes and turned in between the twin stone pillars of the Wolf Moon Inn. Moving slowly past the parked cars, he took the alley exit at the end of the first building, circled around, and turned south on Cache again. After circumnavigating the town square, he headed north again, back to the Wolf Moon’s crowded parking lot. Something had caught his eye.
A Jackson police car pulled onto the crowded street from its blind under a darkened gas station portico. Sharon saw Kanesewah stiffen and his hands tighten on the steering wheel.
“Don’t even think about it,” he warned, peering into the rearview mirror at Sharon.
She watched in nervous silence as the police car drove slowly past, saw it blend into the crowd of cars and people behind them and vanish just as quickly as it had appeared. Her heart sank. Not so much as a glance from the officer behind the wheel. They may as well be invisible.
Kanesewah rolled into the Wolf Moon’s parking lot again, toward the two-story block of rooms in back. He was eyeing a mocha-colored newer-model GMC Yukon with Minnesota plates. It sat high enough to be four-wheel drive, but in the snowy night, he couldn’t be sure. He parked the Buick in an empty space across from the Yukon, turned off the headlights, and put it in park with the engine idling. He adjusted the rearview mirror to keep a watchful eye on the motel office behind them and to the right.
“What do we do now?” Gloria asked.
“We wait,” he replied.
Gloria turned in the front seat, rested her left thigh against the seat back, and glanced at Sharon before staring out the windshield. No one spoke. Sharon, too, was looking out the windshield at the GMC, hoping it wasn’t some vacationing senior citizen. If she were lotto-winner lucky, it would be an off-duty cop on some well-deserved R&R, and this nightmare would be over when Kanesewah tried to carjack him. Either way, her situation was about to change. But how it might change remained to be seen.
A few minutes into their vigil, a figure stepped out of a ground-floor motel room across from them—a tall man, wearing a shearling leather coat and dark cowboy hat. She watched as he stepped away from the weak light of the doorway and strode toward the mocha GMC. He stopped briefly in front of it to light a cigarette, then continued past it through the parking lot and toward the motel office. He paused outside the office door, beside a large smokers’ receptacle resembling a chess pawn, and took a drag from his cigarette. Sharon breathed a quiet sigh of relief as the man finally crushed his cigarette on the pavement, ignoring the receptacle, and went inside the motel office.
More quiet time passed before another motel door opened. This time, it was a room on the second floor, near the left end of the long balcony, making it difficult to see the shadowy figure. She watched intently as the silhouette of a medium-size man walked away from the room and along the balcony to the stairs at the end. When he came down to the parking lot, she could see he was wearing a forest-green wool rancher’s coat and a dark ball cap. He fumbled with something he took from one of his coat pockets, and the lights of the GMC blinked twice, accompanied by two brief chirps from the alarm. The man opened the driver’s door and leaned in as if searching for something.
“Keep an eye on her,” Kanesewah said, getting out of the car.
Gloria rested the .38 on the top of the seat back, pointed at Sharon. Sharon stared at it, then into the woman’s eyes.
“How long have you been with him?” Sharon asked.
Gloria snorted. “Why? We girlfriends now or something? You want to paint our toenails later?”
“Just curious.”
Gloria looked briefly behind her, through the snowflakes melting as they hit the warm windshield, at Kanesewah walking toward the Yukon and its unsuspecting owner. She turned her attention back to Sharon as Kanesewah stopped the man, produced a cigarette, and said something.
“Eight years.”
“That’s a long time,” Sharon said. “And he hasn’t asked you to marry him?”
Gloria smirked. “Leonard isn’t the marrying kind. He’s the fuck-you-hard kind.
“Then why do you stay with him?” The man produced a lighter and struck a flame. “He doesn’t seem to treat you very well.”
The first drip of doubt.
Gloria’s irritation manifested quickly. “Shut up!” she barked. “He’s good to me. You don’t know a fucking thing about him! Sure, he’s rough sometimes, but he’s good to me.”
Sharon measured out another drip.
“I just meant that I’ve known a lot of women whose husbands or boyfriends have treated them badly, and it never gets any better. They never change or they never commit.”
Gloria craned her neck around toward the GMC and saw no one. Her eyes searched the parking lot before she answered. “Just shut the hell up, will you? You don’t know a fucking thing!” The figure of a large man emerged from the shadows at the left end of the two-story inn. The long hair blowing in the snowy breeze told her it was Kanesewah, and that seemed to calm her anxiety. More snowflakes self-destructed on the warm windshield, running together to form droplets of water. “Once we get to Canada,” she said, turning back to Sharon, “we’re going to start a better life together.”
Sharon said, “Is that what he promised you?”
Another measured dose.
“You don’t know him,” Gloria repeated, keeping the barrel of the revolver across the top of the seat back. “You don’t know shit, Miss all-high-and-mighty TV Girl. He loves me.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Drip.
“Shut up, I said. Just stop talking!”
Kanesewah opened the door and got in.
“I’m gonna pull up next to the GMC. You get the shit from the trunk, and I’ll move her. And be quick about it. We can’t afford to waste time.”
“Sure, baby,” Gloria said, handing over the .38 to Kanesewah.
Sharon had watched it all unfold during her conversation with Gloria. It was all she could do to keep her poker face on. After the man had lit the stranger’s cigarette, she saw Kanesewah whip his left arm around the man’s left shoulder as he stepped away, his large hand covering the man’s mouth and nose, stifling any chance to scream. The man had struggled briefly while Kanesewah pulled something from his coat pocket and thrust it repeatedly into the man’s torso. After the fourth thrust, the man’s body wilted and Kanesewah hurriedly dragged him into the shadows of the motel. Sharon concluded that what was now in Kanesewah’s coat pocket was either a bloodied switchblade or one of those folding knives that opened with just the flick of a thumb. And if they were indeed heading to Canada, she would have to use every moment alone with Gloria, no matter how brief, to drip more water on her newly planted seeds of doubt. Seeds that she hoped would grow into an impenetrable hedge of mistrust.