The Wild Bunch Bar wasn’t too different from any other bar along the high plains; it was a rambling affair with three pool tables and a connected café, although there were a few things that made it stand out a bit in comparison with some of the others in the county. Reflecting the influence of the Australian and New Zealand sheepshearers, there was an All-Blacks soccer poster by the door and a tattered Aussie flag over the jukebox.
There was a flat-screen television at the far end of the bar, certainly a new addition, and a dark-haired man in a leather jacket and sunglasses was seated under it; he was actively watching the Rockies being pummeled by the Dodgers. He smiled, cried out, and raised a fist as L.A. loaded the bases. There were no other customers in the café.
The bar was along the left-hand side of the room, and Saizarbitoria was seated on the stool closest to the door; he was having a cup of coffee with the bartender, a stringy-looking young man with flame tattoos and a shaved head. Thirty, maybe. “’Sup, Sheriff ? Can I get you folks something?”
I looked at my daughter, who in turn looked at him. “Diet Coke.”
I motioned to Henry and me. “Iced teas.”
I sat on the stool next to Sancho and pulled his written report from under the personal property bag at his fingers. The bartender’s name was Phillip Maynard, and he had a local address but had only moved here a week earlier from Chicago. He came back with our drinks, and his eyes lingered on Cady. “You new around here?”
She slid the can closer to her. “No.”
I folded my arms on the bar and got his attention. “Are you?”
He looked at me and quickly made the familial connection. “Uh huh.”
I sipped my tea. “So, there was an Asian woman in here night before last?”
“Yeah.”
I nodded toward Saizarbitoria. “He show you the photograph? ”
“Yeah.”
“Same woman?”
He put his hands behind his back and tried to look at the report. “It was kind of hard to tell, but the clothes were the same.”
I nodded. “You get a lot of Asian women in here?”
He paused for a second. “I don’t know, I started less than a week ago—they could come in here in droves. I don’t know.”
"When did she come in?”
“Friday afternoon, before the after-work rush.”
“Right. And what time is that?”
He thought about it and shrugged. “She was gone by four-thirty. She wasn’t here for very long.” I finished my drink and looked at Henry, who had yet to touch his. I followed his eyes as they traveled to the man with the sunglasses in the corner, who smiled a worried smile and then returned his attention to the National League West.
“What’d she have?”
Maynard refilled my glass. “I think she just had some wine.” He thought about it. “And a bag of pretzels.”
"She say anything?”
He reached around and took a sip of the beer that he had stored on the counter behind the bar. “Nope.” His eyes went back to Cady.
I studied the report. “It says here she arrived around noon?”
“Yeah.”
"Four and a half hours? ” I looked at him. “You don’t consider that to be very long?”
The blood was rising in his face. “Well, I mean...some people stay in here all day.”
“And for four and a half hours she didn’t say anything?”
“Nothing in English, just French and a little Vietnamese.”
I gave him a look. "Vietnamese?”
He nodded. “I washed dishes in a Vietnamese restaurant in Chicago. I don’t speak the language, but I can recognize it.”
“Who did she talk to?”
“Herself.”
“Was there anybody else here?”
He studied the bar. “There were a couple of ranchers that came in to get out of the sun.”
"You know their names?”
“No.”
"Ever see them in here before?”
He shook his head no. “Like I said, I been here less than a week.”
I glanced at Henry, who was still watching the man in the corner who still appeared to be enjoying the ball game. “What’d they look like?”
“Working ranchers—locals, not the fly-in type.”
I thought that the description fit the Dunnigan brothers who had been haying the roadside along Lone Bear Road. “About sixty-something? One of them wearing a straw hat, the other in a ball cap with a ranch brand on it, had a squint?”
He started nodding before he answered. “Yeah, that was them.”
“They talk to her? ”
“A little, yeah.”
“Catch any of the conversation?”
He shrugged. “They were tryin’ to hit on her. I mean, she was good-looking.”
“They leave together?”
“No, she left before they did.” He paused for a second, and I knew he was thinking about changing this part of the story. "You know...”
The trick in these types of situations is to assure the subject that you know there’s more to the story and to let them tell it. “Yep?”
“They did leave just a little after she went out.” He partially closed one eye and bobbed his head. “They really were hitting on her pretty hard, now that I come to think about it.”
I nodded. “Anything else? It’s a homicide investigation, so don’t feel as if you have to hold back.”
“She paid in quarters.”
“Quarters? ”
"Yeah.”
I continued to look at him. “That’s odd.”
He nodded, quick to agree. “I thought so, too.”