Another Man's Moccasins

When I got through daydreaming, the sun was booming through the windows, and even with the air-conditioning it was hot. Frymire was still asleep in his chair with his arm in a cast and sling, his face discolored from his brow to down below the jawline.

I figured if Virgil White Buffalo had hit him any harder, it would’ve killed him.

The giant was standing by the bars now. He was so tall that he could see through the bars and out the window of the common area to the elementary school across the street. There was no formal school in the summer, but the county ran a day care, and the little citizens were scrambling over the playground like barn swallows. I had been a little unnerved when he’d first started doing it, but since reading his file I understood. Whenever the kids came out for recess, he would stand there with the bars in his hands and watch. When the bell rang and the youngsters went indoors, he would sit back down and the dark hair would once again enclose his face.

I thought about how the guys in Alcatraz could hear the New Year’s parties going on across the bay in San Francisco, how the prisoners at Folsom could listen to the passing trains, and wondered what they heard in Leavenworth.

I’d spoken to him, everybody had, but he remained incommunicative. He was scheduled for an examination with the attending physicians later in the week, and I was still trying to figure out how we were going to pull that one off without loss of life, limb, or deputy.

“He had a big lunch.” I turned to look at Chuck, who was now awake but was still talking a little funny. “We shared a family-style bucket of chicken from the Busy Bee; I had three pieces and he had thirteen, along with all the coleslaw, baked beans, six biscuits, and four cans of iced tea.”

We watched the giant as he continued to study the children. “That may be his plan, to eat his way out.”

Frymire stood and stretched, wincing a little when his right arm slipped. “I’m going to make a run to the bathroom, if that’s okay?”

I threw a thumb up, sending him out and then crossing to the window for a look at Virgil’s world. I watched the kids with him and thought about the boy and girl whose photograph was in the plastic child’s wallet, the beautiful woman who was tickling them on the bus stop bench, and about the hateful words scrawled on the chalkboard.

I thought about the file.

God.

The bell rang, and we watched the children flow to the open doors of the primary school as if somebody had pulled a stopper and they were all draining away. After the doors closed, I turned and looked up at Virgil. “Don’t worry, they’ll be back.”

He said nothing, lay down, and crossed his arm over his eyes again.

I watched him for a while before the intercom on the holding cell phone buzzed, and I crossed over and picked it up. “DCI on line one.”

I punched the required button. “Longmire.”

“No drugs.”

I nodded and leaned against the wall and tipped my hat back. “Hi, T.J.”

“Walt, this young woman was most likely a prostitute.”

“The sheriff of L.A. County pulled her sheet. He said it was a first offense.”

“Well, she might have been arrested only once, but the physical evidence indicates a number of vocational eccentricities.”

I could feel the old cooling in my face and the stillness in my hands. “Such as?”

“She’s been used to excess; internal abscess, ulceration, and thickening of the vaginal walls uncommon in a woman this young.” It was quiet on the line. “And she’s been modified.”

“What? ”

“At some point in time, she was sewn up to appear virginal, and the breasts are implants; a poor job.”

I took a deep breath and let the dregs of emotion trail out with the exhale, as well as the haunting image of the Vietnamese woman lying along the interstate.

Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam: 1968

I looked at her body before the air patrolman stepped into my line of sight. She could have been asleep; it was difficult to tell in the gloom of the early morning. The red revolving lights of the air security patrol’s jeep had drawn me from the cemetery.

“Whoa there, chief. Where did you come from?”

He looked like one of the guys from Gate 055. I pointed back at the cemetery, immediately regretting the jarring that traveled from the middle of my back to the fracturing pain in my head. “Over there.”

He looked past my shoulder. “The graveyard?”

I stepped to the side and almost fell down. “Is that the girl I was following?”

He tried to block me again, but a voice commanded from behind. “Let him by—he’s one of us.”

I moved forward, and my eyes focused as Baranski looked up at me; he was sitting on the fender of a jeep and was filling out paperwork as the crimson lights flashed across our faces every two seconds. “Well, what’a ya know. It’s the First Division’s secret weapon.”

I stood there weaving, trying to get some idea of what was going on. “What are you guys doing out here?”