Another Man's Moccasins

I noticed that one of the highway patrolmen had pulled a green vehicle over at the top of a far hill and hit the brakes. I slowed my truck and slid in behind the Dodge as the shapely blonde in mirrored glasses placed a hand on her hip, near the Glock, and looked back at us from the driver’s side door of Tran Van Tuyen’s Land Rover.

Rosey wore short black search gloves, with undone pearl snaps that revealed pale skin at the wrists of her tanned arms. She straightened her campaign hat as she walked toward us with Tuyen’s license, registration, and insurance card in her hand.

I liked how she walked and smiled. “How you doin’, Troop?”

She tipped her sunglasses down and looked at me. “Have we got some kind of Vietnamese migration going on?”

“He’s the grandfather.”

Her demeanor changed immediately. “Oh.”

I glanced up at Tuyen, who was still calmly seated in his vehicle, but who was adjusting his rearview mirror to look at us. “How fast?”

She leaned an elbow on my truck and glanced back at him. “Borderline, eighty-three.”

“Let him go? He’s had a rough couple of days.” Her eyes came back to mine, and the delicate parchment of the skin at her high cheekbones reminded me of someone else who had been beautiful.

She nodded, and the eyes went down only to come up slow. “You owe me one.” She handed me the paperwork and smiled crookedly. I was feeling a little warm, and I don’t think it had anything to do with the temperature.

As she strutted back to the black Dodge and climbed in with one last glance, I turned to Henry. “It’s you, right? I mean . . . it’s not me.”

He frowned. “No, it is you. Some women have very peculiar tastes.”

I climbed out and walked up to Tuyen’s vehicle as Rosey slipped back onto the highway like a glossy panther looking for prey and disappeared over the hill. Tuyen turned to look at me as I leaned on his door. I noticed that the hard case I’d seen at the ghost town had now gravitated to the passenger floor. I handed him his identification and then looked up and down the empty highway. “Headed back to your motel?”

He stuffed the license back into his wallet and flipped the other papers into the center console. “Yes.”

“Mr. Tuyen, would you have any idea if Ho Thi was traveling alone?”

He looked at me, his face unchanged. “What?”

“I got some information that your granddaughter may not have been traveling alone and was wondering if you would have any idea who might’ve been with her in the car.”

I watched as he stared at the steering wheel. “I . . . I have no idea.”

I crouched down and placed both arms on the sill. “Do you think you could contact your organization back in California and see if there’s anyone else missing? ”

“Certainly.” He began reaching for his cell phone, which was plugged into his dash.

“That’s okay, you’re not going to get service till you get down into Powder Junction.”

He tried to smile, but his face remained grim. “Outside the veterinary office? ”

“Yep.”

He took a breath. “You think that Ho Thi might have been traveling with someone?”

“It’s possible.” I nudged the brim of my hat back.

He nodded. “I will contact Children of the Dust and see if anyone else is missing.” He glanced at me and then to the rolling hills that seemed to recede in the distance, a terrain so broad it hurt your eyes. “This is most distressing.”

“Yes, it is.” I stood and gestured back toward Henry. “My friend and I are going down to Powder Junction and ask a few more questions. Are you going to be in your room?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll have lunch at around one?” He looked up at me with a questioning expression, and I called back over my shoulder. “There’s only one restaurant in Powder Junction. It’s the one connected to the bar.”

Henry studied the side of my face as I pulled around Tuyen’s vehicle and jetted back up to ninety. I glanced at my best friend in the world as I thought it all through, watching as Tran Van Tuyen pulled out after us and followed at a slower speed. “Do you think I’m prejudiced? Really?”

“Yes.” I glanced at him, and his smile was sad. “We all are, to a certain point—unfortunate, is it not? ”

As he watched me, I watched the green Land Rover recede in my rearview mirror. We were both silent the rest of the way to Powder Junction.

The Dunnigan brothers were easy to find—they were now haying the opposite side of the highway, the giant swathers working like prehistoric insects along the gentle slopes of the barrow ditch. I turned on my light bar emergencies, slowed my truck, and pulled in ahead of the big machines.

Den slowed his swather and stopped only inches from my rear quarter-panel. I got out and looked up at him, but he didn’t move from the glass-enclosed cab of the still-running machine. James was already out of his, had climbed down, and was hustling to get to me. He raised a hand, his thin arm hanging in the frayed cuff of his shirt like a clapper in a bell. I glanced up at Den, who pushed his ball cap back on his head and didn’t look at us. James smiled nervously. “Hey, Walt.”