Another Man's Moccasins

I sat there on the bank of the hillside as the EMTs worked on the back of my head. I continued to clear my throat and massaged my forefinger and thumb into my eye sockets in an attempt to replace the stars in my eyes with real ones.

Double Tough stood by as T.J. handed me another cup of coffee. I wasn’t sure I could swallow it, but it was reassuring just to be able to hold it. We all watched the faint glow of the sunrise on the horizon toward Pumpkin Buttes and Thunder Basin. I nodded thanks and cleared my throat, still unable to speak.

T.J. glanced back at the EMTs, who were finishing up the job. “I assume he’s going to be okay?”

Cathi leaned around and looked at the front of me as she finished doctoring the back of my head. “The long arm of the law’s gonna have a lump, but we’ve patched him up before.”

Double Tough smiled his slow grin and looked across the grassland to the wall of red rocks. “Lord Almighty, you see the size’a that son-of-a-bitch?”

I swallowed and tried a sip; it tasted pretty good but set off another coughing attack. “What did you use to get him off me?” My voice sounded rough and wheezy.

“One’a them pieces’a two-by-four.” He thought about it as Cathi and Chris gathered up the rest of their equipment to change venue. “I think ya surprised him.”

“Not as much as he surprised me.”

The creature from the cave was as big as a grizzly, and it took four men to carry him out of the tunnel. I noticed they used ankle bracelets at his wrists because the handcuffs would’ve been too small. He was an Indian, Crow from what we could make of him.

I started to get up but felt a little dizzy and sat back down. T.J. placed a hand on my shoulder and held me there. “Easy.”

I sighed. “He still alive?”

Double Tough snorted. “Yeah. I hit him hard enough to fell a mule, but he’s still breathin’.”

I watched as Chris, Chuck, and two HPs carried the now unconscious man up the hillside, his hair trailing all the way to the grass, snagging here and there as if it were trying to stay the progress. It was as if his hair, like the Vietnamese girl’s, had wanted to remain here until all the questions had been answered. He was wearing an old army field jacket, torn and ragged, with the remnants of a denim shirt and a wool sweater underneath. His legs were swathed in tatters of plaid-lined overalls. Everything was frayed and filthy except the intricately beaded moccasins that were on his gigantic feet. They were a design I’d never seen.

I tried to stand again, and this time succeeded, and I staggeredup the hill with Double Tough’s help. “Anybody checking all that stuff in the tunnel?”

“They’re gonna, but they’re not gonna be happy about it. The place smells bad enough to gag a maggot off a gut wagon.”

I nodded toward the giant. “What about him?”

“He’s goin’ to the hospital, and then he’s most likely gonna be in our jail.”

“Find anything in the tunnel to connect him with the Vietnamese woman?”

He shook his head at me. “Not yet, but we figured tryin’ ta choke the life out of the sheriff was good enough reason to hold ’im.”

We watched as they loaded the gurney into the EMT van, the rear suspension compressing with the weight of one woman, four men, and one very large Indian. “You guys knock him out with something?”

Double Tough gave a halfhearted laugh. “We didn’t have to. You jus’ about collapsed his larynx, and I pretty much battered his head in.”

They closed the van doors and departed toward Durant Memorial Hospital. After the sirens died down, he spoke in a soft voice. “That is one FBI.”

I didn’t bother to translate the acronym, but I knew he didn’t mean Federal Bureau of Investigation.

T.J. had left with her DCI crew and said she’d be in touch as soon as they knew anything, so Rosey gave me a ride back to the office. It was still early morning, and the darkness was slow to release its grip on the county. Ruby, my dispatcher, was always first in, but she was Dog-sitting and hadn’t gotten there yet. My dog, Dog, still didn’t have a name and after calling him Dog for the better part of a year I was concerned that he would be confused if I gave him a real name or maybe I was concerned about confusing myself.

I took advantage of the situation to go back to the holding cells to catch a quick nap on one of the bunks. I tried sleeping on my back, but the damage to the muscles in my throat made me feel like I was strangling, and the little yarmulke of bandages at the back of my head made that position even more uncomfortable, so I rolled over on my side and stared at the bars.

Where did he come from, and what was he doing there?

If he had killed the woman, why would he have left her in such a conspicuous spot? Why wouldn’t he have just dragged her into the tunnel with him?

Besides, what the hell was a Vietnamese woman doing in northern Wyoming, especially dead alongside Lone Bear Road?

Maybe I’d know more when T.J. called with the official report.