Astride a Pink Horse (25 page)

“Did you try to play baseball again?” Bernadette asked, her voice a near whisper.

“Yes,” Cozy said, his eyes glazed over. “After I rehabbed until I was purple in the face. But what I had was gone—my mobility, my speed, my timing. Some sportswriters claimed that even my will
had disappeared. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get what had been there back. I had a couple more surgeries, minor ones compared to the first, but all they did was finish me off.”

“Athletically, you mean,” Bernadette said sternly.

“Yeah, athletically,” Cozy said, trying his best to force a smile.

“Glad to see you appreciate my point,” said Bernadette.

When the waitress appeared seconds later and asked if either of them would like another drink, Bernadette reached out, cupped Cozy’s left hand in hers, squeezed it reassuringly, and said, “No, just the check.”

Bernadette wanted Cozy to do anything but to drop her off at the Marriott. Drive around town, have an after-dinner drink, go for a walk—any of them would have worked. She wanted to confide in him, talk to him longer, tell him her story, but by the time they reached the hotel, she could tell from the emotionally drained look on Cozy’s face that the evening needed to end.

“It’s been a wonderful evening,” she said as he nosed the dually into a spot for guests in front of the hotel.

Waving off an eager-looking parking attendant, Cozy jumped out of the truck, limped quickly to the other side, and opened the door for Bernadette. “Emily Post says to always see the lady inside.”

“She a friend of yours?”

“My second cousin.”

They laughed, walked down a short cobblestone sidewalk, and entered the hotel. “You up for something tomorrow?” Cozy asked as they stood staring at one another in the middle of a hallway that led to the lobby.

“I haven’t thought that far ahead, truthfully. I can call you, though.”

Cozy looked disappointed. “We can always put our heads together on your Tango-11 problem.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Then we could drive up to the mountains.” There was a dogged insistence in Cozy’s tone.

“Sounds better. I’ll call you when I’m up.”

“Fine.”

“And thanks again for the great evening.”

“Turned out a little one-sided, I’m afraid,” Cozy said.

“No, it turned out perfect.” Bernadette smiled, briefly clasped Cozy’s right hand tightly in hers, and headed for the elevator.

The openmouthed stare of someone who’d seen something he couldn’t quite believe remained plastered on Cozy’s face as he watched Bernadette disappear inside the elevator. He was back outside and behind the wheel of the dually when he said loudly, “Yeah, perfect!”

Sarah Goldbeck cleared her throat, announced, “I’m as nervous as hell, Grant,” into the mouthpiece of the ’50s-style rotary-dial telephone that hung on the front wall of her potter’s shed, and began fidgeting with a tattered edge of her potter’s apron.

Buford had built the seven-hundred-square-foot pottery shop, which Sarah called the Barn, pretty much by himself, and except for the shop’s one glaring error, a concrete floor that caused Sarah to have leg cramps and, like some predator, sat waiting for any errant stumble or loose grip on her pottery, the shop was the treehouse she’d never had as a child, a kind of fantasy place her mother had taught her never to believe in. Her own special place to escape the world. Above all, it was somewhere to get out of the shadow of her late mother’s antinuclear, Greenpeace, civil rights, and animal rights causes, which, as the standard-bearer
of her mother’s legacy, she’d never been able to champion effectively.

“Nervous as hell, Grant,” she repeated, staring out one of the shed’s two slightly off-kilter front windows and up the hill toward her darkened house. She drummed her fingers on her thigh, wondering when Buford would be home.

Fed up with her whining, Grant Rivers, who’d spent most of the afternoon and evening in Cheyenne buying fencing materials and looking for a new brush chopper, said, “Everything will be all right, Sarah. Just calm down, for God’s sake, and stop complainin’.” His cell phone erupted with staticky interference.

“Where are you, anyway? The reception’s terrible. Between the static and that asthmatic voice of yours, I can barely understand you.”

“In Cheyenne at Menards. I drove down to pick up a piece of equipment and a load of metal fence posts.”

Not at all surprised that her penny-pinching former lover had driven 175 miles from Casper down to Cheyenne and to within an hour of her doorstep in order to save ten bucks, Sarah shook her head and said, “I talked to Kimiko a little bit ago. She sounded scared and a little angry. Claimed she might even drive over here to talk.”

“Now, that’s hard to believe. I always thought the only thing that old bird was afraid of was that she might not live long enough to mete out punishment to the sons and daughters of the people she holds responsible for her time at Heart Mountain. I’ve talked to her, too, by the way. Did she tell you that she came home from a trip to Heart Mountain just this morning, or that she had an FBI
agent camped on her doorstep this afternoon? She said he peppered her with questions for close to forty-five minutes. Asked her about her protest days and about her connection, and of course ours, to Thurmond Giles. She said he even had photographs of all of us from back then. Your mother included.”

“Oh, my God! Was Rikia with her?” Sarah asked, hoping Rikia had been present to keep the increasingly forgetful Kimiko from saying the wrong thing.

“No. She said as soon as they got home from Heart Mountain, Rikia left for El Paso to present a research paper to a bunch of math eggheads at a conference.”

“Not good. Not good at all. You know how badly Kimiko needs a buffer.”

“Well, she sure doesn’t need Rikia. He’s as off-the-wall as her, as far as I’m concerned. Forever mutterin’ about how he and his contributions to science have been disrespected. What frickin’ science? The man counts credit-card receipts and totals up people’s phone calls, for God’s sake.”

“So, what do we do?”

“What we do is sit tight. Bide our time and let the cops, the air force, and now the FBI do their thing. We aren’t the ones on the front line with this Thurmond Giles killin’, anyway.”

“What my mother saw in a letch like Giles, I’ll never know,” Sarah said, her voice brimming with disgust.

“The same thing you saw in me a few years later, my dear—sex! What does it matter, anyway? What kind of connection can the FBI possibly make between you and Giles from back then? You were just sixteen.”

“The kind that would let them know I hated the man for destroying my mother.”

“She made her own bed, Sarah.”

“She was an out-of-touch college physics professor with no grasp whatsoever of the real world, Grant. A homely semirecluse, and she was taken advantage of by that womanizing Elmer Gantry of a black pervert. He stole her money, her dignity, and her soul.”

“I’ve heard it all before, Sarah. Let’s move on, okay? The operative word from here on out is
chill
. Don’t talk to the FBI, that Platte County sheriff, any air force OSI type, or even Kimiko without talkin’ to me first. Got it?”

“I’ll try. But if they dig deep enough—”

“They’ll find China.” There was simmering anger in Grant Rivers’s gravel-throated reply. “Lean on Buford if you have to,” he said sarcastically.

“He’s not here.”

“Then go read a book, make some damn pots, go to bed. Do whatever in the shit you have to to focus on something other than Thurmond Giles. Do like I did after our meetin’ in Casper this morning. I decided to concentrate on a fencin’ project at the ranch, and it did wonders for me.”

“Your analogy’s idiotic, Grant. Are you sure all those steroids you take to keep your airways open aren’t affecting your brain? Besides, I’m not you. I can’t turn things on and off like a water spigot, in case you’ve forgotten. Are you headed back to Buffalo?”

“As soon as I’m off the phone with you.”

Sounding calmer, Sarah said, “Drive carefully. You know how bad the deer are this time of year along I-25.”

“Yeah, I know. But after all these years, I’ve learned how to dodge ’em,” Rivers said, laughing. “You need to think about doin’ the same thing when it comes to Tango-11. Nobody says you have to be at home when the authorities show up wantin’ to chat.”

“I’ll consider the possibility.”

“Good. I’ll talk to you later,” Grant said, snapping his cell phone closed to leave Sarah staring at a half-dozen pots that needed to be fired and wondering why she’d called someone for moral support whom she’d seen shoot elk out of season and leave wounded deer lying in the field to rot.

An hour later she remained as disgusted as, and no less nervous than, when she’d been talking to Grant. Buford still hadn’t come home, and two calls to Kimiko Takata had gone unanswered. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the blame for the Thurmond Giles killing would soon be headed her way. Upset with herself for hanging on to tired old friendships and long-extinguished love, she decided to put away her pottery tools, head up the hill to the house, and go to bed.

The crunch of tires on the gravel driveway outside the shed filled her with a momentary sense of relief. Telling herself that Buford was finally home, she rushed to the front door and swung it open, only to realize that the vehicle idling just feet from the door wasn’t Buford’s. Unable to recognize the driver in the darkness, she barely had time to yell, “What?” when two blasts from a sawed-off shotgun took away most of her face. Moaning, with her hands clutched to her face, she fell face forward onto the gravel. She rolled around on the driveway screaming as the driver reloaded,
stepped from the car, and pumped a third blast into the back of her head before slipping back into the vehicle to drive away.

Buford Kane found his common-law wife’s body, her head in a pool of blood, thirty minutes later. For half those minutes he’d nosed around the house absentmindedly looking for snacks and sorting through a stash of porno tapes. When he finally decided to look for Sarah in the potter’s shed, his stomach was growling from the five cans of beer and the nearly dozen chicken wings he’d consumed earlier at a bar in Chugwater. When he found Sarah lying facedown in the dark as the shed’s open front door swung lazily in the night breeze, a projectile of sour beer and partially digested chicken parts shot from his mouth. It was only the lengthy scream that ensued that stopped the flow.

Wiping vomit from his face, he ran into the shed, called 911, and then checked Sarah’s dead body for signs of life before racing up the hill to the house. Barely able to breathe and with tears streaming down his cheeks, he located Bernadette Cameron’s card in a kitchen drawer. Certain that Sarah’s death was connected to the Tango-11 murder, he dialed Bernadette’s cell-phone number and waited.

When Bernadette, who’d stayed up to read for a bit after coming home from dinner, answered, Buford said breathlessly, “I need your help, Major. Sarah’s been murdered. Right here at our house. I found her lying outside her potter’s shed a few minutes ago. Half her face is missing,” he said, shivering uncontrollably, barely able to get his words out. “It’s all connected to that murder at Tango-11, goddamn it! Help me, Major, please! Help me!”

“Have you called 911?”

“Yes. Can you come, too, right now, Major Cameron, please?”

Feeling helpless, Bernadette said, “I’m afraid I’m not involved with the Tango-11 investigation any longer, Mr. Kane. You’ll need to contact Colonel DeWitt.”

With sirens wailing in the background, the still sobbing Buford said, “I don’t want to start with somebody new.”

Bernadette swallowed hard, fighting to maintain her composure. “All I can do, I’m afraid, is give you Colonel DeWitt’s number.”

“Then give it to me, damn it!”

Bernadette gave him the number and added, “That’s his direct line.”

“Wait a minute. I’ve gotta find something to write with. Okay. Let me have it again,” he said, fumbling with a ballpoint pen.

Bernadette repeated the number. “I’m so sorry.”

“The paramedics are here! Oh, my God, I came home too late! Too fucking late.” Buford slammed down the receiver to leave a wide-eyed and visibly shaken Bernadette listening to a dial tone.

Seconds later, as she dialed Cozy’s cell-phone number and her throat went dry, she whispered, “Answer, Cozy, please.”

The Southeastern Oklahoma State baseball T-shirt and jeans Cozy had hastily thrown on after Bernadette’s midnight phone call were wrinkled and in need of washing, and as he sat in her hotel suite, hair barely combed, feeling slightly self-conscious, drinking a Coke, and watching the normally unflappable major pace the floor, he found himself thinking that his unkempt look might be adding to her upset.

Bernadette, who was dressed in loose-fitting khaki shorts and
one of her father’s oversized air force–blue dress shirts, was typically barefoot. Cozy locked eyes with her and, in response to her description of the disjointed conversation she’d had with Buford Kane, asked, “And Kane really sounded that bad?”

“He was crying like a baby, Cozy. It was terrible.”