Land of Wolves (11 page)

We waited for a long while as he seemed lost in his thoughts, and finally Vic stood and went into the kitchen to stir the stew as a relief from the tension or to provide even the smallest bit of privacy as Lucian looked out the windows at the darkness.

“Think about that, givin’ up years of your life for somebody else.”

Vic came back out and stood there, leaning against the wall with the ladle in her hands. “You let him take his brother’s place?”

He glanced back at her. “Once.”

She studied him. “Excuse me?”

His eyes came back to mine. “Had a wolf problem once out on Cat Creek. They’d just started puttin’ collars on those things,
and if you shot one you might as well have shot Spiro Agnew. They had a specialist who said they had a wolf out of the park but that somethin’ must be wrong because their telemetry said that wolf was headed across South Dakota, and the last they heard, it was just outside Chicago. So, we call it in and these Chicago PD boys head out to the last given location on a wolf hunt, and boy, I’d have paid money to witness that.”

“What happened?”

He glanced back down at the shotgun. “They found a dead wolf in a coal hopper where somebody’d dumped it off an overpass.”

“Why do you suppose he didn’t want it?”

I glanced at the Remington Model 11 sitting on the floorboards. “I don’t know. Maybe it reminded him of things he didn’t particularly want to remember.”

“Why don’t you come in?”

I pulled the Bullet to a stop in front of the little Craftsman house with the red door on Kisling. “I can’t. Dog and I need to go home every once in a while just to make sure the wildlife hasn’t taken up residency.”

“Like Larry?” I said nothing, but she smiled. “How about I go with you?”

“I don’t think I’m going to be that much fun.”

She studied me. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

“I think so.” I took a deep breath and sighed. “Just listening to Lucian got to me a little bit. I guess I see him over there at the home for assisted living, and I can’t help but think that that’s where I’m going to end up.”

She reached back to pet my companion. “Never—you’ve got Dog . . . And me.”

I smiled.

“Lucian likes being alone, Walt, he always has—I swear he likes company once a week when that granddaughter of his brings over a box of pastries and that’s it. You’re not like that, and more important, you have too many people who care about you, so if you’re worried about being alone in your old age, I’d forget about it. They’d have to put a revolving door over at the home for assisted living.” She reached across and placed a hand under my chin, pulling it toward her and gently kissing me. “There, now go home and go to bed.”

Watching her get out and walk up to her tiny house, I made sure she was at the door before lowering the window so she could look back at me. “What?”

“I’m making sure Larry isn’t here to attack you.”

She curtsied with the container of stew.

Driving out of town to the rhythm of blinking caution lights, I couldn’t help but think about my daughter and granddaughter so many miles away. I crossed under the overpass to I-25 and pulled into the Maverik gas station. As I filled my tank, I looked up at the moonlight reflecting off the mountains.

I missed my daughter, but I really missed my granddaughter. The last time I’d seen her, Henry had come down from the Rez for a reunion with Cady. When the two of them fell into a lengthy conversation, Lola and I went out for an abbreviated walk with partial carry. It was sunset, and we watched as the Bighorn Mountains turned a raging violet and then a more somber purple before darkening into blackened cutouts.

I pointed. “Mountains.”

“
Moontins
.” She reached for them, excited. “
My moontins
.”

“Yep, your mountains.”

At the pump, I glanced back at the overpass and the inviting on-ramp that led south. I could just hop on the highway and be in Cheyenne in five hours, but I hadn’t received any response from my first and only email, so . . .

Hanging up the handle, I looked across the parking lot and could see an animated conversation going on inside the Maverik convenience store: a powerful looking man in hiking pants and a fleece jacket appeared to be arguing with the attendant.

I held a finger up to Dog and started across the lot, hoping that I could draw this confrontation to a quick close and get back on my way.

When I pushed the door open the man was leaning on the counter and yelling at the attendant in the de rigueur red vest, but he pulled back and stopped at the electronic tone that announced my entrance.

I waited for him to turn around and look at me from under the brim of a North Face cap. “What the hell do you want?”

I glanced at the employee behind the counter. “Is there a problem?”

The customer stepped closer, and I noted he was smaller than me, but not by much, and looked to be in remarkable shape. “I asked you what the hell you wanted.”

“Well, first of all, I’d appreciate it if you’d lower your voice and change your tone.”

He leaned toward me. “You got some kind of problem?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” Stepping to the side, I addressed the clerk again. “Is there something going on here?”

He seemed relieved that I was there. “His credit card didn’t work, so he came in here, but I tried it and it still didn’t go through.”

The man pointed at the card machine, the jacket’s horsehair zipper pull swaying with the effort. “There’s nothing wrong with that card. Run it again.”

“I’ve tried it four times. Do you have another one?”

He threw his hands in the air. “Look pal, I don’t know who you are, but I know people around here and the local sheriff is a family friend.”

I stood there for a moment, letting that one settle. “Is that so?”

“Yeah, so if you don’t want any trouble you should just lay off.”

“Really?”

He stepped forward, thrusting his face in mine. “What, are you hard of hearing?”

Carefully opening my jacket, I pulled my badge wallet from my pocket and flipped it open displaying the six-point star for him. “I’m a pretty good friend of the sheriff myself.” The color kind of drained from his face as I put the hardware away and hiked my jacket back to incidentally reveal my Colt. “How about you show me some ID so that we can all get acquainted.”

“Um . . .” He glanced around, licking his lips, and then pointed at a black, four-door Jeep Wrangler with Colorado plates out by the pumps on the opposite side from mine. “It’s in my wallet out on the dash of my car.”

Reaching over and taking his credit card from the attendant, I handed it back and gestured toward the lot. “Well, let’s go take a look.”

Following him out to the vehicle, he began backpedaling a bit. “So, you’re a deputy here in Absaroka County?”

Evidently, he hadn’t read the ID card that accompanied my badge very carefully. “Something like that.”

Reaching the door, I watched as he took the wallet and
pulled out his Colorado driver’s license, handing it to me. “Well, I do know the sheriff, I mean, he knows my family.”

I read aloud. “Donald Lott?”

“That’s not the family name, the family here in Absaroka County, that is.”

I looked up at him. “Extepare would be the family name here in-county, and Abarrane Extepare would be your father-in-law?”

He looked surprised and a little confused. “Um, yeah, but how do you know?”

We sipped our Styrofoam cups of coffee as his tank filled, courtesy of the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department fleet credit card. He was embarrassed and not wanting to talk, but that was too bad, because I did. “I spoke with your wife, Jeannie, and she said you weren’t driving up until this coming weekend.”

He watched the numbers go by as the tank filled; anything better than making eye contact with me. “I had a change in schedule.”

“And what is it you do, Mr. Lott?”

“IT for Western Banking and Trust down in Denver.”

I nodded, proud of having just learned the term. “I can see why you aren’t too excited about the sheep business.”

For the first time he smiled, placing an expensive-looking hiking boot onto the concrete of the pump island. “Abe told you that?”

“He said you and his daughter were less than excited about the prospect.”

The pump stopped, he hung up the handle, and turned to look in my general direction. “You ever work sheep?”

I leaned on the fender of his car and shook my head. “Nope, my family were cattle people, but I think the romance is about the same after you’ve done it for a couple thousand head.”

He turned and laughed. “I’m from Mississippi. I didn’t know anything about sheep, but I was trying to impress Jeannie. If I never see another sheep again in my life it’ll be too soon.”

“Sounds like your wife pretty much feels the same way.”

“Maybe worse.”

“How about your son?”

He froze up a bit but then peeled the top from the cup of coffee I’d fronted him and took a sip. “Oh, he thinks it’s a grand adventure every time he comes up here.”

“He and your father-in-law seem close.”

He nodded, keeping his nose in the cup. “They are—maybe a little too close.”

“Meaning?”

He sipped the coffee some more and then turned to look at me. “Look, Sheriff, I don’t know how much you know about what’s going on here?”

I lowered my own cup and studied him back. “Enough to know that you tried to hire a good friend of mine or me to kidnap your son.”

He expulsed a lungful of air and acted as if I’d hit him. “Now, wait a minute. It wasn’t anything like that.”

“Then what was it like?”

“Look, I just wanted my son back, and I didn’t want it to turn into a big legal hassle, so I was talking to Libby Troon down in Cheyenne and she said that she knew people up here that—”

“And if you don’t mind my asking, how do you know Libby?”

“My bank sometimes finds itself in situations when we need a bail bondsman, and in cases that concern Wyoming, it’s often
best to have one from in-state, and Liberty Bail Bonds fits the bill. Anyway, I was just venting to her, and she came up with the idea.”

“Libby did?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to get her into trouble or anything. She was just trying to help me.”

“Why didn’t you simply contact my office?”

He dipped a shoulder in a modified shrug. “Jeannie said her family had a history with the sheriff’s department up here and that it might not be for the best.”

“She also mentioned that you might’ve had some run-ins with the law?”

“She said that?” He paused for a moment. “Just some stupid stuff from back when I was a kid . . . Good grief.”

“But then you were going to try and hire me to kidnap your child?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t know it was you. For goodness sake, if I was going to hire somebody for an illegal kidnapping I wouldn’t hire the local sheriff. Tell me, is Libby Troon some kind of moron or what?”

“She can be”—I considered my word choice carefully—“eccentric.”

“I just wanted to get my son back—you can understand that?”

“I suppose so, but you can’t go around kidnapping people and transporting them across state lines, even family—the law has some strong feeling about that kind of thing.”

“I know, I know. Look, I apologize, it’s just that I found myself in a difficult situation and was trying to find some way of solving the problem and made a few bad choices.”

“Okay.”

He stood there for a moment more. “You were out there, at the ranch? About the dead shepherd?”

“Yep.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Did you know him?”

“I may have met him once, but I don’t remember. Sometimes I’d ride along with the camp tender, Jimenez. I know him, but the others, what with the turnover rate and the few times I saw any of them, are just a blur.”

“Any idea why he might’ve killed himself or somebody might’ve killed him?”

“You’re serious?” He stared at me. “Somebody killed him? You mean actually killed him?”

“It’s a potential, and we’re duty bound to investigate all possibilities.”

“The murder thing I have no idea, but you said maybe suicide?”

“Yep.”

He crossed one muscled arm, hugging himself, and looked around, saying the next words carefully. “Well, Abe is kind of hard on those guys sometimes.”

“How hard?”

“Look, Sheriff, I don’t know how much of this I should be talking about.”

“You don’t have to talk about any of it.”

He sipped the coffee. “He beat on one of the shepherds one time while I was there; practically beat him to death.”

“Miguel Hernandez?”

“No, this was years ago. I mean he smacked the guy until he was trying to hide under the wagon and then went around kicking at him. I’d never seen anything like that in my life.”

I sipped the last of my coffee and then tossed the cup in the trashcan. “I suppose that has something to do with your concerns about your son?”

“Oh, I don’t think Abe would ever hurt Liam. It’s just . . . He’s got a temper, comes from a line of tempers, and that’s just not something I’m acquainted with, if you know what I mean.”

“Western Banking and Trust doesn’t have a bare-knuckle Friday?”

“No, not that it might not be a good idea.” He sighed and then tossed the remains of his own cup into the trash. “Will you excuse me for just a moment?”

“Sure.”

I watched as he crossed the parking lot to reenter the Maverik and speak with the clerk at length, and then I watched as the two of them laughed. They then shook hands, and he returned to where I stood. “Sorry, just something I needed to do.”

“No problem.” I watched as he climbed in the Jeep and fired it up. “You still owe the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department forty-three dollars and forty-two cents.”

“Oh, shit.” He started fumbling for his wallet on the dashboard. “I can write you a check?”

I waved him off. “Just drop it at my office sometime—I’ll be interested in how the meeting with your father-in-law goes.” I glanced around. “It’s getting kind of late. I’m thinking you should maybe grab a motel room rather than drive all the way out there tonight.”