Shots Fired (4 page)

“Actually, they do,” Joe said. “And it isn't about what you do on your property, it's what happens if those exotic species get
off
your property. But that's only partially why I'm here—to tell you their decision face-to-face. I also need to let you know that the decision of the commission had nothing to do with Kyle. They liked him, and they thought the proposal he presented was as well done as any man could do. It was all based on the merits, not on the proposal.”

Dietrich stared into Joe's eyes so long, Joe thought he'd have to blink first. And he did.

Dietrich said, “Merits.
Merits
. Do you realize how many times I've heard bullshit reasons like
merits
in my life? Nothing has to do with merits. Every decision has to do with respect and a little bit of fear.”

Dietrich held up a thin bony hand and slowly clenched it. “Merits melt away when there's a fist behind the proposal.
Anything
is possible if you know how to play the game. That's the way of the world. Always has been, always will be. I need men
who know how to play the game. I'd trade a thousand Kyle Sandfords for
one
Lamar Dietrich.”

Joe said, “Maybe there is only one Lamar Dietrich. Did you ever think of that?”

Dietrich beheld Joe and for a moment Joe thought the old man might smile. Instead, he quickly shook his head, as if purging an unpleasant thought.

“I need men I can trust and who can get the job done. I surround myself with winners. That's my secret. I don't have time or sympathy for losers.

“And I don't have time for you,” Dietrich said, dismissing Joe with a wave of his hand.

“Just give him some time to make it right,” Joe said to Dietrich's shuffling back. “He's putting roots down here and his son is in high school. It's not Kyle's fault you want something impossible to happen. Give him a reasonable project and he'll get it done. He's a good man.”

“Losers stay losers,” Dietrich said over his shoulder. “They don't ever make it right. Now where's that stupid boy?”

Joe stood in silence. He was played out. He watched Dietrich exit the building, wave his walker at Kyle Jr., and climb in the ranch pickup.

•   •   •

H
E HEARD ABOUT THE ACCIDENT
over the mutual aid channel of his truck's radio. A pickup had plunged into the Twelve
Sleep River off the one-car bridge at the Crazy Z Bar Ranch. There was one, and possibly two, fatalities. Joe tossed the sandwich he was eating out the driver's-side window and put his pickup into gear. He roared up the hill and past the airport and hit his emergency flashers when he cleared town.

•   •   •

T
HE SCENE AT THE BRIDGE
told him most of what he wanted to know: The Ford F-350 was on its side in the river and the current flowed around and through it, cables on the right side of the bridge had been snapped by the impact and dangled from the I-beams, a sheriff's department SUV was parked haphazardly on Joe's side of the bridge, Kyle Sr.'s personal pickup was parked on the other, and in the middle of the bridge itself was Sandra Hamburger's Dodge Power Wagon.

“Jesus, help us,” Joe whispered to Daisy.

Deputy Justin Woods climbed out of his SUV as Joe pulled up behind it. His uniform was wet from the shoulders down and his eyes looked haunted.

“You gotta help me, Joe,” he said. “I was able to pull the boy out of the truck but I can't find the passenger down there.”

“Is the boy okay?” Joe asked, swinging out of the pickup, followed by Daisy.

“He says he is,” Woods said, nodding toward a bundled figure in the backseat. “He says Lamar Dietrich was in the truck with him. Fuckin'
Lamar Dietrich
.”

•   •   •

A
S THEY DESCENDED
through the brush toward the river, Joe looked across. Joleen and Kyle Sr. stood near their pickup. Joleen was consoling a wailing Sandra Hamburger, trying to hug her to calm her down. Kyle Sr. stood with his hands on his hips and a terrified look on his face.

“Kyle Junior's okay!” Joe shouted.

“Thank God,” Kyle Sr. replied, his shoulders suddenly relaxing with relief.

“So what did he say happened here?” Joe asked Woods.

“He said he picked up old man Dietrich at the airport and he was bringing him out here. He said he was crossing the bridge when he looked up and saw Sandra Hamburger coming straight at him, going fast. It was either hit her head-on or take it off the bridge, and he took it off the bridge.”

Joe winced. Sandra's wails cut through the rushing sounds of the river.

“I cut him out of his seat belt,” Woods said, “but I guess the old man wasn't wearing his.”

Joe nodded and they plunged into the river together. The current was strong and pushed at his legs, and the river rocks were round and slick. He slipped and fell to his knees and recovered. The water was surprisingly cold.

“Maybe Dietrich is pinned under the truck,” Woods said. “I don't know.”

The windshield glass was broken out of the cab when they got there, and Joe confirmed that Dietrich wasn't inside. The current flowed through the smashed-out rear window and through the open windshield. Anything inside would have been washed downstream.

Joe balanced himself against the crumpled metal hood of the pickup and gazed down the river.

“There he is,” Joe said. Twenty yards downstream, beneath the surface, Dietrich's overlarge jacket rippled underwater in the current. His body had been sucked under and was wedged in the river rocks. At a distance downstream where the river made a rightward bend, his large straw hat was caught at the base of some willows.

By the time they dragged the surprisingly light body to the bank, three more sheriff's department vehicles had arrived along with an ambulance. Sheriff Reed dispatched his men to take measurements and photographs of the bridge and the vehicles, and statements from Kyle Jr. and Sandra Hamburger.

•   •   •

J
OE LEANED AGAINST HIS PICKUP
with a fleece blanket over his shoulders, next to Kyle Sr.

“Sheriff Reed hasn't said anything about any charges,” Kyle Sr. said. “I don't know if he's gonna file on Sandra, or Kyle Junior, or neither. It was a damn accident, plain as day. Anybody can see that.”

Joe nodded.

“That poor Sandra, you know how she is. If she's running late there isn't anything she'll let slow her down. I don't even know if she saw Kyle Junior coming across the bridge. I asked her but she just keeps blubbering about her schedule being screwed up.”

Kyle Sr. sighed heavily. “That son of mine—I hope he's okay after this. It's a hell of a thing that happened.”

“Yup,” Joe said, looking over at Kyle Jr. in the back of the SUV. When he did, the boy quickly looked away.

“I don't know what's going to happen now,” Kyle Sr. said, nodding toward the ranch. “I don't know if he had heirs or what.”

“Whatever happens will take awhile,” Joe said. “You might as well hunker down and see where it goes.”

“I guess.”

“It might take years to straighten out,” Joe said. “These things take time to sort out.”

Kyle Sr. looked over and closed one eye. “What are you getting at, Joe?”

“Kyle Junior will be able to stick around. He might even graduate here.”

“He'd like that.”

“Yup,” Joe said.

•   •   •

L
ATER THAT NIGHT,
after dinner, Joe told his wife, Marybeth, about the accident and the death. April listened in as well, and wondered aloud if Kyle would be in school on Monday.

After April left the table, Marybeth looked hard at Joe and said, “What's wrong? Something is bugging you.”

He was astonished, as always, how she could read his mind.

He said, “I don't know for sure, I keep thinking about Kyle Junior. He's an observer, you know? He kind of hangs back and just tracks everything around him.”

Marybeth nodded her head, then gestured for him to go on.

“He saw Sandra on her rounds on his way to the airport, just like I did,” Joe said. “He knows her schedule. He knows the rhythm of that ranch and when Sandra Hamburger is going to show up every day. And he knows how she is. He also knew old man Dietrich didn't buckle his seat belt when he got in the truck.”

Marybeth sat back and covered her mouth with her hand.

“Joe, are you saying . . .”

“I'm not saying
anything
. But it sure was unique timing for him to just happen to be on that bridge going one way when Sandra was on it coming the other, driving like her hair was on fire.”

“My God,” Marybeth whispered.

“No way to prove a thing,” Joe said. “Not unless Kyle Junior decides to break down and confess, and no one is accusing him of anything. Heck, they might not even believe him if he did.”

After a long pause, Marybeth asked, “Are you going to mention this to the sheriff?”

Joe shook his head. “Nope.”

V
laddy pressed his forehead against the glass of the van window as they drove. The metal briefcase was on the floor, between his legs. It was cold in Yellowstone Park in early June, and dirty tongues of snow glowed light blue in the timber from the moonlight. The tires of the van hissed on the road.

“Look,” Vladdy said to Eddie, gesturing out the window at the ghostly forms emerging in the meadow. “Elks.”

“I see 'em every night,” the driver said. “They like to eat the willows. And you don't say ‘elks.' You say ‘elk.' Like in, ‘a herd of elk.'”

“My pardon,” Vladdy said, self-conscious.

“You going to tell me what's in the briefcase?” the driver asked, smiling to show that he wasn't making a threat.

“No, I think not,” Vladdy said.

•   •   •

T
HE GIRL,
C
HERRY,
would be angry with him at first, Vladdy knew that. While she was at work at the motel that day, Vladdy had sold her good stereo and DVD unit to a man in a pawnshop full of rifles for $115, less $90 for a .22 pistol with a broken handgrip. But when she found out why he had done it, he was sure she would come around. The whole thing was kind of her idea in the first place, after all.

•   •   •

T
HE DRIVER OF THE VAN
was going from Mammoth Hot Springs in the northern part of the park to Cody, Wyoming, out the east entrance. He had told them he had to pick up some people at the Cody airport early in the morning and deliver them to a dude ranch. The driver was one of those middle-aged Americans who dressed and acted like it was 1968, Vladdy thought. The driver thought he was cool, giving a ride to Vladdy and Eddie, who obviously looked cold and out of place and carried a thick metal briefcase and nothing else. The driver had long curly hair on the side of his head with a huge mustache that was turning gray. He had agreed to give them a ride after they waved him down on the side of the road. The driver lit up
a marijuana cigarette and offered it to them as he drove. Eddie accepted. Vladdy declined. He wanted to keep his head clear for what was going to happen when they crossed the huge park and came out through the tunnels and crossed the river. He had not done business in America yet, and he knew that Americans could be tough and ruthless in business. It was one of the qualities that had attracted Vladdy in the first place.

“Don't get too high,” Vladdy told Eddie in Czech.

“I won't,” Eddie said back. “I'm just a little scared, if that's all right with you. This helps.”

“I wish you wouldn't wear that hat,” Vladdy said. “You don't look professional.”

“I look like Marshall Mathers, I think. Slim Shady,” Eddie said, touching the stocking cap that was pulled over his eyebrows. He sounded a little hurt.

“Hey, dudes,” the driver said over his shoulder to his passengers in the backseat, “speak American or I'm dropping you off on the side of the road. Deal?”

“Of course,” Vladdy said. “We have deal.”

•   •   •

E
DDIE WAS TALKING TO THE DRIVER,
talking too much, Vladdy thought. Eddie's English was very poor. It was embarrassing. Eddie was telling the driver about Prague, about the beautiful women there. The driver said he always wanted to go to Prague. Eddie tried to describe the buildings, but was doing a bad job of it.

“I don't care about buildings,” the driver said. “Tell me about the women.”

•   •   •

V
LADIMIR AND
E
DUARD
were branded “Vladdy” and “Eddie” by the man in the Human Resources office for Yellowstone in Gardiner, Montana, when they showed up to get their work assignment three weeks before and were told that there were no openings. Vladdy had explained that there must have been some kind of mix-up, some kind of misunderstanding, because they had been assured by the agent in Prague that both of them had been accepted to work for the official park concessionaire for the whole summer and into the fall. Vladdy showed the paperwork that allowed them to work on a visa for six months.

He had not yet seen the whole park, and it was something he very much wanted to do. He had read about the place since he was young, and watched Yellowstone documentaries on television. He knew there were three kinds of thermal activity: geysers, mudpots, and fumeroles. He knew there were over ten thousand places where the molten core of the earth broke through the thin crust. He knew that the park was the home of bison, elk, mountain sheep, and many fishes. People from all over the world came here to see it, smell it, feel it. Vladdy was still outside of it, though, looking in, like Yellowstone Park was still on a television show and not right in front of him. He wouldn't allow himself to become a part of this place yet. That would come later.

Yellowstone, like a microcosm of America, was a place of wonders, and it sought Eastern Europeans to work making beds, washing dishes, and cleaning out the muck from the trail horses, jobs that American workers didn't want or need. Many Czechs Vladdy and Eddie knew had come here, and some had stayed. It was good work in a fantastic place, “a setting from a dream of nature,” as Vladdy put it. But the man in Human Resources had said he was sorry, they were overstaffed and there was nothing he could do until somebody quit and a couple of slots opened up. Even if that happened, the non-hiring man said, there were people on the list in front of them.

Vladdy had explained in his almost-perfect English, he thought, that he and Eddie didn't have the money to go back. In fact, he told the man, they didn't even have the money for a room to wait in. What they had was on their backs—cracked black leather jackets, ill-fitting clothes, street shoes. Eddie wore the stocking cap because he liked Eminem, but Vladdy preferred his slicked-back-hair look. They looked nothing like the other young people their age they saw in the office and on the streets.

“Keep in touch,” the hiring man had told Vladdy. “Check back every few days.”

“I can't even buy cigarettes,” Vladdy had pleaded.

The man felt sorry for them and gave them a $20 bill out of his own wallet.

“I told you we should have gone to Detroit,” Eddie said to Vladdy in Czech.

•   •   •

V
LADDY AND
E
DDIE
had spent that first unhappy day after meeting the non-hiring man in a place called K-Bar Pizza in Gardiner, Montana. They sat at a round table, and were so close to the Human Resources building that when the door to the K-Bar opened they could see it out there. Vladdy had placed the $20 on the table and ordered two tap beers, which they both agreed were awful. Then they ordered a Budweiser, which was nothing like the Czechoslovakian Budweiser, and they laughed about that. Cherry was their waitress. She told Vladdy she was from Kansas, someplace like that. He could tell she was uncomfortable with herself, with her appearance, because she was a little fat and had a crooked face. She told Vladdy she was divorced, with a kid, and she worked at the K-Bar to supplement her income. She also had a job at a motel, servicing rooms. He could tell she was flattered by his attention, by his leather jacket, his hair, his smile, his accent. Sometimes women reacted this way to him, and he appreciated it. He hadn't known if his looks would work for him in America, and he still didn't know. But they worked in Gardiner, Montana. Vladdy knew he had found a friend when she let them keep ordering even though the $20 was spent, and she didn't discourage them from staying until her shift was over.

Cherry led them down the steep, cracked sidewalks and through an alley to an old building backed up to the edge of a
canyon. Vladdy looked around as he followed. He didn't understand Gardiner. In every direction he looked, he could only see space. Mountains, bare hillsides, an empty valley going north, under the biggest sky he had ever seen. Yet Gardiner was packed together. Houses almost touched houses, windows opened up to other windows. It was like a tiny island in an ocean of . . . nothing. Vladdy decided he would find out about this.

She made them stand in the hallway while she went in to check to make sure her little boy was in bed, then she let them sleep in the front room of her two-bedroom apartment. That first night, Vladdy waited until Eddie was snoring and then he padded across the linoleum floor in his bare feet and opened Cherry's bedroom door. She was pretending she was asleep, and he said nothing, just stood there in his underwear.

“What do you want?” Cherry asked him sleepily.

“I want to pleasure you,” he whispered.

“Don't turn on the light,” she said. “I don't want you to look at me.”

Afterward, in the dark, Vladdy could hear the furious river below them in the canyon. It sounded so raw, like an angry young river trying to figure out what it wanted to be when it grew up.

•   •   •

W
HILE
E
DDIE AND
V
LADDY
checked back with the non-hiring man every morning, Vladdy tried to help out around the house
since he had no money for rent. He tried to fix the dripping faucet, but couldn't find any tools in the apartment besides an old pair of pliers and something cheap designed to slice potatoes. He mopped the floors, though, and washed her windows. He fixed her leaking toilet with the pliers. While he did this, Eddie sat on the couch and watched television, MTV mostly. Cherry's kid, Tony, sat with Eddie and watched and wouldn't even change out of his pajamas and get dressed unless Vladdy told him to do so.

•   •   •

V
LADDY WAS TAKING THE GARBAGE
out to the dumpster when he first saw Cherry's neighbor, a man whose name he later learned was Bob. Vladdy thought it was funny, and very American, to have a one-syllable name like “Bob.” It made him laugh inside.

Bob pulled up to the building in a dark, massive four-wheel-drive car. The car was mud-splashed, scratched, and dented, even though it didn't look very old. It was a huge car, and Vladdy recognized it as a Suburban. Vladdy watched as Bob came out of the car. Bob had a hard, impatient look on his face. He wore dirty blue jeans, a sweatshirt, a fleece vest, and a baseball cap, like everyone else in Gardiner.

Bob stepped away from the back of the Suburban, slammed both doors, and locked it with a remote. That's when Vladdy first saw the metal briefcase. It was the briefcase Bob was retrieving from the back of the Suburban.

And with that, Bob went into the building.

•   •   •

T
HAT NIGHT,
after Eddie and Tony had gone out to bring back fried chicken from the deli at the grocery store for dinner, Vladdy asked Cherry about her neighbor Bob. He described the metal briefcase.

“I'd stay away from him, if I was you,” Cherry said. “I've got my suspicions about that Bob.”

Vladdy was confused.

“I hear things at the K-Bar,” Cherry said. “I seen him in there a couple of times by himself. He's not the friendliest guy I've ever met.”

“He's not like me,” Vladdy said, reaching across the table and brushing a strand of her hair out of her eyes.

Cherry sat back in the chair and studied Vladdy. “No, he's not like you,” she said.

•   •   •

A
FTER PLEASURING
C
HERRY,
Vladdy waited until she was asleep before he crept through the dark front room where Eddie was sleeping. Vladdy found a flashlight in a drawer in the kitchen and slipped outside into the hallway. He went down the stairs in his underwear, went outside, and approached the back of the Suburban.

Turning on the flashlight, he saw rumpled clothing, rolls of maps, hiking boots, and electrical equipment with dials and
gauges. He noticed a square of open carpet where the metal briefcase sat when Bob wasn't carrying it around. He wondered if Bob wasn't an engineer, or a scientist of some kind. He wondered where it was that Bob went every day to do his work, and what he kept in the metal briefcase that couldn't be left with the rest of his things.

Vladdy had taken classes in geology and geography and chemistry. He had done well in them, and he wondered if maybe Bob needed some help, needed an assistant. At least until a job opened up in the park.

•   •   •

C
HERRY SURPRISED THEM
by bringing two bottles of Jack Daniel's home after her shift at the K-Bar, and they had whiskey on ice while they ate Lean Cuisine dinners. They kept drinking afterward at the table. Vladdy suspected that Cherry had stolen the bottles from behind the bar, but said nothing because he was enjoying himself and he wanted to ask her about Bob. Eddie was getting pretty drunk, and was telling funny stories in Czech that Cherry and Tony didn't understand. But the way he told them made everyone laugh. Tony said he wanted a drink, too, and Eddie started to pour him one until Vladdy told Eddie not to do it. Eddie took his own drink to the couch, sulking, the evening ruined for him, he said.

“Cherry,” Vladdy said, “I feel bad inside that I cannot pay rent.”

Cherry waved him off. “You pay the rent in other ways,” she
laughed. “My floor and windows have never been cleaner. Not to mention your other . . . services.”

Vladdy looked over his shoulder to make sure Tony hadn't heard his mother.

“I am serious,” Vladdy said, trying to make her look him in the eye. “I'm a serious man. Because I don't have a job yet, I want to work. I wonder maybe if your neighbor Bob needs an apprentice in his work. Somebody who would get mud on himself if Bob doesn't want to.”