An Obvious Fact (17 page)

“There is an electronic security system.”

“You're kidding. In this dump?”

“There is a seven-space keypad for an entry code at the back door.”

“We're never going to be able to guess the code.”

“In my experience you get three tries within a one minute period before the alarms go off and alert the authorities.”

“So, our odds are three in, say, a million?”

He shrugged.

“I hate to sound old-school, but what about just breaking a window?”

He turned and walked toward the back door. “If they went to the trouble of installing a keypad, they probably included the windows in said system.”

Feeling in my jacket for Bodaway's cell phone, I whispered after him, “You want me to call Corbin and see if we can get Kiddo's birth date or phone number?”

He didn't answer but studied the keypad and then punched in some numbers; evidently, we were now on the clock. He stood there for a moment, and then there was a soft buzz and the sound of a latch being thrown. He pushed open the door and walked in.

Unprepared for this development, I skittered around the exterior of the building, looking all the world like a felon, and soon found him holding open the front door to allow me entry. “What the heck?”

“The Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Company was incorporated on September 17, 1907.”

I slid in, and he closed the door behind me. “Hmm . . . 9171907. I'll be damned.”

“What one man can invent, another can discover.”

“Oh, shut up.” I followed as we moved through the office back into the bays of the old service station.

“I wish we had a flashlight.”

I pulled a mini Maglite from my hunting jacket.

“What else do you have in there?”

I held up three fingers. “Be prepared.”

He took the flashlight and directed it toward the bike that Kiddo had been working on, focusing on what looked like modifications around the gas tank. “What do you think he was doing?”

The Cheyenne Nation stooped, carefully reached under a lip near the back of the tank, and, pulling it up, revealed a hidden compartment about half the size of a small shoe box. “The seams would be covered by a leather strap that goes across the tank.”

“Drugs?”

“I do not know. Leaping to conclusions before one has the facts is the mark of a true amateur.”

“I warned you about that Sherlock Holmes stuff.” We studied the tiny space. “It has to be drugs.”

“Need I remind you, Agent Post was investigating guns.”

“What gun could be so important that you couldn't just carry it in a saddlebag or on your person?”

He straightened and sighed, as perplexed as I was. “I do not know that, either.”

We moved past the vehicle bay where there was a newer addition and a door that read
PRIVATE
that was padlocked. I studied the thing. “Too bad we don't have a key.”

Henry pulled down a pair of bolt cutters with three-foot-long handles from a tool rack on the wall and stepped past me. He placed the clasp of the lock between the jaw-like blades. “This should do the trick.”

Before I could say anything, he bit the thing in two, and we both watched as the lock fell on the floor.

I picked it up and stared at him. “How do we explain this?”

He shrugged and pushed open the door. “We do not; we simply take the lock with us and let them think somebody either lost it or did not secure it.”

Shaking my head, I stuffed the padlock in my pocket, walked inside, and scanned the walls as we went deeper into a world I'd hoped didn't exist.

The extension that had been added on to the back was poured concrete with reinforced metal beams above—a bunker, in more ways than one. The walls were festooned with Nazi memorabilia and black-and-white photos of Hitler, Goebbels, Goering, Himmler, and Franz Stangl, Paul Blobel, Josef Kramer, and Reinhard Heydrich, to name a few of the other maniacs. There were propaganda posters for the Third Reich with blond-haired, blue-eyed Nazis extolling the virtues of the party, and more cartoon ones expressing the distrust and loathing of Jews and other so-called mongrel races.

There was a large stage at one end draped with assorted Nazi flags and a podium with a swastika.

Along one wall were event tables stacked high with printouts, paper cutters, and pamphlets supporting the KKK, Aryan Brotherhood, and National Alliance. There were books like
The Turner Diaries
, the self-published, apocalyptic,
white-supremacist novel that had been found on Timothy McVeigh, and
The Coming War
, a graphic novel of the same ilk, which came with an accompanying DVD. “Looks like we've stumbled into George Lincoln Rockwell's man cave.”

The Bear picked up a copy of
The Coming War
and leafed through it, pausing at a point where the white protagonists were hunting Indians with rifles from open Jeeps. “My oh my.”

“I guess they've decided to use comics to speak to their intellectual demographic.”

“Hmm.” He grunted and stuck the graphic novel and DVD under his arm.

“Think we should take a few samples for the FBI?”

He gathered some more. “I do not think they will be missed.”

I glanced around the room, unafraid that my flashlight would be seen since there were no windows. “You know what I don't see?”

“Weapons.”

“Yep.”

He looked at the tables of propaganda. “I do not know if this is not more dangerous.”

“The way a lot of these organizations get operating capital is from drugs.”

“And gun sales.”

“I've said it before and I'll say it again—you can't carry enough guns on a motorcycle to make it profitable.”

I looked around some more but couldn't see any trapdoors in the concrete floor or hidden doors in the walls. “But we'd better get out of here.”

The Cheyenne Nation followed, giving the room one more
look-over before closing the door behind us. “Why would a Native like Bodaway be trafficking with these people?”

“Maybe he didn't know.”

“My experiences lead me to believe that this sort are not very secretive in their political beliefs.” He let me out the front and handed me the Nazi propaganda. “I will return the way I came and reset the alarm system.”

“See you out back.” Skirting around the building, I glanced across the parking lot and didn't see any lights on in the adjacent buildings. Feeling relatively assured, I made the corner at the alley and walked directly into the extended barrel of an S&W .357 Magnum.

“I just wanted you to see how bad planning feels.” Engelhardt holstered his revolver. “Got a call about a half hour ago from Mrs. Hirsch, who lives across the way here. She's got an irritable bladder condition and happened to see a large man walking on the roof of this building and another large man entering through the front door.”

“Here I thought we were being real stealthy.”

“Hard to sneak by an irritable bladder.”

“I'm going to have that needlepointed and put on my office wall.”

We turned, and I followed him to the alley, where his Tahoe had us boxed in. He watched as Henry set the alarm on the back door, climbed up on the roof, stepped over the razor wire, and lowered himself to the top of the Challenger to join us.

“If you don't mind me asking . . .” Irl's voice stayed low but grew harsh. “What the hell do you guys think you're doing?”

The Bear shrugged. “I needed some parts.”

I handed the sheriff a few of the pamphlets. “Looks like Kiddo's got his own little cottage industry.”

Irl thumbed through the evidence. “Well, shit.”

“Our thoughts exactly.”

He gestured with the stack of propaganda. “You mind if I keep these?”

“Seeing as it's inadmissible evidence, sure.”

The Bear plucked the DVD from the pile. “I would like to take a look at this.”

Engelhardt nodded and then opened the driver's-side door of his unit and tossed the stuff onto the passenger seat as I explained what we'd found. He stroked his chin and listened. “So, we've got a guy who's acting as a mule for some neo-Nazis, but we haven't got any idea what it was he was carrying?”

Henry told him about Brady Post.

“Holy shit.” He rubbed his chin some more. “ATF, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, it's one of three things.” He made a face. “No firearms inside?”

“Nope.”

“Then they must have a place somewhere else.” He glanced around, taking in the dawn-lit horizon. “Like anywhere in western South Dakota, huh? Well, I've got a file.”

“I was hoping you'd say that.”

“It sure would be easier if these feds would share their information with us.”

“They seem to take that undercover thing pretty seriously.”

He shook his head. “But this Brady Post just introduced himself to you guys?”

“To me, but then Henry opened the door and entered the conversation.”

Irl shrugged as he slid into his unit. “Let me dig out my files on these shitbirds, and I'll give you a call.” He paused. “You know, my uncle was one of the first guys into Buchenwald. He never talked about it except to say one of the buildings they liberated was a stables that was built to hold eighty horses and that they'd had over twelve hundred men in there, five to a bunk. He said the smell was horrific.” He sighed. “I'll tell you, if he was still around and knew these turds were in South Dakota, he'd get out his deer rifle and finish the job.” My fellow sheriff closed the door behind him and pulled the shiny black Tahoe into the empty streets.

We slid into the Dodge, and I fired up the twin trumpet exhausts, slipping the muscle car into gear and pulling back out onto the main drag. “I'm hungry.”

Henry nodded. “I am sleepy.”

“We sound like the two dwarfs.” Looking for a place to eat, I drove toward Rapid City. “I'll make you a deal: we'll get something and then head back to the motel. I'll wake Vic up and you can have the room.”

“When are you going to sleep?”

“When I'm dead.”

• • •

The food at Ron's, not to be confused with Capt'n Ron's Rodeo Bar, and specifically their world-famous pancakes, was just the thing, but I might've overdone it, ordering a stack as big as dinner plates. “You want some pancakes?”

The Cheyenne Nation was doing his best with an order of
biscuits and gravy that looked like it might feed two men and a hungry boy. “You ordered them, you eat them.”

I cleaved off another chunk, dipping it in the syrup and forking it into my mouth. “Do you think we should bring something back for Vic?”

“I do not think her stomach will be ready for solid food.”

Sipping my coffee, I thought about a more pressing matter. “What do you want to do about Lola?”

He stared at his plate and continued eating. “Meaning?”

“How hard do you want to lean on her?”

He still didn't look up at me. “She has earned as hard as it takes.”

“Have you considered that she might just be concerned for the welfare of her son?” His eyes came up and weighed on me. “Just wondering if you've considered it.”

“I have and then immediately dismissed it.”

“I know she's manipulative.”

“You do not know.”

We stared at each other. “Look, I know she hurt your feelings, but do you really think she's involved in the criminal element of this investigation?”

His dark eyes went back to the table. “Why not? What, other than her gender, leads you to believe that she is in any way innocent?”

I thought about it. “Umm, not much.”

“Thank you.” He went back to his meal.

“Still . . .”

He carefully put his fork on his plate, placed his elbows on the edge of the table, and laced his fingers into a single fist. “When I strike you, I would like you to know why.”

“I'm just saying—”

“Yes, and you have said it enough.” He leaned back in his chair, the picture of restraint, his eyes closed. “You care.”

“Yep, I do.”

“It is one of your most annoying traits.” He opened his eyes, and the weight of them lay upon me like darkness. “Please do not ever lose it.”

There was suddenly a strange noise, and I glanced around, his eyes still on me. “It is Bodaway's cell phone in your shirt pocket.”

“Oh.” I fumbled with the thing and looked at it, a trick I'd picked up from every other person on the planet. “It's the Hulett Police Department. The guys from DCI must've arrived.” He picked up his fork and, instead of stabbing me with it, went back to eating.

I hit the button and held the device to my ear. “Howdy.”

“Walt, it's Corbin.”

“Hey, Deputy Dawg, what's up?”

“He was wired.”

“Excuse me?”

“Brady Post, the ATF agent? He was wearing a wire.”

“Why didn't they find it?”

“Who?”

DCI combed the interior of the Cadillac, the halogen work lights that they had brought with them augmenting those in the Hulett Police annex building. Mike Novo and I were standing in an area draped with plastic sheets where the agent's body now lay.

“The person who killed him.”

Mike pushed some hair from his eyes and stared at the dead man. “They didn't look. Whoever shot him just shot him; there's no evidence that he was searched or tampered with after the murder.”

I held the device, about half the size of a pack of matches. “This thing actually records?”

He nodded, handing me the thin wire and the mic bud. “Yeah, much smaller now that they're digital, but you still have to have an exterior mic for sound quality. He wasn't recording at the time of his demise, and it was in the inside pocket of his vest with the mic and cord under his shirt and around his neck.”

I held the thing up between us. “I don't have to tell you that this is Christmas, right?”

“No, but you do have to tell the ATF.”

I turned to look at the woman with the familiar voice. “Hey, T. J.”

T. J. Sherwin, the head of DCI's lab unit, trailed numerous nicknames in her wake. I called her the Little Lady, but there were others who referred to her as the Bitch on Wheels, the Wicked Witch of the West, and the Bag Lady, a sobriquet that referred to the defunct supermarket that served as the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation's headquarters in Cheyenne—i.e., cashiers and bag boys and bag girls.

“They're going to want these files before anybody else, and in my experience they don't play well and share, at least not without a federal court order.”

“Files?”

“Still a dinosaur, I see.” She took the recorder from my hand and held it up to a light. “There's a plug-in that transfers the information to a zip drive and then you download it onto a computer in an audio file. You can actually hear it, just like a real phonograph.”

I stared at her. “C'mon, Little Lady, help a cowboy out?”

Sherwin glanced at Novo. “Go away.”

He stood there smiling.

“Now.”

“Oh. Right.” He disappeared, and T.J. indicated that I should follow her toward the back of the shop where they had set up an event table with computers and lab equipment.

“Anything on the weapon?”

She handed me back Lola's .38 in a ziplock bag. “Not this.”

“Then what?”

She sat and began attaching cables to the tiny recorder and another thingamajig that attached to a laptop and a small black box, which swallowed a recordable CD. “Forty-gauge semi, probably a Glock, possibly a model 22.”

She sat back in the folding chair and studied the freshly bagged gun. “Girlfriend of yours?”

“Henry's.”

T. J. glanced past me to where the Bear was leaning against the fender of the DeVille. “Well, that doesn't narrow the field.”

“It's Lola's.”

Her eyes widened just a bit. “
The
Lola, the one the T-bird is named for?”

“
The
Lola.”

“Oh, my.”

I took the empty revolver from the bag and stuffed it in my jacket pocket. “It's her son who is in Rapid City Regional Hospital.”

“The donor cycle rider?”

I handed her the bag. “Yep.”

She tossed it on the table and sighed. “I was wondering what you were doing over here in Crook County.”

“Me, too.”

She pulled a CD from one of the devices, placed it in a paper cover, and handed it to me. “Just so you know, I have broken numerous state and federal laws by giving you this, so whatever you find, I'd just as soon you listen to it and then destroy it. The ATF will have a copy that's permissible in court as federal evidence, so you've got that to fall back on, but as far as you and I are concerned this CD doesn't exist.”

“What CD?” I stuffed it in my jacket. “Anything else I need to know as I attempt to break the big case?”

“He had sex.”

“Excuse me?”

“The deceased engaged in copulation with a female no more than an hour before his death.”

“That's unfortunate.”

“For him or her?”

I glanced at the Cheyenne Nation, who was still leaning on the Caddy but now was looking at us. “Both.”

• • •

“So, who else could he have fucked?”

I made a gesture for her to lower her voice as the waitress at the Ponderosa Café brought her another medicinal Bloody Mary. “Oh, how about any of the thousands of biker bunnies bouncing around here this week?”

My undersheriff sipped the drink from a straw, the liquid perfectly matching her fingernails. “The fuckee was Lola.”

“Boy, both you and Henry have it out for her, huh?”

She raised an eyebrow. “I know women, he knows her, and you don't know shit.”

“I'm beginning to think you both might be right.”

“So, it was a .40 that killed the agent?”

“Yep.”

“Well, that lets her off the hook for this one.” She studied me as I stared at the table. “What?”

“Somebody mentioned a model 22 Glock.”

“Recently?”

“Yep.”

“Well, it would be important to know who that was.” She leaned back in her chair and massaged her temples. “So, how come nobody mentioned that I shot myself in the head at the competition last night?”

“You don't think the half-dozen double dirty martinis had something to do with it?”

She yawned. “Your dog takes up the whole bed.”

“Yep.”

I waited, and she began studying the surface of the table as I had. “Just because it wasn't a .38 doesn't mean she didn't do it.”

“No, but—”

“What the hell—did you decide to adopt her while I was knocked out?”

“Gimme a motive. I just don't see what she would've gained by killing Post.”

She belched loudly. “Something she couldn't get by fucking him.”

I leaned in. “Are there such things?”

“Not with me.” She cocked her head coquettishly. “Her son.”

“Excuse me?”

She repeated in a remedial fashion, “If the G-man was after her son—”

I had to concede the point but then brought up my own. “Look, as far as we know she's never killed anybody before.”

“As far as we know.” She studied me now. “More important question: Who else have you got?”

“Billy ThE Kiddo.”

“The South Dakota Nazi?”

It took me a long time to respond because suddenly the spokes in my wheel of thought began spinning. “Yep.”

“Something?”

“When I was talking to Irl, he mentioned a Glock 22 in Kiddo's past, something about a lawn mower.”

“You're kidding.”

“Nope; as I recall, he shot his neighbor's lawn mower with a .40 Glock.”

She finished off the rest of her Bloody Mary with a strong pull and then set the glass down between us. “Are we really going to go dig up some guy's lawn?”

I gathered my jacket from the back of my chair and looked down at her. “After I take a nap, we go have a chat with Billy ThE himself.”

“Where are you taking your nap? Henry has one bed and Dog has the other.”

“Probably in Lola.”

She shrugged, getting up after me. “Why not? It appears to be where everyone else is sleeping these days.”

There wasn't much human traffic, so we made quick time to the Hulett Motel's parking lot. I opened the door to the vintage convertible and looked at the center console in the front and then at the backseat, which didn't look nearly as big as I'd remembered.

“I don't think I'm going to fit.”

She glanced in the back, spotting the Cheyenne Nation's blanket, and then, in the passenger seat, she saw the
Annotated Sherlock Holmes
. “Grab the blanket and book and we'll go down by the river and have a picnic.”

I retrieved the supplies and shut the door. “We don't have any food.”

“No, but I can read and you can put your head in my lap.”

“Sold.”

• • •

“Did you know that Doyle almost named Holmes Sherrinford?”

“In some of the early drafts, but he settled on Sherlock because of a cricket player he remembered.” I kept my eyes closed, knowing full well that opening them would only encourage her.

“Did you know the first novel,
A Study in Scarlet
, was a flop?”

“Yep, but the second was a hit after Joseph Stoddart convinced both Doyle and Oscar Wilde to serialize stories for his
Lippincott's Monthly Magazine
.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
was the only novel Wilde ever wrote.”

“Does the name Sherlock mean anything?”

“Fair-haired.”

I listened as she flipped a page. “Second most-filmed fictional character?”

“Sherlock Holmes.”

There was a long pause as she puzzled on something that wasn't annotated in the book suspended above my head. “Who the hell is first?”

“Dracula.” I opened my eyes and looked up at her. “Hey, I thought I was supposed to be taking a nap.”

“Who's stopping you?”

“You.”

“Yeah, I guess I am.” She closed the book and set it aside.
“An arrogant, drug-addicted sociopath—why do you suppose the character has been so popular through the years?”

“His perfect humanity.”

Her face dropped to look at me. “Explain?”

“He's flawed, but he has an encyclopedic mind and relies on the human element of uncanny intuition, so when scientific method runs amok, he uses his brain. Contrary to popular belief, the method Holmes uses is abduction, not deduction. Abductive reasoning is based on conclusions drawn from observation, whereas deduction is a conclusion drawn from available data and is always true.”

“I thought Sherlock Holmes was never wrong?”

“That would be a dreadful disadvantage to a true detective; you have to always be ready to rethink your abductions in the face of the evolving information in any case.”

“Elementary, my dear Longmire?”

“He never said that in a single story or novel.” I rose up and supported myself with a stiff arm. “How long was I asleep?”

“Less than you want to know.”

“I guess I'm done.” We stood, and I shook off the blanket, folded it, and placed it under my arm. “Any sign of Henry?”

She closed the book and glanced around. “Nope—must still be asleep in the room.”

“I guess we'll leave Dog with him, then, and head over to the police station to have a chat with Billy.”

“Sounds like a charmer.”

We started toward the T-bird. “Oh, he is.”

 

• • •

“What do you mean, he's gone?”

“Made bail, so he's scot-free.”

“How?”

“Somebody moved up the bail schedule, and the judge ruled him a low flight risk in that he's a business owner and a celebrity.”

“What about the fact that that business is in another state, as well as the assault with a deadly weapon on a peace officer?”

“The judge let that one slide because of the previous cease and desist that said you weren't supposed to be within a hundred feet of him. Not sure about the rest.”

Vic sat on the edge of Corbin's desk. “What was bail?”

The patrolman smiled. “Two hundred and fifty thousand.”

“Wowza.”

“I guess the judge decided that even though he might be a low flight risk, he was going to make it tough on him by hitting him in the wallet, but Kiddo called the bluff.”

“Where did he get a quarter of a million dollars?”

“It was a blanket bond from one of that bunch down in Cheyenne—Liberty Bail Bonds.”

“Libby Troon? Hard to believe she'd pop for that without a percentage as collateral.”

He picked up a square card and tried to hand it to me. “I've got her number here. You could call her up and ask her who's fronting for Billy?”

“No, she doesn't care for me very much. She's contacted me and Henry about freelancing as bounty hunters for a few of her skip jobs and we've never bit.”

“You could tell her it involves a murder case.”

“That is the last piece of information I'd want Libby Troon to have.” I looked out front and could see Chief Nutter herding some bikers away from the annex building. “Who picked him up?”

“Nobody. He just walked out and disappeared down the street.”

“So, you think he's still around?”

“No, he said he was done with the rally and heading home. He also mentioned a lot of stuff about suing you, your dog, me, the city, the county, and all the fish in the Belle Fourche River.”

“So, do you really think he went home?”

“It's likely.”

“What's the address?” He stared at me. “I'm not hunting him; I just might be able to get a piece of evidence from his next-door neighbor whose lawn mower he may have shot.”

He stared at me some more. “You're kidding.”

“I wish I were. Address, please?”

He clicked on the computer and wrote it down on a Post-it, and handed it to Vic, who was closer. “It's actually a nice part of town. From what I could tell it was his mother's.”

Vic stuffed the piece of paper in her shirt pocket. “I'm sure she'd be proud.”

We walked out just as Nutter Butter shooed away the bikers and turned to look at us. “As one professional to another, have you lost your mind?”

“I'm not so sure I had one to begin with, but thanks for adding me to your professional circle.”

He lowered his voice. “A dead federal agent in my annex building?”

“We weren't sure where else to put him—or the car.”

“You know, this shit seems to follow you wherever you go.”