Crystal Meth Cowboys (23 page)

"Oh God," said Florence, dabbing her scarf at hazel eyes bright with tears. Wes noted that her hand shook and her pupils were dilated. Florence Jillison had come to the hospital to visit his fallen partner while jacked up on speed. Which pissed Wes Lyedecker off. He kept his face blank but Florence sensed the change in him, backed up a step, looked down at her black and white spectators. Wes dispensed with all the negotiating to yes bullshit he had learned at the Academy and got down to cases. "Did you give Robert Bjornstedt a fatal overdose of methamphetamine?"

Florence's face popped up. Her skin was flushed pink, which made her freckles dark orange. She looked shocked.

"The reason I ask is that Robert Bjornstedt whispered something to me just before he died. Which, believe me, took quite an effort with his throat full of blood and his lungs perforated."

Florence twisted her face away. Wes continued. "At the time I thought it was some sort of dying love call so I didn't tell anyone, didn't put it in the report. It didn't seem to have any bearing on the case." Wes advanced a step. Florence put her hands back as if to brace herself. "But now I wonder if it wasn't an accusation. He trusted you. It would have been easy for you to cook him up a little treat and offer it to him to, you know, kind of prime the pump before you jumped his bones.
Perlina
."

Wes said this last word in a whisper for maximum effect. He was betting that Florence didn't know about the ether Deputy Coroner Fischer had detected in the corpse, betting she didn't know that he knew she didn't do it. She wouldn't have needed ether.

Florence Jillison regarded Wes Lyedecker with open-mouthed horror, her face drained of color, her lips forming words she didn't speak. Wes felt his insides untangle. He had scored a clean hit in the open field.

"No.
No
!," she said at last. "I wouldn't…I…I couldn't
ever
do such a vile thing!"

"No? And I suppose you didn't slip a packet of crystal meth into Sherri's Brandy Alexander during your victory celebration either, as a kind of a friendly warning to Bell to back the fuck off."

"I was
furious
about that when I found out! I told them I'd…" Florence clamped her mouth shut and ground her jaw. She closed her eyes, spilling hot tears down her cheeks.

Wes leaned in. "Who is 'them', Florence? Tell me. Tell me or I'll go stand in front of that TV camera and explain that you're the reason Officer Bell is laying on that gurney fighting for his life.” Wes lowered his voice. He knew that eliciting information from a suspect under false pretenses did not invalidate the interrogation. Cops were not always required to tell the truth. He would and could use a secretly taped confidential conversation to nail her. "Tell me, Florence. Off the record, just between you and me."

Florence backed up against a wall painted the color of beach sand. Whoever had the sand-colored paint concession for the City of Wislow was making a fortune, thought Wes, feeling oddly disengaged, as if he already knew what Florence was going to say which, mostly, he did.

Florence kept her eyes closed as she talked, eyeballs darting back and forth, bulging her lids. "After I was raped and my fiance left me, I bummed around with eco freaks for a while, traveling the state and fucking anything that moved. I felt worthless. And, except for Bob, got treated that way. We met in a bar. I was there for a protest, 29 Palms, a toxic waste dump, something. He told me I was elegant. ‘You're so elegant.' I never saw any hard drugs.
I
had a joint so we got stoned and rode his Harley through Joshua Tree at sunset. He did a pencil sketch of me. He was a lovely man."

Florence stopped at the sound of footfalls down the main corridor. The news crew, hunting prey. Wes took
Florence by the arm and pulled her through the first door he saw. He closed the door behind them. They were inside a linen closet. "But you didn't see much future in being a biker babe so you came home and married Larry Tenace.”

Florence started to protest, met Wes Lyedecker's hard stare, said nothing She touched her hand to her forehead and gulped air. Wes stared and waited, waited and stared

“I'd get these phone calls out of the blue,” said Florence. “Bob, he was in town, could he see me. He
had
to see me. Sometimes I'd go. I never suspected drugs. I thought he was just like that."

"What? Insatiable?"

"Yes." Florence didn't bother to blush. Wes made a mental note to have a good laugh at himself later, at how concerned he had been that Bell's crudity would offend Ms. Jillison. "Then, a while ago, I don't know, recently, he got on this late night talking jag about how we should ride off together on his Harley, down to the tip of South America and back up to the Artic Circle and on and on and on. That was the first time I noticed tracks on his arm. I guess I promised I'd do it, ride off with him just, you know, to get the hell out of there. A few weeks later he called from the Coach House and said he'd come to collect me."

Florence gazed up at Wes through moist eyelashes. She was into it now. Wes didn't have to say a thing. "I didn't know what to do. It was six weeks to the election, I couldn't call the police, how would that look? So I left a note for Esteban Rodriguez."

"Esteban? Why him? How'd you know where he lived?"

Florence answered quickly, impatient at the interruption. "My husband's a public defender, he has a Rolodex. Anyway, the note, all I said was someone was selling speed from room #12 of the Coach House Inn. I didn't know there was this big drug ring in town. From what I'd heard Esteban was the local dealer."

Wes recalled Florence sitting next to him at the Bell's dinner table, pretending she had no idea who Esteban No Middle Name Rodriguez was.

"I thought Esteban and his…thugs would just, you know, scare him off."

Florence burst out crying then, bending over, grabbing Wes Lyedecker's arm for support as she sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Wes handed her a wash cloth, remembering how he'd thought her so wonderfully sensitive when she'd asked him if he wanted to 'talk to someone' about the shooting in room #12. Florence soaked the wash cloth pressed to her nose. Wes fitted all the pieces together.

"So the badass Sinoloan meth dealers get the word from Esteban and go to room #12. They do what they do to Robert Bjornstedt and find something very interesting in his saddle bags. A pencil sketch, most likely nude and an exact likeness, of Florence Jillison."

Wes looked down upon Florence's dark roots until she nodded. He remembered how she had dug her nails into his hand when her fax bell rang, remembered her dewy-eyed concern about gathering up Bjornstedt's 'personal effects'.

"They faxed you the picture, pictures, and kept faxing them till you were ready to play ball." Wes told himself to quit showing off and shut up. It wasn't his voice he needed on tape. "Is that right? Is that what happened?"

"Yes," whimpered Florence to her shoes.

"I can't hear you."

Florence straightened up. Her eyes were pink as a rabbit's and ringed with black. Her tears had carved tracks through her cheek blusher. Her chin trembled. "Yes, yes, fuck yes, that's what
fucking happened
!"

Wes backed away to protect his microphone. The towels and bedsheets in the linen closet damped the echo of the narrow space. Bell was going to be impressed with the quality of this recording.

"They told me,
me
, I had to approach John Aubuchon” said Florence in a clenched, whispered scream. “John Aubuchon's everything I have ever fought against in my whole fucking life!
I
had to go to John Aubuchon and propose a
deal
."

"I'll bet he liked that," said Wes.

"O-
ho
," said Florence.

"What kind of a deal?"

Florence puffed her cheeks out as far as they would go.

"Did you tell John Aubuchon that he would get X number of dollars a week, in cash, if he allowed a meth lab to be constructed on the grounds of his plant? Did you tell John Aubuchon that? Florence?"

Florence gestured emphatically, as if arguing with someone. Wes glanced down at the recorder in his pocket. The red record light was still on. He guessed he had a few minutes of tape left though it felt as if he'd been inside the linen closet for at least an hour. "Maybe the drug dealers offered you a campaign contribution as an extra added inducement," said Wes, remembering her saturation TV campaign in the week before the election.

"No, that was Aubuchon's idea," said Florence after a time, the storm passed, peaceful as the sea. She smiled sadly. "He wanted to make sure I won the election, make sure he had a partner in crime."

"And what about Mayor Krumrie? What was his involvement?" Florence shook her head dismissively. "The Mayor wasn't in on it?"

Florence used the wash cloth to wipe a scrim of perspiration off her forehead. She said, "Wes, don't be a dolt. John Aubuchon would never trust his deepest darkest secret to a
drunk
."

"Ah," said Wes. He paused to review what he had captured on tape. Florence had yet to unambiguously state that John Aubuchon agreed to a deal. Wes decided to try a
little of that sympathetic understanding that Ms. Jillison wielded so effectively.

"Florence, forgive me, but seeing Bell layed out on that gurney with his skin all turned blue, God, I don't know, I just lost it. I don't condone what you did, not one bit. But maybe I can kind of understand it under the circumstances."

Wes offered his hand. Florence took it after a time, wedged her fingers in between his and squeezed so hard that that Wes actually felt sorry for her for a moment. "That must have been a terrible moment," he said softly. "When you approached John Aubuchon with the deal."

Florence nodded, let go of his hand and wrapped him in a steaming hug. Wes hitched himself up so that Florence's cheek just missed the mini-recorder in his shirt pocket. She said something with the word 'horrible' in it. Wes patted her hair. It was stiff with spray. He eased her back a few inches and made eye contact.

"Florence, I'm confused. Help me understand why John Aubuchon would agree to your very risky proposal to place a drug lab inside his property?"

"Beats me," said Florence, dabbing at her eyes with the wash cloth. "But he did."

Wes tightened his grip around her upper arms. He stepped back and said, "Ms. Jillison, you're facing multiple counts of conspiracy to distribute and accessory to murder. I would strongly encourage you to take this opportunity to do yourself some good."

Florence looked confused. The wash cloth dangled limply from her hand.

"You're the Mayor-elect. Chief Sunomoka's new boss. If you instruct him to issue an immediate APB for John Aubuchon I might forget all this."

Florence got it. She bared her teeth like a ferret cornered in a barn stall. "This was off the record. You, you
said
this was just between you and me!"

Wes pulled the mini-cassette recorder from his, Bell's, shirt pocket, pushed the stop button and said, "I lied. Now, if you want to avoid a twenty year prison sentence I'd suggest you go have a long talk with the Chief of Police."

Florence Jillison snatched furiously at the cassette recorder. She balled her fists and pounded on Wes Lydecker's chest. She buried her face in Bell's bullet-riddled shirt and bawled her eyes out. She pressed her breasts against Wes' belly and ran her palms on either side of his crotch.

Wes Lyedecker didn't feel a thing. He opened the linen closet door and pulled Florence Jillison out into the hall.

Epilogue

Wes Lyedecker awoke from a dark dream to the sound of an idling big rig. He flexed his spine and stretched his muscles, willing heat into his arms and legs. The desert night was cold. He wiped the windshield with his road rag. A Pontiac station wagon sat parked two spaces to his right, lights out, windows fogged. The idling big rig was dark save for a dim nightlight in the cab. At the far end of the lot a few RV's huddled by the dump station. Wes remembered now. He was in a rest area off Interstate 80. Rest rooms, pay phone, dog walk, road map mounted in a glass case. 'Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federico Pena, Secretary'. Wes sat up straight in the bucket seat. Cyril Reese's chrome .45 was in his lap.

Wes Lyedecker felt as if he could have steered his RX-7 in any direction he liked when the setting sun burst over the salt flats, turning interstate 80 into a lake of fire, paving the horizon with light. Only the high speed wobble of his tires on the soft shoulder brought him around and, after four tanks of gas, untold coffees and twenty furious tailgating, passing-on-the-right hours on the road, he pulled off at a rest area and parked in the lot, nose out. The map said he was in Skull Valley, 49 miles west of Salt Lake City and just south of the Great Salt Lake.

To distract himself during the long drive Wes had puzzled out the many unasked questions he had for Bell. DWO was Driving While Oriental, that was obvious. NHI was probably No Humans Involved. And as to why Bell and Sherri had asked him to move in, there was only one explanation. They felt sorry for him. They didn't need the money. They took pity on a despised rookie away from home for the first time and asked him to share their home.

Wes shifted the gun on his lap. He'd known he would never figure out why Bell called the test pilot in the black corvette Farmer John so he'd asked Cyril Reese. After the funeral. At the wake at the Deer Lick Inn. After Wes told Cyril Reese that he had surrendered his badge and gun to Chief Sunomoka and Reese had presented Wes his service weapon for the long drive home, laid the gleaming .45 across his broad palm and offered it to Wes in front of everyone.

Reese said 'Because he's smoked so many pigs' was the answer to the question. Wes had laughed.

Wes hefted the gun in his hand. Had Reese been trying to tell him something? Surrendering his weapon so that Wes Lyedecker would do the honorable thing? It didn't seem so at the time. Though they all knew the circumstances of the shoot no one at the Deer Lick Inn had shunned him. CJ, Renaldo, Little Jim, Jake Hansey and Cyril Reese had all hugged his shoulder and patted his back and muttered condolences as if Bell had been his partner for twenty years. Even Sherri, who kept her composure through the church ceremony, trying so hard to be the stalwart cop wife, collapsed in Wes Lyedecker's arms when the bagpiper piped
Amazing Grace
at the graveside.