Strange Country (22 page)

The EMT hesitated, pulling open the driver’s door. Boyd, who had come up behind Hallie, flashed his badge, and the EMT said with a grimace, “We can’t stabilize him here. We’re going to the clinic in town. Hopefully, we can buy enough time to get to Rapid City.”

“Bad, then.”

“Yeah,” he admitted, sounding both stressed and apologetic.

“Sheriff on the way?” Boyd asked as the EMT started up the engine.

“Ten minutes, they said.” Then he was turning on the lights, shoving the ambulance into gear, quick whoop of the siren and he had turned and gone, throwing up gravel in a scattering of spray as they left. Hallie had barely seen Laddie, let alone talked to him, if he could even talk. Bad, the kid had said.

Goddamn.

What had happened? What the hell had happened? She strode to the middle of the parking lot where she could see in all directions at once. Nothing. The only things moving were grass and a loose shingle on the one section of roof that hadn’t burned.

Hallie looked over at Laddie’s car. Before she could move toward it, Boyd laid a hand on her arm. “Wait,” he said.

For the Taylor County sheriff’s car, he meant, for the official investigation. But she wanted to know. Wanted to know what had happened. How it had happened. Was it the same person who’d shot Prue? It had to be the same person. And what had Laddie tried to tell her? Big magic? What did that mean? Like flinging open the car door and riffling through Laddie’s possessions would answer those questions, like destroying evidence would net her the information she craved.

She wanted to do it anyway. It was what she knew how to do.

Waiting was harder.

Five minutes later, Sally Mazzolo rolled slowly into the old gravel lot. She angled her car so it was headed back out again. She sat in the car for another minute, radioing in her location, then got out and looked from Boyd to Hallie with narrowed eyes.

“He called Hallie,” Boyd said. “That’s how we knew.”

“Because if he’d just called 911, they wouldn’t have been able to get here on their own,” she said dryly.

“Well, he didn’t call 911,” Boyd said, not inclined to argue about something someone else did when he wasn’t there. “Photographer coming?” he asked as Mazzolo continued to look at Hallie with suspicion.

“State’s coming,” she said. She walked around Laddie’s car, bent to peer in the windows, but didn’t open the doors. A mile or so up the road, approaching from the direction opposite the way Hallie and Boyd had come, they could see a gray sedan making its way slowly toward them. It stopped just past the turn-in. The three of them—Boyd, Hallie, and Deputy Mazzolo—waited as the engine turned off, the place suddenly agonizingly quiet again.

Finally, the woman Hallie had seen at Boyd’s that first day—God, it seemed weeks ago—climbed out of the car. Boyd and Deputy Mazzolo both approached her, Mazzolo giving Boyd a look, like—step back.

Hallie moved closer so she could hear what they were saying. The state investigator looked exasperated. “Do you have a photographer, evidence bags?”

“I thought you’d be in charge, being from the state and all,” Deputy Mazzolo said, standing back with her arms crossed, like just the presence of a state investigator was an affront to Taylor County, the sheriff’s office, and her personally. There was a brief moment, something charged in the air between the two women; then the state investigator—hadn’t Boyd said her name was Gerson—turned back to her car, popped the trunk, and took out two cases that she set on the hood of the car. She pulled out a camera, which she handed to Mazzolo. “I want pictures of everything,” she said. “Overlapping pictures. Not just the car, but everything around it.”

“The ambulance was in here,” Mazzolo said, as if that made pictures or even gathering evidence unnecessary.

“Just do it,” Gerson said. “And don’t touch the car until I tell you to.”

With a deep sigh, Mazzolo took the camera. Gerson turned to Boyd. “What are you doing here?”

Hallie thought Gerson gave him an assessing air, and she couldn’t really blame her. This was the second shooting Boyd had been present at in a week. She had to admit, she’d be suspicious too.

Boyd looked to his right; his gaze caught Hallie’s and held it. “This is Hallie Michaels,” he said to the investigator. “Laddie Kennedy, that’s the man who was shot, called her.”

“You knew this man?” the investigator said to Hallie. “The man who was shot here this morning?” Now that Hallie was close, she could see there was something taut about the way the woman held herself, her eyes boring into Hallie’s face, like she was looking hard for something.

“The man who was shot, yes,” Hallie said. “You don’t know that he was shot here.”

“Hallie,” Boyd said to her, ignoring the agent’s question, “this is Special Agent Gerson. She’s investigating Prue Stalking Horse’s death.” It was as if Boyd had a way he thought the conversation should go and he was determined to hold up his end of that imaginary conversation, whether anyone else cooperated or not.

“Are you aware Laddie Kennedy is a suspect in an earlier shooting?” Gerson asked, as if she could keep the information about which particular shooting to herself, as if there were so many shootings in Taylor County in the past week that Hallie might not be able to figure out the specific one she was talking about. She took a step forward, aggressive, less than two feet separating them.

Behind her, Hallie could hear Sally Mazzolo swearing softly under her breath, the flash of her camera barely noticeable in the sunlight. “Prue Stalking Horse’s shooting?” Hallie didn’t play according to anyone else’s rules, and she didn’t care about aggressive. “Yeah, he didn’t kill Prue Stalking Horse.”

“Does he have a rifle? Would you say he’s a marksman?”

Hallie wasn’t sure why Gerson was asking these questions, and particularly why she was asking them of her. “I don’t know,” she said, like she’d told Boyd earlier. “He was in the army.”

“And you don’t know anything about what happened here or why anyone might want to shoot him?”

“
I
didn’t shoot him. Is that what you’re asking?”

Boyd put his hand on her arm, like, Take it easy.

“I’m asking,” Gerson’s tone was deliberate. Hallie thought she was trying to convey a patience she wasn’t actually feeling, something in the undertone, edgy and a little strained. “If you know anyone who’d want to shoot him.”

“He called me to say,” Hallie spoke slowly, trying to keep her own strain from showing. Shouldn’t they be worrying about Laddie, here? Wasn’t he the one who’d been shot? “That he had some information, something he wanted me to know. But something happened before we could get here and before he could tell me.”

Gerson looked at her long and hard. Finally, she gave a quick nod that was more like a jerk. “Okay,” she said. “Thank you.” Then, “Deputy,” her voice was sharp. “Have you photographed the entire area?” She stepped between Hallie and Boyd and walked quickly over to Mazzolo and Laddie’s car.

Boyd pulled Hallie back toward the road. “
Did
Laddie tell you something on the phone?” he asked.

“Yes. But I don’t know what he meant. It’s related. It’s all related, that’s the only thing I’m sure of. He called because of the explosion last night and because of something that happened twenty years ago. Some connection between those two things. I think he knew what too many stones too close together would do. I should—I don’t know—I should have forced him to tell me when we talked the first time, right after Prue died.”

“Don’t,” Boyd said. “You can’t change what’s already happened.”

“You don’t actually even know if that’s true, given what happens around here on a fairly regular basis. Maybe we
can
change what’s happened. Maybe we just have to figure out how.”

Boyd shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a road we want to go down.”

“I didn’t want to go down any road, not from the very beginning. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want it. And look how it’s turned out.”

“It’s the hand we’ve got,” Boyd said.

“Well, it’s a pretty goddamned lousy hand.”

21

“Deputy Davies!” Agent Gerson’s voice sounded high-pitched and brittle. Boyd glanced at Hallie, but she was looking down the road, like she could see all the way to Templeton and Laddie in the clinic.

“Do you know who these people are?” Gerson asked Boyd when he approached her. She showed him a faded photograph, preserved in a plastic bag; one corner of the photograph had been bent up, and within the triangle of the bend, the picture contained what Boyd figured were the original colors, but the rest had gone sepia-toned. He took it from Gerson’s outstretched hand and examined it carefully.

The photograph looked like it had been taken fifteen or maybe even twenty years earlier, judging by the haircuts, the clothes, and the car they were standing in front of. There were four men and two women in the picture, and though three out of the five looked different than, say, the way they’d look today, Boyd recognized Prue Stalking Horse, Tel Sigurdson, and Laddie. The two remaining—a woman with a thick braid pulled forward over her shoulder and a scarf worn like a cowboy’s kerchief around her neck, her hair so light, it looked nearly white in the faded tones of the photograph; and a thickset man with dark hair in a severe crew cut, a heavy five-o’clock shadow, and his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his leather jacket, Boyd didn’t know either of them, although the woman looked familiar in some way he couldn’t quite place. He couldn’t tell where the picture had been taken. There was a building wall just visible at the right edge of the photograph—brick and the hint of a cornerstone, though he couldn’t read the date.

He pointed at the three people he knew. “That’s Prue Stalking Horse,” he said. “Laddie Kennedy next to her, and Tel Sigurdson on the far left. He’s the big rancher out northeast of Prairie City.”

“What about the others?” Gerson asked him. “What about him?” She pointed to the third man.

Boyd shook his head. “No.”

“You don’t know him?” Gerson persisted.

“No.”

“It’s William Packer,” Gerson said.

“The body in the cellar?”

“Yes.” Gerson’s response was clipped. “The woman?” she asked again before Boyd could ask more questions about William Packer, about who he was and why he was in a photograph with Laddie Kennedy and Prue Stalking Horse.

“I don’t know. She looks familiar.” He showed the photograph to Hallie, though Gerson made an aborted move to take it back from him before Hallie could look.

Holding the photo in one hand, Hallie said, “No, I’ve never seen either of them. That building, though. It’s the old schoolhouse in West PC, I think.” She flipped it over and looked at the back. “What does this mean?” she asked. In a thick hand, someone had written—
All the talents.

“Talents? What? Like they can play the piano or something?”

“Where did you find this?” Boyd asked Gerson. “On the seat? In the glove box? How do you think it’s related?” Boyd thought the photograph was probably the reason Laddie had called Hallie. Or a piece of it. Right time frame—at least, twenty years ago seemed to come up over and over, and he’d sure be happy to know what had happened back then.

“You’re certain you don’t know the other two people in this photograph?” Gerson looked at him intently, like she suspected he knew something he wasn’t telling her. She probably looked at everyone like that in the middle of an investigation, but it was a contrast to the last time they’d been together, and he wondered exactly what had happened between when he last saw her and now.

“Never seen them before,” he said. “Do you have a theory?”

She didn’t answer, but turned to Mazzolo and said, “Log everything and get someone out here to tow this car back to town.” To Boyd, she said, “Tell me where to find the clinic in Templeton. I want to talk to this Mr. Kennedy as soon as possible, if it’s possible.” She grimaced. “I understand he spoke with our murder victim a few hours before she died. He should have been interviewed days ago.”

“He was,” Boyd said. “The sheriff was working on the follow-ups. He’s sent you updates.”

She frowned. “All right. Maybe I missed a message. In any case, we don’t have much time to waste. Can you finish here?”

Behind them, Mazzolo cleared her throat. Boyd nodded. “I’ll take care of it,” he said.

“Tell me how to get to this clinic,” Gerson said.

“Go back the way you came,” Boyd began.

“I’ll come with you,” Hallie said.

Gerson looked like she wanted to say no, and Hallie added. “It’ll be quicker. I can show you.”

Hallie took hold of Boyd’s arm by the sleeve, pulled him back a step, and said quietly, “Maker was here.”

Maker was often around. Boyd wasn’t sure why Hallie was pointing it out now.

“He was here and now he’s gone,” Hallie said. She paused. “I think it’s Laddie.”

“Harbinger,” Boyd said quietly. He had seen Maker once, when he and Hallie were in the under. He remembered it like a particularly vivid dream. He remembered details from that time—what things looked like and even what they smelled like. He remembered that it had seemed so much like Iowa, like the home he grew up in, that it hadn’t occurred to him to question it until Hallie showed up. He remembered, but it didn’t feel like a memory, not like meeting Hallie for the first time, or getting married when he was nineteen. Not quite real and not exactly a dream, that was how the under—and Maker—felt to him.

“Yes,” Hallie said, “Harbinger of death.”

He touched her cheek. “Be careful,” he said.

She didn’t reply.

Gerson started back to her car, but Boyd stopped her. “What?” she said impatiently.

“The photograph.” Boyd gestured toward the picture in her hand. “Don’t you want to log it with the rest of the evidence?”

“No,” she said. “I’ll ask Kennedy about it, if I can. We’ll log it later.”

Boyd frowned, but let it go.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said to Hallie, a promise and a reminder.

*   *   *

Hallie hadn’t realized how cold she was until she got into Gerson’s car. The interior of the car itself was barely above freezing, even though it hadn’t been parked long, and when Gerson started the engine, cold air came out of the vents with a muffled roar. No wind in the car and it still felt colder, or made Hallie feel colder than the air outside.