The Dark Horse (21 page)

A ski resort would change things, but I doubted we’d be seeing espresso stands and full-length coyote coats on the sidewalks of Durant—other than the one on Omar, that is.

I sipped my water and looked across the parking lot where another of Kyle Straub’s signs proclaimed A MAN TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. What the hell did that mean, anyway? It wasn’t even particularly good English. The sign still made my ass hurt, but I was cheered by what was sitting on its top. A large, very yellow meadowlark periodically lifted its head and sang out with the gurgling, flutelike notes of its song.

A hardy bird that nests in the grasses of the plains, famous for that song, the meadowlark is the state bird of Wyoming, North Dakota, Montana, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oregon. As a state bird choice, original it was not. The birds always arrive in the spring, but then seem to disappear in July until they come back in fall, like sentinel bookends for summer.

The glass doors slid open to my right, and I turned my head just in time to see Janine run by and down the hallway toward the examination room. I was up and through the doors after her. We reached the room at the same time, and I blew through the door in front of her.

The treatment table had fallen over, and Mary Barsad, still attached to an ECG monitor, was lying on the floor beside a series of small, glass-doored cabinets. Vic was holding both her hands against the woman’s throat as the pulse of the blood from her carotid artery pushed with Mary’s pulse through my deputy’s fingers in a one-and-a-half-foot arc. Vic was the only one speaking. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

There was blood everywhere, and what appeared to be one of those disposable scalpels was lodged in Mary’s throat with the wrapper still half on. Isaac Bloomfield, who sat on the floor across the room, was tangled in an overturned utility cart with his thick glasses askew.

I grabbed a large roll of gauze from the counter and knelt to wind it around Mary’s neck; then I slid my arms under her back and legs. I used my foot to flip the table back upright and placed her on the flat surface as a fresh stream of blood streaked across my uniform shirt and badge.

Vic continued to apply pressure, but the blood loss was catastrophic. “I turned my head for a split fucking second.” She was literally shaking with anger. “Fuck!”

Mary lay with her head turned to the side, her mouth gulping air like a landed trout. It seemed as though the pulse in the veins at her temples was beginning to still. My voice was loud but sounded far away. “Isaac . . . I need your help.”

The small man, assisted by Janine, slid up the wall and partially settled his glasses while approaching with hands extended, hands that had saved my own life. I hoped they would save hers.

“Vertebral arteriovenous . . .” The doc’s face turned only slightly toward the young nurse. “I need a transvascular embolization kit. Quickly, please, Janine.” She slipped past us to the cabinets on the wall as he continued to speak, almost as if he were reminding himself of the procedure. “Neurologic deficits coincident with the fistula should resolve with the reestablishment of flow—” Janine brought back a balloon device as Isaac’s hands took over for mine, and I was stirred by Isaac’s sudden switch to his native Teutonic tongue. “
Gottverdammit!
”

I held Mary’s head and looked into her eyes, the blue dulling with each pulse of blood. I knew that we were in a race as to whether the woman would die of blood loss or of suffocation from the mounting hematoma of coagulating blood that was forming in her throat. Isaac called for a number of paralytic drugs to be administered through the IV that Janine had nervously pushed into Mary’s arm.

The choice was brutal but necessary, and for the remainder of the episode, no matter how short that might be, Mary would be aware of what was happening and feel everything as we attempted to save her life.

Isaac took the endotracheal tube and began feeding it into the stricken woman’s mouth. He handed Janine the plastic that was connected to the balloon device and to a one-way valve. With hands shaking, the young nurse screwed a syringe without a needle but full of air into the valve and depressed the plunger on the syringe, effectively holding the tube in place as Isaac listened to Mary’s chest and stomach with a stethoscope.

He nodded, and Janine passed the bulb to me. Isaac looked directly into my blood-spattered face. “
Einmal alle fünf Sekunden
.”

I stared back at him and smiled grimly at the concentration camp survivor. “English, Doc.”

Bloomfield swallowed. “Once every five seconds.”

One.

I was now Mary’s lungs.

Two.

Her lips quivered, and she continued to try to gulp air—pushing out silent words past the tube in her throat.

Three.

I allowed Isaac’s hands more access to the wound, and I brushed her bloody hair back from the high cheekbones, driving my eyes into hers. I spoke from only inches away.

Four. “Not today you don’t.”

Isaac continued to dig into the wound with a hemostat in an attempt to find the artery responsible for delivering the bright red blood to her brain, as Vic conceded him her portion of the wound.

Five. I compressed the bulb again.

“Got it.” The old man’s voice was tired but steady. “Clamp, please, Janine.” Mary Barsad would no longer die from blood loss or strangulation. He looked up and through the still-crooked glasses, and maybe because the circumstance had been so dire, it was funny. “She kicked me.”

I smiled, but it didn’t hold for long. “I bet she did.” I looked down. Mary’s eyes were wide with the pupils contracted to tiny tunnels. She was trying to get to a place to which I wasn’t going to let her go.

I’d lost too many, and I wasn’t losing another.

I was tired when Vic dropped me off at the motel room in Absalom, but she sat there, lounging against the seat, and watched me. I leaned in the window and met her eyes with my one good one. “You’re driving my truck.”

“Yeah.” She ran the palm of her hand over the leather steering wheel. “Thought I’d see what it felt like.”

“Well, don’t get used to it too soon.”

She paused for a moment, and I had to admit that the big, three-quarter-ton truck suited her. “You want to give me a straight answer this time?”

I turned so that she would see the undamaged side of my face. “What?”

“Have you lost your fucking mind? A tough-man contest?”

I cleared my throat, which made my eye hurt—not a good sign. “I wasn’t an official entry.”

“And that makes it better?”

I fessed up. “I think Henry wanted me to get in a fight.”

“Why?”

“I’m just guessing, but I think it was his way of getting me all unballed-up from Cady, the election, the investigation—”

“And me?”

I nodded, and that hurt, too. “And you.”

“Wily devil, isn’t he?” She snorted and covered her face with her hand. “Unballed-up. Is that a technical term?”

She shimmied over and raised her hand, putting the cool of the back of her fingers against the skin next to the wound on my left cheekbone. It felt really good, and I was carried back to that night in Philadelphia when we’d become intimate in a way with which I was still unsure I was comfortable. As a symptom of that discomfort, I changed the subject to her brother and my daughter. “I assume you’ve gotten the word on the latest from our respective households, both alike in dignity?”

Her eyebrow cocked like a revolver. “I think Romeo’s being a tard, but who am I to stand in the way of true love?”

“So, if they get married, does that mean that we’re—”

“I don’t want to think about it.” She summarily pulled her hand away and rested it on my shoulder. “You know, I’d come in if I wasn’t afraid of blowing your cover.”

“Uh huh.” I folded my forearms on the passenger doorsill. “I’m not so sure I’ve got much of a cover to blow.”

She inclined her head and looked up at me through the open window and her dark lashes. “I could always come in and blow something else.”

I didn’t move for a minute, and I don’t think I’d been at a loss like that since junior high school.

I was saved by a loud crash. Juana had carried out a garbage bag of empty bottles and deposited them onto the boardwalk. She looked over at the two of us with a hand on her hip. “I let your dog out, twice.”

“Thanks.” I leaned against my truck and introduced the two women. “Juana Balcarcel, this is Undersheriff Victoria Moretti—Vic, Juana.”

She started over but then stalled out when she saw me. “
¡Ay, mierda!
” She took the step down to glance at Vic, but her eyes kept returning to the side of my face. “Are you all right?”

“Yep, I’m okay. How’s my adversary?”

She shook her young head, the dark hair swinging. “He was still unconscious when the EMTs loaded him out with a neck brace, but when he woke up, they gave him the cash, since you weren’t an official entry. I think that made him feel much better.” She reached in and extended a hand to Vic.

“Hi.”

Vic shook her hand and smiled. “How you doin’?”

I felt compelled to continue. “Juana’s almost got an associate’s degree in criminal justice from over in Sheridan.”

They both ignored me.

La bandita flicked her eyes at my caved-in face and then looked back at Vic. “Is he really the sheriff ?”

The Italian beauty’s head dropped in silent laughter, then raised and considered me. “Yeah, and believe it or not, most of the time he acts like one.”

Juana looked at me again and then back at Vic. I felt like sonar readings were being made, but I wasn’t on the same frequency, even though I could see the pings bouncing back and forth between the two.

“If you’re going to stay, I’m going to have to charge you the double rate for the room.”

First there was pounding on the door, then Dog started barking, then my head fell off and rolled across the stained carpet and lodged itself in the corner against the chipped baseboard—at least that’s what it felt like.

I got up in my boxer shorts, appropriately enough, pulled on a T-shirt from my duffel, and stumbled over Dog toward the door. If it was Cliff Cly looking for a rematch, I was going back to my bag, pull out my .45, and just shoot him.

I swung the door open and looked at a man with glasses and a graying beard with mustache to match who was wearing a ball cap that read COFFEEN DYNO-TUNE. The name
Jim Rogers
spiraled in white thread across the left chest pocket of his dark blue coveralls. “You Eric Boss?”

I stared at him. “What?” He looked at some of the other doors, and the number on mine, sure he’d made a mistake. I cleared my throat; what could it hurt? “Sure, I’m Eric Boss.”

“No, you’re not; you’re the sheriff from over in Absaroka County.” He studied my face, which still felt like it had fallen off. I glanced at the corner next to the baseboard just to make sure it hadn’t. “At least, you used to be.”

“And how do you know that?”

“I got a speeding ticket last year—it was that nasty little brunette deputy of yours nabbed me.”

The voice behind me was sharp. “You were doing seventy-three in a fifty-five.” I turned to look back at the bed I’d just vacated. “And you had no taillights.”

I turned back and looked at the mechanic, who was desperately trying to see around me. “Can I help you with something?”

He focused on me and threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Steve sent me over; I’ve got a horse trailer out here—we re-packed the wheel bearings, fixed the brakes, rewired, and put new tires on.”

I reached up and cradled my face before my cheekbone reminded me about the pain. “Right, right . . .” I took a deep breath and recalled having the vehicle towed into Sheridan for a makeover. I looked over him and could see they had cleaned the old trailer off, and she wasn’t looking half bad. “Uh, you can just leave it out there, Jim.”

He didn’t move.

“Is there something else?”

He nodded. “Ya gotta pay for it.”

“Oh . . . you bet.” I closed the door. He was still trying to see who it was that had spoken to him from the bed. It was lucky that the wind was blowing and that he seemed just a bit hard of hearing. I dug into the jeans that I had left on the chair for my wallet as Vic rolled over and luxuriously stretched, revealing a perfectly rounded breast and alert nipple. She propped herself up on an elbow and used her red-nailed hand to support her tousled head; she made no effort to cover up. I stood there, unable to move, then remembered my mission, opened the door, and handed the guy my credit card. I stepped forward and got between him and the provocative room.

I closed the door behind me as he finished writing down the numbers and totals. He handed the card back and ripped off a receipt. I took the slip of paper and looked at him. “Anything else?”

He shifted his weight and gestured with the thumb again. “Just leave it out here?”

“Yep.” I waited until he got the trailer unhitched and had climbed back in his truck before I turned and sidled into the room, closed the door, and looked at her.

She was still lying on her side with one leg pulled up ankle to calf, one hand still supporting the mussed hair; the other was lazily making circles on the flat of the sheet. More than a little of her body was still exposed, and I took that extra second to take in the swoops and swallows of her general physique.

I felt like I should carve a statue.

I tossed the transaction papers and my wallet in my open bag, stepped over Dog, and sat on the corner of the bed as she watched me with the tarnished gold, vulpine eyes. “A horse trailer?”

I nodded, and it still hurt. “It’s a mercy mission.”

“You don’t even like horses.”

“I do too—it’s just that they’re big, dangerous, and a poor form of transportation.”