Craig Johnson - Cold Dish

More giggling slipped from under the door of the Bear’s room.

I lay there for a while, thinking that what I ought to do was get up, find a shower, and change into the clothes Vonnie had so thoughtfully provided. I wondered how she knew my size and thought about what she had said. I was feeling sorry for myself, and it felt pretty good; so, I just lay there musing in self-pity, thinking about life, death, and a shower, in that order.

More giggling.

I had to eat something. I had to talk to the Espers and tell them about Jacob and try to confirm all of the suppositions as to what Jacob and George’s plans had been, where they had been, and what had happened. My five minutes had run out a half an hour ago. I had to speak with Jim Keller, and it wouldn’t hurt to have a word with Lonnie Little Bird about the last time the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead had been fired.

Even more giggling.

I could also talk to the Little Wolf woman to see if there were any more clues as to where the feathers might have gone to and come from. I needed to follow up on the Vasques, size nines, and get a better idea on who might have been leaving tracks all over God’s little acre in them. I didn’t think it was George, but there was the disturbing habit he had of running off every time he got the chance. He had been so sure that Henry had tried to kill him on the trail that I began wondering if that might have been one of the motivations behind his constant state of flight. I also wanted to check on Henry and get a more thorough diagnosis on how he was doing. The first part was in getting my eyes to open and, when I did, an upside down Janine Reynolds’s blues were there to meet me. “Hi, Janine.”

She looked a little worried. “I thought you might want something to eat?”

“Bless you.”

She looked around and then back down to me. “Are you okay?”

“Just thinking.” I reached over and picked up my hat where it had fallen during my dramatic interpretation. I looked at the flowers, still clutched in my other hand. “You want some flowers?”

“No, thanks.”

I pushed up and slid over to the wall as she handed a tray down to me. It was some sort of supposed egg matter that I’m sure had never seen the rear end of a chicken and two grayish meat patties that had never oinked. I placed my hat beside me with the brim up and placed the flowers in it. I rested the tray on my lap and picked up a piece of dry toast and began chewing. No wonder so many people died here, they starved to death. Whatever this was, it was not the usual. “Janine, is there a shower around here?”

She blinked. I guess it was a strange request. “There’s the one in the staff locker room.”

“Would anybody mind if I used it?”

“I don’t think so; you’re kind of a local hero.”

I continued chewing my toast and began wondering if it was real bread. “Why’s that?”

“Because of what you did up there.”

Everybody talked about the mountains as if they were on the second floor. I was uncomfortable with flattery, so I asked her how the Cheyenne Nation was doing. She said that he had turned out to be remarkably resilient and was lucky in that the bullet hadn’t done any serious damage to any of his solid organs. While the doctors were in there, they had taken his appendix. I asked about his index but didn’t get a laugh, at least not from Janine, as a sultry giggling erupted again from room 62. We looked at each other as I continued chewing my toast, and her face reddened. “Well, it’s good to know all his solid organs are functioning properly.”

Janine made a hasty retreat down the hallway. A few moments later, Dena Many Camps came through Henry’s door. She straightened the same fringed dress I had seen her in a few days earlier and fine-tuned the lipstick at the corner of her open mouth with the tip of a middle finger. She froze for an instant when she saw me. I pulled a beaten tiger lily from my hat and held it up to her. She smiled and took it, bestowing a ravishing wink back over her shoulder as she sashayed down the hall and turned the corner.

I figured that about a dime’s worth of Dena Many Camps and a Fresca would kill my ass.

“What do you mean he’s gone?” George Esper was, once again, at large. I dried off my damp hair, made sure the towel around my middle was secure, and sat beside my set of new clothes that were still in the green paper shopping bag from the Sportshop.

Ferg looked like he was going to die. “He said he wanted something to eat, so I went to get a nurse…”

I draped the towel from my head to over my shoulders and examined my fingers. The first layer of skin was pretty well shot, and the next was pink and sensitive. My ear hurt, and I hadn’t taken the bandage off for fear of disturbing it, but mostly I felt good, being clean for the first time in a couple of days. “Why didn’t you just ring for a nurse?”

“I tried.”

I thought about going back in the shower and drowning myself. “Where did you see him last?”

“In his room, about five minutes ago.”

I handed him the portable radio, still amazingly clipped to the back of my mud-encrusted Carhartts. “This building is not that big. Have somebody go stand at the northeast corner of the hospital, and you stand at the southwest; either of you spots him leaving, call in. You use your truck radio.” I looked up at Ferg and thought about how he had worked through the better part of the night, probably hadn’t had anything decent to eat in days, and more than likely needed to phone his wife and let her know he was still alive. Donna worked at an insurance firm in town and, after thirty years of marriage, they were still madly in love. On Sunday afternoons, you could see them walking, holding hands, along Clear Creek in the park. “He got away from me, too, don’t feel bad.” I picked up my hat to keep him from feeling self-conscious. “I think I need a new hat. What do you think?”

He looked at me with hazel eyes not too disturbed by self-analysis and struck out for the southwest corner of the building. “Definitely.”

I sat the hat back down on the polished surface of the wooden bench, which was anchored to the floor with three-inch pipe. I guess the administrators figured the doctors and nurses weren’t making enough money and might try to run off with the furnishings. I looked in the bag at my new clothes with a sense of trepidation. If she was angry when she bought them for me, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see what size they were, but the jeans were an exact fit, as were the jacket, shirt, socks, underwear, and undershirt.

After I finished dressing, I put my gun belt on, carefully adjusting the jacket so that it covered the majority of it. Then I stuffed my dirty clothes into the bag for later washing or burning, placed my hat on top, and carried it with me into the hallway. Friday, midmorning, and there still wasn’t much traffic at the hospital, which meant that George would have less cover. But, even though the building was small and the staff sparse, there were probably hundreds of places where he could be. I decided to drop my clothes off in Henry’s room, if he was between female visitations, and use it as a base of operations for the hunt for George Esper, take two.

When I got to Henry’s door, I paused to listen and hear if anybody else was in there. I heard voices but, whatever they were saying, it wasn’t postcoital, so I pushed open the door and found George Esper seated in a chair beside Henry. I walked up to the bed opposite George and noticed that he had been crying. “Did it occur to you to say something to my deputy before you went wandering off, George?” He looked sufficiently sheepish and wiped the tears on his bare arm. “I mean, before I put out an all-points bulletin and file a missing persons with the FBI?”