Craig Johnson: Hell Is Empty

The millionaire big-game hunter rounded the front of his SUV and leaned on the hood. “What’re you doin’ up here, Sheriff?”

I gestured toward the prisoners as they complained about the cold and climbed in. “Federal deal at the county line. What about you?”

He smiled an ingratiating smile and, straightening his collar as if he were in court, glanced up at the colorful sky. “Hoping to get snowed in. I’ve got a few commissioned pieces that I’ve got to get done, and I’m doing the work up at my cabin.”

Omar Rhoades sometimes deigned to do taxidermy for struggling concerns like the Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian, and the Autry. I nodded and took my gloves from my coat pocket and pulled them on. “You’ve got a cabin up here?” I could only imagine what Omar would classify as a cabin.

He threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Up on West Tensleep, past 24, near Bear Lake.” I nodded and waited; evidently he had something on his mind. “Hey, I heard Jules Beldon got twenty-one days of community service for that thing at the Rainbow Bar over in Sheridan.”

That thing at the Rainbow Bar that Omar was referring to was an incident in which the jackleg carpenter and cowboy Jules Beldon had tried to climb through the bathroom window in an attempt to evade his tab and had kicked the sink loose, which had then flooded the area near the pool table. Judge Stu “Hang-’em-High” Healy had ordered Beldon to repair the damage and then had sentenced him to three weeks of community service.

“Yep. Why?”

“Well, he was going to do some work for me out at the ranch.”

I looked at my boots, smiled, and looked up at Omar-the condensation from his breath had begun to freeze in his mustache.

“I’m going to need somebody to do some landscaping, Walt, and with the methane stuff, nobody wants to handle a mattock and a shovel around here anymore.”

I thought about it. “You’re not going to do that till June, right?”

He stepped in a little closer. “Yeah, but I want to get somebody lined out to…”

“You’re not just trying to get Jules out of his community service, are you?” Omar and Jules were cowboys, and the locals had their own mafia.

“No. No, no.”

I folded my arms and waited as Saizarbitoria finished loading the prisoners and stood on the other side of the passenger door.

The millionaire smoothed his mustache and wiped his gloves on his black jeans. “All right, you got me.” He took another breath. “He’s seventy-four years old, and you know what it means if he’s doin’ his community service in May; he’ll be out there shoveling every parking lot in town with that cheap, plastic snow shovel he’s got.”

“Well, he was spry enough to try and climb out the bathroom window of the Rainbow Bar.”

“He didn’t make it.”

“It wasn’t for lack of trying.” We stood there looking at each other, and I thawed a little, knowing the big-game hunter was right. “Throw Stu a letter and mention my name-say I said it’d be all right to suspend Jules’s sentence till the end of May so that he can help you out at your place.”

He offered his hand, and I took it. “Thanks, Walt.”

“Keep him out of those bars in Sheridan; they aren’t as forgiving as we are.”

“I’ll try.”

Omar mounted the steps, and I assisted Sancho in securing the ankle manacles on Hector, Shade, and Marcel Popp to the floor of the van. The three knew the drill and leaned forward as I made sure the chains going through the iron floor loops were secure and the padlock was shut. Next I attached the handcuffs to the locks on the seat, but as I started to stand, Shade leaned forward and murmured in my ear, “Who will they send for you, Sheriff?”

I stood up the rest of the way, my hand on the sliding door as Saizarbitoria started around to the driver’s side. I inclined my head to get a clear look into the prisoner’s eye. “Raynaud, you do know that anything you say to me is admissible evidence?”

“Yes, I understand that, but do you understand me?” His lips compressed, but he spoke through them, his powerful hands firmly clasped, his neck muscles bunched. “They have spoken to me since the first one, which is how I knew my mission was the only way to stop them.”

I started to slide the door closed. “Uh huh.”

His voice stopped me. “Do you think you’re a good man, Sheriff?”

I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, especially within context, so I just nodded and fell back on the lessons my mother had taught me. “I hope so.”

He grew still, and his eyes looked like nails driven into his face.

I stood there studying him for a second. “Don’t test me again.”

“But I will, Sheriff-I will.” He continued to regard me with the one eye, and his breath traced across a corner of his mouth like a wisp of steam escaping from a kettle.

I closed the door. Normally I drove, but the Basquo got bored riding, so I had given him the option when we’d left Durant and he’d taken it. As I got in the passenger side, I remembered I’d put Shade’s stolen blade in my pocket.

Sancho started the used van and glanced at me. “Route 422 toward Baby Wagon?”

I pulled the errant steak knife from my jeans and threw it onto the dash. “Yep.” The Basquo, more than a little curious, looked at the knife and then me. I pointed toward the road ahead. “Good thing this piece of crap is full-time two-wheel drive…”

Twenty miles down the road there was a gravel cutoff that led to the right and a slight upgrade. There were two black Chevy Suburbans with government plates, what looked to be about a half-dozen Feds, a heavily armored Ameri-Trans van with two men seated inside, one uniformed man on the outside, a Big Horn County Sheriff’s Department truck, and another from Washakie County-it was a regular cop convention. Sancho wheeled the van in among the parked vehicles next to the large cluster of men.

Before I could get my seat belt off, Joseph Iron Cloud, the Arapaho sheriff of Washakie County, banged on my door. “Hey, hey, we got too many cops out here; you got any bad guys in there?”

Joe was newly elected in the county west of us. A handsome veteran from the first Gulf War, he had model good looks only slightly reduced by a scar that ran from the corner of his mouth to his hairline. He was about Saizarbitoria’s age and cut quite a swath at the Wyoming Sheriff’s Association meetings.

He hung a couple of fingers on the handle as I cracked the door open. “We got three; is that going to be enough?”

He grinned, revealing the small space between his two front teeth as he kicked his chewing gum to the other side of his mouth. “I don’t know. How bad are they?”

I buttoned my sheepskin jacket and flipped up my collar. “Pretty bad.”

Sancho joined us at the door and shook hands with Joe. They were a lot alike, and I had a feeling I was getting a glimpse of the future of Wyoming law enforcement. Saizarbitoria gripped Iron Cloud’s shoulder in his gloved hand as Troy Old Man, another Arapaho and one of Joe’s deputies, joined us.

Sancho smiled. “Jesus, Indians.”

Joe nodded in faux seriousness-he was still working his gum. “Yeah, they brought us in to counterbalance the influx of ETA terrorists from the other side of the mountain.” He turned the grin on me. “Hey, how come you didn’t bring that other deputy, the good-looking one?”

Joe was smitten by my undersheriff, Vic. “I left the womenfolk behind. We heard there were Indians.”

The three younger men followed me over to the larger group that leaned against one of the Suburbans as Joe continued to have fun introducing us to the assembled manpower. I stuck a hand out to Tommy Wayman, who was Rosey’s cousin and the sheriff of Big Horn County, as Joe kept talking. “You guys know Grumpy.” Vic had tagged him with the nickname, and everyone used it, but only she and Joe used it to his face.