William Krueger - Heaven's keep

Sure enough, Dewey Quinn had just walked into the Antelope Grill. He was accompanied by a young blond woman, a real looker, dressed to kill. He’d changed into civilian clothes and was wearing creased blue jeans and a white sweater with a thick turtleneck. They walked to the bar. The woman sat on a stool, leaned toward the bartender, and said something that made him laugh. Quinn laughed, too.

“Should we ask him to eat with us?” Stephen said.

“He’s got a date, Stephen.”

“Please.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to ask. You want to deliver the invitation?”

“Sure,” he said with surprising eagerness.

Cork watched his son cross the restaurant with a long, awkward gait and approach Quinn. The deputy turned to him and smiled. He introduced Stephen to the woman, who shook his hand delicately. Stephen spoke. Quinn looked toward Cork and carried on a brief discussion with the woman. She nodded, picked up the glass of white wine the bartender had given her, slid from her stool, and followed Stephen and Quinn to the table. Cork stood up.

“Stephen made us an offer we couldn’t refuse,” Quinn said. “Cork, this is my wife, Angie. Angie, Cork O’Connor.”

She was younger than her husband. She had on a red dress that slid easily along the intriguing contours of her body. She wore gold earrings and a gold necklace. She smelled of a good, subtle perfume. Her hand, when she gave it to Cork in greeting, was soft and felt uncomfortably intimate in his.

To Cork’s great surprise, his son pulled the chair out for her to sit. Like so much else about Stephen, whenever Cork saw him put into practice what had been drilled into him at home, he was still a bit amazed. Angie purred him a thank-you.

The waitress was there almost immediately. “Need a menu, Dewey?”

“We’ve already ordered,” Cork told Quinn.

“Just give me the rib eye, rare, Estelle. And a baked potato, the works.”

“Will do, honey. And you, Angie?”

“I’ll have the chicken Caesar.”

“And put that on our check,” Cork said.

“No,” Quinn objected.

“Please,” Cork said. “A small way to say thank you, and, besides, I have an ulterior motive. I’m going to pump you for information.”

“All right,” Quinn said. “Thanks.”

“It’s nothing. We appreciate your kindness, right from the beginning.”

“Kindness?” Quinn lifted the beer he’d brought from the bar and sipped. “You were sheriff of Tamarack County for quite a while. You dealt with your share of persons missing in those great North Woods, I’ll bet.”

“Sure.”

“And weren’t you always as considerate as you could be to the families involved? That’s just being professional.”

“It’s different on this side of the situation, Dewey. It feels like a great kindness.”

“Well, you’re welcome.” He lifted his bottle to Cork and Stephen in a kind of salute.

Angie drank from her wine and glanced around the place, as if restless or bored. Cork was sorry she had to be dragged down by what weighed on him and Stephen and, to a degree, her husband.

“Married long?” he asked her.

“Two years,” she replied, smiling brightly. Flecks of her lipstick spotted her teeth, and Cork thought of a vampire or an animal feeding. “Dewey swept me off my feet.” It sounded like a line she’d delivered often.

“We met in Kansas City, when I was there for a law enforcement conference,” Quinn said. “Whirlwind romance.”

“Big city,” Cork said. “What do you think of Hot Springs?”

“It’s a stop on the way,” she said.

“Oh? To where?”

She put her hand on her husband’s arm. “Dewey is a man with a future.”

“FBI,” Quinn said. “I’m thinking of putting in an application. I’m in charge of major crime investigations in Owl Creek County, and so I’ve got a lot of experience. But unless I decide to run for sheriff someday, I’ve pretty much hit the ceiling here.”

“Lots of opportunity with the Bureau, I imagine. Good luck to you.” Cork turned his beer slowly and studied the Fat Tire label. “Third day of the search. What now?”

“CAP keeps flying the grids southeast of where the plane dropped off radar. If they don’t find anything, they start looking northwest, just in case the pilot decided to try to punch through the storm. Commander Nickleson believes that’s a long shot. It’s all air search now, but our ground S and R crews are ready to go as soon as we have an idea where to send them.”

“It’s… a big place,” Cork said cautiously.

Stephen leaped in. “But we’re finally able to look for Mom, and that’s a really good thing.”

“You bet it is,” Quinn said.

Estelle brought their food and another round of drinks. As they ate, Quinn talked about Wyoming, or that part of Wyoming that lay within the far-flung boundaries of Owl Creek County. A diverse landscape, he said, with a diverse population. There were stark, beautiful badlands to the east, lovely pastoral country along the Bighorn, and a wide strip that was nearly desert that led up to the foothills of the Rockies. Finally there were the mountains themselves, all rugged wilderness.

“The Arapaho, the Crow, the Shoshone, they all fought over this area for a long time,” he said, cutting into the last of his steak. “In the end, they pretty much lost everything to the white man. All that’s left to the Arapaho is the Owl Creek Reservation, which is huge, but much of it not really suitable for human beings.”

Cork said, “Jon Rude indicated there might be gas or oil out there.”

“A lot of speculation about that, but so far the Arapaho have resisted pressure to let anyone look for it. They’re afraid the land will be ruined. Hell, if you look at what’s happened to a lot of the beautiful areas in this state that have mineral reserves, it’s easy to see why they’re concerned.”

“I understand,” Cork said.

“You’re part Indian, right?” he asked.

“One-quarter Ojibwe.”

Stephen’s attention had turned from the talk at the table. “Hey, that’s the woman we saw on CNN,” he said, pointing toward the door that led to the casino.

Cork recognized the woman, too. The last time he’d seen her she was standing in front of the community center on the reservation, de-crying the work of the Owl Creek County Sheriff’s Department in the search for the missing plane.

“Ellyn Grant,” Quinn said, clearly not thrilled.

“Her husband was a passenger on the plane,” Cork said.

“He’s the tribal chairman, and she heads up OCRE.”

“Ocher? Like the color?”

“It’s an acronym. Stands for Owl Creek Reservation Enterprises. The business arm of the rez. Oh crap, here she comes.”

Ellyn Grant had stopped at the bar, where the bartender nodded toward Dewey Quinn. Now Grant wove her way among the tables and approached the deputy. In stature, there was nothing remarkable about her. She stood a few inches over five feet. She had dark brown hair done in a long braid, and a narrow face that didn’t seem to have a lot of the physical look of an American Indian. She wore a calf-length jean skirt with a fringe, a brown leather vest over a blue cotton shirt, and elegant-looking cowboy boots. Her wrists were banded in silver set with turquoise, and large silver hoops dangled from the lobes of her ears. In person, she appeared less imposing than she had on CNN.

“Hello, Dewey,” she said when she reached the table.

“Ellyn.”

“I don’t want to interrupt your evening, just wondering how your search is going.”

“Not bad. And yours?”

“With only one plane, it’s hard to cover much ground.”

“If you were conducting the search in a logical area, maybe you’d have more help.”