Amy White-Feather knew more than she was telling and Walt couldn't figure if it was because of guilt by association or something else. He didn't like to think she had anything to do with Henry's sudden sojourn to places-unknown but he couldn't rule out the possibility, either. She kept fiddling with the charms on her bracelet and looking off to the left of his face when he tried to make eye contact as she'd gone to stand behind the bar, classic signs of evasion.
"Amy you know something you're not telling me. I need you to tell me what, exactly, that is because you won't look me in the eye and you've been fidgeting since I got here. This tells me you're either lying or evading," Walt said stepping forward and bracing his arms against the bar from the opposite side.
Amy folded like a cheap lawn chair under Walts gentle badgering. "It is nothing, I think. But there was some trouble a few weeks back, just before Henry left."
Amy paused crossing her arms in front of her chest defensively. Walt said nothing letting her take a moment to gather her thoughts.
"There was a customer here" she explained, "handsome, for a white boy and I let him buy me a few drinks. I'm not supposed to accept drinks when I'm working...but I did that day. I finished my shift and this guy, he wanted me to go off with him but I said no."
"He did not like that," she said and when her eyes flicked up they were filled with bitter indignation. "He called me a dirty, whoring squaw right here in the bar and one one said a damn thing about it, just kept drinking and eating like I was invisible."
"I have a hard time believing Henry let that pass, Amy."
She laughed, bell soft and pretty as a Nightingale. "So, you do know him then," she said, hair waving in a dark banner as she shook her head.
"Henry told him to get the fuck out of his bar and that as proprietor of the Red Pony he could reserve the right to refuse anyone service," Amy paused frowing, "that man, his face, it turned ugly, Sheriff. I don't know how else to describe it. Terrible as this is I remember how glad I was that he wasn't looking at me."
"I wanted to call you but Henry said not to, that he would take care of it."
"Yeah, well, Henry isn't always right, and he sure isn't the law."
"Did this man pay with his credit card?" Walt asked suddenly, feeling more and more certain that this problem customer would be his first lead. He felt like slamming his hand down on the countertop when she shook her head in refusal. Walt did not like the image that was beginning to form: an unhappy customer returning to the Red Pony after hours and attacking the owner who threw him out on his ass.
"Had you seen him here before the incident?" Walt asked.
Amy shook her head a dark blush heating her cheeks. "No, I did not. I, uh, think I would have noticed."
"Right, handsome, got it," Walt said. "I'm going to need you to come by the station and speak to Hank Ellis, get a sketching."
If they had a rendering of the man it would go a long way towards narrowing the suspect pool. He'd have Vic call in Hank. Illustrator for The Absaroka Times who moonlighted as sketch artists for Absaroka Police Department and town flirt who drew girls the same as honey to a bee with his old-timey Southern charm.
"Walt? I, I would have said something sooner but Henry did leave a note. He micromanages this place you know? He's put his sweat and blood into this establishment. Leaving for so long? This is not like him" Amy said, her words breaking Walt free of his internal monologuing.
"Yeah, it's starting to look that way."
Amy turned her back to him as she rummaged through the stack of papers beside the phone, nimbly plucking out a yellow sticky-note he hadn't seen because he'd been in a rush to Henry's private room above the bar.
Gone hunting in Wichita.
"Ah, hell!" he muttered the bottom falling out from under his feet. Walt sat down abruptly, glad for the wood chair his ass ended up in because he felt as though he'd been kicked in the chest by a wild horse and could have just as easily found himself on the floor. So far as he could tell there were two problems here, one was the unspoken understanding that they took these kinds of trips together always had, and always would. Walt loved Absaroka county but he couldn't claim he didn't love those trips together more. It wasn't always easy but he made time. Because that's just what you did, make time for people. The second problem is Henry had hated hunting in Wichita and the hate had been mutual seeing as how they had been all but run out of town like a pair of no account saddlebums. He and Henry had taken a trip up that way to see about those feral hogs they'd read about in the papers but the real problems had been of the two-legged and racist kind.
"When you find him? Tell him I want a raise."
"Okay," Walt said stuffing his hat back on his head as he stood back up. Now that his legs weren't feeling as wobbly as a newborn colts. That stone of un ease he's been hauling around? Well, now it's becoming a boulder lodged in his chest. Intuition can be a powerful tool but he can't run off halfcocked.
He needs more than instinct to go on, what he needs is a trail. To damn bad it's the best tracker in the county he seems to have lost.
"A bear lost in the eye of a storm," he thinks recalling his strange dream and a shiver goes down his spine that has nothing to do with climate. He doesn't need Ada Black Kettle to interpret what those disappearing tracks from his dream mean for Henry in real life.
Mouth pulled in a tight line Walt blew out of the bar leaving the saloon doors swinging wild in his wake but halted suddenly at the outside entrance to the bar, head canted up to inspect the security camera Henry had installed in '09 when their had been a rash of local robberies.
As the county sheriff he had suggested that the town was growing and it would only continue to do so and extra security measures were only logical. Now, it would appear his badgering was going to pay off.
Walt turned on his heel and stuck his head back inside through the door and hollered for Amy White-Feather who came running out her cheeks pink with exertion.
"Sheriff?" she asked, expression jittery as a june bug.
Walt just pointed at the camera and the cut wires. Walt observed as Amy's mouth fell open in a little 'O' of surprise as she drew in quick, shallow breaths. It was clear to Walt her shock was genuine and he mentally cut her loose as a potential suspect.
"I take it you hadn't noticed," Walt said.
"I - I have not had a reason to check the security feed," Amy admitted, "there haven't been any problems. I will get you the footage."
She disappeared into Henry's office and Walt could hear shifting papers and things being moved but she returned within minutes with the footage on a small black memory-stick. Walt took the device from her hands and left the bar for the second time, planning to review the feed from the laptop he kept in his office at the station. This, whatever this was, had involved some planning - not like Mandy Hall who had been a blitz attack of opportunity. Odds were the camera had been cut prior to Henry's abduction and Walts missing person case had just become a kidnapping.
Seated in the relative privacy of the Bronco he slammed his hand down on the wheel hard enough that his hand stung from the force of the self-inflicted blows. He looks away for a minute, one Goddamn minute, and already the world is conspiring to take the last good thing he has going for him.
It's a dickish thing to think, he's safe and Henry is God knows where.
Walt blows out a breath staring down at his hands - they're shaking a little. Minute tremors from the cocktail of pain, nerves, and lack of food catching up and biting him in the ass. That had been a stupid thing to do and he knows it because now Ruby's going to give him the Look and ask what happened to his hand. How's he supposed to tell her? He's been blindsided. He wasn't prepared. He couldn't loose Henry, not like this.
"If anything happens to him because I was too distracted, too chicken shit to say what I wanted, to pick up the fucking phone…" He grips the wheel tight enough to turn his knuckles white.
Walt figures there must have been signs he missed because he hadn't been paying attention. It was no excuse but he'd been to caught up in his own dealings, his job, and calculating the potential fall out from having had sex for the first time since Martha died.
"Enough" Walt growls to himself, "enough."
Time to stow the pity party and lock down anything else he might be feeling that was going to get in the way. The signs might have been there but Walt hadn't been paying attention to the right details and if the spirit-world had been trying all along to send him a message? Well, dammit, he was listening now. Walt turned the key in the ignition and did what he had planned to do before this business at the Red Pony cropped up, go to work at the station as he usually does.
Ferguson was crammed into his chair flipping through paperwork when Walt arrived at the station and Vic was staring at papers of her own her elegant blonde brows pinched in annoyance. She transferred that look to him as soon as he stepped through the door. Vic hated getting shot at as much as filing paperwork - they had that in common.
"What the hell took you so long, Walt?" she asked, her sharp cat-green eyes narrowing as she looked him over.
Checking for bullet holes, or other indicators to what had held him up, no doubt. "I caught a case and the trails running cold," Walt said, "it's Henry Standing Bear, he's missing, the circumstances are more than a little suspect."
"Oh no," Ferguson said, rising from his chair fast enough that it creaked and groaned, skidding back a few paces.
"Where do we start? What do we know?" Ferguson asked, the deep frown he worn adding a sternness to his baby-face. He was resolved but he also looked like he'd taken a bite out of a lemon.
Walt sympathized. Realizing the case you were working was about someone you knew always made things harder, feelings getting in the way and shit. But in a town this size and the limited resources available it wasn't like handing it off was an option. Not that he would if he could. Not when it was about Henry.
"This is what we know. A woman working at the Red Pony, Amy White-Feather, was hassled by a customer and things got heated," Walt said pacing as he turned over the facts in his head, "Instead of calling me, the sheriff, as he should have done, Henry forcibly evicted the customer from his bar."
Walt rubbed his chin absently, his look far away. "This man is our prime suspect because after being thrown out of the bar Henry's gone missing and no one has seen, or heard from him in roughly three weeks."
"Walt, do we even know what this suspect looks like?" Vic asked, coming to stand in front of Walt with her hands balled on her hips, head tilted back to meet him eye for eye. "And we're sure this isn't just a case of, oh, I don't know? Miscommunication? He's gone on business trips before, right?"
Walt turned a hard look on Vic and an inscrutable exchange passed between them in complete silence that had the deputy throwing up her hands in exasperated surrender. "Fine, fine," she said, "you need me to start up your laptop, or do you think you can handle it?"
"Amy White-Feather is going to be here in twenty minutes. She had to lock up the bar before leaving," Walt said, blowing past her questions without apology. He didn't have time for trading barbs. Henry was missing and he was damned if he was going to let those tracks disappear for real. The tracks were fading with each delay. He couldn't afford any more slip-ups - neither could Henry. Three weeks suddenly sounded like three months. Either way, it was a day, a minute, a second, too long.
How ironic. Only this morning he'd been so certain that was the one thing he did have on his side, time.
"Vic, call in Hank Ellis and get him down here. He needs to have a sit down with Amy White-Feather." Walt entered his office leaving the door open and stared out the little window overlooking the town watching two women hurry into the MiltonGeneral Store an epiphany struck and he shouted for Ferg.
"Yeah?" Ferg said, poking his head inside.
"Go ahead and call in Mandy Hall, too."
"Got it" Ferg said, pausing half inside the threshold of Walt's office. "Walt...what are you thinking?"
"I don't know," Walt said, "that's what I need to find out."
Walt knew there was something he was missing and talking to the two potential kidnap victims would help him see the bigger picture. Amy White-Feather was accosted at the Red Pony and Mandy Hall was approached outside Bears & Shears. In a county this size what were the chances that it wasn't the same guy? Walt leaned back in his chair and plugged the black memory-device into the port.
He saw a lot of people coming and going but it was strange to see himself enter the bar and drink a Rainer on the screen. He knows it happened, he can see it happening, Henry joining him for three or four minutes across the bar serving him a second Rainer and a burger and he sees himself laugh. But he can't pick out that one moment from the blur the last weeks have become. He wishes like hell he remembers that moment. What made him laugh like that? He'll never know. Walt tries not to think too hard about the fact that it might be the last chance he had to shoot the breeze, drink beer, and just be with Henry.
He'd only watched forty minutes of footage from the bar when Amy White-Feather, Hank Ellis and Mandy Hall arrived at the station. He hit pause and stood up.
"Amy, this is Hank Ellis it would be real helpful if you would give him a description of the man who accosted you at Henry's bar," Walt said signaling for Ferg to move out of his chair and dragged a chair over for Ellis who tipped the brim of his white Stetson in thanks as he seated himself.
Walt gave them breathing room so as not to hover but stayed close enough to hear leaning against the wall unobtrusively as he could make all six-feet and three inches of himself.
"He was handsome enough, white, he had brown hair...a Superman jaw, you know? But a light beard too, a bit like...a lumber-jack or construction worker," Amy White-Feather said huffing out a resigned breath the silver of her bracelet flashing as she waved her hand in the universal gesture for what can I say?
"That is why I almost left with him after all."
"Well unless the times have changed that rules out lawyer and banker and adds half the town to the sheriffs suspect list," Ellis remarked a twinkle in his pale blue eyes that had Amy White-Feather smiling with him and sitting more comfortably. Ellis turned his attention back to his work and Walt could hear the artists pencil scratch-scratching as he sketched on his drawing pad.
If Walt were a different sort of man he'd be jealous of his easy way with women. But presently it was useful. After all, accurate recall was harder when a person was all locked up in defense mode.
"Eyebrows?" Ellis asked wiggling his own at Amy White-Feather who laughed, still that pretty Nightingale chime.
"They were average I guess. Not bushy but they were not manicured either. He must have had a glass nose, though. It looked like it had been broken a few times, does that help?" Amy White-Feather asked craning her head to look back at Walt.
"It helps Amy," Walt said moving from the wall and looking down at the drawing over Ellis' shoulder. Walt took the pad but was unable to place a name to the face that was beginning to form in clean black lines.
"Mandy, does this look like the man who tried to kidnap you?" Walt asked, handing her Ellis' sketch.
She shook her head. "Sorry, Sheriff. I never saw his face." She frowned, scrunching up her nose in a way that even Walt could see why half the local boys were gone on her. "But there is this one thing I remember, a logo on his sweater - it looked sort of like a ferret or opossum? And the words, they were in yellow I think."
Walt froze at the same time Amy White-Feather spoke up.
"He was wearing a grey Wolverines, West Yellowstone High sweater, wasn't he?" Amy White-Feather asked fiddling with the feather charm on her bracelet.
"Yes" Mandy said her whole face lit up brightly, "I don't know why I couldn't remember that. How did you know that?"
"Because that was what the guy at the Red Pony was wearing," Amy White-Feather said looking over at Walt. "What are the chances, hmm?"
"I should have remembered that!" Mandy said, wheat-gold hair bounding around her face as she shook her head. "Sorry, I guess I just didn't want to think about it once it was over," she said, leaning into the hand Amy White-Feather had put on her shoulder.
"Don't you worry, honey. You remembered when it counted that's what matters" Ellis said patting her hand before turning to Walt. "So, Sheriff, looks to me like my work here is done, you've got your sketch and from the look on your mug, I'd hazard a guess that you've a lead, too."
"Thanks, Ellis" Walt said, "I'll make sure you get that check."
"You know what, Sheriff" Ellis said, glancing sideways at Mandy. "Just this once, it's on the house. A good cause and all."
"Okay" Walt said, shaking Ellis' hand and showing him out the door. Last he heard Ellis was sweet-talking Mandy and Amy White-Feather into drinks at the Half-Moon Cafe as they descended the stairs. Ellis' smooth, southern-accents and the girls soft laughter echoing in the halls.
Pouring himself a mug of coffee under Ruby's disproving watch Walt went back to the laptop and stared at the image on the screen. There was a man at the bar wearing a grey Wolverines, West Yellowstone High sweater, what were the chances? Not saying a word to Gerg and Vic who watched him curiously Walt printed out the image and compared it to the sketch in his hand. They were a match.
Vic looked between the two and cursed, "Christ Walt, this is the guy Mandy and Amy identified. He's even wearing his ugly ass high school sweater."
"There's just one thing that doesn't make sense. Why'd this loser go from attempted kidnappings of two women to a man? It's not like Henry is even vaguely adrogenous, you know. Why didn't this guy just…" Vic trailed off cutting a look at Walt's face. It didn't look good, he knew, he feels like he's swallowed ash and ants are crawling in his veins. Ruby was right, he shouldn't have had that second coffee.
"Kill him? That's what you were going to say, wasn't it," Walt said. "I don't know why, okay, it doesn't make sense to me either."
Vic paced, stopped, and turned fully toward Walt. "It's been three weeks, Walt. We don't know that he's still alive."
"We don't know that he's dead, either," Walt countered, "He - Henry isn't dead. He isn't."
"Walt's right, Vic. We don't know why, or how, or anything at all yet. But what we do know is that this guy is involved," Ferg said flicking the photo sharply as though by some pbscure magic the jab will transfer to the man they're hunting. "I'll take this photo and ask around, see if anyone remembers seeing him."
"You're right, without a body we work this like a rescue not - like a rescue. Okay, gimme one of those," Vic said snatching up one of the photos as she shrugged into her coat. "You take the north side, I'll take the sought, we'll meet in the middle."
Walt followed Vic and Ferg down the steps on autopilot. He paused at the top backlit by the rising sun. He bowed his head and sent up a silent prayer, just one. God. Don't let him be dead.