Chapter 4

I wasn't sure I would ever get used to waking up next to Vic. She slept like it was a competitive sport, and then exploded out of bed every morning like a racehorse off the gate. Mostly, I didn't think anything of the difference in our ages. First thing in the morning, however, I was forcibly reminded of how young she was, and how old I felt. On the other hand, she usually slept naked, or as good as, which did tend to brighten my mood long enough for the coffee to kick in.

This morning, despite the chill, she was flitting around barefoot in boy shorts and a tank top with her long, blonde hair hanging loose around her shoulders. I sat at the kitchen table with my hands wrapped around my mug, enjoying the warmth and covertly watching her while she doctored her coffee with a heavy splash of milk and entirely too much sugar. She toasted, buttered and ate a piece of toast, hovering over the sink to catch the crumbs rather than bothering to get a plate down out of the cabinet. Then she dropped into the chair next to me, and stretched her long, smooth calves out across my lap and wiggled her toes at me. I was suddenly having a hard time remembering why I needed to go out into the cold when it had just gotten so warm inside.

"When is Henry coming by to pick you up?" she asked, drawing my attention regretfully away from her legs.

"He said nine, which means he'll be here at eight forty-five."

She glanced up at the clock over my head. "It's eight thirty now." She scooted forward and bent her knees so she could dig her toes into my thigh. "What a shame we don't have more time." She blinked coyly up at me through her lashes.

"I don't know," I said, thoughtfully. "I could get a lot done in fifteen minutes."

She snorted a laugh and pushed away from me, her chair legs barking against the wooden floor. She stood up. "It's going to have to wait, Casanova. Some of us still have a job to get to, and I need to shower."

"I could help with that," I offered gallantly, but I was only rewarded with another snort. Then, as she passed my chair, she reached up, stripped her tank top off over her head and dropped it in my lap, and then sashayed topless off to the bathroom.

"Later," she promised over one bare shoulder before she disappeared around the corner.

Boy howdy.

The shower went silent exactly fifteen minutes later, just as I heard Henry's sharp rap against the front door. I pulled the door open with one hand and offered him a fresh mug of coffee with the other.

"I knew I remained friends with you for a reason," he said as he came inside and accepted the mug from my hand. He took a sip of coffee and glanced around the room. "This is the first time I have been here since Vic moved in. It is nice to see that you have allowed her to put her feminine touch on the decor."

I gave the inaccurately named great room a critical look. It looked much the same as it had for the past six years - well worn furniture, an excessive number of unshelved books, and an embarrassing stack of dusty boxes that had yet to be unpacked, and, if I was being honest, probably never would be. I could tell Henry was being facetious, but I wasn't quite sure what he was implying. "Well, the Philadelphia Flyers blanket on the sofa is hers, so."

"As is that, I assume," Henry said, nodding at the tiny white tank top that was still laying on the kitchen table. "It does not look as though it would fit you."

I felt my face color from the open neck of my shirt on up into my hairline. I snatched up the scrap of fabric and tossed it through the open door into the bedroom. Henry smirked. I gave him a dirty look.

"I've told her to make herself at home," I said. I knew I sounded a little defensive, but it was the truth. "Vic's just not much on stuff."

"She's not much on the feminine touch, either," Vic said as she came out of the bedroom, wearing her duty shirt and jeans, her still wet hair pulled into a sleek ponytail at the back of her head.

"It is no wonder you two get along so well," Henry said. "You have so much in common." He took another sip of his coffee and winked at Vic.

She rolled her eyes at him, but she was smiling.

Vic sat on the edge of the sofa and started pulling on her Browning tactical boots. "You boys have fun today. But try not to get arrested. We're still short staffed, and I won't have time to bail you out if you ruffle too many of Matthias' feathers."

"We're just going to be asking a few questions," I said. "I can't think of any reason that would trouble the Indian Police." I looked at Henry. "Can you?"

"Not a single one," Henry agreed.

"I can think of about a dozen reasons before you two even set foot on the Rez." She grabbed her duty belt from the top of the piano and buckled it around her waist.

"Hey, you're the one who got me into this," I reminded her.

"I merely gave you the push you so desperately needed," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. She looked up at Henry. "Try to keep him out of trouble, please."

"I will do my best," he said, giving her a formal nod of his head.

"Why does everyone always assume that I'm the one that's going to get into trouble?" I said to the room in general.

Vic and Henry raised matching eyebrows at each other.

"It is usually you," Henry said.

"It really is," Vic agreed. She shrugged into her leather bomber jacket and headed for the door. "Bye, Dear. I should be home in time for dinner." She blew me a fluttery, wholly sarcastic kiss, banged out the door and down the steps, and then, a few seconds later, went roaring up the driveway in her truck, kicking up gravel as she attempted to reach cruising speed - if not altitude - before she got to the main road.

Henry, who was more than accustomed to Vic's habit of both entering and exiting any situation with all the grace and subtlety of a four ton wrecking ball, merely finished his coffee, rinsed his mug and set it in the sink. "Are you ready to go?"

I nodded and reached for my jacket. "I spoke to Eddie Many Bridges this morning. He was pretty dismissive, but he did say he'd talk to us. I figured we'd start there and then see if we can locate any of the other boys that supposedly went on this most recent trip with Brian."

"That sounds like a solid plan," Henry said. He preceded me out the door and started towards his truck.

"Where are you going?" I asked, as I pulled the door closed behind me. "I'm parked around the side."

"I am aware of that," Henry said without turning back around. "I am driving." He got into his truck and slammed the door behind him, neatly cutting off any attempt I might have made to argue with him. Instead, I sighed and went around to the passenger side, wrenched open the heavy door, which gave with a bone-jarring squeal, and climbed into the only motor vehicle in the entire world that I have ever actively hated.

"I really hate your truck," I said conversationally as Henry started the green '63 three-quarter-ton pickup that he had named Rez Dawg, but which I preferred to call a bunch of other less polite names.

"So you have said," Henry replied, unperturbed. "On many occasions." We had performed this same vignette with little variation many times over the years. He loved that truck, but I had never been able to figure out why. It either broke down, got a flat, overheated or simply burst into flames every time we drove it anywhere. And every time it did, he'd haul it up on blocks out behind the Red Pony and tinker with it until it was running again. Such as it was.

With no small amount of physical effort, he wrestled the enormous truck into a lumbering parabola in the yard and headed back towards the road.

"You know, my truck has a heater."

"This truck has a heater, too."

"Oh, so you fixed it?"

"I did."

"Did you fix the holes in the floorboards too?" I asked, though it was entirely a rhetorical question since I could plainly see the gravel driveway give way to the paved asphalt of the highway through the rusted out fissures underneath my boots.

"I did not," Henry replied in the same unflappable tone of voice he always used when I badgered him about his truck.

"I will buy you a new truck," I said. "Today. We can go to the dealership in Sheridan, and I will buy you a truck off the lot. Any one you want. Your choice."

"I do not want a new truck. I like this one."

I gave it up as the lost cause I knew it to be and switched gears. "I spoke to Bonnie Calloway last night and told her I would ask around a little bit. She said she doesn't know many of Brian's friends personally, but she did give me a couple of names." I fished my notebook out of my jacket pocket and flipped it open to the notes I had taken the night before. "Ryan Running Feet and Donny Black Feather are Brian's friends from high school. All three of them have been working as rig hands out at Casper Drilling for about a year. They work two-and-one rotations, so after every fourteen days on shift, they have seven days off."

"And that is when they go on the trips she was talking about?"

"Yep. Not after every rotation, but yes, most of them."

"That is a lot of trips."

"And a lot of chances for a kid that age to run into trouble."

Henry glanced over at me while we waited for a pair of pedestrians to cross in front of the grocery store. "You think he ran into trouble?"

"I don't know what to think yet," I said. "At this point I'm still holding out hope that he'll show up on his own with a world class hangover and a great story."

"But you do not think that is what is going to happen."

I shook my head, though Henry's eyes were focused back on the road in front of us. "In twenty-five years on the job, I was only very rarely pleasantly surprised."

Eddie Many Bridges was elbow deep in a Chevy Silverado inside one of the large service bays when we pulled into the parking lot of the A+ Auto Repair. He was a tall Cheyenne with broad shoulders and heavily muscled arms from his years of wrangling engines and mufflers into and out of the many and varied forms of transportation one might expect to find in ranching territory. The other vehicles waiting to be serviced were a new Ford F-150, an old GMC C/K 10, and, incongruously, a bright purple Volkswagen Beetle. Never let it be said that the people of rural Wyoming lack the eclectic style of the big city.

Eddie looked up as Henry and I made our noisy escape from the truck. He called something over his shoulder in the direction of the office and then reached for a shop towel, wiping his hands on it as he made his way towards us. He wore a pair of dark blue coveralls that I suspected came from the same 'big and tall' section of the catalog that I used to order my duty shirts. At six foot five, I rarely have to look up to anyone, but Eddie Many Bridges had me by a good two inches.

"Ha'aahe, Standing Bear," he said, greeting Henry with a nod, which was graciously reciprocated. Then he turned to me. "Good afternoon, Sheriff. I would offer to shake hands, but…" he held up the shop towel and displayed the palms of his grease-stained hands.

"Afternoon, Eddie," I said with a nod of my own. "It's just Walt these days. I haven't been on the county payroll for a while now."

"I had heard as much." He said. "You freelancing now?"

"Something like that," I said without elaborating. I didn't want to get into the specifics of how I'd ended up here, since I still wasn't entirely sure myself. "Look, I know you're busy, and I don't want to keep you for long. Do you mind if we ask you a few questions about Brian?"

Eddie stuffed the shop rag into his back pocket and crossed his arms over his chest. "It's like I said on the phone. I think Bonnie is getting worked up over nothing. I don't mean to be dismissive of her fears, but I think she is jumping the gun by contacting the police. Brian has gone on many of these trips and he rarely keeps in touch while he's away. He's nineteen years old - a man, or at least he thinks of himself as one."

"Well, I'm not the police, so," I said with a quick, and, I hoped, encouraging smile. "He'll probably come home before we have a chance to find him, but maybe we can put his mom's mind at ease in the meantime."

"Fine." The word came out on a sigh. "I still think you're wasting your time, but I suppose it's yours to waste. What do you want to know?"

"Tell me about this most recent trip the boys went on."

"It was some music festival outside of Bozeman," Eddie said. "Rock the Vally or some nonsense like that - a bunch of bands that no one in their right mind would pay to see, anyway."

I nodded in understanding. I had stopped keeping up with popular music back before the Eagles broke up. Most of what they called music these days gave me a headache. Fats Waller and Duke Ellington were a long time gone.

"Who went with him this time?"

"It's always the same group of kids. Brian and three other guys that he works with at Casper Drilling. Ryan Running Feet, Donny Black Feather and Shane Parker. They're all on the same rotation, so they get the same time off."

"Shane Parker?" Henry asked, his dark eyebrows lifting slightly as his only sign of surprise.

"Yeah. You know him?"

"A little." Henry flicked a quick glance at me. His voice was placid, but I could tell he knew more than just a little about Shane Parker. I let it go for the moment, He'd fill me in later.

"When did they head out?"

"Last Tuesday after their shift ended," Eddie replied. "The festival started on Wednesday, but they wanted to be there for the opening act, so they drove up that night. Donny picked Brian up from the house around five thirty. They were going to stop and get something to eat on the way."

"When were they supposed to come back?"

Eddie shifted his weight and looked away, seeming uncomfortable for the first time. "Well, Brian originally said they'd be back Saturday, but they sometimes change their plans."

I could understand the reason for his discomfort. It was Monday now. Brian was already two days overdue.

"Does he usually let you know if his plans change?"

"Usually, but not always."

"Did he let you know this time?"

"No. Not this time."

Henry spoke up again. "When are they scheduled to be back at work?"

"Tomorrow morning…if they bother showing up before then." Eddie stopped examining the gas station across the road and turned back to me. "I know you probably think I'm being callous - that I don't care what happens to my son. But that couldn't be farther from the truth. I love Brian, but I also know him. And we've been down this road a dozen times or more. He isn't a bad kid, but he does what he wants when he wants, and damn the consequences. He always had problems in school - first with the white kids in Evanston and then with the Indian kids on the Rez. He always said he wasn't white enough to be white or red enough to be red." Eddie made a disparaging sound in the back of his throat and spat onto the hard packed earth next to his boots. "He's had a mesa sized chip on his shoulder for most of his life. He dropped out of school as soon as he could, even though Bonnie and I begged him not to. He's lost or quit at least ten jobs in the last two years because he gets bored and stops showing up. I've worn myself out trying to get that kid to buckle down."

I held up my hands "You'll get no judgement from me," I said. "Raising kids is hard as hell. And if they've written an instruction manual, I never got my copy."

Eddie managed to approximate something like a smile, but the expression never made it as far as his eyes. "I want him to show back up in time to keep this job - it's the best one he's ever had. He even has health and dental insurance. But if he met a girl, or scored some drugs, he'll just see it as a chance to start over when he's ready to come home. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if he just decided to get high and follow one of those terrible excuses for a band for a while." His expression contracted at the idea, but he shook it off and his dark eyes met mine again. "I really hope you can track him down so that Bonnie can stop worrying, but I'll tell you, Sheriff, it'll be a temporary reprieve."

A/N: Book!Walt bears a passionate hatred for Henry's truck, which never fails to amuse me. Neither does Henry's anthropomorphic fondness for 'Rez Dawg', and his certainty that 'she' only misbehaves when Walt is around because she knows Walt doesn't like her.

Still determined to finish this sucker. Maybe even sometime before I retire from the nursing career that I am still going to school for. Maybe. Thank you for your patience, and for stopping in for a visit to my own personal Absaroka County. And thank you for the lovely and encouraging comments that never fail to make my day a little brighter. It's a small fandom, but it's made up entirely of delightful people!

Much appreciation to Craig Johnson for creating these characters and the world in which they live. If you have never read the books, I can't recommend them enough. They are very different from the show (and if you're only there for Walt/Vic, you have a three book wait, but it's worth it!), but I completely adore both versions.

All the usual gratitude and genuflecting to my bestie, Katie F, who has slogged through every chapter of everything I have written for the past seven years or so, and still graciously beats the hell out of it with her fierce grammar hammer so that I won't embarrass myself too badly on the internets. If I have one piece of writing advice for anyone, it is this: befriend a former English teacher.