“How do you know?”
“It’s too small. I’ll show you.” Wyatt picked up the boot and felt for the label inside. “This one is a ten and a half. I wear a twelve.”
“Your feet don’t look like a twelve to me.”
Wyatt pointed to a pair of suede half-top boots in the grass. “Check them out.”
“You could be wearing those because you have an ACE bandage on your ankle.”
“I wear them because my feet are a size twelve. If that was my boot, I’d take it and ask you where the other one was at. But it ain’t mine.”
Wyatt’s face remained empty of expression. He looked at his nails, then up through the cottonwoods at the sky, seemingly uninterested in the origins of the boot. The detective handed him a photo lineup with six mug shots. “You ever see any of these men?”
Wyatt studied the photos. “I’ve seen this guy here in the middle.”
“Are you positive?”
“Absolutely.”
“Where?”
“At the fairgrounds or a powwow.”
“When?”
“Last summer. Up at the Indian rodeo on the rez.”
“That’s interesting, because he died in Deer Lodge ten years ago. I reread the report, Dixon. You said one of your attackers had long blond hair. He lost his mask, and his bandana came loose from his head. That’s when you saw his hair. You must have seen at least part of his face.”
“That was at the same time I got hit upside the head with a rock.”
The detective tapped his finger on the mug shot of a man whose eyes seemed mismatched, as though they had been transplanted from two separate faces. “Did you ever see this man?”
“No. Who is he?”
“Kyle Schumacher. He did three years in California for statutory rape.”
“Where’d you get the boot?”
“If it’s not yours, you don’t need to worry about it. On second thought, I guess it won’t hurt anything. A PI from New Orleans brought it in.”
Wyatt watched a wood duck bob down the middle of the riffle. “Y’all hear anything else about that waitress who disappeared up by Lookout Pass?”
“What about her?”
“You don’t think the same guy who killed Angel Deer Heart might have kidnapped the waitress?”
“There’s no evidence linking the two cases.”
“I’m trying to track your logic, Detective. The stuff you ain’t been able to find somehow proves there ain’t no relationship between the two cases?”
“Maybe you ought to apply for a job with the sheriff’s department in Mineral County. You could conduct your own investigation.”
“I’ll think about it.”
The detective picked up the boot and replaced it in the sack. “I thought we might have our man,” he said. “Too bad.”
“Are you supposed to give away the name of a suspect in a photo lineup?”