"I haven't decided," Sheriff Cain said.
"J.T., you quit running these morons into my jurisdiction," the Mineral County sheriff said.
"You folks got a lot more room over here," Sheriff Cain said.
The Mineral County sheriff lit a pipe and smoked it out on the road while the paramedics loaded the body into an ambulance. I was beginning to look at Sheriff Cain in a new light.
"Why'd you introduce me as an ex-Ranger and not as Doc Voss's attorney?" I asked.
"I felt like it. What do you think Stoltz got hit with?" he said.
"Something big. Probably with a jacket on it."
"A.44 Magnum?"
"Maybe."
"Dr. Voss has got one registered in his name."
"There're.44 Magnums all over this state." And in my mind's eye, I saw the heavy, chrome-plated revolver that Cleo Lonnigan had used to threaten Nicki Molinari at her house. "You really figure Doc for this?"
The sheriff squinted at the sun breaking over the top of the hollow and chewed on the end of a toothpick until it was flat.
"Whoever killed Stoltz just wanted him dead. The person who killed Lamar Ellison wanted him to suffer first. I think we got two different perpetrators," the sheriff said.
"I think you're an intelligent man."
"Your friend ain't off the hook. Come on, let's eat breakfast. I been up since four. I got to find me another job. This morning my old woman told me I'm the reason our grandkids are ugly," he said.
"Doc didn't kill Ellison, Sheriff."
"How do you know?"
"He would have made Ellison fight for his life. Then he would have cut him from his scrotum to his throat."
"That'll make a fine defense, won't it?" he replied.
Friday evening Lucas walked up from his tent on the river and took a shower in Doc's house and was combing his hair in the mirror when I inadvertently opened the bathroom door on him. His cheeks glowed with a fresh shave and his back was white and cuffed with sunburn around the neck.
"Where you headed, slick?" I asked.
"To see Merle Haggard. He's playing at a place called the Mule Palace. You ever been there?" His words were hurried, as though he wanted to distract me from an impending question.
"No, I've never been there. Who you going with?"
"Sue Lynn Big Medicine."
"Tell me, bud, did you come all the way up here to see how much grief you could get into?"
"Since you're already pissed off at me, can I share something else with you?"
"What might that be?" I said.
"I need to borrow your truck," he replied.
Ten minutes later I watched him shine his boots on the porch and slip them on his feet and walk back down to the tent and put on a long-sleeve white cowboy shirt embroidered with roses and his wide-brim cream-colored straw hat, with a scarlet cord around the crown, and climb into my truck and start the engine.
But before he could get out of the yard I waved my hand to stop him. He wore mirrored sunglasses, and I could see my reflection bending down toward him, distorted, a bit comical, the constant deliverer of rhetoric that was meant to compensate for my years of absence as a father.