“Yeah. How’d that meeting go?”
“Billy was there too,” I offered up.
Charlie looked at me, said nothing, and turned back to MacAvity.
“So what do you think the temperature is?” he repeated.
Butte nodded to Richter.
“We think about 100 to 140.”
“That your guess, or is it our’s”
“Bruun’s,” Butte told him.
Charlie nodded. Then, “So what now?”
“Salvage.”
“We’ll sort through the stuff out at my place, Charlie,” Hammersmith said. “See if anything survived.”
“Mind if I tag along?” Charlie asked innocently.
“Sorry, Charlie,” Hammersmith said. “And I suspect there are no grounds for a search warrant, either, Sheriff.”
Charlie didn’t laugh.
He looked at Bender. His detective had acted as if he hadn’t heard a word of their conversation, and was watching Richter’s two guys who had reappeared. They began welding the steel hoops to the door.
“Tell you what,” Charlie said finally. “If you need a deputy out there to keep away your curious neighbors, say the word.”
He let us think about that a moment.
“In fact,” he added, “since we have an on-going arson and homicide investigation going on here in Ryback, I feel I should point out that Detective Bender and myself can pretty much investigate and participate in anything that we feel might provide a motive for these tragedies.”
He paused.
“So do you still think I can’t obtain a search warrant in about ten seconds, Hammersmith?”
Eric didn’t flinch. But his face morphed into that of the Navy Commander’s.
He nodded slowly at Charlie.
“But you won’t,” he said.
Charlie shook his head.
“Nope, Eric, I won’t. Unless I need to.” He paused. “But...if you men even suspect that Donny was killed or the Pub torched, or both, because of what you’ve been hiding away from the public and possibly the IRS and the law in that bunker of yours, you’d better be forthright with me. Because if you aren’t, you will be breaking so God damned many laws I won’t be able to dig your sorry asses out. Not now. Not ever.”
Hammersmith stepped a foot closer to Charlie.
“Be nice, Charlie,” he growled. “You can take your “God damns” and your “sorry asses” and speak to us with respect.” He paused. “You know God damned well we’ll tell your sorry ass anything that will give us the assholes that practically burned down our town and succeeded in torturing and killing our pastor. You understand me?”
Charlie nodded. “So call me.”
“We will.”
With that, Charlie motioned for Bender to join him and they returned to the Explorer. I thought they were going to leave, but instead they sat in it to watch as a chain was hooked to the welds on the vault door and attached to the excavator bucket.
Richter walked over and climbed into the cab. The engine roared to life in a puff of black diesel smoke, and the entire machine lurched backwards on its iron treads. Richter began pulling the door open with the sheer weight of the excavator rather than using the bucket. The chain went rigid as a bar of steel and the treads began to dig into the water softened dirt. At first I suspected the door was going to hold, but then, with an anticlimactic flop, it simple fell over into the mud and lay flat.
The excavator moved back into position, slack was taken out of the chain, then the bucket lifted the door out of the hole and onto the lowboy attached to Richter’s Kenworth semi. It was a slick operation. But by the blase’ reaction of the onlookers, I was the only one that seemed to be impressed. That’s what you get for being a newspaper columnist your whole life rather than a farmer or rancher use to heavy equipment.
I looked back at the vault’s opened doorway. An oily stream of heat was flowing gently upwards from it that smelled like burning plastic.
“Why the brush fan?” I asked Butte. “Why not just have them hose the inside until it’s cool?”
Shiela answered. “Might warp things or crack things or water damage things.”
“Oh.”
She patted my forearm with her ancient small boned hand. “Why don’t you go over and ask Charlie real nice like if he’d mind putting a deputy on guard here until tomorrow. We’ll go back to Eric’s, and Ruthie and I will make us all some supper.”
Smoke, who had been practically motionless came to life with that.
“Paul and I’ll meet you there,” he said. “We’re going to run out to my place first and grab a few bottles of this-and-that to contribute.”
Shiela laughed. “You do that.”
Hammersmith motioned for me to get over to talk to Charlie, real nice like, and then Shiela, Butte and he turned and walked off.
But apparently, Smoke and I, as it turned out, weren’t going to his place. At least not immediately.
After Charlie gruffly said he’d put a man at the burn site, Smoke and I rolled back out towards the west edge of town.
He turned and faced me to say, “You better get your shit together. We’re headed for Saddle Rock, Pardner.”
I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
But he already had his phone out and was punching in keys.
He winked at me.
“Yeah, Ruthie...it’s Smoke,” he said. “Butte, Shiela and Eric are on their way. Paul and I were going to come over, but tell them we have an appointment in Saddle Rock, Okay?”
He listened. “Yeah, we want to check that place out... see what’s going on.”
I thought I could hear Ruthie giving him the what-for.
“I understand completely,” Smoke said. “I promise we won’t do anything. Not anything. Just take a peek-see.” She was still at him when he interrupted.
“We’ll call before we call it a night, Ruthie. Sleep tight.”
He snapped the phone shut and slipped it into its belt holster.
I was still staring at him.
“What’s with you?” he said.
“You
