Chapter Twenty-One
O’Bryan was still slightly embarrassed to be wearing his fresh-out-of-the-box cowhand clothing. He wished Bowkley would have alerted him that it wouldn’t be necessary to dress up when he retrieved him at the motel in Winchester two hours before.
“Bring your weapon,” Bowkley had said to O’Bryan.
“Always,” O’Bryan had responded, patting his coat pocket.
Bowkley had said very little since then.
He drove cautiously, keeping to the speed limit even in Montana when it rose to eighty miles per hour and the state troopers were notoriously lenient to drivers going even faster.
Even so, O’Bryan guessed that the deputy didn’t want to risk being picked up and cited en route to Billings, which was still two hours away.
They wanted no record of their trip to Montana if they could help it.
It was the same reason why Bowkley had instructed O’Bryan to turn off location tracking on his burner phone.
It was a lonely drive, O’Bryan thought. Except for a few semitrucks, there had been very little traffic on the interstate. Montana was as empty as Wyoming.
“Can I ask you a question?” O’Bryan said to Bowkley.
“Sure. But I may not answer it.”
“You said when I met you that you’d recommended Peddy and me to your boss. What did you mean by that?”
Bowkley let the question hover for a few moments.
Then he said, “I’ve been in law enforcement for a very long time.
If you do what I do and you’re smarter than the people you work with and you work for, you realize after a while that you’re never going anywhere.
You bust your ass nailing pukes so the rest of society can just carry on like you don’t exist. There’s no appreciation, you know?
‘Defund the police’ and that kind of bullshit.
And you realize there’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. ”
O’Bryan urged him to continue by nodding his head.
Bowkley said, “So one day you’re talking to a big-shot drug kingpin that you’ve been assigned to escort to court every day.
You’ve established an interesting rapport with him over the months he’s been locked up while the trial is going on.
He’s rich, and he’s really connected. You ask the guy if he knows a couple of names of guys, shooters, who could be hired to off somebody.
It’s sort of a joke question, but he takes it seriously.
“He says that for a hooker, a bottle of bourbon, a carton of cigarettes, and an officer to look the other way, he might share a couple of names. And you just happened to be duty officer that night.
“So he gets what he wants and he comes through with the names of a couple of freelancers.”
“That would be me and Peddy, I guess?” O’Bryan said.
“Yeah, but he didn’t tell me what an asshole Peddy was,” Bowkley said with a sneer.
“So who hired you?”
“That’s not a good question to ask. Let’s just say that if everything comes through like it’s supposed to, I’m set for the rest of my life. No more pukes, no more busting my ass for people who pretend I don’t exist. Fuck ’em, I say. It’s time I got what I’m due.”
With that, Bowkley turned to O’Bryan with a hard, cold glare. “So don’t fuck this up for me, buddy boy.”
—
“Why don’t you get on your phone and book us each a motel?” Bowkley said a few minutes later. “Find a couple of places that are cheap and close to St. John’s Hospital, and use false names. And don’t use Jason Witten and Marion Barber, for Christ’s sake.”
“Two different motels?” O’Bryan asked.
“That’s what I said. So if the cops start asking motel owners if two men checked in the night before the hit, they’ll have to say no.”
“Ah, got it. What if they want a credit card to hold the rooms?”
“Give ’em your card number. We can pay cash when we check in. So don’t worry about that.”
O’Bryan dug out his cell phone and winced. “There’s no signal here.”
“It’s spotty. This is the res. You should get something when we get closer to Lodge Grass.”
“I’ve never been on the Crow Indian Reservation before,” O’Bryan said.
“It’s not much, believe me,” Bowkley said with disdain.
“Isn’t this where Custer’s Last Stand is located?”
“Yeah, up ahead. But it’s called the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument now because the wokesters made them change the name. And it’ll be closed by the time we get there.”
“Damn. I’ve always wanted to see it.”
Bowkley sighed. “It’s some hills and sagebrush and a concrete monument where Custer’s body was found.
That’s about it. Oh, and National Park bureaucrats in their Ranger Rick hats letting you know that the Indians have their version of what happened, too.
And wouldn’t you know it, the Indian version is all about a very noble pushback against the evil white oppressors and yada yada yada. There, I just saved you a trip.”
“I’d still like to see it. I saw the movie.”
—
Bowkley had been an hour late to pick O’Bryan up, he’d said, because he’d had to meet with their employer.
When O’Bryan asked the deputy if the two of them were in the clear in regard to what had happened to Peddy, Bowkley assured him they were.
“I told him Peddy was an out-of-control asshole. He needed to be taken care of.”
“What did you say about me?” O’Bryan asked.
“I said you were reliable. But I also said I’d keep a close eye on you.”
Then Bowkley turned his head to O’Bryan and smiled. O’Bryan got a chill that ran through his bowels.
—
Three miles later, O’Bryan saw that Bowkley was slowing down on the highway and eyeing a turnoff up ahead of them that led to a gravel road going east.
“Gotta make a pit stop,” Bowkley said.
“I could use one myself,” said O’Bryan.
The gravel road was marked with signs indicating that ahead was something called the Arrowhead Petroleum Project, with warnings not to proceed on the private road. Bowkley ignored them and drove to the pad of the nearest pump jack that was working its grasshopper-like head.
Bowkley pulled up near the pad and killed the engine. It was obvious that the oil well was new and that the construction materials used to build it had not yet been completely cleaned up. They parked next to an oversized dumpster half filled with scraps and shards of metal and plastic pipe.
O’Bryan got out to urinate on the gravel. While he did, he looked over his shoulder to see Bowkley lean into the cab of the SUV and fish something out of the center console. O’Bryan looked over to where they’d come. They were out of the view of the highway.
In front of the dumpster, Bowkley shredded the pages of a small spiral notebook and tossed the scraps into the container. Then he smashed the face of a cell phone and broke it up into parts. That also went into the dumpster.
When he looked over and saw O’Bryan observing him, Bowkley said, “I’ve been wanting to get rid of those things for a couple of days now.”
“A notebook and a cell phone?” O’Bryan asked.
“Not anymore.”
“Are you gonna tell me who they belonged to?” O’Bryan asked.
“The guy you and Peddy didn’t finish off,” Bowkley said.
—
“So how are we gonna do this?” O’Bryan asked.
“Simple. We find his room and make sure he’s alone. I’ll keep watch while you go inside and do the deed. Just make sure it’s right this time. No more fucking screwups.”
“What do I do? Smother him with a pillow? Turn off his medication? Cut his throat?” O’Bryan asked, trying to keep any panic out of his tone. “I assume we don’t want to mess with gunshots.”
“No gunshots,” Bowkley echoed. “Keep your gun in your pocket.”
“So…”
“The boss came up with an idea. Reach under your seat.”
O’Bryan hesitated for a few seconds, then he did as asked. He removed a thick black plastic clamshell container with a handle and placed it on his lap.
“What’s this?”
“Open it up.”
O’Bryan unfastened the two plastic clips on the front of the container. What he found inside, resting inside foam padding, looked vaguely like a handheld electric drill. Except instead of a drill bit, there was a fitting with a thick one-and-a-half-inch hypodermic needle.
“What is this thing?” he asked.
“It’s a livestock vaccine-dosing gun,” Bowkley said. “It’s used on the ranch to vaccinate cattle. It runs on lithium batteries and you can inject a couple hundred cows with it in a day. Just stick it in the hide and pull the trigger.”
O’Bryan removed it from the clamshell box. The gun had a digital display screen on the top of it.
“Power it up,” Bowkley said to O’Bryan. “There’s a switch on the side.”
When he did, the display came to life showing the level of battery power and digital counters to set the dosage of the shot and to record how many doses had been administered.
“What’s in it?” O’Bryan asked.
Bowkley took his eyes off the road as he turned his head again. “A pure fentanyl solution. It’s a hundred times more powerful than morphine. It’s set to administer a ten-milligram dose. Two milligrams is fatal in adults. You could take out half of Billings with it if you wanted to.”
“Where did the fentanyl come from?”
Bowkley chuckled at that. “Twelve Sleep County is swimming in it. Same as the rest of the country.”
O’Bryan studied the gun. It seemed simple enough: stick the needle into flesh and pull the trigger.
“Our employer thinks this will work better than anything else for our purposes, and I agree with that,” Bowkley said.
“They’ll figure it out, eventually, when they do the autopsy.
They’ll know that it was an overdose of fentanyl.
But it’s a hospital. They’ll assume some nurse fucked up big-time.
We’ll be long gone and a whole lot richer by the time they suspect anything else. ”
“Are you sure it works?”
Bowkley smiled a mean smile in response.
—
Five miles later, O’Bryan noted that Bowkley had tapped on the brake pedal to release the cruise control and the SUV was slowing down. He looked ahead to see a sign that read Lodge Grass Exit.
“What, do we need gas?” he asked.
“Nope.”
O’Bryan settled back. Montana State Route 463 was a two-lane with narrow shoulders. It went straight west from the interstate. In the distance was a smattering of homes and buildings choked with cottonwood trees.
Lodge Grass, he noted as they wound through it, was from another world.
As they crossed the railroad tracks into town there were finely appointed single dwellings mixed in with single-wide trailers and lawns scattered with cars and pickups that didn’t look like they’d run in years.
The streets had names like Wolf Lays Down and Strong Enemy Drive and Old Grey Blanket Road.
There was a single clapboard grocery store that needed paint and a gleaming health-care clinic surrounded by a tall chain-link fence.
Except for stray dogs that literally slept in the middle of the street and a scrum of young children chasing each other through a dirt playground with sticks, there were no other signs of life.
Bowkley drove through Lodge Grass and took a county road that continued northwest. There were loose cattle on the road and a few abandoned vehicles. When O’Bryan saw a sign saying that St. Xavier was twenty-six miles away, he asked, “Where are we going?”
“Hunting,” Bowkley replied.
Before O’Bryan could ask what they were hunting for, Bowkley swung wide in the road so he wouldn’t hit a man who had his thumb out trying to catch a ride.
The man shot by O’Bryan’s passenger window, but O’Bryan could see the hitchhiker was Native and in his forties.
He wore a high-visibility orange plastic vest and a slouch hat.
Bowkley slowed down to a stop, then reversed until they came abreast of the man. Bowkley powered down O’Bryan’s window and leaned across the bench seat.
“Where are you headed?” Bowkley asked.
“Saint X,” the man said. “I got a house there.”
“We’re going that direction. Jump on in.”
The man paused for a few seconds, weighing his options.
He had probably not expected to be offered a ride by two Caucasian men on reservation grounds.
Then he opened the back door and swung inside.
The man was dark-skinned with remarkably sharp cheekbones and a wide rubbery mouth.
There was a look of animal caution in his eyes, O’Bryan thought.
“Do you work on the highway?” Bowkley asked. “I noticed the vest.”
“Flagger,” the man said. “We’re working up by Crow Agency. We’ve been there since summer. But tonight, my ride had to go see his girl play basketball in Hardin.”
“Then it’s your lucky night,” Bowkley said.
“Thank you, mister,” the flagger said.
“I always thought being a flagger on the highway would be a damned boring job,” Bowkley said. “Is it?”
“Yeah, but it’s a living.”
“What’s your name?”
“Leonard.”
Bowkley said, “Leonard the Indian Flagger.” O’Bryan wasn’t sure why the man said it, and he was as confused as Leonard. Was it to mock him?
Then Bowkley leaned over and quickly retrieved the vaccine gun from the clamshell container on O’Bryan’s lap. He reached over the back seat and plunged the needle into Leonard’s shoulder and pulled the trigger, which made an audible click.
Leonard was as surprised by the sudden move as O’Bryan was. So surprised that he hadn’t even raised his hands to ward off the gun. Leonard stared at the instrument as Bowkley withdrew the needle from his shoulder.
“What the fuck did you just do?” Leonard asked. “What is that thing?”
Bowkley said nothing as he fitted the gun back into the foam of the case.
A second later, the flagger seized up as if a massive bolt of electricity had hit him. White foam formed around his lips, and his eyes went wide. Then he collapsed and shuddered and slumped over dead.
“It works,” Bowkley said. “Now help me roll him out of here. No one will think twice about a drug overdose on the res, believe me.”
—
O’Bryan was still buzzing with both adrenaline and regret when Bowkley’s phone burred between Crow Agency and Hardin. They were back on I-90 headed north.
Bowkley took the call and held the phone to his face. His only responses were “Really?,” “I understand,” and “How much?”
When he punched off, O’Bryan looked over expectantly.
“Slight change of the overall plan,” Bowkley said. “Forget about the motel rooms. After we do this thing in Billings tonight, we’re going to get the hell out of there and beat it back to Saddlestring. Those three cunts have turned out to be a bigger problem than we realized.”