“Actually, it’s a hymn from 1872 by John Fawcett, ‘Blest Be the Tie That Binds.’”

“Fuck.” She held the chrome cup out to me. “How’s Cady?”

I refilled her and then put the cap on and set the thermos between us. “As well as can be expected, I guess. She’s holding on to Lola for dear life.”

“She flying back today?”

“I would imagine so.”

“Maybe I can just piggyback with the two of them.”

“I’m sure she would appreciate it.”

She nodded and stubbed the cigarette out on the concrete. “I’m looking for a way to think good things.”

“Me, too.”

She struggled up, and I fetched the crutches for her. “I guess I don’t get to go to Hardin, huh?”

“We’ll always have Hardin.”

I opened the door for her, and she lodged the pads under her arms. “Is it nice in the spring?”

“Like Paris.”

She nodded and hopped into the house as I stood there holding the storm door. “They don’t get something on this, I’m going to need you to come to Philadelphia.”

I breathed a laugh. “It’s the fifth largest police force in the country and they’ve got really good people to . . .” She turned to look at me, and we stood there staring at each other. “Of course I will.”

She allowed the glass door to close silently between us.

 • • •

Ruby was the only one in the office when I got there, and I explained the situation as she followed me to the back. “What are you going to do?”

“I need to go to Hardin and look up this Joseph Free Bird, but . . .” I sat in my chair and looked out the window at the sky with hard-edged clouds evaporating into shades of early morning blue. “I don’t know—I don’t think I can leave this situation with Danny Lone Elk, Trost, the FBI . . .”

She stood in front of my desk. “What does Cady want you to do?”

“She hasn’t said.”

“Then you have to do the hardest thing and wait.”

I nodded and scrubbed my hands across my face. “I’m tired, Ruby.”

“Why don’t you take a nap before everyone gets here?”

I laughed. “Oh, that’d look good: me in here sleeping on the taxpayer’s dollar.”

She studied me, the picture of empathy. “Dime—the taxpayer’s dime. They don’t pay you enough for it to be a dollar.” She folded her arms. “Walter, considering the circumstance, I don’t think anyone would fault you in anything you do.”

I sat there for a long time, but she wouldn’t go away. “I wish Martha were here.”

She broke a sob and then stifled it quickly. “Oh, Walter.”

“It just seems like I made this deal with the universe to serve and protect, and in return, little by little, I get everything I care about taken away from me.”

“You need to stop this talk now.”

I stood and walked to the window, clenching fists, the sound like studded tires on a roadway. “That’s fine if the fates want to monkey around with me—but there my daughter is with a brand-new baby and no husband.” I turned toward her. “I’ll tell you, if I knew which cosmic office out there to go to, I’d do it and grab some winged or horned son-of-a-bitch by his throat and throw him out his window.”

She smiled a sad smile. “My money’s on you.”

I tried to stretch my shoulders, feeling like one massive, tangled knot.

We could both hear a couple of people entering from outside and then trooping up the steps. Ruby turned toward the door. “I better go do my job.”

“Earn your dime’s worth?”

She nodded. “Yes.” She started to go but stopped, and I could see the tears in her eyes. “Please try and keep your sense of humor, Walter, for all of us, but especially for yourself. You become most frightening when you misplace it.”

I turned back to the window, all at once seeing the ghostly image of myself. “Yes, ma’am.”

I could hear people talking in the outside office and felt someone watching me at the doorway. I turned to see the Bobs, looking like very large, forged-steel andirons.

“Hey, because we’re getting toward the end of our forty-and-found, the commandant keeps givin’ us these babysitting jobs, and we’re getting kind of bored with it.” Robert cleared his throat. “Let’s go to Hardin, Montana, Sheriff.”

Bob interrupted him. “And let’s go there at a hundred and twenty miles an hour.”

Boy howdy.

 • • •

At a hundred and twenty, the sweeping hillsides of the Little Big Horn country seemed like the banked turns on a fictional Montana International Speedway. I glanced over and could see Robert’s hands relaxed on the wheel as the motor on the big utility Interceptor roared like a treed cat.

I spoke through the steel grating from the back of the vehicle. “What kind of motor does this thing have?”

“Hell if I know. Bob?”

His partner turned to look at me. “I don’t know—you open the hood and all you see is plumbing and electronics. Not as sweet as that ’66 LeMans of mine, but she by-gawd moves, doesn’t she?”

“Yep.” Both men were studiously avoiding the subject of my daughter or of Michael’s death. “Did either of you guys call Montana to tell them we were on their turf?”

They looked at each other and then Bob glanced back at me. “We really didn’t see any reason for bothering them.”

“Right.”

Traveling at high speed across the Crow Reservation, I thought about the truncated conversation I’d had with Cady and thought about calling her back but figured there wasn’t any reception even if the HPs had a phone I could borrow. My daughter was with Henry, the best person I knew to be with when in a tight spot, and I figured it might be best to give her a little time to make arrangements without me hovering over her.

I thought about Lena, Cady’s mother-in-law and Lola’s grandmother, and Vic and Michael’s mother, and the hardship she must be going through—the loss of a child. I couldn’t think of anything worse.

“So, who is this jaybird, anyway?”

I looked at Bob. “His name is Joseph Free Bird, a supposed doctor, but involved with illegal drugs associated with the Tre Tre Nomads, an Indian gang up here and over on Pine Ridge. Henry says he’s NN.”

“What’s NN?”

“Non-Native, but all I’m interested in is his connection to Danny Lone Elk.”

Robert passed an eighteen-wheeler like a Saturn rocket. “The rancher who owned the T. rex?”

Bob made a face. “That’s an odd connection.”

“That’s why we’re going to Hardin.”

Robert called over his shoulder, “Surprise, we’re there.”

Slowing the vehicle to a somewhat reasonable speed, the HP ducked the nose of the thing with a touch of the brakes and made a left, heading into the town of Chi-jew-ja, as the Crow called it.

We cruised down old Highway 87, then took a right on North Center Avenue and then another right as we slowed down and arrived at the industrial section of town, the Three Rivers prison facility looming straight ahead.

Hardin had already hit hard times when a for-profit prison management corporation out of Texas convinced the powers that be that a high-security facility would be a good idea for the town’s economy and could employ a hundred locals in an area already saddled with 10 percent unemployment.

It sounded too good to be true.

It was.

Sitting on grazing land usually inhabited only by pronghorn antelope, Three Rivers was a ghost facility, 96,000 square feet of state-of-the-art prison capable of holding 464 inmates, the glinting razor-wire spirals guarding only the animals, the thing sitting empty for more than ten years.

Hardin sued the state of Montana for its legislative mixed message of support, given even though it is against Montana law to incarcerate prisoners from out of state. Amazingly, the tiny town won the case, but not so amazingly, the settlement didn’t cover the $27 million worth of bonds that had gone defunct.

There was a glimmer of hope that the project would be resurrected when the federal government announced that the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba was to be closed, but the three-man Montana congressional delegation was pretty quick to put the kibosh on bringing al-Qaeda to Big Sky Country.