Static. “Well, I’ll be listening up here, but Rosey says it’s a faint signal, so if it does happen I probably won’t hear it.”
I checked the clock on my dash. “We’ve only got a half hour to go.”
Static. “Give me a report in the morning.”
“Roger that.”
Static. “Hey, Walt?”
“Yep.”
Static. “If you don’t hear anything tonight? Well, I’d really appreciate you helping me get her to talk to someone. I’m really worried about her.”
I keyed the mic one last time. “Right.”
The Bear studied Rosey, who was still engaged with the trucker. “If she does not give him the ticket soon, she may miss her call.”
I pulled the Morgan from my jacket pocket. “We can take a message.”
He reached out and took the coin from my fingers. “What did she say about this?”
“She didn’t. I was hoping to hear more tonight.”
He gestured through the windshield. “Well, it looks as if you are going to get your chance.”
The running lights of the truck Rosey had pulled over disappeared into the distance as she walked past her unit, yanked open my back door, and climbed in. “I hate that rat.”
“Who?”
“Coleman. He owns a crappy heating oil business in Thermopolis and runs the fuel down to the rez during the winter at jacked-up prices. I’ve charged him a couple of times, but I can’t get anything to stick.” She glanced over the seat at the dash. “What time is it?”
“A little after midnight.”
The Cheyenne Nation chimed in. “And only six days till Easter.”
Rosey slumped forward onto the back of my seat with a sigh. “This may be the longest half hour of my career.”
The Bear held up the silver dollar. “Care to tell us about this?”
She looked at the two of us, reached up and took the coin, and then delved into her duty shirt pocket. Pulling out an identical Morgan, she handed them both back to Henry. “That’s the second one I’ve found.”
“Where?”
She leaned back in the seat and looked at the headliner. “The first one was near mile marker 117 about two and a half months ago. I was driving down from Thermop right at sunset, and there was something gleaming on the road. I pulled over and stopped, and there this thing was, sitting in the middle of the two painted lines like somebody put it there.”
I took the first one from Henry and examined it. “Well, that’s kind of funny. . . .”
“That’s not the funny part. About eleven that night a Jeep Cherokee hauling three kids from on the rez blew a tire and swerved, rolling the thing against the inboard rock wall at the exact spot that the coin had been.”
Henry’s voice rose from the darkness on the other side of the cab. “Did any of them survive?”
She nodded. “The two passengers did, but the driver was dead on scene when I got there.”
The Bear held up the other silver dollar. “And this one?”
“About a month ago I found it at mile marker 115 at the same time of day, right when the light gets really perpendicular, you know? That last little bit of light that hits everything and makes it stand out? I was driving along, and I saw something flash in the middle of the road so I stop, and sure as anything that coin is laying out there shining like a beacon.”
I traded Morgans with the Cheyenne Nation and studied the second for any signs of wear, but there were none, and the silver dollar looked as if it had just been double-minted down in New Orleans. “Then what?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“I check back there less than an hour later—nothing. I sit there for another hour, and it starts raining, so I call myself every stupid name in the book and head north. I catch this idiot on a Harley about twenty miles over, up near the fly shop, and pull a quick U-ey, run him down, both of us standing there in the pouring rain; some lawyer from Colorado and he’s all Do-You-Know-Who-I-Am, so I give him the citation. I turn around and head north, you know, finishing my loop, but I get this funny feeling.”
“Yep.”
“So, I flip around and head back down, but there’s nothing there, so I pull up and park. It was a slow night and nobody was out, so I just sat there for a few hours waiting to see if anything was going to happen.” She glanced out the side window. “Nothing.”
“Well, that proves that it was just—”
“The next day at around noon there’s a message on my cell phone from Captain Thomas saying some kayakers found this guy and his Harley over the cliff, smashed up by the water.” She continued gazing out the window into the darkness. “The medical examiner said he probably survived the fall but was broken all to pieces, laying down there on the rocks all night while I was sitting right above him, you know, watching the road and looking for ghosts.” She finally turned her head, and I could see the small reflection in her eyes. “Mile marker 115, right where I found the second coin.”
There was a blip on the radio as another patrolman reported in from Shoshoni.
Static. “Unit three, 10-7.”