Page 9

CHAPTER NINE

Jeffrey City

L EE O GBURN -R USSELL LIVED in Jeffrey City in the home he’d grown up in, for better or worse. Dallas Cates wanted to find him.

The wind howled across U.S. Highway 287 as Cates and Bobbi Johnson approached the town from the southeast. Tumbleweeds the size of medicine balls rolled across the asphalt and a massive dust devil descended from Green Mountain to the south, its tail tethered to the ground and its funnel top splayed out like an opened fan. Waves of wind buffeted Johnson’s pickup from the side and rocked it while they drove. To the north were two central Wyoming landmarks: Devil’s Gate and Independence Rock, both on the Oregon Trail. Devil’s Gate was a severe slash down the middle of a granite mountain where the Sweetwater River flowed. Independence Rock was a lone turtle shell–like rock formation covered with initials and carvings made by pioneers headed west a century and a half ago. Both faded out of view as the pickup got closer to the town.

“Slow down or we’ll miss it,” Cates said to Johnson. “There ain’t much there anymore.”

“Why do we keep going to places like this?” Johnson whined. “Can’t we go to someplace with people in it? Someplace to eat and shop? And maybe someplace a lady can take a shower?”

“I’ll tell you why,” Cates said. “Because a guy like Lee can’t live among actual human beings.” Then: “You’ll see.”

*

J EFFREY C ITY WAS a post-nuclear-age ghost town that was remarkable for its isolation, even in Wyoming. It was sixty-eight miles from Rawlins, ninety-seven miles from Casper, and fifty-eight miles from Lander. Once a uranium mining town of nearly forty-five hundred residents in the late 1970s, the population had dwindled to fewer than thirty since the mines shut down. No one lived in the vandalized two-story apartment buildings or abandoned trailer homes, and despite the street grids and signs that had been laid out with Germanic precision, the only life on the streets were roaming pronghorn antelope, jackrabbits, and coyotes. Paint had long ago been blasted off the exteriors of the empty single-family homes by grit-filled wind and horizontal snowstorms.

A battered roadside motel claimed on a hand-painted sign that it was open, and beer signs were lit in the windows of a bar with two muddy pickups parked outside.

“There,” Cates said, gesturing toward a metal square attached to the side of a long-closed service station. It read LOR AMUSEMENTS, 0.7 MILE.

Under the sign was a steel arrow pointing south down Rattlesnake Street.

“LOR Amusements,” Cates said. “LOR stands for Lee Ogburn-Russell.”

“What’s amusing about him?” Johnson asked.

“I’ve got to think about how to answer that,” Cates said. “‘Amusing’ probably isn’t the word I’d use. Maybe ‘eccentric’ or ‘on the spectrum,’ but not necessarily amusing . He can fix anything mechanical and he can make anything you ask for, though. I’ve never met anyone like him.”

“And why are we here to find him?” Johnson asked.

“He owes me,” Cates said. “He owes me his life.”

*

W HEN O GBURN -R USSELL HAD been assigned to Dallas Cates’s cell, he was cowed and recovering from a severe beating at the hands of several La Familia members who’d caught him in the yard. The gang members claimed he’d smirked at them in the lunch line, where he was a server. When he showed up, Ogburn-Russell wore a patch over his right eye and his face was a road map of recently removed stitches. Cates had no regard for the man and told him so.

It wasn’t until three weeks later that Cates discovered his cellmate’s value. That was when he saw his new cellmate kill a mouse with a device he had fashioned from parts pilfered inside the prison. The little zip gun–like weapon, which had been constructed using a length of metal conduit, a spring removed from his mattress, a trigger fashioned from a ballpoint pen, and a handle melted down from a plastic container, had fired a steel pellet seven feet across the cell and nailed the rodent in the head, killing it instantly.

The zip gun was followed by other inventions that Ogburn-Russell shared with Cates: a garrote made of thin wire with handles, ceramic shanks that were so sharp they could shave hair off the back of his hand, an eye-gouger fashioned from a stolen metal cooking spoon, and an ice pick made from hundreds of metal shavings molded together by the heat of a homemade welding torch.

Cates had gotten the names of the three La Familia attackers from Ogburn-Russell and he’d put each of them in the infirmary using the new weapons, one at a time. After that, La Familia put out the word that Ogburn-Russell was under Cates’s—and the WOODS’—protection.

Ogburn-Russell had told Cates that he was in prison for attempted murder and reckless endangerment charges in his hometown of Jeffrey City. He said that after the uranium mines were shut down, unemployed residents became unhinged. A group of them targeted his father because he had worked as a manager in the uranium mine. That was unfair, LOR said, because his dad had been laid off as well.

Several of the criminals vandalized the property where he lived with his dad at the time. Once, his father was forced off the road by drunken ex-miners. Then pieces of his artwork were smashed up and stolen, and his father was pummeled when he caught the criminals in the act.

The local cops did nothing to stop the harassment, Ogburn-Russell said, because several of them were in on it. So he took matters into his own hands.

After weeks of planning and tinkering in his shop, Ogburn-Russell booby-trapped locations where he knew the vandals frequented. Three men were severely injured on the same night. One had his legs blown off when he stepped on a pressure-plate explosive, another was impaled through his clavicle by a steel rod shot out of a length of pipe mounted to his fence, and the third had his hands crushed when he reached into a hinged steel box to retrieve a piece of pie on his front porch.

Ogburn-Russell was quickly caught, arrested, and sentenced in the Fremont County courthouse. The judge said he wouldn’t go easy on him because of the smirk on his face during sentencing.

Offering protection to LOR wasn’t easy for Cates. The man had a way of annoying everyone around him. Ogburn-Russell’s face was set in a kind of permanent superior sneer that made Cates want to slap him.

On the day LOR was released, Cates said he’d find him someday and get payback for keeping the man alive and unharmed.

That day had come.

*

O N THE DRIVE north, Cates had scanned the stations on the AM radio while Johnson drove. He finally found KTWO out of Casper. On the hour, the station had a newsbreak between country songs and local commercials.

Carbon County Sheriff’s Office investigators were on the scene of a fire that had occurred the night before in Hanna. The building that had burned was the historic local museum. It was a total loss. In addition to the fire, county officials were also searching for Marvin Bertignolli, the Hanna marshal, who was suspected to be the charred body found within the museum. The implication of the news report, Cates thought, was that the two items were linked in some way.

“That poor guy,” Cates said. “I forgot what he said his name was.”

“What poor guy?” Johnson asked.

“Never mind.”

*

LOR A MUSEMENTS WOULD have stood out anyplace, and it certainly did in the empty exoskeleton of a town that was Jeffrey City. Located on one square city block with no other structures of any kind surrounding it, LOR bristled with eccentric metal sculptures, figures, wrecks, and ruins surrounded by a six-foot- high chain-link fence. A small faded-white home stuck out in the middle of the scrap-metal garden. Next to the home was an attached shop with corrugated metal siding.

The closed front gate of the lot had a sign on it that read:

LOR AMUSEMENTS

SINCE 1989

ENTER AT YOUR PERIL

“Park here,” Cates said to Johnson.

*

J OHNSON SHUT THE engine off and took in the twisted metal figures inside the lot. “I’ll stay. This place is creepy.”

“So is the owner,” Cates said. “Now come on.”

The gate was not locked, and Cates slid it open to enter. He marveled at the sign as he did so. Every individual segment of every letter was constructed of disparate materials to form the words: cut tubing, steel tools, lengths of bone. He guessed that it had taken months or maybe years to gather the bits and assemble it. Cates rolled his eyes and whistled.

Inside, it was even more crowded with objects than it had appeared. Looming above them was a knight on horseback grasping a lance made out of a long shaft with a drill bit on the end. A creature built to look like Bigfoot peered over its shoulder at them as it appeared to lurk away. A twelve-foot-high human skeleton stood above everything, its arms outstretched and its head tilted to the side as if it were crucified. Every work had been assembled from scrap metal and other scrounged items. Bigfoot was constructed almost entirely from rusty tire rims and chrome fenders. Every bone of the skeleton looked anatomically correct.

Beneath them along the path to the house were turtles made of hubcaps and rabbits twisted from long lengths of barbed wire.

“Who would buy this stuff?” Johnson asked.

Cates shrugged. “People who are as weird as Lee is, I guess.”

The wind changed tone as it blew through the lot and through the hollow metal artworks, making the place hum in an eerie way.

“I’m getting freaked out,” Johnson said, gripping Cates’s arm. “Maybe we should go back to the truck.”

As she said it, Cates inadvertently stepped on a concealed pressure plate with his boot and a grotesque goblin’s face shot out from a suspended metal box that was hung at eye level. The face shot through the air on a telescoping steel rod, its jaws snapping.

Cates reacted instinctively by stepping back and turning his head away. As the goblin shot by his ear, he grabbed it and held it fast. When the goblin tried to retract back into the box, Cates twisted its head off with a sharp snapping sound.

Johnson screamed and jumped back, then covered her open mouth with her hands.

A figure appeared at the doorway of the shop. He wore a welder’s apron, gloves, and a full white welding helmet decorated with stickers from the Star Wars universe. A lit acetylene torch hissed in his right hand.

“Ain’t nobody ever caught that goblin in midair,” he said, his voice muffled by his face shield. “But if anyone could do it, it would be Dallas Cates. I always said you had the quick reactions of a damned cat.”

Cates examined the head of the goblin in his hands, turning it over to see the exposed copper wires and pneumatic tubing that extended from it. Then he tossed it toward the man and it rolled until it bumped into his boots.

“Sorry I busted it, Lee,” Cates said. “How long did it take you to build it?”

Lee Ogburn-Russell shut off the torch and raised his face shield. His face, like his frame, was gnomish and soft and his eyes seemed both perpetually amused and disdainful. It was a face, Dallas had once heard a fellow inmate say, that just begged to be punched.

“It took me a few days,” Ogburn-Russell said. “Once I got the thrust mechanism figured out. I experimented with hydraulics, then I tried a gunpowder charge like they use for airbags, you know? Finally, I figured out that the best and fastest way to shoot that goblin head out was compressed air. I should have known that from the beginning.”

Then Ogburn-Russell turned his attention from Cates to Johnson. “Who’s the fine-looking split-tail you brought along?”

Cates turned his head and grinned at Johnson. “He’s always had a way of charming the ladies, as you can see.”

“ He’s a pig ,” she mouthed.

“He is,” Cates agreed.

“Why are you here, Dallas?” Ogburn-Russell asked. “I didn’t know you were out.”

“I’ve got a project for you,” Cates said. “A really important one that you can’t fuck up.”

Ogburn-Russell winced. “What’s the project?”

“I’ll tell you about it after you invite us in,” Cates said. “You owe me.”

“I haven’t forgotten. I knew this day would come.”

Ogburn-Russell lowered the torch and placed his helmet on a bench outside the shop. He gestured to them to follow him into his house.

“I’ve got some beer inside,” he said. “You can pull up a chair and tell me all about it. You,” he said to Johnson, “can sit on my face and wriggle around.”

“I hate this asshole,” Johnson said through clenched teeth.

“I wish I could say you’ll come to like him,” Cates said to her, “but that would be a lie.”

As he followed Ogburn-Russell, Cates said, “Lee, you need to cool it with comments in regard to Bobbi here.”

“Then tell her to stop provoking me,” LOR said with a smirk that vanished as soon as he saw Cates’s dead-eye glare.

“You’re serious?” Ogburn-Russell asked.

Cates didn’t indicate otherwise.

“Thank you,” Johnson whispered to Cates as they entered the cluttered home.

*

“S O WHAT IS it you’re looking for?” LOR asked Cates. He sat in a stained cloth-covered recliner across from Cates and Johnson, who were seated side by side in a mushy couch. The walls were covered with bizarre metal artwork and the house had a peculiar burnt-hair odor. Ogburn-Russell had given them cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and the three of them had toasted.

“Something special,” Cates answered. “That goblin out there times a thousand. I need a device that can clamp down at a short distance with eleven hundred pounds per square inch.”

“That’s powerful, all right,” LOR said. “That could kill a man.” He seemed to like the idea.

Cates noticed that Johnson recoiled at the exchange. She looked from LOR to him, trying to understand what was going on.

“I’ve got to run to our truck,” Cates said to Ogburn-Russell, handing his beer to Johnson and standing up. “I’ve got some materials I want you to work with.”

“This is getting interesting,” LOR said. To Johnson, he said, “He’s challenging me. I love a challenge.”

*

W HEN C ATES WAS gone, Johnson narrowed her eyes at Ogburn-Russell. “Stop staring at me, you creep.”

Ogburn-Russell drained his beer and chinned toward the huge flat-screen television mounted on the wall. He grasped a remote control from a chairside table and aimed it.

“Do you like porn?” he asked.

“Fuck off.”

“Is that a yes or a no?” He crumpled his empty beer can in his fist and leered at her before he went into the kitchen for another.

That was when Johnson noticed that Dallas had left his burner phone face down on the arm of the couch. She quickly slid over on the cushions and grabbed it. Johnson knew from observing him use the device that Dallas hadn’t programmed in an access code.

She felt guilty about looking, but her curiosity outweighed that concern. Besides, she thought, if Dallas was going to invite someone else to their party, she deserved to know who it was.

There was only one text thread on the screen, and she quickly scrolled through it.

I’ve been released, Cates had initially texted. Are you still on for the project we discussed?

Absolutely , came the reply.

I’m putting a plan into place. It’ll take a few days to get set up. Want to meet?

The recipient replied with a thumbs-up emoji.

From the day before: I’ll text you the address when I can.

Another thumbs-up.

Then, from a few minutes before: LOR Amusements, Jeffrey City, WY.

On my way.

Before placing the phone back where it had been, Johnson glanced at the name of the recipient.

“Doing a little spying on good old Dallas, I see,” Ogburn-Russell said as he settled back down in his chair. Johnson reacted with alarm. She hadn’t heard him reenter the living room.

“Please,” she said, trying to project calm. “Please don’t say anything to him.”

“What will you do if I keep it between us?” he asked.

“What do you want?” she asked. She regretted her words as soon as they were out of her mouth.

Lee Ogburn-Russell pointed down at his crotch and grinned. “Not now,” he said. “But at the time of my choosing.”

She sighed and moved back to her original place on the couch. Cates kicked at the front door and grunted, “Someone let me in. This bear’s head is heavier than hell.”

Ogburn-Russell scrambled out of his chair to grab the doorknob.

While he did, Johnson recalled the name on Cates’s phone and asked herself: Who the fuck is Axel Soledad?