Any Other Name: A Longmire Mystery (26 page)

“I’m sure you didn’t, but people have been hurt and people are dead.”

She raised the pistol a little higher and looked at it.

“Where is Connie?”

She pointed the .32 at me, and all I felt was tired.

“Go away.”

I shook my head. “You know I can’t do that.”

She pulled the hammer back. “I said, go away.”

“That’s not how this is going to end, all these horrible things, with one more horrible act . . .” I held out my hand. “It’s just going to end quietly and with dignity.”

There we were, the two of us staring at each other, neither
of us wanting to be where we were, doing what we were doing, facing what we were facing. I tried to imagine how far I would go to protect my child, but I was just too tired to measure that kind of infinite distance.

Phyllis Holman held the .32 on me until her hand began to shake and then carefully lowered the hammer, turned the thing sideways, and held it out to me.

I took it and then turned to see Lucian holding his own sidearm hidden along his leg as I passed him and headed toward the door to the right. “I thought you were unarmed.”

He countered to the left and approached Phyllis as I continued on. “I ain’t ever unarmed.”

I turned the knob and swung it open to reveal a lonely room with only a single bed, a nightstand, and an old dresser. The wallpaper was peeling, and the carpet was stained, an anomaly in the otherwise pristine Holman house—a room to be used and forgotten, shunned and shut away, a cell. There were narrow windows above, two of them, choked with snow, and an old door in the far corner.

There was no one in the room, but the covers of the bed were pulled to one side where someone had been sitting, hiding, waiting. I looked behind the door to make sure there was no one there, stuffed the Smith into my pocket, and tried the other door. I pried it open to find stairs leading to a set of cellar doors, one of them pushed back, the fog rolling down the steps.

I launched up them as fast as my exhausted legs could carry me and stood in the backyard; there were prints leading toward the side of the house, and it looked like she’d started for her car but had seen the constabulary out front and had doubled back toward a small gate in a chain-link fence. Did she really think
she had a chance of getting away? I thought about calling in the troops but figured she was probably tired, cold, and afraid and that I would rather try and talk her in myself.

Lifting the clasp, I stepped through and closed the gate behind me, turning to follow the prints as they made their way through an abandoned lot and then down a slope to a flat area. There were a few cottonwoods, bare and stark in the frozen fog, and it was almost as if I were rushing across a white desert.

There was a shape in the distance that looked human, but as I got closer, it seemed to fade away. I thought I could hear something coming, but sound was muffled and seemed to resonate from all directions. I thought about the buffalo in Custer State Park, and what Virgil had said, and it seemed like the natural world was closing in around me. Unconsciously, my hand drifted down to the confiscated .32 in my pocket; evidently, I never went unarmed either.

When I got to the edge of the hill, I looked to the west and could see the sheriff’s department’s light bar rotating blue onto the front of the Holman house. When I turned east I saw the figure again, just barely within my field of vision. I stepped and half slid down the hillside and started jogging down a path. After a moment, in one of those patches of clarity that happen on a foggy night, I could see her striding along Echeta Road, parallel with the train tracks, and eventually the highway.

Being in the state she was in, I suppose she thought she could just walk away into the fog.

I continued after her as she headed back toward the center of town, walking alongside the twelve-foot chain-link fence that guarded the railroad tracks, the spiraled razor wire making it seem as if we were in a prison.

In the distance, I could hear the horn of an oncoming train, possibly the one that Jone Urrecha and I had escaped from.

Hurrying my pace, I got within fifty yards of her and called out. “Connie!”

She stopped and turned to look at me, the slight wind pulling at her hair and long wool coat as if we were in some Brontë novel. She stood there like an unfinished phrase.

We looked at each other. I guess it was the most hopeful moment I had had, but I ruined it by starting toward her again. When I did, she turned and began running.

About twenty more yards down the road she slowed and dodged to the right through an opening in the fence, her coat snagging on the wire and holding her up.

Running faster, I got within an arm’s length, but she shrugged off the heavy garment and left it hanging as she leapt forward and then began climbing the short hill leading toward the tracks. I tried pushing myself through the area where the chain-link had been cut and pulled apart, but the opening was too small. “Connie!”

At the top of the incline, she stepped onto the ties and turned to look down the tracks where the whistle blew again, closer this time. Then she turned and looked back at me, the breeze blowing her hair across her face, hiding half of it.

We stood there as before, looking at each other, but this time I could move no closer.

Seeing my situation, she seemed to relax, and then spoke. “I used to come here when I was a kid; we’d put pennies on the rails and then come back and get them.”

I pulled her coat from the wires and held it out to her through the opening. “Come take your coat; it’s freezing out here.”

She stood there, unmoving.

The train horns sounded again, and she turned toward them, the hair blowing back from her face. “I used to dance.”

I looked down the rails but couldn’t see anything yet.

“I was really good.”

I turned back to look at her and watched as she stretched her neck.

She went up on tiptoes, placed her arms in position, and turned, slowly at first, but then gaining momentum until she spun like a dervish. Coming to a stop, she faltered a bit and leaned forward, catching herself and laughing. “I’m a little out of practice.”

I pulled at the fence, but the opening was only wide enough for me to fit one leg and a shoulder through, my face pressed up against the chain-link.

Her voice was high and just a little bit manic. “I used to practice all the time, trying to keep my weight down I got stuck on amphetamines and a bunch of other stuff . . .” She moved her feet up onto the rail and balanced there. “It never goes away, you know.”

The train horns sounded again.

“You’d be amazed at the things you’ll do; things you can’t even imagine.” She began walking the rail as if it were a balance beam in a portrait of poise, flexibility, and strength. “Dave got me involved in all this, and I helped him. It got more involved, and he sold Linda to some guy in Florida.”

She twirled again and then stopped.

“I had this plan for my life, but when that fell through I decided I’d teach and help other people with their dreams . . . But I guess that didn’t work out, either.”

I could hear the train now, the vibration of the thing pounding the rails like punishment.

She stopped and turned to look in its direction. “I don’t think I can watch it—don’t have the stomach for it.” Then she turned to look at my face. “I guess that makes me a coward, huh? I might jump out of the way or something.” She turned on the rail and continued her performance. “Can’t have that.”

The horns sounded again, and now I could see the four headlights of the locomotive pushing through the fog, bound and determined to get somebody this time. Pulling on the post at the other side, I felt my jeans tearing and the canvas of my coat shredding as I tried to get through the ragged edges.

Struggling against the opening, I felt the wire ends drag across the side of my face, pulling at the bandages on my neck, and the sudden warmth of my blood as it trickled down my cheek and saturated the collar of my coat.

Breaking my head free, I yanked at the rest of me, but the opening wasn’t big enough, and I just hung there like a side of beef and watched the big train coming down the line like a juggernaut of justice, inevitable and unstoppable.

She took a few more steps on the rail but then stopped and folded her arms over her chest, still facing the other way. “I guess it’s time to go.”

I grunted and pulled hard, and with one sudden yank, I staggered forward and fell on the ice in the ditch on the other side.

Pushing myself up, I could see the coal train only a couple hundred yards down the tracks, rumbling toward us at speed. I scrambled off the ice up the incline toward the woman, but slipped and slid down on the snow, gritty with coal dust.

When I looked again, it was a lot closer.

I figured it would take a few seconds to get the rest of the
way up the incline and another few to get a hold of her and snatch her from the tracks.

I looked back as I dug in with my boots and, taking an angular route, scrambled up and could now see the details of the giant orange and black conveyance, the front rails with the safety chain hanging between, the treads that led over the hood, and even noticed that the front had a modified cowcatcher—that would be the part that struck us.

No way I was going to make it.

Even with the approaching roar of the train, I could hear the siren of a car pulling onto the road behind me and could see the revolving illumination of the blue lights on the snow. Doors slammed, and I could hear Sandburg and Dougherty calling from behind me but couldn’t understand the words.

Catching a few good footholds, I felt myself going up the hill before I was even aware that I was trying, the snow and coal dust passing under my eyes as I just kept digging and trying not to look to my left, focusing so hard that all I could hear was my breathing.

Reaching the top with a roaring rush of my own, I finally glanced back and could see the train was on top of us, the horn blaring in a din that was deafening. I threw myself into her and felt the toe of my boot hit the end of a tie, and all I could think was that I was going to trip and land the both of us on the rails.

The train bore down with a sudden rush of wind, carrying the fog and thunderous din with it. Making sure to use my left arm to wrap her up, I carried the two of us across the tracks onto the downslope with a tremendous thump, tumbling and sliding to the bottom.

Still holding her next to me, I watched silently as the thing passed by, car after car after car. She began crying and clutched me, finally converting the sobs into a low and steady moan that unintentionally mimicked the train’s whistle in a sad and wrenching lament.

The taxicab driver said that the regular route to Pennsylvania Hospital would be a parking lot this time of morning, especially with the snow piled to the curbs and the fact that it was New Year’s Day and therefore the Mummers Parade but that he knew a shortcut.

He patted the dash of the run-down Crown Vic. “Beena will get us there, she used to work for the police department.” He turned to look at me. “Baggage?”

“More than I can carry.”

“Where is it?”

I closed the door behind me. “Sorry, I was joking.”

He nodded and turned back toward the meter. “Cash or credit?”

“Cash.”

“We’ll get there even faster.” He punched the button on his dash and then the accelerator. We drove, and he continued to smile at me in the rearview mirror. “I have to tell you, that’s one bad hat you’re wearing.”

“Thanks.” We drove on, taking a banked loop underneath the highway, which was, as he’d predicted, jammed.

“Texas?”

I watched the floating snow flurries, somehow different from that of the high plains. “Wyoming.”

“Where’s that?”

“Above Colorado and below Montana.”

He edged the Crown Vic forward and then hit his horn as an individual in another cab cut in front of him and attempted to crowd his way into the lane escaping the airport. “There’s a state in between those two?”

“Since 1890.”

I could see him still studying me in the rearview mirror, probably taking note of the bruises, stitches on my face, bandages around my neck, and that little piece of my ear that was missing. “Don’t they have doctors there?”

I breathed a tired chuckle. “Yep, but my daughter lives here, and she’s the one having the baby.” On cue, I felt the phone vibrating in my pocket. One of the flight attendants had been kind enough to plug the thing in and recharge it after giving me a glass of champagne or it would’ve been long dead. I pulled it out and recognized the number. “Sweet-pea?”

The voice of the Cheyenne Nation came on the line. “I am supposed to ask where you are. Please do not answer with any other location than the City of Brotherly Love.”

“Just got in a cab from the airport.”

Another pause. “There was a car waiting for you, did you not see the man holding the sign with your name on it?”

“Are you kidding? I’m lucky I saw the airport.” I looked around. “Well, I’m in this one. Anyway, I’m on my way to Pennsylvania Hospital, right?”

“Yes, everyone is here.”

“Well . . . Almost everyone, I hope.”

“The only other member of the party is due at 8:20
A.M
.”

I nodded into the phone. “Thanks for the reminder.”

“You have two hours to get to the hospital. Do you think you will make it?”

I leaned forward to get the taxi driver’s attention. “How long to Pennsylvania Hospital?”

He studied the road ahead. “Thirty minutes, tops.”

I repeated the response to the Bear, but this time it was someone else on the line. “Hurry up and get here, these fucking people are driving me up a wall. You’d think that no one had ever had a baby in the history of vaginas.”

“By
fucking people
I assume you mean your family?”

“All of ’em, including my uncle Al who in the spirit of the New Year was the only one thoughtful enough to bring wine and glasses.” There was a pause. “How you doin’?”

I stared at my reflection in the window. “I’m good.”

“I heard you’re even more torn all to hell than when we left you.”

“A little.”

There was a pause. “Where are you anyway?”

I spoke out to the driver. “Where are we?”

He trailed the words over his shoulder as I held the phone out. “Lindbergh Boulevard, driving past Suffolk Park.”

When I returned the device to my ear there was real annoyance in her voice. “What the fuck are you doing all the way over there?”

“Avoiding the Mummers.”

“Let me talk to the taxi driver.”

“No.”

There was mumbling in the background and then the voice on the phone changed again. “Daddy?”

I smiled at her voice. “Hey, punk.”

“You’re going to be here, right?”

“Come hell or high water.”

“Do not get involved in any investigations between wherever you are and the hospital.”

“I won’t.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.” The phone went dead, and I repocketed it as we took a right. There was an area of leafless trees, the dark branches reaching up into the metallic sky like veins.

“You are having a grandbaby?”

His voice breaking my reverie, I looked at the one eye I could see in the rearview mirror. “Yep.”

The traffic became more congested, and we slowed. “Congratulations.” We moved a little farther but then stopped again, and he handed me a card with his name on it. “If you have any need for a driver while you are here in Philadelphia, I would be honored to assist you.”

I read it and looked up at him. “You’re a Patel?”

“You know my name?”

“I know the occupation. You’re sure you don’t have any family running a motel in Wyoming?”

“We’re everywhere, a third of all motel owners in the U.S. are called Patel, and it is a surname that indicates that they’re members of a Gujarati Hindu subcaste.”

“I know.” I smiled. “The Patel Motel phenomenon.”

“You actually know this?”

“I do.”

He smiled at me in the mirror. “With your hat, you are a real cowboy?”

“No.” We slowly passed under another highway and into the patchwork of blocks that made up most cities, red brick and buildings a lot older than 1890.

He drummed the steering wheel, venting his frustration with the traffic. “But they let you wear the hat?”

“I’m a sheriff.”

He shrugged. “So you get to do whatever you want.”

I thought about it and watched the landscape change from strip malls to light industry as we passed over the Schuylkill River. “Not exactly.”

He eyed me again. “Looks like somebody did whatever they wanted to you—no offense.”

“None taken.” I felt the stitches on my face, feeling as if I were growing spines through my cheek like a porcupine; the itching had finally gotten so bad that I’d just taken the bandages off. “I’ve had a rough couple of days.”

“Chasing bad guys?”

I smiled even though it hurt, his phrase reminding me of the answering machine message my daughter had recorded for me:
This is the Longmire residence, we’re not able to answer your call right now because we’re out chasing bad guys or trying on white hats . . .
“Something like that.”

“Train robbers?”

“Nope.” I had slept and dreamed the entire flight from Gillette to Denver, awakened briefly to climb on the second plane, and then had dreamed and slept from Denver to Philadelphia, but the dreams were crowded with white buffaloes and dark prophecies. I was still tired. Maybe it was because I was punchy, but every once in a while you find yourself in a situation where you want to talk, and sometimes it’s to a total stranger, maybe
even a stranger who doesn’t know that a faraway place like Wyoming exists. “There was a suicide of a sheriff’s investigator in an adjacent county, and I was called in on the case.”

“Sheriffs have investigators out there?”

I glanced up at the skyline of the fifth-largest city in the United States and the back of William Penn or, at least, the Alexander Milne Calder twenty-seven-ton bronze sculpture of the man, one of two hundred and fifty bronzes that adorn the outside of city hall, with seven hundred rooms, the largest municipal building in the country. “Oh, I bet you’ve got them here, too.”

“This Wyoming sounds like a rough place.”

“Not really, we have about twenty homicides a year in comparison to Philadelphia, which averages about three hundred and twenty.”

“Yes, but we are a big city.”

“And we’re a big state.”

Calder had wanted the statue to face south so that the detail he’d wrought in Penn’s features would be highlighted by the sunshine to better reveal the complexity of the work. There would be no sunshine today, but it didn’t matter; the statue faces northeast toward my daughter’s building in Old City near Fishtown, commemorating the site where Penn signed the treaty with the Lenape tribe to create the city. “Anyway, this suicide put me on the case of three missing women.”

“Did you find them?”

“Yep.”

He shrugged. “That’s good.”

“One is dead.”

“That is bad.”

“Yep.” I sighed. “And I guess there’s somebody out there that’s put a contract on my life.”

“I am sorry for your troubles.”

It was a heartfelt statement. “Me, too.” I spotted a cheese steak joint and felt my stomach growl and tried to think of the last time I’d eaten anything. “One of the women was found in Miami, and we turned all the information over to the FBI—the authorities there located her.”

The phone vibrated in my hand. “Excuse me.” I cupped it to my ear. “I’m ten minutes away.”

“I’m hoping that’s not the case.”

I recognized the voice of the Gillette patrolman. “Dougherty?”

“Yeah, did you make it to Philadelphia?”

“I did, what are you doing working on New Year’s Day?”

“The sheriff offered me the Cold Case position and I took it. He said I had a unique skill set that would be perfect for the job.”

“He fire Richard Harvey?”

“He’s out on dental leave.”

“I bet. What can I do for you?”

“I just thought you’d be interested that the Las Vegas PD did a search on Deke Delgatos’s place and found a bunch of personal correspondence with a guy in Mexico City who they think is the one who put the hit out on you. You ever hear of a guy by the name of Tomás Bidarte?”

I could feel my jaw tightening.

“Sheriff?”

“Yep . . .” I thought about the man who had almost killed Vic, the man who had gotten away. “Yep, I have.”

Dougherty seemed sorry to have brought up the subject. “I just thought it was something you ought to know, you know?”

“Yep. No, thanks, troop. Any word on Jone Urrecha?”

“She’s fine; a little worse for wear due to the concussion and exposure, but they’re only keeping her a few days for observation so I’m having dinner with her sister.”

“Corbin, you dog you.”

“It’s just dinner.”

“Make sure she doesn’t bring her stapler.”

I hit the button and rested the phone on my knee. So, he wasn’t dead, not by a long shot. I thought about how Henry and I had covered all that ground down near Sulphur Creek and hadn’t found a trace of the man.

The driver interrupted my thoughts. “This is your first grandchild?”

“Um, yep.”

“Girl or boy?”

“A . . .” I thought of white buffaloes and Virgil as I listened to the slush of the melted snow rhythmically scour the underside of the Crown Vic; I attempted to collect my wayward thoughts. “A friend of mine says it’s a girl.”

“Good, girls are best.”

“And why is that?”

“Sons, they have their own plans, but a daughter or granddaughter, they will love you forever and take care of you in your old age.” The traffic had slowed to a stop, and I couldn’t help but pull my pocket watch out and check the time as he watched me. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you there, my man. What time is this daughter of yours scheduled to deliver?”

“Eight-twenty.”

He shook his head. “Nothing to worry about. Take it from a man with five children; they always go later than they say. I will bet you a ten-dollar bill.”

The exhale of my breath clouded the window beside my face. “You haven’t met my daughter.”

The car began moving again, and we’d almost made it to midtown when we lurched to a stop to allow a SEPTA surface trolley to go by. “These damned trolleys, they are so slow, and they take forever.”

“How many cars?”

Not fully understanding my question at first, it took him a few seconds to answer. “Um, two.”

I slipped my hat over my face and smiled, looking forward to seeing all my old friends—and a new one. “You’re on.”