Dry Bones: A Walt Longmire Mystery (12 page)

Henry shook his hand. “Agent.”

He gestured toward me. “I understand you had to save his life again?”

The Bear nodded. “It is becoming something of a habit.”

“Sheriff.” The voice rang from somewhere within one of the cells, but I couldn’t see him.

“Deputy U.S. Attorney.”

“Can I have a word with you?”

I looked around for some sort of path. “Certainly, but you’ll have to come out here, since I can’t get in there.”

After a moment, he appeared around the corner, and I noticed that today he wasn’t wearing makeup. “I’d like to speak with you in private.”

I glanced around at the boxes. “Doesn’t seem possible.”

“Now.”

I thought I might’ve misheard him. “Excuse me?”

He emphasized each word. “Right. Now.”

I stood there looking at him, aware that nobody else in the room was moving. “Well, go ahead then.”

A smug look seeped across his face as he stared at me. “I think you might prefer we did it in private.”

“I’ll do my own thinking. How can I help you, Mr. Trost?”

He glanced around and then, satisfied that he’d given enough of a dramatic pause, continued. “I don’t think you’re taking our case very seriously.”

I waited the exact same amount of time before replying. “Our case.”

He gestured around the room at the copious boxes and files. “Jen.”

I wanted to laugh but figured that wasn’t likely to make the situation any better. “Acting Deputy Attorney, I have made my time, staff, and facility available to you. What else exactly is it you need?”

“Your complete attention.”

“Oh, you’ve got it right now.”

“I mean for the tenure of the investigation.”

“Well, you see, I do have other responsibilities, one of which concerns, as you have noted, a potential homicide, and I think that takes precedence over your sixty-five-million-year-old cold case.” He didn’t say anything, so I continued. “Why don’t you tell me exactly what the problem here is, and then we can both get on with our jobs.”

“I was not impressed with your performance this morning.”

“At the press conference.”

“Yes.”

“Performance.”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Trost, in case you aren’t aware, my job is to enforce the laws and protect the lives and property of the people of Absaroka County; anything beyond that is my prerogative. I have conveyed to you and your department the utmost in professional courtesy and will continue to do so as long as it doesn’t interfere with the performance of my sworn duties.”

His smile faded. “I’ve got another press conference with a few national outlets this afternoon, and I’d like you to be there.”

“I have other responsibilities.”

This time he paused even longer before speaking. “I suggest you reorganize your schedule.”

“I have an appointment that can’t be broken.” And with that, I turned and walked out of the room.

 • • • 

On the drive to Sheridan, the Bear, having decided to keep me company, gave me his take on the brief exchange. “I think it is safe to assume that you’ve been removed from his Christmas card list.”

“That’s all right, I’m not real fond of him, either.”

“I also think you should anticipate a call from the attorney general of the state of Wyoming.”

“That’s okay, him I like.”

He glanced out the window at Lake DeSmet, the rain having let up a bit, with glimmers of the afternoon sun reflecting off the surface of the water in a brassy gold. “Thank you for caring about Danny Lone Elk.” He reached back and scratched under Dog’s chin. “I know you are under a lot of pressure right now, so if no one else has said it—thank you.”

I brushed off the kindness, slightly embarrassed. “Well, it might all be a part of the same case.”

“Maybe, and then again, maybe not.”

Anxious to change the subject, I asked about the cursory observations he’d made of Danny’s body while I’d collected Vic and her paraphernalia. “So, did the turtles do it?”

“The turtles did it.”

I thought about it. “I’m not sure why, but that makes me feel better.”

“I am not so sure why, either.” He turned in the seat to look at me. “And I am not sure why you do.”

“Oh.”

“Now, on to important matters.” He glanced out the windshield at the fresh, newly washed landscape. “Is Vic coming to terms with her little brother marrying and having a child with your daughter?”

I hadn’t told anyone about the damage done to my undersheriff or the fact that she had lost a child and now could have none, but it seemed like the Bear was intuiting, something he was pretty good at. “She doesn’t have a lot of say in it, and Michael just goes with the flow . . . It’s one of his many good qualities.”

“The whole family is coming?”

“Just Cady and the baby. Michael was scheduled for some time off, but from what I understand, he’s got a new sergeant who’s trying to make things hard on him, so he’s having to pull second watch for the next week.”

“Life in the Philadelphia Police Department.”

“Especially if you are the son of the Chief of Detectives North.”

He nodded and took a deep breath. “Your granddaughter is five months old. She needs a name.”

I made a face the way I always did whenever I was reminded that my granddaughter was named for a ’59 Thunderbird convertible. “She’s got a name. In case you’ve forgotten, she’s named after your damn car.”

“I mean a real name.”

Henry Standing Bear, Heads Man of the Dog Soldier Society, Dog Soldier Clan, was offering my granddaughter a Cheyenne name. “Don’t you think she’s a little young?”

He shrugged. “We’re all here, and if you make a run up to Hardin, we could stop in Lame Deer and arrange something with Lonnie and the tribe.” He turned his head and looked out the window. “Are you heading up tomorrow?”

I smiled. “That’s what I was thinking.”

“I will come and make arrangements.”

“I’ll buy you breakfast at the Blue Cow Café.”

“Deal.”

Cady’s Cheyenne name was Sweet Grass Woman, and I wondered if it would have an effect on the choice for Lola. “Have you been thinking about a name?”

“Yes.”

“Care to share it with me?”

“No.”

“Okay.” We drove on, and, thinking I was making small talk, I asked, “So, what do you think of my granddaughter?”

“She is a great deal like you.”

I felt a sharp wave of fleeting self-satisfaction. “You think?”

“Yes, and it will lead to problems with her mother.”

I glanced at him. “Huh?”

“Your granddaughter and you are too much alike, and you will be something of a burden to her for the majority of your lives.”

I laughed and drove on. “She’s only five months old, and you haven’t seen her since she was a newborn—you don’t think you might be jumping the gun here a little bit?”

“I have seen the two of you together.”

“I thought we got along pretty well.”

“Yes, and she will come to see you as the sun, the moon, the stars, and all that is.” He still didn’t look at me. “And this will be very hard for you to live up to; eventually you will fail and she will have to reassess, which will be difficult for her.”

“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence on both our parts.” I glanced at him again. “So when is this cataclysmic event supposed to happen, when she’s nine months old?”

He shot me a look from the corner of one eye.

“You know, between you, Danny Lone Elk, and Virgil White Buffalo, I could use a good word every now and then from the great beyond, okay?”

 • • • 

To everyone’s surprise, including the airline’s, the flight from Denver arrived on time.

Henry and I were both standing there watching the turboprop unload. Not unexpectedly, my daughter and granddaughter were the last ones off the plane, a gentleman I knew helping Cady carry the paraphernalia down the steps. Lola was screeching, but I was able to say hello to Dennis Kervin, an attorney from Durant.

He handed Henry a diaper bag and other assorted essentials, Cady following. “That granddaughter of yours has the lungs of a Metropolitan Opera star.”

“Sorry about that.”

I wasn’t able to add more as a tall redhead with cool, gray eyes unceremoniously handed me the screaming bundle along with her cell phone. “Here, take her. I need a minute.” She turned and marched off toward the bathrooms.

“Why do I have your cell phone?”

“Because there are three messages from the Philadelphia Police Department, and if I answer it and it’s my husband, in the mood I’m in, I’m going to give him an earful.” She called back over her shoulder, “Answer it if you want to, and while you’re at it, tell him I want a divorce and he can have custody of Ethel Merman there.”

I deposited the phone in my jacket pocket and considered my granddaughter. The little bundle’s cries became so shrill that I was sure she was going to rupture something. I turned to look at the Bear and began to bounce up and down ever so slightly. “She does have a set of lungs on her.”

He reached out and settled me with a hand on my shoulder. “She just came in on a turbulence-ridden airplane, Walt, perhaps she would like to be held still.”

He had a point. I placed two fingers on the edge of the blanket and pulled it down so that I could see her chocolate-brown eyes, an anomaly in my family. She was sweating from exertion, but I tipped her up a bit more and brought her a little closer.

They tell you about how your life changes in ways you’d never suspect when you have children, but I think it might be even worse with grandchildren. Maybe because it’s parenting one step removed, or maybe it’s the novelty of it being a part-time job, but whatever it was, it hit me like a tsunami when I looked at her. “You’re upsetting your mother.”

Instantly, she stopped crying and stared at me.

“I don’t mind. You can scream all you like as far as I’m concerned, but you also have to stop when we get to the truck because you’ll scare Dog.”

She blinked her eyes, and a bubble of drool collected at the corner of her tiny mouth.

“You need to be on your best behavior, especially since you haven’t met Dog yet.”

She continued to stare at me, her mouth moving just a little as if chewing my words.

I glanced at the Cheyenne Nation. “See, we are simpatico.”

He studied the two of us like specimens. “Um hmm.”

The phone in my pocket began vibrating and suddenly started playing some sort of hip-hop song. I handed Lola to Henry and began fishing the thing out. “I better get that and let him know that his family is here safe, if pissed.”

Looking at the screen, which did, indeed, read P
HILADELPHIA
P
OLICE
D
EPA
RTMENT
, even I was able to discern the green A
NSWER
button. “Hey, is this about those unpaid parking tickets?”

There was a long pause, and then an unfamiliar voice responded. “Hello? This is Chaplain Anthony Keen, and I’d like to speak with Cady Moretti, if I could, please?”

A chaplain.

“I’m afraid she’s indisposed at the moment. I’m her father, Absaroka County Sheriff Walt Longmire. Can I help you?”

“I need to speak with Mrs. Moretti, if I could, please?”

“Look, she’ll be back in just a minute . . . What’s going on?”

“You say you’re her father?”

“I am.”

The pause was longer this time. “There’s been an incident involving her husband, Patrolman Michael Moretti.”

“What kind of incident, Chaplain?”

“You’re her father, his father-in-law?”

“Yes, damn it.”

“He’s been shot in the line of duty.”

I felt that quarter shift in all points of reference as I formed the next words carefully. “How bad?”

This was the longest pause so far, and I had time to look over and see Cady standing an arm’s length away, staring at me as she reached for the phone. “Sheriff Longmire, I’m very sorry.”

Dog lay on the sofa while the Bear and I sat on the floor on either side of the Pack ’n Play and watched Lola chew on the corner of a blanket Saizarbitoria had been kind enough to provide. “How is the family?”

“I don’t know.” I glanced toward the bedroom, where I could barely hear Cady. “She’s talking to Michael’s mother right now.”

“Lena?”

I was having a hard time concentrating and forgot that the two had met in Philadelphia what seemed a century ago but was actually just a couple of years. “Yep.”

“How did it happen?”

I thought about what Cady had told me after she had spoken with the chaplain. “Routine traffic stop at Fifth and Lombard. He pulled a guy over for a broken headlight, walked up to the window . . .”

“So, it was a random incident.”

“Yep, at least . . .” I looked at him. “Why do you ask that?”

Lola made a noise, and the Cheyenne Nation reached out and gave her a stuffed horse rattle that looked as if it belonged in a museum. “Do they have the assailant in custody?”

“I don’t know.” I leaned against Dog’s sofa and, with my hands in my lap, sat there thinking about the late nights Martha had suffered through when I was being patched up by EMTs, in emergency rooms, or worse, not hearing anything. It’s part of the contract, and those who serve are not the ones who receive the worst of it; those who stand and wait for that phone call or the knock on the door that tells you that the other half of you won’t be coming home, ever—those are the ones who live through a kind of pain that most will never know.

“I made chicken tomatillo soup while the two of you were talking. I will put it in the refrigerator if no one is hungry.”

I focused my eyes on him. “You should go home—you’ve done so much.”

“I will wait until she gets off the phone.”

I glanced at the door leading to my bedroom. “That could be half the night.”

“I have nothing but time.”

I couldn’t hear her voice any more. “Maybe I should go in there.”

“I do not think so.”

I stared at my hands, finally reaching up and petting Dog so that they had something to do. “I’m kind of at a loss, Henry.”

“I can tell.” He waited for a moment. “Do you suppose anyone has told Vic?”

I was jarred by the thought. “I don’t know . . .”

“Would you like me to drive into town and tell her?”

I thought about it. “No, she’s probably asleep—she’s been through so much already today, and I wouldn’t be surprised if her phone was turned off. She tends to do that when she’s drinking a bottle of wine.” I smiled. “I think she gets into trouble when she has a little too much and the phone is available—I’ve been the recipient of some of those calls.”

“Hmm.” He grunted, picked up the rattle, and wriggled it, further entrancing my granddaughter. Lola giggled with delight, which made the scenario all the worse.

“I’ll go over there first thing in the morning—she usually sleeps late when she’s not on duty—after we get everything settled here.” I looked back at him. “If things are ever settled here again.”

The floor creaked, and I looked up to see Cady, standing with the phone in her hand. I struggled to a standing position and stood there looking at her like an archway with the keystone missing. “Is she okay?”

She leaned against the bathroom door and wrapped her arms around herself. “No, she’s not.”

We watched as Dog, sensing that someone needed comforting, slipped off the sofa and approached her, burying his head between her legs and standing there threatening to lift her off the ground if she didn’t pet him. She finally brought a hand down and scratched his head with her lacquered fingernails, tears falling onto his nose.

Henry saved me with a response. “Is there anything we can do?”

She looked at the wall. “Lena’s been trying to get hold of Vic, but she’s got her phones turned off. Could someone go over there in the morning and tell her what’s going on?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Henry spoke softly. “How are you?”

“How do you think I am?”

He nodded and stood, my granddaughter crying out at the loss of him and the horse rattle. The Cheyenne Nation reached down and scooped her up, tucking her on his hip and putting the toy on the kitchen table.

Cady collapsed into herself, taking a step toward him. “Henry, I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “Do not be silly.” He stepped toward her and tucked her into his other hip, holding my little family, a family that was even smaller as of today. “We are all here for you, at the beck and call of your slightest wish.” He pulled her in even closer and kissed the top of her head. “Because we love you.”

Lola wrapped her fingers into her mother’s and the Bear’s hair, and all I could think was, hang on, little one, hang on to the ones you love because that’s all we’ve got in this world. Never let go.

His voice resounded off the top of Cady’s head. “Are you hungry?”

The head shook. “No, thought of food doesn’t sit well right now.”

“Understandable.” Loosening himself, he handed the baby to me and stepped to the counter, opened the refrigerator, and placed the large pot inside. “Remember that this is in here.”

We both nodded and watched as he walked to the door. “If you need anything, anything at all, please call me.”

Cady responded, knowing the social ethic of the Northern Cheyenne and that he would not return again until invited. “Uncle Bear, come back over for coffee in the morning.”

He smiled. “I will.”

The door closed, and we were left with ourselves.

I nudged the baby up and smelled her, clean and powdered. She gurgled, and I smiled at her mother. “How ’bout a cup of tea?”

“Tea?”

I raised an eyebrow in an attempt to be funny. “What, I don’t seem like a tea guy to you?”

She smiled, humoring me. “No, you don’t.”

I handed her Lola and began about the business of putting the steam kettle on. “Ruby gave it to me for Christmas; she thinks I drink too much coffee.”

“You do drink too much coffee—you have your whole life.”

I pulled the teabags from the tin box that had been kept over the refrigerator since her mother had been alive and brought out two mugs, both of them stolen from the Red Pony Bar and Grill. “Your mother once switched to decaf one week without telling me.” I set the mugs on the table between us. “I thought I was dying.”

The words were out of my mouth before I could whip them back. “I’m so sorry, Cady.”

Looking at the surface of the table, she swallowed and hugged Lola a little closer. She finally smiled. “What am I going to do, Dad?”

“Come back to Wyoming.”

She seemed shocked by the statement and stood there looking at me. “I meant this week.”

“Oh.”

Shaking her head, she sat at the table and whispered, “What am I going to do with you? What would I do with me?”

“It’s selfish, I know.”

“What would I do here, hang out a shingle? Wait for Lola to grow up and hope she will decide to be a lawyer?” She sadly bounced her on her knee. “Moretti and Longmire?”

I was frozen at that moment, thinking about what Virgil White Buffalo had said on the mountain, his words carrying with the rushing wind that wound to a screech:
“She is to be married this summer and when she has the daughter she is now carrying, that daughter, your granddaughter, will carry the wrong man’s name . . .
”
I hadn’t understood what it was he was telling me at the time, but maybe the other name my granddaughter would carry would be my own.

“Dad?”

I looked at her. “Sorry, I was just thinking of something . . . something somebody said.”

She glanced away with a funny look. “The kettle is steaming.”

“Sorry.” I got up and went to the stove, took the whistling thing from the burner, and brought it over, filling the mugs. “Moretti and Longmire . . . Kind of has a ring to it.”

She shook her head, still bouncing Lola, the baby giggling from the pony ride. “So, what do you think, Monkey—you want to be a lawyer?” The baby immediately wrinkled her face and cried out. “I guess not.”

Automatically, I reached across the table and took her, resting her in the crook of my arm, picking up the rattle Henry had used to distract her. “C’mere, you Sweet Pea.” She whimpered a little but then settled down and stuffed the horse’s nose into her mouth. “Maybe she’ll be a sheriff.”

Realizing what I’d just said, I looked and found Cady staring at her mug.

 • • • 

In the early morning, after calling Henry to make sure his arrival was imminent, I looked in on my daughter and granddaughter, warm and cuddled together on my bed. Dog and I had taken turns on the sofa; I’d had a troubled night, finding myself standing at the window, looking out at the Wyoming hills with my fingertips against the glass, half waiting to see the great horned owl on the teepee.

I kept thinking how much easier this would have all been if my wife were still here, and how I would’ve gladly traded places with her if only she could be here to console Cady and care for the baby. Martha was like that—she didn’t have to say anything but would simply lay her hand on you and suddenly things were all right.

Grabbing my thermos with too much coffee in it, I pushed the door open and stepped outside, pausing to hold it for Dog but finding my ever-present companion nowhere to be found. Quietly, I whistled, but he still didn’t come.

I crossed back toward the open bedroom door and could see that the great beast had crept up onto the bed and was now sleeping with the girls.

Abandoned. Say what you will about canine intelligence, he knew who needed to be comforted and protected. I shook my head, went out the door, and headed for town with a message I sorely did not want to deliver.

When I got to the little Craftsman house on Kisling, Vic was sitting on the front stoop, barefoot except for the protective boot, crutches at her side, and a cigarette swirling a thin plume past her face like the steam kettle from the previous night.

“Need a cup of coffee?”

She took a strong drag on the coffin nail. “I need two days off to go to Philadelphia and kill a cocksucker.”

“They catch him?”

“No, that’s why I need
two
days.”

I sat on the porch, spun off the top of my thermos with the words D
RINKING
F
UEL
printed on the side, and poured her a cup. “You’re smoking.”

She flicked ash into the wet grass. “Thanks, I think you’re hot, too.” She sipped the coffee. “I’m serious—I need some days.”

“Take a month.”

She nodded with a curt jerk of her head and took another slug of caffeine. We sat there for a while as she alternately inhaled the cigarette and sipped the coffee. Once or twice she turned and started to say something but then stopped and went back to her two-part job.

“Did you turn your phone on early this morning?”

“Yeah. The thing started ringing as soon as I did—scared the shit out of me.”

We sat there for a while more. “Your mother?”

“Father.”

Knowing the rocky relationship between Vic and the Chief of Detectives North back in Philadelphia, I was glad I hadn’t been here for that phone call. “What have they got?”

“The guy walked away clean.”

I studied the side of her face. “Walked? I thought it was a traffic stop.”

She turned and looked at me. “He pulled this asshole over, and then another asshole stepped up behind him and shot him in the back; then when he went down, the motherfucker shot him in the face.” She stopped talking, and her nostrils flared. “I mean while he’s fucking lying there on his back . . . In the face.”

“No arrests?”

“No, I told you . . . if I have my way there won’t be any, just a brief impression on the muddy banks of the Delaware River before the current carries the body away.”

“Plates?”

“Stolen.”

“Driver’s license, ID on either of the men?”

She puffed the cigarette some more. “A sketchy description from a taxicab driver and a woman looking out her third-floor window.”

“Your family on it?”

She shook her head. “Internal Affairs and Admin won’t allow for it, but if I know my brothers and my father . . .” She turned and looked at me. “Thirty-two years old.”

I took a deep breath. “I know.”

“That family thing, it never lets up, huh? I mean, here I am two thousand miles from mine. I know I act like it’s not really important to me, but . . .” She sighed. “The ties that bind.” She studied my face, and there was a spark of triumph. “I finally came up with one you don’t know?” She drained the dregs of her coffee. “Bruce Springsteen.”

“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 . . .”