Dry Bones: A Walt Longmire Mystery (18 page)

I don’t eat donuts.

The massive tow truck, designed to haul eighteen-wheelers, easily plucked the vehicle from the canyon and, dragging it from the edge, pulled it back a safe distance. We sipped coffee that the firefighters had brought, and Henry had a glazed with sprinkles as I excused myself from the group and carried my cup over to the van to look at the burned-out interior. It had achieved temperatures high enough to melt the metal.

Human skin burns at 248 degrees, but bones don’t burn so easily. Crematoriums use ovens approaching 2,000, but bone, containing approximately 60 percent inorganic, noncombustible matter, is capable of surviving even those temperatures. It is so tough that in modern-day crematoriums, after burning the body, the remains are ground in a process that reduces what’s left to granules similar to the dried bits in fertilizer.

According to Chaucer, murder will out—and in modern forensics it usually outs with bones.

One of the firefighters brought us fresh coffee and then raised a fist. “Save Jen!”

I raised a weary one back and then waited for him to retreat before asking Henry, “She wasn’t in there?”

The Bear, having retrieved the blanket from my truck to use as a cape, was looking particularly period, aside from the Styrofoam cup and the donut. “No.”

“Neither was the dog.”

“No.” He waited a moment and then took a bite, chewed, swallowed, and pronounced, “They landed about forty minutes ago.”

I turned and looked at him. “What?”

“Your family, they have arrived in Philadelphia, along with their bodyguard, who, to the best of my knowledge, has not killed anyone yet.” He looked thoughtful. “Evidently the undersheriff incurred a brief altercation with a captain of industry over the allotment of overhead storage space, but cooler heads prevailed and the stewardess awarded them first-class seats.”

I pulled out my pocket watch and looked at the delicate gold numerals that my grandfather had studied in his time. “Only ten minutes old and already a good day.” Pleased with the news, I repocketed my watch and stared at the van’s blackened shell, not really seeing it.

“What?”

I turned and looked at my friend. “Hmm?”

“What are you looking at?”

“In case it escaped your attention, the burned hulk in front of us.”

“No, that is where your eyes are directed, but what are you looking at?”

I smiled. I had been looking at the moon rising over the Powder River country and the clouds that piled up around it in the blackness with tinged edges dulled like an old coin. I smiled at his catching me. “I was thinking about what I was thinking. You know, asking myself about what I need to do? Where do I want to be right now?”

“Wonder.”

I sipped my coffee. “Excuse me?”

“Wonder. There is wonder in you, along with a little impatience. You are standing outside of yourself, looking at yourself, conscious of a rhythm within yourself, several rhythms, and the sound of drums from far away.”

I turned and stared at him. “How the hell do you know that?”

He took the last bite of his donut. “You think you are the only one who hears them?”

I took a deep breath and sighed. “Think we’re headed for something big?”

He laughed a smile. “That, or something big is headed for us.”

“Think we can take it?”

“We have taken it all up until now.” He shrugged. “But you need to be careful.”

“Of what?”

“Preparing for a battle yet to be fought while in the midst of another.”

“Play ’em one at a time, huh?” I smiled and shook my head, staring at the destroyed vehicle and finally seeing it. “Why would she want us to think that she was dead?”

The Bear gestured toward my truck, where the old sheriff was dead asleep. “Perhaps it is as Lucian says—she is attempting to avoid being drawn into the trial—or maybe it is something else.”

“Yep, but that’s not helping Dino-Dave, as near as I can tell.” I took a deep breath and then released it as an elongated and tortured sigh. “What something else?”

“I’d rather not say unless it is confirmed.” He licked his fingers and grinned. “So, I am thinking we should be heading over to the Lone Elk place to snoop around.”

“Without a warrant?”

“Everything has to be so proper with you.” He shook his head and sipped his coffee. “
Beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam
.”

I made a face. “Blessed is the man who invents wisdom?”

“Blessed is the man who
finds
wisdom.” He shook his head, dismissing me. “You always act as if you are the only one who
cui
from a classical education.”

 • • • 

It wasn’t dark at the Lone Elk place; in fact, every light that could be on, was. The lights were glowing not only from both floors of the house but also from the barn and outbuildings. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to sneak in.”

He leaned forward. “No.”

Lucian rose up from the back and thrust his head between the seats, moving Dog to the side. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Go back to sleep.”

His head disappeared. “You’ll wake me if we get to shoot somebody?”

“I promise.”

“I don’t want to miss an opportunity.”

“You bet.” I pulled the truck into the drive and got half turned before the pack of border collie mixes surrounded the Bullet. I turned to Dog, figuring it was time to release the hound. “Don’t eat any of them, all right?”

He responded with a single wag, which was not completely convincing.

I opened my door and watched as the assembled canine mafia swarmed forward and barked. I opened the back door and watched as Dog bounded from the truck and looked at them. The half-dozen dogs froze at the sight of him. The one farthest away ducked its head and started off, but the others held fast just a bit longer as the beast turned his large-muzzled head and started toward them as if in a Jack London novel. This was too much for the pack, and they all widened the area around him. One barked, but Dog turned toward it and it joined the one on the far end in making a move for the porch. All the others, feeling their numerical advantage diminish, started backing away, quietly retreating.

Dog looked up at me.

“One police dog, one riot.”

Henry joined me from the front, and after I put Dog back in the truck, we started toward the house. I could hear a lot of shouting inside, and I was beginning to think that we’d stumbled into a domestic situation.

Before we got onto the porch, the front screen door flew open, and Randy limped out, pulling up to keep from running into us. “You found him?”

The Bear and I glanced at each other and then back at him. “Who?”

“Taylor!”

I glanced at Henry again, as he answered, “We saw him at the IGA this morning. He did not come home?”

Randy was massaging his knee, and his butt held the screen door open. “Yeah, but he’s gone again.” He gestured a thumb over his shoulder. “Eva went in to check on him, and he had disappeared.”

I interrupted. “I thought he ran off every twenty minutes. Why is this such a big deal?”

“Never at night; he never runs off at night.”

“What, he’s afraid of the dark?”

“Yes.”

I looked at him. “You’re serious?”

“Yes.” Randy yelled inside. “Eva, the cops are here.”

After a moment, she arrived at her brother’s side. “Did you find him?”

“Um, no.”

Randy talked out of the side of his mouth to his sister. “He says they saw him at the IGA, but we saw him after that . . .”

“When?”

Her voice was urgent. “He gets home at seven; I guess it was around then.”

“Where does he usually go? I mean, before it gets dark.”

She threw her hands in the air. “Everywhere, anywhere!”

I gestured toward my truck. “I’ll go call it in and get the Highway Patrol and the Bobs to start watching for him. In the meantime there are really only two directions he can go on the main road out here, north and south, and we just came from the south, so I’ll try north—sound good?”

“I’ll go with you.” Randy ducked back in the house, probably to grab his jacket and hat.

“We don’t really have room.”

He looked at the truck. “I’ll ride in the bed. I stove up my leg earlier fighting with a cow, and it feels better standing up anyway.” He smiled. “Unless that’s against the law.”

“I am the law.”

We loaded up, leaving Eva on the porch, her hands knotted in her dress, humming the old spiritual again. I wheeled the three-quarter-ton back up the road as Lucian’s voice echoed from the back, “I don’t mean to alarm, but there’s an Indian standing in the back of your truck.”

“We’re aware of that. Go back to sleep.”

Henry glanced at Randy’s legs in the rear window of the cab and then directed the beam of my Maglite on the hills across the road, as I turned the spotlight on and focused it on my side. “A missing woman and a missing young man . . .”

“What are the chances?”

I glanced at the Bear. “That the two of them are together?”

“Yes.”

I nodded and trained the spotlight over the hills. “What was the other thought you had?”

“She went missing before he did.”

“And he did not seem overly surprised that she was gone.”

“Didn’t show much emotion either way.”

The voice rose from the back again. “Inscrutable, those damned Indians.”

I talked over my shoulder. “Old man, if you’re going to join in the conversation, sit up.”

“Hush. Me and your dog are tryin’ to catch a few winks.”

The Cheyenne Nation nodded. “We will have to ask Randy.”

It was about that time that the aforementioned individual began pounding on the roof of my truck. “Stop, stop!”

I braked, the truck slid on the gravel, Dog yelped, and Lucian slammed into the back of our seat and hit the floor mats. “Damn it to hell!”

I watched as Randy carefully eased himself from the bed and took off at a hitched pace into the hills to our right. I redirected my spotlight in that direction and could see an Appaloosa gelding, saddled, bridled, and munching grass on the other side of the fence—the same horse we’d seen in the corral the other day. He jumped and lifted his head, his reins trailing on the ground, his eyes reflecting gold in the light, and pivoted to the left as Randy approached. The rancher, realizing he’d spooked him, stopped and spoke softly in Cheyenne, whereupon the animal ambled over to him like an old friend.

By the time we got to the fence, he’d led the horse over. “Yours?”

“Yeah, Bambino.” He glanced around. “Not Taylor’s regular horse, but this one was in the corral and saddled, so he was convenient.” He brushed his hand across the velvety nose. “He’s got the yips, though; every once in a while he thinks there’s a grizzly bear under a Snickers bar wrapper.”

“You think Bambino did the two-step, and Taylor got grounded out here?”

“It’s more than possible.”

“If you were headed out, where would you go?”

He pointed in an easterly direction toward a crutch in the hills. “There’s a gully that leads back south and circles around the ranch proper toward the ponds and that dry wash and ridge where we found the
T. rex
.”

“Where we found the van.”

“What van?”

“Jennifer Watt’s, crashed in the canyon, burned.”

His face froze. “Holy shit, was she in it?”

Henry interrupted. “No.”

He sighed in exasperation. “What the hell was she doing out here, anyway?”

“We were hoping that you might have an answer to that question.”

He glanced at Henry. “And why is that?”

My turn. “There just seems to be a lot going on out here at the ranch, and no one seems to know what, who, or why.” I waited a moment and then asked, “Where’s Enic?”

He stared at me. “What?”

“Your uncle, where is he? With all the hubbub going on, I would’ve supposed that he was awake.”

Randy shrugged. “He never sleeps; at least only an hour or two at a time.” He reached out and petted the horse. “Jeez-O-Pete.”

“Randy, what’s going on?”

Jamming a thumb and forefinger in his eyes, he scrubbed at them. “I don’t know, and that’s what’s got me worried. I mean . . . you don’t think I know how this looks with people running around and disappearing?”

The Bear rumbled again, “How does it look?”

“Guilty.” He shifted his attention to Bambino and rubbed his withers.

“I mean, ever since Dad’s death everything’s been kind of weird, and every time I think I’ve got a handle on things, something else strange happens.”

I nodded. “Welcome to my world.”

“Maybe it all started with that damn dinosaur . . .” He cast his eyes on me. “Look, there’s something I should tell you. Dad was drinking again, and Taylor was hiding the stuff for him. Like I said, he wouldn’t tell me where and that’s when I hit him. He’s pretty much convinced that he’s responsible for Dad’s death because he kept letting him have the liquor—that may be why it is that he ran off.” He held the reins out to me. “Here you go.”

I stared at him. “What?”

“There aren’t any roads in that direction, so somebody’s going to have to do it old-school, and I’m hurt.”

I glanced at the Bear, who shook his head. “As much as it pains me to say, you are the better horseman.”

I shook my head. “It’s an Appaloosa. Isn’t that the horse the Cheyenne traditionally rode into battle?”

“It was, because by the time you ride an Appaloosa some distance, you are ready to kill anything.”

I sighed, took the leather strips between my fingers, and studied the white in Bambino’s eye. “The yips, huh?”

 • • • 

We all decided that Henry would drive Randy back to get his truck and continue north; then he and Lucian would head south and meet me back at the site where Jen the Elder had been found. As a precaution, I took a handheld radio from my truck, just in case I found myself alone standing in a field in the dark with a sore rump.

There was a ruffling in the grass as the wind picked up, and Bambino sidestepped to the right and shook his head, rolling his eyes back to me. I countered: “You know, my grandfather had a horse with a nervous disposition, and whenever he acted up he’d reach out and slap the living daylights out of the back of his head.”