I thought about it. “Yep, it is.”
He sipped his bourbon and carefully avoided the wad of chew packed between his lower lip and gum. “Well, ours was probably just as bad. We just didn’t have enough sense to know it.” I nodded, since I didn’t know what else to do. “Seems to me with this Vietnam thing, you get yourself into trouble fifteen thousand miles from home, you’ve got to have been lookin’ for it.” I nodded some more. “Drafted?”
“Lost my deferment.”
“What the hell’d you do that for?”
“Graduated.”
He placed the cut-glass tumbler back in the small ring of the paper cocktail napkin and nudged it toward Jerry Aranzadi, the bartender, whom I did not know at the time.
“Where from?”
I took a sip of my Rainier and hoped my bank account would last through the interview. “University of Southern California.” He didn’t say anything. “It’s in Los Angeles.”
He nodded silently as Jerry refilled his glass with at least four fingers. “Two things you gotta remember, Troop.” He called me Troop for the next eight years. “A short pencil is better than a long memory, and you get to buy me my chew ’cause I’m a cripple.” The last part of the statement referred to his missing leg, which had been blown off by some Basque bootleggers back in the fifties.
“What brand?”
* * *
I closed Santiago Saizarbitoria, placed him carefully on the surface of my desk, and made myself the promise to remember the rube kid with the funny haircut who had sat in the Euskadi Hotel bar and wondered what the hell he was going to do if the old man sitting next to him said no.
“I’m going home.”
I looked up from the surface of my desk to my deputy. “What’s it doing outside?”
“Snowing like a bastard.” Despite the fact that she was leaving, she came in, sat down, and folded her jacket on her lap. She nodded toward the file. “Is that Sancho?”
“Yep. What do you think?”
She shrugged, “I think that if he’s got a pulse and a pecker, we put him on patrol.” She continued to look at me. “What are you going to do about dinner?”
“I don’t know, maybe go down to the Bee.” The Busy Bee was in a small concrete-block building that clung to the banks of Clear Creek through the tenacity of its owner and the strength of its biscuits and spiced gravy. Dorothy Caldwell had owned and operated the Bee since Christ had been a cowboy. I ate there frequently and, due to its proximity to the jail, so had our infrequent lodgers.
“I bet she’s gone home.”
“I’ll take my chances. If worse comes to worse, I can always catch the pepper steak over at the Home for Assisted Living.”
She made a face. “That sounds appealing.”
“Better than a plastic-wrapped burrito from the Kum and Go.”
“Boy, you know all the hot spots, don’t you?”
“I have been known to show a girl a good time, yes.”
* * *
After Vic and Ruby had gone, the beast ambled in and sat on my foot. I was second string, but it was still good to be on the team. She was probably right; with the impending storm, Dorothy had most likely headed home for the night. I weighed my options and settled on a chicken potpie from the jail’s resources. Dog followed me as I rummaged through the minirefrigerator and pulled out the freeze de jour. We didn’t have any occupants, so I took my steaming little tin into holding cell 1 and sat down on the bunk with a can of iced tea. Dog curled up at the door and looked at me. I had taught him that begging was all right if it was done from at least six feet away.
There were no windows so I could ignore the mounting snow outside, but the phone that began ringing, I could not. I sat my half-eaten chicken potpie tin on the bunk and answered the extension on the wall of our kitchenette. “Absaroka County Sheriff ’s Department.”
“Is this the goddamned sheriff?”
I recognized the voice. “Maybe.”
“Well, if you ain’t him then somebody better go out and find the simple-minded son of a bitch and tell him to get his ass over here. I ain’t got all night!” The phone went dead with a loud crack as the cradle on the other end absorbed the impact, and I stood there listening as my potpie was devoured.
I had talked Lucian into coming on as a part-time dispatcher on weekends, and I think he enjoyed it, but I would be the last one he would tell. He drove the rest of the staff crazy, but Dog liked him and so did I. I took the pie tin and threw it into the trash along with the plastic spork and my empty tea. I headed for the office to grab my coat; Dog followed.
Vic was right. By the time we got outside, it was snowing so hard that you couldn’t see across the street to the courthouse. I squinted against the sting, tugged at my hat, and took in the vague halos of the arch lights that ran the distance of Main Street. There was only one car, and it was parked about halfway between the Busy Bee and the Sportshop. The dog halted beside the truck and turned his nose into the wind with me. I opened the door and watched as he climbed across and onto the passenger seat. He turned and looked at me, waiting for me to climb in, but I looked back at the parked car. He stretched across the seat and settled in for a short nap, knowing full well what I was going to do before I did.
I walked down the slight grade to the parked vehicle, careful not to slip, stooped down, and wiped the snow from the front plate of the maroon Oldsmobuick: state plates, county 2, Cheyenne. I looked around at the storefronts, but the only one that showed any signs of retail life was the Euskadi Hotel bar where the Rainier and Grain Belt beer signs softly glowed in the two tiny windows.
Except for the Christmas decorations, the bar at the Euskadi hadn’t changed much since Lucian had hired me there all those years ago. The jukebox was still there, playing an unintentionally ironic version of Sinatra’s “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.” There was an ornate burl wood bar and bar back along the right side, whose ancient mercury mirror was tarnished and faded in its attempt to hold on to the glory of the age and it reflected the blonde at the bar.
I pushed my hat back to its best Dashiell Hammett advantage and felt the slick of melted snow slide down between my shoulder blades and my sheepskin coat. As entrances, I’d made better.
“Hello, Sheriff.” Jerry Aranzadi was still the full-time bartender. A small man with a stooped back and black-rimmed glasses, his narrow shoulders hunched as he scooped into the cooler and popped the cap on a Reindeer beer before I could stop him. It was at times like this that I wished my habits were a little more exotic. “What brings you out on a night like tonight?”
I sat a few stools down as Jerry placed a paper napkin on the bar along with the bottle of beer. He knew all my patterns, even the one about sparing the glassware. “It’s chess night.”
I took a sip of my beer. She didn’t look at me but seemed absorbed in what looked to be an Irish coffee. He gently patted a hand in front of her cup to get her attention. “Miss Watson, this is our sheriff, Walter Longmire.”
I always try to hold on to the first impression I get of a person; usually it’s a feature, but with her it was the energy that was there, an animation that couldn’t be concealed by age, fatigue, or alcohol. Afterward, I noticed that she was just plain beautiful, with large, frank blue eyes and well-defined lips. “Sheriff, this is Maggie Watson, and I bet you can’t guess what she does for a living.”
“Ms. Watson works for the state.” I took a sip and looked back at both of them. I really enjoyed watching those big blue eyes widen as they looked at Jerry and then back to me. I guessed mid to late forties; outdoorsy, and always had been from the face, nicely weathered to perfection. She had an athletic build, probably a skier. “The plates on the car outside. ‘Elementary, my dear . . .’ ” The eyes narrowed. “Bet you wish you had a nickel for every time somebody said that.”
“You have no idea.” She had a nice voice, too. It was soft, but also strong and with just a touch of a southern accent. “State Treasury Department.” She smiled a sly smile and took an elegant sip of her coffee. “Unclaimed property project manager.”
It was her turn to look self-satisfied. “We don’t see many of those up in these parts.” I nodded and looked over at Jerry. “Can’t say we’ve seen any at all.”
It got a laugh that was melodic but short. “I restore the contents of abandoned safe-deposit boxes to the owners or rightful heirs.” She sat her mug down and gave me a sharp look. “At least I was, till I got stranded.”
I thought about it for a moment, then felt duty call and sat the almost full beer back on the bar. “Gimme your keys, and I’ll start it for you. I think we can get you a room, if we move quickly. Motels get to be at a premium when the weather gets like this.” I tried to pay Jerry, but he just waved me off.
Back at my truck, Dog greeted me with a terrific yawn and confirmed my thoughts about his concern for my welfare while I was gone. I cleared the accumulated snow with the windshield wipers and turned on the cautions on the Bullet’s light bar. A vague feeling of sadness always came over me in the presence of the lights: too many seat-belts that were unfastened, too many bald tires. I pulled in front of her car, snagged the long-handled scraper from under the seat, and pushed the majority of the snow off her vehicle onto the covered street. An hour from now, the car would have been a permanent addition to Main. She came running out and jumped in. She was taller than I thought, or else she just didn’t sink into the snow like I did. “Follow me and drive in my tracks, okay?”
She nodded, and I closed the door.
She dutifully made the illegal U-turn and followed me back up the hill and around the courthouse as we slowly made our way toward the mountains. The red glow of the Log Cabin Motel’s neon wasn’t far and, if worse came to worse, she could walk to all the banks in town from there. I pulled up to the office and got out, ignoring the NO VACANCY sign.
I ushered her to the porch and rang the buzzer on the intercom, pulled her in a little closer to the building, and blocked the majority of the wind with my back. She smelled really good. There was no response to the buzzer, so I pressed my thumb against the button and held it there. After a moment, an angry voice screeched at us through the yellowed plastic intercom. “No vacancy, can’t ya read?” There was no more talk but presently a gaunt individual in a threadbare plaid bathrobe appeared around the counter in the tiny lobby and unlocked the door. “Jesus, Walt, what are you doing out in this?”
I ushered Maggie in before me. “This lady needs a room.”
I took the key from Willis’s wife, Erma, and trudged off into the snow to turn the lights and heat on in one of the cabins at the end of the short lane. It would be a cozy little place but, as I told her, the temperature wouldn’t get above forty for about twenty minutes.
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Well, if you come up with any Declarations of Independence in any of those boxes . . .”
“It’s doubtful, but I could buy you lunch.”
* * *
The trip over to the Durant Home for Assisted Living didn’t take all that long, just a couple of blocks of backtracking. When I got there, there was an EMT van waiting at the main entrance, not a completely novel experience at the place but still a little unsettling. The doors were closed, but it was still running and the amber lights made racing, yellow ghost-wolves that darted across the brick surface. I pushed the doors of the building open, only to be audibly driven back by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians singing “Ring Those Christmas Bells” at an ear-piercing volume; most of the residents at the home were deaf as fence posts. Dog followed me in. As we went past the Christmas tree behind the abandoned front desk and rounded the hallway leading to Room 32, a slight sense of panic began to set in. The door was ajar as we approached, and I quickened my step, but the place was empty. The chess set was out on the folding table, and it looked as though Lucian had already consumed the better part of a tumbler full of bourbon. Dog looked around with me and followed as we quickly made our way out of the room, back down the hallway, and again toward the front desk.
The Pennsylvanians were still singing as we turned the corner. I caught a glance of the EMT van pulling away, but my attention was drawn to a white-clad attendant. He was being held against the far wall by what I knew to be the strongest grip in the county.
I took the direct route behind the counter, which turned out to be something of a mistake in that my legs got tangled with Dog and the hammer of my .45 snagged the lights on the fully decorated tree, lurching it from the wall in a short spark of holiday exuberance.
It took both hands and all the weight I could leverage to tug Lucian’s hand free from the choking assistant whom I recognized as Joe Lesky. “Well, it’s about goddamned time.” He rolled off me against the far wall and pushed himself up with his arms; he glared at Joe who was massaging his throat and coughing as Dog, who had escaped unscathed, continued to bark.
“Shut up!” Dog stopped and went over and sat beside Lucian as if nothing had happened. I was not so forgiving. I pushed the tree off me. “What the hell is going on around here?”
It was mostly directed at Lucian but, after a coughing fit, Joe was the first to respond. “Mr. Connally was interfering with the transport of a departed client.” He coughed some more and leaned against the opposite wall.
“I want the room behind me sealed up as a crime scene, and I want a full autopsy arranged immediately.”
I stared at him as he looked at the battle-weary tree that lay between us. “Lucian, have you lost your mind?”
It was a bad time for Joe to talk, but he didn’t know that. “Sheriff, I was explaining to Mr. Connally that we couldn’t hold the body of the deceased without the permission of next of kin.”
He wouldn’t look up from the tree. “You got it.”
I disconnected the electric light string from my holster and gave the tree one last kick for holly-jolly good measure. “Lucian, you can’t.”