The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volumes 1-4 (128 page)

It was Westmoreland’s capstone.

It was déjà vu and Dien Bien Phu all over again.

It was Masada.

I wasn’t sure what I thought I was going to do once I got there, but I figured something would turn up. More than eight thousand personnel were there, more than three times the size of my hometown, and I guess they had caught my attention, too. They were Marines in trouble, and I didn’t want to have had the chance to go and then have to say that I didn’t. I couldn’t say that my head was the clearest it’d ever been, but sitting at Tan Son Nhut and enjoying the sunsets was driving me crazy, and I knew I had to get out.

I studied the canvas webbing of the jump seat and then the black plastic surface of the M16A1 that seemed to absorb what light there was. In basic, they’d given us honest-to-God comic books to tell us how to operate and maintain the rifle—it made the M16 seem even more like a toy. There was even a shapely cartoon blonde who told you important things like you should never close the upper and lower receivers with the selector lever in the auto position, or how to apply LSA, which stood for Lube oil, Semifluid, Automatic weapons. I thought of another blonde, a night at the Absaroka County Fair and Rodeo, about a slow dance that had ended with a soft kiss. That was the thought I settled on for the remainder of the flight, until the buffet of air currents reminded me what I was doing and where I was going.

I glanced over at the navy corpsman and read his name patch, MORTON. When I glanced at his face, he was looking at me. “Quincy Morton, Detroit, Michigan.”

I took the hand. “Walt Longmire, Durant, Wyoming.”

He smiled. “The crazy Indian a friend of yours?”

“Yep.”

He nodded his head. “He’s got that shit right; when this thing touches Mother Earth, it’s di di mau, di di mother-fuckin’ mau.”

I nodded as we flew over the tortured ground and thought about a raw recruit that had asked about foxholes and remembered a sunny sergeant in basic telling us that Marines didn’t dig.

But they had at Khe Sanh.

As we approached in zero-zero, you could see that the fortifications were slapped together in a haphazard manner, with sandbags and tanglefoot wire stretching to the dusty, smoky hillsides and the mist of the night. The landing zone, only a short distance ahead, had circuitous roads and makeshift buildings; it looked like we were landing in a Southeast Asian junkyard.

The ground was shaking, the hills were shaking, and the air was shaking, which meant the chopper was shaking. I could see Henry leaning over the piles of cargo, holding on to a handset and screaming into it as Babysan Quang Sang’s lips puckered and his eyes focused into the darkness from under his pith helmet. The Bear fell back against the quilted bulkhead, turned his face to me, and smiled a stiff smile.

I shifted in the seat. “What?”

He took a breath and then expulsed the words as if he were eager to rid them from his body. “We are backed up. They are bringing in reinforcements, so we have been shuttled off to the garrison.”

“Where’s that?”

“Khesanville.” His eyes widened. “Outside the wire.” I nodded my head, or I thought I did. He leaned in again, and his voice was the most intense I’d ever heard. “Listen to me, when this thing hits the ground, you run. You run and you do not stop for anything, do you hear me?” This time I was sure I nodded. “They are going to be targeting this chopper like a tin bear in a shooting gallery, so you run like you have never run before. Run for the slit trenches, run for the sandbags, but make sure you run till you get to something far from this helicopter.”

“Di di
mau
?”

The Bear smiled, and Corpsman Morton gave me the thumbs-up.

After a moment, Henry leaned back and pulled the CAR-16 closer to his chest, along with the claymore with the detonating device. He pulled out the horse-head amulet and ran his thumb across the smooth surface of the bone.

I dropped the clip on my own Colt rifle and checked the safety. “What about the supplies?”

It took him a moment to respond and when he did, he wasn’t smiling. “We are not in the supplies business anymore.”

* * *

I poured him a cup from my thermos and looked around. There might’ve been more depressing places than the sheriff’s substation in Powder Junction, but I couldn’t think of any.

I’d been here back in the dark ages, when I’d first made the grade with Lucian. The standard used to be a trial period of duty in PJ before being transferred to Durant and the Sheriff’s Department proper. Santiago Saizarbitoria had sidestepped the process, and it appeared that he now realized how lucky he’d been. There was a metal desk, three chairs, a filing cabinet, a plastic clock, one phone, a collection of quad sheets encompassing the entirety of the county, an NOAA radio, and that was about it.

I poured myself a cup and sat in the chair in front of the desk, which allowed Sancho to sit in the command chair. He sipped his coffee but seemed dissatisfied. “Got any sugar?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Any objections if I go over to the mercantile and get some more supplies for the duration?”

“Nope.” I felt like I should be making some effort, so I tried to continue the conversation. “Did I tell you about James Dunnigan?”

“What about him?”

“He thinks his mother makes coffee for him in the mornings. ”

Sancho nodded, a little puzzled. “That’s nice.”

“She’s been dead for almost thirty years.” I sipped from my chrome cap-cup. “Den told me that he bought one of those coffeemakers with a timer and that he explains it to James every day, but every morning James thinks his dead mother makes the coffee.”

A moment passed. “You think he’s dangerous?”

I smiled at the Basquo; he was so serious. “No, I was just making conversation.”

“Oh.” He set his mug on the desk and leaned in. “After Maynard, we go over to the Hole in the Wall Motel and check out Tran Van Tuyen?”

“Yep.”

“I just got the skinny on the Utah receipt. I think you’re going to find this interesting.” I glanced up at the clock and figured we had an easy five minutes for more conversation before the bartender arrived, if he got here on time. “There’s no telephone number on the receipt, so I called up the Juab County Sheriff’s Department, faxed a copy, and got a deputy to run over there and see what she can find out. She called me back and reported that it’s not actually a repair shop, but more of a private junkyard alongside the highway. She said when she got there and found the mobile home in this maze of junk, after being chased around the place by assorted dogs, goats, and a mule ...”

“Okay.”

“... there’s a guy standing outside the trailer, and a woman throwing what appears to be all his stuff at him. The deputy asked him what was going on, and he said that he doesn’t know, that she’s just crazy. The deputy showed him the fax of the receipt, and he said he’d never seen it before. Now, along with most of this guy’s worldly possessions that have come flying out the door was a checkbook, which the deputy picked up and casually compared with the handwriting on the receipt. Dead match. She showed it to the guy as they’re dodging the next salvo, and he admitted that he might just remember the girl. He described our victim and said she rolled up to his gate with a busted water pump and that he fixed it and sent her on her way.

“Sounds plausible.”

“Now, I’d told the deputy about the quarters and that the girl probably didn’t have much money, so she asked him how the Vietnamese woman paid for the repair...”

“She had sex with him.”

The Basquo stopped and looked at me. “How did you know?”

“She used the same morally casual bartering system with the Dunnigan brothers.”

He studied me for a second more. “Well, that certainly establishes a pattern.”

There was the sound of a motorcycle and a knock at the glass pane, and Santiago got up to get it. He opened the door, Phillip Maynard came in, and Saizarbitoria gestured toward the empty seat to my left. The bartender sat, and he looked like he needed it. He looked like he had been up all night.

“How are you, Phillip?”

He sniffed and readjusted in his seat. “I’m good, a little tired. . . . What is all this about?”

“Phillip, I made some phone calls back to Chicago and got some information relating to some incidents that involved you on Maxwell Street, where you’re originally from?”

He looked at the manila folder lying on the edge of the desk. “Uh huh.”

I nodded toward the envelope. “I don’t have to tell you what’s in this, but we both know how seriously some of the charges could be interpreted—two cases of unlawful entry, larceny, one domestic charge, and a restraining order that’s still being enforced.”

“Look, that was a bullshit deal and...”

I held up a hand. “Phillip, hold on a second.” I allowed my hand to rest on the file. “To be honest, I don’t care about any of this. It tells me that you’re no Eagle Scout, but as long as you keep your nose clean in my county, we’ll get along fine. But we do have a problem.” I let that one sit there for a moment. “I think you might’ve lied to me yesterday, or at least you didn’t tell me everything you know. Now, is that the case?”

He shifted in his chair. “Yeah.”

“So, why would you do that?”

He shrugged and sat there, silent for a while. “He paid me.” “Who did?”

“The guy.”

I could feel Saizarbitoria watching me as I questioned Maynard. “Tran Van Tuyen?”

“Yeah, him; the Oriental guy at the bar.”

“Asian, Vietnamese to be exact. What did he say?”

“He asked about the girl the day before yesterday, then came back in and gave me a hundred bucks to not mention his name.”

I glanced up at Sancho, who snagged his keys from the desk and quickly went out the door. “What kinds of questions did he ask?”

“Just if I’d seen this girl or heard anything about her. He had a photograph of her.”

“Did he call her by name?”

“Yeah, it was something like Packet.”

“Did he say anything else?”

Maynard thought and then shook his head. “Just that he knew the car was hers and that she’d run away and he was looking for her.”

“Nothing else?”

He shook his head again. “Nothing, and that’s the truth, Sheriff.”

I walked him out, stood there by my truck, and warned him that if he ever lied again that I’d find a place for him under the jail. He nodded and threw a leg over the Harley and rode off toward the rows of shanty housing at the south end of town.

I was still standing there when the Suburban came reeling around the corner; Saizarbitoria stood on the brakes and ground to a stop in front of me. He started to reach across and roll down the window, but I saved him the grief by opening the door. “Tuyen’s gone.”

I nodded. “What’d they say?”

“They said that he came into the office, paid his bill, hopped in the Land Rover, and took off.”

“How long?”

“About twenty minutes ago. I already called it in to the HPs.”

I thought about it. “You take 192 out to the Powder River, do the loop up toward Durant, and then circle back on 196. I’ll take 191 and 190 toward the mountains.”

He disappeared east, and I headed west.

I was about to make the turn at the underpass of I-25 when I saw the same two kids who had waved at me the day before and noticed that one was wearing a Shelby Cobra T-shirt. They were leaning on the same fence like regular eight-year-old town criers—well, one eight, the other maybe six. I had a thought and pulled onto the gravel. I pushed the button to roll my window down, but before I could say anything, the taller one with the glasses spoke. “Are you the sheriff?”

“Yep. I don’t suppose...”

He grinned and grabbed the younger boy by the shoulder. “I’m Ethan, this is my brother Devin.”

“Good to meet you. I don’t...”

The smaller one piped up. "Are you looking for bad guys?”

I nodded. “Yes. You didn’t happen to see a green Land Rover go by here about fifteen minutes ago, did you?”

They both nodded. "Yes, sir. DEFENDER 90...”

The older boy continued. “Coniston green with the convertible top, the ARB brush/grill guard, and front wing diamond plating.”

I sat there for a second looking at him, wondering what to say after that description, and then fell back on an old western favorite. “Which way did he go?” They both pointed toward I-25. “Did he get on the highway?”

The blond one answered. “No, he went under it.”

“Get on the highway on the other side?”

The one with darker hair responded this time. “Nope. Hey, can we have a ride?”

“Not right now, maybe later.” I saluted them and hit the lights and siren, but this time I left them on, thanking the powers that be for the American male’s preoccupation with all things vehicular. I thought of the Red Fork Ranch and called Saizarbitoria to tell him to turn around and take the 191 leg of the west side of the highway, and that I’d take 190.

The next call I made was to Ruby, who still sounded irritated, and that was without me singing. “What’s the matter?”

Static. “It’s another flood of these e-mails, and I’m getting tired of deleting them.”

I keyed the mic. “Any word from L.A. or Bee Bee?”

Static. "Nothing from L.A., but Bee Bee called and said that this Tuyen fellow inquired about the Red Fork Saturday, so if he was interested in the property, it was a sudden interest.”

“Well, I’m not sure how, but this guy is involved.”

Static. “Have you got him?”

“No, but I’m working on it.”

I hung the mic back on the dash and made the gradual ascent through the red wall country and broke onto the gravel road leading past the ghost town. I had just topped the hill when I noticed the flash of something reflective and slowed. I shut off the lights and siren, threw the truck into reverse, and backed down to where I could get a look into the canyon at Bailey’s ramshackle and only street. The Coniston green Land Rover sat parked along the boardwalk at the far end. I turned the big three-quarter-ton around and pulled off and into the ghost town.

In Bailey’s heyday, it had had a peak population of close to six hundred. The town had had a bank, hotel, hospital, post office, and something you rarely saw in high plains ghost towns: a large union hall, which stood at the top of the rise beside the road leading to the mine.