The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volumes 1-4 (31 page)

I waited, then sighed, and continued on toward my doom. “Are you through?”

“No, I’m not.” She was off the doorway in an instant and stood directly in front of my desk. She looked like she was about ten feet tall. “I’m thinking I should hand in my resignation.”

“Ruby, I’m sorry.” She glared at me, still not giving an inch. “I was sorry when I did it.” I leaned back in my chair, just trying to get a little distance between us. “I’m mortified. It makes me sick.” I sighed again, looking out my window to avoid those eyes. “How is he?”

“He looks horrible, both his eyes are black and his nose is . . . He has tubes in his nose.”

“Ruby, please . . .” I got up and went around the desk, but she backed away, and the response was ferocious.

“Don’t touch me.”

I went ahead and stepped forward, opening my arms and pulling her in. She didn’t struggle, and I wrapped her up. “I’m sorry. I really am sorry.” I could feel how thin and fragile she was; her shoulder blades stuck out like sparrow wings.

“I am so ashamed of you.”

“I know, I know.” I held her there for a while, just listening to her breathe.

“You know this could be misconstrued as sexual harassment?”

“I hope so . . . How’s Lucian doing?”

I felt her stiffen a little. “Don’t make your problems worse by asking.”

I let her go and held her out to look at her. “Yes, ma’am.” The bell on the front door sounded as somebody pushed it open; we both looked toward the doorway. “You see to that, I’ll go talk to Bryan.” I gave her a quick kiss on the forehead and headed for the holding cells. When I got there, he was lying on his bunk, the remains of breakfast sat on the floor beside him, and the door still hung open. I went in and sat on the opposite bunk again. “Didn’t like your breakfast?”

His arms were folded behind his head, but his face turned to me as I propped my Sorels up on the edge of his bed. “I’m just not hungry.”

“I’d take advantage of the good stuff, we switch over to potpies on the weekend.”

His attention returned to the ceiling. “I’m still going to be here over the weekend?”

“Unless I can find who’s killing your friends.” I waited for a moment, watching him. “Jacob Esper’s dead.” He didn’t move at first, but then his arms came up and covered his face. I officially took him off the list. “I guess Mr. Ferguson didn’t tell you.” I looked at him. “You and George ever go fishing?”

He thought. “Yeah, I mean we have.”

“Where?” He was aware of how important the answer might be, so he removed his arm and looked at me. “Anyplace special? A lake on the mountain he likes best?”

His eyes escaped mine and went to the floor. “Lost Twin, that’s his favorite.”

I was up and out of the cell before I remembered. “Bryan?”

He was already sitting up and looking at me. “Yes, sir?”

“You’re not in here because you did something wrong, you’re here because somebody is out there trying to do something to you, and I’m not going to let that happen.”

I blew through the cell door and rushed down the hall but pulled up short when I got to the front. He did look like hell, with the rolled-up cotton and tubes sticking out of his nostrils and the gauze bandage plastered across the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones underneath both black eyes. He was sitting on the edge of Ruby’s desk when I came in, and he started to get up, but I stopped him. “What’re you doing here?”

“I’m here to work, unless you fired me.”

His voice was thick and nasal; you could tell he was having trouble breathing. “Shouldn’t you be at the hospital or on your way to Billings?”

He stood, even though I put out a hand to stop him. “I’m here to work.”

“You think you can?”

He tried to stand up straighter. “I ain’t hurt that bad.”

I kept trying to see Lucian in him, that little glimmer of the old goat that would make him salvageable. Maybe he was what Lucian would have turned out to be if the old sheriff hadn’t lived in such interesting times. A couple of years in a Japanese prison camp might be just what Turk needed, but I didn’t have a bridge over the river Kwai for him to build, so we had to settle for Powder Junction. “Go out to the Esper place and relieve Henry Standing Bear. Tell him to come back to the office.” He didn’t say anything, just gingerly made his way out the door.

When I turned around, Ruby had her arms folded. “I suppose that’s as close as we’re going to get to an apology?”

“I didn’t fire him.” She rolled her eyes. “Can you get me the Ferg, please?” I gave her a dirty look of my own. “Then if you would be so kind as to try and get Jim Keller on the phone?” This got another questioning look. “Oh, and could you call the Yellowstone County Jail and see if they have frequent lodger Artie Small Song?”

While she attempted to raise Unit Three, I walked over to the window and looked back up the valley. The clouds were just beginning to creep over the lower peaks, and it didn’t look good. We had an opening in the weather but, by my calculations, it was only good for about the next five hours. I needed help—as near as I could figure, about seven million dollars’ worth.

“I’ve got him.”

I turned back and took the mic. “Ferg, where are you?”

Static. “Up from the Hunter Corrals.”

“Turn around.”

There was a long pause. “What?”

“I think he’s at Lost Twin.” I shrugged for my own amusement and Ruby’s. “Appropriately enough.”

A much longer pause. “We’ll never make it in there before dark, and with this weather coming in . . .”

I keyed the mic and held it. “Yep, I know.” I looked over at Ruby. “I’m gonna get us some help. I’ll call you back. All I need you to do is get to the parking lot at West Tensleep.”

Static. “Just the parking lot?”

Static again. “Hey, Ferg?”

“Yeah?”

“Anybody who’s there . . . hold ’em.” I handed the mic back to Ruby, loving it when she didn’t know what I was up to. “Would you add Omar to the phone list?”

“What in heaven’s name for?”

I waited a moment, then batted my eyelashes and stated the obvious, “I need to talk to him.” I crossed the room and took out my keys and hung them on the rack, just in case anybody needed to move the truck. She shook her head and dialed as I made my way back to my office. I sat at my desk and made mental preparations for the coming conversations and for the plan that was just starting to fully develop in my mind. I glanced over at the doorway and around the corner to the safe where we kept the guns. I knew what was in there and made a few calculations on what we would need—all long-range weapons. There were a couple of battered old Remington 700s and a Winchester Model 70 and, as near as I could remember, the Remingtons were .30- 06s and the Winchester was a .270. All good rifles, but I was thinking of the Weatherby Mark V .308 that was lurking in the back. Omar donated it to the library raffle about five years ago, and I had embarrassingly won it, and it had rested in the back of the safe ever since. I wasn’t even sure if I had ammunition for the thing. I remembered the sign at the Marine Corps Scout Sniper School at Quantico that read THE AVERAGE ROUNDS EXPENDED PER KILL WITH THE M16 IS FIFTY THOUSAND. THE MARINE SNIPER AVERAGES 1.3 ROUNDS PER KILL. THE COST DIFFERENCE IS $2,300 VS. 27 CENTS. Shave and a haircut, two bits.

On a whim, I punched up Vonnie’s number and listened to her machine tell me she was unavailable at this time but to leave a message and she’d get back to me as soon as possible. When I hung up the phone, Ruby was at the door; it appeared I was on the road to being forgiven. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Mrs. Keller says Jim’s gone hunting with a friend in Nebraska. She also says that she’s bringing Bryan his lunch and a few things and wants to know how long we are intending on keeping him.”

“Oh, brother . . .” I placed my elbows on the desk and rested my chin on my combined fist.

“You’re going to wish you hadn’t stuck your hand in that hornet’s nest.”

I looked at the blinking red lights on my phone. “Do you think she was lying?”

She crossed her arms and covered her mouth, deep in thought. “It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Yep, it does.” She glanced down the hall toward the jail in an unconscious effort to conceal her thoughts. “When Henry gets here, tell him to go down to Dave’s and get some real winter gear, altitude stuff, and some Winchester .308s.” She nodded absentmindedly and disappeared back toward her desk. “Is this Omar on line one?”

She called back down the hallway, “Line one,” then reappeared in the doorway. “By the way, Artie Small Song is in the Yellowstone County Jail and has been there since Saturday. They want to know if you want him; they say he eats like a horse.”

“Tell them it’s a wonderful offer, but no thanks.” She nodded and disappeared as I picked up the receiver and punched line one. “Omar?”

“Yes.” It wasn’t a happy yes.

I thought for a moment. “Are you aware of the term
posse comitatus
?”

“Yes.”

I listened to the silence on the line and then settled into the plan. “Do you still have that Neiman Marcus helicopter?”

11

“I do not think the last one of these I was in was like this.”

I looked around at the embossed, luxurious, Italian leather interior, but once again my attention was drawn to the swirling countryside as we ascended the east slope at over 160 miles an hour, a fact of which my stomach was acutely aware. “Don’t talk to me, I’m concentrating on not throwing up.”

“I did not know that they come with doors, and the little bud vases are a nice touch.”

“I’m going to make a point of puking on you first and into them second.”

Henry smiled and looked out the other window while balancing the Weatherby Mark V lightly between his powerful hands, completely oblivious to the speed and altitude. He had raided the small area of army surplus in Dave’s sale department near the back door of the sporting goods store and was wearing fingerless wool gloves; one of the old, reflective-green, M1-style jackets with the genuine acrylic fur lining; a pair of Carhartt overalls; and a new pair of Sorels. He looked like a disco Eskimo. “Did Omar really buy this helicopter at Neiman Marcus?”

I sighed and attempted to put a good seat on my internal organs. “It was in the divorce settlement with Myra.”

“So, she bought the helicopter at Neiman Marcus?”

I belched and placed a hand over my stomach. “He bought it for her when they were getting along. When they got divorced, he took it back.” He was silent for a few moments, but I knew it was too good to last.

“Where exactly is the helicopter department in Neiman Marcus?”

I dipped my head and rested it against the barrel of the Remington pump I carried. “Please shut up.”

He considered the rifle between his knees. “Did the Weatherby come from Nordstrom’s?”

The metal felt cool against my forehead as I listened to the whine of the superchargers on the big Bell engine as it fought to carry us through the thermals the cragged peaks below were creating. I thought about my plan. I had to keep reminding myself that nobody else had thought up this harebrained stuff and that I was responsible for my own misery, but we couldn’t have covered this amount of ground on foot. If we saw anything, if we saw George Esper, we would go down and snatch him up, dead or alive, and get out of there like a Neidless Markup bat out of hell. Just the thought of up and down made my stomach flip again.

He must have noticed me closing my eyes. “You want me to tell you about my first time?”

“Don’t tell me it’s Dena Many Camps.”

He smiled, playing with the adjustments on the rifle’s scope and then readjusting them back. “I remember the first time I rode in one of these things. We were doing a hot extraction out of Laos in ’68 with this NVA colonel we were taking down to the magic fishing village on the coast. We had lost about half our patrol and were flying really low, under radar, maybe a hundred feet off the water. He was pretty sure we were going to throw him out, so sure that he decided to take things into his own hands. He must have tried to hurl himself out of that helicopter half a dozen times. On the sixth attempt, he kicked me in the chin. So, I just folded my arms and figured the next time he goes for the door, this fella better learn how to fly.”

I opened my eyes and looked up at him. “And?”

He continued looking out the window. “He did not.”

“What?”

“Fly.”

I thought about it. “Is that story supposed to make me feel better?”

I looked up at the back of Omar’s head. He wasn’t happy about the current situation either. We were just cresting the meadows at the head of the valley, and the treetops swayed as the big rotors batted them away. I looked past the trees to the sky and made a few more calculations on the weather. I picked up the headset from the console beside me, held one of the cups to my ear, and adjusted the microphone. “Omar?”

He turned a little in his seat, and I could see him speaking. “Yes?”

“I figure about two hours before it hits?”

He studied the horizon ahead. “Maybe three, you never know.”

“Let’s make it two; I want to know.”

He nodded his head, and my stomach did a half gainer with a full twist. I thought about all the light aircraft crashes I had investigated in my tenure as sheriff; it seemed like there was one every couple of years. Good pilots, good aircraft, but the mountain weather was always unpredictable. Between the thermals, downdrafts, and quirky winds, I wasn’t sure how anybody kept the things aloft except with a liberal application of positive thought. “Doesn’t this stuff bother you? Just a little bit?”

He looked at me, slightly swaying back and forth with the movements of the helicopter. “No, it does not.” He watched me for a while longer.

“What does bother you?”

“You, thinking I might be capable of murder.”

I looked at him, with the shotgun’s barrel between my eyes, and tried to figure if this was really something he wanted to talk about or if it was just another distraction. In the end, I decided that it didn’t matter. “You are capable of doing it.”

He nodded. “Physically, technically, I suppose so.” He leaned forward a little. “But do you think I would?”