She stirred the coffee into the sugar and spoke into the mug. “That monkey pud Kyle Straub’s got signs up all over town.”
“Yep, I heard.”
Saizarbitoria leaned in and joined the conversation. “Vern Selby was talking very highly about Mr. Straub in the paper yesterday.”
“Yep, I read it.”
All our radios blared for a second. Static. “Unit two, 10-54 at 16, mile marker four.”
We looked at one another. Ruby had made a crusade of using the ten code in the last few weeks, and it was turning out to be a royal pain in the ass for all of us. I was the first one to guess. “Intoxicated driver?”
Vic was next. “Road blocked…”
Saizarbitoria took one last sip of his coffee and slipped off his stool; he knew the chain of command. He clicked the mic on his radio. “Ten fifty-four, roger.” He looked at the two of us and shook his head. “Livestock on the road.”
Vic and I shrugged at each other as she tossed him the keys. She sipped her sugar as he hurried out. “Do let us know.”
Vic hitched a ride with me. As we walked up the steps of the old Carnegie Library that housed the Absaroka County jail and offices, I could smell her shampoo and the crab apple blossoms. We were about halfway up the steps when she stopped me with a hand on my arm. I turned to look at her as she leaned against the iron railing and slid that same hand up the black-painted steel bar. I waited, but she just looked off toward Clear Creek, where the cottonwoods were already starting to leaf. She glanced back at me, irritated. “You still planning on leaving tomorrow morning?”
I adjusted the book of fairy tales under my arm. “That’s the plan, at least mine.”
She nodded. “I have a favor to ask.”
“Okay.”
She sniffed, and I watched as the wrinkles receded from the sides of her nose like cat whiskers. “My mother wants to have lunch with you and Cady.”
I waited a moment, thinking there must be more. “Okay.”
She continued to look off toward the creek. “Super Cop might be too busy, but my mother is feeling negligent in her attentions toward your daughter.” I watched as the muscles of her jaw flexed like they always did when she mentioned her father.
“Okay.”
“I mean…It’s not a big deal. She just wants to have lunch.”
I nodded again. “Okay.”
“You can go to my Uncle Alphonse’s pizzeria—it’s nothing special.”
I smiled and dipped my head to block her view. “I said okay.”
She looked at me. “It’s a family thing, and like most of the family things concerning my family, it’s fucked up.” She sighed. “I mean…they should have gotten in touch with her a long time before this, but in their usual, fucked-up way…”
“We’ll have lunch.” I watched as she studied her Browning tactical boots. Her dark hair stood up in tufts of dissatisfaction. “I would love to meet any of your family.”
“Uh huh.” Nothing was ever easy with Vic; it was one of her charms. She started up the steps without me. “Just don’t expect too much.”
I shook my head, followed her, and caught the beveled-glass door as it swung back into my face. I gently closed it and walked by the photographs of the five previous Absaroka County sheriffs. I saluted the painting of Andrew Carnegie as I mounted the final steps to the dispatcher’s desk where Ruby sat reading the last series of updates from the Division of Criminal Investigation down in Cheyenne. “What the hell is a 10-54?”
She raised her blue eyes and gazed at me through her salt-with-no-pepper bangs. “Ferg says that he’s 10-6 today if he’s got to work the next week and a half solid, and I’m 10-42 as of five forty-five for my church’s ice-cream social.”
I decided to ignore the flurry of tens. “Did he go up to Tongue River Canyon?” She nodded. The Ferg was my part-time deputy who made a full-time habit of harassing the local aquatic life with his hand-tied flies. He was going to have to take up some of the slack while I was gone, so I didn’t begrudge him a day casting bits of fur and feather upon the waters. “Any Post-its?”
“Two, and that young man who is supposed to come in this afternoon.”
“What young man?”
She shook her head. “The young man from Sheridan who applied for the other deputy position in Powder Junction. He said he’d be here before five.”
I sat on the corner of her desk, looked at the time on her computer, and reached down to pet Dog. “Then he’s got twenty minutes.”
The beast’s head rose, and Ruby examined the scar that a bullet had left near his ear; a tongue the size of a dishwashing rag lapped my hand. “Lucian called to see if you’d forgotten it’s chess night.”
“Damn.” I was going to have to go over to the Durant Home for Assisted Living to see the old sheriff.
“Cady called.”
“She’s changed her mind and doesn’t want us to come after all?”
Ruby wadded up the second Post-it and dispatched it with the first. “Not likely. She says for you to bring along your gun because she wants to take you to her shooting club on Thursday.” We looked at each other for a moment, and then she raised an eyebrow. “Shooting club?”
I scratched the corner of my eye, where the scar tissue had healed. “It’s this thing that Devon Conliffe’s got her involved with.”
She smiled. “Devon Conliffe again?”
“Yep…” I didn’t sound all that thrilled, even to myself.
“This kid’s got you worried.”
She watched me scratch my eye for a moment longer, then reached up and pulled my hand away. I thought about it. “Methinks she doth protest too much.”
Ruby shook her head. “She’s scared you’re not going to like him.” She carefully released my hand. “He’s young, handsome, accomplished, and makes about six times what you do on an annual basis. He has wooed and infatuated the most beautiful, intelligent, and precious woman that you know.” She watched me with a smile. “It’s perfectly reasonable for you to hate him.” She batted her eyelashes. “Ten twenty-four?”
I looked at her for a moment, then trailed off to my office and wondered if anybody would notice if I slipped out the back. I sat at my desk and thought about calling the Bear to see if he didn’t want to get going early. He wouldn’t. I hit the second automatic dial button and listened as the phone rang at Henry’s going concern at the edge of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation—free parking, no minimum.
He snatched it up on the second ring; it was his signature. “It’s another beautiful day at the Red Pony Bar and continual soiree.”
“Can we leave early?”
“No.”
I hung up. There wasn’t any reason to argue; I’d lose. I stared at the old Seth Thomas clock on the wall, thought of my packed bags by the door of my cabin, and sighed.
I punched the first number on my automatic dialing system and listened to the phone ring one thousand nine hundred thirty-six and one quarter miles away, to the place where my heart was on sabbatical.
“Schomberg, Calder, Dallin, and Rhind. Cady Longmire’s office; can I help you?”
Patti with an “i.” “Hi, Patti, you guys are working late.”
“Yo, Sheriff. We’ve got a brief that has to be filed by tomorrow. How’s things out in the Wild West?”
I leaned back in my chair and set my hat on my desk. “Uninteresting.” I threw my feet up, something I rarely did, and almost flipped over backward. I grabbed the edge of the desk to steady myself. “Is ‘The Greatest Legal Mind of Our Time’ available?”
There was a clicking noise and the phone rang half a ring before she picked up. Near as I could figure, Schomberg, Calder, Dallin, and Rhind were getting their collective money’s worth. “Cady Longmire.”
I smiled in spite of myself; she sounded so grown up. “You’re a punk.”
There was silence on the line for a moment, then a slightly plaintive voice. “Have you left yet?”
“No, the Indian isn’
t packed.”
Another short silence. “Is he still carrying the photographic find of the century around in hatboxes?”
“Probably. What’s this stuff about bringing my sidearm?”
A quick sigh of exasperation. “I told you about it. Devon and I go to this shooting club over on Spring Garden on Thursday nights.”
I was bored and decided to use up a little time arguing. “Why?”
Another, longer, silence. “It’s something to do, Daddy. Don’t start making judgments.”
“I’m not. I just don’t understand why you and a bunch of lawyers feel compelled to go out and shoot things on Thursday nights.”
“We don’t ‘feel compelled’ and we don’t ‘shoot things.’ We go to a registered firing range, where we take out our secured weapons from the locked trunks of our cars, apply for our assigned ammunition, and shoot paper targets under the careful eye of a licensed instructor. He’s an old fart, an Army guy like you.”
“Marines.”
“Whatever.” She sniffed and got soft again. “I just thought you could meet him. It would be nice.”
“Is this a Devon thing?”
Her voice turned sharp. “Bring your gun or don’t. You’re being impossible, and I have to go.”
I looked at the phone. “I’ll bring it.”
“Whatever.”
The phone went dead in my hand. I put my feet back down, placed the receiver on the cradle, and thought about how I was making friends and influencing people. I thought about closing my door and taking a nap but, when I looked up, a tall, slim young man with sandy hair was looking at me through the doorway. “Sheriff Longmire?”
“Yep.”
“I’m Chuck Frymyer.” I stared at him. “About the job in Powder Junction?”
I motioned for him to sit down and pulled his file from the pile on my desk. Only a month earlier, we couldn’t get two deputies to rub together, but now we’d had over a dozen applications for the job. Frymyer had the most experience, with two years in Sheridan County.
I looked at the young man’s application; he was way over-qualified. I glanced back up at him. “You do realize that this job is our equivalent of the French Foreign Legion?”
“Sir?”
I tossed the file back on my desk. “You’re going to be out in the middle of nowhere. Have you ever been to Powder Junction?”
“I’ve driven through it, on the highway.”
“Under the best of weather conditions, it takes me forty-five minutes to get down there, so I need deputies who can take care of themselves and the southern part of this county.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir.” I looked at him a while longer and figured that, like “Beau” Geste, he must have his own reasons for wanting to go off to the end of the world; it probably had to do with a woman, but maybe that was the romantic in me. With his two years of patrol duty, he’d be a nice addition to Double Tough, the other deputy I had down there. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
I stood up and stuck out a hand. “You may curse me for it later, but you’ve got the job. Get your stuff together and report here on Monday morning, eight o’clock, and we’ll get you sworn in. Sheridan’s uniforms aren’t that much different from ours, but you can wear blue jeans in Absaroka County. Get a badge and a patch set from Ruby at the front desk; we’ll order up the rest. No black hats—we’re the good guys.”
I leaned back in my chair as he smiled. Ruby appeared in the doorway and cleared her throat. “I have some bad news.”
I leaned forward and rested my chin on my fingers, which spread across the surface of my desk. “I’m on my way out.”
“It’s Omar and Myra. They’re shooting at each other again.” I raised my head and looked at her. “It’s a 10-16, technically.” She smiled. “I’m going to my ice-cream social. Have a good time in Philadelphia and give Cady a kiss for me”
And she, too, was gone.
I yelled after her. “Who called it in?”
I heard her stop in the hallway. She came back and picked up my hat, carefully dusting it off and placing it on my head. “Go out there, make sure they don’t kill each other, then go over to the Home for Assisted Living and play chess.” I looked up at her. “I’ll take Dog with me, and if you decide to take him with you, just stop by on your way out of town.”
I drafted Vic before she could get out of the office and told her it was a chance for us to say goodbye before I left; of course, we could also be shot by the matching set of .308s with which Omar and Myra usually held their domestic disputes.
Omar Rhoades was the big dog of international outfitters; if you wanted to kill anything, anywhere, Omar was your man. He led big-game hunts on all seven continents, but the most dangerous game he had ever faced was his ex-wife, Myra. They had been divorced for about a year now, but Myra had left her belongings at the Rhoades ancestral manse, and it was like a ticking time bomb as to when Myra was going to be back. The home they had built together was on the northern border of our county, about halfway up the mountain; if they were serious about killing each other, then they were already dead.
I banked the next turn and gunned the Bullet into the long straightaway.
Vic unlocked the Remington 12-gauge from the center hump. “The gate’s open.”
It was about a hundred-yard shot to the circular turnaround at the main entrance, and I missed the fountain by less than a foot. We slid to a stop, and I jammed the truck into park and unbuckled my seatbelt. Vic was already up the front steps before I could get out. “Hold up! It’s one thing if Omar wants to shoot us, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to be shot by accident.”
I pulled my .45 and looked across the heavy, cherry-paneled door that hung open. Vic jacked a shell into the Wingmaster and looked at me. You could hear music, and I’m pretty sure it was Edith Piaf.
I took a deep breath and, after a second, stepped over the threshold.
Vic’s voice lashed at me from behind. “Well?”
It was dark in the main hall, the gallery windows affording only a flat, yellow light from the dying afternoon. There was no one on the landing and no one in the entryway. “C’mon.” I aimed at the stairway to the left, following the wall with a foot along the baseboard and kicked a broken bottle of Absolut raspberry vodka. There was no liquor on the floor, so the bottle had been empty when it hit. Great.
I looked past the mounted heads that led down the main hall toward the kitchen and passed under the cape mount of a particularly large buffalo. “Omar!”
Omar was a friend, having gone so far as to haul my ass up onto the mountain in a blizzard and fly my daughter, who had been caught in another, from Denver for Christmas, but drunk and full of rage he was capable of accidentally shooting either of us.
Vic moved along the wall next to me. “You want me to check the back?”
“No, we’ll go upstairs; that’s where the music is coming from.” I took another deep breath and peered over the foot of the landing. “Omar?”
The furniture was toppled into the middle of the passage like a makeshift barricade. There were holes in the sideboard and the Chippendale chair, with splintered wood and upholstery stuffing scattered on the oriental runner. I slumped against the wall and looked at my deputy. “Either they’re dead, or they can’t hear us over Edith Piaf.”
I started back up the steps; at least the barricade afforded some defense. At the top railing, I made the turn, thought about the layout of the second floor, and remembered that the master bedroom was at the end of the hallway. It was about forty feet to the door, which was closed, but even at this distance I could see where match-grade loads had traveled through it; ten rounds, maybe, at three thousand feet per second. Since Myra was the one who had been in Paris for the better part of the last year and since the music was French, I assumed it was she who was in the bedroom.
I was looking at the door when I ran my leg into the edge of the sideb
oard, causing the mirror to flip on its pivot and crash to the floor. Even with Piaf, it was a loud noise. I looked at the shards of mirror scattered across the expensive Turkish rug and thought about seven years of bad luck. Edith took a breath, and I made out the distinctive sound of a modular bolt action slamming home.
I dove behind the barricade and flattened myself against the floor as the first round splintered through the wood of the upturned edge of the sideboard. Less than two seconds later, the next round caromed off the door facing and dug into the floor just short of my outstretched right hand. I was attempting to scramble toward the stairway when Vic leaned out from the railing and snapped off two 12-gauge rounds into the ceiling, the salvo allowing me a rather ignoble retreat. I ran into Vic, and we both fell down the remaining steps.
I was lucky enough to have landed on the bottom; she was sprawled across my chest. We looked at each other, and she grinned. “That was close.” We stayed like that for a moment, then she rolled off me and I slid against the wall. We were sitting there on the landing a full ten seconds before we saw Omar. He was standing in the foyer and was eating a ham and cheese sandwich and drinking a bottle of beer.
“What the hell?” He lowered the longneck bottle and cocked his head. “What’re you guys doing? You could get killed up there.” He started up the steps, and I noticed he had a .44 hunting sidearm in a holster at his leg. “I brought you guys a beer.” We continued to look at him. “If you want a sandwich, the stuff’s still out.” He took another sip, and I thought about throwing him over the railing. He motioned for Vic to take the bottles, which she did after shuttling the shotgun under her arm.
“What’s the story?”
He rolled his eyes and pushed his 50X silver-belly hat back from his forehead, the long curls of gold reaching to the collar of his white dress shirt. “She started drinking this morning, after we had a little talk.” He took another bite of his sandwich—I have to admit, it was looking pretty good. “She said she had traded me in on two twenty-year-olds, and I told her she wasn’t wired for 220. The conversation kind of deteriorated from there.” He finished off the beer and threw the bottle so that it shattered against the hand-patterned drywall. He put his hand to the side of his mouth to direct the volume: “Bitch!”
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