“Son, don’t you recognize the highly decorated peace officer of Absaroka County, Wyoming?”
After telling the deputy to get in his unit and ride surveillance, Wes excused him and drank a cup of coffee while I talked to the manager. Ray Bartlett said a guy had come in and asked for a job, so he had given him an application. The kid had sat in the corner booth till a couple of rodeo cowboys finished up at the buffet and departed. He had worked up his nerve, come up to the register, pulled a .22 pistol from his waistband, stuck it in Wanda Pretty On Top’s face, and demanded the cash. Wanda, figuring the $214 wasn’t worth her life and unsure if the .22 would kill her or just hurt real bad, handed it over. He asked for the change, and she had sighed and then dutifully dumped the coins into a deposit bag. The kid made them get down on the floor, which Wanda said was fine with her ’cause she was dying to get off her feet. Then he told them that if they moved in the next ten minutes, he’d shoot ’em. Ray said that it had been about five when we came in.
Wes filled himself another and motioned toward me, but I declined. “Ray, what’d the kid look like?”
“Tall, thin . . . stringy long hair and a straw cowboy hat.” Ray thought. “Jeans, a T-shirt, and one of them snap-front western shirts.”
I nodded. “Had the tail of the shirt out to cover the gun?”
“Yep.”
“Anything else?”
Ray thought some more. “He smelled, and he had bad teeth.”
I looked to Wes and watched as he plucked the mic from his shoulder and called in the description to the deputies and assorted HPs he had out prowling. We shook hands.
“Thanks, Walt.”
“You bet.”
I walked to the booth and knocked on the table to get Lonnie’s attention. “You ready to go?”
He nodded enthusiastically but kept reading. “They switched the electrical system over to twelve volts.” He looked up. “I don’t know why people do that; the six-volt system is a good one. Um hmm, yes, it is so.”
* * *
I loaded Lonnie, folded up his wheelchair, and let Dog out. I watched as the beast relieved himself and memorized every smell between the lamppost and the truck, then let him in the back and fastened my seat belt. Lonnie was still reading the Shopper, and it was beginning to worry me. “You all right?”
He didn’t look up but continued reading. “Yes.”
I waited a minute. “I apologize for that.”
He still didn’t look at me. “For what?”
“The deputy in there.”
He finally turned his head. “Why should you apologize for him?” I stared through the windshield and started backing out. “Where are we going, Walter?”
I thought Lonnie must have been getting forgetful. “Well, we were going to your doctor’s appointment, but it’s so late, we’ll have to go home and reschedule.”
He looked back at the paper. “Oh, I thought you might want to go get the young man who robbed the café.”
* * *
It was a rundown trailer park on the outskirts of Hardin, the kind that attracted tornados and discarded tires. We cruised the loop and stopped just short of a sun-weathered single-wide with a rusted-out Datsun pickup parked in the grassless yard. A television cast its flickering blue light across the curtained windows, and Wesley Bayles, Ray Bartlett, and I turned to look at Lonnie, who folded his paper and glanced at the number on the dented mailbox alongside the dirt driveway. “This is it, 644 Roundup Lane, Travis Mowry. Um hmm, yes, it is so.”
I shrugged, placed my hat on the dash, and reached my arm behind the seat. “Can I borrow your gun?” Wes handed me his sidearm, and, quietly closing the door behind me, I got out of the truck. I stuffed the big Colt in the back of my jeans as Wes got out on the passenger side with an 870 Remington he’d brought from his vehicle.
I glanced over to make sure the interior lights of the truck had gone out. It was fully dark now, and the trailer park gave me an advantage by not having any streetlights.
I pulled out my wallet, rolled all the cash I had into a substantial wad, and then mounted the rickety aluminum stairs to knock on the screen door. I could make out the kitchenette and the carpet strip that led to what I assumed was the living room. Some reality show was playing on the television, and I had to knock again. After a moment, a weedy looking young woman came to the door and looked at me. She did not open the screen and had the look of someone who had taken life on early, made some bad choices, and had gotten her ass kicked.
I grinned and, making sure she could see the twenty on top, gestured with the bills. “Is Travis around?” She looked uncertain. “I’ve got this money that John gave me to give to him? I know it’s late, but I thought he might need it?” It was a calculated risk, but everybody knew a John.
She still didn’t come close to the screen, and her voice was thin and halting. “You can give it to me.”
Always let them see the money.
I shook my head but continued to smile. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I don’t know you. Is Travis here?”
She didn’t say anything but turned and disappeared.
I took a deep breath, glanced back to the truck, and wondered, if there was trouble, what Wes thought he could do from out there.
I heard footsteps and watched as a tall, lanky young man stopped in the hallway. He wore dirty jeans, boots, and a grimy, wifebeater T-shirt. He was holding a can of Coors Light and smoking a cigarette. “Who’re you?”
“I’m a friend of John’s. I was supposed to bring this money over to you?”
“John who?”
It appeared not everyone knew a John after all. I took another calculated risk—they were working so well. “John from the bar? I mean you are Travis Mowry, right?” I held up the cash. “Something about some money for you?”
Always let them see the money.
He stepped forward, pushed open the screen door, and reached for the roll of bills. I let him have it but then grabbed his wrist and, slipping the .357 from the back of my jeans and lodging it under his jaw, yanked him from the trailer in one heave. I turned the two of us back toward the truck. The doors were open, Wes was running across the yard with the shotgun, and the manager was nodding his head yes.
* * *
Ten minutes later, we were booking Travis Mowry at the Big Horn County jail under the watchful eyes of two Montana highway patrolmen and three deputies, including the one who had questioned us at the Blue Cow. It appeared that the majority of eastern Montana law enforcement wanted to know how, after we’d stumbled onto a relatively cold 10-52, we had apprehended the suspect in less than twenty minutes.
Travis had a four-page rap sheet, starting with his stealing a car at the age of fourteen. He got caught and was remanded to juvenile detention. He got out, stole another car, got caught, was sent to a foster home, ran away, and stole yet another until he graduated to producing methamphetamine in a bathtub. He had done a two-spot in Deer Lodge, where the prison psychologist intimated that it was all a question of comparison, but that if you sat a bag of groceries next to Travis, the groceries would get into Stanford before he would.
The police officers stood a little away from Lonnie but snuck glances at him as he continued to read the Shoshone Shopper in Big Horn County’s basement jail as I finished up my written statement.
Wes tugged at my sleeve. “All right, how did you know?”
I looked at the old Indian, who folded his paper in his lap and waited along with the legendary Wesley Burrell Best Bayles and the collected force for my reply. “Why, Wes, that was just top-flight investigative work.” I looked back at the group and tipped my hat, especially at the narrow-minded deputy. “You fellas have a nice night.”
* * *
I waited. We were racing a 150-car Burlington Northern Santa Fe down the Little Big Horn Valley, another famed site of monumental hub
ris and stupidity. There was a slight breeze rustling the sage and the buffalo grass, the obelisk and markers of the Seventh Cavalry almost discernible in the light of the just-risen moon. Lonnie remained quiet, his veined arm resting on the doorsill, his thick-lensed glasses reflecting the stripe of the Milky Way stretching from horizon to horizon, what the Indians called the Hanging Road.
“Did I ever tell you about that rattlesnake I ran over with my father’s 8N tractor?” I sighed and wondered what sort of pithy homespun philosophy this story would turn out to illustrate. “When I got back from Korea, he had two hay fields, and one was about three miles down the county road. It was a Friday afternoon, and I had just finished cutting. I was a young man, and in a hurry, but I saw this big rattler sunning himself on the road. Not the smartest thing to do.” He chuckled. “He was a big one; had twelve buttons on him—”
“All right, Lonnie, how did you know it was Travis Mowry?” He turned to look at me, hurt at my interrupting his story. “And how the hell did you know that he lived at 644 Roundup Lane?”
He half smiled, and his eyes returned to the stars as he nodded with his words. “OIT.”
I thought about the well-known phrase. “Old Indian trick?”
He continued nodding and carefully pulled Travis Mowry’s Blue Cow Café employment application from the folds of his newspaper. He handed it to me—the form was completely filled out.
“Um hmm, yes, it is so.”
MINISTERIAL AID
The Millennium: January 1, 2000—6:20 A.M.
I was driving south on I-25 and kept sneaking glances through my half-closed eyes in hopes of seeing those first, dull, yellow rays of daylight crawling up from the horizon.
My county in northern Wyoming is approximately seven thousand square miles—about the size of Vermont or New Hampshire—and it’s a long way from one end to the other, especially in times of crisis, so in my line of work it pays to have a substation.
Powder Junction, the second largest town in Absaroka County, straddles the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains and the Powder River country and is forty-five minutes of straight-as-an-arrow driving from Durant, the county seat. This little settlement of five hundred brave souls is where I subject at least one of the deputies on my staff to some of the most bucolic duty they’ll likely ever withstand in a lifetime of law enforcement.
I didn’t make it down here very often—in fact, I hadn’t made it much of anywhere since my wife, Martha, had died a few months earlier. The reason I was here, very hungover and very early on New Year’s Day, was because I owed Turk Connally, the lone member of my Powder Junction staff, a paycheck. I hadn’t gotten it to him on Friday, which was payday, because it was New Year’s Eve. The reason I was driving the hundred miles round-trip to hand-deliver Turk’s check instead of mailing it was that I had gotten into an altercation with the county commissioners over the price of stamps. Since they pay for my gas, I thought I’d teach them a lesson.
As I drove along, with a thrumming headache, I began wondering to whom it was I was teaching that lesson.
Turk generally slept late but especially the morning after a holiday, so I knew he wouldn’t be at the office. I unlocked the door of the old Quonset hut that served as our headquarters south and left his check on the desk.
I was on my way out when the rotary-dial phone rang. I knew that after three rings the call would be transferred to the rented house where Turk lived, so in the spirit of the season I decided to cut the kid a break and answer it. “Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department.”
The voice was female and uncertain. “Turk?”
“Nope, it’s Walt.”
There was a pause. “Who?”
“Walt Longmire, the sheriff.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Walt. I must’ve dialed the Durant number . . .”
“No, I’m here in Powder Junction. How can I help you?”
She adjusted the phone, and I could hear another voice in the background as she fumbled with the receiver. “It’s Elaine Whelks, the Methodist preacher down here, and I’m over at the Sinclair station by the highway.” There was another pause. “Walt, I think we’ve got a situation.”
* * *
My head pounding, I drove the short distance through town and under the overpass past the entrance to the rest stop and turned into the service station. I noticed a late-model Buick parked at the outskirts of the lot over near the sign that advertised gas at $1.54 a gallon to passing motorists, a price that would definitely teach the commissioners. It was still mostly dark as I parked between a tan sedan and a Jeep Cherokee, climbed out of my four-year-old Bronco, which was adorned with stars and light bars, and trudged inside.
There were two women holding steaming Styrofoam cups of coffee who were seated on some old café chairs to the left of the register. They both looked up at me as I stood by their table.
“Happy New Year.”
They said nothing.
“I’m Walt Longmire.”
They still stared at me, but maybe it was my bathrobe.
“The sheriff.” I glanced down at the old, off-white, pilled housecoat, a gift from my newly dead wife. “I wasn’t planning on making any public appearances today.”
The older woman in the purple, down-filled jacket extended her hand. “Elaine Whelks, Sheriff. I’m the one who called.” She looked at the robe again and then quickly added, “I knew Martha through the church, and I’m so sorry about your loss. She was a wonderful woman.”
I squeezed the bridge of my nose with a thumb and forefinger and gave the automatic response I’d honed over the last couple of months. “Thank you.”
The younger woman, heavyset and wearing a Deke Latham Memorial Rodeo sweatshirt, rose and smiled at me a little sadly. “Would you like a cup of coffee, Sheriff?”
I nodded my head and sat on one of the chairs. “Sure.”
The older woman studied me, and she looked sad, too; maybe it was just me, but everybody seemed sad these days. She dipped her head to look me in the eyes. “I’m the Methodist minister over at St. Timothy’s.”
I nodded. “You said.”
“How are you doing, Walt?”
The throbbing in my head immediately got worse. “Hunky-dory.”
Her eyes stayed on me. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen your hair this long.”
I pushed it back from my face, and it felt like even the follicles ached. “I’ve been meaning to get it cut, but I’ve been kind of busy.”
She changed the subject. “How’s Cady?”
I laughed but immediately regretted it.
“Something funny, Sheriff?”
My daughter was in law school in Washington and had been in Crossroads to keep me company over the holidays. I shrugged, thinking that if I could get this over with quick, I could go home and back to sleep, sleeping being a part-time occupation lately. “We had a fight last night.”
“You and Cady?”
I nodded. “She got mad; went back to Seattle.” Breaking off the conversation, I looked out the window. “Maybe you’d better tell me what it is you need my assistance with.”
The preacher sighed and then gestured toward the other woman, who was on her way back to the table with my cup of coffee. “She called me this morning and said that Jason, the young man who works nights, left her a note that a woman was parked at the end of the lot.”
Liz set the large cup in front of me along with a bowl of creamers and some sugar packets; I didn’t know her, so she didn’t know my habits. “Black is fine. Thanks.” I took a sip—it was hot and good.
“We generally don’t pay very much attention to these types of things. People get tired and pull off the interstate; maybe they feel more comfortable over here with someone around than at the rest stop—a woman especially.”
I pulled my hair back again—I was going to have to ask my old fr
iend Henry Standing Bear for a leather strap if I didn’t get a haircut pretty soon—and sipped the coffee, dribbling a little on the table. “Uh-huh.”
“But she was still here this morning when I opened up.”
I set my cup back down. “I see.”
Liz glanced over my shoulder toward the parking lot. “She came over about twenty minutes ago and filled her tank—used the credit card machine and then pulled back there again.”
I glanced behind me, eyeing the vehicle. “She ran it all night?”
Elaine nodded her head. “That’s the only way you’d be able to stay out there, as cold as it is.”
“Local or out-of-state plates?” They both looked at me blankly as I turned my cup in the coffee I’d spilled. “Did you talk to her?”
“I did.” Liz pointed at the minister. “And then I called her.”
Looking back at Elaine and then over to Liz, I thought about how in some instances my staff and I also contacted the local clergy to provide assistance to needy travelers. “She needed ministerial aid?”
The two women looked at each other, then the pastor turned back to me. “She says she’s waiting on the Messiah.”
I laughed. “Aren’t we all?”
Elaine leaned in close but then retreated a little, probably from the smell. I hadn’t been bathing regularly, being so busy sleeping. “I’m serious, Sheriff. She says she’s supposed to meet Him. Here. Today.”
I wasn’t sure if I’d heard her right. “Jesus?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus.” I sighed, glancing around trying not to cast aspersions, but it was hard. “Returning after two thousand years and He chooses the Sinclair station in Powder Junction, Wyoming?”
“Apparently.”
I ran my hand through my beard. “Well, I guess I’d better go talk to her.”
As I stood, Elaine held out a roll of breath mints. “Maybe you should have a few of these . . . for the coffee, you know?”
Liz touched the stained sleeve of my bathrobe but only briefly. “And, Sheriff?” She looked out the window. “She has a knife.”
Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories Page 2