Kindness Goes Unpunished wl-3

by Craig Johnson

  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 sideboard, 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 fl
attened 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!”

  Two more. 308s slammed through the door above. Vic and I simultaneously ducked as the rounds sped harmlessly down the empty hallway above us.

  Omar took both of the beers from Vic, opened them on his belt buckle, handed her one back, and took a swig from the other as the cap fell to the carpeted landing and rolled down the stairs. “You didn’t, by chance, happen to count how many holes were in the door?” He continued to look after the bottle cap. “There’s only one box of shells for that thing, sixteen in a box…”

  I knew that there was an abundance of weapons in the Rhoades household. “What about all the other guns in the safe?”

  “No ammunition. I moved it all downstairs.”

  They both took sips and looked at me. “Twelve.” I nodded back to the landing. “And two more makes fourteen.”

  Omar nodded. “She’s got two left.” We all nodded, as he casually drew the big. 44 from his holster, aimed it straight up, and fired two shots; the long-barreled Smith and Wesson bucked in his hand. A few pieces of the entryway, elk horn chandelier, and plaster ceiling fell down on us. “Cunt!” The. 308 thundered in response, but this time only once. Omar took another swallow. “Wisin’ up, conserving ammo.”

  I looked at Vic, who looked at Omar. “Any chance of talking to her?”

  Omar laughed, and I looked at him. “Is there a phone in the bedroom?”

  “Yeah.” We traipsed down to the entryway table where an old-fashioned Belgian dial phone sat. Omar picked up the receiver, dialed the number for the bedroom, and handed the phone to me. “She’s not going to talk to me.”

  The phone rang three times before Myra answered. “Bastard!”

  “Myra, it’s Walter…” She slammed the receiver down with an ear-shattering crack. I asked Omar to dial the number again. She didn’t answer this time, but the thunderous report of the. 308 and the brief squall and whine of the line informed us that Myra had shot the bedroom phone.

  I hung up and looked at the two of them. Vic looked back at the landing. “She’s out?”

  Omar agreed. “Yeah.”

  I wasn’t convinced. “How drunk is she?”

  “Pretty damn, but she hasn’t missed the door yet.”

  I crossed the landing, staying to the right, where I knew I could dive into the guest bedroom if she had ammunition left after all. The problem was that the closed door seemed a very dangerous twenty feet away. Credit the carpenters that built the Rhoades mansion-the floor didn’t creak as I carefully made my way around the barricade.

  I had holstered my. 45; I had no intention of shooting Myra.

  With the volume of the music, it was impossible to hear any movement in the bedroom. As Edith Piaf continued singing, I looked at what the 150-grain softpoints had done to three inches of solid wood and felt that familiar weightlessness in the trunk of my body.

  I counted the holes in the door again, but the damage caused by the large-caliber rifle made it difficult to be sure how many shots had really been fired. I wasn’t betting the farm. It did look as if the shot closest to the knob had taken most of the mechanism with it, and the door itself stood ajar about a quarter of an inch, so I opted for nudging the base of it with my boot; it opened four inches. I waited, but nothing happened. I nudged further, gently sweeping it back about halfway before my leverage gave out.

  I took a deep breath to clear my head and stepped through the doorway into the outstretched barrel of the big. 308. She had been waiting, but my left arm was still to my right so, with a sweeping gesture, I carried the barrel down and away from me in a backhanded pull that exploded a round into the floor. The sound in the room was just short of deafening.

  I was going to kill Omar.

  I made a grab for the front stock but missed as she stepped back, and the seemingly endless length of the bolt action swung up.

  I had forgotten how good-looking Myra was, and the yearlong sabbatical in France with close to forty-eight million dollars had done her no harm. She had long, blond hair, the kind you see on the covers of magazines, and perfectly tanned skin that I’m sure had been kissed by the French Riviera. She was wearing a pink mohair cowl-neck sweater that barely reached the top of her thighs, and that was all. She was tall and lean, with strong, capable hands. The honking diamond that Omar had married her with was still on the left hand that pointed the rifle at my face. Above the scope was the palest blue eye, and as my lungs froze, the barrel dipped a little, and the sweater-matching pink lips smiled as slowly as glacial encroachment. I listened to Piaf singing “Le Chevalier de Paris” or “Mon Legionnaire,” I wasn’t sure which, and thought about how this wasn’t the worst way to go.

  The powder blue blinked, and I settled on “Le Chevalier de Paris” as the little bird trilled and softly breathed out her lovingly aching words.

  Myra sagged a little, almost as if someone had punched her, and tossed the rifle aside. She stepped forward, her arms outstretched around my neck as the sharp fragrance of raspberry vodka scoured the inside of my nose and her sweater bottom rose higher. “Walter…”

  “Good thing she likes ya.” He brought his queen out. It was the second game, and my plans for an early evening had gone the way of my three pawns, two rooks, and a knight. I went with the other knight and felt a shadow of impending doom as his bishop slithered along diagonally. The stem of his pipe swung around and pointed at me like the barrel of a gun, the second of the evening. “You get ’er outta the house?” The pipe returned to his mouth.

  I leaned back in the horsehide wingback chair and placed my hat on my knee. The old sheriff wasn’t ready to end the evening and skimmed the other bishop across the board for a completely different attack on my king. “She’s at the End of the Trail Motel over in Sheridan; flies out tomorrow.”

  It was quiet in the room as the old sheriff looked at me. Lucian’s mahogany eyes flickered in the half-light of the kitchenette behind us. He shook his head. “Well, ya know how my marriage experience ended.”

  I did, and we sat there in silence for a while before I admitted a prejudice. “I hate the domestic stuff.�
��

  He nodded and watched me. “Like the third man in a hockey fight, ya get the blame and get the shit kicked out of you for yer troubles.” He waited as I made another inane move. “I hear Kyle Straub’s got signs up all over town.”

  I took a sip and crunched one of the cubes. “I heard that too.”

  “You gonna stand?”

  “I don’t think I’ve got any choice if I want to get Vic in.”

  He shrugged. “I’d vote for her, but I’ve got the weakness.” Lucian was referring to his habit of addressing Vic’s chest as if it had an identity of its own. “The rest of Absaroka County is another question. Now, you can make sure she’s the next sheriff, but it’s gonna cost you a year or two of your life.” I made a face. “But then, I didn’t know yer life in office was so damn bad.” His gaze dropped back to the board. “Check.”

  I looked at the assembly of courtly pieces and placed a finger on my king, casually toppling him over to premature death. “Yep, well…no act of kindness goes unpunished.”

  2

  It took five days to get the three of us to Philadelphia. He didn’t let me drive. He drove only during daylight hours, and he went fifty-five the whole way. I read the AAA books as we drove across the country, even though I had an inkling that the Cheyenne Nation had not appreciated my oratory since Iowa, and I decided that the majority of the United States consists of gently rolling hills with light industry. I was still reading as we loped across the Schuylkill Expressway with the top down, eased off the 15th Street exit, took a left on Race and a stately right on Broad. “‘It was a gentleman’s agreement in 1894 that no skyscraper built would be taller than Penn’s hat, but in 1986 all bets had been called off, and now the majority of the fifth largest city in the country looks down on Billy Penn and City Hall.’”

  Henry carefully parked the big convertible in front of a high-Victorian gothic building and cut the engine. “You can stop reading now. We have arrived.”