The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volume 1-4

by Johnson, Craig

  The kid looked at me for an extra moment, then turned and renewed the conversation.

  “I had no idea you had deputies that could speak Basque.”

  I nodded. “We try and stay close to the constituency.”

  The old priest glanced back at me, and Sancho weighed his next words carefully. “He doesn’t like you.”

  I glanced at him and then back to Santiago. “He doesn’t even know me.”

  “He thinks he does.”

  I stood and gestured for the younger priest to lead on. “Well, we know when we’re not wanted.” He paused for only a moment and then led me back into the cathedral. It was small by modern standards, but exquisite. It had been pieced together by the sturdy and articulate hands of not only the Basque but also the Scottish, Polish, Czech, and German faithful. They had been tough men who had brought the old ways with them along with the skills to build beauty such as this. I followed the king’s-bridge truss system of hand-adzed beams that held the roof and admired the wide-plank floors with no board less than a foot wide; the altar and the adjoining walls were local moss stone with the lichens flourishing in the cool of the open stillness.

  I took a sip of my cocoa. “Must be tough with all these Basquos around.”

  “It’s difficult, especially with the older parishioners; they’re still not sure if I’m going to last.” He smiled. “They have a saying, the Basque. That just because the cat has kittens in the oven, it doesn’t make them biscuits.”

  I laughed and looked at him. “You’re probably wondering why we’re here. We’re interested in his relationship with his cousin, Mari. Did you know her?”

  Thallon nodded. “Mari? Yes, I did know her. I visited with her last Friday. A terrible shame.”

  I nodded. “Do you know any of the rest of the family?”

  “I’ve met the granddaughter, the one that owns the bakery. Lana?”

  “Seems like a good kid.” The priest remained silent. “Have you met either of the twins?”

  “I’ve met Carol; she’s come over to meet with Father Baroja a number of times.”

  “How many times?”

  He thought. “A half a dozen or so, over a lengthy period. I would imagine that it’s very difficult to visit more often from Florida.”

  “Can you remember when she was here last?”

  He thought some more and exhaled very slowly. “About two years ago, I think.”

  I thought about it. “Was Father Baroja very close with Mari?”

  “No.”

  “That was a pretty definitive answer.”

  “I think there was some tension there.” He glanced back toward the chapel as Saizarbitoria entered from the doorway.

  Sancho asked about the church, the congregation, and the community. As they talked, my attention was drawn back to the stained-glass windows. The stone church wouldn’t get long beams of sunshine today; only short blasts of golden light that illuminated first one window, then another. I watched the seemingly random pattern and wondered if I concentrated would I get the message. Probably not.

  When I looked back, Father Thallon was looking at me. “They have a name for you, you know.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The Basques around these parts, they have a name for you.”

  Saizarbitoria was all ears. “They do?”

  We waited a moment, before the priest said it very carefully. “Jentillak.” They both laughed.

  * * *

  I adjusted the heat in the truck and looked at the Basquo. “Well?”

  “What do you want to know first? There’s a lot of ground to cover.”

  “When is the last time he spoke with his cousin?”

  “Nineteen seventy-nine.”

  I stared at the fog on the inside of my windshield. “That takes care of a lot of the other questions.”

  “That was the last time he saw her alive.”

  I turned up the defroster. “And what does that mean?”

  “She comes to him in his dreams.” He misinterpreted my stare. “He said that she visits him when he sleeps, that she asks for forgiveness. The dreams he described were very vivid, very detailed.” He turned and smiled at me; he was a handsome kid. “I think the old man may have some demons.”

  I thought about my own dreams, about the house and the scarf. “Don’t we all.”

  He adjusted his jacket and mindlessly fingered the knob of the glove box. “He said she was immoral. That he had tried to save her his whole life, that the family considered her their greatest failure.”

  I drove across the unplowed snowpack of Durant’s side streets. Santiago studied the road ahead. “The old priest doesn’t like you because he thinks you’re Lucian.”

  Of course. I nodded and thought about it. “Well, he and Lucian probably didn’t get along.” I thought about filling the kid in, but it still seemed early, so I changed tack. “The old guy seems pretty sharp?”

  He paused, the way I was learning that he did whenever you did something to him and he wanted you to know that he knew it. “Well, yeah, kind of.” Santiago sniffed and glanced back at the dash as the windshield began to clear. “He told me to be careful, that there were laminak in the room.”

  I turned to look at him. “Laminak?”

  He chewed his lip. “Fairies.”

  I sighed and made a turn. I had the Old Cheyenne, he had the fairies, and it was all in how you looked at it. “Anything else?”

  “I think that about covers it.”

  I pulled out onto the main drag and started for the office, barely being missed by an inattentive truck driver. He slowed after he saw the lights and the stars. “All right, what the hell does Jentillak mean?”

  He smiled to himself, happy to know something I didn’t. “There are these dolmens, like Neolithic monuments, all over the mountains back in the Basque lands.” He continued to smile. “The Jentillak are a people that once lived alongside the Basque. One day a strange storm cloud was seen in the east and the wisest of the Jentillak recognized it as an omen that their time had ended. They marched off into the earth, under a dolmen still there in the Arratzaran valley in Navarra.” I glanced at him, and he savored the moment. “Jentillak means giant.”

  I drove along silently and thought about it. “Giant, huh?”

  “Yeah.” He looked back out. “There was a Jentillak who was left behind whose name was Olentzero, and he explained that they had all left because Kixmi had been born.”

  I nodded. “Who was this Kixmi character?”

  Santiago looked out into the slight sifting of snow and Christmas lights. “Jesus.”

  * * *

  I dropped Sancho off at the office just as Vic was heading out to a chimney fire on the south side of town. I waved as Saizarbitoria jumped in her unit, and she flipped me off.

  It was a quiet day at Durant Memorial, with only a few cars in the lot. “ Janine, is Isaac Bloomfield still wandering around in here?”

  She traced a finger down the register and smiled. “You’re in luck, he’s making his late morning rounds.”

  I thought about the eight-five-year-old man who had been knocked unconscious only two days ago. “His rounds?”

  She nodded. “He has been stalling out in the B Ward dayroom about this time.”

  I leaned against her counter and rested my chin in the palm of my hand, happy to discover the Doc was human. “Well, we’re none of us getting any younger.”

  She smiled. “That’s not why he stalls out.”

  * * *

  Lana still looked like a Hindu, but she had obviously gotten supplies from home since she now wore flaming red silk pajamas, a white terry-cloth bathrobe, and pink bunny slippers. The most recent copy of Saveur magazine lay open in her lap. “Looks like you’re settling in.” It was a kooky smile, but a warm one nonetheless.

  “I’ve decided to treat this like a spa vacation.”

  Isaac was seated on the ottoman next to the bunny slippers, the picture of the attending phys
ician. “Well, Doc, what’s the prognosis?”

  He continued to smile at her and, if I were a betting man, I would have labeled him as smitten. “If we can get the patient to stop playing with her head, we can probably save it.”

  I stood by the plastic chair. “Stop playing with your head, or it’ll end up looking like my ear.” I glanced over at the Doc. “Or his head.”

  “I like your ear and his head.”

  Okay, I was kind of smitten, too. “Lana, I need to talk to the Doc. Will you excuse us?”

  Isaac and I codgered our way out to the hallway, where I stopped. I didn’t see any reason to drag the Doc any farther than I had to. “How’s Lucian?”

  “Asleep in the lounge; it’s where we’ve both been staying.”

  I nodded. “Isaac, I need to ask you a question, and the situation being what it is, I don’t have a lot of time for niceties.”

  He leaned against the smooth wall of the hallway and crossed his arms. “Yes, Walter?”

  I hitched my thumbs in my gun belt and then shifted them to my jacket. It was enough that I wore a gun around Isaac; there wasn’t any need to broadcast the fact. “This human suppository, Charlie Nurburn, did he leave any illegitimate children that you know of?”

  He sighed deeply. “This concerns the case at hand?”

  “You know, a lot of people have been asking me that lately.” I waited to see if police prerogative would override medical confidentiality. I hated leaning on the old guy, but I needed some answers and, after all, we were talking about ancient history.

  “There were a number of women.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Perhaps an Indian woman.”

  “I’m still listening.”

  He took off his glasses and cleaned them with the corner of his smock. “I don’t know her name, or if I did, it has been too long, Walter.”

  “When?”

  “Early fifties. I could check my private journals and give you an exact date, perhaps a name.” I studied the small indentations at the Doc’s nose, where the same glasses had sat for a half a century. “I have those journals here.”

  I straightened a little. “Here at the hospital?”

  “In my office here.”

  I laughed because it was all I could think to do. “Why would you have those specific journals on hand?” He looked ashamed but not particularly guilty.

  “I was transcribing some historic familial selections for the young lady.”

  “Lana?”

  He smiled and shook his head at himself. “Foolish, yes?”

  I smiled back at the charming old man and gently put my arm around his narrow shoulders. “Isaac, everything to do with women is foolish and, therefore, absolutely essential.”

  11

  “I need to do a little cleaning up.”

  His diaries were piled on the desk and looked like old ledger books, the kind that businesses used to use for accounts and which the Lakota used for painting. He sat in the only chair, and I propped myself against an unoccupied corner of the desk.

  I watched as Isaac deftly slipped a journal from the stack. It was the oldest of the tomes, and I was beginning to feel like some cleric in training. “My notes are not as complete as I hoped but perhaps something is relevant.” The thin finger with the yellowed nail traveled along the lines like the carriage on a typewriter, pausing here and then there; finally, it stopped.

  “Something?”

  “It was when I first started the clinic north of here near the reservation.” He looked up at me, his fingertip still on the spot. “December eighth, 1950, a boy, six pounds, two ounces.” He looked back at the ledger. “No name was given to the child at that time.”

  “You think this baby was Charlie Nurburn’s?”

  He carefully placed the book on the surface of the desk as if the years were in danger of tumbling out, and I thought about all the time that had been collected between the lines. “Acme was a hamlet up near Tongue River, small, even then. Once they stopped producing coal, it became even smaller.” He looked up at me with a thin smile. “It is difficult to hide things in small places.”

  “What was the mother’s name?”

  He watched me through his overlapped eyelids, which were magnified through the bifocals. He checked the ledger. “Ellen Walks Over Ice.”

  I hadn’t moved since he had spoken. “Ellen Walks Over Ice . . . not Anna Walks Over Ice?”

  He looked at the ledger again. “Ellen.” His eyes locked with mine. “Anna Walks Over Ice is the woman that works at the Durant Home.”

  I looked back at him for only a moment. “Can I borrow your phone, Doc?” He looked around, finally giving up on the landline and handing me the cell phone from his smock pocket. Isaac didn’t have any staff, so he could have anything he wanted. “Isaac, what’s the number for the home?” The phone made a loud beeping noise. “I think you have messages.”

  “I’ll check them after you make your call. The phone was in my car, and your new deputy, the young man, was kind enough to return it to me. I get most of my messages through my answering service, but sometimes people don’t want to talk to anyone but me.” He took the mobile, dialed the number for me, and handed it back.

  Jennifer Felson answered. “Jennifer, is Anna Walks Over Ice working today?”

  “Let me check.” I waited as she dropped the phone, picked it up, rustled some papers, and declared Anna Walks Over Ice missing for the day.

  “She’s sick?”

  “She’s an Indian. Sometimes they don’t show up, and mostly they don’t call.” Racial slurs aside, most Indians did have their own sense of time; these priorities had worked fine for centuries, so I guess they saw little reason to change. “She doesn’t speak much English anyway.”

  I dialed the number for the Red Pony and asked Isaac which button to push. “Ha-ho, it is another wonderful day at the Red Pony bar and continual soiree.”

  “Hey, do you know where Anna Walks Over Ice lives?”

  “No, but I can find out.”

  “Can you check on her for me?” He said he would, and then I asked him if he’d ever heard of Ellen Walks Over Ice. He said no, but that they were a large Crow family. He would ask Lonnie and then get back to me.

  “Call me at the office.”

  I handed the tiny phone back to Isaac and watched as he hit a few buttons and held it to his ear. He looked at the journal as he listened. “I have her age listed as late teens, possibly early twenties.”

  “So she’d be in her seventies?”

  He smiled. “You don’t have to make it sound so old.”

  I glanced for the ghostly numbers on the inside of Isaac’s arm but the sleeve of his smock hid his dreadful distant past. “She probably hasn’t had as easy a life as you, Doc.”

  He continued to smile and nodded. “You’re probably right.” He made a face as he listened to the cell phone. “That’s strange. The messages are from Anna.” He waited for a moment, listening. “She sounds very agitated.”

  Evidently, the Doc spoke Crow.

  * * *

  When I got back to the reception desk, the more tanned and less anxious version of Kay Baroja was standing at the counter talking with Janine about how easy it was to get certified as a scuba diver in a three-day crash course in the Keys. I thought about slipping out the side door, but I needed to talk to her and this was the first time I’d seen the twins apart since she’d arrived. “Carol Baroja-Calloway?”

  She turned with a smile like a barracuda. “Carol Baroja, period!” There had been some work done, the face a little tighter, the lips a little fuller, and the hair with bleached sun streaks. She smiled a perfect smile, the teeth a little too white, and extended a hand with no trailing bracelets or wedding ring. “Sheriff Longmire, I am so pleased to meet you!”

  Yikes. I smiled. “We’ve met.”

  She leaned in and exposed a formidable cleavage, which also looked engineered. “I was hoping you would forget.” She scooped up my a
rm and steered me toward the chairs at the other end of the waiting room. “I just wanted to apologize for my sister’s behavior. Kay can be rather trying.”

  “That’s all right. I didn’t take any of it personally.”

  “Even the part about being a son of a bitch?” She sat us on one of the sofas; if she had been any closer she would have been lap dancing. She was still holding onto my arm. “I was on my way in to check on Lana, but this is just too good of an opportunity to let pass. I just want to thank you for taking such a personal interest in my mother’s death and Lana’s welfare.”

  “It’s nothing, I . . .”

  “No, you have no idea how reassuring it is to know that we can depend on you in these difficult times. Is that horrible young woman from the division of criminal investigation still bothering you?”

  I thought about it, finally remembering that she was talking about Cady. “Continually.”

  “I’m so sorry.” She blinked, the steady way that contact lens wearers do. “Are there any leads as to who might have done this to poor Lana? The word is leads, isn’t it?”

  I nodded and readjusted, but she still clung to my arm. “We’re following up on it, but there isn’t anything strong enough to discuss just yet.” She continued to look at me, and it was the first pause since the conversation had begun. “Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”

  Another pause, and the grip on my arm lessened. “I’m not a suspect, am I?”

  I cleared my throat. “When was the last time you visited your mother?”

  She thought. “About two years ago.”

  “And what was your relationship like?”

  The animation in her face subsided for a moment, and I think I was getting the first unrehearsed performance of the day. “Did you know my mother, Walter? Do you mind if I call you Walter?” She measured her next discourse. “In a word, she was a pickle. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think my mother had a very easy life.” That was the understatement of the century. “And I think that that had an effect on her financial views.”

  “I see.” I was wondering how long it was going to take for the money to come up.

  “She had a simplistic view of our financial situation, all our financial situations.”