Most suicides occur as a result of depression, but there are some where the motives are never fully ascertained. This line of thought is of little comfort to the survivors but sometimes helpful to the investigating officer, who can become so immersed in the case that he or she is tempted to slash his or her own wrists.
I flipped on the light in the bathroom and took in the chipped, stained porcelain, the worn tile, and the mold on the shower curtain. The thin towels were still hanging folded on the rod, and the little cakes of soap were still wrapped in paper and sitting beside the unused sample bottle of shampoo/conditioner. Even the toilet paper still had its folded and pointed edge—my compliments to housekeeping.
I turned off that light and moved into the main room, past Gerald Holman’s suit jacket and three-quarter-length parka, both carefully draped on hangers below the chrome shelf where his bone-colored cattleman’s hat still sat, brim up.
Nonetheless, his luck had run out—or he had run it off.
There were more tape lines set up that framed off the area around the bed where Gerald actually shot himself, which was fine by me because I saw no reason to get any closer to the gore.
The majority of the blood was centered not on the bed but on the floor where he slid after he had shot himself. Evidently his upper body had been thrown back by the impact but then had bounced off the bed, which forced his lower body and legs forward where he slipped onto the floor and bled out.
Usually, when an individual shoots himself in the head, the weapon falls from his hand onto his lap, but from the photographs in this case I knew that Officer Holman had been well trained because the Colt Python had still been clutched in his constricted hand, a product of cadaveric spasm. This is a sure sign that the victim died with the weapon in hand; no one could place the revolver there and re-create the same effect.
In the movies, the individual usually slips the barrel of the gun in his mouth, pulls the trigger, and a brief spray of blood fans from the back of his head onto a wall, usually white for cinematic effect, then the victim’s eyes roll back in his head and he falls sideways, leaving a relatively undamaged face with which the mortician can work.
I’ve seen the aftermath of more than my share of suicides, and I’ve never seen one that ended like that; instead, according to the armament, the effects are devastating. The photographs in the folder under my arm told the tale of the Remington 158-grain semi-wadcutter that had traveled through the roof of the investigator’s mouth at over twelve hundred feet per second, taking off the top of his head and the majority of his face from the bridge of his nose up.
I didn’t need to see the soot and powder trace results or the evidence of blowback material on the Colt to know who and what had done the deed—there was only one question that continued to puzzle me.
Why twice?
Because Gerald Holman was shot in the head two times.
The only scenario is that two weeks ago today, he had raised the big revolver up in his left hand and shot himself in the left cheek, then he had placed the barrel of the .357 in his mouth and finished the job.
He had started his career in law enforcement with the Wyoming Highway Patrol in the freewheeling fifties, then had accepted a job as a deputy in the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office in the sixties, where he had been promoted to undersheriff in the seventies, ran for sheriff himself in the eighties, had lost, but then had accepted a position as an investigator; after retirement, he had returned to duty in the Cold Case Task Force that Sandy Sandburg had created for him.
A half century standing behind a badge, Gerald Holman knew where to point a weapon to kill a person.
So why would he shoot himself in the cheek?
There seemed to be only one answer, and it wasn’t contained in the report from DCI. And that was that Gerald Holman did something that, to my knowledge of him, gleaned from his wife, Phyllis, and both Sandy Sandburg and Lucian, he had never done to another human being.
He had punished himself.
2
Aces and eights is a poker hand generally referred to as the dead man’s hand. This particular combination of cards arrived at such notoriety by being the one held by Wild Bill Hickok in Saloon 10 at the time of his demise in Deadwood, South Dakota—a little bit east of where we now sat.
According to popular opinion, Hickok held only four cards—the ace of spades, the ace of clubs, and two black eights—the subsequent draw for the deprived fifth card having been interrupted by Broken Nose Jack McCall, who fired a bullet through Bill’s head that exited his right cheek to rest in the wrist of a fellow card player, the fifth card being the least of Wild Bill’s problems at that point.
Getting breakfast at the run-down café of the same name as the dreaded dead man’s hand was as elusive as Wild Bill’s hole card. The short counter was where the waitress supposedly served meals, but she was a little slow in responding, and getting a second cup of coffee was proving difficult. We’d gotten the first cup all right, but refills appeared to be in high demand, which was strange, since we were the only customers in the place.
Every once in a while the young Hispanic woman who had poured us our initial cup rushed through the restaurant, and we’d ceremoniously hold up our mugs, but she would continue on and out the door.
Lucian watched as the girl breezed in again, once more ignoring our two-mug salute and disappearing through the swinging kitchen doors. “Damn, what’a ya got to do to get another cup of coffee outta that Mexican jumping bean.”
“Lucian.”
He flipped the side of his old hunting coat back, the one that had the 1951 Wyo. Rifle Association patch on the shoulder, and rubbed at the small of his back where the rented bed had not agreed. “What?”
I gazed into the kitchen, where I could vaguely see the smoky visage of the ghost of breakfast future. “I think she’s cooking our Denver omelets.”
“Think they’ll be done before the fire alarm goes off?” The old sheriff studied the massive coffee urn at the bar-back, and I could see him eyeing the prospect of climbing over the counter to get at it.
The young woman passed us again, and we raised our mugs to no avail.
“So, what’d you see up there in room twelve?”
I sat my coffee down and looked at him. “Apparently . . . a man killed himself.”
“I knew I trained you well.” He continued to stare at the brushed stainless steel surface of the coffee urn longingly. “No question about it?”
I swirled the tiny bit of coffee at the bottom of my own cup in an attempt to make it last. “You read the report; look at the pictures?”
“Nope, I just called those assholes over here at the field office, and they made it clear that they were doin’ me some kind of big damned favor by talkin’ to me. They said that as far as they were concerned, he’d killed himself and that was that, case closed.”
I reached over and tapped the thick manila folder that sat between us. “That the investigator who did the scene?”
“Two of ’em.”
“I’ll talk to them, but if I have to I can get in touch with T. J. Sherwin.” I left my hand on the report. “Instantaneous rigor in the strong-side hand, trace elements.”
He nodded. “I figured as much.”
“There’s one thing though.” He turned his head at the tone of my voice. “He shot himself twice.”
I watched the dark eyes sharpen. “With that big .357?”
“Yep.” I sighed. “Wadcutters.”
“Seems like once woulda been enough.”
“If he had wanted it to be.”
He raised his mug to his lips but then, remembering it was empty, sat it back down. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Either somebody else shot him first, or your friend, Investigator Holman, raised that big revolver up and pointed it in his own face and pulled the trigger. Then he stuck
it in his mouth and blew out the top of his head. Now, why does a man do that?”
Lucian scooted his cup toward me, and a sadness seemed to overtake him as he spoke quietly. “I don’t know; I don’t know what comes over a person to be driven to the point where they don’t see any other way out than . . .” His words stuttered to a stop. “I just don’t understand any of it. I guess I’ve fought so hard to keep my life that I can’t conceive of a situation where I’d voluntarily give it up.” The old sheriff sat there moving his jaw in anticipation of the words. “Why would he do that?”
“Possibly to punish himself?”
“For what?”
“I guess that’s what I really have to find out.” I glanced around. “And why here?”
“Hell, he was probably waitin’ on a cup of coffee.”
I repeated the question and then added, “Did you see his house? Spotless; he wouldn’t stay in a place like this unless there was a reason.”
He nudged the handle of his mug with a thick thumbnail. “Maybe he didn’t want to make a mess for Phyllis to have to clean up.”
I sat there quietly for a moment. “Hey, Lucian?”
“What?”
“That story you told me in the Holman driveway about the woman you used to come over here and see on Sundays? That was Phyllis, wasn’t it?”
“By God, I warned her . . .” He turned and looked at me again. “I told her that you were a force to be reckoned with and that if she didn’t want the answers, she better not have you ask the questions.”
“You’ve got a lot of women in your past.”
Absentmindedly, he lifted his mug and then slammed it down. “Yeah, and I’m pretty damned proud of it.”
“Were you driving when she was hurt?”
He pivoted on his stool to look at me, and his glare was like a blast furnace. “No, I wasn’t, and this doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the case.”
I didn’t look at him but stared straight ahead and spoke in a low voice. “Maybe you better tell me the story, and I’ll decide if it does or not.”
“You go to hell.”
“It’ll be a matter of public record, but I’ll be wasting more time looking it up.”
“Wasting time is right . . .”
I didn’t move, and if I’d had more coffee I wouldn’t have drunk it. I did one of the things I do best; ask a question and then wait for the answer—something he’d taught me quite a few years ago.
Our waitress passed through again, once more leaving our mugs like ships in the night. After a while he turned back and thumbed his coffee cup some more. He took a deep breath, and I could feel the emotion leave him. “But I was in the car.”
I continued to wait and then listened.
“We was headed down Route 59 for the rodeo in Cheyenne. Hell, I don’t know, she wanted to see men fall off horses or some damn thing. We’d been drinking. This is back before she was married to Gerald. Hell, they didn’t even know one another . . . You remember how it was, they used to hand you mixed drinks out of the drive-through in every bar in Wyoming—to-go cups.”
“I remember.”
He sighed. “She was in a hurry. Like a damn fool, I bet her a hundred-dollar bill that we wouldn’t make it and let me tell you, she put her foot into that Eldorado and we damn well flew.” His jaw moved up and down, chewing on the words he said next. “Wasn’t even another car involved. We came around one of those big, sweeping turns and the thing just decided it wanted to go to Nebraska . . . She didn’t have on her belt and flew out on the first roll.”
He didn’t say anything more and just sat there.
“You’re not doing this for him; you’re doing it for her.”
He stared into the empty mug.
I let the dust settle and patted the report. “No signs of drugs, alcohol—”
“He didn’t drink.”
“At all?”
“Nope.”
I dwelled on Phyllis Holman. “What did she say about him?” I leaned in closer. “Change in sleeping habits, lack of appetite, sex—disinterest in the job?”
He shrugged. “You’ll have to ask her that.”
“No, you will. You know her, and she’s more likely to open up to you.”
The waitress passed us again and both of our mugs levitated from the surface like some magic act and hovered there before slowly returning, in tandem, to the counter.
“I don’t think I want that.”
I was getting a little annoyed. “Then what do you want?”
He flipped his coat back again, and I thought he was going to rub his back some more, but instead, he quickly drew his service .38 from its holster, extended his arm, took careful aim at the coffee urn, and fired.
The sound in the enclosed space of the café/bar was like a falling tree, and the thing bucked against the bar-back like a wounded felon before spouting a single jet of coffee out onto the floor behind the counter. The old sheriff holstered the Smith & Wesson, hooked the handle of his mug with a forefinger like a talon, leaned forward, and held the cup under the stream to fill it.
The young waitress appeared at the door with both hands at her mouth. Lucian turned his head, grinned, and threw her a quick wave before she backed through the door and ran away.
After filling his mug, he took mine and held it just away from the gusher. “Cup of coffee?”
—
The sheriff’s office in Gillette was a big one by Wyoming standards, and to me it looked like a fort set down in hostile territory. I didn’t know anybody in the outer sanctum—Sandy Sandburg must have been in his office—but they all knew Lucian.
“There was this one time where we had this crazy guy from over our way that was after his wife and her boyfriend and drove over here. Killed both of ’em and was on his way out the door with a pump shotgun.” I watched as the old man’s eyes glinted in the storytelling. “There was a whole mess of us, but you know how those things can go when you’re dealin’ with the deranged—somebody’s gonna get shot.” He shook his head. “The crazy son of a bitch was on the porch wavin’ around that twenty-gauge and screaming and yelling about how he was going to kill everybody, and we’re takin’ cover behind the vehicles when I reached in the trunk of my Nash Rambler for my own scattergun and noticed the vacuum cleaner I had in there.”
I studied the plaques on the entryway wall and noted that Sandy was a member of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, the Masonic Lodge, the Powder River Shrine, Kalif Horse Patrol, Elks Lodge, and the Wyoming Sheriffs’ and the National Sheriffs’ Associations.
“So I fetched the thing out and started walking toward this loony like I was there to sell the crazy bastard a vacuum cleaner.” He turned and swept his eyes over the half-dozen deputies who listened in nostalgic rapture. “I had the thing in there to drop it off to get worked on, but I just walked up to that man and started telling him all about the benefits of having this vacuum cleaner.”
I wasn’t sure if it was the retelling of Lucian’s story or the thought of all those associational responsibilities that was wearing me out, but I wasn’t aware that Sandy was standing beside my chair until I heard him laughing at the old sheriff’s story.
“Well, crazy as a waltzin’ pissant, this guy starts screaming that he’s gonna kill me, but I just kept tellin’ him about the vacuum cleaner and how he was gonna need it to clean up the mess in there . . . Well, sure enough, he starts listening and after forty minutes I traded the crazy son of a bitch the broken vacuum for the shotgun.”
Sandburg tapped on my shoulder and nodded toward the sanctuary of the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office. Unnoticed by the assembly, I stood and followed him down the short hallway; he partially closed the door behind us so that we could still hear Lucian’s voice. “He’ll be tellin’ that story for the next hour, and I’m betting you’ve heard it before.”
“You’d be right.”
He crossed around his large, wooden desk and sat in an oversized, oxblood leather chair. “So I hear you had a lively breakfast at the Aces and Eights this morning.”
“Lucian has a somewhat unique perspective on self-service; I was just along for the ride.”
He glanced at what I assumed was an incident report that had been taken by the nice young patrolman we’d met this morning and straightened the stack of papers on his leather-trimmed blotter. “Mr. Patel of the Wrangler Motel Corporation has agreed to not press charges if you replace the mortally wounded coffee urn today.”
I glanced up at the mounted elk above his head. “Okay.”
“They’ve got nice ones at the Kmart on South Douglas Highway; I had to buy a new one for the bullpen a month ago.”
“Somebody shoot it?”
“Nope, natural causes.” He leaned back in his chair and considered me. “It’s where I get most of my supplies; kind of puts a whole different meaning to blue-light special.”
“Yep.”
He said nothing for a while but then spoke. “You seem kind of down, Walt.”
I shrugged.
“Hey, I heard that little spitfire of an undersheriff of yours got sliced and diced in that cluster down near Powder Junction.”
I studied him back but said nothing.
“Vic all right?”
“Yep.”
He continued to look at me. “You want to talk to Richard Harvey?”
“I suppose so.”
“Good, because he’s standing behind you.”
I got up and turned to meet Gerald Holman’s replacement, a tall man, built like a fence post, with a weathered complexion, wiry hair, an impressive handlebar mustache, and caramel-colored eyes. I extended a hand, and he took it. “Walt Longmire.”
He nodded, sizing me up. “Inspector Harvey.”
I surmised from that that we were on a formal basis.
Sandy spoke from where he sat. “You wanna have a seat, Inspector?”
He placed his big hands in his trouser pockets, the action revealing a badge on his belt and in a holster a 586 S&W .357, the same type of weapon that Gerald Holman had killed himself with, but this one had ivory handles with some kind of medallion inset. “I’ll stand.”
Any Other Name: A Longmire Mystery Page 3