Depth of Winter

by Craig Johnson

  “Most of the local police are corrupt, and the machismo of the local men does not help. These young women, in their eyes, are abandoning the responsibilities of children and home and are taking jobs from the men.”

  “So it’s okay to kill them?”

  “They are seen as expendable.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  He swallowed. “I do not think that you should get your hopes up that your daughter is alive.”

  I braced a hand against the seat and then shook my head. “He wouldn’t kill her, at least not until he has me. She’s the only guarantee he has.”

  “Have you spoken with her since she has been missing?”

  “No.” I stared at the bag of guns next to my boots. “We’re headed south, toward the nature preserve?”

  “Yes, but first we must visit a man, a friend who is more knowledgeable about the area where we are going than any of us. Now he is a doctor, a very good one, but in his youth, he was famous for his hunting skills and was a member of the CISEN. His name is Adan Martínez.” The Seer grinned. “He is a cabrón—a bastard, but he is my friend.”

  “What’s CISEN?”

  “Our country’s version of your Central Intelligence Agency.”

  “What did he hunt?”

  “Jaguars.”

  I grunted. “Sounds treacherous.”

  “It is really his sister you must stay away from—the Bruja de la Piel.”

  Alonzo called over his shoulder for my benefit. “The Skin Witch—she is very dangerous.”

  We sat in silence as Alonzo drifted to the left. The dust broiled up behind us on a dirt road that seemed to stretch on till yesterday. I tilted my head back on the roomy seat and stared at the stars that didn’t seem so much different from the ones back home.

  I had powerful backup, but I wasn’t so sure they would be able to find me where I was going. How would they follow my trail, or even have an idea of where I actually was? There are things I could’ve arranged better, but I knew I needed to get Cady back as fast as I could and the only way to do that was to first find her.

  I pulled my hat over my eyes after a while, figuring at this point one part of the desert was pretty much like any other. I hadn’t gotten much sleep lately and didn’t figure I was going to be getting any in the near future, so I closed my eyes. In the darkness, I could only see the two giant rock towers that were pictured on the vintage linen postcard that I had received in Durant, Wyoming, with the postage mark from Juárez, Mexico.

  Gemelos de Roca was the name given to the geologic formation on the card, with a dirt path tracing its way between the pinnacles, a few gnarled cactus, and a lone, sad-looking burro standing on the trail, evidently placed there for scale.

  I had memorized every aspect of the postcard in my pocket, the faded crosshatches and the texture of the paper in the light blue skies, the vivid greens of the cactus, and the ominous towers of volcanic rock. Gemelos de Roca, la formación en Chihuahua, on one side and on the other a one-word message COME, with Hecho en Mexico at the bottom, the stamp an outline of the country with a golden eagle eating a snake in an almost purple ink.

  The word was printed in the center, just to the left of a thin vertical line that separated it from my home address.

  COME.

  That word had haunted me for days and nights.

  We had been in a battle with Tomás Bidarte for more than a year, and in that time he had hired the Dead Center Association to try to kill me, had murdered Cady’s husband, and had forever damaged Vic. Then he had kidnapped my daughter, and we had gone from a removed, hit-and-run aggression to open warfare.

  It was with that comforting thought that I must’ve drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  —

  I woke up with a start and rolled my head to the side, feeling my hat falling onto my lap. I wiped the drool from the side of my face and looked around, making out a two-story building with arched entryways to my right and what looked to be an abandoned mission to my left. There were a few small adobe structures and an old water tower with the words PUERTO SEGURO spray-painted on the side. Though picturesque and fragrant with the scent of a wood fire lingering in the air, the structures were in differing states of disrepair, and the entire village appeared abandoned.

  There were mountains rising behind and in the stark moonlight, they looked like cardboard cutouts in some old serial-western studio back lot. There was a large, humped massif to the left shaped a little like Cloud Peak back home in the Bighorn Mountains, and there was a rough-looking road that split the tiny village and traveled up through the foothills before disappearing over a hill. There was a pass, a forbidding gateway that led higher into the black, charred lava rock that looked like scorched earth and that looked nothing like Absaroka County.

  At the center of the village, there was a pole sticking up from the road. It was about six feet high and impaled on it was the head of a wild boar.

  I pushed the seat on the passenger side of the Caddy forward and opened the door. Standing a little unsteadily, I took a deep breath and scrubbed the circulation back into my face, certain that if I hadn’t slept long, I’d slept deep.

  I gently closed the door on the Cadillac, and leaning on the ridiculous car, studied the nearest building. Made of adobe brick, the tan-colored structure looked as if it might’ve been a mansion or an old hotel. Either way it had seen better days, but there were multicolored lights on the second floor and I heard laughter and the soft murmur of Spanish voices.

  A black cat with a white chest and four white paws came over and rubbed against my leg, and I reached down to give him a scratch when I noticed a gaping wound on the side of his head beside the jaw. I petted the top of his head, stood up straight, and nudged him away with my boot.

  A set of stairs across the brick patio to my left led to an opening in the plaza. Mounting the steps, I passed a window and saw, through the parted curtains, a kitchen with two women, one of whom was cooking on an old, wood-burning stove.

  I was about to continue the climb when I became aware of someone standing at the top. The backlit figure was female—very female. Holding a number of empty plates, she continued down toward me. “I told them to wait for all of you, but they are like cerdos.” She stopped two steps above me, putting her at eye level, shifted the dishes into her left hand, and extended her right. “You are the sheriff?”

  I shook it, and her fingers were strong. “Walt Longmire. I’m a sheriff.”

  “The one whose daughter was taken?”

  I nodded.

  She studied me, and from the trapezoid of light from the kitchen, I could see she was maybe fifty, remarkably beautiful with a thick coif of black hair waving to her shoulders, which were decorated with complex tattoos. She had unsettling eyes, a remarkable violet color—like a high plains sky before a lightning storm.

  She paused for a moment more and then shouldered past me. “Go up, a sheriff. I will bring you some food.”

  “What’s your name?”

  She threw it over her shoulder. “Bianca.”

  I paused for a moment, trying to remember how the Seer and Alonzo had referred to her. “Nice to meet you, Bianca.”

  She turned at the bottom of the stairs and looked up at me. “Flour or corn?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Tortillas, you like flour or corn?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  “You have never been to Taco Bell?”

  I watched her go, turned, and topped the second floor. Looking to my right, I saw my party along with another man and woman seated on wooden chairs that surrounded a round table with a metal surface impaled by a large umbrella with a thatched cover, the Christmas lights strung around the periphery. There were a few remainders from dinner and a number of shot glasses and a bottle with a handwritten label.


  “Hola.”

  The Seer, without turning, motioned for me to approach. “Your Spanish is improving marvelously, no?”

  I could see a large, old-fashioned flashlight, and all the handguns that had been in Guzmán’s gym bag spread out on the table. “Those are mine.”

  The other man there, who I assumed was Adan Martínez, picked up a semiautomatic and casually aimed it at me. “What if I want this one?”

  Already having it unholstered, I swung my own .45 around and pointed it at his head, centering on his right eye. “Then we’ll have to see if the short-recoil operating and locking system that uses a diagonal cam at the rear of the barrel sliding against a diagonal receiver-mounted groove on that Obregón works better than the swinging link and pin of my Colt.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  The man exploded in laughter, hugging the woman beside him as the others joined in the merriment. “Not unlike the Austro-Hungarian Steyr M1912?”

  I kept the 1911 pointed at him, noticing the sharpness of his features along with an abbreviated goatee and Dizzy Gillespie cookie duster under his lower lip. “Nope.”

  He raised the barrel of the Obregón toward the starry sky. “The conclusion that my country came to in the mid-thirties when they turned it down for military service, an opportunity they did not afford my grandfather.”

  I lowered my own sidearm. “It also helps if you put the magazine in it, which from my last inspection, appears to be missing—along with any .45 ACP ammunition.”

  He gestured toward my Colt. “You appear to have some, perhaps you will loan me?”

  Stuffing the .45 back in my pancake holster, I glanced around the table. “Maybe later.” Reaching over, I dragged another chair from the railing and sat as Martínez slid the bottle with the milky liquid toward me. “Mescal.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Made locally.”

  I glanced around from the perspective of the second story. “Doesn’t particularly seem to be a bevy of going concerns around here.”

  He shrugged, glancing at the woman. “Ahh . . .” He looked toward the mountains. “It was a nice village once, before the locusts came.”

  “How is it you’re allowed to remain?”

  “We have an understanding, the cartels and I.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “If they come here, I will kill them.”

  “Have you had to kill many?”

  “From time to time.” He picked up the flashlight and turned it off and on twice in the direction of the water tower where someone flashed the same signal back at him. “Would it surprise you to know that you’ve had a .416 Rigby aimed between your shoulder blades since you arrived?”

  “I would’ve been disappointed if there hadn’t been something.”

  He smiled at the Seer for all the good it did, but maybe the blind man could hear smiles, too. “I like him.”

  The Seer sipped his own mescal along with Alonzo. “He does not rattle easily—no?”

  “He will have other opportunities.” Adan studied me. “Do you hunt?”

  “I used to, when I was young.”

  “You are going to have to reinvigorate your sense of the hunt—in this part of the world you are either the hunter or the hunted.” Martínez held out a hand. “Show me the postcard?”

  I pulled it from my shirt and handed it to him.

  He turned it in his hands like a relic, read the single word, and then handed it back to me. “I know this place.”

  “Is it far?”

  “A lifetime away.”

  I glanced over my shoulder toward the mountains. “I need to get there.”

  “You cannot get there from here.”

  “I’ve heard that in Wyoming before.”

  He shook his head. “There used to be a bridge across the canyon on that road, but it caved in years ago, and the only way across now is a trail that leads to the old bridge and the river, neither of which are passable.”

  “Then how?”

  “You will have to go south to Torero and then use the ridge road that leads into the mountains, but Torero is a very dangerous town—the last semi-civilized place before you go into Estante del Diablo.” He took the last sip of his drink. “It is south, but it is late and you must first eat and then get some sleep.”

  “I’ve been sleeping.”

  “Then you must eat.” He smiled and hugged the unnamed woman at his side. “My sister has fixed food for you, but since the rest of us are going to bed, you may be more comfortable in the kitchen where she is waiting.” He stood, indicating the party was over. “I suggest you get more rest after that—tomorrow will be a long day.”

  * * *

  —

  “Rebocado—it is a relatively simple dish.”

  I continued eating because it was delicious and because I’d rapidly discovered I was starving. Raising my eyes from my plate, I couldn’t help but study her shoulders, where swirling floral images revealed skulls, religious symbols, angels, devils, and games of chance. “I learned a long time ago that anything that tastes this good is anything but simple.”

  “Slow-cooked stew of pork, chilies, and peppery purslane.”

  “I don’t even know what purslane is.”

  “A weed.” Bianca glanced toward the steamed-over window, and I noticed a number of smile lines creasing the corners of her mouth. “We have lots of weeds around here.” Her eyes returned to mine. “Hogweed, they call it. It has a much more sour taste when you harvest it in the morning.”

  “Pork, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think I saw what was left of the Lord of the Flies on a stake in the middle of town.” She looked at me questioningly. “The pig’s head?”

  She suddenly looked grim. “Adan’s idea of a joke.”

  I pushed the bowl away on the rough surface of the orchard table and munched on a warm flour tortilla. “What’s the joke?”

  “His way of celebrating Día de los Muertos.” She swept a lock of hair from her face and looked at me, her eyes darkening to purple. “A popular holiday with the narcos in the area—they’ve killed so many people, why not celebrate?” She nodded toward the empty bowl. “We would have had something more respectable for you to eat, but everyone is busy preparing sweets for the festivals and the altars of the honored dead.”

  “When is the festival?”

  “Two days from now; tomorrow is Día de los Angelitos or the Day of the Little Angels or innocents, which pays honor to the deceased infants, followed by the Day of the Dead.”

  “Honoring adults?”

  “Yes.” She placed an elbow on the table and propped up her chin. “Are you religious?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “You have a wife?”

  “No, she passed.” I smiled back at her, just to let her know I didn’t mind. “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “I do. I can’t help myself. I suppose it’s because I’m the curious type.” She waved a hand to scatter all the personal talk. “The festival was originally at the beginning of summer and was the time of Aztec celebrations, but when the country was colonized by the Spanish, it was moved. It was not very popular here in the north, but then the government made it a national holiday in an attempt to create a more centralized identity for the country.”

  I leaned back in the rickety wooden chair and felt the legs skip on the stone floor. “What happens during this festival?”

  “The usual activities—religious ceremonies, a costume parade, sacrifices of food and drink to the dead, dancing, drinking . . . lots of drinking in this region.”

  “Costumes?”

  “The Calaveras, where men and women dress up in traditional wardrobe and paint their faces like those of skulls.” She poured me another glass of water from a bottle with a fi
xed stopper. “So, you are the curious type, too?”

  “Just attempting to pick up some culture as I go along.”

  She poured some water for herself into one of the thick glasses as a silence insinuated itself between us.

  I stared at the worn, painted surface of the table, which I could see had been painted at least eight other vibrant colors in its history. “Will they be celebrating Día de los Muertos in Estante del Diablo?”

  She studied the side of my face and then gathered the dishes, carrying them to the deep stone sink. She stayed there with her back to me. “You should go to bed.”

  I took a breath and then stood. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.”

  She dropped the dishes into the sink with a clattering crash and then turned to look at me. “You are going to die, and anyone you take with you will also be killed in that place.”

  In the face of such heat, I stood there for a moment. “I’m not taking anyone with me.”

  “The Seer, Alonzo, my simple-minded brother, and who else?”

  I stood there for a moment and then slid my chair in. “I just need them to get me to the place where my daughter is being held.”

  She shook her head. “People are chattel there, they buy them, they sell them, and no one ever makes it back down. It is the largest cemetery in the sovereign state of Chihuahua.” She took a breath. “There is a monastery, Monasterio del Corazón Ardiente, that no priest has gone to in more than forty years.”

  Taking my hat from the back of my chair, I placed it on my head. “Thank you for dinner.”

  She stared at me for a few more seconds and then turned back to the sink to gather up the broken remains of my meal. “My brother came here after having so many lives, a quiet place to retire. He could have been a great leader for our people, but he can be easily swayed.”

  “He didn’t introduce me to the woman upstairs.”

  Bianca turned her head, offering me an exquisite profile. “Why bother, she won’t be here tomorrow.” Turning and folding her arms, she studied me. “I should hold my tongue.” She sighed. “He was a doctor, a very good one, handsome and accomplished—the girls flocked to him, and I think he got used to it. He didn’t have to try, so none of them held much value for him. Then he met a woman, a real woman, who bore his child, and he began working for the government. She got sick. He did everything he could, but she died. Ever since then I think he’s been looking for a way to die.” She shook her head. “Women, the narcos, and now you.”