He hung a couple of fingers on the handle as I cracked the door open. “We got three; is that going to be enough?”
He grinned, revealing the small space between his two front teeth as he kicked his chewing gum to the other side of his mouth. “I don’t know. How bad are they?”
I buttoned my sheepskin jacket and flipped up my collar. “Pretty bad.”
Sancho joined us at the door and shook hands with Joe. They were a lot alike, and I had a feeling I was getting a glimpse of the future of Wyoming law enforcement. Saizarbitoria gripped Iron Cloud’s shoulder in his gloved hand as Troy Old Man, another Arapaho and one of Joe’s deputies, joined us.
Sancho smiled. “Jesus, Indians.”
Joe nodded in faux seriousness—he was still working his gum. “Yeah, they brought us in to counterbalance the influx of ETA terrorists from the other side of the mountain.” He turned the grin on me. “Hey, how come you didn’t bring that other deputy, the good-looking one?”
Joe was smitten by my undersheriff, Vic. “I left the womenfolk behind. We heard there were Indians.”
The three younger men followed me over to the larger group that leaned against one of the Suburbans as Joe continued to have fun introducing us to the assembled manpower. I stuck a hand out to Tommy Wayman, who was Rosey’s cousin and the sheriff of Big Horn County, as Joe kept talking. “You guys know Grumpy.” Vic had tagged him with the nickname, and everyone used it, but only she and Joe used it to his face.
Wayman shook my hand, but his heart wasn’t in it. “Walt.”
I’d heard that he had planned to retire last cycle, but then I’d also heard that about myself. He was a rough cob and most of the state didn’t care for his my-way-or-the-highway style of management, but he was one of the few sheriffs as old as I was, so I liked keeping him around—if for nothing more than comparative purposes. “Tommy.”
I shook hands with Wayman’s deputy, but his name escaped me in the gusts of wind. I figured it didn’t matter since we would be parting company soon.
The next couple of individuals were probably the reason for the sheriff of Big Horn County’s bad mood. They were Feds, and a number of years back Tommy had accidentally become a national figure when he’d challenged, in court, the rights of federal agents to operate within the confines of his county without proper authorization from him.
It must’ve been a pretty important deal for these two organizations to come together, and I had a feeling it had to do with our proximity to the Bighorn National Forest.
A crew-cut man in Ray-Bans and black insulated coveralls extended his hand. “Special Agent in Charge Mike McGroder, Salt Lake Division.”
I nodded as a few more gusts buffeted against us. “Enjoying the weather?”
“I hear this is classified as a fine spring afternoon in Wyoming.” He turned to the young woman standing beside him. “This is Special Agent Pfaff out of DC.” The lean blonde with the athletic build and direct chambray-colored eyes shook my hand and then Saizarbitoria’s. “And Tom Benton from the Federal Marshal’s office in Denver.”
Benton was a tall redhead, with a black ball cap to match his own noir ensemble, including the tactical shotgun slung to his chest. He smiled but only as a professional courtesy. “Hello.”
“Howdy.”
There were a few other men in coveralls who were holding close-range weapons and who approached and shook hands, introducing themselves as Marshal Jon Mooney and Agent Bob Belmont. There were three more men in the transport company’s uniforms, but I supposed they weren’t worthy of introduction.
I glanced at the two individuals in the back of the Ameri-Trans van just to make sure they were, indeed, prisoners. One was studying his hands and rocking back and forth with more energy than remaining seated and manacled would allow. The other man pasted his nose against the back window like a child. He had long hair that covered most of his face but, unlike his friend, he had taken the time to stare at us newcomers.
“You know, there’s gotta be a reason why all the good guys are standing out here in the cold and all the bad guys are in the vans with the heaters running.”
McGroder smiled. “You’d think, wouldn’t you?” He folded his arms over his chest, and I wondered at the perfection of his government-issue, close-cropped crew cut; with no cap, it must have been a little breezy for the current temperature. “Sheriff, do you mind if we transfer two of your prisoners and talk with the other?”
“Be my guest.” I nodded at Saizarbitoria and handed him the keys to the prisoners’ shackles and watched as he, two of the armed federal men, two of the Ameri-Trans men, and Troy Old Man headed over. “Do you really want to talk to him in our van?”
McGroder looked at Pfaff, and she was the one to speak. “Yes, but I’ll wait till the other two have been transferred so that I can speak with him alone.”
I looked at the assembled group. “It’s your party.”
McGroder glanced at Tommy Wayman and then back at me. “Thank you, Sheriff.”
We stood there a few minutes more and then watched as Marcel Popp and Hector Otero were switched into the Ameri-Trans van. Once this was accomplished, the Salt Lake agent nodded and moved toward the vehicle with Pfaff and Benton in tow. Saizarbitoria passed them on the way, but they said nothing to him.
We local boys stood there and looked at one another, none of us aware of what the others knew. I didn’t know much of anything other than what was in the reports I’d read, so I asked, “What the heck is going on?”
Tommy sighed. “Oh, the usual horseshit.”
Joe laughed and stared at his insulated boots, making patterned footsteps in the compacted snow with short, fancy dance steps. “They haven’t told us anything, Walt. I guess we’re just the transport.”
“Three counties’ worth?”
The Arapaho spit his gum out into a wrapper and tucked it into his coat pocket. “Yeah, but I gotta tell you that knowing what I know about this Shade fellow, I’d just as soon drag him out, shoot him in the head, and charge the Feds for my time and ammo.”
I glanced at the agents in the van and the three standing between the two vehicles. “Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but within a half mile of this location we can be in Big Horn, Washakie, and Absaroka counties, not to mention the national forest.”
“Oh, it’s got to be a jurisdictional deal. It’s just that they don’t know where they are or what the hell they’re doing—per usual.” Tommy sighed deeply again.
Joe’s dark eyes shifted, and his edgy features reminded me of my buddy, Northern Cheyenne Henry Standing Bear. Tonight he and I were going to discuss the planning of my daughter’s wedding to Michael, who was Vic’s younger brother. Cady wanted to have the ceremony performed up on the Rez this summer, and the Cheyenne Nation was my go-to guy.
Joe’s voice broke up my thoughts as we all turned toward the van. “Maybe that’s what they’re finding out.”
We were about to adjourn the meeting and climb in somebody’s vehicle when McGroder and Pfaff exited, leaving Benton seated behind Shade.
The Salt Lake City agent immediately approached Joe. “Thank you, Sheriff Iron Cloud. We won’t be needing you.”
Joe kicked his face sideways with a grin. “Excuse me?”
McGroder repeated himself.
Iron Cloud stood there for a minute more, then shrugged and turned toward the rest of us. “Hey, hey, must be north of here, boys. But then again, these federal agents have a long-standing dislike of us Indians since Pine Ridge.”
Knowing better than to hang around when he wasn’t needed, Joe shook all hands and started off toward his vehicle with his deputy. As he passed Saizarbitoria, he pulled out a pack of gum and offered the Basquo a piece, which he took. Joe spoke in my deputy’s ear.
Sancho laughed and then unwrapped the gum, stuffed it in his mouth, and began chewing.
McGroder stuck his hands in his coveralls as the Washakie County truck pulled away and then considered me. “I’m sorry, Sheriff Lo
ngmire. It’s Longmire, right?”
“Yep.”
He continued to study me like a multiple-choice question. “You’ll have to come with us, Sheriff—it appears that our plans have changed.”
It was a short distance on a snow-covered gravel road until we reached the corrals at the junction of 422 and the spur of 419 that straddled the line between Tommy Wayman’s county and mine; both portions were overlapped by the Bighorn National Forest.
Raynaud Shade sat in the middle seat of our van with McGroder on one side, Pfaff on the other, Benton still behind him; the agents were talking in low voices as Saizarbitoria drove.
When we got to the corner, the prisoner spoke. “Here.”
The Basquo slowed and even went so far as to put on his turn signal for the Suburban that followed us; the other federal vehicles and the Ameri-Trans transport with Otero and Popp had gone ahead to Meadowlark Lodge.
Pfaff was talking to Raynaud Shade with the familiarity that a doctor had with a patient. “You’re sure? It was a while ago.”
I could see the reflection of his one eye getting the lay of the land. “I’m sure.”
The road got bumpier as we left the loop and headed north toward Baby Wagon Creek. We got to a turn where I’d remembered a Basque sheep wagon being parked during a fly-fishing trip with Henry and the Ferg. It was going to get a lot rougher from here on in, and I was relieved when Shade spoke again.
“Here.”
Saizarbitoria eased the van to a stop, and it shifted a little down the incline toward the creek.
I turned in my seat. Agent Pfaff stared at the side of the prisoner’s face, and McGroder, holding a plastic-sealed quad sheet for comparison, read the LED display on a handheld global tracking device. “It’s within a hundred yards of where he said.”
Shade looked past me through the windshield. “We can walk from here.”
I turned to look up the creek bed and could see a number of rock outcroppings sticking up through the snow before the dark shadows of the fir trees blocked everything out. It was getting late, and up this high the shadows were long.
We unlocked Shade from the floor, threw a blanket over him, and he walked with one of the Feds on either side. Pfaff followed, and McGroder, Saizarbitoria, Sheriff Wayman, Marshal Benton, and another of the field agents pulled up the drags.
McGroder continued to read the GPS with the assistance of the map but surprised me by speaking as we trudged through the snow. “So, did he say anything while he was in your custody, Sheriff?”
I thought about the things Shade had uttered over the last day, most of it indiscernible. “He said that two men had sent him a bone in the mail—about wanting the money.”
The agent’s eyes slipped up to mine. “Is that all he said?”
I thought about it some more. “He also said something about voices and testing me, but I think that was mostly guff.”
McGroder nodded.
Up ahead, Shade turned, the heavy wool blanket forming a makeshift hood that shadowed his dark face and, like a malevolent monk, he looked directly at me. “Here.”
The group assembled around a slab of moss rock about the size of a door. “I buried him here.”
McGroder checked the GPS one last time and looked at his map before turning to look at Tommy. “Thank you for your help, Sheriff Wayman. I’ll have one of my men drive you back down to your vehicle.”
He turned to me.
“Not your lucky day, Longmire.”
3
The temperature had shifted to slightly above forty degrees, and the booming in the distant, dark clouds promised a freezing rain if we weren’t lucky. We continued to watch as the younger agents and Saizarbitoria, under the attentive eye of Special Agent Pfaff, excavated the snow from around the boulder.
McGroder and I were too old for that kind of foolishness and were sharing a thermos of really good coffee in the cab of one of the Suburbans. “And those’re the two other convicts who were in the Ameri-Trans van?”
“Yes.” He blew into his stainless travel mug—even it was black. “I’m sorry about all the cloak-and-dagger stuff, but we’re on a need-to-know basis and, until I could verify which county we were dealing with, I had to keep my cards close to the vest.”
I nodded.
He drank from his mug. “I was just as happy to not have it be Sheriff Iron Cloud’s jurisdiction.”
“Because?”
“The victim is Native American.” I looked at him as he continued to sip his coffee. “Crow, to be exact; taken from a vehicle parked at a bar/bait shop near Hardin, Montana. Shade ID’d the victim, even though the child was never reported missing.”
There was a long pause, and while I thought that one over, I heard a few frigid drops of sleet, sounding like pebbles, hit the top of the Chevrolet. I gestured toward the other Suburban.
“And those two?”
“Just your garden variety psychotic scumbags; Calvin ‘Fingers’ Moser is the one with the stringy hair, and Freddie ‘Junk-food Junkie’ Borland is the one who can’t keep still. A couple of fun-loving drug abusers from Arizona who liked to get high, kill people, and then sell the body parts.”
“Charming.”
“Isn’t it though? Through Shade they had a medical connection in Mexico to which they gave a running supply of kidneys, livers, lungs, hearts, and eyes. Years back, on some PCP-induced binge, they killed an elderly couple near Sedona and buried their bodies out in the desert. Borland was working at a livestock dismemberment plant when Shade turned them on to the guys in Central America. They pretty much drove around killing people and selling the parts.” He sipped his coffee some more and then waxed financial. “You can get forty to fifty thousand dollars for a healthy kidney on the open market. Some guy had one for sale on eBay.”
I interrupted, mostly so that I wouldn’t have to hear more. “Is that your specialty, organ trafficking?”
“No.” We continued to watch as the working class finished shoveling around the boulder, and we were faced with the eventuality of getting out of the SUV. “Pfaff’s the specialist—psychotic schizophrenia—and Ray ‘No’ Shade is the textbook for psy-schiz. No-Shade’s first American homicide was this Native American child abduction across state lines; then there’s the supposed missing 1.4 million dollars . . .” He grew silent but finally spoke again. “You pull up the file?”
“Only part of it. What I did read sounds like a horror movie.”
He finished off his coffee and placed the travel mug back in the holder. “That it does.”
I swallowed the rest from my thermos top and did the same, closing the doors behind us and tromping across the trampled snow to where the crew was working. They had produced a pry bar, were laboring around the edges of the rock to unfreeze it from its surroundings, and had connected a tow strap to the back of one of the Suburbans as well. There was a nudging sound, and with one more spot of leverage the boulder broke free and shifted a few inches.
“That’s enough.” McGroder produced a Maglite from his breast pocket and, shining the beam behind the rock, slipped between the other men. “Difficult to see; we’re going to have to move it further.”
A large man in one of the tactical uniforms moved to one side of the rock while another went to the opposite side. They braced themselves and heaved mightily as the tires of the Suburban spun and the distant thunder echoed off the surrounding peaks.
Nothing happened.
With a quick estimation, I figured the boulder weighed close to five thousand pounds.
They tried again but with the same results.
I glanced at McGroder. “Shade supposedly moved this by himself?” I spoke to the nearest agent. “Climb up on top and push with your legs, and I’ll try this side.” I stepped past the Fed on the left, planted a foot against the embankment, and worked my hands behind the cold surface of the rock as the agent braced his boots against it. “On three. One. Two. Three.”
Same result.
I looked up at
McGroder’s arched eyebrow. “Well, even Atlas shrugged.”
I worked my hands in deeper than before, and on the count of three the rock shifted and revealed its egglike shape, with the more narrow portion being the part we’d been pushing on. We hadn’t so much moved the boulder as repositioned it, and if we were planning on doing any more, we were going to have to break out a hydraulic jack and pray we got it done before the sleet began in earnest.
McGroder leaned over the boulder with the flashlight. “That’s all we need for now.”
“They mailed him part of the jawbone in prison to get him to tell them where the money was?”
McGroder looked out at what would have been the panoramic view from Meadowlark Lodge as the sleet pounded the plateglass windows. “Shade had given the boy’s bone to them—who knows why? Maybe as a gift, maybe as a warning, but Moser and Borland still wanted their part of the 1.4 million the three of them had supposedly extorted from the organ-donor business. The bone arrived in a brown paper wrapper at the Draper, Utah, prison where Shade was being housed, with a post office box return address in Bisbee, Arizona. That’s where we apprehended the two. These guys are not exactly destined for Mensa.”
The agent mentioned Shade’s residence in Draper like the killer was renting an apartment rather than being housed in the maximum security prison for only the most violent and escape-prone prisoners in the country. “What was his name?”
“Who?”
“The boy.”
“He said it was Owen White Buffalo.”
There are moments in your life when you hear that first click of the dominoes, and you know that whatever happens from that point, it’s all going to be bad. I sat there in that moment listening to the noises inside me—my heart, the blood surging through my veins, the unwanted adrenaline that was now causing my hands to grow still and my face to become cool.
“Jesus, Sheriff. I haven’t seen a response like that in quite a while. You knew this kid?”
Walt Longmire 07 - Hell Is Empty Page 3