Walt Longmire 07 - Hell Is Empty

by Craig Johnson

  “Isn’t that kind of like pitting the monsters of your imagination against the monsters of human nature?”

  I smiled. “You have been reading your Dante.” I stared out the side window and wasn’t smiling when I made the next statement. “Wonder who would win.”

  At the next bend, I could see a few dusk-to-dawn lights over the cabins that comprised South Fork. “I want you to drop me off at the main lodge; I’ll just stay up here tonight.”

  He hunched his shoulders. “You’re going to be in even more trouble.”

  “I know.” I looked down at my lap. “Could you call and tell them I won’t be coming to dinner after all?”

  He glanced at me again as we gently slowed, listening to the sleet being thrown by the tires. “Why do you want to stay?”

  “I just don’t feel good about leaving those guys up here by themselves in this weather.”

  He nodded and turned in the drive. “I’ll stay, too.”

  I looked at the headstrong Basquo, at the same time thinking about the promise I’d made his wife a couple of months back about keeping him out of harm’s way—even if harm was just keeping him up on the mountain for a night. “No, you won’t. Go home.”

  He pulled the Suburban up to the porch at the front of the lodge, and we both peered through the windshield into the darkened windows—there were only a few lights on. “Looks like you might have to go down, too.”

  After a moment, though, Holli emerged from the kitchen, passed the counter to the glass doors, and squinted in our headlights. She pulled on a coat, pushed open the door with an arm over her eyes, and shouted. “Can I help you?”

  I rolled down the window of the SUV and hung my head through. “Holli, it’s me, Walt Longmire.”

  She approached, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Hey, Sheriff.”

  I shifted my hat back; the sleet smacked the ground around us like shrapnel. “The Feds call you?”

  “About the food?”

  “No, they’re going to need beds up here for the night.”

  “Nope.”

  That was odd.

  She stuffed her hands in her pockets only to bring them out a moment later. “How many?”

  “About a half dozen, and one for a prisoner.”

  She zipped her fleece over her stained apron and pulled up the collar. “Unfortunately, I have rooms. A lot of my guests couldn’t make it in.”

  “You have seven plus one?”

  “Who else?”

  “Me.”

  She looked past the hood of the Suburban to the cabin nearest the lodge. “I can stick you in the hired hand’s bunk. It’s small, but it’s got a single in it.”

  “That’ll do. Thanks.” I pushed open the door and stepped out with the sandwich in my hands. “Kitchen closed?”

  She looked sheepish. “I’m afraid so. Good thing you brought your own.”

  I began unwrapping it. “I’ll wait up for the Feds.”

  “That’s okay, Walt. You get some sleep. I’ll get Beatrice to do that, wherever she’s gone off to.”

  Holli flipped a few fingers at Saizarbitoria as I closed the door, and the Basquo waved back but he still sat there, parked.

  I thought about how I’d seen the waitress turning left as she got back on the main route. “Last time we saw her, she was headed toward Ten Sleep.” I took a bite of my moveable feast.

  “Well, damn it, I guess she decided to go home.”

  The club sandwich was good, and I was starved. I swallowed a bite and reached in the open window to retrieve my cup of lukewarm coffee from the holder on the dash. “Maybe she misunderstood or got scared of the roads.”

  The lodge owner nodded, not very happy with the situation.

  Sancho called out from the driver’s seat, “You sure you don’t want me to stay?”

  “I’m sure.” I took another bite of my sandwich and backed away from the truck to allow the Basquo to escape. I had taken a step back when I felt something in my mouth other than bread, turkey, bacon, lettuce, and tomato. I handed Holli my cup of coffee.

  “Something wrong, Sheriff?”

  I reached into my mouth and pulled out what I thought might’ve been one of the little, flagged toothpicks that held the sandwich together but instead found a bobby pin with one of the small, cellophane flags attached.

  I held it up for both of us to see.

  “Jeez, Walt, I’m sorry.” Holli ran a hand through her thick hair. “Not mine.”

  We both laughed, but the laughter died as I held the thin piece of metal up and could see that the protective tip had been removed from one end and that it had been bent into two opposite-facing right angles near the head—so that it looked like a key.

  4

  It had taken us only a few minutes to get going once we discovered the makeshift handcuff key, but it was taking an agonizingly long time to get back to Meadowlark Lodge—we’d run off the road three times already.

  I held the mic from the Feds’ radio close to my mouth. “Come in, unit one, this is unit two; Agent McGroder, this is Sheriff Longmire. Over?”

  Static.

  Sancho risked a look. “This isn’t good.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  I braced a hand against the dash as we made the turn at Powder River Pass on the Cloud Peak Skyway, almost ten thousand feet above sea level. The storm had gotten serious, and the sleet now pounded the top of the Feds’ Suburban like a snare drum. Sancho was doing his best, but the puddles of slush that pooled in the tread swales of the mountainous road made every turn feel as if we were attempting to corner an overloaded rowboat.

  I pulled out the Basquo’s cell phone, but there were no available bars. He glanced at me. “Anything?”

  “Nope.” I’d had Holli make the 911 call down the mountain with the landline she had in the lodge, but we weren’t likely to get cell reception again until we got back to Meadowlark.

  “Line of sight, or it could just be interference from the storm.”

  “Yeah, but they’ve also got those satellite phones, so somebody ought to be able to get through to them.” I pressed the button on the mic again. “Unit one, this is unit two. How ’bout it, McGroder? Over.” I waited a second and then depressed the button again. “Anybody?”

  Static.

  Sancho gained a little speed on the straightaway as we sluiced past the cutoff to county roads 422 and 419 where Shade had buried the remains of the boy. After a few minutes we could see the lights of something in the gloom of the darkened sleet up ahead. “Are those headlights?”

  “No, it’s something else.”

  As we got closer, we could see that the gas pumps at Meadowlark Lodge had exploded, billowing black smoke and flames into the sodden night. The Basquo slowed and reverted to his mother tongue. “Kixmi.”

  We turned and continued down the sloped parking lot and could see the reflection of the chemical bonfire in the lodge windows, and the melted sheen of the parking lot glowed in triplicate in the freezing fog. I kept thinking that if I looked at the images long enough, perhaps what they mirrored wouldn’t be real.

  The Feds’ other Suburban was lodged sideways into the pump island at a crazy angle, and we could see the still-burning bodies slumped in the driver and passenger seats. I drew the .45 from my holster, held on to the door handle, and nodded to the left of the Suburban. “Over there.”

  The Basquo steered our vehicle toward the building, but a safe distance from the heat and flames. “What if the tank on that thing goes?”

  “It already has.”

  We slid to a stop, and I lurched from the SUV. Glancing at the flaming T-boned Suburban, I extended my firing arm as I rushed toward the front door of the lodge, where I could see a body.

  The tactical yellow lettering across his shoulders bore the three letters. I was careful to walk around the blowback of what must have been the original shot and the trail of blood that he had made while trying to get to the main building. The blood was already frozen in the spot
where he’d been gunned down, and it was probably the heat from the fire that had kept his body from freezing to the surface of the parking lot. He was still dragging himself toward the door.

  I could feel the pressure of the air moving toward the fire, creating a vortex that pulled the sleeting snow along the ground and back up into the flames before disappearing into the conflagration. I glanced toward the lodge windows, but it was only cursory; with the DOC van missing, it was obvious where they—or, more important, Raynaud Shade—had gone.

  I placed a hand on McGroder’s shoulder, and he stilled. Some of the air went out of him as I pulled him over: double-ought buck, his thigh and the oblique muscles torn to shreds. His eyes didn’t focus, and his lips hung open, but he was breathing. “Michael?”

  He gargled, and his throat pulled and constricted as the blood drained from the side of his mouth. His face contorted, and it took a moment for me to realize that he was trying to speak.

  “Michael? ”

  With the surging noise of the fire and the continuing wind, I bent lower to hear his voice.

  “Where—do . . .” He coughed, and more of the coagulated blood pushed out of his mouth. “Oh, hell . . .”

  “Lie still and stop talking.” I had to get him inside. With the lack of blood pressure and the cold, he would soon go into shock if he hadn’t already; I had to get him stabilized. I glanced at the Basquo, who had approached the burning vehicle, braving the blown-out heat of the fire to check for survivors. “Sancho! ”

  McGroder’s eyes wandered but then settled on me. “Who?”

  “Walt Longmire, the sheriff. Remember?” It was textbook shock from blood loss. “Sancho!”

  A moment later, he was beside me. “They’re all dead.”

  McGroder’s eyes remained unfocused, and the pupils began clicking back and forth like a metronome. He jolted at the statement. “Oh, God . . .”

  “Help me with him.” We lifted the FBI agent as carefully as we could, with me taking his shoulders and Santiago his legs. I butted the glass door open with my back and we laid McGroder on the bar to our left. I unzipped his jacket and pulled aside his shirt and thermal. The wound was gaping, but it didn’t look as if it’d gotten any of his organs, so we were just battling blood loss.

  There was a stack of bar towels under the counter, and I packed them into the wound in an attempt to stanch the bleeding, hepatitis C be damned. The Basquo returned from the back with a pile of wool army surplus blankets, folding one to place under the agent’s head and then covering him with another three.

  Sancho tapped numbers into his cell phone then snapped it shut in disgust and grabbed McGroder’s satellite phone from the floor, where it had fallen from the table. The weather conditions must have screwed up the cell service. I lowered my face to the wounded man. “Michael, can you hear me?”

  I supported the side of his head with my hand.

  He swallowed. “Procedure perfect.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Don’t know what happened.”

  I nodded. “They took our van?”

  “Killed Benton and the other marshal, Jon Mooney, right off, shot me before I could even get my . . . Took my sidearm.”

  I nodded. “Was it Shade alone?”

  “Yes.” He swallowed. “He got Benton and Moody in your DOC van. I heard the report and ran out, but he was already standing there and he shot me with the marshal’s shotgun. He took my Sig, went inside, and got the keys from the table.” He tried to swallow again. “Can I have something to drink?”

  “Can do, buddy. The EMTs are on the way.” I leaned in closer—his eyes were clearing a little, and the focus was returning. “When did your other vehicle show?”

  “Just as he was taking off in your van. He slammed into them and then unloaded on the driver, then the passenger—Pfaff was in there.” He sighed a rattling gasp. “Set the whole thing on fire with the pumps . . .”

  Saizarbitoria appeared on the other side of the wounded man with the satellite phone still in his hands. “Need to talk to you, boss.”

  I glanced back at McGroder. “You’re going to be okay, just rest easy and we’ll get you something to drink.” I stepped around the bar toward the windows that still reflected the collective bonfires. “East slope?”

  “Everybody’s coming, but it’s going to take forever. They’ve closed off the road; the whole east side at Powder River Pass is covered in ice and they can only go maybe fifteen miles an hour. I’ve alerted the DOJ and marshal’s offices. Henry and Vic are on their way with the EMTs and HPs.”

  “West slope?”

  “Joe Iron Cloud’s got 16 blocked along with 47 and 434. He’s on his way up with Tommy Wayman, but it’s already turned to snow west of here. We’re going to get buried.”

  I ran a quick topographic in my head; we were close to the spine that made up the Bighorn Mountains, and the majority of the precipitation would fall here before heading onto the plains. “Yep, we are.” There was another surge of flame from the gas pumps, and even if the damn things were empty, they were liable to cause a continuing hazard. “Get him something to drink. I’m going to go out to the side of the building and find the cutoff to those pumps.”

  Snow was just starting to mix with the sleet, and it was cold outside, colder than it had been when we’d arrived.

  Around the corner, there was a lath fence beside the mudroom that housed a compressor and stacks of old tires, but in front of that there was an emergency kill switch. It was possible that, even empty, the pumps were still pushing gas vapor through the lines. After I threw the switch, the fire died down.

  Still keeping my distance, I returned to the front of the building and studied the burning Suburban. I could go in and try and find a fire extinguisher but figured that wouldn’t be the best utilization of my time, considering the circumstances. My eyes remained on the Chevy—the back access door and the rear passenger side hung partially ajar, and I could see where Shade had run the van into the SUV, forcing it onto the pump island. One of the gas handles lay on the melted asphalt, the hose burned and gone.

  I stepped in closer and carefully counted the bodies and then walked around the vehicle and searched the surrounding area, just to be sure.

  Back inside, Saizarbitoria was talking to McGroder, and the agent’s color was a little better. Sancho broke off when he saw the look on my face. “What?”

  “Mike, how many of your people were in the other Suburban?”

  His head shook, but his eyes were steady. “Two of mine and a marshal. Three.”

  Sancho glanced back at McGroder as I bundled up, and we watched the fire bank itself and dwindle even further in the face of the sleet/snow and cold. The Basquo’s voice was tight. “I think he’s gonna make it.”

  “He’s tough, but you need to keep him talking.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Sancho’s dark eyes reflected the waning fire as he spoke. “What’re you going to do?”

  I sighed. “I’ll take a sweep between here and Boulder Park to make sure the convicts are not in a ditch. If they aren’t, Iron Cloud will have a better chance of seeing them on his way up. No word from Joe or Tommy on the Ameri-Trans van?”

  “No.”

  “What about Beatrice Linwood’s Blazer.”

  The Basquo looked grim and then tried to put a good face on a situation that had none. “They didn’t say anything, but if this Beatrice Linwood lives in Ten Sleep, wouldn’t they have seen her?”

  “Call them back and ask them to check it.”

  “I will.” He bit the inside of his lip, a habit he’d picked up from me. “What are you thinking?”

  I pulled out my pocket watch and read the time: creeping up on ten o’clock. “I’m thinking that an awful lot of our bad eggs just got out of the basket, and I’m afraid they’ve got one of ours with them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are only two bodies out there, and the cargo door was open. I think he took whatever was behind the sea
ts and the woman agent, Pfaff.”

  “Why in the hell would he do that?”

  “She’s the one he’s been talking to, and he’s going to need insurance.” I hustled back to the bar and placed a hand on McGroder’s shoulder; he was definitely looking better. I glanced at the can of root beer Sancho had found on the shelves. “You want another sip?”

  The agent grinned. “Only if you’ve got something stiffer.”

  “No such luck.” I cleared my throat. “I’ve got bad news; it looks like you’re going to make it.”

  He laughed slightly. “So, what’s the good news?”

  “I think he’s got one of your agents.”

  The grin faded. “Kasey Pfaff?”

  I nodded. “All the roads are blocked on both sides of the mountains, but I’m going to make a quick loop a little west of here. I’m hoping they’re in a ditch, so I might be able to round things up quick.”

  “He’ll kill you.” He said it like taxes.

  I patted his shoulder. “I’m kinda hard to kill.”

  “Yeah, I know. I talked to a buddy of yours who’s in the Bureau—guy by the name of Cliff Cly. But still . . .”

  My turn to grin. “Let me guess: Cly was reassigned to the licensing office in Nome, Alaska?”

  “Something like that; he says you punch like a mule kicks.”

  I shrugged. “He’s overly kind. Look, McGroder, I’ve got to get out there.”

  His voice took a different tone, and his sable eyes focused on me unlike they had before, as his hand grasped my sleeve. “I’m not screwing around here, Sheriff. Listen to me. If you go after him alone, he’ll kill you. Wait for backup and . . .”

  I took a breath and leaned in. “I’m just going up the road a bit.”

  His face remained immobile. “You’ll never come back.”

  I smiled at him, but it was one of those moments when everything freezes in time. I could hear the coolers laboring away, the sleet on the roof, and the last few dying sounds of the fire outside. You know those moments are a signpost, something telling you that you shouldn’t go any farther—the ones you try and ignore.