The Western Star

by Craig Johnson

  He struggled toward my empty chair and sat, his silver hair, still in a crew cut, doing its best to look sideswiped. “Coffee.”

  Cady trailed a hand across his shoulders and poured him one, placing it carefully in front of the old man like a life preserver. “Here you go.”

  “Hangover?”

  He slurped the coffee. “More like a cliff-hanger; I’m still not sure if I’m going to make it.” He looked up and mustered a smile for Lola. “I figure me and the baby both can spend the day sleeping, puking, and shitting our pants.”

  Cady smiled. “The babysitter will be here in about twenty minutes, and I’ll tell her she’s got two today.” My daughter stood. “I’ve got to go take a shower and get to work.”

  “If you’re still working for those shysters over at the attorney general’s office, I wanna file charges against an individual who was supposed to take care of a delicate senior citizen such as myself.”

  She kissed the top of his head as she passed, disappearing around the corner. “Delicate like a bristly old badger.”

  He called after her, “Well, thank God I got some coffee, ’cause it looks like I’m not getting much sympathy around here!” He turned and looked at Lola and me. “Gimme that baby.”

  “Are you sober enough to hold her?”

  He stuck out his hands. “Gimme that damn baby; I know where I can get me some lovin’.” I handed her over and watched as he folded her up in his arms, then left them there to discuss the state of the world.

  As I passed through the living room, there was a knock on the door, so I changed course and opened it to find a very large woman practically looking me in the eye, with two young men standing behind her. “Howdy.”

  “Sheriff Longmire?”

  “Yes, and you must be Alexia Mendez.” I swung the door open and invited her in, but by that time Dog was standing beside me, which apparently gave the group pause. “Don’t pay any attention to him, he’s friendly.”

  No sooner had I said these words than Dog began a low, vibrating growl.

  I swatted him and turned back to them.

  She entered, but the two young men stood outside, looking at each other and then at Dog. “This is my nephew Ricardo and his friend David; they are living with me in my house and I asked them if they could be here to help with the sofa that your daughter is getting?”

  “Oh, we haven’t picked it up yet.” I stuck a hand out to Ricardo, a rather thin young man with deep-set, dark eyes not unlike his aunt’s. The other young man was more muscular, with shoulder-length blond hair. “David . . . ?”

  He spoke with a Southern accent. “Um, Coulter, sir.”

  Something about his manner tipped me off. “Military?”

  “Army—used to be.”

  “You?”

  “I play guitar.”

  We stood there for a moment. “Well, that means you’ll get all the girls.”

  He nodded, relieved at not having to prove his manhood. “You want us to hang around and wait?”

  “You’re welcome to come in, but I have to run down to Fort Collins to meet them and don’t know when we’ll get back.”

  He glanced at Dog and then his aunt, and there was a brief exchange in Spanish. She turned back to me. “I have his number, so we can call them when the sofa arrives?”

  “Sure, that’d be great, but I think we can probably handle it, if they have other things to do.”

  They departed, and I gestured toward the kitchen. “Lola and her Uncle Lucian are in there, and Cady is getting ready for work.”

  Dog approached, and she ran a hand over his head, winning him over with a scratch behind the ear. “Miss Cady has an uncle?”

  “Well, not officially. Anyway, you’ll see. I’m going to go speak with her, and then I’ll join you.”

  She smiled again and disappeared with Dog following behind.

  I tapped on the partially open door of my daughter’s bedroom. “Alexia’s here, but if you need any extra help today . . . with Lola, I mean?”

  The door opened, and she hung on it, looking up at me. I had a momentary flashback to the many conversations we’d had in the doorway of her bedroom in the little rented house she’d grown up in back home. “Not really. Why, are you looking for something else to do?”

  “Maybe.”

  She studied me, pulling a reddish butterscotch lock from her eyes and depositing it behind her ear. “You really hate this, don’t you?”

  “I guess I do.”

  “Then don’t do it.”

  “It’s not that easy, Cady.”

  She straightened my collar. “With you, it never is.”

  —

  I decided I needed a drink after all.

  Leaving Sheriff Leeland in the rear, I found my way back to the lounge car where the party, along with the train, was well under way. Sidling up to the bar, I got the attention of the bartender, the same diminutive brunette as before. “What’s a man got to do to get a beer around here?”

  She smiled. “Boy, are you on the wrong train.”

  “So I’ve been told.” I pulled the Agatha Christie from my jacket pocket and thumbed to the beginning in hopes of insulating myself from any company.

  She leaned forward with an air of confidentiality. “The crew has a case of Rainier they smuggled on board back in the dining car. When I get a second I’ll go liberate a six for you, just ’cause you’re cute.”

  “Or because I’m less than thirty years old?” She smiled, ran her hand through her hair, and turned to another sheriff whom I hadn’t met, as I feigned reading.

  “Just a branch water on the rocks, if you would, please.” He leaned toward me and shifted his buckaroo hat farther back on his head. He was younger than the rest of the sheriffs with one of his eyes larger than the other, giving the impression that he was studying you with only half his faculties. “John Schafer.”

  “How do you do.”

  “I’d do better if I wasn’t on a train full of drunks.” He gestured toward my empty hands. “Good to see another man with some restraint. You a Mormon?”

  “Um, no.” As we watched the young bartender set his water on the bar and then disappear, I came clean. “Actually, I just ordered a beer, but evidently she has to go find some.”

  “Oh.” He studied me for a moment with his larger eye. “You’re new.”

  “Yep. Deputy sheriff up in Absaroka County under Lucian Connelly.”

  He glanced over his shoulder to where Lucian had moved to a row of chairs facing the windows. He had been joined by some of the other men, who were laughing uproariously at something my boss had just said. “He appears to be having a good time.” He shook his head. “Hey, hey, hey, you see that piece of work that McKay brought on board—a real cruiser-crawler. She made a play for me about a week ago, but I told her to take a hike.” He studied me some more. “You’re a big one, aren’t you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Six-four?”

  “Five.”

  He nodded and sipped his water. “When we get to Evanston, I might need a favor.”

  “A favor?”

  “Yes.” He looked out the window. “If I need you, I’ll tell you about it when we get there.” He looked a little embarrassed at asking, and then, changing the subject, gestured outside. “What do you make of this country?”

  I dipped my head to look out the window at the unfamiliar terrain. “I’m not sure where we are.”

  “Hermosa—it used to be a cattle loading depot, but it’s just a ghost town now.”

  “Looks like godforsaken territory.”

  I got the eye again. “Albany, my county as of eight years ago.”

  I glanced back out the window. “It has a subtle beauty.”

  He nodded, and a slight smile snuck onto his lips. “We’ll start climbing here in
a minute and finish off at Sherman Hill, the highest point on the transcontinental railroad.”

  The young woman returned and handed me a bottle of beer with a smile and a tilt of her head.

  “Thank you.” She eyed me a moment more and then I turned back to Schafer. “Well, that should be a sight.”

  “Not really, we’ll be going through the tunnel, so it’ll be mostly dark as ten feet up a bull’s ass.”

  I nodded, thinking it best if I said nothing, still wondering what kind of favor he might have in mind. I was relieved when Holland, the special agent from the railroad, joined us. “Gentlemen, what are we up to?”

  Schafer sipped his water. “I’m attempting to educate the new guy.”

  “Concerning?”

  “Just about every damn thing.” With that, he pushed off the bar and moved away.

  “I don’t think you impressed him with your breadth of knowledge, Deputy,” said the sad-looking train dick.

  “No, I suppose not.” I gestured out the window. “Have you ever wondered why all of the major cities, or what passes for major cities in southern Wyoming, are almost exactly two hours apart by train?”

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  “They started out as water stops for when all the trains were steam.”

  He cocked his head. “I’d say Sheriff Schafer has underestimated you, Deputy Longmire.”

  “I’m careful who I share my intellect with, Mr. Holland.” My eyes went back to the window—we were, indeed, climbing. “You know about the raffle?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The raffle. When Wyoming moved from being an Indian Territory to becoming a state, they knew they needed towns every two hours for those water stops, so they put up a raffle to divide the state government. The towns would get their choice of the capitol, the university, the prison, or the psychiatric hospital.”

  “Who won?”

  “Rawlins.”

  He looked at me, doubtful. “The prison?”

  I nodded. “First choice, the theory being that they weren’t so sure how the state government or higher education thing would work out, but we’ll always have prisoners here in Wyoming.”

  He pulled at an elongated earlobe. “Well, they had a point.” He glanced over his shoulder. “That might be one of the reasons Schafer’s not too sociable.”

  “He lives in Rawlins?”

  “No, but he’s got a brother that had a short stop there before they shipped him off to Evanston.”

  I raised an eyebrow—maybe this had something to do with the favor Schafer had mentioned.

  Holland looked around to make sure the sheriff of Albany County was well out of earshot. “This brother of his, Ed, got into some trouble back when he was a kid and did a juvenile stint. When he got out, they figured he was okay, but pretty soon some coeds started disappearing around the university in Laramie. I guess he killed a half dozen before they figured out it was him. He was an adult by that time, and they sent him to Rawlins on a life sentence, but when he killed a guard there, they stuffed him in a hole underneath the Wyoming State Insane Asylum.”

  “Black sheep, huh?”

  He nodded. “They tested him and they say he’s got an IQ of over a hundred and forty.” He glanced around and remained silent as another sheriff passed us holding two drinks. “Arrested by his own brother. Strange, too—even with more than a couple of years between ’em, they look remarkably alike with the same proptosis.”

  “The bulging eye?”

  He nodded. “But in opposite eyes; John’s is the left and Ed’s is the right. Even though they aren’t twins, there are some folks who said that was the only way you could tell the two apart.”

  “Before they lodged Ed under the insane asylum?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded toward the man who now stood near Lucian and was listening to the stories. “John’s one tough hombre. He still goes and visits his brother every month over there, and I was on this train with him a year ago and he invited me to go along.” The man shuddered. “My God, I’ve never been in a place like that. They slid that grate aside, and the two of ’em talked through a hole in the door.” His face turned back to mine. “I’ve never seen anything like that. There just aren’t words for it. Ed just kept telling his brother that he was innocent, and he had to get him out of there.”

  “Unfortunate.”

  “Is that what you call it?” He shook his head. “They should’ve taken Ed out and shot him in a ditch and left the body for the turkey buzzards.”

  “Unless he really is innocent.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t you know? Everybody’s innocent in there.” He stared at me. “You’re a true believer, huh?”

  “Define true believer.”

  “Someone who thinks there is an equal and all-encompassing justice.”

  I took a sip of my beer before answering. “No, I don’t think there is, certainly not after Vietnam.”

  He studied me a few moments more. “Yeah, you’re a true believer all right.”

  —

  “You ought to get one of those phones that tell you where to go.” Lucian stuffed the bowl of his pipe from the beaded tobacco pouch as I drove.

  “I know where I’m going.”

  He glanced around as I parked in the municipal lot. “This ain’t the way to the Office of Probation and Parole.”

  “I know that, too.”

  I cut the ignition.

  “Then where the hell are we going?”

  “Wyoming Court of Appeals.”

  “Hell, what’s being appealed?”

  I pulled the handle and opened the door of my truck, glad to get him out before he started smoking. “We’re going to find out.”

  Declining my assistance, he exited from the other side and eased the prosthetic leg to the pavement. “You need to get a lower truck.”

  I helped him around the door and closed it behind him, handing him his four-prong cane. “You seem to have a lot of ideas about what I need.”

  He glanced around. “Well, you needed to park closer, too.”

  “Uh huh.” I shook my head and guided him in the direction of the office. “How about you get one of those handicapped mirror danglers? That way I can park right by the door.” He didn’t say anything. “Or I could go get one of those complimentary wheelchairs they’ve got inside. . . .”

  “How would you like to kiss my ass for a big red apple and then not get it?”

  I assisted him in stepping up on the curb. “Well, I don’t think I’d like that very much at all.” I spotted one of the court-appointed attorneys on his way out of the building. “Dick Davis?”

  He joined us. “Hey, Walt . . . Lucian.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “The convict had what they’re calling a heart episode, so they hauled him over to Cheyenne Regional Medical; we’re in a holding pattern.”

  Lucian poked at one of the silver-haired lawyer’s boots with his cane. “There are a lot of folks who would contest the fact that the convict has a heart at all.”

  Dick nodded and started past us. “I’ve got more cases that need attention this morning, certainly ones that pay better, so . . .”

  I called after him. “What are we supposed to do?”

  “I guess you’ve got to wait until the court decides when the hearing will convene.”

  “Well.” I turned back to Lucian. “Do you want to get Lola and go to the zoo?”

  He ignored me. “No, by God, I’m goin’ to find out what the hell is goin’ on.”

  I followed, figuring the least I could do would be to keep Lucian from being incarcerated himself.

  Ushering him through the glass doors, I got that feeling I always did when walking on the marble floors past the wood-paneled walls of the grand government building—that I was some country cous
in from the hinterlands, unworthy of sullying the halls of justice. We were making our way down one of those halls when we ran into the one person in Cheyenne I was hoping to avoid.

  “Walt Longmire, you haven’t been returning my e-mails.”

  I looked down at the frizzy mop of chemically dyed fuchsia hair, a color approximating nothing in the natural world. “Libby, I don’t have a computer.”

  She propped a fist on a hip obscured by an extremely loud, printed caftan and swung a scarf as large as a Hudson’s Bay blanket over a shoulder, her jewelry rattling like a sheep wagon. “Do you have a phone?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Libby Troon was the owner and operator of Liberty Bail Bonds and living proof that the spirit and style of the sixties were far from dead. “Well, I’ve got some opportunities for you and that delicious Henry Standing Bear.”

  I watched as Lucian, who hadn’t paused, kept walking. “We’ve got enough official work to keep us busy, Libby.”

  I tried to move past her, but she stepped in my way. “Um, there’s something I’d like to talk with you about.”

  I stifled my sigh. “Go ahead.”

  “Abarrane Extepare.”

  One of the patrician Basque ranchers from my county. “He’s, what, a hundred years old?”

  “Well, almost, I guess, but there’s a situation developing with his great-grandson.”

  “What kind of situation?”

  “He keeps taking him off on unscheduled trips.”

  “Unscheduled trips. Like what, fishing?”

  “Now that you mention it, yes. The parents filed charges. Abarrane had taken the kid to Elko, Nevada. The charges were dropped, but I’ve got a funny feeling on this one.”

  I glanced down the hallway where Lucian had disappeared. “Libby, if you’ve got something to tell me, I’d appreciate it if you just got to the point.”

  “I’ve seen this pattern before where they test the limits, seeing how far they can get before they finally take the child and vanish.”

  I stuffed my hands in my pockets and looked at her. “Abarrane is one of the largest landowners in the county and he’s older than dirt. Where would he run off to, the Sunnydale Home for Assisted Living? And why would he kidnap a kid in his own family?”