“I wish I was.”
Her pitch softened a little with the wonder of our predicament. “What does this have to do with the prisoner transport?”
“One of them may have been involved with the murder in a primary way.”
I listened as she readjusted the phone. “The Shade guy?”
“Yep.”
“Figures. The voices in that fucker’s head are singing barbershop.” It was quiet, and I listened to her breathe. “Here’s Henry-you better talk to him.”
I could hear her hand him the phone, and my lifelong buddy came on the line, a man with whom I’d endured the Wyoming public school system and Vietnam. “You are in trouble.”
“More than you’ll ever know.” I explained the situation. “Do you have any idea if any of the White Buffalos had any children who might’ve disappeared about nine years ago?” I waited as he absorbed it all. I tried not to mention the four-hundred-pound Indian in the room. “Can you make some phone calls?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still have Eli’s number over in Hot Springs?”
“I do.”
“Could you check with him and then call me back here on Sancho’s cell?”
There was talk in the background, and Henry spoke again. “She wants to know if you have eaten.”
I stared at the sandwich that was still wrapped on the table in front of me. “Not yet, so tell her to save me some lasagna.” There was more talk, but I interrupted. “Hey, Henry?”
“Yes.”
“Have you had any contact with Virgil since last summer?”
“I will ask Vic to save you some lasagna.”
“Virgil White Buffalo was briefly a suspect in a homicide case we had last August.”
McGroder, trying to get a read on why I was telling him all this, studied me as he ate his turkey sandwich. “Uh huh.”
“He wasn’t guilty, but he did display a number of antisocial characteristics and is… at large.”
The Basquo stated flatly, “In more ways than one.”
McGroder glanced at Sancho and then back at me. “What the hell does that mean?”
“He’s a very big man.”
The Utah agent studied me. “Bigger than you?”
“Much.” I took my hat off and balanced it on my knee. “In our part of the world, he’s what some people refer to as an FBI.”
Sancho provided the translation: “Fucking Big Indian.”
McGroder stopped chewing. “Dangerous?”
“He has had his moments.”
The agency man set his sandwich down. “Let me get this straight. You’ve got a giant Indian sociopath running around in these mountains who may be related to our victim?”
I noticed he’d lost the politically correct sobriquet. “I’m checking on that, and besides, he may not be anywhere near here. All we have are rumors. The Cloud Peak Wilderness Area alone is 189,039 acres and it’s completely surrounded by the Bighorn National Forest, so the chances of running into him or of him knowing anything about your investigation are slim.” I drank some of my coffee and listened to my stomach complain about waiting for the lasagna. “We didn’t know about the investigation until a few hours ago.”
McGroder sat there looking at his half-eaten sandwich, his appetite having just taken a hit. “I don’t like coincidences.”
“I’m not too fond of them myself, but I thought it was information you should have.”
“Thank you.” His hand came up and covered most of his face.
“There’s another concern.”
He looked at me through his fingers. “There is?”
“Have you guys checked the weather recently?”
The agent glanced out the window with a glum expression. “It’s shitty. Why?”
We both watched as the waitress pulled her aged SUV from the lot and turned left, driving carefully onto Route 16. I assumed she was done for the night and heading home the twenty miles to Ten Sleep where she probably lived.
“It may get worse. The temperature is dropping and in an hour or so this whole mountain range is going to be encased in a couple of inches of ice.”
McGroder sighed, and I continued. “There aren’t any working facilities open in any of the lodges around here, so you’re going to have to haul your people back to South Fork Lodge. I think you should secure the scene and get the rest of these prisoners off the mountain.”
He plucked the Motorola from his hip and clicked the mic. “AT, when can you be ready to go?”
After a moment, a strong signal came back from the van in the parking lot.
Static. “Can we eat first?”
He glanced at me, and I spread my hands.
McGroder clicked the mic again. “As soon as you’re done, get out of here.” He rested the radio on the table and looked at me. “Six hundred and some miles back to Salt Lake?”
“Six hundred fifty miles from Durant, about eight hours in good weather.” We both looked out the windows again. “Which you are not going to have until you descend a couple thousand feet.” My eyes stayed on the DOC van holding Raynaud Shade. One of the marshals was proffering bags of food to Benton, who divided it and handed some to the prisoner. “What about him?”
“He stays.” McGroder sipped his coffee. “But there’s no reason that you have to. If I had a warm bed and hot lasagna an hour away, I’d be leaving skid marks.”
I glanced at my deputy, who was making a pretense of reading and probably anxious to get home to his wife and young son. “You’re sure you don’t need us?”
“In about twenty minutes, I’m going to have a mobile task force of two field agents and four marshals to guard only one man.” He stood and extended his hand. “I think we can handle it. Would you mind borrowing one of our vehicles so that we can keep him in yours?”
I placed my hat back on my head and reared up into a standing position. I could see the relief on Sancho’s face as McGroder handed me a set of keys. It was nice that I hadn’t had to remind him that even though it was his investigation, it was still my county. “When do you want us back at the scene?”
“Weather permitting, probably early in the morning-say 0800.”
We shook hands, and I stared at his crew cut again. “Semper Fi?”
He grinned. “Yeah, you?”
I picked up my coffee and put the lid back on. “First Division.”
Wearing a pasted-on smile, he slapped me on the shoulder. “Get some sleep, Sheriff. I’ll see you at South Fork in the morning.” He stretched a hand toward Saizarbitoria but looked at the both of us. “Thanks for your help, Deputy. If I don’t see you again and you’re ever over Salt Lake way, look me up. I’ll get you over to The Pie for a good pizza.” As we got ready to go, he picked up my wrapped sandwich and tossed it to me. “Something for the road?”
“Class act.”
“Yep.” I was contemplating the sandwich in my lap and wondering if I could eat it now and the lasagna later. The Basquo momentarily slid the borrowed Suburban into a turn, then carefully corrected and straightened. “Slick?”
He nodded but kept his concentration on the road. “Like greased goose shit.”
“Better slow down.”
He heeded my unneeded advice, and we rolled/slid along the road at forty-five. “You think the Shade guy did it?”
“Well, he all but admitted to it when I took him to the bathroom.” I thought about the adopted Crow Indian we’d passed on our way to the borrowed federal vehicle. He had been eating while Benton, still holding the shotgun, watched. The marshal had nodded to us as we’d walked by in the freezing sleet, but it was Raynaud Shade’s eye, the glass one, that seemed to track along with us as we passed. The thing was wayward at best and it was probably just another reflection, but it was as if the dead eye was watching me.
“What?”
I turned to look at the Basquo. “Hmm?”
He continued to study me. “You were thinking of something?”
I fiddled with the wa
xed paper. “Did you read the file on Shade?”
“No.”
“He was one of the last of the Tukkuthkutchin tribe up in Canada-Northwest Territories.” I refolded the sandwich and stared out the window. “Transferred from one of the residential boarding schools to a private orphanage when he was eight. They tested him, and his IQ was off the chart. Raynaud ran away to live with his non-Indian father, who took responsibility for him. Two years later a social worker stopped in to check on the boy and discovered that the father had died eight months earlier.”
Sancho stared ahead. “What’d you do, commit the file to memory?”
I thought about it, about the parts I wasn’t telling. “That ten-year-old boy had been living in a cabin with his dead father in the bedroom for eight months. He got kicked around to a number of foster homes before being adopted by a couple in Lodge Grass. The woman was Cree; her husband, Crow. She was related to Shade’s mother, but there were problems, behavioral and otherwise; he ended up dropping out of school. That must’ve been the period when he killed Owen White Buffalo, and who knows who else. He returned to Canada and joined the army up there-Dwyer Hill Training Center outside Ontario.”
Sancho reached down and turned the defrosters to full, and I watched the already-ice-encased tree line as we passed, the conifers looking like some gigantic army standing at attention along both sides of the road.
“He was married, and his wife disappeared during a camping trip. There was a provincial hunt in Ontario, but she never turned up-must’ve killed her, too. A year later one of Shade’s buddies went missing, and the Ottawa Police Department started asking some questions. The military stonewalled it, but Shade was drummed out. He turned up as a suspect again in Factory Island Reservation, Ontario, in a search for an outfitting business partner a couple of years later. He was arrested, and when they searched his apartment they discovered blood trace from the guy he killed.”
“Jesus.”
I pulled my cup from the holder and sipped my coffee. “They stuck him in Kingston Penitentiary, but he got transported to a psychiatric prison for observation and, after three months there, he escaped into the U.S., hid out up in Lodge Grass, and killed the old couple that had taken him in when he was a child.”
Saizarbitoria shook his head as we slid around another sweeping corner.
“He’s supposedly a very interesting case, a specific form of psychotic schizophrenic where the subject is overcome by a culture-bound syndrome and hears voices-sees…” I couldn’t help but pause. “Sees apparitions. He refers to them as the ‘Seldom Seen’ and believes that he’s actually possessed by evil spirits that force him to sacrifice others.”
“Sounds like the old Basque priest at the Catholic Church who believes in fairies.”
I nodded. “The versions vary from tribe to tribe, but these spirits are purported to be malicious, supernatural beings. The people they inhabit supposedly have malevolent spiritual powers but are shunned by their own people.”
There was some chatter on the Feds’ radio about the mobile unit coming down from Baby Wagon, and I was glad to hear it. The Basquo slowed for another curve, and I could feel the Chevrolet fishtail. He glanced at me. “You believe that stuff?”
I was just as glad that he hadn’t been privy to my experiences in this very area of the mountains more than a year ago, when I had seen and heard my share of strange things. “I believe there were spiritual signposts that these tribes put into place so that no matter how dire the situation, the members would never be tempted to do things the tribe considered absolutely taboo.” I felt tired and slouched into the seat. “Imagine beginning to see people, things that no one else can see, and in punishment the real people around you begin drawing away-leaving you to these… spirits.”
“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 t
he 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?”
Hell Is Empty wl-7 Page 4
