Cold Dish

by Craig Johnson

  “We don’t know. We been here for twenty minutes and ain’t seen a damn pancake yet.” Joe Benham was in a lean and hungry mood.

  “Might be for the best. They aren’t letting the firemen cook again, are they?”

  “You think they’d learn to not trust ’em with fire.” David’s comment referred to the infamous Stove Oil Incident wherein the firemen had set fire to the old wood-burning stove at the Future Farmers of America hall, resulting in that year’s pancakes tasting roughly like roofing shingles.

  “The best was when they almost burned their truck up at that grass fire out near you.” Elaine, being a patron of the arts, always appreciated spectacle.

  Ruby placed a steaming Styrofoam cup of coffee in front of me. I hadn’t even seen her get up. “Thank you, ma’am.” I took a sip and listened to the rumble as it joined the other four cups in my stomach. I was hungry and that was not a good thing on Pancake Day.

  “We were just discussing the city Christmas decorations, Walt. Do you think they’re the ugliest in Wyoming?” Elaine had a twinkle in her eye. As part of the city council, she had been lobbying for new decorations for about six years now. The problem was that Joe’s father had designed and executed the offending artistry of Santa, elves, reindeer, bells, wreaths, candles, trees, mistletoe, holly, stars, and toys twenty-five years ago. Say what you want about three-quarter inch exterior ply, it holds ugly for a long time.

  “Gillette’s are uglier,” I ventured.

  “We heard you had a busy night.” Dan Crawford picked up his coffee and blew into it, watching the swirls of cream separate at the rip-tide on the other side of his cup. It got quiet.

  This was going to be the prime topic of conversation for the morning, so I might as well develop an official line. “Nothing big. We had a hunting accident out near 137 on BLM land.” I tried to make it sound like the end of the story.

  “We heard there was a boy dead.” Dan continued to look at his coffee.

  “Well, what else have you heard?” It got even quieter. “No offense, Dan, but I’m not gonna sit here and play guessing games with you. Why don’t you just tell me what you know, and I’ll either confirm or deny it or not.” His face reddened, which was not what I was after.

  “I didn’t mean anything, Walt. Just curious.”

  He meant it. I rubbed my face with my hands and looked at all of them. “I hope you’ll all excuse me, but it’s been a long night.” I sighed. “With all due respect to the ongoing investigation, it would appear that, on the night past, one Cody Pritchard departed for the far country from which no traveler born returns.”

  The allusion was not lost on Elaine. “Have you narrowed it down to a couple of hundred thousand suspects, as in something rotten in the state of Denmark or Iowa?”

  Joe nodded. “Well, I don’t figure there’ll be any public outcries of mourning . . .” Elaine ventured that there might be a parade, then saved me by asking if I was willing to play the Ghost of Christmas Future in the civic theatre’s upcoming production of A Christmas Carol. I was pretty sure that she wanted me for my height and not my dramatic skills. This was confirmed when she assured me that I wouldn’t have to learn any lines and that all I had to do was point.

  I excused myself to see a man about a horse and made for the boy’s room at the far end of the hall. On the way, I got a peek through the kitchen service opening and was startled to see Vonnie Hayes sliding a stacked platter of pancakes to a waiting fireman. She looked much as she did last evening, which seemed like another life. Her hand came up and swiped back a stray wisp of hair that had escaped from the loose bun. It’s funny how the little movements that a woman makes seem so individualized, like a signature. It was the rotation of the wrist with a two-finger pull. I gave it a ten and was aroused. I waved and thought she had seen me, but maybe I was wrong. She smiled at the young fireman and disappeared into the kitchen. Those firemen, they make out like bandits.

  In the boy’s room, I attended to business, washed my hands, hit the button on the hand dryer, and wiped my hands off on my pants to the quiet hum of modern technology. It was then that I realized I was wearing my weapon. I don’t wear my gun to community functions, and I don’t wear it on weekends. I was actually famous for taking it off and leaving it places. Periodically, Vic would bring it back to me from the bathroom in the office or out of the seat of the Bullet. She liked to make fun of my antique armament by calling it the blunderbuss. Heavy, hard to aim, slow rate of fire, it was the weapon I had used in Vietnam for four years, and I’d gotten used to it.

  The Colt 1911A1 had a grisly but effective past. During the Philip-pine campaigns, the islanders took to getting doped up and wrapping themselves in sugarcane. United States servicemen had the glorious experience of shooting these natives numerous times with no result before being hacked to death by their machetes. Obviously, something with a little more hitting power than the standard issue .38 was needed. John Browning’s auto-loading, single-action child graduated to .45 caliber, and the Filipinos began flying back out of the trenches they had hurled themselves into. Unaccurized, the weapon was about as precise as a regulation basketball but, if you hit something with it, chances were good the fight was over.

  I thumbed the standard duty holster open and took the weapon out to check it; an old habit. The matte finish was rubbed off at the sights and the ridges along the barrel’s slide action. Fully loaded, which it was, it regularly weighed 38.6 ounces, but today it seemed to weigh about three tons. What the hell was it doing on? Was I responding to some unconscious threat? Did I know more than I thought I knew? It was about this time that I became aware of the bathroom door being opened, and a fully dressed fireman looked at me and my gun.

  “I didn’t think the pancakes were that bad.”

  “Hello, Ray.” He was the young one I had seen talking to Vonnie at the kitchen window. “You need in here?” It took him a moment to respond.

  “Ms. Hayes sent me over, you got a phone call in the kitchen.”

  It was probably the first time he had ever used the title Ms. in his life. He still didn’t move. “Anything else?”

  He smiled, embarrassed. “You gonna shoot somebody?”

  I thought for a moment and sighed. “Anybody need shooting?”

  “Not that I know of.” He looked away for a second. “Sounds like the only one that needed it got it last night.” He was roughly Cody Pritchard’s age, and they probably had gone to school together. I nodded and started to squeeze by him. “What’s the um . . . story on Cody?”

  I stopped, and we were lodged in the doorway. I looked down at him. “Well”—I paused for effect—“he’s dead.” I watched him to see if there was anything else. There wasn’t, so I smiled. “You better get some pancakes over to the mayor at the Business Associates Committee table before you guys are putting out fires with a bucket brigade.”

  “You bet.” Always good to know on which side your pancake is buttered.

  As I made my way toward the kitchen, I mused on the thought of being caught in the bathroom playing with my gun. Great, as if everybody in the county didn’t already think I was loony as a waltzing pissant. When I got to the kitchen door, Vonnie already had it open.

  “No rest for the wicked?”

  “I wish.” God, she looked good with that little bit of sweat in the hollow at the base of her throat.

  “The phone’s over by the sink, back hallway.”

  I breezed by, trying to exude competent professionalism as I picked up the receiver from the drain board. “Longmire.”

  “Jesus, are you eating again?” The long distance whine from Cheyenne was no surprise; in my experience most things from Cheyenne whined.

  “I am motivating the constituency and have yet to eat any pancakes. What are you still doing awake?”

  “The state medical examiner just finished his preliminary.”

  “Let me guess. Lead poisoning?”

  “Yeah, the rig/liv says it was about six-thirty when he got it.
Gives some credibility to the hunting accident scenario, changing light and all, but . . .”

  This must be good. “But?”

  “Massive cavitations with a lot of radiopague snowstorm.”

  My mind immediately summoned up a visual X-ray with the usual fragments of civilian hunting ammunition. Obviously, this was not the case. “Nonmilitary?”

  “Maybe semijacketed, maybe not. It’s a really strange caliber, and it’s big.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  This was something. With Vic’s specialty in ballistics back in Philadelphia, I had assumed her initial assessment that it was a .30-06 was gospel. “What do you think?” There was silence for a moment.

  “I don’t think it’s a deer gun.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “I know what a fucking high-powered slug looks like, all right?” I let it set for a moment, and so did she.

  “Why don’t you get some sleep?” It was fun saying it to someone else. Silence.

  “He had a cheeseburger with jalapeño peppers.”

  “I’ll go by the Busy Bee and talk to Dorothy. Anything else?” Silence.

  “Go talk to Omar. He’s a crazy motherfucker, but he knows his shit.” Silence. “So, do you miss me?”

  I laughed. When I hung up the phone, Vonnie was holding a plate where a steaming stack of pancakes lay waiting. “I figured this was the only way you were going to get to eat.” She relaxed and leaned her back against the wall. With the apron on and her hair up she looked like an Amish centerfold. “You have a lot of women in your life.”

  “You think that’s a good thing or a bad thing?” I said between bites.

  She peered over her coffee cup. Her eyes were enormous. “Depends on the women.” I nodded and chewed. “It’s just got to be difficult. I don’t know how you do it.”

  “Well, it’s not my usual routine, running ten miles at dawn, three hundred sit-ups . . .” She let go with this snorty laugh and apologized, holding her hand to her face.

  “How are your pancakes?”

  I took a breath. “They’re great, thank you.”

  “I heard you used to make animal shapes with pancakes.” She smiled mischievously.

  “You’ve been talking to one of the women in my life.”

  “I have, it’s true. I learned all kinds of little secrets about you when she was working for me.”

  I nodded, thought about little secrets, and took my last bite. “The deal was this, if she went to church on Sunday mornings with her mother, she didn’t have to eat her heathen father’s breakfast. It’s a wonder she didn’t turn into a devout Methodist.”

  “That’s not what she told me. She said she liked having you all to herself.”

  “And now she does.” It was out before I knew I had said it. I had gotten so used to joking about Martha’s death, but here it just seemed wrong. “Sorry.”

  “Do you ever get lonely, Walter?”

  “Oh, sure.” I tried to think of something else to say, but nothing seemed honest enough. All I could think of was how soft and inviting she looked. I had this unfocused image of her, my bed back at the ranch, and all my worldly needs being gratified at once. This didn’t seem appropriate either.

  “Maybe we should get together sometime.”

  Maybe it was appropriate. “Why, Ms. Hayes, are you making a pass at me?” I emphasized the Ms.

  Her eyes sparked. “Maybe, Mr. Longmire, though I must admit your indifference and the gauntlet of women I may have to face seem daunting.”

  “Well, they’re a pretty tough bunch, so I can understand.”

  “The term a pride comes to mind.” She took a sip of coffee. “Maybe we should start with lunch?”

  It was a short drive back to the office where I parked behind the jukebox Turk called his car. It was some kind of Trans Am, at least that’s what it said all over it. That wasn’t all it said, since it looked as if every available surface was covered with some sort of sticker. It had stickers on the bumper to proclaim every ill-considered political opinion that had ever crossed Turk’s apolitical mind. Advice on the ex-president, his family, gun control, ProRodeo, state nativism, and honking if you were horny. On the back window, it had little cartoon characters peeing on each other and on the emblems of other vehicles. It seemed to me that there wasn’t anyone that could look at this car and not be offended. It was a lot like Turk.

  When I pushed open the door, no one was in the reception area. I stood there with the doorknob in my hand and listened. There was a shuffling noise in my office, and I heard one of my file cabinets shut. A moment later he turned through the doorway in full saunter. His eyes stayed steady as I shut the door behind me.

  “Man, it’s about time. I been sittin’ around here for hours.” I wasn’t sure if he considered being offensive to be the best defense or if it was just his natural state. “Running Horse called. She said they had some hunters that asked about the BLM land out on the Powder River near 137, section 23. They’re still here, stayin’ at the Log Cabin Motel. Wanna go talk to ’em?”

  I let it set for a few seconds. “What are you doing in my office?” He was a handsome kid with what the romance novels would call smoldering good looks. Dark coloring with wavy black hair and a Van Dyke goatee accenting the Basque on his mother’s side. Just shy of six and a half feet, most of it shoulder, he was a handy thing to have crossing his arms and looking menacing behind me in a domestic disturbance but, other than that, I had found little use for him. I had taken him on as a favor to Lucian. He didn’t like him either, but Turk was his nephew, and I felt obliged.

  “I was just checkin’ things out.”

  “In my office?” His face darkened a little past smoldering.

  “Hey, might be my office some day.” He looked toward Vic’s windowless little room across the hall from mine. There were no pictures on her walls. There were just books, shelves and shelves of books. You had to reach through the blue binders of Wyoming Criminal Procedure on the third shelf next to the door to turn the light on and off.

  “Turk, I’ve been up for two days and I’m getting a little edgy. You get my meaning?”

  He straightened. “Yes, sir.”

  I was liking him better. “Now there are a few things you can do to endear yourself to me in the next few days. Starting with doing what I tell you to do, keeping your mouth shut as much as possible, and staying out of my office. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now what I want you to do is run over to the Busy Bee and ask Dorothy Caldwell when she saw Cody last.”

  “You want me to get a statement from her?”

  I lowered my head. “She’s not a suspect, so don’t treat her like one or she’s liable to kick your ass. Just go over and ask her when she last saw Cody Pritchard, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You don’t have to keep calling me sir.”

  “Hell, I’ll call you anything you want, ’long as it gets me on your good side for once.” I tried not to, but the smile played on my face for an instant. “You sure you don’t want me to go with you to talk to the hunters?” I sighed as he pulled out a small, black vinyl notebook and a section map of the state. “I went by earlier and got the plate numbers, Michigan, with no wants or warrants. Willis at the office said there were four of ’em.” He paused for a moment. “They’re going to be armed.”

  “Well, I’ll put on an orange vest before I go over.” I reached out and tore the page from his notebook and took the map. He didn’t like me taking his evidence but followed me out the door anyway. I pointed over to Vic’s unit. “Take that one.”

  “That’s all right, mine’s warmed up.”

  We paused beside his car. “I am proud to say that this vehicle does not accurately represent the Absaroka County Sheriff ’s Department.” I guess it hurt his feelings.

  “This car will do a hundred and sixty.”

  “I doubt that and, if it does, it better no
t do it in this county. Anyway, I don’t think Dorothy’s gonna run for it, so you’re safe.” I nodded toward the office. “Hanging by the door with the Phillies key chain.” Whiz kids.

  He slumped and started back, stopping to ask, “We meet back here?”

  “Sure, we’ll synchronize watches.”

  It was six blocks to the Log Cabin Motel on 16 leading toward the mountains. It’s an old style place with twelve-by-twelve log structures and faded red neon. I pulled the Bullet up to the office and went in to talk to Willis, who informed me that the Michigan men had been up late celebrating their last night in town. This didn’t sound like men who had shot somebody, but you never knew. Willis asked who whacked Cody Pritchard, and I asked him why it was that when somebody died in town everybody started talking like John Garfield.

  They were in cabins 7 and 8, so I walked down the row beside the imprint of Turk’s 50-series tire tracks. Topflight detective work. I’m sure with the glass-pack mufflers he had been as inconspicuous as the Daytona 500. There was a brand new Suburban parked between the two cabins, Michigan plates. I couldn’t believe he had called them in. I knocked at the door of the nearest cabin and heard a muffled groan. I knocked again.

  “Oh God . . .”

  I knocked again. “Sheriff ’s Department. Could you open the door, please?”

  “Randy, this is not funny . . .” I leaned against the glossy, green doorjamb and knocked once again. After a few seconds, a young man in his underwear and a camo T-shirt snatched open the door. “Do you know what time it is?!” He was short and kind of round with light brown hair and a two-week beard. It did not take long for him to figure out I wasn’t Randy.

  “Good morning. I’m Sheriff Longmire, and I’d like a word with you.” At first he didn’t move, and I could see the wheels turning as he tried to figure out what it was that he had done to bring himself in contact with me. These few moments in the beginning can often tell me what I need to know. You hear about eye movement, nose touching, all that crap but, when you get right down to it, it’s just a feeling. The little voice in the back of your head just says, “Yeah, this is the guy.” My little voice had taken the fifth, and I figured this was not the guy. Besides, I was probably looking for a perpetrator who had acted alone. I told him he could put his pants on.