It was my turn to take a breath. “We’re not talking about me.” I slowly let it out. “We’re talking about you.”
Her eyes went down to her hands, which still held my knees. “Look
… I know my limitations.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m not an administrator.”
I shrugged. “Neither am I; that’s why I have Ruby.”
“I won’t have that luxury because as soon as you retire, she’ll leave skid marks.” She looked around the room as if the staff had suddenly assembled and then departed. “They’ll all leave, and I’ll be sitting in this fucking mausoleum alone.”
“I think you might be underestimating yourself.”
“Really?” Her head nodded in emphasis, the way it did when she had more to say than one mouth would allow. “The Ferg is, for all intents and purposes, retired. Double Tough will bail as soon as one of these methane outfits offers him sixty thousand a year. Frymire, the international man of mystery-who the fuck knows what Frymire is going to do? And Saizarbitoria? You think he’s going to be happy being a deputy for the rest of his life?”
“He just switched over from corrections-he’s not ready to be a sheriff.”
“He will be in two years.”
“Maybe not.” I wanted to put a little more distance between us, so I contemplated the books on her shelves and the one space left for the light switch. “Does the Basquo seem a little odd to you lately?”
Her head inclined. “In what way?”
“Since he got stabbed?”
She thought about it. “Maybe a little. He’s quieter-why?” “I’ve been trying to work him back on the duty roster, but he’s not showing a great deal of enthusiasm.”
She sighed. “Well, he lost a kidney, so maybe he’s got a right to a little bullet fever.” She leaned back, cocked an elbow on her armrest, and placed a fingernail that matched her toes between her teeth. “And you?”
“What about me?”
“I’m going back to the original subject of this fucking conversation. Are you going to be my deputy if I’m sheriff?”
I leaned forward and took her finger out of her mouth and put my hands over hers. “Like I said before, we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you.”
“I asked you a very simple question.”
I didn’t answer, and she’d nodded some more. “That’s what I thought.”
October 28, 7:25 P.M.
Bill dropped Dog and me off at my rental car and said he’d see us later this evening at the fights. I drove the lonely gravel road back toward Absalom. A fantail of ochre dust plumed twenty feet tall behind me before it was lifted by the prevalent wind and carried off toward Twentymile Butte and the Battlement. The two-hundred-foot front face of the topographical landmark stood like some sort of Powder River Monte Cassino along the wide valley of Wild Horse Creek, which reflected the autumnal glow as the scoria shone like carved platinum.
When I was about Benjamin’s age, I’d read Edgar Rice Bur-roughs’s Lost World in the back bedroom of the ranch house we’d just been surveying and had secretly suspected that dinosaurs roamed the elevated and unapproachable twenty square miles that I saw almost every day. I was right in a sense but wrong in a chronology that was off by a couple of million years.
The college in Sheridan had had a dig up on the butte where they had found the intact, fossilized skeleton of not a dinosaur but a birdlike creature about eight feet tall. I’d seen the Diatryma in the museum over there and had dutifully read the little brass plaque that had labeled it as one of the dominant predators of the Eocene period, when Wyoming had been a dense jungle of subtropical climate at the edge of a western interior seaway.
Geologically, I’m sure there was a lot that had gone on there since then, but socially I don’t think much had happened. There were the occasional antelope and plenty of modern birds that made their homes in the rock, but the plateau was too high and the wind too forceful to allow for cattle grazing, and there wasn’t much to hunt, so not many people made the trip.
There was a new road where an energy exploration firm had tested for gas and oil, and which might have provoked more exploration, but in keeping with the Battlement’s inhospitality, all of the seventeen-thousand-foot wells had come up empty.
Secretly, I was glad. I still had hopes that there might be a few dinosaurs up there lingering about.
Just outside of town, I pulled the rental car to a stop at the railroad crossing and watched a fully loaded Burlington Northern amp; Santa Fe coal train rumble over the dark, shiny rails that gleamed like quicksilver in the twilight. My mind matched the pace of the train, each thought snagging the next and hauling it in tow.
I had explained to Tom Groneberg and his son, Carter, that we were just out for a ride and had taken the old ranch road by habit. He’d asked if I’d gotten this month’s check, and I assured him that I had. He said that he and his wife, Jennifer, had purchased the property to the west and still had hopes of having a place of their own someday. I assured them that my place was theirs as long as they liked.
I glanced back up the hill toward the cemetery and thought about two of the graves that were up there.
I reached over and scratched Dog’s ears as the last railcar passed and snaked its way in a gradual arc along Clear Creek south toward the Bighorn Mountains. “Thomas Wolfe says you can’t go home again.” He watched me with his big, soulful eyes and then glanced back down the gravel road to the hills beyond, perhaps looking for his own long-dead ancestors.
There was a great deal of bustle in The AR in anticipation of the big fight, and I was hoping that Juana would be working so I could get Dog and me some dinner. It was as she’d said, and Pat had rehired her; then, after giving her all the work, he had gone home to take a nap before this evening’s festivities. She was loading auxiliary coolers behind the bar, and there were sixteen more cases to carry in from the porch. I volunteered to stock the beer if she would grill up a few hamburgers for us.
The food was ready by the time I finished setting up the coolers, and she even allowed Dog to come in and sit at the end of the bar. She broke up his two hamburgers and started to carefully feed them to him. I guess her opinion of the species was softening. “He likes me.”
I ate my one cheeseburger and suspected that it might’ve been a little larger than The AR usually served. “So, you called the cops last night?”
She fed another bite to Dog, and I could tell she was surprised at how gentle he was. “Yeah, even as an illegal I figured that was too much gunfire to not call in. Anyway, I was incognito.” She glanced at me. “How come they arrested you?”
I swallowed and took a sip of my iced tea. “They didn’t.”
“Why’d they put you in the cruiser?”
I plucked a fry that had fallen from my plate onto the surface of the bar, dragged it through my puddle of ketchup, and gave it to Dog-waste not, want not. “They just said they wanted to go over a few things.”
She gestured a graceful chin toward the now-boarded-up window. “Like who blew out the front of the bar?”
I nodded. “Things like that.”
“Pat’s got a pretty wicked scuff on his chin, and he says his jaw isn’t working so hot.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” She continued to watch me as I ate. “He says that he was closing up and that somebody came in the back and surprised him.”
I turned to look at her as she fed Dog another bite. “Somebody was breaking in the back while somebody was shooting up the front?”
“That’s what he said.” She shrugged with one shoulder and again with just a bit of attitude. “What do you think happened?”
I had to smile at her two-year, textbook procedure. “I really wouldn’t know.”
“I found about fourteen nine-millimeter casings scattered all over the floor, and a twenty-gauge shell behind the bar with wadding out on the porch.”
I ate a fry. “Really?
”
“Yeah.” She fed the last of the burger to Dog and wiped her hands on a dishtowel hanging from her back jeans pocket. “You wanna know what I think?”
“Sure.”
“I think there were three people involved. I think Pat and somebody else were meeting here in the bar, and then somebody came in the back. I think whoever it was that came in surprised Pat, hit him with his own gun, and then went toward the front.” Her face grew flushed, and I could tell she was very excited about giving me her account of the story. “Then, whoever was out here didn’t really want to see whoever it was that took Pat out and started shooting at them.”
I nodded. “Took Pat out?”
Her smile bunched to one side as she considered me. “It’s cop-talk. Don’t you ever go to the movies?”
“Not since 1974. It was a double feature-Ulzana’s Raid and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.”
She swatted my words away. “Evidently, nobody got shot since there isn’t any blood.”
“Evidently.”
She folded her arms and looked at me. “There’s just one thing I can’t figure out, and that’s why the guy with the shotgun didn’t just shoot the guy in the pickup truck?”
I took a sip of my tea and sat there watching her in the silence. “And what pickup truck was that?”
It was silent some more. “I didn’t tell you about the red Dodge pickup truck?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Oh.” She reached down and petted Dog’s head. “After I called 911, I ran down the road by the church and saw a truck back away from the bar and take off down Wild Horse Road.” As an afterthought, she added. “It didn’t have any plates.”
“Uh huh.”
She leaned in on the bar, conspiratorially, and stole a fry. She chewed and watched me. “Bill Nolan’s got a truck like that.” She made a face and shook her head. “But he’s not the one you’re looking for.”
“Oh?”
“No, he might be a law bender, but he’s not a lawbreaker.”
I sighed and finished my tea. “I wasn’t aware that I was looking for anybody.”
She leaned in even closer, and her voice was barely a whisper. “Okay, but a lawyer from Philadelphia by the name of Cady Longmire called looking for her father, the sheriff of Absaroka County, and described a guy who sounded an awful lot like you.” She stole the last fry and looked very satisfied with herself. “I told her that I was working for you, and I could deliver a message.” She put her elbows on the bar and looked to the right and to the left for dramatic effect, then at me directly. “I told her you were undercover.”
I stared at her. “What was the message?”
“She said that some guy named Michael asked her to marry him.”
9
October 28, 8:45 P.M.
“How am I supposed to know you’re undercover; you’re never undercover!”
Cady emphasized the word like I was playing spy.
Ruby, unaware that my activities in Absalom were of a covert nature, had given my daughter the number of the motel office, which was also the one for The AR. Luckily, Juana had been the one who had answered. “It’s okay. I trust the person who got the phone.”
“The man or the young woman?”
I took a breath. “Who answered the phone when you called?”
“Some guy, sounded like a real piece of work. Funny name, like something you’d hear in a bad television show.”
“Cliff Cly?”
“That’s it.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“Nothing. I just told him I was looking for my father and then asked if he worked there. Then he handed me over to the woman.”
“Juana.”
“Who is she?”
“You’re sure that’s all you said to him?”
Long sigh. “Yes, Man From U.N.C.L.E., that’s all I said. Now, who is she?”
I looked down the bar at the young bandita who’d allowed me to use the wall phone in the hallway of the empty establishment. “She works here.”
“She sounds foreign.”
I cupped the receiver against my face. “She’s Guatemalan. She’s an illegal-”
“She said her name is Juana.”
“It is.”
“She said she worked for you.”
“She doesn’t work for me.”
“She said she did.”
I sighed. “She has an overly active imagination and a potential two-year degree in criminology from Sheridan College. You know what they say about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing?”
“Speaking of-you’re a sheriff. What are you doing working undercover?” She continued to say it as though I were in the school play.
“Sandy Sandberg called and needed a little help.”
“Oh, God.”
“What?”
“Daddy, you know he is such a character.” She and Sandy went way back. When she was a toddler, he had taken the time to play with her at the law enforcement academy in Douglas, and they had become fast friends. Even through her protests, I could hear the admiration she had for the man. “He could get you killed.”
“It’s not that dangerous a case.” I leaned a shoulder against the wall and tucked the big Bakelite receiver against the side of my head. “What is this about you getting married?”
There was a pause, the first in the conversation. “Michael asked me to marry him.”
The second pause. “When?”
The third pause. “Yesterday.”
The fourth pause. “What’d you say?”
“I told him I needed to think about it.”
I nodded at the wall and rested my forehead there. “I think that’s smart.” I waited for the critique of my response.
“Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”
I cleared my throat. “For thinking about it?”
“For being asked.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
I listened to her breathing and could tell she was holding the phone close to her mouth. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure.”
“It’s awfully soon.”
“I knew you were going to say that.”
I paused again; if only I could find a way to parent undercover. “You’ve had a lot of things in your life lately.”
“I know.”
I thought about the Philadelphia patrolman, Vic’s younger brother. It wasn’t that I had reservations about him, but it had only been five months since they’d met and a tumultuous five months at that. And even though it wasn’t fair, I thought about her previous relationship and how that had left her unconscious on the steps of the Franklin Institute. “Why do you think he asked?”
“Well, I think it has something to do with him loving me.”
“I mean now.”
Silence. “I don’t know.”
I nodded at the wall. “Have you guys discussed this?”
“A little, just talking about what we could do… Just pie-in-the-sky stuff.”
“I guess he’s decided he wants his dessert now.”
“Daddy.”
I stared at the army-green wall. People had written and scratched things so deeply that re-paintings had only heightened the sentiment. I wondered if Custer really wore Arrow shirts, if DD still loved NT, if the eleven kids that got left at the parking lot were still beating the Broncos twenty-four to three, or if 758-4331 was still a good time. I thought about the love, heartbreaks, and desperate passions that had been played out through the phone in my hand and wondered if emotion held like the scent of honeysuckle in late August-sad and sweet, hopeful and tragic. “I think he loves you. I think he’s crazy about you.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not hard to do, you know.” I could hear the smile.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I ran my fingertips over the wall. “I think you need to follow your heart, kiddo.” I took a deep breath and let it o
ut slowly, allowing my emotions to join all the others that had sighed through the pattern of black holes in the mouthpiece. My heart, which was two thousand miles distant, pulled away a little bit farther. “Is he okay with you taking your time?”
There was a sniff. “He says he’ll wait forever.”
I nodded at the wall again, aware that something had changed in me a few months ago and that now I seemed to be battling a sort of grief aversion-the emotional backwash of Cady’s narrow escape. During her crisis, I had been in a kind of present-tense, protective mode that got me through the danger without wasting energy or emotional resources, but now it was past tense and I was uneasy.
We do everything we can to protect those we love, whatever it takes, and it’s not enough. Unlike bone, once that illusionary magic circle of safety is broken, it can never be completely repaired and it is not stronger at the break. When Cady had left to go back to Philadelphia, I had hours and days to think and feel. I was supposed to be happy, but I wasn’t, and I hadn’t been sleeping well-having Mary Barsad in my jail hadn’t helped. Like an addict, I was taking it one day at a time.
Dog was still seated at the end of the bar, and Juana was feeding him the remainder of my cheeseburger now. “I figured you didn’t want the rest?”
“No.”
She studied me. “Are you okay?”
I took a deep breath, cleared my throat, and swallowed. “Yep.” I extended my hand. “Walt Longmire, sheriff, Absaroka County.”
She wiped her hand on her jeans, took mine, and smiled. “I know. I looked you up on the Internet at the library in Gillette. There was a big article about you in the Billings Gazette and the Denver Post-something about you breaking up a human trafficking syndicate in California?”
“I had a very small part in an investigation.”
“There was a photograph of you on the steps of some big building, but your hat covered up a lot of your face.”
“That’s my best side.” I reached down to pet Dog. “Was Cliff Cly the first to answer when Cady called?”
She nodded. “Yeah, but I grabbed it away from him pretty quick. He was in here drinking his lunch and got to it faster than I could.” She thought about it. “It was like he was waiting for a call.”
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