Cold Dish

2

There’s nothing like a dead body to make you feel, well, removed. I guess the big city boys, cataloguing forty or fifty homicides a year, get used to it, but I never have. I’ve been around enough wildlife and stock that it’s pretty commonplace, the mechanics of death. There’s a religion worthy of this right of passage, of taking that final step from being a vertical creature to a horizontal one. Yesterday you were just some nobody, today you’re the honored dead with bread bags rubber-banded over your hands. I secure what’s left of my dwindling humanity with the false confidence of the living, the deceitful wit of the eight-foot tall and bulletproof. Yea, verily, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will live forever. If I don’t, I sure as hell won’t become an unattended death in the state of Wyoming with sheep shit all over me.

We had pretty much done our work, secured the area, lit it up, and finished taking pictures. There’s a kind of cocksure attitude that overtakes a man in the presence of the dearly departed, a you’re-dead-and-I’m-not kind of perspective. There’s something about a carcass of an animal like oneself, the post-shuffled, mortal coil that brings out the worst in me, and I start thinking that I’m funny.

“I’ve been thinking about a search-and-rescue sheep squad.” I picked some of the dried shit from my pants and flicked it from my fingernails. “The way I figure it, the sheep would work up a damn storm and never raise any hell about working conditions. Might even get rid of some of this leafy spurge.” I looked around at the frosted milky-yellow plants that had been half eaten by the baahing attending witnesses we had corralled at the base of the hill. I had been here for nine hours, and the sun was beginning to scatter the gray blocks that made up the eastern horizon. The crime scene was a slight depression at the middle of a wreath-shaped ridge. “What do you think?”

T.J. raised an eyebrow from her clipboard. “Cody Allen Pritchard.” She returned the eyebrow to the hunting license and wallet that were clipped to the official forms. “DOB, 8/1/81. Kind of has a ring to it.”

Cody had looked better. Whoever had dispatched the young man had done so with a smooth and consistent pull-off as center shot. From the back, it looked as though someone had drilled a perfectly round hole between Cody’s shoulder blades; from the front, it looked as though someone had driven a stagecoach through him. The body was lying facedown, all the limbs arranged in a normal fashion, arms at the sides with palms turned to the lemon-colored sky. I was tempted to see if Cody’s lifeline was abnormally short, but his hands had already been bagged. A green John Deere hat with an adjustable strap in the back had been carted off with the unfired Model 94 Winchester 30–30 that had been found at his side. His clothes were in bad shape, even for a person who had had more than ten cc’s of lead pushed through him at approximately twenty-five hundred feet per second. The sheep had done a number on him. The orange vest was torn where they had tried to eat it, the sleeves of his flannel shirt were shredded, and even his work boots looked as though they had been nibbled on. They had slept on him, gleaning the last energies of the late Cody Pritchard as his body cooled. Finally, much to the dissatisfaction of the crime lab people, they had shit on him.

I gestured to the sheep down the hill. “I’m assuming that you’re going to want to question all the witnesses.”

T.J. Sherwin had been the director of the Division of Criminal Investigation’s lab unit for seventeen odd years. I had always called her the Little Lady, as opposed to many of the other nicknames that periodically circulated through Wyoming’s law enforcement community: Bitch on Wheels, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Bag Lady. The last referred to the Division of Criminal Investigation’s home away from home, a converted grocery in Cheyenne, commonly tagged as the Store. Hence, DCI lab personnel were routinely called Bag Boys, and criminal investigators were Cashiers.

When I first met T.J., she had informed me that I was just the kind of dinosaur she was going to make a personal career of eradicating. As the years passed and we worked numerous cases together, I remained a dinosaur, but I was her favorite dinosaur. “So, what do you think?” She had finally lowered the clipboard.

“He doesn’t look like a deer.” I gave Cody another study.

“Walt, let’s drop the aw shucks bullshit. This is one of the boys that was involved in that rape case two years ago.” T.J. had held my hand through the Little Bird rape investigation, introducing me to the world of secretors, medical swabs, and gynecological exams.

“Yeah, well, I’ll follow up on the home front; he wasn’t any angel. We’ll go through the licensees, and, hopefully, find some poor, dumb bastard from Minnesota that got a little trigger happy.”

“You don’t think it was an accident?”

I thought about it. “Like I said, he wasn’t an altar boy.”

“You have a feeling about this?”

I started to give her the old Colonel-Mustard-in-the-library-with-the-candlestick routine, but thought better of it. “No, I don’t.”

When we got back, the Bag Boys had already zipped Cody up and loaded him onto a gurney; some of the others were still processing evidence into freezer bags. One of the boys was dropping a tattered eagle feather into a plastic envelope. He looked up as we approached. “Looks like everything out here’s been making a meal of this poor guy.”

T.J. turned to me. “Walt, are you going to be the primary on this one?”

“Do you mean am I going to be riding in one of those Conestoga wagons of yours for five hours down to Cheyenne?”

“Yes.”

“No.” I pointed to the group of vehicles where Vic was busy putting away the photography equipment. “At the bottom of this hill, you will find my somewhat agitated, but highly skilled, primary investigator.”

T.J. smiled. She liked Vic. “She have any cases pending?”

“Well, she’s been hanging Christmas lights in town, but I figure we can let her go for a few days.”

“It’s not even Thanksgiving.”

“It’s a city council thing.”

We followed the body down to where the rest of our little task force had congregated. Someone had brought a number of Thermoses full of hot coffee and a few boxes of donuts. I got a cup of coffee; I don’t eat donuts. I spotted Jim Ferguson, one of my deputies and head of Search and Rescue, across the bed of the truck and asked him if they had turned anything up on their walk around. His mouth was full of cream-filled, but the gist was no. I told him I was going to replace his staff with the sheep.

“We did a three-hundred-yard perimeter, but the light wasn’t so good. We’ll do another soon as everybody gets a donut and some coffee. You think this guy left brass?”

“I hope.”

I took my coffee and moved over to where T.J. and Vic were seated on a tailgate. They were looking at some of the evidence; hopefully, they were discussing something I could understand.

“Single shot, center, didn’t get too much of the sternum.” Vic held a bag up to the rising sun and looked at the metal fragment inside. “Fuck, I don’t know.” T.J. patted the spot beside her with the palm of her hand, and I sat. Vic continued, “It looks like a slug. I’m thinking 12 gauge or something just a little bigger.”

“Bazooka?”

She lowered the bag, and her eyes met mine. “You’re getting rid of me?”

I nodded my head. “Yep.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a big pain in the butt.”

“Fuck you.”

“And you talk dirty.”

She handed the bagged bullet to T.J. “You’re going to be stuck up here with Turk.”

“Yeah, well, maybe we’ll get the Christmas lights put up together.” Vic snorted and readjusted her gun belt. “Besides, you’ve forgotten more about this space-age stuff than I’ll ever know. You can relay information back to me.” The tarnished gold stared at me, unblinking. “You’ll only be down there for two days. It will take us that long to round up all the usual suspects.” I was the old dog who had learned his fill of new tricks, and it was only logical that I work the county and the people.

She poked me in the belly. Her finger remained in one of my fat rolls, and she poked each word for emphasis, “If Search and Rescue don’t find anything, you gonna call Omar?”

“That’s another reason for you to leave, you don’t like Omar.”

She poked me again. “You be careful, all right?”

This all sounded very strange coming from Vic’s mouth, but I took it as affection and punched her on the shoulder. “I’m always…” She knocked my hand away.

“I mean it.” She didn’t have kind eyes, they rarely looked away, and they always told the truth. I could use eyes like that. “I’ve got a funny feeling about all of this.”

I gazed back up to the patch of sage and scrub weed and watched the sun free itself from the red hills. “Yeah, well you got five hours to talk to T.J. about this woman’s intuition thing.” The next poke hurt.

I hung around the scene until Search and Rescue had finished their second sweep; I sat in the Bullet and filled out the reports. Ferg strolled up with a cup of coffee and another cream-filled. “Anything?” Fortunately, I caught him between bites.

“Nothing. We got a lot of sheep shit and tracks.”

“Any suspicious sheep tracks?”

“Nope, no suspicious sheep shit, either. It’s like the Denver stock-yards up there.”

I thought about how you could kill a victim only once, but how a crime scene could die a thousand deaths. I hoped that whatever useful information could be deducted from this patch of God’s little acre was traveling safely in plastic bags toward Cheyenne. Motives are all fine and good, but if we could find out the how, we’d have a shooting’s match chance of finding out the who. I had the niggling feeling I was going to have to call Omar.

On the drive over to the Pritchards’ place I thought about the last time I had seen Cody alive. He was a heavyset kid, built like a linebacker, curly blond hair and pale blue eyes. He had his mother’s looks, his father’s temper, and nobody’s brains. I had pulled him out on three occasions, the last being the rape case. Cody had endeared himself to the local Native American community by being quoted in the Sheridan paper as saying, “Yeah, she was a retard redskin, but she was asking for it.”

The Pritchards had a place on the outskirts of Durant and, by the time I got there, there must have been eight or nine cars and trucks in the drive. Word carries fast in open spaces. As I cut off the engine, the full impact of what I was going to have to do hit me like a Burlington Northern. How do you tell parents that their child is dead? Sure, they’d heard it through the grapevine, but I was the official word. I allowed myself a long sigh.

There were field swallows swooping near the Bullet. I was probably disturbing their family, too. Seemed to be my day for it. It had been longer than twenty-four hours since sleep. It’s easy to work all night because the sun doesn’t come up, but when it does, my eyes start to sting and the rest of me gets a little shaky. I’ve always been this way. I was focusing my eyes when I heard the screen door slam and saw John Pritchard walking down the drive. I never cared too much for John; he was one of those guys who always had to be in control. The conversation wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The pertinent information from him was that Cody had left the house twenty-seven hours ago with an extra doe license. The pertinent information from me was that he wasn’t coming home.

I did the best I could, drove the seven miles back to my place, and sat on the porch-well, the front doorway-but not for very long, because it was cold. I had the presence of mind to fall into the house instead of out of it. I drifted in and out of consciousness until the phone rang, and the answering machine my daughter made me buy picked up. “You’ve reached the Longmire residence. No one is available to answer your call right now, ’cause we’re out chasing bad guys or trying on white hats. If you leave a message after the tone, we’ll get back to you as quickly as we can. Happy trails!” She had taken a great deal of joy in recording the message printed in the instructions, with a few minor alterations. I smiled every time I heard it.

“It’s Pancake Day!” The voice resonated through the lines from fourteen miles away. Jim Ferguson was not only head of Search and Rescue and my longest standing part-time deputy, but he was also the man in charge of driving around Durant once a year at dawn in the fire department’s truck, proclaiming through a bullhorn, “It’s Pancake Day, Pancake Day!”

There are only three major vote-getting days in Absaroka County, and I can’t remember the other two. “Oh God, no. It’s Pancake Day.” I thought about shooting myself. I could see the headline: SHERIFF SHOOTS SELF, UNABLE TO FACE PANCAKES.

“It’s Pancake Day!” Ferg really enjoyed his work. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the last hour, just thought somebody ought to call and remind you. But if you really are gonna retire next year, then who gives a shit?”

I stumbled to the phone beside the recliner. “Is it really today?”

“If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’.” There was a pause. “Hey, Walt, if you want, I can just tell ’em we were up all night.” Ferg was slightly in the Turk camp for future sheriff, but I had other plans. If Vic was going to be the first female sheriff in Wyoming, I only had a year to pull in all my political markers. I could last an hour of Pancake Day with the Elks, the Eagles, the Lions, the Jaycees, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and, of course, the AARPs.

“I’ll be there in a half hour.”

“Remember, it’s at the Catholic church this year.”

“You bet.” I plugged in the coffeemaker and dumped enough coffee for eight cups into the filter with only enough water for four. I took a shower while it was perking. The plumbing was somewhat makeshift, but the water that came from above went away below. It went away below through a bathtub that Henry had found for me for twenty dollars. Somebody on the Rez had used it for target practice with a. 22 but had only chipped the porcelain. Then there was the shower curtain. I don’t know what the exact physical dynamics are that cause a shower curtain to attach itself to your body when you turn on the water but, since my shower was surrounded on all sides by curtains, I turned on the water and became a vinyl, vacuum-sealed sheriff burrito.

I slid behind the wheel of the Bullet and started driving the fourteen miles to town. Durant is situated along the Bighorn Mountains and, because there is abundant fish and game, it’s become the retiree capitol of Wyoming. In Absaroka County, to ignore the octogenarian vote is to pump gas at the Sinclair station for a living. Service jobs are about all there are in Durant, somewhat stunting the younger generation and forcing the majority out by age nineteen; but the retirees keep coming from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa, with the odd Texan and Californian thrown in for spice. They come looking for the romance of the west that they had paid shiny quarters to view on Saturday afternoons in flickering black and white. They waited half a century of stamping out automobile bumpers to get their western dream; they paid for it and, by God, they were going to have it. Most ended up picking up and moving out, headed for Florida, Arizona, or wherever the weather was easier. I liked the ones who stayed. You’d see them out after the blizzards, shoveling away, and waving at the Bullet like it was the circus come to town. Hell, I’d stop and talk to them. Sheriffs have to get elected in Wyoming, so we have to be liked. I imagine that, if you had to elect the average police force, the turnover rate would spin your Rolodex.

When I first started out, it was the part of the job that I enjoyed the least, courting the public. But as time wore on, it got to be the part that I enjoyed the most. Martha was right when she said that I needed a bumper sticker that said BORN TO BULLSHIT. The debates were the best part. In ’81, old Sheriff Connally planned a peaceful takeover. He ran against me so no one else could and had lofted softballs to me so that I felt like Harmon Killabrew by the time the debate was over. I was elected. Lucian retired and was now living the high life in room 32 at the Durant Home for Assisted Living. I still went over on Tuesday nights to play chess, and he still kicked my ass, to his unending delight.

I looked at the inch of snow that dappled the sagebrush. It looked like a Morse code of white dots and dashes leading down the road. If I could read the message, would it tell me the story I wanted to hear? The truth still stood that I was a sheriff who had survived by the cult of personality, and that, if the trend were to continue, my heir-apparent would not be elected. Was I just trying to force Vic down the throats of the county because I could? No, she was the best person for the job and that was the reason I was going to have to keep pushing. Pancake Day, Pancake Day.

I idled down into second gear at the corner of Main and Big Horn and looked down the street to see Turk’s Trans Am parked at the office. Just seeing his car made my ass hurt. I didn’t feel like facing him on an empty stomach. I hoped he would have already contacted Lavanda Running Horse over at Game and Fish for any information we could get about last night’s incident. I circled quickly around the courthouse to avoid being seen and made a beeline for the Catholic church. The place was mobbed, and there was no parking. I wheeled the Bullet onto the concrete pad beside the HVAC unit and cut the engine. I figured the Pope wasn’t coming today.

“Well, if it isn’t the long arm of the law.” It was an old joke, but one I didn’t mind. “Longmire, pull up a chair and sit yourself down.” Steve Brandt was the mayor of Durant and the de facto president of the Business Associates Committee, a loosely affiliated group of warring tribes that made up the commercial facet of the downtown. He also owned the screen-printing place on Main and had done the T-shirts for the annual Sheriff’s Department vs. Fire Department softball game, but the less said about this the better. Next to him was David Fielding of the Sportshop, Elaine Gearey who had the Art Gallery, Joe of Joe Benham’s Hardware and Lumber, Dan Crawford from the IGA, and Ruby.

“What are you doing here?” Ruby’s chin rested on her palm, fingers trailing into the hollow below her cheekbones. I figured cheekbones were one of those things you gained from speed walking five miles a day.

I slipped off my coat and sat on it. “Well, I’m here to support the courageous Durant Volunteer Fire Department’s men in nonflammable nylon… Do you think their hats are cooler than ours?”

“Shouldn’t you be home, in bed?”

I took my hat and perched it on her head. It looked jaunty. I turned to the others at the table. “This is the problem I have with all the women I know, they’re always trying to get me into bed.” There was a derisive chuckle around the table, and Ruby took my hat off, sitting it on the table brim up-good Wyoming girl. “It’s ’cause I look so much like Gary Cooper.” General opinion at the table projected their cinematic consensus to more like Hoot Gibson, whereupon I changed the subject. “So, how are the pancakes?”

“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 jalapeno 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 not 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.

I waited out by their SUV and watched the cars go by. The air was brisk, and I was starting to regret not bringing my coat from the Bullet. The aspen trees around the cabins and adjacent campground were a bright butter and shimmered in the light wind. They had been tenacious in the face of the small snowstorm of the evening before, trying to hold onto fall. Only a few loose leaves tumbled across the gravel toward the alley behind the motel. But the sun was shining this morning, and the whole place just seemed to glow.

He remembered his jacket. After he closed the door to the cabin, the curtain flipped back just a touch and then hung slack as it had before. “You want the other guys, too?”

I introduced my most ingratiating smile. “No, I figure you’ll do.” He didn’t seem happy with this turn of events. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, mister?”

“Anderson, Mike Anderson.” He was quick with it, and the name matched the registration of the vehicle.

“Mr. Anderson, do you mind taking a little walk with me here?” I gestured toward the office, where the Bullet was parked and, more importantly, where my jacket lay on the seat. He started, and I figured this guy’s never had any dealings with law enforcement in his life other than traffic violations. I figured to start easy. “Why don’t you tell me about last night?”

He bit his lip, nodding his head in agreement. “I am really sorry about all that noise.”

“Um-hmm.” Um-hmm was one of my secret weapons. I could give out with a noncommittal um-hmm with the best of them.

“We didn’t tear anything up… I mean we made a lot of noise?”

“Willis did mention it… But that’s not why I’m here.” Now he looked really worried. “I just need to ask you about the areas that you might have hunted in your visit here.” We had arrived at the Bullet, where I opened the door, fished out my coat, and pulled it on. “Sorry, it’s getting a little cool. The areas? Sections for your hunting permits?”

His eyes stayed in the truck, taking in the radio, radar, and especially the Remington 870 that was locked to the dash. After a moment he spoke. “You mean the numbers?”

“Yep, that would be helpful.” I waited. “You’re not sure what the numbers are?”

“No, but they’re in the truck.”

As we started back, the tone became a little more conversational. I commented on the weather, and he related how he and his friends had been surprised by the little storm last night, how the roads had been slick with snow coming off the mountain. “You fellows were hunting on the mountain?”

“Yes, sir.” He unlocked the Chevy and dug into the center console where I caught a glimpse of a red box indicating Federal brand ammunition. After a moment, he produced four bright and shining bow-hunting permits.

Bow hunting permits. I pursed my lips and blew out. “You fellows are bow hunters?

“Yes, sir.” I checked the permits; they were all mountain, 24, 166, 25. “Look, is there something we’re being charged with? Should I be getting a lawyer or something?

“I’m hoping that won’t be necessary, Mr. Anderson. Do you or any of your party have any firearms?”

“No.”

Maybe he was just nervous. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. Well…” Moment of truth. “Randy has a. 38 in the glove box.”

“Is it loaded?”

“It might be.”

“Are you aware that a loaded, vehicularly concealed weapon constitutes a misdemeanor offense in this state?” Vehicularly-was that a word? Where did I get this stuff? I smiled again to let him know I didn’t think he was Al Capone. “So, let’s say you and I make a deal? I won’t examine the legendary Randy’s pistol to see if it’s loaded and you answer a few more of my questions.” He figured it was a good deal. I pulled the section map out of my coat pocket, spread it out, and, with Mike’s help, held it on their hood. He said they had asked at the Game and Fish about sections 23 and 26 because Anderson’s father had hunted there years ago, claiming the deer on the Powder River draw were much larger than those on the mountain. Anderson’s father was right, but I didn’t share that with Mike; my ranch was in that section. They had driven out there Friday at noon and circled up along the Powder River coming back past Arvada, Clearmont, and Crossroads.

“Did you get off the main road at any point?”

“Um, three times. Once to watch some antelope just at the top of the hill after that little town at the main road?”

“Arvada.”

“Once where there was an old bridge headed south.”

Maybe something. “An old kings-bridge structure?” His face was blank. “A trestle system of steel girders that goes over the road with an old car stuffed into the bank on the far side?”

“Yes, sir. Now that you mention it.”

“Did you see anyone, or anything else, out there?” He paused to think. I was going to have to talk to all of them. Was I ever going to get to sleep?

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did anybody see you?”

“No. I mean there were some cars and trucks that went by…” He was thinking hard but wasn’t coming up with anything.

“But you didn’t speak to anyone?”

“No.”

“What about the third stop?” His face brightened. I guess he figured the governor had called with the reprieve.

“We had lunch at a little place about twenty miles out.”

“The Red Pony?”

He pointed a finger at me, and I started figuring that Anderson sold something for a living. “That was it.”

I asked him what they had, and he said cheeseburgers. I asked how they were, and he said they were okay.

“Just okay?”

“Yes, sir. Why? Is that important?”

A gust of wind fluttered the map. “No, I just want to give the chief-cook-and-bottle-washer some flak. You ate at this place on the way back to town? About what time was that?

“Right after noon, maybe one.” I took out my pen and made some notes on the map. “Your picture is on the wall. Out there at the bar with all the medals, maps, and stuff, isn’t it?” I continued to scribble away. “You two were in the war together? You and the Indian guy?”

“Yep, the war to start all wars.” I don’t think he got it.

“I mean the food wasn’t that bad…” He started sounding apologetic. I couldn’t wait to give Henry an earful. “It took him a little while to get it out to us, but I think he had just opened. You sure get your money’s worth. He cut the fries out of potatoes right there on the bar, and I got this cheeseburger that had about a half pound of jalapenos on it.”

I stopped scribbling.