The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volumes 1-4 (84 page)
Read The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volumes 1-4 Online
Authors: Craig Johnson
The door opened smoothly with a barely perceptible sound. I shook my head and stepped in, allowing Dog to go over to the sofa as I closed the door behind me. I stood there for a moment to let the room still again. He must have been awfully tired, because he didn’t move, and the gentle whiffing of his snoring filled the room. I wondered how often he must have slept in the chair and figured it was more times than were good for him. I wondered if he was really asleep, if this was his way of welcoming me back. I wondered about the sad-eyed lieutenant and about how much Lucian knew about the baby who had been born perhaps not so prematurely to Mari Baroja, about the child that Charlie Nurburn had tried so hard to kill, and about the man who was fortunate enough to father a child of his own before a senseless war took from him all that he had left to give.
I reached a hand out and once again began the Queen’s Indian Defense, Petrosian Variation, by advancing my pawn to F4 and moving his knight to F6; I approached chess the way I approached life, way over my head.
I smiled and took a step back; when I looked up, I saw a different set of dark eyes. It wouldn’t have been surprising if they had risen from the old man in front of me, but they stared up from the sofa. Dog’s head was lying on top of a chief ’s blanket that covered her. Lana smiled and started to speak, but there wasn’t any need; she was holding the tattered letters that had been bound together with a thin ribbon, and they told the tale.
The letters from Lucian to Mari; the ones that told Lana how her grandfather had loved her, why her father and brothers were so quick to get Mari married after they had separated her from him, why Charlie Nurburn had done so well for himself at her expense. The old man had finally told it all to the person to whom it mattered the most. The rush of information came running in like a waterfall, filling me with the thought that hatred has a poor shelf life but that hope and love can limp along together forever. The water beneath Lana’s dark eyes ran deep, resonating far into the last century.
I held an extended finger to my mouth and smiled again, as she watched me carefully back from the room to the door and silently pat my leg for Dog to follow. He was reluctant to leave the warmth of Lucian’s room and Lana, but finally deigned to follow me as I picked up the bourbon and slid the double-paned glass shut behind us.
* * *
Dog looked puzzled as I collected a couple of the wood bundles and stacked them on top of the battered cooler that I had put in the corner of the cabin, along with the fifth of Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve and a book of matches. I opened the backdoor and walked off the edge of my deck another thirty yards. I sat the cooler down and unwrapped the firewood, stacking the pieces in the snow. I opened the bourbon. I looked back at the open door of the cabin and could see Dog watching me.
I took a swig and looked up at the starless sky. It had finally stopped snowing. I thought about what I was doing, then poured a strong draught of the whiskey onto the logs and lit them with one of the windproof matches. The fire took with a tremendous swoosh, and I stepped back to avoid burning my beard off. I watched it for a while and then headed back to the house. I shut the door behind me and took the bourbon to the bathroom. I sat it on the back of the sink and looked at myself in the mirror, started running the hot water, and dug out the shaving cream and razors that I hadn’t used in quite a while. It took longer than I would have thought, but Dog watched with head resting on his paws as I slowly became myself again.
I studied the reflection and considered if I really was me. I was about to do something that I never would have done before, but then I remembered and a small cold feeling overtook my breath and I took another sip of the twenty-year-old bourbon.
I went out to the truck and collected three items from the center console of the Bullet and a shovel I’d stolen from Henry. This time Dog accompanied me out to the fire, and we watched it for a long time. I sat on the cooler with the three items resting beside me, the flickering orange, yellow, and red reflecting in Dog’s eyes and mine.
The fire died down, and it didn’t take long to dig the hole. I took another swig of the bourbon, then took the three items from the surface of the cooler and stuffed them under my arm. I opened the cooler and pulled out a long bone, probably a femur. I looked at Dog but tossed it back. Dramatic moments call for dramatic bones, and it only took a moment for me to find the skull.
I palmed it in my hand; it seemed smaller than it should have. I studied the skull, trying to see something in its structure that would explain the man’s malevolence, but all I saw was the ghostly reflection of the gold tooth. It is said that the evil men do lives on, and the good is oft interred with their bones; I hoped with all my heart that this was not the case here and that what I was doing was the right thing.
I tossed the skull into the hole and eventually added the other bones until the cooler was empty. I pulled the tiny chrome-plated, pearl-handled .32 from under my arm and threw the empty pistol in as well, and then pulled the manila envelope out, undid the clasp, sat and looked at each of the photographs of the tortured and dead woman, returning them to the envelope as I went. When I was finished, I took the shovel and filled in the hole, making a raised area. When the rains came in the spring, I would tamp the area flat. It was amazing, the things you learned loitering in graveyards.
I sat on the cooler again and opened the small white box. Dog and I sat there, munching ruggelach, and I stared at the humped up earth and thought about how, perhaps, the old sheriff and I weren’t that different after all.
CRAIG
JOHNSON
KINDNESS GOES UNPUNISHED
PENGUIN BOOKS
Table of Contents
PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2007
Published in Penguin Books 2008
Copyright © Craig Johnson, 2007
All rights reserved. No part of this product may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
ISBN 978-1-101-20211-1 (ePub)
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For the Donut, who started it all…
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A writer, like a sheriff, is the embodiment of a group of people and, without their support, both are in a tight spot. I have been blessed with a close order of family, friends, and associates who have made this book possible.
I have the usual posse to thank, and a few new deputies that came along for the ride. Thanks to Gail Hochman for pulling out the jail bars. Kathryn Court, Ali Bothwell Mancini, Clare Ferraro, and Sonya Cheuse at Viking/Penguin for having the horses saddled, Susan Fain, Joel Katz, and Richard Rhoades for the cover fire, and to all the Troiano’s for the spaghetti westerns.
Thanks to Mandy Smoker Broaddus for use of her poetry from her book
Another Attempt at Rescue
(Hanging Loose Press), and to Marcus Red Thunder and Henry Standing Bear for cutting the telegraph lines. Eric Boss for selling the snake-oil, Neil McMahon, Bill Fitzhugh, and Christopher Moore for baking the cake with the file, Margaret Coel for the Derringer in her garter belt, and to Tony Hillerman for the pardon from the governor.
Thanks to Jim Pauley and the City of Philadelphia Police Department Public Affairs Office, the Trauma Center at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, OperaDelaware and the Grand Opera House of Wilmington, Delaware. Thanks to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and to Judy, my favorite masterpiece.
Philadelphia, where no good deed goes unpunished . . .
—S
TEVE
L
OPEZ
The Philadelphia Inquirer
January 15, 1995
1
I didn’t wear my gun. They had said that it was going to be easy and, like the fool I am, I believed them. They said that if things got rough to make sure I showed the pictures, of which there were only twenty-three; I had already shown all of them twice. “‘Long, long ago, there lived a king and queen…’”
I looked around the room for a little backup, but there wasn’t anyone there. They had said that I didn’t have to worry, that they wouldn’t leave me alone, but they had. “‘…who didn’t have any children. One day, the queen was visited by a wise fairy, who told her, “You will have a lovely baby girl.” The king was so overjoyed when he heard the news that he immediately made plans for a great feast. He invited not only his relatives, but also the twelve fairies who lived in the kingdom.’”
“Where’s your gun?”
My thought exactly. “I didn’t think I was going to need it.” They all nodded, but I wasn’t particularly sure they agreed.
“How long have you been a sheriff?”
“Twenty-three years.” It just seemed like a million.
“Do you know Buffalo Bill?”
Maybe it was a million. “No, he was a little before my time.”
“My daddy says you’re a butt hole.”
I looked down at the battered book in my hands. “Okay, maybe we should concentrate on today’s story…”
“He says you used to drive around drunk all the time…”
The instigator in the front row looked like a little angel but had a mouth like a stevedore. He was getting ready to say something else, so I cut him off by holding up
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
open to the page where the young princess had been enchanted and put to sleep for a hundred years. “Why do you think the fairy visited the queen?” A dark-haired girl with enormous eyes who sat in the third row slowly raised her hand. “You?”
