Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories (2 page)

It’s hard to argue with an old Indian or his tricks.

I was driving Lonnie Little Bird up to Billings for an evening diabetes checkup at Deaconess Hospital when we pulled into the Blue Cow Café, on the Crow Reservation just off I-90, for some supper. The Blue Cow had been a restaurant longer than it’d been a casino; its
MONTANA BREAKFAST! SERVED ALL DAY! AS FE
ATURED IN READER’S D
IGEST!
consisted of a half pound of bacon, four jumbo eggs, twelve pancakes, three-quarters of a pound of hash browns, a pint of orange juice, and endless coffee—a western epic, well known across the high plains.

We had gotten a late start—the sun was already sinking over the rolling hills of the Little Big Horn country and was casting surrealistic shadows against the one-ton hay bales of the Indian ranchers. It was September and, with the sporadic rain of a cool August, it looked like everybody was going to get a third cutting.

We rolled the windows half down and made Dog stay in
the truck. I lifted Lonnie, placed the legless man in his wheelchair, and rolled him in. He smiled at the remains of the day and picked up a free
Shoshone Shopper
newspaper as we passed through the double glass doors into the restaurant. I wheeled the old Cheyenne Indian to a booth by the window where I could keep an eye on the truck and on Dog and where we could hear Montana Slim singing “Roundup in the Fall” through his nose on a radio in the kitchen.

“Nineteen-forty-eight 8N tractor, only twelve hundred dollars.” He held his gray and black hair back with a suntanned, wrinkled hand. “Comes with a Dearborn front-end loader.”

I tipped my hat back, pulled a menu from the napkin holder, and looked at the tiny rainbows at the corners of his thick glasses. “I don’t need a tractor, Lonnie.”

“It is a good price. Um hmm, yes, it is so.”

I nodded, tossed the menu on the table, and glanced around. “You think there’s anybody here?”

He blinked and looked over my shoulder toward the cash register. My gaze followed his—two sets of eyes stared at us, just above the surface of the worn-out, wood-grained Formica counter.

*   *   *

“So, you weren’t here when it happened?”

The Big Horn County deputy continued to take my statement; he was young, and I didn’t know him. “Nope, we just stopped in for a little dinner and noticed that everybody was hiding.”

“And you’re headed to Billings?”

I wondered what that had to do with anything. “Yep.”

“And the old Indian is with you?”

I had listened as he’d questioned Lonnie Little Bird and hadn’t liked his tone. “Lonnie.”

He stopped scribbling. “Excuse me?”

I looked at my friend, now parked at the corner booth and still studying the
Shopper.
“His name is Lonnie. Lonnie Little Bird. He’s an elder and a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council.”

The deputy gave me a long, tough-guy stare, or as much of one as he’d been able to cultivate in the six weeks he had spent at the Montana Law Enforcement Academy in Helena. He
stabbed the still shiny black notepad with his pen for emphasis. “I’ve got that in my notes.”

“Good.” He gave me more of the look, so I smiled at him. “Then it won’t be hard for you to remember his name.”

“You didn’t see anybody when you pulled in?”

“Nope.”

“No Indian male, approximately twenty-five years of age with a . . .”

“She didn’t say Indian. She said ‘dark hair with dark eyes
.
’”

He didn’t like being interrupted, and he liked being corrected even less. “Look, Mister . . .”

I made him look at the notebook for my name.

A tall, heavyset man entered the café; he wore a large silver-belly hat, a .357 revolver, and a star. He waved at the two behind the counter as I turned back to the deputy. “Wanda’s Crow. If she thought he was Indian, she’d have said so.”

I caught the eye of the woman with the hairnet. “Wanda, was the kid Indian?” After a brief conversation with the manager, they both shook their heads no. “You need to quit jerking
us around, get a more detailed description of the suspect, and put a unit out to circle the vicinity.”

“Is that what you’d do?” He studied the notebook again for my name—evidently he wasn’t a quick learner.

I watched as the large man with the star stood behind his deputy. Wesley Burrell Best Bayles, the sheriff of Big Horn County, was a legend; hell, I’d seen him eat the
MONTA
NA BREAKFAST! SERVED
ALL DAY! AS FEATURED
IN READER’S DIGEST!

“Son, don’t you recognize the highly decorated peace officer of Absaroka County, Wyoming?”

After telling the deputy to get in his unit and ride surveillance, Wes excused him and drank a cup of coffee while I talked to the manager. Ray Bartlett said a guy had come in and asked for a job, so he had given him an application. The kid had sat in the corner booth till a couple of rodeo cowboys finished up at the buffet and departed. He had worked up his nerve, come up to the register, pulled a .22 pistol from his waistband, stuck it in Wanda Pretty On Top’s face, and demanded the cash. Wanda, figuring the $214 wasn’t worth her life and unsure if the .22 would kill her or just hurt real bad, handed it over. He asked for the change, and she had sighed and then dutifully dumped the coins into a deposit bag. The kid made them get down on the floor, which Wanda said was fine with her ’cause she was dying to get off her feet. Then he told them that if they moved in the next ten minutes, he’d shoot ’em. Ray said that it had been about five when we came in.

Wes filled himself another and motioned toward me, but I declined. “Ray, what’d the kid look like?”

“Tall, thin . . . stringy long hair and a straw cowboy hat.” Ray thought. “Jeans, a T-shirt, and one of them snap-front western shirts.”

I nodded. “Had the tail of the shirt out to cover the gun?”

“Yep.”

“Anything else?”

Ray thought some more. “He smelled, and he had bad teeth.”

I looked to Wes and watched as he plucked the mic from his shoulder and called in the description to the deputies and assorted HPs he had out prowling. We shook hands.

“Thanks, Walt.”

“You bet.”

I walked to the booth and knocked on the table to get Lonnie’s attention. “You ready to go?”

He nodded enthusiastically but kept reading. “They switched the electrical system over to twelve volts.” He looked up. “I don’t know why people do that; the six-volt system is a good one. Um hmm, yes, it is so.”

*   *   *

I loaded Lonnie, folded up his wheelchair, and let Dog out. I watched as the beast relieved himself and memorized every smell between the lamppost and the truck, then let him in the back and fastened my seat belt. Lonnie was still reading the
Shopper
, and it was beginning to worry me. “You all right?”

He didn’t look up but continued reading. “Yes.”

I waited a minute. “I apologize for that.”

He still didn’t look at me. “For what?”

“The deputy in there.”

He finally turned his head. “Why should you apologize for him?” I stared through the windshield and started backing out. “Where are we going, Walter?”

I thought Lonnie must have been getting forgetful. “Well, we were going to your doctor’s appointment, but it’s so late, we’ll have to go home and reschedule.”

He looked back at the paper. “Oh, I thought you might want to go get the young man who robbed the café.”

*   *   *

It was a rundown trailer park on the outskirts of Hardin, the kind that attracted tornados and discarded tires. We cruised the loop and stopped just short of a sun-weathered single-wide with a rusted-out Datsun pickup parked in the grassless yard. A television cast its flickering blue light across the curtained windows, and Wesley Bayles, Ray Bartlett, and I turned to look at Lonnie, who folded his paper and glanced at the number on the dented mailbox alongside the dirt driveway. “This is it, 644 Roundup Lane, Travis Mowry. Um hmm, yes, it is so.”

I shrugged, placed my hat on the dash, and reached my arm behind the seat. “Can I borrow your gun?” Wes handed me his sidearm, and, quietly closing the door behind me, I got out of the truck. I stuffed the big Colt in the back of my jeans as Wes got out on the passenger side with an 870 Remington he’d brought from his vehicle.

I glanced over to make sure the interior lights of the truck had gone out. It was fully dark now, and the trailer park gave me an advantage by not having any streetlights.

I pulled out my wallet, rolled all the cash I had into a substantial wad, and then mounted the rickety aluminum stairs to knock on the screen door. I could make out the kitchenette and the carpet strip that led to what I assumed was the living room. Some reality show was playing on the television, and I had to
knock again. After a moment, a weedy looking young woman came to the door and looked at me. She did not open the screen and had the look of someone who had taken life on early, made some bad choices, and had gotten her ass kicked.

I grinned and, making sure she could see the twenty on top, gestured with the bills. “Is Travis around?” She looked uncertain. “I’ve got this money that John gave me to give to him? I know it’s late, but I thought he might need it?” It was a calculated risk, but everybody knew a John.

She still didn’t come close to the screen, and her voice was thin and halting. “You can give it to me.”

Always let them see the money.

I shook my head but continued to smile. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I don’t know you. Is Travis here?”

She didn’t say anything but turned and disappeared.

I took a deep breath, glanced back to the truck, and wondered, if there was trouble, what Wes thought he could do from out there.

I heard footsteps and watched as a tall, lanky young man stopped in the hallway. He wore dirty jeans, boots, and a grimy, wifebeater T-shirt. He was holding a can of Coors Light and smoking a cigarette. “Who’re you?”

“I’m a friend of John’s. I was supposed to bring this money over to you?”

“John who?”

It appeared not everyone knew a John after all. I took another calculated risk—they were working so well. “John from the bar? I mean you are Travis Mowry, right?” I held up the cash. “Something about some money for you?”

Always let them see the money.

He stepped forward, pushed open the screen door, and reached for the roll of bills. I let him have it but then grabbed his wrist and, slipping the .357 from the back of my jeans and lodging it under his jaw, yanked him from the trailer in one heave. I turned the two of us back toward the truck. The doors were open, Wes was running across the yard with the shotgun, and the manager was nodding his head
yes.

*   *   *

Ten minutes later, we were booking Travis Mowry at the Big Horn County jail under the watchful eyes of two Montana highway patrolmen and three deputies, including the one who had questioned us at the Blue Cow. It appeared that the majority of eastern Montana law enforcement wanted to know how, after we’d stumbled onto a relatively cold 10-52, we had apprehended the suspect in less than twenty minutes.

Travis had a four-page rap sheet, starting with his stealing a car at the age of fourteen. He got caught and was remanded to juvenile detention. He got out, stole another car, got caught, was sent to a foster home, ran away, and stole yet another until he graduated to producing methamphetamine in a bathtub. He had done a two-spot in Deer Lodge, where the prison psychologist intimated that it was all a question of comparison, but that if you sat a bag of groceries next to Travis, the groceries would get into Stanford before he would.

The police officers stood a little away from Lonnie but snuck glances at him as he continued to read the
Shoshone Shopper
in Big Horn County’s basement jail as I finished up my written statement.

Wes tugged at my sleeve. “All right, how did you know?”

I looked at the old Indian, who folded his paper in his lap and waited along with the legendary Wesley Burrell Best Bayles and the collected force for my reply. “Why, Wes, that was just top-flight investigative work.” I looked back at the group and tipped my hat, especially at the narrow-minded deputy. “You fellas have a nice night.”

*   *   *

I waited. We were racing a 150-car Burlington Northern Santa Fe down the Little Big Horn Valley, another famed site of monumental hubris and stupidity. There was a slight breeze rustling the sage and the buffalo grass, the obelisk and markers of the Seventh Cavalry almost discernible in the light of the just-risen moon. Lonnie remained quiet, his veined arm resting on the doorsill, his thick-lensed glasses reflecting the stripe of the Milky Way stretching from horizon to horizon, what the Indians called the Hanging Road.

“Did I ever tell you about that rattlesnake I ran over with my father’s 8N tractor?” I sighed and wondered what sort of pithy homespun philosophy this story would turn out to illustrate. “When I got back from Korea, he had two hay fields, and one was about three miles down the county road. It was a Friday afternoon, and I had just finished cutting. I was a young man, and in a hurry, but I saw this big rattler sunning himself on the road. Not the smartest thing to do.” He chuckled. “He was a big one; had twelve buttons on him—”

“All right, Lonnie, how did you know it was Travis Mowry?” He turned to look at me, hurt at my interrupting his story. “And how the hell did you know that he lived at 644 Roundup Lane?”

He half smiled, and his eyes returned to the stars as he nodded with his words. “OIT.”

I thought about the well-known phrase. “Old Indian trick?”

He continued nodding and carefully pulled Travis Mowry’s Blue Cow Café employment application from the folds of his newspaper. He handed it to me—the form was completely filled out.

“Um hmm, yes, it is so.”

The Millennium: January 1, 2000—6:20
A.M.

I was driving south on I-25 and kept sneaking glances through my half-closed eyes in hopes of seeing those first, dull, yellow rays of daylight crawling up from the horizon.

My county in northern Wyoming is approximately seven thousand square miles—about the size of Vermont or New Hampshire—and it’s a long way from one end to the other, especially in times of crisis, so in my line of work it pays to have a substation.

Powder Junction, the second largest town in Absaroka County, straddles the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains and the Powder River country and is forty-five minutes of straight-as-an-arrow driving from Durant, the county seat. This little settlement of five hundred brave souls is where I subject at least one of the deputies on my staff to some of the most bucolic duty they’ll likely ever withstand in a lifetime of law enforcement.

I didn’t make it down here very often—in fact, I hadn’t made it much of anywhere since my wife, Martha, had died a few months earlier. The reason I was here, very hungover and very early on New Year’s Day, was because I owed Turk Connally, the lone member of my Powder Junction staff, a paycheck. I hadn’t gotten it to him on Friday, which was payday, because it was New Year’s Eve. The reason I was driving the hundred miles round-trip to hand-deliver Turk’s check instead of mailing it was that I had gotten into an altercation with the county commissioners over the price of stamps. Since they pay for my gas, I thought I’d teach them a lesson.

As I drove along, with a thrumming headache, I began wondering to whom it was I was teaching that lesson.

Turk generally slept late but especially the morning after a holiday, so I knew he wouldn’t be at the office. I unlocked the door of the old Quonset hut that served as our headquarters south and left his check on the desk.

I was on my way out when the rotary-dial phone rang. I knew that after three rings the call would be transferred to the rented house where Turk lived, so in the spirit of the season I decided to cut the kid a break and answer it. “Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department.”

The voice was female and uncertain. “Turk?”

“Nope, it’s Walt.”

There was a pause. “Who?”

“Walt Longmire, the sheriff.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Walt. I must’ve dialed the Durant number . . .”

“No, I’m here in Powder Junction. How can I help you?”

She adjusted the phone, and I could hear another voice in
the background as she fumbled with the receiver. “It’s Elaine Whelks, the Methodist preacher down here, and I’m over at the Sinclair station by the highway.” There was another pause. “Walt, I think we’ve got a situation.”

*   *   *

My head pounding, I drove the short distance through town and under the overpass past the entrance to the rest stop and turned into the service station. I noticed a late-model Buick parked at the outskirts of the lot over near the sign that advertised gas at $1.54 a gallon to passing motorists, a price that would definitely teach the commissioners. It was still mostly dark as I parked between a tan sedan and a Jeep Cherokee, climbed out of my four-year-old Bronco, which was adorned with stars and light bars, and trudged inside.

There were two women holding steaming Styrofoam cups of coffee who were seated on some old café chairs to the left of the register. They both looked up at me as I stood by their table.

“Happy New Year.”

They said nothing.

“I’m Walt Longmire.”

They still stared at me, but maybe it was my bathrobe.

“The sheriff.” I glanced down at the old, off-white, pilled housecoat, a gift from my newly dead wife. “I wasn’t planning on making any public appearances today.”

The older woman in the purple, down-filled jacket extended her hand. “Elaine Whelks, Sheriff. I’m the one who called.” She looked at the robe again and then quickly added, “I knew Martha through the church, and I’m so sorry about your loss. She was a wonderful woman.”

I squeezed the bridge of my nose with a thumb and forefinger and gave the automatic response I’d honed over the last couple of months. “Thank you.”

The younger woman, heavyset and wearing a Deke Latham Memorial Rodeo sweatshirt, rose and smiled at me a little sadly. “Would you like a cup of coffee, Sheriff?”

I nodded my head and sat on one of the chairs. “Sure.”

The older woman studied me, and she looked sad, too; maybe it was just me, but everybody seemed sad these days. She dipped her head to look me in the eyes. “I’m the Methodist minister over at St. Timothy’s.”

I nodded. “You said.”

“How are you doing, Walt?”

The throbbing in my head immediately got worse. “Hunky-dory.”

Her eyes stayed on me. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen your hair this long.”

I pushed it back from my face, and it felt like even the follicles ached. “I’ve been meaning to get it cut, but I’ve been kind of busy.”

She changed the subject. “How’s Cady?”

I laughed but immediately regretted it.

“Something funny, Sheriff?”

My daughter was in law school in Washington and had been in Crossroads to keep me company over the holidays. I shrugged, thinking that if I could get this over with quick, I could go home and back to sleep, sleeping being a part-time occupation lately. “We had a fight last night.”

“You and Cady?”

I nodded. “She got mad; went back to Seattle.” Breaking off
the conversation, I looked out the window. “Maybe you’d better tell me what it is you need my assistance with.”

The preacher sighed and then gestured toward the other woman, who was on her way back to the table with my cup of coffee. “She called me this morning and said that Jason, the young man who works nights, left her a note that a woman was parked at the end of the lot.”

Liz set the large cup in front of me along with a bowl of creamers and some sugar packets; I didn’t know her, so she didn’t know my habits. “Black is fine. Thanks.” I took a sip—it was hot and good.

“We generally don’t pay very much attention to these types of things. People get tired and pull off the interstate; maybe they feel more comfortable over here with someone around than at the rest stop—a woman especially.”

I pulled my hair back again—I was going to have to ask my old friend Henry Standing Bear for a leather strap if I didn’t get a haircut pretty soon—and sipped the coffee, dribbling a little on the table. “Uh-huh.”

“But she was still here this morning when I opened up.”

I set my cup back down. “I see.”

Liz glanced over my shoulder toward the parking lot. “She came over about twenty minutes ago and filled her tank—used the credit card machine and then pulled back there again.”

I glanced behind me, eyeing the vehicle. “She ran it all night?”

Elaine nodded her head. “That’s the only way you’d be able to stay out there, as cold as it is.”

“Local or out-of-state plates?” They both looked at me blankly as I turned my cup in the coffee I’d spilled. “Did you talk to her?”

“I did.” Liz pointed at the minister. “And then I called her.”

Looking back at Elaine and then over to Liz, I thought about how in some instances my staff and I also contacted the local clergy to provide assistance to needy travelers. “She needed ministerial aid?”

The two women looked at each other, then the pastor turned back to me. “She says she’s waiting on the Messiah.”

I laughed. “Aren’t we all?”

Elaine leaned in close but then retreated a little, probably from the smell. I hadn’t been bathing regularly, being so busy sleeping. “I’m serious, Sheriff. She says she’s supposed to meet Him. Here. Today.”

I wasn’t sure if I’d heard her right. “Jesus?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus.” I sighed, glancing around trying not to cast aspersions, but it was hard. “Returning after two thousand years and He chooses the Sinclair station in Powder Junction, Wyoming?”

“Apparently.”

I ran my hand through my beard. “Well, I guess I’d better go talk to her.”

As I stood, Elaine held out a roll of breath mints. “Maybe you should have a few of these . . . for the coffee, you know?”

Liz touched the stained sleeve of my bathrobe but only briefly. “And, Sheriff?” She looked out the window. “She has a knife.”

*   *   *

There are twenty-four counties in Wyoming, and each one’s assigned number sits in front of Steamboat, the bucking horse that is the symbol for the state on the longest-running license plate
design in the world. Absaroka, being the least populated, gets twenty-four—the number that was on the Buick—so it was not only in-state but also in-county. Stumbling across the snow-covered parking lot in my moccasins, I approached the car, exhaust clouding the air on the driver’s side.

The woman was elderly, probably approaching eighty years of age, dressed in a pair of sweatpants and an oversized parka with fake fur around the collar.

Standing there on the hard-packed snow, I tapped on the window.

It startled her, and I could clearly see the butcher knife clutched in her hands as she turned to look at me. Her face was wet from tears, one of her eyes was swollen shut, and I was betting she had a full-blown headache to match mine. She stared at me the same way the ladies in the convenience store had.

I watched my breath cloud the window between us as the wind lifted the hem of the bathrobe. “Hey, could I speak with you for a moment?”

She sat there with her mouth a little open and then began fumbling at finding the window button, but when she did, it only whined a little and then pulled at the rubber weather seal at the top—frozen shut.

I gestured toward the passenger-side door. “How ’bout I come around and get in?”

She nodded, and I ambled my way around the four-door and pulled on the handle—it too, frozen shut. Unwilling to take no for an answer, I put all six feet five inches and two hundred and thirty pounds behind the effort and almost took the door off. I quickly climbed in and slammed it shut behind me.

It seemed warmer in the car, but not by much. The radio
was on some AM station, and a guy was screaming about it being the Millennium, and therefore the end of the world, and about salvation and a bunch of other stuff. I didn’t think my head could hurt any more than it already did, but the radio was so loud that the pain escalated. I reached up, turned the thing off, and looked at her. “Sorry, I can’t take that crap.”

She stared at me with her mouth still hanging open.

I was ready to rest my head on the dash but figured I’d better see what was what first. I stamped the snow off my moccasins onto the rubber floor mats. “Lot of snow.”

She nodded.

I gestured toward the weapon in her hands. “Mind if I have the knife?”

Without hesitation, she handed it to me, and I placed it on the floor by my feet. I turned back to look at her, but she was the first to speak. “You . . . You’re bigger than I thought you’d be.”

It seemed like an odd thing to say, especially since I was pretty sure I didn’t know her. “I get that a lot.” She seemed to want more, so I added, “From my father’s side.”

She nodded, studying me. “I understand.”

I straightened the collar of my robe. “I apologize for the way I’m dressed, but I really wasn’t planning on going out today.”

“That’s okay.”

She started crying, and I felt a little empathetic twinge. “I’ve had some problems of my own as of late . . .”

She nodded enthusiastically, wiping the tears away with the back of a hand aged with spots and wrinkled skin, careful to avoid the wounded eye. “Me, too.”

I held my fingers out to the heater vents, stretching them
as a matter of course, buying time till my head stopped hurting enough so that I could concentrate. “I guess that’s what this life is all about, getting from one trouble to the next, at least in my job.”

She turned in the seat. “I would imagine; and you get everybody’s problems.”

“Pretty busy, especially during the holidays.”

“Yes.” Her eyes shone. “Everybody thought I was crazy, but I said you’d come.”

I looked around and yawned, the popping in my head sounding like gunshots. “Well, when we get a call . . .” I sat there for a moment longer, looking at her, and then reached a hand out and touched her cheek. “Tell me about this problem.”

She ducked her head away but then reached up and took my hand, holding it in her lap like she had held the knife. She didn’t say anything, and we just sat there, listening to the Buick’s motor running and the fan of the heater. “He doesn’t mean to do it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But I forget things.” She sobbed a little. “I just don’t remember like I used to.” She stared at the dash, the instruments glowing a soft green.

*   *   *

It was a modest home on the outskirts of town, a single-level ranch, the kind that can contain a lot of rage. There was a yellowed-plastic, illuminated Santa in the yard, and I was surprised that when we met at the front of the car, she looked at it and then at me and said, “I hope you don’t mind.”

Wondering what she was talking about, I glanced at the jolly old elf and decided not to judge. “Um, no. I’m a big fan myself.”

Her spirits appeared buoyed. “Oh, good.”

Oddly, she took my hand again, and we walked up the shoveled walk to the front porch, a gold cast emanating from a needless bug bulb. As we stood there, she threaded her fingers into her parka and produced a prodigious key ring.

Suddenly, the door was yanked open, and a bald man with a Little League baseball bat in one hand was yelling at the two of us through the storm door; another wave of pain ricocheted around in my head.

“Where the hell have you been? Do you know there’s no damn cigarettes in this house?” Peering through heavily framed glasses, he glanced up at me. “And who the hell is this?”

Her head, having dropped in embarrassment, rose as she clutched my arm. “This, Ernie, is our Lord and Savior.”

I stopped pinching my nose in an attempt to relieve the pain and turned to look down at her. She smiled a hopeful smile, and then we both turned to look at her husband.

He stood there for a moment staring first at her, then at me, and then back to her before leaning the baseball bat against the doorjamb. “Jesus H. Christ.”