Any Other Name: A Longmire Mystery (19 page)

“I agree.” I reached out to check the door and was unsurprised that it was locked. “Kick it?”

Henry, always the thinking-man’s felon, slid the blade of the knife between the door and the jamb, popping the bolt and gently swinging the door wide.

“I could have done that if I had had a knife.”

He and Vic ignored me as they looked inside.

There was a large room with an efficiency kitchen which looked as if it had been assembled from appliances cannibalized from an RV, with a hallway where there were a couple of closed doors—I figured a bedroom and a bath. The Bear was about to enter when a tan and white pit bull appeared at the other side of the kitchen.

“You first.”

He turned to look at me, and probably would have responded, except for being interrupted by the low, guttural growl emitting from the dog just before it launched itself toward us.

The Cheyenne Nation quickly slammed the door as we listened to the pit bull clawing and barking. He finally turned and looked at me. “Any other bright ideas?”

“You still have those muscle relaxers?”

—

We sat in my truck and waited about twenty minutes. I’d bought a container of hamburger at the convenience store at the bottom of the hill and had inserted one pill in each of two meatballs that I had made; Henry had climbed the stairs and had quickly tossed one of the balls onto the kitchen floor of the apartment. Not wanting to overdose the dog, I’d kept the other in reserve. The rest of the burger Dog consumed in a second or less.

“You think that did it?”

The Bear nodded. “Considering it is approximately a quarter of my weight, I would say yes.”

Making sure I had the extra meatball safely ensconced in a paper cup in my shirt pocket, I pushed open the door of the truck, which was covered in a blanket of snow that was handy in keeping us out of sight of the myriad South Dakota law enforcement that was likely out prowling the Black Hills in search of us.

Quietly, we made our way up the stairwell again and paused at the door, where Vic pulled her Glock.

She ignored the look I gave her. “Fuck you, I’m not getting bit by Michael Vick in there.”

Henry looked back at the two of us and then turned the knob, pushing the door open about four inches.

We listened, but there was no sound.

Carefully, he pushed it open a little farther and then stuck his head in, an act of bravery of which I was not so sure I was capable. He continued inside, and we followed.

The kitchen was as we’d left it, but the meatball was gone. “He ate it.”

We all entered, and I shut the door behind us.

“C’mon.” I could see a room in the front where an old table lamp without a shade, sitting on a cardboard box, had been left on. There was a plastic chair—one of those mass-produced ones that everyone bought from Kmart—beside the box, and a small flat-screen TV and DVD player, which were on the floor, along with a stack of homemade discs with dates written on them. Nothing else.

Vic opened a door to our right, Glock first, and closed it behind her. Henry and I looked at each other, but after a moment, there was a flush. Seconds later the door opened, and she shrugged. “Bathroom. Sorry, had to go.”

Henry peeled off to the only other room in the place—what I assumed was the bedroom—as Vic kneeled, picked up one of the discs, and inserted it into the player. “Let’s see what’s on . . .”

“Walter?”

I turned and walked over to the doorway where the Bear lingered.

The pit bull, thankfully still breathing, was lying next to the bed. I stooped beside what was a she and ran my hand over her side and her eyes flickered, but nothing more. Other than the dog, there was a broken-down mattress and bedspring, yellowed sheets, a thin blanket, and lumpy pillows.

I straightened up and noticed that there were ankle manacles lying with their ends open, secured to eyelet bolts in the floor at all four corners of the bed, along with another plastic chair pulled up to a card table with a Canon video camera sitting on a short tripod. “Oh, boy.”

The Bear took a few more steps in and kicked at a box on the floor.

“What’s that?”

He pulled back a flap and peered in. “You do not want to know.”

Vic appeared in the doorway with all of the DVDs in her hand, a strange cell phone, and a disgusted look on her face.

“Bad?”

“Worse than bad.” She shuffled through them. “The ones dated within the last week especially—they are all Roberta Payne. Willie was an amateur in comparison to Delgatos.” Her face came up. “Can we go kill them again, please?”

“We can petition Emil—I’m betting he’d be up for that. At the moment, however, they stay in the morgue.”

“Maybe so, but Delgatos is still getting texts.” The Bear and I joined her at the door. “Five minutes ago, somebody asked him if the job was done.”

“Text them back.” I watched as she pushed a button and waited. “‘Need to meet.’”

She typed in the message with her thumbs, and it buzzed in her hands immediately. She looked at it. “It’s mystery guest number one and he’s asking if she’s dead.”

“Tell him yes, need to talk.”

She typed it in. “Looks like the area code is 702.”

The Cheyenne Nation was the first to come up with it. “Las Vegas. Of course, that does not mean he is physically in Las Vegas.”

The phone buzzed again, and Vic read the message. “‘Is the sheriff dead?’” She looked at me. “Who the fuck in Las Vegas wants you dead besides the dead guy?”

“I don’t know.” I felt the stubble on my face. “Tell him yes.”

She typed it, we waited, and after a few seconds it buzzed. “‘You’re sure?’”

“I’m sure.”

She typed, and we waited. “He says you’re lying.” Almost immediately, it buzzed again, and Vic read, “‘Like your Indian friend, Deke never used contractions when messaging.’”

“Well, hell.”

The phone buzzed, and she read, “‘Sheriff?’” The phone buzzed again. “‘You are a very durable individual.’”

“We need to meet.”

Vic typed, and the response came back. “‘That would not be to my advantage.’”

“Are the other women safe?”

Vic read the response. “‘I’m not concerned with the women.’”

“This has to stop.”

Vic typed and then read. “‘Not necessarily. Ever heard of Asociación Punto Muerto?’”

We all looked at each other. “Nope.”

Vic looked up from the phone, a sickly smile on her face, and read the final text. “He says, ‘You will.’”

“We got you a computer and a girlfriend.”

Henry laid the pit bull next to Dougherty’s desk on the dog bed we had purchased. “What’s wrong with her?”

Vic put the computer, the cell phone, and the collection of discs on a stack of cardboard boxes. “She’s got a substance abuse problem.” She glanced around at the subterranean confines of the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department. “Where’s the Dick?”

Dougherty was still looking at the dog as he spoke. “He hasn’t gotten back from Evanston yet. The sheriff came down and told me that he expected him around noon.”

I nodded. “Good to know.”

He studied the bandage on my neck. “What happened to you?”

“Got too close to a buffalo.” I gestured toward Henry. “Him, too.”

“Remind me to never go to South Dakota with you guys.”

I moved a Gagliano’s pizza box and put it with about twenty others on top of a nearby shelf and sat in the chair opposite him. “You guys must be single-handedly keeping the pizza joints in Gillette in business.” I pointed at the computer and discs. “That stuff is from the dead guy . . .”

He adjusted a folder under his arm. “What dead guy?”

“The one who had Roberta Payne.”

“The woman from the Flying J? You found her?”

“We did.” I glanced at Henry and Vic, finally dropping my eyes to my lap. “She’s dead.”

His shoulders slumped, and he seemed to fall back into the chair even though he didn’t physically move. “My God.”

“I’m afraid so. Deke ‘Big Daddy’ Delgatos killed her.”

“Who is Deke ‘Big Daddy’ Delgatos?”

Henry grunted. “One of the dead guys. It is complicated.”

“Nothing on Linda Schaffer?”

“Not yet.” I took a deep breath and explained, telling him about Deadwood, Custer State Park, and most of what had taken place at the State Game Lodge. “Evidently he was a hired killer, among other things.” I leaned forward. “First, I need you to find out who with the Las Vegas number the last text on that cell phone came from, then crack the computer open and get as much information out of it as you can.”

Dougherty nodded. “Will do.”

I gestured toward the file under his arm. “Got anything for us, troop?”

He sat forward and petted the dog, even going so far as to put his face down near to hers. He straightened her ear, and she sighed—match made in heaven. “Almost nothing.”

Vic leaned against the chain-link divider that kept the Campbell County files from making a break for it. “Almost?”

He sat back and handed the file to her. “I found the last reports that Gerald Holman didn’t file.”

I interrupted. “Where did you find those?”

He tapped a handle on one of the drawers in the desk. “Locked up in here.”

My undersheriff opened the folder. “Holman did another series of interviews in Arrosa; so what’s the big deal?”

The patrolman returned to petting the dog. “Look at the date.”

She glanced at the report. “Yeah, so?”

“It’s the day he killed himself.”

Her eyes returned to the file. “Oh . . .”

Dougherty stopped petting the dog but left his hand on her head. “How do you do an entire afternoon of interviews and then check into the Wrangler Motel and blow your brains out?”

Vic handed me the folder. “More important, what do you find out in those interviews that leads you to do it?” Inconclusive, the file simply read that Holman had made stops at Dirty Shirley’s, the Sixteen Tons Bar, and another location identified as
undisclosed
in or near Arrosa. I looked up at the group. “What other location is there, undisclosed or otherwise, in or near the town of Arrosa?”

Vic posited, “Private home?”

I thought about it. “There’s an elementary school and a post office . . .”

Henry studied me. “Nothing else in the immediate vicinity?”

“No.”

He smiled. “This should make things easier.”

Vic’s cell phone rang, and she pulled it out, looking at it and then to me.

“What?”

“It’s your daughter.” I didn’t say anything. “The pregnant one.”

They all looked at me. “You answer it.”

“Chickenshit.” She held the phone up to her ear. “Hello?” She nodded her head. “Yeah, well he’s around here somewhere . . .” She listened again. “Right.” She listened some more, and I could
hear the edges of my daughter’s voice traveling through the airwaves from the City of Brotherly Love. “Yeah, yeah, he told me that . . .” She was silent for a moment. “It is a case.”

I glanced at the Cheyenne Nation and then cleared my throat and held a hand out for the phone.

Vic shot eye-torpedoes at me and continued to speak, glancing at the Bear. “Yeah, he’s around, too—helping your dad.” There was another, longer pause. “I’ll tell him.” She pulled the phone from her ear and looked at it. “And a see you later alligator to you, too.”

“What?” I slumped in my chair. “Please tell me she hasn’t had the baby.”

She deposited the phone into her other hand and pointed at me with it. “No, but they are inducing her tomorrow, and there are three tickets for the noon flight to Philadelphia at the Gillette Airport for you, yon Standing Bear, and me, and I was informed, and I quote, that if we were not on that flight then we could all kiss good-bye any thoughts of ever seeing the grandchild within our collective lifetimes.”

“Gimme the phone.” She did, but I handed it back to her. “Could you dial it for me, please?” She did, without comment, and gave it back to me.

It barely rang once, and my very angry daughter was on the line. “Chickenshit.”

“Boy howdy.”

“Daddy, I want you on that plane at noon.”

“Cady—”

“I’m not kidding.”

I took a deep breath, like I always did when facing total annihilation. “I know, it’s just that there are some details that I’m going to have to take care of—”

“For who? A guy you never met who killed himself? Some women who’ve been missing for months now?”

“Well, there have been some developments—”

“I. Don’t. Care. I, your only child, am about to have a baby, who is likely to be your only grandchild. My mother is dead, and it is your solemn and imperative duty to be here with me.”

Feeling that a little privacy might be a nice addition to the conversation, I took the phone and started up the steps. “Cady, I promise I’m coming—”

“When? A week from now, a month?”

I turned the corner, walked down the hallway, pushed the outside door open, and stood on the elevated stoop behind the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department. I leaned on the metal railing and watched the interminable snow continue to fall. “I just need a little more time to—”

“No, don’t go on autopilot here.”

“Honey—”

“Don’t honey me.” She took a moment to calm herself, and I could see her threading her long fingers through her auburn hair, and I was glad there were more than two thousand miles between us. “I knew this was what you were going to do to me . . .”

I stopped myself from saying honey. “I’m not doing this to you; it’s just that I have responsibilities.”

“Your responsibilities are to me and the baby.”

“I know that.” I looked out into the parking lot and could see Dog looking at me through the windshield, fogging the glass with his breath. “Lucian is over here, along with Dog.”

“Dog is also on the noon flight—I paid them more so he could go on the small plane—but you need to get a crate.”

I pushed my hat back on my head and clutched my forehead. Of course, the Greatest Legal Mind of Our Time had gotten Dog a ticket. I smiled in spite of myself. “What about Lucian?”

“Uncle Lucian can drive the Bullet back to Durant so you don’t have to pay for parking.”

“We have free parking at all the airports in Wyoming, or did you forget?”

She shrieked, finally having had enough of me. “I don’t care!” She was fighting valiantly, but I could hear the breaks in her voice as she spoke, and then there was a small sob. “Daddy, I’m afraid. Okay? They say there are complications and . . . I need you here for this.”

I nodded into the phone, Virgil’s words of disaster on the horizons of my life echoing in my head. “Right.”

“Please.”

“How much time do I have?”

It was silent on the line for a moment. “I knew you were going to do this—”

“When is the last moment I can leave?”

She literally growled into the phone. “You are not really booked on the noon flight.”

That stalled me out, and I was unsure of what to say next, finally deciding on something original. “I’m not?”

“No, I just switched you to the eleven-forty-two
P.M.
one to Denver and then the red-eye to Philadelphia where you will get in a paid car and come to the maternity unit of Pennsylvania Hospital on Eighth Street by eight tomorrow morning—thus sayeth the Greatest Legal Mind of Our Time.” There was a pause. “I know you.”

I breathed a laugh and shook my head at my wet boots. “Yep, you do.”

“Eleven forty-two tonight, got it?”

“Yep.”

“That leaves you fourteen hours and forty-two minutes to break the big case.”

“No pressure.”

She pressed her advantage. “Now take Henry, Vic, and Dog to the airport so that they can catch their flight. Don’t forget the crate.”

“You said.”

“Move.”

“Yep.” I quickly added. “Hey . . . ?”

“Yes?”

I tucked that tiny phone in tight, hoping she could feel me. “I love you, and everything’s going to be all right.”

She sniffed. “You promise?”

I took a deep breath and whispered the truest words I’d ever uttered. “That, I do.”

Walking down the steps, I found Vic and Henry standing by the stairwell, and I was surprised to find the pit bull sitting next to Dougherty, with her head on his knee.

“Does she have a name?”

“Probably, but the guy that knew it is dead so make one up and let her get used to it.” Vic shrugged. “She’ll get fully awake here in a few hours but be careful because she might be a little wonky and she doesn’t care for strangers.”

I reached into my pocket and handed him a cellophane-wrapped orb. “If she gets really anxious, give her another magic meatball.”

As we trooped out the door and up the stairs, Vic added, “Personally, I’d let her wake up and then post her at the door here for when the Dick gets back.”

Dougherty called out after her. “Wait, she’s aggressive?”

My undersheriff yelled back down the stairwell, “She’s a bitch, after all; between her and the Dick—my money’s on her.”

As we trudged to the Bullet, I explained our newfound travel plans.

Vic buckled herself in the center seat as Henry closed the door and turned to look at me. “You should get on the plane with us; we can deal with this shit when we get back.”

I started my truck and headed for the Kmart again. “I’ll follow orders and grab the red-eye. I don’t suspect I’ll have much luck, but I’ll follow up on what we’ve got so far.”

The Bear leaned forward, making forceful eye contact with me. “You had better not miss that flight at eleven forty-two tonight.”

I nodded. “Did Corbin get anything off of the computer or the phone?”

Vic shrugged. “Nothing on the computer yet, but he did get the information from the server on the phones; both of them are registered to Deke Delgatos, paid for by Deke Delgatos—”

“How about a listing of most recent calls?”

She slapped a Post-it onto my dash with the number engraved in the paper and a period that looked like it might’ve been made with an ice pick. “One number; the pay phone at the Sixteen Tons Bar.”

After getting the crate for Dog, some toiletries and essentials along with a couple of carry-ons for Vic and Henry, and a cheap work jacket and pair of gloves for me, I pulled the Bullet to a stop as we found ourselves on the wrong side of another of those mile-long coal trains. “It’s somebody in Arrosa.”

“Yes.”

Listening to the claxon warning and the thundering momentum of steel wheels, I glanced at him. “Any ideas?”

Both he and Vic shot me a look and then continued watching the passing train. “We have not met any of them to have any ideas.”

“Oh, right.” We watched the train together. Fingering the vents, I turned up the heat. “So Roberta Payne was sold to Willie and then taken by Deke.”

Vic fingered the Post-it fluttering in the hot air. “I really called the folks over at First Interstate and guess what?”

Henry’s voice rumbled. “The money from the trust ran out.”

Vic nodded. “Yeah.” She turned and looked straight at me. “You said he said he’d been studying you.”

“Yep, but maybe that had to do with something else.” I thought about it some more. “Maybe Roberta Payne was thrown in as a bonus, but after the money ran out—”

Henry asked, “Which would mean that the other women are alive?”

“Possibly.”

“For what reason?”

“The answer to that might be on those DVDs.”

Vic added, “You don’t suppose you’re pinning your hopes on that because it might mean that the victims are still alive?”

Both of them were looking at me now. “Maybe.”

—

“Just remember that the cock crows at eleven forty-two post meridian, which does not mean that you arrive at the airport at eleven forty-one.”

“Yep.”

He glanced up at the sky. “Not to worry.”

Henry had called the airport to check to make sure the airplanes were still flying, but although the snow had been steady,
it hadn’t been windy, so the plows were able to keep up, and flights were leaving relatively on time—but it was more than that. He breathed in through his mouth, and I watched him taste the frigid air. “It will stop snowing before midnight.”

I watched as the Cheyenne Nation lifted the large crate onto his shoulder like it was a shoebox and led Dog into the airport on the leather leash, his back apparently feeling better.

My undersheriff stepped into my view as I sat there in the driver’s seat. “Hey . . .” She glanced back and watched as Henry and Dog negotiated with the skycap at the outside desk, something I’d never seen at a Wyoming airport. “What are you going to do?”

I glanced at the Post-it, still stuck to my dash. “Just go over there again and poke around. That pay phone is outside the door of the bar, so I’m sure nobody’s going to know who was using it or admit to it, but you never know.”