The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volume 1-4 (135 page)

I turned back to Baranski and, without my even having time to notice, he had pushed the blunt barrel of my sidearm under my chin. He held it there. He smiled, and I heard the unmistakable sound of the .45 being cocked.

Neither of us blinked. “You better pull that trigger, ’cause that’s the only way you’re gonna stop me.”

I saw his eyes shift, and we both heard the safeties go off of more than one M16, behind me and to the right. A voice I didn’t know spoke in a steady and loud tone. “We got a problem here, Lieutenant?”

Baranski’s eyes returned to mine and widened just a little. I slowly released him. I could see four security airmen from the 377th, all of them with their automatic weapons trained on my right eye.

Baranski spoke quickly. “Look, there’s no need.”

One of the security detachment, a captain, swiveled the barrel of his rifle toward the CID man. “You wanna secure that weapon, sir?”

Baranski lowered the .45 just a bit and then carefully used both hands to aim the barrel at the dirt and lowered the hammer, and slowly glided the Colt back into my loose holster, which was wound around his fist. “We’re clear.”

The airmen lowered their M16s to their hips, still keeping them generally pointed in our direction. The captain was a goofy-looking guy with eyebrows and a smile that sloped down at the sides of his face. “Not too smart having a riot just outside of security headquarters, sir.”

Mendoza was still sitting on the ground, but Baranski straightened his collar, smoothed the front of his uniform, and tucked my .45 under his arm. “No riot, Captain—just a little interservice miscommunication. ”

The captain continued to study me from under his helmet, and it was like a voice coming from a cave. I got the feeling most of his brains were down in his neck, and he probably had the same thoughts about me. “You the Marine who broke the nose on one of my men last night?”

My breath gummed up my throat, but I still got it out. “Coincidentally. ” I sounded sarcastic, maybe even more than I wanted to.

He watched me and then nodded. “Well, why don’t we just take this little party back inside.”

“There’s no need for that, Captain.” Baranski took a step forward and flipped out his ID. “We’re with security, too.” The captain studied the Central Intelligence Detachment card and badge, looked at Baranski, then at me. He took a step back and fully lowered his weapon. They all did.

“All right, sir.”

Baranski smiled, showing the gaps in his front teeth, and stuffed his wallet back in his pants. “Thanks, Cap. I owe you one.”

The security detachment backed away from us and continued down the street. Baranski spoke in a soft, friendly voice and continued to smile as the captain glanced back at us one last time. “That’s right, keep going, you stupid motherfuckers.” One final wave, and he turned to look at me.

I met his eye and thought about how calm he’d been with my pistol under my chin. “I’m not leaving until I find out who killed her.” He shook his head and bumped up a smoke from the Camels in his breast pocket. He bit the cigarette and extended the pack to me. “I don’t smoke.”

He flipped open his Zippo and lit up with a deep inhale, the streams of smoke continuing into his nostrils as he pulled the cigarette away from his mouth. “Maybe you should—it might help calm you down.”

* * *

“I was hoping that you could assist me in making the arrangements for my granddaughter’s body to be transported once it’s released?” Tuyen sat in the chair opposite my desk and held the cup of coffee Ruby had given him.

“Certainly.”

Tran Van Tuyen was speaking into the mug and had yet to look up. “You may find this strange, but I was actually thinking of a cremation and scattering her ashes near the place she died.”

I was a little surprised. “You don’t want to take her back to California?”

His head shook slightly. “I don’t think her spirit was ever happy there, and I was thinking that she could, perhaps, find peace here.”

I nodded and tipped the brim of my hat, which was resting crown down on my desk. I watched as it turned slightly to the left. “Well, with a situation like this, it may be a while before they release Ho Thi, so you’ll have a bit of time to think about that.” There was no immediate response, and I hoped that he was coming to terms with the loss. “It’s a standard procedure with an open homicide investigation. We don’t want to miss anything that might lead us to apprehending the individual responsible.”

“Yes. I understand.”

He didn’t say anything else, so I waited. I’d sacrificed lunch with Vic, who had joined Cady and Michael. The Cheyenne Nation and the Crow contingency were having a cooling-off period out on the bench beside the walkway leading to the courthouse. I had told them to wait, that I’d be out as soon as I was through with Tuyen.

I had gotten a washcloth for Virgil, run it under some hot water, and handed it to him. We still had a doctor’s examination to contend with, and I wanted to get a closer look at the big man’s face, but it was all going to have to wait until I was finished with the dead woman’s grandfather.

Tuyen had followed me back to my office, and here we sat. “That was pretty slick out there.” His head rose, and he looked at me blankly. “With Eli?”

There was a sudden look of realization, and he sighed a quick laugh. “It is difficult to forget, once you have been properly trained.”

“Yep.”

After a moment, he spoke again. “Do you think about the war a great deal, Sheriff?”

I touched the brim of my hat with a forefinger in an attempt to straighten it and was relieved that someone else was asking the question. “A lot more, lately, it seems.”

“Because of my granddaughter?”

I looked up at him. “Yep, I believe so.”

He stood and put the untouched cup of coffee on the corner of my desk, and I thought about offering him tea next time. “Would it be possible for me to see my granddaughter’s things?”

It was the third time he’d asked and DCI had returned some of the items, so I nodded and motioned for him to follow me to the basement to our personal belongings cabinets.

Once there, I opened the large drawer and placed the small collection of items on the counter—the purse, the change, the French novel, the scarf, and the keys. The photograph of Mai Kim and me was being held, along with her clothes and herself. “What would you like to do about the car?”

He looked at the small group of objects. “Excuse me?”

“The car she was driving; I was wondering what you’d like to have done with it?”

“I may want to look at it.”

I wondered why. “I can make arrangements for it to be shipped back up here from Cheyenne, if you want.”

“Yes, thank you.” I waited as he looked at the items on the counter. “And the computer?”

“Excuse me?”

He cleared his throat. “Ho Thi had a computer of mine. It was not with her?”

“No.” I studied him, as he continued to look at her things. “Is there something wrong?”

He took a deep breath. “It doesn’t seem like a great deal . . . for a lifetime, does it?”

* * *

I pushed open the door and walked out to the war council. “How’s it going?”

Eli sat on the far side of the bench, his elbows on his knees, and looked as though he was memorizing the cracks in the sidewalk. Brandon stood with his thumbs hitched in the back pockets of his jeans, and Henry watched the side of Eli’s face. The Cheyenne Nation turned and looked up at me. “This may take a while.”

I beat a slow retreat back to my office. Ruby was holding her phone up to me. “Saizarbitoria.”

I came inside and sat on her desk, took the receiver, and reached down to pet Dog. “What’s up, Sancho?”

“Jim Craft wants to know if you have any idea how many credit cards the Flying J truck stop processes in a twenty-four-hour period.”

I ruffled Dog’s ear, and he mouthed my hand with his big teeth. “Tell him I’ll buy him lunch next time I’m through Casper. ” I wiped the slobber off on my jeans. “What’ve you got?”

“The manager says that there was a card left at the counter and that they contacted the company, who in turn contacted Tuyen.”

“Well, it was worth a try.”

“Boss, there’s something else....”

His tone froze me. “What?”

“The manager says that he remembered the incident because he was running an inventory that night and got a glimpse of the car as it pulled away.”

“Yep?”

“He said the card came back declined and reported stolen, so the woman working the register called it in and they told her to confiscate it. She did and got the manager as the girl ran out of the store with two bottles of water and a large bag of chips. The manager said he saw the suspect jump in and back into a concrete spacer before hitting the accelerator and tearing out onto I-25 headed north.”

It was silent on the line, and I noticed I wasn’t breathing.

"Walt...he said there were two girls in the car.”

11

Henry rode with me as we headed south to Powder Junction in an attempt to overtake Tuyen’s Land Rover, but we hadn’t seen it so far. He looked at a nondescript section of the frontage road, just off I-25. “Who died there?”

Most people didn’t like riding with me, and most of my friends and family had learned to not ask when my eyes unfocused on some lonely stretch of prairie or on a desolate part of the road. “Those three kids that turned over that Camaro on the way back up from the Powder Junction Rodeo back in ’98.”

“Have I ever told you how depressing it is to ride in this county with you?”

I switched on the emergency lights and coaxed the Bullet up past eighty-five. “Well, you never look at the place the same way.”

He nodded. “Where is Vic?”

I made a face. “What’s that got to do with anything?” He didn’t answer, and I glanced at the clock on the radio of my truck. “With Cady and Michael, eating lunch.”

He adjusted his signature Fort Smith Big Lip Carp Tournament ball cap and carefully placed his thick ponytail through the adjustable strap. “At the risk of getting my head bitten off, I will ask again. How is that going?”

I watched the road, then readjusted in my seat and propped an elbow on the armrest. “I don’t know.” I was the picture of annoyance and uncertainty.

The Bear laughed. “You do not know?”

I sighed. “We . . . When we . . . When we were back in Philadelphia?”

“Yes.”

“We got really close.”

“Yes.”

“But that was a different context and now we’re back home and it’s different.”

“Yes.”

I started to speak, then stopped, waited another moment, and then continued. “What happened back there between the two of us—I’m not so sure it should’ve happened. Not so much me, but her.” I turned up the air-conditioning as it seemed to be growing even hotter in the cab. Pretty soon, I was going to run out of knobs to play with; maybe it was a family trait. “I just think that she might’ve done it because she felt sorry for me.”

He stared at the side of my face. “There are a multitude of reasons why she might have instigated the ... intimacy between the two of you. A sense of mortality connected with Cady’s accident, strangers in a strange land . . .”

“She was born there.”

He stuck out a hand to silence me. “Let me finish?”

“Sorry.”

“Perhaps even a competitive response to her mother, but the one I would be willing to believe the most readily is that she deeply cares for you. Not about you, but for you, and there is a difference.” He turned back toward the windshield. “That, or it was a mercy fuck.” I turned and looked at him, and he shrugged. “To use her terminology.” The Bear drummed his long fingers on the dash and changed the subject. “So, you think Tuyen knows something?”

I stared at the road. “I’m not talking to you anymore.”

“I was joking.”

“It wasn’t funny.”

He gazed at the rolling prairie. “It was a little funny.”

We both escaped into our separate silences and watched the golden-brown grass sweep patterns in the heated wind. We needed rain, soon, or all of Absaroka County would be a tinderbox.

I knew full well that I’d never outlast him, so I started talking again, anxious to pick up another conversational thread. “I’m thinking Tuyen might know if Ho Thi had any friends, or if anyone else is missing.” We passed a wide load, carrying two halves of a modular home, and navigated back into the righthand lane. “I’ve got calls into the Los Angeles and Orange County Sheriff ’s Departments to see if they can get me anything, but Tuyen is here and he might be useful.”

Henry watched the road. “Did the manager at the Flying J say that the girl was Asian?”

“Jim said the manager was unsure, but that they were both female and had long dark hair.”

He shrugged. “Possibly Native...”

“Wouldn’t be the first time an Indian girl was hitchhiking up I-25, but I’m not betting on it.”

“Why do you want this young woman, if she exists, to be Vietnamese?”

I glanced at him. “It would mean that somebody’s alive who knows what’s going on.” My eyes returned to the road. “Why do you ask that question?”

He continued studying me. “I sometimes wonder if you are trying to come to terms with two mysteries almost four decades apart.”

I drove and stared at another patch of the highway where more lives had come to an abrupt halt. I remembered who they were, their names, their family, their friends; these dead weren’t the ones I worried about—there were people who would remember them. It was the ones who had died truly alone who concerned me most. If no one remembered them, were they ever really here? I took a deep breath and forced my eyes back to the road. “Ruby says I care about dead people more than the living.”

Henry said nothing.