The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volume 1-4 (84 page)

We looked at each other like we had for decades, a blind man talking to a deaf one. There was a line that neither of us was able to cross: his sneering at my supposed weakness and my righteous indignation at his immorality. I was sure that the chasm between us was a generational one. Lucian’s world was simpler, and he was unable to see that law enforcement had become complicated in the modern era; or was it that he was so close, so much of a part of the whole mess, that he had lost perspective on it long ago? Charlie Nurburn hung out there like a reoccurring nightmare and in Charlie’s child and his child’s child.

I guess the heat was getting to Joe, because he felt compelled to interrupt. “We were just having a little conversation somewhere quiet.” His voice was a little unsteady. “I came across some information I thought might interest Lucian.”

I glanced back as Lucian pulled his pipe from one jacket pocket and the beaded leather pouch from the other. The tension eased but only a little. “I got some information, too.” Lucian filled his pipe and struck a match on the side of his chair. “I, um . . .” He sucked on his pipe until he got it going, the thick plume of smoke roiling from the corner of his mouth. “Beebee Banks was visitin’ her mother over at the home. Walt, she told me to tell you she found out who had that little Baroja girl’s bakery building before she did.” The smile played on his face like a reflection on moving water. “Why, it was Joe here.”

Like the motor drive on an automatic shutter, I counted six different stills as my head rotated to Joe, like six separate heartbeats. “Don’t move.”

The weight of it was in the room with us now like a cold cloud-burst had suddenly let loose; the rain of recognition was dripping from all of us and, as I saw Joe’s hand slip from the table, I was positive that of the four men in the room, three had guns. I saw the Bear move, but I was closer.

The bones in his wrist crunched with a nauseating give, and I finally got a look at the Joe Lesky that had been so carefully hidden from me as, with a snarl of rage, he tried to twist and pull away. My left held, but I wasn’t going to trust it to do the job alone. His expression changed as the cold barrel of the .45 pressed up under his jaw, forcing his head back to where he had to look over the contours of his face to see me.

I took a deep breath. “I said, don’t move.”

I watched as his nostrils spread, and he pulled air in like a bellows. “Let go of my wrist!”

“I don’t hardly think so.” I eased the pressure of the .45 and allowed his head to lower enough so that I could see his expression. I thought of an old drill sergeant who had told me that a professional is the one who always has his gun. I risked a glimpse to the right, around the damn eye patch, and saw the long-barreled .38 of Lucian’s duty revolver extended across the table eight inches from Joe’s face.

I looked back at Joe, who was glancing at his coat and thinking about trying the reach with his left. “You do, and I will splatter your brains all over the pressed tin ceiling.” His eyes came back to mine. “Now I’m going to place your hands back on this table, and you are not going to move them, do you understand?”

I swept my hand behind him, lifting his coat and throwing it to Henry. I pulled my cuffs from my belt. “Put those on.”

“You broke my wrist.”

“Put those on.” He pressed the one loop through and delicately placed it around his damaged wrist, only partially locking it as I counted only three notches that clicked. “All the way.”

He looked at me. “It hurts.”

“So will the .45.” He clicked it again and then did the other hand as specified. I leaned back and took another deep breath as I pulled the Colt away from the underside of Joe’s chin. I turned my head, so that I could see Lucian with the inside of my good eye. “You all right?”

“I ain’t the one without a gun, if that’s what ya mean.”

I looked back at Joe. His eyes shifted from me, to Lucian, and then back to me. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m not saying anything until I talk to a lawyer.”

Lucian snorted. “What makes you think that you’re gonna see a lawyer?”

My voice sounded a long way away, like it was coming from the land of reason. “Lucian.”

The old sheriff ’s hand didn’t move, and the extended barrel of the Smith and Wesson stayed even with Joe’s eyes. “I aim to kill this son of a bitch, right here and right now.” He pulled the pipe from his mouth and blew a strong lungful of smoke away from us. The pounding of “Ring Those Christmas Bells” continued as the jukebox charged on.

I cleared my throat and swallowed. “Lucian, I’m going to need you to lower your weapon.”

He gestured toward Joe with the stem of his pipe. “You killed my wife.”

I needed to buy some more time. I studied Joe. “When did you find out that Charlie Nurburn was dead?” He didn’t move, but his eyes switched from Lucian to me. “I’m betting that you knew he was dead by the time you contacted Leo. I guess you figured that Lucian here had kept Charlie alive for fifty-odd years and there was no reason why you couldn’t keep him alive for a little while longer or at least until you could get a share of Mari’s money.”

He didn’t move. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His tongue flicked across his lips. “Walt, you’ve known me . . .”

“No I don’t.” I leaned in on the back of my chair. “Did you kill Mari Baroja before you got Leo over here? You knew you could get him to kill Lana and Lucian, certainly Anna, but he didn’t kill them all, did he? And you didn’t do so well with Isaac.”

I was tired, and I wanted it all over with, but there was so much more to tell. “Leo tried to save his grandmother; he was hurt and was going to run for it but you knew we were down on the old Nurburn place. You were the one that shot Wes Rogers, and then you sent Leo down there in the cruiser even though you knew we were waiting and either way, you figured this problem would solve itself.” I kept the .45 leveled between Joe’s eyes. “What were you going to do, Joe? Blame it all on Leo?”

His voice was strained. “I want a lawyer.”

Lucian exhaled, his arm still extended. “Best you can hope for is a priest, and that right soon.”

“You can’t prove any of this.”

I looked into Joe’s eyes, trying to see some common ground between us, but there was nothing there. I glanced back at his rumpled coat, hanging from Henry’s hand. “If I go over there and pull a .32 automatic from your coat pocket, and it makes a ballistic match with the gun that shot Wes Rogers, I can start proving a lot.”

I reached into the pocket of my jacket and lay the Christmas ornament on the table, face up. I slowly pushed it toward Joe, where the visible part of the man’s face in the photograph matched the man in front of me. “Never mind all the others . . . he was your son, Joe. How could you do that to your child?”

The old sheriff cocked the revolver.

I could see the lanyard ring at the base of the pistol’s butt, the loop that used to attach Lucian’s old service revolver to his belt in the style of the cavalry riders so that they wouldn’t lose their sidearms while mounted. Like Lucian, this morning it was untethered, out there in the wind where bad things could and would happen. “Lucian, you know what it is Joe here was getting ready to tell you. Whether it was as a bartering chip or leverage, you can’t do what you were planning to do because you’re not alone in this anymore.” He blinked, and I could see the welling in his eyes as Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians took the Christmas train home amid four-part harmony.

I saw his trigger finger tighten, and the legendary grip squeeze the wooden handle like a lifeline. The best I could hope for was to knock it away with my own gun, flip the table, or throw myself sideways into him. In the split second I was thinking this, Lucian swung the revolver around and emptied it with five thundering reports into the shuddering and now forever silent jukebox. He tossed the empty .38 back onto the table where it clattered and spun with its barrel pointed at an absolutely immobile Joe Lesky. Lucian’s voice was low and weak in the silence. “Jesus H. Christ . . . I always hated that damn thing.”

The sounds the piano made were soft and just a little melancholy, with a poetic lyricism that matched the surroundings. Henry was planted behind the bar; Bill McDermott was dancing with Lana Baroja; Saizarbitoria was dancing with his wife, Marie; and Cady was dancing with our newest Powder Junction deputy, Double Tough. Dog was curled up by the piano; he had already called it a night, the shaved portion of his middle and the bandages on his head and abdomen making him look like a stuffed animal.

I made the musical bridge and cut in with an improvisational riff that paused the dancers but held my attention for a while longer. My fingers felt stiff, but I was loosening up. My eye patch was gone, and there was no serious damage to the cornea; my vision was a little blurred on the right, but Vic was to my left. I kept sneaking glances at her, still a little startled by her civilian clothes. She was wearing a short black dress and black cowboy boots with embroidered red roses and blue leaves. With the turquoise and silver chandelier earrings, it was western, with just a touch of gypsy insouciance thrown in for good measure.

There was brief applause as I reached for my beer and nodded in acknowledgment toward the dance floor alongside the pool table. I shifted my weight and leaned against the wall, looking over at Henry and signaling the jukebox. I had only played a half dozen songs, but my fingers hurt, and I needed a little relief.

Vic took a sip of her dirty martini and shrugged as the wind continued to batter the outside of the bar. Another storm had come in from the Arctic Circle and had dropped about eight inches of snow. The Ferg had volunteered for duty, but so far there hadn’t been any phone calls; it was the kind of holiday we liked, where the weather was so bad that the populace stayed in, including Ruby and Isaac, who had elected to stay home to avoid the amateurs who might have decided to drive.

“How’s your leg?”

“Still not up to dancing.”

“Nobody asked.” She glanced over her shoulder at my daughter. “Cady flying out tomorrow?”

“If the weather’s decent.”

“Air Omar?”

I nodded and took the opportunity to watch her for a moment, like I always did when she wasn’t aware. “You got two new deputies for Christmas.” She stayed turned to the dance floor, watching Saizarbitoria, and tipped the delicate stem of her glass for another sip. “He’s a dark horse, but he’s sharp and he works hard.”

I took another sip of my beer. “The wife is nice.”

“Whatever.”

I smiled behind her back. “What about the hillbilly?”

Her head pivoted a little as she watched Double Tough, who was still dancing with Cady. “He’s durable.”

“That he is.”

She turned back around. “All right, so Joe got his name from the priest in Casper. Where did Leo get his?”

“Foster parents in Fremont County.”

She nodded. “Joe brought Leo over for the job after he laid the groundwork by keeping Charlie Nurburn alive?”

“Basically continuing Lucian’s efforts in hopes of getting a percentage for himself, but who knows? It looks like he was ready to kill half of Absaroka County to get what he thought he deserved.”

“What about Anna Walks Over Ice?”

“We found an unfinished letter at her house, in Crow.” I glanced toward Henry. “She outlined the whole situation; she had seen Joe add something to Mari Baroja’s Metamucil that night.” I took another sip of my beer. “I guess she just wasn’t sure enough, at the time, to accuse him, and then with Leo it was too late.”

She stared at the piano and tentatively reached out for a key. “Very understanding of you.”

I looked at my friend with the bandaged face; he was still mixing drinks behind the bar. “I didn’t have to kill him.”

In the dim glow of the stained glass of the billiard’s light and the Rainier beer advertisements, my chief deputy looked like some courtly renaissance woman, the kind that would poison your wine. “It’s Tuesday night. He’s probably got the board out.”

I waited for more, but there wasn’t any. She just sat there, with her finger resting beside the keys, her eyes far away. She had looked like this at the hospital the night she handed me Lucian’s love letters from Mari. She waited there for a moment, then got up and straightened her skirt in an action that seemed both symmetric and disquieting. “Where are you going?”

She didn’t turn when she said it but downed the martini in one gulp. “Dancing.”

As I watched her approach the stilled dancers to choose a victim, Lana came over and occupied the bench seat next to me. “I’m leaving.”

“I seem to be having that effect on people.”

She glanced back at the Yellowstone County coroner. “Bill says he’ll give me a ride back into town.”

“You should take advantage.” She placed a hand on mine and ducked her head to catch my eye. She kept looking at me with those familiar dark eyes, so I diverted her thoughts. “What are you going to do with all your money?”

She didn’t pause. “Hire someone to work at the bakery.” She smiled the jaunty smile that always seemed to put the world off kilter. “What would you do if you had a million dollars?”

“I don’t have a million dollars.”

She tipped my hat back as she rose and planted a gentle kiss on my bared forehead. “You never know.” I watched with great unease as she turned to Bill, who assisted her in putting on her coat, the same purple, quilted teepee as before. “I left you something on the bar. Merry Christmas.” The teepee swirled out with the coroner, and they were gone through the glass door with a flurry of flakes blowing in to take their place.

I drained the last of my beer and gingerly got up, keeping the weight off my left leg and trying to negotiate between the bench and the piano with the blurred vision of my right eye. I decided that the next time, I would make a concentrated effort to get wounded all on one side; it might make post-adventure life a little easier. I limped my way across the makeshift dance floor as Dog followed and threaded my way between Saizarbitoria and Marie and Double Tough and Vic, who ignored me as I passed.