The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volume 1-4 (96 page)

It was possible that what had happened to Devon had been triggered by what had happened to Cady, but not exclusively. It appeared that the young man could have been involved in any number of situations that could have led to his violent end.

The nurses had finished. I folded the paper, placed it back on the counter, and leaned my elbows on the ICU desk. Nancy Lyford, the head nurse, the one who had held my hand when we had first arrived, came over and stood by me. “Your friend has a beautiful voice.”

“Yep, he does.”

“He’s Native American?”

I smiled. “Indian. Yes.”

“Isn’t Native American the correct term?”

“I suppose, but most of the Indians I know would laugh at you if you used it.” I figured I’d better explain. “Most Indians don’t identify themselves as American particularly, but as members of nations unto themselves.” She looked at me blankly. “A nation, like a tribe.”

She thought about it. “He said he was Cheyenne?”

“Northern Cheyenne and Lakota.”

“Sioux?”

I shook my head. “You start calling Lakota the Sioux, and you’re going to get in real trouble.”

She laughed. “Sounds more complicated than Native American.”

I gestured toward my daughter. “How’s she doing?”

She glanced over her shoulder. “The bilateral constriction subsided to a normal reaction of the pupils, which gives her a much better opportunity of recovery. The involuntary response to external stimuli is also a very good sign.”

It was basically the same speech I’d gotten from Rissman the day before, and I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. “Still a wait-and-see situation?”

She nodded her head and looked a little sad. “It’s not like television. It’s a long process that takes a lot of effort, even if things go well.” I nodded, and she looked back at Cady. “I’m not sure if now is the time to mention it, but the things that people have been sending and bringing are beginning to pile up.” I guess I still looked blank. “Cards, stuffed animals, flowers, and things like that.” She smiled. “She’s a very popular young woman.”

I had the flowers donated to other units and started to put the rest into a large shopping bag the head nurse thoughtfully provided. I was still talking to Cady. “I’ve half a mind to leave all this stuff here and have you lug it all home yourself.” There were stuffed animals, mostly indicative of the West—buffalo, horses, and a bear. There were assortments of candy and a stack of cards, most of which had her name on them, except for one that had mine. I held the little envelope up for her to see. “There, I’m popular, too.”

It was the usual size of a thank you note, with a mechanical, typewritten print that read SHERIFF. I nudged my thumb under the flap and opened the sealed envelope. Inside was a plain white card that looked like the ones used for names at a place setting; it read, in the same type, YOU HAVE BEEN DONE A FAVOR, NOW DROP IT.

I looked at it for a long time. I finally noticed that my finger and thumb were holding the card like a life preserver; I guess I thought that if I let go, the card might disappear. I studied the envelope. There was nothing to indicate where the note had come from or whom it was from. I held it up to the fluorescent light and could see the indentation of the mechanical typewriter’s strike, worn, with a small dropout at the bottom of the O. A typewriter? No one used one of those anymore.

I stood and walked out to the nurse’s station. I held up the envelope. “Excuse me, but do you have any idea where this one might have come from?”

She shook her head. “No, I really can’t say.”

“Can you check with the rest of the staff and see if any of them remember anyone bringing this particular envelope?”

She reached out for it. “Certainly.”

I held on. “I need to keep this, but there aren’t any others that are typewritten. Do you think you could bring them here or describe it to them?” She looked uncertain. “It just says SHERIFF in capital letters.”

“Yes.” She continued to sit and look at me.

“I mean now.”

The other three staff members who were on the floor had never seen the note and, after a few phone calls, it was ascertained that the others hadn’t either. I plucked a card from my wallet, looked at the great seal of the City of Philadelphia, and thought about the deep-set eyes that had watched me so carefully this morning. Asa Katz, Detective, Homicide Unit, 8th and Race. There were four different phone numbers, and I didn’t call any of them.

I was standing with the head nurse in Cady’s room when Lena Moretti arrived.

The sun had set, but the last of its golden light reflected off the other sides of the building in a burnished brilliance of dying illumination, peaking and then dimming like a thought having passed.

“No, I didn’t write it.”

I reached out and held Cady’s foot; I felt the momentary reflex of response and the heat in my face as I looked at hers. “Well, I just wanted to give you the chance to give yourself up.” I heard her exhale with a smile.

“What are you going to do?”

I gave a little laugh myself. “You know, your daughter asks me that a lot.” The hot spots of the sun were reflecting back to my mountains in Wyoming, and I thought about how deceptively simple life seemed there. “I figure I’ll give the detectives a full report in the morning.”

“Yeah, but what are you going to do tonight?” She was holding the card and stood in the golden light with her other hand propped at the small of her back.

“That note seems to indicate that Devon Conliffe’s death is a direct result of Cady’s accident.” I smiled at the floor tile some more and didn’t answer.

I stood there with the Cheyenne Nation, looking up at the tall building and the night sky. “Are you going to tell me that this is a bad idea, too?”

He considered the streetlights running down Market. “Nah, this is a good idea.”

Now I was worried.

The clouds hadn’t given way to the moon and were still skimming along the tops of the buildings and reflecting the city’s light. It was a warm, balmy evening and, with the cloud cover, everything felt close.

I looked at my pocket watch and glanced down both sides of the city street. Patti-with-an-i was to have met us at nine o’clock, but it was creeping up on a quarter past. “You think she changed her mind?” He didn’t say anything, just looked off toward City Hall. He looked remarkably like the Indian at Logan Circle.

“For what, exactly, are we searching?”

“I don’t know. That’s why we have to look for ourselves.”

His eyes turned to me. “You do not think the police have already done this?”

“I’m sure they asked some questions, but that’s probably all. It’s hard to deal with lawyers without a warrant.”

He looked back at the building. “Which is why we are breaking and entering?”

“Just entering; I’m not planning on breaking anything.” He nodded but didn’t look particularly convinced.

It was just then that the woman I assumed was Patti turned the corner and approached from the plaza on Broad. She was looking around as she crossed the street. “I’m sorry, I had trouble getting a babysitter…” She stopped talking and looked at Henry. The Indian had that kind of an effect on people east of the Mississippi River.

“Patti-with-an-i, I’m Walt and this is Henry Standing Bear.”

He inclined his head, extended a hand, and smiled while she melted into the cracks of the sidewalk. “Patti-with-an-i, I have heard a great deal about you.”

I rolled my eyes and converted it into a glance through the revolving doors of the lobby, where a couple of security guards sat at a centrally located desk between the banks of elevators. I wondered mildly if we might have been better off leaving the Cheyenne Nation out of the equation.

Once inside, Patti just waved at the men; I noticed one of them was reading the
Philadelphia Inquirer,
which had a more demure take on the Devon Conliffe saga. The other looked at us a little quizzically but made nothing more of it.

We watched as Patti punched the up button, and we got on the elevator as she slipped a security card into the panel and hit a red one marked thirty-two. We got off and followed her to a set of opaque glass doors where she inserted the card again. The doors buzzed. I pushed one only partly open. “This is as far as you go.”

She looked up at me. “I thought…”

I shook my head. “It’s bad enough that the guards have seen you with us. If we get caught, I don’t want you anywhere near.”

“You’re not going to know what to look for.”

I glanced over at Henry. “We’ll have to take that chance.”

She sighed. “Her office is straight down the hall past the library, then take a right and go to the corner; she’s the next to last door on the left.”

I saluted, and we waited till she was gone. I turned to look at Henry. “I like to ask myself, what would Gerry Spence do in a situation like this?”

“Gerry Spence would not be in a situation like this.”

The main hall was a straight shot to a conference room. The lights were all on, and I expected somebody to cross at any second and turn to look at us. I waited a moment, then stepped into the entryway and looked both left and right down the first intersecting hallway. There seemed to be three more before the end. We listened, but the only sound was the heating/cooling air handlers.

I watched as Henry took his rightful place at the front, always the scout. He advanced to the next intersection and motioned for me to follow, never taking his eyes off the area ahead. I moved out and up behind him as he crossed and continued.

We were at the doorway of the library when he stopped and angled his head in the direction of the opening. I expected to hear the shriek of lawyers, aware that they were being attacked by a war party, but it was silent. I waited as Henry held up a fist, then a single finger, and then the fist again.

Hold, one person, stay there.

I waited as he crossed and peered into the room from the opposite angle. I watched as the dark eyes flicked around. He froze for a second, then slowly turned away and placed himself flat against the far wall; I did the same. I listened more carefully as someone rustled some papers and walked through the room about twenty feet from the door.

After a moment and more than most white men would wait, the Bear inclined his head and looked into the library. He glanced back and gestured for me to come along. I crossed and followed him to the far corner, where he stopped, and once again looked both ways.

Every light in this part of the damn place was on as well, and I started wondering how much Schomberg, Calder, Dallin, and Rhind could shave off their billing by turning them out. Paintings on the walls in the corridor that led to Cady’s office were abstracts of what I took to be Indians. When I turned to look at Henry, he was studying the nearest one, looked at me, and shrugged.

To my relief, most of the doorways leading to the right were either dark or closed. Seeing the lights from the other tall buildings glide past as we worked our way down the hall was making me dizzy, so I was glad when we got to the door that read CADY LONGMIRE on a little brass plaque. The door that was three before Cady’s was open with the light on. The plaque on it read JOANNE FITZPATRICK; the name sounded familiar. Henry turned the knob to Cady’s office and closed the door behind us after I followed him in.

It was a small room, and we stood there for a moment to let our eyes adjust to the darkness. I could feel some of Cady’s clothes hanging on the back of her door and steadied their swinging with my hand. Henry stood slightly to the left, looking out the floor-to-ceiling glass wall ahead of us. William Penn and City Hall were to our right, and the yellow glow of the clock below Penn told us it was a time when all good lawyers should be home and in bed. The bluish light of the building across Market reflected the streetlights below and the image of the building we were now in.

Henry reached across the shadow of a desk and clicked on a green tortoiseshell lamp. The illumination was ample but not so much that it reached the space under the doorway. I breathed the first deep breath since entering the offices. “Somebody was in the library?”

The Bear nodded. “Yes. Pretty girl, about Cady’s age with long, dark hair.”

I thought about it as I looked around. “I don’t know anybody she works with by sight.” He nodded.

There wasn’t much room to move; there were file boxes lined up against the wall, so I crossed behind the desk where there were more piles of folders and a computer. There were even more boxes at the foot of the windows, with another wall of file cabinets to the right.

I sat in her chair and looked around. There was a large map of Wyoming from the turn of the century in a heavy gilded frame. There were four ledger drawings that Henry had acquired for her flanking both sides, and an etching Joel Ostlind had done of Cloud Peak. I looked at the elegant simplicity of the etching and could feel the air and the cold wind of the west ridge.

On the desk, there was an old photograph of Cady with Martha after the chemotherapy had begun taking its toll. I studied the beautiful bone structure of the two women, mother and daughter, the brightness of their eyes, and the languid relaxation of their hands as they lay draped over each other’s shoulders. There was another of Henry standing with Dena Many Camps in traditional dress at the Little Bighorn reenactment. There was even one of Dog.