Any Other Name: A Longmire Mystery (21 page)

“Hello?”

“Dougherty, it’s Walt Longmire.”

“Yeah, I just called you.”

“I know, the transponders down here are covered with ice and malfunctioning; nothing is working. Did you find something?”

“I’ve been going through those files and came across a transcription that wasn’t in the computer, somebody else he talked to.”

“Who?”

“A woman named Izzy—does that ring any bells?”

A faint alarm went off somewhere in the periphery of my head, but nothing I could place. “Izzy?”

“Yeah, Izzy. Evidently she was involved with the Dave Rowan guy in something that Holman seemed highly suspicious of.”

I looked around, aware that I was still pursuing a felon. “Well, keep digging and get back to me.”

As I hung up, I could still hear his voice. “How?”

Rowan had continued through a door into the commercial
area and around a counter where three P.O. boxes hung open, one with a key still hanging from the lock. There were wet boot prints there that trailed across the tile-covered floor and out the front.

As I pushed open the door into the silence of the outside, I saw that the tracks were much fresher and more defined, and that now there were two individuals walking. It looked as if they’d taken only one step out and then headed to the right, away from the bar toward the strip club and the scattered trailers belonging to the dancers.

There was a thundering noise growing louder to my left as I headed east on the frontage road, and all I hoped was that it wasn’t a plow coming up from behind preparing to dump a few tons of snow on top of me. The sound became more familiar as it grew louder, and I turned my head in time to see the billowing vortex of snow being swept along behind another Burlington Northern Santa Fe. As it is with mountains making their own weather, the mile-long train drew its own along with it, clearing the road and the surrounding area as it carried millions of dollars’ worth of not-so-hard fuel.

The pair of prints passed the trailers and angled into Dirty Shirley’s parking lot, making a beeline for the back door where I’d first seen the bouncer. I tried it but it didn’t budge, and then I thought about shooting the lock as they do on TV shows like
Steadfast Resolution
, but in reality, all that ever does is mess up the lock and not open the door.

Still thinking about that name, Izzy, I began the long trudge around the building and eventually got to the alcove that protected the front entrance. Where had I heard that before? I pulled on the door, it opened, and I eased it closed behind me.

It was dark in the interior of the building, and I couldn’t see
much beyond some half-drawn heavy curtains that led toward an elevated area. There were a few illuminated liquor advertisements behind the bar that were reflected in the numerous mirrors on the black velvet walls. I stood there for a few seconds, letting my eyes adjust, and thought I might’ve seen something move.

I watched the mirrors and finally saw the end of a baseball bat hovering in the blackness. Unsure from which direction it was reflecting, I figured I had to make a guess. Remembering that the bouncer had led with his right, I decided to move to the left and direct fire to the right, where he’d most likely be.

As mistakes go, it was a doozy.

He was on the left and caught me with the Louisville Slugger. Luckily, it was a glancing blow and I’d dropped my head, but unluckily, I tripped on the shag carpet and tumbled off onto the dance floor. When I hit the ground, the .357 clattered out of my hand and slid across the tile underneath the other platform.

“You know, you really should’ve left off on this one. Not only are you too old for this shit, but you’re too dumb, too.” He patted the wooden bat in the palm of his other hand with a continuous smack. “Now I’ve got to beat you to death, and I was just getting to kind of like you.”

I rolled over and stared up at him. “Where’s the postman?”

“Dave is taking care of business.” He stopped at the step and took a few practice swings. “That’s what we’re all doing, taking care of business.”

I pushed a little away and propped myself against a chair. “And what part of the business are you in?”

He palmed the bat again. “Right now, the tenderizing business.” He stepped down. “USC, huh?”

“Yep.”

He raised the bat. “Well, Trojan, say hello to the Fighting Irish.”

I pulled the Colt Walker from my sling and carefully aimed it at his face. “Fight this.”

He stared at the massive barrel of the vintage firearm.

“I’ve never seen a human being shot with one of these cap and ball jobs, but I’ve heard they about half explode on contact, so not only do you get the primary wound, but bits and pieces of the ball scatter all over you.” I could see him weighing his chances. “But you won’t have to worry about that because before I take another hit with that bat, as my old boss used to say, I’ll spray your brains out of the back of your head like a manure spreader.”

There was a tense moment, and then he lowered the bat onto his shoulder and sighed. “I don’t want to go to prison; I just wanted to get my knee fixed.”

“It might be a little late for that.” I pushed off the floor, keeping the Walker on him. “What’s going on around here, anyway?”

He reached a hand out, but I ignored it and stood on my own, watching his muscles tense in his shoulders as he thought about swinging the bat again.

I shoved the big Colt in his face. “I’m getting the feeling that you just aren’t trustworthy.” I pulled the cuffs from my pocket, tossed them to him, and motioned toward the pole at the center of the stage. “Hook yourself to that.”

He stepped back. “No way, man.”

I lowered my aim at his good leg. “Do it, or you’re going to be rehabbing both of those knees.”

He dragged a chair from one of the tables onto the stage and did as I said, slumping into a seated position with his wrist attached to the chrome pole. “Happy?”

“Give me the bat.” He did, and I sat at another table with the lumber in front of me. “So I’ll ask the question again—what’s going on?”

“My question, exactly.”

The voice that came from behind me was female, sort of, and was accompanied by the sound of a slide-action being pulled back on a 9 mm semiautomatic. I turned and was treated to the sight of the sister of the sheriff of Campbell County and proprietor of the establishment pointing a pistol at me. “Tommi.”

She threw her purse and coat onto the bar and looked at the two of us. “What the hell is going on in here?”

Thor was the first to speak. “Thank God you’re here, Tommi. I caught this guy snooping around and hit him with the bat, but he got the jump on me and cuffed me to the pole—”

I interrupted. “Call your brother; I’m working on a case involving the missing women. Your boyfriend, Dave, the recently deceased bartender of the Sixteen Tons, and the mullet with the mouth cuffed to the pole here are all involved.”

She looked disgusted—then considered him and then me again. “Mister, I’ve done quite well in life knowing what aspects of my business I need to involve my brother in, and which ones I don’t—another thing I’ve fine-tuned is my ability to sniff out bullshit when it’s being shoveled my way.” She came down, sat in the chair across the table from me, and then readdressed her aim to the bouncer. “Now, Thor, you tell him everything he wants to know or I’ll shoot you myself.”

The blond kid pleaded. “Tommi, you don’t understand—”

The 9 mm went off, splintering a hole in the stage floor no more than a yard away from the kid’s foot as he wrapped himself around the pole.

I sat the Walker on the table and cleared my nearest ear with
the tip of a pinkie. “You mind telling me when you get ready to shoot that thing again?”

She casually lifted the semiautomatic and blasted another round in the stage a foot away from the kid’s other sneaker, causing him to leap up, overturn his chair, and stand comically behind the chrome pole. She glanced at me. “I might be shooting some more.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“Think nothing of it.” She took out a cigarillo and a lighter and rested her elbow on the table in order to sight the pistol on Thor’s private parts. “You were saying?”

The kid was on the verge of crying. “It wasn’t my idea.”

She puffed her cigarillo as if her life depended on it. “Comforting, seeing as how in the couple of years I’ve known you I’ve never known you to have one.”

“It was the postman, honest.”

I watched as Tommi’s hand tightened around the pistol. “Dave.”

“He always rings twice.” Figuring the kid was scared enough, I reached over and lowered Tommi’s weapon. “Tell me about Mr. Rowan, Curtis.”

“It was his idea.” Thor relaxed and leaned against the pole. “He gets these catalogs with women in them at the post office, and he figured he could go into the business himself what with it closing and him losing his job anyway.”

“Mail-order brides?”

“Yeah . . . Well, kind of.”

“Kind of?”

He nodded. “More like servants. We were all talking over at the bar one night, and he brought the subject up. We didn’t know that he’d already done it twice with women from town,
but we figured we had a supply of girls that we could use from the club—”

“You mean you abducted these women against their will and sold them?”

“Um, yeah.”

I sat there, thinking that the report from Tommi’s pistol had affected my hearing. “Slaves.”

“Sort of, yeah.”

She raised the pistol and aimed again. “Can I shoot him now?”

I pushed the 9 mm away. “Not till we find out where the women are.” I turned and gave the bouncer my most immediate and severe attention. “At last count there are three—where are they?”

“Um . . .” He mumbled the next part. “All over.”

“I’m shooting this little bastard on general principles.”

I held the gun away. “Where are they?”

He shook his head as he spoke. “One might be somewhere in Florida, maybe.”

“Rowan has the list?”

He nodded. “He knows everything.”

“So, where is he?”

“I don’t know.” Tommi lifted the pistol again, and this time I didn’t attempt to dissuade her, and Thor suddenly remembered the conversation. “He came in here and told me you were going to kill us all and that I was supposed to stop you no matter what it took.”

“Then he left?”

“Yeah.”

I thought about it. “There had to be a place where you kept the women before shipping them out or delivering them; where was that?”

“We kept them sedated in the trailer.”

“The one that burned down?”

“Yeah.”

I stood. “What about Jone Urrecha?”

“Who?”

I gestured toward Tommi. “Shoot him.” She did, this time missing his foot by inches. “Your running partner, the Basque woman.”

“The schoolhouse.”

I stuffed the Colt Walker into my sling. “Over by the bar?”

“No, the old one back up the canyon road.”

I walked to the stage and lifted the short curtain that trimmed the dancing area but couldn’t see the .357. “There’s a pistol that slid under there that belongs to the detective that’s been working on this case. When the sheriff’s department gets here to take golden boy into custody, tell them about it, would you?”

She nodded. “Will do. You headed for the schoolhouse?”

“I am.”

“You can’t see a damn thing out there.” She stubbed her cigarillo out on the table. “You want me to send the troops and my half-wit brother after you, or do you just want to shoot that asshole Dave and leave him for the coyotes?”

“It’s tempting, but send them after me.”

“Will do.”

I straightened my hat and zipped up my coat with my good arm, careful of the bandage on my neck. “Can I drive there?” She and the bouncer looked at each other. “I take that as a no.”

“It’s just a dirt road and all rutted out; in weather like this I think you better walk.”

“How far?”

“’Bout a mile.” She frowned. “And I was going to marry that son of a bitch.”

—

When I came out the back door of the strip club and looked across the field, I could see that the Jeep was gone. I could also see the revolving lights of a Campbell County Sheriff’s car. I hustled across the parking lot and down the road, getting to the Sixteen Tons Bar in time to see the present sheriff of Campbell County and the retired sheriff of Absaroka loading the wounded investigator into the backseat.

“Where’s the EMT van?”

Sandy turned and looked at me as they made Harvey as comfortable as possible, his head wrapped with so many bar towels it was starting to look like the top of a snowman—all he needed was some coal and a carrot. “With this fog, you’re lucky that radio call you put in with my dispatcher got through to me. I’ll drive him over to the hospital and then come back.” He glanced past me, toward the mail office next door. “I understand we’ve got somebody who’s gone postal?”

“From what I got from Curtis, the kid I handcuffed to a pole over at your sister’s strip club, he, the dead bartender, and the postman are running some kind of white-slavery ring.”

He guffawed. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I wish I were.” I glanced at the hills behind the small town. “Supposedly they kept the women in the old one-room schoolhouse up in the hills out here.”

Sandy stopped laughing and nodded. “There’s a road, but the fastest way to get there is to follow the railroad spur behind the school that deadheads about a mile down the canyon—and that way you can drive.” He pointed to a line of empty coal cars. “They sometimes park the cars there before they roll ’em down to Black Diamond, where they fill them up. When you get to the
end of the line, hop over the top of the hill, and the school will be right there.”

I held a hand out. “Let me borrow your cuffs?” He handed them to me, and I reached for my keys. “There’s a road beside the tracks?”

He nodded. “A lot better one than that goat path on the ridge.”

I started to move off, but Lucian caught my arm. “What do you want me to do?”

I glanced at Sandy. “Is this the only road out of town?”

“In or out.”

I turned back to the old sheriff, the man who had gotten me into this mess. “Stay here in case he decides to make a run for it. Take Harvey’s car and set up out there on the entryway to the railroad crossing.” I started off toward my truck. “You see him, you stop him.”