Christmas in Absaroka County: Walt Longmire Christmas Stories
Read Christmas in Absaroka County: Walt Longmire Christmas Stories Online
Authors: Craig Johnson
Tags: #Mystery
CONTENTS
Praise for Craig Johnson and the Walt Longmire Mystery Series
CHRISTMAS IN ABSAROKA COUNTY:
Walt Longmire Christmas Stories
EXTRA!
Chapter 1 from
The Cold Dish
The First Novel in the Walt Longmire Mystery Series
PENGUIN BOOKS
CHRISTMAS IN ABSAROKA COUNTY
Walt Longmire Christmas Stories
CRAIG JOHNSON
is the author of eight novels in the Walt Longmire mystery series, which has garnered popular and critical acclaim.
The Cold Dish
was a Dilys Award finalist and the French edition won Le Prix du Polar Nouvel Observateur/BibliObs.
Death Without Company
, the Wyoming State Historical Association’s Book of the Year, won France’s Le Prix 813.
Another Man’s Moccasins
was the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award winner and the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers’ Association Book of the Year, and
The Dark Horse
, the fifth in the series, was a
Publishers Weekly
Best Book of the Year.
Junkyard Dogs
won the Watson Award for a mystery novel with the best sidekick, and
Hell Is Empty
was a
New York Times
best seller and was named
Library Journal
’s Best Mystery of the Year. All are available from Penguin. The eighth novel in the series,
As the Crow Flies
, was a
New York Times
best seller as well and an Indie Next List pick and will be available in paperback in May 2013. Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire novels have now been adapted for television in the hit series
Longmire
on A&E. His next novel,
A Serpent’s Tooth
, will be available from Viking in May 2013. Johnson lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population twenty-five.
Praise for Craig Johnson and the Walt Longmire Mystery Series
“Like the greatest crime novelists, Johnson is a student of human nature. Walt Longmire is strong but fallible, a man whose devil-may-care stoicism masks a heightened sensitivity to the horrors he’s witnessed. Unlike traditional genre novelists who obsess mainly over every hairpin plot turn, Johnson’s books are also preoccupied with the mystery of his characters’ psyches.” —
Los Angeles Times
“Johnson knows the territory, both fictive and geographical, and tells us about it in prose that crackles.” —Robert B. Parker
“The characters talk straight from the hip and the Wyoming landscape is its own kind of eloquence.” —
The New York Times
“[Walt Longmire] is an easy man to like. . . . Johnson evokes the rugged landscape with reverential prose, lending a heady atmosphere to his story.” —
The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Stepping into Walt’s world is like slipping on a favorite pair of slippers, and it’s where those slippers lead that provides a thrill. Johnson pens a series that should become a ‘must’ read, so curl up, get comfortable, and enjoy the ride.” —
The Denver Post
“A winning piece of work . . . There’s a convincing feel to the whole package: a sense that you’re viewing this territory through the eyes of someone who knows it as adoring lover and skeptical onlooker at the same time.” —
The Washington Post
“Johnson’s pacing is tight and his dialogue snaps.” —
Entertainment Weekly
“Truly great. Reading Craig Johnson is a treat. . . . [He] tells great stories, casts wonderful characters and writes in a style that compels the reader forward.” —
Wyoming Tribune Eagle
Also by CRAIG JOHNSON
The Cold Dish
Death Without Company
Kindness Goes Unpunished
Another Man’s Moccasins
The Dark Horse
Hell Is Empty
As the Crow Flies
FORTHCOMING FROM VIKING
A Serpent’s Tooth
CRAIG JOHNSON
CHRISTMAS IN ABSAROKA COUNTY
W
ALT
L
ONGMIRE
C
HRISTMAS
S
TORIES
A PENGUIN SPECIAL
PENGUIN BOOKS
ABOUT THE BOOK
It’s holiday season in Absaroka County and Sheriff Walt Longmire gets personal in this delightful collection of four short stories from
New York Times
–bestselling author Craig Johnson.
Readers glimpse a softer side of Sheriff Walt Longmire as he grapples with the death of his wife, Martha, and his sometimes turbulent but ever-loving relationship with his daughter, Cady. In these four stories—“Ministerial Aid,” “Slick-Tongued Devil,” “Toys for Tots,” and “Unbalanced” (three of which have been sent to Johnson’s fans over the years in the author’s “Post-it” e-mails)—Walt is alternately at his best and his worst. He helps a somewhat delusional elderly victim of domestic abuse while sporting a bathrobe and a mean hangover on New Year’s Day. He’s sidelined by grief when his wife’s obituary reappears in the paper and there’s an unexpected knock on his door two days before Christmas. He strives to help even those who don’t want it when he picks up a young female hitchhiker, and he’s forced into some last-minute Christmas shopping by the Greatest Legal Mind of Our Time, during which he might just end up saving a young Navy chaplain’s Christmas.
Full of Longmire’s dry wit and good heart,
Christmas in Absaroka County
is a holiday must-have for every Longmire and Craig Johnson fan.
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
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(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in the United States of America by Penguin,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2012
Copyright © Craig Johnson, 2012
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-101-62371-8 (ePub)
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this product may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
T
O
J
UDY
MINISTERIAL AID
The Millennium: January 1, 2000—6:20
A.M.
Driving south on I-25, I kept sneaking glances through my half-closed eyes in hopes of seeing those first, dull, yellow rays of sunup crawling from the horizon.
My county in northern Wyoming is approximately seven thousand square miles, about the size of Vermont or New Hampshire. It’s a long way from one end to the other, especially in times of crisis, so in my line of work it pays to have a substation. Powder Junction, in the southern part of Absaroka County, is where I subject at least one of the deputies on my staff to some of the most bucolic duty they’ll likely ever withstand in a lifetime of law enforcement.
It’s the second largest town to Durant, the county seat. Straddling the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains and the Powder River country, the little settlement of five hundred brave souls is forty-five minutes of straight-as-an-arrow driving. I don’t make it down here very often—I don’t make it much of anywhere very often since my wife, Martha, died a few months ago. The reason I was here, very hungover and very early on New Year’s Day, was because I owed Turk Connally, the lone member of my Powder Junction staff, a paycheck. I hadn’t gotten it to him on Friday, which was payday, because it was New Year’s Eve. The reason I was driving the hundred miles round-trip to deliver Turk’s check in the first place was that I had gotten into an altercation with the county commissioners over the price of stamps. Since they pay for my gas, I was teaching them a lesson.
As I drove along with a headache so severe that I could hardly stand to open my eyes, I began wondering to whom it was I was teaching a lesson.
Turk generally slept late anyway but especially the morning after a holiday, so I knew he wouldn’t be at the office. I simply unlocked the door of the old Quonset hut that served as our headquarters south and left his check on the desk.
I was just leaving when the rotary-dial phone rang. I knew that after three rings it would transfer the call to the rented house where he lived, but I decided in the spirit of the season that I’d cut the kid a break and answer it. “Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department.”
The voice was female and uncertain. “Turk?”
“Nope, it’s Walt.”
There was a pause. “Who?”
“Walt Longmire, the sheriff.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Walt. I must’ve dialed the Durant number. . . .”
“No, I’m here in PJ. How can I help you?”
She adjusted the phone, and I could hear another voice in the background as she fumbled with it. “It’s Elaine Whelks, the Methodist preacher down here, and I’m over at the Sinclair station by the highway.” There was another pause. “Walt, I think we’ve got a situation.”
* * *
With my head pounding like traffic, if there had been any, I drove the short distance through town and under the overpass past the entrance to the rest stop, and turned into the service station. I noticed a late-model Buick parked at the outskirts of the lot over near the sign that advertised gas prices to passing motorists ($1.54 a gallon—that would definitely teach those commissioners). It was still mostly dark as I parked between a tan Oldsmobile and a Jeep Cherokee, climbed out of my four-year-old Bronco, which was adorned with stars and light bars, and trudged inside.
There were two women holding steaming Styrofoam cups of coffee who were seated on some old café chairs to the left of the register. They both looked up at me as I stood by their table.
“Happy New Year.”
They said nothing.
“I’m Walt Longmire.”
They still stared at me, but maybe it was my bathrobe.
“The sheriff.” I glanced down at the old, off-white, pilled garment, a gift from my now-dead wife. “I wasn’t planning on making any public appearances today.”
The older woman in the purple down-filled coat extended her hand. “Elaine Whelks, Sheriff. I’m the one that called.” She looked at the bathrobe again and then quickly added, “I knew Martha through the church, and I’m so sorry about your loss; she was a wonderful woman.”
I squeezed the bridge of my nose with a thumb and forefinger and gave the automatic response I’d honed over the last couple of months. “Thank you.”
The younger woman, heavyset and wearing a Deke Latham Memorial Rodeo sweatshirt, rose and smiled at me, a little sadly. “Would you like a cup of coffee, Sheriff?”
I nodded my head and sat on one of the chairs. “Sure.”
The older woman studied me, and she looked sad, too; maybe it was just me, but everybody looked sad these days. She dipped her head to look me in the eyes. “I’m the Methodist minister over at St. Timothy’s.”
I nodded. “You said.”
“How are you doing, Walt?”
The throbbing in my head immediately got worse. “Hunky-dory.”
Her eyes stayed on me. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen your hair this long.”
I pushed it back from my face, and it felt like even the follicles ached. “I’ve been meaning to get it cut, but I’ve been kind of busy.”
“How’s Cady?”
I laughed but immediately regretted it.
“Something funny, Walt?”
Cady was my daughter who was in law school in Washington and had been in Crossroads to keep me company over the holidays. I shrugged, thinking that maybe if I could get this over with quick I could go home and go back to sleep, sleeping being a part-time occupation lately. “We had a fight last night.”
“You and Cady?”
I nodded. “She got mad; went back to Seattle.” Breaking off the conversation, I looked out the window. “Maybe you’d better tell me what it is you need my assistance with.”
The preacher sighed and then gestured toward the woman who was bringing me a cup of coffee. “She called me this morning and said that Travis, the young man who works nights, left her a note that a woman was parked at the end of the lot.”
Liz set the large cup in front of me along with a bowl of creamers and some sugar packets; I didn’t know her so she didn’t know my habits. “Black is fine. Thanks.” I took a sip—it was hot and good.
“We generally don’t pay very much attention to these types of things. People get tired and pull off the interstate; maybe they feel more comfortable over here than at the rest stop with someone around—a woman especially.”
I pulled my hair back again—I was going to have to ask Henry for a leather strap if I didn’t get a haircut pretty soon—and sipped the coffee, dribbling a little on the table. “Uh-huh.”
“But she was still here this morning when I opened up.”
I set my cup back down. “I see.”
Liz glanced over my shoulder toward the parking lot. “She came over about twenty minutes ago and filled her tank—used the credit card machine and then pulled back there again.”
I glanced behind me, eyeing the vehicle. “She ran it all night?”
Elaine nodded her head. “That’s the only way you’d be able to stay out there, as cold as it is.”
“Local or out-of-state plates?” They both looked at me blankly as I turned my cup in the small amount of coffee I’d spilled. “Did you talk to her?”
“I did.” Liz pointed at the minister. “And then I called her.”
Looking back at Elaine, and then over to Liz, I thought about how in some instances my staff and I also contact the local clergy to provide assistance to needy travelers. “She needed ministerial aid?”
The two women looked at each other, then the pastor turned back to me. “She says she’s waiting on the Messiah.”
I took a long time in responding but then laughed. “Aren’t we all?”
Elaine leaned in close but then retreated a little, probably from the smell. I haven’t been bathing regularly, being so busy. “I’m serious, Sheriff. She says she’s supposed to meet Him. Here. Today.”
I wasn’t sure if I’d heard her right. “Jesus?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus.” I sighed, glancing around trying not to cast aspersions, but it was hard. “Returning after two thousand years and he chooses the Sinclair station in Powder Junction, Wyoming?”
“Apparently.”
I ran my hand through my beard. “Well, I guess I‘d better go talk to her.”
As I stood, Elaine held out a roll of breath mints. “Maybe you should have a few of these?”
Liz touched the stained sleeve of my bathrobe but only briefly. “And you should probably know—she has a knife.”
* * *
There are twenty-four counties in Wyoming. Ours, being the least populated, gets designated number twenty-four—the number in front of Steamboat the bucking horse on the longest-running license plate in the world—so the Buick was not only from in-state but also from in-county. Stumbling across the snow-covered parking lot in my moccasins, I approached the idling Buick from the rear of the driver’s side.
The woman was elderly, probably approaching eighty years of age, dressed in a pair of sweatpants and an oversize parka with fake fur around the collar.
Standing there in the melted snow, I tapped on the window.
It startled her, and I could clearly see the butcher knife clutched in her hands as she turned to look at me. Her face was wet from tears, one of her eyes was swollen shut, and I was betting she had a full-blown headache as well. She stared at me the same way the ladies in the convenience store had.
I watched my breath cloud the window between us as the wind lifted the bathrobe. “Hey, could I speak with you for a moment?”
She sat there with her mouth a little open and then began fumbling at finding the window button, but when she did, it only whined a little and then pulled at the rubber weather seal at the top—frozen shut.
I gestured over the top of her car and toward the passenger-side door. “How ’bout I come around and get in?”
She nodded, and I ambled my way around the four-door and pulled on the handle—it too, frozen shut. Unwilling to take no for an answer, I put all six feet five inches and two hundred and fifty pounds behind the effort and almost took the door off. I quickly climbed in and slammed it shut behind me.
It seemed warmer in the car, but not by much. The radio was on some AM station and a guy was screaming about it being the Millennium, and therefore the end of the world, about salvation and a bunch of other stuff. I didn’t think my head could hurt any more than it already did, but the radio was so loud that the headache escalated. I reached up, turned the thing off, and looked at her. “Sorry, I can’t take that crap.”
She stared at me with her mouth still hanging open.
I was ready to rest my head on the dash but figured I’d better see what was what first. I stamped the snow off my moccasins onto the rubber floor mats. “Lot of snow.”
She nodded.
I gestured toward the weapon in her hands. “Mind if I have the knife?”
Without hesitation, she handed it to me, and I placed it on the floor by my feet. I turned back to look at her, but she was the first to speak. “You . . . You’re bigger than I thought you’d be.”
It seemed like an odd thing to say, especially since I was pretty sure I didn’t know her. “I get that a lot.” She seemed to want more, so I added. “From my father’s side.”
She nodded, studying me. “I understand.”
I straightened the collar of my robe. “I apologize for the way I’m dressed, but I really wasn’t planning on going out today.”
“That’s okay.”
She looked like she might begin crying again, and I felt a little empathetic twinge. “I’ve had some problems of my own as of late. . . .”
She nodded enthusiastically, wiping the tears away with the back of a hand aged with spots and wrinkled skin, careful to avoid the wounded eye. “Me, too.”
I held my fingers out to the heater vents, stretching them as a matter of course, buying time till my head stopped hurting enough so that I could concentrate. “I guess that’s what this life is all about, getting from one trouble to the next, at least in my job.”
She turned in the seat. “I would imagine; and you get everybody’s problems.”
“Pretty busy, especially during the holidays.”
“Yes.” Her eyes shone. “Everybody thought I was crazy, but I said you’d come.”
I looked around, yawning and stretching my jaw muscles, the popping in my head sounding like gunshots. “Well, when we get a call . . .” I sat there for a moment longer, looking at her, and then reached a hand out and touched her cheek. “Tell me about this problem.”
She ducked her head away but then reached up and took my hand, holding it in her lap like she had held the knife. She didn’t say anything, and we just sat there in the Buick, listening to the running motor and the fan of the heater. “He doesn’t mean to do it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But I forget things.” She sobbed a little. “I just don’t remember like I used to.” She stared at the dash, the instruments glowing a soft green.
* * *
It was a modest little home on the outskirts of town, a single-level ranch, the kind that can contain a lot of rage. There was a yellowed plastic illuminated Santa in the yard, and I was surprised that when we met at the front of the car, she looked at it and then at me. “I hope you don’t mind.”
Wondering what she was talking about, I glanced at the jolly old elf; I decided not to judge. “Um, no. I’m a big fan myself.”
Her spirits buoyed. “Oh, good.”
Oddly, she took my hand again, and we walked up the shoveled walk to the front porch, a gold cast emanating from a needless bug bulb. As we stood there, she threaded her fingers into her parka and produced a prodigious key ring.
Suddenly, the door was yanked open, and a bald man with a Little League baseball bat in one hand was yelling at the two of us through the storm door; another wave of pain ricocheted around in my head.
“Where the hell have you been? Do you know there’s no damn cigarettes in this house?” Peering through heavily framed glasses, he glanced up at me. “And who the hell is this?”
Her head, having dropped in embarrassment, rose as she clutched my arm. “This, Ernie, is our Lord and Savior.”
I stopped pinching my nose in an attempt to relieve the pain and turned to look down at her. She smiled a hopeful smile, and then we both turned to look at him.
He stood there for a moment looking first at her, then at me, and then back to her before leaning the baseball bat against the doorjamb. “Jesus H. Christ.”
