The Highwayman: A Longmire Story (4 page)

“Stole that money?” His eyes unfocused, and he sat there looking at nothing. “Hell, no.”

“Then why did he do it?”

“Do what?”

“Pull out in front of that runaway tanker truck and kill himself?”

He got up again and walked back over to the same post, leaning against it, and I noticed it was rubbed smooth. He must’ve spent a lot of time standing there, looking at the road below, the opening of the north tunnel just visible in the distance. “Bobby drove this big ol’ LTD with a 460 Police Interceptor motor in it; he used to turn the lid on the air cleaner upside down, you know, high-school shit. . . . Man, you would hear the
wump
of that thing when he got on it—sounded like a rocket ship.” He drank some more beer. “There isn’t a month that goes by that I don’t swear I hear that damn thing goin’ up or down my canyon.”

“I was born here.”

“In the canyon?”

Rosey took her eyes from the road and turned to look at me. “Riverton.”

“I never knew that. I thought you were from near Cheyenne.”

“We moved there when I was four.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, my father worked for the phone company, and they kept switching him around all over the country. Mom’s mind is starting to go and I’m not sure how much she remembers is real, but she says I had a nanny in Riverton that I used to call Butterfly, but I don’t
remember anything like that—don’t remember any of the time we spent there, but I was four. I guess when we moved to the big city, I just forgot about the place.”

It was a slow afternoon, and it seemed strange that she was in civilian clothes. We’d gone out for a late lunch but had been drawn back to the canyon. She wasn’t on shift for another couple of hours, so we sat in my truck and stared at the turbulence, hoping to get a glance of Henry and the other crazy man in the rubber raft as they white-watered by.

I was reluctant to bring up the subject of why Henry and I were here, but knowing that unless something miraculous happened tonight we’d be heading back over the mountain tomorrow morning, I spoke up. “I had an interesting conversation with Mike Harlow this morning.”

“He talked to you?”

“He did.”

She nodded, returning her eyes to the water. “How did you accomplish that?”

“I went to his cabin.”

She shook her head and licked her lips, the gray light of the overcast day flattening her refined features. “He doesn’t answer his phone or have e-mail. I even wrote
him a letter, but he never answered and I finally gave up. It never occurred to me to just walk up his driveway—seemed intrusive.”

“It was, but he didn’t shoot me.”

“Did you show him the silver dollar?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“He’d never seen one. I mean, he knew the story, but he’d never found one on the road like you.”

“What about the radio calls?”

“He says in his entire thirty years in the canyon, he never heard one.” We sat there in the silence of my truck and continued to watch the water. “So, when these calls happen, what do they sound like?”

Her eyes didn’t move, but her jaw stiffened and she pulled the handle and climbed out, quietly closing the door behind her. I sat there for a few moments, giving her time to collect herself, and then got out, rounding the front of my truck, where we both leaned against the grill guard.

She kept her personal blue searchlights on the water, traveling north through the canyon. “This isn’t me, you know? I’ve never had anything like this happen to me in my life, and I guess I’m not dealing with it really well.”

“I think you’re doing okay. If I had dead people talking to me on my radio every night, I’m not so sure I’d be completely rational about it either.” That at least got a smile. “I’ve had strange things that I can’t explain happen to me, Rosey, so I think I know a little bit about how you feel.”

She turned to look at me. “So, you’re haunted, too, huh?”

“I think we’re all haunted, by one thing or another.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Far in the distance, I heard a familiar whoop, and we both turned to see the two aquatic braves fighting the rapids with all the gusto of a war party. Dave Calhoun was in the back, digging in with two oars on either side of the rubber raft, while Henry kept switching sides, paddling with a single oar. The front of the raft lifted, but Henry continued to struggle as the float shot through a water funnel and turned sideways toward a large boulder the size of an automobile.

Rosey stepped toward the edge of the cliff. “Oh my God.”

I shook my head, figuring there wasn’t a lot I was going to be able to do if they crashed into the thing, except possibly fish for parts.

The Bear dug in and turned the front of the raft toward the right side of the boulder as Dave paddled like a steamship, attempting to get them to the side of the rock before they hit it.

Fortunately, the central current caught the raft and shot them alongside the boulder. They flew underneath us around the next corner, but not before the Cheyenne Nation turned our way and, throwing up his hands, screamed at the heavens, “Howouunoni—yehewihoo!”

The sound of the Bear’s voice reverberated off the rock walls as they disappeared, and she turned to look at me. “Do you think you have to be crazy or Indian to willfully do that sort of thing?”

“Maybe to enjoy it.” We listened as the battle cries grew distant, and I figured they’d made it. “So . . . what does he say?”

“Who?”

“The midnight caller.”

She walked back to my truck. “He calls in a 10-78, officer needing assistance.”

“Simple as that?”

“There is a loud static noise and then he identifies himself as Unit 3, which is my number. The first time I got the call, I answered and asked him if he was Troop
G or belonged to a different detachment, and if he wasn’t, who was he and how can I help?”

“Then what?”

“Nothing for a few minutes, and then he repeated the call, identifying himself as Unit 3 and once again calling for a 10-78.”

“Did you try and talk to him anymore?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“Nothing, he just repeated it again.”

“Verbatim?”

“Yes.”

“Could it be a recording?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“There are slight variations in the cadence, tone, things like that.”

“How do you know it’s Bobby?” She looked at me again. “Hey, I’m an investigator—I’m investigating.”

“There are audio recordings of him at the library in Shoshoni. I went and tracked them down—heck, some of them are on the Internet. It’s him, Walt, I’d swear to it.”

“Do you know Sam and Joey Little Soldier at the college?”

“No.”

“Sam teaches down there and Joey’s his grandson—Sam knew Womack and his grandson appears to be an expert on the man.”

“You think either of them would come up and listen?”

I watched the clouds topping the canyon walls. “I think we better get some corroborating evidence before we try and draw a crowd.” I waited a moment and then asked a more philosophic question. “So, are you saying that he’s still alive?”

She slipped off the glove with the pearl snap and bit her thumbnail. “I don’t know.”

I stuffed my hands in my jacket and attempted to be a voice of reason. “Bobby Womack is dead, Rosey.”

“You know, the legend goes that the Indians arrived here after crossing the great sea of the Big Horn Basin, and the land was so big that it made it impossible for the people to find game, so they prayed to the Creator and asked him to help. He did, by draining the sea and catching the water and the fish and game in the narrow canyon, and the people were saved.” She stared at the ground and didn’t move. “But what if that isn’t all that got caught? What if there’s a little bit of Bobby left here in the canyon, too?”

“Why now?”

She finally looked at me, a strong lock of blond falling over one eye. “Exactly.”

 • • • 

“I talked to Vic and Ruby back at the office and they said to tell you they were glad you didn’t drown.”

“Tell them thank you for me.” Henry sat on the bench outside our motel room and wrung the water from his socks. “How was your conversation?”

I continued to peel my apple with my old Case RussLock. “Which one?”

He draped the socks on a nearby planter, which somebody had filled with pansies in a desperate attempt to hurry the season, and leaned back against the wall. “Let us start with the first.”

“Mike Harlow seems like a pretty good guy—I hiked up to his cabin. He’s just gone hermit and doesn’t respond to phone calls and e-mails.” Cutting off a piece of apple, I chewed.

“Sounds like somebody else I know.” He stretched his legs out, his toes grabbing at the sun-heated air. “Had he had any strange experiences?”

“A few, over the years.” I sat on the bench at the other
side of our door and related the stories that Harlow had told me earlier.

He sat there unmoving. “No radio calls or silver dollars?”

“No.”

He nodded and thought. “Why would there suddenly be more incidents of a supernatural nature in the canyon?”

“What do you mean?”

“Thirty-five years after the death of Trooper Bobby Womack and only a handful of incidents since. Why would things appear to be happening with a greater frequency now?”

“Rosey was just asking me that same question.”

He grinned that hidden little smile he did when he knew something you didn’t. I got that smile a lot. “As she should—what
is
the one thing in the canyon that has changed?”

I rested my chin in my palm. “Rosey.”

“Yes.” He stretched his shoulders, unbunching the knots that had collected battling the rapids. “So, the situation begs, is she simply more susceptible to the influences of Bobby Womack than someone like Mike Harlow, or is she somehow personally connected?”

“I don’t see how. She says she was born down in Riverton, but her family left when she was four, so they couldn’t have known each other.” I stood and walked out into the April sun, warming my shoulders after the seemingly endless winter. “I don’t see how they could’ve ever met.”

“How old is Rosey exactly?”

“I don’t know, but we can ask Captain Jim, because I’m not asking her. I’ve done some crazy things in my life, but asking women their age isn’t one of them.”

“Is Mike Harlow from here?”

I thought about the man’s accent. “I don’t think so. Pennsylvania maybe? Why?”

“Having been born here might make Rosey more susceptible to the ways of the canyon.” He frowned. “Does she have any Indian blood, specifically Shoshone or Arapaho?”

“Not that I’m aware of, I mean, she’s blond-haired and blue-eyed—maybe she’s Cherokee?”

“You know what you get when you have sixty-four Cherokees in one room?”

I glanced at him sideways. “One Indian. I’ll tell you this much, if somebody other than Rosey doesn’t hear Bobby Womack on that radio tonight, then all this is going to come to a screeching halt.”

“What does the spectral trooper say?”

“He identifies himself as Unit 3 and calls in a 10-78.” I noticed the Cheyenne Nation’s blank look and felt foolish; I assumed that with all his dealings he’d absorbed everything I knew. “Officer needs assistance.”

“And that is all?”

“Yep.” I readjusted my hat and turned to look at the passing traffic on the road leading toward the canyon. “It’s strange, because why would he be calling for backup? The man died pulling his cruiser directly in front of a runaway tanker truck—it wasn’t like anybody could’ve helped.” Tipping my hat back, I ran the calluses on my hand over my face. “But there are other types of assistance. We’re taught to work independently, but nothing strikes you quite like a 10-78, the urgency to reach a fellow officer in need. It’s instinctual to individuals who are trained to respond and risk their lives for each other and complete strangers.” I spoke through my fingers. “But what if it’s a psychological cry for help?”

“Meaning Rosey again?”

“Yep. Look, I don’t think we’re going to hear anything on that radio tonight, but what if what Rosey is hearing is what she wants to hear or, more important, what she needs to say?”

“Hmm . . .”

“There’s such a stigma attached to this type of thing, and it’s rampant in the line of work, and whether you call it crazy or not it’s hard for a cop to make that call on themselves.”

“So you do not believe?”

“No.”

“What about the instances that Harlow mentioned?”

“All explainable. The flat-tire incident could’ve been caused by carbon monoxide poisoning from the occupants sitting in a running car in a snowbank. Heck, they’re lucky they didn’t die of asphyxiation. The hippie hitchhiker? Who knows what he was on. The WYDOT guy working in the sun too long with some random driver following the paint truck and playing the same song over and over again—it’s all explainable.”

He gave me the smile some more. “Yes, it is, and one of the simplest explanations is one you seem to be incapable of entertaining.” Then he reached out and took the rest of my apple.

 • • • 

We sat on the tailgate of my truck in front of the grave and studied the ribbons tied to the sagebrush near the
headstone, the medicine bundles and assorted objets d’art that had been left by the two tribes of the Wind River Reservation.

“It’s a shrine.”

“Yes, it is.”

I started picking out different things on the grave at Monument Hills Cemetery. “What’s the meaning of the broken arrow to the Arapaho?”

“Peace.”

I pointed to a small stone carving.

“In most Native cultures, the wolf is considered representative of courage, strength, loyalty, and success at hunting and is big medicine. The origin stories of some Northwest Coast tribes, the Quileute and the Kwakiutl, tell of early peoples changing from their wolf forms to that of men.”

“Why are wolf fetishes white?”

“Among the Pueblo tribes, wolves are considered one of the six directional guardians associated with the east and the color white. The Zunis carve stone wolf fetishes for protection, ascribing to them both healing and hunting powers.”

I turned to look at him. “What about the Shoshone and the Arapaho?”

“In their mythology, the wolf plays the role of the noble creator god, or the brother and true best friend of the culture hero. There is an Arapaho legend concerning a white wolf and a woman.”

“Okay.”

“There was a beautiful woman, proud and independent, who wanted no man and painted her tepee herself. One night she woke up to find a man wearing all-white robes in her bed. It was dark, and she could not tell who he was, so she dipped her hand in the red paint by her bed and, as they made love, she held the small of his back, marking him where he could not see. Later, she looked for the paint on all the men of the tribe, but none of them were marked. She became pregnant and went into the forest to gather wood, thinking surely the father of her child would reveal himself. Suddenly a large white wolf ran from the trees and stood in front of her. The woman was very afraid and raised up a piece of wood, ready to strike the wolf, when she noticed the red handprint on the wolf’s back. Angry at what people might think if they found she had slept with a wolf, she brought the limb down and killed it. Later, when she arrived home, she saw that the tepee flap was undone and there was blood in the entrance. Still holding the stick, she
pushed the flap open and entered, finding the most handsome man she had ever seen sitting in the back with a bandage wrapped around his head.”