The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volumes 1-4 (127 page)

He retested his coffee and found it to his liking; he came over and sat on the chair that Ruby had occupied last night. “The administrative staffs don’t work much on Sunday nights, so we might want to call around again.” I nodded and continued to sip my coffee. “But I can tell you one thing...”

"What?”

He gestured with his mug toward the stacked pie pans at the bars with the lone utensil handle pointed out. “He’s been inside.”

“How so?”

“We used to have them get rid of their dinnerware in just that fashion in the extreme-risk unit of the high security ward.”

The Basquo had done two years in Rawlins and knew more about corrections than I ever wanted to. “He look familiar?”

“No, and it’s not as if he’s somebody you’re likely to forget.” The young man tipped his hat back and stroked his musketeer goatee. “If I was guessing, I’d say federal.”

“The hospital was going to send his prints down to DCI. Check it.”

“I will.”

I sipped my coffee and watched the big Indian sleep. “You ever have anybody respond the way I described he did when we left him alone?”

He nodded. “Once or twice.”

“What’d you do with them?”

“Straight to Evanston.”

The state psychiatric hospital. “Check that, too.”

“Okay.”

“We’re going to have to keep somebody in here at all times.” I turned and looked at him. “Otherwise, I don’t think our jail will be able to take it.” He got up and started out. “Vic or Ruby make it in yet?”

He called back from the hall. “Nope.”

I yelled after him as I glanced in the cell. “Call and tell them to pick up more potpies.”

6

“That is one Fucking Big Indian.”

She reaffirmed what FBI really stood for.

Vic was back from her sabbatical in Douglas, but it hadn’t broadened her vocabulary. She sipped her coffee and looked at me; I was trying to decide what all I needed to take with me to Powder Junction, since that appeared to be where I was going to be spending my day. Her feet were propped up on my desk where she had put the shooting trophy she’d won over the weekend.

“You out-quick-drew the entire Wyoming Sheriff’s Association?”

“Yeah, including that ten-gallon ass-hat Sandy Sandberg and that butt-cheek Joe Ganns.”

Sandy was the sheriff over in neighboring Campbell County, and Joe Ganns was the controversial brand inspector who was reputed to be the fastest gun in the West. “Oh, I bet that made you popular.”

My diminutive deputy from Philadelphia shrugged, and I tried not to notice the muscles of her bare arms in her sleeveless uniform. “Kinda frosted his flakes, but shit, Walt, what is he, a hundred and three?”

It was quiet in the room as I tossed the shooting bag on my seat and piled a couple of hand radios in along with two large bottles of water, the reports from Illinois, and my thermos, a mottled green monstrosity made by Aladdin with a copper pipe handle and worn sticker that read DRINKING FUEL. She finally spoke again. “So, you get to go play in Powder Junction, and I get to talk to all the VAs on the high plains?”

“You wanna trade jobs?”

She thought about it. “No.”

“Call Sheridan first; they’ve got a psychiatric unit in ward five. See if they ever had this guy.”

She made a face, and then the eyes balanced on me like a knife. “How do you know where the psychiatric unit is in Sheridan?”

I looked at the collection in the duffel. “I visited with a fellow over there back in ’72; Quincy Morton, the PTSD coordinator.”

“Post-traumatic stress disorder?”

“Yep.”

She studied me. “What were you doing, having flashbacks?”

I sighed and zipped up the shooting bag. “It was different back then; nobody wanted to discuss that stuff, so I’d go over to the VA once a month and drink a beer and talk with Quincy at closing time on Friday afternoons. It helped.”

“Nineteen seventy-two?”

“Yep.”

She continued to study me. “That’s when you came back, got married, and started with the Sheriff’s Department?”

“Yep.”

“I got a question.” It was pretty obvious where she was headed. “You got out in ’70, but you didn’t show back up here until ’72.” I waited. “What’d you do for the two years in between?”

I threw the strap of the duffel over my shoulder, walked to the doorway, and looked down at her. “Who can speak broader than that has no house to put his head in?”

The eyebrow arched in its trademark position. “What the hell is that from?”

“
Timon of Athens
, Varro’s Second Servant.”

She nodded. “Oh, how could I forget.” She reached over and slipped a forefinger in the pocket of my jeans. “You really are a dark horse.” She pulled, and I shifted my weight toward her. She looked up at me, the tarnished gold pupils softly feathered by the long dark lashes. “So, you gonna have any free time when my brother gets here and reinstitutes the courting ritual with your daughter?”

“I’m hoping.”

The carnivore smile returned. “Maybe we could double date.”

I took a moment to take in all that she was giving me, thinking about that night in Philadelphia, thinking about the parts of her I hadn’t seen since then. There were about a half-million things I wanted to say, starting with the part about when I looked at her or thought about her, about that night; that I felt like something inside of me took flight and I wasn’t sure if I’d come back to earth yet. Then I thought about the years between us, how they would never go away. How the distance would only grow greater, and how even if everything went right, there were so many ways it could still go wrong.

Her gaze flicked across my face, and it was like my thoughts were leaking out of me and into those iridescent Mediterranean eyes. “What?”

I tried to breathe and then looked at the worn marble floor; it was easier. “Look...”

“No.” She sat there for a moment and then stood, both of us aware that her finger was still in my pocket. She was close now and was standing next to my arm and slightly behind me where I could feel her breath on my shoulder. “I’m not looking for hearth and home.”

“Yep.”

It was silent in the room, but I could still hear Ruby typing at the receptionist’s desk in the front. “You are so fucked up, and you’re carrying so much shit around...” I felt her chin on my tricep. “But I just like being around you, okay?”

“Yep.”

Her breathing continued on my arm, and even that felt good. “That’s all I need.” I nodded and didn’t say yep again, because I knew she’d hit me. After another moment, she pulled away, and I felt the finger leave my pocket with one last tug. “What about Henry? Does he have any leads in the big case?”

I nodded and tried to get my mouth to work in complete sentences. “There might be a family connection with Brandon White Buffalo.”

Her voice continued to come from behind me. “Another FBI.”

“Henry’s working out with Cady this morning, and then he said he’d run up to the Rez and try to track Brandon down.” I adjusted the bag, leaned against the doorway, and played with the hole in my door where I’d yet to replace the knob—still not meeting her eyes. “You’ve got Frymire back there Indian-sitting, but I don’t think you’re going to get anything else out of him or Double Tough, so call the Ferg again and tell him to get his butt in here.”

“Aye-aye, Captain.” She saluted. “What about the guy in the Land Rover, Tran Van Tuyen?”

I looked at her and tried to think about it; about anything else. “I might go by the Hole in the Wall and check him out.”

“You want me to come down to PJ later?”

I thought about that, too. “Somebody’s got to work the rest of the county.”

She nodded. “I can take your daughter to lunch.” She smiled, her eyes igniting again, and I thought about Philadelphia. “We can talk about your wartime indiscretions.”

“Uh huh.” I walked ahead of her, but she followed close behind me into the hallway.

“Ol’ love-’em-and-leave-’em Longmire...” She was still talking as we got to Ruby’s desk. “Suckee-fuckee, fi-dollah . . .”

Fortunately, Ruby was fussing with the computer and not paying any attention to us. She was going through the gray-mail, trashing unwanted messages, of which we’d had a rash last night. I decided to quickly take the conversation in another direction. “Are we still getting all that gobbledygook?”

“Yes.” She continued to hold the delete button down, and I watched as the words marched up the screen and disappeared. “Seventy-two since yesterday.”

“Any idea where they’re coming from?” She moved the mouse, and I watched as she clicked it a few times and gestured for me to have a look. The setting read Absaroka County School District: BPS. “I guess the school board is out to get me before the debate.”

She ignored me and looked at one of the messages. “It’s just a random mess; they started late last night and stopped early this morning.”

Vic leaned in, and I could smell her shampoo. “So it’s not automated.”

“No.”

I looked up at the wall clock and figured I’d better get going if I was going to make it to Powder Junction for our meet with the bartender. “Any word from Bee Bee over at Durant Realty or Ned in L.A.?”

Ruby’s big blues looked up at me in irritation. “It’s a quarter till eight.”

I glanced at the two of them and nodded. “Right.”

“Which means it’s a quarter till seven on the coast.”

I was about halfway down the stairs when Vic called after me in a singsong voice. “You come back soon soldier-boy, me so horneeeeeeee...!”

Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam: 1968

“Fifty dollars?!”

Hollywood Hoang stood there on the tarmac in the late afternoon under a pan-fried, tropical sun as the big Kingbee warmed up. He was waiting for his money with his arms folded over his powder-blue flight suit. We were shouting at the top, bottom, and middle of our lungs even though our faces were only about six inches apart. “He with her all night. I like you, Lieutenant, and that why you get half discount rate!”

I looked past Hoang to where Henry was carrying Babysan Quang Sang into the cargo hold. “Fifty dollars is the discount?!”

He smiled. “It extra for girls to sleep with Montagnard tribesmen, so that remove discount! I happy to take greenbacks or MPC; no dong.”

I pulled out my wallet and gave him the five tens. “She sure didn’t seem to mind last night....”

“She world-class entertainer!” He slapped me on the shoulder and drew me toward the slow-moving rotors as he turned to where Baranski stood on the flight line. The inspector from CID and Mendoza had told me that this particular idea was a bad one but had relented when I’d remained obstinate. Baranski motioned for Hoang and gave him a messenger satchel. He waved one last time as the pilot followed me and we climbed in the cargo hold of the helicopter, the slight Vietnamese man carefully slipping the satchel behind the copilot seat.

It was dark in the Kingbee even with the cargo doors open. I pushed my steel pot further down on my head and waited for my eyes to adjust. There wasn’t much room with all the supplies that were going into Khe Sanh, so the flight personnel consisted of the Bear, Babysan Quang Sang, two navy corpsmen, and me. I pulled at my flak vest, stiff from nonuse, and felt it constricting my chest as the big machine began to rise; at least I hoped it was the flak jacket.

By chance, it was the same helicopter I’d flown in on, the one with the dead. I wasn’t sure if Hollywood Hoang had been the pilot, but we’d had a conversation about hauling them. He said that once the ma, or spirits of the dead, had ridden with you, they were always there, riding along. Flamboyant and dramatic, the flight crews were a superstitious lot who had tapped into that resonance, and they knew death, like suicide, was catching.

Babysan was propped up asleep against the bulkhead, with a cargo net partially wrapped around him and secured with some nylon webbing, just in case we were to make any unexpected turns. Henry was checking the magazines on his assortment of weaponry and looked over to see how I was doing. It was going to be a long flight, and he knew about my stomach’s stance on helicopters.

“How are you feeling?”

I nodded but kept my head straight, where I wouldn’t see the passing countryside as we sped north at a hundred and twenty miles an hour, willing it to grow darker so that I wouldn’t be able to see anything.

“Do not puke in here.”

“I won’t.”

“The one thing you must do...”

“Yep?”

“When this thing lands, you run like hell.”

I glanced at him but quickly averted my eyes so that I wouldn’t see any of the smoke from the lower hells we were flying over—the whispering gray smoke from the burned rice paddies of strike-free zones, the alabaster of the phosphorus smoke, and the smudged black smoke and gasoline smell of the napalm. I hoped I would see the purple landing zone smoke that would mean the ride was over.

The medics always offered you Dexies when you went out at night. I never took them, because I was so wired I was afraid that with the extra stimulant I’d fry my wiring and go stiff. I tried to hand the pills to the Bear, but he just shook his head and smiled, his teeth glowing like river stones in the gloom of the cargo hold. “I do not need them; you?”

I leaned over and felt his shoulder against mine. “Right now, you couldn’t pull a needle out of my ass with a tractor.”

He laughed, and as we flew, the light died.

No grunt ever called Khe Sanh the western anchor of our defense, but a lot of other people did. The heroic image of besieged Marines holding out against unimaginable odds had captured the imagination of the public, enough so that Lyndon Johnson called in the boys of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to sign a statement to “encourage public reassurance” that Khe Sanh would be held at all costs.

Khe Sanh was a group grope for the high command.

Within the rolling hills, astride an old French-built road that ran from the Vietnamese coast to the Mekong Delta’s Laotian market towns, Khe Sanh began as a Special Forces encampment built to recruit and train local tribesmen. Now, it was an uneasy fort with U.S. intelligence reports stating that four North Vietnamese infantry divisions, two artillery regiments, and assorted armored units were converging on that wide spot on Route 9.