The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volume 1-4 (79 page)

“Walt?” I turned back because his voice had changed. “Someone has cut a loaf of bread on the butcher block, has taken some provolone and buffalo mozzarella from one of the coolers, and has chased the meal with a couple of jugs of Wheatland microbrew.” He looked up. “Lately.”

I was glad I had taken the 12-gauge from my truck.

There were three doors on the landing: one to the bathroom, one that went to the basement, and one that continued upstairs. The steps to the second floor were warped and swayed in the middle. Tongue-and-groove boards paneled the stairwell, and a tiny grime-covered window provided the only illumination on the second landing where the stairs turned and went the other way.

I jacked a shell into the shotgun, flipped off the safety, and started the second flight. I didn’t figure I was going to surprise anybody, so I decided to introduce myself. Henry called from the front, “Ha-ho?”

“Broadcasting.”

It was quiet for a moment. “Careful, I do not want to have to drink two espressos.”

There were three rooms on the upper level: a small one for storage with a few windows that overlooked the alley in the back; another with a two-by-four table pushed against the wall; and the front room with a couple of windows overlooking the street. This was the room where Leo Gaskell had been living.

There was a ragged and torn polyester sleeping bag piled against one of the corners with a child’s bucking bronco blanket and a dirty pillow. The remains of downstairs’ repast lay on the floor nearby. There was a flashlight, which had been stolen from Northern Rockies Energy Exploration, and the coat I had seen him in last night. There was no Leo.

I coaxed the coat from its crumpled position with the barrel of the shotgun and flipped it open. It was a bloody mess. You could see where two of the pellets had done the most damage, one in the arm and the blood on the sleeping bag showed where the other had hit his foot. As bad as I was feeling this morning, somewhere out there, Leo Gaskell was feeling worse.

I nudged the jacket again and examined the inside pocket where two crystal-meth vials had exploded and thought that maybe Leo wasn’t feeling much of anything after all. I put my gloves on and fingered the shattered glass containers. A full 65 percent of the Wyoming division of criminal investigation’s cases concerned clandestine lab activity. It was a scourge. From Leo’s dental situation, I had assumed meth-mouth and was right.

“Espresso?” We all had our addictions. I sat against the wall and clicked the safety back on the shotgun before placing it in my lap. I took off my gloves. My fingers hurt. He sat beside me and sipped. “Well, at least we know where Leo has been keeping himself.”

“As the possible illegitimate grandson of Charlie Nurburn, I also ask myself where Leo’s daddy might be, if anywhere.”

“We are looking for a white male.”

“With an Indian mother; a half-breed.”

“Bicultural.”

I glanced over at him. “Are you aware of the damage you are causing with all this political correctness to the language of the mythic American West?”

“You bet’cher boots.” He studied the grim surroundings. “Age?”

“Ours, according to Doc Bloomfield. Anybody come to mind?”

“I always thought you might be a half-breed.”

I ignored him. “All right, he may have been here when I found Lana, but he’s definitely been here since.” I stretched my legs out. “I’m also wondering where Leo might have hidden an 18-wheel truck and a mobile home.” I took a sip, which tasted pretty good.

“And what is your answer?”

“Well, there’s too much activity at Four Brothers Ranch, and Vic and I were just there and didn’t see any evidence of Leo, but what about the 260 acres that Mari and Charlie lived on that is adjacent to the ranch? If I were looking for a place to hide something as big as a house, I’d go there.”

* * *

Ruby was talking on the phone with Dog’s head in her lap, and Lucian was asleep and snoring loudly on the wooden bench in the reception area with my .45, cocked and locked, lying on his chest. “How do you get any work done around here with all the noise?”

Her head dropped, and she raised an eyebrow over a particularly cold blue eye. “I understand you went swimming last night?”

“Technically, I think it was struggling and sinking.”

She continued to shake her head. “You have Post-its, that woman from the state dropped off a love note and, lucky for you, Vic is delivering a summons to the bookstore for nonpayment on a newspaper ad. They don’t feel they should have to pay for an advertisement that misspelled the word literature.”

“I can see their point.”

“Saizarbitoria is in the basement. He said he was going to look through Mari Baroja’s effects. I think you should go see him first.”

I plucked my sidearm off Lucian’s chest as Henry and I went by.

When we got to the basement, Saizarbitoria was seated in the middle of the open floor with all of Mari Baroja’s correspondence carefully arranged around him in a semicircle. The whole side of his face was dark and bruised, and he was wearing slippers. He stood when we came in and stuck out his hand. “Thank you.”

I shook it. “You’re welcome.” I wasn’t as good as the Cheyenne, but I was learning. We looked around at the amount of paper stacked on the floor around us.

“She wrote poetry.”

“I’m sorry.” Some of the piles were close to a foot high.

He studied the letter in his hand. “No, it’s actually pretty good.” He pointed to one of the larger stacks. “This is personal communication.” He gestured to another pile. “Business correspondence, and this one is the poetry.” I looked around at the neatly ordered mess. “You don’t want to hear some of it?”

He was definitely spending too much time with Vic. “Maybe later.”

We sat down, and he carefully placed the poetry back in its place and looked at the largest pile in front of him. “She was a savvy businesswoman. She bought up all the surrounding leases adjacent to Four Brothers including Jolie Baroja’s, so she was not only getting the methane money from Four Brothers but also from about a quarter of the valley.”

“Maybe Lana should open up a chain of Basque bakeries?”

Saizarbitoria ignored us and went on. “Mrs. Baroja was probably one of the richest women in the state, but she lived like a pauper.” He glanced around and then back up to me. “I’ve been trying to establish some patterns, but it’s difficult.” He pulled a few bank statements out and a few letters from the personal pile. “She had established a trust fund for Father Baroja that he doesn’t seem to know anything about. I remember he said that they didn’t get along, but she must have felt sorry for him when his grip on reality began to slip. It isn’t administered in Wyoming but set up in . . .”

“Florida?”

His eyes widened. “How did you know that?”

“A little bird told me, a little southern bird.” I thought back to what Carol Baroja had said in the hospital waiting room when she tried to tie Lana with the ETA. I suspected that no money had gone to Father Baroja or the ETA. I figured that the money went to Carol Baroja’s private charity, herself, but didn’t think that that particular malfeasance had any relevance to the murders. “What about the personal stuff?”

He leaned in a little, and his voice dropped. “Mrs. Baroja may have had a long-term affair with Sheriff Connally.”

The Bear and I looked at each other and back to Saizarbitoria; it was Academy Award stuff but lost on the Basquo. “Ancient history. Anything else?”

He paused for a moment and then went on. “The relationship between her and her daughters was a little strained.”

“Uh huh.” I turned to the side and stretched my sore legs again: Indian style wasn’t working for me. “Any mention of Charlie Nurburn?”

“Old, numerous, and not kind.”

“Any mention of the financial relationship between Mari and him?”

“Some, early on, but he seems to be cut out of the picture by the early fifties.”

Henry and I looked at each other again, but he was quicker. “You can say that again.”

Saizarbitoria’s eyes were shifting back and forth between us. “Are you two going to keep looking at each other or are you going to let me in on this?”

“What’s the story on Leo Gaskell? You knew him in Rawlins, didn’t you?”

He grunted. “We were in the infirmary. He had sliced his hand open in a fight with some dealer from Cheyenne over what they were going to watch on television.” His eyes narrowed, and he was looking back into a place he wasn’t sure he wanted to go to again. “He was secured to a gurney but kept flexing his fingers, so I asked him if he was all right. He doesn’t even look at me and says, ‘I’m just wonderin’ how long you’d cry like a bitch if I was to get my hands around your throat.’ ”

I listened to the heat kick on in the jail and resisted the temptation to look at the Bear again. “All right, Troop. You in or out?”

He propped an elbow on his knee and placed the pointy end of his Vandyke in the palm of his hand. “You’re not going to tell me about Mari Baroja unless I stay?”

I leveled with him. “A lot of this stuff is local history. If you’re going back to Rawlins then you don’t need to know it.”

He looked at both of us, his black eyes glittering like the backs of trout rolling in dark water. “I’m in.”

We shook on it; the median age of our department was now securely under the age of fifty. “Mari Baroja cut Charlie Nurburn’s throat in 1951.”

He leaned back against the bars of the cell behind him and let out a long slow whistle. “Some of the poetry is a little dark.”

* * *

The plows had been doing their job, and the highway was clear as I set off south to the old homestead, but we had to hurry because it didn’t look like the weather would hold. Henry had made a few calls while I had gathered up some cold weather gear and called the Busy Bee for a few club sandwiches and a couple of coffees. Dorothy had met us at the curb with two paper bags. She hadn’t waited for a response but just waved, turned, and disappeared back into the café. We kept the food in the front, away from Dog, who was still sulking about having to leave the office, but Ruby was going out with her granddaughter that evening and couldn’t watch him.

About three miles out of town, we saw an HP headed in the other direction. He waved, flipped across the median, and pulled up behind us after I’d slowed and stopped. I wondered how Leo had escaped being detected.

“You were not speeding, were you?”

I didn’t acknowledge him but rolled the window down and leaned an elbow on the ledge as the light bar on the highway patrol cruiser began revolving and the door popped open. It was Wes again, and I watched as he straightened his Smoky the Bear hat and strolled up with the gigantic Colt .357 banging at his leg. “License and registration.” He folded his arms and leaned against my door. He pushed the hat back, and a strong dollop of gray flopped down on his forehead.

“Are you the only one working out here?”

“We’ve got our two, three more from the Casper detachment, and another three from over in Sheridan.” He looked at my eye patch. “Jesus, what the hell happened to you?”

I gestured over to Henry. “The Indian beat me up.”

Wes tipped his hat. “Hey, Henry.”

“Wes.”

“You know, all I’m looking for is a Mack truck with a mobile home attached to it.”

Wes nodded. “Seems like we’d be able to find that, doesn’t it?”

I pushed my own hat back. “I thought you were retired.”

“Next week.” He smiled an easy smile. “Why, you gonna have a party for me?”

“No, I was just wondering when we were gonna get some younger HPs around here with better eyesight.”

He shook his head. “Where you guys headed?”

“Down to Mari Baroja’s for a little look around.”

“You want me to tag along?”

“No, but if you or your boys wouldn’t mind swinging through Durant, Leo had been staying over Lana’s little bakery next to Evans’s Chainsaw.” I turned to Henry. “What kind of car does Joe Lesky drive?”

The Bear looked up from a small notebook. “Tan, ’87 Jeep Wagoneer, County 25, Plate 3461.”

Wes nodded and reaffirmed that Ruby had already taken care of the car’s ID. I smiled the half smile I’d perfected and turned toward him. “If I don’t see you? You be careful down there in Arizona.”

He smiled a smile of his own. “You bet.”

* * *

“Do you want to hear about Ellen Runs Horse?”

I negotiated around a slow-moving 18-wheeler, neither black nor Mack. “Sure.”

The dark wave of hair fell alongside his face as one eye studied me. “As we suspected she is Crow.”

I continued to stare at the road through my one eye. “Anyone hint about her having an illegitimate child with Charlie Nurburn?”

He nodded. “Better than that.” He shifted his weight and leaned against the door. “She registered a child, Garnet Runs Horse, in the tribal rolls, but gave the child up for adoption in 1950.”

“Lucian said Ellen told him that the child died. I guess she lied. Where did he go?”

“Wind River.”

“Name still Runs Horse?”

“I do not know.”

I thought about it. “That would figure, since Leo’s been living over near Lander, but where did he get the name Gaskell?”

“Maybe his father took the adoptive family’s name?”

“Maybe so.” I pulled my mic from the dash. “Base, this is Unit One, come in?”

After a moment of static, a cool voice responded, and it wasn’t Ruby; I had forgotten that she wasn’t there. “What the fuck do you want now?”

I glanced at Henry, keyed the mic, and quickly composed myself. “How was the bookstore?”

Static. “I bought you the
Idiot’s Guide to Swimming
.” The Bear snorted.

“Thanks.” I listened to the static for a moment, since it was more comforting than her voice. “Can you do me a favor?”