Land of Wolves, page 8
“Why?”
“The evidence doesn’t matter—people are going to hear wolf, and it’s going to explode into a full-blown monster hunt with torches and pitchforks. Like Chuck said, we’re not a trophy zone but rather a predator one, so wolves can be shot on sight. People are going to want that wolf dead, and I doubt Chuck Coon is going to want the job, so that means they’ll be bringing somebody in from Predator Control. Usually counties here in Wyoming depend on Game and Fish to provide a professional hunter, but in Absaroka it’s under the auspices of the county predator board, and they have a group of hunters they keep on a list.”
“So, who will it be?”
“The next person on the list. I think there are about three or four, some with dogs and some with helicopters.”
“Omar?”
“Oh, I think he’s too big of a deal to bother with this. Besides, he’s probably in Borneo or someplace.”
The tarnished gold eyes looked over my shoulder toward the mountains. “So, we’re going to have a wolf hunt.”
“Evidently.”
“You don’t look excited about the prospect.”
Turning, I looked at the Bighorns with her. “Maybe I’m feeling empathetic toward the old wolf.”
“Maybe they won’t get him.”
I turned, aware that I was looking at her with the pupil that was bisected by a gash, ghostly and shining like a strike of lightning. “They always get them.”
* * *
—
Walking up the steps, I made the landing and glanced past the dispatcher’s area at my office door, where numerous Post-its were stuck on the molding like tiny, cautionary flags. “Looks like business is picking up.”
Ruby leaned back in her chair and handed me more. “Since news of the great wolf hunt has hit the airwaves, we’ve had numerous applicants apply for the job of Predator Control.”
“The position is open?”
“Evidently.”
“They don’t apply here, they apply to the Department of Agriculture’s Technical Services Division or with the county predator board.”
“Chuck Coon gave them your number.”
“I am going to shoot Chuck Coon.” She handed me the Post-its along with the current edition of the Durant Courant with a photo of me on the front page. “What’s this?”
“The news that evidently packs of wolves are now clamoring out of the Bighorns and lying in wait behind every mailbox in hopes of seizing our children and devouring them whole.”
“Oh, hell.”
“Can I quote you on that?”
I took the bundle and trundled off to my office as Vic trailed after me, waiting at the door as I sat.
“Welcome home.”
“Yep.”
She hung on the jamb. “You’ll give me warning if you decide to run off to Hatch, New Mexico?”
Sitting in my chair, I threw the papers on my desk. “I promise.”
“You want me to inform Miguel Hernandez’s family members in Chile that he’s wolf chow?” I looked up at her, and she shrugged. “I’ll phrase it differently.”
“Sancho didn’t do it?”
“Me or him, we’re all here to serve, oh Great One.”
Ruby appeared. “Call, line one.”
“I’m out.”
“It’s Chuck Coon.”
“I’m in.” Stabbing the red button with a forefinger, I flipped the receiver up and clutched it like a cudgel. “I am going to have an open season on forest rangers.”
“Walt, before you start, I don’t know these people and you do.”
Ruby disappeared, but never one to miss an ass-chewing, my undersheriff sat in my guest chair. I shook my head. “Call Ferris Kaplan over at Game and Fish—this is not my job, Chuck.”
“Well, as of Thursday, it’s not going to be my job either.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m retiring.”
“What?”
He laughed. “Retiring, it’s a thing some people do when they feel like they’ve put up with enough crap for one lifetime.”
“Like a rat from a sinking ship.” I sighed and hung the phone up without further comment as Vic leaned in. “So, what’d the turkey trooper have to say?”
“He’s retiring, so it’s our problem, unless I want to hand it over to Ferris Kaplan.”
“So, hand it over to Game and Fish.”
“He’s overworked.”
“And we’re not?”
I glanced down at the Post-its attached to the Durant Courant and covered my face with my hand. “Well, we are now.”
Vic leaned across and spun the newspaper, then peeled back a Post-it in order to look at my picture. “It’s an old one, before the scar.” She glanced at me, the gold flashing. “Maybe you should go for a soft focus like those romance authors do.”
The red button on my phone began blinking as Ruby called out from the main room. “Walt, line one!”
Slumping in my chair, I punched the button again and picked up the receiver. “Longmire.”
“It wasn’t me.”
I pulled the receiver from my face and looked at it for comic effect, lost on the world as a whole but infinitely humorous to my undersheriff. Placing the thing in the crook of my neck, I pulled the paper back so I could read the article. “Excuse me, but who is this?”
“Jerry.”
“Jerry who?”
“Jerry, down here at the Euskadi.”
Recognizing the name of the bartender at the only Basque bar in Durant, I nodded. “Aranzadi. Right, what did you not do?”
“Beat that kid up.”
“What kid, Jerry?”
“The one in the paper; that shepherd that hung himself.”
I glanced at Vic, whose eyebrows crouched together in question. “Abarrane Extepare mentioned something about fetching him out of your bar.”
“Um, yeah, well, I don’t want any trouble with that ol’ Basquo either.”
“How about I come down there, and you can tell me the story?”
There was a pause. “Um, sure. That’d be okay, I guess.”
“Bad time?”
“Um, no, no . . . It’s just never good to have the Law in the place when people are drinking.”
I thought about how Lucian frequented the place on an irregular basis but figured retired Law wasn’t as much of a deterrent to the drinking public. “How ’bout we meet you in the alley behind the bar. Have you got somebody who can cover for you for a bit?”
“Um, yeah.”
“See you in five minutes.” I hung up the phone and glanced at Vic. “How ’bout a drink?”
“Now you’re talking.” Following me out of my office, Vic ran into my back as Ruby intercepted us and tried to hand me more Post-its. “I don’t want those.”
Fist on hip, she looked at me, her cat’s eyeglasses pushed back on her nose. “What do you want me to do with them?”
I patted the doorjamb. “Put them here on the Wailing Wall.”
* * *
—
Vic read the paper she’d purloined from my desk, her boots wedged on the dash of my truck again. “Wow, we’ve got a real wolf emergency on our hands, huh.”
“I told that kid the straight story, but evidently he had something in mind before he called me.”
“They do that sometimes.” She lowered the paper. “I’m assuming that since it’s only ten o’clock in the morning, we’re not really going for a drink, so what’s the skinny?”
“Miguel Hernandez had multiple bruises, contusions, and lacerations about the head and shoulders, and Isaac said they’d been made a few days before his death. I was going to poke around and try to see who the fight might’ve been with, but the bartender down at the Euskadi called and said it wasn’t him that did it, which leads me to believe that he knows who did.”
“Sound detective work.” She folded the paper and tossed it on the seat between us. “So, why are we driving down one of our two alleys?”
“We’re meeting him behind the bar—besides, I thought it might remind you of your home turf.”
She glanced up at the two-story buildings. “Philly? Not hardly. Manayunk, maybe.”
Jerry Aranzadi was easy to spot, wearing a white apron and wiping his hands on a dishtowel behind a dumpster at the back door of the bar. “Jeez, Jerry. This looks like a drug deal.”
The balding man nodded and leaned in my window and rested his arms on the sill. “Thanks for meeting me like this, Walt. I wanted to tell you, but it’s not good for business for me to be talking about customers.” He threw a thumb toward the door. “People come in with their problems, and I just don’t want to get a reputation as a guy who talks.”
“I understand.” I waited for him to begin, but evidently he was having trouble, so I primed the pump. “You want to tell me about Miguel Hernandez?”
He looked confused. “Who?”
“The shepherd.”
“Oh, right. He was in here, less than a week ago.”
“Uh huh.”
“He sat where he usually did, at the booth by the window—was reading a book. I mean the kid wasn’t any trouble, you know? Anyway, he’s sittin’ there minding his own business when this other guy comes in, a kind of cowboy.”
“You know him?”
“Nope. I mean he looked kind of familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Well, he sits in the booth, opposite the Hernandez guy, and they start talking, but low and pretty intense—not like they were friends or anything.”
“Right.”
“Well, after a while the cowboy leans over and smacks the living shit out of this kid. I mean really lets him have it. So, I walk over and ask them if there’s a problem, and they say no and they’ll keep it down. So, I go behind the bar, and I’m keeping an eye on them, when I have to go to the back. But I hear a crashing noise and come running out, and now the kid is on the floor with this cowboy standing over him. Well, I grab that ball bat I keep behind the bar and go to push the cowboy off the kid, and he turns around and has some words for me, so I tell him the next argument he’s going to have is with you, Walt, ’cause I’m calling 911.”
I nodded. “Then what?”
“Oh, he talks some more shit before I go toward the phone, and that’s when he says a few more things to the kid and walks out.”
“That was the end of it?”
“No. I help patch the kid up and buy him a drink to help make up for it, and when I bring the izarra and gin over the kid looks up at me and says that cowboy is gonna kill him.”
I glanced at Vic, whose eyes sharpened. “Do tell.”
“So, the kid drinks his drink and it’s getting close to closing, and I tell him I need to lock up, and he asks me to let him sleep in the bar and I tell him no, that I can’t do that, but that I’ll be happy to give him a ride home. He tells me that he works on the mountain, and I tell him I can’t run him all the way up there, but doesn’t he know anybody in town that he can stay with? He says yeah, and so I load him up and run him over to this place on the north end of town out near the airport.”
“Okay.”
“But here’s the thing: when I was driving him out there, there was this car that I swear was following us.”
“And you think it was this cowboy?”
“I do.”
“What kind of car?”
“New, maybe a truck but I think it was a car.”
“Make, model, color, plates?”
Jerry made a face, covering it with his long fingers. “It was dark, Walt, and I was tired. I’m not sure which county or number, and I guess it was a car—an SUV maybe?”
“What happened when you dropped Hernandez off?”
“He got out and went to the front porch, and there was a woman who opened the door, and they talked for a bit and then he went in.”
“Did you know the woman?”
“No, not much. She looked kind of familiar, but she was backlit in the doorway, so it isn’t like I got a good look at her either.” He fumbled in the apron and pulled out a napkin with a number and street written on it. “I remembered the address and wrote it down for you, because I figured you’d want to go talk to her.”
“Thanks, Jerry.” I took the napkin and handed it to Vic. “I’m sure we will.”
5
“So, do we pretend we’re Mormons or are we selling Tupperware?”
I walked around the car and met Vic in front of the small house. “I think the uniforms are going to give us away.”
Pausing at the mailbox, Vic opened it and then followed after me. “No name, no mail.”
Stepping onto the porch, I knocked and waited. After a moment, I knocked again and leaned to one side to look in a window, but all I could see was a room with a couple of cardboard boxes piled into each other along the wall. After knocking one last time, I stepped off and walked around the railing to the window. “The place is empty.”
Vic looked up and down the street at the houses on either side. “You take the left. I’ll take the right?”
“Sounds good.” Retreating to the curb, I approached the next house, when the front door opened.
A middle-aged woman, who was tying her bathrobe closed, was holding the door. “Can I help you?”
“Maybe. Walt Longmire, Sheriff.” I took off my hat and stopped at the edge of the porch. “I was wondering if you knew who lived in that house next door?”
“Nobody. It’s been vacant for the better part of a year now.”
“Have you seen anybody around the house in the last few weeks?”
“No.” She clutched the robe a little tighter and pulled a lighter and some Camels from her pocket. “Something going on over there I should know about?”
“Not particularly. We’re just looking for the last known whereabouts of an individual.”
She lit up one of the cigarettes. “Who?”
“A young man by the name of Miguel Hernandez.”
“The one that hung himself?”
“Mind if I ask how you know about him?”
“I read the newspapers, Sheriff.” She flipped some ash in one of the scraggly bushes that lined the porch and took a step toward me. “And what’re you guys going to do about the wolf problem anyway?”
I sighed. “It’s only one wolf, so I don’t think there’s much to be worried about, Ms. . . . ?”
“Schlesier. They say that that wolf ate part of that Hernandez kid.”
I handed her one of my cards and slipped my hat back on my head. “If you remember anything or you see anything regarding the house next door, I’d appreciate a call.”
I turned to go, but she threw out one last tidbit. “You know, once they get a taste for human flesh, it’s hard to break them of the habit.”
I stood there for a moment wondering what actual research she’d done in the world of lupine studies. “We’ll keep that in mind.”
Vic met me at my truck. “I got an old guy who says he hasn’t seen anything in months, but wants to know what we’re going to do about the—” she raised her fingers, imitating quotation marks—“wolf problem.”
I climbed in and fired up the truck. “I got the same thing on the other side—the inhabitant says that the place has been empty for the better part of a year.”
Vic closed her door and looked at me. “Anything else?”
“She also volunteered that once wolves get a taste for human flesh, it’s hard to break them of the habit.”
“What habit?”
“Eating people, I guess.”
“What, she’s some kind of fucking expert?”
Turning a U, I drove back toward the center of town. “Everybody is these days.”
* * *
—
There are lots of ways of approaching the ladies at the courthouse, but the one I always rely on is carefully. I pulled into our parking lot behind the venerable building that replaced the North Star Dance Hall and Stables as the newly formed county offices in 1884. It was clear that a former dance hall, stable, and house of ill repute wasn’t a particularly safe place to store all of the official Absaroka County records, so a bid of $81,650 was accepted and construction began on the Italianate building with stilted-arch window openings, pronounced keystones, and what they called consoles on cornices.
Bricks for the building were made of clay soil from just south of Durant, and the town’s own kilns provided lime for the mortar. Not much has changed except for the sad removal of a bell tower, which used to house a multitude of bats that my old boss and mentor, Lucian Connally, used to say was a perfectly suitable habitat since all the people who worked in the place were batshit crazy.
There is an emblem of the rising sun over the main entrance at the east, but my intention was to enter subtly from the west to avoid the maximum number of county coemployees as possible.
As I started to open the door, I became aware that Vic had followed me. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“With you.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you and the courthouse ladies don’t get along.”
“We get along fine.”
I stood there, holding the handle but keeping the door closed. “Fine, like when you threw the trashcan over the counter at the county treasurer’s office?”
“I was provoked.”
“You were not provoked, you were just in a bad mood.”
She leaned against the homegrown bricks, folding her arms and studying the sidewalk. “They provoked my bad mood.”
“By asking you to pay your taxes.”
She shrugged. “Taxes in Wyoming are a joke; it was the way they asked me to pay my taxes.”
“You were six months delinquent and received three warnings in the mail.”
