Dry Bones: A Walt Longmire Mystery (10 page)

“It was rye whiskey, at least that’s what was in the flask, and if my expert is to be trusted, it was the good stuff.” I waited. “Do you think he might’ve had some stashed around here?”

Randy stared at the planks on the porch floor. “That’s how Taylor got the black eye . . . He’s the one who snuck it in for the old man, but he wouldn’t tell me where.”

“It’s possible that there’s something wrong with what’s in that bottle, so we’ll need to test it against what was in the flask—besides, if it’s bad, you’re going to want to get rid of it.”

“Wait.” Eva stood and disappeared into the house again, after a few moments returning with Taylor the Truant under an arm. “The sheriff has something he’d like to ask you.”

The young man stood there not looking at me.

“Hey, you helped me find the ranch—you mind helping me find something else?” That piqued his interest, and he looked up at me, all of a sudden a carbon copy of his grandfather. “I’m looking for a bottle of whiskey.”

He stared at me.

“A bottle your grandfather might’ve had hidden around the house somewhere?”

He continued to stare at me.

His mother nudged his shoulder. “I told the sheriff you could find anything; do you know where a bottle like that might be?”

He swallowed and looked at his feet, all of a sudden seeming to be five. “I promised Grandpa I wouldn’t tell.”

I leaned in a little. “Well, you see, there might be something wrong with what’s in that bottle. We need to take it to the lab so that they can find out what might’ve happened to your grandfather.”

There was a long pause as thunder rumbled from the west. “I don’t know where it is.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

Randy started to reach over, but I shook my head at him. “That’s okay.”

Figuring he was released, Taylor turned and walked away, the slap of the screen door his final, teenage response—it was almost as loud as the thunder.

Randy turned and looked at us. “How ’bout I go in there and kick his skinny ass like a rented mule?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

He shook his head. “I’ll look, Sheriff.” He glanced up at his sister, who rested a hand on his shoulder. “Or Eva will; one way or the other, we’ll come up with it.” He studied her. “You ever see Dad with a flask?”

“He had that antique one. You know, it was silver, old-timey with a leather beaded cover?”

I nodded. “That’s the one.” I looked back at Randy. “Do you mind if we take a look at his study?”

He rose and started toward the door. “No, come on in.”

He opened the screen, and we followed Randy into an entryway, where he turned to the right into what had been, I was sure, Danny Lone Elk’s inner sanctum. Two large windows looked to the south, with a massive, hand-laid fireplace in the corner. There was a substantive rolltop desk between the windows along with an oak library chair. There were fossilized bones and tribal memorabilia everywhere, from dance fans and ceremonial pipes to war shields and feathered lances, but overshadowing all the relics was a huge horned shell from what must have been the largest snapping turtle ever seen in the territory. The carapace was painted and decorated with feathers and beads unlike anything I’d ever seen, and much too large to have ever been used as anything other than a stationary objet d’art.

Randy caught me studying the artifact, resting on a center table with a Plexiglas box over it. “I know, a monster, isn’t it?”

“Where did it come from?”

“Here, at first; then it was acquired by the Canadian Museum of History. The tribe went to war, legally that is, and reacquired a lot of these items. Dad kept a few of them with permission, but now that he’s gone I guess we’ll hand ’em back over to the Culture Commission.”

There were some smaller items surrounding the megalith—rattles and dance sticks, all made with turtle parts, each in its own Plexiglas box. “This stuff must be worth a fortune, Randy.”

“I guess, but it’s the tribe’s now. Dad would’ve wanted it that way.”

Eva carefully lifted up one of the Plexiglas boxes and retrieved a rattle adorned with an intricate painting of a turtle shield, feathers, and strips of horsehair and beads. “This . . . This was one of his favorites. I would come in and find him asleep in his chair with this on his chest.” There was a pause as she handled the piece, her eyes full of tears. “I used to find him in here asleep with it every day.”

She handed it to Vic, who gave it a cursory look and then handed it to me. Running my fingers along the edges of the box-turtle shell, I noticed a smell emanating from the thing, something antiseptic. “What’s that smell?”

Randy stepped into the room from the doorway and took the rattle back and placed it on the stand, re-covering it with the Plexiglas. “They disinfected these things when they were in the museum in Canada.” He half smiled. “I guess if they hadn’t the mites and stuff would have eaten them all up. Smells funny, huh?”

I looked around the room. “Maybe you should ask to keep this one . . . I can’t see how the tribe could be upset by you keeping just one.”

He nodded. “I might, for Eva, as a remembrance of Dad.” He gestured toward the collection. “He kind of had a turtle fixation. Hell, he used to bring the things back and have Eva here cook him up turtle soup on a regular basis.”

Vic made a face. “I thought he held them as sacred?”

“Oh, he did. He’d sit on the front porch and talk to the turtles and apologize for eating them. I’m surprised he didn’t have Eva cooking up pink elephant stew, what with his hallucinations.”

I glanced around, wondering where I’d be if I were a bottle of whiskey. Lucian kept his liquor in a corner cabinet, but I didn’t see anything like that in here; the moss-rock fireplace, however, looked remarkably clean for one that worked. “Is that fireplace operational?”

Eva shook her head. “No.”

Randy stepped up and used a fingernail to pick at the moss growing on the stone. “He had a spray bottle that he filled up with old beer and sprayed on the mold to keep it alive—drove Eva here crazy.”

“Who built it?”

Randy shrugged. “I don’t know, why?”

“It’s a Rumford design, unique in this territory.” From my peripheral vision I could see Vic shaking her head and placing her face in the palm of her hand, but I continued. “Benjamin Thompson, a.k.a. Count Rumford, designed the fireplace that was state-of-the-art in the late eighteenth century.” I leaned in and looked up the flue. “Jefferson had them built in Monticello, and Thoreau said they were one of the modern conveniences most taken for granted.”

Vic’s muffled voice sounded through her fingers. “So?”

I reached a hand up the flue, feeling my way. “The fireplaces were tall and shallow to reflect more heat into the room and had streamlined throats that carried the smoke away, but one of the truly inspired aspects of the design was a shelf that redirected the incoming cold air and then reflected it back up with the heated air from the fire.” Finding what I was looking for, I carefully pulled the almost-full bottle of E. H. Taylor Straight Rye from the flue. “Also makes for a magnificent hiding place, when not in use.”

 • • • 

Under the gathering gloom of thunderheads and the overcast sky, we said our good-byes. “Hey, Randy, do you mind if we take a look at the dig where they found Jen on our way out?”

He leaned on a post. “Why?”

“No particular reason; it’s just that with all the excitement the other day, we didn’t get close enough to see anything, and with all the excitement in town now, I’d like to talk about it from a more informed position.”

“Sure.” He pointed a finger at me. “No souvenirs, though.”

“I promise.”

“You better hurry; that storm’s coming in and the washes flood if there’s enough rain, and those roads get like axle grease once they get wet.” He studied the angry skies. “You think you can find it from here?”

We started off the porch. “You can loan us your nephew.”

He laughed as his sister followed us to the edge of the porch, clutching the coffee mugs to her chest with a worried look. “I want to apologize for Taylor. He’s having a really hard time with his grandpa’s death.”

Randy draped his arm over her shoulder. “You better get going.”

Eva continued, “Even to the point where he thinks . . .”

He interrupted, “They don’t need to hear that stuff.”

Vic, never one to shy away from asking a question, didn’t. “What stuff?”

The woman’s head dropped, but we could still hear her voice. “He keeps saying that he sees things.”

“Eva, they’re going to think we’re all crazy.”

She looked up past us where the thick smell of ozone permeated the air. “That he keeps seeing his grandfather standing on the hills out here . . . watching him.”

“I am officially creeped out.”

“Why?”

She shook her head and then turned to look at me as if I were the sole member and president of the Absaroka County chapter of stupid. “Umm . . . that kid is having the same visions you are.”

Without thinking, I found myself looking in the rearview mirror to make sure that Taylor wasn’t running along behind us. “It’s a pretty generic vision.”

“Maybe the two of you are tuned into the same channel from strange.” She lodged her boots onto my dash. “I notice you didn’t want to hang around and discuss it with him. You know, compare notes?” I ignored her chatter and watched as she scanned the hills in the available light that made them glow just before the storm. “I want a vision of my own.”

“Well, you go ahead and get yourself one.”

“Is that how it works?”

I tried not to smile as we sped along with the wind gusts buffeting the truck. “I don’t think so.”

She turned in the seat and stared at me. “Well, fuck special you. How come you and the kid get to run around communing with the netherworld while the rest of us mere mortals slog along?”

I humped my shoulders in a shrug. “How should I know how it works?”

“Because you have them like clockwork, like the eleven o’clock news.”

I actually gave it some thought as I slowed for one of the few turns on the road. “Maybe you should talk to Henry.”

“He can give me a vision?”

“I doubt it, but if you’re looking to have one, he might help you find it in yourself.”

She turned further in the seat. “That doesn’t sound hopeful.”

“I think some people are more susceptible.”

Her tone sharpened. “What, I’m not susceptible?”

“You’re pretty rational.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“I think you have to be open to . . . I guess, influences.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.”

“No, I mean it’s still bullshit that you get to have visions and I don’t.”

I glanced at her. “You might do well to keep in mind that every time these types of things have happened to me I’ve been somewhat impaired.”

She sighed. “As in ready to die?”

“Something like that.”

She went back to looking out the windshield. “Yeah, well, I’m not so sure I want a vision if I have to be bleeding to death to get it.”

I watched her as we sped along, her eyelids drooping the way they always did whenever we were on one of our extended county tours. I began wondering how much sleep she was getting given the psychological toll of the last few months.

I was feeling a little unmoored myself and was thinking that even with all the complications, I was looking forward to seeing Cady and Lola. I would have preferred a more quiet time with them, but those seemed to be rarer and rarer these days.

I spotted the gate where we’d gone through the first time, when we’d first seen the dinosaur dig site, and slowed the Bullet, but now three strands of barbed wire blocked our way. I pulled to a stop and climbed out as Dog whined and I shushed him, trying to let my undersheriff grab a few winks. The gate was an old lever type, and I flipped it and dragged the pole and wire wide enough to drive through.

I stood there for a moment wondering if we really had time for this kind of goose chase—the wind was picking up and the storm had eaten the mountains. It was probably less than a half hour away, but seeing as how we were already here, I figured we could take the extra time. I would just make sure I parked far away from any washes, so that we’d be able to make it back to town.

I watched the clouds and remembered something Lucian, the old Doolittle Raider, had told me once, that if we could see what the wind was doing up there, none of us would ever get on a plane again.

Momentarily distracted, I had a feeling I was being watched, and turned on a cowboy heel, floating my gaze over the undulating hills. Maybe that’s what happens when you invest so much of yourself in something; whether it is a person or a place, your soul is loath to leave it. I looked for Danny’s outline on those hills and thought maybe his ghost or spirit was still here, looking over the place that had been his. Maybe you stayed until you realized it wasn’t yours anymore and then you went on your way.

 • • • 

Vic studied me as I got back in the truck. “So, what about the daughter?” It was as though she had been reading my mind; maybe she was getting closer to a vision than she thought.

“Cady?”

“Eva.”

Maybe not. “What about her?”

She yawned and covered it with a hand, singing in a fine soprano voice she’d inherited from her mother: “
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones . . .
A little strange, wouldn’t you say?”

I pulled through the gate, got out and closed it, and drove toward the ridge where Taylor had taken a few potshots at Omar’s armored SUV. “I guess.”

“Don’t you think we should follow up and see who’s prescribing her with Fukitol
and why?”

“I would imagine that Free Bird, Danny Lone Elk’s doctor up in Hardin, is prescribing for her, too, and in answer to your next question, no, Isaac didn’t mention having gotten hold of him, so I’d imagine he hasn’t answered his call just yet.”

“Are we going to Hardin?”

“Not unless we have to—it’s not exactly Paris.”

She spoke philosophically: “I haven’t ever been.”

“Paris?”

She punched my shoulder. “Hardin.”

“Well, like I said, don’t get your hopes up.” I eased the truck to a stop and the three of us climbed out, carefully following the two-track up the hillside to Jen, the dinosaur’s next-to-last resting place.

I noticed Vic had left her jacket in the truck. “Are you sure you don’t want to bring your coat?” I gestured toward the dark clouds, strung in front of the Bighorns like a royal curtain, to the purple born. “It might get a little rough before long.”

She kept coming. “I’m not planning on spending the night.”

The afternoon air was cooling rapidly, and I was starting to think that it might not be rain but rather hail that we might be getting, as I stopped by the large wooden box that the paleontologists used to store their tools.

She puffed up behind me and rested an elbow on the crate, which was as big as a refrigerator. “Well, we can use the humidity.”

I started, turned, and looked at her.

“What? You say that all the time . . . I’m trying to get with the western code thing, okay?” She pushed off the box and passed me, and I watched the back of her as she worked her way up the trail toward the dig.

When I caught up with her, she was standing next to a depression in the top of the ridge where the ground and surrounding rock was terraced in all directions. You could see that the majority of the
T. rex
was still there, somewhat uncovered but very much intact, minus the head, of course.

The great creature was turned in on herself with the massive pelvis at the center and the elongated tail circling up and over the back. There were a few other bones, a large femur and vertebrae, scattered a little away, and I couldn’t help but walk to the overhang where Jen had surprised Jennifer. It was as if the old girl had tucked herself into a modified fetal position. It was difficult to imagine anything that could kill the undisputed seven-ton queen of her time, but life had a way perhaps even then of humbling all of us. From personal experience, I was pretty sure it must’ve had something to do with her offspring, one of the more than a few thoughts I decided to keep from present company.

I called Vic over to a small trail that led toward a narrow gap and the underside of the cliff. She joined me, and I pointed up to where the two-talon claw appeared to be reaching out from within the rock and time and space. “Look.”

“Holy shit.” She stretched out a hand, touching the nearest claw, and it was almost as if some interspecies karma was taking place. It wasn’t a reach to see that DNA strand that might’ve somehow connected them, not hard to see Vic’s most ancient lineage being a tyrannosaur. Evidently, her line of thought was running along the same trail. “So, if I was a
T. rex
, what were you?”

I played along. “Probably a brontosaurus—they call them apatosaurus these days—means deceptive lizard, by the way.”

“What, they got married and changed their names?”

“Remember Cope and Marsh?”

“Oh, no.”

“Yep, Marsh was in such a hurry to scoop Cope that he classified a smaller, juvenile version of the same creature as a completely different species; he called the juvenile an apatosaurus and then the much larger, eighty-foot adult a brontosaurus.”

“The one that’s on the Sinclair Oil signs?”

“Yep.” I stooped and picked up a few stones as Dog came over and sniffed the area. “To add insult to injury, in 1970, paleontologists discovered that Marsh had taken a skull from another dig and had put it on the skeleton of the apatosaurus at the Peabody Museum at Yale.”

“So, why do we still call it a brontosaurus?”

“Because we are used to calling it that and because this particular specimen is more like a thunder lizard than a deceptive one. I mean, at eighty feet and thirty tons, how deceptive could you be?”

She nodded but seemed restless. “I’m going back up topside. You coming?”

“In a minute.”

She disappeared, and Dog started to follow but then lingered with me.

Thinking about the passage of time and what a blink we were in the history of this planet, I reached up to touch one of Jen’s claws. Dinosaurs walked the face of the earth for approximately 165 million years, whereas we have been here for only two hundred thousand. To put that in context, if the dinosaurs had been here a week, we would have been here for only the last two minutes. And yet for all their longevity, they were gone, and no one really seemed to know why.

I thought about what Jennifer had said about the big beasts and how they likely ate each other, even family.

As I looked out over the high plains and felt the weight of the oncoming storm at my back, it wasn’t difficult to feel small, transient, and ephemeral. I thought about the tenuous threads that held us here, that kept us going. I thought about the women in my life and what magnificent, life-engendering creatures they were. I’d like to think that Jen had been like that—that it was more important what you did with your life than how it ended or what somebody did with your bones long afterward. Still, her head rested in my jail’s holding cell. I couldn’t help but think that she deserved something better than that.

I guess I hoped that she’d end up at the High Plains Dinosaur Museum or with the Cheyenne Conservancy—somewhere near her home—but it didn’t look good.

I watched as a few hailstones the size of BBs struck the rocks outside the overhang, and I could almost feel the sagebrush holding its breath in anticipation of an ice storm. In the distance, lightning struck a point down near the Powder Breaks, and I started thinking that it might be best for us to get out of the two-track before the deluge began.

I looked around, but Dog was gone, probably following Vic, so I flipped up the collar of my old canvas hunting jacket and tugged my hat down tight against the gusting wind and the ice pellet buckshot.

Stumbling a few times, I looked to the west and could see the sky was a wall of purple and black, the only thing defining it the diagonal striping that indicated precipitation.

Thinking Vic and Dog might’ve shown more sense than I had, I went to the edge of the ridge and looked at the truck. Moving over a little, I peered down through the top of the windshield as the hail bounced off it with an unnatural, metallic ping.

There was no one inside.

The wind was really picking up, and I looked in all directions but could still see nothing. I pulled my gloves from my pockets and slipped them on—it was May in Wyoming, but I’d known spring storms to blow in with the ferocity of February, so I decided I’d better gather both Vic and Dog as quickly as I could find them.

There was a knoll at one end of the ridge, and I figured that was the spot where I’d be able to see the surrounding area. It was possible that my undersheriff had slipped and fallen down one of the steep hillsides, but I couldn’t be sure unless I could spot her, and it was doing nothing but getting darker.

I zipped my jacket and made my way upward as quickly as I could, slipping on the wet surface of the rocks as the hail melted into sleet. A small panic was setting in as I scrambled the short distance, and it seemed to take forever. The air from my lungs was billowing like a bison’s and clouding from the drop in temperature as I made it to the top.

Nothing.

Some of the hail was hitting the rocks and bouncing like marbles, while some exploded into tiny, icy shrapnel. Visibility was still dropping as I stumbled down a slope of scrabble, kicking some rocks loose and watching them fall some twenty feet to the ground below the ledge where I stood.

It was then that I noticed something beside my boot and stooped to pick it up. It was a piece of cardboard, sopping but still legible, and I read C
ASH
P
RIZES,
P
LAY
M
ONEY
in old-fashioned print; at the bottom was the outline of a coin and the words M
ALLO
C
UP, 5
P
OINTS.

As another lightning strike flashed to the east, the thunder shook the ridge where I stood with a resounding shudder like the footstep of a sauropod, and I thought I might’ve seen something or someone to the east on the opposite side of the narrow canyon. I took a step forward to the very edge of the drop-off as the hail continued to bounce around me like I was a target in a shooting gallery, the roar of the impact drowning out everything else.

There was someone standing at the very top of the other ridge with arms outspread like an eagle attempting to take flight. Evidently, she was trying to summon up a vision after all. I looked around but couldn’t see Dog.

I brought my hands up alongside my mouth and shouted, “Vic!”

The shadowy figure didn’t move.

“Vic!?”

Whoever it was turned and looked at me. I waved but stopped in midmotion when it became clear that it wasn’t she.